Bo Jones. Or maybe Dennis. (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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fandomhigh_ooc2014-11-19 09:33 am
nookiepowered) wrote in fandomhigh_ooc2014-11-19 09:33 am
BDE: Ghost-Con! (December 1st through the 6th)
Remember those thrilling days of yesteryear when Fandom Island was the location of professional gatherings for mercenaries, law enforcement types, and musicians? It's been a while, but the peace couldn't last forever and the urge to play host runs strong in the Fandom family. This time, though, things are a little* bit different...
*by which we mean a lot.
First of all, the convention will be held not at the Arms Hotel on Fandom, but at the Haunted House on Ingvar - where, you may have guessed from the location or possibly the subtle inclusion in the post title, our short-term NPC guests will be canonical spectres of all sizes, shapes, fandoms and dispositions!
Ghost-Con itself will run on Monday/Tuesday, December 1st and 2nd, and will be a normal -- for Fandom -- convention, just populated by the dead, while the living on Fandom remain largely unaware that it's going on. There'll be the usual workshops and discussion panels, a special bar where even if your character can't imbibe, they can at least remember what it was like, and the chance to schmooze with fellow spirits.
Fandom Island will be officially off-limits, and there'll be a Do No Harm spell in place for the length of the convention, but unofficially, ghosts will be able to sneak off to Fandom to observe or interact quietly with the living, as long as they don't draw undue attention to themselves. The convention itself should be NFB, and the spell will prevent ghosts from discussing its existence with any living people they might interact with. Psychically sensitive Fandomites might pick up some weird vibes from the direction of Ingvar, but nothing detailed.
If the only part of of the BDE you want to participate in is Ghost-Con, that's fiiine and dandy. It's a relaxing two days of NPC fun with no strings attached.
The BDE part comes after the convention winds down -- though involved NPCS are welcome and encouraged to start figuring things out and plotting diabolical shenanigans during their interactions with each other at the con.
What Things? What Shenanigans? Weeeell…
Those ghosts of an evil nature, or those who are relatively neutral but desperate to return to life, will have the chance to remain in Fandom for the rest of the week, wreaking both general and specific havoc. During the convention, it will become clear that the dark power generated by Ingvar makes those ghosts that are attuned to it even stronger than they usually are. More able to affect the physical world. To contact the living. To enter the living. (Not dirty. Probably.) To control the living. To, eventually, replace the living. Always wanted a new body and a new lease on life? Hey, buddy, here's your shot!
All good and lawful ghosts will leave Ingvar and return to their usual haunting grounds on Tuesday evening; the ones who stay behind will no longer be affected by the convention's Do No Harm spell, and may start hanging out on Fandom and messing with its inhabitants, with one of two goals:
Sadly, Ingvar's power and slightly warped values are fueling the spirits, so they'll be harder to fight than some other past invaders have been. Exorcisms, once people realize they might be necessary, will be unsuccessful or impermanent -- so Fandomites will have to discover how to depower the spirits while fighting them off both internally and in the physical world.
Is This Open To Alumni/Expats?
Absolutely, but only if they can find an excuse to be on Fandom Island during the week; there won't be a special event to get them there. The BDE week won't count against the regular limit of five days on the island per month.
How Do I Stay Out Of It Completely?
Don't be on Fandom from Wednesday through Saturday, or keep your character's eyes and ears very, very firmly covered. No buildings will be blowing up or multiverses disappearing, but hauntings and weird behavior will probably get mentioned on the radio, and any public space including the dorms and school is open for ghosty activity.
What About Safe Spaces To Retreat To?
Sure! One partial, one complete:
--- The No Violence spell in Caritas will be unaffected, but that doesn't protect against possession.
