eldritchesrpg

[eldritchesrpg]

Name: Monique Ford ✖ Age: 30 ✖ Lives On: 9th Floor ✖ Flexibility: Inflexible ✖ Plot: Their Eyes Were Watching ✖ Status: Open ✖ FC: Pearl Mackie

somethin’ ‘bout the city / don’t know what it is / it makes my head get crazy — heroin, lana del rey

personality

❝ Somethin’ ‘bout this weather got these kids goin’ crazy, and I think I might be one of them. Before this, before the lights, I like to think I knew myself. I was bubbly and chipper. I believed in good tomorrows and happy endings. I thought that everything in life could be planned for. Now I see that’s not the case, and I have nothing left to lean on. I’m not that happy girl from before. I’m serious, sharpened; honed. Still, I’m crafty, clever as a fox. In another life, long ago, this would’ve been a sign of my intelligence, but now it’s proof that I’ve changed. Manipulative, calculating ... I play mind games with people because it’s what I’m good at. I can take one look at somebody, at something, and know it. Her hobbies, his misdeeds. It’s good for building relationships, but it’s also good for destroying them. Not that I would ever let myself get caught. As good as I am at seeing people, I’m even better at planning. I may not be able to read leaves like Valentine, but the future is easy to know if you just think on it. The world’s in redundant —people, places —it repeats itself. All patterns are predictable, if you know what to look for. ❞

❝ I don’t worry. There’s no time for that, not anymore. I used to work myself up thinking about deadlines, but that’s pointless. And it’s pointless trying to think for four other people. I used to do well in group projects because I was good at sharing ideas. That’s still somewhere inside of me, but it’s not easy to share with people who are afraid and volatile. Being in the dark has made me selfish, sneaky. I feel like I rat when I run around the halls, making plans for myself and nobody else. I’m not thinking straight; I know that. I get angry because they’re afraid, but I’m afraid too. God, I’m so scared, and it makes me dizzy and frustrated. Mostly with myself, but I take it out on the others. I snap and bite and fight everyone all because I have no control. I like to plan, and there’s nothing to plan for. I wake to total darkness. What next day? What tomorrow? How am I supposed to see patterns when it’s too dark to see my hands? ❞

❝ Can we stop this? Please? Because all I can think about is that girl I used to be, satisfied with life and cheerful. I’m not cheerful, I’m not satisfied. I’m scared and hungry. I’m resistant to change, hate anything that’s too new. I ruin things that are good so I can stay in one familiar place. But I have no control now, no say in what stays the same and what changes. Then I’m not a fox at all; I’m a wolf, and I can feel the beast panting beneath my skin. Everyday it gets angrier and angrier. I’m terrified of what it might do — what I might do; I get frantic. I can’t plan for what I don’t know, and my anxieties get the best of me. They eat me up, the wolf and my fears, and all that’s left is the screaming, blubbering remains of Monique. And when I get like that, there’s no telling and no emotion. There’s only red, and no future and no apartment and no light, but no darkness either. I don’t know who I am when I go there, and I don’t know how to pull myself out. I’m afraid that if I go back into the red place, I won’t come out. ❞

about character

one. My fiancé holds hold my face in his hands. They’re warm, slightly sweaty but scented with citrus. His father, I think, his father has an orange grove. He took me there once, before all of this and before he proposed, and we peeled oranges and tangerines. Long strips of orange and yellow curling in our hands, long strips down to our feet. I sucked the juice off his fingers and fell in love with his darkening eyes. He sucked the juice of my lips and fell in love with my laugh. But now, he holds my face in his hands, and I fear that he is nothing more than a dream. Specter beautiful, specter mine, I search his hands for curls of orange, for white string or pulp beneath his nails. There is none, I know, but I search them anyway. And I search his eyes and mouth, examine his too-pink tongue and too-straight teeth. He is not mine. Too perfect, too lovely. No gap in his teeth, no wrinkle around his eyes. Specter beautiful, specter ... So I let him go, unravel him from my arms in long curling peels. When I wake my dreaming, my mouth is bruised from kisses and my tongue swells with the taste of oranges.

two. Are you happy? I asked this of my mother once while she stood in the kitchen up to her elbows in suds. Her brow furrowed, she licked at her lips. She raised one wet hand and rubbed at the space just above her eyebrow. Mother was silent, wordlessly scrubbing breakfast off the plates. Clumps of pancake, sticky syrup caked on. She licked her lips, rubbed her face with the bone of her wrist. I thought, ridiculously and prophetic, that she was Mommy, but she didn’t look anyone I knew. A stranger, a person with parents and lovers and dreams. A stranger who, in some other time, washed dishes only for herself, that kissed men other than my father. A stranger who had sisters, a brother, who had seen things I hadn’t. And I regretted asking mother if she was happy, hated that she was someone else without me. Distant eyes came to me, taut almost real smile crossed her spit-wet lips. She rubbed her face. Of course, I’m happy.

