GUIDELINES.
This is the OOC plotting post for the October 2023 event! Here you can find brief summaries of the various event prompts which may help you engage in plotting with other players. To participate, utilize the code at the bottom of the page. This is not mandatory! Feel free to plot here or in private with other players, or simply wait to be part of the event.
Please note that this month we have a player plot featured as well! Robby and Tsuruno will be hosting a Halloween house party with some very interesting consequences. This player plot will have its own plotting post, which can be found here. Feel free to check it out and participate there, too!
NOTE: This is NOT the event log! The event log will go up on the 19th of this month.
SOMETHING DEAD THAT DOESN'T KNOW IT'S DEAD.
From the morning of October 19, characters will start to notice flyers hung up around the city that advertise the local university's homecoming Halloween party. The flyers will be strewn about the city in various locations beginning on October 19. Characters who read them will find themselves feeling oddly compelled to go check out the advertised Halloween party, which will run from October 22 to October 31 between sunset and midnight. For the most part this will just feel like a sense of curiosity about the party, and astute characters may be able to pick up on the fact that they're being emotionally manipulated a bit.
Characters who choose to go can wear a costume of their choosing from the Halloween Superstore, or the City will provide one if they don't have a costume of their own yet. You can find a little more information about the costumes in the next section.
Lastly, every character will find a dorm room key somewhere on their person before the party starts on October 22. This key will correspond to one room in the dorm where the party is being held. The dorm room key is not a usable item during the October 2023 event, but will become usable in November and December, so characters are advised to not lose them.
ALL THESE GHOSTS COME STREAMING DOWN.
On the morning of October 22, every device in the city will start to buzz with a message: THE GOOD OF THE MANY, it says, with a single "OK" button below. Characters must press the "OK" button in order to escape the message; if they don't, the message will stay on the screen until the end of the event, rendering the device otherwise unusable. At sunset on the 22nd, the Halloween party will open for the first time. The party's entrance is located on the ground level of a large dorm building in the western half of the university campus. The double doors into the building are fully decorated with folded-paper bats and ghosts, cotton batting pulled apart to make spiderwebs, and a cut-out sign that says "HAUNTED HOUSE" in bright red, dripping-blood letters.
However, this is not the only way that characters can get into the party. After the party begins on October 22, any door in the city that a character walks through has the potential to become a door into the first level of the haunted house (first level of the dorm building). Characters will not be able to tell by any means whether a door is pointed there or not; only once they're fully through the door will they realize that they're actually standing in the lobby of the decorated dorm building and not in whatever room they intended to enter. Once characters are inside, there's unfortunately no way to get out, not without making their way through the haunted house itself.
Whether a character enters the haunted house via the main double doors or through another door somewhere else in the city, they'll need to come in costume. (Their own canon clothes do not count!) If they're already wearing a costume, they can keep it on arrival; however, those who enter the haunted house costume-less will be assigned a costume at random by the city. The actual costume is up to the player's choice. It may end up being something that suits the character, or it may end up being something totally embarrassing—that's completely up to the player. Regardless, characters will have a difficult (but not impossible) time removing the costume until they have exited the haunted house.
THEY GO TO GROUND AND ROT.
The first level of the haunted house consists of fairly cheap scares, mostly relying on animatronics, voiceover tracks, and tricks of the light or optical illusions to deliver scares to the residents. Players should use their imaginations to come up with potential scares—think something moderately more scary than Haunted Mansion but less than Halloween Horror Nights.
Although the hallway of this first floor looks oddly long, there doesn't seem to be anything particularly odd about the dorm building itself. As characters walk down the hallway, they are able to look inside the dorm rooms on this floor. Some of the doors lead to total blackness; others lead to rooms decorated like an elaborate Victorian haunted mansion, and yet others even lead to perfectly normal dorm rooms, like someone forgot to get around to decorating.
