realitymods | The Hosts

★ The Hosts

The people who maintain the Machine and this experiment are all mod characters. Some are helpful, some are misguided, some are cruel, and some are dancing to a higher power's tune. While they can change and may appear with varying frequency, there are some constant influences.

★ The Shop

The shop is a quaint wooden cottage that happens to be perhaps a bit futuristic on the inside. It's run by Jhil and Roen and the double jokers on the gaudy sign make it hard to miss. They're all too happy to sell characters the things they need - even information - for the right price. Can they afford their prices? That depends on what they have to lose. On the plus side, their employer wants them to hire new employees. As long as those employees don't try to get into the back room, behind the purple curtain... Oh, and don't even try to attack them. The door has a trigger to detect harmful intent, and you really don't want it to go off.

Though NPCs can see the shop, whenever they try the door, it is locked. They may, if they are lucky, catch a fleeting image of them in the window, but they won't be allowed in. Regardless of what they try to use - magic, technology, or explosions - they will not be able to get into the shop. The door will open only when player characters are alone (or alone with other player characters).

★ Main Hosts

Wolf ☆ Unlike Derogative, Wolfgang Albrecht is actually a completely normal human. Well, mostly. Hailing from a world where dimensional paradoxes are common, he searches for a way to save his home before it succumbs to instability and is swallowed forever. Though he dresses and sounds like he's from Britain, he'll be the first to tell you that he has no idea what Britain is.

Clumsy, well-meaning and earnest, he's a departure from the old manipulators of the Plane and he's in a class of his own. Like you, he's desperate for answers and unutterably alone. Wolf might be the only friend you have.

Recently he's acquired something of a following, and is one of two powers vying for control of the Machine.

Jhil ☆ Somewhat mysterious to lay eyes on, she's a woman with long red hair and two distinctive black horns curling back around her ears. She dresses in dark armor made of leather and mail even though she spends all her time working in the shop. She has a sharp tongue and is somewhat cranky, but if you want information, she's got it.

Roen ☆ A short man with chin-length black hair and two small black horns that curve forward slightly. He dresses in gray cloth armor embroidered with gold thread in various patterns. Unlike his cousin Jhil, he's generally very hospitable, if not a bit nervous.

Da Tian ☆ Wolf's former doctor and friend turned traitor. He is tall and striking, hawkish features and black hair braided down his back, as well as yellow eyes. He raised the 'angels' and released them on people just to see what would happen.

Shaman ☆ A little girl who works on the Machine. She dresses like a butterfly cocoon and talks in riddles, much like Meredith before her. It's rumored that she is actually upwards of a thousand years old.

★ Former Hosts

These people no longer can be contacted, but their info is here for reference.

Raymond ☆ Raymond Keys works for a man named Jed, and that's all he has to offer on that situation. He looks stunningly average, brown hair, brown eyes, average height, dressed in greys and like he can't decide between business or casual. His stature and appearance always seem like he's just barely tolerating being there.

And when he says you make him sick, he means it. He comes from a long line of people with the ability to sense the inhuman, but no one has ever had it as strong as him. He has no problems treating you with utter contempt and disgust, but will at least play at being nice to get his job done.

Jacob ☆ Jacob Kross seems to be a normal sort of guy; a bit of a jock who is into cars. Short blond hair and an average height, frequently dressed in jeans and t-shirts. He has a friendly demeanor seems to mean well- just don't mention keys around him.

Oh, did he mention it yet? He's looking for a key. A specific key. It's very important. If you happen to find it, please, he needs it.

Rita ☆ Rita Blake is clearly more refined than her boyfriend. Black business suits and classy, serious glasses are her attire of choice, and her long black hair practically blends in with them. She's a bit odd though, in her way. She always seems familiar to men- she always reminds them of someone they've met before.... Maybe in a dream?

'Grey'/Charlie ☆ Dead. As it turned out, he was host to something quite terrible. Who knew?

Derogative ☆ Derogative is an insufferably cheery, usually asleep, new addition. When dealing with most humanoid beings, he tends to take on a human form; a man in his early forties with short, messy brown hair, bright green eyes, and usually dressed in jeans and a black leather jacket. Though when in the shop, he tends to prefer his natural form: a giant canine-like animal with a golden ankh on his chest.

Most of the time he does odd jobs for whoever needs him for anything, he takes his role as Guardian seriously, but it would be best for everyone if he just remains as doofy and scatterbrained as he allows himself to seem.

The Twins ☆ The Twins are comprised of a girl and a boy - Lapis and Lazuli respectively - who look shockingly young and like perfect, pale porcelain dolls. Everything about them is sheet white and neat, wearing old-fashioned clothes, cropped hair and generally seeming quite delicate if not rather unsettling.

Don't be fooled. The Twins are sly, amoral business types. Everything has a price and nothing is sacred. They appear to have ties to everything corrupt - the mafia, crooked cops, etc - as well as everything good - heroes, orphanages, whatever - and keep their cards close. People tend to end up in debt to them but if you have what they want, they might just be your best friends.

