Young Writers Society

A long time ago, there was a swamp who moved.

It would be on one mountain one day, and on a different mountain the next. Only those who fell into its waters truly believed that it moved. The swamp did not care - as it was only a swamp. But, one day, the swamp grew tired of moving. The swamp found a nice, forgotten chunk of land and decided to claim it as its own. Dry, rich dirt became soft, wet mud. The trees became coated in moss. An entire ecosystem changed overnight.

Some of the swamp's waters, however, still liked to travel. Even a droplet of its waters would remain connected to the original swamp. The swamp's water could end up anywhere - a pool, a bathtub, a lake or even a stream.

You find yourself in the swamp after going into some kind of body of water. The swamp, for the most part, is uninhabited. But if you go deep enough into the swamp, you'll find a little cabin.

The swamps, however, aren't uninhabited. As with any natural area, you need to be careful - no one can tell what lurks within the trees.

1. Please include a description of your character in your first post - you can throw it into a spoiler using the code down below and put it at the top of your post.

Code: Select all

[spoiler]Put your description here![/spoiler]

2. 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 world, time and plot they're from ultimately just impacts how they interact with this roleplay, so it's really up to you.

3. You can have as many characters as you want, but there'll come a point where you can no longer add new ones because it would alter the plot too much. I'll make sure to say something when that happens, so don't worry about it for now.

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. You're free to have your character guess what the plot is, but don't make any plot-altering decisions with talking about with me first. You can PM me or chat in the spoilers of our posts if you have an idea - I love scheming! I just want to make sure your schemes can be incorporated into what I'm already scheming.

(I also have a discord server for roleplay scheming! If you don't use discord or don't want to join, don't worry about it. But if you want to join in on the shenanigans, here's the invite link.)

6. Don't post multiple times in a row, and 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 try avoiding it unless you absolutely have to - it prevents the other writers from getting too behind and feeling like they aren't involved with the story.

7. Have fun!

The day had been a relatively normal one - at least by Colt's current standards. He had been walking on the edge of the complex's property, admiring the plants and animals that were beginning to stray away from the wilderness and into the secluded property. The skies were dark with storm clouds above, but that didn't stop them from enjoying the cool weather.

Colt had a similar train of thought. The weather made him feel refreshed and focused. It had been so long since he had taken an actual stroll through nature; it made him remember a time long before now.

He gave a little stretch as he stopped beside a natural pool of water, making a big show of checking the time on his watch in case he wasn't as alone as he thought he was. He had to head back to the complex soon - they were planning on running more tests on him soon.

He let out a sigh.

He reluctantly turned to head back towards the building in the distance.

But his foot slipped when he went to take a step forward - he suddenly found himself falling back. A horrified expression flickered across his face as he tried to come up with some kind of spell that could stop him from hitting his head on a rock in the too-shallow pool-

-then suddenly he was underwater, struggling to breath as water rushed into his lungs. Everything was so murky. Colt couldn't even see a few inches in front of his face. He reached out, trying to swim or even just float.

His boots touched wet mud.

A second later, his hand was grabbing onto some kind of root.

He used it to pull himself out of the water and onto a muddy shore. When he was finally out of the water - or most of him was, anyways - he started coughing up all of the water he had digested. He got out enough to utter the words to a spell that removed the rest in a disgusting pile of algae-ridden, green-tinted water.

Then he threw himself onto the shore, staring up at the tree branches and dark sky above him. He was cold, and wet, and almost certainly looked like some kind of horror movie monster from the way he was coated in algae, mud and little bit of plant debris. When he glanced down, that was all he saw - everything else was covered.

He took several deep, frantic breaths.

He was still alive.

When he finally calmed down, he got to his feet. The algae and mud was still wet and dripping, but he didn't really care.

"Hey, Pres," he said, almost instinctively, "look at me-"

He faltered.

...He kept forgetting he was alone right now.

It had been a long morning. Rachel still hadn't fully accepted not being in Italy anymore, even though it had only been two days. The weather was nice but home just felt so boring in comparison, and all of the problems that Rachel had put off thinking about were coming back to her now.

No job. Money wasn't the issue, but she'd almost graduated three years ago now and had yet to make something of herself. Her book about Theodore Roosevelt had been half-written for a year now and she was sure once she began querying it she'd get the inevitable question: Why don't you write something about cults? Then she'd get So, when are you going to have a baby? It was something that people were asking more and more and more frequently now that she was 32. She wanted them for sure, but still liked it just being her and Justin. She wasn't sure if that made her a terrible person or not.

Besides, she already worried a lot bout her younger siblings too, especially Lacey. She'd have to call her. It was ten in the morning and Justin had gone to meet an old college friend for breakfast in the city.

Rachel turned on the hot water in her bath and put in a good dose of bubble bath. She turned on theremin music on her phone, which never failed to make her relax, and lit a candle. Perfect. Everything else could wait.

