The only quest where "who is your daddy, and what does he do?" makes a valid line of investigation

Edmango 2022/03/15(Tue)21:22 No. 137265 ID: afe7de
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EDMANGO: Reposting here now that there's a true disthread

You awoke one night in cold sweats, looking over your body. You move each digit with purpose, teasing and testing them. Your heart beats with an incredible furiosity and it takes you a moment to come to terms with the one very large and prominent fact. You don't remember how you got to this room.

The word GRADUATION lingers at the back of your mind, like a festering and pus filled scab. It haunts you to the very essence of your being as you feel flashes of another life invade your mindscape. You've read stories like this in the local library before, you've just been REINCARNATED.

Your old name has been tossed aside, and your new identity, JOSEPH, comes to the fore. You take to this new world with ease, it's more advanced than your old one and, after a few years, you AWAKEN to greater power.

You feel a pulsing energy flow through your veins, this, this is RAW POWER and it sculpts to fit your being. You were always an... avid fan of the SUPERNATURAL, so it only fits that you were given some power straight out of a movie about ALIENS.

Your POWER is called [TRACTOR BEAM]
You can draw things towards you by making a UFO-LIKE cone from your hand.

You point out in front of you and feel an attractive force emanate from your fingertips, the motions are second nature to you after a moment and the energy use intuitive. This, you would say, is what it feels like to be alive.

Edmango 2022/03/15(Tue)21:22 No. 137266 ID: afe7de
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Years pass and you graduate from high school, with no strange ceremonies or deaths.

Roger: So Unrealistic
Jhonen: YEAH! I’d be picking at those “pus filled scabs”
Jhonen: Investigating everything in that school
Lillian: Causing a general ruckus
Jhonen: And I can’t believe you gave me an alien power!
Phillip: SHHHH
Phillip (as GM): I’m the [GM] and I have to sculpt your backstory in a way that works!
Jhonen: Fine I guess…
Phillip (as GM): As I was saying…

This part of your life was normal. However, after getting out into the wider world you thought differently and applied yourself to solving the uh SUPERNATURAL. You wandered the forest one day, in search of the fabled BIG-FOOTMOTH-WOMAN…

Phillip (as GM): PFFF AHHAHAH
Lillian: You seriously wrote that as your backstory?!?!?
Jhonen: Sh.SH. SHUTUP! AT LEAST IT’S NOT A FOX!
Roger: Grumble grumble

And you found them, only it turned out to be a minor imp attempting to create a smaller dungeon. You detained them with ease and for your troubles were rewarded with an ARTIFACT OF POWER.

Your SIGNATURE ARTIFACT is THE GIMMICK GUN
- It has 6 chambers and fires quickly
- It can use 10 different kinds of bullets but requires an action to reload
- You know how to make the special bullets now
- Each of the bullets acts as a different CANTRIP
- There’s piercing/blunt/fire/shock/blank/water/oil/gas/sleep/gust
- Go read your character sheet for more info

Edmango 2022/03/15(Tue)21:22 No. 137267 ID: afe7de
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It's here, on the precipice, as you're making a name for yourself, that you come to the town of CATTENOM in the country of SUMMO TERNO, a DUNGEON has appeared recently, and you finally feel strong enough to dive in. You peruse the BOUNTY BOARD, a source of information publicly available on the dungeon and you hear the deep and husky voice with a slight whistle come from behind you.

Lillian (Brutus the Strong): Ahhhh, so yer looking for a PARTY I see?
Albert (Alfred the Wise): Hmmm, he seems astutely qualified, what say you?
Roger (OOC): Her mouth doesn't move, but you hear her voice anyway
Roger (Dotticus the Flame): Hmmmm yessss, a densssse source of mana
Phillip (AS GM): That's your cue to start talking
Jhonen: HAH HAH! *Ahem*
Jhonen (Joseph): The answer is so obvious if you thought about it for a moment!
Jhonen (Joseph): Of course I am!
Jhonen (Joseph): After all, I'm a famed paranormal investigator!

You turn around and see the large Orc barbarian, Brutus the Strong, their tusks are massive and add a slight whistling to their already rather husky voice. On his back is a greataxe.

