Cardians: Rural, Kinetic Novel [Horror, mystery]

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Inksword
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Cardians: Rural, Kinetic Novel [Horror, mystery]

#1 Post by Inksword »

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CARDIANS: RURAL
The Cardians are a world-wide spanning shadow organization dedicated to hunting and containing the supernatural threats of the world: giving up their own freedom and sanity to maintain the separation of the supernatural and mundane that allow the rest of the world to live their lives in peace. They run outside the law and in concert with other hunter groups, well, those who don't turn their nose up at their illicit money-making ventures and non-discriminatory and strong-arm hiring practices at least. They label their hunters into card suits based on their skills; clubs the violent and athletic physical powerhouses, hearts the social manipulators and faces of the divisions, spades the knowledge keepers and informants, and diamonds, the skill specialists, support and upkeep necessary to keep functioning.

This story isn't about the Cardians vegas casinos or the well-funded world-spanning arms and divisions in the big cities around the world. This division is in... Carlsville Wisconsin? A tiny town with less than 200 people with enough supernatural activity to warrant a division of its own. The Carlsville division has been mostly forgotten by the greater hunter organization, left to their own devices with close to zero funds operating out of a single house in the small Wisconsin town.

Fate has suddenly and mysteriously brought six new members to the Carlsville division from across the country, most of them unwilling and magically dragged across hundreds of miles to land in the hands of the Carlsville division in apparently completely separate and unconnected incidents. They have to adjust to the town where the dark is so thick with monsters you leave the doors locked and the house lights on or you die. What makes Carlsville so dangerous? Why has the hunter organization has half-abandoned the town that clearly needs more support and has more going on behind the scenes? The supernatural origins of the town's plights aren't the only mysteries in the way of the new recruits surviving in the new world opened up to them.

POV CHARACTERS
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Theo Warden
Theo is a recently graduated culinary student who worked at a small Boston bakery before his supernatural encounter landed him in Carlsville. A video game nerd, jokester and optimist, Theo tries to keep the smiles on everyone's faces and singlehandedly lighten up the dark town. Can he keep smiling through the death that plagues Carlsville as he struggles to find his place and purpose on the team?
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Salvador Santos
Sal is an amature ghost hunter and conspiracy theorist. He's been training how to punch out cthulhu his whole life between flipping burgers at the local fast food joint. A night of ghost hunting turned genuine drags him into the world of Carlsville and REAL monsters. Most of his information proves utterly useless, but that's not going to stop Sal from absolutely enthusiastically pursuing the death of every creepy crawly that lurks in the darkness.
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Richard Henderson
Henderson is a devoted father and husband to his wife and two sons. An accountant from Seattle, he gave up his dreams in college to settle for the white picket fence and stable job. A wall-flower who never really found his voice, Henderson has to step up to the plate in order to find his wife and eldest son who have gone missing during the unfortunate camping trip that brought them to Carlsville. However, he's brought more than his family into the dark town, as he has a secret of his own to maintain...
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Tomoe Yakasuki
Tomoe was raised since a child to be a assassin and mercenary. He willingly joins the cardians after the rest of his mercenary company is slaughtered in an encounter with the supernatural. His combat skills are excellent for field work when they're fighting, but he finds himself sorely lacking in the perspective and social skills required to work with the everyday accountants and students making up the Carlsville Cardians division, let alone the small-town folk of Carlsville. He's not a bad guy deep down... probably, but has his own slew of issues to work through in the midst of already emotionally straining work which is a recipe for disaster.
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Guy Lemons
Lemons is the nicest neighbor you'll ever have: polite, well kept, charming, keeps to himself without being antisocial. Oh, and he also leverages his position as a medical examiner and forensic pathologist to steal and eat samples of dead people. Lemons is just your friendly neighborhood coincidental cannibal. Just a few steps away from sociopath, Lemons is primarily concerned with his own survival, and he may have just landed in the one place where he's not the biggest monster going bump in the night.
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Natalie Cole
Natalie is a medical student thrown into the deep end of emergency first-aide and supernatural medical mysteries when she's dragged through a fae portal into the Carlsville corn field. Smart, opinionated, and observant, the thing most likely to hold her back is her tendency to mouth off and sass her friends and superiors when she thinks they're in the wrong paired with an unfortunate forgetfulness.


