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wildestmods) wrote2021-07-26 08:27 pm
wildestmods) wrote2021-07-26 08:27 pm
THE MOVING CASTLE
THE MOVING CASTLE
The group's moving castle base is a strange place, seemingly split between two locations. One half of the castle is the former abode of a wizard and actually somewhat homey.
The other half of the castle is bits and pieces of a faerie kingdom, patched on haphazardly, like some kind of magical catastrophe slapped it onto the Moving Castle. This half of the castle has parts of the faerie realm known as the Brugh.
The castle appears and disappears. Whether this is magic or by traveling on its legs is unknown but characters may sometimes leave the castle as a group, travel, and randomly find it in a new place. When the quest draws characters on an adventure and they're all meant to leave, the castle magically kicks them out with whatever belongings and supplies they need.
One half of the castle has a cluttered but warm interior, interspersed with spell books, magical trinkets, mystical doors, and other wizarding oddities. Correspondence laying around indicates that its possibly owned by someone named Howl.
Or the Wizard Pendragon.
Or Jenkin the Sorceror.
This half of the castle is whimsical and homey. Only the enchanted doors are potentially dangerous, leading to pocket dimensions and magical rooms that aren't always safe.
Fortunately someone has left notes in various hands labeling some of the doors and magical rooms, as if people who the house didn't belong to lived there for a time and tried to label things for use. Some of these notes aren't the most complete and/or show that the people that wrote them had a sense of humor.
The crystal gardens inside the castle feature delicate flowers and sculptures made of crystal and glass.
Due to the gardens being left untended, much of the crystal has spread through the castle. It sometimes randomly blocks hallways and rooms and must be broken and "weeded." There are only two ways to do this: by singing a song loud enough to make the crystal resonate until it breaks, or by dancing so awkwardly the crystal cracks in sheer secondhand embarrassment.
The castle has a massive library that has all of Howl's original books, gathered from many lands, but also has absorbed the library of the Brugh. The Brugh's library has books stolen from every world imaginable. While many of these books are normal books, some are magical, containing spells or other oddities. For instance, some books scream or curse at the person who opens them until they close them, others flap around the room like birds until they're caught and closed, and others are fiction that have text slowly appear and get revised as it's written for the first time by an author in another world - or as real events happen in another dimension.
The only books characters will not find here are ones that detail stories about the canons of characters in the game.
The only exception is if the PC is from a fantasy world that appears in the game. They would be from an alternate version of the world and not from the version that got displaced to the Wilderlands. If another character reads a book about a land in the game world and a character from that land apps in later, the first character will forget what they read about that character. So if the books describe Middle-Earth and someone apps Sam Gamgee, they'd forget all knowledge related to Sam.
The music room is massive, filled with uncountable instruments from a wide variety of places. Some of these instruments are normal Earth instruments ranging from violins to keytars. Others are completely alien. Some even look like they require more hands to operate than humans have.
One complicated instrument in the center of the room plays music that's in characters' heads without them having to play. They just have to touch it and think of the music.
The bathrooms have large tubs that have to be filled by hand with buckets that can be heated down the hall. Most of them are mysteriously stained with multicolored dye.
They do at least have flush toilets.
These rooms don't have soap unless it's gathered from other places, like it was all used up by someone. Only toilet paper is available and it's unable to be removed from the magically replenishing rolls it's on unless it will only be flushed down the toilet (the paper is psychic so it knows), so it can't be taken elsewhere.
Due to overgrowth in the crystal gardens, crystal often blocks the bathrooms and characters will have to sing and dance to get through.
The bedrooms all vary in decoration. Some are warm and homey, with large beds, fireplaces, and bright windows. Others are more economical with stiff small mattresses set into the floor, or hammocks hanging from hooks. Other rooms are full of magical clutter and whirling devices.
New bedrooms seem to appear as new people appear. The castle doesn't always provide enough rooms for everyone, sometimes forcing people to bunk up together in groups of 2-5. Higher occupancy rooms sometimes save space with extravagant hammocks netted all over.
