Mysteria
10-16-2009, 02:34 PM
A game by Lamb:
http://i290.photobucket.com/albums/ll261/HaruspexLamb/WereBannerj.png
The above image is altered without permission. It is copyrighted to Universal Pictures, I claim no ownership, and am making no profit from this image.
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Welcome to my first ever RPA roleplay, boys and girls! It’s so nice of you to stop by. I’ve poured a bit of work into this concoction, so it may be a little lengthy but I hope it ends up fun for all. I thought some of you, like me, would love to get into the Halloween spirit this month with a good old fashioned monster roleplay. WARNING: The following is long enough to make your eyes bleed.
REWLZ! (4 siriyus, gaiz)
1. You control your characters and your characters only, unless given specific permission to do otherwise.
2. Use proper grammar. Come on, folks, take the time. This RP should read well, like a book, not like a chat log.
3. YOU MAY NOT post a picture in your character’s profile that belongs to another artist without their direct consent. This is my number one gripe. You do not have the right to go grab some amateur artist’s pic off the web and claim “This is MY character”. As an artist myself, this greatly offends me. If the artist drew the picture for you and you can reasonably prove as much, fine. If you want to post a photograph of a real person and say your character looks LIKE this real person, fine. You may not, however, claim an artist’s work for your own creative purposes. Have a professional picture? (i.e., from a movie or tv show?) Credit the original source, please, as I have done with the image in my banner. This is where I get Nazi, sorry folks.
4. Be polite!
Premise:
This story takes place in a modern day earth setting. Your character can have come from anywhere around the globe, because they will all inevitably be led to the same place. The basic idea is that, for unknown reasons, a sizable handful of people across the world suffer a sudden stroke of lycanthropy. Men, women, children, seniors—the curse is seemingly indiscriminate in who it chooses to transform into a monster.
Werewolves:
These are not cute and cuddly teddy bear wolves. Think more along the lines of An American Werewolf in London; vicious, ugly, and fucking scary. The average height in werewolf form is around seven to eight feet tall (though please keep werewolves below ten feet and above six) and the weight is roughly five-hundred pounds of snarling fur and muscle. You have elongated human hands with opposable thumbs and three inch claws on each finger. You have no tail and can walk or lumber on two legs quite easily, but most of the time you are mindlessly bolting or lunging on all fours. Your teeth can shred metal and your claws can slash stone into dust. You are a force to be reckoned with.
Transformation:
Unlike most movie transformations, our werewolves explode into killing machines in an instant—so fast and incomprehensible most of the time that it’s over before the transformer has time to acknowledge it. Most people who have suffered a transformation are going about their business one second and standing frazzled over a dead enemy the next. When it occurs, great clouds of mist erupt from your orifices and envelop you in an instantaneous cloud. You’re human one minute and then you burst into werewolf form from seemingly nowhere—your clothes and accessories vanish when your wolf body appears and then mysteriously return unmarred as if the mist had merely covered you in a werewolf’s shell.
Two things can trigger a werewolf transformation. The first is seeing a ghoul (see section The Enemy), after which you instantly attack it without thinking. The second is some sort of extreme emotional stress or trauma. (In the Story section, you will find one example of each type of provocation.)
Perhaps the most awe-inspiring after effect of your first transformation is that you are suddenly…perfect. If overweight, your human body is now perfectly sculpted—blasted into the muscular structure befitting a Greek god or goddess, the same of the all-too-thin. If you were subject to any diseases, regardless of how hopeless or fatal they seemed, they have evaporated. If you were missing a limb or lacked the use of paralyzed body parts, they have been respectively regrown and rejuvenated. Balding folks have a full head of hair, glasses and contacts are no longer needed, hearing aids obsolete as well, because there is practically nothing that this sudden miracle monster cure has left you wanting. You have the body of a super soldier. A perfect physical specimen of mankind—inside and out. And that’s beside the fact that you can transform into a ravenous hellhound. You notice these changes have all occurred immediately after you become human again for the first time.
However, not all effects of lycanthropy are directly beneficial. Your appetite has increased enormously. You find yourself eating upwards of ten times a day now, but with an ass like you’ve suddenly developed, it doesn’t seem to be doing you any harm. Your metabolism is skyrocketing faster than you can keep up. Women unfortunately find that, if pregnant, the first transformation has resulted in immediate miscarriage, the body’s duress under the inexplicable change unable to support a child.
And there’s one more thing…after your first terrifying transformation, you’ve been feeling restless. A strange unnerving pull has been residing within you, urging you to move towards Western Europe. You do not know it at the time, but your ultimate destination (where the strange pulling sensation will stop) is North Yorkshire, England. You have no idea why, it seems almost instinctive. Like there’s something there you need…something you’ve been meaning to do in that general direction (whatever direction that happens to be from whatever country you’re in). If you are already in the U.K. at the time the story starts, you feel something pulling you northbound.
