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UNQUIET DEAD: Jaunt Info

THE UNQUIET DEAD
An Eldritch Ghost Story Jaunt In the City of Harrogate
August 7th–September 16th

Harrogate is a little British resort town with a dark past. A little over one hundred and twenty years ago, a large portion of the town died when a fire consumed a theater in the middle of a performance. But time passed, the dead were forgotten, and everyone rebuilt.

But in death, as in taxes, forgetting something doesn’t always make it go away. Harrogate has been dying of the same forces that kill towns everywhere: a sluggish economy, a stagnant middle class, corrupt management, being a tourist town in a decade when nobody can afford to be a tourist in England. It’s a slow, grim death, but a mundane one. Ignorable. The sort of thing that starts a clawing existential dread in your heart, but you push it down and get on with your day because that’s life, after all. That pain and uncertainty? That is normal.

What is happening now is anything but normal. People have been seeing ghosts. Not diaphanous white figures. Just - people. People they lost. Reflected in windshields, mirrors, still water - just for a moment. Hearing their voice on the wind, or in the creaking of a settling house at night. Probably just the power of suggestion. Probably, except that it’s happened to almost everyone, even people who didn’t know that this was going around like a rumor, or the flu.

Artie Grove has just died. A local celebrity, a philanthropist and former child actor, Artie was always considered the luck of the town, almost like a mascot, and their sweet, too-public romance with a stranded tourist was the stuff of gossip right up to their star-spangled wedding last month. Now Artie’s gone, car wrapped around a bridge abutment in one of those accidents that looks like a deliberate and unhappy act. Shocked, devastated, the town - and an all-too-cynically welcome flood of tourists - have come into Harrogate to pay their respects. But when wild, undismissable supernatural events plague the funeral - what will everyone think? Is it a public health crisis? Mass hallucination? Publicity stunt? Cover-up?

Of course, it can’t really be the spirits of the dead. Can it?

Travelers are struck with a worse problem. Mundane circumstances, fewer people here than expected—it must be a Walkabout, mustn’t it? Only—Harrogate’s a horror story among Travelers, one of those where almost everyone dying was actually the best available end to the Jaunt. Is this really the same town?

And some Travelers—investigators and infiltrators alike—will be waking up in an empty, mist-wracked city full of dark memories that echo. Ghosts, knowing and unknowing, will slowly discover that there are no revivals here—but possession of the living is far too easy… whatever that portends.

It’s coming. Soon. And death, or the dead, and the twists and turns of wicked history may be the only way to stop it, if the living cannot be made to see the truth.

World Info | History | Casting Call/Plot Role Announcements | Skills | Infiltrator/Investigator Roles | Infiltrator Directory | Calendar | Map/Locations | Player Resources | Plotting | Questions | Opt-In Permissions

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The Unquiet Dead takes place in the England of 2020: a grim, recessionist post-Brexit grey rainy land, where everything is drab and futile. Icelandic volcanoes are causing a chilly summer. Travel restrictions are in effect due to the terror alert level. Technology’s only a little ahead of 2017 - televisions and computers are screenless now, projecting photoreal images on blank walls. Smartpens and bluetooth earpiece-projectors or smartglasses have replaced smartphones. Most cars are electric or hybrid, and can be shut off wirelessly by law enforcement or the government.

This ghost story is a part of the eldritch horror genre. For those not familiar: eldritch horror features a harsh universe which is frightening not so much due to its unthinkable evils, but by the uncaring nature of the world. Alien forces at play do not care about humankind one way or another. Sleeping abominations are, in this story, very unlikely to wake, but that is the only kindness that can be expected. Sanity and ignorance are related to one another: if you see under the surface of the world, your character may not walk away sane.

That said: this grim ghost story is not doomed to certain misery and madness. Victory is possible. Spooky things are meant to be enjoyed by the players, even if their characters may struggle. We encourage players to work hard at unraveling mysteries and play to win. And all of the grossest, most hopeless, or scariest elements of the plot are opt-in, as per the permissions thread over thataway. Your character will not go mad, be gruesomely murdered, acquire lasting trauma, or anything like that without your express and explicit permission. And even if they do - Psychic Healing skills exist precisely to cope with these kinds of things, so you can dive into misery for six weeks and come out the other side intact if you want to toy with darker themes but not embrace them long-term. Cool? Cool.

