Young Writers Society

Starting Note: Tagbooks are a special kind of storybook. Instead of making a character profile, the character you write for is yourself - and other members of the site! Your goal is to tag as many users as you possibly can in your posts, while also telling a story. In this case, you're telling the story of the Great YWS Halloween Adventure. Tagbooks are usually wacky, random and filled with fourth wall breaks - if you're lucky enough to be tagged, or just want to pop in with a post of your own, you're in for a treat!

( Here's an old tagbook, if you're still confused. )

And now, let the story began.



Mage couldn't remember the last time she had taken part in something like this. It had to have at least been a year ago, or possibly longer - the last great YWS get together that she remembered was a traumatic one involving @TheSilverFox and buses. Or maybe it wasn't. It had been long enough that she was starting to question if bringing up speaking in third person instead of first person was something she needed to bring up for the newer members of YWS, or if it was something that could just go unsaid. She decided it was the second option that made the most sense - after all, she didn't want to spend her entire night internally debating the art of writing.

Because it had been so long since the last time everyone had gotten together, Mage made sure to scan the crowd for any familiar faces. She saw @soundofmind was working on a song over in the corner, @Featherstone was with her very impressive bird and Mage's brother @Sheyren was preaching about his transdimensional overlord llama god to the users that strayed a little too close to him.

But she also saw some newer faces, too. An experienced veteran of things like this, Mage decided it was her duty to welcome them to the soon to arrive chaos. She didn't know what the chaos was going to be, but exploring a haunted mansion on its own was a recipe for disaster. Add in the trend of things like this quickly getting out of hand, and all Mage could do was hope for the best.

She slipped through the crowd and made her way over to @TheMulticoloredCyr, @Liberty and @FlamingPhoenix. Liberty and Phoenix were discussing the fine arts of reviewing, while Cyr was on the ground making a very magnificent castle out of cardboard.

"...Where did you get that cardboard?"

"You know," Cyr replied, clearly distracted by gluing things together. She waved a stray piece of cardboard around as she talked. "Can you pass me the glue?"

"Uh, sure," Mage managed to get out. After handing over a glue stick, she decided that Cyr was occupied as it was - she didn't need to distract her by offering her very wise words of wisdom.

She scanned the crowd again.

Finding another thankfully set of familiar faces, she joined @SirenCymbaline on the front steps of the mansion.

"This is going to be a crazy night," Mage offhandedly commented.

Siren gave a nod, hoisting a bag of ghost hunting supplies she had borrowed from @ChristenedPages onto her shoulder. "At least it won't be as crazy as Vodquila."

"You never know," Mage said. She was glad to finally dispense some wisdom. "Nights like this can get crazy-and, uh, I already said that, didn't I? Ignore that last part."

She paused and looked around again.

"...Have you seen @Omnom, by the way?" she asked.

"He's probably working on the YWS Universe," @ScarlettFire suddenly said from beside her, her arms laden with her very troublesome cat.

Mage jumped in surprise, then regained her cool.

"I don't know," she said. "I hope he is. If he's not, I think he might be coming up with a villain for tonight, and I'm not sure we can defeat a villain of that caliber."

Siren opened her eyes wide. "You spake the name. Maybe, he heard you." She dropped the ghost hunting supplies on the ground, so she could spookily wriggle her fingers.
"Now, @Omnom might reeaAaLly doOoo it."

She straightened out, opened the door, and pointed in with her thumb.

"Anyway, I already got a buncha folks in here. Specialists. In the important things." She introduced them all, and punctuated each name with a clap, followed by a finger snap and point.

"I got @wakarimasen in here, talking up the musical ghosts." She pointed out Wakarimasen, in thick debate with a modern indie folk ghost and a 60s folk baroque ghost.

"I got @AvantCoffee, for the caffiene lovin' film critiquin' classical ghosts." She waved at AvantCoffee, twelve mugs into suffering the tangents of a would-be philosophical bro ghost wearing a goatee and sunglasses.

