#taken bugbear

[wickedsrest-rp]

Darcy Kincaid She / her

"No, I don’t have any trouble letting things go. Why would I have trouble doing that?"

SPECIES: Bugbear OCCUPATION: Attendant at Midnight Drive-In AGE: 25 Years Old PLAYED BY: Ci FC: Katie Douglas

BIOGRAPHY:

TW: Parental death, sibling death

Life was meant to be something simple. There wasn’t very much to being a bugbear, and on the flip side, there wasn’t much to being a hunter. Except the natural balance of the supernatural world and the whole hatred thing, but Alison and Eli would purposefully look in the other direction when it came to such questions (even if said questions were internalized). The reality of what they’d become– a couple tied largely into their communities, finding love in a… less than ideal place, was only exacerbated by Alison having their first child: Bridget. With Alison’s parents having already passed, what made the most sense was staying put, where they could both have a sense of their communities, even if Alison no longer hunted, and Eli was making some changes to the way he fed. 

Followed by Bridget only two years later came Corey, and three years after that, Darcy was born. She was the last and final child. Corey and Bridget took after Alison, and it was noted almost immediately by their strength and complaints of that fuzzy feeling when around either their sister or father. Darcy, on the other hand, took after Eli, born as the only other bugbear in the family.

As the children aged it was time to teach. Despite being a bugbear, Alison entertained Darcy when she would tag along with her siblings’ training. Alison was ruthless with their education, ensuring that they understood what it meant to be in a family that had both shifters and rangers. Self-defense, and basic knowledge of the supernatural (both hostile and non) were a part of the curriculum, but something was missing. Normalcy– the kind that kept supernaturally adept children alive longer than those hidden away.

The idea of homeschooling was brushed off, because for Darcy specifically, the less time she had around other people, the more likely she was to revert to bear behavior, even with her siblings around. It was good for her to get out of the woods, and so she was thrust into the townie life, though,  hardly making any friends. That was, until Cricket came along. Cricket started off as hey, girl! and slowly morphed into something else. Upon their first meeting, Darcy offered her a worm, and a couple of isopods as a means to secure the friendship. From then on, their mutual possessiveness cemented itself.

What time wasn’t spent with her family, learning and cultivating togetherness, as her father liked to put it, was spent with Cricket. From the treehouse Eli had built the Kincaid children (commandeered by Darcy), to the bubbling streams and mossy forest floors, their friendship flourished. Hidden desires seeped between them, though largely unspoken. Both had been labeled as burnouts, favoring skipping class instead of attending, smoking weed under the bleachers, and spending most of their time kicking around the treehouse, which surpassed the childlike novelty and turned into a safe space for the two of them. It was a culmination of both their personalities; the creepy, the weird, and the ugly.

Graduation came and the years slipped by, and with them came the realization that the only thing she had hoped to do was leave; to see the world and all it had to offer. So it felt like a slap in the face once the person she had devoted to leaving with started to disappear on her. It started with the flakiness, then the dry text messages– the hesitance to speak. Cricket was fading on her, and Darcy had no clue why. Ultimately, it pushed her in the direction of focus– of getting a job, at the very least, and of honing in on the abilities she’d used for slapstick moments to make her best friend laugh. 

With the time she spent away from her family, something had shifted upon her return (though, she hadn’t actually gone anywhere).  Her siblings were less inclined to spend time with her, citing reasons that she couldn’t begin to comprehend– keeping Wicked’s Rest safe from non-humanoids. Darcy and Eli both felt some kind of way about it, but Alison reassured them, telling them it was only for the bad things. The question of whether or not they were bad things in others’ eyes died on Darcy’s lips, because it was proven as the correct theory shortly afterwards.

It happened quickly, as all horrific things do. She heard them through the wall; talk of a murder. Corey’s name thrown in, though without added grief. He’d done something, and it had been to protect both Darcy and Eli. Alison and Bridget went to deal with it, and Eli was left behind to mend his son’s wounds with Darcy standing on the other side of the wall. The day after was the only time in her life she’d ever seen her father be stern. There was talk of leaving, and Darcy knew just who they’d be taking along with them.

