Where the Road Takes 🚐 [M] OOC Urban Fantasy Road Trip
Rated M: for scenes of violence, swearing, drug use and sexual situations
Inspired by Scooby Doo, Unknown Armies, World of Darkness and Buffy The Vampire Slayer
Could not find whose the original picture is, if anybody knows tell me
“Nothing behind me, everything ahead of me, as is ever so on the road.”
"On the Road", Jack Kerouac
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In the summer of 1979 Bethany Petra Roads went missing near her home in Azlu, Washington.
The police search for her turned up no clues and eventually it was thought she had been kidnapped.
Three weeks after her disappearance her friends discovered a letter that lead them on a hunt,
that took them further from home than any of them had ever been.
This is that story.
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Spoiler: Evidence Box 001, Item 002: Missing persons poster Bethany Petra Roads
The missing persons poster Edward and Shelly Roads put together to aid in finding their daughter. Found on the dashboard of the van.
Spoiler: Transcript from the first interview with Robert Paul DuboisTimestamp 10:41 - 10: 44
Spoiler: Evidence Box 001, Item 001: Evience report, the Ford Econoline Van
Customized version of the 1971 Ford Econoline model. Painted ocean blue with yellow highlights on the sides. Addition of two beds in the back both military cots, the seats also extended all the way back allowing for two other people to sleep in the car. Attached to the back doors there are also simple seats made that allow the other passengers to be seated as well. The rest of it's factory issue though the engine has some work done on it to increase the speed from 0 to 60 Mph. The job is done well and shows that the Mr. Dubois knows his stuff.
Important note: All of Box 1 and 2 contain the contents of this van.
Spoiler: Evidence Box 001, Item 003: Bethany's letter to her friends
Thought to have been written on the day that she disappeared. First found by Robert Paul Dubois three week after the disappearance.
Spoiler: Archive Document: 1955, REDACTED, REDACTEDThere are monsters in the world. There have always been, even back when humanity were just another species of primate doing it's best to strike the evolutionary jackpot. As we grew so did the monsters tailoring themselves to hunt us more effectively. Some of them even adopted our form seeing the benefits of it.
My point is they've been with us for a long ass time. So you would think considering human ingenuity and our powerful survival instincts we would have driven them to the edge of extion like we did with any animal that pissed us off or was tasty. Yet it seems in this one area we have quite certainly gone backward not forwards.
It used to be the case if you had a vampire nest in town you'd hunt it down and kill it. Nowadays if you tried to gather a mob to hunt vampires you'd be put in the looney bin. Towns that suffer from ancient curses that cause their firstborns to die blame it on gas leaks or mass psychosis or whatever else bullshit excuse they can find.
And that ladies and gentlemen is why we are important. Most of the people out there aren't aware of the supernatural. They move through their lives blind to the secret loss of life around them. This is what these monsters are the best at. Making you so afraid than rather deal with reality you believe they aren't real. Our goal is to stop them. At all costs.
Taken from meeting REDACTED, minutes 23 - 24. Speech delivered by head of the CIA's REDACTED project 1955, REDACTED, the project was ceased soon after this.
Spoiler: Evidence Box 001, Item 005: Torn page, Zine "The Arcane", Issue 105, with notes by Bethany
Original picture by Bryan Ray
The Edwards Supernatural Entity Power Scale: A Guide
By Josh Harsh, 1977, April issue
First found in the latter part of the 1950s the Edwards power scale has seen pretty consistent use for the past twenty years. It is used for referencing and cataloging supernatural entities. It classifies them based on power taking as its baseline a regular civilian. Each stage represents a step up in power with creatures of the same stage being pretty even in an one on one fight but creatures of different stages would be very unevenly matched in an one on one battle. It is unknown for exactly what purpose it was made nor who exactly this Edwards was. (Some have speculated it to be Edward Kelly however as the scale contains Wendigos this is unlikely) Whatever the case the scale started filtering into the Aware community and has been passed down through word of mouth ever since.
