BDE: It's The End Of The World We Can Actually Do Something About

[rebelseekspizza]

Okay, so when we first came up with this BDE, we did not expect we'd be living under the actual apocalypse when we ran it. Sorry.

On the other hand: here's your chance to FIGHT THE FICTIONAL APOCALYPSE. From Wednesday, December 7th through to Sunday, December 11th, post-apocalyptic Fandom will merge with Fandom itself, cutting the island off from the rest of the world and forcing everyone to confront their AU selves from a world where things - we're not saying how, what, or which - went catastrophically wrong.

Yes, even worse than a Trump Presidency.

Wednesday will see flickers of our post-apocalyptic AU arriving on island, washing across various locations with the fog: if you want your character to not be around for this BDE, they can take these scares as a 'KAY, TIME TO GET AWAY FROM THIS PLACE' and bail. From Thursday on, however, the island will be wreathed in fog, and strange and twisted creatures will roam the island. Fandomites will wake up to find their homes and businesses in disrepair, with monsters potentially behind every door. (Even the dorms will not necessarily be safe - the only 'safe space' will be the shanty settlement in the park.)

And soon enough, they'll discover that many of these monsters used to be people they know.

Okay, so what kind of AU selves are we talking about?
Whatever terrible events transpired on Fandom to make the AU world that way, it ate at the memories of those on-island. The deterioration of memory for these AU selves can be at whatever level you choose, though we do stipulate that no one remembers the actual event that made things this way.

First comes forgetting. Then comes the changing. There's a certain point where enough memories are lost that a person goes hollow; people at this stage will be like zombies, violent but empty-eyed. The changing process continues after this, twisting their bodies further, taking significant traits and expanding on them to monstrous - and sometimes monstrously beautiful - levels. We don't want to hark back too much on the game that inspired this BDE, because we're not taking many of its rules, but an AU copy of your character could wind up grotesque but beautiful or just grotesque - it's up to you.

Eventually, the change will make enormous monsters of them all, if they survive the earlier stages. The biggest and most powerful of them all will eventually gravitate to places that are familiar to them, even if they are almost entirely out of memories. There'll be a cap on these, but we'll talk a little more about that later.

One thing does need to be said up front: we are placing no active limits on anyone in the range of 'still has a bunch of their memories, but not much' to 'zombie, beginning to change into something terrible'. That means not just all active characters - not just all active players! - on the island can be played in this range. Dropped characters can also be apped for this.

So there are different categories...?
Yes! Four of them!

1. AU Villagers with most memories intact
These are capped at two per person and no dropped characters. Those people who, in our AU, have managed to hold on to most of their memories will congregate in a small shanty settlement built in the Park. There, they are just trying to survive and cling on to sanity and companionship.

Characters who cannot rot in this way - immortal mutants not truly made of flesh, angel-demon hybrids who don't respond to the infections of mortal men, etc - also fall under this category, but if you're planning to lean that way, please let us know in your application so we can keep a tally of the more-or-less healthy. (Though again, even these people can't remember exactly what happened.)

2. The hollow
Close to zombies, the hollow are still alive, but their memories have passed and they now largely rely on old creature instincts. They're violent and will lash out at anyone, but they are still fundamentally human: no strange feats of power, or anything.

You can app any character as this, including dropped characters.

3. The monstrous
These are hollows that have started to change, but are not particularly powerful yet. Depending on what your character was like as a 'normal person', they'll see attributes increased - greater strength if they were a bodybuilder, flaming arms if they had a firey personality, whatever makes sense to you - and their bodies will be in a state of slowly-twisting.

You can app any character as this, including dropped characters.

4. The bosses
The truly monstrous and the truly bizarre. These characters will have mutated into something almost unrecognizable, deadly and powerful. They flock to one place or another from their memories and stay there, but they'll destroy anything in their path.

These are limited to one per person, and we'll pick up to four of these at random for our finale. (Please let us know if you can't play an antagonist in the finale.) These are limited to active characters in game.

Do I need a separate journal for this?
Yep; playing an alternate version of your character will involve making a new journal, so people can keep your character's real self and AU self apart.

So walk me through what's going to happen, exactly
On Wednesday, as we said up above, there will be flashes of this AU world across the island. People can leave until midnight. Then the fog will set in and block the island off from the rest of the world. The island will twitch and go grey and post-apocalyptic, rotting and terrible. Characters will not be replaced by their AU selves - they'll be able to encounter their AU selves out in the world instead.

Since the collection in the library will also be replaced by post-apocalyptic Fandom's books, a research team will be able to start digging into the question of what happened, how things can be put back to rights, and most immediately important, how to defeat the terrible bosses taking up space in various Fandom hotspots.

Like, say, the horrific twisted creature that was once your Principal who now haunts the upper levels of the school. That one.

By Saturday, the research team will have found ways to defeat the boss monsters. People will be able to fight the various boss monsters, defeat Boss Zoe, and return things to normal. WOO.

And how's that finale thing going to work?
Easy! A few days before the BDE starts, we'll post the names of all the bosses people have applied to play. Other players can then indicate an interest in fighting this boss - or not. The only one that's truly vital to the plot is Zoe, but the more we have, the more we can raise the stakes.

Questions? Comments? Pie? Otherwise, the application forms are below! There will be a brainstorming post closer to the day.

All apps are due on December 1st.