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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.
It's adorable
"Tsk. Fiiiiiiine." She whines and after a quick trip down to Carter's room where he checks, cleans and bandages the wound the pair exit the Temple.
"Okay! What do we do first? How do you track a serial killer?" She asks as she bounces down the street with him.
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Despite being the worst at taking care of himself, he's pleased when Roxy agrees to get the cut on her cheek looked at. Once she's patched up, the two of them head out into the night.
She's so enthusiastic. Malcolm wonders if this is how he comes off to Gil. "I think first we have to establish that he's a serial killer," Malcolm says. "He didn't kill you, though I don't doubt that he would have. What did he say to you?"
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"And he said he was going to keep my eyes as a souvenir since they were pretty." She adds and then shudders a little bit because while she's used to getting compliments about her eyes that kind of takes it one step too far.
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"You saw that? The body was there?" They have to go back. Hopefully they can get there before the crime scene is compromised.
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"Yeah she was laying right at his feet when I first saw him, why do you think I was chasing after him? So I could ask him for directions?" She says sarcastically and then because Malcolm is still looking at her for information she sighs. "It was up a block and around the corner from where you found him attacking me."
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The two of them hurry back through the streets to where Malcolm came upon Roxy earlier. Malcolm grabs a lantern before they walk down the dark narrow alleyway.
"Through here?" he confirms, wanting to make sure that they're going the right way.
cw: death, murder, dead body
"Yeah down this one." She says, her voice drained of all her previous bluster and emotion. It doesn't take long to find the spot where Roxy first found the killer and luckily for Malcolm the body is indeed still there, the poor woman staring lifelessly up at the night's sky.
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He's relieved that the body is still there. Malcolm crouches down to get a better look. "He slit her throat." The victim's face is ghostly pale, blood spilled out over the front of her dress.
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"So...urm. What do we do now? Look for clues?"
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"I'd like to inspect her for clues first," he tells Roxy, glancing up at her. "You can help if you want to, but it's okay if you don't."
Malcolm is, comparatively, much more used to looking at dead bodies. The scene before them clearly doesn't bother him much, at least not on a visceral level. He has to remember that Roxy hasn't had the same experiences as him, plus, she was just attacked. The front that she's putting up that everything is fine might be a façade. Malcolm's been there before himself.
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She watches as Malcolm inspects the body closely and keeps talking. She can't help it, she tends to ramble when she gets scared. "Shouldn't we have gloves on for that? They always wear gloves in the movies. Fuck, what if her ghost gets pissed off that we're touching her and haunts us later?"
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Normally, he'd take anything about ghosts with a grain of salt, but this being the Isles, ghosts are a real possibility. Roxy is absolutely right about the gloves too. He starts patting his jacket pockets, sure that he put a pair in earlier. They aren't latex gloves, but unfortunately they don't exist here. Leather gloves will have to do.
"We're trying to help her," Malcolm says after he locates the gloves and pulls them on. "Surely she won't haunt us if we're trying to help her?"
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"Yeah but what if she gets mad at me that I didn't get here in time, that I didn't save her and she haunts my ass for the rest of the next month?" She continues, trying to keep her eyes from looking at the dead woman's blank stare but her eyes keep getting dragged back. "I'm sorry okay, I can only move so fast, I've got powers but I'm not the fucking Flash and I can't move at the speed of light or whatever."
Yes. She's talking to the dead woman as if she can hear her.
"Fuck I hate this." She says and shivers, "....any clues?"
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"That's not your fault, Roxy," he continues. "You didn't even know she was being attacked." Surely someone can't fault her for that, right? Besides, this is only relevant if this woman becomes a ghost, which Malcolm is hoping is a long shot.
With the gloves on, Malcolm picks up one of the victim's hands and examines it. "There's something under her fingernails.... it could be her killer's skin, or it could just be grime." People here, unfortunately, are not very hygienic.
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Just like how she's finding looking at the dead body of the woman right now.
"He didn't have any visible scratches on him when he attacked me." She says, trying to keep her breathing steady but it isn't working so well and finally she has to turn her back away from the woman's dead eyed stare.
"So it's probably grime."
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He's able to commit the body to memory as much as he can and sweep the area for clues. There are a few items scattered about on the cobblestones; they could be clues or they could be trash. Malcolm will examine them more closely in the daylight.
When he's finished, he stands up and looks at Roxy. "We need to report the body to the police so that they can come and do their own investigation and clean up the scene." He doesn't want to leave the victim laying out in the open.
[ ooc: Do you think we can wrap up this thread in a few more tags? I'm trying to wrap up some of the old threads in my inbox. ]
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When Malcolm is finally finished with his investigation Roxy breathes a sigh of relief and immediately moves so she's close at his side, shivering and nodding.
"Okay sure." She says, grateful that they can leave the crime scene and as they walk towards the police station she feels a cold chill go down her spine. When Malcolm asks her what's wrong she just shrugs and takes his arm.
"It's nothing." She says quietly and casts a look behind her, suddenly worried, because for a moment it felt like someone had been watching her.....
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He puts a gentle hand on her arm before she takes his. It's not nothing, but he doesn't push for now. Malcolm hates when people push him to talk about things that he isn't ready to.
"Let's get back to the road," he says. There's more light there and hopefully Roxy will feel a bit more comfortable. Civilians don't always understand what it's like to investigate a murder. It's not all Sherlock Holmes or Agatha Christie. Sometimes it's grisly and brutal. Plus, Roxy is a victim of this particular offender. That makes it personal. He understands her want for revenge, but he feels like Gil right now, worried about his friend's well-being. It's not a sensation that he expected to feel.
No matter what though, he'll make sure that Roxy is safe. The killer won't be able to finish what he started.
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