Fear and Loathing in Excelsior

[portolan]

Who: Balthier portolan and anyone else!
What: A mysterious object leads to a horrific week of fear and misery
When: May 21
Where: Excelsior
Content Warnings: death, violence, phobias, memories of characters worst traumas – this is fear based; please tag specifics for your threads.

CWs: death, violence, phobias, memories of characters worst traumas – this is fear based; please tag specifics for your threads.

OPT OUT OPTIONS: Don’t be in Excelsior or don’t be hit by a spell yourself. Players may also limit to smaller scale fears, or avoid specific fear topics they don’t want to play out.

FEAR AND LOATHING IN EXCELSIOR

An ancient artifact releases three pixies intent on spreading as much fear and chaos as possible. When they hit someone with their spell, their fears manifest, with effects worsening the longer the pixies are free. To escape the spell, characters must face their fears or be trapped in the fear cauldron. Once the pixies are captured, the captured souls will be released and the manifestations will fade, though the damage caused will remain.

ANTIQUES ROADSHOW —

Downtown Excelsior may seem like an odd location to open an antiques store. One wouldn’t think that the chic youth of today would be interested in dusty relics of the past. Yet ask anyone and they will tell you this shop has been around for decades. Rue Moore once reported that it's particularly beloved by the Society and that was how it was able to stay afloat through the changing times, speculating that they use it to move black market goods.

Step inside the high end building and find yourself disoriented by the clash of differing time periods. French Rococo chandeliers, a pristine settee owned by John Adams, an honest-to-god suit of medieval armor, and a few framed sketches by Rembrandt and the like. There’s an electric thrill, as if you could reach out and touch history - though some of that may be the high number of protection magicks being employed.

Whatever you touch is probably worth more than your annual salary. You break it, you buy it.

Balthier is standing at an antique desk plucking away at a laptop as the first few volunteers arrive. He gestures for them to head to the classy bar tucked in the corner. You’re free to enjoy a glass of rich wine and high end appetizers, chatting amongst yourselves about the task at hand while the host finishes his work. As the crowd gathers he shuts his computer and ushers them into the back room, where even more antiques are carefully stacked. Among them are the offenders from the network post and a stack of additional concerning items.

A Little Bit Of Pixie Dust

The biggest puzzle of the night is a medieval cauldron. Intricate carvings depict great tales of monsters and magic. The most notable carving of all is three human faces engraved next to three creatures: a fae, a shade, and a troll.

Search as they might, there’s no record of this object in any database. At the end of the day this one is the only one left identified. As the last remaining investigation team members turn away to pack their things, they miss three small lights slowly rising from the carving’s open mouths. As the door shuts behind them, they may miss the sound of giggling. Or the soft swish of a tricky spell hitting you squarely in the back.

Pixie Magic is unfortunately difficult to detect, after all.

But the first spell cast is a sign these fickle spirits are picking up an old game. Who can create the most chaos? They're powered by human suffering. All fear that they collect returns to their cauldron, making them stronger and increasing the distance they can travel from it.

They are not discriminating and their targets are random. Anyone hit by their spells will become the victims of their fear manifestation spells. Each pixie specializes in a different kind of fear.

The first specializes in internal conflict. Think you have a face like a horse? Well now you might be Bojack Horseman. Worried you’re annoying? Well now you can’t stop doing every annoying habit you’ve ever had. Terrified you might be stone-cold and heartless? Congrats! You're turning into a statue.

Afraid of being ignored? Day 1 you might notice more people are ignoring you. As the spell progresses, no one is returning your calls or texts, people are avoiding you, and you are having trouble being served at coffee shops. By the end of the week, congratulations, you are no one can see or hear you!

These fear spells may be defeated by the character facing their fear or someone where someone helping them see they are still wanted or safe despite their flaws.

---

The Second Pixie specializes in interpersonal conflict. Maybe your love life explodes. Maybe your worst nemesis returns to harass and humiliate you. Whatever it is, you’re having trouble with others.

EXAMPLES: One day 1, you might be increasingly aware of your significant other's flaws or the health of the relationship. By midweek, you may find yourselves hitting each others buttons and fighting constantly. By the end of the week, you both may be compulsively playing out every flaw the other person perceives you to have.

If you have a nemesis from your past who haunts you, you may find yourself having more memories and dreams of them on Day 1. By Day 3 you might start seeing their face or signs of their work around town, or impacts of their presence. By the end of the week, they may full-on appear in this world, with all their powers, threatening to repeat that terrible memory if you don’t stop them.

