This world is inhabited by creatures that we call pokemon. People and pokemon live together by supporting each other, but now the scourge threatens the safety of the entire region. Kohaku has become a dangerous place, where children stay at home and only brave souls go adventuring.
Welcome to KOHAKU. Come for the nightmares. Stay for the tea and crumpets.
The season is SUMMER. It is easy for survivors to forage for food from the land, as there are entire abandoned farms ready for harvest. On the downside, you can smell the corpses.
swarms
GRAND OPENING !
Welcome to KOHAKU REGION's grand opening! If you're interested in joining, come check out our grand opening giveaway!
Castle Forlorn was a strange place - in here he felt different, in control, more tuned and accepting of the fact that he was not just the owner of a scourge pokemon, that he was part of the scourge itself. Sometimes - occasionally, not as much as he'd liked to - he visited by himself, a tangible presence, a real body that could live and die at the land's whim. Other times, the land claimed him in his sleep, pouncing like a predator cornering its prey, and he was different, different each time. It was strange.
Pillows at Castle Forlorn - like every other piece of furniture - were always worn, stuffing bleeding out of the pillowcases in ugly tufts of white. The beds, on the other hand, were decent enough to sleep on, but the heavy, hot sheets weren't ever to his liking, and it looked like the land had no intention of amending that error anytime soon. It was a far, far stretch from the shade of an oak tree, gentle sounds of waves crashing where no one could intrude.
Ethan sighed, and Azazel laughed - giggled, rather. Ghosts didn't sleep, but it was somehow fascinating to watch two humans do so, together.
y5NFLQGW > 50 ethan gets out of bed > 50 disturbs deryn < 10 ethan turns on deryn < 10 azazel(spiritomb) turns on deryn 1-33 regular clothes 34-66 fancy dinner clothes 65-99 no clothes 100 pajamas
Deryn slowly entered that strange half-awake state where you can’t really tell if you’re dreaming or not. Sadly, it wasn’t an unfamiliar feeling. With the half-awakeness came an almost useless half-sense of awareness; the first thing she became aware of was a stuffy feeling that was hard to identify, then she gradually noticed something was different about the bed. It was different… It wasn’t familiar.
Oh great, had the bossy lady rearranged her room while she had been gone? The scene played out easily in Deryn’s mind – her and her step-monster arguing silly muffled words that turned into gibberish and ended with a sigh and that woman’s children giggling at the whole scene.
Wait. Those sounds hadn’t been imaginary; they had been way too clear. Deryn’s eyes shot open at the realisation and the first thing she saw was an ugly ceiling and an even uglier chandelier. It was hard to make out too much, but Deryn swore she saw something red.
“The hell?”
She turned her head to see if the walls were even more horrendously decorated, and got a double-hit combo. First was the sight of some weird, albeit nicely dressed, albino guy lying right beside her, and the second was the feeling of some pillow stuffing crawling from her hair onto her neck.
It did not feel like pillow stuffing. Pillow stuffing did not crawl.
CSFERUPJ <80 flails >80 screams <40 lashes out at ethan while flailing/scream shatters something shit needed replacing anyway <50 hair is full of pillow fluff 1-33 fancy victorian dress with way too many skirts 34-66 toga 67-99 bunny suit 100 jeans and t-shirt
Ethan contemplated getting out of bed. But the sheets were heavy, overbearing. It made his limbs feel heavy, and he sunk deeper into the mattress, muttering under his breath about heat and lack of oxygen. To his side, Azazel giggled again, and Ethan quirked an eyebrow at it, rolling over at about the same time he heard another voice, the voice of a woman.
"Huh-?" Something came flying at his face. Most of the impact landed in the pillows - two particularly wild lashes veered off to the side, behind Ethan as opposed to beside him. One knocked the hat off of his head, and the other came into contact with the vase that sat on the nightstand. The container wobbled twice, some of the water escaping to drench Azazel's base in a film of gray-black water. Ethan would've laughed if he hadn't been scrambling to get out of the bed, mostly to escape this woman's fists.
"Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry. This is all a big misunderstanding, I swear." He backed away, rubbing at the back of his neck while Azazel giggled up a storm. This woman's clothes were fancy - looking down at his own clothes, he deduced that they were probably party contenders the night before, but could remember nothing of it happening. Was the punch spiked? Had he been slipped drugs? Ethan pouted, even idly thinking about this made his head hurt, so he quit while he still could.
kvn9CbXJ < 50 recognizes the LoN > 50 the room morphs into something else < 30 the pillow fluff is actually scourge
“The hell it is!” Deryn snapped angrily. This loser was going to be so, so sorry by the time she was done with him. Because as she currently understood it, this was all his fault. Deryn had had nothing to do with… with this, so it had to be him. Luckily to Ethan, she didn’t think on this too much as whatever had been crawling on her neck had dropped to her shoulder. One of them, anyway.
There was an eerie second of silence as Deryn stared at the scourge Joltik. Her first thought was that it smelled bad and needed a bath. Her second thought was ew. The Pokemon didn’t even need to be a scourge one to freak her out.
7OxtBhgO >50 resumes flailing <50 ten or so scourge joltik burst out of her pillow
As much as she wanted to swing her arms around and try to shake the scourge off, Deryn forced herself to stay calm. After a deep breath Deryn flicked the tiny Pokemon off her shoulder and jumped off the bed before any extras could crawl onto her. She bent over and – ow, why did bending over hurt? what the hell was she wearing? – brushed her hair upside down in case there were any other scourge Pokemon hiding in there. (Ew did another just fall out? She would have shuddered if it weren't for the uncomfortable victorian getup).
Deryn shouted something very un-ladylike before straightening up again and flipping her hair back. She didn’t bother looking around the room – it was poorly decorated and looked after anyway and didn’t deserve to be looked at – and instead focused her gaze on the guy she had woken up next to.
Okay, it was a glare. Very much a glare. She still blamed him for everything that had happened.
“What’s the big idea?” she demanded. “That was disgusting!”
He winced. Half of him said that this was Spiritomb's fault, but heaven knew how the pokemon would have managed to haul both him and this woman to an isolated room without either of them remembering the process. Drugs, maybe? Then again, what kind of drugs induced amnesia, of all things?
A joltik appeared out of the corner of his eye, perching itself precariously on her shoulder before the woman flicked it off with a finger. Ethan stifled the urge to laugh, just a little bit - not at her expense, but at the type of location that the bug pokemon would have chosen to live in, of all things. Those pillows were scratchy, with bristly, coarse fibers that had a quality of barely passable softness about them. Not a lot of them slept in the Castle, and now he had a better idea of the underlying reasons.
"Oh, no, that wasn't me. They like to make their homes in the pillows sometimes, that's all." Realizing that this was the Land of Nightmares lifted a huge pressure off his chest, but relieved nothing of the confusion that still muddled his mind at this strange set of circumstances that they were in. "I can't control them or anything, but this is my home, in a way. I have no idea how this," He gestured at the bed, then held up his hands, not quite backing away but not exactly approaching, either(because she was scary, at least, that was the impression he'd gotten). "happened, honest."
Cautiously, Ethan drew closer, eying Deryn's clothing with a strange sort of fascination. "Was there a party that you were attending last night, miss? There's food in the the other room if you're hungry, and I can explain everything, if you'd give me the time to." He adjusted his tie, placed the fallen hat back on his head and grinned cheekily at her.
The Joltik scuttled underneath the bed and didn't resurface.
bg|ytpsb < 50 the ground falls from underneath them > 50 ceiling starts sinking down < 30 doors disappear < 50 furniture disappears
Deryn shot a glance at the pillow that was somewhere between disturbed and disgusted. Talk about bed bugs. She still didn’t entirely trust the albino’s words, but she did admit to herself that if what he said were lies, they were stupid ones. Who in their right mind would lie about living in this place? A place that was infested as well as dirty and unfashionable.
