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"The Soiling of Old Glory" by Stanley Forman,
Boston Herald American, 1977 Pulitzer Prize Winner
"The Soiling of Old Glory" by Stanley Forman,
Boston Herald American, 1977 Pulitzer Prize WinnerTL;DR List
- GM's HeySeuss and AnnaBeth
- Up to four other players. We're trying to keep this a smaller group, so please be very sure you want to do this RP.
- Modern-Fantasy setting. 2013 United States, magic has returned.
- The return of magic is not a welcome event. In fact, people have freaked the hell out.
- Not Twilight or Harry Potter; this has darker political overtones because humans know about magic and various supernatural beings and are scared shitless.
- Meanwhile, the people with magical power don't know what's happening to them and are grappling with these sudden unexplained phenomena as well as the hatred of their neighbors.
- In the United States, the government starts rounding up people with magic in response to mass hysteria that percolates all the way up to the halls of power.
- By Christmas of 2012, animals and plants, places and things, start to emerge; energy nexuses, mythical beasts, spirits even. Coincidentally, that's around the time the Mayan calendar ends. Some people say it's the end of the world, the Mayans point out it's just the end of an age. Whose right?
- The characters will be forced to make some stark choices vis a vis retribution, justice, the law and nature.
- The characters are part of a small coven in Haye Township, Pennsylvania, a small town in the central part of the state near the Allegheny Mountains. They have assembled, as fellow Emergents, but are keeping their abilities a secret, even as the Federal Government hunts those like them fervently.
- Only four people, besides Annabeth and myself will be accepted. Sorry, but we're trying to keep this one small-circle and get some regular posting going on. It's easier with less people to wait for.
Glossary of Terms
- Emergent, Manifested - Initially an adjective for people, it has since expanded to describe any sort of magically active thing, place or being as of late December of 2011. Emergent people, plants, animals, places and objects all exist. This is the politically-correct term for it in the United States and Canada. There are many more less flattering terms, of course.
- NPC's - Disparaging term for regular humans, especially the people that hate Emergents (such as many of the religious fanatics in the country) used by American Emergents in turn. Particularly popular with the ones that have been caught and put in camps. It was a popular term among roleplayers, before roleplaying games and science-fiction novels were pulled off bookstore shelves during the last couple months of hysteria, and outright banned in certain states, as if they were the reason all this came about.
- Shame-kisser - A disparaging term among anti-Emergent groups, often religious, for people who support the rights of Emergents. It refers to the 16th century myth of one of the rituals of witchcraft, the Osculum Infame, involving a kiss to the anus as a show of subservient. It was first used by a famous televangelist mid-sermon, and caught on from there.
- Freakville - Synonymous with the holding camps for Emergents, be they large or small, as run by FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security.
- Pitchfork Party - A facetious term for NPC attacks on Emergents, alluding to peasants with torches and pitchforks, though these days they're more likely to have Molotov cocktails and shotguns.
- Coven – Any gathering or attempt at community by the magically active – this is certainly a loanword from mega-church lingo, which encourages the use of the lexicon of witch hunting as slang for the Emergents.
- Alpha-Omega Type - Classification of the Emergents as given by the DHS upon in-processing at a camp like the Nellis AFB facility, but also part of the shorthand for communicating observed powers. Classifications are as follows:
- Type: Alpha - Confirmed dangerous emergent with abilities that can directly harm someone. These people are processed differently than others -- they are first brought into isolation units for observation and 'testing' before release into the general population. All inmates can be drugged if the guards see fit, but Alphas are almost always drugged to some degree, often on high-dose benzodiazepines.
- Type: Beta - Physically altered. Currently, people are still undergoing sudden changes, in the camp and outside the camp, which is to say, the process is ongoing. If warranted, this class of inmates is physically shackled, muzzled or otherwise restrained so as to not present a threat to other inmates and the guards.
- Type: Gamma - Emergent with abilities to produce apparitions or alter perception. Also kept on high dose benzodiazepines or some other anti-anxiety/behavior control drug as a rule.
- Type: Omega - Unknown/General Population of Emergents. Classification to be expanded as trends in emergence are identified.
In Character Info
It's late October, 2013, and the uncertainty of life, often buried deep in the psyche of humanity, is suddenly a raw and very exposed nerve. Things have emerged and the false serenity of society is irrevocably swept away on a tide of the supernatural.
The world is turning upside down. Things are emerging from a long dormancy, their spirits either finding flesh on their own or fusing with the nearest host and twisting them into something else. From the beautiful to the freakish, it was almost as if someone unlocked a spiritual vault and threw the doors wide open, heedless of what would emerge, heedless of the things this force would overturn.
Magic came back on September 23th, 2012 (the equinox); people suddenly manifested abilities. Some changed shape to misshapen or supernaturally beautiful beings, others manipulated energies by their will and mind. Society was not prepared, and fell into all sorts of social unrest, including lynchings, riots and vigilantism. Not everyone was grabbing a shotgun or gardening tool to go after these newly-minted 'Emergents' but there was a torrent of hate on the TV and on the radio, a furious argument about how to respond.
Irrationality won out, as it almost always does when fear sinks into the mass psyche.
Initially, at the behest of the more vocal and hardliner group of Americans, yelling for the government to 'do something,' especially with people taking it to their own hands and 'doing something' themselves, often with encouragement through the internet or the radio or the pulpit; vigilante violence against Emergents. These people, backed up against the wall, lashed out -- their uncontrolled, sometimes dangerous talents gave the newscasts of these incidents a horror movie feel, especially as the media played up the most extreme example, partially for ratings.
