Oh, this looks super cool! One question though: how common is it for someone born there to leave? The answer isn’t gonna influence my interest or anything, I just wanna know for backstory’s sake.
A wonderful question! One that I don't even know the answer to. Probably very unlikely/impossible, since there's all sorts of weird shit going on in Delville Heights that the Horror goes to great pains to cover up. Which does bring me to another thing I was thinking about - the more one lives here, the more...acclimatised they might be to the things that go on here? Again I reference WTNV for that sort of vibe. Maybe not completely nonchalant, but I think a born local who's never experienced anything else, and can't leave anyhow, might end up shrugging their shoulders or knowing their way around things.
Prompts are almost ready to go, I'll finish them up then head to bed.
UPDATE: Prompts are done! I've decided to go for the same prompt for everyone, and it's just a matter of changing the names and pronouns. Do let me know if I messed up somehow. Tomorrow - more locations and the start of our Encounter list.
Edit edit: @SashaThePanther, thank you for tolerating my mistake of carefully double checking the PM...then copying Luneras over and completely buggering the whole post when I meant to just do a paragraph. It's now super late here but I'll fix it in the morning, lest I continue to screw it up. XD I'll reply tomorrow too.
Well, I wouldn't say he's a "new local" at the start, he's definitely an extended-stay visitor (because he's willing to spend at least 3 months working on his story). He's still potentially a future resident, but that's not his mindset at the beginning, if that makes sense.
Night!
Ahh, now I get what you were aiming for. Ironically enough it looks like, from the sheet there, that the Horror intentionally dragged him over to DH. Probably wants to turn him mad trying to uncover the truth, that pesky godlike entity. I'll rustle up a prompt for you in a few hours and we'll see how you fare.
Holy wowww. I'm delighted and intrigued by this whole premise. Working on a character now!
Nice to hear! I'm hoping once I got maybe three or so interested people we can work on adding more to our town. I mean, I got ideas and all, but a big chunk of it would have to do with the cast joining. You can own your own shops, churches, whatever. It'd really bring a lot of life to the town.
Speaking of, Sasha - what do you think about maybe an overcluttered desk in the town hall for Thad? DH uses the radio for most of their news but I can see them taking pity on the journalist and letting him write up newsletters and what not. I don't think they have a dedicated building for journalism so you can go ham on what town hall is like, maybe make a few NPCs to go in it like the mayor and some secretary.
Well the only difference between w visitor and a resident is that the visitors are actively pushed out of the town, one way or another. Either they get fed up and leave or something kills them, drives them mad, forces them out by any means necessary. That's because the Horror is busy collecting people without any ties to the rest of society, but that's not even set in stone. Post your CS and let me know why you want to make a visitor and I'll work with you.
Tagging a few people who might be interested in joining! (Hopefully they're still around, some of these GMed or played in RPs I was in like half a year ago lmao) @Sad Ogo@Lord Orgasmo@MissCapnCrunch
Everyone knows someone who knows someone who left for Delville Heights. The rumour is that it's such a sleepy, self sufficient town stead that people go in and don't come out again. Which is preposterous, because everyone also knows someone who went to visit and came back just fine. It's a hotbed for conspiracy theories and, despite the locals' best efforts, steeped in the American Gothic that seems to titillate the masses.
But why visit Delville Heights when there's much cooler places to go, like Salem or Area 51? Delville has lost most of its veneer of tourism by never feeding the hype. Every so often, a smattering of curious souls come in hoping to not really discover the truth but find signs of the illusion, buy souvenirs, take photos of carefully crafted crop circles and get out. Most are disappointed when it's just a small town. It's the party pooper of Midwestern curiosities.
The rumour is that you can't just choose to go to Deville Heights. Deville Heights chooses when you go. It's been used for decades as a destination for the uprooted; a young man jilts his bride on the altar and blames a sudden compulsion to visit Delville Heights. But, as he will shortly find out, the town itself rejects the unwelcome; everything is irritably lame and isolated for those who are not meant to arrive and it quickly shuffles them onwards to the next sleepy town. No, you know when you are ready. It calls to you across the horizon. Life becomes desaturated, insipid and bland. Friends become boring. Family are no longer as close as you thought. It whittles away at the chains holding you to your old life until you can leave without resistance, then it helps you pack your bags in the trunk and drive. The ones that come to stay often have no idea why they did it. The ones that are meant to stay never regret what they left behind. And it's rare for anyone to come running after them.
