Young Writers Society

When you wake up, you're confronted with three problems.

Problem #1: You've woken up somewhere you arguably don't remember falling asleep in. You're in the overgrown ruins of a city, surrounded by broken vehicles and buildings with questionable integrity. The entire city seems off. The smell of decay lingers in the air, and it's far too quiet for a place like this. And while you might have abandoned cities where you're from, you don't have this abandoned city. You also don't have any idea how you've gotten here.

Problem #2: This isn't just the aftermath of an apocalypse. This is the aftermath of a zombie apocalypse. You discover that when you look down and realize the smell of decay was coming from your own body. You've become a zombie. You don't have a craving for brains. You think you'd be able to speak normally if you tried. And you still feel like you. Your body is just...not doing so good.

Problem #3: You're not alone.

More specifically, you're not alone because you're surrounded by other zombies.

So, in summary, you're stuck in a zombie apocalypse as a zombie with absolutely no idea how you got there. The only help you'll probably be able to find are the survivors of the apocalypse, but it'll be hard winning their trust as a zombie.

Good luck.

1. Keep all out-of-character discussion over in the OOC thread! It keeps this thread nice and easy to navigate. As a bonus point, it makes rereading the roleplay a little bit smoother.

2. Please include a description of your character’s appearance in your first post and/or the OOC thread! I’ll throw together a formal list of them in the post before this one, but we need to know what your character looks like so we can describe them in our posts. You can put the description in a spoiler with the code down below:

Code: Select all

[spoiler]Enspoilered text goes here![/spoiler]

3. Speaking of characters, feel free to pick characters from whatever you want. They can be from another roleplay, a storybook, a novel or even a fanfiction of yours. The only reasons I’ll say no to a character is because they’re either a) too powerful for this roleplay or b) somehow conflict with the plot I have planned. But I’ll definitely let you know if that’s the case!

4. Please don’t write for anyone else’s characters. It's hard to predict what someone else might have their characters do, and it takes away some of the fun for the other writers.

5. Your character can guess what the plot is, but don’t make any plot-altering decisions without checking with me first! Some of my roleplays have more group scheming involved than others. I run roleplays like a DM runs a Dungeons & Dragon campaign. There’s some things that absolutely have to happen in a certain way to progress the plot, but the other writers have a lot of flexibility with other parts of the story.

(For example, you might not be able to add an NPC, but you can choose how your character interacts with them—save for if that interaction somehow conflicts with the plot!)

I’ll do my best to communicate how flexible a certain part of the story is, but always check with me if you’re not sure.

6. Don't post multiple times in a row. Make sure everyone has a chance to get a response in. There's going to be times where it makes more sense to post back-and-forth between two people, but please be courteous of your fellow roleplayers! If you want a faster-paced roleplay, Roleplay Hollow roleplays might be more of your cup of tea.

7. Posts should be on the longer side and be easy to read. Since this is a Roleplay Realm roleplay, longer posts are the norm. Occasionally, a sentence reply might work best, but the goal is to have longer posts. As for the easy to read bit: don’t worry! Just follow grammar rules and you should be all set.

8. Communicate with your fellow roleplayers. Ever have to take a break from the roleplay or realize it’s not really working out for whatever reason? That’s okay! Just let us know ahead of time so we can naturally write your character out of the story or give you the time you need to write your post. The key to a really fun and finished roleplay is communicating with the other writers.

And while we’re on the topic of communication, here’s your first task: pop over to the roleplay’s ooc thread and say the phrase “DungeonMaster loves roleplays” in a spoiler! That lets me know that you’ve read through this rules post~

When Rose first opened her eyes, she thought she was dreaming. Sunlight flickered through broken windows and across abandoned buildings. She felt cool, rusted metal beside her. When she glanced next to her, she saw an old, unfamiliar car. And the entire place smelled like decay—the smell was even worse than the last dud potion Grim had made in Crewel's class.

She sat up and covered her nose, but that only made the smell worse. This dream had to be the most realistic one she had ever had. That thought wasn't new, but Rose had grown to used to how sleeping was supposed to work for her now to put the pieces together.

She dropped her arm to her side. The smell was a little easier to handle now.

"Hello?" she called out. She scanned the area for other people. She wouldn't be alone in a dream like this, would she? Maybe she would be-

Then she heard movement from around the car. She spun around, eyes landing on the figure that emerged. And then her breath immediately caught in her throat because this suddenly didn't seem like this much of a dream.

