Post by Suzune on Nov 12, 2014 23:20:28 GMT
This is the thread for describing the entire metaplot and its structure. As such, you should (please) refrain from mentioning individual arcs that haven't become vastly important enough that any player might feel its impact.
The Premise And Backstory Of The School
The School
Shokushu Campus is a university and exclusive one at that. It has a strong academic reputation, is known for its superb women's programs and outreach, and is very unique in being in a sort of transnational space nominally under joint US-Japan jurisdiction, but in truth under neither. It is housed on a balmy island somewhere in the west Pacific with lush forests that manage to be just outside of the tropical zone enough to be slightly more familiarly temperate, excellent beaches with good (though not world-class) surfing to be had, and a handful of natural springs and other amenities.
The campus itself is a sweeping complex of buildings, with enough dorms to house thousands of students, additional residential blocks for even a large faculty, numerous office and administrative buildings, loads of classrooms, athletic and sports facilities (from team sports to professional gymnastics to professional swimming, most popular collegiate athletic programs are represented), enough cafeterias and mini-restaurants to please students and faculty alike... and finally the Shokushu Town, a small shopping district to let the people on the island get their hands on necessities and clothing and the like on what's otherwise an isolated boarding school on a Pacific island.
But... that's just the public side. There are also, among the legitimate uses for them, many forbidden areas in the basement especially, which is surprisingly sweeping for a school. Rumors of 'torture rooms' (Which in truth are nothing more than exquisite BDSM dungeons, sometimes with equipment you'd never see in the outside world), monster nests known among the 'aware' students, rooms dedicated to dark rituals, and quite possibly worse, abound in the school. Depending on the inclinations of a plot writer, there might even be one or two abandoned buildings (Don't go overboard with that!) or other unsavory things. The school also is the focal point of a massive dimensional weakness unparalleled since rifts probably dating thousands of years ago - this is the source of new monsters, and can easily be pushed 'further' to let them come into this Earth's dimension almost anywhere on or slightly past the shores of, the island. There are also likely monster nests, arcane hideaways, maybe even weirder things, out in the island's wilderness.
The World's History
The world isn't too far from the Earth our players live in, but for one major difference. Throughout its history, rifts sometimes formed around parts of its surface, as if drawn to some natural beacon or weakness of the planet in interdimensional space. This is where the Mythids and Visitors come from, as some arcanists native to the world have come to name them. Mythids are any being likely to fit in human mythology, folklore, or even fiction - Angels, vampires, kitsune, dragons, Lovecraft's abominations, I could go on - while Visitors are humans or things not quite of mythical import, usually distinguished (When not human) by possibly knowing magic but not inherently being magic. Either way, human civilization has had to coexist with Mythids and Visitors, though a problem they realized is that humans were usually too numerous to be attacked or conquered, and the supernatural too foreign to them for integration (other than in hiding) to be feasible. Prudence became tradition, and so to this day the Masquerade that hides magic, Mythids, and Visitors from the majority of humanity continues.
Of especial note is that foreign magic seems perfectly reliable, regardless of principle. Unless literal dependence on something physically peculiar to their home-plane is needed, the mystical properties a Visitor or Mythid brings with them, seem to be 'borrowed' by this Earth. Whether in being tied to those of that plane and any descendants, or truly embraced by the Earth and usable by native humans, it's not completely known (and some suspect it might vary depending on how contradictory to other magic and mundane nature, the supernatural properties are). Either way, this means natives have become mages, and even wildly contradictory tales or magics (such as the presence of multiple classes of demon that all operate in different ways) can coexist. It often leads to headaches to academics that pierce the Masquerade.
The School's History
Started sometime in the late 90s or early 2000s, Shokushu was the brainchild of a group only known as The Cabal, and it's being left up in the air writing-wise as to who the 'official' founder is. The Cabal recognized the island's natural rift seemed obnoxiously stable and long-lasting, so they set out to exploit it. Through use of tantric principles, demonology and exobiology, and other magical disciplines, The Cabal secretly established the nature of the campus. Shokushu would be a place of lust, and as such it was biased by them to naturally attract Mythids and Visitors interested in sexual congress of all the varying ways they could manage, for all the varying reasons they had. In exchange, the Cabal sometimes abducted monstrous spawn, siphoned life energy generated by said sexual congress with terrifyingly powerful tantric rituals, and continued to build their power. It's not known why the Cabal set this system up (even assuming you have the rare gift of knowing they exist at all), but it clearly empowered them.
