This event is our fourth missive event, which means a little bit of what happens will be assigned to your muse. Since we’re fresh off the heels of a heavy, location-based event, this one actually isn’t in a centralized location at a certain time all together... it’s “normal play,” but things aren’t as your muse left them when they entered Hotel California. You will be given 2 ‘tasks’ to accomplish as you see fit. This event has only this one part.
The date stamp for the dream portion is the overnight between Friday, July 21st and Saturday, July 22nd. (You don’t have to stop writing established HC threads.) Please do not make timeline threads dated after August 26th, which will be the next event.
Exhausted from what feels like only 8 hours, everyone, finally out of the hotel, makes their way home. Their tech is still acting up, not yet giving updated information, and folks wind up in bed around three in the morning. While they believe they are going to bed during the small hours of June 25th, in truth, it’s the wee hours of July 21st. As they sleep, everyone has the same strange dream—
In your dream, you see a tree; it bears 12 different types of fruit, but each time you try to focus on one, it shifts colour, like light through a prism. The tree itself seems to glow with its own light, but that doesn’t make the tree feel like a good omen; instead, there is something about the tree that invokes the feeling of vertigo. Like, if given half the chance, you would fall toward it on your knees. It’s a feeling between awe and confusion. The bark of the tree, if you look closely enough, isn’t inlaid with gold nor silver: instead, it’s as if all the words ever spoken are written upon the wood, making its curves and shadows where the words grow denser: all the wisdom of the ages.
The leaves shine as if to heal, the air is sweet and fragrant, the roots grow strong and thick into the ground where a river meets it on either side. Perhaps you are in a plain; perhaps you are in a garden; where the tree is doesn’t matter. Everything in the dream pales in comparison to this tree. Giving in to the vertigo, you fall into the tree itself, becoming a part of its trunk, another word on its bark, and you can see out into the world. It’s as if you are on an altar, privvy to things unseeable otherwise—is this how energy senses? is this how the universe sees?—and looking out, you see 3 bright spots. The longer you focus on a bright spot, the clearer it becomes. Each, a grail.
Slowly, the brightness fades. The grails have seemed to—disappear off the face of the earth. You are spat out from the tree, back to whatever setting, the sense of vertigo gone, and as you are whooshed backward, you can see 3 pinpricks of light emerging—but not a sense of where, on a map, they might be. As you re-orient yourself in the dream, the tree seems to no longer be a tree, but instead just a plain bush, the same sort of bush you might see on your way to work, of little to no consequence at all—until it bursts into flame. Suddenly, and very surely, you have the sense of not being alone. You turn to one side, only to see another version of yourself.
The other you seems curious at first, with the wayward innocence of a puppy, going to touch your face—only, it reaches through your face and into your skull. It tries to know what you know, but you push it out; in that moment, you also got to see a glimpse inside of the other-you’s head. It feels like one of Famine’s manifestations, the sort you encountered in the Hotel rooms, and it wants to take over your life. It already has. It’s running your life for you. All it needs to do now is remove you from the life its stolen to stay seamlessly in it. A dark version of you, a minion of something far worse than you.
You scream. You shake yourself awake, unsure what to make of all of this, perhaps, looking to those you know, those around you, to discuss it with.
When they wake, it is July 22nd. Their phones are working again. They realize they spent far longer in Hotel California than they’d ever imagined. What felt like 8 hours in the Hotel turned out to be about a month in the real world. But how do they still have apartments? How do they still have jobs to attend? How is their life running without them in it for a month?
Feel free (we encourage) to make threads trying to determine the meaning of the shared dream. It might take awhile to sort out, but yes, all of the Grails are gone from where ever they might have been—so if your muse had one, feel free to make a thread to check on it, only to find that it’s gone.
You are also free to make “normal” threads from here on out and continue plotting in your usual way. What has changed in the world around them, as they rejoin it, is that each muse now has an “evil double” version of themselves that Famine manifested. That “ED” has assumed your muse’s life. Your muse shows up to work? ED is already there. (For example.)
The only muse not affected with an ED is Pestilence, who will get to fuck with all of these folks as she sees fit, get her kicks perhaps deliberately “killing” (more on that later) the wrong people, and perhaps a head-start on Grail finding.
MUN TASK ONE:
Encounter your muse’s double.
