Nestled in the sleepy town of Iverson, California is Lakewood Summit, a cozy suburban paradise for the state’s best and brightest. Entrance into this gated community is strict and exclusive, and once when you buy a home there, you buy a lifestyle. Top-notch private schooling, a sprawling country club, 24-hour security presence and gorgeous community gardens overlooking a private lake, all for an average price of six million per home.
While the sun shines and polished housewives take their groomed toy pooches on strolls to the dog park, it seems that not all that glitters is gold. Lakewood and its residents harbor nearly as many secrets as they have digits in their bank accounts. Who is sleeping with who? Are the Jones’ really considering a divorce? What about the children? There are whispers of suspected drug use and unplanned pregnancy among the seemingly cherubic youth. It won’t be long before the perfect façade of the suburban oasis starts to crack.
Setting
Welcome to Lakewood Summit! This pleasant community is comprised of 40 homes to fit each and every taste -- Victorian, craftsman, Asian-inspired, and modern masterpieces all decorate the gorgeous Californian landscape. The price tag on these homes range from 1 million to upwards of 12 million dollars. Although the heart of The Summit is a beautiful lake, Sparkling Springs, the majority of these individual properties have in-ground pools and spas. Residents sometimes travel to the local beach to float their yachts, but the gated community offers so many amenities that most hardly leave at all.
Notable Places
Sparkling Springs: This manmade lake was established at the commencement of the Lakewood Summit community development. Sparkling Springs boasts an average depth of 15 feet and has four lighted fountains throughout. Although this lake is not naturally occurring, millions of dollars have been put in to naturalize it with local flora and fauna species. The lake is one hundred percent swimmable and fishable, and is a favorite among both the young and old in the summertime. It’s carefully maintained and monitored, down to the fish population numbers and pH levels.
Lakewood Country Club: A sprawling compound taking up nearly 300 acres of the Summit, the country club has all the bells and whistles: a full 18-hole golf course, stables for prized horses, exclusive equestrian trails through the woods, two heated and meticulously tended swimming pools, several tennis courts, a meeting hall, a dining room, a sauna, and a gym. The people that spend time here are some of the most pretentious and elitist around among the residents of Lakewood Summit. The different golf caddies and towel boys are ‘outsiders;’ less privileged residents of Iverson city, who often marvel at the wealth and ‘problems’ of the Club members.
Lakewood Academy: The Academy is an award-winning K-12 education facility located within the gates of Lakewood Summit. The teachers and counselors are highly trained and very well-payed, some of them even being members of the Lakewood community themselves. The student body is comprised of not only Lakewood community children, but the best and brightest students from neighboring towns. Although these ‘outside’ children are wealthy enough to afford the steep tuition cost, they are often socially bullied by the local kids. The graduation rate of the high school sector is 98% and many of those students go off to either receive Ivy League education or stardom upon graduating. For the younger children, there is a separate day care and pre-k facility called the Tiny Tots Academy.
The Whistle Stop: This tiny cafe positioned just outside of The Summit’s gates is run by an older woman who lives inside the community. However, she tends to hire hot young things from outside -- her clientele is mostly men heading out for work, picking up a cup of coffee, and she takes a cut of the young baristas’ tips. There’s a drive-thru window that’s used almost more often than the interior, though the interior is fairly cute and modernized, with an always stable wifi connection. In addition to coffee, they do serve some pastries and baked goods, always freshly baked in the morning(read: purchased by the girls and unpackaged before it opens). The Whistle Stop keeps a sharp schedule, opening at 6:30 in the morning and closing by no later than 2:00 in the afternoon every day, with weekends closing at noon.
