planarposting is a blog-based ARG set in a modern-fantasy world.
Jamie Quinn Ambrose (@ambroro), born September 29, 519 PLNR, is an eighteen-year-old skyborn boy living in Rhea, Celestia. Jamie’s life as the heir to his father’s fortune has been a whirlwind of galas, fundraisers, and private tutoring, mostly attended alongside his best friend Nico Curzón. Come fall, Jamie will be double-majoring in economics and history to prepare him for his future as head of the Ambrose dynasty. For himself, though, he’s elected to minor in alchemy, and hopes to cultivate impressive talent while at Cavillier.
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Jamie enjoys:
History documentaries
Learning guitar
Romance novels (don’t tell Nico!)
Jamie dislikes:
Classical music (listen, you sit through enough lessons…)
Spinach
EB Garamond (yes, the font)
Join Jamie on his journey at @ambroro, and don’t forget to enroll at @cavillieracademy for the ‘38-’39 school year. See you in the fall!
planarposting is a blog-based ARG set in a modern-fantasy world.
Penelope “Penji” Muriel Stratford (@silji), born January 11, 520 PLNR, is an eighteen-year-old earthborn girl living in Orsino, Celestia. Living with her fathers, Penji can usually be found in her small greenhouse, making magnificent flora sprout even in the dark underbelly of Celestia’s capitol city. She is excited to begin classes at Cavillier Academy. Accepted on scholarship, Penji plans to take difficult courses in alchemy and political science to keep her place at the prestigious university.
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Penji enjoys:
Gardening
Fiber arts (especially macramé)
Dancing
Penji dislikes:
Being idle/wasting time
Hot weather
Sour candy
Join Penji on her journey at @silji, and don’t forget to enroll at @cavillieracademy for the ‘38-’39 school year. See you in the fall!
planarposting is a blog-based ARG set in a modern-fantasy world.
Visit the Commonwealth of Celestia — the easy, breezy, bustling city in the heart of it all!
Welcome to the Commonwealth of Celestia, the bustling trading hub of the four planes. Located between the Kingdom of Farrago and the Republic of Adamas, it’s both the best defended and most central of the Upper Planes. With that central location also comes multiculturalism — earthborn, seaborn, and (naturally) skyborn are found in great numbers, and our central planning committee has designed our cities to be accessible for all their denizens, regardless of inborn alignment.
Rhea, our capital, is full of wonderful places to visit. See our thrilling art-deco inspired high-rises, our state-of-the-art theaters, and our legendary parks where you can frolic on cloudtop! Enjoy the gorgeous gothic architecture of our parliament building, whose majestic edifice rises from the mist in the east with the sun each morning.
In its shadow sits Orsino, the moody city cast in Rhea’s clouds. Affordable and cozy, Orsino is host to a unique temperate rainforest of bioluminescent flora, cultivated to flourish in our sunless suburb.
There’s so much to see! Learn more travel information at @planarposting and check out some of our proud citizens like @ambroro and @nicurazon
A light blue goblin with salt-and-pepper blond hair and white stubble on a craggy face followed a trail from a rectangular imprint where a kennel used to sit on the forest floor. Germ wore tan leather booty shorts and a lambskin vest. His hair stood out stiffly where he’d combed it out of his face with his fingers. He had the buggy wrinkled features of a hairless cat, but with an old man’s bulb nose and boxy chin. Germ plucked up and nibbled on the little black ground beetles he found along the way. Behind him, paying no attention to the tracks, Mal compared sticks picked off the ground and selected a new favorite switch for whipping against tree trunks, logs, rocks, bracken, puddles, droppings, and insects. He had a caterpillar green complexion and stood a few heads taller than Germ, with short brown hair under a leather cap with a long thorn on top and dangly straps hanging in front of his pointed ears. His short, stubbly muzzle held rather large teeth. Mal walked dick out in just an old holey sweater that used to be the pale yellow beige of grain but had gotten grayer and indistinct as dust settled into the fibers.
“Cudya and yer stick stick behind me so I can track the grub-girl’s tracks before you smack em?” requested Germ.
“Nope. Just smacking,” replied Mal.
Germ smacked a smarting slap across Mal’s knuckles. “ ‘Just smacking’ back thar.”
“Kay, kay, doin.” Mal grinned with his overlarge chonky sharp teeth and skittered back a short ways to give Germ room. He re-smacked a pile of deer scat he’d swatted already with his switch.
