Welcome to Westcliffe, A small town nestled neatly away between the peaks of Colorado, USA. Isolated from the rest of the world, Westcliffe is like an ecosystem all of its own. Few people visit, no one leaves. The result of the isolation of this small town had created a tight-knit community with distrust to outsiders. While the town does have formal leadership, the town is actually controlled by the DeWinter family, which if you believe all of the tales, is actually a witch coven, hiding away from the world. A tale, however, that everyone in the town believes.
The biggest event on the Westcliffe calendar is the fabled Halloween festival. The town goes all out and launches a massive festival, decorating the entire town with creepies and ghoulies. However the past 7 years or so, a dark secret has hung over the heads of the town. Something everyone acknowledges, but no one wants to talk about. Every year, on the night of the festival, or a day later, there has been a murder. Not to mention that people's behaviours seem to change during the build-up to the festival. What could be causing it? The murders don't seem related and each time the suspect has been caught, well, nearly most of the time. Nothing connects the murderers, nothing connects the victims, only that they all believe the DeWinters are responsible in some way.
So, This is not your typical murder mystery RP. Things are not quite as they seem and everything you think you know is about to get thrown out of the window. This RP focuses mostly on the interactions of a bunch of seniors during their final year at school, across roughly a two week period.
Westcliffe Town
Westcliffe is a small mountain town located up in the flat plains between the Colorado mountains. With a population of just under 2,000 people, the community is relatively sealed off from the rest of the world. This doesn’t mean the town doesn’t have luxuries, it receives deliveries all the time, just hardly anyone moves in and no one moves out. Ever. Given the towns small nature, everyone seems to known everyone and their business. Nothing stays a secret for long, unless it pertains to the DeWinter family, then suddenly everything seems to be shrouded in mystery.
The local school is also extremely small given its size. Grades are largely bunched together into a single classroom order to save money on hiring lots of teachers. This is the case currently, where the Seniors, Juniors, Sophomore and Freshman years are all bunched together into a single class equaling 23 students.
The mainstay for the town is the Halloween festival, rather than go around and trick or treat, the whole town gathers on the local town square and high street to have a parade and festival, full of stalls and ceremonies. The festival is mired in tradition, which culminates in the final procession where the Heiress of the DeWinter Family walks down the street to the town square and lights 5 candles at the bottom of the base of the statue of the towns found; Lamorna Dewinter.
Characters
In terms of characters, the biggest group I would be willing to take for this is Six. The more I add, the more complex the system gets. Six feels like a comfortable number of players to achieve a nice balance. I probably should mention that all the characters are in high school, roughly 17/18. So these are the roles I currently have in mind:
DeWinter Heiress:
New Resident in town:
Tragic Backstory 1:
Tragic Backstory 2:
Standard Character 1:
Standard Character 2:
In terms of a character sheet, this one requires no special information. As such you are free to use any template you like to help you mold your character. I know some people like to create aesthetically pleasing ones to get into character or to give them long backstories. Obviously, we need the basics such as Name, Age, Appearance, Personality, but asides from that, write to your hearts content. For this RP don't worry about relationships etc, you will all be in the same class and that will be our reason for meeting up. Since I can only take 6 characters, I won't use length as a decider for being accepted, but more so I will how you make your character come to life
For those who struggle to come up with a character sheet of their own, I have this base you can you:
Rules and Information
So rules time:
- Standard Guild Rules apply, being courteous in OOC etc.
- Standard RP Rules apply also, so no godmodding and meta-gaming etc, that last one is very important in this game.
- For this RP, given the fact there will murders etc, it is going to be a strict, please be 18 or overrule. This RP is going to be dark at times.
- Post length will be a minimum of one decently written paragraph. I don't expect you to write an awful lot more, but I know some people find it easier than others.
- Post Cycle is once a week. I know that might seem rapid, but given the pace of the RP, and the smaller posts, I am hoping we can speed it up.
- If you can't post in a cycle do not worry, just let me know beforehand. I can use some magic to help you out.
- When your character dies, please do stay around, I can't spoil it, but I would love for you to stay as we might need you for some scenes.
- Don't reveal any private information sent to you by me to others. The whole point of this RP is you are trying to work out what everyone else is doing without giving yourself away in the process.
- Real Life FCs only please, just to keep things consistent.
- Character Submission Deadline is Sunday 10th January 12.00pm GMT. Successful applicants will be in PMed their instructions later in the day. Multiple people can submit characters for the same role. Please do not get offended if you do not get accepted.