While it’s too early to even guess why this is happening, those it has happened to can hazard a guess that it has something to do with the strange creatures they may or may not have seen.
The Enemy:
Spirits. Banshees. Demons. Ghosts. No one really knows what to call them, but they seem to cropping up left and right, just about the same time people start turning into werewolves. Sometimes they come in the form of a possessed human or human corpse that ravenously kills and devours its former kin, sometimes they are merely barely visible, shadowy wraiths hovering by and sucking the life force out of nearby human beings when they need a recharge of energy. Their true form, capable of the aforementioned possession and stealth, is a delinquent ghoul that only occasionally will show its real face. They appear as pale, gaunt, savage men or women, naked and flesh-torn, eyes gouged out and lips carved away. It is in this form that they are the most dangerous to a werewolf, maintaining a fluctuating corporeality that makes getting a hold of one difficult. They shriek like sirens and are capable of astounding acrobatic physical feats. When in this form they are anything but subtle, running naked and screaming through streets and sucking the souls out of hapless victims. The way that they utilize these abilities, their intent is clear: kill the living.
When a werewolf—or soon to be werewolf—sees one of these ghouls in any form for the first time, transformation occurs as a knee-jerk reaction and the werewolf practically cannot help leaping onto and destroying it that instant. This reaction is instinctive and somewhat akin to flinching defensively when someone tries to hit or throw something at you. The upside is that for a werewolf, they are relatively easy to kill. The downside is that for a human or a werewolf in human form, they are impossible to harm, let alone kill unless they are in the possessed body of a human.
So to recap, here are the three forms of a ghoul you may encounter;
Possessors - Ghouls in their most corporeal form—the body of a human.
Goal: To kill and eat other humans.
Strengths: They cannot feel pain in this form and are not immediately killed or fled from by humans because they do not understand it is not a human itself.
Weaknesses: Subject to every injury a human is susceptible to, can be killed by a human if the brain is destroyed, and are almost completely irrational. Plain old zombies, really.
Wraiths - Ghouls in incorporeal form.
Goal: To hide. While doing so, their presence discretely drains the life-force of nearby humans. Through osmosis, I guess.
Strengths: Cannot be seen by average humans and can absorb their energy without them knowing it. Humans in their vicinity feel drained and will have anywhere from weeks to years taken off of their lives depending on the duration of exposure.
Weaknesses: Can do no directly fatal harm, can be easily dispersed by a werewolf.
Banshees - Ghouls in true form.
Goal: When enraged, empowered by enough human spirits, or desperate, a ghoul reverts to its natural form to either have a chance at fighting a werewolf or to go on a mass killing spree.
Strengths: Cannot be harmed by humans, speed, agility, are terrifying to behold with a bone-shattering, unearthly and unnerving scream. They are only partly corporeal, so if a werewolf bites down on or slashes, say, an arm that is in flux, its teeth or claws will go right through it. The banshee is in constant flux, only parts of it tangible at a time.
Weaknesses: Cannot sustain this form for long unless they have fed off of enough human lives, can be injured by werewolves if hit at the right time in an area of the body that is currently solid.
--Story--
For centuries, man has lived in fear of what he knows. He has feared threats from the astrological, from the biochemical, the societal and the celestial. He now faces an element of a never before conceived supernatural. He now faces the unknown. The unknown is both within and without him; he can rarely see his enemy and he does not understand his ally. No mere human can stand in the face of what nightmare we now know to be true and hope to save its people.
And so it is instead we—fragmented, dazed, and unprepared as we are—who are mankind’s only chance for salvation now.
Examples: (Note: these are actual characters that will likely make several appearances in the roleplay…and probably make my posts idiotically long sometimes. Consider these to be the first transformations ever—with yours happening either around the same time or when my post starts, which will be an assumed three days later.)
Account #1: Noah Gershwin
It couldn’t have been more than a one minute walk in the rain and he is already soaked through, only the contents of the plastic bag in his hand dry. He barely notices, though—a Seattle man should be used the rain if anything. It’s letting up now anyway as he approaches the door to his apartment building and tries to ring the buzzer next to his nameplate. He tries a few more times with no result. He sighs, leaning back against the wall under the small bit of shelter from the rain. “C’mon, Kate…” he mutters. He hopes she hasn’t gone out. He had just spoken with her on the phone not thirty minutes ago, and he knows that the only reason she would have left is to surprise him with dinner when he arrived home. He looks down at his Styrofoam boxes of expensive prepared Thai food and shakes his head. He supposes he should have just told her he was bringing dinner home. Now he’s stuck out here.
His head turns as a middle-aged man approaches the door and buzzes a friend. Noah waits hopefully and watches as the man opens the door to the building, then he quietly slips in behind him undetected. It said something about the security of the building, but he doesn’t think he has much to be worried about with so many people living here. He turns to amble up the stairs tiredly, because he knows that the elevator has been broken since Monday. The place has its flaws, certainly, but the one-bedroom that he shares with his long-term girlfriend turned fiancée is affordable and comfortable. He has never been a man who asks for or expects much, and highly values what he has. Kate seems to him to be the only ounce of luxury life has ever afforded him.