Parks: There are four main parks located in Lakewood Summit. The most notable is Central Park, which is in the center of the Sparkling Springs. Central Park contains a grandiose gazebo surrounded by well-maintained gardens that are colorful all year long, which many residents have either been married in, or at least attended a wedding at. The second park, East Park, is located close to the Academy, and has the typical benches, slides, swing sets, sand boxes and then some. North Park contains an agility course and is used mainly as a dog park. There is also a quarter-mile track surrounding the dog park that residents frequent to get in their cardio. West Park is comprised mostly of the community gardens. These gardens are a Lakewood Summit project created 10 years ago as a way to offer fresh local produce to the residents of Lakewood. These residents are welcome to plant and harvest as they please and a small staff of gardeners are payed to maintain the crops.
Community Projects
Neighborhood Watch: In addition to the 24-hour security presence that Lakewood Summit hosts, there is also a very active neighborhood watch program that is useful in both keeping residents safe… and churning up gossip. The Watch enforces a strict curfew for the local youth of 9 PM on weekdays and 10 PM on weekends.
Homeowner’s Association: This group of community members is the authoritative force in keeping up appearances around The Summit. They will be the first to notify you if your lawn has grown even a quarter of an inch outside of Lakewood Summit’s standards, as well as dictate what color you are allowed to paint your shutters. Although they are often seen as elitist, even among the most pretentious Lakewood residents, at their core they do want what is best for the community. Most community enrichment projects have their beginnings in the Homeowner’s Association meetings, including the community gardens.
Lakewood Academy PTA: The Lakewood Academy PTA functions like most other parent-teacher associations -- as a formal organization composed of parents, teachers and school faculty which is intended to facilitate parental participation in their children’s education. The PTA is very involved with the school’s budgeting proposals and often hosts voting polls on ways to improve the school. While the association is home to more than a few overbearing helicopter moms that try to live vicariously through their children, it is run by the more level-headed Audrey Huntsberg-Blake, who prefers to organize bake sales and other activities to benefit the kids.
Character Creation
We are in need of a few residents to fill up this exclusive community. Your characters can be pre-existing residents of The Summit or a brand new family (or bachelor/bachelorette) looking to start a their life of luxury in California’s wealthiest county. These residents can be of any age, from the 5-year old daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Smith to the old man down the block who is always yelling at kids to get off his lawn. The plan for this roleplay is to dive deep into the seemingly perfect lives of the wealthy inhabitants of Lakewood Summit. Your characters should be dynamic and well-rounded. There should be drama and intrigue around every corner, and it is our job as the storytellers to create the very gossip our characters will be spreading around. Keep the idea of having secrets and character flaws in mind when you are writing your characters, because flaws are realistic.
Remove the ‘.’ in the line breaks for the coding to work in the template. Please also @myself and/or Silent Observer when you post your character sheet!
Rules
- Abide by the site rules; i.e., romance must be kept PG-13, keep conflicts private, etc
- No controlling other characters; i.e., don’t move another person’s character or write dialogue for them, it’s just plain rude
- No Mary-Sues; i.e., no perfect characters; this is a realistic slice-of-life roleplay, it’s basically a soap opera and it’ll suck if no one is flawed
- Commitment; while we will not require posting within a certain timeframe, please keep up up to date if you will be absent for a while. If you’re MIA for longer than a week we will be forced to drop your character
- Character limit; there isn’t a character limit in place yet, but if things snowball out of control in the sense that member growth and number of characters expands too quickly, the GMs reserve the right to cap character slots
- Standards; this is a high-casual to low-advanced roleplay; while we are not grammar Nazis, we expect to be able to make it through your posts without too many issues
- Plot twists; while we encourage and allow freedom in our world--it’s basically a sandbox--please inform either one of the GMs if you plan on doing anything major. We’ll rarely, if ever, turn you down, we just want to be in the loop so we know what to expect and have NPC responses prepared
- Keep in-character drama in-character; this roleplay will be littered with drama, please don’t take it personally. You are not your character, and just because someone does something to your character does not mean they’re attacking you personally
- Open for business; this roleplay will always be open, however, we request that if you aren’t joining in the initial burst, that your character be a new resident
- The D-bag Rule; this one is simple, just don’t be a douchebag
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