Overview
Welcome to the ISIDH interest check! This roleplay draws inspiration from Stranger Things, Lovecraft, Welcome to Night Vale, Silent Hill and This is the Police 2. I am planning to begin running the game Early-Mid August, with a definite first IC post by September 1st. In short - we have hella time to worldbuild and work on applications, even from as early as the interest check. (see more below)
ISIDH will be a semi-sandbox RP taking place in the odd town of Delville Heights. Players will play average civilians within the town during the 80s. As stated in the teaser, it's a town that people end up at. The Delville Horror, a cosmic entity that lurks somewhere in the area, lures individuals in to stay. A fog in the surrounding woodland that leads escapees back into the town itself keeps the population within very controlled and calculated. Sure, there are tourists - visitors - that crop up from time to time but you can usually tell them apart from the locals.
Potential applicants will have to be comfortable with minor DMing as they go along. The Co-GM and I will drop prompts through Delville Radio, and I'm hoping that we'll have an extensive list of encounters for the OOC before we start. Certain 'cues' in the prompts will open up the possibility of several encounters, and then it's up to one of you guys to take the reins for whoever's in the area and RP it out. These encounters range from hauntings and combat with monsters to strange phenomena and happenings.
1: An IC Radio post mentions static interference in Connal's Icecream Parlour. Three players, A B and C, currently have a character in/near the parlour and want to pursue it.
2: B steps up and offers in the OOC to follow the prompt for anyone interested. He checks the Encounter list to see what has the cue of 'static'.
3: There are three possible encounters - the emergence of a Shrieker, the haunting of a ghost, and a freak storm.
4: B doesn't want to do any combat. He writes out the storm, but takes his own liberties - it's raining in the parlour. A and C's characters have to save the icecream from water damage!
There IS an overarching storyline to all of this though. We're going to put in the work on NPCs, locations and histories only for me to come in and start 'removing' them piece by piece (you'll see when I get to it! Have faith). So with the town starting to get wiped out, the threat of being unable to leave starts to become increasingly worrying. I'm hoping the eventual destruction of the entire town and its populace would be a good incentive for our team to band together and look into who, or what, is pulling the strings in Delville Heights.
Application Process
This one's going to be a little different from what you might be used to. You will NOT be judged via CS, though a sheet with some basic info about your character is necessary before you start your interview.
Since I'm looking for people who can take initiative and are within Advanced level in terms of roleplay, not writing, we will be doing a short scene in PMs using the character you want to join with. In this test, I'm not looking at post length or quality of prose (though, naturally, I expect a decent grasp on grammar and writing). Instead I'll be looking at how you put your spin on things as a mini-DM - how you control the NPCs, how realistic your character and the events you create turn out. In other words, I'll lead you in with something to work with and I expect you to DM for me. As such, I'd rather see one or two paragraphs that keep the RP moving instead of large passages of introspection with very little action. (You are free to RP in the IC however you like, but if you're going to take the wheel on an encounter I'd expect to see the same proactive writing style that I saw in the interview. Don't keep people waiting!)
So technically, applications are open already. The RP that happens in the interview process is NOT canon, though, so we don't get a full cast of players that all know the same chick they met earlier.
(No need for any formatting here if you don't want it! Images allowed with brief description.) Name: Age:(16+) Gender: Occupation: Personality: History: Skills: Weaknesses:
Lore So Far
Key Locations:
Main Street:
A cluster of shops and other necessities that cling to the main road running through Delville Heights.
Floodwater Hotel: Poorly named, brilliantly maintained. Meet Sally Parker at the front desk and get yourself a reasonably priced room. You’d think a small town wouldn’t bother with hotels, but there are always a bunch of odd visitors lurking round these parts…
Delville Heights Newsagent: Run by old man Tommy. A corner store, selling the local paper, sweets, tobacco, some odds and ends. Flocked by kids in the after-school hours.
Delville Diner: A greasy, grimy 24hr diner. Portion sizes are gratuitous. Kelly and Simon run the orders, whilst Cookie works on the meals in the kitchen. There’s almost always a plume of steam rising in the air from this place.
