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After successfully talking Zan into waking up—the world around you starts to dissolve and break apart. There's a lurch, like the sensation of abruptly falling into sleep, but backwards; and all around you, the glass begins to crack apart, splintering and sending ocean water splashing everywhere, gushing forward, a cascade of blue and black, alternating between starfish and actual stars, suspended in liquid sky.

. . . reality seems to bleed in overtop of it and, sluggishly, you find yourselves waking up all over a suburban basement in New Jersey. There is a lamp on near the bed, where someone is still asleep, though fitfully beginning to wake up.

More noticeably, there is a woman sitting up in bed with him, arms wrapped around her bare knees as she watches them with amusement, extremely beautiful and . . . extremely familiar.

"Wow." One hand drops to Zan's hair. "I don't even know where to start with you guys."

[You find yourselves in an enclosed, metallic box—the walls on all side appear to be glass, though they are looking out into inky blackness. The walls and ceiling are metallic . . . It seems to be an elevator of some kind, since there is a panel on the wall, with buttons. The elevator gives a lurch, beginning to move. Up, at first, then sideways, zooming forward, though you can't see where.]

[You find that you are not alone.]

[There is a sudden lurch, like something has reached inside of you, grabbed your 'self,' and pulled it forward sharply. Blue lights spin in the corner of your vision, like the whole world is suddenly outlined in pulsing blue neon, energy crackling along the edges of the world, holding it together. When the sickening sense of disorientation fades, you find yourself in a place that seems very unlike a suburban house in New Jersey—]

[The 'door' behind you has vanished, replaced with a brick wall splattered with bloody graffiti that spells out—

DON'T DEAD
OPEN INSIDE
[The hallway in front of you is twisted, and the girl that greeted you has vanished, nowhere to be seen.]

[Shuri, it is New Years Eve, and David and Kazuki are off in Japan somewhere, meaning that YOU get to be the focus of attention at this late-night family dinner with Lucia and her parents.

Lucia is largely keeping the subject on business with her father, but that leaves Lucille to stare at you unnervingly as she eats her turkey.]

Luckily, it's not altogether unusual for a group of people to be walking around outside at around 3AM on New Year's Eve—maybe the one night in the year where you can get away with it without turning too many heads.

At the suggestion of Robin and some of the others, Una agrees that the group can split up—some people can stay behind in the church, some will stay outside/close by when they get to Zan's house, and the others will . . . well. Knock at someone's door at 3AM? Try to look in the windows? We're not sure yet.

[Pick your location]

This might be familiar by now—or it might not. You find yourselves in an unfamiliar location, quite suddenly. Luckily, it's not at all dark and eerie; in fact, there are cheery lamps overhead, wound with garland and tinsel. There are rows of cloth-covered benches, high windows, and soft carpet—a church.

There is a girl sitting on the steps up to the pulpit, listening to quiet music on her smartphone speakers and watching as the group settles themselves. There's a bottle of champagne by her side.

"Happy New Year," she says, leaning back on her hands. "Anybody up for a drink?"

Hello friends! I made Zazzle (and myself) a bunch of special Demonverse tea blends for Christmas from Design a Tea, and thought I'd share them with you for anyone who might want to order any. Unfortunately, unlike Adagio you can't order them directly, but you CAN fill out the elements to get the same teas.

I'll also give my label names and you can ask to use my labels by name. The label name I used is in bold, and if you want it to appear with the images I picked, you might need my real name - if you don't have it already, it's Zrerqvgu Xngm - use ROT-13 to decrypt. So, you know "Please use [real name]'s 'Dr. Filangieri: Deep Sleep' label!, and hope that works.)

Bastien: Mistakes are Made - Rum-Cinnamon Oolong
(Base: Oolong, Flavor 1: Rum, Flavor 2: Cinnamon, Herb: Cloves - whole)

Kit: Old Linen - Cinnamon-Plum Rooibos.
(Base: Rooibos, Flavor 1: Cinnamon, Flavor 2: Plum, Herb: no herb.)

Tristan: Humanist Interest - Cherry-Lemon Green
(Base: Green, Flavor 1: Cherry, Flavor 2: Lemon, Herb: Lemongrass)

Kieran: Divine Calling, Infernal Desires - Pumpkin-Vanilla Black
(Base: Black, Flavor 1: Pumpkin, Flavor 2: Vanilla, Herb: Cinnamon)

Elli: Witch Way - Strawberry-Caramel Black
(Base: Black, Flavor 1: Strawberry, Flavor 2: Caramel, Herb: Lavender)

Luka: Sweet Smoke - Blackberry-Caramel Oolong
(Base: Oolong, Flavor 1: Blackberry, Flavor 2: Caramel, Herb: no herb.)

