Resonance - Things to Come

Over the last few weeks the island has been plagued with a series of deeply mysterious events. People have been acting strange: showing up in places they shouldn't, doing things they really shouldn't, and generally causing trouble. Theories have bounced between mind control, mass hysteria, and even doppelgangers.

But on Sunday evening a group of concerned citizens investigating the mystery found themselves pulled into a confusing and unusual situation. Following their targets, they all found themselves heading deep into the depths of the forbidden forest- a highly dangerous area. There, they found something hidden and terribly unnerving: a school.

Not just any school either but a massive school approaching the size of Starlight Academy itself, far too large and elaborate to be one of the other small private schools that dot the island. None of the explorers had heard of the school, and as they set about investigating they found something even stranger. The school was littered with people, but each of them was frozen in place. Still alive, but dead to the world. As the group explored the school they learned several increasingly alarming facts.

The school was apparently named Dark Crystal Academy, and it once operated as a sister school to Starlight Academy. Dark Crystal Academy took a more heavily supernatural lean, eschewing most standard subjects in favor for focuses on magic and the like. Twelve years ago though, on June 23, 2007 at 10:37 AM, something happened which, in addition to freezing the DCA faculty and students in time, seemed to completely erase the school from existence without a trace.

A thriving magical school, once so prominent on the island, became unknown overnight. It's staff and students forgotten by all.

As the group explored more alarming details began to come out. Most pressingly, they learned that the island--the whole island--had been in a furor over a scientific theory which had recently come to light: the theory that the supernatural world itself was dying out. That the collective disbelief of humanity was slowly rendering the supernatural denizens and parts of the world, well, natural.

Most on the island seemed to think the theory was nonsense but many people at the Dark Crystal Academy took it very seriously. There was talk of protests on campus and theories being banded about for what could be done. A small group within the school's faculty even pushed for perhaps the most extreme solution possible: the abrupt end of supernatural secrecy, the destruction of the so-called Veil.

In secret the group attempted to do just that, and were surprised and alarmed when there was push back. Multiple groups intending to destroy the secrecy turned up missing. Things went wrong despite the best laid plans. Some supernatural force seemed to be acting against them and their plans directly, and so the group--lead by one Professor Tern--took drastic action.

Professor Tern managed to trap the thing that was acting against them, allowing them to move forward with preparations to breach the secrecy which had long protected the supernatural.

Suddenly this thing--the thing that he called simply the Veil--lashed out in a desperate attempt to stop them.

With the desperate power of this entity Dark Crystal Academy froze in time, forgotten by everyone, and the Veil, still trapped in the bowels below the Academy, strained against its container as best it could.

It wasn't until years later that it had enough strength to make an attempt to free itself, but it ended only in failure. Outside assistance would be required, and the Veil--the manifestation of all that was supernatural--sent doppelgangers out into the island to draw attention and lure those who might be able to help it back towards its prison.

It worked. A group arrived to investigate, pulling together clues on one Sunday afternoon in the hopes of solving the mystery of the rumors that had sprung up on the island. Through sweat and blood and tears they found Professor Tern's lab and faced down the thing trapped inside.

Interestingly, the Veil had not been content to hope that a single group would solve the issue, feeling this was far too important for that. So the Veil had shifted the world in such a way that Dark Crystal Academy, already existing on the absolute boundaries of reality itself, would have its hidden halls discoverable by three separate groups at the same time. Each had to explore the school. Each had to discover its secrets, catching glimpses of the other groups as they did so as a result of their overlapped existences.

And each group in the end had chosen to free the Veil.

The moment the Veil was free, it vanished. The school remained as it was, although the doppelgangers no longer showed themselves. All three groups found themselves in a single version of Dark Crystal Academy, now firmly back in the same reality as Starlight Academy itself.

Less than thirty minutes later the authorities arrived to cordon off the entire area. The surge of magic released when containment had been broken had set off every instrument on the island (and several off the island), drawing their attention immediately.

The explorers were each questioned at length about what had happened, and those who'd been hurt were given medical care. Any objects they'd helped themselves to were confiscated as evidence. They spent Sunday evening in police custody, as officials made sure everything was handled appropriately, and then they were released from custody.

Those who were arrested, charged or otherwise accused as a result of the doppelganger events were also freed, with said charges and allegations against them cleared.

While there doesn't seem to be any immediate responses to the Dark Crystal Academy's return to reality, there is a clear, universal agreement by everyone attuned to magic or the supernatural that a change has happened. Something is different, they just aren't sure exactly what.

Something significant has changed, and there's no going back.

In August of 2007, Manta Carlos changed forever. Starlight Academy's sister school, which had for years operated on the island without issue, vanished overnight.

But it wasn't a normal vanishing. Instead, the school and everyone within had been erased from reality, wiped from the memories of those who knew about it. Those outside the school forgot it's very existence, and to the rest of the world it was as if Dark Crystal Academy had never existed at all.

But Dark Crystal Academy wasn't destroyed, only taken. It still existed, put on cosmic pause on the border of reality, waiting. The effect which put it there was temporary at best, a patchwork effort intended to prevent the worst case scenario from coming true.

But it could never hold, and on October 10th, that cosmic pause unpaused.

Those outside of Dark Crystal Academy who had once knew about Starlight Academy's sister school suddenly remember it again. Records became untampered. Evidence of the school's existence can once again be found.

But most importantly: the students of Dark Crystal Academy once again live and breathe.

For them, no time at all has passed. They were attending class normally at Dark Crystal Academy, a school much like Starlight Academy (albeit with a darker bent and far less of a focus on the mundane), and one blink to the next, things had changed.

Twelve years had passed. The school had degraded around them, gone dark and dingy. The forest, once cleared back from the school, had pressed in.

An hour after their reintroduction to reality, the authorities arrived from the city. Those in and around the school were transported back to the city, and the island is doing what it can to accommodate those displaced and help them settle back in.


If you want your existing character to have a DCA connection, please post here (or contact a mod directly) so we can keep track. If you want to make a new character who was part of the pause, you can! Just app them like any other character.