Pandora's Inheritance - SanityStealer/HeySeuss 1x1

[Heyseuss]

Status: Recruiting

Table of Contents
The IC
Recent Historical Event - Emergent Containment Camps and the Nellis Uprising
Major Figures of the Emergence
[URL=]Our Setting[/URL]


The OOC
Pandora's Inheritance IC
Pandora's Inheritance OOC


Dramatis Personae: (Characters)


Pandora's Inheritance is all about how people react to the unexpected; magic comes back in a catastrophic and traumatizing fashion and the better parts of human nature often find themselves taking a back seat when people are freaking out. Pandora's Inheritance is very much about how society adjusts to the emergence of magic in a modern society -- a realistic appraisal of how people like you and me would respond to it.

Pandora's got run here before; below is a listingis a listing of the work done on it, but other work on the setting was done since that storyline was run.

Emergent, Manifested - A nice way of describing someone who came up with powers in the last couple months, when this all really started. This is the politically-correct term for it in the United States and Canada. There are many more less flattering terms, of course.

NPC's - Disparaging term for regular humans, especially the people that hate Emergents (such as many of the religious fanatics in the country) used by American Emergents in turn. Particularly popular with the ones that have been caught and put in camps. It was a popular term among roleplayers, before roleplaying games and science-fiction novels were pulled off bookstore shelves during the last couple months of hysteria, and outright banned in certain states, as if they were the reason all this came about.

Shame-kisser - A disparaging term among anti-Emergent groups, primarily religious, for people who support the rights of Emergents. It refers to the 16th century myth of one of the rituals of witchcraft, the Osculum infame, involving a kiss to the anus as a show of subservient. It was first used by a famous televangelist mid-sermon, and caught on from there.

It's July, 2010 and the uncertainty of life, often buried deep in the psyche of humanity, is suddenly a raw and very exposed nerve. Things have emerged and the false serenity of society is irrevocably swept away on a tide of the supernatural.

The world is turning upside down. Things are emerging from a long dormancy, their spirits either finding flesh on their own or fusing with the nearest host and twisting them into something else. From the beautiful to the freakish, it was almost as if someone unlocked a spiritual prison and threw the doors wide open, and all the inmates took their chance and ran out into the wider world.

Magic came back in July 2009, and people suddenly manifested abilities. Some changed shape to mishapen or supernaturally beautiful beings, others manipulated energies by their will and mind. Society was not prepared, and fell into all sorts of social unrest, including lynchings, riots and vigilantism. Not everyone was grabbing a shotgun or gardening tool to go after these newly-minted 'Emergents' but there was a torrent of hate on the TV and on the radio, a furious argument about how to respond.

Irrationality won out.

Initially, at the behest of the more vocal and hardline group of Americans, yelling for the government to 'do something,' the government tried arresting Emergents and interning them in camps, much like the Japanese in WWII. They justified not extending constitutional rights to the Emergents via the 14th amendment, stating that there was no provision for 'nonhuman' sentients.

It was a disaster. In August of 2009, there was a mass uprising against the government's containment facility at Nellis Air Force Base where Emergents took over the compound and then used their abilities together to break the siege the military had on the facility -- all this on national television, including the part where the military opened fire first, in reponse to the throwing food and paint at a tour bus full of reporters by the inmates and a somewhat overkill response. Then it came out that the Department of Homeland Security and the Pentagon were running experiments on the emergents during the month or so of time they were able to hold onto them.

One of the other emergent tactics during the negotiations was to use their connection to the spirit world and other abilities to glean information that the government didn't want release; all the political opponents of Emergents found detailed, and highly accurate, dossiers being issued to the media from the pro-Emergent factions connecting all the dots and showing where the bodies were (figuratively and literally) buried.

There was a rash of political resignations as the ranks of anti-Emergent politicians and other publicly active figures, such as media personalities, were 'outed' by the information the emergents were getting a hold of. The Speaker of the House was put into the White House with a mess on her hands, including the responsibility to negotiate with tens of thousands of angry people with supernatural powers who had the ability to fillet her career as well as placating the people that wanted to burn them for witchcraft.

During a long series of negotations, a second wave of magic came; spirits and mythological creatures started manifesting. Suddenly, household pets were breathing fire or flying, and places like San Francisco's Golden Gate park was overrun by mischievous wood nymphs.

The government position of taking the hard line against Emergents collapsed, largely because they were losing members of their faction by the day to scandals that were being handed like box-gifts, wrapped with a bow, to the media and because the rest of society needed the Emergents as a go-between with capricious spirits and creatures of magical power.