He trudges the staircase muttering to himself and knowing exactly what awaits him in his small but not cramped apartment. He’ll plop dinner on the table and flop on the couch to watch TV before Kate eventually stumbles in, looking cheerfully frazzled as always and apologizing several hundred times for picking up a second dinner—which she is surely doing now. But as he gets to the top of the stairs and peers down his hallway, he can’t help but notice that the door to unit 204, his and Kate’s humble abode, is swung wide open. Noah wouldn’t put it past Kate to be enough of a scatterbrain to forget to close the door. He worries that their things will be stolen, so he hurriedly marches up the last stair and walks in. Only it’s not his things that are stolen when he arrives. The lights are all on, Kate is not gone, and she is not alone. He can’t quite comprehend the scene he’s looking at. The bag in his hand falls to the floor and he stares blankly at his fiancée lying prostrate on the kitchen floor with her back to him. Above her is a man that Noah’s attention suddenly turns to. The man looks surprised, then somewhat nervous but mostly angry. There is blood on the floor. On his clothes. In his hand is a knife pilfered from their chop block and on the counter is a pile of Kate’s antique jewelry. Noah knows instantly, his brain explodes into a thousand different shrieks of emotional agony, and something in his face makes the intruder freeze.
He doesn’t understand what happens next—he doesn’t register it, there isn’t time to. He’s suddenly numb and static and rippling, he’s flying through the air, a leap that clears twenty feet, and he comes down at light speed on the man. Or what was a man. Suddenly the man is gone. Suddenly Noah’s on his knees on the kitchen floor. Suddenly the amount of blood has increased tenfold. He looks down at himself—human and whole but he could have sworn for a moment he hadn’t been. He’s covered in gore. It’s everywhere; in his face, his hair, his pockets. The home invader is a quartered pulp—a hunk of him having landed on the kitchen counter, another in the hall leading towards the bedroom, an arm dangles from the top of a high cupboard, drizzling blood.
Noah looks at his hands, so covered in blood that fingers are glued together, he spits out teeth—and they’re not his own. He looks around, twitching, jolting, trying to rouse himself to scramble away but he’s paralyzed with disjointed fear.
His hands slap against the wet floor as he catches himself and he screams a blood-curdling, hysterical cry.
Account #2: Reagan Dodson-Marsh
He always hated these country roads at night. His night vision was poor already and he was none too excited about the already icy October mist settling in front of him. Not that this place was completely deserted and not that this car wasn’t absolutely top of the line and expensive enough to ensure his safety. He was still always afraid he would hit some animal out here. The last time he was out here he nearly hit a buck head on, and in missing it nearly wrapped his Lexus around an oak tree. He already missed the city.
“It was nice of you to come all the way up here.” Said his passenger.
He looked over at her briefly, shrugging. “You know, Mom, it’s fine. I don’t expect you guys to come down every year. Besides, getting the time off was a breeze. I just closed a deal and I’ve got nothing on my plate.”
“That’s good.” The woman nodded, fiddling with her gloves as she gazed out the window. “I’m sure you could use a break. And from more than just work, I mean. I really don’t know how you put up with the hustle and bustle of that city.”
He snorted in amusement. “Mom, you lived there for thirty years. I don’t know why you hate it so much, referring to it as ‘that city’ all the time.”
“Oh I don’t hate it. I just meant…well it’s so much nicer up here, isn’t it?”
“Sure. Where else am I gonna get the chance to peel deer guts out of my grill?”
“Really, that’s just gruesome!” she held a hand to her chest, suppressing a laugh and shaking her head. “We have never hit a deer here, not in five years. In fact I’ve never even heard of someone hitting one on this road.”
“Not yet.” He muttered, using a sleeve to try and wipe away the smog on his windshield. “You know, I’d be lying if I said I knew why you guys moved here in the first place.”
“What’s wrong with Johnstown?”
“What was wrong with New York?”
He watched as she shook her head again, clearing feigning ambivalence. “When you get to be my age, sometimes you just need a change of pace. That’s all.”
“If you say so.” He relented, moving his eyes back to the dark, endless stretch of road. He glanced back over, noticing that she was staring at him.
“Well?” she prodded, looking back towards the road in front of them again. “How are things back in New York, then?”
He let out a sigh, thinking. “I got that promotion I was telling you about, so that’s good. Oh and uh…I got a dog.”
She looked back to him quickly. “A dog? And here I was finally hoping you tell me you met some nice young girl, but a dog. A man like you doesn’t even have time for a dog.”
“Sure I do. Cutest little puppy too—I bought it off the street just outside my building.”
“On the street?”
