Pandora's Inheritance: Coven

[HeySeuss]

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

TL;DR List

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- Modern-Fantasy setting. Modern United States, but probably AU for the purpose of playing with geography and events.
- Magic returns to the world; 2016, rather than 2012. This managed to scare everyone and make the Mayans question their calendar.
- Summer/Fall of 2016 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 2017, animals and plants, places and things, start to emerge; energy nexuses, mythical beasts, spirits even. Coincidentally, that's around the time the Mayan calendar ends. Some people say it's the end of the world, the Mayans point out it's just the end of an age. Whoever is right, people are freaking out.
- 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.
- Advanced Standards.
- This RP was designed back in 2009, well before the current presidential campaign (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.
- Discord Chat here. Ask questions, collaborate, brainstorm!
- 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. 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.

Glossary

Glossary of Terms

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- 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 2016. 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

In Character Info

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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, 2016 (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 2016, 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 Solistice), 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

Out of Character Info

I'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.

[HeySeuss]

@The Spectre

[Mao Mao]

Cool fam. I will try to post a character soon but I am doing my essay for English. So, it might be awhile before I post the character. As for the other stuff mentioned in the private message, I am fine with everything you have suggested.

EDIT: Oh, I did not realize that it was not a 1x1 interested check. lol, oops. Still, I will make a character for this roleplay.

[HeySeuss]

A lot of that went into the update of the setting that I did, actually. Detainment camps and transportation into the Freakvilles also factored into how small towns would be involved as well as the walled communities.

[Mike73]

I think I saw this before a long while back, it looks familiar at least. Either way I'm interested in joining.

[Architect]

Huh. Neat.

[HeySeuss]

Still considering doing this, definitely. I just want to make sure there is a structured plot with a goal for the coven; in this case, looking to figure out how to help people that are caught and in detention.

[Architect]

Hope so. I have Norse-related concepts in mind.

[Mirandae]

I've stumbled upon this a couple of times now. Having taking an active interest in politics as of late, I'm definitely interested in being a part of this, if it gets going.

[HeySeuss]

With enough people I can set up an OOC and some character sheet stuff and really start the discussion. I think that the setting confronts some of the underlying issues in our politics nicely, though the current situation feels closer to the setting now that we have a lively debate, in some places anyway, over immigration enforcement and a more casual attitude toward civil rights in the Department of Justice.

Beyond that, I'd be curious to see what people think makes sense for the setting location and what feels right. I mean, we can go urban or we can go more suburban in this. One of my thoughts for that was that having watched Buffy recently, the third season involves the mayor heading up a huge a conspiracy, but then when we look at Daredevil, we see the local government somewhat subverted in the process of contracting, bidding and cooperating with a criminal conspiracy, backed by a supernatural doomsday organization/corporation. With all due respect to Joss Whedon, I think I want to find a way to thread the needle on factionalism even in local politics to feed it into this.

(to be fair to Whedon fans, he made the Initiative seem sort of incompetent in the long run, due to dysfunction and conflicting agendas.)

One of my great impressions of Watergate and other political conspiracies involves seeing how it's kind of riddled with errors. Even CIA operations like the Bay of Pigs involves a lot of messy loose ends, unreliable characters and things going wrong. It's one of the reasons why I like to steer away from well-oiled supernatural shadow governments running the world as three dimensional chess players.

I also want to dig in the skulls of the players for this on how they feel about these themes and what they might take from that. I want to make sure we're collaborating and working off each other here.

[Mirandae]

@HeySeuss

Alright, I'll make a contribution.

In regards to venue, considering your notes on urban and suburban, if the plot will allow for or require movement of characters from one place to another in order to achieve a purpose, then there would be grounds for including many different locales. If a certain described area is enjoyed by the players, then the group can linger and overcome whatever challenges that such area offers. I suppose this goes hand in hand with the notion of political conspiracy, and particularly the different layers of such conspiracy.

I clearly remember how government or corporate involvement was depicted in the film District 9. It was almost solely based on the interest in alien weaponry, which was ironically 'bio-locked' (not sure if this is a word) to the aliens themselves. If the initial reaction to magic is similar to the initial reaction of an outbreak, which it seems to somewhat be, then the next question, once the thread is contained, would be how to put this new power to use. So, maybe the overarching conspiracy would be how to weaponize magic in order for non-Emergents to use it? However, if this was the case, you would have to determine the source of magic, and how it manifests in the body of Emergents.

If there is a conspiracy of some sort, hints or knowledge of it could be a motivating factor for our coven to break down 'freakvilles' and prevent individuals therein to be taken away for experiments, deconstruction, or whatever it might be.

[HeySeuss]

That absolutely helps create a framework for plot. I am not sure that the government's sole interest is in weaponizing magic, but it certainly has groups that consider it a goal, especially if other countries aggressively pursue the use of magic as well. There are religious lobbies and civil unrest to consider, as well as containing all the spiritual events that happen with magic absent an apparent actor, ie a person using it.

