Mokley

Moonfiend

This oonneee is next!

Dragon's Mask

Ok, finally got a post up! :)

I'm still working out the specifics of the world, and making note of what doesn't work. It's looking like the water-button is probably a bad idea, so in the future I'll probably have it go somewhere else.

Also, to everyone: if you push a button and you really don't like where it goes, let me know. I can scrap it and change it to something more engaging.

Dragon's Mask

_{"Yeah! Let's go!" Isabelle said, hopping on her feet a bit. She looked around for a bit for the exit. Well, the little girl and cat can't go anywhere if they don't leave the room, can they?}

"Yeah!" Howl cheered with an equally excited leap in the air. He landed gracefully, did a neat little turn and a twitch of his tail, and raised his paws up against the wall, ears perked. "This is a very special room that has no door -- but you can push one of those buttons there! Do you see them?"

Carved among the intricate patterns on the coppery wall were a series of buttons with strange symbols on them:

---

_{Riley most certainly didn't want to imitate that behaviour, so she took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and pressed one of the buttons at random. It turned out to be the one on the far right.}

The button lit up with a gentle green glow; the light spread quickly throughout all the carved lines that networked throughout the walls of the tiny room, until the coppery little room was full of angled patterns of dim neon.

BRRRRRM CLICK!

Above Riley's head, a copper ceiling slid closed, sealing off the room from the water that had been floating overhead.

Howl spun in place and flashed a fangy grin up at Riley. "See you later!" He turned his back to her, coiled his haunches, and leaped through the wall as if he were nothing more than a ghost -- but the wall was completely solid.

The room began to shake and rumble like a very old elevator.

DING!

All of a sudden everything went still and quiet; the lights were gone and the shaking had stopped. For a tense moment, Riley was alone in silence -- until the wall behind her split open like elevator doors, revealing a chaos of muttering and clattering noises and buttery-sweet smells.

"Make way, coming through, out of the way!" called a waitress as she sprinted through the crowd with an enormous tray of covered dishes held over her head. She rushed past the elevator door and disappeared among the filled tables to the right. The tables were all filled with enormous monsters with scales or feathers or fur or spines, all shoveling ravenous forkfuls of savory meats and sweet desserts into their fanged or tentacled mouths.

The waiters and waitresses that darted about, however, were very much human. They wore uniforms of pink and blue, which matched the gaudy decor that gave the huge restaurant a very particularly nostalgic feel.

Directly in front of the elevator was a worn red carpet, which led directly to the hostess' podium, above which glowed a bright green neon sign:

welcome to

Lilyrose House

The hostess was a teenage girl with flyaway black hair and a pink uniform that was slightly fancier than those of the other wait staff. She wore a patch over her right eye, but her left eye caught quick sight of Riley through the elevator door.

"Hey, there you are!" she hollered, gripping the podium. "You're late!"

---

<sub>"N-n-no!" He cried out as he twisted around and began to dig into the pillows in an attempt to escape this nightmare. "I just want to wake up!"

Deeper. "Wake up!"

Deeper. "Wake up!"

He made a small hole to climb into and began to blubber in it. "I want my Mommy!"</sub>

The black cat tilted his head and swished his tail, and for a moment he waited for this new visitor to finish being scared -- but when the boy showed no signs of anything but distress, the cat lighted up onto the disheveled pile of pillows and craned his neck to peer into the little cave the boy had made in them.

"What's a mommy?" he asked quizzically, triangle ears perked.

Tin Dragon Detective Agency

Hey guys, I'm so sorry -- especially to those who just joined! -- but my head's just not in this. I've been stuck in a creative block for the past month, and for the life of me I can't come up with any sort of plot now that would be remotely interesting to play in. Instead of just posting something random for the sake of forcing a post out, I feel it would be more responsible to focus on other RPs for now.

Thank you all so much! You're all awesome, and I would absolutely love to see you guys (and your characters!) in any of my other RPs: Mirror, Fox, Key, Moonfiend, or Dragon's Mask, or any potential future RP!

