It’s five miles south of the Canadian border, twelve miles west of the state line. I’ve never seen so many trees in my life. As W.C. Fields would say, “I’d rather be here than Philadelphia.”
Ok finally finished my drawing of my OCs. This is my first time drawing most of them. Lore below the cut:
PREMISE:
Corrin is fairly certain he has latent psychic abilities tied to his migraines. During migraine episodes, he can almost feel the buzz of psychic energy in the air and sees the flow of it in the corners of his vision. Still, he clings onto a degree of skepticism. He only realizes how thin the veil is in his city (Asphodel, USA) when he visits his mother out of town and can't seem to find the magic at all. When he returns to Asphodel he waits for a particularly strong migraine and performs a ritual of his own making to harness its power to reach through the veil. Corrin was correct in his observation that the veil between worlds was thin in Asphodel, but it's less like a "veil" and more like glass, so when Corrin reaches through, the barrier shatters and magic floods into the city of Asphodel, causing strange effects on several of its citizens.
It's kind of a superhero story, but without any heroes. Everyone's just kind of crazy.
CHARACTERS:
(Starting with Corrin in the center and then moving counterclockwise)
Corrin: As described in the premise. There are psychics in this world (more on that later), but Corrin doesn't know about them. He sees his own "powers" and "ritual" as a sort of spiritual exploration but doesn't fully take himself seriously. When he breaks the barrier, it causes an explosion of pain and he passes out. He dismisses it as a migraine, and dismisses the strange glow he saw during the ritual as just a new visual symptom. In the following days, he keeps having several more strange new "symptoms" that scare him before he finally realizes his ritual actually worked and he's actually psychic. He doesn't realize that he fully shattered the barrier though and that now people are looking for the culprit.
Matthias Roche (AKA The Roach): Matthias is many things. He's a programmer, a bug-lover, an agoraphobe, and a slob. He never leaves his apartment, never takes out the trash, doesn't really clean up after himself, snd works from home. He has one friend online whom he knows live in the same city, but he can't get himself to leave the house to meet them. He actually knows their address (creep) but they don't even know he lives in Asphodel too. He has a terrarium with pet hissing cockroaches, which he loves more than anything. Unfortunately, his hygeine habits also invite pest roaches into the apartment. His drunken roommate who's finally had enough of Matthias, barges into his room and tells him if he's going to invite cockroaches into the home, them he doesn't need pet ones. And then shatters the terrarium and crushes Matthias' pets. Naturally, Matthias attacks his roommate, stabbing him repeatedly until he dies. Matthias just leaves the body in the kitchen and slinks back to his room and pretends like nothing happened. Days later, he hears a woman enter the apartment and scream. The roommate's girlfriend had a key and came to check up on him only to find hid body rotting on the floor. Whoops! Matthias has to run, despite his fear of leaving the house. He knows he has to find his friend, but doesn't know how to reach them. (Meanwhile the veil shatters.) He runs down an alley in a panic, trips and falls into a strange glowing pit, and then wakes up in another alley in a different part of the city. He gets mugged, gets stabbed, but the knife barely punctures his skin... which is now hardened like exoskeleton. He reaches his friend and they let him stay with them. There's more about the two of them but I'm going on too long here. Basically his powers are he's part roach and can communicate woth roaches. Yay!
Jean Magnon (AKA Dr. Maggot): This is Matthias' friend from online. They're a professional biologist and genetic engineer who does important research but doesn't get to explore some of their grander (possibly unethical) ideas because obviously they can't get funding for them. Matt's arrival is unexpected, but presents an opportunity at a particularly low moment. They invite him in with open arms. They soon find out he killed someone (or two) but Matt is sooooo pathetic and they feel for him, and Matt claims that he only killed those people because of what he's become and that he needs a cure. Jean doesn't have the resources to do that kind of research. They try to use the lab at work, but almost get caught. Matt decides to steal to make the means to help out. Eventually Jean finds out that Matt killed his roommate before he became The Roach but it ends up not being an issue because Matt is helping them so they can do the research they've been wanting to do. Also they basically create all kinds of crazy genetically-modified roaches that Matthias can use for thieving shenanigans. Glowing roaches that send signals or act as distractions, scout roaches with specific pheromone trails to be used as trackers, giant roaches for... idk tbh I just think it would be fun.
Dr. Fran Tich (AKA Professor Illusion): She's a philosophy professor. When the veil breaks, she falls fully into the magic dimension and sees things beyond human comprehension. Unlike others who fell in and were unable to recover, she makes it out with as much sanity as a philosopher can have after an event like that. She becomes resentful that people claim to know anything at all, and expecially resentful of know-it-alls and becomes a huge contrarian. She literally warps reality to show people just a glimpse of what she witnessed to drive them mad. To show them that they're wrong, that they understand nothing. But on a deeper level that she can't admit, she wants to be proven wrong because she's trapped herself in a philosphical prison. To believe that nobody can understand you—even if just for the reason that nonone can truly understand anything at all—is a lonely way to live.
