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Got the morbs.
✖ VICTORIA'S SECRET
Ⅰ. ARRIVAL & THE TEMPLE
You can read all about your character's arrival in the game lore.
The ferry pulls into port in the evening, when shadows are long and gas lamps burn through a veil of mist. Dozens of other ships are docked as well, with men unloading crates and boxes from their holds. Beyond the wet wood and lapping sound of the ocean, a city looms like a charcoal smudge on a purple sky. The air is smoggy and thick, and the river that flows from the sea into the city smells foul. Walk the cobbled streets and you will find that the city is crowded and filthy, but full of merchants, pubs, and theatres. Vast wealth and extreme poverty exist side by side.
In the center of the sprawling city is a temple with towering gothic spires and huge stained glass windows depicting all manner of beings that might be gods or angels or monsters. You could look for hours and still be finding new figures plucked straight from books of myth and religion. Inside, the main chamber has a grand vaulted ceiling, and dozens of pews line the aisle up to the altar, which is oddly anticlimactic compared to the lavish surroundings: just a plain stone table with a lit oil lamp in the centre. Two hallways branch off on either side of the room: one leads to private baths and a communal kitchen, the other to monastic style chambers with thin beds. Not the most comfortable place to stay, but it’ll do in a pinch!
Alternatively you can venture into the city and find yourself some other lodging - every Traveler has been supplied with some pocket money. Just be careful that it isn’t stolen by some street urchin. Travelers can also find an era-appropriate outfit that will fit them perfectly laid in the first sleeping chamber they visit.
Ⅱ. SEANCE
CW: grief, past trauma.
Perhaps you overhear talk of it at a pub, or maybe you’re handed a small card as you push your way through the crowded city streets. Maybe you just wander in by accident. However it happens, you find yourself being ushered into the parlour of one Miss Mary Price: Spiritualist.
You and several other people are instructed to sit at a round table in a very dark and musty room. The walls are covered in thick black curtains, and maybe you’re the type to suspect that there’s someone hiding behind them somewhere. Once everyone is seated, Mary Price herself enters the room. The lights are all extinguished save for a single candle.
Mary calls out to the spirits. They communicate through a series of knocks, or the movement of a Ouija board. Someone at the table is put in contact with a deceased aunt who reveals the location of a family heirloom. Someone else is able to say goodbye to a son.
Mary Price looks at you with eyes so dark they look black, and asks, “What haunts you?”
Maybe you answer honestly. Maybe you don’t answer at all, but that doesn’t matter because the spirit tapping around the room is more than happy to narc on you and tell the whole room what or who it is that you cannot forget.
You can deny it all you like, but the spirits don’t have a reason to lie. And if you try to mess up the seance, you will spend a month being hounded by an angry poltergeist.
Ⅲ. THE RIPPER
CW: murder, gore, violence.
You’re lost at night. Maybe you were in the pub too late, or maybe you were searching for more illicit fun - weren’t there opium dens around this time? - or maybe you just weren’t keeping an eye on the time. However it happened, you’re on the streets in the dark.
It’s very foggy; you can barely see a foot in front of you. The streetlamps look like dimly burning ghosts and when the odd person passes you they are felt more than seen, just a darker shadow in a world of shifting shades.
Very suddenly you hear a scream - short, and swallowed up quickly by the fog. Still, it’s enough to get you to turn and hurry down a narrow alleyway.
Sprawled on the ground amid a lake of blood is a body. It’s immediately apparent that this person is probably beyond help - their throat has been slashed ear to ear. Your appearance was not expected, however, and you can see that you’ve startled the killer: they’re running down the alley in the opposite direction.
You have a few choices: you can chase the killer and attempt to catch them, you can try to help the victim, you can get the authorities, or you can just walk away.
What will you do?
Ⅳ. RESURRECTION MEN
CW: dead bodies, grave robbing.
You’re not entirely clear on how you agreed to this. Maybe it was a barroom bet gone wrong. Maybe you’re broke enough that you need money fast. Or maybe you want to help some wannabe medical students. However it happened, you’re in the cemetery.
And you’ve got a shovel.
Time to rob some graves! You’ve convinced yourself somehow that this isn’t morally reprehensible, and so you and your partner are just going to get down to business! What corpse should you unearth? You feel like a kid in a candy store!
The problem comes once you’ve unearthed the body because it seems terribly familiar. Which is… creepy. Creepier still when it starts talking.
