You awaken on a hard, uncomfortable bed in a crude hospital room. A single dim lightbulb with a pull-string switch flickers above you. Your clothes are soaking wet, and you're covered in scratches and bruises - thankfully, all minor enough to heal on their own, although you can't shake the feeling that something is wrong with you.
The doctor will tell you you were pulled out of the water by a fisherman on the docks at sunset, just like the rest of them. You're in the port town of Vandare, he'll explain further. You'll be asked if you know where that is, and if you remember how you got here. Your answer will be no - just like the rest of them.
When you are released from the hospital, the townsfolk will look at you with a mixture of fear and pity. Almost anyone will help you if you ask, but some will gently encourage you to try and find shelter elsewhere. If you're lucky, you'll run into someone like you who can explain what has happened. If you're unlucky, you'll run into someone like you who is already too far gone...
Welcome to Ryslig Peninsula.
Ryslig is a panfandom journal roleplay with the basic premise that characters arrive and slowly begin transforming into monsters. There are also a couple of meddling gods, a number of Muggle natives with varying levels of haplessness, a mysterious horse-headed guy in the woods, and an ominous recurring fog. Can be found here
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Tropes relating to specific characters can be found here.
This game provides examples of:
- Abusive Parents: Dr. Liewen is heavily implied to have created the Fourth God by experimenting on his own son, and he did turn him into a Living Battery for the network.
- Battle Amongst the Flames: The conclusion of the Rotan event involved captured monsters and their rescuers battling their way out while the entire town went up in flames.
- Brought Down to Normal: A temporary case. Characters come in with any supernatural powers gone, but they gain new ones as they transform into monsters.
- Burn the Undead: Waldgeist are particularly vulnerable to fire.
- Chill of Undeath: Some waldgeist have a touch cold enough to cause frostbite.
- Closed Circle: It is currently impossible for the PCs to leave the peninsula. Unknown to them, this is because there may be nothing beyond.
- Compelling Voice: Some vampires, gargoyles and manticores can hypnotize victims with their voice.
- Death Is Cheap: Dead PCs come back during the next fog, though if this happens too often they start losing their memory.
- Devil, but No God: The benevolent day and night gods worshiped by the locals purportedly don't exist. The fog god, their devil figure, does, and his rival isn't much better.
- Doomed Protagonist: All the player characters so far will change after roughly a month in Ryslig, and there's nothing they can do about it yet.
- Deity of Human Origin: The other/fourth god was once known as Elias Liewen. Somehow, about 30 years ago, he obtained half the fog god's power and ascended to godhood himself.
- Fog of Doom: There's the usual fog, which comes several times a month and is often a catalyst for monster transformations. Then there's the parasite fog...
- Glowing Eyelights of Undeath: Shades have glowing, white eyes.
- Horror Hunger: All monsters eventually need to feed on humans, or they will go mad.
- I'm a Humanitarian: Most monster types, except for the ones that consume human souls or energy instead.
- Living Battery: Originally, the fourth god was trapped powering the network. Now it's his father.
- Mind-Control Music: Minotaurs, harpies and merfolk can lure their victims with a soothing song.
- Our Dragons Are Different: Gargoyles in Ryslig are actually a mix of gargoyle and dragon, with scales and fire-based magic.
- Our Monsters Are Different: Characters are assigned one of twenty-three monster types after entering the game, and the players are given fairly free reign to customize them (so yes, All Trolls Are Different.)
- Our Sirens Are Different: Merfolk can be this; in a nod to the classical siren, harpies have Mind-Control Music as an optional ability as well.
- Rock Monster: Trolls, to varying degrees. Not gargoyles, on the other hand, as they are only rock in their inanimate statue form (if even then- they can be any material).
- Running Gag: Thanks to one of the Test Drive prompts, it's well known that most newcomers will invariably get lost in Lager Woods.
- Taken for Granite: Or silver, or LEGOs... Gargoyles are nocturnal by necessity, as they turn back to their statue form in sunlight.
- Translator Microbes: For as-yet-unknown reasons, all characters understand each other just fine.
- Unscaled Merfolk: Merpeople can be part amphibian or cephalopod instead of fish, at the player's discretion.
- Vampiric Draining: Faeries, goblins, merpeople, and kelpies all need to feed on human energy - through faerie rings, spells, and drowning, respectively. (Vampires, of course, feed on blood.)
- Voluntary Shapeshifting: Several monster types can change into an ordinary animal at will; shades can morph their shadow form in various ways as well as turning back into a solid human.
- Weakened by the Light: Vampires, shades, and trolls are all weakened or harmed by sunlight in one way or another.
- Your Soul Is Mine!: Demons and shades must consume souls.