It’s up to you where and how your muse encounters their double. The extra fun piece of this is, as writers, you also get to write your evil double. So you can have threads as your muse, and then also as your ED muse interacting with others. Please put, in the Subject of your threads, [ED] to mark that it’s an ED for clarity.
Feel free to explore what the ‘evil’ version of your muse would be like! Yes, even you, Satan, should be able to find parts of you to make worse. (And remember, evil can present as a number of personality traits; the thing is the ED has evil motives, but many methods, to allow you creative spectrum.) The ED knows some, but not all, of the facts about your muse. (That’s why we had you do Challenge 23 to help brainstorm some of that!) It’s also important to keep in mind that the ED is trying to both:
Pass as close as possible to your muse while having evil motives
And trying to kill your muse so it can assume your muse’s life
Your ED does have all the abilities of your original muse, except 1) ED angels/demons cannot hear prayers and 2) ED angels/demons can be killed like a human; it doesn’t require a Grail.
How the ED is trying to kill your muse is also up to you. It doesn’t have to be stabby-stab; maybe they’re trying to poison your muse, or trying to stage a series of unfortunate events to take the suspicions off themselves. You do not have to write [ED] threads if you don’t wish to. You do have to still have your main muse meet and/or engage with their ED, however.
MUN TASK TWO:
Kill your muse’s double.
Doubles can’t be killed by the original muse.
In order to stop the ED from taking over your muse’s life and killing your muse, your muse will need to enlist help from someone to take out their double. Since all muses have EDs, they’ll be pretty familiar with the predicament, having to do the same thing for themselves.
Your task is to create a scenario in which another muse has to decide whether to kill OM (Original Muse) or the ED. (Another reason we had you do Challenge 23, of course!) This does not have to happen the moment your muse wakes up, but can happen at some point over the course of the month. You’ll be carrying on other normal-style threads at the same time as your OM or ED.
The “kill scene” scenario can be a thread with someone your muse knows well, or it can be with someone they don’t know well—after all, while we are planning the scenarios, it might be quite sudden or abrupt for them! We want you guys to have fun with this and get as creative as possible.
A few muses will be incorrectly “killed”—that is, the OM “dies” instead of the ED.
Those muses are:
Dom, Paul, Zack, and Noah.
As such, those listed above might want to create scenarios in which their muse is being judged by someone who doesn’t know them as well as they’d hoped. Or, perhaps their ED succeeds in killing them. Or, a situation where an amused or cruel other party might intentionally choose to let the ED live as opposed to the original muse, as a point of humour or contention—especially if under the understanding that the “death” might not be a true death, as follows:
When an ED or and OM dies, it’s not actually a realistic death. No matter how the ED is killed, it should just turn into ash and dust once it “dies.” When an OM dies, it looks like they just become dust particles and ‘flicker’ out of existence, insinuating they’re not actually dead, just somewhere else. If you are the player of one of the dead original muses listed above (thanks for volunteering as tribute!) you will get to continue to thread as your ED until the August event.
When an OM flickers out of existence, a business card from Delirium will be left behind in their place for the muses left to read:
This event is our third missive event, which means a little bit of what happens tonight will be assigned to your muse. Luckily, this time around we decided to give y’all a super chill event in light of finals, et cetera, so if your muse can’t make it to the event, it’s alright.
The date stamp for the event is Wednesday, April 26th. Assignments for this event are only considered game canon if you thread them (an exception to usual policies), though we still encourage tackling them in interesting ways. If you have an issue with an assignment, let us know!
A neutral space, Valencia Event Hall, was rented out for this excursion. Not too far from everyone’s home locales, the great room has been transformed into an art night with open doors to anyone. Meant to function as art therapy, Shibah booked the evening and provided all the accouterments: canvases, a variety of paints, brushes, and so forth—and wine, donated by Absolution, if needed.
Light snacks are available, including a chocolate fondue fountain with fruit and pound cake for dipping as well as cheese and charcuterie boards accented by olives and fresh bread. Participants are welcome to paint their feelings in whatever way calls to them. Shibah will be quite busy tending to the needs of the event and playing hostess, so if any moderation or interception is required, Cassiel is the one who has stepped into that role.
During the evening, attendants are encouraged to pick a number from a repurposed punch bowl and get randomly paired to talk about their feelings with strangers and acquaintances. Pamphlets around the punch bowl discuss empathy, nonviolent communication, and active listening skills. You are welcome to create threads other than those assigned below.
