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Basement Bonanza Log
The House
The house is much like the rest of the housing around it. Victorian style with some side yards, an outside that's desperately in need of paint, and wild, fancy architecture. Along the side is a fenced yard containing a small kitchen garden, complete with a recently added chicken coop in the back.
The front door leads to a small foyer, whereas the side door by the garden goes straight into the kitchen. In the kitchen, there will be a number of foods available for anyone chipping in to snack on, with options for vegetarians and meat-eaters alike. (No blood, sorry vampires, but if you get peckish you might find someone willing to let you have a bite.) Shinjiro will aggressively shoo away anyone who shows up just to get food without actually contributing. It's for people who help only!!
The interior is weird, as to be expected. They've made it mostly liveable, most of the furniture in the living spaces in new, but there's still Victorian Classics such as too many patterns and portraits of strangers on the wall, and bad wallpaper in surprisingly cozy places. There's even a restroom on the ground floor, complete with fireplace by the tub. People taking a break are welcome to tool around on the ground floor, where things are markedly more normal. Any attempts to go upstairs, where the residents bedrooms are, will be dissuaded.
There's a dog to pet (Koromaru, an incredibly intelligent white shiba inu) or a Petal Wolf (Bela) or, if you want to risk a few fingers, Fie's hyena (Alfin). The hyena occasionally breaks out into mad giggles in other people's voices, occasionally parroting contextless statements in perfect mimicry of the people who live there. Scrounging around somewhere will be Louis's cat, Juniper, and then there's the coop full of chickens outside, a snapping turtle in the pond...
But you people aren't here for the relatively normal living space.
THE BASEMENT.
The air is cooler in the basement, and with that soft scent of wet stone. It's not disgusting or overwhelming, despite how locked up and sealed the area had been, and for who knows how long. More than anything else, it's just dark. They've carried a few magitech lanterns down to the foot of the stairs, at least, in initially scoping it out to try and see what's down there: and even from just stepping off the stairs, it's clear to see that this is some sort of wild magical hoarder situation.
Walls are packed with everything from displays of oddities and curiosities to books and containers of liquids, the labels long since faded and peeled, to even rusted lockboxes, worryingly rectangular and human-lengthed, each with stiff, sturdy locks. In another corner, there's more shelves cluttered and overflowing with wet specimens preserved in jars. Many are completely unidentifiable. Many are absolutely identifiable, and it's unclear which is worse. There's everything from animals to plants to fish to even pieces of monsters or humans/witches alike.
Scattered throughout, there's lumpy sheets covering what can only be assumed to be furniture, as well as household items, baubles, trinkets, books, scrolls, and just general things crammed in any and every nook and cranny that can be found. If there was any sort of organization, it was lost well before the prior owner stopped their collecting.
In one corner, there's an iron spiral staircase that just leads into the ceiling, going nowhere. A few iron Maidens and sarcophagi can be found stored away, some of them haphazardly fallen over.
It's absolute chaos of junk layered on top of junk, pinned down by even more junk. And it's clearly going to take a lot of trips up and down those stone stairs to even begin to unearth some of the wild things stashed away.
Maybe if you're lucky, you'll unearth a friend to help light your way.
The Stuff.
I've gone ahead and written up some examples for people to run wild with-- and for anything else, feel free to either make things up, OR request something in the top thread!
Some of the Major Attractions of the Basement include:
An Iron Maiden. - Unlike many others, there's no spikes visible within. In fact, it looks almost welcoming. There's a faint enchantment to it, gently pulling at the senses of whomever gets too close. It's plush, and soft inside. Doesn't it look warm? The rest of the basement is so musty and damp and cold. Surely taking a rest would be fine.
Once someone steps into it, however, the doors close shut, and the victim is forced to rewatch their most embarrassing memory. When said memory has played out, however, they are released, no worse for the wear, and immune to the Maiden's Seduction for the next several days. Good thing you're the only one who saw that memory..... right??
A helpful (if creepy) teapot. - This teapot has one job, and it will perform it. It will serve you tea. It will not stop until it has served you tea. No, it doesn't even know what tea is. It also doesn't seem to care if you have a container to hold a beverage or not. It. Will. Serve. You. Tea.
...However, who knows what liquid is actually within it. Feel free to use this skittering, crawling friend for anything. It could be as benign as incessantly following your character like an annoying and needy dog. It could be as horrifying as using force and chitinous claws to make your character ingest something. (Which could be delicious tea. Or could be anything else. Up to you!)