She gave him a hard stare, and said “Okay. I believe you.” She didn’t, of course, but he didn’t need to know that. “Your home is in serious need of redecorating – and you need to get rid of those disgusting little Joltik.” Seriously, it really said something about the state of your house if you had scourge Pokemon living in your pillows.
Wait. Ew. Ew. Ew. Deryn shuddered. A scourge Pokemon had touched her. Gross, she needed a bath as soon as she got out of this place, and then— “Party? What party? I was nowhere near a party,” she answered automatically. She hadn’t been to a party in months and sure was sure not many others had either. Before she could reject the food offer and demand an explanation now (but not before she noticed the tie, hat and cheeky grin), the floor disappeared under her feet.
Instinctively she grabbed for the bed, but fat lot of good that did; the bed was falling with her. Out of options, Deryn screamed. “What the hell is happening?! Where’d it go?!” This was all that stupid guy’s fault. It had to be. Him and his bloody grin. Him and his bloody weird Pokemon. Deryn squeezed her eyes shut.
HBOTfNFp <70 they land in the dining room 71-90 fall is broken by the bed 91-99 they land on the soft belly of a scourge snorlax 100 splat! cold hard ground
Ethan's eyes widened to saucers. "Really?" His grin grew wider. Most of him hadn't expected that to go as well as it had. "That's great! I can't make any promises about the joltik, but I definitely agree with you about the decor." He wrinkled his nose, as if that would prove some sort of point. What he didn't mention was that the castle was shared by the other agents, too, never mind how many. One of them had probably chosen these drab living quarters.
"Huh, that's weird." He put a finger on his chin and thought hard, hard enough for his brain to explode while still coming up with nothing. Personally, Ethan thought that it was funny how he'd thought hard enough to make the floor disappear, as well, yet still failing to come up with an explanation as to why they'd ended up here, of all places. Azazel was having fun - the spirit was giggling madly to itself, and the idea of falling didn't bother him that much, but the uncertainty was unnerving. "Don't worry! We won't die or anything!" He was fairly sure this was a dream. If it were his true body in the Castle, his reaction would probably have been drastically different.
It wasn't a long fall. Granted, it wasn't a short fall, either, but they landed in a room with a table and chairs set for two, and all of his limbs were still in tact, so that was a start. "Look, miss!" He ran over and tugged at Deryn's sleeve, trying to get her to look at the table, laden with food. "The food here is great, I promise! I can explain everything there, c'mon, try some!"
It was hard to tell if this guy was gullible, stupid, or just having her on.
Having just gone through an experience where Deryn was pretty sure that she was falling to her death, the grumpiness had been temporarily shocked out of her. She just stood there, on her feet, on the actual ground, staring wide-eyed at nothing. “I’m… alive..?” Well shit, Mr. Everything-here-is-his-fault had been right. They were both alive and in one piece.
One piece each. It would’ve been too nightmarish if they had somehow ended up with their bodies mashed up into one Frankenstein monster of a body.
Deryn didn’t even look around the room this time. She pulled her arm away from the albino guy but looked at the table anyway. She regretted it the moment she did. She turned away. She wanted to throw up. And if the guy, whom she now pinned as unsettlingly enthusiastic, forced some organy goodness down her throat, Deryn was pretty sure it wouldn’t stay in there for every long.
She pulled the albino by the arm to pull him closer to her – there was no way she was turning back around to talk to him – so she could snap into his ear, of course. Deryn didn’t waste her time. “Do you think this funny? Do you really? This is ten times more disgusting than the last thing! No, a hundre—a thousand times!
“I want an explanation now, and you’re going to give it to me now. You clear on that?”
Worst. Date. Ever.
qSTKgBCl 100 it gets better >80 food turns into something edible
citrus wow ethan is adorbs. i wish i could've given him someone just as cute to interact with.
...
