Lucia's Hidden Side, a paranormal investigation story

Have you ever believed in the supernatural? Ghosts, dragons, fairies, vampires... At one point of history, humanity did believe on them, lived next to them, one way or another, and could wield the power of magic. Of course, we all know the stories, battles, pacts, them messing with us, us messing with them, but centuries ago, it just... ended. All the magic, wonder and power just disappeared. As the time goes on, the world just moved on, considering all of it just a legend of days gone by.

Until about a month ago, strange purple lights have been appearing all over Lucia, so fast no one seems to know if they were real. But whoever sees them gets distracted by a more unbelievable sight. Unicorns, trolls, and other things came out, causing havoc and hiding who knows where. There\'s been plotting, secrets and chaos. To recover the order and peace depends on us. And we thought getting our projects done on time was hard enough.

So, there it is, an idea of an episodic story about a bunch of young adults going around a city, living life, trying to live, work and getting through shenanigans of supernatural nature in one piece. So, maybe a modern Scooby-Doo would be a somewhat apt description.

The setting is the city of Lucia, a moderately big city somewhere on New England, and Alma College being a major setting, being that the cast goes there.

As several portals open all over the place, creatures of all kinds appear all over the place. Since it’s been happening for a month or so before the story starts, a few “nests” have been created, and several magical artifacts have either appeared or activated. Due to the nature of them, not only are American folklore will be used (all America, not just the USA), but yokai and the like are fair game (once this gets going, a discussion thread will be opened after it gets going).

So, there we go. I thought of 4-5 main characters and maybe an animal companion.

The usual rules apply.

So, without further ado…

• Name:

• Age:

• Gender:

• Appearance: Image or appearance

• Personality:

• Talents:

• Weaknesses:

• Interests:

• Background:

• Maybe a song, favorite or theme:

Be sure to reserve a slot for me!

This sounds really cool, so here's a mostly finished character! I'll be done with him real soon, just wanted to get him down in post.

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Name: Jack Hawthorne

Age: 23

Gender: Male

Appearance: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/571746115178346011/

Personality:

Often sarcastic, Jack is no stranger to pointing out strange occurrences or mistakes. He tends to be nice most of the time, but isn't above lying or throwing insults to get out of a sticky situation. Known as a bookworm.

Talents:

-Book Lover and Author: An avid reader and writer, Jack enjoys fantasy and horror (obviously). He's good at recognizing common and not so common tropes from both genres.

-Charming: Persuasive arguments and reasoning comes naturally to Jack, who was previously on the debate team in high-school. As a side effect, he's also good at lying and bluffing.

Weaknesses:

-Weak: Jack isn't very strong physically, and you don't need to be a supernatural creature to knock him down or win an arm wrestling contest with him.

-Curious: In reasonable doses, curiosity is a good thing. Being curious enough to talk to an angry vampire instead of running like a sensible person is probably not a good thing.

Interests:

-Writing: An avid writer, Jack is pursuing a career in literature. He aims to be more than a second rate horror or fantasy author.

Reading: Books can be both an escape and a friend. Jack likes to read, and has an extensive fiction collection at his apartment.

Background:

Jack had an average middle-class upbringing, and is currently pursuing a major in writing. He lives in his own apartment. His mother and father are still alive, as are his brother Jake and sister Red.

Theme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NaqmqordZs4; about things that should've been left forgotten being uncovered.