three. When I was young, I drew maps of the little town where we lived. My mother thought it charming, my father thought it sweet. I thought it complex, exciting. I liked lines, like to measure and draw and paint. Whatever I made, I babied, petted. The walls of my bedroom were lined with maps, and when my walls were full I used my parents’ room, the living room. And all my maps were of our town and the things I knew, and all my maps were the same. But they weren’t, not really, because they changed. On Sunday, Yellow Tree Road was on the left and led into town square. On Tuesday, Yellow Tree Road was short and wandered into a creek. The creeks, tricksters, grew into rivers and lakes, and even those could not stay in place. They jumped, leapt from behind the school to deep in the forest. Water, dirt, everything not made by man (and some things that were) were not permanent. So I learned how to follow, how to trace the changes and take each detail as a lesson. The earth is and it isn’t. Adjustments. It’s all about adjustments.

four. A thought while scavenging for food, a thought about my aunt. About my distinguish aunt, important and high-headed, looking low and smiling with no teeth. I went to see her because I loved her and her garden and her house that smelled like fresh-cut flowers. I went threw the front door open and called her name. No answer. I walked up the stairs, peeked into the rooms, calling. No answer. I went out to her garden, green and glorious, and I saw her. Hunched over, fingers deep in the soil. Chewing. My aunt, my distinguished aunt, with dirt up to her arms and ants crawling on her skin and worms wriggling in her grasp. Her eyes were closed so she did not see that I saw. She didn’t know that I was there, watching as she chewed on roses, sucked the color out of the stems. Her mouth, red. Her hands, red too, but I didn’t know if it was from the flower or the thorns. Her teeth were stained and grassy, disgusting tongue laving at the petals, the buds. She hummed, she hummed and murmured. My aunt, my distinguished aunt, who I visited because I loved her did not see as I walked away, as I left her house. I did not tell, I did not tell anyone, but I never loved her garden the same.

lore

one. I didn’t stop him. I saw him killing that man, but I didn’t stop him. And I wasn’t afraid, it wasn’t because I was afraid, but I watched a man go blue and cold, and I didn’t stop his killer. He let me have the leg and the spleen and the kidney. 

two. The phone rang in Valentine’s apartment. He was fast asleep, smelled faintly of liquor. I picked up the phone and listened. The soft, teary voice asking for her father. Please, please. I told her that he was dead, that something took him too. She cries, but I — click.

three. On the first night, I stay in my apartment and pace. On the second night, I sleep in Anansi’s apartment and talk until I’m tired enough to drop. On the fifth night I watch Anansi flick the flashlight on and off, on and off, rabidly and then slowly. On and off and ... I pretend to sleep. She flicks the flashlight.

#bio rpg #bio roleplay #horror rpg #open character #inflexible ch #teww ch #teww open #pearl mackie fc

[eldritchesrpg]

Name: Daphne Dion ✖ Age: 30 ✖ Occupation: Owner of Daffy’s ✖ Flexibility: Inflexible ✖ Plot: And Home Before Dark ✖ Status: Open ✖  FC: Michaela Coel

nobody knows, nobody sees / nobody knows but me — long black veil, johnny cash

personality

❝ If you want something done and done right, you go to Daphne. She’s a bee busy with her pollen, an entire ant colony building a hill. You’d be hard pressed to find a harder worker, to find someone with as much pride in herself and her work as she. What she wants, she gets and she gets it on her own. Her pub is an extension of her personality and ethos; what she makes with her own hands, she loves dearly. Levelheaded and thoughtful, Daphne sits at the center of town. People flock to her with their problems and gossip, and she gives them their ear. She’s easy to relate to, that big laugh of hers draws people in like flies to honey. Even with all of her confidence and pride, she’s practical, smart with her friends and money. She can be a pill at times, her low tolerance and sharp tongue and wit can be unnerving, disarming. She’ll never tell you what you want to hear, only what you need. No one ever likes how she says things, but they’ll appreciate it in the long run. Really, Daphne is the ears of the village! Just call her name, and she’ll be there. ❞

❝ What do you get when you mix a spoiled girl with hard times and a hot temper? You get Daphne who is at times abrasive and petty. Her personality is like strong, dark coffee, and it’s never to everyone’s liking. She doesn’t believe it has to be. According to Daphne, it’s not her job to entertain nor is it her job to make sure that the world is good for anyone but her. And trust me, Daphne never does anything she doesn’t have to or anything that doesn’t benefit her. Though she’s good at building relationships with people, most steer clear of her. She’s argumentative, scathing in her honesty. She never seems to want anything or anyone. It’s good that she has boundaries and it’s good that she knows what works for her, but she could do with some patience. Everything has to happen now, everything has to be now. Not entitled, no, but she expects something to come from something. She loathes the idea of her work, of her passion going to waste. She’ll wait to become a villain so long she doesn’t die a voiceless hero. ❞