“Yeah, come on, Mom. I know what you’re thinking, but who needs a good home more? The purebred thousand dollar stud or the dirty, dead broke mutt some guy’s selling out of a cardboard box just to pay his rent? I couldn’t resist him.”
“Well I suppose.” She agreed, looking back out the window.
Silence ensued once more after that and he flicked on the car radio, which barely registered in his mother’s attention. She could say what she wanted; he could use a canine presence in his life. Things has been strangely lonely after his parents moved away, and while he didn’t seem to have time for a relationship, some good old fashioned unconditional love was nice to have around again. He squinted through the mist and again wiped his windshield with a sleeve. When he moved his hand away, he suddenly caught sight of a figure directly in front of him. Off in the distance. It almost looked like a person. He slowed the vehicle quickly as he approached and leaned over the dash to try and make it out. It definitely looked like a person, standing in the middle of the road. The car gently jerked to a halt and he glanced at his mother, who looked back at him with confusion. “Stay here.” He advised, unbuckling his seatbelt and stepping out of the car.
He walked a few feet to the end of the car, staring at the headlight illuminated man. “Hello? Sir? Are you alright?”
The man didn’t respond, and he began to take his appearance into consideration. He was tattered, pale and bloody, glaring daggers into him from his spot twenty feet or so away.
“Jesus…Sir, do you need me to call an ambulance? Where’s your car?”
Something felt completely off about this. He heard the passenger door open and close, followed by his mother’s boots clicking on the ground and he held up a hand half-consciously to warn her back.
The man didn’t approach. He didn’t move, just stared into his face with what could only be described as malice. He then suddenly grinned, and a gush of blood fell through his teeth.
He stepped back. He moved as calmly as he could, trying to muster the words to order his mother back into the car. He looked over to her, and his breath caught in his chest. Her mouth was agape, her posture slanted. Gray mist was pouring out of her eyes, ears, mouth, nose—as if she were a hollowed-out jack-o-lantern with a smoke bomb inside of her. “Mom…?” he choked. And then she erupted.
Out of the mist where she had been a monster vaulted from the side of the car with a ferocious roar that knocked him on his ass so fast that he didn’t have time to brace for impact. The beast had charged, made one impressive leap and came crashing down on the bloody man’s head back into the mist. It was quiet.
At first he couldn’t move. He sat, gripping the front tire of the car, shivering as he stared in the direction of what he had just witnessed. “Mom?” he queried shakily. He received no response. He managed to pull himself to his feet, stumbling forward, terrified to discover what lay in the mists. His shoes stuck to the ground as he walked…bits and pieces of red shone through the fog. He slowly came upon the only remaining figure. “…Mom?” he uttered in shock.
She was on the ground, sitting with her hands in her lap, eyes terribly wide as she stared at the remains of the man. She blinked, finally exhaling a breath. “Oh, my.”
Character:[/center]
You’re human. At least…you thought you were. Now when you gaze into the eyes of the reflection in your mirror you wonder whose it is. Your body has changed. Your instincts have changed. Your control has diminished, and people are terrified of you. You’re probably more than a little terrified yourself.
Translation: you’re a motherfucking werewolf. This may put a damper on your social life.
Template
Name:
Age:
Gender:
Nationality and Current Location:
Appearance (both before and after your first transformation, if changed):
Personality:
Occupation:
History:
PAQ (potentially asked questions)
Q. So, I can’t control myself as a werewolf?
A. Not so much at first. Over time and a few transformations throughout the roleplay, our characters will come to find that once they get used to the primal burst of sensation, they can reign themselves and use their werewolf abilities to make conscious efforts while in that form. Eventually they will be able to control every action they make in werewolf form, and towards the end of the tale, they may even be able to induce transformation at will.
Q. Can I play a ghoul?
A. No, sorry. This was never intended to be a pitted faction roleplay. Plus, ghouls suck.
Q. How many characters can I have?
A. As many as you think you can handle, but I will be juggling four—two main and two side characters—myself, and that will not be easy. I highly recommend that you don’t play more than two, but you’re welcome to.
Q. How do I get to North Yorkshire?
A. Any way you can, really. You don’t know that’s where you’re ultimately headed, so you might just be aimlessly flying in planes trying to get rid of this instinctive pull, or a boat, or once there driving a car, etc.
Q. When do we meet up together?
A. Consciously try and steer characters toward other characters as you detail your journey. Since everyone is headed to the same place, it’s reasonable to assume that they might bump into each other along the way. If your character doesn’t end up meeting us all until we arrive at our destination, that’s fine too.
Q. How do I start?
A. Probably with your first transformation, something along the lines of one of the stories in the story section. If you want to have your post begin after you’ve already transformed, remember that it had to have happened very recently. (And no, your posts don’t have to be in third person present tense. Pick any perspective you’d like. From now on mine will be in third person past tense.)
This roleplay is just unraveling in my head—have any questions? Please feel free to ask.
