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February 17th, 2016. Sandfield, California.
After leaving his father's place to go home to his mother, Tom Winters was reportedly sidetracked by his best friend Duane Logan seeing something strange in the woods on the way back. They were then antagonized by a group of bullies from the local high school, supposedly led by local high school football star Jackson White.
After fleeing from the reported group of bullies, Tom and his friend were separated in the woods as they - according to Duane - started to hear various disquieting noises in the woods.
That was the last time that Duane saw Tom Winters that night.
Tom's left shoe was found at the tree house not far from his mother's house, and signs of a struggle were evident. A small amount of blood was found at the scene, matching Tom's DNA. Something had attacked Tom Winters that night, and stolen him from his safe spot in that tree house.
But there was no hint as to what might've been responsible, or who. The police, in the absence of any concrete suspects, went ahead and arrested multiple time felon and troublemaker Cotton Owens. He was deemed the most likely culprit, even as the questions begin piling up.
As the students of Monroe High School reckon with the news about the disappearance of Tom, the official story begins to be called into question. Duane might well have seen something that night - something grossly inhuman. And he believes that this creature may well be responsible for Tom's disappearance.
What in all does everyone who was out that night on the road know...?
Shadows of Sandfield is a Play-by-Post game on the TV Tropes forums, GM'd by Nick The Swing.
One otherwise ordinary night in Sandfield, high school student Tom Winters disappears under very peculiar circumstances. A small group of his peers decide to investigate said disappearance, and end up finding themselves in a very strange world indeed.
The RP can be found here
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Shadows of Sandfield I successfully concluded, and the story continues in Shadows of Sandfield II. The city of Sandfield is wrecked by war and surrounded by the threat of Green Wall as the Masquerade comes tumbling down. A cast new and old must find a way to both survive and get out from the threat of the Gibbs Militia - as well as whatever else lurks in Sandfield's torn streets.
Tropes
- Aborted Arc: Xander's Junior Umbral Horde, while set up as a major antagonist, ultimately vanishes by the time the club confronts Kellon Nyczus and is never mentioned again, even after Xander's Heel–Face Turn.
- Jayden's Vision Quest is never completed, due to there simply having been no time to finish it with everything else going on.
- Adults Are Useless: The Investigation Club is the only force that seems to be looking into Tom's disappearance.
- Advancing Wall of Doom: When the Thresher starts chasing the investigation club and grinding down everything in its path, there's pretty much nothing the group can do but run.
- Alien Geometries: Despite the fact that Kethyll's prison is on the third floor of Further's mansion, it is actually below the other levels. What's more, he claims that objects that exit through the windows would actually fall upwards instead of down.
- Amazon Brigade: The dark god Khaos has an all female legion of demons known as the Furies.
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Angst? What Angst?: If the other teens (sans Jayden) are in any way disturbed or frightened by what they see, they're sure good at hiding it. Heather rather viciously lampshades this, openly calling them out for how they're willing to let all the horrible things they learn slide. - Anti-Magical Faction: The police department is in the control of Elijah Gibbs, who has set it towards rooting out mages. After Dubai is leveled they exploit the ensuing panic to rally the citizenry against wizards.
- Author Appeal: There are a whole lot of buff gorgeous men in Sandfield.
- The Bad Guys Are Cops: The police department is coopted by enemy forces and counts anti-magic vigilantes among its numbers. Furthermore, Mina's villainous mother also worked as a police officer. Not uniform however, since both Matthew and Damien are police officers themselves.
- Blatant Lies: Conrad Parker claims that Bryce is Mina's brother, despite the fact that he looks older than her and she has never so much as heard of a sibling up to this point.
- Breaking the Fellowship: Downplayed, but Jayden splits from the club after the final battle, Xander effectively taking his place in the group.
- Broken Masquerade: It becomes impossible to cover up the existence of the supernatural after Dubai is destroyed by a magical nuke.
- Bullying a Dragon: A mage by the name of Ivander Hollace intends to scam the Umbral Horde by making a deal with them and then not keeping his end of the deal. This goes wrong when he gets himself beaten and his magic collection ransacked by the Horde.
- Clap Your Hands If You Believe: A downplayed example; magic initially requires significant belief on the part of the practitioner, though it eventually becomes much less dependent on this.
- Cult: There's one among Sandfield's upper crust, worshipping a mysterious pagan pantheon.
- Culture Clash: The Umbral Horde's bizarre and often questionable practices are a cause for argument between Xander and James.
- Darkest Hour: The Escape from the Gibbs Militia part of the finale. The entire town is overrun by the forces of Elijah Gibbs, the characters are on the run and incurring several injuries, running away rather than even trying to fight the Militia. Ultimately, things turn out mostly okay, though.