It wasn’t even a week later that they were gone. Darcy had managed to avoid it, somehow. Maybe it was looking for Cricket that had saved her, or maybe it was something else. Maybe, it was instinct. Her family home had been burned to the ground. Everything lost with it– her childhood, her family. The fire had been declared an accident by officials, but Darcy knew better. There was no fear in what pushed her forward, just the search of something that was left– of Cricket, of her parents’ teachings; that she could coexist with the world that so badly wanted her gone. It was a difficult thing, being met with opposition from those in the backgrounds she was raised up from, and the news spread quickly. She was the last surviving member of the Kincaid family, and apparently, that meant something to some people.

PERSONALITY:

Independent · Forgiving · Protective · Adaptable · Rebellious · Vindictive · Disruptive · Impulsive · Disconcerting · Aloof

OTHER INFO:

Her shifted form takes on the appearance of an Eurasian brown bear. 

Darcy has a couple of “pet” jumping spiders. They go by the names of Broom, Floor, and Ceiling. They are named after where she found them.

She owns a 2010 jeep wrangler, which is covered from bumper to bumper in stickers, paint chips, scratches (animal, and key), and tree sap. It’s usually parked at one of the trailhead parking lots.

There’s a couple of strange creatures that hang around the treehouse she lives in, and they’re more than welcome. If anything, they ward off trespassers. 

Like most bugbears, has an affinity for all things creepy, including: horror films, taxidermy, oddities, and the creepy crawlies.

Despite working at The Midnight Drive-In, she sometimes takes shifts at The Video Vault for some extra cash. 

Darcy lives out of the treehouse her dad built for her. It’s off of the beaten path, a couple of miles into The Pines, away from most hiking trails.

[wickedsrest-rp]

Joel Metzger He / him

"You gotta have pride in what you do. Without pride, what the fuck else is left?"

SPECIES: Bugbear OCCUPATION: Sole proprietor of Metzger Auto Salvage AGE: 52 Years Old PLAYED BY: Elliott FC: Karl Urban

BIOGRAPHY:

TW: Parental death, child death, heart attack

Childhood as a bugbear in East London was nothing short of a complete snooze fest. Forbidden from shifting into his bear form, Joel was warned about the dangers of being too bold and drawing unwanted attention. Where they lived, it wasn’t commonplace to see a bear around. Not just in the city, but in the country as a whole. His parents worried that reports of wild bear sightings might catch the interest of rangers, who would likely suspect bugbear activity rather than the sudden reappearance of a locally extinct species. But Joel hated being told what to do, and as a child who rebelled against every form of authority, he fucked off from home just as soon as he could find an employer that didn’t mind paying him under the table. This went fine for a while and the boy oscillated between homelessness and finding temporary shelter he could afford with his meager wages, but it never really bothered him. He didn’t have to buy human food, which saved him a lot of money. All he had to do was scare the everloving shit out of people, and he was golden. 

But still, the comforts of having a bed to sleep in couldn’t be overstated. Eventually, Joel got old enough to want some kind of stability, so he signed on to be a welder and general mechanic on an oil rig in the North Sea. This job served him for years, bouncing him around from one rig to the next, where he always had a place to sleep and plenty of coworkers to terrify. But life on the ocean wasn’t his favorite (he much preferred a nice forest), and in his early thirties, he found a reason to stay on the mainland. Her name was Claire, and he asked her to marry him after only six months of dating. She said yes, and the rest was the white picket dream you’d expect, if only a little rough around the edges.

In their first two years of marriage, they had two kids together. Joel found a job at a nearby factory, working as hard as he could to support his family. The rebellious ne’er-do-well of his youth was no more, as he found he much preferred companionship, love, and family. His children were everything to him, and watching them grow into curious, rambunctious toddlers instilled him with a sense of pride he wasn’t sure he’d ever felt before. Still, he needed to eat, so some nights were spent away from his family and causing trouble. His wife didn’t know he wasn’t human until their third year of marriage, and it forever changed the landscape of their marriage. She never could see him the same as before, and what had once been a loving, peaceful household became a terrible source of tension and mistrust. She always warned him to never do anything stupid that would put her or the kids at risk, but of course one night he went a step too far.

