Event Plotting Post: Vigilo Opperior Audio

[epistemological]

You who watch and know and understand none. You who listen and hear and will not comprehend. You who wait and wait and drink in all that is not yours by right. Come to us in your wholeness. Come to us in your perfection. Bring all that is fear and all that is terror and all that is the awful dread that crawls and chokes and blinds and falls and twists and leaves and hides and weaves and burns and hunts and rips and bleeds and dies! Come to us.

I – OPEN – THE DOOR!
-TMA 160
With the unfortunate (re)reading of those words by a (once more horrified and tricked) Jonathan Sims, the barge's reality will be taken over by the 15 Dread Powers, eldritch fear Entities from his world/the world of The Magnus Archives. Jon has given a rundown or two of the various entities and they've poked their way onto the Barge before in the form of a few deadly books, a couple of floods, and quite a few bargizens, but that was just a drop or two.

The ocean has arrived.

What does this mean?
As of January 18th, the Barge will be transformed, Changed, into a nightmare landscape full of individual fear domains, each one taking up a portion of the public areas of ship. While the cabins will remain safe, anyone who ventures out is as likely to walk into the Arctic circle or an active warzone or maybe into the middle of thin air, starting to fall before they even realize what's happening. The fear entities, led by the Eye, don't care about how reality actually works, whether you need to sleep, or eat, or what physics would say: the objective is fear and as much of it as can be dragged out of you.

What does this mean... for me?
Because the leader of the band here is the Ceaseless Watcher, this leaves everyone in this new 'world' two options:

OPTION 1
You are one of the Watchers, someone who is responsible for (and possibly even delighted by) controlling a fear domain and terrifying/traumatizing others to feed the Entities that align with your personal vibe. Your domain takes up a public section of the Barge, though physics and logic don't actually work properly anymore so don't worry about whether or not someone else is there too or how much room you take up (though obviously a spread is better). The domains can be just about anything, function any way you like. So if you want an endless carousel that won't let people off or a terrifying village full of plague or a city street in perpetual midnight where monsters hunt people while they try to find a door that will let them in... you do you! You've got total control of reality in your domain, though you're welcome to play with how much is under your character's conscious control and how much is a part of their own fear and wants. Your domain can be aligned with one entity or a mishmosh of them; ultimately, it's shaped by the Watcher in power there.

OPTION 2
You are one of the Watched, someone being subjected to the horrors of this world, fed on for the fear that can be drawn out of you. You are at the mercy of the Watchers, who feed on how effectively they can terrify and traumatize you. While being 'trapped' is an important part of the horror, the Watched can escape through an act of extreme will, through being pulled out by someone else, by being mysteriously freed, or through a role reversal.

Role Reversal?
Jon, as the focal point of the Change, has the power to shift the balance between the Watchers and the Watched, making a Watcher into a Watched and vice versa. Every domain must have a Watcher, so there's no taking someone out of power without putting someone else into it.

How do we fix this?
Jon is traveling through the Barge, trying to help somehow and figure out how to fix this horrible situation. As such, he'll be seeking out Elias in hopes of finding a solution. And that solution will be found. On January 22nd, the 'door' will close and the barge will revert to normal, the 'door' reset and closed to the Entities once more.

DOMAIN FORM
<b>LOCATION:</b> Where would you like your domain to be located on board? <b>ALIGNED ENTITY:</b> Which one of the fears is this domain primarily aligned with? If multiple, please explain <b>GENERAL FORM of DOMAIN:</b> One to two sentences on what your domain involves; one sentence for each 'side' is a good pitch. <b>REVERSAL?:</b> Do you want to be reversed into a watched or into a watcher at any point?

Domains should be shaped by the watcher but also need to contain an element for the watched; while a domain for Randel, for instance, would be Slaughter-aligned due to his experiences in war and would probably involve him being in a permanent state of frenzy, no longer able to return to his humanity as he murders people over and over... I should also offer what the watched in that domain would experience. One option for that would be going about their day and people are just... murdered right next to them, no place is safe. Or maybe it's like zombies, where the second blood splashes on them, they too get caught up and start murdering people all around them, stuck in the back seat of their own body as they do horrible things. While everyone's going to take things a little differently, a domain should always be about both sides of the experience.


FAQ [click for answers]

Will this flood have rolling effects?

Any character in a public area of the barge will be subject to a domain in the appropriate area of the ship. If there's no domain in that area, reality will be spooky according to what would spook your character, but it won't be a set domain. If your character is running a domain, they will remain in that domain until they've been made one of the watched or the event ends.

I'm not very canon familiar with the source material that the Entities are pulled from. How accurate do I have to be here? Do I have to listen to the podcast?

Nope! The fears, and even to some degree how they work, are shaped by the beings feeding them. As long as you have the general gist of things correct, it's not really a big deal if you have a Corruption-type domain that includes spiders or something. Do what works for your character and CR and what's going to make for the best RP.

Whoah, I am canon-familiar, and you changed some stuff...

Yeah, I wanted to 1. make sure people aren't stuck doing the same thing all week and 2. give people the opportunity to experience multiple domains and situations and 3. wanted to give some places where people could have Normal Things going on, as well as 4. offer a little relief since we're playing this out and everything.

One to two sentences isn't much to go on for a domain. How do I find out more?

It'll be up to Watchers to provide a description of the domain they're 'offering' for the plot and of course to provide whatever terrible shenanigans they'll be putting the watched characters through. The 'meat' of this will be on their post, of course: the one to two sentences here are essentially an elevator pitch to provide the pertinent details. I'm not going to dictate how they run their domains; please feel free to work out details here on the post!

How will a reversal work?

Sign up for a domain below and indicate you'd like to do a reversal. Then leave a post on the 'reversal' section. Once you have another character who's willing to be the other half of the reversal, Jon can come through and do his thing. Once the reversal is done, the domain is controlled and connected to the new Watcher.

Can my character leave the domain once they've been reversed into a watched?

Absolutely! That's half the fun. Or they can stick around and get a dose of what they did to others. Up to you!

Will my warden be held fully responsible for what they do during this event? Can I get demoted if I act as a Watcher?

Just like in a flood or a breach, your character is not entirely themselves during this, so they won’t be demoted for their actions here alone. You’re welcome to work the trauma or plot that happens here into whatever demotion plans you might have in store, however.

Will my powers be nerfed during all this?

Only if you want them to be! They can also be a part of the fear you experience, how you inflict fear on others, however works to your comfort level. This does not effect the caps and controls put on a character by the Admiral, so while power over a domain may allow someone to mimic their full powers, they don't actually have them uncapped. Feel free to play with how this might interact with the current power fluctuations as well.

Can a watcher just... not cause fear?

No, unfortunately not. If a Watcher doesn't exert control over a domain, it's essentially going to be their own fears run wild. If a Watcher takes over a domain from someone else and they don't work on shaping it, it'll stay the same as it was just with a new master. There's no 'out' in this new paradigm, unfortunately. That's part of the horror. It's like capitalism in a way.

Can my character die during all this?

Absolutely. The End is one of the biggest and most cognizant of the fears. Dying is not turned off or anything. Of course, the PERCEPTION of dying is totally an option for the various domains. Please negotiate accordingly!

What about Jon and Elias?

In this new 'world', Jon and Elias are essentially demi-gods. Both of them will theoretically have a feed on basically everything that's happening throughout the affected/public areas (so no cabins!). That said, any IC knowledge will be okayed and confirmed with individual players before it is used or acknowledged in game.