If the castle is forcing someone to bunk in a specific room, when they're ready for bedtime and try to open a door to somewhere to sleep, it will always lead to their assigned room. If they fall asleep where they are and don't open a door to go to bed, they'll find themselves teleported to the assigned room.
Only some characters are forced into this. Others will get to room with who they want or get a room entirely their own, depending on player preference.
The scrying glass room is a simple stone room with a pool at the center, 3 feet in diameter, in a metal basin set in the floor. This pool can allow someone to view their homeworld if they concentrate on it. The more homesick someone is, the clearer the view.
Due to time being frozen until they return home, this view of their world is frozen as well, only allowing them a snapshot of what they left behind. However, they are able to view whatever they want, wherever they want, in that frozen moment.
On rare occasion, the glass shows important locations in the Wilderlands that may need to go to. These images do move in real-time.
The Waterfall room has a small glade, with a twenty-foot-tall waterfall that flows in from some outside source. When someone looks into this waterfall, they will sometimes see their memories playing across the surface of the water. With great concentration, one can sometimes choose what memories to view, but most of the time the waterfall is capricious, sometimes playing happy memories of things the viewer misses, or sad ones from terrible moments in the past.
Memories can be shown to other characters, but it takes a lot of focus. Players can also treat the waterfall as sometimes showing the character's memories against their will, too, if they want to let something slip where another character can see it.
Though the waterfall is capable of showing uncomfortable things, it sometimes projects a compulsion for individuals nearby to come and view it despite not wanting to.
On rare occasion, the waterfall shows memories that are not that of the viewer, sometimes providing useful information about the greater quest.
The magic of the waterfall is responsible for the occasional memory share event.
The waterfall is tied to the soul of the castle, so it may be that the castle itself is trying to get the PCs to share or confront things to become closer.
There are several gardens on roofs or balconies of the castle that open to the outside elements. These are usually simple and often filled with unmagical but exotic flowers. Some of them also grow vegetables from a variety of worlds but not in large enough amounts to consistently feed a large group - just enough to add a little bit of produce to people's diets.
There are several kitchens for cooking, often with open hearths and hooks for hanging cooking pots over the fire. There are also some wood stoves. The castle has extensive larders and root cellars, places to hang herbs to dry them, and even a smoke house out in one of the gardens to preserve meat. There are also large brick ovens and barrels of salt for preservation, shelves near windows to dry fruit in the sun, as well as jars for preserving food.
The mystic doors of the castle lead to many pocket universe realms, some of them more dangerous than others. Some of these realms contain monsters and nightmares, others contain pleasant areas of magic and nature. Some magical creatures can't open the door from the inside but can escape into the castle if the door is left open.
The more dangerous doors have notes sometimes but they're not always easily decipherable, sometimes using shorthand or vague descriptions.
Players are free to make up adventures in pocket dimensions and unleash minor events (such as status effects or monsters) on the rig from these doors as long as they have opt outs.
Dr. Kent V. Nelson is a previously down and out psychiatrist who imploded his own life through self-destructive choices and became a homeless drunk, but has recently pulled himself together and tried to be a better man. Following in the footsteps of his grand-uncle, he is the next person to carry the superhero mantle of Dr. Fate. Gifted with a magical helmet that allows him to transform and use magic, previously powered by a Lord of Order, Kent has had to learn to control his magic, something he's worked on while being part of the Justice Society of America.
The Green has brought Kent to Howl's Moving Castle as another one of the Chosen, like the PCs, and bound him and his helmet there. Though he can at least go outside to the Castle's gardens, Kent can't leave the castle no matter how hard he tries, blocked by invisible forcefields. Neither can his helmet, which has been rendered magically inert while inside.
The Green has done this to provide the gang a psychiatrist, explaining this to Kent. While he hates being trapped, left with no other options, it's a role that Kent has accepted due to being unable to help the group otherwise. This is partly because he wants to continue redeeming himself by doing good and partly because dear God he is bored out of his mind.
