The game thread for this has already been made here. Initially I skipped making an interest check thread, but then it occurred to me that some people might check the interest check forum for new RPs more than they check the RP forum. A friend assured me that it's not poor etiquette to make an interest check thread purely for the purpose of advertisement after the game thread has already been made, so I'm posting this here. If you're interested, please check the main thread for more details.
This is an RP based on the Persona franchise. However, it is an entirely self-contained alternate universe, so no canon characters or organizations will appear. Some mechanics are similar to those in Persona games, but some are different. They will all be explained in this post, so prior knowledge of Persona games is not required.
The setting is much like the modern Earth we're familiar with, except that all well-known contemporary public figures do not exist, their roles taken by NPCs as needed; historical figures are usually fair game, but ask me if you're unsure. Unlike real life, there is no pandemic, but the world is still not without a fair share of major problems.
It is the year 2022. Social media is more widespread than ever, due to the efforts of Lin Yao-Yu, the richest man in the world and the first ever trillionaire. His company, OmniLink Inc., managed in the past two decades to acquire nearly every single one of the major tech giants in the world, seamlessly merging all of their online services into a single continuous whole. And with the thorough integration of facial and vocal recognition algorithms, it is now easier than ever to find and connect with others. But this connection is only superficial, as people cherry-pick only what they want others to see, while misinformation, echo chambers, and filter bubbles run rampant. While shouting into this all-pervasive white noise, introspection is too often forgotten, and the darkness within builds up and festers until it bursts forth from beneath the surface.
In the past months, a rumor of unclear origin has been circulating that speaks of the so-called "Saklas Syndrome". It alleges that a user of OmniLink's ubiquitous O-Phone can have his soul itself sucked into the device, resulting in a range of possible symptoms including depression, psychosis, catatonia, coma, and even death, supposedly spreading via a supernatural virus that infects smartphones. You likely dismissed this as hogwash… until it happened before your very eyes.
The screen of your O-Phone cracks open, but the cracks extend into the space itself around you. The next thing you know, you are surrounded by a thick, impenetrable, blinding white fog. From the fog it emerges, a shadowy figure with an uncanny resemblance to yourself, surrounded by an ominous dark aura that you find unsettling on some primal, instinctual level that you cannot quite explain. "I am the Shadow, the true self..." The shadowy figure speaks, its voice a horrible distortion of your own, before letting loose the deepest, darkest secrets that you have admitted to no one, not even yourself. But just as you cry out to reject this gratuitous affront to your very identity, the shadowy figure contorts in grotesque defiance of human anatomy, before exploding into a monstrosity from your worst nightmares.
Will you simply go down and become just another victim? No. Your heart may be scarred, but you won't let it end like this. If getting out alive means facing your own inner darkness… As you gather your resolve, you see it then, a shimmering, ethereal blue butterfly that morphs into what seems to be a Tarot card. Desperately, you reach out to grasp it, and-
This is an RP based on the Persona franchise. However, it is an entirely self-contained alternate universe, so no canon characters or organizations will appear. Some mechanics are similar to those in Persona games, but some are different. They will all be explained in this post, so prior knowledge of Persona games is not required.
The setting is much like the modern Earth we're familiar with, except that all well-known contemporary public figures do not exist, their roles taken by NPCs as needed; historical figures are usually fair game, but ask me if you're unsure. Unlike real life, there is no pandemic, but the world is still not without a fair share of major problems.
It is the year 2022. Social media is more widespread than ever, due to the efforts of Lin Yao-Yu, the richest man in the world and the first ever trillionaire. His company, OmniLink Inc., managed in the past two decades to acquire nearly every single one of the major tech giants in the world, seamlessly merging all of their online services into a single continuous whole. And with the thorough integration of facial and vocal recognition algorithms, it is now easier than ever to find and connect with others. But this connection is only superficial, as people cherry-pick only what they want others to see, while misinformation, echo chambers, and filter bubbles run rampant. While shouting into this all-pervasive white noise, introspection is too often forgotten, and the darkness within builds up and festers until it bursts forth from beneath the surface.
In the past months, a rumor of unclear origin has been circulating that speaks of the so-called "Saklas Syndrome". It alleges that a user of OmniLink's ubiquitous O-Phone can have his soul itself sucked into the device, resulting in a range of possible symptoms including depression, psychosis, catatonia, coma, and even death, supposedly spreading via a supernatural virus that infects smartphones. You likely dismissed this as hogwash… until it happened before your very eyes.
The screen of your O-Phone cracks open, but the cracks extend into the space itself around you. The next thing you know, you are surrounded by a thick, impenetrable, blinding white fog. From the fog it emerges, a shadowy figure with an uncanny resemblance to yourself, surrounded by an ominous dark aura that you find unsettling on some primal, instinctual level that you cannot quite explain. "I am the Shadow, the true self..." The shadowy figure speaks, its voice a horrible distortion of your own, before letting loose the deepest, darkest secrets that you have admitted to no one, not even yourself. But just as you cry out to reject this gratuitous affront to your very identity, the shadowy figure contorts in grotesque defiance of human anatomy, before exploding into a monstrosity from your worst nightmares.
Will you simply go down and become just another victim? No. Your heart may be scarred, but you won't let it end like this. If getting out alive means facing your own inner darkness… As you gather your resolve, you see it then, a shimmering, ethereal blue butterfly that morphs into what seems to be a Tarot card. Desperately, you reach out to grasp it, and-
