✿ EMERALD

[dramatispersonae]

You find yourself in a musty rectangular room floored with tatami. The room is not large, but luckily fits your team without seeming too claustrophobic. It seems to have been set up as a sort of study. There is a low desk against one wall, covered in stacks of paper cards and writing utensils. Near the desk are, of course, cushions for everyone to sit on. A circular latticed window is set into the wall perpendicular to the desk. Bright moonlight filters through, enough to provide illumination for your task. If you look through the window, you can just barely make out the shapes of a shadowy garden beyond and below… you must be at least on the second floor.

The other end of the room is dominated by a large apothecary's chest. There are many, many drawers, but none of them open save for the fourteen in the middle that have been painted with team colors. A hand-lettered sign has been placed on top of the chest: "Please turn in your stories here."

Comments

Round One

[dramatispersonae]

(Game instructions are here!)

Please discuss these answers with your team and submit using the textarea. You can choose the same team more than once in the team selection. Answers are due at 5PST

Where does your character live?
What is your character's backstory?
What do they do every day?
How does this make them feel?
What are three things that would make their life worse?
What are three things that would make their life better?

Choose 1-3 teams whose lives you would like to improve.
Choose 1 team that you think has a good idea of how to make someone miserable.
Choose 1 team to take some of their sadness on yourselves.

[your team]'s character lives [____] When they were a child, they [____]. Now that they are older, every day, they [____]. This makes them feel [____]. Three things that would make their life worse: <li> <li> <li> Three things that would make their life better: <li> <li> <li> <b>Team Selections:</b> Improve their lives (1-3): Good at making someone miserable (1): Take their sadness (1):

Discussion

[dramatispersonae]

Re: Discussion

[irishluck]

Heh! Can't say thinking negative's something I'm good at.

Re: Discussion

[brotagonist]

You again!

Re: Discussion

[brotagonist]

Terrible lives?! But at least we're trying to make the other teams' lives better...

Re: Discussion

[galacticfairy]

What a morbid game...

Submission

[dramatispersonae]

Re: Submission

[brotagonist]

Emerald's character lives in a world ravaged with famine without cows, controlled by a dictatorial church that forbids any non-church entertainment to control the populace. When she was a child, she was convicted for singing in public and falsely accused of plotting against the King, then kidnapped and beaten by papal knights before being thrown in a prison camp to be experimented on. Part of their throat turned to crystal. Now that she is older, every day, she tries to practice singing despite being unable to and plan how to escape and change the world. This makes her feel sad, but determined.

Three things that would make her life worse:

Her home being destroyed by monsters

A person she cares about dying

Mismatched underwear

Three things that would make her life better:

Making the world a place she was able to sing freely in public

Finding her voice

Eating cow with rice

Team Selections:
Improve their lives (1-3): Ruby, Coral, Turquoise
Good at making someone miserable (1): Turquoise
Take their sadness (1): Coral

Round Two

[dramatispersonae]

Please discuss these answers with your team and submit using the textarea. You can choose the same team more than once in the team selection. [Answers are due at 6PM PST]

What is the worst feeling in the world?
What is the best feeling to have?
What is the worst thing to lose?
What is the best thing to find?

Choose 1-2 teams whose life you would like to improve.
Choose 1 team that you think has a good idea of how to make someone miserable.
Choose 1 team to take some of their sadness on yourselves.
Choose 1 team and come up with a creative way to terrorize them with kindness.

<b>Worst feeling:</b> <b>Best feeling:</b> <b>Worst thing to lose:</b> <b>Best thing to find:</b> <b>Team Selections:</b> Improve their life (2): Good at making someone miserable (1): Take their sadness (1): Creative happiness (1): . . . what do you want to do to them?:

Discussion

[dramatispersonae]

Re: Discussion

[galacticfairy]

Helplessness, success, your health, and a beautiful place...

Re: Discussion

[fraternalorders]

[is there suddenly, what, where did he come from]

Interesting questions.

Submission

[dramatispersonae]

Re: Submission

[brotagonist]

Worst feeling: helplessness
Best feeling: success
Worst thing to lose: health
Best thing to find: love

Team Selections:
Improve their life (2): heliodor, carnelian
Good at making someone miserable (1): jasper
Take their sadness (1): sapphire
Creative happiness (1): ruby
. . . what do you want to do to them?:

"We're going to sing for them, because Slick wanted it. And send them wheat, and statues of soldiers with short skirts, and raise all their battleships from the bottom of the ocean. Oh, and what's an Emerald thing to do for them? We'll give them alcohol, I guess, since that's our name thing." - Sheryl Nome!!

Round Three

[dramatispersonae]

Emerald's character lives in a world ravaged with famine without cows, controlled by a dictatorial church that forbids any non-church entertainment to control the populace. When she was a child, she was convicted for singing in public and falsely accused of plotting against the King, then kidnapped and beaten by papal knights before being thrown in a prison camp to be experimented on. Part of their throat turned to crystal. Now that she is older, every day, she tries to practice singing despite being unable to and plan how to escape and change the world. This makes her feel sad, but determined.

One day, things change quite suddenly . . .! Write a paragraph (or more) of their story to include all of the following elements:

One of the corpses in the haunted house is the head of that criminal organization! They can then replace the head of that organization and TURN IT INTO SOMETHING GOOD, thus securing themselves a job.

