wellie: (Default)
Well Mod ([personal profile] wellie) wrote in [community profile] wellcome2023-09-30 08:55 pm

3.3 Event Plotting

3.3 Event Plotting

OOC announcements

Welcome to month 3! The end of the cycle, and October, and you know what that means!

There will be no event post on the main comm. Instead, make your own logs to include these prompts, and any other prompts you want to add. There will be a mini-event log mid-month.

Use the happenings form to report on what your character’s been up to! Did you break something? Did you get into a screaming match in the middle of town? Spill the tea! Everyone’s thirsty for gossip.

Post any bulletins to the bulletin board.
Plotting/CR form

Fill out as much or as little of this form as you like:


New this month

At the hotel

The dining hall features one long table and the same meals every day: a nice, continental breakfast, sandwiches for lunch, and a roast for dinner. But after the first week everything starts to taste sort of off and raw.

The pool is still out of order and empty, and at the bottom of the pool is a strange, rusty metallic build up.

Water is in even shorter supply this month: The taps splutter and spit air instead of water occasionally. It takes forever to fill up a glass or a bottle. Showers will be nearly impossible. Time for a sponge bath!

The General Store

The General Store is still full of fun outer space paraphernalia. You can find stationary with stars on it, candles shaped like planets, slime with alien-shaped charms in it, plastic astronaut helmets, whatever your heart desires as long as it’s useless, novelty, and space-themed.

Around town

The diner’s special for the month: cherry pie! Delicious.

The jail is still around... for now.

When you visit the few other locations in town, you’ll find the employees friendly and welcoming, although they may say some strange things, in addition to the handful of phrases they usually say:
The receptionist: “The town's been nice lately, hasn't it?”

Owner of the General Store: “Still got some jam! Livens up just about anything.”

The bartender: "Least we still got plenty of bottles."

The waiter: “I'm trying out a new cold brew to help with the heat!" And he serves you a cold brew—that's pretty weird. Maybe don't drink that.

The gravedigger: She’s nowhere to be seen during the day. At night, she’s digging graves.

The sheriff: Silently sits at his desk during the day and drinks at the bar at night.


Let the water hold me down
Content warnings: blood. Lots of blood. Floods of blood. Drinking blood. Risk of drowning. Storms, drought, flash floods.
The weather this month is quiet.

Baked by the heat of months, the desert is parched. Fine sand whirls up in small eddies, but…

that’s all.

There are no clouds on the horizon. What few animals are left are not running for the hills. There are no dust devils, and there is very little wind. The only change, really, seems to be the increasing drought: Water is nearly impossible to come by, the faucets barely a trickle.

Until the second week of the month, when they start to flow again. At first the water is pink and flowing freely. Over the course of a few days, it becomes deeper: magenta, then crimson, and then deep, bloody red. It smells increasingly metallic, and an awful lot like blood, actually.

Which, of course, it is! Might not want to drink that, unless B- is to your taste.

To find a drink this month, stop by the saloon or the diner, and drink something that doesn’t require water: alcohol, juice, milk. Those are still in supply. Coffee and tea are too, but the waiter is still using the “water” to make them, so they’re simply steeped in blood.

By the third week of the month, thick storm clouds gather, blotting out the sun. It’s a reprieve from the heat, but the clouds are strange, too. They’re a dark angry red, so deep it’s nearly black. For days they just squat over the town, blocking out the sun and casting everything into reddish gloom.

Then, as the fourh week begins, thunder cracks at dawn, sharp and loud enough to rattle even the sturdy Staywell. Lightning flashes. The heavy air splits. The clouds drop everything they’re holding all at once, torrential and fierce.

Naturally, the rain is red, and thick: blood, just like the rest of the water.

All this blood has nowhere to go. It rages over the parched surface of the desert in foaming torrents and slams hard into the town. By mid-morning on the first day of the storm, several buildings are gone, washed into debris, and the blood has formed standing pools in the town where they used to be. The jail is gone, and the General Store with it. The ground floors of the buildings that remain are uninhabitable, filled with feet of blood, and the rain just keeps coming.

Over the course of the week, more flooding and increased rain take out the whole desert. It begins to rise in the Staywell, taking each floor as it goes.