The ghostly side of the veil appears almost like the living side, but with a few exceptions:

-The sun, moon, and stars are never visible. Their light levels are, but the sky is always overcast.

-Moving objects in the living world vanish from the ghost world. There’s no traffic on the streets, no mysteriously levitating objects, etc. But there are parked cars.

-Electricity does not function.

-Items and locations that change quickly do so in real time - so the grocery store always has today’s food stocked on the shelves, and the newspaper stands show the day’s paper.

-Items and locations that change slowly retain some ‘memory.’ So demolished buildings will flicker in and out of existence, renovations will appear and disappear, etc.

-Ghosts who cannot pass through solid objects need either to wait until someone opens doors for them, to use poltergeist telekinesis, or to very heavily emotionally invest themselves in the item changing its state in the ghost world.

-In general, emotion is key to ghostly existence. Strong emotion thins the veil between the worlds, keeps ghosts existing, provides them with something to occupy their time when they do not sleep or eat and only rarely have company. Little wonder that ghosts usually wind up emotionally volatile...

The Conan & Valeria movies which Artemis Grove starred in as Valeria were based on a YA reboot book series of Conan the Barbarian which occupied essentially the same place in pop culture as Harry Potter - eight movies, five billion pounds in profits, making Artemis Grove a household name on the scale of Dan Radcliffe or Emma Watson.

The Conan & Valeria books & movies, in order, are:
Queen of the Black Coast
Red Nails
The Tower Of The Elephant
Rogues In The House
Mistress of Death
Shadow Of The Vulture
The Phoenix & The Sword
The Hour Of The Dragon

The books begin with Conan & Valeria as young warriors and pirates tossed together by misfortune; but starting in the third book they're mercenary adventurers and sometime thieves on land, and at the end of of Shadow they become King & Queen of Aquilonia.

For anyone who's read some original Conan stories: the Valeria in these stories takes elements of all the femme fatales in the above stories (Red Sonja, Valeria, Belit, & Dark Agnes) & turns them into a single character.

Edited 2017-08-08 21:21 (UTC)

May 10th, 1897, in the town of Harrogate. The Queen's Diamond Jubilee was to be celebrated with much pomp and circumstance. The mayor had a special play translated from German for the event, which was secretly a catalyst for a summoning ritual which would summon Hastur, the King in Yellow, to infect the minds of the visiting dignitaries and peasants alike with madness which they would then spread all over the world. Meanwhile, the town doctor was using his knowledge of the Old Ones to experiment with creating eldritch horrors, one of which succeeded and attacked lone Travelers at night. After a troubling corpse was found outside the inn, a seance was performed; there, a connection was found between the mysterious happenings of the town and the play that was to be performed. As the practice for the play continued, the actors became slowly consumed by their character roles and the dead from the moors began to walk again. While the cultists did their best to let the show go on, and the mayor did his best to keep the visitors to his town happy while not revealing his plans, the Travelers managed to break the spell at the last moment. A riot started, thus making the ritual fail, providing the Travelers with a very narrow success and a very high body count.

If you’d like to sign up for a plot role, pop over here and let us know which one. Casting will be done during the day on the 2nd.

The Widowed Lover: Artie Grove’s spouse, a traveler with no roots in the town thrust into an uncomfortable public life, and now into public grief, suspicion, and inheritance of a shocking fortune - 85 million pounds. The terrifying forces of public pressure are the least of what this isolated, mourning figure will face in the coming days.
The Innkeeper’s Heir: Your family has operated the local bed-and-breakfast for generations, though the player’s choice if your family inherited the inn before or after the 1897 Harrogate Theater Fire (that is, you can be connected to a previous infiltration, but do not have to be). You grew up on sinister ghost stories in this town, and are the first person to believe the nature of the dreadful events currently unfolding - but you know that to openly confess a belief in the supernatural would only cement the family reputation for madness. The horror of this part is seeing the oncoming train, but not knowing (yet) if anything you do can stop it, or even warn others of its coming.
The Museum Curator: The busybody would-be amateur detective who operates the Harrogate Historical Society, you have access to a great many obviously exaggerated and unreliable old records, and enjoy (seriously enjoy) a reputation as a meddler, gossip, and matchmaker. Straight out of a tea cozy mystery, in a less dark Jaunt, this would be a comedy role. Here, it’s a chance to get in way over your head while suffering from a case of genre confusion.
The Doubting Exorcist: this Benedictine nun or monk is a prior or prioress - the head, and only remaining member, of a dwindling religious community in Harrogate. With a reputation for wisdom and a large library, they are visited frequently by the spiritually troubled in town, and have a vocation to care for those in spiritual distress. But being alone in this life for years has made the once-steady figure doubt their vocation and religion, and they remember all too keenly the horrors they saw as a young exorcist which made them seek the cloistered life.
The Queen’s Agent: an impeccable, amoral, cold-eyed, well-mannered secret agent in the service of MI6, here to investigate rumors of troubling hallucinations on the off chance this is another terrorist bio-attack, like the sarin scare in York last year. A jaded figure, the Queen’s Agent has extraordinary legal powers to act as needed for the preservation of England, but is also under orders to be as discreet as possible, and inquire under the guise of a public health inspector.