The pairings are as follows:
For anyone concerned with reading that ridiculously fine print courtesy of the random pairing site, haha, it’s:
This event is our second missive event, which means a little bit of what happens tonight will be assigned to your muse. This event is a finale of the “Pestilence Chapter” and will be served to you in two parts. For the first part, your muse has been assigned a specific thread topic to explore. It’s up to you to delve into the interaction!
For now, we ask that for this night, you explore just this assigned thread—and not to make more threads during the time of the Escape Room. (There’s more to be revealed; after Part 2 drops, you can make your own independent threads.) You can, however, make threads and starters before the clock starts at your Escape Room location if you wish.
The date stamp for the event is Thursday, January 26th, for timeline purposes (though you aren’t restricted to beginning threads tomorrow, of course, you can even begin them today). Assignments are considered game canon, whether or not you explore them deeply. If you have an issue with an assignment, let an Admin know! For after, please do not write past January 26th for any thread yet—the drop of Part 2 might affect your muse’s future outlook.
Escape Rooms are a beloved past time for adrenaline junkies, gamers, team-builders, and competitive folks of all sorts. The premise is that you are shown to a room and then locked inside of it; within are a series of puzzles you have to figure out as a team in order to get released from the room. You must do this within one hour or your team fails the room. (You’re released, but you fail and take a shameful photo - you are the weakest link, goodbye.)
Escape Rooms are meant to foster trust, connection, cooperation, and critical thinking. Meant to.
ROOM ONE: MURDER MYSTERY INC.
“Love is clockworks, and it's cold steel, fingers too numb to feel, squeeze the handle, blow out the candle—blindness.”
After arriving at the Escape Room headquarters, you are ushered into a sleek black limousine; you are asked to put all of your cellphones in a velvet black bag, which will be returned to you at the end. After the 8 people in your party are all settled in, 1920s music filters through the stereo system, grainy and warbled and nostalgic. A champagne aperitif is offered to you, if you dare to drink it. The car smells of polished leather and money—the actual scent of money, as if a great amount of it had been there recently.
You are driven for about fifteen minutes: do you drink? do you laugh? do you speak? Suddenly, the car screeches to a halt, hitting the breaks hard. The lights in the limo go dark and the music stops playing. And then one by one, each of you is led from the limousine. When it’s your turn to exit the limo, you step outside and find a dark bag placed immediately over your head and your hands bound in front by lead-rope: and you are led, stepping on concrete toward somewhere else. You hear door open, and you are pushed inside, then your hands unbound. You can remove the bag from your head.
The rest of your team is there. As your eyes adjust to the dim lighting, you can see a room dazzled with 1920s opulence. There is even a chandelier hanging over a running fountain—it’s ridiculous in its mockery, it’s entreatment. You find there is a stranger in your midst: a ninth person, who welcomes you to his humble home. Then, the lights flash, and he screams, and the actor lies on the floor, ‘dead,’ the echo of a gunshot hanging in the air like a question mark as blood pools around him.
The clock starts and you must all discover who has ‘killed’ your generous host—before that person ‘kills’ you for witnessing! Search the room, leave no painting hung, no chair upright, no drawer unopened—
Assignments:
Shibah/Donato: Shibah naturally begins by observing the paintings on the wall—they seem out of place for a 1920s theme. She identifies them as The Triptych of the Temptation of St. Anthony, but realizes they are out of order. Near by, Donato has found a small lock that requires a 3-number code to open a drawer in a stately foyer desk. They must work together to crack the code—inadvertently drawing them into a required long-awaited reunion neither of them would prefer to have right now. Conflict emerges and it isn’t long before the two are full of rage and angst.
Belial/Babylon: Babylon notices eggs hiding all around the room—golden-painted eggs, silver-painted eggs, rhinestone-covered eggs. Collecting a few, she realizes by shaking them that there might be something inside, so she breaks them open, revealing the following strands of paper:
without one friend, alone
I cannot come down
world without end. Below me
young lovers Tread the sweet ground—
in my purity
But I am God—
Belial is studying the book case, noticing that among the many authors there, almost all of the books look faded and worn except one, which peeks out slightly. It’s marked as a book of poems. Perhaps if they can determine which poem Babylon found, they could find another clue on its page. That is, if they could cooperate—it seems Babylon hasn’t yet had the opportunity to confront Belial for “damaging” Dom. Belial engages in her argument, but has no trouble reminding her that he’s her boss.