There’s nowhere to go. Nowhere is safe.

Except the graveyard, of course.

The graveyard is dry as a bone.

tl;dr:
  • Nothing happens for weeks and weeks. It's quiet, too quiet. The water becomes less and less available, and around week two turns to blood. It starts pinkish, and starts flowing deep, deep red by week three. It isn’t potable anymore, unless you happen to like the taste of blood.
  • The only potable drinks are found at the diner and the saloon, which are open (almost) all month. You can drink just about anything that isn’t mixed with water at the establishment (no coffee or tea, but yes juice, milk, or alcohol).
  • The last week of the month, thick, reddish storm clouds blot out the sun and hover for days.
  • They rain blood. And with the ground so dry, the blood soaks it immediately, and then has nowhere to go. It floods the town, floods the ground floors, and fills up the buildings in the town. There’s nowhere to go. Nowhere is safe.
  • Except the graveyard, of course.

How did I get here?
Content warnings: body horror, abduction, torture, surgical-like procedures without anesthetic, being buried alive. To avoid descriptions, skip over the blockquote below.
You wake up in the graveyard. You’re in your own grave: sealed underground in a casket, or in freshly dug earth, your faded gravestone marking the spot. You might want to get out of there, stat.

It's a while after your last memory of Wellstone: you’ve been gone for days, maybe a week. You disappeared, it seems, in the blink of an eye. You may not remember where you were, or what happened to you. You seem fine. Right?
You wake up strapped to a cold stone table. It’s roughly cut, scraping against your bare skin, jutting in places and dipping in others. The ceiling above you, if it can be called that, is red-black and moving obscenely. In your nose the air is hot and foul.

Holding you to the table are straps, or… something like them. They’re warm. Very warm, and tacky against your skin, almost like flesh. They wrap around your limbs and your hips and your throat, keeping you pinned firmly.

And then they start to move.

They squeeze you tight, tight enough, maybe, to break your ribs. They slice you open with tines as sharp as cactus spikes, like they’re looking for something inside you. They probe down your throat, into your chest, your lungs.

They aren’t kind. They aren’t careful. They don’t seem particularly concerned with keeping you alive, even.

They press into your ears and your nose. They worm their way into your head: worse, into your mind with a pain so searing it seems death would be kinder. It’s possible you’ve felt an echo of it before: it’s the same pain you feel when a memory flares, only with the volume turned unbearably higher. Blood drips from everywhere it can, pooling warm and sticky around you, dripping unseen onto a stone floor. All this may trigger a memory of something deeply held, something that you believe in so strongly that you’ll find it impossible that you forgot it in the first place.

You can’t escape. You may try, but you’re prone, your body barely under your own control, even if you had much strength left.

Eventually, somehow, it ends: you black out, from pain or blood loss or something worse. It must end, anyway, because you wake again in the graveyard days after you last remember being free.
Your character has been abducted! They disappeared from wherever they were in the blink of an eye, and are gone for up to a week.

For this prompt, you can decide what exactly happens to your character during their abduction, and you can decide how much or little your character remembers of their abduction: the whole thing in awful detail, or hazy painful impressions, or nothing at all. If you choose to obfuscate the experience now, you can have them remember it later on through a memory regain that doesn’t require points. The intent of this prompt is that your character disappears for up to a week, and undergoes a terrible experience during that time. The actual abduction isn’t intended to be heavily interacted with, but the aftermath is. This can only happen once per character.

Characters who were abducted can earn 3 memory points. You can choose to use them on the memory indicated in the prompt, another memory now, or save them for later.

tl;dr:
  • You’ve been abducted!
  • During the abduction, you’re strapped down, and some pretty nasty stuff happens to you. Player choice what and how much. You can die there, or simply be pretty messed up.
  • You’re gone for 4-7 days.
  • Your character can remember as much or as little as you want them to.
  • You wake up in your grave. You can be sealed in, or not.
  • Characters who were abducted earn 3 memory points.
  • A character can only be abducted once using this prompt.

Same as it ever was
Content warnings: Impersonation, manipulation, body horror
If the quiet and the blood and the disappearances weren’t bad enough, well: it gets worse. You knew it would.