There was a system in place. Nonsentient monsters and stubborn ones were watched and regulated. Students and monsters alike were studied (and sometimes in terrible magiscientific ways) for sick ends. There was a set of students marked as "Appropriate" to target by the monsters, and those that worked with the Cabal obeyed the dictum while those that didn't were consistently manipulated into respecting the approved list. Powerful rituals had been woven that actively protected knowledge of what was happening, from getting out. Emails and phonecalls self-censored or dropped, people who could be easily magic'd into incredulous disbelief at the claims of monsters, were. It was an intensely powerful blackout that so far has kept knowledge of the truth mostly constrained to the island and nowhere else. Girls (and it was largely if not exclusively girls) on the approved list that graduated seemed to leave normally, yet often went missing. Nobody to this day knows of their fate, even if there are numerous theories as to the truth.
However, one year and one half ago today, disaster struck. Somehow, the Cabal sensed it and managed to engineer a closing of the school, ushering the majority of residents back to the mainland (often using some method of control or another on the Aware - the slang term for residents who knew about the monsters), though not all of them. Afterwards, all hell broke loose. Nobody clearly remembers what happened, but the aftermath was clear. Much of the Cabal was wounded, dead, or in hiding so far their peers couldn't find them anymore. Monsters freely roamed the school grounds sans some warded areas. The place was abandoned for the intervening time. Any residents hapless enough to be left behind were at the monsters' mercy - proper breeders often taken for 'use', and others... it is best not to dwell on their fates.
But eventually, someone decided it was enough. Whether through a personal discovery, machinations of the Cabal's survivor, or just dumb luck, the current administrators discovered the school's woes were more than just some mundane building problem. Much work was needed, but wards were re-established (if never perfect...) monsters were kicked out of many places, some of the survivors were rescued and rehabilitated (somewhat), and soon? Shokushu was open for business again. But with the presence of their 'prey', the monsters in waiting were once again beckoned by the Cabal's eldritch working of lust, even as naturalized Mythids and Visitors might come in for simply hearing of the school, and all the native students and faculty members began coming to school...
What A Player Should And Should Not Know
The Masquerade
Natives, or humans born from lines that never once belonged to a Visitor (nor interbred with a Mythid), usually are outside of the Masquerade, the traditional practice of hiding the supernatural world away. To those natives, the world is shockingly like, if not almost indistinguishable from, the real world their players live in. Inhuman traits would usually be seen with shock or confusion, magic similarly, and for those without the intense iron will to stand up to the horrors of the unknown, witnessing a hostile monster is probably an encounter of significant terror. The Normals, as these natives are called sometimes, might have had contact with supernatural things, but certainly haven't learned about it let alone mastered aspects of it. The vast majority of important people visible publicly (presidents, senators, CEOs) are Normals, and this goes a long way to show the nature of the world.
Unmasqued World
However, for Mythids, Visitors, their descendants and/or relatives, and those Natives that have seen the truth and might even dabble in it, things are different. Often, Masquerader (a sometimes-term to avoid needing to rattle off such a massive list, of those that know the supernatural) politics is either completely detached from Normal politics and largely concerns different races or societies in conflict... or based on secretly manipulating the Normal world through infiltration, manipulation, and even gross mental or destiny manipulation. But usually, unmasquing one thing, tends to lead to eventually getting a picture of the entire supernatural world.
Probably the mightier forces are the arcanists (magic-using Visitors and Natives), night people (vampires, werewolves, and other night creatures usually born from converting humans), and a diverse group known as the Elders (highly powerful beings from any number of types that have enough sheer power and cunning to defy the arcanist and night people majorities). But with the nature of the rifts, nearly any creature can come from them, so any sentient can be on Earth or even thrive with their own community.
The School
Generally, Normals know jack all. Masqueraders... usually have an impression about it being a place where supernatural things are more likely to accumulate, and may be in touch with parts of the administration for explicitly such reasons. It's beginning to become known that the flow of new monsters is picking back up again, but it's still a somewhat obscure fact. It is much much harder to know about the Cabal though, and indeed for now it may mostly be OOC knowledge period.