Mr. Sidney: Butler, Please - Amaretto-Zabaglione Black
(Base: Black, Flavor 1: Amaretto, Flavor 2: Zabaglione, Herb: Rose petals)

Lucia: Don't Disobey - Mango-Ginger Green
(Base: Green, Flavor 1: Mango, Flavor 2: Ginger, Herb: No herb)

David: Deep Shadows - Mocha-Hazelnut Oolong
(Base: Oolong, Flavor 1: Mocha, Flavor 2: Hazelnut, Herb: Yerba mate)

Dr. Filangieri: Deep Sleep - Vanilla-Honey Rooibos
(Base: Roiboos, Flavor 1: Vanilla, Flavor 2: Honey, Herb: Chamomile)

Maon: An Coineachan - Apricot-Black Currant Rooibos
(Base: Rooibos, Flavor 1: Apricot, Flavor 2: Black Currant, Herb: Lavender)

Madison: Blind Eye - Orange-Cranberry Green
(Base: Green, Flavor 1: Cranberry, Flavor 2: Orange, Herb: Lemon Balm)

Hope people enjoy if they get -- based on samples I got before making up actual full blends, my personal favorite (Haru) is probably Luka's, which tastes, indeed, sweet and smoky, though Mr. Sidney's is certainly a (bizarrely fancy) treat!

(And if anyone has any questions on the blends or flavors or whatever let me know)

sahrsotometsrhsowhhlehniaade
agcnltnltkdlhdlhesceoiedeoaf
tjfvmntbureeghesorfeeatmtolwt
Game Times
Friday January 2nd - 5PST to 9PST
Saturday January 3rd - 1PST to 4PST & 6PST to 9PST
Sunday January 4th - 2PST to 5PST

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the character you're playing
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As always, it's fine if you can't make every/all of the time (though more than half is recommended)—we just need to know in advance to plan around it!

And of course, we have an IRC chan (#deadgaysatanists) and a Plurk (

demonverse) so please follow, friend, and lurk as you prefer ♥

PS: If you're new to this, the website should tell you what you need to know!

Thank you all again for playing ♥ WE HAD A LOT OF FUN DOING SOMETHING A LITTLE DIFFERENT and hope you did too 'u'

Our next game will PROBABLY be the weekend after Christmas though we understand that availability may vary due to holidays. If you know you 100% can't make it, please let us know, since if there's a lot of people we'll reschedule, but so much delicious time off.

Since the number of characters staying in Demonverse continues to climb, we may do some in-between plotting so just stay tuned for that, energy-dependent. And of course if you ever have a character that wants to move on in, we are cool with that. I'm sure Tristan will be happy to continue funding condos.

Remember you can hang out in #deadgaysatanists as much as you want, and it's a good idea to pin this community and follow us at

demonverse.

As always—questions about characters or the plot? Comments? Memes? Requests? Anything goes! (We know we've introduced a lot of new stuff and revealed some older things, so please feel free to ask as much as you want and we may not have to be supercryptic possibly maybe).

Eimhir listens to the news and grimly departs to report to the Queen. Sariel and Luka also get ready to depart—Sariel with Valencia by his side, returning to report to Raphael; and Luka to Hell, although Elli is staying behind. However, for now—they accompany the rest to the small Inn near the train station in Kinbrace, where they left Maon, in the wee hours of the morning.

—there is quite the commotion going on outside the front doors.

(If you're . . . not interest in engaging with that, you can always grab a bite to eat or find a room of your own to rest—it seems someone's bought up all the available rooms, and there's a tab open in the pub.)

[BACKTHREADING UNTIL WHENEVER, feel free to placeholder and we will pick up through the week so everybody can get to everybody!]

While everybody else is confronting their inner demons to save humans from Hell and the Fae, Fon and Maon get their hotel date. Though it may not be exactly the way they'd originally intended.

The Procession is this upcoming night. Although the party rescued themselves, Valencia, and everyone else in one prison, they have confirmation that there were other prisons, with other people to rescue. Malamhìn, the Leannan Sìth with Naha, confirms that the Procession is to be in a place called Naver Forest, which the previously-kidnapped can confirm they also overheard in a snippet of conversation. Naver Forest is considerably north of Inverness (a good three hours by car; ScotRail has a stop in an excrutiatingly tiny farming village relatively nearby, and it's a half hour walk from there, so that's your best bet). It's certainly, extremely isolated in the Highlands.