Familiar faces begin to crop up again, through crowds in the diner, wandering in from the edge of town. They are, of course, your own.

The doubles are back.

Like before, each character has a double of themself running around town. They are everything that you are and more: they are your strongest self, your worst self, full of your worst and darkest impulses and all the skills and knowledge that you’ve forgotten. Their goal is to become you, and if you’ve been abducted, they’ll try particularly hard to convince people that they’re you and undermine your relationships and your reputation while they’re at it.

Something seems to be wrong with all of these other versions of you, though. Try to convince your friends that everything is okay. They're you, they're safe and normal and Wellstone is a safe and normal town. Everything’s okay here and maybe we shouldn’t worry after all and just let it happen?

However, occasionally, something weird will happen, either:
  1. Their voices will be taken over with static, fritzing out across frequencies. They’ll clutch at anyone nearby, trying desperately to communicate with your friends in a chorus of voices that can’t be made out.
  2. Their voices will be taken over by a low, unearthly groan. It’s bodily and visceral and makes anyone within earshot feel like they need to run and hide. When this takes over the doubles, their eyes go lifeless and their bodies limp, like marionettes.
When any double touches you, from the point of contact outward, searing pain rolls under your skin as it begins to rot. Your thoughts, memories, and sense of self warp and turn to hazy static. The longer they hold on, the worse these effects will be, and the stronger the doppelgänger will get. If they hold on long enough, you’ll simply die.

When your actual self returns (if you do), you may need to convince your friends that you are indeed the real one. Are you?

tl;dr:
  • The doubles are back! Each character has a doppelganger who embodies their worst self.
  • The doubles are intent on replacing characters, and will particularly try to do this when a character has been abducted.
  • Sometimes, the doubles might act a little strange. They will either sound like radio static, or an unearthly horrible groan.
  • If any double (not just your own) touches you, you hurt, and the world twists and warps. The longer they hold on, the worse it gets, and if they don’t let go eventually you will die.

sighsheavily: (Default)

[personal profile] sighsheavily 2023-10-01 01:15 am (UTC)(link)
Any town remains/debris in the graveyard by the last week?

Would anything preserved in the Diner freezer from September be spared from becoming bloody?
outofsynth: (it's hard when you're always afraid)

[personal profile] outofsynth 2023-10-01 02:08 pm (UTC)(link)
Your name: Joey
Your pronouns: He/Him
Contact: [plurk.com profile] thlayli or fourthling (discord) or PM
OOC limitations: Nope

Character name: Min-Gi Park
Permissions: Just here!
General impressions of your character: Idk man. I'm too lazy to type much up today. He comes off as a bit of a stick in the mud unless you get to know him or hit it off just the right way with him, but he does know how to have fun. He just... largely doesn't remember how he does that now.
CR you're interested in: I am open!
CR you're not interested in: I think romance is the only definite no.

General ideas or plans for the month: No specifics just yet. He doesn't remember how to cook for the most part, but he does know he used to work in a diner so with the hotel food being iffy this month maybe he will try and push himself more in that department.
Event ideas: Definitely wanting to get his double out more this time around! Yes, that does mean he's getting abducted though I've yet to decide whether that will be bad or bad for him. What has been decided is both Min-Gi and Ryan will be abducted at the same time. Their doubles will be using each other to lend credibility to them being the real versions of them.
Are you planning to create a log this month? Probably?
Edited 2023-10-01 15:56 (UTC)
toteninsel: (15)

ariane yeong | signalis

[personal profile] toteninsel 2023-10-01 04:07 pm (UTC)(link)
Your name: floral
Your pronouns: she/they
Contact: [plurk.com profile] moonlanding or PM or the game discord
OOC limitations: none!

Character name: Ariane Yeong
Permissions: here, note that the listed content warnings will be particularly applicable this month
General impressions of your character: Ariane is small and frail-looking, but with a generally cheerful personality and a geeky, theater kid-esque energy when you get to know her. She tends to dress in red and black. Underneath all this, there's often something a little bit off about her.
CR you're interested in: Pretty much anything!
CR you're not interested in: She's spoken for, romance-wise.