❝ Confidence of a lion and a bite just as deadly. You can lift your head high without looking down on others, but no one taught Daphne this. She’s hungry for attention, can’t stand to be out of the limelight for even a second. A brat! That’s what she is! And about her popularity, her ‘friends’ ... You know the saying. Loose lips sink ships, and Daphne’s ocean is wrought with twisted metal. She uses secrets like bartering tokens, and will toss a dear friend under the bus to boost herself up. When it comes to gossip, she has no moral compass. You have to be close to her, closer than close, for her to decide that you don’t deserve to be hurt by any mean’s necessary. The problem is, really, that Daphne thinks she’s untouchable. Old money and that big house of hers, it’s just more reasons for her to sit high and look low at us little people. Too good to let anyone in, even the people she claims to care for. What do you think’ll happen when you learn the secrets of the secret keeper?❞

about character

one. She is less than a goddess, but much more than a mortal. Through the thick swirls of smoke and wafts of cheap, stale beer, you hear her laugh, smell her cloying perfume. Her hand and red nails on your forearm, her eyes and red lips close to your ear. Mystery, enigma as Daphne pours out drinks, as she laughs at bawdy tales and tells a few of her own. Dionysus, Bacchus —fat, drunken jolly gods to whom she devotes her pub to. Music rings from all four walls. Bodies thrown across the tables and bodies thrown across the bar, guzzling spiced wine and dancing and singing. Daphne commands them all, arms raised, head tossed back into movement, into untamed passions. She pours a glass for a weeping man, and the whole town flows into the cup.

two. Momma says that girls aren’t supposed to fight . boys. Boys that push girls, tug their hair and pinch them are sweethearts, lovesick suckers with no clue how to woo a woman. Girls that kick, spit and fight back are bitches, fast, destined to be angry little — Momma leaves a red hand on her face after she bites Lil’ Johnny for ruining her tea set. Momma praises brother for knocking boys down and for chasing after screaming girls. Momma smacks, Momma praises. Daphne grows to the size of a house, ten houses. A mountain and the valley in between, an iceberg and all that lies beneath it. She teaches herself how to burn, how to crush and throw her fist with the fury of ten brothers, ten chasing boys. She earns her twisted mouth in a brawl, wins her cat-like claws after tearing through enough eyes, lips, cheeks. Momma says that girls aren’t supposed to fight with boys so Daphne doesn’t fight; she wins.

three. Speak its name and render it powerless. Gag order straight from damnation, gag order straight from the ends of the forest where the dirt path leads into the city and the city becomes another woods, a red-cheeked woman with shark’s teeth. She knows the look of her, it. Its spires and leathery skin, its sheen and gloss and talons. A red and glowing hell complete with demons and devils, but not hot like how she’s been taught. Come morning, when dream melts into memory (or memory into dream, she is never sure), she speaks aloud what she can remember. Mouth moving, hands moving. Remember, remember. Speak, speak it even if all the words sound like complete and utter madness. Speak it or it’s not true. Under her tongue, Daphne holds the secrets of this universe and the next. In her throat, she nurses the horrors. In time, in its time, she’ll scream.

four. Sister comes back with vines and rope strung around her neck. Sister comes back gasping, stumbling, mossy hands thrust out in front of her. Sightless eyes see, sense, her presence. Come to the only place that is safe enough to call home. Sister crawls up the walls and calls out in a voice too guttural to be human. Sister shrieks for wolves and bats and beetles, spins her head in circles and gnashes her blunt, yellowed teeth. Her wooden eyes hold termites and wood beetles. The cellar’s too shallow, floods when it rains. The bedrooms are too fragile, easy to get out of. The attic sags and moans and covers all sound. Hard to leave, hard to flood, hard to hear for all the settling. Sister slams her dew-wet hands to the boarded up windows, cries out for animals and fought violently against invisibles. And downstairs, Daphne listens, weeps.

lore

one. What a shame! She used to be such friends with Daphne. The two were inseparable and then, well ... Their siblings went off into the woods, and they’ve never been the same. What a shame what the trees will do to people.

two. I saw a light on in her attic last night. It was far too late for clearing out, but a shadow crossed the window. Once, twice, three times. Two shadows, maybe. And one was thin as a drawn line, haggard. I’ve always wondered about her sister. The sister she said died after returning.

three. Oh, no, I never drink at Daffy’s. She does something to the beer, I’m sure of it. Doesn’t it always have a funny taste to you? Doesn’t she always watch you a little too closely as you sip, swallow?

#bio rpg #bio roleplay #rpc #horror roleplay #horror rpg #michaela coel fc #open character #ahbd ch #ahbd open #inflexible ch

[eldritchesrpg]

Name: Tomas Whitney ✖ Age: 26 ✖ Occupation: N/A ✖ Flexibility: Inflexible ✖ Plot: And Home Before Dark ✖ Status: Open ✖ FC: John Boyega

what goes up / ghost around — haunted, beyoncé

personality

❝ He’s a newcomer so we’re still sussing out his personality, but this is what we know of him so far: he’s brave, he’s good. Tomas has a knight’s honor, faithful to the end, even to people that don’t deserve his loyalty. He’s hungry for the good in people, and he’ll look past the worst of flaws to see it. The golden rule seems to be built into Tomas — do unto others, and he does this without fail. He’s foolish at times, and naive, and sometimes just plain stupid. He runs headlong into danger, thinking with his gut and not his head. But and still, he has a spirituality about him that makes you believe that this impulsivity is not impulsiveness at all. Like, it’s more akin to intuition, something in him sounding off and alerting him to protect, fight. Without question, Tomas is one of those people that are fences. He is a sentinel, a guard against fear. There is strength in him, stronger than any strong man. It’s the strength of a protector. He is willing to die for anyone one of us; could you say the same? ❞

