singillppl | November 2024 Event Plotting

NOVEMBER 2024 EVENT

PROMPT ONE — STRANGERS: The Darkwalker returns to directly target Interlopers by stripping away the very things that make them who they are.
STRANGERS — CONTENT WARNINGS: mental manipulation; memory loss; loss of self/identity; potential identity crisis; potential personality changes; possible themes of depression; possible themes of suicide.

PROMPT TWO — NO EXIT: Interlopers find themselves trapped within the bowels of the earth, with no way out, except one.
NO EXIT — CONTENT WARNINGS: forced honesty; claustrophobic situations; nyctophobic/scotophobic situations; themes of peril; caves/possible cave-ins; themes of starvation/dehydration; themes of imprisonment

PROMPT THREE — LAST SUNSET OF THE YEAR: As the long night draws in, Interlopers find a way to bring about some festive cheer to chase off the chill and darkness.
LAST SUNSET OF THE YEAR — CONTENT WARNINGS: drinking/alcohol; mentions of survival situations relating to AMC's The Terror.

STRANGERS

WHEN: The month of November
WHERE: Everywhere.

”They failed.”

For some, they have heard this voice before many times. For others they have only heard the voice upon their arrival into this place. An old voice, deep and dark and ancient. Something impossible, older than the earth itself. The one that floats into your ears and nestles there, sending an ice-cold shiver down your spine. Even to the most stoic and unshakeable souls, it is an unnerving voice. It feels wrong. It feels like an ending. It is the very same voice that spoke to you, right from the start. The words all Interlopers share with one another: You are the Interloper. You are not part of nature’s design.

They failed, and you realise just who ‘they’ are — the Forest Talkers. Mallory slumped in a cabin, slowly bleeding out.

”Interloper.”.

The voice that wants you gone. The one that wants to get rid of you. The Darkwalker.

”Inconsequential. They have gone into the Dark. As will you. As will all.”

The words hang in the air for a moment before it continues.

“What are you truly, Interloper?” it asks you. ”Or rather…. who are you? Take it away, and what are you left with?”

You feel your hands shake, you can’t seem to breathe. What does it mean?

”Perhaps nothing worth keeping, perhaps then you will finally see. Maybe you will finally understand your place. And perhaps then you will go into the Dark.”

You remember those words, and they linger within your mind in the days that follow.

It happens slowly, like the sea erodes the cliff face. The pieces come away, everything within you is slowly undone. Not an instant, but an insidious thing. You begin to forget things, about yourself, about the others around you.

You know you have loved ones, here in the Northern Territories, or even the ones waiting for you back home, but you cannot recognise their faces. You cannot recall the colour of a daughter’s hair, or the dimpled smile of a brother. You do not remember your father’s eyes, or your mother’s laugh. You cannot recall their names, their voices.

You do not remember those around you here in this world. You look upon a friend and see a stranger. You cannot recall the trials you have gone through together and come out the other side from. You cannot remember every shared moment, every small and brief moment of joy or compassion or hope. A hug, a hand held, a joke, a kind word, an apology.

Or perhaps you cannot remember any good thing you ever did. You cannot recall any act of kindness or goodness you brought into the world. You cannot recall your good deeds. Everything falls away from you, and you are left wondering who you are, what kind of person you are. Are you a good person? Or a bad person? Perhaps you’re a terrible person, after all. One who should not be here. Why should someone who has done nothing good with their life be here in this place?

Perhaps the Darkwalker is right. Take it all away, and who are you? What is left of you? Who are you if you cannot remember any goodness of you? If you cannot remember the connections you have made in this place? If you cannot remember the love of those back home?

Is it anything worth keeping? Is it anything that’s worth staying?

For some, it may be too much. Despair and disconnection are heavy things, and it may be too much. Perhaps they are nothing worth keeping, in the end. It may be enough to seek an end to themselves. Maybe it would be best to slip quietly into the Long Dark, after all.

It is a terrible trick, but it is one that can be broken. The Darkwalker’s hold has been broken before, and perhaps it can be broken again. Even if you do not remember yourself, the ones around you do. Leaning on those you are close to and talking with slowly pull the pieces of yourself back to you. The Darkwalker has power, but the testament of Interlopers is their persistence in this world, and that has power, too. Given enough time, and patience, and care — those around you may finally make you whole once more.

NO EXIT

WHEN: The month of November
WHERE: Everywhere...?

You don’t remember falling asleep. You’re sure you were wide awake only seconds before, but when you open your eyes, confused and groggy, you are met with a strange kind of darkness. The kind that seems thick and endless, and you stare into it, trying to get your eyes to adjust but nothing seems to shift in your vision.

The air is stale, and there’s a scent of old, damp stone that clings to it. As you move around, trying to get your bearings, the room echoes oddly and it doesn’t take long to realise that you’re in some kind of cave atrium. And soon enough, someone else is waking up — you’re not alone in this place.