Standing by a rather lithe looking elf with large glasses, Alfred the Wise. He seems frail, like he would break at a single touch, but there’s deep emanations of power flowing from his body.

To their side is a short Fox-Kin woman, Dotticus the Flame, she has long eyelashes and is fiddling with a lute, humming a tune as they speak. They begin to weave their tale, inviting you into their motley crew.

Edmango 2022/03/15(Tue)21:23 No. 137268 ID: afe7de
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Jhonen (Joseph): Heh, I'll crack this dungeon wide open!
Jhonen (Joseph): And then... EXPERIMENT on these creatures
Jhonen (Joseph): Heh, HEH, HEHEHEH, HAHAHAHAAHAH!

You go with the party through brief adventures and meet the party’s NPC ARTIFICER named RUDY, and Lilian’s favorite recurring NPC NIPHA. You cackle maniacally and enjoy the fun as the scene fades to black, a vivid memory, there, but not forgotten.

Edmango 2022/03/15(Tue)21:23 No. 137269 ID: afe7de
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The dawn threatens to break you from your meditative reverie. It’s the morning, and you cringe slightly at the light. You sigh and sit up at your desk, having fallen asleep amongst your numerous documents. You were researching the town of LYST, thinking of settling down and prying into its secrets for a time. There was that job offer too after all, two birds and one stone.

You open your wallet and look longingly at the photo entombed there. Well, it's more a drawing than a photo, you had it commissioned. You see Robert, Albert, Lillian, Phillip, and Franklin there. Your last life's friends. You get a strong feeling of nostalgia and almost start to think more about that time, but hold yourself off from it.

Joseph: Sigh
Joseph: I wonder what you’d think if you saw me now

You scratch your head and pick up the last of your accessories, donning your shirt and hoodie before heading out. You've got some investigating to do, time to go to LYST.

EDMANGO’S NOTE: You like making stories of my characters, well now it’s time for me to flip the script. Happy EARLY birthday Himitsu!

Lilian, Albert, and Lemmy seemed really confused about what Franklin just said there about his mother's room being restricted. And after thinking about it, it triggered his memory about Lemmy in the closet...

I'm thinking he might be confusing his mom's room with the closet? and his mother's room doesn't exist (currently)? Maybe it's related to how he thought he had hair for that one moment until we told him.

I'm thinking maybe before Franklin became who he is now (and had hair) there was one point where his mother was quarantined and was kept in a room similar to where the closet is. His mom probably isn't actually here this whole time.

Ummm... probably best not to let him know this whether it is true or not, and just let him ease into it (or we might risk his fear level going higher). Donut asking about amount of food is a good starting point I think.

>His mom probably isn't actually here this whole time.
I can think of a few different possibilities; Franklin's mom could be
A: Not present
B: Deceased
C: Never existed to begin with (Very Unlikely, given Franklin's vague fuzzy memories)

Anyways, between the parallel to the end of Thread 2-
>I just have to wait. They’ll be here, any minute now.
>Just... have to keep Waiting...
I'm guessing that there's a pretty big Trauma-Bomb™ we need to walk carefully around until we think we can defuse it. Very Bad Things Happened, possibly during that flashback up in the tree. That's what my intuition tells me. Who knows, it could also be related to the Forbidden Neck.
At the very least, we should look out for the Waiting keyword, it seems important to Franklin.

What's the plan? Do we try and ask Lem-Jordan-my about... what he presumably saw? I don't think there's a way we can skirt around the issue and do that at the same time. If we plan on finding that out from him, then him not graduating becomes increasingly more important. Jorlemmdan seems like a massive problem waiting to happen from carelessness, but I really shouldn't judge- that carelessness seems to be butterfingering us into important details. I mean, there's bound to be a good reason DanLemJormy was a potential candidate for a perspective. I'll try to put more stock into him, LDJ.

Goofing aside, I'm thinking that it's best we put whatever that is on the backburner as best we can, and instead focus on keeping the group rested and ready for what's next.

...There's also Clive. I don't think it'd be a good idea to have him poke around in that, but it's a non-zero possibility that an opportunity may present itself.