They could destroy the darkness.

They could catch leprosy so their necrophobia would be triggered when they look into a mirror

That person becoming more unstable

A lucky charm.

Mismatched underwear

You MUST use all of these suggestions, and you cannot ADD any additional events (though you can be creative with how you use them).

The teams that played against you in Round 1 were Coral, Ruby, Peridot, Sapphire.

Discussion

[dramatispersonae]

Re: Discussion

[brotagonist]

Whoa.

Re: Discussion

[fraternalorders]

[...huh]

I see.

Submission

[dramatispersonae]

Re: Submission

[brotagonist]

Emerald's character lives in a world ravaged with famine without cows, controlled by a dictatorial church that forbids any non-church entertainment to control the populace. When she was a child, she was convicted for singing in public and falsely accused of plotting against the King, then kidnapped by papal knights before being thrown in a prison camp to be experimented on. Part of her throat turned to crystal. Now that she is older, every day, she tries to practice singing despite being unable to and plan how to escape and change the world. This makes her feel sad, but determined.

One day, things change quite suddenly . . .! She finds out that the prison is haunted, and tries to make friends with the ghosts. She's the only one who can do it, since she's got no voice but they can hear her singing anyway. When everyone sees her able to talk with spirits, they make her the head of the church instead, and since they're really criminals, she gets access to all their underground contacts! She frees the rest of the world and the church becomes her fanclub, but when they try to fix her voice, it becomes unstable and the crystal gets... transferred to her bra instead?! And that's bad because she doesn't have enough support and her underwear is mismatched?! What the hell is this story?! I quit!

Final Round

[dramatispersonae]

Emerald's character lives in a world ravaged with famine without cows, controlled by a dictatorial church that forbids any non-church entertainment to control the populace. When she was a child, she was convicted for singing in public and falsely accused of plotting against the King, then kidnapped by papal knights before being thrown in a prison camp to be experimented on. Part of her throat turned to crystal. Now that she is older, every day, she tries to practice singing despite being unable to and plan how to escape and change the world. This makes her feel sad, but determined.

One day, things change quite suddenly . . .! She finds out that the prison is haunted, and tries to make friends with the ghosts. She's the only one who can do it, since she's got no voice but they can hear her singing anyway. When everyone sees her able to talk with spirits, they make her the head of the church instead, and since they're really criminals, she gets access to all their underground contacts! She frees the rest of the world and the church becomes her fanclub, but when they try to fix her voice, it becomes unstable and the crystal gets... transferred to her bra instead?! And that's bad because she doesn't have enough support and her underwear is mismatched?! What the hell is this story?! I quit!

However, she still has to face the oncoming darkness, which she does quite bravely and destroys it. Though before its defeat it offers a crushing blow of its own in the form of a leprosy so insidious it could trigger necrophobia.

That's disgusting! You could have the whole story end right there and it would be terrible -- "she had bad skin for the rest of her life, and she was sick and dying, and she couldn't even be friends with ghosts anymore because she was afraid of dead people"! Hmph! Well, it can still get worse. Obviously it turns out the mismatched underwear that was part crystal was a good luck charm that was going to save her from the leprosy! Except this is a depressing story, so it was a depressing good luck charm... let's see... it saved her life, but when she put it on, it turned her into a cow, because that was the secret plan of the criminal-church-human-farm-people all along to solve the cow shortage. She tries to sing a goodbye song to thank everyone who helped her up until that point, but it just comes out moooooooo. Her cow song brought all the cows back to the world, but what the hell, she wanted to be a sexy human and sing human songs, and she couldn't even eat cows now that she was a cow! This is definitely he saddest story anyone has ever told.

...that is really sad...

I could cry just thinking about it! I'd rather sing and start dying than be a cow and get stuck singing moosic!

M-moosic. . .

You know, "moo moo moo" instead of "la la la."

But the story doesn't end here. A friendly team, Amethyst, wishes to help cheer your character up with the following story element:

Send Sunshine to ambush them with waffles.

Continue the story by writing a paragraph (or more) including the gift of kindness, as well as the following elements:

The best thing to find is the power of friendship! But behold! It was there all along!

Despair

Losing people important to you

You MUST use all of these suggestions, and you cannot ADD any additional events (though you can be creative with how you use them).

THEN:
Write a happy ending.
Write a bad end.
Which do you prefer, and why?

After you're done, you may proceed to endgame.

<b>Story:</b> <b>Happy Ending:</b> <b>Bad end:</b> <b>Which do you prefer, and why?</b>

Discussion

[dramatispersonae]

Re: Discussion

[fraternalorders]

...Waffles.

Submission

[dramatispersonae]

Re: Submission

[galacticfairy]

Story: Her friends ambushed her with waffles to cheer her up, but she despaired because cows can’t eat waffles. And, so, as a cow, she lost a lot of the human friends she had made, especially when they realized she wouldn’t eat their cheer-up waffles. But the ghosts were still there for her, so he power of friendship was there all along. It was a shame that they were ghosts and still dead.

Happy Ending: One day she tried a waffle anyway and it was magic and she got everything back and sang anywhere she wanted!

Bad end: She died.

No one ate her with rice.

The power of friendship stopped them from turning this into a cannibalism story, after all.

Which do you prefer, and why? The first one, obviously. Who doesn’t want to hear her sing and not be a cow?