(event) GHOSTS & HOSTS

[vestigemods]

SEPTEMBER EVENT: GHOSTS & HOSTS

SEPTEMBER 22ND - 28TH

► THE BASICS

Salutations, murderfam. It's time to talk about the September event!

First, a note on events in Vestige overall. Looking at the events so far + the events I have upcoming, it seems like we've fallen into a general pattern for event months: first an event in which horror things happen to characters (see: Shatter & Decay), then a month in which a horror problem needs to be solved (see: Way Down We Go), and then a month in which some sort of horror entity needs to be fought or dealt with (this month). I like this pattern, and aside from the wild cards I'll throw in every once in a while for holiday reasons - or because a character triggered it, like a fool - most events henceforth will follow this pattern with relative consistency.

As for this month's event, like I said, we're dealing with a good old-fashioned monster horror event, with a side dish of psychological horror depending on how you approach it. There are multiple directions from which to approach this event, which ideally means that combatants and non-combatants both have ample opportunity to get involved. It's also worth noting that large parts of this event are dependent on player extrapolation, and that you'll be given a framework to work within and free rein to run wild with it.

While this looks ICly like a problem-solving event - there are multiple routes by which to tangibly and noticeably get rid of the entities, and they're given no reason to think that it will go away on their own if they don't - the OOC outcome of this event is not dependent on how characters handle the obstacles therein. There's no need to fuss with the level of plotting and orchestration we had last month. Just do your best and have fun. :')

The lead-up to this event (as detailed in the September Infopost) has been running since the containment zone expanded on the 10th, while the event itself runs from September 22nd - 28th. The event log is currently aiming to go up on the 19th.

In order to opt out of this event, simply say that your character was left alone! This event occurs all through the containment zone, but it's more 'anywhere' rather than 'everywhere' and can easily be OOCly avoided. Content warnings for this event as a whole are mostly just for monster gore - while individual pieces of the event may have more intense CWs, they're pieces which are left to player extrapolation so those are mostly dependent on the players involved. (As such, please remember to include appropriate content warnings if your prompts call for any!)

Now for the fun part.

THE GHOSTS

THE OVERVIEW.

Some characters - especially those exploring the manmade bits of the new and improved containment zone - may have felt a bit like they were being watched, as of late. Not all the time, and never from any direction you can pinpoint... Or maybe from more than one direction at once? They might have written it off as their imagination. It was certainly subtle enough to be the mind playing tricks, especially exploring these creepy new buildings everyone seems to have found.

Beginning on the 22nd, they'll start to figure out why. Spirits begin to manifest with varying degrees of tangibility and even humanity, all over the containment zone but especially in the town and around abandoned structures. While few of them actually seem to affiliate with one another (though the weaker ones tend to flock together for strength in numbers), they all seem to share a common target: The living.

What do they want, and what do they do? That varies quite a bit by the spirit, and is actually entirely up to you! Within reason, of course. We'll dig a bit into that, but first a key concept to keep in mind when brainstorming for this event: Every spirit has a theme, even if you don't go too deep into it. It doesn't matter if you're dealing with generic rando spirits/beasts, but if you decide to craft one to personally fuck with your character, try to have a concept in mind (like 'jealousy' or 'died trapped in a fire') and use that to craft how the spirit/beast looks and acts. I'll have some examples in the comment section below.

The rest of this section is about building the spirits for your characters to interact with, offering hard and fast rules + options for things to consider. All info on stopping them can be found in the 'UNFUCKING YOUR CONTAINMENT ZONE' drop-down below.

WHAT DO THEY LOOK LIKE?

THE FRAMEWORK -
• The only real mandatory feature is that they were once human in some shape or form.
THINGS TO CONSIDER -
• Their degree of visibility is variable - they can be anywhere from 10% to 90% opacity, and you're welcome to say they're able to change how visible they are at a given time.
  
• They can still look just as they would have when they were alive, or they can be changed in some way.
  
• If they are changed, you have a lot of creative liberty there - their features or bodies can be distorted and/or uncanny, they can have wasted away or eroded, they can have grown Extra Spooky (demonic/dark), etc. The only real guideline there is that their changes would have matched their general theme in some way, but if you're making up generic random ghosts there's no need to fuck with theme shit for that.
  