--- Our Lady of Fandom - the church only, not the grounds -- is completely off-limits to ghosts, whether outside or inside a human body. This means that if you drag a possessed person inside, their ghost will flee and they'll be normal -- but only while inside the church. The minute they step outside again, their ghost can re-invade them. Characters are welcome to figure this out any time after they figure out that possessions are happening at all (or even "accidentally" if they're the churchgoing type), and once that happens, we encourage anyone who wishes to make open Our Lady posts for those who want to flee to the safe zone.
What About Leaving Fandom Entirely?
Un-possessed people? Sure.
Ghosts without a body? Only if they're going back to their home world.
Possessed people? Ahhh, there's the question. That's what most of the possessing ghosts want -- to scamper off with a new body and go live a life -- so they're certainly welcome to try it. BUT the possessions won't reach full strength until the last day; before then any ghost who tries to leave the Fandom/Ingvar area in a human body will feel the possession get shakier, and know they need to turn around. As Saturday approaches, this effect will get less pronounced if they keep trying, opening the way for escape attempts during the finale -- but at that point, our brave Fandomites will be doing everything in their power to stop that.
What's Possession Like?
This is largely up to the players of the Possessed, who are, conveniently, also the players of the spirits possessing them. This lets people structure their narrative between the personalities however they'd like, and nobody's modding anybody else's character.
On a personal level, the Possessed are still in there, to whatever level the player wants them to be, and can be horrified and and mentally fighting back (but unable to openly tell anyone what's happening, or thinking they're going bonkers and not wanting to tell anyone, or telling people but not getting believed) or completely overtaken, as desired.
Ghosts will only have their ghosty powers (beyond the possession itself) when they're not possessing a body, but they'll have control of any powers the body has. So if Elsa is, for instance, stuck sharing a brain with Freddy Krueger, he'll have control over her ice powers when he's in her body, but to do his evil dream invasion schtick on other people, he'd have to temporarily GTFO of Elsa.
As the possession gets more and more solid (so, by late Friday and Saturday morning) most Possessees will get weaker and weaker, and start to feel like they might flicker out altogether and get pushed on to the afterlife. The progression of this is up to you and what you feel the personal and psychic strength of your character might be.
Both the hauntings and the possessions will start cautiously and ramp up over the week, with the individual levels of external mayhem and internal loss of identity controlled by y'all - the players of both the baddies and the victims!
We've got an outline for you of what will generally be happening when, and research clues will be found at specific times, but the thing to understand about timing here is that our enemies in this case are written and controlled by the players. Who figures things out and tries to put a stop to it over the course of the week is in our collective hands, rather than your loving Admins just saying "You Must Now Ignore Things For Three Days. GO!"
Wednesday
Ghosts who remain after the convention may start hanging out on Fandom Island and doing their particular thing either late on Tuesday night or anytime on Wednesday. Daylight will be no particular barrier to ghosty effects or attempts to frighten or possess the living.
Attempts to possess people, however, should be tentative, testing out the waters, as it were. If your evil ghost wants to bop around and try taking over several of your characters before settling on one, that's absolutely fine. Ghosts will need to get a good emotional foothold in their humans before starting to control them more obviously, so take your time.
Characters sensitive to such things can pick up psychic weirdness in other people, but the ghosts will be trying to combat that too, by avoiding those people, faking them out, or temporarily vacating their human when challenged.
Some ghosts may not want to possess anyone at all; this is also cool! Just stirring things up and using Fandom as a playground to torment the living is absolutely an option. However, out of professional courtesy or fear of the wrath of those with more permanent plans, public hauntings should also be mild on Wednesday, so that those who want to worm their way into a human body can work up to it without attracting a lot of suspicion.
Thursday and Friday
By Thursday, strong possessions can start happening, and hauntings all over Fandom can get bigger, nastier, and more creative. (On an OOC level, always check with the players involved if you're going to haunt someone else's character or post, of course.)