A speaker of secrets. - A jarringly hideous piece of taxidermy, the ravens screech the secrets of whomever touches it. Sometimes they're wrong, though. It's anyone's guess if they're yelling your deepest secrets, or if they're just making things up. Anyway, here's hoping whoever you're with doesn't just think you're using it as an excuse. (Or, if what they speak is true, hopefully people believe your excuse. Good luck carrying this thing all the way up and through the house.)
Vaguely Insulting Dishware. - What it says on the tin. The text seems to shift and change to insult you, specifically, and often times very passive aggressively.
A beautiful, floral chair - Like a flower in full bloom, this is another object that anyone nearby could find themselves magically drawn towards. It even smells soft and sweet- almost like fresh rain and honeysuckle. It's pristine looking, in comparison to all the objects around it, covered with dust and debris, and looks soft and pillowy and inviting. It's wide enough that someone could crawl onto and drape themselves across it.
At which point the petals will pull closed, enveloping them in a sweet cocoon of which they come out.... different. The effects are, as always, up to the player, as is the duration of them. (Transmutation spells are finite, of course, and the effects aren't strong enough to last more than a few days.)
A giant crystal. - It'll take a team to move this humongous chunk of rock-- Or maybe just a duo of dragon or chimera. The first person to touch it, however, will find that it is not only reflective, but it projects. The light hitting it is projected in prisms, and all take a form based on the person who touches it. This could be a warped, twisted reflection showing how one thinks of themself. It could be a projection of deepest fantasies. It could just be whatever you're thinking at the moment. Or maybe it's a mockery. Play around at your hearts content!
Potions of any and all type! - You're not the type to just drink mysterious liquids in someone's basement (Unless you are, in which case, go for it!) but so many of these are cracked and worn. It's entirely possible some of them work on contact or inhalation. The effects can be almost anything, from Alice in Wonderland style shrinking and growing, to floating or glowing or transmuting. Perhaps one is a mood enhancer! Another could be poison. And a third could make the tips of your fingers grow hair. It's a mixed bag.
Cursed jewelry of any and all types - Same thing as the potions, these can be enchanted to have effects as minor as making your hair always look perfect (though there's a smell of cod liver that won't go away--) to as major as clamping in and biting through the skin, drinking your blood to fuel its dark powers. (Said dark powers could be anything from animatronic taxidermy coming alive to mimic your every move, to a spell to charm everyone around you, to the ability to speak with termites.) Again, go wild! And if you have trouble getting that jewelry off, there's gotta be some bolt cutters somewhere around here.... right?
There is MUCH MUCH ELSE that can be found! If you would like to be assigned a random Thing, feel free to give me the general vibe of what you're wanting, and I'll come up with something crazy for you! If you would like more than one thing, THAT IS FINE TOO!
FINAL OOC NOTES
In a list format because i'm lazy:
--NO EFFECT IN THE BASEMENT CAN BE GAMEBREAKING. Mind control, dreamwalking, and memory alteration are no-go.
--The contents of the unenchanted books in the basement are mostly nonsense or boring, but you can absolutely find some sort of burn book with hot deets on (non-plot) NPCs
--Any effect will eventually wear off. The process can be expedited with a witch. It's your choice how skilled that witch needs to be.
--"But susan someone else in a previous thread already took care of the item i was gonna use!" it's magic there can be two of them. or it can teleport itself repeatedly back into the basement. i'm not going to keep track and time isn't real.
--Mark any explicit content, plzkthx.
--Let me know if your character is enough of a jerk to try going to the second floor of the house. because a witch lives here and nearly all of them are mistrustful as hell so you know that's not gonna work out. (I'll let you know exactly how, if your character would try it.)
--If you're gonna die, talk to the mods about it first. if you're gonna kill anyone then double talk to the mods about it first.
--Go wild like you graduated from crazy go nuts university
And most importantly:
--FEEL FREE TO ASK ME ANY QUESTIONS! I'm available in the top comments here, though you are welcome to PM me, or shoot me a DM on discord (Soozaphone#3966), or shoot me a private plurk (
no subject
there weren't many other options available to them. it pretty much had to be this or to leave momo like this and see if there was anyone who knew the right magic to manage to reverse this. somehow, he didn't feel like that would be an easy task. nothing has been easy here thus far.
he nods. )
Alright.