Maria/Isadora: Maria turns over a heavy, ornate sitting chair to find that the base of the seat is hollow and that there is a latch she can undo; she finds a series of love letters from the now-deceased host to a woman named Chanterelle, who appears to have been a singer at a jazz club. For all of the letters, there are no post marks, no envelopes. Were they never sent? Some random letters are in all caps, and if she arranges them in order of date written, it spells out: C H E C K T H E D R A I N. Maria shouts to Isadora, who has been studying the fountain. Isadora is less than interested in helping Maria, but for the sake of the task waves Maria over when she realizes there’s a key in the drain of one of the shallow trays. They have to figure out how to get it—but Isadora can’t help letting drop that she knows the cure exists.
Raziel/Cassiel: Cassiel finds a piece of old film in a jewelry dish that has a few frames, seeing what appears to be a woman singing at her own wedding. The man she marries is not the now-deceased host. She wonders what it could mean, but Raziel swoops in with a film reel he found taped under the desk that holds Donato’s drawer. Raziel and Cassiel must splice together the footage to discover the ‘end’ of the story—except Cassiel doesn’t even think Raziel can do that right, so how can he possibly do anything in Heaven right? Raziel obviously spats back, saying Shibah has been absent and done nothing to earn the throne. That if she wants to be God so badly, she should act like it.
ROOM TWO: JEKYLL AND HYDE.
“Say hello to something scary, the monster in your bed, just give in and you won’t be sorry, welcome to my other side.”
After arriving at the Escape Room headquarters, you are shown through a door marked Authorized Personnel Only. Your party winds down a sterile looking white concrete hall, fluorescent panel lights above, flickering. Your shoes squeak and squick as you walk; even the floors seem too clean. You even feel a weird urge to not touch the walls. At the end of the hall is another door with the glass of its window frosted over: you’re shown through that, too. On the other side is the outdoors, actually: you can see a dirt driveway with haphazard gravel and unkempt, half-brown grasses. Lined up are 3 stately town cars, each pristine and white, freshly washed.
Each town car has a driver with white gloves, opening the door for your party. Three folks in the first two, two in the last. The car door is shut behind you and, as the engines revv to life, the windows of the car and a divider between you and the driver goes up—pitch black and opaque. You can no longer see where you’re going, but you’re comfortable enough. In what feels like forever—or is it only ten minutes?—you finally park and the car doors open. So rushed you can barely take in the outside, you are brought into what looks like a small house, and then down a flight of stairs. Your party is put into what would be a basement, the door behind you locked.
The basement itself is hardly grotesque: rather, it, too, is very stately. It looks instead like an office. There is a heavy oak desk with a green lamp and a laptop on it, an expensive throw rug, an assortment of pads and papers, a pad for prescriptions. Chairs opposite it, as if to invite guests or consultations. Locked pristine white metal medicine cabinets, a wall with shelves of scientific books, specimen jars carefully arranged and labeled. The floor is interesting: under the rug, there is a pattern of alternating colour tiles, grey and white, almost resembling a checkerboard.
The clock starts and you must figure out how to escape the basement, or else be charged for trespassing on Dr. Jekyll’s property! Search the room, leave no cabinet locked, no rug arranged, no jar unturned—
Assignments:
Abaddon/Olivia: In an almost metaphor moment, Abaddon discovers that the tall Grandfather clock in the room has no hands. Even this broken clock can’t be right twice a day—and she’s running out of time. In a fit dissonance, she overturns the clock and breaks it. From the loudspeaker comes one of the managers: “Please do not break any items in the room that do not easily break themselves.” Abaddon curses under her breath: seemed easily broken to her. Olivia, by a cabinet requiring a 4-number code lock, tries to distract Abaddon into helping, thinking maybe the clock and the nearby cabinet are related. How could the clock help solve the code? To tempt Abaddon into being helpful, Olivia tries to create a rapport, and soon the two enter into a muffled, whispered conversation about trading secrets as they try different number combinations. Olivia reveals to Abaddon that she thinks she might really be possessed this time—Abaddon gives her secret: back in August, during the chaos, she ripped off Gabriel’s wings without authorization.