The Sundered Lover: Artemis or Arthur Grove, philanthropist, local celebrity, former child actor, darling of the town. Led a charmed and seemingly innocent life right up to their shocking death. But everyone has secrets. There are no charmed lives, not really.
The Troubled Ancestor: an experienced ghost whose unfinished business has kept them around since their death in the theater fire of 1897. Looking out for their living relatives, staying human in the face of disembodied life and tempting powers, this role would be a natural fit for Infiltrators from last Jaunt, but is equally open to new players. Not everyone who died in the theater fire and left family behind is someone we “knew” at the time.
The Evil Spirit: A cultist from the 1890s, the knowledge you acquired before death has served you well after it. The architect of Harrogate’s current woes, you are a figure of depthless malice and sadism, whose exact powers and affiliations are secret, and whose timing is governed by rules that may or may not have meaning outside your own mad mind.
The Mad Minions: An unspecified number of ghosts awakened by the Evil Spirit and willing to use their powers of haunting and possession for their own gain, or that of their master. This role can be approached with a wide variety of powers, motivations, and backgrounds.

After the parts are cast, we’ll ask the players with plot roles to pop in here and tell everyone who they’re playing.

Hiroshi will be playing the Innkeeper's Heir.

Altaïr is gaining several decades to play the Doubting Exorcist, Father Anthony Brown.

Edited 2017-08-08 10:21 (UTC)

The ghost of Rika Furude will style herself as Frederika Bernkastel, the Evil Spirit!

Zed is going to be a Mad Minion!

Yakumo will be the Museum Curator!

Anyone who wants involvement or association with the museum, please hit me up! Let's do it.

Allura will be playing the part of Artemis Grove, the Sundered Lover.

Ace will be playing the Troubled Ancestor

Elphaba will be playing Ella Grove the Widowed Lover.

Dakki will be playing (one half of) The Queen’s Agents!

Oh man I forgot about this

Edited 2017-08-08 02:02 (UTC)

Anafiel Delaunay will be playing the other half of the Queen's Agents!

Edited 2017-08-10 02:11 (UTC)

Eldritch Defense [T], Eldritch Knowledge [T], Eldritch Madness [S], Eldritch Magic [T], Spiritual Revival [S], Spirit Sensitivity [S], Prophetic Nightmares [U], Poltergeist Telekinesis [S], Lucid Dreaming [T], Functionally Sleepless [S], Ghostbound Item [U], 2020 Technology [T], 21st Century Pop Culture [T]

Eldritch Defense: To possess eldritch knowledge is to be corrupted by it. Someone with the Eldritch Defense skill knows just the snippets necessary to protect themselves and identify horrors at work, without knowing enough to doom them to insanity and the attention of alien intelligences. This skill is for those who combat the Eldritch, and can be used to identify beings or items of an unnatural nature, know common weaknesses or signs of such beings, and know basic wards or protections to defend against them. They can also identify eldritch magic or summoning rituals and have some basic knowledge of how to disrupt such events. Eldritch Defense may be taught by someone with Eldritch Knowledge as well as by those with Eldritch Defense. This is the skill we advise for most characters who wish to know more about the unnatural.

Eldritch Knowledge: To possess eldritch knowledge is to be corrupted by it, and therefore vulnerable to it. A character with eldritch knowledge knows eldritch creatures, locations, beings, items, and magics in intimate detail - which makes it easy to use them, but almost impossible to protect oneself from them. A character possessing eldritch knowledge suffers some form of progressive psychic trauma every time they invoke the skill, but can summon otherworldly creatures, pronounce curses, start hauntings, manipulate the matter of the spirit world, and cross dimensional boundaries - all at terrible cost. Psychic Healing will cleanse the effects of short-term or occasional eldritch knowledge use, but can only slow the decline of someone who uses such knowledge with any regularity. This skill has serious potential consequences and implications, and should not be selected lightly. If you are unsure if your character would have access to this skill, please consult a moderator.