A group of gruff looking men out having a pint were a perfect meal ticket. Always easier to scare than you’d expect based on appearances, and funny to boot. Joel did what he did best, following them out of the pub and catching the trio alone to give them the fright of their lives, only… one of them, the eldest of the three, clutched at his chest and dropped to the ground. Joel took off, not having meant to do that, and the guilt started to weigh heavily on him. His wife took note and started pressing him on it until he finally gave in and explained to her what had happened. She was furious, reminding him that he’d promised not to put them at risk and horrified at the idea of her husband having murdered someone because of his own carelessness. In her anger, she kicked Joel out of the house. He begged her to let him stay so he could protect them, but her only response was that he’d done enough.

He watched the house every spare moment that he had, arriving one day to find a strange car in the drive. Joel leaped into action, breaking into his old home to find the two younger men from the pub with his family in their clutches. They seemed happy that he’d arrived, informing him that their father had died because of him, so now he was going to feel what it was like to lose his family. Because they no longer feared him or his illusions, Joel was helpless to stop them as they slit the throats of his wife and children, their screams drowning out everything else as he sank to the living room floor. 

He’d been warned not to go after them or he’d suffer the same fate, and Joel didn’t bother. Obviously he couldn’t harm them, so what was the point? He was a useless excuse for a bugbear. The agony of his loss and the self hatred that spawned from it colored every aspect of his life for decades after that, and he became reckless with his shifts, not caring how often he was spotted by humans until the day it caught up to him. Having seen himself on the news, it should have come as no surprise when a team of endangered species biologists cornered him. Being much more excited than afraid to see a wild, undocumented brown bear, they were unmoved by his roaring protests. He was tranquilized, tagged, and left there, waking in a rage and trying desperately to remove the tag. He failed at this and only managed to give himself a permanent reminder of the pitiful display. 

Enough was enough, he thought. To hell with this place. The decision to move was an easy one, Joel following in the footsteps of the only friend he had and leaving London with them to instead make landfall in Maine, USA. It’s been a massive change, but it’s one that Joel hopes might help him get his shit together and feel like a proper scaremaster again.

PERSONALITY:

Snarky · Reclusive · Insecure · Hardworking · Devoted · Protective · Scrappy · Lonely

OTHER INFO:

When shifted, Joel looks like your average Eurasian brown bear. He’s even a little bit on the small side for that bear species, which doesn’t help his scariness factor. Those ears are just too darn cute! He suffers the same problem as a human, standing at an unimpressive 5’5” tall.

For much of his life, Joel worked as a welder in less than safe conditions and had no access to ear protection. Because of this, he now suffers from severe noise-induced hearing loss. 

Despite having dealt with his deafness for around a decade, Joel's grasp on BSL is pretty lacking. He relies almost entirely on lip reading and still responds with spoken word. He cannot hear a person speaking at a normal volume, and will only hear muffled, distorted versions of some very loud sounds. 

He has a strong Cockney accent that has never wavered, even as his ability to hear diminished. His language is… colorful.

The tracking tag in his ear looks like a weird scapha piercing and a wide cuff of silver metal wrapped around his upper helix. At a glance it could be mistaken for regular piercings, but only at a glance. He doesn’t like when people point it out and often wears knitted caps to hide it, always tugging the brims of them down when he’s anxious. 

Metzger Auto Salvage, which Joel owns and operates (mostly) on his own, is run out of a scrapyard in the southeastern end of Worm Row. This also doubles as his place of residence, which is technically a small building (an amalgamation of a stone hut and a cabin) that’s tucked away among the piles of scrap metal. Cozy.

[wickedsrest-rp]

Nora Pine She / her

"Boo."

