[OOC] 𝒟𝒪𝒪𝑀𝒮𝒜𝒴𝐸𝑅𝒮 - Duality in the Land of the Dead

[Opposition]

𝒟𝒪𝒪𝑀𝒮𝒜𝒴𝐸𝑅𝒮

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[[[Hey. Have you ever felt forgotten? Have you ever felt your memory decay? Maybe you’ve seen it in others. While drifting through life, little pieces of you that exist in others deteriorate, like they’re chipped away.]]]

[[[Have you ever felt a connection snap? Like, some fake red string gets scissored, snipped, and that’s it. What once was is gone, and you can choose to move on. But often, I find that we get lost. We chase the shredded, shedded string and grasp at its frayed edges. Just like that you’re off course. In a misguided attempt to save a single inkling of something you once thought would carry on, and you’ve tumbled off the path. Maybe in your frantic wandering more strings snap.]]]

[[[Some of us are down to our last.]]]

[[[Our connections to this world are maintained by only fragments of fabrics. You’d think most people would want to hold on, but at the edge you feel this switch in perspective creep up and infect you. Maybe it’s the Big Man Downstairs plucking your last strings, asking for a dance down below. All it takes is one misstep and just like that, you can forego all the ill-fate of the everyday. Take a trip to some sort of sick and twisted basement. He’s down there waiting, but that’s his trick. In the blink of an eye, no goodbyes, what came before recedes into the inky black and what’s next is all that’s left. Don’t glance back. You can’t. Sign the contract.]]]

[[[But what’s even worse is being stuck on the edge.]]]

[[[Welcome to the Land of the Dead…]]]

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Welcome to Doomsayers! This will be a surrealist urban fantasy roleplay in which you will each take on one character with many roles: an inpatient in a strange and mysterious asylum experiment, a peregrine outsider in a surreal parallel world, a counsel to devil, demon, and the dead. Will you live up to your reputation, Doomsayer, and bring about an end in the land of all endings, or have you another goal buried in the mental fog? Maybe remnants of your attachments to that strange place—that life you lived—remain.

Our Roles:::

Each player will maintain one character who has been willingly or unwillingly taken into High John’s House of Saints Asylum, where a society with close ties to the American Government conducts a variety of studies on patients who have little recollection of quite where they are, how they got there, and what they’re doing there. Through the mental fog, you will discover you can’t ignore your tie to another strange world: the Land of the Dead, where storybook creatures reside and no common law from your world applies. Will you find out what your connection to this world means? Will you be devoured by the disorder or reclaim it as your birthright?

Our Goal:::

Doomsayers will be a very involved project that demands a lot of each writer taking part. As such, I will be looking for people who are interested not only in developing an interactive complex story that integrates both a variety of player motivations and world lore, but also players who are looking to use the project as an outlet to seriously draft, practice, and improve their writing.

Because of this, I hope you will bear with me through the expansive content of the lore so that we can work together to develop an interesting, multi-layered narrative. The character creation process for Doomsayers will be rather intensive to ensure that we have a powerful and motivated cast that can dedicate themselves to this collaborative performance.

Our Rules:::

Rules

►Follow all of the Guild’s rules and don’t metagame or powergame. Working cooperatively with other writers’ characters can be challenging, but as you learn to give and take without overly modifying another player’s experience, you’ll find unexpected new opportunities arise. That being said, I expect all players to respect the actions of other characters and realistically interact with the world.

►Doomsayers will be an advanced RP, as I want to adhere to certain quality standards. While quality is greater than quantity, I’d like each writer to substantially contribute in each of their posts. Focuses here will be to aim for around 3-5 developed paragraphs, regular dialogue interaction, and balance of action and reaction. If you are ever struggling to create a post or come up with an idea, I am willing to help work through ideas and I imagine our other writers will be as well.

►Be friendly and respectful to the rest of the group. If any sort of problem comes up, hash things out respectfully. Unnecessary OOC arguments will bring no positive benefit to the players. Don’t be afraid to bring up issues that may arise so that we can talk through things and solve any problems. I’d prefer us all to be on a friendly page.

►This story necessitates heavy participation, discussion, and active pursuit of personal character development alongside main story plotlines. What I’ve found can be the most important aspect of collaborative roleplaying is how deeply players choose to interact with the story, other characters, and themselves. Please do your best to regularly include and interact with the players you are in scenes with, and please try to actively pursue storylines as they emerge and interest you.

►While I would like everyone to be posting on a semi-regular basis, I understand that issues may arise and we all get busy. I tend to run a game that can get slow at times. My main intention is to keep Doomsayers going regardless of what roadblocks we all hit. If you need to take a temporary leave of absence and can’t post, please let the group know. That being said, if you are unable to post for an extended period of time, I will likely control your character as an NPC until your return so we can continue the story moving along.

►This story will have 18+ themes. Themes of mental illness, alienation, and the forsaken may be heavy at times. Violence and descriptive combat can play a large role in portions of the roleplay. Please keep that in mind. While you don’t have to go into graphic detail, expect rattling violence from ruthless aggressors. Due to the above, I expect all players to be adults and approach these topics with tact and respect.

► Nothing is ever the perfect immortal. Not even in the Land of the Dead. Expect your actions to have consequences. While you will have a lot of freedom of choice in Doomsayers, options will open and close both for individuals and for the group as decisions are made. Please understand that the actions the players take will not be forgotten by the world around them.

►This roleplay will run a Discord server for communication, though I hope you all will actively use the thread to keep Doomsayers relevant and alive. If you would like to be added to the Discord, add me at Opposition#4407.

What To Expect:::

►Doomsayers will have a heavy focus on the practice of writing as the players create the story. As such, I’m looking for players that want to use the RP as an outlet to improve their writing. I encourage workshopping ideas together, providing feedback, and cognating on our own writing throughout your process. As an employed writing advisor, I’ll also be offering unique critique sessions to each player as well should they want greater feedback.

►When writing scenes, you should be prepared to interweave the perspectives of your Doomsayer and their counterpart. Certain scenes will take place in reality while others entirely in the Land of the Dead. It is important to note that these two perspectives are separate and won’t have the same experiences, memories, and personalities.

►Doomsayers will have a focus on conceptualization and surrealist imagery rather than any hard magic system or skill system. Rather than writing a character to fulfill a niche role, or building a strategically useful and powerful character, I encourage you to explore your own creativity in a new direction. You will get out as much as you give in to Doomsayers.

►All players should be ready to establish your characters in both worlds with open goals that can be strived for as well as interfered with by the plots and NPCs you encounter. Regular interaction and intertwining of your personal subplots with those of other player characters is also necessary to move the group forward.

►I have not established a hard limit on the number of characters as that will depend upon how much interest the RP gets and how many people can put together sheets, but I will be deciding and capping the cast around the principles established here. Those who push creative boundaries and are looking to experiment with their writing will be given precedence. I am currently looking for at least 4-5 players minimum, but could go much higher depending on the application pool. With that said, please understand that I am looking to take a rather serious group of roleplayers and I can't always take everyone along for the ride. If you are not accepted upon first drafting a sheet, there will be more opportunities throughout the life of Doomsayers for new players to join in with additional opportunities and unique possibilities available.

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[Opposition]

Lore

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High John’s House of Saints:::

Reach through the static attacking your head. How did you end up here?

High John’s House of Saints is an establishment shrouded in mystery. With patients that are never quite sure how they ended up there and a faculty of specialists and esoteric clinicians, the true origin of the House of Saints’ funding and mission are unknown. The asylum itself is built in a forest grove with a backdrop of volcanic mountains isolated in high elevations presumed to be somewhere in the American northwest. Arranged as a compound array of structures, there is great variance in the House’s buildings, but the main structure in which the patients are housed is a large brick structure with innumerable towers and crenellations. No patient has successfully mapped its labyrinthine passageways. Dare to explore further around the compound, and you might find esoteric lab spaces or training barracks.

While each patient’s experience is unique, most of the tests that take place are reminiscent of cold war fringe scientific experiments that leave patients impaired, dessicated, disoriented, detached, and with lapses in memory. While keeping track of time can be difficult in the House, most imagine that experiments happen sporadically, sometimes days apart, sometimes weeks apart, sometimes hours apart. In a sense, most patients come to believe they’re losing pieces of themselves with each new experiment, and often the only thing that remains in place of the lingering emptiness are flashes of hallucinogenic imagery. Inhuman creatures, impossible geometry, and unlawful physics—a world on the other side.