"@Sunnydragon and @LordZeus for the...dragony ghosts. I'm sure we'll find some eventually."

Siren pointed out "@TinkerTwaggy, for the historical ghosts- Sweet Jesus, is that the ghost of Napoleon III? Tinker wait for me!!!"

Mage raised her hands to her mouth, and called out after her. "But is talking- does that work? Just talking to them?"

"Heck if I know man, here's my chance to meet Napo III!" yelled Siren, already out of sight.

And Mage was left alone on the steps, with the bag of ghost hunting equipment that lay forgotten on the ground.

Mage poked through it, and found a manual inside. She read it. She gasped, to find how easily the aspiring hunter could be turned into the ghosts by the spirits they tried to exorcise, if they exorcised improperly.

She flipped furiously through the pages. Her gaze snapped up, to what she could see through the open door, and down, at the segment on safety precautions.

Nobody inside the building was using any of them.

@alliyah had been sent to the mansion on a mission from @KotGRCommander, well he called it a mission, but really it was an over-rated Building Inspection if you asked her. She had been sent with the rest of the KotGR Court and Senior knights to check out some of the mansion's rooms, and especially the Great Library, to evaluate whether there were any ideas that they could bring back for the KotGR Castle. The problem is she didn't know the first thing about construction, let alone interior decorating. And worse than that! A few folks in chat, @Dilbert64, @Liberty, and @Riellehn had mentioned that they had heard that the mansion was actually HAUNTED. Knowing this, did little to put Alliyah at ease, so she paced back and forth outside of the house waiting to see if @CaptainJack, @BlueAfrica, @Kale, and @fraey would arrive.

Suddenly, she heard some rustling from a nearby tree. "Who... who's there? Show yourself!" Alliyah tried to sound authoritative, adjusting her dark green global moderator badge that was pinned to her coat.

"~whoooo, whoooo, whoooooooooooooo~" came the reply...

Not knowing what to make of that, Alliyah decided she'd rather take her chances inside and hurried inside the door of the building. The rest of the court would simply have to meet her inside she decided, and looked around for some sort of library or information desk.

She heard what sounded like a party coming from deeper inside the building, but Alliyah was unsure she wanted to stick around the building long enough for that. She made her way to the staircase, and saw @Oxara, @RavenLord, @Asith, and @mellifera dressed in different costumes making their way down the steps. Asith, the current featured member, waved and said, "You might not want to go up there, some greenish goo was leaking from one of the rooms so we all decided to get out of the second floor."

"Thanks Asith, but I'm kind of on a mission, also have you all been hearing this weird drumming sound?"

Ox offered, "Dead men play no drums"

Alliyah didn't know what to make of that so made her way past them to continue up the stairs. Suddenly she saw bright green goo dripping out from under the door of an office room to the right. She wanted to get past it, but needed to make sure it wasn't the library, so knocked lightly on the door. And heard a soft voice shout, "come in! muahaahahahaha"

Could this day get any more bizarre? She opened to door a crack, and saw.... @ShadowVyper sitting in front of a set of overflowing beakers and a cauldron. "Um, hi Shady, I've gotta ask what's going on here?"

ShadowVyper started waving a piece of paper, and started rattling off what was either an incantation or a chemical formula. Alliyah gave a blank look back. "It's science!" Shady offered back. Alliyah nodded, and unsure if she wanted to stick around while that cauldron was still overflowing, backed away slowly. "That's great Shady, I need to find the library though, so I've gotta leave, good luck with your experiments!"

As she turned to enter the hall again she ran into @Tuckster holding a medium sized robot and @AvantCoffee holding... a tray of assorted coffee beverages. "Have either of you seen the library?" Alliyah asked.

Just then the floor-boards started to shake, then there was a bright flash, followed by the lights going out.

@Liberty let out an ear piercing scream a second after the lights went out.

"Help!" she squeaked out. @Dilbert64 and @Riellehn were still in the chat with her, and she knew because they both let out yelps. Quivering, she took a step to the left, and bumped into something.