Despite the full re-instatement of their rights, many Emergents didn't go back to their old lives, but instead moved to places where they would be around their own, feeling that safety in numbers was their best bet, like many other beleagured minorities. There is a weary truce between the NPC's and the Emergents in most cases, but some cities are more progressively minded than others -- they realize that Emergents are useful and potentially profitable.

That doesn't mean all is well. There are many groups out there that hate and fear the Emergents, many of them political and becoming more influential by the day as life continues to turn upside down and then turn upside down again just when things seem to stabilize.

--

OOC stuff:

I'm pretty loose on character ideas, but, ideally, the characters are still figuring things out. I'm loose on what magic entails. The plot is almost more about how people react to the situation than what they can do with magic.

I haven't gone into the details of how magic has affected the world, because I'm honestly hoping that it will come out more in the RP. I did use events from a previous RP under the same name on this that I did, but I kept it broad and general as much as possible. In general, I'm interested in doing 1x1's on the basis of this setting, unless there's so much interest that people more or less demand I put up an OOC in the advanced and turn it all group.


Suffice to say, this is more like 'Carrie' than 'Blade'; I'm not so interested in having long-established secret societies of vampires and werewolves emerge from the woodworks to take over the world. They, like everything else, are a fairy tale that suddenly shows up, and those people that do turn into them are as new to it as anyone else.

(That's strictly to avoid another Underworld/WOD type cliche of vampires secretly running the world-- there's plenty of those elsewhere. This is about something different.)

The plot will involve questions of politics and culture, rights and law and morality at the bottom line. I pretty much envision that the plot will take place in Boston, but I can move it to another city and do some of the same things -- Frisco and New Orleans probably qualify as the most magical cities in the Country outside of Boston itself. New Age, Voodoo and Salem Witchcraft seem to form a 'mystic' triunvirate of cities with some sort of heritage or cultural inclinations in that direction.

[Heyseuss]

A basic history of recent events:

The emergence caught everyone flat-footed; the emergents themselves were as surprised as anyone, contrary to the assertions of various religious and conspiracy theories and radio show hosts -- people sprouted horns, tails, scales and the ability to wield forces beyond people's comprehension. The sudden ability to wield magic cracked minds; the people wielding it all of a sudden, if particularly unprepared psychologically, often cracked. In the first days, there was destruction rained down on neighborhoods for no particular reason, and this fuelled the response of the average person in fearing and disliking the emergents. It also gave the anti-emergent fanatics the credibility of being partially right.

In politics, partially right is all it often takes. Mass support is fickle, but often works off surface impressions.

It wasn't just the radio shows complaining that emergents were a danger to everyone all the time because they couldn't be disarmed, or that preachers were yelling for them to be burned at the stake. It was that some people got it in their head to grab their weapons and start shooting, lynch mobs were operating openly once more in America and not just in chalk white areas, and all sorts of unrest was taking place, much of it violent. Even relatives were turning on relatives over the issue.

The Department of Homeland Security saw the political opportunity to give itself a mandate and more funding by point on the Emergent/Manifested 'threat.' They actually snapped up a lot of military volunteers to try and make up the shortfall in trained people to help handle the problem.The president and the congress and senate, for the most part, were doing everything they can to accommodate the demands of DHS, which are numerous and involve a lot of funding and secondment of military personnel to their command largely because there was a public outcry for the government to do something, a lot of fists in the air screaming for things. It's a typical response, but it was deemed louder than usual and politicians got worried.

The response was to decide that the 14th amendment only applied to humans (Senator Robert Norman's infamous "The constitution was not written to protect all sapients, just humans, according to how it was written literally" speech, as written by Salvatore Siragusa, general counsel at the Department of Homeland Security), Emergents weren't humans and therefore not 'persons.' Literally, they disenfranchised anyone that was an emergent, and that allowed them to round up all Emergents and stick them in camps, starting with the one at Nellis AFB as the pilot project.

Of course, this was considered controversial and there were a lot of firings in the DHS as bureaucrats incapable of coping with actual work were quickly removed; there was a lot of political pressure for the DHS, a newly-established bureaucracy with procedures worked up on the fly, to become much more efficient and many of the new people staffing decisionmaking positions in DHS were ex-military. The DHS took on more of a Gendarme sort of feel as it becames more and more like a militarized police during 2009, all in reaction to the need to have something to 'keep Emergents in line.'