The Land of the Dead:::

You’ve heard it in the whispers in your head. Its messages call you to the desolate. Feel your inherent connection.

The Land of the Dead is a space where everything lost inevitably ends up: a limbo beyond all things, the precipice—at the edge of the void. Believed by the researchers at the House to be a sort of drain from which all dimensions are sucked into, the Land of the Dead is perpetually suspended in time ‘at the edge’, frozen moments before apocalypse. There are a number of factors that play into this. From the fragments of observations that have been collected and documented of the Land of the Dead, speculations have been made that claim the very fabric of its universe is shaped like a constantly collapsing double-helix spiral. There are no planets and no stars. The fabric of the Land of the Dead is warped and constantly shifting and falling further into its own void. Thus, the laws of physics are completely skewed and the limits of possibility are entirely speculative.

Chaos reigns above all else in the Land of the Dead, but that hasn’t stopped civilization from rising and falling back into the flames. While the landscape is extremely varied and you can never quite be sure of where you are in the Land of the Dead, layer upon layer of the remnants of ancient civilizations are built up and crumbling all alongside each other. In one second, you may see endless cities stretching on as far as your eyes will reach. In the next, fantastic cliff formations and torrential rifts bisect the land.

The Land of the Dead is far from empty. The Dead, shadows of creatures estranged from their past lives, fill its urban landscapes. They say when you’re ready to cast it all away, The Big Man Downstairs will come and take you. Cross the river and you’ll arrive at the Gate. In a place where there’s no need to survive, all you can do is try, but the empty-handed dead wanderers from beyond are not alone. Gnarled beasts await to usher you into this interim. Cartels of Devils and rabid Demons lurk the streets, demean, depress, and devour the Dead who can’t quite jive in the new world. When the Dead denizens have no motive, no goal, no hope, what’s left?

Inhabitants of the Land of the Dead:::

►The Dead

When an entity loses all connection to this world, and nothing but the calling void remains, chance may have it that they find themselves stripped of their identity. In one second, the anguish evaporates. You’ll cross the river and the Gatemen await to let you into the Land of the Dead. Memories, final remnant possessions—don’t count on holding on for long. The Gatemen will demand their due, lest you dare to dance at the river in limbo into eternity.

The Dead make up the majority of entities existing in the Land of the Dead. While there is great variance in their masses, the Dead are typically identified by their ‘husk-like’ appearance. As the Land of the Dead begins to take them, their bodies will further eschew their human form and give way to desiccated shells with skin like stone and bright yellow eyes. To join the dead is to become one with the end, but even in the eyes of the hollow creatures there is something left: the Hunger.

The Dead carry an insatiable appetite right alongside the Land of the Dead spiralling in on itself. The hardy creatures are known to eat anything and everything, from solid matter to other creatures. Managing the Hunger until the prospective End tends to become the sole focus of a Dead husk. Societies of the Dead have risen and fallen based on this premise, but no group has emerged to unify them. Thus, the Dead all have their own fleeting purpose in the Land of the Dead. Everyone needs to find something to pass the time.

►The Doomsayers

It’s a strange fate—stuck upon the interim, at the edge of the disk—on the outside looking in. No one knows quite why, but there are a rare few cases of those who have seen into the interim and come back. At the edge of this world’s connection, the so-called ‘Doomsayers’ can see the end. It often comes first in hazy memories misplaced, as though the Doomsayer were always there, lurking in the Land of the Dead.

The Doomsayers play a bit of an esoteric and chaotic role in the Land of the Dead. While its Dead inhabitants have mostly resigned attitudes towards the acceptance of the End and the oppressive forces of their strange homeland, the Doomsayers are known to invade the Land of the Dead with the drive to shape the world around them. Because of this, the Doomsayers are omens. While they are a rare sight, Doomsayers are often held in a spot of contempt, distance, and reverence all at the same time.

Doomsayers enter the Land of the Dead through parallel-but-altered versions of themselves in reality. Each Doomsayer that wanders through the Land of the Dead is different, with a completely different set of strange abilities to distort the very dimension itself. Each of these unique individuals tends to be the embodiment of their own doom prophecy that intersects their own reality and the Land of the Dead. They are often known as the only creatures in the Land that are able to oppose the great Demons and Devils.

The Outsiders:::

The Land of the Dead is itself so distant that we can hardly understand the bounds of its black void—a pandaemonium. Lurking within it, creatures seem to have emerged in primordial times to occupy the once craven space.

►The Devils

The End’s Greatest Machinations...

Some believe it was them that weaved the Land of the Dead out of the emptiness. The Devils, creatures made of the darkest shadows, have spread like a virus across the Land of the Dead. Intelligent, physically-attuned to the strange circumstances of their twisted world, and revering hierarchical order above all else, these outsiders have been responsible for the great creation and undoing of many great civilizations throughout the Land of the Dead.

With each devil owing allegiance only to another in their many orders and substructures, their desire to exploit the environment and its Dead inhabitants are almost uncontained. The Devils are known to set up elaborate factions that the Land of the Dead’s inhabitants can’t help but utilize, striking dangerous deals with the Outsiders in the process. More than anything, the power of the Devils is propped up by the innate fear they strike into their foes with the overwhelming order of their Dread Courts.

Having developed a fine control of their own evolutionary process over aeons, Devils are a very diverse species. While they are all made of the same basic composite that amounts to a sort of flesh-armor over their form, the shapes that Devils take are based on their specific position in the greater order. Common phenotypes include abilities like cell regeneration and augmentation, manipulation of the laws of physics, and psychic connection to other entities in the Land of the Dead.

►The Demons

Believed to be the first primordial spawn of the void, the Demons are creatures that haunt the shadows of the Land of the Dead. They are governed only by chaos and pandaemonium. Since there is seemingly no bound or pattern to the spawning of Demons, they irregularly amass around the Land of the Dead, preying on any creature they find. Most know them as terrors that will level cities or devour the Dead.

Much like their counterparts in the void, Demons have incomprehensible evolutionary processes, but the diversity of Demons is far higher than even the Devils. It is believed that each Demon is evolving and mutating beyond the greater species, and often this can occur through a ‘rewriting’ process during the creature’s life rather than at its genesis.

►The Vestiges

Pandaemonium is full of forces and energies unseen. Their interaction, their sentience, their influence are all mysteries. The Vestiges are the reflections of these mysteries. Researchers at the House have yet to prove the existence of Vestiges, but accounts pulled from the minds of Doomsayer counterparts of interaction are hypothesized to be caused by microscopic life that unify into greater entities to create a sort of collective consciousness. These Vestiges manifest throughout the Land of the Dead seemingly at random.

The Doomsayer Loophole:::

Watch your step amongst the Dead. It’s said that the moment a creature enters the Land of the Dead, they are stuck there until its end—bound by contract with the Big Man Downstairs, but there exists the Doomsayer Loophole. A small subset of the populace in reality, often wayward and lost, can abandon their human connections and enter the sensory world of a projected counterpart in the Land of the Dead.

Doomsayers can be quite unlike their counterparts in reality, but their interaction is nonetheless a subject of wonder for any House researcher. Measured signatures across both planes seems to indicate that both the Doomsayer and the counterpart take actions independent of one another. While almost always unaware of the Doomsayer, the counterpart can be manipulated into trance-like unconscious states wherein they see into the Land of the Dead. It is hypothesized that the connection between Doomsayer and counterpart goes much deeper.

Consistent observation over several experiments has provided marginal information on the Doomsayer and its relationship with its counterpart. Scientists have since come to a few conclusions, though much greater study is required. Firstly, research notes that the role a Doomsayer plays in its interactions with the Land of the Dead is highly variable depending on its counterpart. Counterpart personalities, beliefs, and feelings can change the course of the Doomsayer in powerful fluxes. Second, the more a counterpart undergoes observation tests, the greater the connection to the Doomsayer and the Land of the Dead becomes. Counterparts may show greater aptitude for connecting and influencing the actions of their Doomsayer avatar, but this development can manifest in strange ways in base reality. The most common effects on the counterpart include gaps in memory, disconnection and distance from the material world, and ‘emptiness’.