❝ You can call it spirituality, but there’s something wrong with Tomas. It isn’t just being new or having not found a place in our community. He’s a jump behind quirky, too haunted to be taken seriously by most. With some Tomas can be coy and sharp in conversation, but with others he is strange, stilted. Some people build walls to hide their true selves, but Tomas wears masks. Constantly swapping them out, switching them from person to person. His knight’s honor leaves room for white lies, mistruths that allow him to sneak away from suspicion. And then too, I have noticed that he is almost too good. There’s a chill about him, as if he’s on the verge of emotion, but is terrified to let the feelings free. He can perform vulnerability, but never honestly, never revealing everything lest it may be used against him. Whatever brought him to our village transformed him. I think he’s afraid of a second transformation. ❞

❝ Bad moon rising, a storm on the horizon; call it whatever you please. There’s turmoil inside of Tomas, thunderstorm on its way to becoming a deadly hurricane. He’s past the point of unsteady —he is canted, nearly falling over. Like a gun just before the trigger is pulled, Tomas is the danger. Never to anyone else though, only to himself. He’d prefer death over letting anyone get to know him, the real him that hides underneath all of that laughter. He is complex, but not so complex that nobody can unravel him. Tomas doesn’t believe this, thinks that everything he has gone through is too toxic to share. He rejects help. It’s not even pride that stops him; it’s fear. Fear of judgement, fear of weakness, fear of letting the village down. Someone told him the lie once that warriors were not allowed to lay down their weapons, and so he walks around with his suit of armor, his sword and shield. Alert always, but Tomas is wearing down. He sees Atlas with the world on his shoulders, but Atlas never had people who cared for him, who were willing to help him carry the weight. Tomas is willing to die for anyone of us, yes. Has anyone considered that that’s what he wants most of all? ❞

about character

one. Macavity, Macavity, there’s no one like Macavity. Speaking of, has one seen Tomas? He was here just a minute ago, but he seems to have vanished in thin air. Omnipresent, he is on the ceiling, the stair and in the cellar. There are rumors of duplication, you know. There is no human way possible that he can be here and there and there also. With some skill, he has managed to share a drink with Daphne at the pub all while helping Missus Jackson with her garden. He’s been seen picking flowers with the children on the hill, but others have seen him near the woods, eyes wooden and mouth full of owl moths. They say that his face with slick with sweat and dew, that he gripped the dry grass as if holding on for dear life. Others say that his arms are full of flowers, that he smelled of blackberries and wine. You may seek him in the basement, you may look up in the air, but I tell you once and once again — Whitney’s not there.

two. I know you, I’ve walked with you once upon a dream. Or was it a memory? He knows there was a city once, shockingly neon and blinding, that held hundreds of millions. The buildings like the Tower of Babel, kissing the sky. The sky, in turn, kissing the people. He remembers, or does he dream, smooth planes of glass and metal that hung from the clouds like a neck dripping in jewels. His face illuminated by raging fires, his face stained red and black with blood. Tomas seizes, dreams, or does he remember, blunt, white teeth gnashing and snapping, clicking together with such force. People leaving by the thousands, empty bodies returning with little more than their skin. Tomas dreams, remembers, seizes, foams, bursts — And he’s never quite sure when day becomes night, when the dreams are just dreams. ... visions are seldom what they seem, but if I know you —

three. Tell me about the big bang. Stars and star dust, chaos and ordering rushing, swirling. Tomas swears he was there when the earth came to be, swears he could see straight into the molten core. He says it was hot at the beginning and ice cold at the end. He says that he saw darkness and light, a thousand truths and a million lines. His tongue contorts with stories of monsters, beasts, gods. Six eyes, twelves wings, hooves and horns and tentacles. He describes their mouths and maws, lolling red tongues and talons that curl into the torso and pull. Tomas says he can see the beginning and feel the first twinges of the end, that the guts of the universe will soon crack open and spill, viscous-like, into what is safe and known. Tell us then, o Tomas, about the big bang. It hurts, it hurts, it hurts to become. 

four. A huntsman ties down his daughter with braided rope and fishing nets. Her ankle is blackened with blood. An arrow pierces her side. Her hands, feet and snarling mouth are all that Tomas can see. Grab hold of her, pin her down! He obeys, feels the rawness of her wrists, her thick, green spit against his cheek. She curses, she kicks, she damns all gods and her parents and every man that binds her. She promises blood and suffering, hellfire and beasts from within the woods that lust for the rend of flesh. She begs to be released, to go back to the house, to the lady-hand forest where the others were. What others, what others? But all Tomas can see is her eyes, her snarling mouth, the maze of rooms and wanting. See, see, see? A huntsman ties down his daughter with braided rope and fishing nets. Her ankle is blackened with blood, and an arrow pierces her side. But tomorrow, or perhaps tonight, she will meet the others.

lore

one. The last place he lived had a festival too, but there they burned witches and sacrificed sinners to the sea. Check his eyes. Aren’t they birch and aspen?

two. There’s something off about that new man, Tomas. They say that he’s a seer, that he knows things far into the future. Soothsayers tell you only what you want to hear. 

three. He freed the huntsman daughter. I saw him myself! Loosening the ties, whispering to her of a place with a red-cheeked woman. Do you trust him still?