The Premise And Backstory Of The School
The School
Shokushu Campus is a university and exclusive one at that. It has a strong academic reputation, is known for its superb women's programs and outreach, and is very unique in being in a sort of transnational space nominally under joint US-Japan jurisdiction, but in truth under neither. It is housed on a balmy island somewhere in the west Pacific with lush forests that manage to be just outside of the tropical zone enough to be slightly more familiarly temperate, excellent beaches with good (though not world-class) surfing to be had, and a handful of natural springs and other amenities.
The campus itself is a sweeping complex of buildings, with enough dorms to house thousands of students, additional residential blocks for even a large faculty, numerous office and administrative buildings, loads of classrooms, athletic and sports facilities (from team sports to professional gymnastics to professional swimming, most popular collegiate athletic programs are represented), enough cafeterias and mini-restaurants to please students and faculty alike... and finally the Shokushu Town, a small shopping district to let the people on the island get their hands on necessities and clothing and the like on what's otherwise an isolated boarding school on a Pacific island.
But... that's just the public side. There are also, among the legitimate uses for them, many forbidden areas in the basement especially, which is surprisingly sweeping for a school. Rumors of 'torture rooms' (Which in truth are nothing more than exquisite BDSM dungeons, sometimes with equipment you'd never see in the outside world), monster nests known among the 'aware' students, rooms dedicated to dark rituals, and quite possibly worse, abound in the school. Depending on the inclinations of a plot writer, there might even be one or two abandoned buildings (Don't go overboard with that!) or other unsavory things. The school also is the focal point of a massive dimensional weakness unparalleled since rifts probably dating thousands of years ago - this is the source of new monsters, and can easily be pushed 'further' to let them come into this Earth's dimension almost anywhere on or slightly past the shores of, the island. There are also likely monster nests, arcane hideaways, maybe even weirder things, out in the island's wilderness.
The World's History
The world isn't too far from the Earth our players live in, but for one major difference. Throughout its history, rifts sometimes formed around parts of its surface, as if drawn to some natural beacon or weakness of the planet in interdimensional space. This is where the Mythids and Visitors come from, as some arcanists native to the world have come to name them. Mythids are any being likely to fit in human mythology, folklore, or even fiction - Angels, vampires, kitsune, dragons, Lovecraft's abominations, I could go on - while Visitors are humans or things not quite of mythical import, usually distinguished (When not human) by possibly knowing magic but not inherently being magic. Either way, human civilization has had to coexist with Mythids and Visitors, though a problem they realized is that humans were usually too numerous to be attacked or conquered, and the supernatural too foreign to them for integration (other than in hiding) to be feasible. Prudence became tradition, and so to this day the Masquerade that hides magic, Mythids, and Visitors from the majority of humanity continues.
Of especial note is that foreign magic seems perfectly reliable, regardless of principle. Unless literal dependence on something physically peculiar to their home-plane is needed, the mystical properties a Visitor or Mythid brings with them, seem to be 'borrowed' by this Earth. Whether in being tied to those of that plane and any descendants, or truly embraced by the Earth and usable by native humans, it's not completely known (and some suspect it might vary depending on how contradictory to other magic and mundane nature, the supernatural properties are). Either way, this means natives have become mages, and even wildly contradictory tales or magics (such as the presence of multiple classes of demon that all operate in different ways) can coexist. It often leads to headaches to academics that pierce the Masquerade.
The School's History
Started sometime in the late 90s or early 2000s, Shokushu was the brainchild of a group only known as The Cabal, and it's being left up in the air writing-wise as to who the 'official' founder is. The Cabal recognized the island's natural rift seemed obnoxiously stable and long-lasting, so they set out to exploit it. Through use of tantric principles, demonology and exobiology, and other magical disciplines, The Cabal secretly established the nature of the campus. Shokushu would be a place of lust, and as such it was biased by them to naturally attract Mythids and Visitors interested in sexual congress of all the varying ways they could manage, for all the varying reasons they had. In exchange, the Cabal sometimes abducted monstrous spawn, siphoned life energy generated by said sexual congress with terrifyingly powerful tantric rituals, and continued to build their power. It's not known why the Cabal set this system up (even assuming you have the rare gift of knowing they exist at all), but it clearly empowered them.