There have been documented—but unverified—cases of gaps in existence upon one plane, wherein a counterpart disappears from House observation for stretches of time only to reappear in a completely different place than the original loss of contact. These tales should be held in great scrutiny before the Doomsayers are falsely represented in official reports.

As a Doomsayer counterpart grows more connected to their Doomsayer, there is a threshold that is reached wherein the counterpart receives an apocalyptic prophecy of the End of the Land of the Dead. These prophetic tales of death have provided the House great insight into the individual identity of each Doomsayer, their counterpart, and the motives of the pair.

[Opposition]

Character Creation

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The character creation process for Doomsayers is a bit intensive and abstract compared to the usual character sheet for Guild RPs. In a sense, you’ll be creating two entirely different sheets (don’t worry too much; both of them are short). One side of the major sheet involves outlining your character in reality while the other side describes the mysterious Doomsayer that your character will be uncovering right alongside you.

In the Land of the Dead, Doomsayers are one of the closest things to any sort of ‘magic’. Your Doomsayer will be able to employ a variety of mystic abilities that shape the world around them, but rather than specifically outlining your abilities, we will be relying on an abstract approach based on the concepts and themes of your Doomsayer. Thus, you’ll be able to employ this sort of ‘magic’ onto the world when it works well for the story, almost as if the Land of the Dead shapes to the Doomsayers rather than the Doomsayers exerting their influence on the world.

With that said, there will certainly be limits on what you can accomplish when inhabiting your Doomsayer. The thematic concepts that are at the center of the sheets (Virtue, Vice, Quest, Doomsayer Prophecy, etc) will determine what your Doomsayer is able to do. Keep that in mind as you write, as your limits and abilities will be bound to your creative ability rather than any arbitrary external factors. When writing these crucial elements of the sheet, particularly those detailing actual writing samples of your Doomsayer, you do not have to omit their mysticism entirely, but it shouldn’t be the central focus of any section. Explore as much as you’d like.

Creation Guidelines:::

►Characters can be from anywhere in the world, though it would be nice if you all created people who spoke English for the sake of group communication and avoiding that sort of additional obstacle.

►You can choose whether or not your character has any fragmented knowledge of their Doomsayer, though your Doomsayer and counterpart will (at the start of the RP) not know any concrete detail about one another. You may, however, have the off-sense that you’ve seen the Doomsayer in dreams, or in a slip of the imagination. Allow that to influence your character as you will.

►There’s been a slight change to the sheet since the interest check. Doomsayer title is no longer the same thing as Doomsayer Paragon. Thus, you can call your Doomsayer something related, but independent of your Paragon.

Character Sheet

Cut

[Opposition]

As we begin to jump into the (rather intensive) character creation process, I'm going to be on standby for questions as needed. To provide better correspondence, the Doomsayers discord will now be live, but please note: the selection process is not finalized. We may not be able to accept everyone, so entrance into the discord is preliminary for character building.
If you'd like to be added to the Discord, hit me up. My tag is in the rules.

Also, we are still looking for any new interested parties that dare to tackle the whack Doomsayers character sheet. Throw a reply in the thread if you're interested and the other players and I can help you with any confusing aspects of the OOC.

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TO BE ADDED:
-Specific locations in High John's House of Saints
-Core NPC in High John's House of Saints
-Specific locations in the Land of the Dead

[Firecracker_]

me, finally making my descent into the land of the dead to write another Gary Sue

[Mixtape Ghost N]

@Firecracker_ i read that as "Gay Sue"

[Atrophy]

@Firecracker_ i read that as "Gay Sue"

@Ghost Note

Stop stealing my character ideas...

[Mixtape Ghost N]

<Snipped quote by Ghost Note>

Stop stealing my character ideas...

@Atrophy

No it's my character idea.

[DeadDrop]

Edgar-West & The Undergod

[[[P R O J E C T ::: U N D E R G O D]]]

[[[L A I N E D G A R - W E S T]]]

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Layer 01:::

Patient Profile:::

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”Do you feel it? The force of ten Gs as you turn wildly, I can feel it from here.”

Name: Lain Edgar-West "Joker-2"

Gender:Male

Age: Twenty-nine.

Classification: Human.

Physical Description: He was impressive, standing at six foot one the man was something of a beast. A beautiful caged animal just yearning to be let out, he could of been a model he was a handsome babyface thing. The one women dream about and the one men envy, he was close to being pale but there was blood underneath the flesh. He was a platinum blonde, with an athletic build he rivaled sometimes even his strongest foes but his strength lay in his wings not his fists. He had a smile, the one you could see your reflection in. He oozed everything that a perfectly sculpted human could, yet something was off. Something was oddly inhuman.

Psychological Profile:::

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Egotistical | Charming | Calculating| Dishonest | Callous | Psychotic

Patient Observations::: It's unilaterally accepted that Lain is a violent individual, his ability to overpower and injure staff is relatively so often that a special team of trained personnel are on call to sedate the young pilot. Though once sedated Lain is docile and compliant with staff as he simply cannot resist them at that point. He is often under increased surveillance due to his malcompliance with staff, though when he isn't combative he is quiet and often seen humming or singing to himself. Looking up at the ceiling, treatment so far has been progressing decently but it often hampered by his outbursts.

Deepest Desire::: Worthy Foes of The Everlasting Skies

During his time as a pilot he never found a true foe he could call his equal nor could he find someone that would challenge his very skill as the King of the Skies. It's a void that needed to be filled, every Ace every team or squadron he face he fell them all without too much remorse. There was no one that could sate his quest for a decent fight, perhaps this generation of pilots were just so lack luster that they fell into futility? Regardless, he'd continue to search even in his state of captivity.

Quest::: Return the Crown

Ruling the skies was the sole source of Lain's power it balanced around the fact that Joker team could take on anyone and fell them. It was a good life style, the power they could project was truly knee trembling yet with the fall of Joker team and the illegal incarceration of Lain the two have been broken up. Once freed from his chains, Lain will find Joker-1 (The fabled Kilgore Garcia-Menaz) and take up the skies one last time. Reclaim his crown, and defeat all pretenders.

For only one pair of kings rules these deep blue skies.

Virtue::: Triggerman

Lain is the force that drives the nail into it's place, he's the glue that keeps it all together. Whether it's his natural prowess at commanding the mechanical giants that fly so high above our lifetimes or the sauve way he's speaking to his enemies and foes that demoralize and defeat them before contemplation of engagement is considered. He considers himself to be the Triggerman, the man that will get the job done no matter how gritty or painful it may be. Sometimes morally ambiguous, the skies don't cede to black or white or the morally grey. What happens up there is based on instinct, and surviving it often left to second guesses.

Vice::: Sin baby, it's a sin.

Hubris is something that never crosses the mind of the bright and ever vigilant mind of Lain's. He thinks he is so good, no one has ever told him no. It's just so fucked, one day it will catch up with him there will be a reality check if this even is reality any more. It won't be pretty, but his ever-constant ego reminds him that what he's doing is righteous and just. He knows that he'll never fall, that he's untouchable but that overconfidence will ultimately be the downfall of the downtrodden pilot.

Likes:::
►The Skies
►Fighter jets
►Freedom
►Winning
►Joker Team

Dislikes:::
►The Ground
►The Man
►The House
►The Useless
►The Damned

Oddities::: Lain keeps a journal, of all the sorties and all the kills he has racked up. Every plane, every pilot, their allegiances and dates. He can't forget, no he won't the things he's done. Is it remorse or just some twisted game to him, it's simply unknown.

Background Information:::

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“You and I are the opposite sides of the same coin, we may look similar when we're face to face but we'll never be in the same direction.”

Wisps of Memory:::

The jets soared over head.

Looking up into the sky Lain saw a beautiful dance, two jets chasing each other like a break neck dance of something sinister. It was beautiful like an art and it was something he'd never forget, the crackling of sound came to him in an instant. The 30mm guns firing off from the jet ripped into the other sending it smoking as it took a nose dive towards the town, a plume of fire and smoke erupted as it crashed into a building. Specifically the Red Tide (the towns favourite, now lost forever in the void). Lain blinked, excitement rushed through his veins as the victor flew away. He'd be hailed a hero, the enemy was dead and what more could be asked for? It was a fuck-you moment, he had lived the others had died and there was nothing more too it. A live on the edge like that, who could resist it? Lain knew he wouldn't be able to, it would suck him in and in the end it did.