It was Ace. He was standing there with tattered clothes and decaying skin. He let out a groan when he saw her, arms held up like a stereotypical zombie. Her fingers fumbled for the pepper spray in her bag. Did that even work on zombies? She didn't know. She just kept thinking about when she had seen him last. They had been in her dorm with Deuce and Grim, trying trying see who could stay up the latest.

How could this have happened?

She held up her pepper spray, hand still shaking. Ignoring the actual effectiveness of pepper spray against zombies, could she really spray him in the face when he was giving her such an Ace look with those wide eyes of his right now-

"Prefect?" he said in a voice that didn't sound very zombie-like.

She blinked, still holding up the pepper spray. "...You're-You're not..."

He held his hands up in surrender.

She let out the breath she had been holding. "It's you," she managed to get out. "I thought you were an actual zombie—why didn't you say it was you?"

"I didn't recognize you." Rose just stared at him. Ace, in response, covered his nose with his arm. "You smell worse than I do!"

She frowned. "I don't smell that bad, do I?"

"You smell like Deuce's dirty gym socks," Ace declared. She replied by giving him a little nudge in the arm—only to freeze when she saw how decayed her hand looked.

...So that was why she smelled.

Sinestra's Point of View

The aged woman's eyes opened slowly, vision blurrier than the sky at dusk. Her her was messier than she would've like-- she could tell because she was on the ground and her bun hadn't been tied up. Her cane was, thankfully, already in her hand. Grasping it, she rolled onto her front and slowly forced herself up, bones aching, skin sagging--

"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!" she hissed, catching eye of her decaying skin, wrinkled and aged. "I look like I'm at least a hundred!"

"Frankly, I considered you to be at least a thousand," a man's voice said from behind her. Turning around, the first thing she saw was a-- well, a zombie. Her wits about her, she raised her cane and thwacked the creature on the head. "Ow!" it hissed. "What on earth was that for, you insolent hag?!"

"...for calling me a hundred," she quickly lied. The man's skin was pale and seemed to be rotting. The smell of death and decay was all around. Flies danced around the man's head, clearly making use of all their natural instincts. "You seem to be dead," she noted, placing her cane firmly against the ground as she slowly stepped towards him.

"As do you," he snorted. The man looked all around, eyes adjusting to the light. Now that she was closer, Sinestra could see the grime-coated glasses sitting in his shirt pocket. She looked down at her own clothes-- torn and worn, not at all what she had worn when she was--

Never mind where she was. All that matter is that she got away from here. Looking around, Sinestra noticed several others. "Are any of you locals or residents of this... place?"

Sugar

The unrelenting assault of sunlight on Sugar's delicate eyes, which were still closed but nonetheless pierced by the eternal nightlight of horrors that already glared down from above. The phrase 'piercing glare' had yet to apply to any other so accurately.

Sugar peeled themself off of the rough surface they'd apparently passed out upon. Where were they last? It had to be somewhere in Aidopus...

As their eyes scoured the ground for clues. It was stone, pure and solid, like the whole strip they'd fallen asleep on was carved from the same enormous slab of stone, or perhaps carved into the side of one of the mountains that surrounded Aidopus, a theory that was further confirmed by the sheer scale of the buildings surrounding them, nearly all of them being of the same straight, rectangular build like dominos all stacked in rows along the solid stone road. About the road were scattered large beetle-shaped capsules, each built slightly different with odd doors and space inside to fit various numbers of people. All of the capsules were mounted on wheels, but none appeared to have any poles or straps to attach a mule or ox.

How many people lived here that even with buildings tall and dense enough to obscure the rest of the mountain beyond that these small mobile dwellings needed to line the streets?

Sugar yanked on the handle of one of them as someone slowly dragged thirself to their feet on the other side. Their dark brown skin was marked by tears and rips like it was mere paper that had been shredded by the family cat.

The door popped open and Sugar ducked inside, occasionally glancing at the stranger through the window. The interior smelled of death and dread and looked as though it had been abandoned in a hurry.

Meanwhile, the stranger flapped a decayed set of glorious black wings irritably and looked around, appearing sickened, brow furrowed in distress.

"You okay, my dear acquaintance?" Sugar asked following a quick tap on the window.

The stranger's golden eyes captured Sugar's attention in their iron grasp, and they didn't hear their response. The sun was so much kinder to those beautiful rings of rippling gold, evidently as enchanted by them as Sugar was.

Sugar shook their head and climbed backward back out of the dwelling. "I'm sorry, I couldn't quite hear you," they said once they met those eyes over the roof of the dwelling.

