Beyond the City Walls (Post-Apocalyptic/Surreal Horror Survival RP)

[ZacksQuest]

Beyond the City Walls

The Story

It all started when, somewhere, in the middle of a cornfield in central Kansas, there were suddenly two square blocks of a city right in the middle. Nobody built it, nobody could explain it. Not even the people who owned the farm- they were found brutally butchered by something unknown. People said they saw shadows with pinpoint eyes and split, hairline grins walk out of the farm into the city blocks. People who tried to explore the inside of the city have never made it out. Even when two people are watching from different ends of a corner, the person inside the city vanishes when they rounded the corner. Then the city began to grow, and not just that one patch. More unbuilt city blocks grew everywhere, and doors began opening in homes, in entryways, in impossible locations, leading to the city itself. And when someone who disappeared in a doorway in Belgium found himself in northern Nagasaki, barely legible and certifiably insane, everyone knew it was one city. The City.

So, when the City began to spread, people started getting lost, mysterious creatures began to escape. There are many species of unnatural abomination recorded even before the City took control, from the shadow creatures with white pinpoint eyes to flocks of birds in the sky that can become storms and lightning, to seemingly normal city objects that reveal their true nature as something horrifying, to a mysterious fungus that grows on some of the City's walls that alters peoples' perceptions of what they see and hear. Other statements from the rambling few who made it out of the City intact in all but their sanity talked of other people in the City who morphed into grotesque monstrosities over a period of time, and mysterious, varied, godlike abominations that seem to run the show called Constants. On top of that, more terrifying than all these recorded and unrecorded nightmares, it's been agreed that the City is alive. The City is alive, and aside from some areas that it can't change, known as "Dead Zones", the City is more than capable of changing itself, shifting, breaking the very laws of geometry and physics itself, creating scenes reminiscent of Salvador Dali or surreal landscapes, all in an urban jungle style. It's easy to get lost in the labyrinths that are the buildings, streets, and sewers of the living City.

With all this in mind, as well as the horrifying fact that the City was growing faster than ever before, and soon it would overtake every square inch of the planet. There were revolts, wars, over land and property, while every scientific mind was focused on how to keep the City back. 100 years later, and it's unknown to the roughly 50 million inhabitants of the City, both wanderers of the living City and residents of the Dead Zones, if there's anything left of the world that once was, but what they do know is that even if there is, they'll never find their way back to it. The thing is, the City might be winding and it may be very hostile and unforgiving, but for some reason the City doesn't want its inhabitants to die. It supplies food, clothing, shelter, drink, and even some remnants of the world before, just enough so people either in roving groups or Dead Zones can survive and eke out a living.

In the City, the Dead Zones have been carved out by civilizations that have grown and have prospered, fallen, or morphed into something horrifying. No matter what the outcome is, these places are known as Sectors. Sectors have a variety of different ideals on how to cope with the City, everything from slavery to manipulating the City's inhabitants to bloody carnage on anyone and anything they can to even worshipping the City itself and the ungodly creatures in it. But even then, most Sectors, good and bad, have their leaders, either a council or an oligarchy or some sort of top brass, their merchants, scientists, researchers, entertainers, and their big three branches of City interaction- The Retrievers, teams of three to five people who go out and hunt for Caches, huge hoards of more valuable and better functioning things that the City leaves in some of its most hostile environments; Soldiers, armies of people who fight other Sectors or against the mysterious forces of the Constants; and the Hunters, people who go out and hunt down beasts that stalk the living City for sustenance, even, in some civilizations, the mutated creatures that were once human. With members of all these groups working in one Sector, there will be caches to uncover, new, frightening creatures to be met, wars to be had, and the mystery of why and what may even be answered with the coming of more afflicted humans who have become monsters and the mysterious Constants themselves.

