—TDM 001.

[shadowovershiokawa]

TDM 001.
( FULL NAVIGATION )

» ARRIVAL.

It could happen at any point, anywhere: glancing into a reflective surface steals you away from your home.

You're left dreaming and paralyzed; there's fire and the slow-creep of dread across your awareness. There's the feeling of being watched.

When you awake, you're soaked through with salt water, lying face down in sand... The sun is just coming up, but that light doesn't help you feel any less horrified and unsettled. The lighthouse, a ways off, makes you feel even worse, sick to your stomach somehow...

There are other people on the beach, in various states of rest or wake, like you. You feel a sort of kinship with them already... Maybe you can hunt for answers together... You find that the grasp of their hand in yours puts a calm into your soul, just a little.

»

The curse you've been afflicted with sends most townsfolk running, which leaves you to the company of your fellow cursed. You'll be in various states of ill and well, sane and off your rocker. How to ease the curse, or get rid of it entirely?

»

You've been sorted into a Coven upon arrival, feeling a thrum of familiarity humming between you and the other members of your Coven.

» URBAN LEGENDS.
WARNINGS: gore, suicide mention.

A few days into your stay at your new home, you start hearing high school kids talking about a game called Aka Manto.

A student died last week, throat cut and left bleeding on the cold school bathroom floor. Apparently he had played the game. You feel compelled to investigate and, after some poking and prodding around town, you learn some things.

Aka Manto is a "Bloody Mary"-like game where one runs into an impossibly tall man with a blank-look mask. He's in the last stall of the boy's room on the second floor of the high school. Or maybe he's in the teachers' break room. Or, some kids will tell you, he's actually in the classroom where that girl hung herself last summer.

He asks you what color paper you'd like, and your answer will either be your death or your salvation.

"RE... d... pAPer... OR BlUE... pa... PEr?"

If you answer red, the color of his coat and the stains on his brandished knife, he nods at you and disappears in a flutter of red papers. The papers have Lorem Ipsum printed on it, with a few that have a web address, and a few still with the repeated names of dead students...

If you answer blue, the color of the sad and wide sky outside, you're dead. He draws his blade across your throat, agonizingly slow, and you bleed out on the floor.

If you answer, "I don't want anything from you!" then you have a chance to fight. His mask flies off, leaving a void of a face in its wake. The only way to kill him is to stab him with his own blade — even though blades are scary to you because of the Old God's rule — right in the heart.

» REALITY CHECK.

The ways to keep yourself sane:

» Break a mirror, cast the shards in the sea. Men at the bar near the shore will tell you this, but so will kind mothers at the park, noticing your distress and unease.

» Tell your secrets to the sea, or better yet: someone you haven't met yet. You might feel compelled to do this on your own.

» Sing the song bouncing around in your skull. A child — wide eyed but grinning, making you feel peaceful — will tell you that you should.

» "Do something that scares you," an old man tells you, "With the ones against you." You know immediately he's talking about someone from another Coven, the one that makes you shiver and shake.

» BULLETIN.

The web address from the Aka Manto game?

It leads you to a post on the network from a user posting as "J.H."...

in an impossible place, where
fire meets forest meets moon,
there's a mausoleum. i've found it and
left it unlocked.
won't you visit?

won't you dream?

won't you tell us all about it? (:

Feel free to comment on the post, though J.H. will never answer. But now that you've read the post, you can't help but feel like you need to find that impossible place...

» FIRE, FOREST, MOON.
WARNINGS: grace desecration and fire/burning.

It's in a clearing in the forest, seen only in the witching hour, only when a fire is lit.

The mausoleum itself looks like it's survived a fire and, indeed, the door is open. When you go in, you'll feel compelled to open the coffins inside and look through the bones and dust. But when you reach the back of the crypt, you'll find there's a coffin with your name on it.

You want to climb inside and sleep.

So maybe you do, or maybe you were smart and brought someone with you who can talk some sense into you. Better hope your friend doesn't find their own coffin, or you'll both be committed to sleep there and dream of hellfire until someone kind enough happens by to rouse you awake...

Should you get your wits about you in one way or another, you'll be rendered sick from the air of the mausoleum. You'll want to find it again; all you can think about is getting in your coffin and sleeping. It's all you want. Eventually, you'll talk of burning — it feels like you're on fire.

