C&C HOLIDAY JAMJAR ICE HOTEL HELL: AFTER-AFTER-AFTER-AFTER-PARTY

[bluffing-ruffle.livejournal.com]

WHO: That 'tag yourselves in' thing? Yeah. Let's do that again.
WHERE: The Gorsewick Hotel YOUR BRAND-NEW PRISON. :D
WHEN: Late evening of December 19th through 6PM December 22nd
WARNINGS: Time will tell, so for now, let's just cover our basics until more specific ones can be made: cursing, violence, drama, couples, etc.
SUMMARY: Everyone who attended the holiday dinner thrown by Remus and Miles is now trapped together in an icy hell for three and a half days. As the days progress, conditions worsen, growing incredibly severe. What, exactly, will several dozen people of all shapes, sizes, powers, and alignments do when forced to face their combined and potentially horrific impending doom...?
FORMAT: IF IT FEELS GOOD, DO IT! Long prose, action brackets, rapidfire dialogue, present tense, past tense--whatever floats your narrative boat!



OOC PLOT INTRODUCTION

As characters progress through the days ICly, any number of things can and will be going wrong. This is an experiment in balancing free-form play with guideline challenges, so it's set up a little differently. In order to allow players as much time as possible to play, we have decided to provide a way for all four days to be accessible at once rather than attempting/spamming with a new log every day. Play and tag around however you like--if you want to take each day as it comes, that is perfectly welcome; if you would like to move back and forth between them, that is also 100% valid as an option. Don't worry too much about perfect continuity timing, either--this is for fun, not science, so do as much as you want to!

Please also remember that you are not restricted to only tagging into something on the IC day; players may start, finish, or generally carry on as far beyond the 22nd as they want! If we still have people actively threading and playing around doing new things on January 13th, this log is not over and you are not late. Let's see if we can make LJ's comment limit weep for mercy!

Visual aides are provided for each floor on each day, with important reminders on the side, so that a quick memory jog is just around the corner if you need to check back on a detail; please comment to these floor-markers when making new threads so that people can find the action by day and floor. The hotel is laid out exactly as shown, including room arrangements, floor designs, frozen-through bathrooms, how far the snow explosions initially extend inward, and all that, so you won't have to worry about whether your made-up detail meshes with someone else's.

When starting a new thread, do so under the appropriate day/floor subsections, and please try to mark your initial subject title informatively to some degree so that people will know what they're looking for--whether it's open or closed, or what general time of day it is, or who's in it, or what it's about, or any combination of the sort. It'll really be helpful to everyone OOCly, since characters will more than likely be doing an awful lot during their stay... after all, where else are they going to go~?

Remember, this was primarily created an exercise in CR rut-breaking, characters learning how to work as a community (or, depending on how dangerous they are, how to better work against it), and lasting personal developments... so have fun and let's shake out those tired old RPing limbs! :D



SPECIAL DETAILS

The order of NPC cold-virus carriers is as follows, skipping places if necessary due to deaths before the appropriate turn.
The three tourists, the two housekeepers, the grandson, his grandmother, the bellhop, the husband and wife, the front desk clerk, and Edgeworth himself.
If someone kills the tourists along the way, it is to be assumed that the two housekeepers become the next reason people are falling sick (and it's possible that their killer gets it him/herself). In that scenario, if someone did not interact with the tourists, but did shake hands with the housekeeper, it means they suddenly become at risk of getting sick even if they weren't before. Should it happen to get down to Edgeworth-as-main-disease-spreader, please take note of the following: because of the effects his powers have on him, he has not been/will not be presenting symptoms, and it's very likely that a great many people will have been around him at least once...
____________________________________________

Nobody will/can actually be bitten by Lupin on the night of the 21st, as Ty has not cleared the making of new werewolves, although close calls, other injuries, panics, mob reaction/mob defense, and whatnot are welcome!
____________________________________________