RP Gameplay/The Story As of the Start of the RP

Essentially, what's going to happen in the beginning is just limited to three factions as of the beginning of the game, if only because if not then the factions would be spread so thin that nothing would really happen. So, as of the start of the RP, the factions are

• Sector Nine- A benevolent Sector led by a council of five or six seasoned veterans of the City that is home to some of the most pleasant people still left around, mastered in the art of Retrieving and traversing the living City to find the most valuable items to the point where among the however many Sectors there are, Sector Nine is considered a major superpower. Alongside messengers and merchants alike, the Sector is home to crack teams of Retrievers, who will go into the City and fight and claim the treasures inside the Caches.
• Sector Three- a Sector big on slavery and use of mysterious mechanical creatures of the City to upgrade and "purify" themselves, masters of their own right in creature hunting, barbarism, combat, and manipulating pieces of the City that can even be manipulated to their own benefit. On a moral compass, these people vary from cynical pragmatists who think this is what must be done in this new society, to people who don't like what's happening but are afraid of the consequences if they speak out or if the method stops, to people who outright take pleasure in it.
• The City- This is probably the broadest category you have. There are some nomadic, neutral parties who have just gotten good at traversing outside the Sectors or the Dead Zones that connect them, there are some people who live in the active City and even worship it, and you have the creatures of the City that aren't connected to Sectors, including Constants (although being able to play one of these godlike creatures requires a PM and teeters over the edge on acceptable power scale), the creatures that the Constants use to further their own ends (not nearly as powerful and technically you can get by with it), and the Afflicted humans.

Essentially what would happen then is that each of these factions do what they can to keep the faction on top or help it win over the other two factions, or, even, to find an equal ground somehow and learn more about the City and how they can escape or even stop it. This means Retrievers go on huge missions to, well, retriever, hunters do what they do best, the researchers and scientists try to figure out more about the City, the leadership tries to keep everything under control, and essentially other than that, just be the character and react as you would as the character. However, given the nature of the City where anything can happen to anyone, I might need some people I can confide in to, on top of any characters, post things as the City itself, whether it be its changes, a member of the Sectors becoming afflicted, any of the creatures in the City (and there are many, many types, enough that if you wanted to make one up within reason it probably would fly so long as the players can feasibly escape), or the City changing shape or moving about in some way. Just don't use the opportunity to buff up any of your own characters on purpose. You can play characters with abilities, like the Afflicted or the creatures that work under the Constants, but if you want to do that and be a member of one of the Sectors, especially if you want to have abilities right off the bat that are more than your average super skills, you'd definitely have to PM me about that as there'd have to be some leveling to make it fair and not just a power play of one-upping the other guys and being unkillable. That's just not cool.

Other than that, if you, whoever has taken enough time to get this far, want to take the story in a certain direction, say there's a certain Cache you want to find, a certain creature you want to hunt, or things you want to collect, or missions you want to do against the other groups, so long as you've got other people in your faction backing you up on it and wanting it to be a thing, or even if your character has the cajones to try to do it solo, then by all means go ahead and do it so long as it's not godmodding or something your character just can't do. Just know that whoever is the City can vary (within reason) between a rather benevolent City that's decent to the people walking inside it, to a deathtrap that's ready to throw potential near death experiences at you in a conga line of pain. All in all a lot of this RP is more or less teamwork and wanting the RP to sort of just play itself, and for people to keep it running and aside from plotlines or factions being added in if, fortune permits, the RP grows enough. Just like the City itself, the world and the Sectors and the characters should all be malleable and changing depending on what's going down, and that can vary from self-sufficient happy places trying to work together to full-on Game of Thrones styled carnage. So long as you've got another RPer's permission to kill off a character or you've got permission to do some crazy power obtaining or otherwise implausible yet possible situations, this could potentially be a fun time for everyone. A fun, hectic time.