Eldritch Madness: You received a lingering mental transformation or unbalance of the mind which cannot be healed by any normal or magical means. This permanent change in perception and/or cognition will provide some advantages, some vulnerabilities, and indelible trauma. Psychic Healing will mitigate the symptoms but will not "cure" it. Speak to a moderator before selecting this skill.

Eldritch Magic (T) - Requires Eldritch Knowledge. Beyond the summonings, curses, and hauntings of Eldritch knowledge are more powerful spells: growing fungi and mold, spreading diseases and poisons, inflicting madness, fear, despair, and obsession, warping the minds of others with madness, and performing unspeakable rituals of physical and mental transformation and sacrifice with consequences even more dire. A user at this stage can no longer gain the full benefit of Psychic Healing. This skill is primarily intended to be used by beings such as the Evil Spirit during the Jaunt, and not actually kept afterwards - but it can be, for those who want to send their character down a very dark path.

Spiritual Revival [S]: Revive as a spirit rather than returning to life, and access spirit-only abilities while in this state. This skill can only be taught to characters who are currently dead and affected by a necromantic ability before they revive. For the duration of the Unquiet Dead jaunt, that includes anyone who dies. After the Jaunt is concluded, characters will be able to choose whether or not to employ this skill each time they die. Every Spirit revived this way has the ability to possess the bodies of the living for short periods of time.

Spirit Sensitivity [S]: The ability to sense ghosts and receive indirect communications from them - empathic senses, seeing their writing, channeling their messages through tarot cards or a ouija board, etc. This ability does not enable a character to see ghosts or speak to them directly, but it can be used to determine if an area has been haunted or used for necromantic rites, and to track nearby or recent spirits, hauntings, and necromancy by hunch and intuition.

Prophetic Nightmares [U]: The ability to see horribly negative futures in your dreams, no more than once per month. This ability should be activated by pinging a mod on the Questing Sense page, and will always be traumatic when activated, but may give hints to what possible awful failure states a current situation could end in.

Poltergeist Telekinesis [S]: Prerequisite: Spirit Revival. While in spirit form, affect physical changes in the living world. This is limited to slowly moving items of 1.25 grams per Spirit Skill (Spirit Revival, Lifesense, Poltergeist Telekinesis, Lucid Dreaming, any necromancy skill or skill beginning with the word Eldritch). However, in moments of rage, terror, or despair, the speed limitation is lifted and the weight limitation increases by a factor of 100. In moments of mental instability such as feelings of godlike superiority, extreme sadism, or eldritch madness, the speed limitation is lifted and the weight limitation increases by a factor of 100. In moments of extreme emotion and mental instability, precision is impossible, but items may be moved at blinding speeds and at 10,000 times the normal weight limit (12.5 kg/skill).

Lifesense [S]: Prerequisite: Spirit Revival. Normally spirits can only perceive living beings in moments of shared, intense emotion. Using this skill, spirits are able to consistently perceive living beings, without themselves being perceived. Spirits who regularly use this ability often become emotionally unstable, experiencing severe rage, despair, or feelings of godlike superiority, as they cannot participate in the interactions they witness and ethical boundaries begin to seem situationally absurd.

Lucid Dreaming/Spirit Travel [T]: The ability to maintain consciousness while dreaming, communicate deliberately and intelligibly, travel through dreams, and sort possible real and unreal elements apart from one another. This ability does not provide access to the Telepathic Network like Dream Communication, but can be used to reach another Traveler’s dreams for one-on-one contact (although that may be limited if the other Traveler is not a lucid dreamer).

Spirits with Lucid Dreaming gain the ability to fly and to pass through solid matter.

Functionally Sleepless [S]: The ability to survive on three or fewer hours of erratic sleep a night for weeks or months at a time. While this is a gradually more debilitating process, it can be used to avoid nightmares, beat deadlines, or resist abilities which could be used to cause unconsciousness. While using this skill, a character does not dream and is immune to all dream-based or sleep-based abilities.

