(( slip inside the eye of your mind ))

[hardlydead]

I look and observe the realms of The Entity

generally speaking, i'll go with the flow and follow my thread partner's lead on how things work, but this is my default setting on how i imagine things.

the fog

+ THE CAMPFIRE

there's one, "main" campfire that's a little out of the way which is where survivors and the killer are summoned for the trials. it never goes out, it provides warmth but isn't hot to the touch, and offerings to the entity can be burned here.

+ RESIDENTS

there's a fixed-ish group of survivors (and killers). more arrive at random intervals, but any leaving is a Big Deal. this is not the only campfire in the fog, there are other groups of survivors and killers out there.

+ RESIDENCE

the woods around the campfire are safe from killers — they can approach, but they can't harm survivors. the entity doesn't want them there, however, and it can't necessarily stop them but it will make its feelings known. survivors can make themselves at "home" however they want, mostly with tents and the like. but hey, if you wanna build a house or some shit go for it.

the further you go from the main fire and the woods, the less protected you are. there's random buits of architecture out there; solitary sheds, abandoned and ruined houses, etc. etc. you can make yourself at home out there, but in exchange if a killer (or something else) finds you, you're on your own.

+ REALMS

there's no such thing as a fixed location. travelling through the fog is based on thought and intent more than geography. a journey from the campfire to eyrie of crows can just as easily take ten minutes as an hour based on what's going on in your head and/or your confidence when it comes to travelling.

pallets/lockers/jungle gyms/etc. don't exist outside trials, and in some realms there's more to them than you will see inside of a trial (trapper's workshop, bathrooms in ormond, etc.)

the more one explores, the more they'll see "dead realms", which are just realms that aren't in use for one reason or another. killers without a place of their own and/or survivors might make a home out in one of these. they can conceivably be anything from anywhere.

+ COSMETICS

i know there's a whole bunch of lore about how this actually works, but i'm going by what's fun and/or funny to me. clothes can be scavenged and found, every now and then someone might find something that's theirs from home: it's not a direct gift from the entity, it's just Out There somewhere. the entity can also decide on a whim "fuck you, you're wearing this now," in a trial. (much more likely if you ignore the call.) dwight might turn up wearing a jacket and pants, but then he comes to in the trial grounds and it's dwelf time.

+ HEALTH

the short version is: it's psychic magic baby.

nobody needs to eat or sleep or shit or whatever for biological reasons, but you might feel like you have to and so you do. most people still sleep because it's the hardest thing to convince yourself you don't need.

healing is fast, though maybe not as much as it is in trials, and an infection will generally go away just fine but you can really fuck up a physical injury and you just have to try and fix it or live with it until either you get called to trial or die.

in a similar fashion, physical form is generally based on one's image of themself, which is the core reason most people in the fog don't age much if at all. one typically doesn't scar either, but they can, if the injury feels significant enough to warrant it. similarly you can get pierced or tattooed the same way.

+ WILDLIFE

the lack of anything except crows could be considered eerie, especially considering most of what you'll see outside realms is wooded. sometimes something escapes from a random realm, and it could be normal, or it could be a deer with seven eyes and fangs and a centre of gravity that's a little too low. within various realms, there is at times wildlife appropriate to the area, but significantly less than there would be in real life.

+ TIME

??????????????

trials

+ CALL TO TRIAL

survivors and killers get their individual calls, like a pressure pulling from their chest toward the campfire so they can make their preparations.

they can ignore the call, but unless they somehow escape the entity's gaze entirely, they can't ignore the trial. if you don't go on your own, you will black out and suddenly come to in the trial grounds.

+ GENERATORS

in terms of what doing a generator actually is like, it's like comparing playing a guitar to playing guitar hero: characters with actual mechanical knowledge will note (and probably be annoyed) that repairs are so... simplified?
the whole thing is really just an aesthetic slapped on an escape ritual. it's about completing the action enough times as a group to 'unlock' the door, not what the action is.

+ HOOKS & MORIS

like generators, the hooks are just an aesthetic slapped on a ritual. what's important are the three stages — it's not as cut and dry as it is in trials, all you know for sure is at some point when you're on the hook the entity will decide you're about ripe for havest and start coming to getcha. when you can't fight it off any more, you get sacrificed.

the ability to kill survivors by your own hand is a gift. (there are exceptions & i'm not gonna get into how ph&sadako work within this rn.) it's not that killers can't choose to kill a survivor, they could walk right in and murder straight off the bat if they wanted, but killing without sacrifice is effectively depriving the entity of a meal. doing it without showing the proper respect (burning a mori/bringing your lil item) or completing the corresponding ritual (devour hope) lands you in deep shit.
(i also headcanon that devour hope feeds the entity too, just not as well as a sacrifice but that's neither here nor there)

+ TRIALGROUNDS

this one's a little bit fucking insane but bear with me here:
the realms used for trials are not the same realms the killers inhabit. rather, they're temporary little snapshots of the area that the entity takes to use for trials and discards when they're over. the end game collapse is the equivalent of the entity putting a photocopy in the paper shredder.