Edited by Cwest5538 on Jul 30th 2018 at 3:39:59 AM

• Name: Alex Sharp
• Age: 17
• Gender: Female
• Appearance: Alex is a fairly short girl with long, tied-back black hair and black eyes. She wears a white T-shirt under a gray zip-up hoodie, tan trousers, white socks with sneakers, a black beanie, and a pair of black rectangular wire-rimmed glasses. Her faithful camera is always by her side.
• Personality: Alex asks too many questions. Some would even say that she is nosy. She tries to be cheerful and nice to people, even though she'd rather spend time in the company of video games and her studies. However, she always had a predisposition to tell stories and pretend to go on adventures. Now that the supernatural have come back, it's her chance to finally go on a real adventure.
• Talents:
  • Alex has ways of ferreting out secrets like you wouldn't believe. She combines this with her wit to ask the questions no one else is willing to ask. She's perfected a silent walk for the purposes of information gathering.
    • This also extends to her research skills.
  • She's also quite talented with photography and writing from her time in her school newspaper.
• Weaknesses:
  • Alex is kind of socially awkward, and will often offend people by being too blunt or applying the wrong amount of sarcasm at the wrong time.
  • She just can't leave secrets and conspiracies alone, to the point of getting obsessed over them.
• Interests:
  • Alex likes reading, playing video games, photography and filming.
• Background:
  • Alex has had a normal middle-class life so far, and is studying journalism at Alma College as a freshman. She lives in the college dorms. Her mother and father are still alive.
• Theme: The Sharp-Tongued, Sharp-Minded Mudraker

Edited by JumpingFruit on Jul 30th 2018 at 12:57:00 PM

Both approved.

• Name: Rosemary and Romy Hendrix, twin sisters - well, not exactly.

• Age: Rosemary is 18 years old. Romy is physically also 18, and chronologically much, much older than that.

• Gender: Cisgender girls

• Appearance: Both sisters are short and stocky, with upturned noses, a smattering of freckles, and shoulder length dark hair (Rosemary wears hers in a low ponytail, Romy keeps hers loose). Rosemary wears a lot of flannel, t-shirts, and jeans, while Romy prefers frills, skirts, and bright colors.

• Personality:
  • Rosemary is quiet, observant, and determined. She has little regard for social niceties, and can often go for weeks without talking to people outside of her immediate family, though she has gotten somewhat better on that front. She tends to be mistrustful of magic, and yet fascinated by it. Her childhood has left her with a deep-seated desire to not see anyone get hurt, especially if magic is involved.

  • Romy is the more outgoing and aggressive of the two. She‘s good at making friends, although rather bad at keeping them; once she gets what she wants from people, she tends to stop interacting with them. She’s not a bad person by any means; she’s mostly just thoughtless and a little selfish. Her charming exterior masks some deep-seated insecurities and guilt, primarily over what Rosemary has gone through. As a result she’s extremely protective of Rosemary (ditto for their parents), which may extend to other people she grows to like. And for better or worse, she truly does think of herself as human.

• Talents:
  • Rosemary is skilled at picking pockets, picking locks, and hiding objects and herself. She’s also a moderately skilled survivalist, able to start fires and identify various plants.

  • Romy is a musical prodigy with a particular interest in the violin (she’s also no slouch on the piano). She’s also extremely charming - not in a supernatural way, just a regular way. She’s quite knowledgeable about fairy magic, though she can’t actually do any of it.

• Weaknesses:
  • Rosemary‘s time in Fairyland has left her with side effects. Due to spending most of her childhood in Fairyland, she’s unable to digest meat and can’t touch iron without getting a headache. She also struggles with PTSD, though she has been seeing a therapist and is much, much better than she was when she first came home.

  • Romy is functionally a normal human, without access to any fairy magic she once had.

• Interests:
  • Rosemary is interested in the natural world: how everything fits together and balances each other out. Her particular favorite is botany, and she often collects seeds and leaves for her collection.

  • Romy’s interests lie in music and art, particularly folk and classical music, and watercolor and oil painting.

• Background: Evan and Theresa Hendrix were a married couple and new parents, who just happened to destroy a fairy mound while moving into their house. The fairies swore revenge, and their toddler Rosemary soon got sick with a strange disease no doctor recognized. She made a miraculous recovery, but after that, strange accidents started happening: fires out of nowhere, animals not native to the region stalking them, even plants trying to attack them. Nevertheless, the Hendrixes stuck together, just happy to have their daughter safe and healthy.
  • Rosemary (or Romy, as she was nicknamed) grew up into a perfectly typical child with nothing particularly strange about her. Except for the fact that she was a fairy, planted in the Hendrix household, with the instructions to watch them. But she had grown to love Evan and Theresa, and grown to identify with humans. She knew that the first Rosemary was in Fairyland, being treated alternately as a pet and a servant, and the guilt soon became more than she could bear. At the (physical) age of ten, she ventured into Fairyland to find Rosemary and bring her back. Find her she did, living in the woods and hiding from her “masters.”