Kiara/Jairus: Jairus has gone to studying the laptop; when he touched the trackpad, the computer asks for a Password. He types in a few attempts, but nothing comes of it; in fact, he has one try left before the computer gets entirely locked. Kiara notices his struggle and comes over to brainstorm and observe: she notices the keyboard, which seems unusual. After studying it a moment, she realizes she must have the Password—but can’t help jabbing Jairus over it. She, a young girl, figured out the answer when a hundreds-year-old man couldn’t. It sounds shakily familiar to their current situation... as she wryly types in the password that unlocks the computer (can you figure it out?), she throws out how hard it must be to have a young girl finding easy answers to all of his problems: the cure and the password both. How long can Jairus keep his calm when she’s hitting his rawest nerves?
Adele/Crowley: Adele is studying the book case, trying to see if anything seems particularly out of place. After shuffling through some of the books, she finds no discerning markers, no torn pages, no handwriting, nothing dog-eared. She puts each book back and tries for another: methodical, thorough. Crowley sees her doing this and laughs at her. Crowley does not like a sheep who bends over backwards, who does things as expected, so she proceeds to throw barbs at Adele as she looks. Adele is not really sure how to deal with someone not liking her, even every demon and sinner she has ever met does. Adele quips back that at least she’s trying—to help, to solve the puzzle, anything, trying—and all Crowley does is nothing. Glowering, Crowley leans on the bookcase as they argue... only to find the bookcase moves. Swinging open the book case like a door, another, heavier door is revealed—but there seems NO visible way to open it.
Elijah/Ethan: Elijah is studying the small, framed medical diagrams on the wall. He sees there are four and wonders if the order of them might be some kind of code or combination—each one is labeled strangely: H7, A4, D5, E2. He can’t seem to locate anything that might use and 8-digit code—none of the drawers have locks or combinations, none of the locked cabinets need that many. He shouts to the room for help, thinking he has something, just not sure what. Ethan—used to working for what he gets—isn’t adverse to helping. But when he starts, Elijah just sits back and watches, waiting. It starts a contentious argument between them, where Ethan says that all Elijah wants is an easy life of fame and hasn’t worked for anything in his life—and Elijah gets defensive and says he doesn’t know him. Meanwhile, Ethan does figure out that removing the throw rug reveals the floor—which looks just like a chess board. The edges are even marked 1-8 and A-H. Maybe if each person in the party stands in one of the designated squares... something will happen.
ROOM THREE: ZOMBIE OUTBREAK.
“Don't know what I'm after but the pressure driving me insane, searching for a different ride, had a funny feeling I can't hide, do the zombie stomp.”
After arriving at the Escape Room headquarters and checking in, you are sent directly right back out the door you came in. Out front is a school bus, yellow and beat-up looking, with spray paint all over it. It says things like “Turn back now!” and “QUARANTINE” and “Don’t open, dead inside.” Of course, you go inside. There’s no driver that you can see, but the thing can’t possibly be automated, so you just sit on the empty bus and wait as the rest of your party shuffles in. After everyone is seated, suddenly, each of you feel hands on your feet, anchoring you to the ground by the ankles—as you look down, a black cloth is placed over your head and zip-tied on. You can breathe, but the effect is obviously jarring and you can’t get it off.
The ride is a bumpy one, but any childhood notions of yelling ‘drive it off a cliff’ or similar to increase the ‘fun’ bumps of the ride have all but left your mind. You keep reminding yourself that of course, none of this is real, and maybe you even think some of it is hokey, but it’s hard not to get caught up as your body’s natural response is already flooding your mind with adrenaline and other survival neurochemicals. The bus slows to a snail’s pace, almost to the point where you think you’re not moving any more, and then begins to shake left and right, as if trying to be toppled over by forces you can’t see. Slowly, you start to feel tipped, and then suddenly righted, jarring. There’s a sound of the zip-ties being clipped off. Immediately, you take off your bag.