• They can still carry their death injuries, or an exaggerated version thereof.
  
• How they sound is variable. They can sound fully normal/human, they can have the wrong voice for their body (e.g. creepy man ghost with little girl voice), their voice can be distorted in some way, they can open their mouth and animal/otherwise nonhuman sounds come out, go nuts.
  

WHAT DO THEY WANT?

THE FRAMEWORK -
• The only rule is that all spirits seem to have wants/needs which lead them to target the living in some shape or form.
OPTIONS TO CONSIDER -
• They want something all living can offer, indiscriminately - your soul, your memories, your eyes or other such body part, your body heat leeched from your body, for Literally Anyone To Understand Their Pain, etc.
  
• They want something specific living can offer - maybe they latch onto someone who fits the general age/gender of their long lost relative and get yandere about it, or find someone who reminds them of the person who murdered them and try to make them regret that murder, etc.
  
• They want something irrelevant to the living, but the living are interrupting that and need to be fucked with/chased off - maybe they want some goddamn peace and quiet, or for a certain building or landmark to be left alone, etc.

WHAT CAN THEY DO?

THE FRAMEWORK -
• Spirits are not fully tangible, and while they can interact tangibly in some ways, they don't have a physical presence which interacts consistently with the world around it. (e.g. maybe it can grab and throw a book, but also walk through a table.) This is mainly to establish that spirits can't pass seamlessly as a living being, even if they give it a convincing try.
  
• Many spirits can accomplish things without regard toward their aesthetic form - for example, their strength when lifting/pushing/pulling doesn't need to match the strength a human of their apparent shape/size would have, and a spirit may not need to tangibly reach out and grab someone in order to hold them in place.
  
• Spirits do not seem able to possess the living. This is the one thing that none of them display the ability to do, universally across the board.
  
OPTIONS TO CONSIDER -
• They might interact with the environment. (e.g. throwing furniture, wielding a weapon, setting a fire, making the air around the character freezing cold.)
  
• They might interact physically with a character. (e.g. shaking hands to appear benign, grabbing/restraining a character, pushing/pulling a character, etc.)
  
• They might take control of a character's body part. (e.g. reach into the character's arm and make him punch himself or something, idk.)
• They might harm a character. (e.g. biting or clawing them, stabbing them with the aforementioned weapon, etc.)
  
• They might read a character's mind. (e.g. a spirit might work like a boggart and take the shape of one's worst fears, or take the form of a lost loved one to lull the character, or maybe just cruelly jab at the character's biggest insecurities.)
  
• They might lure/hypnotize a character. (e.g. whispering in their mind to call them to a certain place, or lulling them into a complacent daze so they hold still for whatever harms the spirit plans to inflict.)
  
• They might induce hallucinations. (e.g. showing the character how they died, adjusting the character's perspective of the current reality they're experiencing, etc.)

EASTER EGG: SHATTER & DECAY

Some characters who experienced the rot psych horror side of Shatter & Decay back in July - specifically the telepathy equivalent, in which characters experienced increasingly agitated voices in their heads - might find some of these spirits very familiar. In fact, all 'hallucinated' voices from Shatter & Decay were actually spirits and can be interacted with during this event, should you choose to do so.

Anyone who did not experience glass effects (physically or mentally) in July is free to retroactively handwave having experienced these voices, if you'd like to have your character recognize a few of these sorry ethereal fucks from a couple of months back.

THE HOSTS

THE OVERVIEW.

As the spirits begin to manifest around abandoned buildings, dilapidated beasts rise up throughout the containment zone as well - and I mean 'rise up' quite literally. They emerge from the muck of the swamp, from the rivers, from the sinkhole, from any given patch of mud, clawing and scraping their way out into open air.

While the beasts' exact shapes are varied, they're very wendigo-esque in aesthetic - feral patchworks of skeleton and loose fur and misshapen flesh, limbs too long or too gangly, much stronger and faster than anything of their nature has any right to be. (Feel free to take creative liberty with the design, no need to stick to the wendigo's deer theme.)

In contrast with the spirits, these beasts tend to stay away from civilization, lurking amongst the trees or the cliffs or the reeds in the river.

THE ENCOUNTER.

