So, what I'm looking for here is a few people to join me on a twisted journey into Wonderland... It's going to be a guessing game at what is real with us trying to decide as we go, kinda a Sucker Punch meets Alice deal. This version of the story is going to be a mash up of several books, comics, and games I've played based on a twisted Wonderland. So, if something sounds familiar... it probably is.
Anyway, the story is that Alice Liddell had a child and her line was carried on to Taylor Croft, my character. When my character hit puberty she, like all of Alice's decedents before her, started having delusions. She starts hearing animals, bugs, and even plants talking to her. She tries to shut them out, but with no luck she ends up admitted to a psych ward through a series of events I'll explain later. However, after meeting several others who seem to be having the same delusions she becomes certain that she and the women in her family before her weren't crazy after all and that instead they are cursed. So, the group is trying to find a way to break their curse. More info on that is to come in the play...
I'm not sure yet which direction I'm going to go.... Having Original Characters wandering Wonderland or having them see each other as Wonderland Inhabitants since it's a shared 'delusion'. If I go with the Wonderland Inhabitants idea then I have some ideas for everyone's 'issues'.
Cheshire Cat: The clever and mischievous kid who hides behind his/her smile and who tends to talk in riddle and give cryptic answers to anyone he/she doesn't like or simply when he/she is agitated.
White Rabbit: The kid obsessed with manners and not being late. Gets very upset when he/she is... has breakdowns.
Dormouse: Possibly a shy and very nervous boy/girl that everyone believes to be autistic. Is skittish and avoids being touched.
Mad Hatter: The boy/girl obsessed with hats whose mood swings rival Alice's and who tends to go off on tangents.
March Hare: Obsessed with tea and won't eat or drink anything that isn't in a tea cup. Throws things when cross.
Caterpillar: NPC Wonderland version of their therapist unless someone has another idea for him/her.
Duchess: NPC, probably the cafeteria lady.
Card Guards: NPCs
Red Queen: ?
I included The Truth About Alice, so you guys can see the kinda dark roads I'm willing to take and so you can see the background (most of which was taken from American McGee's Alice) that got us here. I intend for this to stay PG-13 and therefore in RPG's parameters despite the darker aspects. High-end casual players who are able to post once a day and at least two or three six sentence paragraphs are preferred. Don't be scared off by the amount of story, it covers two game summaries. I won't ever expect that much out of you, lol.
Once upon a time there was a girl named Alice who was very curious. Though she had an older sister, the years between them were many and so Alice often played on her own. To fill the void of playmates she began to dream and fantasize all day and all night about rabbits with waistcoats and pocketwatches, vanishing cats with luminous grins, and talking flowers. She would imagine her Wonderland any chance she could and was a very lively and playful girl even if she was a bit shy and introverted. One night, as she played in Wonderland, her house was set ablaze. The official report stated that her cat, Dinah, had knocked over a lamp in the library. In her room, Alice was daydreaming about Minotaurs sneaking into her home and had just dozed of listening to her sister's mumbling through the bedroom wall when Dinah leaped onto her chest and woke her to find her room filled with smoke.
Still clinging to her stuffed rabbit, Alice ran from her room only to find the blaze in the hall cutting her off from her parents whom she could hear screaming for her to get out on the other side of the blaze. Alice went to Lizzie's room, intent on waking her sister but the door was locked and the handle burned her hands. She screamed for Lizzie but her sister never answered. With the heat burning her skin and the smoke stinging her eyes and making her cough Alice retreated back to her room to find Dinah digging at her latched window. Opening her only means to escape, she followed Dinah out the window, down the lattice, and into the yard. She was standing outside her home, burned and covered in soot, still clinging to her rabbit when the authorities showed up. It was hard to say how long she'd stood there listening to her parent's scream, unable to help, until the screams had finally stopped. Police tried to speak to her but all she did was ramble about Minotaurs, talking cats, and a rabbit being cross at her parents for being late for tea.
Alice was taken to Rutledge Asylum by the authorities when, after days of rambling nonsense between crying and sleeping she succumbed to a violent fit of rage and tried to slit her wrists. This gave her Nanny, who had taken her in, no choice but to call for help. Then, she suddenly quit responding altogether and seemed to drop into catatonia. Over her time in Rutledge the Doctors and Nurses tried a variety of potions and treatments, none of which were effective. Then, feeling sorry for the girl, one of the nurses washed and stitched her old rabbit back together. After the rabbit was thoroughly repaired and white from washing once more, the nurse returned the rabbit to the girl in hopes it would ease her troubled mind. Instead, Alice seemed to suddenly wake from her catatonia even if it was only to start speaking fevered gibberish to the rabbit. She began to draw fantastic and morbid images of Wonderland and have moments of wakeful alertness during which she could be randomly violent and had to be restrained just in case. When she wasn't violent, Alice could be extremely charming if a bit cryptic and still altogether mad. She began telling stories about Wonderland and how she planned to defeat the Red Queen for twisting and destroying her world. All the psychiatrists could guess was that the Red Queen was another possible way for Alice to see herself and that she still blamed herself for her family's death... A type of survivor's remorse and that Wonderland was a way to escape the reality of her trauma.
After ten years in Rutledge, Alice seemed to suddenly return to reality with no help but her own. She began speaking clearly and of sane matters, she began eating and walking outside, and even seemed to be slowly coming to terms with her guilt. She suddenly asked the nurse to remove the rabbit and refused to speak of the toy and no longer drew at all. Slowly she seemed to come to terms with her guilt. Her psychiatrist, Doctor Winston, kept the rabbit despite... thinking that perhaps in time she'd want it back. As her progress increased Alice was finally released from the Asylum and was proclaimed cured, though Doctor Winston was reluctant to claim credit for her recovery. In an effort to help her survive in the outside world Alice's former Nurse set her up in a Home for troubled children run by Angus Bumby. Bumby began a new form of treatment when Alice's dreams of Wonderland began to return after someone unknown sent her a picture of her family when Alice had thought everything had burned in the fire. The new treatment was hypnotherapy... something he did for all the children in the home to help them forget their troubled pasts. However, the more she tried to forget the worse her nightmares became until she suffered another break with reality.
In the end Alice discovered Bumby's real reason for wanting her to forget when everything came back to her. Bumby had been an undergrad in the Academy where her father taught Psychiatry, he seemed to take quite the interest in Lizzie, Alice's older sister. Lizzie, however, had no such fancies for him and actually expressed discomfort in being around him. After a time, Lizzie confided in Alice that Bumby had caught her in a bathroom in the Academy and had tried to make forceful advances which Lizzie had equally forcefully declined with threats of alerting the authorities. Angered by her rejection, Bumby had snuck into the Liddell house in the middle of the night. A only half awake Alice had mistaken him for one of her fanciful creatures and had went back to daydreaming, not knowing that the sounds from Lizzie's room was Bumby. Having done what he came to do he killed Lizzie and locked her bedroom door, taking her key as a sort of twisted memento. Then, he'd taken an oil lamp and had thrown it into the library, intending to kill everyone in the home to cover up his crime... Having awoken to the truth Alice confronted Bumby at the train station where he was planning to depart on a business trip. It was there that he smugly reminded her that no one would believe a crazy young girl over a well respected member of the community. Alice pushed him off the platform and into an oncoming train, then her worlds (Reality and Wonderland) seemed to merge into one. A few years down the road, Alice met a man who loved her despite her odd mood swings which laudanum seemed to ease. They got married, though right after having her daughter Alice's husband brought home a stuffed white rabbit for the baby's crib. Alice was said to have had another break with reality that same night and jumped out her bedroom window and broke her neck.