Character Sheet

• Name- The character's name. This can be their full name, the name they go by, or in conjunction with some title they might have.
• Age- The character's age. Pretty much a given.
• Gender- The character's gender, if they have one.
• Faction- Currently between Sector Nine, Sector Three, and City, though others may show up.
• Appearance- The character's appearance. Be as verbose as you want, honestly, the more you want to describe your character, the more power to you.
• Starting Equipment- This is the equipment you want your character to start off with. Basic guns (starting from pistols to long-range rifles only in the beginning- if you want heavy duty firepower you fight your way to a Cache or trade for one) or melee weapons, clothing, any light body armor you might have, and other basic pieces of equipment like night vision goggles, radios, or even personal effects your character takes with them.
• Personality- The character's ideals about others, the City, philosophical things, likes, dislikes, habits, pet peeves, you name it. Whatever you come up with for your character so long as you show and tell.
• Skills- Now everyone's got skills. Everyone and their grandma, so "Nothing special" won't work here. Mercantile, speech, good with firearms, crack sniper, great at traversing around the City, can throw a metal pipe through someone's chest, can punt a fluffy wombler two miles in any direction, whatever skills your character has just list them here. If it's something you think would not be a normal occurrence for a character in your faction, such as Affliction abilities or otherwise supernatural powers, you're gonna have to message me or someone about that.
• Requests- These requests can be anything that you want someone to message you about first or things that you don't need formal messaging for. If you don't want to be Afflicted or become entangled with a Constant or some other group or creature, let us know. If you don't want your character to get killed unless asked first, let it be known. If you don't want your character to be hit on by guys or girls, or if you want exemption so people who don't abide by this request may get summarily kicked in the nether regions, then let us know. In the end this is a postapocalyptic setting so there's got to be some suffering your character endures, lest this section of the character sheet essentially be the "Easy Mode?" section, but basic requests are all fine.

Also, if you want to be able to play as the City for some posts at some given days in a week or month, then just say whether or not you'd be interested in knowing the rules of playing the City or being someone who would play the City at certain times underneath your character sheet.

Conclusion

So in conclusion after however many words, huge world, super malleable, the setting is alive, Lovecraft and Silent Hill have nothing on some of the monsters, and all in all it's a mostly self-governed RP of Cthulhu meets Walking Dead meets Song of Ice and Fire. If you've read the 10K character boring post on how this setting is and still want to take part, just let me know! In case this overview isn't enough, I can supply a larger list of the more common creatures or events that can happen in the City, but essentially the City is so infinitely big that anything can really happen. So, if anyone's interested, just let me know!

[TheMadAsshatter]

Holy shit, I can't help but get a vague S.T.A.L.K.E.R. vibe from this. This sounds awesome!

Also, why is there not a section for gear? Surely a character should have some guns and shit.

[SirBeowulf]

Interest has also been gained on this end. I really like the idea, too. Got a few questions though. What are Afflicted? Could you go into detail on what exactly they do and what 'powers' they have? A list of major beasts would be cool too. Also what Asshatter said is true, there should be an equipment section or something similar.

Speaking of, 'sup Asshat. Long time no buenos.

[TheMadAsshatter]

Eyyyyy!

Also, what is the extent of what can happen in the city? Obviously there's some spatial shit going on, but what is sort of, like, the limit?

[ZacksQuest]

Essentially, gear is mostly the same as you would have it, although the system might be a tad complex. For the most part, the guns available are the guns that the City salvaged from the world it took over, things ranging from a simple Smith and Wesson pistol to a Heckler and Koch G11 to probably a dozen types of automatic weapons, though for the sake of brevity I will simply make it as such. Your gear is limited to four categories and each of those categories into a few different subcategories.

For instance, for armaments and equipment, you have weapons and ammunition, your armaments or clothes, and any other equipment you may have. For weapons and ammunition, for brevity's sake, it will just be split up into knives, blunt melee, knuckles, pistols, short-ranged rifles, long-ranged rifles, shotguns, automatic weapons, and explosives, missiles, and other such incredibly heavy artillery. Anything past long-ranged rifles is likely only to be found in the most dangerous of Caches or otherwise kept in some protected storage unit to use in emergencies or invasion (unless you're part of a Sector that cares not for rules or safety, in which case all the power to you). On top of this, you can of course have modified sights on ranged weapons as well as other modifications, and given the City's eldritch properties and the fact that some of the many creatures it boasts include Towerspawn, essentially golems made of intricate and unorthodox clockwork mechanisms and what seems like pieces of the City itself, as well as a number of other creatures that affect things around them, it's quite possible to end up with a pistol or rifle that does some crazy things. Exactly what it does depends on what goes into the weapon and what the properties are of the aforementioned unnatural modifier. Other than that, you have your normal attire, although stab-proof or bullet-proof attire is much harder to come by though you usually find at least one in almost every Cache. And as for other equipment, that ranges from night vision goggles to other things that could be useful in the City, but not necessarily attire or a weapon.