They continued on a winding path through broken ferns and crushed lichen. “Yooll see here she’s foraging. She don know the fuck she doon, but she hungers. Leaves, roots; I-kin see her lil teethy scratches on this treeskin. Trying to beaver bout it, but see she rustled oot vittle-type morsels roond herebouts. Try and err. She’s circled through this area a few times.”
“Yap yep,” listened Mal. He picked up a new, thicker stick and began peeling the bark off it with his thumbnail. “Yip yap yep yup.”
“Yeep yip yups,” agreed Germ.
“Yip yip yip.”
They echoed variations on that back and forth and the range of vowels and consonants shifted with each iteration.
“Ayk ayk, here we’ve gotter,” announced Germ. “Icker ker krer.”
“Kreck teck deck,” Mal said.
“Okeys, stoppit.” Germ got annoyed at their mouth sounds game and waved his hand at Mal to shush.
A larva the size of a fat corgi had crawled up the side of a maple tree and dug her sharp claws and wedged her tail into the bark. Her breath rippled down the smooth mushroom gray flanks as she rested her eyes, face pressed to the side of the trunk. Below her in the leaf litter and moss, scraps of fur and gnawed bones lay scattered: a opossum far past playing dead, a skeletal carcass with a striped tail, an antlered skull with bits of brain stinking up the inside. Germ crouched over the remains and found paper plates stained orange from tomato sauce, soggy fragments of paper napkins, overlooked bits of arugula, and a line of thatcher ants carrying off cornbread crumbs in a line.
“Somefolk feeds her,” remarked Germ. “Or somefolk likes having picnics on a pile of animal carcasses. We gots pasta maybe, breadstuff, ground beef bits, sauteed onion and garlic. Touching. You got a friend or what?” He got to his feet and reached up to pat the resting creature on her back. “Set to pupate. Muk says hi. Lesget a barrier up an you jus sit tight, big girl.”
She didn’t acknowledge him in any way. Germ snorted out a booger into the dirt then waved for Mal to follow him as he began poking around for big rocks. They rolled over the largest stones they could pry up from the earth and arranged them in a circle with the base of the tree forming the east wall. It took them a few hours, and it wasn’t much to look at when they were done, but after a short recitation in an underworld language the objects within the circle extending up for a few yards began to move in an odd flicker like a time lapse video. Flies and their young crawled in shimmering masses with beetles and ants, reducing the skeletons to dry husks at the tree’s feet. Pulses rippled down Duria’s oblong form as she swelled up. Her outermost skin split along her back, barbs, face, and other features with it. The pantyhose-thin sleeve peeled back and shrank to one end, revealing a tan, smooth mass. She writhed and pulled herself up into a compacter chrysalis, breathing in rapid beats as her larval form began to melt into something new.
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Misha wore blue latex gloves and a simple raglan t with paint-splattered jeans as she sectioned off Winter’s hair in the bathroom. A box dye kit instructions lay kicked to the side on the floor, with the different chemicals arranged on the already busy vanity.
“The metal teeth were dope, but those old dudes were top tier freaky,” Misha said. Her aunt had redone her braids to have light and dark green strands worked in ending with white and gold pony beads that clattered behind her where she’d tied it all out of the way with a scrunchy. Winter in turn wanted to go from white to aqua blue, and since her roots had grown out so much it was time to redye it anyway.
“I wish I could cut out all the Riley bits. And Xander. I don’t care about all the romantic crap and weird orgasm jokes and these stupid Ken doll ‘hunks.’ I just want to see her fight monsters,” commented Winter. She played Pokemon FireRed with the screen angled to catch the vanity lights above the mirror behind her so she could see the game better.
“Did you like Angel better?” asked Misha.
“No, I just said I don’t care about the hunks. He was boring to be ‘ominous’ and I’m glad he’s off in his own show now. I really could not care less about the stupid boyfriend shit,” replied Winter.
“Angel is pretty good, I think. The show. But the guys they want to be cute just are most def not. I don’t know. I feel like I don’t really know what my type is but it’s just not that, you know? I guess they’re, like, hotter in anime or whatever.”
“I guess.”
“But forget the boyfriend crap. Super creepy episode, right? And what kind of fairy tale has goons in straight jackets?” Misha wondered.
“Ye old asylum horror fairy tale.” Winter giggled. “And the good fairy said, ‘Put them in padded rooms and throw away the key!’”
Misha snorted. “More like the evil fairy.”