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-2 -1 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 Human Civilian Unaware Soldier, True Faithful, Wolf Born, The Gifted Aware Soldier, Apprentice Magician, True Faithful Priest Journeyman Magician, True Faithful Soldier Master Magician, Skinwalker The Chosen Cursed Ghoul, Changeling Nephilim, Young Vampire Werewolf, Old Vampire The Endless, Wendigo, Ancient Vampire Vampire Prime, Father Wolf Created Homunculus The Pygmalia Sons of Ulgan Golems, Children of Adam Fae Small Folk (Pixies, Gnomes, Fairies), Brownies Hobgoblins, Satyr, Kobold Goblins, Grimcat, Faceless, Doppleganger Ogre's, Trolls, Grimwolf, Hags, Centaurs, Minotaur Giant's, Cyclops, Unicorns, Gruffs, Riders of the Hunt, Ghast Fetch, Elder Gruff, Kelpies, Courtiers, Gugs Minor Princes of Fae The Autumn Prince, The Spring Princess The Winter King, The Summer Queen Spirits Ghost, Zombie Poltergeist, Black Eyed Beings Shade, Banshee Wraith, Daemon, Draugr Reaper Beasts Wolpertiger Pegasus The Black Beast, Cockatrice Basilisk, Drake Cerberus, Griffin Dragon, Phoenix, Hydra Echidna
The list is full of scribbles with some creatures circled while others crossed off. The pattern is unclear but it is assumed that it represented what creatures the kids had contact with. Under the list the following note is written:
Most of these are western centric examples. No African or Asian mythology is represented. This does not mean that those creatures don't exist or aren't scalable more that when this Edwards designed the Scale they were thinking of Western Monsters. Otherwise I think this scale should be quite useful to us help to see who we're facing.
The handwriting comparisons reveal the writer to be Beth.
Made an unknown amount of time before she disappeared.
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Now to some of you most of those words in the scale will seem meaningless. And that is why me and the editors of the Arcane have decided to put together this handy guide to those that are just entering the Aware community.
First let us talk about the categories and what exactly they mean:
Humans: This one is probably the most obvious. This includes everyone who is still essentially human regardless of whatever other abilities they have.
Cursed: Any human that has suffered a curse that has changed their essential being. Some of these curses originate from other humans while some are ancient, meant to be a scourge on humanity from the outer realms.
Created: The unifying factor in all of these is that they were created by human hands. Everything from the body to the soul is created by a mage or a religious practitioner. Yet they have a hard time ever truly functioning as human as they are too different and leave us feeling strange after seeing them.
Fae: These cover all the creatures who inhabit the Dream realm. They all feed off of human stories and dreams. The one found in the original list do not even begin to cover all of them. These all differ country to country mythology to mythology but one constant remains they're powerful and not to be messed with.
Spirits: These cover all the creatures who inhabit the Deathly realm. They feed off of the soul energy released at the moment of death. From this energy they construct pale reflections of a person that they use to affect the world. The more powerful the emotions that surrounded the death the more clear and powerful the spirit. The important thing to be remembered here is that they are not the persons you rember from life. They are just creatures who are using their memories and soul stuff to make themselves a body.
Beasts: These cover all the creatures who inhabit the Primordial realm. They feed off of the fear and hatreds of people. Unlike the Fae who they resemble the Beasts are not intelligent creatures they are for the most part like animals only with the violent tendencies of humans. Probably the ideas and fears that created them were more primal than those found with Fae creatures. As with the Fae those found on the list just scratch the surface.
Celestials: These cover all the creatures who inhabit the Celestial realm. They feed off of the faith and hope of people. To also clarify these contain within it both the forces of heaven and hell as well as all the other beings tied to the numerous other worlds faith. They are not added to the list as it has been made clear that it is hard to exactly pin down power levels as they rarely meddle in human affairs, unless brought into things by humans themselves. Further it is unclear whether these creatures are just the reflections of our faith or the real things so to speak.
The rest of the issue could not be found in the van, this page seemed to be the only thing they needed.