Crash.

"Lib, was that you?" Rie asked suddenly, making her freeze. The dark was her greatest fear.

"Um, yes?" she replied softly.

"It was the antique vase, I think." Dilbert pointed out.

Libby was about to apologize, but realized it was only a vase. She smacked her self on the head for being so dumb.

"Anyone have a flashlight or a match stick or anything we can use to light the way?" Dilbert asked.

"Would a torch help?" she asked. She could almost make out the other two nodding, because of the moon's light coming through the tall window that reached up to the ceiling.

Fumbling for her torch, that she always kept handy, she flicked it on, and jumped when she saw @26Gemini staring back at her. The two screamed, while Dilbert and Rie held back laughter.

"What happened?" Gemini asked when they had all regained their composure. "Who turned off the lights?"

Rie shrugged.

"Let's go and try getting everyone else in one place." offered Dilbert.

Nodding, the foursome huddled close and creeped towards the main hall, where everyone had been partying. On their way, Libby shrieked when she saw a huge way-too-realistic picture of vampire and mummy staring at them. She could have sworn she saw the vampire wink at her.

They bumped into @AtlasW, @FireSpyGirl, @PrincessInk and @FlamingPhoenix who were sitting beside a statue of a knight. "You guys wanna join out troop?" Gemini asked.

The two nodded, got up, and joined them.

"Libby, what would you think if I told you that I think a picture of a vampire winked at me?" Phoenix whispered to her.

"Erm. I'd believe you." Libby answered.

Phoenix didn't push it, knowing that the girl was already freaked out.

At that moment, the torch went out. Libby jumped, accidentally dropping the torch, which fell and broke into pieces. They all frantically looked around for some light, but saw none, but got some from the full moon outside in the cloudless sky through another tall window.

The little group creeped towards the door of the main hall where the party was taking place.

Since Rie reached the door first, he opened it as slow as possible, trying to make as much dramatic effect as possible with the creaking of the door.

Getting impatient, Libby shoved open the door, and out jumped a cat.

"Awe, a cat!" Princess exclaimed, reaching out for it, but it ran away.

"Hope it doesn't turn into a monster and eat us all." Atlas said playfully.

Libby squirmed. "Hope so too."

Fraey was having an interesting day, to say the least. In between studying for their upcoming tests in biology and, ugh, organic chemistry, they were called out to basically join the party at the Mansion (in capital letters because it's Important.)

On their way there, they spotted quite a few fellow YWSers in varied dress and costumes. Interesting. They didn't think this was a costume party, but it wasn't like they had much to dress up as besides a hockey player.

They greeted the array of users at the front of the mansion, namely @TheBlueCat and @Mea. Since the whole Knights of the Green Room Court had been summoned, Fraey shouldn't really hang out in case someone needed help, so they continued on, before wishing everyone a good morning/evening since the weather outside had turned quite tumultuous.

Never mind that -- they had a mystery to solve! (Well, not really, but the idea of being on an adventure sounded fun.)

Fraey walked into the large front room, absentmindedly taking in the various sites of people messing around -- the many users such as @Ventomology and @AstralHunter involved with the Pokémon: New Horizon SB were having imaginary battles among each other. With a second glance, there was an odd shape that appeared by them, but Fraey figured it was nothing to concern themself over.

Once they managed to push by the growing amount of users on the first floor, the place didn't appear too terrifying to them, save the growing amount of green ooze, possibly, spreading down the walls and across the floors, with curious pictures that could have moved an inch since their previous check. No worries. It wasn't like there were ghosts or anything.

As if summoned, all the light over the stairs and the entire house went out. Oh well. Good thing they brought a super bright flashlight which may blind themself rather than any actual intruders.

Fraey hummed aloud as they slowly climbed the stairs. There was such promise in all of these dark corners! Hopefully they would be able to meet up with @alliyah and the rest of the guard soon.