  • Rosemary initially didn’t trust this stranger with the same face as her, and she was hesitant to believe her stories of a family Rosemary barely remembered. But she was the first person to treat Rosemary with any kindness in many years, and after Romy saved her life, Rosemary agreed to go with her.

  • As they journeyed back to the human world, they grew to like and respect one another. They were briefly captured, but managed to escape; however, Romy was completely bound to her human form and cut off from any magic she had.

  • When they returned home, Romy told the Hendrixes everything. To her surprise, the Hendrixes told her that she was still their daughter, and they loved both of them no matter what. (Though they were, admittedly, weirded out by the whole thing.)

  • The Hendrixes moved to a new town, one where Rosemary and Romy could be passed off as sisters. Rosemary slowly grew accustomed to human life and graduated from elementary and high school, with Romy by her side every step of the way. Now, they’re in college, away from home for the first time since escaping Fairyland all those years ago.

• Theme:
  • Together: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gSxSCv7Cegc Children aren’t as simple as we like to think.

  • Rosemary: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=M6rrTROoZIw The sun is up, the sky is blue, it’s beautiful and so are you.

  • Romy: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zD5ajixxv-w Like a hummingbird I will hover, but never taste the fruit.

(Full disclosure: I am on the autism spectrum, and this, in part, is my attempt to engage with the changeling fantasy without playing into how the changeling trope connects to the vilification and abuse of children on the spectrum or who have disabilities. Time will tell as to whether I do well or not.)

Edited by emilyorthoclase on Jul 31st 2018 at 3:17:12 AM

Seems interesting, and I've been meaning to get back into Tv T R Ps. May I reserve one spot?

Nice to have you around, ortho.

Let's see what you got, darkness.

• Name: Werner Ulryk O'Brien^note  His first name is German, his middle is Polish, and his last is Irish
• Age: 21
• Gender: Male
• Appearance: Werner is about 5'11, lanky, and almost perpetually dressed in a short-sleeve button-up shirt and cargo shorts, regardless of the weather. It should be worth noting that his clothes always, always have a lot of pockets. He has long, reddish-brown hair, bluish-green eyes, and fair skin with loads and loads of freckles. Some people say he looks like his father. Others say he looks like his mother. Those that know both say he looks like both. He has unkempt Perma-Stubble, and his eyes are slightly larger than normal, but he is otherwise rather handsome, though not extremely so.
• Personality: Werner is a Nice Guy. He's friendly, slow to anger, and fun to be around. He's usually the responsible one, doing his homework and reading assignments without delay or complaint, but hasn't let this get in the way of his social life. He's quieter than most, but not the awkward kind of quiet. He is somewhat embarrassed by his name, since, in his eyes, the grandiosity and "loudness" of it is in stark contrast with his mild mannerisms.
• Talents:
  • Avid Reader and Historian: Werner loves books, both factual and fictional. His favorite genre is Fantasy, and his favorite nonfictional subject is history, especially European history. He knows a lot about things like historical battles and He wishes he knew more about his family history, especially how he ended up with such a bizarre Multiethnic Name.
  • Always Has Useful Stuff in His Pockets: Werner, as stated above, has a lot of pockets on his clothes at all times. In his opinion, one can never, never have enough pockets. His pockets always have stuff in them: spare change, pens, keys, packets of gum, the usual pocket stuff. Thing is, be it fate, some minor magic, or an excessive amount of pure, dumb luck, Werner always seems to have a mundane-yet-extremely-useful item for the situation at hand in one or more of his pockets, and, more often than not, in the first one he reaches into.
• Weaknesses:
  • Incompetent Fighter: It's not that Werner is physically weak, in fact, he's more-than-reasonably fit and healthy for a boy his age. He's simply incapable of holding his own in a fight. Without outside help, he would not only be of no use when fighting a dragon, he'd be of no use fighting anything that's reasonably good at fighting at all.
  • Nervous Around Girls: Werner is very nervous around attractive members of the opposite sex. All of his charm vanishes, his mind freezes up, and he finds himself looking at the ground or hiding behind a book. Even his talents turn against him, as he finds himself babbling about really awkward and/or kinda creepy subjects throughout fiction and history, and his pockets begin turning up really embarrassing things instead of useful ones.
• Interests:
  • Reading: Werner loves reading. I believe I've told you that already. He loves reading history and fantasy novels especially. He has a massive collection of books under his bed in his dorm, which are there because his roommate took all the other available space.
  • Music: For whatever reason, Werner loves Classic Rock and Heavy Metal. Music helps him focus and helps release his emotions. In addition, it is a different way of telling a story, which, unlike movies, is not inferior to the written word. One of his favorite sub-genres is Folk Metal.
• Background: Werner knows little about his family beyond his parents. He has no siblings, and his parents tell him that, after he was born, they agreed to keep their relationship hands-off. He never met any members of his extended family, and only heard a few names and some amusing stories his father told him when he was drunk. Werner suspects his parents had a falling out with their families, but they won't talk about it. At all. He otherwise had a relatively normal life, moved a few times, and went to college. His fascination with history is partially a result of knowing so little about his own. Although he usually is not one to dabble in "the occult" viewing it with a more-than-healthy amount of skepticism, when he found a massive, dusty old tome about "awakening ancestral memory" or somesuch in a decrepit secondhand book store, he immediately bought it, since even if it was a scam (which he was pretty sure it was), in his opinion, it was worth a try, and was his best chance of finding out anything about his family at all. He's since read it. Three times. He's been trying the techniques, but there seems to be nothing so far. However, he has been thinking some very strange thoughts and having some very odd dreams on occasion lately, so perhaps there is something to that old book after all...
• Favorite Song: "The Serpent Within" by Music/Suidakra