The psychically sensitive or just smart/experienced may notice their friends acting weird or haunting activities, and try exorcisms or banishing spells. They either won't work at all, or won't work well/won't be permanent, since Ingvar is feeding extra power to the ghosts, who just take a licking and keep on ticking, not dirty. Exorcisms attempted in Our Lady of Fandom will appear to work, but the person will become re-possessed as soon as they leave the church. (That doesn't mean the possessing ghost has to make that obvious, though, muahahaha.)
Characters can start researching to see what's up or what might help get things back to normalish. Topics to look into include hauntings, bodysnatching, possession, exorcisms, as well as whatever wacky dead-ends might amuse you. A few beloveds of the RNG will get clues on why an exorcism might fail, which will include hints about location (i.e. holy ground) and levels of spiritual power. Late on Friday afternoon, there'll also be a hint (courtesy of Fandom, who's not overly pleased about all these goings-on herself) of where the trouble is coming from and what to do about it.
Friday Night
By Friday night, the collected unpossessed folks will be able to gather at the Town Hall to put their heads together and figure out that they need to cut off the source of the ghosts' power. A Strike Team (another collection of RNG beneficiaries, who'll be able to pre-play the adventure) will need to make an expedition to Ingvar. In the morning when it's slightly less skeery, thank you.
Of course, not all the possessed people are going to be obvious about it, soooo one or two are welcome to sneak into that meeting -- and/or some bodiless and invisible ghosts -- and figure out said plan.
Saturday: The End
Ingvar: In the morning, our Strike Team will head to Ingvar to try to do a spell (possibly combined with characters' powers, depending on what's in their arsenal) to shut down the power flow. Ingvar will see this as an attack, so it will be using the best of its spooky baby arsenal to fight back.
Fighty back home on Fandom: the ghosts have been warned! Free spirits will be causing as much ruckus as possible. Possessed people will be trying to head to Ingvar to stop the Strike Team, or off Fandom via the Causeway to escape into the Multiverse with their stolen bodies. It's up to their friends to protect themselves from both ghosts and possessed humans while trying to keep the humans on Fandom by herding them into Our Lady.
Once someone is inside the church, they'll be safe until the Big Finale, but then the ghost that was possessing them can be around outside the church, contributing to the fighty on a haunting level.
Big Finale: Once the Strike Team finally succeeds in knocking Ingvar for a loop, the ghosts will immediately become less powerful. This is the signal for Big Fun Exorcism Times! A Banish-All-Negative-Spirits spell, to be performed by anyone and everyone available, including any still-possessed PC characters as they start being able to use their own strength of will and personality to force the ghosts out.
There'll be a separate post today for the applications themselves, which won't be screened, so people can see which characters have already been applied for. There'll also be a space in that post for early brainstorming of things like ghosts from the same canon, team-lead convention panels, and any other stuff you might want to get up to with your characters.
The rules are here, though, so all of your questions about the plot can collect in one easy-to find location.
And now the con floor is open for your questions and comments!
*by which we mean a lot.
Ghost-Con Itself! Monday and Tuesday
First of all, the convention will be held not at the Arms Hotel on Fandom, but at the Haunted House on Ingvar - where, you may have guessed from the location or possibly the subtle inclusion in the post title, our short-term NPC guests will be canonical spectres of all sizes, shapes, fandoms and dispositions!
Ghost-Con itself will run on Monday/Tuesday, December 1st and 2nd, and will be a normal -- for Fandom -- convention, just populated by the dead, while the living on Fandom remain largely unaware that it's going on. There'll be the usual workshops and discussion panels, a special bar where even if your character can't imbibe, they can at least remember what it was like, and the chance to schmooze with fellow spirits.
Fandom Island will be officially off-limits, and there'll be a Do No Harm spell in place for the length of the convention, but unofficially, ghosts will be able to sneak off to Fandom to observe or interact quietly with the living, as long as they don't draw undue attention to themselves. The convention itself should be NFB, and the spell will prevent ghosts from discussing its existence with any living people they might interact with. Psychically sensitive Fandomites might pick up some weird vibes from the direction of Ingvar, but nothing detailed.