AS OF 5AM ON THE 22ND, THERE WILL BE NO ELECTRICITY. NO LIGHT. NO HEAT. NO TV. NOTHING. JUST PITCH-BLACKNESS, UNLESS OTHER LIGHT SOURCES CAN BE FOUND/MADE OR YOUR CHARACTER CAN SEE IN THE DARK. MAKE FRIENDS WITH USEFUL PEOPLE PDQ OR RISK BANGED SHINS AND FALLS DOWN A STAIRCASE.
____________________________________________

There really will be no running water as of 4PM December 20th. That's probably going to translate to an awful lot of horrible-smelling people by the end of the plot. Combined with the need to keep close to conserve heat... well, I can only suggest that your characters pick up a clothespin or some cotton balls from the ground floor's housekeeping supply room before it gets too cold to go down there.
____________________________________________

Miles and Remus are obviously not getting their security deposit back when this is over, and the owner will be cashing in his insurance policy with a sigh before deciding to just open a small coffee shop named Beenz next time.


FAQ

I have ____ power! I can totally do _____ to the blizzard/force field! Hooray!
Nope--sorry! For the duration of the plot, when it comes to trying to break free, you can consider your powers pretty hardcore nerfed by the multi-layered and ultra-complicated nature of Remus' wild magic and the sheer force feeding into it from the storm. Attempting to meddle with either the trap or the blizzard will fail... and more than likely, backfire in fascinating (but not always safe) ways. Feel free to make up your own effects and/or explanation for why they don't function. And, yes... this includes all-powerful god-types, too. The only way anyone gets out is through death or, more likely, the end of the plot. :)

Also, while areas of the hotel can be made warmer or colder as PC actions are taken, the slide toward most of the space within suffering below-freezing temperatures and cold damage is pretty much inexorable. The same magical containment field keeping the huge walls and ceiling of snow and ice in place is also expanding to mingle with Edgeworth's power as they essentially begins leaking into the hotel itself, meaning that once something is frozen/snowed over, that's it--once the shower is turned into a block of ice, it's blocked in until 6PM on the 22nd. Power backfires apply to these situations the same way they would the barrier outside the hotel.

Obviously, if your power is superstrength and you'd like to throw a king-sized bed at someone or teleport up a floor or Ruffle the towel rack, that's cool, as that's not escaping the hotel.

It's not so bad. My character will just chill out and talk on the comms until they can get out.
Theoretically a good idea, but other than the 'chill out' bit--and there will be plenty of that, believe you me--it's not gonna work. HP magic causes problems with Muggle tech, and with something as powerful as that? Well. From the moment the field and blizzard strike, comm functions will be mangled. Their ability to send or receive messages will be very twitchy on the first two days, with the feeds coming in and going out pretty damn garbled or static-y. On the 21st, the few messages that come in/get out will probably become nigh-unreadable. On the 22nd, they will stop working completely until such time as the characters escape.

You... don't have enough beds. At all. Are you aware of that?
Yes. The floor plans were intentionally designed to make it so that even from the very start there are less than half as many bed spaces as will be needed. This number will shrink as time goes on and beds become ruined by PC/NPC actions or main plot events. I hope some of you like tubs, hallways, and couches.

Can I add plots in ways that aren't in the pre-existing design?
Sure! If a Weasley twin wants to turn a half-dozen people into giant canaries and set them loose on the remaining inhabitants of the hotel, go right on ahead! That's what you're all here to do, actually. Same for anyone who'd like to start a fight, hold a competition, roast an NPC, attempt to poison a person they don't like, etc. Not everyone will react to being trapped in an ice block with 60+ strangers for four days in the exact same way...

Oh holy hell someone just did something that's going to kill us all quick quick what do we do AAAAGH WHO LIT THE ENTIRE SECOND FLOOR ON FIRE WE'RE ALL GONNA BURN IN HERE!!!!
If something gets way, way too far out of hand, and can't be resolved by any other PCs, either Ty or Grimm can be contacted and asked to BS a plot-device end to it somehow. I don't foresee this actually being a possible problem in any way, but if it somehow is at some point or another, don't worry about it. We're all here to have fun. No panicking necessary. <3

Okay, but seriously. My character just got _____ injury/is sick/is dying.
Then you'd better hope there's somebody who can help them out in the hotel with them! Nobody and nothing comes in or goes out until 6PM on the 22nd. Mind you, we totally encourage all manner of dramatics, these included, but be prepared for any possible consequences to your actions :3

So it IS okay if I want to die, right?
Of course. Your character may die along the way in some fashion or other if you want them to; mind you, you'll have to clear it with the mods first. The NPCs can also all be offed along the way if you feel the need, with that being first-come first-served and with the acknowledgement that retcons or 'THE REAL TRUTH' scenarios may become necessary as a result. (You may want to hit up the OOC comm announcement HERE if you would like to kill one/some of them in order to give other players as much of a heads-up as possible.)