While the dye set, Winter and Misha sat on the couch with the television on (turned down and ignored as background ambiance), and played pokemon together. They’d gotten the complementing versions together in the store with their allowances. The television would have had to compete with the music blasting from her brother’s room if they hadn’t muted it. Heard through the wall, the music crashed and wailed with often discordant melodies. Her brother had his friends over, not just the boyfriend who lived here but a couple goths muttering together under the overlapping guitar riffs. Within his room, Daiki sat on his bed with a sketchpad on his knees, leaned against the wall drawing monsters. Out in the living room, Bevie had her arms around Calvin’s middle with her hands tucked into his oversized black hoodie, sharing an armchair and a bag of barbecue potato chips. Since Bevie’s hands were full, Calvin put every other chip into his girlfriend’s mouth.
“I’d give them to you if I could,” mumbled Calvin.
“That would be fucking sick,” commented Bevie.
Calvin grinned and fed a potato chip into her mouth. “You would fall over. You’re a stick.”
“True,” agreed Bevie. She caught the younger adolescents on the couch staring at her hands moving around under her boyfriend’s shirt. “Worth it.” She lowered her voice and snuggled in closer. “How do you get okay with being fat? Because I just, I hate – not on you, you’re perfect, but like. Pinching up skin on myself? Retch. I hate hate hate folds and muffin tops and…” She saw Calvin’s expression. “Just on me, girl.” She realized her mistake and quickly corrected to, “Boy.”
Calvin sat still and gazed into space. Slowly he told her, “So, I am not comfortable with this. I don’t like when you call me fat, Bev.”
“What? I said you’re perfect, dude. Get over it. This is about me,” replied Bevie, annoyed.
“Sure, bitch. Sure.”
“Shut up and just let me play with your body.”
“You really are such a bitch,” he muttered.
“Cry a river, bridge, yada yada, zip it,” she grumbled. “Why did you stop giving me chips?”
“Get a room!” Winter complained.
“Daiki threw us out,” replied Calvin.
“Why? You’re here to hang out with him, aren’t you?” asked Winter.
“Where’s the other guy? Peter or...with the long hair?” asked Misha.
A timer went off in the kitchen. Winter sprang up and jogged over to turn it off. “Time to rinse my hair. I hope he gets back soon; we were going to go check on the grub thing.”
“Oh yeah, that pet cryptid?” Bevie asked. “I gotta see that. There’s no way that’s real.”
“Fine, come along if you want,” accepted Winter. She stopped at her brother’s room and called through the door. “Daiki? Can’t you drive yet?”
“He doesn’t have a car,” mentioned Bevie.
“Ugh, useless.” Winter ducked into the bathroom to wash the dye out.
When she came back out, Calvin and Bevie had slipped into Daiki’s room and shut the door. Misha played LeafGreen under the lamp. A few minutes laterDaiki emerged from his room and shut the door behind him, looking back at the door with an annoyed expression.
“Why don’t you want to hang out with your friends?” Misha asked.
Daiki stood silently for a minute, and she thought he just wasn’t going to answer. Then he stated, “They want me to join them. I have a boyfriend.”
“Oh my god,” Misha commented.
“Wash your sheets after they leave,” advised Winter.
He nodded and sat down near Misha on the couch.
“You okay dude?” asked Misha.
“I’m. I don’t know. I’m unharmed,” decided Daiki.
“I hope I never get like that,” Winter remarked. “Like them. That’s gross.”
“They’re sorta cute and tsundere,” said Misha. She stretched out her legs and frowned over her game. “Can you ask your mom if we can get a pizza?”
“What the fuck is ‘tsundere’?” asked Daiki.
The door opened and Paul slipped in then sat down on a stool by the door to take off his winter boots. “Hey,” he greeted. “Oh, the blue is pretty. I like that color.” He still had the green corduroy jacket with the faux sheepskin collar more suited for autumn, but had layered it with a thick flannel shirt.
“Thank you! Oh Paul, can we go to the woods to see the grub?” asked Winter.
“I…” Paul sighed and retied his shoelaces. “Yeah, sure. I’m just kind of hungry.”
“Me too!” said Misha.
Daiki got up and moved to the kitchen where he began almost mechanically making sandwiches without comment. A stack of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches gradually increased on a plate to his right, with an open bag of bread, a jar of peanut butter, and a blue tub of jam to his left. Calvin and Bevie started arguing in Daiki’s room. The album Daiki had put on reached the end and the silence interrupted their argument as they became conscious of the rest of the house hearing their spat. Paul poured a glass of juice and helped himself to one of the sandwiches. Daiki bumped his head gently against his boyfriend then resumed his task until he’d made one sandwich for every person there, with one for his mom for when she finished her errands and got home. He covered the last one in plastic wrap and stuck it in the fridge.