"I said I am quite confused," the stranger confessed, apparently for the second time.

"What about?"

Their brow furrowed again, and they tilted their head. "You are typically....decayed?"

Sugar snorted. "Well the host body is certainly not the strongest thing- wait," they imitated the head tilt, though it felt silly, "are you usually....not like that?"

"No, I am not. And this is not the city in which I typically awake, nor the building."

"So...you're not from Aidopus?"

"This is quite clearly New York City, and I cam not from there." The emphasis sounded awkward, like they'd only recently been introduced to the concept.

But it was Sugar's turn to be confused. "What are you talking about-"

It was then that the chatter of another group, the tones as inquisitive and confused as Sugar and the stranger they'd awoken nearest, reached a volume which enough to distract Sugar from whatever they'd been asking about a minute before.

With a frustrated laugh, Sugar hopped over a few of the dwellings to reach the other group, followed more slowly by their winged acquaintance. They stopped to sit cross-legged on the one nearest the whole group and awaited the answer to the question they'd overheard.

"Are any of you local residents of this...place?" A very good question by a very old individual.

They spun around when they heard voices from behind them.

Rose was still trying to wrap her head around suddenly becoming a zombie, but she was having an even harder time registering that the two that had approached them weren't actual zombies. Ace looked torn between doing another zombie impression and blasting them with a gust of wind.

"We're, uh, not," Rose said, giving Ace another little nudge. These two were friendly. Maybe zombies weren't a normal magic thing, but everything weird was becoming Rose's new normal at this point. She could add turning into a zombie into the mix, too.

Ace nudged her back, but it wasn't nearly as hard as hers.

"We're students at Night Raven College," Ace said with a warm smile. There it was. She was waiting for him to switch from being Ace to being the weirdly polite version of him he pulled out whenever he wanted to manipulate a random stranger.

Rose caught a glimpse of a tattered shirt out of the corner of her eye. It was sitting on the front seat of the old car she had been leaning against when she woke up. It screamed tourist, but not in a way that she would have expected from Twisted Wonderland.

She reached in through the open window and pulled it out.



A pit formed in her stomach.

...Twisted Wonderland didn't have a New York.

"We're in New York City," she said, shirt still in her hand as she turned around. She glanced at the sky line. She hadn't been to NYC outside of a few school trips, so she couldn't say for sure that they were really there. But it looked like the kind of buildings she had expected from the city, if she tried to imagine them without the destruction and plants.

Ace frowned and took the shirt from her. He held up in front of his face and stared at the letters. "What kingdom is that in?"

"It's not in a kingdom," she said. "Ace, we're on Earth."

"Fellow planetary travelers?" Sinestra half-whispered to herself. "I must admit, I'm rather surprised to hear that..." Alexander watched nervously as the woman started muttering several odd words-- if they were words-- in a language that he wasn't quite sure he recognized. She seemed to realize that she had changed languages, because she paused and looked around. "Er... I would be correct in assuming that I am the only one present that speaks Belecthorian Olde Elvish, would I not?"

"...there's no such thing," Alexander grunted. "We're not even really here."

"I can guarantee that we are truly here," Sinestra replied. "Though my magic might be temporarily gone, as soon as I find it, I will be more than happy to show you that it is quite real."

[i]This woman must've escaped from Parsons State Insane Asylum,[/s] Alexander thought to himself, shaking his head. "It is scientifically impossible. Most likely, this is just an extremely vivid dream that I either will or will not remember when I awaken at home."

Sinestra whacked the his leg with her cane, making the man wince. "That felt like a dream?"

"Admittedly, no," he responded, trying to ignore the pain. How could a woman so old hit so hard? Probably use of steroids, assuming that this was real. Otherwise, it was just part of the dream. "So, we're in New York... this is what remains of the Big Apple."

"Quite right," Sinestra agreed before falling back into the so-called Elvish she'd spoken previously. The crazy woman started wandering around a bit before noticing a seemingly gangly creature and a person with wings that Alexander had not yet noticed either. "Ah, hello, there!"

Sugar

Sugar's face brightened and they waved, "Hi!"

"Are you typically..." Sugar's yet-unnamed companion tried to find a word, "...Deceased?"

Sugar raised an eyebrow. That was a very...human way of putting it.

Their eyes widened.

"YOU GUYS ARE HUMAN!" they exclaimed, almost falling backward off of the dwelling. They quickly corrected their posture and leaned forward, the vines growing out from the gaps in their host body's chest reaching out and hovering curiously near the collection of strangers. "You have to tell me everything."