Delville Town Hall: Mayor Ingrid and her administrative staff do their best to keep a lid on things through infallible optimism and cheery dispositions. Their bubbly demeanours make it incredibly grating to have to deal with the council, which might be the whole point of it. Mayor Ingrid has held her position for seven years.
Delville County Jail and Police Station: Even more respected than the Town hall in terms of getting things done. Becoming a cop in Delville Heights is a highly dangerous profession; you are the frontline against whatever mysterious happenstance is plaguing the town this time.
The Suburbs:
The residential area for most inhabitants of the town. The most likely place for your character to live. Also houses a few amenities to really get the community spirit going.
Delville Heights Commonwealth Pool: An outdoor pool with a set of changing rooms, toilets and showers. Lined with sunbeds and bleached parasols. Bask in the stench of chlorine.
Delville Heights Community School: The town's local school. There aren't enough students or teachers to maintain several different educational institutions, so the school itself has three buildings in the property - One for elementary, one for middle, and one for high school. It's poorly maintained but with an average of around 10-15 kids per class, the students receive a better quality of education than usual.
Tenpin's Bowling Alley: Johnny Tenpin may not be his real name, but bowling and pizza is a beloved passtime of the locals here regardless of age. The bowling alley is moved primarily into the residential district and good for parties.
The Outskirts:
The unofficial term for the part where the buildings start to thin out around the edges. There are VERY few houses out here, and the ones that still stand have been boarded up. It's bad luck to live so close to the wilderness.
Alpine Lodge: A somewhat run-down winter lodge made by a hopeful ranger who vastly underestimated the temperament of the wildlife. It sees more popularity during winter and summer break - the bar sells alcohol to underage teens, the rooms are dirt cheap and the food served there is a good deal better than what's served in the Diner. A popular haunt for the younger residents of Delville Heights.
Rotter's Ranch: Against all understanding of the phenomena taking place in Delville Heights, Old Man Combleberry dug deep into the ineffable roots of his farmer ancestry and started up a cattle ranch just on the borders of the forest. Sure, the cows produce a sort of lavender-coloured milk and some of them have more legs and heads than usual, but Combleberry loves them all equally. He's getting old though and appreciates the help, especially during calving season.
The Wilderness:
(GM CONTROLLED AREA. Try not to venture out here without one of the (co) GM's characters with you.) Surrounding Delville Heights is a vast expanse of woodland, a long and winding river and a lake made out of an old, flooded quarry. By far the most dangerous part of town. Cordoned off with an old chain-link fence and plenty of warning signs - but there are many holes and entrances into this area.
Delville Woods: A dense, fog-shrouded expanse of towering pine trees. The further you delve into the forest, the more distorted and diseased these mighty pines become. Deer, foxes, squirrels, birds and even the odd bear or wolf are good signs. No animals at all? Get the hell out and fast - if you remember the way back.
Delville River: Used to run a different course when the quarry was still active, but now runs straight through. White, frothing rapids all the way down, inter-spaced with sharp slabs of granite.
The Flooded Quarry: Delville Heights was named after its position on the top of some cliffs, into which a large granite quarry was established. Once it began to get dangerous to keep digging on account of its proximity to the town, the existing tunnels were reinforced and the remnants of the mine filled up with water.
Encounter Compendium:
Below you will find a list of possible encounters to use during the roleplay. They are separated into four different categories: Phenomenon, wherein something strange or out of the ordinary happens on the Material Plane (AKA our world) that doesn't involve spirits and has no combat element to it. Combat, wherein a variety of creatures may need to be killed or subdued. Haunting, wherein the spirits of the recently departed wreak havoc on the town. Dimension, wherein the inhabitants of the area are teleported into a familiar yet slightly different version of Delville Heights and must escape.
The Compendium itself is split by cues - almost like symptoms of the encounter's presence. For ease of reference, if the post mentions any of these cues you essentially have a mixture of different encounters you can establish and get to choose one.
Below are the current cues and their encounters:
Incredibly localised storms in certain areas provoke the following:
The Dripping Realm: (Dimension) An involuntary shift into the Dripping Realm, inhabited by great, ancient aquatic beasts that float through the air. The world is a mirror of Delville Heights but everything is rotten and bloated here. It is so humid that your clothes and skin become damp to the touch, and the water slowly accumulates in your lungs, your stomach...you will slowly drown on dry land unless you escape, typically through a body of water. Do not anger the fish. They are carnivorous. They are hunters.