My characters will be posted shortly--soon as I get back from a class.
http://i290.photobucket.com/albums/ll261/HaruspexLamb/WereBannerj.png
The above image is altered without permission. It is copyrighted to Universal Pictures, I claim no ownership, and am making no profit from this image.
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Welcome to my first ever RPA roleplay, boys and girls! It’s so nice of you to stop by. I’ve poured a bit of work into this concoction, so it may be a little lengthy but I hope it ends up fun for all. I thought some of you, like me, would love to get into the Halloween spirit this month with a good old fashioned monster roleplay. WARNING: The following is long enough to make your eyes bleed.
REWLZ! (4 siriyus, gaiz)
1. You control your characters and your characters only, unless given specific permission to do otherwise.
2. Use proper grammar. Come on, folks, take the time. This RP should read well, like a book, not like a chat log.
3. YOU MAY NOT post a picture in your character’s profile that belongs to another artist without their direct consent. This is my number one gripe. You do not have the right to go grab some amateur artist’s pic off the web and claim “This is MY character”. As an artist myself, this greatly offends me. If the artist drew the picture for you and you can reasonably prove as much, fine. If you want to post a photograph of a real person and say your character looks LIKE this real person, fine. You may not, however, claim an artist’s work for your own creative purposes. Have a professional picture? (i.e., from a movie or tv show?) Credit the original source, please, as I have done with the image in my banner. This is where I get Nazi, sorry folks.
4. Be polite!
Premise:
This story takes place in a modern day earth setting. Your character can have come from anywhere around the globe, because they will all inevitably be led to the same place. The basic idea is that, for unknown reasons, a sizable handful of people across the world suffer a sudden stroke of lycanthropy. Men, women, children, seniors—the curse is seemingly indiscriminate in who it chooses to transform into a monster.
Werewolves:
These are not cute and cuddly teddy bear wolves. Think more along the lines of An American Werewolf in London; vicious, ugly, and fucking scary. The average height in werewolf form is around seven to eight feet tall (though please keep werewolves below ten feet and above six) and the weight is roughly five-hundred pounds of snarling fur and muscle. You have elongated human hands with opposable thumbs and three inch claws on each finger. You have no tail and can walk or lumber on two legs quite easily, but most of the time you are mindlessly bolting or lunging on all fours. Your teeth can shred metal and your claws can slash stone into dust. You are a force to be reckoned with.
Transformation:
Unlike most movie transformations, our werewolves explode into killing machines in an instant—so fast and incomprehensible most of the time that it’s over before the transformer has time to acknowledge it. Most people who have suffered a transformation are going about their business one second and standing frazzled over a dead enemy the next. When it occurs, great clouds of mist erupt from your orifices and envelop you in an instantaneous cloud. You’re human one minute and then you burst into werewolf form from seemingly nowhere—your clothes and accessories vanish when your wolf body appears and then mysteriously return unmarred as if the mist had merely covered you in a werewolf’s shell.
Two things can trigger a werewolf transformation. The first is seeing a ghoul (see section The Enemy), after which you instantly attack it without thinking. The second is some sort of extreme emotional stress or trauma. (In the Story section, you will find one example of each type of provocation.)
Perhaps the most awe-inspiring after effect of your first transformation is that you are suddenly…perfect. If overweight, your human body is now perfectly sculpted—blasted into the muscular structure befitting a Greek god or goddess, the same of the all-too-thin. If you were subject to any diseases, regardless of how hopeless or fatal they seemed, they have evaporated. If you were missing a limb or lacked the use of paralyzed body parts, they have been respectively regrown and rejuvenated. Balding folks have a full head of hair, glasses and contacts are no longer needed, hearing aids obsolete as well, because there is practically nothing that this sudden miracle monster cure has left you wanting. You have the body of a super soldier. A perfect physical specimen of mankind—inside and out. And that’s beside the fact that you can transform into a ravenous hellhound. You notice these changes have all occurred immediately after you become human again for the first time.
However, not all effects of lycanthropy are directly beneficial. Your appetite has increased enormously. You find yourself eating upwards of ten times a day now, but with an ass like you’ve suddenly developed, it doesn’t seem to be doing you any harm. Your metabolism is skyrocketing faster than you can keep up. Women unfortunately find that, if pregnant, the first transformation has resulted in immediate miscarriage, the body’s duress under the inexplicable change unable to support a child.
And there’s one more thing…after your first terrifying transformation, you’ve been feeling restless. A strange unnerving pull has been residing within you, urging you to move towards Western Europe. You do not know it at the time, but your ultimate destination (where the strange pulling sensation will stop) is North Yorkshire, England. You have no idea why, it seems almost instinctive. Like there’s something there you need…something you’ve been meaning to do in that general direction (whatever direction that happens to be from whatever country you’re in). If you are already in the U.K. at the time the story starts, you feel something pulling you northbound.