<20 something overcomes deryn and everything she says is enthusiastic and with a smile
"Of course you're alive! This place isn't that mean." It was pretty obvious that this woman had never visited the land in her dreams before. Most who did tended to realize that the land would never let its fun end so quickly. Sometimes it formed attachments, but that in itself was rare and sometimes backfired, a double-edged sword.
The land liked to play pranks sometimes, but from sounds of things, that sort of explanation wouldn't work here. Instead, he frowned a little, tapping his chin with a finger. "I didn't do this on purpose. The um, chef likes to spice things up a bit once in awhile. Sometimes normal food gets a little bit boring, right?" She was more than a little bit intimidating, he decided, but didn't pull away immediately. Rather, he grinned a little bit wider and marched them both(or attempted to, anyways) over to the table, staring down at the food.
"Besides, it's not what it looks like, see?" On the table, the organs were trembling, glowing a pale shade of grey that continued for a few seconds before subsiding altogether.
AJNktt9d > 50 the organs are made of something edible < 50 made of something inedible 1-33 black scourge goo in the shape of organs 34-66 disturbingly realistic glass organs 67-99 ethan/deryn's organs 100 holograms
dizzy haha i really like deryn, the contrast between them is great thread content! hopefully she doesn't hate ethan too much by the end of this thread, these dice rolls are pretty fabulous haha.
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"into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely."
Of course she was alive? The place isn’t that mean? Again, Deryn was compelled to say it: “The hell? What are you on about?” Suddenly she realised that something really bad had happened to her, something that only happened to people in movies or books. Because real people didn’t wake up in a mysterious old-styled place in outdated clothes with only a crazy person to talk to. (He just had to be crazy – look at how carefree he was!)
Wait, no, scratch that. It – this – wasn’t bad. This was bullshit.
Like the albino crazy guy’s explanation. Seriously, was that the best explanation he could come up with? He had told her nothing. Nothing useful, anyway. Deryn was pretty sure that she could have lived the rest of her life without worry if she didn’t know that there was a sick chef hanging around somewhere.
Deryn didn’t look back at the food. She wasn’t falling for that again.
“Who are you?” Deryn asked, not really expecting an honest answer. “And why am I here?” There were thousands of girls in Kohaku – more than that, even – so why did she have to be the one in this ridiculous situation?
citrus i know what you mean! (contrast + dice rolls). and i hope so too. ethan's being so nice and all.
"You really don't know?" Ethan tilted his head at her. When it became obvious that the answer was 'no', he shrugged his shoulders, unconsciously straightening his tie. "What I mean is that this place is alive, miss! It's what makes it so different and fun from what we're so used to. Fate and luck don't seem to exist her. It's all up to the house itself to decide." Now that he thought about it, the explanation didn't make the situation any easier to understand. Ethan rubbed at the back of his neck and continued to grin. "...Sorry if I didn't explain that too well, it's a pretty unique place."
When the organs stopped blurring in and out of reality, they'd gained a light sheen to them. At the right angle, it was relatively easy to see that they were simply glass ornaments, nothing more. Not seeing them was a different story. In an attempt to relieve some of the earlier tension, Ethan picked up a random organ - a heart - and held it in front of the other woman's face, at eye level. "Hey, look here, miss! I'm really telling the truth!" As the last syllable left his lips, he dropped the object. It landed on the ground with a sharp, shattering noise that somehow sounded more brittle in the vast emptiness of the castle. "See? Told you so."
"You mean my name?" Ethan thought it over, then nodded his head. "It's Aiden. I live here, most of the time. As for why you're here..." Somehow, he doubted she would take 'I don't know' for an answer. "Would you believe me if I told you it was the house's decision?"
2FmXoXNs < 50 the land approves of deryn > 50 the land disapproves of deryn as a result... 1-33 earthquake 34-66 scourge appear 67-99 transported to a different room 100 room bursts into flames
Deryn wanted to hit him. No, she didn’t really know. That should have been obvious. But then, it should have been obvious to her that the person she suspected of being crazy wasn’t all there.