That War was a terrible one, the one where the U.S. had to do a lot of flying and a lot of killing. After university it was clear where his sights were set on, the USAF was in a deficit of pilots and they needed to be trained, young and smart pilots even more so now than ever. Enlisting was the best thing he could of done, going through the air academy and receiving his commission made his parents so proud but they'd never understand what being a pilot meant to him. They lacked those kind of receptors in their brains, Lain was special and he knew it and so did some other people but this story is about him - not them. Earning his commission as a second lieutenant he was assigned to the 5th Fighter Squadron. Fancy names didn't matter it was about what you did that everyone cared about, what he'd do would change the war.

He was mentored by him, not Joker-1 like people would suspect but him. The old man, he'd survived many wars and many conflicts. He was old but still in service, a lieutenant-colonel. He'd been all over the globe, fought dozens of flags and brought them all down. Borders ceded and treaties were signed because of him, Rainer Kellerman a strange name but it rang bells everywhere he went. He was a hero, a war hero and one that everyone respected. He was the king of the skies but his time had gone, someone else had to take his place as king. Maybe he had been that pilot he saw oh-so long ago, dancing through the skies with ease and grace. The one that never let his prey get away.

Joker team formed by the hands of Kellerman, the teams were all his fledglings waiting to become full-grown big birds just like him. When Kellerman left it was just Joker and a few other teams, they were special yet the still didn't see their potential. Joker-1, Kilgore Garcia-Menaz the man the myth and legend was his best friend. They went through everything together, with the start of This War the two would be key in it's development. Over the years, fighting in such a austere environment the two became soured with their opponents. No one could beat them, was it fate or was it just a boring and torturous existence. They'd been promoted, both captains both wild and young bucks. It was great, yet something was stumbled upon. Kilgore was nosy, he liked to know what he was getting into. Intelligence-driven, he dug into something evil.

He went to share it with Lain, it was about This War. Nothing was what it seemed, yet Lain coulden't remember exactly what it was he found. All he knew is that the military police came, they tried to take Lain but he took off though Kilgore was swiftly arrested by the MPs. In a last-ditch effort, Lain strafed the airbase blowing up the command center leaving it in a state of twisted metal and gore. He went deep-north, stashing his plane on an abandoned farm. He thought his plan was foolproof, he'd escape north to the Land of the Leaf but a militarized swat team had other plans as he was subdued before he makes it. The papers claimed he was a domestic terrorist, he was committed to the JOHN where'd he never sees those blue skies ever again.

Yet, they were wrong.

The next strike would be for the throat.

In the House of High John:::

Being eternally caged in the JOHN Was not an ideal lifestyle, he tried to fight it all the fog and the nurses. They would all be felled eventually, but he would not allow the FOG to take over his mind he coulden't forget who he was. Yet it was working, he forgot some things like the documents he was shown. He was a fresh face though, unlike the mysterious Chica he had not done hard time in the JOHN yet. He continues to resist where he can but they are getting smarter and are employing a variety of not-so nice tactics to ensure his compliance.

The Team as they are verbally referred to as, must be some kind of special forces or of trained descent. They were not here for games and knew exactly how to restrain or coerce poor Lain. They would be the first to fall under his fist of the ever-damned. Though he rued the place, he enjoyed the peace yet it would soon be broken. Peace is a lie.

Fragments and Connections:::

The first image that comes to mind is Garcia-Menaz the fabled Joker-1 his wingman and his compatriot they did everything together in the times of service. Though it's unclear if the man is alive or if he's just another corpse in the carcass of the betrayed and hung. Though once he got out he'd have to find him, a pair of kings were no pair without the other. The second rings to his parents, Ma' and Pa' they were both tough and well-liked people back in the town but were they still alive. They should be, lest the U.S. government wanted the full wrath of their creation, the flag would burn if the old ones were harmed.

Flickering images of a pretty young woman, a blonde passed through his mind like a vision of future-past. She was an ex or a girlfriend at the time, a name slipped from his mind as he drew back on his past but the fog was just too strong. Who was she? It was unclear, but an investigation would truly needed to be conducted to find out what her role was.

Layer 02:::

Description of a Doomsayer in the Interim:::

---

[[[DOOMSAYER:::THE UNDERGOD]]

Doomsayer Title:::
UNDERGOD, The Unremorseful

Description::: It looked like it was of a warrior of old, like from the bronze age the doomsayer looked like it was hailing from The Empire. He was stoic with the ways of his appearance, adorned in the oldest of attire the robes of purple and the golden laurel of death spoke waves about the leader. The Undergod wasen't massive he was a smaller statue of six feet, though his agents are a different story. His skin was fading, rotting even and he was demonic in nature. His armor was faded, and oozed black as he carried around weapons of old. A gladius, a round shield amongst other ancient spawn-slaying gear.

Doomsayer Paragon:::Warlord
The Undergod is known to the world of dead as a leader and warlord of the damned and be-broken, the dead follow him. Not all dead, but those who know what's about to come. Those who can see the End Times follow the man in his undead legion of the unremorseful, he's a leader and truth purveyor first and foremost. The being is stoic and speaks with charisma, courage and certainty. He's given speeches for as long as time has existed, he can pull and sway those who dare listen to him. Perhaps the most intimidating thing about the Undergod. Regardless, his legion follows him and it continues to grow. For a warrior must shed blood when the sword is unsheathed those who fall only bond themselves to a fate already decided to them. Joining the legion may be their only escape, but those who refuse only find themselves smited from the depths of purgatory, perhaps this is fate.

Doomsayer Prophecy::: The End Times

Throughout the constant visions of the ever-bound future, the End Times are what is signaled in the visions to the Undergod. The gates of the dead open up and leading the fight is the Undergod himself as the legions of the dead and hungry enter Earth, the helpless are soon consumed and those who fight are felled without much struggle. The legion of dead overtake earth, their new home and their new kingdom ruled by the Undergod. Chaos and destruction await, the time of which this is will occur is unclear but the legion grows - so does their hunger.

A Legend:::

The stories grow as time passes in the Land of the Dead, for the word of the Undergod spreads to every crevice and enclave of the damned and forgotten. The Undergod is the embodiment of war, he's a greedy and unremorseful Doomsayer from what the scribes of the dead ascertain from their interactions. They claim he was born from a warrior of the ancient age, betrayed by the vestiges of his service to the public the Undergod sought to rally a legion that would face any foe that challenged it. Though his motives were clear, the Land of the Dead was a forgotten relic and Earth would be the home of his new empire. Some say the Undergod is the prophet of a new age while other see him as a warlord looking to secure his power in the Land of the Dead. One thing was for certain, the gods would ultimately decide his purpose.

A Sighting:::
It started with a sounding of a horn, it was distorted and sounded like something of old but it had a twisted twang to it when blown into. The lone dead scab blew into it as the shuffling of feet, rather the marching of the undead came. They were armored, armed, and blindly stepped forward as the Doomsayer himself appeared. The Undergod was flanked by a retinue, rather a group of Praetorian guardsmen - a bigger and deader group of tallboys. His standard-bearer was nearby, the flag bore a melting face grotesque and gore for all to see. Was it truly a banner or was that someone's face?

The Undergod spoke, he was stoic as he preached one of his speeches from long ago speaking of unity and the End Times oh how soon they were coming. His ability to swoon the undedicated caused envy in some as he pulled more bodies to join his legion of the ever-damned and corpsed. He'd often give speeches to large gatherings or places of congregation, though during the battle against the legions of hedonists and unmoveable it's often described as a blood bath of unspeakable proportions. Whatever truly happens on the field, stays there.

𝒜 𝒞𝑜𝓃𝓉𝓇𝒶𝒸𝓉 𝒲𝒾𝓉𝒽 𝒟𝑒𝒶𝓉𝒽:::

Lain Edgar-West

THE UNDERGOD

I own all char ideas as of now.

[BlackBlood]

Cannot wait to release this absolute edge ball.

[DeadDrop]

Me, waiting for BBs edge ball.