Moving around is difficult, and it’s best to use your body to try to navigate yourself. Testing the way out carefully with hands and feet. Maybe you have something on your by chance to help you light your way — a lighter, a pocket flashlight, matches. However, which way you try to feel out the atrium, you both soon come to the same conclusion: no matter how hard you try, there is no exit. No tunnel or passage out from the atrium, nothing.

You are both entirely trapped within this one space.

For a while, you sit in the atrium. Maybe you sit in silence, maybe you speak over what looks to be the inevitable: you’re doomed to die here, whether you suffocate or die of dehydration or starvation. You and your companion — familiar or strangers —

Out of nowhere, comes a scraping against the stone. You turn to find that on one of the walls, there is light — a ghost writing on the wall, carving into the stone to reveal letters that will glow dimly:

THE TRUTH WILL SET YOU FREE

For some, this feels eerily familiar. Those who have been in the Northern Territories have dealt with something similar: a game of truths, a game of deadly consequences. There is no Jackal-headed being, no chains, no blood. This time, there is the truth or there is waiting to die. For others who aren’t familiar, it may take some working out. Maybe it’s best to talk, after all.

Opting for silence will find that nothing will change in the cave’s atrium. You will be left, waiting to die in the half-gloom. Strangely, speaking any lies will find that the cave will rumble ominously, and with enough — rock will begin fall down from above, almost as the place is slowly caving in. As if the stone itself knows if your words are truthful or not.

But as the words say, the truth will set you free. If you say enough, speak your truth, you will find yourselves noting a shift on the air — a crisp, freshness that drifts in from one direction. Heading through that way will bring you to a tunnel that had not been there before, and with it — you will find your exit, out into the wilds of Milton’s region.

LAST SUNSET OF THE YEAR

WHEN: Preparations throughout November; November 26th.
WHERE: Milton Community Hall

As November begins to draw to a close, the daylight hours grow shorter and shorter. From the start of the month, there is less than seven hours of daylight and that number becomes smaller and smaller as the month goes on. The world is darker and colder, and the long night draws nearer — when the sun will not rise, and the Northern Territories exist in total darkness, save for the spare hours of twilight.

For some, it is not the first time they’ve experienced the darkness of winter. For a select few, they have known the darkness only too well — the bitterness, the hopelessness, the hunger for the dawn. But even in the dark, there are sparks of light — the crackles of fires to fight off the night and cold, or in a more figurative sense… the spark of an idea, another way to fight off the night and cold.

As the day shrinks, the idea grows. There is little to be cheerful of in the Northern Territories. Interlopers are tormented endlessly in this place: supernatural beings, harsh weather, precarious food situations, nightmares, the Forest Talkers and whatever mysteries lie within the Aurora. Survival is a persistence, but people are exhausted. Francis Crozier, former Captain of HMS Terror knows this more than anyone. A veteran, and a survivor of an ill-fated expedition— he has seen what becomes of those with low morale, when the darkness seems so thick and endless. He has seen many horrors.

This time, though, it can be different. This is not his world. These are not starving and maddened men, women and children. It is not Carnivale.

Over the month of November, plans are made and slowly bear fruit. Help is wrangled from Interlopers where they can — food preparation, decorations, musicians. Interlopers are encouraged to add their personal touches, country, culture, customs, to all that they plan. The only thing that’s insisted upon is light, so much light: lanterns, candles, torches, mirrors, sculptures made of ice that catch the glimmer of the nearby fires. The evening will glow.

There isn’t so much a ‘dress code’, per say. But Interlopers are encouraged to dress up for the occasion. Maybe hunting around in the homes of former Milton residents may prove lucky — with some rather dated formal-wear that has remained forgotten in the back of closets. It’s vintage, is all.

On November 26th, there is less than an hour of daylight. The crowds gather to watch the sun set after it has barely risen before the festivities begin.

The food is simple and hearty, much like what can be found at Methuselah’s feasts. While pine wine has been brought along, hot tea is also available—both can keep the chill away. Crozier digs into his stores to share all, a promise to every person as they descend into darkness: no Interloper will go hungry this winter.

There’s dancing, of course, an area cleared and illuminated with torches. There’s an insistence on a party thrown in open air, no canvas to obscure the stars, though inside the Community Hall the warmth calls to those needing a break from the chill.

It is important to remember that the last sunset of the year is not the reminder of the darkness ahead, but the promise of the first sunrise of the next.

FAQs

STRANGERS

1. While the Darkwalker Ward Talismans anointed with Interloper blood (first created by Heartman earlier in the year) will help ward off the worst of the Darkwalker's influence, Interlopers will still find themselves vulnerable to this kind of influence — particularly if their spirits are low, or if they've found themself questioning themselves or their relationships around them as of late. Interlopers who do not have Talismans (this is a handwaved thing) will fall victim very easily to the Darkwalker's influence.