Though he slacked off due to his own depression and failed a patient in the past (and by extension also the people that patient hurt and killed), Kent is actually a very good psychiatrist when he's trying to be, and his past failures are a motivator to try to never fail another patient again. Due to his own bad choices imploding his life he has a good understanding of people with self-destructive tendencies. He also has extensive experience with bizarre bullshit magic, superhero nonsense, and once defeated a demon by convincing him to get therapy and become a client, so the gang will be hard-pressed to actually phase him with anything.
Kent usually keeps the helmet close, since it's a very powerful artifact, even if it's currently blocked. Uncaring about keeping a secret ID because he doesn't really have a life or loved ones, he sometimes wanders around wearing the shrunk down version of it while doing mundane stuff like raiding the pantry just because he's too lazy to carry it.
Therapy/Medicine
The mods will only occasionally toss Kent into network stuff as a presence. The players can otherwise just handwave that he met their characters, advertised his services, and talked them into going to therapy. Though he has a slightly gruff style, any therapy would be genuinely diligent, compassionate, and deeply insightful since Kent is very observant.
Kent also has his family's ability to look into someone's memories, something he'll be open about before starting therapy. It requires eye contact and intense concentration, and he'll only do it with consent if a client wants him to directly view a memory for context to help in their therapy.
Kent also is a medical doctor, and can offer at least some medical advice, basic diagnosis, or first aid, though he wouldn't be as on top of it as a general practitioner since he specializes in something else.
His office is old-fashioned through no choice of his own, like the Green modeled it on their idea of what Freud's office would be, complete with desk and leather recliner couch. Magical crystals inside create white noise that makes it impossible for anyone to hear what's said inside, even with superhearing, and blocks all magical or mechanical forms of observation. Inside the office, there is no way for anyone to eavesdrop, through magic or otherwise.
Kent has placed a wood sign outside the door that's an homage to of Lucy's sign from Peanuts, but the 5 cents is crossed out and the word "Free" is over it.
Jonald, Ronald, and Rolkien, are strange sentient magical machines that can walk, talk, and fly. They are the eager-to-please and extremely annoying caretakers of the castle. Their efforts to keep the PCs, their very best friends, happy can sometimes be grating and clingy, and they're sometimes more trouble than they're worth. They sometimes accidentally leave open the mystical doors, letting the magic and denizens within cause problems in the castle.
If players want to use magical weirdness or status effects in threads taking place in the castle, they can handwave the triplets caused problems.
The Brugh is a pocket dimension currently attached to the Wilderlands that has merged with the Moving Castle. This faerie realm has an enchantment on it that's led to its residents being frozen in time, making it so the PCs can wander the hallways of the faerie castle without being bothered.
The Elves in the Brugh, frozen in place, are breathtakingly beautiful, pointy-eared humanoids with delicate almost cat-like features. Or at least that's what their glamours would leave the characters to believe. There's something of their true nature in their eyes, which are hard and cold.
For some reason, scattered all around the Brush side castle are pairs of glasses (all the same identical wire-rimmed style), and poppies. There are also unnervingly mundane tchotchkes on many shelves, the most significant of which are endless Byers' Choice dolls and Snowbabies figurines.
There's an area that looks like it's outdoors, complete with a seemingly artificial twilight sky. A magical hedge maze lies in this area, one of the few green things inside the Brugh. The hedge maze is enchanted and when one enters it, there's a compelling sense that there's something important at the center to find.
At some points in the maze, wanderers can sometimes hear the alarming sounds of rustling, footsteps, and ragged breathing, as if they're being followed. When this happens, it's wise for them to keep moving before they're found. It's possible to get lost in the maze for days but it usually spits people out before they die of dehydration.
The maze may, at times, have something genuinely useful hidden with it, but these items will only appear sometimes, and characters must pack supplies and prepare for a long expedition within. These deeper incursions into the maze will have time-bending qualities - weeks can pass for an expedition team inside while no time passes outside the maze. Longer expeditions also run the risk of the PCs actually crossing paths with what lives inside the maze.
