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

Otto Octavius | OTA

[doctopoda]

i. downpour (cw: a lil body horror)

[It started with the water.

Otto has no idea why water keeps falling from the sky. It's like he's being followed by his own personal raincloud, except that the damned thing keeps on happening inside. It's unpredictable, soaking him and anyone near him at random. Luckily, he improved the waterproofing on the actuators months ago, so it's not actively dangerous - but it is god-damned irritating.

He knows they're safe, so he restrains them from thrashing about when it happens, and pays little attention to anything else going on with them. Even on the best of days, he finds it difficult to be concerned about them, and recently...well. He's been dwelling more on it lately. Maybe he never really stops dwelling on it - that fear that he's become a monster. The ice-cold feeling he remembers so clearly, as if he too had turned into a machine.

There's metal creeping up around his neck and along his jawline, visible now where he'd always been able to keep it hidden before. If he catches anybody looking, he'll snap, one actuator stamping too hard on the ground:]

What? Have you got something to say? Hm?

ii. voices (cw: body horror)

[This was a mistake. What was he thinking - trying to fit back into normal society, like he was someone normal? Like he wasn't a monster?

He's not well. It crept up on him at first, but by now he knows he isn't. The metal has crept up the side of his face, fully overtaking one eye. It's like another camera now, glowing a faint red behind his glasses. He's torn at it until the surrounding skin tore and bled, but it won't come loose. Worse than that, though, is that the irritability's only gotten worse. He's angry. Finally, Otto can't quite restrain himself from shouting someone down in the street - he is fucking sick of being stared at. How dare they? How dare they always expect him to be the nice one, the accommodating one, making himself so inoffensive that his spine aches under the weight? He could kill any one of these people right here and now, easy as crushing a bug, and - 

And that's not him. There's something else whispering in his mind, cold and careless and horribly familiar. Wasn't it easier? it says. Weren't you happier when you didn't feel guilt? Didn't feel grief?

He blanches, hand flying to the back of his neck. The chip's intact. The problem's him, then - well, of course, why wouldn't it be? Peter didn't know any better; he's just a child, a naïve good-hearted child who wants to save people. That's fine. It's who he is. But Otto ought to have known better. He knows he's not worth saving.

The actuators slam into the nearest building, hauling him up. He has no game plan. He just needs to get away from here, away from the people he's still horribly tempted to lash out at.]

iii. cauldron

[Otto falls into darkness, and for a moment he thinks ah, this is how it was supposed to go.

But then he wakes again.

Here in this corner of the cauldron, there's water up to your knees. Something like a miniature sun blazes, radiating a choking, blistering heat. The metal pylons containing it seem to be straining beneath its power. Otto stands on a raised platform near it, the only area up out of the water. The floor's littered with broken glass and spatters of blood, though there's no windows and Otto himself doesn't look hurt. 

He's already tense, but somehow the line of his broad shoulders goes even more rigid if he hears someone approaching. The actuators writhe wildly behind him, claws snapping at thin air.]

Go away.

iv. wildcard

(( hit me up at lluosogrwydd if you want to do something else! ))

ii

[thecoolerloki]

[Regardless of form, Loki longs for mischief. The scale of that mischief has just changed in proportion to the size of his body. And spotting an Otto Octavius who's slamming into buildings rather than rebuilding them... That's perfect, isn't it?

Loki teleports to the top of the building he's climbing and peers down at him. He gives the man a little wave like they're colleagues meeting for lunch.]

Hello Otto! Won't you join me up here? The view's lovely.

[doctopoda]

Not now, Loki.

[Of course there's someone on the roof. The place is teeming with superheroes, why would there not be someone on the roof. Otto turns to gauge his proximity to the next nearest building - no, if he makes that jump from here he's going to crash into all those windows. Small chunks of concrete crumble away as he drives the actuators in impatiently, climbing up to the roof proper.]

[thecoolerloki]

A bit moody today, are we? And I thought they liked me.

[Once Otto's up on the roof, Loki pokes at the actuators, his way of saying "I'm that Loki".

[doctopoda]

[One of the actuators snaps at him. They aren't much in the mood either, agitated both by Otto's feelings and perhaps a bit of their own.]

They're machines. They don't like anyone.

[thecoolerloki]

[He fires a blast of magic back, nothing too powerful, just enough to discourage further snapping. Like spraying a cat with water.]

What of you? Something about you seems different from the last time we met... new haircut?

[doctopoda]

[The actuator recoils, clicking. Otto just glares.]

It must be some kind of curse. Everything around here is some sort of rogue magic.

[Which he hates? Fuck magic, tbh!]

[thecoolerloki]

Seems to be! Even I’ve been caught up in it and forced to skip puberty!

[He says as if that’s something dreadful, and for the boy it was, but the old man doesn’t really care.]

Perhaps you could help me get to the bottom of it though. Your little friends must be bored after so much manual labor and good will, yes?

[doctopoda]

[This is...irritating, mostly, this is so irritating. But Otto also just wants this to be over. His self-control's frayed enough that he doesn't stop one of the actuators from turning to look at him as if in consideration, but he is still in control - he's the one who decides to ask:]

What are you suggesting?

I - If you're chill with him hitting Otto up

[helpdesk_hero]

[Of course he noticed. There was David, just living his life in Excelsior, and here was a guy being followed by his own rain cloud. That he knew the guy didn't change how interesting it was. Clearly this was something to do with the spell the youngest Loki had mentioned. And he was intrigued.