Now, as for the Afflicted. What an Afflicted is is essentially a human being that has either been exposed to some of the more unnatural parts of the City, a Constant, or something to the point where their physiology and psychology have been affected and morphed into something much more inhuman. For the most part, if a Constant incites this, it's trying to make you into some kind of Servant of it, and usually these Servants have the same general skillsets, but if it's the City itself, it's almost an ability, physiology, and self-control roulette. Obviously you state whether or not it's even a possibility, and you have control of what happens if your character ends up getting Affliction. It's generally irreversible unless you do something crazy like make a deal with a Constant, which is essentially the only way to undo either the Affliction fully or the negative aspects. But as far as the abilities that come with Affliction, it varies, but usually there's at least one or two inhuman aspects that cause the Afflicted person to become a very, very skilled combatant so long as the other changes aren't hindrances.

Now for the most part, there are five main types of creatures that roam the City proper, outside of Constants and their Servants and, of course, the Afflicted. In order from the most populous to the least likely to be seen, these include:

• Shadow Graphers- The aforementioned shadow people with the pinhole eyes and the slit mouth smile, these creatures are beings of habit and order. Some say this is what happens to humans who are absorbed into the City, and others say they're merely the heralds to the City and were never human. All that's known is that these are either simple messengers, or deadly vicious attackers that can fuse into each other to become things that are truly nightmarish.
• The Harmony- The Harmony is a strange beast. For the most part, it looks like a fungus or a growth that usually is on the ground or a wall. And it can completely override your perception and make you see and hear things that aren't actually happening. Some people, including all Afflicted or Constant-allied people, are immune to its abilities, but it's a dangerous, dangerous thing, especially if it gets onto a person. Then, they essentially are displaced from reality alongside anyone within a certain distance of them, unless, again someone makes a deal with a Constant.
• The Flock- Another hive mind of sorts. These are birds that will appear out of nowhere and almost darken the sky. They can attack as a swarm, going for the eyes or soft flesh, or they can themselves meld into things like a storm or lightning bursts or a veritable tornado. These creatures are vicious and without remorse, and if they are quiet but present it's because something worse is there and they're more than willing to watch the suffering commence.
• Towerspawn- Like I said, these are the City's clockwork and dieselpunk golems. Most of the time, these things are completely subservient, mindless, and only given set parameters of human interaction, but for the most part are more on the destructive side. But there are many Towerspawn more than capable of mimicking human interaction, having their own thoughts and personalities, and even leading or misleading people or Retrievers it comes across.
• Cacklers- Mostly these are nighttime creatures, so they rarely make an appearance in the day except in dark interiors or in underground systems. They look like normal parts of the City, street lights, cones, empty newspaper vendors, a fire hydrant, anything. They can either communicate (especially in the case of a street light with its three lights), but most of the ones that will attack you will simply cackle. They'll cackle and you won't know where it's coming from until it reverts to its original form, which nobody has ever really lived to see. If they survived the Cacklers at all, they ran like hell until they reached a Dead Zone.

These are not by any means the only creatures the City has to offer, these are just the ones that most often show up. Other creatures appear and can, at times, be more prevalent in an area than the normally occurring creatures.

Thank you for comparing this to S.T.A.L.K.E.R. by the way! That franchise, even moreso than the Fallout or Metro franchises, was the inspiration to sort of make this RP, on top of lovecraftian horror and just the tiniest bit of creepypasta thrown in for extra flavoring.

