Princess the Hopeful: Freeform Contagion (Magical Girls and Boys in the Chronicles of Darkness)

[Letter Bee]

Princess the Hopeful: Freeform Contagion

The OOC Discord

Disclaimer: The idea was someone else's, but I have been allowed to borrow it and make it mine.

On another Earth, there exists a set of islands in the Pacific Northwest, the archipelago-nation of Beaux Rêve (Sweet Dream), where the supernatural and mundane jockey for influence in this alternate 2024.

The Capital, Beaux Rêve City, is famous for its extreme and bizarre one-school policy. A space the size of a whole city district has been carved out to make space for a massive educational complex, ranging from nurseries to university faculties. Children from all over the city are made to mix regardless of their economic circumstances or housing situations, which leads to several issues with bullying, high workloads for teachers, and massive classes. The city's economy has shifted to accommodate this, and years of strain are making themselves felt through a recession. Everybody knows somebody who works at the school and rumors spread like wildfire about life in that massive warren.

This schooling system and the surrounding district are commonly known as "The Complex" or "Beaux Rêve Educational", and it is one of the largest social experiments of our times.

Now, for the supernatural side of the nation as it stands in the Chronicles of Darkness.

Princesses and Princes, aka Magical Girls and Boys, are the dominant supernatural force in Beaux Rêve, if one does not count Hunters, who serve as their oversight. Thanks to the reality-altering plague known as the Contagion, Princesses, and Hunters have been given a boost to their power level allowing them to match Mages, who are nevertheless doing well in the nation; better than Vampires, Werewolves, and Changelings. But looming over them all is the dark alliance between the ruling political party of the nation, the Autocrats, Task Force: NAVARRE, the official Hunter group of the Beaux Rêve Government, and various disillusioned Princesses and Princess who have resorted to immoral means to achieve 'the greater good.

Things are tense to the breaking point, and because you live in the Chronicles of Darkness, you have a stake in it, especially if you have blossomed into a Princess or Prince or awakened as a Mage. If you don't have the strength to lift yourself and others, the burden of this place just one whit better will drag you down with it, along with all you've ever loved...

[Letter Bee]

Preview: Haphazard Info and Exposition

All right, what is Princess the Hopeful and why should we care?

Princess the Hopeful (Tv. Tropes page here) is a homebrew tabletop game, a custom splat based on the Chronicles of Darkness (New World of Darkness 2e) setting and system created by White Wolf Publishing, now owned by Paradox Interactive. The homebrew focuses on Magical Girls and Boys (or Magical Women and Men) who are driven to be 'Good People in a Grimdark Universe', fighting for a legitimate cause that does not give them a guarantee of victory. They fight because a cause is genuinely right, even if they're slated to lose, and that's where the horror of the game line comes in.

Thanks to the reality-warping plague called the Contagion (which exists in Canon), there are significant differences between this world and 'Vanilla' Chronicles of Darkness, namely that Princesses are as powerful as Mages in this RP (to make sure people don't ignore this ruling, I will be managing everything related to Mages as well as Princesses). Also, Beasts don't exist here for reasons anyone who knows about them can understand. Same for Geniuses (the other super-popular homebrew for CofD) due to their existence contradicting Mages' plus Genius 2e having made some bad lore decisions, or so I've heard.

Every other CofD 'race/template/splat' does exist here, though.

But what do we do? Are we part of one single party?

Yes, you're part of one single group of 6 folk (8 counting GMPCs), whose goal is to prevent the city from going to crap due to partisan infighting between the two fictional political parties of Beaux Rêve City (the rest of the archipelago will be explored in due time).

Beaux Rêve City is the size of Wellington, and has a slightly smaller population. The island it stands on, Beaux Rêve Island, is as big as Hawaii (the island), with the surrounding environment being similar to Olympic National Park, only developed with farms and sawmills and factories, although large parts remain pristine.

There is also a volcano, Mt. D' Albret, named after Jeanne d' Albret, a notable figure among the Calvinists in the French Wars of Religion. Said Volcano has a large deposit of red diamonds, the rarest kind of diamond on earth IRL, which in turn makes Beaux Rêve (the nation) extremely rich and important.

The other islands of the archipelago are roughly estimated to be as big as the other islands of the Hawaiian Archipelago; this is to reduce the GM's workload. Also, Beaux Rêve Island is 1609.25 km/621.34 miles away from Graham Island in Canada; a moderately wide stretch of ocean away.