But the intrigue isn't nearly as interesting as the way that the changes have started to overtake Otto. Which was why David, holding an umbrella in a completely practical sense to keep any rain off of himself, was staring. Which he'd feel guilty about if he had a heart to be concerned with. As it was, he just watched the other man.]

I'm thinking it's a good look.

[doctopoda]

[Otto's in no mood to suffer commentary, but at least this is someone he's friendly with - and hasn't fought with recently. That's why he just grumbles:]

I think I need a goddamn scalpel.

[helpdesk_hero]

Why? Damage the beauty coming over you?

[Is that such a bad thing?]

This deserves to be retained.

[doctopoda]

...what the hell is wrong with you?

[COME ON MAN THAT'S WEIRD ON THE FACE OF IT]

[helpdesk_hero]

Really?

[David raises an eyebrow but he doesn't really look curious. There's just... no expression on his face, like he's devoid of emotions and just going through the motions.]

Is it wrong to find beauty in the overlap of flesh and machine?

[doctopoda]

You sound like a sci-fi villain.

[Pot calling the kettle black, a little? But Otto's inclined to be misanthropic and suspicious in general right now, so he's not in the mood to accept this super weird flattery.

Anyway. David's a fellow scientist. In Otto's experience, when scientists suddenly start being weird, it means A Real Specific Thing!]

What did you do?

[helpdesk_hero]

Really? With everything you've done, you'll say that to me? Amusing.

[What did he do? David doesn't look impressed by the assumption.]

I've done nothing but walking here.

[doctopoda]

[Otto just snorts. You don't need to talk to him about what he's done.

It's something nearing concern, really. He can tell that David's acting off, and he's just centered enough right now to find that troubling. David is, however, also being extremely weird and irritating, so he's not all that patient when he asks:]

What happened to you, then?

III

[portolan]

[ Balthier crashes into the water, spluttering as it enters his lungs. He’s anchored outside the cauldron, but that doesn’t make any of this feel any less real. And based on the very real implications of the pixie spells, he’s going to be careful.

But he’s not risking Otto, and they’re going after the pixies soon; what if someone destroys the thing or seals it and Otto is still inside? He’s not losing anyone else. Especially not when this whole thing is on him.

He surfaces, choking. ]

Otto! It’s a projection! These are all fears!

[doctopoda]

[The actuators rear like snakes at Balthier's sudden appearance. Nuance doesn't register with them; all they know is that the last time they saw this guy, it wasn't friendly, and now he's crashing down into a very stressful situation.]

Enough.

[Otto snaps, their claws closing with sharp clicks. He's...well, it's hard to say he's feeling any better. They wouldn't have acted even that much on their own if he weren't...scattered. But he knows better where his ire ought to be directed now. His voice is softer when he addresses Balthier himself.]

You shouldn't be here, Balthier.

[portolan]

[ Balthier's righted himself, at least, taking stock of wherever they are. There's some comfort in the softness of Otto's voice. At least they aren't yelling at each other. He'd been prepared for that, but--

An image of his father, dead twice flashes in his mind. Cold words.

But the actuators are still agitated and he's not a fool. ]

Neither should you. I'm not leaving you here.

[doctopoda]

This is a nuclear reactor. It's dangerous to be this close without protective equipment.

[Otto raises his voice a bit over the dull roar of the Sun. The metal fixtures around the room are vibrating dangerously. Only the actuators themselves seem unaffected; they lift Otto up, turning him about. He doesn't have anything resembling protective gear himself - if anything, he's less covered than normal, gloves gone and sunglasses lost somewhere in the water.

Even facing Balthier, he can't quite see him clearly. Staring into the light of the reactor has seared blinding after-images into his already-damaged retinas. He tries to blink them away.]

I made it. I should be here.

[portolan]

[ he doesn't know what that is, but the tone tells him it's not good news. ]

Yes, well, I'm sure something terrible will show up that I can just transfer the damage to.

[ He doesn't like that power but he's not dying in a fear manifestation in a magic bowl. and neither is Otto ]

Whatever this is, I'm sure it's weight is immense, but it's not real. The pixies are projecting it.

You're a good man, Otto. Even if you've done things that you regret. Come home with me.

[doctopoda]

You don't know anything about what I've done.

[An actuator slams down against the platform, responding to Otto's sudden flash of anger. He regrets it a moment later. But that's just what he does, isn't it?

...it takes him like, way too long to register the pixies comment. Once he does, though - well, even with the situation being what it is, you can't just let something like that pass unremarked-upon.]

Pixies?

[portolan]

[ Fear. Right. Worst things people have done. He's still reeling from his own encounters. ]

You're right. I don't. And I frankly don't care.

[ The aggression of the actuator startles him, but he's too good a pirate to show it much past a small jump at the sound.

And Balthier may be near useless in combat here, but his wits and his silver tongue are in tact.

When you were in the shop, do you remember the large cauldron with the rather ugly carvings on it? It was apparently housing three pixies with the ability to manifest fears. They've entrapped you; I'm anchored outside it.

[doctopoda]

...of course it was.

[Magic is the fucking worst, why would there not be magic fear pixies? Otto snorts disdainfully, turning to look back up at the machine.]

I was supposed to have died here, you know, months ago. It makes a strange sort of sense, ending up here again.