What Happened in Oregon is a play by post game set in the alternate history The Reckoners Trilogy universe. It's located on the Brandon Sanderson fan forum 17thshard
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It deals with the events that lead to the destruction of Oregon. It is divided into the primary locations of Portland, the Dalles, Astoria, Salem, and Corvallis.
After the roleplay lost its steam, a sequel called What Happened In Edmonton began.
What Happened in Oregon contains examples of:
- Affably Evil: Aldo the Enigmatic! fits this trope, what with his fondness for good food, good wine, and cheerfully shooting bartenders in the face.
- And I Must Scream: Nighthound sometimes does this to random normals by enslaving their body and letting them do his dirty work while they are fully conscious.
- Artificial Limbs: Using her own powers, Lucentia replaced her right arm with a diamond construct after losing it permanently.
- Ax-Crazy: Timeport. That he now has an actual battle-axe doesn't help his image. Not that he cares.
- Back from the Dead: A couple of Epics can resurrect as long as their weakness isn't in effect, like Voidgaze, Penumbra and Timeport.
- Badass Normal: Remington Springfield. He has a reputation for personally killing one of the most powerful Epics in Oregon—coupled with being named after two types of rifle. Max Kennon and Stephen Vondra also count towards this trope.
- Came Back Wrong: Each time Lightwards dies he turns a little bit more Cloudcuckoolander. Jeff, on the other hand, manifests a new personality each time he dies, all of them having a name starting with P.
- Cool Shades:
- Inverted with the character Backtrack. He tends to think his pair of bright pink sunglasses make him look manly, but everyone else thinks he looks like a dork.
- Shiny Sparkle also wears a pair of colored sunglasses. The fact that she can casually blow people up and has the power to make everything sparkle helps her to pull it off better.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: Timeport, a teleporter able to travel through time, teleports inside of a teenage boy, exploding him from the inside out. Later, he uses a piece of paper to decapitate and de-limb a man.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: Just about every fight the Minor Epic Empire was involved in. Special mention goes to Stitch for getting eaten by a dinosaur mid-sentence.
- Dark Is Evil: Even taking aside the choice of his wardrobe, Nighthound's powers have this trope covered by emitting a black, mist-like substance. The evil part comes with the territory of being an Epic.
- The Dragon: Nighthound's status in Lightwards' Empire of Light. Nighthound more or less does what Lightwards asks him to do, but his reason for doing so is that Lightwards pays him with dinosaurs for things he would enjoy anyway, not any kind of loyalty. If they weren't involved in the turf war, Nighthound wouldn't even humor him that much.
- For the Evulz: Nighthound's Raison d’être. The guy slaughters innocents and Epics alike with no proper reason and that's not even going into all his other atrocities, also all committed for no other reason.
- From a Single Cell: Lightwards is capable to resurrect himself and anything else this way, be it a drop of blood, a steak, his dinosaur leather jacket, or a splinter from a tree.
- God Save Us from the Queen!: Lucentia the Diamond Queen, though the occasionally mentioned Möbius fills this role as well. Lucentia also inverts, defies, and tap-dances on the idea that Females Are More Innocent and that there is Never a Self-Made Woman. She became Queen of Astoria because she wanted a city to rule, and did so using a combination of her own charisma and brute force. Her supervillainy would put Lex Luthor and his reliance on pretty rocks to shame.
- Good Thing You Can Heal: The amount of injuries inflicted to Nighthound range from simple stab wounds up to an exploded rib cage and being covered in acid. In fact, his own powers tend to tear his muscles and break his bones near constantly.
- Hope Crusher:
- Nighthound. One of his first POV scenes shows him thinking about how much he loves to crush his victims' hope spots. He then proceeds to enslave an author whose only crime appeared to be lack of research, after taunting him with a vague promise of "redemption."
- Ringmaster. Although his mind control powers kept his victims in line, he also seemed to value pushing people over the edge to maintain his grip.
- Lethal Harmless Powers: Epics have a way of finding the most terrifying uses for their powers. In-game examples include:
- Altermind, a telepathic illusionist whose illusions of pain are all too real.
- Saccharine, whose short-range object teleportation can get messy.
- Magical Girlfriend: Almost literal with Funtimes, given her ability to turn a radio into a steak and a pile of dirt and sticks into a colorful cottage.
- Meaningful Rename: As in the source material, all Epics take on a new name fitting their powers, theme, etc.
- Mix-and-Match Critters: Chimera uses his powers to create these. Sometimes he recreates mythical creatures, other times he just does whatever.
- Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Usually what a well picked Epic name turns out to be, like Corpsemaker or Voidgaze.
- Nigh-Invulnerability: A couple of Epics can only be harmed when their weakness is in effect, for example Corpsemaker.
- Nightmare Fetishist: Nighthound for just about every sign of vulnerability a woman shows, ranging from fear to futile attempts to struggle against him and inflicting physical injury.
- People Puppets: Nighthound is capable of controlling the movements of anyone he has given his powers to, giving him a steady supply of forced and expandable minions.
- Person of Mass Destruction: A couple of Epics qualify. Ironically, for an roleplay that gathered with the goal of destroying Oregon, a rather small number of Epics actually have power that causes a lot of property damage.
- Raising the Steaks: The Necromancer Lightwards made capturing the museum of natural history his first priority upon entering Portland. His army of reanimated corpses has since been swelled with dinosaurs enslaved to his command. Several other Epics joined his faction solely on the promise of dinosaur pets.
- Required Secondary Powers: On a purely technical level, Nighthound lacks these, as the use of his own super strength and agility harms his body as one would expect. However, he instead has a healing factor that is strong enough to easily offset any injury he sustains through his powers.
- Rescue Romance: Almost invoked by Nighthound in relations to Neverthere. However, by chance he found her in a situation that required rescuing before he managed to set his plan into motion, thus giving him the chance to play the rescue part straight. The romantic aspect however is still very much invoked.
- Royal Brat: Despite being an adult, Lucentia exhibits many signs of this. She has also been known to challenge other characters to Misery Poker. That she will undoubtedly lose to a vanilla who lost both family and friends and is currently trapped in a one-sided conversation with the queen of the complainers evidently escapes her.
- Smug Snake: Koschei and Lightwards are both examples of this, both being very smugly sure in their invincibility.
- Stuff Blowing Up: Shiny Sparkle's main method of attacking. To be precise, the explosions are very shiny.
- Super-Empowering: Nighthound, like all gifters capable of lending parts of his power to normal people. Given what control it gives him over the person, this might be one of the worst things that can happen to somebody.
- Superpowered Evil Side: Of all of Jeff's personalities, Penumbra is the most representative of Epic characteristics (read: evil).
- Survival Mantra: "And then Nighthound died." Although Ray thought this on several occasions, players have been known to repeat this to themselves when Nighthound does something especially reprehensible.
- Taken for Granite: Chicago Joe's only superpower is doing this to himself. He generally uses it for taking long naps without being interrupted.
- Teleporters and Transporters: Teleportation in its different forms might be the most far spread power, with each faction in Portland having at least one and another one located in The Dalles.
- Unequal Pairing: High Epic Voidgaze and minor Epic Big Al.
- Villainous Friendship: Between Quota and Timeport, now that they went out on a sadistic murder spree to have some fun. Even better, Electro is planning to join them.
- What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?: Essentially the kind of power that makes a minor Epic. An example is Big Al being able to create Sausage Mcmuffins and making people sneeze.
