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Entry tags:
death archives.
DEATH AND DYING
While characters can maintain their canon immortality, all characters accepted into this setting are vulnerable to event-based deaths via their new blood types. It can be extremely hard to kill a character, but there should be at least one way every character can die, even if you never actually go through with it.
What Happens When My Character Dies?
Nothing at all...At first. When a character dies, the regular physics behind their death will apply. If they are beheaded, their corpse will be on the ground with the head nearby. If they were eaten, then their bodies will be digested. You get the point. Corpses don't go away. They don't just fade into this world.
They rot and reincarnate.
But of course, Sleepers aren't regular creatures, so they don't rot like regular creatures either. They go through what's universally known as the Rot and Rebirth process by Sleepers and scholars of Sleepers. This process has a general outline and players can play within its parameters however they want:
You can determine how fast or slow this process takes. It must take at least 24 hours but players are welcome to have this process take weeks.
1. Rigor Mortis
2. Rapid Rot
Bodies will never rot fully during this process. They can come close to it, but there shouldn't be skeletal remains.
3. Crystalization
4. Inking
Squid ink will begin to leak out from the body. This ink will have traces of a character's blood type in it. This ink can be highly valuable and collected for the purpose of bloodstones, enhancements, or healing ministration. It is considered one of the most valuable forms of blood collection since it does not contribute to blood pollution.
5. Rebirth
Eventually, the crystal will begin to break apart, shattering the majority of the body, and what's left in the crystalized, inky mess will be a baby Sleeper Squid! Complete with endearing squeaks and all. If you're a real monster, you can always...kill the squid I guess...you son of a bitch...And it would kill the Sleeper again...Dick...
But if you're NOT a raging sociopath, you have a few choices! Wait and the squid will (quickly or slowly) reshape into the canonical body of the character who died. Or bring them to the ocean/a body of water and just plop them in so they can speed up the process. Either way, it can take anywhere from five minutes up to an hour for a Sleeper Squid to reform into the character's canon body during the rebirth process.
Speeding Up / Gentling the Death Process
Obviously, not everyone will want to play this out, experience it, or have situations where a character's body will be readily available. So what are the exceptions?
1. Total Destruction: Bodies that are completely destroyed. This can be caused by the character's cause of death, or it can be caused by how other characters treat the body. Examples: Character is killed by being melted by acid; a character's corpse is found and their friends burn it.
2. Burial at Sea: It is custom for citizens of Trench to hold funerals by sending bodies out to sea on uniquely designed boats created for the deceased. Sleepers are encouraged to send their dead out to sea as it is considered "sending Sleepers back to where they come from."
3. Vanishing: Chaos happens and bodies can be lost among the madness. You don't always need to specify exactly where a body wound up, and this is a good option for those who want to handwave everything. This can also be connected with characters who are being put on hiatus or canon updated in combination with deaths.
Rebirth Process: They come back the way they arrive in the game: by the ocean and through their squid forms. They can awaken back on the shores in the clothes they died in (or naked if you really wanna get technical). It seems their atoms know how to cosmically rearrange themselves in the situation of a total obliteration during/post-death.
Post-Rebirth
Coming back to life is never easy. Characters are disoriented when they first show up in Trench, but coming back to life is even trickier. Players can play this to any extent they desire, but generally speaking, the first 24 hours back from death shouldn't be a walk in the park...Literally.
Characters are literally being reconstructed and reborn and as such, they will struggle for a while. This can be presented through difficulty with walking, talking, sensory awareness, or other such things - they should just generally have some difficult readjusting to their own bodies. You can get as creative and long-winded as you want with this, or keep it to a character feeling incredibly drunk/jet-lag for a whole day.
Generally speaking, the worse the death, the more difficult it should be for a character to reacclimate to their own bodies.
Per Injuries/Scarring/Amputations: It is entirely up to players if a character maintains scars or lost limbs. All injuries will be healed upon rebirth, but the general idea is that if a character is greatly impacted by the injury, they will now accept it as part of their actual body and will thus be reborn with the scars to show for it. This includes any amputations or other impairments.
The Death Form
Make sure to put Character Name | Canon in your header. Characters can die an unlimited amount of times but it should theoretically be more disorienting each time it happens and generally be an unpleasant experience.
While you are not technically required to fill out a death form or play out every death your character experiences, we strongly recommend it as it can be a good way to catalog experiences chronologically in the game. It is also rad as hell to see what events kill more characters.
There is no "approval" or "denial" for any death forms so do not anticipate mod-response. Feel free to ask questions about death below. We generally see this page as archival and beneficial to help keep players in the loop of who's dying around this place and how.
