middaeg | Basement Bonanza Log

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Basement Bonanza Log

BASEMENT BONANZA

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 (

soozaphone ) if you'd prefer it be top-secret!!

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[Momo is...somewhat less worried by the presence of tentacles since Yuki started having them, but Mikasa's step back draws his attention to it. The small wave before it disappears gets a laugh out of him, even if he tries to stifle it in consideration of the startle.]

Did it get you or was it just a jumpscare? What a friendly little guy.

[Clearly waving at them means it just wanted to say hello or something.]

A jumpscare..? [Damn you and your slang terms Momo. She was still rubbing at her hand, still tapping her foot in some kind of beat that only she knew. But then...

Then the tendril reappears. And there's more of them? Attached to some kind of flat surface?] What are they?

Just a term for something really sudden that scares you. [He's not explaining the movie connotations, it's not like people don't use it outside of that anyway.

Still, he approaches the shelf when more tentacles emerge, tilting his head a bit as the tendrils rearrange themselves. It's not until they collect a bit more under the flat surface that it clicks.]

...I think it might be a shoe? Like a high heel, but the kind of bizarro concept one the fashion designers in my world would come up with. You see the shape?

[He uses a finger to more clearly indicate the incline of the inner sole, then the shape of a heel and outer sole underneath.]

[Annnd he's getting the dismissive snort as she turned her head away.] It didn't scare me. It just felt weird.

[Kind of slimy and sticky, and oddly warm. The combination of things that no living being should have been. Something that felt off enough to trigger every NOPE part of her brain.

But she's looking again when he moves his arms to point. The things patiently curling their tentacles underneath themselves as they waited. The fae's foot still giving a small tap that was slowly dying down now she wasn't in contact with the alleged shoes.

...She actually knew what a high heel was. All those strange shops, Mettaton, it was hard not to pick up a few scraps of fashion with those around. That doesn't make the squint lighten though.] I don't think shoes are supposed to move on their own.

Do you prefer "startled", then...? [Which Momo would still file under a jumpscare, but it does occur to him that she probably has a much higher bar for an actual scare than most people from a modern Earth would.

Her observation gets a little laugh out of him, though, and he waves a hand generally at the rest of the basement.]

I mean, radios aren't supposed to tune into memories either...a bunch of things here aren't supposed to do things that they're doing. That's why we're cleaning it up, right?

[Good old cursed objects and their unpredictability.]

[Not giving an answer to that, nope. Just giving him that unimpressed scowl.] Aren't things like this poisonous normally? [The slimy underwater creatures. At least that's what they'd been when Nicolo had been showing his cooking. That some of the creatures took a lot of skill to prepare.

But there's a few more stray foot taps and she stops. The effects of touching the 'shoe' wearing off. But Momo's explanation is good enough.]

I guess... I don't know what most the things here are. At least these things don't seem as bad as the fake tail. [That had taken ages to get rid of.]

Octopi usually aren't? There's a couple that are but it's definitely not super common with them. Heck, you can pick up octopus meat really easily where I come from, even whole ones. [Whereas the poisonous stuff tends to need a license to prepare unless you catch it yourself, and then you're basically asking to die of chronic bad life choices.

He can't help but raise his brows considerably at the fake tail mention, though.] "Fake tail"? You're gonna have to explain, and not just so I can avoid it.

They aren't? [Well, that's getting the normal series of blank blinking as her brain tries to understand it. Momo was probably used to that by now.

She's shaking her head by the time he mentions the tail though. And looking over her shoulder, like it might be there again. Giving a snort.] Don't worry. It like me... [The feeling was not mutual.] It's harmless, but it clung to my back for ages.

No. Jellyfish are, though, if you're just thinking of things with tentacles. [Granted, their tentacles aren't nearly as big, but they're still technically tentacles.

And while he still looks doubtful about the tail, he seems to take her explanation for it.] I have to wonder what the owner of this house was even trying to do to end up with a few of these things...

Jellyfish... [And there it is, the slow head tilt. Then the looking away as she gave up. No longer questioning the strange creatures unless she was forced to again.