There was, of course, a chance for the government to stand up to this trend, but instead the government did two things; they put a law into effect recognizing that Emergents were not human, and therefore not accorded the rights of the 14th Amendment -- the Supreme Court shot down the challenges, and then used the National Defense Authorization Act of 2011 to justify deploying military force, under the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), specifically the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), to start rounding up Emergents, as they were being called, to be placed in containment camps, often on military bases, "for the protection of everyone involved." Darker rumors swirled, that the various governments of the world were frantic to understand these forces and dead set on controlling or containing these disruptions.
In December, right before Christmas (the 21st, the Solstice, as well as the prophesied end of the Mayan calendar/start of a new age), suddenly the animals and plants, things and places, started to show emergent traits; limited phenomena at first and then a buildup to a crescendo point. Many Emergents felt it in their bones, but most of them managed to conceal this feeling of burgeoning power, a sudden increase in these new-found things they do. They know they are hunted and being kept, and so they keep their own secrets from a secretive government. Quietly, affecting a degree of docility, the inmates at Nellis begin to plan...
Haye, Pennsylvania finds itself swept up in a dire situation as the federal government, largely overwhelmed, is having to put out fires in all kinds of places and leaves a lot of others on their own. Small towns like this are largely cut off due to a lack of resources, and small town America has undergone a sudden change – sure, the internet is open, and there phones are working, and there's even wireless coverage (sometimes) but the land outside of the metropolitan areas, where humanity is still sparse enough, thrums alive with mystical energy. The federal government is happy to come and sweep up a few locals that emerged, turned in by some fervent relatives or other locals that knew them, though the act of ratting on other locals has torn this small-knit town apart. The feds themselves are little help – they ride in with their automatic weapons on armored vehicles, make a big show of apprehending someone that is scared out of their wits, maybe a kid, and then ride back, acting like they'd faced down Old Scratch himself.
Then the town has to live with itself while it deals with the problems of Emergence...alone.
Out of Character Info
I'm pretty loose on character ideas, but ideally the characters are still figuring things out. I'm loose on what magic entails, but let's keep this level-headed and avoid munchkinism. The plot is almost more about how people react to the situation than what they can do with magic.I haven't gone into the details of how magic has affected the world, or, at least, I haven't gone into more detail than I've had to; part of this is because I want to flesh that out in a plot.
The idea of this RP is how people would adjust to the sudden emergence of magic in society, and I've tried to set up a confrontation, but I am not guiding the story into bottlenecks of that sort; rather, I am trying to get a feel for what the players will want to do with this story, and how to fit that into the overall story. Suffice to say, this is more like 'Carrie' than 'Blade'; I'm not so interested in having long-established secret societies of vampires and werewolves emerge from the woodworks to take over the world. They, like everything else, are a fairy tale that suddenly shows up, and those people that do turn into them are as new to it as anyone else.
(That's strictly to avoid another Underworld/WOD type cliche of vampires secretly running the world-- there's plenty of those elsewhere. This is about something different.)
As said, I'm not going to be terribly strict about characters so it's just a matter of posting up what you want and playing, so long as it's tasteful, balanced and doesn't sparkle. I'd ask that we keep it from going overboard on the powers, as everyone is, at this stage, discovering them in a world where even a little bit of it is a huge advantage over the rest of humanity. Preferably, characters will be somewhat based on mythology in some fashion; I think that is a little more tasteful. Based on, but not in the sense that they have to conform to every element of the story. I think I'd prefer to say that the characters are the basis of the legends, not the other way around, in this setting.
The plot will involve questions of politics and culture, rights and law and morality at the bottom line. The players will, as a result, need to be mature about it and remember that this is fiction, even if it is based on modern life as we know it. It's still fiction, and we have to take license with it. This is a dystopia, a speculation upon the worst that can happen.
This is a setting I have used before in other RP's, even on other boards, that I've worked on for a couple years. It addresses the question of how the world would react if magic were to suddenly spring into being in the world, what would occur if normal people were suddenly able to wield these powers and if some of them were to turn into beings out of the fairy tales and myths. There are, of course, stories that deal with the supernatural existing in secret, forming cabals and ruling the world with their advantages...or having romances with drab girls in rainy towns in Washington State; this isn't one of those stories.
In the end, the roleplay is about human nature, a combination of political thriller and fantasy, a sort of "Martin Luther King and Muhammad Ali meet Merlin" scenario. It may even be "Mao Zedong meets Medea," or "Che Guevara meets Circe." Will those people with magical gifts allow themselves to be pushed around? Will they justify the worst fears of their most vocal opponents and try to use their powers to take over? What can the government do? What will the government try? Who will provoke whom? Will the shot heard around the world be fired again? Will it be a civil war?
They, of course, have things up their sleeves. It is anticipated that there will be an uprising, but it will be character decisions that dictate the course of that uprising, the road they intend to take. Will they justify atrocity with self-defense, or will they be better men and women than the men and women that want to put them in detention camps?
As a people with considerable untapped resources at their fingertips, much of the plot will have to do with the characters unlocking their magical potential faster than the government can invent prototype weaponry to stop them, as well as finding ways to manipulate events. In a sense, I am cool with sandboxing this, but I want to keep the overall goal to be the resolution of the conflict one way or another, either by waging a war of retaliation against mundane humanity or forging a peace...or perhaps waging a peace, because it's not like politicians listen to anything but self-preservation.
The setting itself is the town of Haye and the characters are locals here – maybe new arrivals from elsewhere, maybe refugees from the Emergence starting out, or they've been here forever. Maybe they're back from college, since most colleges are closing down, stricken with fear. So are the private schools that dot the area.
In any case, your characters may have family, may be alone and come from all walks, but they've found each other and are making common cause...perhaps, if they can manage to agree on what to do. With their powers only being touched tentatively, they are in a largely hostile world trying to hide themselves while attempting to learn more, a process that holds much fearful unknown.