If you notice any errors on this page or need to update information then let us know in a comment below.
CODINGWhile characters can maintain their canon immortality, all characters accepted into this setting are vulnerable to event-based deaths via their new blood types. It can be extremely hard to kill a character, but there should be at least one way every character can die, even if you never actually go through with it.
Nothing at all...At first. When a character dies, the regular physics behind their death will apply. If they are beheaded, their corpse will be on the ground with the head nearby. If they were eaten, then their bodies will be digested. You get the point. Corpses don't go away. They don't just fade into this world.
They rot and reincarnate.
But of course, Sleepers aren't regular creatures, so they don't rot like regular creatures either. They go through what's universally known as the Rot and Rebirth process by Sleepers and scholars of Sleepers. This process has a general outline and players can play within its parameters however they want:
You can determine how fast or slow this process takes. It must take at least 24 hours but players are welcome to have this process take weeks.
1. Rigor Mortis
2. Rapid Rot
Bodies will never rot fully during this process. They can come close to it, but there shouldn't be skeletal remains.
3. Crystalization
4. Inking
Squid ink will begin to leak out from the body. This ink will have traces of a character's blood type in it. This ink can be highly valuable and collected for the purpose of bloodstones, enhancements, or healing ministration. It is considered one of the most valuable forms of blood collection since it does not contribute to blood pollution.
5. Rebirth
Eventually, the crystal will begin to break apart, shattering the majority of the body, and what's left in the crystalized, inky mess will be a baby Sleeper Squid! Complete with endearing squeaks and all. If you're a real monster, you can always...kill the squid I guess...you son of a bitch...And it would kill the Sleeper again...Dick...
But if you're NOT a raging sociopath, you have a few choices! Wait and the squid will (quickly or slowly) reshape into the canonical body of the character who died. Or bring them to the ocean/a body of water and just plop them in so they can speed up the process. Either way, it can take anywhere from five minutes up to an hour for a Sleeper Squid to reform into the character's canon body during the rebirth process.
Speeding Up / Gentling the Death Process
Obviously, not everyone will want to play this out, experience it, or have situations where a character's body will be readily available. So what are the exceptions?
1. Total Destruction: Bodies that are completely destroyed. This can be caused by the character's cause of death, or it can be caused by how other characters treat the body. Examples: Character is killed by being melted by acid; a character's corpse is found and their friends burn it.
2. Burial at Sea: It is custom for citizens of Trench to hold funerals by sending bodies out to sea on uniquely designed boats created for the deceased. Sleepers are encouraged to send their dead out to sea as it is considered "sending Sleepers back to where they come from."
3. Vanishing: Chaos happens and bodies can be lost among the madness. You don't always need to specify exactly where a body wound up, and this is a good option for those who want to handwave everything. This can also be connected with characters who are being put on hiatus or canon updated in combination with deaths.
Rebirth Process: They come back the way they arrive in the game: by the ocean and through their squid forms. They can awaken back on the shores in the clothes they died in (or naked if you really wanna get technical). It seems their atoms know how to cosmically rearrange themselves in the situation of a total obliteration during/post-death.
Coming back to life is never easy. Characters are disoriented when they first show up in Trench, but coming back to life is even trickier. Players can play this to any extent they desire, but generally speaking, the first 24 hours back from death shouldn't be a walk in the park...Literally.
Characters are literally being reconstructed and reborn and as such, they will struggle for a while. This can be presented through difficulty with walking, talking, sensory awareness, or other such things - they should just generally have some difficult readjusting to their own bodies. You can get as creative and long-winded as you want with this, or keep it to a character feeling incredibly drunk/jet-lag for a whole day.
Generally speaking, the worse the death, the more difficult it should be for a character to reacclimate to their own bodies.
Per Injuries/Scarring/Amputations: It is entirely up to players if a character maintains scars or lost limbs. All injuries will be healed upon rebirth, but the general idea is that if a character is greatly impacted by the injury, they will now accept it as part of their actual body and will thus be reborn with the scars to show for it. This includes any amputations or other impairments.
Make sure to put Character Name | Canon in your header. Characters can die an unlimited amount of times but it should theoretically be more disorienting each time it happens and generally be an unpleasant experience.
While you are not technically required to fill out a death form or play out every death your character experiences, we strongly recommend it as it can be a good way to catalog experiences chronologically in the game. It is also rad as hell to see what events kill more characters.
There is no "approval" or "denial" for any death forms so do not anticipate mod-response. Feel free to ask questions about death below. We generally see this page as archival and beneficial to help keep players in the loop of who's dying around this place and how.
If you notice any errors on this page or need to update information then let us know in a comment below.
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