Glass Vial of Emotion Discussion/signups

[starbolts]

Hey! Zoki here. I just thought I'd let you know what I have on the horizon and get cracking with the planning, since it's two weeks away now. It's approved, but it's not on the calendar yet because I haven't been as clear as I should be with logistics. Hopefully this will help me get it ironed out!

Plot: Glass Vial of Emotion

Date: July 1st-whenever (I am really bad at estimating how much time is needed. 3-4 weeks, maybe?)

Runner: Zoki/me, but I'll need help if we go over---see below.

Size: I'd say 10 is about the number I can handle by myself, but if possible I'd like to arrange a system where some of us NPC for each other to make it unlimited. And who knows, I might not even need that much space. This post is partially to gauge interest and let me see what I need to do to make it work.

Synopsis: Our heroes touch down in Verdriet Village, a small place that's having quite a lot of trouble because their water supply has run dry. There's a blockage up by the lake that feeds into their river, but no one from the town is willing to go out and fix it. Our crew is led into it, but they'll soon learn why the villagers were so reluctant: the woods have an appetite for heroes. They all get chewed up, but almost none are spit back out alive. Can our crew beat the odds?

Basically, the Verdriet Forest is a very creepy place. The crew will see their worst nightmares brought to life, the inhabitants are extremely creepy and terrifying, and some of the crew might very well be lost to the darkness. It seems to have something to do with the magically sealed bracelets they were given in the village...

Without giving too much away, you'll have a chance to present your character with pretty much any awful/disgusting/morally questionable scenario you want, with the goal of pushing them to the limits of their perseverance and hope. There's even a way to turn your character to the dark side if they lose all hope---they'll then be the enemy. No one will be lost forever unless you want them to be, but don't expect happy endings here.

With all that said, expect some very dark themes to be discussed and played out in this plot. There will be brief mentions of gore at a minimum, but please let me know if there's something you're really not comfortable with. I want to make this as inclusive as possible, and I can cluster characters to face or not face certain things if necessary.

So, questions? Interest? Horrible ideas? Let me know what you want and I can start building a more concrete plan. The plan will be more concrete and updated on Wednesday, with official signup details finalized.

Comments

[iaijutsu]

Interest interest lots of interest. There are Character Issues I've been hoping to force Saitō to deal with, because he is awesome at being stoic instead of...properly dealing with things, and his canon point meant it was kind of completely shoved to the back burner before he even started having to deal with it once he podpopped. This could be absolutely amazing for that!

If you go to NPCing to make more space available, I am tentatively up for helping, but I admit how capable I would feel to doing it might entirely depend on what NPCing a particular character's nightmares entailed. :|a

[starbolts]

That's why I encourage listing out their fears here! It'll help us find matches and things we want to thread out together.

I really hope this goes well.

---and I'll go ahead with Starfire's, whoops I forgot.

[iaijutsu]

I CAN LIST that is a good idea huh.

Basically I have two things to work with:

1) Saitō has kind of this Deep Existential Issue where he literally says in canon that if he isn't a samurai, he might as well not exist. During the brief period after he was charged with murder/left Edo and no longer had a lord, thus stopped wearing his swords because no lord = not a samurai, he says he felt like he didn't exist.

This kind of goes horribly with the fact that he's also from a time when being a samurai is becoming basically irrelevant; the imperialists just trounced his side at Toba-Fushimi despite having only a third as many men, because they had awesome guns and awesome swordsmanship doesn't mean jack if they just shoot you all down from a couple hundred feet away.

So while he hasn't really sat down and processed that because then suddenly alien spacecraft and everyone's dead, oh no, that...is kind of a thing that would be easy to mess him up with. Especially considering that since he doesn't know if his commanding officers or anyone from the Aizu domain (who authorized the Shinsengumi as peacekeepers in the first place) actually got saved/podded or not, he might not actually have a lord right now at all, for all he knows.

And then there is also the part where -

2) Oh right he also just decided his humanity was an acceptable sacrifice to finish his mission, and willingly became a blood-drinking creature of the night. But he hasn't really had to deal with...the consequences of that, because there's no sunlight on Stacy and the mess hall covers everyone's special snowflake dietary needs. On a prolonged mission off-ship, though, he would absolutely start running into the drawbacks, and I definitely want him to finally get hit hard by the bloodlust and realize oh, that's what it means to stop being human.

...sorry for herding the teal deer there, wow.

[starbolts]

Ooh. We can definitely stretch it out to get the bloodlust going and play with that. And I'll keep the samurai issue in mind too!

[iaijutsu]

Awesome.