The way to calm down someone who has been afflicted so is through either physical contact and a genuine desire to help them, or to bring them to the sea and push them in. They'll be fine, but maybe a little irked at being so wet.

» NOTES.

TDM threads can be considered game canon if all parties agree to it.
Ask questions below if you need.
The Coven you choose now doesn't have to be the one you end up with, so don't feel locked down.
Have fun with it, feel free to play around with the symptoms of your characters' curse, their sanity, etc.!

code bases by tricklet

Comments

jotaro kujo | JJBA | bane

[seishiin]

01 — arrival.

( He wakes up on the beach, and it's a little too close to how he died.

What is this? Some strange and unsettling hell? He looks at the lighthouse and feels queasy but he's walking up to the nearest person he feels a thrum of connection with. )

You ... What's the last thing you remember?

02 — urban legends.

( He ends up investigating the Aka Manto game, because of course he does. He's a Joestar, meddling is etched onto his ribs.

It is, however, a good idea to get a few other Bane members to go with him ... So he searches with them, taking the lead even when they see the impossibly tall man.

Yep. Girl's bathroom.

Jotaro answers his query: )

Give me red.

( And the papers flutter as he disappears ... )

03 — reality check.

( It's ebbing now, but he doesn't notice until he finds himself terrified to see his reflection. He has to sit or stand with his back to something if he's still, and on more than one occasion Star Platinum has punched through brick because of a hallucination.

But what to do? He paces, and maybe that's quite a lot for the other Banes ... )

04 — bulletin | un: punchghost

@ J.H.
I don't really have a choice, do I.

@ ALL
I'm getting together a small search team for the mausoleum mentioned in J.H.'s post. Let me know if you're interested and what you can offer the team in a potentially dangerous area.

I need people who can fight, or at least people worth protecting.

05 — fire, forest, moon.

Hey. Hey!

( He grips your arm hard. Having solved the strange puzzle of its location, Jotaro and some others find themselves in the mausoleum. Only someone happens to be climbing in one of the dusty stone coffins. )

Snap out of it. We're not here to die.

01

[lacitsym]

[ She's had easier hangovers, for sure. ]

You mean before waking up in a place I definitely did not fall asleep in? Because that might sound crazier.

[seishiin]

Yes.

( Entirely too serious. )

I'm looking for similarities.

[lacitsym]

Magic in my universe is broken, as a friend of mine had put it. I was helping her fix it so that some apocalyptic forces wouldn't come to our earth. Or, rather, trying to fix it, before this rude interruption. Is that similar to anything you experienced?

[seishiin]

( Rude. Good word for it. )

In a way. I wouldn't call anything back there magic, though.

( A pause. )

What were you doing the moment before you arrived?

[lacitsym]

Fair enough, sometimes the definition is hazy at best. [ Woah is that an understatement. ]

I was attempting to explain said apocalyptic forces to the team I was with, and this place is great at proving that point already.

[ Ha. ]

And you?

I was going to TDM with someone else but how can I not (05)

[hierophany]

[ Jotaro can be forgiven for not recognising him. He's gone out of his way to make himself unrecognisable (it's in the mirror. it's the thing that's in the mirror and it knows what it looks like, its servants know what he looks like, because his reflection is there). He's buried in a hoodie about three sizes too large for him.

He can't quite be forgiven in the same way for failing to recognise Jotaro (bane. a bane. strong where he is weak. it's going to hurt him. it's going to know where his failures are and strike at them and ruin everything and he is surviving and he is surviving and making sure other people survive and he can't afford to let himself fail). He's Bane. He's Bane and that's all he is, because if he looks too long or listens too hard then something terrible will happen.

(but surviving is tiring

he's not meant to be alive

maybe everyone else isn't meant to be alive, either)

He's made himself unrecognisable, but the green little tendrils that poke out from the cloth of his hoodie are as distinct as they've ever been. They coil around Jotaro's fingers, trying to pry them off his arm. ]

I'm tired.

screams with my mouth closed

[seishiin]

( Jotaro feels as though his heart has fallen up and out of his mouth when he recognizes who is in the coffin. Yet then, as ever, he moves, acts, pulling Kakyoin up and to his feet. )

I can't imagine how tired you are—

( liar )

—but you're not going to die here.

( Everything in him refuses to see him die again when there was something he could have done to prevent that tragedy, that robbery of life.

He pulls Kakyoin closer, makes to move out of the mausoleum... )