I'm gonna close shop here, but I hope to see you all again soon! :)

Dragon's Mask

@bloonewb Was hoping to hang on for @XxLyraxX :3

Mirror, Fox, Key

Holy crap I wrote something! O.o

But no explosions. :(

Mirror, Fox, Key

_{Meryn found Cogswall on the map again and traced a line northward with her eyes.}

The old map was drawn with meticulous care, in sepia ink on aged paper; it had been folded and re-folded, bore tea stains and small margin notes scribbled in a runic code. Much of the map was forested by clever penstrokes, while plains and desert were noted by the sparsity or scraggle of trees.

Cogswall was most prominent, with its moat of barren burned wasteland -- and Enn, half-hidden in the forest, smaller and inconspicuous. There were others -- Lune, Kestrel, Raskiln -- and the temples: An'Dast, the ruins that Spook had called the "Temple of Spring Whistling"; and An'Hiket, which appeared larger and, according to the drawing, slightly more impressive.

North of Cogswall there was -- nothing. Only Sorrow's Deep lay to the north: a round craggy bay crowned by mountains.

The old man shuffled behind Meryn to peer over her shoulder. "Sorrow's Deep, eh?" He scoffed. "Dangit if that damned crater doesn't keep comin' up. You an' the Prophet and Spook -- the temples an' the lot of the crystal-skins, all you all gosh-dang care about is that gosh-dang crater." He worked himself up to exhaustion, and he creakily lowered himself into a chair.

He set his beady eyes on Meryn and pointed a knobby finger at her. "I'll tell ya somethin' 'bout that crater, missy. Leave it alone. Let it be. Boats sail in and don't come out. Birds fly out over it and don't come back. There ain't nothin living in that water -- not a fish or a scrap of weed. It's been dead and death always, and it'll be dead and death after we're all gone. Don't you believe the fairy tales -- the creature sightings or caught fish, or people returnin'. They're lies told by the temples to bring in new recruits, see. Spook hisself swallowed that garbage line and sinker. We wouldn't be in this mess."

He huffed a sigh and leaned on his bony knees. "The best thing is to just leave it be. Leave it all be. And if the temples are right, and somethin's comin', then we'll just stay out of its way."

Machinery elsewhere in the tower whirred down, and pipes clanked. An uncomfortable silence draped over the room. The old man turned his head, listening -- then shuffled over to a sink and turned on the spigot to find only a few short spits of sludge. "Dangit now the water's out, too."

_{Ronken positioned himself between the man and as many kids as possible. He then reached out to the man's right shoulder from the side. He kept his other hand at his side in a fist. He was hopefully ready to block a punch if needed, but he didn't want to threaten the man if he could avoid a fight. Not in front of kids. "Hey Mate, you okay there? Seem on edge."}

The hooded man stiffened, and slowly he turned, his eyes blazing. He was either furious -- or terrified. "Get out," he hissed, his voice deep and trembling, mad with diseased insanity. "They're coming. Too many here. Get out. They're coming." A crystalline hand suddenly snatched Ronken's shirt, his fist like stone. "They're in the waaaalllssssss!"

_{Rather, as she looked down she realized that her hands were locked in a death grip around a fold in the boy's shirt, unable to let go. Instead she tried to be as small as she possibly could be and hide behind the boy, trusting him not to be the bait for some elaborate trap.}

Below, a small circle was forming around a big hooded man and the smaller man he was holding up by the shirt; heads had turned to see the source of the crazed voice that echoed in the wide chamber, and some recognized the gleam of black crystal that grew on the brute's exposed arm.

The boy, however, was undeterred. "It's okay!" he assured Feela with a pat of her hand. "We're all refugees. C'mon, let's get some grub, yeah?" He encouraged Feela down the stairs, holding onto her wrist, and waved over his head at a few friends who had spotted him from another side of the room. "That's my sister, Glinny, and her friend, and that's Bobo and Tizzy. They're saving a spot in line for us, it's okay!" He pushed his way through the crowd, skirting around the fight in the middle of the room to reach his friends who were calling over the crowd's murmur.

"PEOPLE OF COGSWALL!" a man's voice bellowed.

