Pandora's Inheritance - Modern/Fantasy

"The Soiling of Old Glory" by Stanley Forman of the Boston Herald American, 1977 Pulitzer Prize Winner

TL;DR List

- Modern-Fantasy setting. Modern United States, but probably AU for the purpose of playing with geography and events.
- Magic returns to the world; 2018, rather than 2012. This managed to scare everyone and make the Mayans question their calendar.
- Summer/Fall of 2018 got scary, fast.
- Not Twilight or Harry Potter; this has darker political overtones because humans know about magic and various supernatural beings and are scared shitless and are freaking out. You know how people are in large groups, right?
- In the United States, the government starts rounding up people with magic. 
- By Spring of 2018, animals and plants, places and things, start to emerge; energy nexuses, mythical beasts, spirits even. 
- The characters are part of a Coven of like minded people, probably with magical abilities they are just touching, in a town or city where there is an internment camp for others of their kind. They are trying to avoid being caught and figuring out a way to undermine the internment camps, to get support to their fellows.
- The characters will be forced to make some stark choices vis-a-vis retribution, justice, the law and nature. 
- This RP was designed back in 2009, well before the current presidency (and I'll be happy to show people the link to it, because it still exists on another forum) and I do not want to shy away from the zeitgeist of the nation, because I think it's interesting material to work with and always have. All the same, I am hoping to avoid a huge discussion of politics outside of the need to discuss it to write good fiction. Themes like the structure of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and FEMA camps and all that jazz do feature, but these are policies rather than people. 
- Inspirations: Anything John Carpenter did, especially "Escape from New York" and a whole lot of other stuff. Trying to avoid the touchy-feely 'magic in secret' thing. Magic is something that burst out uncontrollably and has turned everyone's lives upside down -- and a lot of people are freaking. Also taking inspiration from underground movements like the French Resistance and the White Rose, though it's also a lot of Martin Luther King meets Merlin the Magician. Someone mentioned District 13 - definitely a good thought.
- Still reading? I'd prefer to have one or two collaborators that have multiple character ideas than a bunch of players that drop off. I'm open to 1x1 for this, but my hard line on this is that I need collaborators that want to help weave the plot, add characters that drive it.
- HeySeuss #6650 on Discord. HMU!

Glossary of Terms

- Emergent, Manifested - Initially an adjective for people, it has since expanded to describe any sort of magically active thing, place or being as of early October of 2017. Emergent people, plants, animals, places and objects all exist. This is the politically-correct term for it in the United States and Canada. There are many more less flattering terms, of course. 
- NPC's - Disparaging term for regular humans, especially the people that hate Emergents (such as many of the religious fanatics in the country) used by American Emergents in turn. Particularly popular with the ones that have been caught and put in camps. It was a popular term among roleplayers, before roleplaying games and science-fiction novels were pulled off bookstore shelves during the last couple months of hysteria, and outright banned in certain states, as if they were the reason all this came about. 
- Shame-kisser - A disparaging term among anti-Emergent groups, often religious, for people who support the rights of Emergents. It refers to the 16th century myth of one of the rituals of witchcraft, the Osculum infame, involving a kiss to the anus as a show of subservient. It was first used by a famous televangelist mid-sermon, and caught on from there. 
- Freakville - Synonymous with the holding camps for Emergents, be they large or small, as run by FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security. Smaller camps are used to securely transport Emergents, often by rail, to the larger communities in cash-strapped cities like Baltimore, Detroit, Memphis and Tucson.
- Pitchfork Party - A facetious term for NPC attacks on Emergents, alluding to peasants with torches and pitchforks, though these days they're more likely to have Molotov cocktails and shotguns. 
- Alpha-Omega Type - SETF Classification of the Emergents as given by the DHS. Classifications are as follows: 
- Type: Alpha - Confirmed dangerous emergent with abilities that can directly harm someone. These people are processed differently  than others -- they are first brought into isolation units for  observation and 'testing' before release into the general population.  All inmates can be drugged if the guards see fit, but Alphas are almost always drugged to some degree to try to inhibit their concentration.
- Type: Beta - Physically mutated. Currently, people are still undergoing sudden changes, in the camp and outside the camp, which is to say, the process is ongoing. If warranted, this class of inmates is physically shackled, muzzled or otherwise restrained so as to not present a threat to other inmates and the guards. 
- Type: Gamma - Emergent with abilities to produce apparitions or alter perception. Also often drugged.
- Type: Omega - General Population of Emergents. Classification to be expanded as trends in emergence are identified.
In Character Info