She closed her eyes and drifted off. As she came to, something felt wrong. It was muddy. Her ankle was stuck on something. A vine. Rachel desperately shook it free. She opened her eyes and saw she was in a swamp. Her heart was racing, and she did what she could think to do and got out. When the shock subsided, she realized she still wasn't wearing any clothes.

Almost like magic, she saw the clothes she'd changed out of on a branch. The plain white button down. Denim capris. Flip flops that were not at all appropriate for this climate, but at least she wasn't barefoot. As she wearily changed, she thought she heard someone else.

"Hello?" She called.

"I mean, it's not like you can just walk onto the ship without them shooting you."

Kate paused in her task to shrug, "I'll walk it off." She resumed dragging the whetstone over the edge of her blade.

Tallulah pulled up onto the rocks next to Kate and leaned back, taking in the bright, ever-summer sun. "But you'd ruin that pretty skin of yours," she pouted.

Kate snorted, "You're pretty enough for the both of us, Lully."

Tallulah flashed a grin at that, one hand going up to smooth back her already flawless hair, "Oh, you flirt."

The glow in Kate's eyes grew just a touch brighter. Typically, that would be a bad sign, but as Tallulah cocked her head to the side and peered at Kate through a thick set of lashes, she was fully aware that the emotion brightening that glow wasn't rage.

Kate cleared her throat - which was purely theatrical - and said, "I've, uh, I'm going to go to...eat....something."

Tallulah smirked, "I'll see you later, Katey."

If Kate could blush, Tallulah was sure she would be as she slid off the rocks and waded through the waist-deep water to shore, where she vanished into the trees.

Tallulah gave a small chuckle and laid back on the rocks.

There, she sunned herself until the daylight began to fade.

Finally, she dived back into the water, but when she opened her eyes, she saw not the crystal clear waters of the cove, but the murky, muddy algae-infested water of some kind of suffocating bog.

She pulled herself to the surface where she could breathe with human lungs and looked around, wrinkling her nose at what she found.

The twisted roots of knotted trees vanished in the muddy green water like the tentacles of some slimy beast. In fact, everything here was slimy. She needed a shower. She'd never taken one of those before, but she wanted one now.

After a minute, she heard voices, calling out through the bog.

I don't need other people's help.

But she kinda did.

So she shot off in the direction of the voice, eventually coming up next to a human chick who stood on the shore in clothes that clearly hadn't been in the bog for very long.

He wasn't alone.

Maybe he should have found some kind of comfort in that. He liked to think that he could handle himself most of the time, but this swamp was strange and unfamiliar. He didn't even know how he had gotten here.

...So that meant he couldn't get away with sticking on his own.

He groaned.

He didn't want to be with other people right now. He just wanted to be alone with his own thoughts. But there were other people there, and he really needed to get better at the "helping other people" thing, so he gave into pressure and started heading towards the source. He didn't bother cleaning himself, though. It would be a good way of blending into the scenery until he got a good look at just who else was here.

When he finally reached the speaker, he found himself looking at a - human - woman somewhere in her thirties. She apparently hadn't gotten nearly as deep into the swamp as he had; her clothes looked relatively spotless and normal.

But the woman wasn't the only one there.

There was a girl in the water - a daughter of Ægir.

No, that wasn't the right word. That was an old word, and he could see a bit of her tail as she appeared next to the woman. A mermaid, then.

Neither one of them were familiar; they probably didn't work with the researchers. But there still was a chance that they did, so he'd play things safe. Maybe he would watch from behind this conveniently placed tree for another moment-

He went to shift his weight, but his mud and algae-covered boot slipped on a root. He went stumbling towards the woman, the mud of the swamp squelching underneath his boots as he struggled to regain his balance.

He was only a few feet away from her when he finally did - mud dripping in front of his eyes as he watched both her and the mermaid for a reaction.

"Hattie!" Mary called from where she was cooking in the kitchen, and Hattie May picked up the remote, pausing what she was watching on the tv the next room over.

"Yeah, Mom?" She stands to work her way there, and her mother hands her a kettle.

"I need you to make the tea for tonight, please" Hattie May nods and takes the Kettle, rushing down the basement steps to the secondary apartment of their house. It was originally renovated for Ollie, but he'd wanted his own space after everything, so it was pretty much hers now. She sets the kettle on the counter of the tiny kitchen and turns on the faucet. She fills the kettle and pulls it out of the sink, and then she loses her footing, and stumbles backward, pouring water all over herself, barely able to keep herself standing.

"Dammit," She hisses and turns around to grab paper towels, only to find they aren't there. In fact. Nothings in front of her except swampland and a giant tree. She whirls around to look at the stove, finding it to be gone as well.

All she has is her kettle and soaking clothes on her body.

"Hello?" She calls out, using the tree to steady herself a bit, she clutches the kettle like her life depends on it. "H-hello? Anyone?"

As Rachel began to fully process her surroundings, she became aware that there were others. A young girl with soaking clothes, some sort of.... swamp monster... and a mermaid?