THE OTHERS (NPCs)

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Aubry & Cheney Lafleur - Twin young girls that have somehow managed to become aces within the Cardians organization. How the hell did children(?) manage that? Natives to Carlsville they hold high affection and familiarity to the town. Ace of spades and hearts respectively, they are as different in personality as they are similar in appearance. The intellectual and even-handed Aubry is the oft-absent leader of the entire division, while her sister Cheney is a playful imp absolutely willing to leverage her kiddie looks to get away with more shenanigans than she really should be.
Bailey Oberplier - The cripplingly shy ace of diamonds who can barely speak and stutters when he does. His apparent timidity doesn't prevent him from single handedly protecting the town from the monsters that lurk in the expansive cornfield outside Carlsville. Rarely seen as he lives in said cornfield with the junk he puts together in his spare time and the cars he repairs for the team rather than on base.
Matthew Hellings Sr. - The transfered Ace of clubs with a British accent and a hair trigger temper. A stern disciplinarian with no room for a grey area between people and monsters. Unofficial second in charge when Aubry is gone.
Arthur St. Bellings - The highly paranoid and confrontational ten of spades who doesn't seem to so much solve secrets as find them and keep them from his superiors and the rest of the team. Another Carlsville native from the prestigious St. Bellings estate, he's eschewed living with his sister in their mansion for being the grumpy town mortician in his civilian life.
Carly Patchworth - A sweet and friendly woman who dual wields pistols and specializes in the frequent search and rescue missions the Carlsville division runs. The Jack of Clubs is probably the most well adjusted and nice of the entire division, but strictly loyal to her ace despite his temper and brutal tactics.
The Rest? Six people were manning the entirety of the supernatural battles for a town where nighttime is so crawling with monsters stepping outside the light is a death sentence? Where are the others and what happened to them?

The Town of Carlsville - In a small town of less than 200 you're going to get to know the places and faces around town. Carlsville is a town full of secrets with multiple hotbeds of supernatural activity that have necessitated a town-wide curfew once night falls. How the small town manages to turn a blind eye to what's going on at night and find a way raise its kids and go about its business is a mystery in its own right.



Everything else

Cardians Rural is based off a tabletop campaign myself and my friends played together using the New World of Darkness: Hunter the Vigil roleplaying system. The Kinetic novel would have the serial numbers filed off, but we used a unique hunter organization and characters, and almost entirely unique monsters, so it's not that big a deal. There were 6 evenly weighted npcs played by 6 players, so the player will have the option to switch which character to follow in each chapter which will reveal secrets and scenes unique to those characters. The vast majority of the story is shared by all the characters though, and the kinetic novel can still be enjoyed from the perspective of a single character or read-through for those who don't want to feel compelled to complete it 100%. It's mostly a dark work, but definitely has moments of levity (as any good tabletop game has) and ultimately is about the bonds of friendship and love formed by the characters in order to emotionally survive the darkness, and how well those bonds (and characters) end up surviving.

Plot - 100% as this is based off a tabletop campaign, the entire plot has been mapped out already!
Writing - 2%
Art - 0% There's pleanty of art that already exists drawn by the players, but none that would actually be going into the game. This IS just an ideas thread and not a WIP thread for a reason.

I'd love to hear your thoughts. What do you think of the characters presented as individuals and as a cast? Do you have any immediate concerns or questions? Do you like the set up?

As the creepy child drawings say:
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Thanks for reading!
Last edited by Inksword on Sun May 20, 2018 4:03 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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Zelan
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Re: Cardians: Rural, Kinetic Novel [Horror, mystery]

#2 Post by Zelan »

This is a super cool concept. I remember seeing your question about it in the Writing subforum, I hope to see this one come to completion. c:

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Re: Cardians: Rural, Kinetic Novel [Horror, mystery]

#3 Post by DirkB »

Good luck! I love the whole idea of the world of darkness setting and especially the hunter path. I once thought about doing role playing in that setting, but I didn't get past the stage of reading up on the game system. I will surely keep an eye on your story.

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Re: Cardians: Rural, Kinetic Novel [Horror, mystery]

#4 Post by Inksword »

Zelan wrote: Sat May 19, 2018 4:11 pm This is a super cool concept. I remember seeing your question about it in the Writing subforum, I hope to see this one come to completion. c:
Thank you! I'm glad you're interested!
DirkB wrote: Sat May 19, 2018 5:12 pm Good luck! I love the whole idea of the world of darkness setting and especially the hunter path. I once thought about doing role playing in that setting, but I didn't get past the stage of reading up on the game system. I will surely keep an eye on your story.
World of Darkness is a great setting! As with all games, your experience ultimately depends upon the group of people you find to play with, and I was lucky enough to find a fucking fantabulous group to play with. I can definitely recommend WoD though!


That said, I want to start drawing sprites soon, but I have been waiting on a new tablet pen. I'm going home in a few days so I should be able to pick up my backup then!

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Re: Cardians: Rural, Kinetic Novel [Horror, mystery]

#5 Post by Inksword »

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In lieu of game assets that I can't work on yet, I got permission from my friends to post SOME of the art we've made over the course of the campaign. We have a few artists within our midst, but of varying skill levels, so you'll see a variety of styles. Most of this is actually quite old and we've gotten better, as I picked mostly stuff towards the beginning of the campaign that wasn't too spoilery, making most of it three-ish years old at this point.

Artists and their DAs are:
Cinochecker - Storyteller
Doublepensword/Inksword (me) - Player of Henderson
Scribblecloud - Player of Lemons
ZygomaticProcess - Player of Theo
TheLandShark - Player of Natalie
Dark-Venitus - Player of Tomoe
Reyxa - Player of Sal

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(And now some humor, I promise there's moment of levity to contrast the dark)

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