Someone's starting to sing Kumbaya. Or Row, Row, Row Your Boat. Or both. Badly.
Get ear plugs, punch their teeth in, or sing along with them. Your choice. I can't be held responsible for poor tastes in music.

You're a sick, sick person.
I know. :)

DAY/FLOOR LINKS TO PREVENT SLOW LOADING/BROWSER FREEZES AND CRASHES
Day One
1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5
Day Two
1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5
Day Three
1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5
Day Four
1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5
Escape!
Here (4th Floor)

Comments

Dec 19 / Ground Floor

[bluffing-ruffle.livejournal.com]

[OPEN] 10PM / Lobby

[pacifisted.livejournal.com]

He'd already claimed the longest of the couches on the ground floor for himself, well aware of the fact that there wouldn't be enough sleeping space to hold everyone comfortably. Too many people present--after he'd been catty in Alastair's ear, he'd slipped up to the other floors before the dinner to check the place out.

They'd only just come back from a hellish miniature war. It was possible that someone had slipped up and left a few of the criminals alive; there was no telling if knowing their surroundings would prove necessary at some point.

Yeah, call him a little paranoid. But he's stayed alive this long.

At any rate, he's slept in all kinds of places, and not all of them somewhere most people would even think of considering. A couch? Not so much a problem, and more comfortable than a number of his other options. Better that other people take the beds, when he can deal well enough this way.

So it is that Trowa is stretched out, mildly annoyed by the lack of freedom in having to sleep in his clothes but as accepting of this inconvenience as he is of most irritations.

He'll be up for a while yet, though. The walls to his right and behind his head will give him some degree of protection, but it's still him trying to crash out in a building mostly filled with strangers. Some of them might even want to come up and talk to him, or try to punch him out and take his sofa. Or just keep him up in general.

...Those rings under his eyes are gonna look worse by the morning.

[hellcommander.livejournal.com]

Around 11 pm, the text message that Hiruma sent to Trowa will FINALLY get through. Garbled, but intelligible.

[Open] 11 PM

[greenxjadexeyes.livejournal.com]

Lily had refused to leave the lobby of the hotel, sure that there was no way they were all actually trapped. Maybe if she just waited a couple hours, the snow would be gone.

But she had waited hours, and the doors were still completely blocked by snow. Running a hand through her hair- both annoyed and a bit scared- she continued her pacing. Back and forth in front of the door, looking at the door every now and then as if expecting the snow to just vanish.

She really wished she wasn't alone. Where had James and the others gone?

[shiromadoushi]

Feeling far too antsy after his talk with Vector, Bakura had excused himself from his temporary roommates and headed down to check on the doors again. The exercise (even if the stairs were laid out oddly) would to him good, and hopefully take care of a little of his anxiety.

He paused a moment, seeing Lily pacing there. Looks like he wasn't the only one so worried.

"Has anything changed?" he asked softly as he approached.

[pacifisted.livejournal.com]

The young man who'd been stretched out on the three-seater sofa in the lobby had been staring at his comm in tired confusion when she'd approached the doors; he'd gotten up to follow the directions on the (incredibly garbled) text message and head upstairs a few short minutes later.

He nearly ran into her as he passed by the doors, holding his hands up to avoid a collision.

"Ah, sorry."

[metamorphmangus.livejournal.com]

After scouring the building for some form of escape and finding none, Tonks reluctantly returned to the lobby, looking rather defeated.

"Wotcher!" she called to the redhead who was pacing back and forth in front of the door, "Any sign of that snow melting at all out there?"