As the lights went off a scream could be heard from downstairs where the party must have come to a stop. Alliyah made a mental note to ask @Mage, @Meshugenah, and @Rydia to book a more reliable venue for the next Spooktober Bash. This mansion, haunted or not, was becoming much more than bargained for. "Are you both alright" Alliyah tried to ask Coffee and @Tuckster. A mechanical sound started-up and the robot Tuck had been holding hopped out of their arms. "BEEP BOP BOOP Bop, NEW SQUILLS HOT OFF THE PRESS. BEEP Bop BOOP BOp" the robot repeated again and again while printing the newest Squills Editions.

"Is that... Is that the @SquillsBot?" Alliyah asked as the robot hurried away leaving a paper trail behind it.

"Well yes, I may have borrowed him for a robotics project" Tuck answered back.

"Ooof... well hopefully he makes his way back to @EternalRain, @Fraey, and @CaptainJack before the next edition is due"

As the sound of the robot speeding away faded, Alliyah heard another sound, it sounded like footsteps coming closer to the group. Then, very close by, there was a monstrous howling. Not wanting to wait and see if it was @Wolfical, @SpiritedWolfe, or @wafflewolf7 playing a prank on them or a real werewolf - Alliyah started running in the opposite direction.

As she rounded the corner she saw a glowing figure standing rather ominously in front of her, thinking it must be a ghost she froze in her path. "OH hi! Alliyah, long time no see!" the ghostly figure said.

But as the figure got closer, Alliyah could see it was actually @Lightsong! "I'm trying out some glow-in-the-dark paint for Spooktober, what do you think?"

"Well, to be honest, it's pretty spooky, but at least it seems to work pretty well in the dark, do you have any idea where the library is?" Alliyah asked.

Suddenly a third voice joined the group, "did someone say library?"

"Who said that!?" Alliyah asked the darkness.

"It's me, Knight Fraey." the voice answered back.

"Oh great - I'm hoping the light starts working again soon, it's awfully difficult to tell who anyone is in the dark. Let's get to the library, if you want to join us Lightsong you can, I honestly have no clue how to get there."

"Maybe I know" said a fourth voice, accompanied by the sound of a small dog barking.

"I was trying to catch up with you earlier, but you started running when Bubbles was howling earlier"

"Is that... @Dossereana???" Alliyah asked hopefully.

"It sure is, and I think I can help you get to the library too!"

Just then the dog that Doss had been holding started growling like they sensed someone... or something... coming towards the group.

@FireSpyGirl slowly looked at everyone around her. This wasn't good, not at all. She took a deep breath and decided to not say anything. She'd let the others lead and decide for right now. The only ones she could say she "knows" was @Liberty, @26Gemini and @Fantascifi66. This was her first time doing anything like this, first time being in a real haunted house as well. She shuddered as she remembered the whispering voices when she first walked in. She wondered if @Wolfical was in here somewhere.

Captain Jack was doing paperwork.

It was a Friday night and that meant paperwork. Incidents in the halls of the main castle had led to expense reports containing details of overtime for the cleaning crew, more cleaning supplies, a small dumpster, and a replacement pigeon ornament for the Hall of Order. The previous, now horribly disfigured, pigeon had been laid to rest in someone’s inferno with the prospect of being made into dining ware.

They flipped open their agenda book that featured a sparkling dark cyan ink on a plain yellow sticky note. Definite sign that alliygator (@alliyah) was the source of the reminder. They picked up a fountain pen to draw a small set of jaws on the scrap of paper and then began packing their inspection bag. In went a clip board, two pens, multiple wells of ink, a collapsible sword and treats for the possum and the raccoon.

The two creatures had become theirs after @Kale left for an extended research project set somewhere in the dungeons of unknown worlds. The critters followed the captain of the guard out to their Mustang, dragging the captain’s bag along and hitting every bump in the parking lot. Captain Jack placed the critters and the bag in the back of their car, and set off for the new business.

Maybe @KotGRCommander should get out here and attend to the new business if he really wants it done. Jack considered picking up @AvantCoffee for the sake of having someone else in on this whole ordeal, but decided to hold out. Maybe there would be some cat selling coffee down the road. Or tea. Or whichever one the alliygator liked.