[BlackBlood]

T R A V I S H O A N

Travis Hoan

T R A V I S H O A N

---

Patient Profile:

---

"I woke up in this place, surrounded by people I don't know, and with no memory of how I got here. Do you really think I'd be here if I knew what to do?"

Name: Travis Christopher Matthew Hoan.

Gender: Male.

Age: 20 years old.

Classification: Human, naturally.

Physical Description: Travis is often described as “a brick wall”. He doesn’t speak, he’s taller than most of the other patients, and his conversational skills are especially wall-like. His stature is that of roughly six feet and five inches, a mesomorphic frame with lean muscle. His hair is blond in colour, messed in the front with a subtle fade to the base of his neck. Double crowned, a troublesome spike of hair always sticking at the back left. His blue eyes, along with his whole face, show no expression most of the time. The only expression he does show is one of displeasure, more akin to disgust. His wardrobe is of muted tones, nothing really holding an express colour or silhouette.

Psychological Profile:::

---

Stoic | Uncaring | Disconnected | Whispy | Dry| Unwavering

Patient Observations::: According to the reports of clinicians and other staff within the house, Hoan isn’t much of a threat, requiring that he is kept severely medicated. He often paces the halls in these states he finds himself in, wandering around but never interacting, as if he can’t see the people around him.

Reports of Hoan, when his medication has run out or become ineffective, differ from the norm. When unsedated, Hoan has intense, panic-inducing mental intrusions. These make him very paranoid, but he claims when unsedated he is completely lucid. He is convinced that the paranoid invasions in his head are completely sane. He has attempted an escape from the house seven times since his stay. He claims that the tests they do to him unlock ancient cryptic thoughts, of which he claims is what induces his erratic and anti-social behaviour.

Deepest Desire::: Run.
There is something evil within. Something dark. Something that nothing good could come of. Hoan wants nought other than an escape from the house. No care for those around him, no care for staff, he just wants to run. Whatever it is, whatever those tests do to him, he hates. So he must flee. Every time he’d been unsuccessful, and they have him too sedated to even be able to try again most days. These slight moments of complete lucidness, he clings to them as hard as he can.

Quest::: The quest Hoan follows and his desire are one in the same. His immediate desire is to escape and rejoin the world. While his desire is more about escaping the clutches of ancient darkness, his quest is simple. Get as far away from the High John’s House of Saints as humanly possible. The exact other end of the globe. Whatever plagues him, it only plagued him in here, not when he was outside. Or what he can remember of that at least…

Virtue::: Unbreakable.
Hoan possesses an immense fighting spirit. His vigour at the idea of escaping the house even after his seventh failure unwavering. He doesn’t stop until he gets what he wants, and he won’t give in to any sort of suggestion unless heavily drugged.

Vice::: Apathetic Sado-Masochism
Travis Hoan cannot, for whatever reason, empathise with another human being. He is completely numb to the strife or happiness of another. The only way he really can empathise with someone is through pain, and so the pain of others is interesting to him. Inflicting pain, as well as receiving it, are a release of dopamine. He cannot care for another, and cannot understand someone unless through suffering.

Likes:::

• Wandering around.
• Planning an escape.
• Tapping on his bedframe.
• Tuesday's in the cafeteria.
• Some of the staff.

Dislikes:::

• The Tests.
• The images, those damn images...
• Most of the higher clearance clinicians.
• The crow that pecks at his window.
• His medication.

Oddities::: Travis is meticulous about his morning routine. He holds a range of toiletries, facial scrubs, and herbal face masks. Along with that, an intense callisthenics workout that keeps him in shape. He is impressively strong because of this routine, and can sometimes overpower staff members. Even when severely drugged, he will attempt to still carry out this process, despite usually being unsuccessful.

Background Information:::

---

“My family, friends, none of their faces are in my mind anymore. I can't see them...”

Wisps of Memory::: Travis was born in a graveyard.

His mother was widowed by his father, who had died during his deployment in the middle of Afghanistan, leaving the boy with less than stellar father figures all of his life. The circumstances of his birth are odd. His mother, despite being still two months away from her due date, suddenly began to give birth in the middle of her late husbands funeral ceremony. Luckily, one of his father's close relatives was a midwife, and the baby was safely delivered before the ambulance arrived on the scene. As he was premature, he was a sickly baby, but this didn't stop him inheriting his fathers build and height.

His childhood was messy. With his father dead, his mother and her extended family were the only ones who could look after him. His mother had to take a second job, leaving him with his grandparents. They weren't especially strict, his grandparents were flawed, but nice in their own way. They had expressed some worry over Travis however. He'd often find himself disconnected from conversations, where a small child would be inquisitive Travis simply wasn't. There was one particular incident when he was seven years old, in which Travis had somehow hunted down and crushed a mouse to death, and he told his grandmother afterwards. The boy was almost unaffected by his actions, numb to the crimson on his light-up sneakers.

This naturally landed him with a seat in a councillors chair. He was diagnosed with ASPD, prescribed intensive psychotherapy, in the hopes the little boy could be fixed. He got out of that program after a few years, and continued on with his life. He suppressed his thoughts, tried to fake emotions to fit in, and lived life behind the mask that the medicinal system had provided for him. This continued throughout his early tens all the way to his sixteenth. Or at least, he tried to continue being normal. Weird things started happening the more he grew. He'd occasionally disappear from his bed, dogs would bark at him without any aggression from him, among many other strange happenings.

His mother had remarried by this time, and the man she had now married was abusive. Not physically, but emotionally. He'd constantly berate and break down those around him, forming a complex in the mind of Travis. He worried if everything he did was ever going to be good enough, or if maybe the gaslighting was actually correct all along. Either way he got out of there as quick as he could, got into a good college, and made his own way in the world. Or at least, that was the plan.

It was only about six months ago. From what Hoan can remember, him and a girlfriend where arguing. As he's so apathetic, she was very upset and he couldn't care, and that escalated. She began breaking things, throwing objects, and eventually knocked Hoan unconscious. The next thing he knew he'd woken up in a hospital bed. He'd left his mother, his girlfriend, and his entire life behind.

In the House of High John:::
Before properly sedated, Travis was constantly trying to make a run for it. He went through three attempts within the first two weeks, making it very clear that he did not want to stay within those walls. He has since been placed on a large dosage of Droperidol in order to sedate him and stop him from escaping. He attempted a further four attempts regardless of this sedation, sometimes actively missing doses. Due to this, the staff expect that he will probably try to escape again at some point, and so they try to do everything in their power to stop him from doing that. Regardless, Travis still fights onward.

Travis is disconnected from the other patients further. He'd rather be exercising in his room than sitting in a room with a few chairs and a bunch of whackjobs. He tends to keep others distant. The others don't matter to him. Having any sort of special relationship with the people here is pointless, he has people he needs to see, and he needs to run away from this place as fast as he can, nothing to tie him down.

Fragments and Connections::: His mother. Hoan needs to see his mother. He hasn't seen her in what feels like an eternity, and her face is starting to ever so slowly slip from his mind, becoming a blur. He needs the face of his mother back with him, as well as all the others that he's lost. While others may not be tied to the mortal world, Travis Hoan certainly is.

---

L E M A Î T R E

Le Maître

[[[DOOMSAYER::: L E M A Î T R E]]]

Doomsayer Title:::
Le Maître, The Dread Overseer

Description:::
When one sees the dread overseer, they might look them past, mistaking them for your typical dead from certain distances. His almost grey skin would be attributed to this, although upon further inspection one would see this is not the case. His eyes are wrapped in shredded cloth, withered away with sand and dirt, but his forehead exposed. In the centre of which sits a third eye, shut for the moment, and in a perpendicular direction. When imposing his will this eye opens, black veins pulsing in his forehead, and similar for the blinkers resided on the inside of his palms. His hair mirrors that of his counterpart, similar in style, length and colour. His dress sense, however, is more elaborate. Dressed in an old tattered 19th-century suit, two buttons were undone with a ruffle shirt to boot. His feet a bare, their surfaces black and skin ashen. When Le Maître is sighted, he is often seen muttering, or usually staring up into the horizon. Words hardly ever leave his lips. However, the bigger the crowd around him, the more erratic and violent he will become.