What was in that bubble bath?"

"Uh, hello," she said, slightly nervous. Either that mermaid was the best costume. she'd ever seen or it was an actual mermaid.

Kiirion wandered to the lake’s edge. It was a calm summer evening, and there was a slight breeze. He dipped his hand in the water, and it was cool - a welcome contrast to the muggy air around him.

He adjusted his pack on his shoulders. He needed to get back to his camp for the night, but he wanted to take a small moment just to breathe. He slipped off his shoes and rolled up his pants, leaving his pack at the water’s edge as he walked in slowly, letting out a long sigh. He was ready to lie down after a long day of travel.

It was when he got about knee-deep that the sandy bottom of the lake turned murky and muddy, riddled with roots and algae. One more step, and he was falling in. His arms shot out for the nearest supports - a low hanging vine and a scraggly branch hanging over the water. With a grunt he managed to pull on them in time to keep from falling in further than his waist, but his face was already crinkled up in disgust.

Slowly and carefully, he pulled himself up into the tree and looked to the wooden dock just a foot from him. Oh, thank Pelor, something man-made. Whatever magic had sent him to his dreadful bog had at least sent him a saving grace: a haven from the coat of green over the waters.

He reached out with his slimy wet foot and pushed himself off the tree and onto the dock, waving his arms to balance himself for a moment before letting out a sigh.

There were others.

A mermaid, a man with strange energy about him (covered in bog moss), a girl with a kettle, and a woman in clean clothes.

None of them looked remotely like they belonged there or like they knew what was going on. With the amount of humans about them, he assumed they were probably even more clueless than he was.

He stood upright and waved his hand about his soiled clothes. After quickly muttering a simple cleaning spell a few times he managed to get most of the bog water and all that came with it off of him.

“Well,” he said. “None of you happens to know where we are, do you? Or even what plane we’re on...”

Tallulah adjusted her hair and pulled herself up to sit on the shore beside the increasingly large collection of humans around her. Her fins swayed absently in the water as she offered the elf a small, uncertain smile, "Not...really," she admitted, "This is a bit like some places on Earth, I know, but..." she looked around, "I...don't remember Earth being...magical."

Kate had to be looking for her. They were supposed to meet for dinner at Skull Rock - the most romantic spot in Neverland, by both of their testaments - but now...

She bit her lip. If Kate found out who or what took her, things wouldn't be very calm for very long.

More people had arrived - one of them being an elf. He couldn't tell if the elf was his kind of elf or not, but he thought it was best to assume that he was. Besides, he had asked about planes. It just made sense.

"We should be on Earth," he agreed. "Miðgarðr, specifically."

A little bit of mud got in his mouth as he spoke. As he spit it out and accidentally sucked in a little more, he remembered that he was still covered in the swamp's stuff.

He thought a moment, remembering the words to the spell.

A second later, a very large bucket's worth of water was being dumped from a spot over his head - easily rinsing the mud and algae off. He did the spell again for good measure, then used a drying spell so he wasn't soaked.

"Earth can be magical," he said, giving the mermaid a smirk. "Seeing that I'm magical and from Earth."

He thought for a moment, then gave a theatrical little bow.

"The name's Colt," he offered with a smooth smile. "Colt Rian. I'm your friendly neighborhood sorcerer and occultist."

Kiiirion raised his brows as he looked down at the sorcerer. Earth had to be another world on another plane - not that he knew much about those, only that it was possible and they existed. He wished he'd had time to learn teleportation spells before being caught up in something like this.

"Kiirion," he offered, putting a hand on his chest. He dropped his extra names, assuming they wouldn't care to use them and would have trouble pronouncing them anyway. "Healer, doctor, cleric. Whichever word is more familiar to you. And the rest of you?" he asked, casting his gaze over the others who had yet to introduce themselves.

She had found her way to a group of people pretty quickly. They all looked older then her, and she wasn't inclined to trust them very easy. But at least she wasn't alone.

The most notable thing about the group of people is the mermaid. Ollie and Noah always said that mermaids were real. Momma always disagreed. Guess Ollie was right again.

Hattie May tried really hard not to stare, it was rude. So she turned to address the taller man who spoke to her.

"I'm Hattie May" She states, clutching her kettle so hard that her knuckles are turning white. She pulls at her sweater, the wetness of it is getting to her now.

Rachel wasn't sure what was stranger. The fact that one moment she'd been relaxing in a bathtub and the next she was in a swamp with what looked to be rejected creature designs from the Harry Potter movies. She felt her heart pounding, not sure how to respond or if any of these creatures were friendly.

"Does anyone know how we got here?" She managed once she could find her words.

Tallulah shrugged, "A bit of inherent magic, I would assume. My girlfriend gets in situations like this all the time, pulled between realities like, as she says it, 'some fucking action figure for the dimensions to toss around'. She's quite upset about it, really."

She leaned back on her hands and flipped her fins in the water to emphasize her point.