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Spoiler: PlotFour or five friends set off on a journey to find their kidnapped friend Beth. Most of the RP will be focused on the characters and the journey through different parts of America looking for clues. Each town we stop in however will have some sort of supernatural problems that we get mysteriously embroiled in. Some of them will be real towns and cities others will be made up for plot convenience.
Spoiler: Our homeThe town of Azlu, Washington lies near the border of Canada. It sits among the Northern Cascade mountains near a national park which also extends to the nearby Abbdon forest. It has a permanent population of 63000. It mostly survives on ski tourism, campers, hikers and the local university. Logging and copper mining are still important industries to the locals.
Interestingly it is also the city with the highest concentration of supernatural activity in the world. More people disappear hear in a year than the whole state of Washington combined but as it's such a small place no one notices or if they do they don't seem to care much. This has a lot to do with the town's history and placement. It was founded in 1864 by mad millionaire Jack Lane. Lane had been a very successful business man back in New York, so successful in fact that by the time he was fifty he had made close to thirty million dollars which in today's money would be many billions of dollars.
Lane in the last years of his life went quite publicly crazy. He was convinced that he had gotten his fortune through deals with "unspeakable creatures" and needed to "repay his debts". For this purpose he began the construction of the town of Azlu even though at the time there was a civil war going on. By the time the town was complete Jack began paying people to come live there. This policy attracted a lot of folks and soon the town grew to grew to it's current size.
By the time of his death Lane had lost most of his money to this project but people who had been with him during his last days said he died happy. The town mostly stopped growing after that, remaining about the same in size and population as it has for over a hundred years.
Azlu has always been strangely diverse for a small Washington town. Some of it can be chalked up to it being an University town. Yet that is not entirely it. People from different beliefs and cultures all seem to flock to the town as if the city itself wanted diversity in it's people. And once people start living in Alzu they do not want to leave...
Spoiler: Note about the time this is setSo this RP is set in 1979. When I created this RP I knew that I wanted to set it in a time before cellphones, the internet and high grade surveillance equipment. More than that however I wanted to set in a time that was not our own to give it that certain distance that allows us freedom to write what we want. The past is a fictional world after all albeit with much more world building than most fantasy books.
A thing to keep in mind while writing characters then is that this RP is set in a time just after some serious social upheaval in the late sixties. The Stonewall riots and the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. happened only ten years ago from this point. The Watergate scandal happened only five years ago and the last G.I left Vietnam about a year after that. We are also just passed a recession and economic slump in the mid seventies and just entering into the Energy Crisis thanks to the Iranian Civil War. All these events have happened within our characters lifetime. What effect it had on them is up to you however I wanted everyone to at least keep all of this in mind.
Spoiler: Important charecter notesSo the first and most important thing is that our characters are friends already at the beginning of the RP. Friends actually might not be the best word more like comrades in arms. Teens who have fought monsters together for the last three years yet never actually gotten to know each other on a deeper level. There's a fun duality to this that in some ways we know each other better than probably anyone else but on the other hand we don't really know each other at all.
After you fill in the character sheet and we have a set cast I will send out questionnaires that explore what exactly these friendships mean to each of us, but for now keep that in the back of your head when you create your character.
The other thing important thing is that while yes you can play supernatural characters there are a few limitations. Looking at the Edwards Supernatural Scale choose from the human or cursed category from 0 - 1. So you can't be a vampire or a werewolf but you can be a wolfborn or a ghoul and so on.
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MAP OF THE JOURNEY SO FAR
Spoiler: How the van looks like inside
Spoiler: Timeline of eventsMay 28. 1979
Beth asks Tommy to keep an eye on a person they'd been observing before.
May 31. 1979
Beth gives Monique concert tickets for her birthday to see Siouxsie and the Banshees and The Cure in London. They discuss plans on how to get to London by October.
June 3. 1979
Beth talks to Rob expressing a desire to visit a PI they'd had contact before. Rob agrees to take her there.
Penny and Beth spend a long evening in the library. Beth seems to be acting strangely.
June 4. 1979
Beth doesn't return home. Parents are worried call her friends. No one knows where she is.