It's late March 2017, and the uncertainty of life, often buried deep in the psyche of humanity, is suddenly a raw and very exposed nerve. Things have emerged and the false serenity of society is irrevocably swept away on a tide of the supernatural. The world is turning upside down. Things are emerging from a long dormancy, their spirits either finding flesh on their own or fusing with the nearest host and twisting them into something else. From the beautiful to the freakish, it was almost as if someone unlocked a  spiritual vault and threw the doors wide open, heedless of what would emerge, heedless of the things this force would overturn.
   
Magic came back on September 23th, 2017 (the equinox); people suddenly manifested abilities. Some changed shape to misshapen or supernaturally beautiful beings, others manipulated energies by their will and mind. Society was not prepared, and fell into all sorts of social unrest, including lynchings, riots and vigilantism. Not everyone was grabbing a shotgun or gardening tool to go after these newly-minted 'Emergents' but there was a torrent of hate on the TV and on the radio, a furious argument about how to respond.
   
Irrationality won out, as it almost always does when fear sinks into the mass psyche.
   
Initially, at the behest of the more vocal and hardline group of Americans, yelling for the government to 'do something,' especially with people taking it to their own hands and 'doing something' themselves, often with encouragement through the internet or the radio or the pulpit; vigilante violence against Emergents. These people, backed up against the wall, lashed out -- their uncontrolled, sometimes dangerous talents gave the newscasts of these incidents a horror movie feel, especially as the media played up the most extreme example, partially for ratings. Emergents had some allies, many of them relatives or people who held to a principle in the face of danger but a majority of people, fed on news stories showing magical phenomena and terrified people, were scared and supported tougher measures.
   
There was, of course, a chance for the government to stand up to this trend, but instead the government did two things; they put a law into effect recognizing that Emergents were not human, and therefore not accorded the rights of the 14th Amendment. It passed with bipartisan support in October of 2017, during the so-called Season of the Witch. The federal courts at all levels shot down the challenges from the ACLU and other orgs while the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) Special Enforcement Task Force (SETF) established Memoranda of Understanding (MOUs) with local and state police forces to train with funding and leadership from SETF agents similar to the model employed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the Past -- in fact, ICE was plundered for their toughest people for SETF, along with other federal agencies. Captured Emergents, as they were being called when nastier words weren't used, to be placed in containment camps "for the protection of everyone involved." Darker rumors swirled, that the various governments of the world were frantic to understand these forces and dead set on controlling or containing these disruptions. The internment areas, the Freakvilles, established as secured communites in certain cities desperate for the funding, allowed Emergents to live inside walls, with armed men looking down on them and drone surveillance keeping watch. Families are allowed to go with their children, but not all do. The Freakvilles get some support, but not much -- they're poor, desperate and a lot of them are pissed off.

There was also the fear of 'Covens' of Emergents who were in hiding, conspiring against society. Essentially lacking much in the way of controllable power, some individuals stoked the fears with lone wolf or small scale attacks involving a handfull of people. These attacks helped discredit open Emergent supporters in elected office. The November elections turned over a lot of figures who might be seen as sympathetic to Emergents; it was a commonly hurled accusation by campaigns, pushed on social media. Blood libel, the concept of accusing Jewish people of human sacrifice, took on a broader meaning that was no longer merely specific to Jewish history in Eastern Europe.

In December, right before Christmas (the 21st, the Solstice), suddenly the animals and plants, things and places, started to show emergent traits; limited phenomena at first and then a buildup to a crescendo point. Suddenly, the dark was scary again, and electricity was no longer enough to hold the wolves, and other things, at bay as local governments got overwhelmed trying to cope with the new safety concerns and the federal government struggled to deal with something that they weren't equipped to really deal with -- especially as occult shops were closed up and even the study of mythology was discouraged outside of secured facilities.