General ideas or plans for the month: Going to mostly focus on event stuff this month, particularly the doubles and abduction prompt, and the resulting memory regain.

Event ideas: During the first week of the month, Ariane will be acting like her usual self. She's a bit weirded out by the blood, but she'll try to take it in stride, and will offer to help others do the same. Ariane likes the graveyard, so she'll generally try to direct people there, and might set up a little space to do some sketching to help people take their minds off things, similar to the art therapy session she hosted back in August.

During the remainder of the month, Ariane will not be doing well. Ariane will get abducted, and vanish for six days. While she's gone, Ariane's double will return! This time, Ariane's double will be much, much nicer to be around. She'll be working hard to convince everyone that she is the real Ariane. She's strong, capable, and helpful in all the ways that Ariane could never be! She's a born leader, and an excellent comrade! Ariane's double will try to be just as helpful as Ariane was, but with an air of manipulation throughout the whole thing.

Meanwhile, Ariane herself will return from her abduction experience remarkably unwell. She'll remember that she has spent the last several hundred years imprisoned in a cryogenic pod in a painful, semi-conscious state. To reach Ariane, characters will have to cut through a maze of rotted, decaying, body-horror flavor hallucinations. Ariane's double will encourage characters not to do that. Isn't Ariane terrible to be around? Wouldn't you rather hang out with the double instead?

Overall, I'm interested in characters genuinely mistaking Ariane's double for Ariane, or alternatively, reaching Ariane herself through either the power of friendship, the power of incredible violence and determination, or both!

Are you planning to create a log this month? yes!
sighsheavily: (Default)

[personal profile] sighsheavily 2023-10-01 04:31 pm (UTC)(link)
would u like...a barely-keeping-it-together cece or a frigid bitch double magical cece c:
outofsynth: (1000_cb=202105142034022)

[personal profile] outofsynth 2023-10-01 04:35 pm (UTC)(link)
Ohhhhhh. Both are very tempting options!

Maybe barely-keeping-it-together Cece? I think that would be an interesting side of her for Min-Gi to see.
sighsheavily: (Default)

[personal profile] sighsheavily 2023-10-01 05:09 pm (UTC)(link)
sign me up for a log ping so we can do some girl time c:
sighsheavily: (Default)

[personal profile] sighsheavily 2023-10-01 05:09 pm (UTC)(link)
he saw shades in the kitchen now he can see proper forms while she's shoving glasses of ice water from the diner into his hands DONT DRINK THE BLOODAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
outofsynth: (with too much resistance)

[personal profile] outofsynth 2023-10-01 05:12 pm (UTC)(link)
Quietly starting to wonder if the Cecelia Ryan tells him about is the same Cecelia he's been seeing......
sighsheavily: (Default)

[personal profile] sighsheavily 2023-10-01 05:14 pm (UTC)(link)
ryan: no dude shes like totally on top of shit and like professional

cece: breaking a fifth pencil in a row due to gripping it too tight
oniicursed: <user name=tanabata> (when bae wants to pursue higher educatio)

[personal profile] oniicursed 2023-10-01 05:26 pm (UTC)(link)
Is it possible for the worse double to intentionally murder the person they're impersonating?
guidemyway: (Unfold as I cascade below)

[personal profile] guidemyway 2023-10-01 05:38 pm (UTC)(link)
I feel like Ruby should mistake the double for actual ariane.
toteninsel: (falke)

[personal profile] toteninsel 2023-10-01 05:48 pm (UTC)(link)
hell yeah i would love that!! ariane's double will love ruby but will also be a terrible influence. see, ruby, isn't it better to be someone else :)
toteninsel: (07)

[personal profile] toteninsel 2023-10-01 05:48 pm (UTC)(link)
i shall!!! looking forward to it o7
guidemyway: (I'm what inspired the fairytale)

[personal profile] guidemyway 2023-10-01 06:19 pm (UTC)(link)
That's exactly what she needs right now!
forgeabettertomorrow: (I'm about to do something awesome)

[personal profile] forgeabettertomorrow 2023-10-01 07:18 pm (UTC)(link)
So, Darin is going to be doing his best to keep the Staywell up so survivors can get out. Before everything is lost, he's going to try and dive beneath the water to the stairwell that's sealed up to see if it's still sealed.