- Deal with the Devil: Fiendbonders have an unusual variant of this in which they use violence to coerce a demon into giving them a portion of its power.
- Mina makes a pact with the Dark God Varancain to bring vengeance upon the Umbrals.
- Deceased Parents Are the Best: Of the parents who get any attention in the narrative, most of the confirmed living ones are either Parents as People at best or outright villainous at worst. Jayden's father Arthur, the only one who's outright dead, was by all rights a kind and loving father, and Jayden misses him dearly.
- Diabolus ex Machina: Near the end of the RP, everything seems set up for a well-earned happy ending—Tom is rescued, Xander effectively joins the club, and Jayden finds peace in normal life. Then, out of literally nowhere, a completely unrelated threat who was never so much as mentioned before blows up Dubai and kicks off an entirely new problem.
- End of an Age: The Age of the Masquerade ends violently - with the cyborg maniac Justin Henderson unleashing a nuclear weapon hooked up to mana cells to blow up Dubai - in the process making Magic, Mana, and the nature of the magic using world forcibly go public.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Downplayed. Many of the antagonists still have romantic and familial bonds, but most of them only care for said bonds for what they can provide them and have little true attachment to them otherwise.
- Exact Words: Mina accidentally frees the demon Kethyll by answering in the affirmative when it asks if they were all free to go.
- Frankenstein's Monster: The look of the creature created by Kellon Nyczus and sent out after Damian Winston to silence him. It also seems capable of using bolts plus a chain to form a weapon. Rather than a gentle creature, it was explicitly created for malicious intentions. It is also a Psycho Electro.
- Four Lines, All Waiting: The beginning of the sequel has three plotlines going at once: one in a safe zone with the original Investigation Club (plus a few others), one where several other newcomers are holed up in the mall, and one in Green Wall with Jayden.
- The Friends Who Never Hang: Downplayed, but Jayden notes a few times that the group is together solely for the investigation, and none of the members really know each other outside of it.
- Genre Shift: one happens rather early, shifting the series from paranormalinvestigation horror to an urban fantasy story with horror elements.
- God Guise: The Magic Gods draw their power from this. Adopting one can cause one to actually become divine through a process known as Holy Approximation.
- God and Satan Are Both Jerks: Neither the Light or Dark pantheons are particularly nice, and most gods are more interested in perpetuating and increasing their own power instead of any nobler goal.
- Go-Karting with Bowser: Xander, who is still very much an Umbral Cultist, joins in on the celebration of Tom's rescue.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Xander parts ways with the group to distract the heavily armed Gibbs Militia.
- Hope Spot: Tom is rescued, Jayden is able to find peace in living an ordinary life, and Xander leaves his abusive father and becomes a semi-ally of the Investigation Club. Then Justin Henderson kills millions with a magical nuke, and Elijah Gibbs becomes the de facto ruler of Sandfield.
- If You're So Evil, Eat This Kitten!: New members of the Umbral Horde are required to conduct a ritual sacrifice. Averted in Mina's case, since they think she might be too weak-hearted to do it.
- Illegal Religion: The Umbral Horde has long been persecuted by the followers of the Gods of Light, who are generally in positions of political authority.
- Improbably Female Cast: Sandfield manages the impressive task of being an inversion. Pretty much every NPC, major or minor, is male. The amount of female characters can be counted on one hand, and the amount of relevant female characters comprises solely of the female PCs plus one or two female relatives of those PCs. One almost gets the feeling some sort of Gendercide has taken place.
- I Never Said It Was Poison: The fake police officer on the other end of Duane's call made one crucial slip up - Duane only said the injured officer's name was Damien, and the fake immediately knew it was Damien Winston.
- Jerk Jock: Played straight with Jackson, and implied for the rest of the football team. Downplayed with Kyle, who is more apathetic than jerkish.
- As Jackson moved closer to redemption, we are introduced to Tristan Frentescu. A froth at the mouth homophobe and borderline Right-Wing Militia Fanatic, he and his fellow East European hockey players are apparently pretty well known for their violent and dangerous ways - being just one more reason Downtown Sandfield isn't very safe.
- Laser-Guided Amnesia: The Orik'eth have the power to remove and alter memories, using it to uphold the masquerade.
- Legally Dead: Well, not legally, but by the time of the second RP, Jayden has presumed the Investigation Club deceased. They're not, obviously, but he has no way of knowing that.
- Loophole Abuse: The Orik'eth use telepathy to get around their vow of silence, since they aren't technically speaking.