#bio roleplay #bio rpg #rpc #horror roleplay #horror rpg #john boyega fc #ahbd ch #ahbd open #open #inflexible ch

[eldritchesrpg]

So, I saw that you mentioned in your rules that they may be sensitive topics and was wondering what some of this topics may be?

Sensitive as in horror, body horror, mentions of gore, violence! It sounds like you might be concerned about mentions of sexual assault/violence, but I promise (and I’m using my most serious of voices right now) that nothing like that will be a part of the story. So! Themes common in horror? Yes. Misogyny, violence about women, sexual violence? A big no!

#mod cthulhu speaks #sexual assault m / #thanks for asking actually! #Anonymous

[eldritchesrpg]

Name: Hermione Jackson ✖ Age: 92 ✖ Occupation: Midwife ✖ Flexibility: Flexible ✖ Plot: And Home Before Dark ✖ Status: Open ✖ FC: Cicely Tyson

but there are not palm trees in the street / and dishwater gives back no images —images, nina simone 

personality

“ Anyone who knows Hermione — and everyone knows Hermione — will tell you that she’s brilliant. Really, quick as a whip and smarter than any man. We all call her grandmother because if she did not birth us then she birthed our mothers, our aunts, our fathers, our uncles. She needs no defenses: to her core she is compassionate, caring. You don’t move Hermione. She moves you, or moves through you. And once she settles on something, it’s set, and there’s no use questioning that old woman. She’s seen so much, you’d think she’d be callous, like Evita, but there are no shadows in her eyes. She’s been beaten, shaken, pressed, and now love flows from her love olive oil. She’d give you the teeth out her mouth, the marrow from her bones. Her blood is the blood of the village, and I think, when she passes, that the trees might bend at the waist and go to weeping for they’ve lost the truest friend they had.”

“Women are not mules, and though Hermione is old, she has not yet learned this lesson. She thinks her back is meant to be broken, her wisdom used and discarded. She carries the troubles of others on her shoulders — she must be exhausted. Someone has tricked her into believing that this is her place, beneath the thumb, beneath the boot. And it doesn’t help that she’s stubborn. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks, and she fights against the new with tooth and nail. How can someone so strong be spineless? Firm and staunch, but weak-willed when it comes to self defense? The village will suck the marrow from her bones, and Hermione would let it. For martyrdom, for pride, she will let herself die.”

“Can’t teach an old dog new tricks? True, but I’ve seen mutts less stubborn than she. Less manipulative, too. If she can’t bring you down with her pouting and whining, she’ll wear at you with guilt. How dare you disobey the woman that delivered you? That saved your mother, that drew the killing mucus from your father’s chest? Spiteful old witch! She knows all about holding grudges. Hermione’s got the ability to make your life a living hell until you come crawling back to her, begging on your knees for forgiveness even if you weren’t wrong. She manages, somehow, to be the executioner and executed, head on the chopping block and the one swinging the ax. She’d crucify herself if it meant garnering pity, but she’d bring herself down too, if she didn’t think you were crying hard enough. I’m not saying Hermione isn’t invaluable or that she isn’t a pillar of this community. Still, must she always remind us? Or hold it against us?”

about character

one. Mary, Mary, quite contrary! How does your garden grow? She’ll never tell, her lips are sealed, but she has been seen in the oddest of places at the oddest of times. Snatching bones from the butchers, stealing buckets of chum and offal from the hunters. In the heat of summer, her garden reeks of death. It gets into the clothes and hair. Skins burns from the smell, and no amount of oils can mask the smell of rot. But how curious! Come spring, this devil’s garden is bursting with green buds and flowers. At harvest time, her baskets are full, straining even, under the weight of squash, beets and sweet potato. Her vegetables are vibrant, though misshapen; all of them have human faces, eyes and mouths, bulbous noses that remind you of — Well, it’s only strange, but you know what people say. All things grow, even the dead things. Even the liver and intestine, the heart and pink of brains.

two. To obtain, something of equal value must be lost. On the day of her birth, the room is hot and red. Her father’s cool hand on her mother’s sweat-slick forehead, her nosy brothers peeking in from the hall. The house is still as a grave, but it is rocking, being tossed by the winds from the storm outside. Chaos comes through the front door, shrieking and grabbing at everything. A photograph falls from the wall and shatters. Her father’s eyes, molasses brown and loving, turn to wood. He takes up his hat and shoes, says not a word as he stumbles out their little home, out into the woods. And just as her mother is beginning to feel the emptiness — the hole growing in her heart, the sorrow sucking at her belly — Hermione is born. Red, hot and shrieking, kicking and grabbing at everything. A tornado reborn as a baby, a death reborn as life. The hole is filled, the sorrow wanes. Equivalent exchange — the greatest law of alchemy.

three. Mother teaches, Mother knows. Mother sees her one girl-child and makes a woman from her — mother, sister, daughter, wife. Mother sees Hermione with idle hands and a restless heart, and puts her to work. Hermione, chase them chickens. Hermione, milk that there cow. Hermione, clean this. Hermione, cook that. Young arms become old arms mixing cake batters and preparing greens. The work that makes her hand dry and her mouth twist becomes a relief. She sits in the kitchen just to hear the pot boiling, sits by the stove just to smell the honey-heat of the sweet potato pie. Mother teaches and Mother knows, but did mother ever guess that the girl-child who she popped and smacked and scolded would ever learn those magic ways? Did she ever think, ever imagine, how girl-children learned to turn tigers into butter?