EDIT: And the answer to what happens in the City is that really, aside from it mostly taking on the form of a City, there is no limit. The street can pull an Inception and turn upwards and even fully upside down to where the street continues up and above your head almost in an impossible U-turn, manholes can lead to the rooftops, you can walk up walls in a section where the gravity is sideways and pray it doesn't change while you're up there. For the most part, the only sections that aren't city-like are the dominions and homes of the Constants in sections in the very center of the City, which vary based on the Constants' varied personalities, representations, and abilities, and even then it might just be because those dominions are the unnatural equivalent of their living spaces. Aside from Dead Zones, which include Sectors and the narrow paths that connect the Sectors, and the domains of the Constants, mostly because the Constants do not want it, the City is in control of itself and aside from its urban aesthetic being generally the same throughout except in these domains, it is absolutely in control of itself and how it functions and operates, and is known to change on a whim.

[TheMadAsshatter]

I love it. Holy shit, this looks sick.

I'm sorry, I can't stop being excited about this.

[ZacksQuest]

It's all good, man. Thank you for being interested in it! I hope more people take an interest in it so the RP can begin to take off, but again, thank you so much!

[TheMadAsshatter]

Oh, what of other indigenous wildlife? Like dogs, cats, wolves, bears, eagles, whatever.

[bluejay_gl]

Interested. Reminds me of the spiraling city in Uzumaki.

[FantasyChic]

I would like to express interest in this. It looks pretty awesome.

[Sypherkhode822]

Interested.

How possible would it be for an afflicted to escape the control of their Constant? Can a Constant be killed?

[TheMadAsshatter]

One more question. Since it's been a hundred some-odd years since things went tits-up, people would begin to be given some off the wall names and shit, right? Maybe not like star-wars esque, but people just throwing cool words together to make a name at someone's birth.

[CallMeChaotix]

@ZacksQuest I am very interested.

But I've never done a Advanced roleplay before. I mostly do casuals.

[brokndremes]

@CallMeChaotix, @TheMadAsshatter, @Sypherkhode822, @FantasyChic, @bluejay_gl, @SirBeowulf:

Looks like OP posted an OOC here! Found the interest check, and then stumbled that thread.

[ZacksQuest]

@CallMeChaotix @TheMadAsshatter @Sypherkhode822

You can honestly create whatever names you want for the characters. Some characters go by normal names from the cultures or places on Earth they were from before it was taken by the City, but for the most part names' functions vary depending on where in the City, and what the purpose of names are. If it's from a Sector that boasts individuality and expression, you can go wild with the name, or if it's a name the character gave themselves.

A Constant escaping the control of a Constant is by far not unheard of. Usually, if you play a non-Servant Afflicted working under a Constant, it's not too hard to escape from the Constant's willpower, even if you couldn't survive fighting the Constant (which, probably, you wouldn't be at first). Servants usually aren't Afflicted enough for the Constant to be powerless over them mentally and honestly some Constants rely on less mental methods of control, and other Servants just want to serve the Constant. But if you're Afflicted, as in really Afflicted, you're granted quite a bit of immunity to a few things even if "not being mind controlled or tracked" is the only one on a short list that really counts in fighting against the Constant. And yes, a Constant can be killed by an Afflicted or a small army of people but it's nigh impossible. Especially since not all Constants are created equal. No spoiling possible plot points but essentially one Constant can be the embodiment of a major human emotion, or have skillsets that make it godlike on a tier beyond others. Without going too far into it, one is the embodiment of the afterlife, the human concept of religion, and the inhuman concept of reanimation. Indigenous wildlife is more an expression of the creatures the City creates, but animals probably have entered the City and the ones that aren't dead by this time or become Afflicted probably never will be.

And as far as Advanced Roleplay goes, the only few things that requires is a bit of a more detailed and descriptive character sheet, keeping track of your abilities and the stuff you have as well as just trying to fit in your character and the world best you can, and being a bit verbose. If really nothing's going on, you can do what you may to fill up time or keep it a little more brief, but really it's only a small handful of things.

I'm going to be back and ready to begin the RP in earnest after Boxing Day, and will be taking and approving characters indefinitely from that point forward, but if I don't reply with my approval or message you with suggestions or questions, it's because I'm currently on a brief vacation. But it looks like there are enough people interested for the RP (which, admittedly, yes, I did begin already) to begin in earnest after that.