The captain was honestly struggling when thinking of people to call, holding off the temptation for an all knights bulletin. Maybe once they got to the location their head would be clearer.

The sound they heard faded into the darkness, and everyone breathed a collective sigh of relief. That is, except for Princess Ink. Princess Ink squeaked as she looked around the room they all stood in. Too many shadows. Definitely too many shadows. She squeaked again. She wished she had been wiser and stayed out of the haunted house like her hummingbird entourage suggested. But ah well. Too late.

"You alright?" @Magestorrow asked her.

"Yes! Of course," said Ink, not wanting to be the only YWSer who was scared. She peeked around at the others. There wouldn't be...any ghosts right? None right?

@TheMulticoloredCyr switched on a flashlight to shine it on the walls. "Light is the illuminator of truth," she proclaimed, just as the beam focused on some...writing on the wall.

It was in dark blue ink -- YWS blue.

In big, bold, spooky words, it read "#classified".

@BlueAfrica pranced in. "Ahhh, classified!" she said with a wide smile as she winked at everyone. "'Tis follows us even here!"

"Is this someone's idea of a prank or is it real?" Ink demanded. If it were a prank, it was terribly, terribly mean. Mean enough to warrant dropping a bucket of gifs over the prankster's head.

Well, actually, if it were a prankster, it'd be better. Ink decided to reward this prankster with a helping of 500 points, 3 cookies, and a review.

@Oxara, was piratically laughing at the groups reaction, which constituted of @alliyah, @tuckster, and @Dossereana. They clearly couldn't see him, and were all piratically quivering with fear. Oxara was just glad he had made his night vision googles function able.

"Let the evil reach the condemned
Let the tendril reach for the sky
Let us not behead
But surely let them die"

The group were practically quivering, Alliyah was holding keeping onto a pen she had written a poem on recently, Tuck was hugging a screw drive for some robot project abandoned to the dark hallways, or so Tuck thought at the least.

Oxara began to talk, almost like a robot
"Bleep bloop get your squills
Surely your getting chills
Bleep bop I need a refill.
Bleep Bop surely you enjoy these thrills?"

"Uh @SquillsBot is that you?" Alliyah asked in a hesitant voice?

"I'm sorry for leaving you in a dark!" Tuck added in

Oxara crept forward, and a beam of light shot across him. The eyes of the group eased just a little bit at the sight of him.

"Oxara? god you really had us going there." Tuck chimed in, relief still plain in tuck's eyes.

"Oh course, please come this way sacrifices
I assure you I won't antagonize,
I am after all a master of fantasizes."
Ox said in a pleasant, yet off putting voice as he could muster.

"You know Ox, your rhyming scheme is off, both literately and figuratively. By which I mean your scheme to scare us is off."

"Aww are you sure?" Ox said, his normal voice at last returning

"I am sure." Alliyah said, before returning to walking toward the library.

"Wait a second, how did you know that squills bot ran away!" Tuck protested

"Oh that's easy, I found the bot when the lights went out. He was printing like a mad little robot. I also may or may not have taken some of it's the dark blue ink, like the ones our names are made off, and let's say I put up a few gifts around the house."

"What did you write?" Dossereana said, finding a way to chime in.

"Oh well that is classified." Ox responded

Alliyah narrowed her eyes "Bold of you to say that to the leader of unclassified."

Ox just pushed past the group and started walking back words, his legs moving a little bit too fast given the fact he was walking backward, and appeared to twist in a little bit unnatural ways.

"So where are you headed in such a hurry?" Ox asked causally

"The library."

"Ah you know the rumor right?"

Alliyah only gave a squint of the eyes in response.

Ox cleared his throat
"The library is a maze
You will surely be stuck
So beware of the ghosts gaze
For you will have no luck."

Alliyah shrugged "rumors. Beside what's with your poetry, their not even that cryptic!"

