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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.
C
"I'll do what I can," he promises, quickly running back out into the street and yelling for the police. He's able to flag one down after not too much time searching, and leads them back to to the alley and the dead body. Once it's clear that they'll take over from here, he takes off in the direction the wing-guy flew, leapfrogging up a street lamp to climb to the roofs of the nearby buildings. He's at a bit of a disadvantage without his web shooters or any skyscrapers, but he can still run and jump from roof to roof to try to catch up to where the action is.
no subject
Or he could, if this place played by the rules and the killer wasn't some eldritch horror able to do things even Hawks can't anticipate. Hawks is used to quirks, obviously. He has no idea if this guy is a human, has any special powers, or is something else. All he knows is the guy murdered someone and then ran. Down the street as the killer turns the corner, Hawks catches sight of something…slithery…where the dude's feet should be.
Well, that's not too weird yet so he registers it but keeps on going.
Peter catches up on the rooftops. Hawks sees him there, noting that Peter does not move the way a guy without a quirk would. Hawks has gotten kind of used to people here not having quirks at all, so the fact that Peter does have some kind of ability is refreshing. He comes down closer to the rooftop.
"I think there's something weird about this guy," he calls out, "But we've almost got him."
He's away again after that, diving down for the killer below them on the street. The man(?) is still running, but as Hawks comes closer, he starts to slow, turning to face him. Hawks is smart enough to know that's probably not a good sign, but hero enough to know he's got to keep going anyway. He readies one sword-feather as he closes in. It's a good thing, too, since one of those tentacle-thing shoots out from under the killer's trench coat to try and grab him.
He dodges, deflecting with the sharp feather.
"What the hell."
[ ooc: mods said the killer could be a slithering eldritch being so I picked that option for fun and profit; I figure we can go a couple rounds and he'll slither off into the night if that works for you! ]
no subject
"Great, I'll catch up!" Peter keeps running and jumping from rooftop to rooftop, finally leaping down to cling to a street lamp once they corner the guy. There is definitely something weird about him, the way the shadows cling to him and— is that a tentacle!?
As his winged buddy parries the tentacle with a sword that is also a feather (Peter has so many questions, but he'll deal with that later), the sharp edge slices into the tentacle's flesh, causing a spray of dark blue-green substance that must be what passes for blood in shadowy tentacle man biology. Peter knows that octopi have blue blood because it's copper-based, but this is something different. As it splashes across Peter's face and chest, it burns like something caustic. He scrambles to tear off his coat and wipe his face with a dry part of it.
"Watch out, he's got acid blood!" He yells to his partner in (stopping) crime. "And that was the only jacket I had!"
He really wishes he had his web shooters right about now...
no subject
Still, he definitely gets what acid blood means.
At least Hawks has speed on his side here. He gets out of the way of most of the blood so it doesn't get on his feathers, though it catches the edge of his leg, burning holes through the edge of his pants. He can feel it smart there in drops, some of it hitting the leather of his boots and not skin. He wonders if anyone has a healing quirk. Maybe Anders? That's a problem for later now. For now, okay, avoid cutting the caustic blood guy. Got it. That does complicate things.
"Shit," he says. He changes tactics and reaches for a loose stone on a nearby rooftop, figuring he can go on the offensive with that instead.
The injured killer isn't unintelligent, though. He realises that while the two heroes are outside of the range of grasping tentacles, he can still fling acid drops at them. Hawks is on the offensive, but the killer himself stays on the defensive, ready to fling acid as he makes a hasty retreat into the fog.
Hawks doesn't want to let him go, of course, acid blood or not.
Behind them down the alley, a whistle sounds as the police start to get in on the chase. Well, that's a start.
Hawks chucks his rock anyway, hoping to slow the creature down with a headshot. He has good aim, at least, and he hits it pretty straight on.
"Not so fast, slimy," he says. "Hope those cops have handcuffs built for, uh, tentacles. Left mine in another universe."
He calls to Peter, "You okay?"
Especially now that the authorities are coming, he can be have some concern for his fellow traveller, too.
no subject
"I'm fine, I'm fine!" He shouts, waving off any concern from the flying guy. "He's getting away."
The killer is indeed trying to shrink back into the shadows of a nearby alley, and Peter can tell that the police aren't going to see where he's going, and are going to run right past the alley's mouth.
"You circle around and head him off, I'll redirect the boys in blue." These cops aren't wearing blue, but old habits die hard. "We'll flank him!"