If the only part of of the BDE you want to participate in is Ghost-Con, that's fiiine and dandy. It's a relaxing two days of NPC fun with no strings attached.
But Wait, There's More!
The BDE part comes after the convention winds down -- though involved NPCS are welcome and encouraged to start figuring things out and plotting diabolical shenanigans during their interactions with each other at the con.
What Things? What Shenanigans? Weeeell…
Those ghosts of an evil nature, or those who are relatively neutral but desperate to return to life, will have the chance to remain in Fandom for the rest of the week, wreaking both general and specific havoc. During the convention, it will become clear that the dark power generated by Ingvar makes those ghosts that are attuned to it even stronger than they usually are. More able to affect the physical world. To contact the living. To enter the living. (Not dirty. Probably.) To control the living. To, eventually, replace the living. Always wanted a new body and a new lease on life? Hey, buddy, here's your shot!
All good and lawful ghosts will leave Ingvar and return to their usual haunting grounds on Tuesday evening; the ones who stay behind will no longer be affected by the convention's Do No Harm spell, and may start hanging out on Fandom and messing with its inhabitants, with one of two goals:
- just terrorizing people and causing mayhem because they're evil/angry and they enjoy it
- possessing a living character (which will be an FH character played by the same player), slowly taking over completely with the intent of shoving the original soul out so the ghost can effectively return to life
- or
Sadly, Ingvar's power and slightly warped values are fueling the spirits, so they'll be harder to fight than some other past invaders have been. Exorcisms, once people realize they might be necessary, will be unsuccessful or impermanent -- so Fandomites will have to discover how to depower the spirits while fighting them off both internally and in the physical world.
Is This Open To Alumni/Expats?
Absolutely, but only if they can find an excuse to be on Fandom Island during the week; there won't be a special event to get them there. The BDE week won't count against the regular limit of five days on the island per month.
How Do I Stay Out Of It Completely?
Don't be on Fandom from Wednesday through Saturday, or keep your character's eyes and ears very, very firmly covered. No buildings will be blowing up or multiverses disappearing, but hauntings and weird behavior will probably get mentioned on the radio, and any public space including the dorms and school is open for ghosty activity.
What About Safe Spaces To Retreat To?
Sure! One partial, one complete:
--- The No Violence spell in Caritas will be unaffected, but that doesn't protect against possession.
--- Our Lady of Fandom - the church only, not the grounds -- is completely off-limits to ghosts, whether outside or inside a human body. This means that if you drag a possessed person inside, their ghost will flee and they'll be normal -- but only while inside the church. The minute they step outside again, their ghost can re-invade them. Characters are welcome to figure this out any time after they figure out that possessions are happening at all (or even "accidentally" if they're the churchgoing type), and once that happens, we encourage anyone who wishes to make open Our Lady posts for those who want to flee to the safe zone.
What About Leaving Fandom Entirely?
Un-possessed people? Sure.
Ghosts without a body? Only if they're going back to their home world.
Possessed people? Ahhh, there's the question. That's what most of the possessing ghosts want -- to scamper off with a new body and go live a life -- so they're certainly welcome to try it. BUT the possessions won't reach full strength until the last day; before then any ghost who tries to leave the Fandom/Ingvar area in a human body will feel the possession get shakier, and know they need to turn around. As Saturday approaches, this effect will get less pronounced if they keep trying, opening the way for escape attempts during the finale -- but at that point, our brave Fandomites will be doing everything in their power to stop that.
What's Possession Like?
This is largely up to the players of the Possessed, who are, conveniently, also the players of the spirits possessing them. This lets people structure their narrative between the personalities however they'd like, and nobody's modding anybody else's character.
On a personal level, the Possessed are still in there, to whatever level the player wants them to be, and can be horrified and and mentally fighting back (but unable to openly tell anyone what's happening, or thinking they're going bonkers and not wanting to tell anyone, or telling people but not getting believed) or completely overtaken, as desired.