Edited by SomethingRandom113 on Jul 29th 2018 at 6:18:14 AM

You are in, Something. Glad to have you in.

Darkness, if you still want in, tomorrow is the deadline, so, please have it up then, or else sign ups will be closed. After that, the game will start.

• Name: Sara Takahashi-Smith
• Age: 25
• Gender: Female
• Appearance: Sara is a Japanese-American woman in her mid-twenties with long black hair and brown eyes. She is of a slightly chubby build and is of average height for a woman of her age and ethnicity. She typically wears plain and simple clothes in dull colors. Sara's typical outfit is a gray Creedence Clearwater Revival T-shirt, faded blue jeans, a black leather vest, black cowboy boots, a blue headband, and black sunglasses.
• Personality: Sara is energetic and extroverted, but is also obnoxious and talkative. Overall, she is kind and caring if a bit awkward at times.
• Talents: Sara has the following talents
  • Accurate Shot: Sara is a great shot with both firearms and crossbows, particularly rifles. She keeps a Winchester 94 lever-action rifle at her trailer home, with the proper legal paperwork and permits.
  • Cooking: Sara is an excellent cook
• Weaknesses: Sara has the following defects
  • Socially Inept: Sara has the social skills of a rhubarb, to put it bluntly. She is prone to dominating conversations and only wanting to talk about her interests and what's on her mind. She is loud, talkative, obnoxious, and hyperactive although she does try her best to practice self-restraint, to mixed results.
  • Head In The Clouds: To say Sara is aloof and inattentive is an understatement.
• Interests: Sara has the following interests
  • Tabletop Role-Playing Games: Sara is a huge fan of games such as Dungeons & Dragons, Pathfinder, Big Eyes Small Mouth, and early Vampire: The Masquerade. Her favorite game is Advanced Dungeons & Dragons First Edition
  • Paganism and The Occult: Sara has an interest in Paganism, the Occult, and ancient history and folklore. She is a practicing Celtic Polytheist. She also studies magical rituals, alchemy, and the like on the side.
• Background: Born to a Japanese immigrant couple in California, Sara was orphaned at the age of nine months when her birth parents were killed in a horrific car accident. She was adopted by an older couple in rural West Virginia and was taught by her adoptive father how to hunt, forage, and live off the land, as well as how to shoot. Her adoptive mother taught her how to cook as well, which she displayed a talent for. When she was 18, she moved to the town of Lucia and attended Alma College for five years, finally gaining a Bachelor's Degree in American History after some minor setbacks. She currently lives in a cheap trailer on the outskirts of town and works at the college library as an assistant to the head librarian. She has recently re-enrolled in the college to work on her Master's Degree, also in history.
• Favorite Song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0dvabcWVo0