[notadartboard]

Sanji had remained downstairs for a while to wrap up the leftovers, seeing as the caterers were locked somewhere outside that ice floe and no one else was going to do it. If he was diligent in keeping what was left, they would have food in the morning - assuming they weren't rescued from without by then.

But now he was on his way upstairs to try and find a place to sleep, if any ladies would have him. He could warm a bed nicely. On the way he passed by Lily. "Miss, do you...oh, are you Miss Lily?"

[Open] 11 PM

[thelionharted.livejournal.com]

James had been busy attempting to keep Sirius from exploding the whole of the hotel, actually, and fretting a little about Remus. But he spots Lily and heads over, rubbing his hands together and looking a bit anxious.

"Nothing's changing, then?"

Re: [Open] 11 PM

[reluctantlegend.livejournal.com]

Josh had just spent some time exploring around the hotel. He'd seen the others throw things far more powerful than he could muster at the barrier and paid for it. So he had decided to see if there was any part of the barrier that wasn't up or was possibly weaker.

Having not found any, he headed back to the lobby when he spotted a friend.

"Hey, Lily," he called out, heading over to her. She definitely looked like she could use a friend.

Dec 19 / Ground Floor 7:30 - midnight

[purmoncul.livejournal.com]

Sirius was at the front door, face to the glass, wand out, just...staring, and listening to something.

Over the course of the evening he will: set himself on fire, freeze his eyes shut, hex his mouth off, send his wand shooting through the lobby, cause cold wind to come screeching through the space, apparate himself to the fifth floor and have to come back downstairs, turn himself into a wombat (then shift into dog form and then back up to human), petrify himself (someone will need to notice this and go get James or one of the other HP wizards), turn his clothing to snow, and any number of other things.

He will not, however, be able to poke a hole in the ward, or in the storm.

[incywincyhero]

A little before 9 PM, Spider-Man headed out to the lobby, having heard rumors that the guests were trapped. What he found was a teenage boy doing -- well, he wasn't sure what he was doing. Mind you, he wasn't sure the kid knew what he was doing either. He stayed perched on all fours on the wall six feet up, but leaned out to see if he could get a closer look without getting too close.

"Okay, I'm guessing that's magic of some kind," he commented the next time Sirius took a breather, "I'm just not sure what you're trying to do exactly."

Dec 19 / Ground Floor 7:30 - midnight

[thelionharted.livejournal.com]

Some time around 10:30, James will be flopping next to him and frowning a little. "Are you having fun being completely daft down here?" He asked, looking slightly irritable.

"Because I really doubt anything you try's gonna work, mate, if it hasn't worked yet. I suppose we could see if Prongs could break a window or something, but that ...might end badly."

[greenxjadexeyes.livejournal.com]

Lily rolled her eyes as Sirius collapsed to the floor, petrified. The things that boy did....

Sighing, she made her way over to him, countering the spell before righting him.

"Sirius, it's not going to help any," she promised him.

WHAT'S UP MAN.

[thingone]

"You're going to break something important there, mate." Fred tells him, plopping down unceremoniously next to Sirius, after watching Sirius retrieve his wand from the lobby. Man, this was weird. Fred had decided to roll with it, but still. Weird.

Just after 9:00

[ofthedream.livejournal.com]

Having re-appeared in the lobby after examining the barrier (http://community.livejournal.com/capeandcowllogs/1361261.html?thread=44953197#t44953197) Ysera couldn't help but notice the Sirius seemingly having a magical fit as he tried more and more spells whose purpose baffled Ysera. When his hair burst into flames she decided that that was enough. Brave as he was, someone ought to stop him from putting himself in danger from such reckless magic use. Frowning slightly, she walked over toward him and asked concernedly.

"Mage Sirius, are you injured?"

[dragony]

It's getting pretty late by now; well past late, closing towards midnight. Most of the rooms have been scavenged and claimed by now, and the people who haven't succeeded there are making due with couches and corners. Still, some people remain awake, and even as late as it is, Ruka stops by with a couple pilfered mugs of cocoa.

"Hey."

[donttasemebro]

Bruno, in his infinite capacity for bad timing, walks into the lobby to investigate the barrier only to find a small wombat on the floor in front of the door.