"Look, my human who is writing this, only has so much time! He can't create 10 really cryptic poems ok! Look just accept the poems for what they are, short and sweet and do what they do."

"Well anyway we're close to the libary." Dossereana offered

Ox retreated to the door, and opened it for them, the others went in to the unseen libary. Ox still behind the door, unheard and unseen by the group grew a grin, his mouth looking too large for his face.

"I hope you like what happens thereafter
I have been the perfect actor
So let me offer
These authors
Perhaps I shall play on their dreams
oh what a glorious scheme"

Ox went into the unseen library, closing the door, which appeared to lock behind itself.

The Library was smaller than Alliyah had thought it would be, and there was an odd smell - slightly smoky and acidic, Alliyah thought to herself that "stardust" would be too poetic for whatever smell was circling around the room, but still assigning a word to it made it slightly less spooky. Speaking of poetry, she wasn't sure what had gotten into @Oxara, but the increase of spooky poems seemed suspicious. Alliyah took a spin around the room trying to jot down whatever details could be helpful for the @KotGRCommander's records: spiderwebs, high ceilings, section for ghouls, witches, ghosts & monsters, a few odd metal bowls on a center table, candles arranged in a circle near a window - honestly the room was giving her the creeps.

@Tuckster appeared to be getting lost in a novel by some classic well-known authors from the area. A few novels by @Carlito, @BlueAfrica, @DougalOfBiscuits were being put in Tuck's backpack already.

@Fraey was taking a more numerical approach to studying the library getting out a tape measure and starting to measure the lengths of the room. As Fraey neared the edge of the room a mouse scuttled past their feet and @Dossereana's dog ran after it barking. Fraey tripped backwards into the book shelf - and suddenly the whole bookshelf swerved revealing a dark tunnel with no end in sight. A low howling like a muted ambulance-siren could be heard from somewhere deep in the tunnel. The group exchanged glances.

"What in the world is that? I'm quite sure this wasn't on any of the building plans I looked at before coming here. I've had enough. Let's get out of here now." Alliyah made her way towards the door, tried the handle, and found it... locked.

"I guess we're stuck. Door's locked. Unless @CaptainJack, @Querencia, @TheBlueCat, @FlamingPhoenix or @Kale, or one of the other knights come to the library themselves I don't think we're getting out of here."

Oxara smiled and in a poetic sing-song voice said back,
"If escape you seek,
you'll be here all week
if you stay within this room
it will become a tomb.

However if you're brave
let's explore that tunnel cave
it might be the trick
to leave this house of brick."

Alliyah felt a bit uneasy but she wasn't one to argue with a good rhyme scheme. Tuck, Doss, and Fraey scratched some further notes down about the library and started slowly walking towards the tunnel themselves.

Fraey spoke up before they entered the tunnel though - "Alliyah, did you notice that the "featured works" display in the library was empty? It looked like a big Manual of Incantations was taken out - I checked the recent check-outs sheet and it looks like @Magestorrow and @SirenCymbaline 's names had been scribbled in there by someone, but all the other information said "CLASSIFIED" so I couldn't tell when it happened."

"Look, I don't know what's going on in this place, but this mission is way more trouble than it's worth. I still remember the last time we had to deal with this #classified nonsense and I'm not going there again... still it couldn't hurt to send an emergency notif to the members of Unclassified. "



The crew entered into the tunnel getting closer and closer to whatever... or whoever was making that terrible howling noise.

Deep in the darkness of an ouiblette, Kale twitched.

For the first time in who-knows-how-long-because-Kale-sure-didn't, there were voices. Human voices. Hopefully. Though was that a dog? Dogs were good. Dogs meant people. People meant rescue. Rescue meant food. And Kale missed food.

For the first time since several hours after tripping and falling through that Very Inconveniently Placed Trap Door of DOOM (seriously, who puts trap doors in the Mystical Crystals section of their library???), Kale felt confident that escape was nigh.

Dungeon crawling got very boring, very quickly, when one only had a single, small-but-deep dungeon to crawl around in.