Ghosts will only have their ghosty powers (beyond the possession itself) when they're not possessing a body, but they'll have control of any powers the body has. So if Elsa is, for instance, stuck sharing a brain with Freddy Krueger, he'll have control over her ice powers when he's in her body, but to do his evil dream invasion schtick on other people, he'd have to temporarily GTFO of Elsa.
As the possession gets more and more solid (so, by late Friday and Saturday morning) most Possessees will get weaker and weaker, and start to feel like they might flicker out altogether and get pushed on to the afterlife. The progression of this is up to you and what you feel the personal and psychic strength of your character might be.
So How's This Going To Play Out?
Both the hauntings and the possessions will start cautiously and ramp up over the week, with the individual levels of external mayhem and internal loss of identity controlled by y'all - the players of both the baddies and the victims!
We've got an outline for you of what will generally be happening when, and research clues will be found at specific times, but the thing to understand about timing here is that our enemies in this case are written and controlled by the players. Who figures things out and tries to put a stop to it over the course of the week is in our collective hands, rather than your loving Admins just saying "You Must Now Ignore Things For Three Days. GO!"
Wednesday
Ghosts who remain after the convention may start hanging out on Fandom Island and doing their particular thing either late on Tuesday night or anytime on Wednesday. Daylight will be no particular barrier to ghosty effects or attempts to frighten or possess the living.
Attempts to possess people, however, should be tentative, testing out the waters, as it were. If your evil ghost wants to bop around and try taking over several of your characters before settling on one, that's absolutely fine. Ghosts will need to get a good emotional foothold in their humans before starting to control them more obviously, so take your time.
Characters sensitive to such things can pick up psychic weirdness in other people, but the ghosts will be trying to combat that too, by avoiding those people, faking them out, or temporarily vacating their human when challenged.
Some ghosts may not want to possess anyone at all; this is also cool! Just stirring things up and using Fandom as a playground to torment the living is absolutely an option. However, out of professional courtesy or fear of the wrath of those with more permanent plans, public hauntings should also be mild on Wednesday, so that those who want to worm their way into a human body can work up to it without attracting a lot of suspicion.
Thursday and Friday
By Thursday, strong possessions can start happening, and hauntings all over Fandom can get bigger, nastier, and more creative. (On an OOC level, always check with the players involved if you're going to haunt someone else's character or post, of course.)
The psychically sensitive or just smart/experienced may notice their friends acting weird or haunting activities, and try exorcisms or banishing spells. They either won't work at all, or won't work well/won't be permanent, since Ingvar is feeding extra power to the ghosts, who just take a licking and keep on ticking, not dirty. Exorcisms attempted in Our Lady of Fandom will appear to work, but the person will become re-possessed as soon as they leave the church. (That doesn't mean the possessing ghost has to make that obvious, though, muahahaha.)
Characters can start researching to see what's up or what might help get things back to normalish. Topics to look into include hauntings, bodysnatching, possession, exorcisms, as well as whatever wacky dead-ends might amuse you. A few beloveds of the RNG will get clues on why an exorcism might fail, which will include hints about location (i.e. holy ground) and levels of spiritual power. Late on Friday afternoon, there'll also be a hint (courtesy of Fandom, who's not overly pleased about all these goings-on herself) of where the trouble is coming from and what to do about it.
Friday Night
By Friday night, the collected unpossessed folks will be able to gather at the Town Hall to put their heads together and figure out that they need to cut off the source of the ghosts' power. A Strike Team (another collection of RNG beneficiaries, who'll be able to pre-play the adventure) will need to make an expedition to Ingvar. In the morning when it's slightly less skeery, thank you.
Of course, not all the possessed people are going to be obvious about it, soooo one or two are welcome to sneak into that meeting -- and/or some bodiless and invisible ghosts -- and figure out said plan.