Still, it should be fairly simple, unless there's anything people are overlooking. It shouldn't even be dangerous. People will pick a human in the procession and try to take them back. If they fail or flinch, that person will be lost; if they succeed, the person will be saved—but the one who tried to save him will not be harmed either way. Those are the rules.

Although, there is one little thing to get out of the way before arranging transport up there . . .

A blast of wind suddenly rushes through the forest, leaves trembling. There is a moment of expectant silence, then—the sound of hooves and piercing horns echoing through the woods, rapidly growing in volume. The ground begins to tremble.

You hear voices—human? Possibly familiar? Amidst the sudden frantic rustling of leaves.

"Don't bring anything back with you!"

"Is that really our greatest concern right now!? Holy—"

It's several hours by bus up to Inverness—luckily, Kano helpfully got coffee and McDonald's for everyone, and the scenery is quite beautiful. And of course, the WiFi works. Maon is literally crawling out of his seat by the end of the ride, alternating between half-hanging out the window and squirming all over Fon for attention, but somehow you all make it.

Some rooms have been booked at a motel near the outskirts of town for the day—so everyone can get some rest and some food, which is strongly encouraged, since it's likely to be an all-nighter.

And just as dusk begins to fall—everyone meets up again at the edge of the woods, where there's a pair of familiar strangers waiting.

Tsuyukusa finds himself in a forest late at night, somewhere approaching dawn. It's dark, and unfamiliar, and it's a good hour of wandering before he comes across anyone -- A black-haired, black-eyed, ruddy-skinned man dressed in jeans and a brown flannel shirt. He seems to have been out here a while himself, leaves and mud and twigs sticking to him.

"Hello there," he says, in a Scottish accent. "Lost, are you?"

Edmund, Naha, and Bakura find themselves in what looks like some kind of underground tunnel, surrounded by the partygoers. Many of them, rather than being the friends and companions they'd seem to be during the party, immediately begin to disperse with little apparent interest in each other. Those few who remain have weapons, and are very clearly escorting you somewhere. Of the ones you met, Ràild—no longer wearing his beak and vanishing his feathery cloak with a whirl—and Malamhìn continue to walk alongside you. Malamhìn is keeping quite close to Naha's side, actually, while Ràild walks somewhat in the lead.

They're met by a woman with golden hair piled on her head, wearing what looks like silver armor, bringing Seto from a side corridor. The procession stops briefly as Seto is quickly shoved in with the rest of the captives as the woman turns and eyes the group with a faintly troubled air.

"Ah? Malamhìn, you were tasked with capturing them, not making a relationship binding."

One way or another—some combination of frantic phonecalls, psychic connections, and text-messaging pictures of trees, all those that weren't spirited away to who-knows-where meet up near the edge of a small park early in the morning—there were too many of them to fit in the doctor's office, Filangieri pointed out with a yawn. He declined to come along, but Sariel is definitely there in his stead.

So that's how the group finds itself—in time for some reunions or introductions, and, excuse me, what happened to you and who ate what?

The messages came in late October, from Dr. Alessandro Filangieri—one to David Bellcourt, and one to the household in New York. Plane tickets, and a simple request—

"As soon as possible, per favore. It is extremely urgent."

While Lucia and Kieran had to decline—certainly it's an extremely ominous message to receive from the archangel Raphael, so that's how it came to be that a rather out-of-sorts reunion took place at Filiangieri's office in Edinburgh on the evening of October 29th, 2014—a humble red-brick building between a grocer and a café. The sign on the door says "CLOSED" with no other indication of hours, but it opens as you approach . . .

As usual, the summoning itself begins with a sense of the world changing around you, a rush where up is down and down is up, and ends with finding yourself in the darkness.

Or, at least, the night. It is neither dark by any true sense, nor silent. Although you find yourselves in a clearing far out in the woods somewhere, lights are strung up all over the place, and energetic—if strangely discordant, perhaps warped by the combination of open space and trees—celtic-style dancing music is playing. If the changing colors on the leaves and the near-freezing temperature doesn't help you realize it's late October or early November, all the partygoers in costumes probably will.