The ocean...horrfiying. So much wild shit lived there.

But moving on, she shrugs.] Maybe they collected weird stuff. Nothing I've seen so far was dangerous. [It's true tho] Just...strange. One of the chairs turned me into a children's toy earlier.

I mean, yeah, I get the hoarding part, but you kinda have to have the intent to do something specific if you're enchanting objects. [Some of these are really, really weird, and the idea that a chair transformed her into something else earlier is not making this whole situation any less questionable to Momo.]

That I guess could've been some kind of body mod chair gone wrong, if it was a transformation spell. At least those don't usually last super long.

[Ehh, she shrugs. She knew a little bit about enchantments, had done a few herself. The first few times had been...interesting. She'd not known what she was doing.]

...They might have been learning how to enchant?

[Momo makes a bit of an "err" face at that, scrunching one side of it. Enchantment isn't his primary area, but he had to dip into it to learn how to heal minor Cwyld infections, so he knows a fair bit about the Witch flavour of enchantments specifically.]

A newbie enchanter wouldn't be able to do enchantments this long-lasting. They usually need to be recharged or something like that to keep working, and even ones that can be recharged reliably are complicated to do. My best theory is maybe trying enchantments that hadn't been done before? Like, experienced Witch pushing the boundaries type of stuff.

Oh... Like how the commander would cut off titans' limbs and see how long it took to regenerate. [You know, back before Hange was commander and back before they'd learnt titans were people.]

I wonder what kind of things they were trying to do...

I mean, yeah, same concept just a bit less grisly doing it this way. [Momo...isn't even going to ask at this point, because he's kind of just accepted how much of a disaster Mikasa's world is after having heard so much horrific information about it.]

I can kinda see how some of these might be useful? Or potentially useful. Like that radio could maybe be handy for therapy or something if it was possible to tune into specific memories. And like I said, the chair could've been a tool for temporary fashionable body modification type stuff. But both of those went kinda wrong if that was the point.

[Had Momo been speaking to anyone else, he might have been making a solid point. But alas, he was talking to Mikasa. So yet again he gets a tilt of the head, body modifications she could geuss.]

What is therapy? [But could Momo be really suprised that it was a question she'd ask? She's already shrugging. Something that made Momo freak out like that radio had was probably bad news.]

We should probably get back to cleaning...Even if we're not really being paid for this. [And lifting a box, staying well away from the strange shoes.]

[Momo visibly pauses at that question, and then lets out a sigh so put-upon it's almost definitely meant to be comical on some level.]

Why am I so not surprised your world doesn't have that... [Given what he's heard about it. He drops the theatrics to actually answer the question, though.] It's...a type of medical treatment, basically, but for mental "damage" instead of physical. People who've had traumatic experiences that stuck with them and affect their lives, people with ingrained habits that are hurtful to them, stuff like that. They go to therapists to try and work through that and get back to a healthier mindset. Sometimes that means going over the traumas again in some way to try and move on, or describing how they react to things that remind them of that, which is why I suggested the radio.

[Also the fact that it very much tuned in to not only a memory there, but a memory as it played out within Momo's head and not in reality, so if it can tune into a remembered panic attack it can probably tune in to someone else's mental problems.]

[Mikasa just blinks at the explaination, shifting her box of random crap. Her head tilting slightly. Because even with the sigh, it still sounded like something serious.

Mind doctors...Though the idea sounded useful given everything. Those people would be very busy where she was from.

Very, very busy.]

We hardly have normal doctors. Education to be classed as one is hard to get... [That was why Grisha had to travel into the walls ocassionally. There were people who knew basic things, how to sew up wounds. ] I don't think we'd have anything like that.

Yeah, I figured you might be kind of occupied with other stuff. Also I think therapy is kind of recent, last few hundred years it started to get developed.

[And it's changed pretty rapidly in that time, to his knowledge. Still, with that subject cleared up, he goes back to moving things around, keeping a wide berth from the radio.]

Oh well. Back to work, I guess! [Hopefully they get this done sometime before the heat death of the universe.]

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Basement Bonanza Log

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