Shade's Retreat: Walkabout Info

[powersthatbe]

Shade’s Retreat
A supernatural murder mystery
November 14 - December 24

A large, well-appointed inn at the crossroads seems like a pleasant enough waystation for travelers and Travelers alike. But soon enough, the peace will be broken by the arrival of a hunter of the supernatural forces known to plague the countryside. This hunter is on the trail of a Shade, a malicious dark spirit that feeds on human life force, which has taken possession of someone at the inn.

Though the threat of an enemy that can't be seen may be cause for doubt, the brutal death of one of the guests not long after the hunter's arrival should convince even the most determined skeptic that something is very, very wrong - just in time to find themselves magically trapped in the confines of the inn's grounds with the spectral killer still at large.

(This Walkabout will take place entirely within the grounds of the inn, and will run on a one OOC week = 1 IC day timescale.)

World Info | Locations | ‘Casting’ Call/Part Announcements | Infiltrator/Investigator Roles | Skills | Calendar | Player Resources | Questions | Plotting

Comments

WORLD INFO

[powersthatbe]

The nation of Chiaroscuro is bordered by mountains to the east and the north, and ocean to the west and south. The inn where the walkabout takes place lies roughly halfway between the capital city of Alba, which sits in the shadow of the tallest peak of the northern mountain range, and the port city of Grayshale along the western coast, at the junction between the Queensroad and the main road leading to the merchant town of Silvermarket, which brings goods from the southeastern farmland and the mines in the eastern range. The area is well-traveled, and sees no shortage of foreign visitors.

The local technology level is roughly equivalent to the mid-Renaissance, though this world has a measure of magic to go along with its science. The main forms of magic, the ones any reasonable person will believe in, are the creation of physical wards, and the purification and binding magic used by hunters to deal with dangerous supernatural elements. There are rumours of stranger things - the folklore of Chiaroscuro is rife with necromancers calling forth the dead to trouble villagers, and everyone knows that the Queen's great-great-great-grandmother led the rebellion that threw down the last of the necromancer-emperors that ruled the nation in ages past. Merchants from the north tell of fire-mages who can call or quell great conflagrations in the grasslands far beyond the mountains, and sailors whisper of witches who control the weather and make dark pacts with strange beasts beneath the waves - but few in living memory have actually met a necromancer, or a pyromancer, or a witch. Or, at least, anyone who would admit to having such magic - even the rumour of necromancy in particular is liable to end in torches and pitchforks.

While supernatural creatures are uncommon in civilized areas, and not particularly well studied given how elusive and deadly they can be, they are a know threat, and several orders of monster hunters have sprung up to deal with them. The best of these are considered heroes by the common people, brave knights who swoop in to save defenseless villagers from marauding ghouls, and rescue children lured away by hungry phouka. The worst are little more than mercenaries and extortionists, as likely to manufacture a threat as actually dispatch one. The majority, as ever, are somewhere in between.

In Chiaroscuro, the most common supernatural threats are:
-the werewolves of the deepwoods, clans of bestial shapeshifters who are known to hunt woodsmen, and to raid isolated farmsteads and occasionally smaller villages in harsh winters, leaving few survivors.
-the shapeshifting phouka who haunt the northern mountains and western coast, blighting crops, bewitching travelers, and occasionally leading the unwary away to serve as a meal.
-the will-o-the-wisp, physically harmless but skilled at enchantment, appearing as distant lights that lead weary travelers to their deaths in sheer canyons and deep bogs.
-malicious ghosts and the walking dead, which range from nuisances to lethal, depending on the temperament of the dead and their numbers.
-and, of course, the Shades, dark spirits from the Otherworld, invisible when disembodied, nearly undetectable when possessing a victim, and always, always the cause of much misfortune and death.