DHS, for its part, wallowed in the idea that they had a specific mandate, as they were always a bit of a fifth wheel in the government. Critics considered them overly eager to do their job and unnecessarily violent in cases that may not have warranted it; the overzealousness of the politicians infected the DHS and the DHS higher ups passed this zeal down to their guys. There was immense populist and political pressure to bring in emergents, and this involves cutting corners when it comes to nagging issues like rights.

Unfortunately for Homeland Security, the Nellis Uprising, July 9th, 2009, started when they were trying to show off how efficient they were in keeping the Emergent threat bottled up from society for a tour of reporters, broke out and spun completely out of control; the reponse to inmates of the camp throwing soap and food at a bus full of reporters was to bring in the riot guys and the military's active denial system, a formerly experimental weapon that used microwaves to force protesters back. The pain of the system caused a backlash among the magic users in the crowds, who all reacted instinctively to the pain. This led to the DHS forces firing back and calling in fire support from Blackhawk helicopters, which hosed the place down with live ammunition.

A sandstorm, unnatural in the area, raked through the area at that point and brought down one of the helicopters while the othters aborted the mission.

It got on national TV despite the attempts to shut down the coverage.

The footage made it to the networks in various forms, despite the military’s attempt to stop it from getting released, and despite threats of censure from the Department of Homeland Security.

BNN Headline Report, July 8th

”And now to Nellis Air Force Base, to our correspondent on the scene, Ed Colton.”

”Thank you, Greg. gunfire and violence erupted today as Emergents in the Department of Homeland Security-managed detainment camp at Nellis Air Force base started a riot against touring reporters and dignitaries this morning. Despite anti-riot countermeasures taken by the military, the Emergent inmates, originally just throwing food and displaying banners, fought back with a stunning array of abilities to stop the attack of the developmental “Active Denial System” a science fiction raygun used to stop rioters nonlethally, CS tear gas and rubber shotgun rounds. However, when Emergents managed to escape, using abilities we can only call ‘magical’, the Air Force started to use lethal force.

Other Emergents used these abilities to take the upper hand in the standoff and used their abilities to disable the Air Force’s weapon systems and force the Air Force personnel into retreat. A Blackhawk helicopter overhead strafed the camp and the inmates to suppress them as the Air Force pulled their people back, but to little avail as the Black Hawk itself was brought down by a sandstorm that I, Greg, think must have been conjured…”

NBS News

”Rioting in Washington DC tonight as vigils for the dead at the Nellis Uprising were disrupted by counterprotests; tempers boiled over and violence engulfed the vigil as both sides went at it with words, then with fists, clubs, rocks and other weaponry.

Other cities are reporting similar outbreaks of violence as the antipathies go from a simmer to a boil and one of the most controversial issues of our time, the so-called "Emergent Question" becomes a much more urgent issue for everyone. We now take you live to the Washington Mall, where a mass brawl is ongoing...”

FOC News, Late Edition

"Under fire for his department's mishandling of the Nellis Uprising, which has now turned into a siege between an entrenched perimeter of a mixed military task force and the Emergents, trapped in their encampment, but in control of it, Secretary Donald Norman of Homeland Security tendered his resignation to President Amesbury as of eight o'clock this evening, Eastern Standard Time.

The Department of Homeland Security and the president have come under a bipartisan torrent of fire over the footage of the Uprising, showing military personnel, under the command of Department of Homeland Security, using lethal force on Emergents, and the Emergents fighting back with a truly terrifying spectacle of supernatural fury..."

New York Daily Mail Editorial, evening edition

The air is crackling, and it isn’t merely the antipathies of both sides of the Emergent issue. It feels almost as if the world is slipping into crisis, and what will emerge from its maw will not resemble the world as we knew it, the old world we furiously attempt to keep in place as reality itself seems to turn everything we know, or thought we knew, against us…

The Army was called in to surround the Nellis facility, now taken over by the inmates, with armor and other heavy forces and were waiting for the order to start shelling.

There were already protests by people who felt that the Emergence had no bearing on civil rights or just those people who were relatives of Emergents and stood by their own (many didn't). These people were organized by four Emergents who have since become national figures; Casey O'Neil, a medal of honor winning Vietnam war hero, Benita Sanchez, Max Kopek and Anna Hsieh, the Hong Kong pop singer.