Does anyone have the map handy? I feel like that's important if we wanna suggest anything for alternative locations to search for Clive.

The Storyteller 2022/08/08(Mon)12:51 No. 137811 ID: 629f2e
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>>137810

Here you go.

Hello! I don't know if the voices out there still check this thread, but I figured I'd raise my findings.

Cattenom and its Power Plant are real places that exist... In France.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cattenom
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cattenom_Nuclear_Power_Plant
https://fr-m-wikipedia-org.translate.goog/wiki/Lac_du_Mirgenbach?_x_tr_sl=fr&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=sc

I wasn't thinking particularly hard when I came across this information, but rather contemplating the line "Everything stays in Cattenom." What this really makes me wonder about is how isolated the place may or may not be from the outside world. Where do people get their food from? The farm, exclusively?

A forewarning; any musings into this could prove unfruitful, given the tendencies into the occult, fantastical, and so on. Who's to say parallel universes aren't fair play?

Ignoring that, this line of hypothesis ties into Clive's... lingering thought on what year it is, I suppose. Comparing our worlds, there's a pretty big year discrepancy. Namely, the Nuclear Power Plant was built from 1979 to 1991. However, supposedly the power plant was opened in 1959, "Ten Years Ago."
Clive's intuition really is something else, isn't it?

Pinpointing what year it actually is in Perpetuity (The name's starting to feel relevant. Thanks, Nicolas.) might not be very easy, since how we can find info is pretty limited, but the wiki does mention that a part of the Maginot Line which had been around since 1930, was flooded due to the artificial lake made to cool the power plant. But who knows? Maybe WWII didn't happen.

So, I guess don't be shocked if the actual year's like, 2200 or something...?

>>138123
My personal theory is it's some weird midwest shit. Cults and experimental communities crop up now and again there, and it seems like the kind of place that would try to raise kids some bizarro way that isolates them from troublemaking teens.

>>138200
Maybe!
Personally, I think the whole potential propaganda part means that it's a bit further than that.

A few things I'm wondering about but not sure there's a good chance to explore;

What do these kids learn in class? (Do they have a history class at all? I'm guessing that there's something really off there, but nothing we'll be shown.)

People from Outside (Are they real? Are people allowed to come into Cattenom, but not out? What happens to Adults not in the know?)

Where do they get their produce? (Is everything made in town/nearby? Do they get shipments from... Outside?)

The Library's Forbidden Section (A goldmine of information most likely, with some reasonable things to be forbidden mixed in, but I'm not sure anyone's going back or would know what to look for. Hell, I don't think I'd know where to look, but... y'know?)


...But I gotta keep myself impartial, it's "Just fiction", right?

Yeah, so I'm thinking if we want Frankin to enter his "mother's room" getting him to lower the temperature on the thermostat to get him as cofortable as possible to convince him to go in his mom's room, and to prepare him for what he is going to witness is going to be super important. I think we're at the point where we'll need to take risks and small sacrifices if we are going to make significant progress, and i feel while it is garuanteed he is going to get in trouble, it probably isnt going to be a huge loss (maybe at most grounded for a day, much like how Roger was out of commission for a day) but this is going to be worth it if we want Franklin to maintain his composure and convince him to do things he doesn't want to do.

I'm not going to mention this to Franklin just yet until we dealt with the dr. dad situation. Don't want Franklin's mind to wander while dealing with Dr. Dad

but doesn't Franklin's dad's from the flashback sound a bit different than his current dad? the present dr. dad sounds a bit more eccentric than the dad from the flashback.

I think this is leaning towards the doctor turning out not being Franklin's real father, which could mean the mother we saw on with him picture was probably not Franklin's real mother...

>>138506
Perhaps now would be a good opportunity.
I wouldn't say it's quite "dealt with" but now at least in the safely discussable zone.

I posted this in questden discord, but ill post it here too (spoilers) i noticed that Franklin, or Jordan in his past life on that recent flashback in the hospital was bald in the hospital bed, and earlier in Jhonen's notes on Franklin's skin samples, he had erased words that there were traces of radiation on them... from that info, i think Jordan may have died of cancer, and the traces of radiation Jhonen may have discovered on Franklin's skin samples were from radiation therapy.