Even when he's at his worst, he's still likely to be highly resistant to the idea of actually drinking from anybody else - in canon Chizuru basically has to cut her arm, stick it in his face, and tell him to shut up and drink before he flips out. Canon's hilariously iffy about the mechanics of how long is too long, so I think it's completely possible for him to make it through the mission and get back to the ship without having to cave in, but it'll be extremely rough on him if he tries to. I don't think he'll actually go over the edge, because that's pretty much a one-way trip in canon, but it may be a very close thing.

So if someone else on the crew doesn't figure out the issue and talk some sense into him, it'll be a very nasty few weeks, and if they do, it'll be a...less painful but still very unfun few weeks. \o/;;

[badluckbabe]

Count Jinx in, she's already having a hard time acknowledging the fact that she's hardly a villain anymore but she doesn't want to claim she's a hero either. Complicating matters is this relationship that is undefined between her and Diana. Just when she thinks she understands it life throws a curve ball at her. Stacy has changed her from a girl who used to have everything planned out and ambition to reach the stars into a girl just going with the flow and caught up in someone Else's current.

[starbolts]

Ah, that's a rough situation. I'm sure we can rig something up for it...her past self, people telling her what's wrong with her, a bit of tug o war?

[badluckbabe]

Visions of her former friends in the HIVE 5, Madam Rouge. Maybe even about how her bad luck can go out of control and hurt anyone she dares to get close to. Absolutely tug of war between the girl she was and the woman she's becoming. :D

[starbolts]

Yes, yes. Bad luck can be used very effectively. :3

[badluckbabe]

Oh yes! And in my head canon Jinx started her career at Dark Way Preparatory Academy as a geeky little outcast and had to claw her way to the top before she made friends. That might be useful too. Yay Self esteem issues!

Example

[starbolts]

Sorry, I should've done this earlier! Here's what's going down with Starfire:

The recent losses have made her start to doubt herself. Her powers no longer work as well because they require joy and confidence, and she wonders if it really is possible to win. If everything's just going to be taken from her.

She sometimes has flashbacks to her darker days, back when no one was nice except her konorfka/nanny and the world was a cruel and bitter place where you had to claw to the top to survive. She's going to be tested in that direction with challenges from her sister, Blackfire, and the faces of everyone she's failed to protect.

It'll get steadily worse.

[moltenman]

Count Mark in. He's been a person who doesn't consider himself 'evil' and the only crime he committed (attempted murder on Spiderman) he does harbor some guilt for. On the other side... he has unwillingly worked for a villain in an effort to keep his sister safe and to be able to turn off his powers.

[starbolts]

Hmm...yeah, playing with the evil line is something we can work with. Maybe with Jinx, looking at the past and future?

[grimbiker]

I'm interested in this for Sirius. There's definitely a lot that can be used for him so I'll have to think about what exactly to do with all his problems. I've certainly touched on James and Lily's death and Peter's betrayal a lot so I might go more with his totally screwed up family situation. I'm not sure. I do know that well, he's probably not going to be able to resist it for long enough so he'll end up going evil for a time. I mean I hate to underplay how strong he is but to say he has a lot of skeletons in his closet would be an understatement.

[starbolts]

Awesome. I can work with the Blacks, and an evil Sirius could be very fun.

[myboggartisthemoon]

Do I really need to elaborate? But let's just say that aside from all his fears over loss of his friends and the people he cares about, the thought of harming one of them during a transformation... well, the only question is, is killing them outright worse than infecting them with his curse for all their lives?

[starbolts]

Haha, nope! We'll have a full moon if that's what you like. And some more ghosts.

[splendid_roman]

I think this is a great idea and I would love to put Ian into this one. He's alluded to an incident in his past in a thread with Orc so it's fresh in my mind.

There's a short story where he's captured and tortured and is about to be killed when he's rescued. At which point Ian kills his torturer. Ian feels guilty about it afterwards because it wasn't self-defence, he was safe.

I can put the short story up in Ian's journal (although it would have to be friends locked, but I can give access to anyone interested). But since the end of the story is about Ian realising what he's capable of, all he really needs is for someone to torture him.

[starbolts]

That can be arranged! A visit from the victim as well, if you'd like.

[splendid_roman]

Awesome. I will definitely put the short story up somehow.

[17thangel]

Count Maria in. While she faced several of her demons about being a hostage/sacrifice in her canon, she still has the whole failing to properly defend her city thing hanging over her head and a rather nasty revenge complex against the nation that in her mind ruined her life.

Add to that that the biological control circuit for her robot is her mother (She doesn't know this) and the central computer is her father (she suspects this but has yet to confirm it) both who were killed by that nation and she'll fly off the handle at anything Solarian.

[starbolts]

Got it! We can throw in some decaying cities and parental visits.