These four pooled resources and managed to organize a relief into the compound via magical means, the infamous "Nellis Door," that completely circumvented the military's blockade. The first thing the military knew that a bunch of non-Emergent hippie types with signs and lots of food had gotten in and some emergents had gotten out was when they showed up on the major news outlets, well-organized and with a spokesman, a former Pentagon man who'd changed into an 'ogre' by his own admission, who knew how to run the press campaign for the Emergents.

Disaster piled on disaster, but the coup de grace was the revelation of all sorts of well-buried skeletons and embarassing details that no one thought could be revealed started coming out about the most vocal opponents of Emergents; for example, several politicians were brought down by massive financial scandals, the president himself was revealed to have authorized cyberwarfare against his opponent's internet services and networking during the campaign, and the Vice President was caught red-handed with connections to various organized crime and labor groups for funding. One prominent politically involved preacher got put on death row when no less than thirty missing children over the course of three decades were found buried in various places with the evidence to easily convict him.

It was a feeding frenzy as far as the media were concerned, but it was also an effective form of warfare against the people stirring up people's fears against Emergents that discredited them nonviolently.

It's possible the tactic of massively discrediting the nation's politicians and blackmailing the rest with the implied threat that more would come is what brought the newly-sworn in President, the former Speaker of the House, to the negotiating table in good faith. Despite all that, the negotations dragged on and it seemed like little would be resolved...

That's when the Second Emergence happened, August 2nd, 2009. Imagine the housecat walking through walls, the family poodle breathing fire and beautiful green women emerging from tree trunks and dancing all over Golden Gate Park. Those were relatively benign events, but far worse happened as a plethora of formerly mythological things emerged, as well as another plethora of things that no one had ever really thought of. Suddenly, the spirits were on the loose, and the people who could deal best with them were locked up or being hunted by every gomer with a pitchfork and a shotgun in the nation.

Now it wasn't a matter of Emergents being dangerous, it was that they were useful. There was now a legitimate political reason and increasing pressure to let the Emergents go as the most fervent anti-Emergents were quickly derided as unrealistic idiots. The negotiations opened up for the establishment of safe zones for Emergents where they would be able to live off a reparation fund paid for by the government to help resettle people who were displaced from their homes and wouldn't go back for fear of being attacked by vigilantes and a variety of other concessions meant to smooth things over and quickly.

Despite this, things were not easy for the Emergents or the rest of society, as mutual suspicion reigned for the most part. Jobs were hard to come by outside of the community, though businesses quickly cropped up within it. There was almost a ghettoization effect in play in major city neighborhoods like New York's Greenwich Village, Boston's Roxbury, the Quartier Francaise of New Orleans and San Francisco's Castro, and most people had some degree of suspicion of Emergents. Despite that, Emergents were useful and some people recognized the opportunities immediately, particularly those who were familiar witht he infamous "Summer Massacre," of political resignations or in the media. Police departments started using the resources to help solve crimes, though there was little trust for the authorities and few willing to help, particularly in investigating other emergents.

The emergents have their own militants; magical supremacists who have embraced the power, often justifying it with the self defense rhetoric of militias that are often arrayed against them; it is a particularly attractive philosophy given the abuse they'd just suffered at the hands of the government, and it is feared that is is only a matter of time before one side or the other takes it beyond a war of words on talk shows and editorials and does something deadly.

Things, as they stand, in 2010 are tense, to say the least.

[Heyseuss]

Major Figures and Organizations of the Emergent Movement (NPC's)

Emergent Rights Movement - The Emergent Rights Movement is the first organization to organize and advocate for the rights of Emergents; ironically, it was not started by emergents, but by the relatives of emergents whose children were interned in the Nellis Camp and other non-emergent political activists during the Summer of 2009, when the crisis was coming to a head. The organization was pivotal in providing assistance to Emergents on the run, in a sort of underground railroad fashion, as well as famously organizing in Clark County, Nevada, for the so-called "Nellis Door," the magical gate that was used to link Nellis' inmates with the outside world. While emergents head up the organization's leadership, the ERM has a very strong membership of non-emergents.

The ERM is a broadly based organization, but also highly moderate; many Emergents feel that the ERM is too soft on the government, and too eager to compromise. In the wake of the Nellis Uprisings, many emergents have adopted a more militant stance on the "NPC's" and have splintered off into their own groups. None of them have the same pull as the ERM; the ERM has contacts across both major parties in Washington DC and none of them have ever forgotten the effects of the infamous "Summer Massacre" when the most prominent anti-emergent politicians, the ones that authorized the detention of emergents at Nellis, had all their dirty laundry outed in the press. While the ERM has since renounced the use of magical methods to unearth dirty laundry, the fear that Benita Sanchez, its president, will come out of her semi-retirement and put her relationship with the spirit world to use once more tends to fuel all sorts of heated rhetoric across the anti-emergent stance's various camps.