Slapper: (Combat) A certain species of monster. Slappers look like malformed sea lions, the size of a pick-up truck. They feast on rotting corpses and the smell of the sea hangs off them. Ungainly and gluttonous, but powerful and deadly in close range, with a surprising amount of speed behind their flopping, slapping movements across the floor.
Gurgling Ginny: (Haunting) The ghost of a young witch, dunked to death. She will possess anyone who steps into water when they hear her song, and attempt to drown those around her. The only way to calm her is to sing her a sea shanty.
Radio interference, digital malfunctions - when technology is acting up, these encounters are available:
Shriekers: (Combat) Typically moving in bands of threes, shriekers are glitchy, perpetually screaming entities that look like distorted echoes of humanity. They're fast, sometimes intangible and fight like animals. They are weak to water.
EMP: (Phenomenon) A sudden burst of electromagnetic energy is released in the area. Damages range from temporarily disabling all electronics to making certain devices explode.
Poltergeist: (Haunting) A particularly active spirit that flings objects (and, in some cases, people) around but is unable to materialise as their past self, nor can they speak. One must find the root of their anger. Each poltergeist is unique and their grievances can be decided upon by the DM.
When things start floating, the following is about to occur:
The Twisting Void: (Dimension) A kingdom of lost things and timeless memories. In this dimension Delville Heights has been shattered to pieces. Floating amongst these pieces are things of every time and age, from the distant rubble of Japanese Pagodas to the red British phone box jutting out of the wall of the Diner. To avoid becoming lost forever, you must find and hold your most precious possession in all of the chaos.
Spaceman: (Combat) Absolutely NOT a human in that suit. The visor is pitch black and oozes the same black liquid, which burns anything it gets into contact with. Considering the current state of gravity, Spaceman is a formidable opponent. Fortunately for us, his goo is highly flammable.
Zero-G: (Phenomenon) Sometimes, nothing really happens and everything is floating. The effect will either wear off on its own or it could be a worldshard - an incredibly fragile crystalline formation in the area that pulses like a heart. Find the worldshard or wait it out; all it needs is the pressure of a brush of a finger or a leaf in the wind to crumble it into dust.
Andrina will see the light of day eventually, but this RP calls for a RDR2 specific character I made up sometime earlier this year. Provided, ofc, that there's still room to play!
Edit: GM liked my post, that's all the permission I need to at least work on a sheet.
Edit Edit: Sheet's done! Let me know what you think @RedVII.
Name: Alexandra Hartwell (Amélie Desrosiers)
Age: 17
Gender: Female
Appearance:
5’1 person of indeterminable gender with a bony yet muscular physique. Short, almost buzz-cut hairstyle of straw blonde hair. Skin is quite tan and grimy. Hazel green eyes, missing a tooth. Several scars on her arms, shoulders and back from flogging. Typically seen in oversized clothing.
Assets: One roll-up tent, in need of repairs Hand-made hunting bow with 16 wooden arrows Hunting knife, serrated and straight edge One bed-roll, mouldy Two sets of clothes Basic hygiene kit, in need of replacements Food rations (scarce) Water flask (near empty) Old movie posters, water damaged Hat, too big
Personality: Intensely guarded and secretive, the person now known as Alex does not take kindly to being disturbed in her day-to-day life. She’s curt with strangers and particularly wary around men. Otherwise polite and hardworking, she avoids conflict and stays out of the public eye.
When you do get to know her, she can be sardonic and whiny yet retains a mischievous sense of humour from a bygone childhood. It takes time and effort to garner her loyalty but she struggles consistently with her own moral compass and her desire to be compassionate in a world that can be quite cruel to young teens wandering the west on their own.
History:
Born Amélie Desrosiers, daughter to the famous French actress and movie star Étienne Desrosiers and her American agent and manager, Raymond Parkers. The unfortunate consequence of a woman willing to do whatever it took to make it into Hollywood, Amélie’s conception and subsequent pregnancy pushed the two Catholics to marry in secret and raise the child, though she was mostly her mother’s care in France for the first decade of her life. The responsibilities that came with a child had hindered her mother’s career at the pinnacle of her fame; she was nationally recognised in the French theatres and starred in around five films before her death, two of which being leading roles and all of them made by French film companies.