Maybe it’s a family member, or an old friend. Maybe an ex partner. Whoever it is, they immediately start telling your fellow grave robber about some incident from your past that you just. Can’t. Let. Go. Of. And even if you whack it with a shovel it won’t stop. Bad corpse! BAD Corpse!
Which of course is exactly what you have to try and do if you want this chatty Cathy of a corpse to shut the hell up.
Sometimes I can still hear his voice...
You can read all about your character's arrival in the game lore.
The ferry pulls into port in the evening, when shadows are long and gas lamps burn through a veil of mist. Dozens of other ships are docked as well, with men unloading crates and boxes from their holds. Beyond the wet wood and lapping sound of the ocean, a city looms like a charcoal smudge on a purple sky. The air is smoggy and thick, and the river that flows from the sea into the city smells foul. Walk the cobbled streets and you will find that the city is crowded and filthy, but full of merchants, pubs, and theatres. Vast wealth and extreme poverty exist side by side.
In the center of the sprawling city is a temple with towering gothic spires and huge stained glass windows depicting all manner of beings that might be gods or angels or monsters. You could look for hours and still be finding new figures plucked straight from books of myth and religion. Inside, the main chamber has a grand vaulted ceiling, and dozens of pews line the aisle up to the altar, which is oddly anticlimactic compared to the lavish surroundings: just a plain stone table with a lit oil lamp in the centre. Two hallways branch off on either side of the room: one leads to private baths and a communal kitchen, the other to monastic style chambers with thin beds. Not the most comfortable place to stay, but it’ll do in a pinch!Alternatively you can venture into the city and find yourself some other lodging - every Traveler has been supplied with some pocket money. Just be careful that it isn’t stolen by some street urchin. Travelers can also find an era-appropriate outfit that will fit them perfectly laid in the first sleeping chamber they visit.
Notes:
1. Unless this is your character’s first island, the High Temple and anything you may have stored there is off-limits this month.
2. Please remember to mark threads appropriately with Content Warnings when necessary.
3. The city greatly resembles Victorian London, and the technology and general way of life is all of that era. Feel free to explore the city! These prompts are a jumping off point - how they affect your character and their development is up to you.
4. Most food is safe to eat, and is consumable by non-human entities. Most. Some of it’s going to be pretty gross or cooked improperly, so be careful.
5. The people in the city are normal humans unless otherwise indicated. Killing them is possible and will affect the colour grading of your Scrywatch depending on the situation.
6. Have fun!
Ⅱ. SEANCE
CW: grief, past trauma.
Perhaps you overhear talk of it at a pub, or maybe you’re handed a small card as you push your way through the crowded city streets. Maybe you just wander in by accident. However it happens, you find yourself being ushered into the parlour of one Miss Mary Price: Spiritualist.
You and several other people are instructed to sit at a round table in a very dark and musty room. The walls are covered in thick black curtains, and maybe you’re the type to suspect that there’s someone hiding behind them somewhere. Once everyone is seated, Mary Price herself enters the room. The lights are all extinguished save for a single candle.Mary calls out to the spirits. They communicate through a series of knocks, or the movement of a Ouija board. Someone at the table is put in contact with a deceased aunt who reveals the location of a family heirloom. Someone else is able to say goodbye to a son.
Mary Price looks at you with eyes so dark they look black, and asks, “What haunts you?”
Maybe you answer honestly. Maybe you don’t answer at all, but that doesn’t matter because the spirit tapping around the room is more than happy to narc on you and tell the whole room what or who it is that you cannot forget.
You can deny it all you like, but the spirits don’t have a reason to lie. And if you try to mess up the seance, you will spend a month being hounded by an angry poltergeist.
Notes:
1. The spirit can communicate through knocks, the Ouija, actually vocalising through the medium, or via ectoplasm.
2. What haunts your character does not have to be the memory of a dead person. It can be an event - maybe they’ve never gotten over losing that science fair in grade three. It is the feeling of being haunted that is important.
3. If you choose to trash the seance, the spirit will follow you for the rest of the month. It can range from annoying to actually dangerous.
Ⅲ. THE RIPPER
CW: murder, gore, violence.
You’re lost at night. Maybe you were in the pub too late, or maybe you were searching for more illicit fun - weren’t there opium dens around this time? - or maybe you just weren’t keeping an eye on the time. However it happened, you’re on the streets in the dark.