2. There are three ways players can play with this plot: they can go with a loss of self, the loss of game-cr or the loss of canon relationships/canon story. Players can go with whatever way they see fit. They can also go with the nuclear option of all three, or a mix of the three.

NO EXIT

1. The truths need to be meaningful in some way in order to secure freedom. 'Small truths' will not be enough.

2. Either both or one of the characters can speak their truth in order to free themselves from the cave.

LAST SUNSET OF THE YEAR

1. A big thank you to Gels for reaching out and helping with this prompt!

2. Characters will be able to find 'formal wear' of a sort within Milton. Bear in mind that a great deal of the fashion within Milton is dated, with a lot of the clothing being decades old that the original residents of Milton would have carefully kept safe. For a rough idea, nothing would be from anything later than the late-00's.

3. Players are free to write out any preparation threads as well as party threads! This could be outfit hunting; resource gathering for food, etc.; or making decorations for the Community Hall.

PLOTTING FORM

EVENT POST

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Character Name: Orson Callan Krennic
Canon: Rogue One, informed by the prequel novel Catalyst.
Aurora Feat: N/A!

Wanted CR:

- Allies! I'm always very interested in having Orson meet people he can see some of himself in, because his personality deficits mean that other people are typically just uninteresting inanimate objects in his world unless they're directly useful to him. Seeing glimmers of the self in them makes them familiar and more interesting to him, and he's more likely to stick around - because, ironically, Orson has very high social needs and really needs external validation and company to function. The military + Galen Erso kept those needs met for most of his life, and now suddenly both are gone.

- People interested in his bridge project - The recent chaos has kept things from advancing further, but Orson is looking at engineering and constructing a safer bridge into Lakeside than the train bridge someone died on. He has the lifetime of expertise to design such a thing easily once he has the right information available to him, and knows a lot about construction, but doesn't have the manpower - he will need people to volunteer for things like logging, stone mixing, assemblage, scavenging, guarding the project, etc. I'm thinking that I am going to have a PC led expedition to find the hydroelectric dam plans because he wants to determine things like strength of river current and depth of the river.

Unwanted CR: While I'm theoretically open to shipping him with characters who aren't Mr. Galen Erso, I think it'd definitely take time and a lot of plotting and slowburn to get him there—as disturbed and possibly onesided as their relationship was, I think he's still grieving very deeply right now and is sort of occupying the mental space of a widower. He's 51 and he met Galen and became attached to him when he was around 15, so his complete absence from his life/death is pretty earth-shattering and something he's still recovering from. Then of course there are also the more philosophical considerations like what 'love' is and means to someone with ASPD that manifests like Orson's does, etc etc.

Event Ideas:

- Strangers: This is an interesting one because Orson does not care if he is a good or bad person. He lacks the wiring that allows people to care about the harm their actions might cause the word/other people, so while his pre-Death Star career as an engineer/architect did help a lot of people in terms of transportation throughout the galaxy, he's not liable to be overly distressed about not being able to remember that.

Instead his distress will come more from forgetting his achievements, and because he finds a sense of security and self worth in what he has done/what he can do, this is really going to accelerate his plans to start infrastructural improvements around Milton/Lakeside if anyone is interested in jumping in on that. Forgetting bits and pieces about Galen, whom he lost seconds before arriving in Milton, will actually be beneficial to him, in a way—Orson is going to have a few moments to catch his breath and recalibrate and adjust into his setting without the hindrance of mourning a 35-year friendship/infatuation/bond/whatever you want to call it.

- No Exit: Looking to play this one out with someone interested in CR that will go further as opposed to being an event one-off because it has the possibility to be so juicy. I'm thinking that he may confess, to his own surprise, some of his feelings of inadequacy/verbalize some of his constant need for external validation - or, alternatively, admit to at least one person here that he does not feel all of the emotions that the people around him do (guilt, remorse, empathy, compassion) and never has in his life and knows that he's different from them.

- Last Sunset of the Year: Orson was a social butterfly in his greater canon universe, and this sort of gathering is one that he thrives in. He'll be in dress uniform as opposed to his more practical overcoat/long underwear/etc ensemble, all charm. He's very charismatic when he wants to be, and enjoyable company, so definitely looking to use this as a jumping point for some (potentially superficial or dishonest) positive CR. If anyone wants a dancing partner, he's their guy, although it's likely to stay platonic.

Anything Else?: Have had a slow start with him but excited to really get his CR rolling! If you have an idea that's not on here feel free to hit me up and I'll probably be down!

Strangers:
No Exit:
Last Sunset of the Year:
Other:

Hello fellow person with a pathological need for external validation and proving/validating oneself through achievements; these two should totally meet. James would definitely be interested in the dam plans quest at least, but also both No Exit and Last Sunset seem like good opportunities so I'm good with whatever you might be interested in.

November 2024 Event Plotting

orson krennic | rogue one & sw lore

Event Plans (Please do not post to this comment!)

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