“That’s for us?” Misha asked.
Daiki nodded.
“You rock,” she said and got up to get her sandwich.
Winter grabbed one then shouted through her brother’s bedroom door. “Stop your sex and come get your sandwiches!”
Paul choked on his juice and laughed into his hand.
Bevie, ruffled and casual, threw the door open and stepped out. “Who made sandwiches? Oh, hi Paul. Sup.”
“Hi Bev,” greeted Paul. A tamed animosity crackled between them: two cats with a truce.
Calvin walked out with his arms folded across his body, eyes down. “Hi. We weren’t...we...it’s not like. Shut up.”
“Yeah, sure,” said Winter. “Daiki made PB n’ J’s.”
“Suh-weet!” hooted Bevie. She snatched one and took a bite.
“We’re going to the woods to see Duria,” mentioned Paul.
Calvin had been reaching for a sandwich but his hand dropped. He looked around at everybody with a stony expression then walked back to Daiki’s room and slammed the door.
“Okay, the rest of us are going,” amended Paul. “I can only fit five in my car anyway.”
Daiki made one more sandwich and packed it into a ziploc bag. “For her.”
Everybody got their coats on and filed out the door. A frigid night greeted them, above freezing but still bitter for a climate that shied from extremes. Fog haloed the streetlights and deepened the darkness. With Paul in the driver seat, Bevie sat in the back with Winter and Misha, and Daiki took shotgun. His black trench coat was more suited for rain than chill, but he had on a sweater and a thick scarf. Paul put on a Pet Shop Boys CD, checked that everyone had their seat belts on, and pulled out onto the suburban street.
“Your team is underleveled. You gotta spend more time in the tall grass,” Misha suggested.
“It’s too dark to play anyway,” grumbled Winter. She saved her game and turned the console off. Misha followed suit. They shivered and leaned together for warmth in the chilly back seat. Bevie remained aloof from the two younger girls and looked out the window at passing houses decked in string lights. Her breath fogged up the window so she wrote HELP on the glass with her finger. Paul took the familiar streets slowly, leaning forward in his seat to see. He could see the shadow of his car in front of him in the headlights of the car right on their ass.
“Oh, excuse me for not speeding when I can’t fucking see,” grumbled Paul.
“Fuck being able to see when you drive. Just hit the gas and bring us right into the side of a house,” goaded Bevie.
“Until you got to the house bit I thought you were serious,” he replied.
“Yeah, can you imagine?” She twisted around in her seat and flipped off the car behind them.
Paul pulled over and the tailgater sped past. After a minute he cautiously pulled back out onto the road. Tension etched his posture into stark angles. The main road turned into a highway and houses gave way to tall conifers. A low mist crawled over the roots of the trees and slinked across the road.
“We’re here,” stated Paul. He pulled off to the shoulder and parked between the highway and the trees. His boyfriend had remained silent throughout the drive, so when everyone piled out of the car Paul took Daiki aside to check on him.
“Are you mad at me?” Paul asked.
“No,” replied Daiki. He turned his flashlight to the trees and started to walk away.
“Wait, hey, what’s wrong?” Paul asked and stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.
Daiki shrugged away and kept his eyes down. Paul waited for him to speak. Over in the trees, Winter showed Misha and Bevie some bones in the leaf litter. Daiki took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He glanced up at Paul without making eye contact, then opened the car and rooted around, setting his flashlight on the seat. After a minute or two he returned with a receipt from the floor and a pen from the glove compartment. Resting the receipt against a rear window, Daiki began to write.
I’m never alone anymore because of sharing my room. At school in the hallway I feel people shove me and call me names and when I turn around I can’t see who did it because of the crowd. I keep spacing out in class and I can’t help it and my grades are shitty. In my dreams Scott has found me and he hangs me or buries me in the ground or cuts me into tiny pieces. Or I dream about Sid. I don’t know what happened to him but he usually comes to see me at least once every couple weeks. If everything would just fucking stop and let me catch my breath then maybe I could be okay. I just want everything to stop.
By the end his writing had gotten quite small to fit on the receipt. Paul held it close under his flashlight and squinted. While he read it, Daiki walked away into the woods. Paul folded the receipt, put it in his pocket, and hurried to catch up with his flashlight making tall shadows swing along behind the trees. The group of teenagers made a racket of crunching and rustling noises as they pushed their way through the ferns, ivy, and reeds. Their breath hung condensed in the air and Bevie’s teeth rattled as the cold shook her thin frame.
“What if I sleep on the couch for awhile?” Paul offered.
“Okay,” accepted Daiki.