What do they do, when you encounter one? Nothing... As long as you leave them alone. At first glance, a person may not even realize they've spotted a beast - it hardly registers as a creature, still as the grave, blending in amongst the shadows of the trees or the rocks, and watching. Always watching. A character passing through the woods may very well come within twenty feet of two or three beasts without noticing.

If spotted, the beast will acknowledge your character with some form of movement - a flick of a body part, an uncanny twitch-tilt of its skull-head, something small but distinct. And that's it. No fleeing, no encroaching, just this incremental acknowledgment.

From here, a character can simply walk away. The beast makes no move to stop them, to attack, to follow in any shape or form. The character has opted to live and let live, and the beast accepts this truce. However, if your character makes any small indication of a non-truce - an attempt to approach, for example, or even a startled hand on the hilt of a weapon - the beast will attack, and will do so without hesitation or mercy.

THE BATTLE.

While their battle strategy is largely universal (feral, merciless) and the beasts do share a few universal traits (uncannily strong/fast, clever but not enough so to outright strategize), their exact approach depends on the beast you've designed - for example, whether you've given it antlers to gore with, talons to claw with, teeth to tear with.

That said, they're essentially glass cannons. They're excessively easy to damage, with bones much too brittle to accomplish any of the things they've just been seen doing + flesh which cuts away like a disgusting but well-cooked tenderloin. Blunt objects punch into their torso as if they're made from paper mache, as if the inside is somehow hollow. They seem aware of the general 'spirit is willing but the flesh is weak' nature of their existence, and do their best to dodge around most attacks rather than trying to tank them.

Unfortunately, aside from slowing them down by way of hacking off limbs, they're very difficult to actually stop. Even if beheaded, the beast will continue to thrash about on the ground (as will the head)... Unless you destroy the heart. Because each beast's chest cavity is indeed hollow, and inside sits a warm, damp, and beating human heart. Disgusting.

UNFUCKING YOUR CONTAINMENT ZONE

Right now, you might be thinking that this all seems pretty fucked. Congratulations: You're right! But lucky for everyone stuck in this mess, it's not unsalvageable. There are a small handful of ways to begin to neutralize the threat posed by spirits and beasts, involving varying amounts of time, effort, and danger.

OPTION 1: A-HUNTING WE WILL GO

Here, we finally learn why the event is named as it is - because while the spirits and the beasts may seem unrelated, two horrors which happen to overlap inopportunely, that's very much not the case.

For each spirit, there is a beast which carries his or her heart. The beast resembles the spirit in some critical way - a hole through the skull of the beast if the spirit was shot in the head, or a wooden cross necklace around the beast's neck if the spirit wears one made from silver, or charred skin and burnt fur if the spirit is marred by burns - and the quickest possible route to getting rid of a spirit is to find that spirit's beast and to destroy the heart within it.

Once the heart is destroyed, the beast will collapse like a puppet whose strings have been cut, and the spirit (wherever it may be) will vanish into the ether.

But how do you find a specific beast, if all such beasts are moderately elusive? It's not actually as hard as you might think. If a certain beast is sought, it will often come to meet (s)he who seeks it, as if drawn to the spot by your character's desire to find it. Not necessarily the wisest choice in self-preservation terms, but the beasts do seem oddly polite right up until the moment at which they perceive that it's time to fight.

OPTION 2: DO THEY WANT TO, LIKE. TALK IT OUT?

In many cases, it's also possible to just... figure out what the spirit wants, then find some way to satisfy it. Some spirits will be impossible to satisfy, and some will only be satisfied at a heavy cost (perhaps for you to join them in death), but others might as well be glorified spooky fetch quests in the making.

It's entirely up to you whether they're cooperative or hostile throughout the process of discovering and granting their desire. A spirit's consciousness in death is not as it was in life, and spirits may not comprehend the rationality of ceasing to attack so that your character can help them. It's also possible that a spirit is very willing to be helped but unable to communicate normally, or any number of other problem-solving obstacles you might think of. Once a spirit's desire is satisfied, they're able to leave this realm and move on to the next, fading from existence.