Is it?
forgeabettertomorrow: (come on trust me!)

[personal profile] forgeabettertomorrow 2023-10-01 08:12 pm (UTC)(link)
Do you want some power of friendship in this trying time?

I'm also down with Ariane's double tricking Darin since he'll be out of sorts himself.
forgeabettertomorrow: (But what does 'being anime' even mean?)

[personal profile] forgeabettertomorrow 2023-10-01 08:26 pm (UTC)(link)
Your name: Ant
Your pronouns: He/Him
Contact: [plurk.com profile] bitterbearface or PM
OOC limitations: None but I've been busy lately but I will backtag into oblivion if you want

Character name: Darin Altway
Permissions: Here!
General impressions of your character: Big, beefy, extra good at hugs. Loud and kind of an obnoxious hot-blooded shounen/JRPG hero type
CR you're interested in: Anything really except romantic, he's taken
CR you're not interested in: Hit me with what you've got

General ideas or plans for the month: HAHAHA oh man okay

So, Darin's going to be in a very bad way for like half of this month. Cece is going to be getting killed and Darin is not going to take it well. He's not going to go full apocalypse monster, but he is going to be focusing on trying to get the Staywell shored up...

When the floods happen, Darin is going to be the last one out. He's going to be using his strength to keep the building from collapsing (with a little help from his transmutation magic!) but this won't be the end for him.

Event ideas:
Darin is going to be abducted from the vanishing Staywell, which means he's going to be exploding out of his own grave when everything else is gone. He is going to be in a bad, desperate state having lost everything he's worked on, lost Cecelia, and also have a very bittersweet memory of his childhood that's going to make him feel worse.

When his double rolls up in the last few days, Darin is having none of it. They killed each other last loop but he's done. To anyone who wants to see a truly terrifying version of Darin, one who is cold, vicious, and impossibly strong, this is your chance because he's going to take out his own double (and anyone else's) in especially brutal fashion.
Are you planning to create a log this month? Yes!
hellonspectacles: (With all respect--piss off)

[personal profile] hellonspectacles 2023-10-01 09:02 pm (UTC)(link)
Your name: Becca
Your pronouns: she/her
Contact: [plurk.com profile] historein or PM
OOC limitations: For the sake of continuing to keep on top of things, I’ve started to drop some older threads that aren’t plotty, but please hmu if you have questions about any of them in particular!

Character name: Palamedes Sextus
Permissions: Here!
General impressions of your character: 20-year-old, scrawny, tall, bespectacled friendly neighborhood nerd! Pal tends to be kind and approachable, if awkward, sometimes bad at noticing social cues, and inclined to monologue about whatever is on his mind.
CR you're interested in: Pretty much same as before: Gimme it all! Mystery-solving collaborators, friends who want to talk about the complicated feelings they have about who they might have once been, people who have complicated feelings about what it means to be trapped in Wellstone. I’d also LOVE for him to interact with people who have some knee-jerk suspicion of his powers.
CR you're not interested in: NA

General ideas or plans for the month:
I’m going to be focusing on abductions, Doublemedes (aka, evil!Pal), and the related fallout, but in terms of general vibes:
- folks might start to notice that Pal is just a little more careful with his words and less likely to tell you everything that’s on his mind these days. It won’t be dramatic, but he is remembering enough about his past for his canon instinct to play his cards close to his chest to kick in. And hey, he chose a good month to get suspicious, right?
- I think Pal will be gaining the memory of the necromancy religion he grew up with. This would be absolutely boring and unremarkable…except that it means he will remember seeing religious icons with John Gaius’ face on them and wonder what the hell is up with that. Probably a coincidence, right?
- Because all this blood = more thanergy, both Doublemedes and Pal, original flavor, will have much stronger powers than usual.
- While he’s going to end up getting distracted by the Bad Times, Pal is also thinking about 1) doubles and NPCs “glitching out” and what it means, as well as 2) the significance of the graveyard (maybe it’s always unaffected because it’s where their captors live, NOT because it’s a place of safety for the rest of them!)
Event ideas:

ABDUCTION:

Pal will be getting abducted relatively close to the start of the month! He’ll be returning with the memory that Cytherea killed and impersonated Dulcinea, and then proceeded to kill a bunch of other people in order to get revenge on God. Good times! Back on dry land (so to speak), he’ll be obsessively searching the town for where the abducted people have gone, pretending (badly) not to freak out about the missing people, and using the whole experience to bolster his theory that they’re all part of some awful experiment.

