Mokley

Grimtooth

_{art by Demizu Posuka}

OOC THREAD

Someone slipped an unmarked envelope under your door. It is a fine envelope, crisp-edged and carefully wax-sealed with a symbol like a pair of wings. You have certainly seen this symbol before on the sides of regal carriages and on banners and bookbindings. Surely your door has been mistaken for that of someone of far more importance.

Curious, you break the seal. Inside is an elegantly penned invitation.

Lord Roderick Ancroft Fowle Requests the Pleasure of Your Company at the

MASQUERADE

Twenty-Fifth of November, Eighteen Hundred and Fifty-Five
Seven O'Clock in the Evening
Toadmere Rookery Ballroom

PREMISE

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Your character is a citizen of Pallhallow, a modest Victorian town in the quiet and rainy countryside. As long as your character can remember, the Toadmere Rookery -- the mysterious old estate on the hill -- has never opened its doors to anyone but one strange servant, and the Lord Roderick Fowle has locked himself away inside. So when invitations appear in the hands of persons who are exceptionally underqualified to receive them, it is a most curious event indeed.

Although the opening scenes are simple enough, gameplay will soon lead deeper down the rabbit hole, if you will. Beneath the quiet town of Pallhallow you may expect everything steampunk from automatons to dirigibles, rune-based magic and enchantment, dragons and dinosaurs, plenty of mystery, and a rumored big-bad only called Grimtooth.

GAMEPLAY

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Things will play out differently depending on what the characters do or say; you determine how this story is told. This game is exploratory, but there is a common goal, an overarching plot, a plethora of subplots, and plenty of motivation to move forward. The style will be lighthearted and a bit ridiculous at times, but may take a few dark or horrifying turns. Characters are encouraged to forge their own path and develop new skills and abilities, make new friends and enemies, and find new tools and artifacts to help them along on their journey.

NOTES

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Inspirations are drawn from Fallen London, Neverwhere, Lemony Snicket, Charles Dickens, Jules Verne, Labyrinth, Dinotopia, MYST, Undertale, Mushi-Shi, and CLAMP in general. If you like one or more of these, you might like this. :)

Experience has told me that at least half of all accepted characters drop out in the first four weeks of gameplay. Therefore, there will be no limit to how many characters will be approved. The first few weeks of gameplay will be the most chaotic, but posting will eventually slow to a steady pace. So, don't panic if it's too fast, and don't panic if it slows down. It's okay. :)

Mirror, Fox, Key

Squeak?

Mirror, Fox, Key

Aw, let's not destroy the mystery! What if he's hideous? What if he's gorgeous?

Maybe he's a hamster.

Mirror, Fox, Key

Bahahaha excellent. x3

Mirror, Fox, Key

@Turboshitter Sounds like a hugely busy schedule! I commend you for your enormous energy and dedication!

The only thing I could suggest is to say the felidrake escapade drew Fiammetta away from the others and off into something else equally plot-related, which I could help with. That way she could jump back in with a useful reason she wasn't there.

Otherwise, the spot is permanently open if you feel it's better to wait until your schedule is more comfortable -- we could even make a show of removing her from the scene, only to turn up later with fantastically important information. It would be epic.

Mirror, Fox, Key

I generally will just ignore their existence entirely unless/until they reappear.

Speaking of which --

@Turboshitter@t2wave@Magnato@Irisity@Bornlucky@Darinthus@Damiann47@DFTBA

If any of you guys are still floating around and still want to drop back in, give us a shout! I've got an offer for you: I'll edit you into the latest mod post if you want to react to the monster, or I'll give your character their own side-thing that explains why they missed the action. Essentially, I will happily write you back in, just say something.

This offer will never expire. Any of you who want to step back in later will be written in again as seamlessly as possible.

I know Skittles is around and probably busy, so I won't add to the multiple @mentions, but this offer is open to Lux as well! I'll totally edit her into the latest mod post, just let me know what she would do.

Rune and Sword

Alphonse didn't move an inch.

The rock thunked against his skull and left a scrape of red in its wake.

For awhile he just crouched atop the rock, spinning the stick in one hand and staring at her. At the same time he listened to the heavy breathing of the groon behind him -- it would only stay asleep for so long.