SPECIES: Bugbear OCCUPATION: Model/College Student/Private Investigator/General nuisance AGE: 22 Years Old PLAYED BY: Fish FC: Jenna Ortega

BIOGRAPHY:

While adoption is normally a great thing, there are times when it can be… tricky. And it certainly was tricky for Nora and her parents. There had always been something different about Nora, ever since she was a baby. Creepy crawlies always lurked around her. A spider here, a snake there, the creaking of wood on cement floors, eyes glowing in the dark. But it never bothered Nora; she seemed to feel an affinity for all things dark and spooky. Her dads were accepting, but they were understandably freaked out. But few psychologists would see an infant, and doctors couldn’t confirm that anything was wrong with her. In most regards, Nora was a healthy baby.

Normal was another story. Once they determined that Nora was healthy, her fathers had different ways of approaching the issue. Gregory thought it was best to let Nora’s development take its course and just see what happened, but Damien, who had been bullied throughout school, wanted Nora to avoid being ostracized and tried to discourage the weird behavior.

Nora tried to be good, but her idea of social interaction was different to that of most children– or even most humans. She got in trouble for eating with her hands, growling, playing in the mud and, worst of all, biting. She even seemed to take pleasure in scaring people– something her dads weren’t able to make her stop.

Worried about her new passion for goth fashion, her fathers decided to try and get her into the family business — Gregory’s fashion line. After talking it over, they got Nora into modeling. It never went exactly as they wanted but they took pride in seeing their daughter reach two million Instagram subscribers and hoped that it would give her the confidence to see that she could fit in with people and didn’t need to always scare them away.

She was a teenager the first time she shifted forms. For once, something scared her and not the other way around. She never told her dads, but they knew something was off. Nora was cautious and only shifted when no one was around. Eventually, on her 18th birthday, she shifted into a bear and left. As much as she loved her fathers, an influential life in the public eye wasn’t what she wanted. She spent the better part of the next year and a half wandering around the country, shifting between bear and human. It wasn’t until she made friends with a strange dog in the woods of Maine that Nora decided she’d found a place to settle down. Wicked’s Rest.

Wicked’s Rest changed her life. For Nora, it became the best place in the world. She gained a family who accepted her fully. They weren’t scared that she was a bear. They welcomed it. They laughed at her illusions and held her when she cried. They turned Wicked’s Rest from a stopping point for her endless wandering into a home.

That’s not to say that it was all good. Wicked’s Rest proved to be challenging in its own way. At one point, the mines called to her so deeply she tried to force everyone to live in their depths with her. Consumed her entirely and made her into a new, transformed monster. However, she was never alone; her friends made sure of that. That was why she ensured Regan wasn’t alone when she went to Ireland. 

Ireland ruined Nora’s life. She fell in love there. With the town, the women who doted on her, the idea of being a banshee. Most of all, with Declan. Declan was murdered in her arms. A sacrifice to bring out her inner banshee, but she was never going to be a banshee. She was always going to be a bugbear. After his murder, she left with his ashes, having failed everyone there. 

She was a shell of a person after that. A shell that watched the ghost of what could have been dance around her crypt, dance around town, interact with her family. So Nora did what she’s always been good at: ran. She ran home to the arms of her father. She became a model again, her fathers taking no breaks. Every now and then, they would ask her about what happened to her, about the weird dogs that followed her around. About the ashes, they heard her crying over at night. But they gave up when no answers came, and life went on. 

There was something cathartic about letting her life get taken over by her father's. Her schedule was full. Her appearance was planned. Her life was set. Every day she was forced out of bed and into the world. Every day she found the pit inside her stomach shrinking. Every day, she began to feel more and more like Nora again. Her phone was full of contacts she left in Wicked’s Rest. They reminded her that home was always waiting for her, all she had to do was grasp it. 

That’s why on her twenty-second birthday she announced to her fathers that she wanted to go back to Wicked’s Rest. They protested. It was a reminder that they would never and could never understand that she wasn’t like them. Perhaps that was her fault for never showing them who she was. But it was hard. Every time she imagined showing them her true self could see the fear staining their faces, the smell burning her nostrils, the taste making her sick to her stomach. She wasn’t ready to lose them. 