In addition, the first level is also populated by characters working as scare actors. These characters may be those who attended Robby and Tsuruno's house party, or may simply be characters with a sense of humor who enjoy making other characters jump and shriek a little. Either way, these scares are harmless and non-contact. The scare actors won't harm anyone going through the haunted house, even if they do a little chasing down the hall.
Characters may find that the trip through the haunted house feels shorter when they're accompanied by another. For characters who don't wish to venture up the stairs to the second level, there is a very well-hidden emergency exit tucked out of sight behind the staircase that leads upward. This is the opt-out for players who don't wish to engage with the events in the second and third levels of the dorm.
WE WILL NOT REMAIN UNSCATHED.
Once characters enter the second level of the haunted house, those attuned to energy flow will immediately be able to recognize this as a place full of ghostly energy. As characters make their way down the hall, they will notice that many more of the doors on this level are open, and there are shadowy figures moving in the blackness. Characters may sneak extremely carefully and quietly through the hallways, avoiding every single ghost; they may be pursued by ghosts, but ultimately make it to the exit, beyond which the ghosts will not pursue; or they may be caught by a ghost (or "ghost") and be forced to fight for their lives.
Not all of the "ghosts'' on the second level are truly ghosts. Players may opt to have their characters participate in the event as "scare actors'' on the second level. Only they won't be acting: to these characters, anyone who passes by in the second-floor hallway (the "partygoer") is an absolute threat that must be dealt with immediately. Scare actor characters will be possessed by an irrepressible need to hunt down and attempt to injure or kill any partygoer or other scare actor they encounter, and can only be stopped by either death (of either the partygoer or the scare actor) or being knocked out and removed from the hallway.
Getting a little too in-character and ultimately becoming a scare actor in this haunted house is also a potential consequence for characters who attend Robby and Tsuruno's Halloween house party. Please refer to their plotting post for more information. However, characters do not have to attend the house party in order to participate in this mechanic. Any character who enters the haunted house can become a second-floor ghost if the player so desires.
Either the scare actor or partygoer may be seriously injured or even die. If this happens to the partygoer, the haze of bloodlust will immediately lift from the scare actor and reveal to them what they've done. (If the scare actor is knocked out or dead, obviously this realization will take place after they've returned or regained consciousness.) Killing and death as a part of the October event is not subject to murder or death consequences.
If a character chooses to sneak through the second floor and avoid the ghosts, and does so by entering any of the decorated dorm rooms, they may find shorthand messages scratched into the desks, closets, or doors. These messages might just be names, familiar ones belonging to people from home, or might say things like HELP ME or ITERATION 4█ or LOOK BEHIND THE APOCALYPSES. Characters may also find small, non-magical, recognizable personal effects belonging to people from their home worlds, tucked into drawers or kicked under the bed or in some otherwise unobtrusive location, easily overlooked.
WHEN YOU HAVE NOTHING TO SAY, SET SOMETHING ON FIRE.
After the second level of the haunted house, characters will ascend the stairs to the final level, where the Halloween party is taking place. The food and drink is abundant and, of course, free. There's just about any type of drink or Halloween-themed snack imaginable, so characters can help themselves. When they're through partying, there's an outside staircase that leads directly from the common room back down to ground level.
Characters who survive the haunted house in a group of two or more will find that there is a custom-made letterman jacket with their name on the back, perfectly their size, hanging on a coat rack on the far side of the room. While wearing this jacket, characters will be less susceptible to the scares in the haunted house, and the ghosts of the second floor will not pursue them as intently (although it has no effect on scare actor characters).
To any characters who are particularly sensitive to this sort of thing, the jackets do have a moderate protective effect against various negative status effects, so to speak; this effect does not diminish after the event is over. Characters can only get one jacket, their first time through the haunted house; subsequent trips through will not result in additional jackets.
CODES.
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TWO CHARACTERS |
THREE CHARACTERS |
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cityooc2023-10-17 08:53 pm
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