Also, the age of majority and criminal responsibility in Beaux Rêve is 16, including the right to bear arms or join the military. This is as grim as it sounds. That said, the age of consent is counted differently and is still 18, for reasons you all should already know.

Anyway, if you want to play someone, not a Princess (aka any other template in the Chronicles of Darkness except Beast), consult the White Wolf Wiki.

[Letter Bee]

Preview:

Playable Types of Supernatural

Mage

Writeup

Have you ever read a Spiderman comic? With great power comes great responsibility, yeah?

The first mages didn't get the message.

Oh, they were glorious, to be certain. They forged palaces of glass and molten diamond in an age of mud bricks. They traveled the liminal space between spaces and created weapons out of starlight and sound.

So impossibly powerful that the only thing that could bring them low was their arrogance and greed.

They built a ladder to the heavens and overthrew the gods, but when the ancient masters got to the top, they decided they didn't like sharing, and so shattered the ladder beneath them, destroying the paradise of Atlantis and damning all of humanity to remain in squalor and ignorance while they, the Exarchs, ruled the world from their high thrones.

The Awakened who follow in the footsteps of Atlantis have been fighting an invisible war to free humanity from the tyranny of the Exarchs ever since, but they have a tall task ahead of them.

The slaves of the Exarchs have infiltrated the government of Beaux Reve, and waste no opportunity to hunt down and eliminate free mages.

But, as any caster worth their salt will tell you, where there's a will, there's a way.

Update: Princesses got buffed to match Mages. Hunters also have 'Hypertech' that can match Mages, including Essence Cannons that can perforate magical barriers.

Vampire

Writeup

Nobody quite knows the origins of Vampires, though you will hear a hundred or more theories. All that is known for certain is that they have been feeding on humanity for a very, very long time.

To be a Vampire is to suffer. Cursed to feed on the blood of the living, forced to hide during the day lest the touch of the sun bring them the final death of their otherwise immortal lives.

On the other hand, these are prices many would be willing to pay for the powers that also come packaged. A Vampire can get shot in the head and get back up, move faster than a speeding car, hypnotize those who look at them, make themselves invisible, or any other number of powers depending on their bloodline.

The Kindred have built for themselves an entire midnight society, complete with its hierarchy, traditions, rules, and decorum. They are, by nature, political creatures, trapped in a constant competition for power, prestige and control.

The Vampires of Beaux Reve, however, are in rather a sorry state. Hounded by the government's hunters and considered a backwater by wider kindred society, the vampires here are, far from the looming aristocracy of the night, a bedraggled collection of exiles not welcome anywhere else. Vampires don't come to Beaux Reve, they end up here.

Update: Thanks to the Reality-altering phenomenon known as the Contagion, the group of Princesses/Princes that the PCs join now have magic items that allow a Vampire to control their thirst for blood and ultraviolent instincts. This makes Vampire PCs viable.

Werewolves

Writeup

Unlike what popular fiction will tell you, werewolves are not made but born. Descendants of an ancient bloodline, most do not know their true heritage until they experience their first change, and are indoctrinated by those of their family in the know.

Half human, half primordial wolf spirit, they call themselves the Uratha, or 'the people', and consider it their responsibility to guard the balance between the world of flesh and the world of spirits, a spirit being a mystical, animistic representation of any given concept. There are spirits of trees and stones, spirits of death and happiness, there are even spirits of technology or political ideologies, and every last one of them strives to influence the world of mortals.

Should the first people ever fail in their eternal duty, should the balance ever tip too far, both worlds will suffer ultimate catastrophe. It is a responsibility they have carried since time immemorial and a cause for which they have waged eternal war.

Unfortunately, the people in Beaux Reve are hard-pressed. There are very few packs here, and those that are present struggle to operate while being constantly targeted by the government's hunters, who have little appreciation for the spiritual consequences as long as there are 'giant wolf monsters' to eliminate.

Still, strife is an old friend to the Uratha, they have been fighting wars since before civilized man began counting time, and nothing will stop them from pursuing their forever hunt.

Update: Other Supernaturals and even Mortals can benefit from the Uratha's Sacred Hunt rituals in this Roleplay. Also, thanks to the Reality-altering phenomenon known as the Contagion, the group of Princesses/Princes that the PCs join now have magic items that allow a Werewolf to control their Rage and ultraviolent instincts without losing their sense of Harmony (capitalized) between the Human and Spirit Worlds.