+ BLOODWEB/RIFT/ETC.

i know there's in-universe lore for this and i don't care. i do not acknowledge this.
(except sometimes, for comedic value.)

+ AURAS

case-by-case, but i tend toward more of a psychic 'pull' or a sense of knowing. empathic connection would tell you that someone who can help you is over yonder, bbq would tell you there's survivors over there. anyone who's been here long enough would start to recognise the "flavour" of the pull — "oh, the killer broke something over there and it 'feels' like trickster" etc.

+ PERKS ETC.

i've rotated this one in my head endlessly and try to be as vague as humanly possible because i hate it. i imagine both survivors and killers are 'restrained' in trials, because, let's be honest here, a significant number of survivors would opt to throw down and improvise weapons otherwise. i've played it different ways in threads, but ultimately survivors can't hurt killers in a way that's more than a momentary surprise within trials.

that's tangential though. when it comes to perks, everyone arrives with their own "skills", they can teach eachother these "skills", and killers can sort of work around this by virtue of all being linked via the entity. (it can be both a compliment or an insult depending.)

+ ITEMS & ADD-ONS

shit's scavenged bro

survivors

+ THE ENTITY

unless they actively go out of their way to contact it, survivors are by and large free of the entity's influence outside of trials. this means they're kind of free to do whatever they want and go wherever they want. crows are the entity's eyes, so they can be seen, and information can be relayed to killers, but the entity can't actively do anything.

+ POWERS

most survivors are just normal people, so this is a non-issue for them, but for those that aren't their powers/abilities/whatever are dampened in trials, effectively to what they'd be able to teach other people to do. (boons, perks like empathic connection, etc.) outside trials though, they have (mostly) unfettered access to their shit. mikaela can do her magic, yoichi and haddie can do their psychic nonsense, quentin can do... whatever dreamwalking shit he does. etc. etc.

(sometimes a little might bleed into trials, but we don't have to talk about that.)

+ HEALING & DEATH

survivors heal quickly, as said before, but it's still a matter of what feels like hours or days for anything serious. when they die, they die, and it's subject to a day-ish before they come back. sometimes more depending on various factors.

+ MEMORY

trials kind of exist in their own memory pocket. within a trial the prospect of opening the gates feels very much like escaping the fog, and on the flipside death feels final. maybe if you really struggle against it you could remember the reality of the situation, but it's fucking hard to do. the idea of anything outside the trial is a dim reality at best.

on the flip side, remembering the details of a trial once you've left can be hard. specific things might stick out, and a particularly untraumatic trial might be easy to recall, but otherwise it's hazy like an old dream. if you die it's even harder to remember anything, and you might even only know you were in a trial because of how unpleasant coming back from the dead generally feels.

killers

+ THE ENTITY

for killers? the entity is an ever-present issue. like with survivors, it can't force their hand, nor can it see or hear them outside of through its crows, but imagine it like a little worm buried in the back of their head. it can communicate with them at any time, which most often comes in voicing displeasure with their behaviour once it finds out for most killers. sure, they have most of the same freedoms as survivors, but that comes with the caveat that at any time the entity might start screaming at them, and they can be pulled from anywhere at any time for detention.

no killer is ever truly free or alone.

+ WHY

some folks just wanna kill. some are made to do it. some have to be bent and broken into submission. there's a handful of killers the entity plays more of a long game with though, actively altering their 'sight' in trials so that they see people other than the survivors who face them. people who've wronged them, people they hated in life, whatever. by the time they learn to see through this illusion, they've usually come to terms with their place in all this and don't need the push to kill anymore.

+ POWERS

killers are more or less unrestrained outside their trials — it's case-by-case, some need to still have brakes put on to keep them from escaping or from wreaking more havoc than the entity wants — and for most this just means they can use whatever powers they've been given by the entity without the rules of the game. (so yes, wraith can totally smash you over the head while he's invisible.)

some killers aren't just regular dudes juiced up by the entity though, and they have most of their powers at their disposal outside trials so, uh. i wouldn't fuck with them without really planning ahead first.

+ HEALING & DEATH

long story short: killers heal wolverine fast and whether or not they die and have to come back is down to the entity's whims. you might see the light go out of their eyes, and then 2 seconds later they're healing up and also they're pissed.
that said, they can also lose these boons or have them dampened in a second if the entity's feeling especially annoyed with them.

Death is not death. In this place, life is fleeting. • shamelessly copied from pharmacy • CODE