These fear spells may be defeated by literally defeating the other person, or by reconciling with them. They could also be defeated by accepting reconciliation is not possible but removing the person's access to you (or to destroying the city, RIP).

---

The Third Pixie specializes in person versus environment conflict: packs of angry chihuahuas. The weather. The sidewalk opening up to swallow your ankles. Awakening dormant magical creatures. A super volcano going off.

EXAMPLES: You hate the cold and can't shake a chill. By midweek, the temperature around you is literally 10 degrees colder than everywhere else. By the end of the week, you are the eye of a blizzard.

These fear spells may be defeated by overcoming the physical obstacle through whatever means necessary.

Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter...

Perhaps you failed to overcome this challenge. Just as you succumb to your worst fears, your eyes open and you find yourself standing in an empty space. Others are there with you, looking equally as forlorn and lost.

And then it transforms.

You and your fellow victims are now trapped in a HELLISH LIMBO. You’re living out one fear after another – whether it’s yours, or that of one of the others who failed to overcome their fear in the world outside.

In this hell your very worst fears are realized. And there’s no way out. The pixie’s magic brings things in, but it doesn’t let them out.

Those who have not succumbed to their fears may be drawn to the back room of the antique shop, finding the cauldron abandoned but overflowing with power. The magically inclined may be able to find the seam on this pocket dimension and ATTEMPT A RESCUE.

But more concerningly, the carvings on the cauldron appear to be glowing. What was once a fanciful depiction of ancient battles now appears to be a warning that the worst is yet to come.

These powerful creatures need to be defeated and returned to the cauldron. They have fanned out across the city and will be encountered separately, so teams may wish to form. They cannot be killed, but wounding them will bleed out their power until they can be re-sealed on the cauldron.

The only trouble is you need to find them.

Transformation

As the pixies amass more and more power from the fear they’re generating, the range they can travel from the cauldron increases. The further they can travel, the more fear they can inflict. And where better to feast than a city built upon consumerism, where fear isn’t dealt with but bought off. Perhaps you may spot the flickering light of a pixie out of the corner of your eye, but it’s gone in a flash.

Eventually though, they trade speed for power. As their power crescendos the pixies begin to change shape. By the seventh day, all three of them have shape shifted into much larger and more imposing forms.

The first pixie will become a beautiful and terrifying fae. They make themselves at home in the city’s enormous man-made park and offer fae bargains to those foolhardy enough to trust them. Strength won’t overcome them, but a quick thinking mind might.

The second becomes nothing but a shade. It slides under cars and along walls, hiding in people’s shadows and whispers their darkest fears. This entity can’t be held down or stopped with physical force, but it recoils from the light.

The third rampages throughout the business center in the form of an enormous troll. Like the other two, this entity cannot be stopped with force. Excelsior’s artificial weather systems may be needed to slow this beast down.

AFTERMATH —

Once the pixies are restored to the cauldron, their fears in the city fade away and trapped characters are released, physically unharmed but mentally shaken. The damage any fear manifestations did to the city remain, but any people or objects they conjured fade away within the day.

The cauldron cannot be destroyed, so something will need to be done to keep it from wreaking havoc again.

IN SUMMARY...

• Balthier asks for help identifying magical objects. Characters interacting with one object in particular awakens sleeping magic inside.


• When the pixies first awaken, they must stay close to the cauldron to sustain their power.


• Each pixie's fear spell works on a different kind of conflict (though characters can be affected by more than one, or cured and then affected by another). As the week goes on, the manifested fears will worsen.


• Characters can defeat the fear spells by facing their fears or by someone else helping/interfering.


• The pixies must be defeated and returned to the cauldron.


• Comment HERE if you'd like to be involved in taking out the pixies!

Comments

[frenchkissed]

So... badly. Got it. Me too.

( really, eddie is just assuming everyone is having a hell of a week. maybe that just comes with the territory of being a hero. )

Did you lose someone?

( this is the part where venom mocks loki's haircut, or his fashion choices, and mentions that he smells nice. the lack of response is loud enough for eddie to wince. )

[dothelokimotion]

[ ah. his fingers twitch uselessly at his sides. he feels phantom fingers brush against his neck. ]

I've lost everyone. It's what I'm best at.

[frenchkissed]

Pretty sure I got you beat there, man... Don't gotta make it a competition, though.

( though he isn't sure if loki means by proximity or by virtue of being so terrible that everyone around him has left, eddie is retweeting with a hashtag same beneath it. )

...

I don't know how to be alone.

[dothelokimotion]

[ loki cocks his head, somber. ]

Have you never been alone before?

[frenchkissed]

Not successfully.