Ghostbound Item [U]: You have an item which has an undead intelligence bound to it. This enables the item to use itself, and to be targeted by possession. Depending on the nature of the item, other powers and abilities may be negotiable. The item may become in some way marked by the spirit in it - its color may change, its shape may warp, or its temperature may alter, among other possibilities. Use of this skill permanently condemns a human or animal spirit to permanently inhabit the item in question.

2020 Technology [T]: Familiarity with the technology of the day.

21st Century Pop Culture [T]: Familiarity with general pop culture knowledge of the era.

Edited 2017-08-04 03:31 (UTC)

Infiltrators and investigators alike can be living or spirits. Spirit investigators will be restricted to their own branch of the network and Liminal Space (Psychic Bridge may come in handy here); living investigators will come into town on a double-decker tour bus, like the visiting detectives in many a classic mystery. That the bus was chartered to attend a celebrity funeral may strike people as ghoulish, but that’s life in the 21st century.

In general, infiltrator roles from the previous jaunt to Harrogate can only be reprised as spirits. If you think you have a fringe case that could be around in corporeal form somehow, please contact the mods before committing to this plan to make sure it’s feasible. Descendants of previous infiltrators are totally feasible, however.

This will be filled in after the jaunt starts.

August 7th: The Haunted Funeral; The Missing Investigators. Some Investigators show up AS SPIRITS, partitioned to their own Liminal & Psychic channels; meanwhile, an important figure to the town is laid to rest, but their wake is disturbed by the supernatural.
August 17th: Limited Access to Liminal Space & Telepathic Network begins; an exploration of the town’s history and geography shows unexpected avenues for Infiltrators & Investigators, living & dead, to explore.
August 27th: No One Dead Leaves Here/Dreams Are The Enemy. Clear communication is permitted in dreams; this is not a good thing; everyone begins to lose sleep. An inrushing of ghosts from the past makes the supernatural obvious, & MI6 cordons off the town.
September 6th: Worlds Collide. The source of the mystery becomes clear; a solution must be found.
September 16th: Liminal Return.

Harrogate: a quaint, provincial English resort town, famous for its sulfur-spring baths and its scenic, undeveloped vistas. Harrogate has a population of about 20,000 and is isolated, surrounded by woods or moors on all sides.
The Stray: a hook-shaped two-kilometer long, half-kilometer wide park near the center of town, with groves of oak and hornbeam and towering, shaggy hedgerows. A favored getaway spot for young lovers, beachcombers with metal detectors, and opiate users and their dealers.
Yew Tree Lane: a crooked northwest-to-southeast road that defines the southwestern edge of the Stray and leads up towards Killinghall and the Empty Sinkhole and down towards Burnbridge.
Cold Bath Lane: the kitschy, tourist-trap road coming in off the nearest major highway, running north of the Stray but not quite bordering it, southwest to northeast. Further northeast is the new town centre, including the New Harrogate Theater (almost a century old) and the Harrogate Clinic.
Leadhall Lane: running due west from the intersection of Yew Tree & Hookstone, Leadhall contains the Chapel of St. Bruno & St. Benedict, Mother of Sorrows Cemetery,
Hookstone Chase: the lane along the southern edge of the Stray before it curves, running southwest to northeast, containing the oldest standing buildings in town, including the Historic Inn and the Harrogate Historical Society, just north of Burnbridge.
Killingshall: a village district on the northern edge of Harrogate, mostly sheep and cattle farmers, with a historic slaughterhouse, a wishing well, a fish and chips shop, and several historic inns. The hills around Killingshall have a number of unmarked paths through the woods which serve as windbreaks between farms.
Sicklinghall: a village district on the southeastern edge of Harrogate, known for its strict parochial school, its stables, and ongoing rumors that there are poppy-fields somewhere hidden between the clover and hayfields.
Burnbridge: the main residential district of Harrogate, south of the Stray and built on a man-made hill. Home of Grove Manor - a stately faux-Victorian estate. There are no buildings in Burnbridge that date further back than the Second World War.
The Bath-houses: mainly on Sulphur Street & Electric Row, just north of the Stray & south of Cold Bath Lane & the touristy areas of town.
The Empty Sinkhole: a dry lakebed with steep sides past the hills of Killingshall.

Infiltrators are very welcome to submit local businesses or residences in any of these locations, or to fill empty corners or districts of the map. Mod consultation is appreciated but not required unless the location is intended to be plot-important.

Edited 2017-07-30 06:15 (UTC)

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UNQUIET DEAD: Jaunt Info

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