There was a system in place. Nonsentient monsters and stubborn ones were watched and regulated. Students and monsters alike were studied (and sometimes in terrible magiscientific ways) for sick ends. There was a set of students marked as "Appropriate" to target by the monsters, and those that worked with the Cabal obeyed the dictum while those that didn't were consistently manipulated into respecting the approved list. Powerful rituals had been woven that actively protected knowledge of what was happening, from getting out. Emails and phonecalls self-censored or dropped, people who could be easily magic'd into incredulous disbelief at the claims of monsters, were. It was an intensely powerful blackout that so far has kept knowledge of the truth mostly constrained to the island and nowhere else. Girls (and it was largely if not exclusively girls) on the approved list that graduated seemed to leave normally, yet often went missing. Nobody to this day knows of their fate, even if there are numerous theories as to the truth.
However, one year and one half ago today, disaster struck. Somehow, the Cabal sensed it and managed to engineer a closing of the school, ushering the majority of residents back to the mainland (often using some method of control or another on the Aware - the slang term for residents who knew about the monsters), though not all of them. Afterwards, all hell broke loose. Nobody clearly remembers what happened, but the aftermath was clear. Much of the Cabal was wounded, dead, or in hiding so far their peers couldn't find them anymore. Monsters freely roamed the school grounds sans some warded areas. The place was abandoned for the intervening time. Any residents hapless enough to be left behind were at the monsters' mercy - proper breeders often taken for 'use', and others... it is best not to dwell on their fates.
But eventually, someone decided it was enough. Whether through a personal discovery, machinations of the Cabal's survivor, or just dumb luck, the current administrators discovered the school's woes were more than just some mundane building problem. Much work was needed, but wards were re-established (if never perfect...) monsters were kicked out of many places, some of the survivors were rescued and rehabilitated (somewhat), and soon? Shokushu was open for business again. But with the presence of their 'prey', the monsters in waiting were once again beckoned by the Cabal's eldritch working of lust, even as naturalized Mythids and Visitors might come in for simply hearing of the school, and all the native students and faculty members began coming to school...
What A Player Should And Should Not Know
The Masquerade
Natives, or humans born from lines that never once belonged to a Visitor (nor interbred with a Mythid), usually are outside of the Masquerade, the traditional practice of hiding the supernatural world away. To those natives, the world is shockingly like, if not almost indistinguishable from, the real world their players live in. Inhuman traits would usually be seen with shock or confusion, magic similarly, and for those without the intense iron will to stand up to the horrors of the unknown, witnessing a hostile monster is probably an encounter of significant terror. The Normals, as these natives are called sometimes, might have had contact with supernatural things, but certainly haven't learned about it let alone mastered aspects of it. The vast majority of important people visible publicly (presidents, senators, CEOs) are Normals, and this goes a long way to show the nature of the world.
Unmasqued World
However, for Mythids, Visitors, their descendants and/or relatives, and those Natives that have seen the truth and might even dabble in it, things are different. Often, Masquerader (a sometimes-term to avoid needing to rattle off such a massive list, of those that know the supernatural) politics is either completely detached from Normal politics and largely concerns different races or societies in conflict... or based on secretly manipulating the Normal world through infiltration, manipulation, and even gross mental or destiny manipulation. But usually, unmasquing one thing, tends to lead to eventually getting a picture of the entire supernatural world.
Probably the mightier forces are the arcanists (magic-using Visitors and Natives), night people (vampires, werewolves, and other night creatures usually born from converting humans), and a diverse group known as the Elders (highly powerful beings from any number of types that have enough sheer power and cunning to defy the arcanist and night people majorities). But with the nature of the rifts, nearly any creature can come from them, so any sentient can be on Earth or even thrive with their own community.
The School
Generally, Normals know jack all. Masqueraders... usually have an impression about it being a place where supernatural things are more likely to accumulate, and may be in touch with parts of the administration for explicitly such reasons. It's beginning to become known that the flow of new monsters is picking back up again, but it's still a somewhat obscure fact. It is much much harder to know about the Cabal though, and indeed for now it may mostly be OOC knowledge period.