( then he's closing the distance between them and the cursed chair. he moves his hand downward, close enough to the seat for momo to step off, but not close to actually come in contact with the thing.
he wasn't willing to purposefully test his luck. )
Here's to hoping, my dear boy.
no subject
Can't I at least be a man? [He's pretty sure it's just a habitual thing in this case, hence his faux pouting instead of an actual correction, but he's been mistaken for under 20 by so many people here it's starting to become a running joke and he's rolling it into comedy accordingly.
Almost as soon as he says that, though, he marches nubbily towards the middle of the flower chair, seemingly very determined to set it off again. It takes a bit of a jump into the heart of it when he doesn't have much in the way of weight in this form, but the flower finally takes the bait feeling something on its middle and closes again.
When it opens...well. Momo is Momo-shaped, but he's acquired a few wolfish features. He's also minus a shirt, but he didn't come down to the cursed mysterious basement in anything he cared about having ruined.
Initially, Momo seems quite pleased with the result, almost bounding out of the chair.] Did it work? I feel way better--!
[And then he feels that his already long canines are a good inch or so longer than normal in his mouth, and spots his still painted but now clawlike nails when he hasn't done that with his own magic...and hesitantly reaches up to his head. His wolf ears twitch a bit when he touches them, and while his expression is fairly unreadable, he seems to take it in stride enough.]
Okay, you know what, I can live with this for a couple days. Transformation magic isn't permanent, I remember that much from class. [He almost sounds like he's reminding himself of that to a degree, but the wolfy tail he's also acquired waves ponderously from side to side, so he's at least not upset enough to affect that.]
"nubbily". *please*.
it's less dramatic than the first, but he supposes that nothing could quite be as dramatic as the strange form that he had afflicted with earlier. in fact, he still hardly knows how to describe it. it was a bit like a child's doll, wasn't it? which wasn't a very comfortable thought. )
Oh—! Well, I cannot deny that's an improvement.
( he agrees, nodding towards him. the most important part was that he was back to his original size. whatever opinions he might have about either appearance, the fact of the matter was that it was incredibly dangerous for anyone to be that small. he could only imagine disaster.
the only problem now was that momo was improperly dressed. without hesitation, aziraphale is already pulling off his cardigan and extending it to him. it was going to be rather oversized on him, but it would at least keep him warm and comfortable. )
Here. It's best not to leave you without a shirt.
( he glances over momo once more. )
But I am surprised. You seem to take to being transformed rather good-naturedly?
it's a perfectly cromulent word
[He won't actively refuse the offer in this case, he just seems a bit hesitant to take someone else's clothes unless he's actively dying of exposure or something. He moves on to answer the question quickly enough, though, tail thumping at his own legs a bit.]
When I first came here, Illusion was the first kind of magic I learnt, and my instructor was into Transmutation as well, so I dabbled a tiny bit in that. I've done this to my nails before, actually. [He wiggles his now clawlike red nails.] So I'm not that worried. And besides, whatever transformation happens to me here, my darling is going through worse just by the bad luck of coming here as a Monster. So I couldn't complain knowing that.
[He states that very firmly, as if it's absolutely unthinkable that he could complain about anything if his "darling" is going through worse. He complains to Yuki sometimes, but it's usually about minor things or teasing. Where more major life matters are concerned, he's still kind of bad at expressing discomfort with things.]
no subject
No, no. I insist.
( and he's glad to insist.
he does note that momo seems to have already learned a chunk of magic, tucking that knowledge away for a later conversation. there was much to ask about that but now really wasn't the time. he does, however, wince a little at the remark about it being bad luck to be a monster. his own transformation has been steadily progressing and he couldn't help but agree.
bad luck indeed.
moving on, he circles back to something else that had been said. )
Shoots for work? What sort of work do you do? Aside from part-time work!
no subject
Thanks. [His painted claws poke out the ends of the sleeves, careful not to pick at any of the knitwork and instead tapping thoughtfully at his own legs. Aziraphale's question makes him blink briefly and then laugh, rubbing at the back of his hair like he's realising an oversight.]
Oh, I guess I didn't mention it! Back home, I'm an entertainer. My partner Yuki and I are a really famous idol duo, so we mostly do musical performance but we also do acting, modelling, radio, ads, TV appearances...basically anything that lets our fans see more of us. So that's what I meant about shoots for work, but I do modelling on the side really regularly here, too. I mostly do radio, though, since I couldn't perform on my own and my darling only arrived here recently.
[His tail wags side to side happily as he talks about it, but there's a noticeable upswing to the pace whenever he mentions his partner, apparently the same "darling" he kept mentioning earlier.]