"What've you got to prove?" he asked her in a low voice. He'd noticed that whatever she'd been carrying was now leaking on the ground, but she wouldn't have dropped it if she hadn't been so jumpy. "Who're you going to impress? I'm the only person around, and you obviously don't care what I think. Do you often go running at your own death just to prove you can?"

Now that he'd done his job, his demeanor had changed. He was a tired sort of angry, and not at all amused by the pain in his temple. Alphonse dropped the stick and left her, instead turning his attention to tying a rope around the groon's chest so that it could be dragged to the water.

Mirror, Fox, Key

Hmm, I think possibly we should drop the teams. Since this RP is no longer the size of a classroom -- and we're all basically ignoring the teams anyway -- we could probably just quietly ignore them now. x3

Mirror, Fox, Key

The Temple of Spring Whistling

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From over the heads of the whistling statues, Telio could see and hear the roaring, screaming, thrashing, almost comical chaos below. There was a knot of green scales and claws and teeth and arms and swords flailing; a pistol fired, and the forest shook as every living creature fled for higher ground, and still a couple of the trusting ones kept their hands to the circle despite the immediate danger of decapitation by snake bite. Spook stood by, hands in his pockets, idle.

Here, in the remains of the temple, it was peaceful. The statues whistled in soothing harmony. The leaves above rustled in the soft breeze.

Telio would hear a soft tack tack tack of something small and metal tapping against stone.

"You have beautiful dreams."

The soft, feminine voice came from a small metallic bird. It stood glinting on a whistling statue's head, blinking at Telio with one eye turned toward him, and it bounced a little closer along the stones. A turnkey spun slowly on its back. A rune had been carved ornately into its chest -- like the rune on the tree they had encountered on the road, and like the runes written on Spook's arms.

^{by ktt}

"A person with beautiful dreams should never be afraid," the little bird said. "Not in a place where dreams are magic."

The Magic Circle

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The beast had been on the verge of a strike upon Meryn -- enraged at the smear of blood on its nose -- when Kelsier initiated his own attack. Within moments, Kelsier alone had the monster's full attention and rage; in quick succession each head snapped against his skilled blade, flicking forward and back like a venomous spring. One head still reeled, cross-eyed from the guardsman's initial attack, and was slower and sloppier than the others. The rest of its body -- half of which still hung below the edge of the portal -- writhed and scraped to move closer, to catch Kelsier between blows, to snatch him in its fangs and rip him apart.

A shot rang out, and one of the heads jerked violently, crashing into the others, dripping black blood from an eyesocket. The head that had been shot fell to the ground and was limp and still. The remaining two heads divided their attention: one continued to fight Kelsier's sword while the other sped venomously toward Alexander with every intention of biting off his head. It crashed into his shield and pulled back for another blow.

Lily and Emma, in their concentration, could feel every detail of the power moving between them. Energy routed throughout the network of lines in intricate patterns; It was now clear to both of them where the power was lacking, and where the gaps and blocks were in the flow of energy. It was simple, with this knowledge, to direct their thoughts and work together: to balance the flow of dreams and bring stability to the circle.

Within the portal, the thunder stopped rolling. The lightning stopped flashing, and the wind stopped howling. An eerie silence followed, broken only by the hissing beast and the clang, clang of Kelsier's sword against the monster's snapping fangs.

The monster's lower half began to scrape, slide and sink backward.

Soon, its attacks could no longer reach Kelsier and Alexander. Its claws scrabbled against the weedy cobblestones, and the two heads hissed frightfully while the third dragged, bleeding, along the ground. As long as Lily and Emma maintained concentration, the beast was sucked farther and farther back into the hole it had come from, its necks flinging wildly in a desperate desire to stay aboveground -- until, all at once, the last of it was yanked into darkness, and the monster was gone.

Stillness. Silence. The forest held its breath.

At the center of the magic circle, the portal remained -- only now it simply looked like a black spot in the road, a hollow nothingness, as if in this particular spot nothing at all existed.

Spook whistled.

"You two have a knack for this, don't you?" he said to Lily and Emma as he ambled over to the pile of cages, where the felidrakes were shaking in silent fright. The Traveller picked up two of the cages, and these felidrakes began to yowl in terror as he carried them across to the center of the circle, to drop the cages into the portal one by one.

Mirror, Fox, Key

I'm thinking of storypostin' tomorrow/today. If anybody's thinkin' of postin' before me, give a shout! :)