The Circle - The Circle is the most infamous of the more extreme emergent groups; headed by Max Kopek, credited as the first modern magician, it also has the most credibility. The Circle believes that another Nellis is inevitable, and the best way to make sure the rest of humanity respects the rights of emergents is to make sure they have the ability to defend themselves. Modelling itself on the NRA, the Circle runs 'self-defense' courses where mages are trained and disseminates magical educational material in seminars as well as on the internet, along with instructions on how to access the Circle through proxies in countries where emergents are being hunted. Other organizations exist, but the Circle's tutorials and seminars are acknowledged as being the most effective and proven. The Circle's stance worries the US Government; they are contemptuous of 'NPC's', particularly the megachurches and religious opposition to emergent rights. The Circle, for its part, is contemptuous of the US Government -- it tends to feel that they are superior to the NPC's and should not have to answer to them.

Benita Sanchez - Mexican-American from Arizona, Benita Sanchez was a successful palm reader and 'medium' for many years, even though such things were viewed as more or less fraudulent. Despite this, she is one of the few that came out as truly talented during the Emergence, and she is credited as the one who contacted spirits for information that led to Max Kopek's training as well as the information used in the infamous "Summer Massacre" of opposition politicians and media figures through the release of private information that led to arrests and trials for many of the major figures calling for the internment of Emergents or worse. She and Kopek have fallen out. Sanchez has, to date, refused all offers for work as a 'consultant' for various political parties and corporations, hoping to exploit her known abilities to their great advantage. While spirits are manifesting openly now, Sanchez is still considered foremost among the mediums. She is the current head of the Emergent Rights Movement, though she is more symbolic and leaves the work on the Hill to Casey O'Neill. Sanchez is particularly hated by the various anti-Emergent groups as the enemy #1, not in the least because she was so instrumental in helping derail their agenda and discrediting many of their leaders. She has a cult-like anti-following in the most extremist corners of the internet.

Max Kopek - The ritualist magician who opened the 'Nellis Door' with instruction from Benita Sanchez. A Detroit native that worked sales clerk jobs at bookstores and comic shops, he is the one who started derisively referring to people, particularly anti-Emergent people, as "NPC's." While not openly active in politics after leaving the Emergent Rights Movement (ERM), he is currently running the Circle, which is NRA-like in its politics and programs, but oriented toward magic. He is inevitably the one that gets mentioned by some radio talk show nut or religious preacher when they point to the danger of Emergents, and he tends to reply in kind with contempt when interviewed. Max Kopeck famously once said, "Your creator gave you a big mouth and a small mind; look what my creator gave me," as a dismissal of Reverend Jacob Smalls on the Bill Mulligan Show.

Casey O'Neill - Former Colonel in the US Army, Special Forces and MACV-SOG veteran, winner of the Medal of Honor. During the Emergence, he changed into what could be politely described as a sasquatch. Forces attemping to arrest him were unable to do so as he literally disappeared into Central Maine and Vermont, impossible to track. When he did reappear, it was in Vegas and in subsequent media events as a spokesman for the Emergents, using his decorations and service to argue against treating emergents as noncitizens. He is currently in Washington, working on behalf of the Emergent Rights Movement as a spokesman and is considered the national face of the movement.

Anna Hsieh - A former Hong Kong pop star, she became involved in the Emergent Rights Movement using her looks and magnetism to command attention, as a partner to Casey O'Neil. Her abilities involve the manipulation of people's emotions, particularly in terms of their reactions to her. She stays on the down-low, but is thought to be an ally of Max Kopek's organization. Her capabilities are largely unknown.

Aaron "Ogre" Rabinowicz - Graduate of the Columbia School of law and legal editor for the Washington Herald before moving over to the head of press relations for the Pentagon. When he emerged in 2009, he was hidden by his wife but reported by a neighbor and interned at Nellis AFB's containment facility. He assisted the Emergent Rights Movement with his knowledge of which reporters to contact and who to speak to, as well as using his legal training to aggressively negotiate the release of the Nellis detainees. He has since settled in Boston with his wife, Sarah, and commands one of the highest salaries in his industry as a freelancer. His firm prominently hires emergents and uses their abilities to its advantage.

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