The second explanation was so odd, not to mention downright ridiculous, that it almost gave Deryn a headache. A house decided everything? It was alive? It suddenly occurred to Deryn that she should probably try and make a run for it. Who knew what crazy things would happen nex—
“Ew, no, what is that?!” Deryn covered her eyes with her hand. “I told you, I don’t want to look at it!” Covering her eyes was a bad idea, it turned out, as when she heard a sharp sound of something breaking, Deryn had no idea what it was and jumped. She had to look now, if only to make sure some more creepy Joltik hadn’t had a part in it.
It was glass. Oh… wait, no, ‘oh’ was not the appropriate response here! The correct response was:
“Oh, no. I’ve believed you once already.” And right after she had, the floor had done a bloody vanishing act.“You’ve used up today’s quota, Aiden.” If that was his real name.
And right before Deryn could make a nasty comment about the absurd idea of a building – of all things! – being able to make stupid things happen, something felt different. The room started to shake.
Deryn just stood dumb for a moment before she realised that it was an earthquake, and when that happened she dropped to the ground and covered her head. A stray piece of broken glass tried to dig at her through her ridiculous dress.
Everything was getting worse and worse. Even when the earthquake had stopped, Deryn wanted to stay as she was, curled on the ground. If she tried hard enough, she was sure that she’d wake up from this stupid nightmare.
w6OqE|pf <50 walls and ceiling crack <50 chandeliers fall down
"That one was a mistake!" Honestly, he hadn't expected things to turn out the way they had. The fact that the 'food' prepared for them was actually organs made out of glass did wonders to show how the land was feeling about its new guest, or perhaps, even the two of them in general. "I really had nothing to do with this. Or that." He pointed to the shards of glass that were on the floor, worrying his lower lip. Somebody was going to have to clean that up later on.
He straightened himself up and turned towards her, ready to ask about her name, or perhaps suggest to talk it out in a civil manner if he didn't have to rebuff any more accusations and suspicions. As he opened his mouth, the room gave a sudden, all too familiar lurch and began to shake violently. Ethan fell to one knee, the hat falling off his head and rolling to a stop somewhere near where the other woman currently lay. The walls began to split from the base up - long, thin, growing wider by the second. "Ah, that won't do." Ethan shook his head violently, eyes sparkling.
"C'mon, miss, we gotta get out of here!" He ran over and tugged at her hand, dress, something that he could grab onto, trying to get her attention.
|O168p1t < 50 room begins to disintegrate < 50 ceiling begins to fall down < 30 scourge appear < 50 doors close/lock them inside
Oh, as if she’d fall for that! That wasn’t a mistake – there were no mistakes. This was just some horribly thought-out… joke! Or something! Deryn didn’t know and the lack of knowledge and control was grating at her mind just as much as all the insane things that were happening.
Unaware that she was doing so, Deryn had started to chant, “Wake up, wake up,” in a quiet voice. It was all she wanted. She had had enough of this – all of it.
Unfortunately, this (whatever it really was, she wasn’t so sure) didn’t feel the same way. She didn’t wake up and disappear. She was still here, and now the crazy guy was tugging at her, saying something about getting out of here. Deryn looked up at him, stared him hard in the eyes. She sniffed, then she snapped at him.
tI7bXMdi 1-33 yes 34-66 no 67-99 piss off 100 unintelligble something
“No!”
She glared at Aiden. He was weird. He was crazy. And, strangest of all, he never once freaked out like a normal person should. Deryn didn’t trust him. Hell, even the name he gave was probably a trick too – she might as well just think of him as Bob.
“Just—” Her voice cracked. “Just leave me alone!”
While Deryn was vaguely aware that the room was disappearing and that monsters had appeared, she found it hard to run. Her gut told her that wherever she ran there would always be more monsters, and wherever she ran she’d find something just as bad as before. Deryn knew she couldn’t win. She might as well disintegrate with the rest of the room.
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