- Lovecraft Lite: The story has a distinct tone of cosmic horror to begin with, with monstrous gods and sinister secret societies, but the protagonists soon begin to acquire the resources to fight back.
- Magic Knight: Most practitioners of magic also use their powers to conjure weaponry and enhance mundane attacks.
- Magitek: Very ubiquitous considering the setting's Urban Fantasy nature. Employed especially heavily by the 317th Division.
- Malevolent Masked Men: Played straight with the Umbral Horde's membership, but then played with further by the Orik'eth. A group of masked men who show up to "patch up" incidents involving magic use on non-magic users. They make use of memory magic, teleportation, and function as jailers, on top of having creepy masks, a Vow Of Silence, and odd telepathy. They're also neutral more or less.
- Never Speak Ill of the Dead: The only thing that well and truly gets a reaction out of Jayden during the trial? The monster in question imitating his late father, Arthur.
- No-Sell: Heather tries throwing her sword at the Thresher, only to realize that it discorporates when she isn't holding it.
- Oh, Crap!: Jayden's reaction upon learning that the builder of Oron'gur is Mina's Missing Mom.
- Off Screen Moment Of Awesome: When Xander splits from the party, his last stand against the Milita results in an entire section of the town being leveled.
- Light Is Not Good: According to Matthew, there also exist Gods of Light, but they are also an antagonistic force.
- Paranormal Investigation: Monroe High has an entire club for this (granted, it has only one member, but still). Also the focus of the RP.
- Parental Abandonment: Of the Investigation Club, only one member, Dave, has both parents. The others have a parent that's either missing (Mina, Merry), deadbeat (James, Heather), or outright dead (Jayden).
- Pocket Dimension: Parallaxus' Bar Bizarre, which the group visits at the conclusion of the roleplay, is based in one of these. The terrain takes the form of a single road suspended in a night sky.
- Recruit Teenagers with Attitude: The forces opposing the Dark Gods and other threats appear to have few other tactic than to magically empower teenagers. This seems to have happened before - Matthew and a number of his friends were similarly recruited as younger teens.
- Razor Wind: This is the form taken by a Sword Beam most of the time.
- Sorting Algorithm of Evil: The threats the group face scale with their level of expertise, starting with Marco, a neophyte mage, and culminating in taking on part of the Umbral Horde directly.
- Spell Blade: One of the first forms of magic taught to the group is the ability to magically enhance their weapons, allowing them to wrap them in fire, electricity and similar effects.
- Spontaneous Weapon Creation: Magic users can expend some of their magical energy to create a weapon if they lack one on hand.
- Starter Villain: For the portion of the RP past the Genre Shift - Marco Di Gracia is a fitting enough starter villain for the cast, as well as setting the tone going forward.
- Super-Empowering: The cast is granted heightened physical abilities and the use of magic by Matthew.
- They Look Just Like Everyone Else!: The Umbrals have extensively infiltrated the town of Sandfield, and the Investigation Club has to deal with the fact that even their loved one's might be members, as a couple have been revealed to be.
- Time Skip: There is a period of three months between the escape from the Gibbs Militia and the finale of the first roleplay.
- Town with a Dark Secret: Many of Sandfield's residents are members of the Umbrals including some of its most influential individuals, and that's leaving out all the other magical conspiracies taking place.
- The Unmasqued World: Downplayed. There used to be a Masquerade separating the normal from the...less than normal. Now it's falling to pieces and everything that used to be invisible is now becoming so very visible.
- With Justin Henderson's actions however, the Masquerade suffers a total death. Now nothing's keeping the magical apart from the mundane.
- Urban Fantasy: The roleplay takes in the current day, where wizards and monsters hide behind a masquerade.
- Villain Team-Up: The Junior Umbral Horde - comprised of Xander Nyczus, Carter, and Alan Godfrey, with Eli Moss tossed in there too.
- Wave-Motion Gun: The mana accelerator cannon packed enough firepower to completely eradicate a monster that had returned from the dead twice over.
- Wham Episode: Just as the Investigation Club is celebrating, a magical terrorist completely levels Dubai, and Sandfield is overrun by a reactionary anti-magic militia who takes advantage of the broken masquerade.
- With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility: Matthew makes clear to Jayden that he shouldn't have expected magic simply to be an exciting diversion, and that his empowerment came with the obligation to save Tom.
- Wake Up, Go to School & Save the World: While relatively little focus is placed on it, the characters are still required to regularly attend school, regardless of their less mundane responsibilities.
- World of Muscle Men: Good God. Aside from the male PCs* and a select few others, every male character is muscular.