When you can see, the lights on the bus are all flickering, but you see no people except those in your party—no driver, no one to have tied the bags, no one to have held the feet, no one to have jostled your bus. You all get out, a little worse for wear, and head to what looks like a small warehouse. Entering, it’s all one room. You get to look around for about 3 minutes with the warehouse door still open. There’s an actor on the floor with his ‘guts’ ripped out, fake blood pouring from his entrails, appearing dead, a chain attaching him to the wall. There are 2 other, empty chains. There are 4 flashlights in various places in the room—4 too few. As you start to dart for the nearest one, the door slams behind you and locks and all of the lights go out. You’re in total darkness.
The bright, lit-up digital clock starts and you must figure out how to escape the warehouse, or else become zombie food! Search the room, leave no crate unopened, no shelf ignored, no stomach untested—
Assignments:
(For clarity, those with flashlights are: Josh, Naomi, Dom, and Zoe.)
Josh/Magda: Magda immediately disregards the flashlight and heads for what she knows has to be a clue: she shoves her hands into the ‘stomach’ of the dead man. Triumphantly, she comes up with a key, but not what it goes to. Josh meets her with a flashlight, just in time for them both to jump back: where there once was an empty chain, now there is a living zombie trying to attack. They back away from the area and advise everyone else to do the same—but the zombie gains more chain (and more range to attack) the longer they’re in the room. Josh searches for something to put the key in among the warehouse crates and calls her reckless—that he should have done that, because if it was real, he’d be safer. She argues she isn’t fragile and has been through a lot herself—even lets drop she’s been sleeping with Crowley. How does that make him feel?
Satan/Naomi: Naomi, given her history, goes immediately for the flashlight. She starts to examine the shelves and begins to figure out that some boxes are marked with red dots. She starts to collect the boxes of varying sizes; they’re taped so well they can’t be opened by manual strength. Satan sees her struggling and goes to try himself, to the same lack of avail. This, of course, immediately gets under his skin: he can’t be foiled by boxes. Making them an unlikely team, the two bicker constantly as they try to figure out the puzzle—Satan making cruel and degrading remarks, Naomi biting back, but Satan’s blood starts to boil under the surface. By the time they find an empty shelf with red dots marked 1-6, it’s unsure if they can figure out the order without one of them snapping.
Renee/Dom: Renee and Dom both headed for the same flashlight and immediately start fighting. Renee, preferring to retain class and composure, lets him keep the flashlight, but not before she starts artfully picking him apart for his poor attempt to take her Church from her. How does Dom hold up under her acute interrogation? Perhaps in a moment of deflection or denial, Dom finds a lone object out on a crate: a skull, but one of those fake, glittery Halloween ones clearly not meant to resemble a human. It’s overt in its nonconformity, which means it’s a clue. Meanwhile, Renee notices a scale that had a small velvet bag on it—in front, instructions read that removing the bag without placing equal weight will detonate the warehouse. Perhaps they can solve this together, if they can stop tearing each other apart.
Zoe/Noah: Zoe gets one of the flashlights while Noah disregards and immediately gets to searching well away from the zombie. He finds a crate that seems to have a knocking coming from it. A knock sounds once, at even intervals, and figures the crate must mean something. Zoe, feeling the stress of everyone fighting about God and particularly creeped out that she's locked in a small room with Satan, tries to get Noah on her side. It does not go as planned. She flashes light on the box and sees there’s a sheet outlining Morse code. If they can figure out what code to ‘knock’ back to the box, perhaps it will open—if they can focus on the task and stop having an intense debate, that is.
Place: White Lies
Time: October 29th, 2016
Open: anyone; @catastrophically-aware
Belial took a moment to survey the lay of the land. He had to admit the people Renee had hired to decorate the bar were impressive. The normally pristine, white walls and furniture had been turned into a haven of spooky decorations, interspersed with 80′s macabre humor. It was amusing, and he was certainly going to enjoy the night as it progressed, of that he was sure. Though he had yet to watch the ‘Stranger Things’, he’d gone along with the 80′s theme of the night and dressed as Patrick Swayze from Dirty Dancing. Black shirt, black pants, 80′s hair, it was a match made in Hell.
Halloween was always a favorite time of year for him, where people let their inhibitions go, and let their ‘wild side’ out to play. He’d managed to collect countless souls throughout the ‘haunted’ season, and he intended to keep the tradition going with this year with the poor, lost souls that stumbled into his ‘hallowed’ domain. Taking place in front of his station at the bar, he sent his most charming smile to the unwitting soul standing across from him and lifted a metal shaker with a shake, “What’s your poison?”