“You two splitting up?” asked Bevie through the chatter of her teeth.
“No!” snapped Paul.
“Just asking,” she said. Despite the layers she’d thrown on, she was just a pale little thing with no meat on her bones. Bevie hugged her arms and kept her hands in the sleeves of her hoodie.
“People can get lost in the woods really easily,” mentioned Misha. “Let’s not go too far from the road, okay?” She had a pair of fluffy earmuffs and a poofy padded nylon jacket. Her hands stayed warm in striped knit gloves.
“We come out here all the time. I know that log, and there’s the tree with the broken branch next to the hollow tree full of spider webs and roly polies, and that’s the ditch where Daiki tripped last time,” reassured Winter. She swung her flashlight around to all the different landmarks she’d come to know, now steeped in rolling mist.
“Well, okay. As long as we stay where things are familiar to you. It’s creepy out here, though,” Misha replied.
“Would that help?” Paul whispered.
“Would what help?” asked Daiki.
“If I give you some space.”
“Oh. Yeah. Probably,” mumbled Daiki. “I feel like...like a radio between stations.”
An owl hooted somewhere deeper in the trees. Paul’s flashlight landed on a strange, slug-like lump a tad shy of the size of a toddler. The smooth chrysalis had affixed itself to the side of a trunk.
“I think that’s the grub thing,” said Winter.
She passed her flashlight to Misha and ran up to the chrysalis. Paul’s flashlight blinked out. He cursed and smacked the side of the plastic case. Misha stumbled over a branch on the forest floor and aimed her flashlight at her feet to keep from tripping. When Paul’s flashlight flickered back on, Winter wasn’t there. Now Misha and Paul both directed their flashlights at the large shape stuck to the side of a conifer. A mound of rot shifted perceptibly at the base of the tree, but nobody stood near it.
“Winter?” Misha called out.
No answer.
Daiki moved forward to the base of the tree. He put a hand on the trunk and peered around the back of the tree, then off toward the surrounding trees where the wane yellow light from the flashlights barely illuminated a chaos of ferns, underbrush, and fungi. Nowhere could he see a young girl in a bulky coat. Daiki moved strangely quick once he’d gotten close to the chrysalis. His mouth moved in silence and he turned back toward his friends, then he dropped away.
“Daiki?” Paul asked.
“Okay, nobody else walk up to the tree,” declared Misha. “Something is wrong.”
“Bullshit,” replied Bevie. She walked over and nearly tripped over one of the rocks set up near the tree’s roots. “They’re just behind the trees; I’ll show you.”
As she entered the direct proximity of the chrysalis, both flashlights died. Night closed in around them and muted the two remained teenagers. Paul unscrewed the top of his flashlight and checked the batteries, then put them back in. It worked more or less, but its beam showed no sign of Winter, Daiki, or Beverly.
“Daiki?” repeated Paul.
“Winter!” shouted Misha.
Since nobody called out for Bevie, Paul did. “Bev! Beverly! Daiki? Please answer!”
Here’s another student from Danganronpa: World Art Despair.
Introduction card:
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This is Uzeji Ito.
Unlike the others, Uzeji's Ultimate talent remains a mystery.
Quiet, distant, and almost impossible to read, Uzeji avoids crowds and rarely speaks. There’s an unsettling calmness that makes it feel like every movement and every silence has a purpose. No one seems to know what lies behind that blank expression.
Report card:
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This is the second-to-last student I'll be introducing from this killing game. Only one more remains before the full cast is finally complete.
"It's nice to see you again. The weather in Astropolis is wonderful, and the moist breeze is filled with the scent of sunshine... I'm hoping to gather inspiration for a new song. Would you like to take a stroll together on the beach and listen to the sounds of sea conchs?"
Soaring clearest skies and bluest oceans, wings sweep up the sea spray, transforming it into a new melody. Following the lingering echoes of memory, she embraces the unexpected along the way, seeking inspiration for a melodic variation— Beyond the melody, how else can the Harmony sing?
Variations on a Cosmic Tour | Aventurine • Waveflair
"Friends, we meet again! I just wrapped up a sponsored shoot, and wow, keeping a smile plastered to my face for the camera is no easy feat. But now that I've been promoted to P46, I can finally go on vacation. Want to relax and enjoy your time with me? I guarantee you'll have an unforgettable getaway."
The grand festival illuminates the coast, while a storm brews amidst euphoria. Secret orders in hand, he steps back into the eye of the storm to shake up this long holiday— When treacherous waves subsume his figure, how will he emerge as the game changer?