Doomsayer Paragon:::
If the Mesmer is representative of balance, and the Undergod order, then The Dread Overseer is chaos. His nature is not to keep all things dramatically balanced or for a union of souls to fight in a just and righteous war. His is a power of chaos, of trickery, of curruption. Black smoke and purple fire consuming things around him with avatars of smoke rising from them, a dark wash of clouds as he passes, and the whispers that resonate from his person without so much as a twitch of his lips. This influence, accompanied by many "tools" he possesses, is used to beat his opponents into submission. That's the only way it can be unleashed. For him to feel any sort of tranquillity, violence must occur beforehand. Otherwise, the knocking won't stop. He cares not for factions or morality. He wishes an end to his own suffering, not anyone else's. Selfish in desire.

Doomsayer Prophecy:::

The key to the end is within The Dread Overseer, as he saw flashes it himself. Awaking in a ruin, he reached a vantage point, and that's when he saw it. An eye, exactly like his own, opened within the sky. It showed him it. Flashes of it. The blaze of purple fire and rot that he would leave, himself at the centre, the heart of the land of the dead. Draining it, expelling the energy and ending all. All pain of the dead, and more importantly the knocking in his head. He'd be left, in the tranquillity of the ash.
A Legend:::
Dread Overseer was a name granted to him, but not one that he ever remembers receiving. The dead call him Le Maître, calling him The Master due to his old (and very french looking according to some of the dead) fashion sense. He tends not to disturb the dead, unless provoked, as they are not really worth the hassle of killing and are rather harmless anyway. Demons and Devils however? They saw him as a challenge. He readily comes to challenge them, as it becomes a point of catharsis for him. Both being hit and finally dominating his opponent, The Dread Overseer had thoroughly exerted his need.

Those who care enough to speculate on him find that his origin appears in an old dusty ruin, as he often finds himself in any way. The exact circumstances of if he was born, or simply came to be, is still lacking knowledge. For all the dead know, Le Maître is nothing to fear, just a being that passes them and sometimes drops in for supplies. He tends not to hang around long, and large groups make him erratic.

A Sighting:::

Walking the ashen planes of the land of the dead, The Dread Overseer is known to murmur to himself. He's often not seen moving his mouth, but it is clear that this noise surrounds him. He wondered right through the streets of a town, the wind around him dropping still. The dead watched, hidden by windows and curtains, but he paid them no mind. He had come there looking for something to do, he had grown bored. Not long after he found his opposition. A fight with a devil followed, and it was met with force from both sides. Visions of smoke appeared from purple blazes, consuming the devil and choking him with the hot ash before he could even react. All eyes flexing, spasming and shaking, he gripped the devil's throat and before the dead knew it-

SNAP!

The devil was done. And the brutality sent waves through the dead present. As if nothing had happened, Le Maître simply ashed the corpse away, not really wanting to leave any bother for the dead. He was from then on continuously hunted, devils come forth, wanting to avenge one after another. Some lived, running away and causing him to blaze everything around him out of frustration, and some died. The ones that died simply were replaced, over and over again. Once they successfully were able to form a unit to surround them, rumour has it he created a blaze so large the avatar of smoke he created was large enough to completely seer a devil to death if they got too close to it. Evidence for it is a stretch of almost half a mile of scorched earth, of which is a common clue that Le Maître had passed. After all, his footprints do burn into the ground.

𝒜 𝒞𝑜𝓃𝓉𝓇𝒶𝒸𝓉 𝒲𝒾𝓉𝒽 𝒟𝑒𝒶𝓉𝒽:::

Travis Hoan,
Le Maître,
All is the same.

---

Interactions Table

Character name	Relationship
[Name of other character]	[Write out your character's opinion and relationship with the character in question.]

[BlackBlood]

He's up!

[DeadDrop]

Bounce that ass no peace!

[Atrophy]

Here we go.

Character Sheet

P r o j e c t :: F l u k e

[[[M A R T Y G A S K I N S]]]

---

---

Layer 01:::

Patient Profile:::

---

“People these days always love to accentuate the negatives. They’re too focused on the cons, when really they should appreciate the artistry. Those suckers shouldn’t look at it like they were cheated. They were treated to a once in a lifetime opportunity to see a master craftsman at work.”

Name: Martin “Marty” Gaskins

Gender: Male

Age: 54

Classification: He’s a creature of habits and comforts, mostly.

Physical Description:
Marty isn’t so much barrel-chested as he is just shaped like a barrel. A short man of five foot and a couple of inches (thanks to some orthopedic shoe lifts), Marty is heavyset with a thick neck and a large, round head. Although he dresses well his arms seem to be too thin for his otherwise stout body, making it appear like he is a bloated boy wearing his dad’s button-up shirt. Any illusion of boyishness ends there. Marty shows every bit of fifty-four on his body. His hands are rough with callouses and the wrinkles make the back of his hand look like a detailed topographic map of a national park. His face is pinkish and resembles a certain cartoon pig if it wore dark, thick glasses and had gray, thinning hair.

Marty’s twitchy and always manages to look guilty, as if he was perpetually possessed by the spirit of a small dog that just got yelled at for pissing all over the freshly mopped linoleum. More than anything, Marty appears harmless—helpless, pathetic even—with a doofy smile, dimly lit brown eyes, and a growing list of minor and imagined medical concerns that makes the ailments of Cavity Sam from Operation pale in comparison. Marty is a paradox given flesh, his existence disproving the theory of evolution while still somehow spitting directly in the face of intelligent design. Despite all of this schlub, his laugh has been theorized as being the most wonderful sound known to man, the one factor that keeps him from being left out on the hillside for the wolves.

Psychological Profile:::

---

Jovial | Empathetic | Oafish | Lonely | Exploitative | Fraud

Patient Observations:::
He’s here because he’s been made. Why else would they keep a mentally stable man here? Marty was at High John’s for the same reason he was at any of the other many psychiatric hospitals he has had brief sojourns at: to exploit the system and scout for easy marks. Often citing major depression as the problem that was plaguing him, the eternally happy Marty never had a problem in his life getting out of a ward once he got committed. The doctors feel like they helped a man down from his well-acted breaking point, the actual patients feel like they met a friend who is kind and cares about whatever whacko bullshit it is they’re going through, and Marty has the names and trust of a couple of people whose identity he can easily steal for a new line of credit. Just about everybody that matters wins.

Only that didn’t happen this time. This time they’re keeping him around, saying he’s actually sick and delusional. They say he has something called Munchausen. Well Marty’s not being fooled. He’s hustled enough people with the old fake disease schtick to know not to name it after a beloved character from the Simpsons. Even after he started to see the other side Marty believed, at least originally, that it’s all part of the con—the work of psychedelics in the salads or acid in the water. Everything has an explanation. It’s High John’s attempt to outwit a natural born swindler, but what they don’t know is that all of this is just now playing into Marty’s next move. He’s smelling a lawsuit, a best-selling autobiography, a talk show circuit, and a movie deal. Perhaps he has been made, but after this he will have it made. He’ll play the part of the stupid, sedated patient until he finds the key to the front door.

Deepest Desire:::
Marty has a colorful cast of fictional dead spouses to pull from whenever he needs a good sob story. Unfortunately, having spent so much time carefully crafting companionship has left him without the opportunity to ever go out and find a true companion that’ll one day die and become an actual sob story. Most of his years are behind him now and it’d be nice to have someone with whom he can enjoy the remaining ones. Not a wife, necessarily, unless there is prenup, but a friend—a real friend, not the “friends” he has that can make something go away. While his relationships with patients have helped hold off some of the despair that comes from loneliness, it isn’t quite the same. A tick cannot become friends with the dog from which it feeds. Marty needs a fellow parasite.

Quest:::
Cybil replaced Marty’s original nurse. She appeared after he emerged, all scattered and disoriented, from the fog of the other side for the first time and helped him through the comedown. Surprisingly, she was more frank about the reality of the situation than any of the other staff at the House of Saints. They chatted after every experiment, and it was during these chats that she began to reveal that she was more than just some other nurse. She knew about Marty, knew about his past, knew about what kind of man he actually was, and knew the name of a woman he’d hooked up with nearly three decades ago—her mother, allegedly.