four. Hermione sees her father come back from the woods. She has never seen him before, never knew his touch nor heard his voice, but she knows it’s him the moment she lays eyes on him. His black skin hangs off his body like paper, wind aged and full of gravel, grit. His eyes, molasses brown and loving, were made of bark, but they shine when they catch sight of her. He comes into their, his, little house, reeking of gutted deer and trailing mud. His voice is hollow, his hands left moss and moths on the faces of his children. He sits at the dining table and drinks jug after jug of water, jokes with his son, kisses his wife with earthworm lips, held the black cheek of his only daughter. Satisfied with the health of them all, he nods his lolling head, his hair knotted with twigs and branches and leaves. Hermione never saw her father walk into the woods, but she is there to lead him back.

lore

one. Didn’t Hermione send her own children into the woods? She didn’t cry, some say. Not even as her children kicked and screamed and pleaded. She said, well, I think she said someone would be waiting for them.

two. She switches out the weak ones, you know. The babies she thinks won’t survive, the ones with frail chests and weak hearts, she leaves them at the mouth of the woods and waits for a fae child. How many of us then, do you think are changelings?

three. Something’s not right with her. She’s a batty old thief, and I don’t care who hears me say it! Everyone knows she steals though most of us are too scared to say it. What? Afraid she’ll cast a spell? Afraid she’ll take your child, too?

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#bio rpg #bio roleplay #horror rpg #horror roleplay #cicely tyson fc #flexible ch #ahbd ch #ahbd open #open character

[eldritchesrpg]

Name: Ulysses Davis ✖ Age: 38 ✖ Occupation: Schoolteacher ✖ Flexibility: Flexible ✖ Plot: And Home Before Dark ✖ Status: Open ✖ FC: André Holland

excuse me, while I disappear / angel eyes, angel eyes — angel eyes, ella fitzgerald

personality

“ There’s a softness to Ulysses, a warm gooey center that he encourages in others. Sweet to his core, he is easily affected by the ways of the world, the cruelty of man. Sensitive is the word I’d use, as any little thing can set him off and radically change his moods. Unlike most, he doesn’t believe a leader has to be forceful. He watches his class of small children carefully, remembers even the minute details about their personalities. He can, in some cases, be flighty and indecisive, but it is tempered by his vibrancy and soothing nature. His comforting aura makes him easy to confide in, so he has most of the community has friends. Still, he is kind out of a need for attention and for others to be kind to him, not so much out of the goodness of his heart. His need for validation can be a pitfall, but some people need the eyes of other. Many hands to guide them and many candles to light their way. “

"Scared of lonely, but he isolates himself on an island of pride. Sweet and warm as he is, Ulysses is still a man, has been raised to see the world as a man. His ego is like china; big, but delicate and easily broken. Disagreements and confrontation leads to an unpleasant side of him. Ulysses paints himself as a centrist, a mindful moderator, but, in reality, he can’t stand the idea of being judged. If he cannot have all the love, he will have none of it. It’s why he likes to teach the children. They’re more careful with them, expect less from him than any other adult. He can give them guidance, yes, but nothing else. Little changes in any children? Yes, that’s simple. Do something real that will change his life for the better, instead of playing victim? We’ll see."

"Let’s divest of the mask of innocence, shall we? Take away his slumped shoulders, the bashful looks and hoards of children that he uses as a shield. What’s left of Ulysses save for a victim complex? It’s easy to be kicked when you lay on the ground and invite the shoes. Beyond his outward appearance, he does the ugliest of things, and gets away with it. Why? Because he’s soft, because he claims he doesn’t know. How can you not know right form wrong? He’s never had to take responsibility for his actions. He uses the people around him as crutches and excuses. Ulysses is not violent nor is he bad per se, but he’s gotten too many chances. Haven’t we yet learned that these ‘soft men’ are just men who’ve learned to act?"

about character

one. He tells the children the story of Bluebeard’s wife in winter. By then, young tongues have long forgotten the acidity of blackberries. They think only of rarebit and lamb as he turns down the blinds and pulls shut the damask curtains. His audience is innocent, eager, as he tells hem the tale of the rich, rich man and his many, many wives. And of his newest wife and the curiosity which killed her when she peered into the keyhole of Bluebeard’s forbidden room. Ulysses spares no details. He tells them of the golden plates and silver chalices, the crystal decanters filled with the sweetest of summer wine. He tell them also of the heads of Bluebeard’s former wives, their faces caught in horror, how the forbidden room ran red with clotted blood. And he tells the children, these cherubic little ones, of how the wife begged and pleaded, and how Bluebeard showed her no mercy. The curve of the sword, the sound it made as he took her head. And in Spring, when the snow has melted and the children have long forgotten the taste of rarebit and the curve of Bluebeard’s sword, he places a fine, blue box on his desk with a keyhole just big enough to be peered through. Ulysses gives them strict instructions to leave the box be, for horrors and disasters lie within. He waits.