It also becomes more apparent to me that we need to probably stick this right in a large city in the US. We can design one to fit or we can use an existing one heavily modified.

I'm almost in favor of inventing one.

[Mao Mao]

I am still in. I was busy with finding sources for both my government and history papers.

[Architect]

Honestly, I have this weird hard-on for small towns, southern or midwestern, but locale depends on everyone else.

[Mirandae]

There are religious lobbies and civil unrest to consider, as well as containing all the spiritual events that happen with magic absent an apparent actor, ie a person using it.

@HeySeuss

How deep do you want to go with this, though? Because I was thinking about this before, and it relates back to the source of magic, its purpose, and conspiracy. If there is any religious lobby involved in any shady dealings concerning this appearance of magic, then it would be Zionism. They would probably sway opinion in their favor by claiming magic to be God's gift to the 'chosen people', and thereby proclaim any non-jewish Emergent antisemitic and an enemy of the state. Zionists are already hated by a plethora of different secular Jewish groups, religions, and other groups of people for their violence and racism. However, this will come close to that "well-oiled supernatural shadow government" that you wanted to avoid, even if it's not entirely the same thing.

[Mike73]

<Snipped quote by HeySeuss>

How deep do you want to go with this, though? Because I was thinking about this before, and it relates back to the source of magic, its purpose, and conspiracy. If there is any religious lobby involved in any shady dealings concerning this appearance of magic, then it would be Zionism. They would probably sway opinion in their favor by claiming magic to be God's gift to the 'chosen people', and thereby proclaim any non-jewish Emergent antisemitic and an enemy of the state. Zionists are already hated by a plethora of different secular Jewish groups, religions, and other groups of people for their violence and racism. However, this will come close to that "well-oiled supernatural shadow government" that you wanted to avoid, even if it's not entirely the same thing.

@Prisk

I think this would be an interesting group to deal with. They'd be a third force that's neither on the NPC side nor on the majority of the Emergent side, while at the same time not being neutral. We could have them go against either side due to their own agenda whenever we need the plot to take a certain direction or need to introduce a threat to the characters. They wouldn't need to be a shadow organization either, if anything we could just probably draw parallels to them from real world hate groups. Organized and potentially dangerous to everyone, but no where near perfect when executing movements or plans, and they'd probably rely a lot on impressionable but unpredictable young people to carry out goals.

[HeySeuss]

Honestly, Zionism was a political lobby in the 1930's, but it never had a strongly religious component. It was labor-socialist in a lot of senses, but Orthodox Judaism was a very different thing and only had some representation in Zionist movements. Israel itself is the outgrowth of the movement, and took on a similar character of secularized youth groups that emphasized a more nationalist identity that wasn't necessarily bound by the religious observances of Judaism, which always had variation in how the traditions are kept and practiced. Within Modern Israeli politics, some ultra-conservative groups exist that are highly traditional, but they also tend to represent a minority.

The most prominent group I can think of that is orthodox and works internationally is the Chabad and they tend to focus on bringing assimilated Jews back into the fold. Their relationship with politics is basically nonparticipatory to the point where they take no official stance on the establishment of Israel.

Basically, Judaism gets complicated fast, but there's not a lot of consensus. It seems like the response to magic would be fragmented.

I'd also say that Catholicism and Mormonism, which each have lately had their internal beliefs and subcultures on display, also would have a loud argument over magic. With Catholicism, the reaction of Jesuits would be different from more conservative elements (including American ones that think very differently from South American ones who think differently from African ones) and with Mormonism, you have different interpretations of their scripture making people decide on different priorities in a crisis. There may be splinter factions, of course, like that underage polygamy cult in Arizona that claims to be Mormon, but they have no real influence.

Islam, as we know, is pretty decentralized and has been since the fall of the Ottoman Empire. So the really big religions aren't that monolithic, even the ones we'd expect to be monolithic like the Catholics. The words of the Pope are considered guidance...I'd name a couple of politicians that exemplify that, but I don't want to start an argument.

Now when we get to something like Scientology, which is a lot more cultish, heavily monied and probably would consider magic to be their tool. There are smaller protestant groups, we might have some leverage there, especially as some megachurch pastors tend to deal with a more unified base of tens of thousands rather than millions.

Luckily, America has a bunch of megachurches and the pastors collectively have influence. I also think they'd be the least paralyzed of groups with lobbying influence in American politics. Scientology, of course...well, we can see.

The next question regarding religious reaction is, what happens? Condemnation? Outreach/ministry to comfort the people detained in the camps as an act of mercy and redemption? Conversion therapy? Pitchfork parties? I'd imagine that with some of these groups, "Burn the witches!" becomes a thing.

[HeySeuss]

Also, let's shift the discussion over to the OOC.

It's definitely worth having there or in the chat.