June 8. 1979
Edward and Shelly Roads report their daughter missing. The police begin their investigation.
June 10. 1979
Beth is officially declared missing. The posters are put up.
June 15. 1979
Police conclude that Beth must have been kidnapped.
June 27. 1979
Robert discovers the mysterious letter in a library book Travels with Charley.
June 28. 1979
Robert shares his finding with Penny. They go to pick up Tommy. Rob let's her off so she can go find him and talk to him. It turns out Tommy isn't there anymore.
Before Penny gets back however Rob drives over to pick up Monique after Rodney finds him. After telling Monique about everything that's happened Monique gets violent and leaves him quite beat up. They all drive themselves back to Tommy's place and pick up Penny who notices Rob's pain.
They drive off to Conconully. Penny and Rodney go to meet up with PI Afu Kekoa who tells them that he had contacted Beth two days before she disappeared and before that she had hired him to work a case for her that related to her adoption. He starts digging and finds that the place she was adopted from was supposedly closed in 1890s. Doing more digging he finds that St. Mary's House for Orphaned and Deranged Children pops up in many strangely similar cases. Rodney tried to extract the location information out of him but was layed out on his ass by magic. Then a deal was made. A map leading to the current location of the orphanage for some of Rodney's blood. Penny extracted the blood and they left the trailer.
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What is your name?: The name your character goes by.
What do you look like?: The outward appearance of your character
What's weird about you?: There is something about your character that is off. This can be a supernatural or a mundane thing.
What's something you do that you are great at?: A skill you are truly the best at.
What's something you wish you could be better at?: Something you are middling or bad at, that you wish you could be great at.
What's something you do purely because it gives you joy?: A skill you practice because it makes you feel better about yourself and life.
Tell me a story about the last time you saw Beth?: A RP sample of your character out and about doing something.
Why do you think that Beth is worth saving?: The answer does not have to be positive nor does it have to be negative what is important is being honest to the character you're playing.
Spoiler: Current PC castSpoiler: Robert Paul Dubois played by TheBarbarianWhat is your name?: Robert Paul Dubois, my friends call me Rob
What do you look like?: I'm tall I guess, almost seven foot, not quite but almost. Other than that... Man I've never been good at describing myself. Hmm... I have an afro which I take care of. Recently started growing a beard which I have to say I'm pretty proud of it, my dad says it looks ugly but honestly fuck him. Been thinking about getting a tattoo like my friend Beth, he would hate that, but honestly unsure as to what to get. Look I it's better for all of us that I just give you a picture, those are supposed to say a thousand words aren't they?
Spoiler: Me at my Dad's scrapyard, working on my welding skills
What's weird about you?: Yeah heard about that did you? Well don't believe everything you hear. I ain't no witch nor a dam voodoo king or whatever. It's just that I have a gift. I can make metal do things that it shouldn't be able to do. As long as I can touch it I can rust it, mold it like it's clay or whatever else I can think of. Makes me tired pretty darn quick though.
What's something you do that you are great at?: Probably fixing cars or metal stuff in general. I don't know because of my gift that sort of stuff just speaks to me. It comes so easily and naturally that it's scary sometimes.
What's something you wish you were better at?: All of this occult thing. I mean I know enough to get by but I can't identify most spells, monsters or rituals to save my life. Beth was always great at that stuff I just never could wrap my mind around it.
What's something you do purely because it gives you joy?: Play guitar. Makes me feel alive. Each time I play I feel that in that moment I am just so purely myself. Rest of the time it just sort of feels like an act. I don't know if that even makes sense. I hope it does. Anyway you should come see my band. It's me and this other guy we call ourselves "The Storm and the Wagner", most our stuff is punk rock. You should listen to it if you liked the Ramones and the early Blondy stuff, you know the heavy stuff not that disco shit.