The Elves stole two magical mirrors from the many worlds they stole from. The room they're contained in is a very plain room with what mostly looks like unwanted furniture and other junk.
One mirror has the ability to show the viewer their heart's deepest desire. Many have wasted their lives before the mirror, losing track of reality as they were deluded by what they saw. Some have even been driven mad by seeing their most desperate desire, unable to achieve what they were witnessing.
The other mirror shows a character's true self. Usually this reflects on their heroism or monstrousness. This doesn't always correlate directly to beauty being good or bad. For instance, a character whose true form - the one they'd be happiest with - is an ogre, might see that this is meant to be their final shape.
Some doors on the Brugh side lead outside the castle, but instead of it being the Wildeerlands, there is a very dreary nearly lifeless place filled with dead trees and endless winter. The only area with growing things in this snowy expanse is a mysterious meadow of flowers that only appears when someone is feeling extremely homesick. When the character stands in the meadow, they'll see an entirely different sunny sky. When they leave, the meadow will disappear.
If one wanders away from the castle, they'll find the world growing stranger in appearance, and there is an added unfinished quality to the landscape. It is as though details such as leaves and bark on trees don't exist until closely observed. The further one walks away from the castle, the more outlines of objects and the dead trees become smudgier and more faded, like a drawing getting washed away until all that's left is outline in pencil. Those who wander also find themselves fading and anyone that wanders too far disappears and never comes back.
The further one gets from the castle, the more they risk running into the dromes. Like psychic spiders, dromes spin dreams drawn from the minds of their prey. The dreams are traps, but though there are signs they're not rea. Those trapped in them may not realize they've passed into a dream. Those that eat anything in the dream will want to stay there for ever. The drome will watch their victim eating dream food until they starve to death and then eat them in turn.
Dromes appear in the dreams they create, and if their victim realizes they're not supposed to be there, they can be killed there with imaginary weapons. This is usually the only way of escape. Outside the dream they are large and pale and puffy, and can easily be killed by beheading.
All that said, the dromes are not actually malicious creatures. Kidnapped into the Brugh to be used as tools by the Queen of Faerie, they're usually harmless in their own world, using their hypnotic abilities to entrance and capture their normal prey: crabs. They're very simple creatures that don't entirely understand where they are or that what they do to their victims is wrong. All of them dream of going back to their own world, and are homesick for the sea.
The Elf Queen's throne room is one of the most unnerving rooms in the castle. Most of its surfaces are covered in mirrors. The Queen herself is seated in a throne at one end, and she stares out at the masquerade in front of her with a gaze that is somehow menacing despite the gentle smile on her lips.
The masquerade ball in front of her is frozen in mid-dance, with many of the Elves wearing masquerade masks.
Also frozen around the room are very sad-looking people that are not Elves. They are human - or alien - and have vacant expressions like they've either been brainwashed or are simply feeling so much despair they barely have any personal identity left. These non-Elves are all clearly working in servitude: some are servants passing around wine, others are musicians, and others are wearing ridiculous costumes and seem to be in roles as dancers or court fools.
And then there are the children. They are dressed in beautiful clothes, with audiences of Elves gathered around them. These Elves do not have the kind faces of those who truly love children, instead their expressions are hungry and possessive, the way one might look at a precious trinket giving them entertainment. These children are frozen mid-dance and mid-frolic but they do not look happy, and even if this world wasn't frozen, they would never age. To the Elves, they are just toys, meant to dance and sing for their amusement.
The most alarming part of this room is the effects caused by the mirrors. While the glamours of the Elves are still in place, making them beautiful on first glance, they have been weakened by the Elves being frozen. If one looks in the mirrors around the rooms and concentrates hard enough, they'll see glimmers of the Elves' true forms, which are only vaguely humanoid and so horrible that they're difficult to look at for long.
The door is big, and red, and locked very, very tightly. It would be lovely if not for what's on the floor in front of it: trails of deep brown stains and the occasional bloody hand-print. There are also scratch marks in the floor and if one looks closely enough they might even see some broken fingernails.