While it’s too early to even guess why this is happening, those it has happened to can hazard a guess that it has something to do with the strange creatures they may or may not have seen.
The Enemy:
Spirits. Banshees. Demons. Ghosts. No one really knows what to call them, but they seem to cropping up left and right, just about the same time people start turning into werewolves. Sometimes they come in the form of a possessed human or human corpse that ravenously kills and devours its former kin, sometimes they are merely barely visible, shadowy wraiths hovering by and sucking the life force out of nearby human beings when they need a recharge of energy. Their true form, capable of the aforementioned possession and stealth, is a delinquent ghoul that only occasionally will show its real face. They appear as pale, gaunt, savage men or women, naked and flesh-torn, eyes gouged out and lips carved away. It is in this form that they are the most dangerous to a werewolf, maintaining a fluctuating corporeality that makes getting a hold of one difficult. They shriek like sirens and are capable of astounding acrobatic physical feats. When in this form they are anything but subtle, running naked and screaming through streets and sucking the souls out of hapless victims. The way that they utilize these abilities, their intent is clear: kill the living.
When a werewolf—or soon to be werewolf—sees one of these ghouls in any form for the first time, transformation occurs as a knee-jerk reaction and the werewolf practically cannot help leaping onto and destroying it that instant. This reaction is instinctive and somewhat akin to flinching defensively when someone tries to hit or throw something at you. The upside is that for a werewolf, they are relatively easy to kill. The downside is that for a human or a werewolf in human form, they are impossible to harm, let alone kill unless they are in the possessed body of a human.
So to recap, here are the three forms of a ghoul you may encounter;
Possessors - Ghouls in their most corporeal form—the body of a human.
Goal: To kill and eat other humans.
Strengths: They cannot feel pain in this form and are not immediately killed or fled from by humans because they do not understand it is not a human itself.
Weaknesses: Subject to every injury a human is susceptible to, can be killed by a human if the brain is destroyed, and are almost completely irrational. Plain old zombies, really.
Wraiths - Ghouls in incorporeal form.
Goal: To hide. While doing so, their presence discretely drains the life-force of nearby humans. Through osmosis, I guess.
Strengths: Cannot be seen by average humans and can absorb their energy without them knowing it. Humans in their vicinity feel drained and will have anywhere from weeks to years taken off of their lives depending on the duration of exposure.
Weaknesses: Can do no directly fatal harm, can be easily dispersed by a werewolf.
Banshees - Ghouls in true form.
Goal: When enraged, empowered by enough human spirits, or desperate, a ghoul reverts to its natural form to either have a chance at fighting a werewolf or to go on a mass killing spree.
Strengths: Cannot be harmed by humans, speed, agility, are terrifying to behold with a bone-shattering, unearthly and unnerving scream. They are only partly corporeal, so if a werewolf bites down on or slashes, say, an arm that is in flux, its teeth or claws will go right through it. The banshee is in constant flux, only parts of it tangible at a time.
Weaknesses: Cannot sustain this form for long unless they have fed off of enough human lives, can be injured by werewolves if hit at the right time in an area of the body that is currently solid.
--Story--
For centuries, man has lived in fear of what he knows. He has feared threats from the astrological, from the biochemical, the societal and the celestial. He now faces an element of a never before conceived supernatural. He now faces the unknown. The unknown is both within and without him; he can rarely see his enemy and he does not understand his ally. No mere human can stand in the face of what nightmare we now know to be true and hope to save its people.
And so it is instead we—fragmented, dazed, and unprepared as we are—who are mankind’s only chance for salvation now.
Examples: (Note: these are actual characters that will likely make several appearances in the roleplay…and probably make my posts idiotically long sometimes. Consider these to be the first transformations ever—with yours happening either around the same time or when my post starts, which will be an assumed three days later.)
Account #1: Noah Gershwin
It couldn’t have been more than a one minute walk in the rain and he is already soaked through, only the contents of the plastic bag in his hand dry. He barely notices, though—a Seattle man should be used the rain if anything. It’s letting up now anyway as he approaches the door to his apartment building and tries to ring the buzzer next to his nameplate. He tries a few more times with no result. He sighs, leaning back against the wall under the small bit of shelter from the rain. “C’mon, Kate…” he mutters. He hopes she hasn’t gone out. He had just spoken with her on the phone not thirty minutes ago, and he knows that the only reason she would have left is to surprise him with dinner when he arrived home. He looks down at his Styrofoam boxes of expensive prepared Thai food and shakes his head. He supposes he should have just told her he was bringing dinner home. Now he’s stuck out here.
His head turns as a middle-aged man approaches the door and buzzes a friend. Noah waits hopefully and watches as the man opens the door to the building, then he quietly slips in behind him undetected. It said something about the security of the building, but he doesn’t think he has much to be worried about with so many people living here. He turns to amble up the stairs tiredly, because he knows that the elevator has been broken since Monday. The place has its flaws, certainly, but the one-bedroom that he shares with his long-term girlfriend turned fiancée is affordable and comfortable. He has never been a man who asks for or expects much, and highly values what he has. Kate seems to him to be the only ounce of luxury life has ever afforded him.