He... stares.

[formidophobia.livejournal.com]

"At least you're doing something productive--" Jon was starting to say, ambling slowly down the hall and watching Sirius--work his magic. Which seemed different and somewhat more complex than the magic Jon was used to from back home, but at least he knew the user relatively well.

"Can you explain what exactly has gone wrong here?"

[OPEN] 9PM, just outside the front door

[professorlionface]

Hank braves the cold, trying to test the limits of their boundaries. He's thrown himself against the field a few times to no effect, but his nose is cold and his eyes are burning and he's still not sure what to do about any of this.

[Wait wait, I can't tell if the doors can actually open or if the force fields are actually on the doors themselves. If it's the latter and I'm mistaken, then I guess this is in the lobby instead? /o\]

[shiromadoushi]

Whichever case it is, have a concerned looking Bakura blinking a bit at the... rather different looking sort who seems to be running into a wall over and over. "... are you all right?"

[bedeviledspider.livejournal.com]

Reilly, eventually spotting Hank, runs up to join him and Bakura.

"Dr McCoy!", he calls out, "I have flame-based powers. Perhaps...?"

9:00 PM

[ofthedream.livejournal.com]

Having first walked as much of the first floor interior perimeter as she could, Ysera had dream-stepped past the magical chains on the door and then walked the perimeter of the barrier outside the walls, through the howling blizzard. All her efforts to probe at the barrier, or find a weakening where she could unravel the spell, had failed. And now she was cold, despite manifesting heat around her from her dream - it was almost as if the closer to the barrier she went, the more the heat was leached from her.

Shivering slightly, she stepped back into her dream. Turning, she frowned at the barrier that rose, stark and white, even within dreams, blocking her from stepping out of the dream on the far side of the barrier in the physical world. That shouldn't be possible. No power she knew of in this world, save the Porter's, had been able to block her from traveling where she pleased through dreams. It would take a power as strong as her own to block her so...

Turning away from the barrier, Ysera stepped back out of her dream, re-appearing inside the lobby just in front of the main doors. She brushed snow off her hair and clothes before glancing around to see who else was still in the lobby.

[Open : Around 9:15 - At one of the front doors ]

[notyourutopian]

Eleanor stood in front of the open door, staring at the wall of ice and snow that packed into the opening, her head tilted to the side. She'd seen similar things in Rapture, when one of the heating pipes in a section would freeze the area would fill up with frozen water rather rapidly, and when it seeped into other sections it looked like this.

But that took days, not...hours. And as far as she had heard, there wasn't supposed to be any sort of snow storm before. If there had been, she probably wouldn't have come to the party simply for the chance to see it. Instead it was out there and she was on the other side of this...snow.

She held out her hand towards the pile, her eyes narrowed as she braced for the pain that came with her powers, and then her hand burst into flames. A step forward brought her palm against the snow, watching as it started to melt...and then immediately refroze. She moved her hand in a slow circle against the snow, watching as it would melt where she passed and then refreeze even before she could really move the fire away from it.

This was not normal.

After a full thirty seconds or so the pain got to her and she stepped back, unable to conceal the pained expression on her face as she shook the fire off her arm. The sores, burns and blisters that had formed from the heat began healing right away, but it took thirty seconds or so for them to disappear completely.

Unconsciously she pressed her arm into her stomach, cradling it there as she studied the snow in the doorway. It looked like she hadn't done anything at all...

"Bloody hell..."

[open] around midnight / Front doors

[satisfiedsigner]

To say Kiryu was pissed off was an understatement. He hated cold, hated feeling trapped, and really hated the idea of being trapped with half the hero population.

And he really hated that he'd been trying to blast fire at the snow on the other side of the front door for half an hour and it wasn't working. He could barely get any fire going at all and then it fizzled out once it reached the doorway and didn't even touch the snow. The most he was doing was keeping the cold out while he had the door open. Although while he wasn't actively trying to leave, his power worked just fine.

For now, he had Infernity Beast out to see if it could do any better with it's fire-breath attacks. And those didn't seem to be working either.