Here dance a group of girls in matching green dresses, with identical red hooded masks completely covering their faces. There, near a long table covered in delicious looking food and alcoholic drinks, sits a man in a plague doctor mask, tipping it up just enough to drink his beer. A small child, waist height at most and grubby with leaves and mud, grabs a girl's hand and uses it to swing himself around with the dance.

The band are all wearing masks as well (when their instruments will allow for it) or face paint (when they won't). There are the traditional Halloween costumes as well—black dresses and hats and long noses for the witches, fancy formal wear and hair slicked back and fanged smiles, men and women with horns and fur plastered to them. There is a youth dressed as a soldier with a bloody hand; a woman covered in blue paint from skin to hair; someone who's either a bent old man or doing a really good job making himself look like one, though he moves smoothly; a handsome man with long brown hair wearing a bird's beak and a cloak made of feathers, backing away from a dance in progress, apparently ready for a break . . .

Whether you were summoned for this or it's some kind of accident, you appear to have arrived at a rather fantastic party.

New York, Spring through Fall 2014
Tristan complained about it excessively to the point where everyone was certain he was doing it to try and distract them, a little—but, a new townhouse was secured, and warded, and kept quiet. The previous one suffered from a mysterious fire—tragic, really, but probably better than having neighbours or potential buyers dealing with unwanted visitors from unwanted places.

Tristan disappeared shortly after, and was gone for most of the summer and fall—showing up now and then, out of the blue, staying for a few days before leaving again. It was obvious to everyone that knew him that he was doing something, working on something, but he wouldn't breathe a word of it, and shut down any conversations that tried to get too serious.

✧ ✧ ✧
Maon stayed until summer vacation started, even though Madison was gone. He went to school (sometimes), brought Sitara over for visits, dragged everybody out around town on weekends, getting into trouble and relying on Fon to bail him out of it. He brought home an excessive number of houseplants and claimed a bedroom that nobody was allowed into, that had a tarp instead of a carpet.

He and Sitara went back to Scotland shortly before midsummer. "Ah ken ye'll miss me, bit ah will come back soon~" When pressed about it, he confirmed that he and Sitara had another assignment that took priority—he didn't look too happy about it. "Bit we'll be dane by November, sae we kin hae Christmas th'gither. Yer Thanksgiving, tae! That'll be fin."

✧ ✧ ✧
There was no sign or sound from Madison. All Tristan would say when he was around was—"Things are fine, for now. No news is about as good as we're going to get. Don't stick your nose in trouble."

So it was a quiet, unsatisfying summer, leading into Autumn.

✧ ✧ ✧
Orange County, October 2014
For the two pairs of newlyweds and their wayward demons in California, the summer had passed with the same sort of expectant strain in the air.

"It just feels weird," David muttered, pushing back from his computer abruptly late one night and rubbing his strained eyes. "To be sitting here working on . . . mundane things when there's, like . . . a lord of Hell slowly draining my life energy, my sister contols an army of demons, there's an apocalypse impending . . .!? Like . . . seriously?"

Kazuki sighed, looking up from the manga he was idly flipping through."You bored?"

"I'm not . . . bored," David protested, glancing over at Kazuki uncertainly. "Frustrated? I guess?"

"I wouldn't blame you for being bored, though." Kazuki replied, sounding a little bored himself and going back to his manga. Almost appropriately, it's a fantastical action type. "But being frustrated works too, cause you're ready to take action and there's a lot of other stuff going on elsewhere . . . that kind of feeling."

"So what are we supposed to do about it?"

Pausing, Kazuki seemed to seriously consider it for a moment . . . then grinned wickedly and opened up the manga to a spread page of EXTREME ACTION GUNS BLAZING EVERYWHERE.

"How about this?!"

David tossed a pillow at Kazuki's face without taking his hands off his keyboard. "Idiot," he sighed.

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Ars Goetia

an admirable history

Recent Entries

[Game 18] The Waking World

[Game 18] The Elevator

[Game 18] The House

[Game 18] New Years with the Bellcourt-Mayfairs

[Game 18] New Year's Eve

[Game 18] Summoning

Christmas Teas!

Game 18 Calling

[Game 17] OOC

[Game 17] Endgame

[Game 17] Fon & Maon

[Game 17] Samhainn

[Game 17] The Wild Hunt

[Game 17] Inverness

[Game 17] A Tree in the Forest

[Game 17] Underhill

[Game 17] Connections

[Game 17] The Doctor's Office

[Game 17] The Forest

[Pre-Game 17] New York & Orange County

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