He trudges the staircase muttering to himself and knowing exactly what awaits him in his small but not cramped apartment. He’ll plop dinner on the table and flop on the couch to watch TV before Kate eventually stumbles in, looking cheerfully frazzled as always and apologizing several hundred times for picking up a second dinner—which she is surely doing now. But as he gets to the top of the stairs and peers down his hallway, he can’t help but notice that the door to unit 204, his and Kate’s humble abode, is swung wide open. Noah wouldn’t put it past Kate to be enough of a scatterbrain to forget to close the door. He worries that their things will be stolen, so he hurriedly marches up the last stair and walks in. Only it’s not his things that are stolen when he arrives. The lights are all on, Kate is not gone, and she is not alone. He can’t quite comprehend the scene he’s looking at. The bag in his hand falls to the floor and he stares blankly at his fiancée lying prostrate on the kitchen floor with her back to him. Above her is a man that Noah’s attention suddenly turns to. The man looks surprised, then somewhat nervous but mostly angry. There is blood on the floor. On his clothes. In his hand is a knife pilfered from their chop block and on the counter is a pile of Kate’s antique jewelry. Noah knows instantly, his brain explodes into a thousand different shrieks of emotional agony, and something in his face makes the intruder freeze.
He doesn’t understand what happens next—he doesn’t register it, there isn’t time to. He’s suddenly numb and static and rippling, he’s flying through the air, a leap that clears twenty feet, and he comes down at light speed on the man. Or what was a man. Suddenly the man is gone. Suddenly Noah’s on his knees on the kitchen floor. Suddenly the amount of blood has increased tenfold. He looks down at himself—human and whole but he could have sworn for a moment he hadn’t been. He’s covered in gore. It’s everywhere; in his face, his hair, his pockets. The home invader is a quartered pulp—a hunk of him having landed on the kitchen counter, another in the hall leading towards the bedroom, an arm dangles from the top of a high cupboard, drizzling blood.
Noah looks at his hands, so covered in blood that fingers are glued together, he spits out teeth—and they’re not his own. He looks around, twitching, jolting, trying to rouse himself to scramble away but he’s paralyzed with disjointed fear.
His hands slap against the wet floor as he catches himself and he screams a blood-curdling, hysterical cry.
Account #2: Reagan Dodson-Marsh
He always hated these country roads at night. His night vision was poor already and he was none too excited about the already icy October mist settling in front of him. Not that this place was completely deserted and not that this car wasn’t absolutely top of the line and expensive enough to ensure his safety. He was still always afraid he would hit some animal out here. The last time he was out here he nearly hit a buck head on, and in missing it nearly wrapped his Lexus around an oak tree. He already missed the city.
“It was nice of you to come all the way up here.” Said his passenger.
He looked over at her briefly, shrugging. “You know, Mom, it’s fine. I don’t expect you guys to come down every year. Besides, getting the time off was a breeze. I just closed a deal and I’ve got nothing on my plate.”
“That’s good.” The woman nodded, fiddling with her gloves as she gazed out the window. “I’m sure you could use a break. And from more than just work, I mean. I really don’t know how you put up with the hustle and bustle of that city.”
He snorted in amusement. “Mom, you lived there for thirty years. I don’t know why you hate it so much, referring to it as ‘that city’ all the time.”
“Oh I don’t hate it. I just meant…well it’s so much nicer up here, isn’t it?”
“Sure. Where else am I gonna get the chance to peel deer guts out of my grill?”
“Really, that’s just gruesome!” she held a hand to her chest, suppressing a laugh and shaking her head. “We have never hit a deer here, not in five years. In fact I’ve never even heard of someone hitting one on this road.”
“Not yet.” He muttered, using a sleeve to try and wipe away the smog on his windshield. “You know, I’d be lying if I said I knew why you guys moved here in the first place.”
“What’s wrong with Johnstown?”
“What was wrong with New York?”
He watched as she shook her head again, clearing feigning ambivalence. “When you get to be my age, sometimes you just need a change of pace. That’s all.”
“If you say so.” He relented, moving his eyes back to the dark, endless stretch of road. He glanced back over, noticing that she was staring at him.
“Well?” she prodded, looking back towards the road in front of them again. “How are things back in New York, then?”
He let out a sigh, thinking. “I got that promotion I was telling you about, so that’s good. Oh and uh…I got a dog.”
She looked back to him quickly. “A dog? And here I was finally hoping you tell me you met some nice young girl, but a dog. A man like you doesn’t even have time for a dog.”
“Sure I do. Cutest little puppy too—I bought it off the street just outside my building.”
“On the street?”