Before Rose could reply to anything the two had said, another pair of zombies joined their group. One had wings; the other had vines. Rose hadn't ever seen anything like that before. From the look on his face when she glanced over at him, Ace hadn't ever seen people like them, either. The zombies were one thing. This was an entirely different can of worms.

"Ace," she whispered, "it's rude to stare."

She still had a pit in her stomach when she thought about them being in the ruins of an Earth city, but she had to hold onto the hope that this wasn't her Earth. They had gone to that alternate universe where every NRC student was a gangster and Crowley was a police officer. Anything was possible.

"They have wings," Ace said. "And one of them has vines coming out of them."

"Jack has wolf ears and a tail," Rose pointed out. "Mal has horns, and Floyd can turn into a giant eel."

Ace faltered. "...That's different."

Rose just crossed her arms and raised her eyebrow. Ace, who would never apologize without any kind of nudging, fell back into silence. Rose considered that a victory.

Rose turned back to the others.

"Sorry," she apologized. She rubbed the back of her neck, only to freeze when she felt the decaying skin. She quickly drew her hand back. "My name is Rose, and this is my friend Ace. We're students at Night Raven College. We're both human, but we're not usually like...this."

Amoku stared down at his rotted body and realized something really quickly: "So this is what it's like to be dead."

He had never expected being dead to be so . . . uneventful. Evidently, there were other dead people around him, milling about, wondering what to do with their afterlife.

After strolling around for a bit, Amoku finds a group of dead people talking. One of them, strangely, had wings. One of the other, wingless dead people was speaking.

". . . name is Rose, and this is my friend Ace. We're students at Night Raven College. We're both human, but we're not usually like...this."

Amoku interjected, "Why are you using the present tense? Obviously, we're all dead, so you won't be going back to that college you speak of."

"Night Raven, you say?" Sinestra inquired. "That's a new one..."

"I'm from Sanctuary, a small settlement just outside of Concord in the Commonwealth," Alexander added.

"It's been quite a few years since I've been to Boston," lamented Sinestra. "Oh, life was splendid on the Charles. I spent a few years in Salem; they, of course, jailed me for telling the truth, and though I never hurt any of those girls, I have my suspicions as to who did. Poor Rebecca Nurse wasn't as lucky as I was; I pity her old bones to this day."

Sugar nodded along in interest. Real life humans! Or, what was left of them. They were about as human as Sugar was, as far as they could tell, but they seemed to have their host's memories!

"Your hosts had such rich lives!" Sugar exclaimed, "I don't even know who mine was."

Rose opened her mouth to speak, paused, and then closed her mouth a moment later when she realized this was one of those times where she didn't really want to ask. Lilia joked about being over five hundred all the time, so hearing someone referencing the Salem Witch Trials as if they had been there really wasn't surprising. And even though the host comment confused Rose, she really wasn't going to put much thought into it right now.

Rose turned to Amoku. She could reply to that comment, at least.

"I'm not sure we're actually dead?" Rose hesitantly said. "I look like a zombie, but I don't feel like one. This feels...off."

Ace crossed his arms and gave a wise nod. "It's like we were splashed with a potion," he said. After a moment of thought, he added, "Even if we were dead, they'd probably still take us. They let the raccoon go there."

Rose sighed.

"Ace, he's not a raccoon," she said for what felt like the hundredth time. "He's a cat. And he's a person, too, so Crowley should have let him in without my help."

"Zombie?" Amoku said, "I'm not familiar with the term."

He turned to take a closer look at the others around. They all seemed very different, probably from different realities, or at least from different places on Earth. One even had wings? And another had . . . plants?

Raziel's brow was furrowed. The souls surrounding her were shrouded in thin veils of secrets, but many of the secrets contained were...dark. Many of these people thought themselves violent. Raziel had long ago learned not to doubt the views people held about themselves. Too many of them had the correct idea.

"Zombies are a common antagonist in stories told by the humanity of the world from which I come," Raziel explained, "The appearances we have been given by whatever force or entity brought us here closely resemble zombies, or, I presume, versions of ourselves infected with a 'zombie virus' of some variety."

"Wait wait wait," the vine-wrapped corpse with flowers in place of their pupils waved their hands, swishing their pale yellow aura through the air, "infected. No, dude, and what do you mean 'zombie version'. This is the only version of me that I know of-"

"There are more," Raziel said absently.

The corpse - what was their name? Raziel couldn't remember if they'd given an introduction, looked frazzled as the mass of plant matter twisted and wriggled in their open chest cavity.