( honesty hour. nice. )

[dothelokimotion]

[ loki huffs. ]

I'm sure suitable company can be found for you. Humans are plentiful after all. Unless you're seeking something specific?

[frenchkissed]

Are you... not... human?

( naturally latching onto the wrong part of that, because finding people and keeping people are two very different problems. )

[dothelokimotion]

[ loki slowly shakes his head. ]

I am not. I wasn't speaking in hyperbole when I spoke of loneliness. My world and my people are gone.

[frenchkissed]

Fuck, man. ( eloquent as always. ) Are you all right?

( venom would be a better conversation partner for this one, though his departure from his planet was more willing. he could probably go back, unlike this guy. )

Like... I mean, how do you even survive without having a home to go back to?

[dothelokimotion]

[ loki shrugs, laconic. ]

Technically, I did not. But dying is something I'm also quite used to.

I also noticed you didn't answer my question.

[frenchkissed]

( what the fuck is this man's life, dude— )

Which one? About looking for a specific... something? Not really. I don't know. I don't think I'm looking for anything more than someone willing to tolerate me, I guess.

( which is asking a lot, he knows, but he's still going to answer honestly because it'd be a dick move to leave a guy hanging after he just admitted to the destruction of his entire home/planet/species/family. )

[dothelokimotion]

[ loki blinks, eyeing him curious. ]

You don't look particularly intolerable.

Shouldn't you get to have more than simply someone who wishes to stay with you? Regardless of who you are?

[frenchkissed]

( that's the nicest thing he's heard in a while. )

Thanks, man... I'd tolerate you, too.

( he thinks. death of the home planet isn't a deal breaker in tolerability. )

Wow, that sure is... a question. ( one he's really going to have to think about for a moment. even without fully collecting his thoughts, he dives in with: ) No one is entitled to companionship, I guess is how I'd answer that, maybe. You know, actions have consequences... chief among those being how you're perceived by others. Like, I don't know, if a dude goes around popping kids' balloons just for the hell of it, I don't think that dude deserves to have good friends cheering him on, you know?

[dothelokimotion]

[ that hits a bit too close to home and loki can't help but purse his lips tightly. after all, he is one of those terrible people who doesn't deserve anything. and yet. ]

Every person, regardless of where they come and what they've done should have the ability to choose what they want. Agency matters. Desire matters.

It sounds to me that you tell yourself you're not allowed to want because of your . . . character.

[frenchkissed]

( as a fellow terrible person who deserves nothing, he speaks from the heart. )

Wanting isn’t the same as receiving, dude. I want a lot of things… normal things. Everyone says they want a sports car and a million dollars, but I just want, like, a friend. Like, basic, you know? A really good friend would be so nice… But wanting something doesn’t mean I deserve to get it.

You gotta earn that shit. You get what I’m saying? And not in that weird late-stage capitalism sort of way. But, like, if I want a good friend, I have to be willing to be a good friend, at the very least... That’s all. I’m not trying to cancel your ability to want for things.

[dothelokimotion]

[ hmm. fair point. loki's not sure he's convinced. or quite grasps why it's such a struggle for this man to have a friend. humans always seem to have friends and connections. that's why he lost so soundly many years ago. ]

What makes you . . . not a good friend then?

[frenchkissed]

( he could say a lot there, but let's start the list off pretty mildly: )

I'm selfish, for one.

[dothelokimotion]

Everyone is selfish.

[ that's the whole point. to take care of yourself, you have to be selfish. ]

[frenchkissed]

Yeah, uh, that's not a good thing.

[dothelokimotion]

[ he shakes his head. ]

You don't understand. To look after yourself, to see to your own needs and desires is a base level of selfishness we all need to exist. You cannot conflate that with the greed of selfishness that takes everything.

[frenchkissed]

Sure, a healthy amount of self-interest is necessary for survival... I don't think covering the basics like food, water, and shelter should be considered selfish, though. Like, if anything, the ability to survive should be a human right, you know? ...A being right, not human, because even people who aren't human shouldn't be considered selfish for wanting a cheeseburger sub every now and again.

...

I get what you're say, though. I think. ( he holds his hands out in front of him, like measuring a footlong in the air. ) Rational self-interest ( he shakes his left hand, ) and excessive greed ( then his right, ) are different points on the same line... hard to tell where one stops and the other begins.

[dothelokimotion]

[ loki gives him a long look. ]

Are you trying to take over the world? Are you trying to harm people in order to receive your desires? Are you dominating others?

[frenchkissed]

No?

...

Are you?

[dothelokimotion]

I had, long ago.

So I think you're fine on your . . . scale.

[frenchkissed]

Why? ...What made you want to take over the world?