So she did what every child does. She lied to her fathers. She told them she wanted to go to college and her heart was set on UMWR. She didn’t know why they believed that lie, but they did. An extraordinary amount of money was paid to get her into the spring semester, despite it already being underway. Nora was shipped off to Wicked’s Rest, reminded that she would still be expected to work since she had contracts, and told that her fathers would be sure to check in on her and her studies. 

Fuck her studies. Nora already knew what she wanted to be when she grew up, and it is nothing her fathers would approve of. However, her heart had been set on it the moment Emilio had offered her a job at Axis. She was going to be a private investigator. This college detour was just that. A detour. She turned her dorm room into the Axis Jr. investigation center. Ready to take on her first case, and solve what really was going on. 

PERSONALITY:

Taciturn · Deadpan · Loyal · Cold · Quiet · Lost · Flat affect · Protective · Inquisitive

OTHER INFO:

When Nora appeared back in L.A. a year ago, no questions were ever publicly answered about where she was or why she was gone for so long. Interviewers who continued asking were met with blank expressions. 

Due to her monotone nature, and her typical blank facial expression, it comes across that she is disinterested an not paying attention at all times. That is just who she is. 

For most of her life, Nora had no clue she was a Bugbear. That was something she learned when she moved to Wicked’s Rest. But for most her life, she just assumed she was a freak monster who fed off people’s fear, turned into a bear and pretended to be human.

Flawless liar; capable of showing little to no emotion.

Nora is often seen traveling with her dog (yeth hound) named Babadook, a Squonk named Declan, and a haunted doll named Munch. Together they live in the crypt of some dead lady.

Nora’s dorm room was turned into the office for her new business, Axis Jr, which is the only reason she turns up to school at all. She is fully aware that her degree will be paid for by her parent’s money. 

Nora is a oil painter. That’s one of the few hobbies she loves that doesn’t involve breaking some sort of law. Most of her oil paintings are horror-themed. Monsters are her passion. 

Has a strong distaste for ham.

[wickedsrest-rp]

Sawyer Rhodes She / her

"More horror movies should have bears in them. We’re—I mean, they’re the apex predator around here."

SPECIES: Bugbear OCCUPATION: Insurance Agent at ShroomState AGE: 28 Years Old PLAYED BY: Kaitlynn FC: Amber Midthunder

BIOGRAPHY:

Tucked back along a hilltop in Gatlin Fields sat the Rhodes family’s farmhouse, surrounded by wide open fields, an old barn, and other farm buildings. The property never functioned as an actual farm when Sawyer Rhodes was growing up, but rather was transformed into a haunted farm every fall for people in Wicked’s Rest and neighboring towns to come get the life scared out of them. Never literally, for the Rhodes family. Plus, they always had people sign those waivers just in case something did happen! The family of bugbears loved turning their property into a horrifying nightmare for visitors, and they viewed Halloween as a way to dine on fear before hunkering down for the cold winter months. 

As the eldest of three cubs, Sawyer was the first to learn about casting illusions and how to run the family’s haunted house business. The property had been in their family since her great-grandparents moved to Wicked’s Rest, and though it had previously been a regular farm, the bugbears capitalized on the popularity of haunted houses and the farming fell to the wayside. She excelled quickly with her illusions and found it easy enough to satisfy her hunger. She dreamed of the day she would inherit the farm and turn it into a haven for herself and her future cubs. But as her two younger siblings, Tobe and Sally, grew older, they excelled past her abilities. The two of them learned how to terrify people using multiple senses all at once, while Sawyer struggled to incorporate much more than sight. 

Frustrated, she attempted to do better than them. She spent her days out in Gatlin Fields and the Pines practicing her illusions on whatever poor soul happened upon her. She drew upon the horror films that she grew up watching, especially the ones that her family believed could only have been created by bugbears (no way could pathetic humans imagine anything so horrifying). Throughout high school, she worked at the Midnight Drive-In as a way to watch horror movies while also finding ways to cast illusions and grab a quick snack from moviegoers. Still, Tobe and Sally learned quickly and no amount of inspiring horror films could satisfy her parents. 