EXAMPLE DESIRES TO SATISFY -


• 'I want someone to know how I died.' (viewing/maybe feeling horrible memories, possibly following them to the site of death)
  
• 'I want to be buried with my family.' (moving a corpse from one place to another)
  
• 'I want to be tucked into bed and kissed goodnight [or insert other sentimental activity] one last time.' (you just gotta do it. take one for the team. kiss that spooky uncanny little shit right on the forehead.)
  
• 'I want revenge against this character who first trespassed in my building.' (your character would have to hunt down this other character and harm them somehow. maybe the ghost just wants a little blood, or maybe they want the whole ass murder.)
  
• 'I want this character I think is my mother to join me in death.' (legit gonna have to die, sorry fam)
  

OPTION 3: OR MAYBE THEY CAN JUST FUCK OFF

Is your character supernaturally inclined? Can they influence spirits, guide spirits, ward spirits, banish spirits, condense spirits into seasoning to sprinkle over a nice stew? They are now everyone's best friend, because that shit more-or-less works like a charm.

If their spirit-wrangling abilities depend on actual social interaction ('can talk to the dead and convince them to move on'), they mostly just find that they have a slightly easier time getting spirits to cooperate with an attempt to undergo their fetch-quest. If they're actually able to banish/manipulate spirits by force, however, that's quite a bit more effective. In such a case, it's very much an option to just... make the ghosts fuck off out of existence in some shape or form.

You're at full liberty to decide how well your character's abilities work, with the caveat that it's best to not just like... magically solve the entire event in one fell swoop, that's no fun for anyone. If you'd rather just ask me how the abilities might work, I'm also down to give you a rough idea, but please don't feel like you have to run it by me.

TEMPORARY OPTION 4: IF YOU'RE REALLY THAT SHITTY AT EVERYTHING

If you can't fight, can't exorcise, and can't run a basic ghost fetch quest, you really need to do better but you're not out of options yet. While this is a very temporary solution, all but the strongest ghosts can be briefly dissipated with iron, reappearing again at the spot which they died after some minutes (or if you're lucky, maybe hours).

This is a band-aid on a bullet wound, and seeing as ghosts don't like to be rudely stabbed with a fire poker or what have you, they will almost definitely do their best to come back and try to ruin your day in particular as a result. But if you have no other options, finding an iron object to swing through any spiritual assailants is at least better than nothing, right?

ENDING: WAITING IT OUT

Ultimately, no matter how many spirits and beasts have been destroyed or banished or given peace in the meantime, all spirits begin to retreat one by one in the latter half of the 28th. Where are they going? We just don't know - though it's not impossible to investigate and find out, if you really feel like prying open that can of worms again so soon.

Similarly, the beasts retreat as well, clambering placidly back down into various sources of water or muck to disappear beneath soft ground.

The prevailing feeling of being watched which has haunted the containment zone's residents since the 10th is now entirely gone, leaving characters feeling... shaken, probably, but at the very least blissfully unobserved.

QUESTIONS, ANSWERS, & MISCELLANY

Q: THAT WAS... A LOT OF INFO. WHAT'S THE EVENT TL;DR?


Spirits happen! They can do a wide variety of things but ultimately all fuck your day up in some way and with varying levels of proficiency. Each spirit has a beast they're tethered to (the spirit's heart is inside the beast), which you can kill to get rid of a spirit or just for fun. You can also negotiate with or banish the spirits, but ultimately they all whisk off to god-knows-where at the end of the event regardless.


Q: WHAT HAPPENS IF A BEAST IS KILLED FOR REASONS UNRELATED TO A SPIRIT?


If you happen to encounter and kill a beast without having hunted it down for specific 'this beast holds the heart of this spirit I hate' reasons, it's safe to assume that a spirit somewhere in the containment zone just kind of dissipated with no real explanation.

You're welcome to play with this element - for example, if your character kills a beast and another character needs a reprieve from a spirit but has no viable means to escape it, you're welcome to say that the dead beast held that spirit's heart, thus saving the character from the spirit's wrath with no... real... explanation for why the spirit stopped.


Q: IF A SPIRIT IS BANISHED/DESTROYED OR GIVEN PEACE, WHAT HAPPENS TO THE BEAST?


If the spirit was banished/destroyed, the beast will collapse as if the heart has been destroyed. Investigation will find that the heart inside is deeply rotten and reeks terribly.