Edited by DocSammy on Jul 29th 2018 at 9:43:04 AM

Congratulations, Sara is in. With this, we close the sign ups. For now, maybe at some point they'll open again.

Discussion thread.

RP thread

Discord

Edited by Blueace on Jul 30th 2018 at 11:18:37 AM

So, Jumping Fruit can't participate anymore, so that frees up a slot, so I'll be accepting another character.

• Name: Stefan Kingston
• Age: 18
• Gender: Male
• Appearance: Stefan is, to put it in the bluntest of terms, a total hunk. He's the quintessential jock, plays on the football team, and very visibly takes care for his appearance. He stands around 6 foot 2 inches tall, and usually dresses in a white short sleeve shirt, a medium size so as to make certain things more notable, a letter jacket over that, tight blue jeans, and red sneaker shoes. His skin is evenly tanned, indicating a predilection for use of a tanning bed, few if any of the pores on his face are visible, and his dark hair has a trendy cut (short on the sides and longer on top). His eyes are bright blue - though he often wears sunglasses.
• Personality: Stefan is decidedly a mixed bag - he's brave, surprisingly industrious, quick to think on his feet ("You can't be a lineman these days without thinking on your feet and judging threats to the QB."), and a very socially driven individual. Out of all the jocks, Stefan has the most friends. However, he's also incredibly vain and narcissistic, working out less for health and more for his own aesthetic appreciation. He's not very good at romantic commitment - having gotten together with and broken up with more than three dozen girls over the course of his time on the Team - and that aside there is more than a little element of his confusion about his sexuality - he is deep down unsure where he stands. He's very much into women, make no mistake, but other guys also catch his eye, though he is exceedingly adamant he "just appreciates how buff we guys can get", and he gets absurdly defensive of this. While he is not a Dumb Jock, he is a very stubborn one - once he's decided something, he goes forward with it. He's also used to being given respect on account of simply being a jock, expecting to a certain degree to have his input given a certain amount of respect.
• Talents: There is a certain value to physical strength and aptitude - both raw strength and surprising speed are in abundance with Stefan. He's a surprisingly good moment to moment tactician. He's a capable social expert, not only being skilled with person to person communication but managing social media.
• Weaknesses: However, his "position" means a lot to him, and he can tend to get worked up easily. Taking advantage of his neuroses are surprisingly easy.
• Interests: Football, Working Out / Bodybuilding, Reading, Scary Movies, Theater, and (low key) some surprisingly nerdy interests.
• Background: Stefan himself admits he comes from a very preppy family. "We're like, established around here. My mom says the men in our family have played football here for generations." He lives in a big house, and has two younger brothers and a sister. One brother is a runningback on the Junior Varsity Team, the other is in training for Sophomore Football (they take the sport VERY seriously). Stefan kind of broke with a few molds when, in addition to playing sports, he took up bodybuilding and did a modeling gig at the local school for the art class, among other things. His parents did not care for his new inclinations. "My dad gave me a huge lecture about how he doesn't want to see me "posing like a gigolo"." They very much expected him to take the Protestant part of WASP more seriously, which he has no intention of doing. Thus, while Stefan continues to be one of the better players on the team, his parents make every attempt to try to control his life choices and clamp down on his expression of himself in "unflattering lights". He also as a result became nervous about his preferences, being internally divided over his thoughts on where he stands.
• Maybe a song, favorite or theme: Fire Away, Fight Like Sin.

Edited by NickTheSwing on Aug 16th 2018 at 2:10:50 AM

Glad to have you on, Nick.