OOC PLOTTING — EVENT #1

[collectedmods]

JULY 15TH - JULY 17TH

Time in the mall thus far has been ripe with tension - between the silence, the lack of resources, and the worrying conditions outside, it’s normal for morale to be less than high. But on the early morning of the 15th, things will truly take a turn for the wicked.

Starting on July 15th, and continuing on until the following Wednesday, characters will find that there are doppelgangers of them in the mall.

The first sign of this will come on the first day they even appear: in the early morning of the 15th, just as the radioactive sun is starting to rise and characters begin to stir from slumber, they’ll find a smoking heap of… bodies of mall residents with matching clothes to boot outside the mall’s front doors, cooking in the radioactive sun. And with them? Most of what was left of the frozen rations from the food court’s freezers. No more philly steak and cheese hot pockets!

On the First Floor, much of the remaining furniture that had not been in immediate use by characters has been torn apart and thrown into the toxic waters below. Floating amongst these dismantled furniture pieces are what appear to be drowned bodies of mall residents.

Doppelgangers found on the first day of this event are more likely to resemble characters whom have survival experience, or have adapted well to the mall thus far. Inspecting any of these first bodies discovered will reveal that they are identical to mall residents down to the fingerprints. Characters may retrieve the bodies from the First Floor and even the outside (if they work quickly enough) for inspection.

JULY 17TH - JULY 21ST

Throughout the rest of the week, characters can be expected to be dealing with a myriad of trouble from these doubles:

» Witnessing doppelgangers sabotaging survival efforts. Most commonly, doppelgangers will be doing things throughout the week like destroying food, cutting power lines, ruining water piping - you name it. They are difficult to catch, as they flee whenever seen, and can contort into impossible shapes to evade capture. If captured, they will either continue struggling until they escape or are killed, or they will try to convince their captor that they are the original - and if threatened, will begin to beg for their life (convincingly.) See below for more information about the doppelgangers themselves.

» Hearing screams for help identical to the mall residents' voices. Doppelgangers will be extremely convincing actors, and will attempt to lure away and confuse resident characters by any means necessary.

» The doppelgangers become more similar to their “originals” as the week goes on. Doppelgangers will be able to act increasingly in likeness to their originals towards the end of the week. Each day they continue living, they become smarter, more convincing, more advanced at impersonating their originals. This means that if they are witnessed apart from their “original” in the latter parts of the week, they may be capable of carrying on simple conversations and acting as their “original” in order to create confusion and plant seeds of doubt over who is the “real” one.

JULY 22ND

Almost as abruptly as they’d come, the doppelgangers will meet their end on the following Wednesday: those who had not already been killed by characters present in the mall will be found dead on the morning of the 22nd.

Corpses will be in every inch of the mall, and killed in a bunch of different ways: some look to be freshly killed, as though they had been ambushed by surprise (throat slit from behind, pushed from a high area, etc.) Others seem as though they have been dead for days - and are beginning to rot. These corpses will not disappear, and will need to be cleaned up or disposed of by the characters, unless they’d like the mall to start smelling a whole lot worse. Get to work, shoppers!

More than anything, their sudden appearance and equally sudden demise does beg the question - can you trust the ones around you?

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NOTES

Welcome to Collected’s first main event! We’re going to provide some additional notes about the doppelgangers here, so everyone will know what they’re dealing with:

» Doppelgangers are identical physically to their originals.

» Doppelgangers DO NOT have the magical or supernatural abilities of their originals. They will retain only the skills and abilities related to their physiology (like physical strength), as they are biological duplicates (or mechanical, in the case of androids).

» Doppelgangers will be wearing clothes identical to the ones characters arrived in.

» There is only ONE copy of each character in the mall. This means that if you would like to have your character among the first ones discovered by characters, they won’t find another copy of their doppelganger doing things throughout the mall for the remainder of the event.

» Doppelgangers can be killed - they are not immortal and will not heal the same way characters do in the setting. However, they are extremely difficult to capture, and will flee if they are witnessed participating in sabotage, or if they are caught impersonating their original. Of note is the fact that they are strangely able to contort into impossible shapes to evade capture - bending limbs the other way, folding in half, that kind of deal.

» You are free to NPC your own doppelganger (so long as you’re not solely tagging as your double the entire event). If you’d like to handwave other characters witnessing your doppelganger doing things throughout the week, or handwave your doppelganger successfully interacting with your CR while impersonating your character, that is fine as well!

You may use this plotting post to plot out what your evil double will be up to throughout the week, where their body will be found (and what state it will be in/how it seemingly died), or what your character will be doing to stop/capture/kill them! And anything else you come up with - as always, these ideas are not exhaustive, and we want players to interpret their own ways to interact with the event.

The event log will be going up on July 15th at 6:00PM PST. For any remaining questions you have about the event - feel free to ask them HERE in the Questions comment.

Comments

[oomfies]

lottie's double won't be discovered on the first day because she's a blogger who has No Life Skills(tm), so here's her schedule for the week:

JULY 15TH - JULY 17TH

○ wanna come complain and theorize about why the food is slowly disappearing? come talk to the resident conspiracy theorist and let her talk at you!!

○ generally she'll be pretty useless as far as retrieving the bodies from the outside.. lottie is a weenie. BUT she's more likely to put in the effort if other people encourage her to do so.

JULY 17TH - JULY 21ST

○ first and foremost feel free to assume your character has seen another girl with green hair roaming around, being mischievous and just as awkward at conversation! i'd love for her to deal with people being suspicious of her.

○ on that note, if you want your doppelganger to be spotted by her or for lottie to talk to them, let me know! i'm extremely down to play stuff re: her being super confused that she just saw you go the other way. as far as her double specifically she'll be ruining most of the things that are cosmetic in the store, along with destroying the gym - like the pipes, etc.

○ in response to all the weird shit happening and feeling like she's being watched, lottie is going to just stop sleeping! yay! if you want to meet with a woman who really feels like she's one step from snapping, let's do it.

○ optionally, come find lottie mid breakdown!! yes, this is happening. her allergy medication will mysteriously go missing, and that'll truly be the tipping point. she won't do anything crazy, she'll just be Very Sad and Gross. maybe violent.. who knows 👀

○ want to fight an angry blogger? she won't be very good at it but she LOVES putting the blame on other people. a lot of potential for negative cr and some arguments while the doubles steal their shit or smth

JULY 22ND

○ hello YES i would LOVE to play out stuff re: cleaning up her corpse!! lottie is a very gentle soul and would absolutely freak out and cry about this. despite how horrified she'd be she wouldn't want anyone else dealing with 'her' body so, even though she'd be hesitant to ask, she would appreciate help dearly.

○ when she's a little more desensitized, she'll be reluctantly cleaning up all the organs and blood around the mall where she can! come join her with the trashy cleaning supplies available and mop up

when the log goes up i'll be putting up a top level when i figure out a couple openers, but if you want a specialized starter with lottie and/or her double, please feel free to let me know! ❤︎