Saturday: The End
Ingvar: In the morning, our Strike Team will head to Ingvar to try to do a spell (possibly combined with characters' powers, depending on what's in their arsenal) to shut down the power flow. Ingvar will see this as an attack, so it will be using the best of its spooky baby arsenal to fight back.
Fighty back home on Fandom: the ghosts have been warned! Free spirits will be causing as much ruckus as possible. Possessed people will be trying to head to Ingvar to stop the Strike Team, or off Fandom via the Causeway to escape into the Multiverse with their stolen bodies. It's up to their friends to protect themselves from both ghosts and possessed humans while trying to keep the humans on Fandom by herding them into Our Lady.
Once someone is inside the church, they'll be safe until the Big Finale, but then the ghost that was possessing them can be around outside the church, contributing to the fighty on a haunting level.
Big Finale: Once the Strike Team finally succeeds in knocking Ingvar for a loop, the ghosts will immediately become less powerful. This is the signal for Big Fun Exorcism Times! A Banish-All-Negative-Spirits spell, to be performed by anyone and everyone available, including any still-possessed PC characters as they start being able to use their own strength of will and personality to force the ghosts out.
Application Stuff:
There'll be a separate post today for the applications themselves, which won't be screened, so people can see which characters have already been applied for. There'll also be a space in that post for early brainstorming of things like ghosts from the same canon, team-lead convention panels, and any other stuff you might want to get up to with your characters.
The rules are here, though, so all of your questions about the plot can collect in one easy-to find location.
- The deadline for submitting applications is 11:59 p.m. Pacific Time on Friday, November 28th.
- Eligible Characters
- Canonical ghosts from any fictional source. Familiar FH canons? Supernatural comedies? Hardcore horror movies? All both allowed and welcome. Nor do they once-human characters; the doggie ghost from Nightmare Before Christmas is totally welcome.
This includes "might be a ghost, might be a hallucination, the canon refuses to say for sure" characters like the dead people in 6 Feet Under or Benton Fraser's dad in Due South, etc. - Any former FH characters who were killed off in the game (e.g. Hamlet, Triela, Bart), if their players want to bring them back as ghosts for the convention.
- Canonical ghosts from any fictional source. Familiar FH canons? Supernatural comedies? Hardcore horror movies? All both allowed and welcome. Nor do they once-human characters; the doggie ghost from Nightmare Before Christmas is totally welcome.
- Not Eligible
- Characters who've died in their canon but never been shown as a ghost. (Yes, even if the canon contains the possibility that ghosts exist. e.g. Phantom Dennis yes, Principal Snyder's ghost, no.)
- Zombies, vampires, other undead creatures who already have a body
- Demons and other spiritual entities who were never, at one time, the spirit of a living creature
- Characters who've died in their canon but never been shown as a ghost. (Yes, even if the canon contains the possibility that ghosts exist. e.g. Phantom Dennis yes, Principal Snyder's ghost, no.)
- If the ghost comes from a canon represented by current characters in the game, please get permission from those players before applying
- Number of ghost characters applied is limited only by what the player thinks they can manage
- Only evil/malicious ghosts may remain after the convention for the rest of the BDE, or those who are so desperate to return to life that they're willing to take over a human body.
Q: Can a non-evil ghost (who just wanted to liiiiiiive again) change its mind about possessing a human once they realize they'd be killing the original owner, and decide to help the good guys?
A: Sure; if you're interested in playing a ghost like that, note it in your character app, and dive into the brainstorming with that information! (There'll be more than one brainstorming opportunity, not just the one in the Application Post.) - The application will ask about which character is getting possessed; you can list more than one. Possessing ghosts may experiment with taking over any or all of your regular characters, as long as they eventually settle on a permanent host.
- When acting as the possessed character, ghosts should use the FH character's journal and use the narrative to show who's controlling the body. When the ghost is interacting or causing trouble as themselves, free of a living body, use the NPC journal.
And now the con floor is open for your questions and comments!