It’s very foggy; you can barely see a foot in front of you. The streetlamps look like dimly burning ghosts and when the odd person passes you they are felt more than seen, just a darker shadow in a world of shifting shades.
Very suddenly you hear a scream - short, and swallowed up quickly by the fog. Still, it’s enough to get you to turn and hurry down a narrow alleyway.
Sprawled on the ground amid a lake of blood is a body. It’s immediately apparent that this person is probably beyond help - their throat has been slashed ear to ear. Your appearance was not expected, however, and you can see that you’ve startled the killer: they’re running down the alley in the opposite direction.You have a few choices: you can chase the killer and attempt to catch them, you can try to help the victim, you can get the authorities, or you can just walk away.
What will you do?
Notes:
1. The inspiration for this prompt is Jack the Ripper but you do not have to use that case as a basis for your killer.
2. You can get as involved with this as you would like. You can have your character catch the killer in a chase, or form your very own detective squad and hunt them down that way.
3. Naturally, walking away from a potential serial killer might not be great for your Scrywatch grading!
Ⅳ. RESURRECTION MEN
CW: dead bodies, grave robbing.
You’re not entirely clear on how you agreed to this. Maybe it was a barroom bet gone wrong. Maybe you’re broke enough that you need money fast. Or maybe you want to help some wannabe medical students. However it happened, you’re in the cemetery.
And you’ve got a shovel.
Time to rob some graves! You’ve convinced yourself somehow that this isn’t morally reprehensible, and so you and your partner are just going to get down to business! What corpse should you unearth? You feel like a kid in a candy store! The problem comes once you’ve unearthed the body because it seems terribly familiar. Which is… creepy. Creepier still when it starts talking.
Maybe it’s a family member, or an old friend. Maybe an ex partner. Whoever it is, they immediately start telling your fellow grave robber about some incident from your past that you just. Can’t. Let. Go. Of. And even if you whack it with a shovel it won’t stop. Bad corpse! BAD Corpse!
Which of course is exactly what you have to try and do if you want this chatty Cathy of a corpse to shut the hell up.
Notes:
1. If you do NOT let go of this past event, the corpse will follow you the rest of the night singing Henry the Eighth I am, I am.
no subject
"Oh. Damn," he's still working on the whole showing empathy thing. How is anyone supposed to know what people want to hear if you don't go looking in their head for it. "Sorry. That uh. That sucks. Well. If it's any consolation you're good here. I mean like, I've got your six while you're practicing any psionic stuff."
no subject
"If I could forget the look in his eyes as he strangled me, I'd be happier I think."
It was the source of a lot of his fear of relationships that had been revived after all his boyfriend before that had done to make David happy and comfortable with relationships.
"I'm just annoyed I didn't see it coming. I'm psychometric and I couldn't even figure out he was a serial killer. Which means I've been killed TWICE by serial killers. It's so 'fuck you David'."
no subject
"I mean, hey, that's always an option right," he reminds him.
"I feel you," he says. His mouth twisting thoughtfully. It was only just recently that his mind has been thinking about those kinds of things— how stupid and ironic it is that a guy with his brain powers is still asking the kinds of questions he keeps coming back to. It's a timely reminder that Kyle was possibly right about him and David.
"That kind of thing has been bugging me lately too. I mean I know it's not exactly the same but like, you'd think mental stuff would get easier with our powersets, right? And sure, fucking algebraic geometry gets easier and basic social functions get harder somehow?? How is that even fair? Anyway. I guess you can't beat yourself up about it. We don't know what we don't know."
no subject
"For me, I know why. Like, my power doesn't tell the difference between true knowledge and false knowledge, and good and bad skills. It's literally all just there. Sometimes it's hard pick out, and a lot of the formative adults around us were a mess."
But Quire isn't wrong. That didn't stop David from beating himself up.
"You're starting to sound responsible, like JP does. It's scary."
no subject
"Tch. They usually are," he agrees emphatically. "So. Does that mean you have to cross check everything? Like when you get a massive info upload? Or what would happen if you grabbed a bunch of info from conflicted sources? Do get like... cognitive dissonance when there's antithetical information?" That is, perhaps, not what David wanted to talk about, but Quentin has a hard time not chasing the thread of things he finds interesting.