two. This is what Ulysses knows of his parents. They are faceless and light, they smell of crushed flowers and their hands burn like fire against the cheek. He can, if he likes, go to the mouth of the woods and speak with them. This is why he built his house so close to it, why he looks forward to the summer festival. Their voices are strong in the warm months, and it is always then that they regret their exchange. Come back, they say. Do you not miss the black soil under your feet? Do you not crave the freedom to change at will, from bird to bee to carnivorous plant? And Ulysses does miss it. He misses knowing and the fine, thin air and the ability to be, but he has made a home with the humans. Here, in this realm of houses and clothes and conversation, he is an oddity, but he is loved. They find him strange, but still he is found. And so Ulysses does not go back to the trees, to the faceless forms of light and the heady aroma of crushed flowers. A changeling is loved most in retrospect, he realizes, when beads and bits of bark cannot by it back.

three. The hills are alive with the sound of — But no one is ever sure what they’re hearing, if they’ve imagined the discordant music that comes from Ulysses’s home. If they heard it in a dream or in a vision, eyes crossing at the haziness of it. If it is him, he’s very talented, and one with a gifted ear can tell the woodwinds from the strings, the brasses and percussion instruments. He is never seen, only heard; felt. The passionate mourning of cellos, distraught pianos. Guitars and lyres and harps in whining and wailing, the sound of thousands of birds calling and crying out. And it is strange, how his eyes lose character and become wooden, how his mouth falls open. And Ulysses speaks with such confidence in his music of the things that he knows. Like he’s seen the very insides of the universe, like he’s dug them out with his fingers as if digging for the pit of the peach, sweet juice running down his arms. The hills are alive with the sound of — Well, it’s best not to ask.

four. Teach the children they say, and without warning, tykes of all ages are left upon his stair. Ulysses frowns, but does not protest. He knows a great many things, and is eager to teach them what their parents cannot. They think that he’s funny, but they are kind about their curiosity. They do not call him names and are gentle with him and, in return, Ulysses gives them fairytales and the fruit from his trees and the knowledge of things invisible. Still, there is no treat more beloved than that of music. He plays his pipe for them, the one he has carved himself. It’s music of the forest, the children think; some have told him, solemnly with the seriousness of children, that it sounds like the wind blowing through the laundry, or bells tolling in the distance. Their parents, some of their parents, are not so kind, and they do not thank him, and they do not leave food to eat or candles to light his cabin. Ulysses frowns, but he does not protest and holds no grudge. There will come a day, he knows, that he will play a familiar tune, and the children will follow him, dancing and singing. And the forest with bend with the sound of his fife, and the children will not come home.

lore

one. You haven’t heard! Really? Well, there are some who say that he is not of this realm, that he crawled from the forest on hands and knees, wild in the eye and of evil spirits.

two. He saved one of his students once, but it wasn’t for kindness. It was Hermione’s grand-daughter, I think, and the grandmother serves the life debt. Favor for a favor, you see. Remember Rumpelstiltskin?

three. Be careful of what he teaches your children. Ask them, really, to repeat what he says to them. Sometimes it’s arithmetic, and sometimes …

#horror roleplay #horror rpg #bio rpg #bio roleplay #open character #ahbd ch #ahbd open #flexible ch #andré holland fc

[eldritchesrpg]

Name: Evita DuMont ✖ Age: 34 ✖ Occupation: Healer and Apothecary ✖ Flexibility: Flexible ✖ Plot: And Home Before Dark ✖ Status: Open ✖ FC: Gugu Mbatha-Raw

i climbed a thousand stairs just to kiss your lips / god, you’re so tall / taller than tall trees — taller than tall trees, mirel wagner

personality

“ She is, for lack of better words, a complicated woman. She’s in love with the romance of medicine, of community and healing, but not so much with people. There is a frost about her as if, beneath those infrequent smiles and refined manners, lies nothing. No soul, no grim, thumping heart. All flesh and ice, she’s the sort to describe themselves as ‘brutally honest’, though most can confirm there is more brutality than honesty. The woman is a razor, slicing quickly to the root of things, caring little for superfluous conversation and emotion. She takes nothing less than what she deserves, acts on a moral code written in her own hand. She believes, simply, that to survive one must become like the world. The world, in her eyes at least, is insensitive, calloused and selfish to the point of heartlessness. Still, she is deeply empathetic, approachable enough to make a trade of medicines and tinctures. She is like so much of her cures — bitter, but healthful and needed by most. Be warned — you’ll need more than sugar to swallow her. “

" Shameless, guiltless — two words that describe her perfectly. Do not be drawn in or seduced by those dark, unflinching eyes, that always frowning mouth that makes you think of modesty, politeness. Beyond the walls of her home, she rejects all discipline and moderation. A hypocrite and pathetic excuse for a medic. This is, of course, no judgement on her skills. The craft of her hands is strong, well-practiced, but her bedside manner leaves much to be desired. She plays the part well, sometimes, but then others you see her true nature. Callous, biting, with a manner that can be cruel and violent. There is little charm to her, and what little heart she shows must be doubted. You cannot, however, judge to harshly. A woman is not a thing meant to smile and entertain. A beautiful sea cannot be judged for its unpredictable nature. "