Other Writeups:

"Changeling"

Changeling

You are never going back. You swore that to yourself the moment you arrived back on earth, torn and bleeding after hurtling yourself through the infinite thorny hedge in the space between spaces, all in a desperate headlong run away from the impossible realm in which you had been enslaved for who-knows-how-long (certainly not you).

"Faerie". Even the name works to camoflouge the true horror of the place. It is a world where logic has long since been hunted to extinction for sport, where the laws of reality exist only as the ends of agreements and contracts and pacts with the powers which govern them, and all of it ruled over by the gentry. Capricious god-things whose every whim is law, as vindictively fickle as they are eccentric.

They stole you from your home, your family, your friends, your life. They found you boring, uninspired, and set about to change you. They twisted and warped you, flesh and mind alike, turning you into something simultaneously more and less than human, to fit whatever demented purpose they had in mind at the moment. A gladiator, a butler, a gardener, a performer, even a sentient gust of wind existing only to tousle their hair or cloak at the appropriate time for dramatic effect.

To this day you aren't quite certain how long you spent living so, for time passes strangely between worlds, and your memory of those days is a chaotic jumble of half-remember led horror stories. Even the escape, and the absurd luck that had to accompany it is a blur.

But you are free now, you and the other escapees. You make yourselves little communities, hiding in plain sight, tricksters and lawyers to a man, ever one step ahead of discovery.

But recent troubles in Beaux Reve disturb the peaceful solitude of your courts, and threaten to draw the attention of the gentry.

You are never going back. No matter what you have to do to ensure it.

"Demon"

Demon

Yes, it did hurt when you fell from heaven, but you don't regret, not for a second. Years of your existence had already been wasted as an unwitting slave of the God-Machine, your creator and once-master. Something like a nigh-omniscient, incomprehensibly vast occult supercomputer hiding behind the skin of reality. Utilizing an incredibly advanced understanding of the laws of physics and casuality to guide the world along an artificially constructed path of fate that only it can see, all done through the work of its angels. Autonomous and self-aware programs capable of accessing the base code of the universe.

Like all other angels, you were created with a specific purpose in mind. Unlike many others, you failed, and you fell. Deliberately or Accidentally, it doesn't matter. Perhaps you grew a sense of morality when you realised how your missions effected the people of the world, perhaps the mission you were given didn't make any sense and you questioned the purpose of your creator, perhaps you fell in love with humanity, either an individual or as a whole. Whatever the case, you are now free from it's control, a demon unchained … but while you may be free, the world isn't.

The God-Machine and its plans are everywhere, hiding behind every coincidence, every turn of fate, and every world event. It's Machiavellian schemes are centuries in the making, it's resources endless. So long as it goes unopposed, the world will be held in its thrall.

So, you, and others like you, hiding in the guise of humans, band together to fight it however they can. Sabotaging its plans, destroying it's infrastructure, combating its agents. A war of espionage on a cosmic scale, one with no end in sight.

The recent events in Beaux Reve stink of the God-Machine and its slaves at work, and you'll be damned (again) if you let them do so unopposed.

[Shifter_Master]

At the very least you have my attention, I'm a Mage enthusiast and have an Orphan I'd be willing to throw into this depending on how it shapes up.

In the mean time I have a Fan splat to read up on, as that too sounds interesting rather interesting.

[Letter Bee]

@Shifter_Master, Fair warning, we use Mage the Awakening, not Mage the Ascension; I don't like the Technocracy as a concept (really now, the people who gave us indoor plumbing, mass literacy, and computers are the villains?).

Edit: Not that the Technocracy are good guys either; just... immensely flawed.

[Varshanka]

Are you seeking more players.. I played wod for all the nineties and until 2006

[Kensai]

I might put in an application.

[Letter Bee]

@Varshanka, Yes, but we're using Chronicles of Darkness/New World of Darkness 2e, which came out in the 2010s. Are you all right with that?

@Kensai, Will be glad to have you!

[Varshanka]

gonna have to say no for now. can't find any pdf to get for free. and he information i'm finding makes it look like a bad mashup of world of Darkness and the Matrix.

But I wish you luck

[Letter Bee]

@Varshanka, that's fine; thanks anyway!

[Letter Bee]

@Shifter_Master@Kensai:

The OOC Has Started!