After high school, Sawyer studied cinema in university, though she wasn’t entirely certain if she planned to actually work in film. Her main goal was studying horror films to improve her family’s haunted farm, because of course she was going to inherit it one day. Of course she and her cubs would have the best haunted house in all of Maine. In all of New England. Ursa Major willing, in all of North America! She fell in love with her degree though, as she wrote and directed short films, and she thought maybe she would take this a step further. Maybe she could do both. 

But then her parents told her that her brother Tobe, who wasn’t even as passionate about horror as her, was interested in the Rhodes’ Haunted Farm, and they were going to pass it on to him. She was dumbstruck as they broke the news to her. How could they? She was the eldest! She deserved to run the family business! Sure, she needed to work more on her illusions, but she was never bad at them. She had met bugbears who cast pathetic illusions in comparison to the nightmares she created. But Tobe incorporated all of the senses in his, and their parents believed he could run the business better than her, because of his “business” degree that he was pursuing. Then he had the audacity to tell her that he wasn’t even that interested in running the haunted farm! That he wanted her to do all the actual work while he lived in the spare house on the property.

Furious, Sawyer gave up on the possible dream of pursuing film as she remained in Wicked’s Rest to prove to her family that she should inherit the farm and that she should run the business. Her parents maintained that Tobe was more cut out for the work than her. Sawyer tried to keep her cool, but it was hard when she ended up being the one to plan the new theme, think of the designs and props, and practically plan the entire haunted farm while Tobe reaped the praise of their parents—all because he was filing taxes! She could file taxes! Probably! Her parents, disappointed in how their eldest cub turned out in comparison to their two youngest cubs, asked a friend to hire her for their insurance company. She needed to earn actual income (she wasn’t getting anything from her work on the haunted farm). With fake insurance licenses framed behind her desk, Sawyer took to selling insurance for ShroomState, a bugbear operated insurance company for all supernatural incidents in Wicked’s Rest. It wasn’t her dream job. It wasn’t remotely close to what she wanted to do with her life. She was stuck pushing papers and talking to pathetic humans about their insurance options in case their house turned into a giant boot, a la The Mice Who Lived in a Shoe. 

Determined to prove herself, Sawyer focused on practicing her illusions. She needed to be the best. She practiced at any opportunity to make her illusions more terrifying, and she spent her free time in the woods as a grizzly bear terrifying hikers. She could tell that her victims were seeing, smelling, and even feeling her illusions. She knew the warnings from her parents though, about being careful in her bear form. She was a white grizzly bugbear, something rare and exciting for bounty hunters who wanted her white fur. She was also a grizzly in Maine, far away from their western territory, which could raise the brow of any human familiar with bear species. 

But that mattered little to her. Hunters and humans were never a big concern for the Rhodes family, believing they could handle themselves. It meant little when she encountered a hiker who resisted her illusions, who seemed more interested in taking pictures of her and going nuts about spotting a white grizzly bear in Maine. She heard him say something about Club Cryptid as she padded away and focused on finding a snack elsewhere. How was she supposed to know that moron human was going to tell his friends all about the white grizzly in the Pines?

PERSONALITY:

Persistent · Blunt · Jealous · Creative · Observant · Fiery · Perfectionist

OTHER INFO:

Sawyer’s bear form is a white grizzly bear, while the rest of her family are all normal brown grizzlies. 

She loves horror films, especially slashers. She grew up considering slashers as fun, child-friendly movies, so she’s often confused when people say things about never letting their children watch them. 

Her favorite song is Blood Curdling Scream (Female) 1 from the hit album Halloween Haunted House by Pro Sound Effects Library. She listens to this on repeat. Very soothing!

She really wants to help you bundle your home and auto insurance so you can save money with ShroomState, which is a super legit insurance company located only in Wicked’s Rest. They’re very legitimate. They specialize in insurance for supernatural disasters. Please contact Sawyer and enroll today! 

Through her job, she sometimes gets to find out which people in town have hot tubs and swimming pools, so don’t be surprised if you one day go out to use your hot tub and there’s a white grizzly bear sitting in it. 

If she could, she would do everything in her bear form. She loves wandering around as a bear. Swimming, hammocking, napping, eating, whatever. Being a bear is so much more fun.