If the spirit was given peace, however, the beast will make its serene path back to the nearest source of water, mud, muck, or loose soil and disappear back down from whence it came.


Q: HOW WILL CHARACTERS KNOW ABOUT THE ABOVE LISTED OPTIONS?


I can definitely see how it might be tough for them to connect the puzzle pieces on this one (especially the beast-spirit connection and the effectiveness of iron), so if you'd like something to at least vaguely spell it out for them:

New illustrations have been revealed in the mostly-indecipherable books detailed in Shatter & Decay, which now reappear on the coffee table of each cabin and apartment regardless of whether or not a character has previously put it away or discarded it.

A couple of rune-filled pages after the Shatter & Decay diagrams lies a page which previously had a thick blank row across the page, as if space has been left for a picture that someone forgot to add in. Well, now it's here, in the form of two new illustrations - one larger, one smaller. The larger of the two depicts what could passably be a spirit (a humanoid figure, but not colored in like the rest are) with its arms extended. In the air in front of those arms, what looks roughly like a human heart floats, as if being given to a gangly and ill-proportioned creature on the right-hand side of the page. The smaller image depicts a man swinging something long and distinctly some sort of metal (the grey has a metallic sheen to it, perhaps from lead) through a spirit, who appears to be waving its arms in dismay.


Q: IS IT POSSIBLE TO GET RID OF ALL THE SPIRITS IF WE DO OUR BEST?


God, there are just. So many gosh damn spirits, between the larger/more problematic ones and the smaller ones which barely have identities and only have the strength to fuck with people a tiny bit. It's possible to get rid of all of the spirits in a small area (e.g. a decent-sized building) if it's maintained with vigilance, and it's also possible to get rid of all of the larger/more problematic spirits in a section of town/around the lake/etc., but not to get rid of them from the containment zone altogether.

Which is to say: You can make an area safer, but not entirely safe unless it's a very small area and you're protecting it with vigilance. Or wards. Wards are good, too.

That's it, folks! If you have any questions, toss them into the top-level below. You're free to use this post for plotting purposes, though I also recommend linking it on the discord/modplurk for those who may not check the comments.

Happy h(a)untings!

Comments

Re: MOD QUESTIONS

[seaboard]

Hey so, what if your character totally blanks on being scared of them but can actually see see Spirits fairly easily?

Also if they are half of a spirit type thing themselves??? Would said ghosties behave any differently?

And lastly, if they started leaving little presents for the spirits, what then?

[vestigemods]

Hey so, what if your character totally blanks on being scared of them but can actually see see Spirits fairly easily?

The way these spirits work, everyone can see them to some degree, so just plain being able to see them isn't a big concern. As for not being scared - that's totally okay, for some of them! While all of the spirits ultimately bring harm/discomfort to the living, it's not always malicious. Some of them are simply distraught or afraid or trying to get attention in the only way they know how, and if they're acknowledged and assisted in gaining whatever want or need they have, a kind soul like Gilia might be able to help quite a few of them move on peacefully.

That said, it's very very possible (probable even, though ultimately 100% up to you) for Gilia to run into spirits which bully the hell out of her/assault her/show her manifestations of her worst fears/etc. regardless of whether or not she fears them. Some of the spirits genuinely just want to watch the world burn.


Also if they are half of a spirit type thing themselves??? Would said ghosties behave any differently?

HMMM, I hadn't thought of this. Let's go with: If all of the ghosts are on a spectrum from nearly-benign to fully malevolent, the chillest 50% of that spectrum seem to accept/trust her a bit more easily because she, too, is half spirit.

On the flip side, however, the ghosts who are less chill might take any disagreement with them Distinctly Worse than they would from a regular person, because someone who is half-one of their own is coming against them and that could easily be seen (by an emotionally-unstable spirit) as abject betrayal.

Play with it how you'd like!


And lastly, if they started leaving little presents for the spirits, what then?

This one depends on the spirit rather than having any universal answer, and you can totally make it up as you go. Some spirits might appreciate the gifts and leave her alone in their bullying/negativity, some might throw the gifts, some might see the kindness and try to entreat her/pull her into their fetch quest - just as a few examples. She might also find that some gifts are more appreciated than others (also at your discretion), with no visible adherence to any form of spiritual mythos regarding preferred gifts to the dead.