Garrett (The Wizard): He's a fantasy LARPer and plays as a wizard in his campaigns. His current LARP group wants to try out a sci-fi campaign next and Garrett KNOWS this but he's so stubborn he keeps working on his wizard costume anyway, hoping he can convince them to change their minds if he just makes his costume perfect. The veil breaks while he's working on his staff and magic strikes him hard. It's excruciatingly painful, but he channels some of the magic into his staff which relieves some of the pain. Now he and his staff are imbued with magic. Because he's so on his wizard shit, he's like yeah I'm a fucking real wizard! And he thinks the world is going to offer him some sort of quest. Later on, he finds out someone let magic into this world, which is what caused him to become the wizard. Naturally he assumed the person to do so must be an even more powerful wizard and wants to track them down to become their pupil. When he finally meets Corrin, he's kind of disappointed, but he doesn't let that get to him. He asks Corrin to be hid mentor and Corrin is like 1) no, 2) who the fuck are you, 3) i'm not a wizard. Corrin doesn't even know what he's doing and couldn't mentor Garrett if he wanted to. But Garrett is stubborn so he decides that if Corrin isn't skilled enough to mentor him, then he must challenge Corrin so they BOTH become more powerful. Garrett basically sees Corrin as the most powerful player so far and wants Corrin on his side, but also recognized that Corrin is not at his full potential and essentially needs to be groomed into the role. So Garrett essentially becomes Corrin's nemesis, even through Corrin wants no part in it.
Marionette (The Puppetmaster): She doesn't speak and only communicates through puppetry. She makes puppets and other crafts, which her girlfriend sells in their shop. They have a shop on the ground floor and their home & workshop upstairs. Marionette likes peoplewatching and sketches interesting people to make puppets of them later. One person that catches her eye is someone who's just come back from falling through the veil. They shamble around like a hollow shell. She makes a doll of this person and unbeknownst to her, it causes the real person to do whatever Marionette makes the puppet do. Only the "husk" people who lost their minds on the other side of the veil are magically tied to her puppets. She finds this out by playing with her puppets, making one of these interact with a puppet of her girlfriend. Later that day, she sees him say exactly what she acted out in her play.
Jeanine "Juniper" (killer hippie): Not super-powered. She's an upper-middle class suburban woman with a husband and college-age daughter. She's also an infamous serial killer. Her daughter is the only person in the world she loves, but when her daughter catches her killing her husband, she has to kill the daughter too. It's the only murder she feels guilty for. In her grief, she moves away and starts a new life in Asphodel. She starts experimenting with psychedelics and decides to become a pacifist & hippie. She intrudes on a college party and they let her hang around and invite her to more because she deals them drugs. Eventually, she just starts hanging out on the college campus. If asked by students why she hangs around, she tells them it makes her feel closer to her daughter who tragically passed... and they're all like okay she's objectively kind of a creep but I feel bad for her. There are a few girls at the college she has her eye on, though not with any intent... yet. At one party, she sees a boy trying to assault one of Jeanine's girls outside a sorority house. The girl pushes the boy down the steps and he hits his head. The boy is only knocked out, but the girl is drunk and thinks she killed him. Jeanine steps in and says she'll help the girl dispose of the body. On the way to dispose of the boy, he wakes up, and Jeanine pressures the girl to kill him for real this time because otherwise he's going to tell. So the girl kills him and Jeanine feels a sens of pride. From this pont on, she grooms the girl into becoming her protégé.
Cult Leader: To be honest, I barely have anything written about this guy. He's just a regular cult leader. He says the end is coming and then the veil breaks and weird shit starts happening around the city and it drives his flock closer to him. He doesn't get any powers from the event, but his follwers think he did. And word gets around, so more people start to believe it. I just thought it would be a fun addition to have a world where random people are getting superpowers, but the guy famous for having powers actually doesn't. Throughout the story, though, he's discreetly seeking a way to actually gain powers.
Psychic Council: The psychic council has been around since Asphodel was founded. The veil there has always been thin, and the founders sought to contain it. They succeeded in doing so, for the most part. The council has been monitoring psychic energy around the city for centuries. It's a legacy role, passed down from parents to children. In the modern day, they just meet up for a conference every year to discuss measurements. It's a tradition, but it hasn't been anything particularly noteworthy in a long while. They just rent out a space and order catering. It's more of a social event than anything now. They're technically part of Asphodel's government, but they have some less conspicuous name than "psychic council."My original document where I wrote about them says "they could be called Agency of Specialized Security (ASS)." Awesome. When the barrier breaks, everyone is ill-prepared to deal with it. Few of them even have psychic experience. None of them expected anything like this in their lifetime. They have records of every psychic in the country, which was able to be tracked because psychic abilities are a heritable trait. So they're trying to track down suspects based on this list. Corrin isn't on this list though. Others in his family might have latent psychic abilities, but they certainly aren't aware of it. Possibly they rejected it generations ago due to religious beliefs.
Okay that's a general overview. It's a bit all over the place and I don't think anyone will read all this, but if you did, thank you! I hope you enjoyed my ideas :3
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