Up above, a man in a white hooded cloak stood at the mouth of one of the drainpipe entryways, at the top of the stairs. He had his arms outstretched. His nose and mouth were covered by dark cloth.

"THE INFECTION HAS SPREAD, AND IT IS DEADLY."

Somewhere behind him, faintly, came the choked sob of a woman.

The man who restrained Ronken was trembling. "They're coming, they're coming, they're coming for us.

"ALL OF YOU HAVE BEEN EXPOSED. BUT YOU'LL ALL BE JUST FINE -- A CURE HAS BEEN FOUND!

A ripple of excitement spread through the room. Murmurs whispered in the crowd.

Water began to trickle out of one of the four drainpipe entryways. Then a second began to drip.

"A MEDICINAL WATER HAS BEEN MIXED. EVERYONE HERE MUST ONLY SUBMERGE THEMSELVES MOMENTARILY, AND ALL TRACES OF THE CRYSTAL-SKIN WILL BE WASHED AWAY."

The third drainpipe began to leak water.

"WE WILL BEGIN TO FLOOD THE FLOOR WITH THIS MEDICINAL WATER NOW. PLEASE DO NOT BE ALARMED, AND HOLD UP YOUR VALUABLES. SOAK YOURSELVES IN IT AS MUCH AS YOU CAN!"

"They're coming, they're coming, they're coming, they're coming . . ."

Water began to flow freely out of the drainpipes, splashing down the stairs to the floor. People rushed to it to rub the water on their skin, splash their faces, scrub their hair.

"GET OUT GET OUT NOW!" This screech was not the man in the drainpipe, but it was Switch's voice. She pushed her way through the crowds, shoving people aside with a blade withdrawn, raced up the steps to get at the man in the white hooded cloak.

SLAM

A metal grate slammed down between her and the man in the white hooded cloak.

SLAM

SLAM

SLAM

Each of the four drainpipes closed off just before the water began to surge. Frothing water surged and roared out of all four pipes, and waterfalls spilled down into the crowd.

The boy tugged on Feela's shirt while water rose at their ankles. "C'mon, we gotta get wet to get cured!"

The crystalline brute at the center of the room was still shaking. Whispering. "Get out. Get out. Get out."

Mirror, Fox, Key

Haha I'm fond of gray morals and conflict. x3

Agreed, the characters need a chance to latch onto something, and especially to understand what's happening and how it affects them. That is exactly what's blocking me, haha. It's not enough to simply sweep the characters through the narrative -- the narrative should be structured around the characters' actions, should depend on their existence.

I'll go ahead and write, and see what happens. x3

Edit: jk I made a map instead. xD

Mirror, Fox, Key

Not necessarily -- the demons get the disease the same way anyone else does. It's universal.

The Thing That Is Coming has something to do with the origin of the disease and the way to cure it -- but those that are already afflicted (and whoever has the mask, to an extent) are the only ones who can know this for sure.

The disease is a byproduct of something else that also is the reason the cities are all isolated from one another.

Mirror, Fox, Key

Hmm. Ok.

The disease is what is splitting people on the issue. In one camp are those who see the benefits of the crystalline, which are certain connections with otherworldly things. Those afflicted who manage to live with it can see/hear/interact with things that no one else can. They are therefore acting as prophets, they know something is coming, and they want to recruit as many afflicted people as possible to help fight it.

The other camp wants to destroy the crystalline by any means necessary. They see the prophets as terrorists that are spreading the disease wherever they go, spewing lies about saving the world to cover up for their massacres. They're especially looking for Spook, who they only know by name and mask, who they believe is the ringleader.

Which brings us to the present moment. North is Spook's thought, meaning something to do with The Thing That Is Coming. He's found something important, something he needs to retrieve and secure in order to prevent The Thing That Is Coming.

The guy in the underground -- the crystalline one -- therefore isn't the real threat. If he dies, everyone in that underground will be afflicted. If any of the crystalline patients in those cots dies, everyone will breathe in the disease. Those devoted to abolishing the disease are aware of this. This is what Switch means by massacre waiting to happen.