Took too long but hereās an OOC intro post I can pin. (Itās out of character because Harold wouldnāt think to write one.) You donāt have to read it to interact, but it contains some information on how Iām running this blog and on whatās happened so far. While the blog belongs to HaroldāostensiblyāI may bring other characters into rp posts.
Putting it under the cut for space purposes.
General Character Info
Harold Boltonācall him Harry if you want. Heāll hate it but thatās 100% in character.
24, graduated art school in ā22 after studying cinematography.
He/Him pronouns, in the āI really donāt care enough to turn off default settingsā way.
An average-height man with dark hair and eyes, wearing a long, black trench coat and carrying a telescoping umbrella that he seldom opens. He is almost always dripping wet. He has a large nose, an idiosyncratic British accent, and consistently forgets to shave.
As far as paranormal phenomena, Harold doesnāt breathe and is constantly dripping wetānot just from the storm that follows him. His lungs and other organs are full of silt, making his voice come out gargled and making eating an impossibility.
Harold + other recurring characters from this blog.
The Story So Far
Blood on the Ice
When Harold was 11, his father went on a hunting trip, during which he went mad and killed his companion, whose remains were seen as an empty husk of skin and a pile of cockroaches.
On his way back to the small town above Newcastle, he killed another person who the autopsy found had no internal organs.
When his father reached their home, he chased Harold out of the house with his rifle. Harold fell through the ice above a river and was pulled out downstream, unconscious. He believes the Buried marked him at this point.
Harold, now an adult, visited his father in prison and was told the man had been well-behaved. However, when Harold arrived, his father began yelling āYouāre too close, I canāt breathe!ā And pounding the glass until it splintered and his fist was bleeding.
An Angel in Haroldās inbox explained that his father had written letters while in prison, and they were withheld from Harold. He sent one to this blog, where Nicholas explains that when around monsters (people touched by the fears) he becomes murderous, leading Desmond to wonder if Harold was marked by the buried even before falling in the river.
In later letters from Nicholas, itās revealed that on his hunting trip he experienced a vivid hallucination of being tackled by a wolf that attacked his heart, and thatās when this all began.
For Haroldās birthday, the Angel pulled strings to get Josie from the Bookend sent to Nicholasā prison, where he killed her and escaped, chasing a trail of spiders.
Harold left London to stay with Dezās brother in order to hide from Nicholas and Kieran (another hunter)
HuntingHauntings
Check the tag (#HuntingHauntings saga).
Harold works for a ghost hunting show that he thinks is cheesy. Due to his large student debts, he canāt quit, despite doing all of the technical heavy lifting for Angie and Charlotte, the co-hosts.
An investigation into a supposedly haunted firing range revealed what Angie believed to be a rifle haunted by the ghosts of things it had killed. A spectral wolf appeared and chased Harold into the rain, where it dissipated.
When they went to film the next episode at the Bookend, they encountered 3 Leitners, one of which opened an emptiness into reality that both show hosts fell into
Harold took all three books and ran.
The show revamped with a focus on actual paranormal events after Harold saved Angie and Charlotte, with an episode on a mold-infested corner store, and the not-them.
Toe in the Water
Harold took the Leitners to Amelie, a librarian at the Magnus institute, and borrowed a book titled āChokeā while there.
By reading Choke, Harold learned about the existence of the Buried (though he knows it as Choke), and based on his observations, he deduced the existence of an opposing force, which he has dubbed Adrift.
Based on interactions between Amelie and the Unholy Bible and the blue book and the rain, Harold reasons that these two forces can be used to counter each other.
After interviewing at the Magnus institute, Harold identified a new pair of fears, which he called the Known and Unseenārudimentary versions of the Eye and Dark.
After a first outing to retrieve a painting that caused things around it to bleed, his theories spat out another pair of opposing forces: Blood and Decay. Faye corrected his names for the Buried and Vast.
After a dream while drowning laid the fears out for him, and a post from Amelie gave them names, Harold lined them up with each other.
Falling Up
During the events of the Bookend, Charlotte and Angie fell into a hole pulled into reality by a Leitner.
Harold reasons that since matter cannot be created nor destroyed and their bodies didnāt drop, they must still be inside the book. He feels guilty for abandoning them and he needs to get them out.