Additionally, Pal will immediately remember the full experience of his torture, but he is keeping that memory all to himself. He won’t lie directly if someone asks, but he will be extremely vague.

DOUBLES:

Doublemedes is back! Come for his animal-torturing serial killer vibes, stay for his ability to creatively insult your intelligence. Doublemedes thinks he is smarter, more powerful, and way more interesting than his original version with his silly ethics and belief in the power of love, and is more than happy to sow discord and chaos among the locals. He will also be hanging around with evil!Cam and evil!Dax and treating them like his shitty (sexy) henchmen.

Oh, and then he’s gonna kill Cecelia, and Darin is gonna take his revenge and tear that asshole in two! If anyone else is interested in fighting with him, getting insulted by him along the way hmu!

BLOOD:

Speaking of Doublemedes causing trouble: this asshole will be leaving a note on the bulletin board saying that he tested the water and it’s fine!

Otherwise, I don’t have a ton of specific thoughts. Pal will definitely notice that his powers work better and feel some kind of way about it. Also, as water levels (blood levels?) start to rise, Pal will do his best to help everyone stay safe, board up doors and windows, carry stuff to dry ground, etc. Open to other ideas if you have ‘em!

Are you planning to create a log this month? Yep!

(Am I missing anything? I feel like I'm missing something, so plz tell me if I am)
d9x: (19)

Dax | Star Trek

[personal profile] d9x 2023-10-01 10:08 pm (UTC)(link)
Your name: Nat
Your pronouns: they/them
Contact: [plurk.com profile] crow47
OOC limitations: n/a

Character name: Dax
Permissions: here
General impressions of your character: She's not having a good time.
CR you're interested in: any
CR you're not interested in: n/a

General ideas or plans for the month: She's going to be quiet and stressed this month and doing a lot of hovering around the Games Club members / trying to make sure the kids are okay. She'll also be trying to set up tents/get things moved to the graveyard when the blood rain starts.
Event ideas:
ABDUCTION. Dax will be abducted the second week of the month. She'll end up attached to Pal's hip for the second half of the month in the searching for where people have been taken. She won't talk about what happened while she was gone and she'll shut down anyone who tries to bring it up with her, with the exception of her Games Club boys. She miiight put up an anonymous warning on the bulletin board.

DOUBLES. Dax's double is going to Evil!Pal's hot henchman and at the hip of Evil!Pal or Evil!Cam just about every time she's seen. Opt-in for a murder attempt if you're looking for drama or a character death; Dax's worst self includes her sixth host's fun time murder tendencies being at the forefront. This can include Dax's double trying it herself; or, Evil!Dax works for Evil!Pal, but doesn't have strict loyalty, so she'd help another double set a character up to be cornered and attacked by their own double.

Her double will be trying to infiltrate her CR while she's abducted to plant seeds of doubt about their CR and to report on her own research about the town as 'well, this all seems fine, we're perfectly safe'. It'll all just be a liiittle off until she tries to hold your hand comfortingly. Come closer.

She'll also try to undo any hard work Dax has done or been involved with. Her notebooks will be shredded when she returns from abduction time. She has all the engineering/comms knowledge and may try to undo the hard work they've put into the walkies. She may ruin the Games Club headquarters.

Dax herself will barely be sleeping while the doubles are around.

Are you planning to create a log this month? Yes, likely just closed prompts as determined here though!
mycrosstobear: (how long she will be next to me)

Re: Questions

[personal profile] mycrosstobear 2023-10-01 10:41 pm (UTC)(link)
is it possible to have the doubles glitch out in response to particular external triggers (i.e. being attacked)?

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