He pulls a sour face at that comparison. "Excuse me?? Uh. One. Gross. I do not. And Two. If that guy strikes you as responsible you're right— your formative adults really did fuck you up."
no subject
"There is a lot of extra research though, and sometimes reinforcement from other sources I gain things from. But there can be some serious cognitive dissonance. Though..."
He pauses after sending another scoop of dirt to the side.
"I've got this theory that my mutation was never merely my ability. The way my mind processes things, the speed, the number of lines of thought I can keep going at once, the way I can organize and store and synthesize information from so many sources and create something new... I'm not going to get a brain scan any time soon, but there's a chance the actual wetwork in my head is a bit different. I think there's probably inherently some difference in the wetwork for all telepaths, but I think mine helps me survive what I processed as a kid. And now of course."
Because in the end a telepath could let things wash over their mind, or keep things out. And back home? David could never do that. He was always taking in. Constantly taking in.
Though calling Jean-Paul irresponsible makes him laugh.
"He's a lot more responsible now than he was as a kid. And you've got to remember, he's my team leader. I see him in a whole different light."
no subject
"Makes sense," he said heaving another shovel full of dirt until the blade clunks again against something solid and firm. More interesting though than what they've struck is David's point. He snaps his fingers at that, like he's excited about this idea before he can form words to explain way.
"Gah. Yes! Ok! Me too! I mean, not that I was thinking about your case specifically. But I've been studying this— I mean I was. Before here. And not like a controlled study. Just natural experiments. But I have a lot of thoughts about the ways social influences that would effect the development of the brain also impact the development of burgeoning x-genes. So we're out here trying to like categorize powers all the time and being surprised when someone doesn't fit the usual mold of like a familiar suite of abilities but I'm willing to bet those anomalies could be predicted just like other outcomes that can be predicted by our early social influences," he heaves a breath after all of that without really noticing how much he rambles. And then just like that, he's on to something else again.
"Anyway— body! Want me to haul this one out, or you wanna try?"
no subject
"So you're suggesting that the very form our powers take could be reflective of the environments and circumstances of our youth?" David asks, a bit intrigued by this idea. In fact, intrigued enough that he's left considering it m ore than the body. What an interesting approach. "You ever float that theory past McCoy?"
The offer has him offering a bow of concession to Quentin.
"Not an actual telepath. I wouldn't be able to do enough to really affect this. Three foot distance projection limits are gonna suck.
no subject
"Yeah pretty much," he says, the shovel dissolving in his hands when he reaches into that grave telekinetically. The ground rumbles a little as he wrestles it up through whatever earth is left covering it.
"I dunno if it goes so far as to like, determine the particular type of abilities. There's probably something genetic instigating that particular direction. But how and to what extent those skills develop. I think some of that can be controlled for with the right environment." When he dirt settles around their feet he manifests a different psionic tool. A crowbar this time.
"I brought it up to him once in passing but... he's pretty fucking weird these days. I dunno. Weird vibes. I don't always trust him, you know?" He plunges that crowbar into the lid of the coffin and pries, the wood cracking until the hinges give.
But there’s no body in this one. Just a brain.
“Oh shit… Martha?”
no subject
"That's an interesting idea that should absolutely be explored. And I lament how busy you are with X-Force when you could be a researcher instead."
Was that a 'you're wasting your intellect' comment from David? Yep. Definitely. But the comment about Beast made David frown. Yeah, he'd seen that too. It was... disturbing. Very disturbing. Almost as disturbing as...
"There's no way," David said with shock.
no subject
Quentin. David. Martha doesn't speak of course. At least not in the literal sense. You're both looking well. All things considered. Quentin... you're feeling.... less super villainy than usual.
"I'm not— wait. Are you actually here?" he whirls around to David. "Is she actually here? I just don't trust the legitimacy of anything about this place anymore, you know?"
no subject
"I admit, I'm not entirely sure. A medium channeled Drake for Jean-Paul the other day," David said, looking at Martha and the bowing.
If it was her, he wanted to be respectful.
"How did you come to be here?"
no subject
It's almost impossible to tell if Martha's paying a lick of attention to their sidebar conversation, but there's an air of consideration about her as she ruminates on David's question.
I... I don't know," she admits. I have no memory of leaving the island.
"Wait. Which island?" Quentin thinks to add.
Utopia.
no subject
"You don't remember coming here on a ferry?" David asked, because that seemed more relevant here.