Tell me a story about the last time you saw Beth?:
Spoiler: The last meetingOne day before the disappearance, 02:12 AM, Azlu
The moon rose over the town Azlu bathing the early summer night in a silver glow. The harsh summer heat had not yet made it to town instead the air was crisp and cool with sweet scent of freshly blooming lilacs. Except for the moon light the street was dark except for a single tiny pinprick of light coming from in front of a rundown looking townhouse. There stood Rob on the porch smoking a cigarette he had stolen from his dad. He looked to be waiting for something and whatever it was, was making him tense.
"Where is she?" He muttered taking one final pull and extinguishing the cigarette on the wooden handrail. Beth had said that she wanted to meet him about something secrete after midnight. If Rob had been a hopeful man he would have assumed that she was coming here to profess her love or something. But Rob had never really been much for hope. Nor was he certain now what exactly he wanted even if it did happen. It hurt sometimes how much he loved her yet he never wanted to hold her back and if anything happened he was afraid he would. She was bound for great things and he... Well that remained to be seen.
His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of fast paced pedaling. As if from nowhere Beth came careening towards his house on her mother's bike ancient looking bike. It had no brakes so she just made a few circles before finally coming to a stop in front of his house. Red faced and breathless she stumbled off the bike letting it fall to the ground behind her. "Hey!" She managed between breaths. God she looked beautiful right then, like some ancient goddess almost intimidating in the radiance of her beauty, her dirty blonde hair a perfect mess and her skin flushed from activity. "Sorry I'm late. Stuff came up and I think..."
She shook her head like she trying to shoo away a wasp. "Whatever that's not important right now. Rob do you rember the magician we talked to a year or so ago. The investigator dude?" Rob nodded frowning."The one from Conconully? With the weird face tattoos?" Beth smothered a giggle eyes glittering in the moonlight. "Yeah that one. I've had him look into a few things for me. As a job you know. I got a letter yesterday to go find him. Can you take me there tomorrow?" Rob shrugged and smiled one of his easy smiles. "I see no reason as to why not. Should I tell the others?" Beth grew more serious for a moment and shook her head. "No I think this one is a more private matter. Anyway thanks, just come my place at five or six we can get there quickly as it's so close." She picked up the bike and was about to turn it around to leave. Before she could Rob was down the stairs taking her hand in his. "Beth you sure you're okay? You know that you can tell me anything." They looked at each other for what felt like an eternity then like in a trance they closed the distance between them and kissed. It was quick but to Rob it felt like he was drowning right then. All sounds seemed to leave the world as did the worries of the past few months there was just this kiss and it seemed to consume all of him in one go. She pulled away first and spoke, her voice huskier from the contact. "I know. That's why I asked you." And with that she pushed off and was gone again into the night.
Why do you think Beth is worth saving?: Because I think I love her and I don't what to do because of that. I need to see her, to talk to her just so I can figure out if this actually a thing or if I am just suffering from delusions.
When did your mother leave you and your dad?: How did you hear about that?! Also fuck that, she didn't "leave" she disappeared huge fucking difference. Nevermind I guess it doesn't matter it's not like it's much of a secret. Yea... She left us when I was nine. Don't know why. Don't know where. She just went off one day and never came back. Dad called the police. They never found her. I doubt the pigs ever cared. That's what happens in Azlu people go missing and we fucking ignore it. Do you know that we have the highest disappearance rates in the goddamn country but none cares! Especially if you're poor and a mom not some... Point is she's gone and I don't like talking about it.
What did you do to unlock your powers?: Look we've all done things that we regret later. I... Don't regret it necessarily but it sure did feel wrong. I mean don't get me wrong it's good that I can do stuff, I mean otherwise I would be useless to the group. Anyway I made a pact with a... thing. Demon I guess. Or maybe a fairy I could never really tell the difference and they sort of brought something out that was in me already. Not what I expected to get but power is power. They might come collect some day but I will be ready by then.
Penny June Martyn
played by r a b b i t
Monique Tara Shea
played by CartelSaide
Thomas Vernon Brown Jr.
played by Woz
Rodney David Carlisle
played by BumblingBee
Spoiler: Current NPC castN/A
WE ARE NOW CLOSED.
THANK YOU FOR THE INTEREST!
. My RP's are usually slow but do what you think is best.
).
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