"The snake that waits in high grass is the most dangerous of all. Has no one seen how she listens at the doorways, how she hoards and hides the secrets she’s stolen like dragon’s gold? As healer and apothecary, she keeps key to everyone’s sins and foibles, carefully writing it down in her plain, level script. She preys on the weak and naïve, people too sweet to doubt the façade. A smile to pry you open, a touch to the small of the back to make you feel safe. It is little secret that the woman is a thief and remorseless liar. Unrepentant, she doesn’t bother to apologize, knowing that she’ll be at her tricks in a day or two. No punishment suits her — the solitude of the jailhouse amuses her, the vicar and palm reader are unnerved by her seriousness. It leaves the people to wonder — what penitentiary is there for the unrepentant?"

about character

one. Date a woman that’s weird. Date a woman that’s been sleeping all day, one that emerges at night to tend to her moonlit garden. You do not know her name yet, but she has been preparing for you. You have yet to ask her out, but she has dragged the razor across her skin, foaming cream and sharpened blade. She’s been growing poppies and only poppies. When you come to the door, she is ready, cloaked in dark velvet and stinking of pesticides. She smiles her knowing smile, touches the flesh of your arm with her palm-leaf hands. In her black bark eyes, you see the past and future. Your death and hers, a century of woods burning and sprouting anew, human carrion fertilizing the black soil of the forest. She is frightening, she is exciting. Over dinner, she speaks extensively about the delicate nature of poisons and about ants and about the sticky, lobster-like body of the mayfly. She presses her bare ankle against yours, presses a knife into a raw, raw steak and lets it bleed. She wants you to take her home. You do, take her, and that night, when she is showering in your shower and fussing with your soaps, you feel your stomach roil. Turn, turn sicker. Her hemlock hips, her thighs running with the purple-black juice of arum lily berries. At sunrise, you are human carrion, fertilizer for the black soil of the forest. Over your body, she plants poppies and only poppies.

two. Sugar and spice and everything nice; that’s what little girls are made of! But Evita is made of deeper stuff, ingredients savory and spiced. They burn the tip of the tongue, set fire to the belly, to the loins. She reminds you of hot-houses, humidity. Sweat clings to the skin around Evita, hair to the forehead, armpits turned yellow. Bizarre flower from nowhere near, plucked and nurtured by brown hands. High cheekbones kissed by full lips. Deep, rumbling voices have called to her from the woods, calling her killer and woman-child and belladonna before she knew how to form the shape of words. But now that she has learned them, she speaks them with pride. She is no pie, she is nothing to be devoured. Voices from the woods call to her, and she answers back, toxins on her tongue.

three. Bitter woman with the touch of Midas, but her fingers bring no gold. They bring, instead, poison, swirling and bilious tastes. She has known others to sweeten their medicines, but she is about the practice. Her healing feels like an act of violence. There is no relief in the relieving. Only ether and salts, a tightness around the throat and the hard smell of camphor. The body bends, snaps. Migraines bloom at the base of the skull, behind the eyes. Nothing feels fixed or changed until you sleep. Some do not wake, but the ones that do are better for it. The eyes are brighter, the body does not convulse and heave. The heart beats easier, and the mind races with colors, scenes of a world parallel. Mary, Mary, quite contrary, how does you garden grow! With hemlock and poppy and peyote, and miles and miles of fertile minds.

four. Two white sheets flutter on the line pulled taut between two dying trees. They’re damp from last night’s rain shower. Smell faintly of water and of air and of lightning about to strike. She mends them when they tear, but never dares to take them off the line. Evita thinks, still, somehow, that someone or two will come to her house. She thinks that they will be naked and shuddering, that they will sit on her porch and ask for lemonade and sweetened tea and bits of ice straight from the block. And they will be shaking like leaves, and their sentences will sound like chopped pieces of an old song. And then Evita imagines that she will unpin the white sheet, or sheets depending, and wrap their shoulders, apologizing heartily for the damp and the smell of impending lightning. But it hasn’t happened, not yet at least. So until then or maybe never, two white sheets flutter on a line pulled taut between two dying trees.

lore

one. I heard she had a brother once, that she was a wicked child with a wicked heart. She pulled a cruel trick of him so that he went into the woods instead of her.

two. She stole, once, from Daphne. They used to be the best of friends, but then they had that big falling out. Daphne threw her out of the pub, and now she’s not allowed in, I thought.

three. Evita? Isn’t she the one who had to put her mother away, into the Healing House? Poor, poor thing. You know, her mother tried to do away with her after her brother’s walk into the woods. The line around her neck — haven’t you seen it?

#horror roleplay #horror rpg #bio rpg #bio roleplay #gugu mbatha raw fc #flexible ch #open character #ahbd ch #ahbd open

[eldritchesrpg]

a note about the personality section

It can be read as positive, neutral and negative traits, but I would prefer it if you all read and took it all as one huge conglomerate of their personality. I may mention in the first section that they’re vain and maybe add in that they grew up with self-confidence issues in the end where you think the negative traits are. Or! I may have that they’re short and snippy, but once you read the whole thing you see their bluntness comes from their autism/anxiety, etc. Just really take into consideration the entire personality trait section instead of assuming the pieces! OK? Thanks!

#cthulhu speaks