Naturally, as someone who pretended to be a long-lost kid once or twice, Marty didn’t believe the woman. Despite his unwillingness to believe she insisted that she would help get him (and the rest of the patients) out of the asylum, even though it was in her opinion that his history of conning the mentally unstable was proof alone that he needed to be locked away. He just didn’t deserve to be locked away here. None of them did. And then she didn’t appear for one of their post-experiment chats, and he hasn’t seen her since.

Marty doesn’t believe one bit that the woman is his daughter, but he’s concerned about her wellbeing...and he’s concerned about how much he knew about her. Strangely enough, everyone on staff claims there has never been a woman named Cybil working there. It’s all part of their act to gaslight him, he’s certain, and they’ve threatened the other inpatients to keep them quiet too. Still, before he escapes he is determined to find out the truth about the nurse, to find out how she knows the truth about him, and to make sure that secret stays between the two of them.

Virtue::: Opportunity’s Designer
Good luck doesn’t come from chaos or a random number generator, it’s fathered by patience and birthed by decisiveness. Marty doesn’t jump upon the fruitful opportunities that come by his way, he loads the dice and biases the coin so that everything rolls and flips right into his lap. When he takes this good fortune there’s no feelings of remorse to weigh him down, no fear of punishment, and nothing more than false pity tossed to the losers. Why should he feel an ounce of guilt? After all, he just got lucky, nothing else.

Vice::: The Power of Mythomania
Honestly, honesty is a concept that is practically foreign to Marty. He’s not certain, but he believed it started as a game he’d play with people. He’d start with a lie, and compound upon that lie, and keep going forward with the lie until he had to lie down in the bed of dishonesty he made or get laid out by a violent seeker of truth. There’s a point in life where one tells so many lies that the truth sounds more like a great fib than a record of history. By then, it just feels more right to lie sincerely than tell the truth artificially. Ultimately, his words, his most precious tool, have started to lose their value. The more people realize he’s full of shit, the more worthless they become.

Likes:::

• Routines, rituals, relaxation.
• Conversations, with and of any sort, even those about the weather.
• Gambling, particularly on sports, with plenty of sidebets.
• Sitting outside, on a bench, enjoying a Churchill.
• Jazz, even the smooth kind, especially the smooth kind.
• Unconventionally attractive people, unique styles, oddballs.
• Meatloaf Mondays, an extra helping of mashed potatoes, c’mon, fill ‘er up.
• Tricking stupid people, feeling like everyone is stupider than him, feeling like a big man.

Dislikes:::

• Short jokes, fat jokes, positive or negative comments on his physical appearance at all.
• Hard work and exercise, all of the body aches, getting up in the morning.
• Hurting feelings, being mean, being disliked.
• Violent films, loud music, abrupt personas.
• Being confused, having no control over a situation, watching everything spiral and burn.
• Getting caught, being exposed, dealing with the repercussions.
• Taco Tuesdays, without soft corn shells, seriously, this is a travesty.
• Being deceived by others, realizing that he might be as dumb as he pretends to be, fearing that he might be dumber than he pretends to be.

Oddities:::
Before Cybil disappeared, she gave Marty an antique-looking key to an unknown lock. He has hidden the key inside a hole in his mattress, where upon searching for it again he has discovered that the bed ate it only for it to appear on top of his freshly changed sheets the next day. The key was then kept inside of his pocket, but it fell through a tear and appeared on his lunch tray hours later. Since then he has continued to lose the key, but it keeps returning to him like a well-thrown boomerang with abandonment issues. As far as he is aware, the key opens no doors in High John’s.

Background Information:::

---

“Yeah, there’s some people who like to say I’m crooked, but look at my record. It’s spotless. Clean. Practically empty, almost as if I never even existed. Which is funny, because that’s how I’m starting to feel too.”

Wisps of Memory:::
Marty wasn’t always a fraud. What remains of his early childhood are painful glimpses of a kid playing inside of a dark house that wasn’t a home, a screaming woman that was technically a mom, and a man and a woman in suits coming to take him to meet his new parents. He doesn’t remember much about the new parents, except that either their faces and body changed or he had more than one pair. That was it for the first couple of years. New houses, new schools, and new faces. He was in his early teens when Marty performed his first trick. He realized that his school peers wouldn’t antagonize him if they liked him, and they would like them as long as he entertained them. So he became the clown. Always smiling, always laughing, always happy. It made life more bearable. Marty always found it funny how the first person he had to con was himself.

After school he found that pretending to be something else was always easier than actually becoming something. Marty preferred to have his living be easy. Why spend the money and time becoming a real estate agent when you can just print out some business cards and collect on a down payment for a house that isn’t even for sale? What kind of schmuck would go to school to become a therapist when all you need is a picture frame, a fancy piece of paper, and a decent couch? Marty ran through a number of games in his years, but none of them stuck quite like the institutionalized game.

He’d have his psychiatrist (himself) and his general practitioner (also himself) recommend he be committed to a ward, where insurance and the taxpayers would fund his room and board. In the hospitals he’d make friends with the other patients, patients who he could easily manipulate for capital gain later on. After all, someone had to pay off the insurance companies, plus the lawyers who were keeping his civil suits out of the courts until the other party bled out of money, and also the bookies who were threatening to break his kneecaps with a wooden bat.

That’s the thing Marty remembers most out of his time before the House: no matter how much he was able to swindle out of people, there were always debts. His life was a cycle, con people to pay off debts, go into debt protecting himself from the people he conned, and having to con more people to pay that off, and so on. It was the one major problem Marty had with his lifestyle, really. He had never anticipated that living the easy life by taking advantage of others would end up being so damn hard, but once he was in he couldn’t get out.

In the House of High John:::
Fittingly enough, once he was in he couldn’t get out can also be used to describe the problem with his life at the House. Before he committed himself, life had gone bad for Marty yet again. Despite having a few fake credentials and forged certificates he was no doctor, but he could still guess that it’d be detrimental to his health if the certain unfriendly people who were looking for him did actually end up rearranging his organs in the way they said they would. The House was just another psych ward he would lay low in for a couple of weeks, miraculously recover from the major depression he didn’t have, and maybe meet a few suckers to profit off of later so he could get the debtors off of his back.

Not such a good idea, that one.

Marty’s no longer sure how long he’s been at High John’s. Months, at least. Definitely longer than any of his previous stay. They insist that he’ll be released once he is better, but Marty knows he doesn’t need any treatment because he was faking everything in the first place. When he tried to convince them that his depression was gone they slapped him with Munchausen, claiming that he had faked his depression so he could receive attention and care. Fearing that they might actually have been catching on to the fact that he was exploiting them, Marty played along. He was an ideal patient. Docile, friendly to the staff, and caring of the other patients. He figured once he went long enough not claiming he had any diseases they’d eventually drop their suspicions, clear him, and let him go.

Then the experiments started. Or maybe they were always happening. Marty doesn’t remember. He believes the Land of the Dead is just a hallucination, induced through drugs or virtual reality, although it’d be delusional to think that an institution would go this far to teach an individual a lesson about exploiting the health system. It was around this time that he met Cybil, and around this time that he grew more comfortable with the routine lifestyle of the House. Sure, the experiments were awful, but otherwise was it so bad? Three meals a day, plenty of lovely nature to look at, some cute nurses that took care of you, and game shows on repeat. It was almost enough to make him forget about the terrors that awaited him during the experiments.

Almost. It helped having Cybil there. She kept him in touch with reality, even though sometimes the reality she told him about sounded unbelievable. She gave Marty a hope that she’d get him out of the House. He didn’t trust her first when she said she was his daughter, but after a while she started to feel like one. Her companionship made the experiments tolerable, because he knew after the horrors he’d be spending time with her. He once admitted to her, thanks to the cocktail of painkillers they gave him, that she had been his highlight of his life since she started visiting him three weeks ago. It was the only time he’d ever seen her frown as she sat on the edge of his bed and said, “You mean three years, right?”

It was the last thing he remembered her saying. Cybil has been gone since that day. Any questions about her are met with confusion and denial. Marty has stuck with his routine to keep perpetuating the lie that he was just another patient, but what she said has haunted him. They’re never going to let him go. He can’t just keep taking it easy if he wants to get out of this place. He has to do something. Marty has to do something before he forgets. Already he has forgotten her face. If he ends up forgetting her words how long until he forgets that unless he does something they’ll keep him in this place forever?