Many Emergents felt it in their bones, but most of them managed to conceal this feeling of burgeoning power, a sudden increase in these newfound things they do. They know they are hunted and being kept, and so they keep their own secrets from a secretive government.

In one city in the United States, home of one of the so-called "Freakvilles," a coven plots to do more than just torch a church with pyrokinetics, it looks for a way to break down the walls...
Out of Character InfoI'm pretty loose on character ideas, but ideally the characters are still figuring things out. Most Emergents do not have control over their abilities and have only started to touch the edge of them. 

I'm loose on what magic entails, but let's keep this level-headed and avoid munchkinism. The plot is almost more about how people react to the situation than what they can do with magic.I haven't gone into the details of how magic has affected the world, or, at least, I haven't gone into more detail than I've had to; part of this is because I want to flesh that out in a plot.
   
The idea of this RP is how people would adjust to the sudden emergence of magic in society, and I've tried to set up a confrontation, but I am not guiding the story into bottlenecks of that sort; rather, I am trying to get a feel for what the players will want to do with this story, and how to fit that into the overall story. Suffice to say, this is more like 'Carrie' than 'Blade'; I'm not so interested in having long-established secret societies of vampires and werewolves emerge from the woodworks to take over the world. They, like everything else, are a fairy tale that suddenly shows up, and those people that do turn into them are as new to it as anyone else. They're in a hostile world that doesn't like them with powers they struggle to control and/or use, assuming they have powers rather than just having visibly changed physically without being able to tap any sort of power -- marked, but not currently able to wield any power.
   
  (That's strictly to avoid another Underworld/WOD type cliche of vampires secretly running the world-- there's plenty of those elsewhere. This is about something different.)
   
As said, I'm not going to be terribly strict about characters so it's just a matter of posting up what you want and playing, so long as it's tasteful, balanced and doesn't sparkle. I'd ask that we keep it from going overboard on the powers, as everyone is, at this stage, discovering them in a world where even a little bit of it is a huge advantage over the rest of humanity. Preferably, characters will be somewhat based on mythology in some fashion; I think that is a little more tasteful. Based on, but not in the sense that they have to conform to every element of the story. I think I'd prefer to say that the characters are the basis of the legends, not the other way around, in this setting.
   
The plot will involve questions of politics and culture, rights and law and morality at the bottom line. The players will, as a result, need to be mature about it and remember that this is fiction, even if it is based on modern life as we know it. It's still fiction, and we have to take license with it. This is a dystopia, a speculation upon the worst that can happen.
   
This is a setting I have used before in other RP's, even on other boards, that I've worked on for a couple years. It addresses the question of how the world would react if magic were to suddenly spring into being in the world, what would occur if normal people were suddenly able to wield these powers and if some of them were to turn into beings out of the fairy tales and myths. There are, of course, stories that deal with the supernatural existing in secret, forming cabals and ruling the world with their advantages...or having romances with drab girls in rainy towns in Washington State; this isn't one of those stories.
   
In the end, the roleplay is about human nature, a combination of political thriller and fantasy, a sort of "Martin Luther King and Muhammad Ali meet Merlin" scenario. It may even be "Mao Zedong meets Medea," or "Che Guevara meets Circe." Will those people with magical gifts allow themselves to be pushed around? Will they justify the worst fears of their most vocal opponents and try to use their powers to take over? What can the government do? What will the government try? Who will provoke whom? Will the shot heard around the world be fired again? Will it be a civil war?
   
The characters are part of a Coven, a small group of people in a city near a large Freakville, or perhaps in one of the smaller towns that hosts a temporary camp to house the detainees pending transportation, but they haven't been caught. Part of the plan is to find a way to help the people on the inside; an underground of support for those people stuck behind the wrong side of the wall. The eventual plan is to find ways, magical or otherwise, to establish a line with those folks and help them. And not get caught, because then they'll be in the camp too.
Pandora's Inheritance - Modern/Fantasy

HeySeuss DJ Hot Carl