In America, the Desrosiers name is much less prevalent. Mr. Parkers squeezed every last penny out of the actress, waylaying and stalling her debut in Hollywood to milk her renown in France. The stress of being a mother and juggling plays, movies and public events caused Étienne to fall ill; Parkers used this opportunity to bring the young Amélie under his care in Saint Denis, both to privately tutor her and as an incentive to continue overworking herself for his benefit.
Amélie spent five years in the care of Taylor Parkers, her biological uncle. She was largely restricted to his third-floor apartment and homeschooled. It was a stark contrast to her previous life but she acquiesced to the crueler treatment in order to keep her mother safe. It still did nothing to prevent the inevitable; her mother’s condition deteriorated and the medical bills started to outweigh the profits of her failing career prospects. She presumably died penniless, but her will suggested otherwise; everything was in her daughter’s name, including several assets that Raymond Parkers was unaware of.
Amélie was repeatedly subject to coercion, pressuring the young girl in every which way to sign documents that would transfer ownership of these assets to her father. They were inaccessible until her eighteenth birthday and nobody knew what sum of money she had in her name. She resisted for three months at her mother’s private behest; her dying wish and sole command was that her daughter signs nothing that the Parkers set before her. When one of these attempts turned too dangerous for her liking, the ensuing struggle knocked over an oil lantern into the open drawer of Taylor’s desk. The resulting fire was in the daily news. Her uncle reportedly died of smoke inhalation and Amélie fled from the building with nobody the wiser to her presence there.
This was around two years ago. Since then, Amélie has taken on the English name of Alexandra (though she prefers the name Alex), cut her hair and masqueraded as a young boy on the streets. She worked in a steel mill by day and swept a chapel at night in exchange for hot meals and a place to sleep. Things were going smoothly until the her favourite pastor’s painkillers for his chronic condition were swiftly made inaccessible to him due to a sharp increase in the price. Traumatised by the hopelessness of her mother's slow death and seeing the similarities unfolding before her, Alex acted recklessly and called in a friend of the pastor to rob a medicine wagon.
His name was Brooks Lockwood. He was, once upon a time, a member of a small band of outlaws that never even bothered to make a name for themselves in the grander scheme of things, focusing on smaller heists to pay for provisions and constantly on the move. Due to the dissolution of his gang and it's leader missing, Brooks was permanently stationed in Saint Denis. Alex had seen him repenting in the chapel several times and persuaded him to do this for their mutual friend.
Whilst they got the painkillers the pastor needed, they botched the operation and received a bounty on their heads that forced them to flee to the mountains over the winter period, tucked away in one of Brooks' old gang hideouts where he taught Alex how to ride and hunt. When the weather cleared, they headed to Armadillo for the spring and helped the town to solve a hysterical rumour of ‘Chupacabra’ sightings that ended up being a mangy grizzly bear. With the respect of the townsfolk, they were able to live comfortably in the settlement for a few months and then crept back into the prairies during the summer. During their absence, the impossible happened; Raymond Parker recognised the description of the 'boy' on the wanted posters and has begun hiring out bounty hunters to recapture them both alive, presuming the sum of Étienne’s inheritance to vastly outweigh the cost of Amélie’s retrieval. Their bounty has increased substantially as a result, under the condition that minimal harm may come to them and they are to be delivered to the Parker Estate, on the outskirts of Bluewater marsh.
Alex and Brooks were ambushed in Blackwater and separated in the confusion of a scuffle. Alex has managed to wander into West Austin but there is no sign of her partner in crime. She hopes that returning to Armadillo and retracing their footsteps will make it easier to meet again, but the journey to the mountains is treacherous and will take weeks, if not months of constant travel.
Additional Info: There is a substantial bounty for an unnamed young girl with a similar description of Amélie in Lemoyne alongside another unnamed man, if captured and returned alive to the Parker Estate in Bluewater Marsh. Two similar individuals resisted arrest in Blackwater several weeks ago.
Known and liked in Armadillo by the locals (NPCs), who may step in to help her if she is in the area.
Do you have a personal story arc prepared: Absolutely!
Punished GN