Fragments and Connections:::
Once, Marty thought he had the answer to his deepest desires before him in the form of his first and only partner-in-crime, Sunny Corll. The medication has since erased nearly all memory of Sunny, but certain mundane things like a dropped coffee mug or a patient catcalling a nurse serve as reminders of the man. While Marty can no longer remember why it is exactly, all of these fragments of memories hit him with a wave of negative energy, sucking him into a temporary vacuum of disappointment and hatred. These feelings never last long, but they all point to one thing: Sunny, at some point, had screwed him.

Layer 02:::

Fluke

Doomsayer Title:::
FLUKE, the Bloodletter

Description:::
Fluke is an exaggerated mockery of the final husk state of the Dead. Her skin is like the shattered sidewalks that have broken so many mothers’ backs, tinted by a light, mildewy green of spilled toxic radioactive waste. It’s draped and tightly pulled around tattered bones like broken broom handles fastened together by old, decaying hemp rope of her sinewy muscles, effectively making her into a towering scarecrow dressed in a widow’s funeral gown. Her arms have the jerky movements of a marionette operated by an amateur puppeteer with a hand cramp whereas her legs barely animate at all, seemingly gliding over the ground. Her voice is a pained rasp, the sound of a death rattle, the final words that somehow keep coming.

Fluke’s oil black hair is coarse and straw-like, sliced into sharp angles that curtain her eyes. A certain peculiarity makes it impossible for her eyes to be seen, a swathe of hair or a cast shadow always finding a way to block the sightline. It hides the truth that all the Dead already assume: Fluke lacks yellow eyes. The Hunger isn’t there. No matter how much she looks like them, Fluke isn’t one of the Dead. She’s the Halloween costume that ends up being more mean-spirited than fun, the Frankenstein’s monster that the townspeople chase with torches and pitchforks, an insult physically manifested. While all Doomsayers fuel the Dead with some sort of contempt, Fluke is the rare sort that makes them burn with jealousy and remember the long gone feelings of anger they once have. How can something so disgustingly insulting in its familiarity be a Doomsayer?

Doomsayer Paragon::: Mountebank
Fluke follows misfortune. Misfortune heralds Fluke. She is the much needed champion of the Dead, their caretaker, the bloodletter that eases the pain of the toxins brought about by the Hunger, the Devils, and the Demons. She is also the cackling villain hated by the Dead, their torturer, the parasite that feeds upon their pain for her own twisted needs. Fluke’s pandering to the needs of the Dead is believed to be just that—it’s a charade, a game, a crooked setup for some unforeseen end—and no good deeds will be able to convince them otherwise. Those leeches of hers, her so called good luck charms, drain what they are supposed to create until the unlucky husk are one of her husks, gaslighted into believing that they are under Fluke’s care instead of one of her spells. Yet still she says she is trying to help. The Dead aren’t braindead. They know a liar when they see one. Fluke really isn’t a Doomsayer that wants to help the Dead; she’s a Devil in a Doomsayer’s dress.

Doomsayer Prophecy:::
It was the kind of grand betrayal the likes that only Fluke could be accused of orchestrating, although it was strangely defeatist to think that she would plot against herself. Although in a way she did. Her words, her warnings, her pleas to the Dead, Fluke had always thought they’d fallen on deaf ears. It was nice to know that they listened—even if they didn’t believe what they heard, even if their ravenous mouths full of jagged, serrated daggers ribboned her paper-thin disguise, and even if they had given her more credit than she was truly worth. Trust her, for once, trust her, as the swarm of leeches that erupted forth from her wounds were instantly devoured in the Dead’s feeding frenzy. She screamed out for them to trust her, her voice already consumed, her nothing words devoured, her good intentions choked upon, as the Land of the Dead turned to cannibalize itself, the Dead’s Hunger finally unchecked.

A Legend:::
The myths surrounding Fluke have shifted throughout the eons in an unending downward spiral. She was once considered a rare kind of Dead who denied the impossible, shirked their apathy, and by pure will and a lot of luck became a Doomsayer. Fluke was an inspiration, a bountiful source of good luck, and the last bastion of hope in a land that long forgot the feeling. Whenever misfortune struck—when the Devils revealed their machinations or a Doomsayer’s unrestrained behavior caused collateral—Fluke would be there to reverse the fates into a favorable outcome. Whenever the Hunger became too much, some bloodletting and a few leeches from Fluke would drain the dark desire. She was the undeserved savior of the Dead and she performed her sacred duty without rest.

Regretfully, the Dead viewed themselves as undeserving of a champion. Word began to spread that Fluke’s acts of charity and heroism were all part of some grand charade working to further the agenda of a magnificent scheme. Fluke only arrived after something terrible had happened, and no matter what good she did during her time it always seemed like something worse would be around the corner after her departure. She wasn’t a savior. She was a charlatan. She was a false prophet pitching phony poultices in hopes to win influence and gain control over the Dead. She was a Devil in disguise that mocked the Dead for ever believing that a Doomsayer could even consider them worthy of their aid.

A Sighting:::
A twist of good fate ended the madness that had consumed the city for a week. The city free from Devils, the height of Dead achievement, had been reduced to rubble and ash by the very hands that had built it. Finally broken from the spell that had driven them into such a rampage, the remaining crowd of Dead, beaten and covered with the blood of their neighbors, looked around in horror at the destruction they had caused. It was then that a voice from the grave whispered in all of their ears, causing the crowd to turn to see one of their own sliding towards the center of the city square. Behind the incredibly tall figure was the corpse of a thin Demon with a massive cranium that was as tall as its emaciated body, shrivelled tentacles protruding from its perforated skull. The corpse was being carried upon a living pool of shadows that stopped when the tall Dead woman stopped and dispersed, the thousands of leeches seeking shelter inside the Demon’s head. For the first time in a week the city was silent, and then a voice cried out that it was the Bloodletter.

Fluke stood there as the crowd grew angry, their cries echoing off the walls of the collapsed towers that had once been the pennants of their sanctuary, and then she spoke. Even through the yelling her lies could be heard by every Dead present as if she perched over all of their shoulders. She warned them that although the madness Demon, which had vanquished by her own hand, was gone, the corruption it had done to their minds was not yet removed. The only thing keeping them from turning against their neighbors yet again was her presence. She cut a deal with the townsfolk: let her cure them of their malady, and she would leave immediately. If not—she gestured as her counterspell dropped, and the Dead turned.Then, with a wave of her hand, they were letting go of each other’s collars and picking one another up off the ground.

Nobody trusted the Bloodletter, but desperation forced the Dead to take her deal. The Dead lined up before her and she produced a lancet, carving up the Demon’s worm-infested mind and serving each one of the dead a tiny pink morsel that was attached to a black, wiggling leech. After the citizens of the fallen city had consumed their homeopathic remedy and returned to their docile, resigned nature the Doomsayer left them as she said she would. Yet despite the efforts of the Bloodletter, or perhaps as precisely orchestrated by her, the city never returned to its former glory. The Devils arrived the very next day to exploit the Dead, striking predatory deals and shaking hands with crossed fingers behind their backs. After the reconstruction it was just another city controlled by Devils, leaving many to question if their fate hadn’t really gone from bad to worse.

𝒜 𝒞𝑜𝓃𝓉𝓇𝒶𝒸𝓉 𝒲𝒾𝓉𝒽 𝒟𝑒𝒶𝓉𝒽:::

𝓜𝓪𝓻𝓽𝔂 𝓖𝓪𝓼𝓴𝓲𝓷𝓼

𝓕𝓛𝓤𝓚𝓔

@Opposition.

[Opposition]

Thanks for all the applications so far. I've been a bit busy this past week, but I'll try to coordinate with all of you in the coming days.

In the meantime, we are still waiting on some other applicants. Doomsayers, alas, is coming soon.

[Mixtape Ghost N]

don't wait on me i'm busy af

[Opposition]

Hey everyone,

Considering my own time constraints, I'm sorry to say that Doomsayer's is going to have to go on hold for the moment. I've not got the time to upkeep the RP to a satisfactory level, and I'd rather wait until I can tackle the project in full before moving on. Thanks to those of you who submitted apps. When Doomsayers comes back, you're welcome to pick up where you left off.

Thanks,
Opp