Also, they have a creepy tendency to talk in unison, as if they share a mind. The only way to tell them apart is Lapis's slightly higher voice and the fact that they each wear a braid but on different sides of their heads. (Lapis wears hers on the right, Lazuli's on the left). If you listen closely when they move, the sound of gears can be heard.

Roe ☆ Not much is known about this woman. She fixed the Machine after it crashed from misuse, then disappeared. She seems to be irritable, because she very much is. Recently she has appeared again in glee at character suffering and annoyance that they were getting a vacation. She's a bundle of joy.

Meredith ☆ Meredith Sault represents what she simply refers to as 'the Order.' It has a real name, but she doesn't think that you need to hear it. There's something distinctly eerie in her mannerisms, from the distant voice to the fluidity of her movements. Her robes hide her eyes in shadow, but her lips, often curled in amusement, are always visible.

Meredith is not your friend, but she is not your enemy, either. She will not be bought, coerced, convinced, or made to care, for she values little and considers everything to be transient. She will not attempt to trick you, but she often speaks vaguely - or else callously offers shattering information, a small smile the only hint at her reason for doing so.

Laith ☆ Dead. Laith Kolter seemed like the usual harmless research slave right up until she showed her true cards as a master manipulator. Notable for controlling a long-term peaceful Plane resident into slaughtering half a dozen people and hampering the investigation. Ruthless, unfeeling, and willing to put her own life on the line for the sake of making a new world, Laith took the secrets of the Machine to her grave.

★ Contact A Host

In this post, you can ICly contact a mod character. You should leave a comment of whatever your character is doing to get attention - going into the shop and so on - as you would with normal tagging. If you have a preference for what character you get, give their name in the subject line. For the purposes of this post, the characters that can be contacted at any point are Wolfgang and Jhil.

However, if you do not specify which character you want, you may receive messages from others involved in the workings of the Machine.

I wouldn't expect you to be. I only ask since I have the feeling that only a 'special' person can stop people from vanishing and turning up dead.

I don't know if just a special person can do it... I assume anyone could. It's a matter of getting to its lair. It's like finding a locked door. If you have a key, you can get in. If you don't, well. Sorry, son. Maybe you can brute force it, but that just isn't likely. They make tough doors in this place.

There hasn't been a break-in in years; the safest neighborhood around.

Then perhaps it is time that a break in be staged.

Those are dangerous words. You're no callow youth, sneaking into the house of an old lady to steal her jewels.

No, but I doubt I would be alone. How would one go about finding the beasts' lair?

I'd expect you'd have to go where it all started. Or rather, where the story starts and ends, and has for years.

And where is that?

That little town up in New England. Deep in the forest, where monsters lurk. A pond turned into a swamp, with a creature deep inside. Seven graveyards for seven bridges... though that is Elias' story, those graves and those bridges. Something for another time.

I thought you had time for a story.

[He laughs.]

I do, but more meant that his story has little to do with the one you're interested in. At best, there are connections - friend of a friend of a friend of a corpse, but well. That's all. But if you don't mind! Then certainly, I can tell it.

I'm in the mood for one, certainly.

[He folds his hands over the notebook.]

Before his decline, before he lost his partner, Elias Copperstone was a police officer in that little town. He had moved in from a city in New York, wanting to get a bit of the more peaceful life. Things went well until they didn't, which is his partner's story, but things were never quite the same after that.

He drank more, he abdicated duty, he eventually quit in a flurry of depressed reactions. And so the once golden boy of the department became a ghast about town. The whispers and rumors about his partner, what had happened, ate away at him until there was barely a man left.

Now, in this town, things were and are never... quite right. Seven graveyards for a town that boasted little more than a thousand or two thousand people spread over thirty miles. A little off-putting, to say the least. Turn a corner and you were often presented with the dead, slumbering deep below the earth.

Or you were presented with the almost dead, Elias, stalking the streets and graves for some answer. Both were fairly unpleasant options, to say the least.

Something had stirred again, as it was wont to do, and at the bridges, all seven bridges... suicides. Deaths. People flinging themselves into the water below. It was often never deep, but the height, the fall onto sharp rocks, it was deadly. No explanation for them, none at all.

They were buried in those graves, meant to slumber. But they never did. Something took residence in them, and they rose. It's almost silly, a practical zombie story, I know, but such is that town and the things that go in it.

Elias... it sparked something in him. Something of the old Elias, the golden boy, the cop who wanted justice done but was thwarted by things beyond his comprehension. Never again, he swore to himself, would he be bested.

The details get a bit fuzzy here; I'm afraid my connections are friend of a friend of a friend of a corpse as well, but rumor is that good old Elias, he put the dead back in their graves.

And when they found him - where they found him - he was dashed on the rocks below the biggest bridge of all.

The Hosts

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