“Yeah, come on, Mom. I know what you’re thinking, but who needs a good home more? The purebred thousand dollar stud or the dirty, dead broke mutt some guy’s selling out of a cardboard box just to pay his rent? I couldn’t resist him.”
“Well I suppose.” She agreed, looking back out the window.
Silence ensued once more after that and he flicked on the car radio, which barely registered in his mother’s attention. She could say what she wanted; he could use a canine presence in his life. Things has been strangely lonely after his parents moved away, and while he didn’t seem to have time for a relationship, some good old fashioned unconditional love was nice to have around again. He squinted through the mist and again wiped his windshield with a sleeve. When he moved his hand away, he suddenly caught sight of a figure directly in front of him. Off in the distance. It almost looked like a person. He slowed the vehicle quickly as he approached and leaned over the dash to try and make it out. It definitely looked like a person, standing in the middle of the road. The car gently jerked to a halt and he glanced at his mother, who looked back at him with confusion. “Stay here.” He advised, unbuckling his seatbelt and stepping out of the car.
He walked a few feet to the end of the car, staring at the headlight illuminated man. “Hello? Sir? Are you alright?”
The man didn’t respond, and he began to take his appearance into consideration. He was tattered, pale and bloody, glaring daggers into him from his spot twenty feet or so away.
“Jesus…Sir, do you need me to call an ambulance? Where’s your car?”
Something felt completely off about this. He heard the passenger door open and close, followed by his mother’s boots clicking on the ground and he held up a hand half-consciously to warn her back.
The man didn’t approach. He didn’t move, just stared into his face with what could only be described as malice. He then suddenly grinned, and a gush of blood fell through his teeth.
He stepped back. He moved as calmly as he could, trying to muster the words to order his mother back into the car. He looked over to her, and his breath caught in his chest. Her mouth was agape, her posture slanted. Gray mist was pouring out of her eyes, ears, mouth, nose—as if she were a hollowed-out jack-o-lantern with a smoke bomb inside of her. “Mom…?” he choked. And then she erupted.
Out of the mist where she had been a monster vaulted from the side of the car with a ferocious roar that knocked him on his ass so fast that he didn’t have time to brace for impact. The beast had charged, made one impressive leap and came crashing down on the bloody man’s head back into the mist. It was quiet.
At first he couldn’t move. He sat, gripping the front tire of the car, shivering as he stared in the direction of what he had just witnessed. “Mom?” he queried shakily. He received no response. He managed to pull himself to his feet, stumbling forward, terrified to discover what lay in the mists. His shoes stuck to the ground as he walked…bits and pieces of red shone through the fog. He slowly came upon the only remaining figure. “…Mom?” he uttered in shock.
She was on the ground, sitting with her hands in her lap, eyes terribly wide as she stared at the remains of the man. She blinked, finally exhaling a breath. “Oh, my.”
Character:[/center]
You’re human. At least…you thought you were. Now when you gaze into the eyes of the reflection in your mirror you wonder whose it is. Your body has changed. Your instincts have changed. Your control has diminished, and people are terrified of you. You’re probably more than a little terrified yourself.
Translation: you’re a motherfucking werewolf. This may put a damper on your social life.
Template
Name:
Age:
Gender:
Nationality and Current Location:
Appearance (both before and after your first transformation, if changed):
Personality:
Occupation:
History:
PAQ (potentially asked questions)
Q. So, I can’t control myself as a werewolf?
A. Not so much at first. Over time and a few transformations throughout the roleplay, our characters will come to find that once they get used to the primal burst of sensation, they can reign themselves and use their werewolf abilities to make conscious efforts while in that form. Eventually they will be able to control every action they make in werewolf form, and towards the end of the tale, they may even be able to induce transformation at will.
Q. Can I play a ghoul?
A. No, sorry. This was never intended to be a pitted faction roleplay. Plus, ghouls suck.
Q. How many characters can I have?
A. As many as you think you can handle, but I will be juggling four—two main and two side characters—myself, and that will not be easy. I highly recommend that you don’t play more than two, but you’re welcome to.
Q. How do I get to North Yorkshire?
A. Any way you can, really. You don’t know that’s where you’re ultimately headed, so you might just be aimlessly flying in planes trying to get rid of this instinctive pull, or a boat, or once there driving a car, etc.
Q. When do we meet up together?
A. Consciously try and steer characters toward other characters as you detail your journey. Since everyone is headed to the same place, it’s reasonable to assume that they might bump into each other along the way. If your character doesn’t end up meeting us all until we arrive at our destination, that’s fine too.
Q. How do I start?
A. Probably with your first transformation, something along the lines of one of the stories in the story section. If you want to have your post begin after you’ve already transformed, remember that it had to have happened very recently. (And no, your posts don’t have to be in third person present tense. Pick any perspective you’d like. From now on mine will be in third person past tense.)
This roleplay is just unraveling in my head—have any questions? Please feel free to ask.
My characters will be posted shortly--soon as I get back from a class.