When speaking with Faye, they confirmed that the Vast doesnāt tend to kill its victims.
Harold took the blue book up to Yorkshire and jumped into the Bolton Strid with it, drowning himself and saving the bookās victims in the course of becoming a full avatar of the buried.
He had a dream in the Strid where he experienced 14 of the fears and ran from each in turn, before falling to the Buried and finding comfort in it.
He called an ambulance for the victims, and they are well on their way to a full recovery, with Angie and Charlotte back in London.
The footage of this event, recorded on his camera, is deeply marked by the buried and causes a claustrophobic feeling when viewed. Harold is alone in thinking itās beautiful.
The Crushing Storm
Tagged (#the crushing storm saga)
Since Haroldās senior year finals week it has been raining on him. He doesnāt mind it that much, but the havoc it wreaks on some of his personal belongings irritates him.
For the third time, rainwater has begun to leak through his flat ceiling, and he anticipates the apartment flooding (again) and needing to move.
When compelled to answer a question about his mental state, the rain let up slightly when he let the weight off his chest, but came back just as heavily when he denied his answer a moment later.
Harold has deduced that the rains are a manifestation of Choke.
The puddles forming in the rain give Harold access to cramped underwater tunnels, which drag him to places where the Buried is strongāor where it wants him to be.
Harold realized that other people were falling into his tunnels through a statement an institute worker gave him. After he started pushing people in himself, his powers developed further, allowing him to control if the storm is real or only visible to him, and have a bit more control navigating the caverns.
Boltzmannās Brain
At the Bookend, Angie read the two annotated papers by Robert Kirk that made up a Leitner and became convinced that she is the only real person in existence.
When Angie emerged from the book, this effect was still in place. She is rude and frightened, and Harold is struggling to talk her out of Solipsism.
She attempted to steal a bunch of lapis from a crystal shop, meaning to use it to enhance her āpsychic abilitiesā. She was arrested and when Harold paid her bail, she mellowed out, realizing that even if people are fake, her experience of the consequences are not.
A Stranger Streamer
Harold won a giveaway to see one of his favorite twitch streamers (d.parfit.plays (fictional)) in a private Q&A
Desmond recognized Harold from his HuntingHauntings work and arranged a meetup for coffee. Tea in Haroldās case.
They began dating, and Haroldās attempts to keep it private blew up when he accidentally hugged Desmond during a livestream.
Dez used Haroldās phone to run a Q&A, mentioning that heās been streaming the video of Harold drowning, because he knows it feeds Harold.
As Hunting Hauntings rebooted, Dez added supplementals to each video, explaining that he was being followed, and investigating into the Angel.
During a stream, Dez was attacked by the notthem, which managed to convince Harold the screams were just a prank.
Eight-Legged Angel
While Harold was confused of an aspect of the powers, he got an ask explaining it in terms he understood, signed āan angelāāonly this ask was sent in before he mentioned the issue aloud.
Harold received several taunting messages from this angel, leading to it revealing that it has the letters his father wrote in prison, and while it will send the first one for free, to get the others, Harold will need to do exactly what it says.
The Angel had Harold find two statements in the archives, pointing him to the NotThem and the moldy corner store that became the first two episodes.
On Interacting with This Blog
I intend to have some posts that are like, actual narrative rp, and some which are in-universe posts. Please donāt respond to an in-universe post like itās narrative rp or vice versa. If you do I will ignore it.
I will not rp a romance with someone I am not actually romantically involved with. Light flirting will usually be fine, but it will not be reciprocated and I will not hesitate to say youāre going too far.
If youād like to approach me in DMs to plan out story arcs involving both our characters, they are open. I will not rp in DMs.
I will also not rp in post tags, those are simply for meta blog organization.
If my character is upset, that does not mean I am upset. If I am upset, I will say so in tags or DMs, not in the body of a post.
Feel free to tag me in chains and ask games and such, I might not interact on all of them, but Iāll probably see it.
The One Behind the Curtain
Names are all made up in the first place. Why do you want mine? So you can moan it? Thatās gay.
Iām 20. Really not sure what else to put here since I, as a person, am pretty irrelevant to this blog as a whole.
Mountain Time so if Iām not responding, check the hour. Iām probably asleep or at work.
