The Protectors of Halloween

I'm saving this so I can access it on another computer.

The Protectors of Halloween.

This is another "kids turn into their costumes" thing, but with a plot. I hope.

Two days ago the popular kids got together and handed out invitations for what they said would be the biggest Halloween bash this little one-horse town of Facade had ever seen. But there was a group of kids that were quite obviously not invited. These were the freaks, the geeks, the losers.

Instead of bemoaning their misery, one of them came up with a grand idea. The loft in her family's barn was perfect for a Halloween party. She'd clean it out and throw a party- just for the losers.

Meanwhile, in another dimension...

Hades, the King of Hale, wants to take over the Human world, and he has chosen Facade to be his base of operations. On Halloween night, he casts a spell on Hale that spirits all the humans off to another dimension.

For some reason, and unbeknownst to Hades, the spell misses the barn where the losers are having their party. They go on having their fun, totally unaware of what is going on outside.

Now Hades' wife Persephone was born in Hale, so naturally she'd do anything to protect it. She follows Hades to Facade and finds an abandoned city. She also finds the losers in the barn, and sees that most of them are dressed as something supernatural.

She casts a spell to change them into the costumes they where. Now, the only way to gain their true forms and get the rest of the town back is to fight defeat Hades and his demons. But will they follow through with Persephone's plan, or join Hades?

Just to clear it up, Hades and Persephone aren't necessarily the figures of the Greek myth- they just share their names. You should be glad I didn't use the names Jack and Sally.

-Characters Needed-
Hades
Persephone
"The Losers"
Hades's demons

Here's the form for the losers. For the others, you can make up your own form. Advantages and disadvantages refers to the talents and handicaps they have once their costumes have taken over. For instance, a vampire may be stronger and have super jumping abilities, but may have aversions to light and garlic. You MUST have at least one disadvantage.

Name:
Age:
Regular Appearance:
Costume:
Advantages:
Disadvantages:

Leaving New Salvation

However, I'm afraid that it's been so many years that I've lost touch with the franchise.






In 200X, a program called D-Reaper figured out how to take physical form and started attacking the physical world. A long, difficult battle for humanity's right to exist followed. Sacrifices were made, but the D-Reaper was defeated and returned to a more manageable state.

But the world was forever changed. All over the globe- but especially in Japan, people picked up the pieces of their destroyed cities. It came known that the D-Reaper came from the Digital World, and the Digital World was a manifestation of various communication networks. Consequently, the movement to abandon technology gathered steam quite quickly.

All over the globe, Tech Free Communities or TFCs sprung up. These were met with varying success. Some sought to go even farther than that, though. They sought to bring the world to something like it had been before the industrial age.

A few in the latter category founded the settlement of New Salvation- which is celebrating it's fiftieth year of existence.

School children from the city in the shadow of the mountains sometimes make day trips to New Salvation. And indeed, the people there seem to live an odd lifestyle. It looks like some twisted parody of one of those historical movies. The people of of New Salvation have forgone the combustion engine for the horse and carriage. The professions of blacksmith, milliner, and shoemaker are very real trades. Just about every family has a farm and much time is occupied taking care of this farm.

But New Salvationites haven't abandoned all the ways of the twentieth century. One conspicuous way this shows itself is in fashion. Styles of clothing haven't changed up here since the first decade in the millennium. They have an even more antique look about them since the cloth is made, sewn and dyed by the very people who wear them. Thankfully, medicine isn't the way it was in pioneer times either. Antibiotics are used, and a lot of medicines is imported from the outside world, but New Salvationites also use a good helping of herbal remedies. One technology the founders decided not to get rid of was the printing press- with a amendment that it only be used to print educational works that help better the lives of the townspeople.

And of course, the two generations born in New Salvation are completely aware that the rest of the world is different. Since they have no television, radio or personal computers, they read books for entertainment. The books in the town's library are the same that were gathered when the founders of New Salvation first sought to retreat from the world. Many of them were printed and are about characters in the late twentieth and early twenty first century. If nothing else, they know what a TV used to look like just by seeing a picture in a book.

And they have seen technology for themselves. There are the planes that fly overhead and, if one goes to a particular lookout in the forest they can see the skyscrapers and smokestacks of the city behind the other mountain. And then of course, two or three times a year a truck comes in to town to deliver supplies.

When school children come to visit for the afternoon, they still have their communication devices on their wrists. Of course when the visits last a few days, people are asked to abandon all these devices. What follows is a set of curious behaviors. The visitors will often look at their naked wrists nervously. More often than not, they will cut their visit short- giving New Salvationites a sense of smug satisfaction but also a tinge of uneasiness.

For some, this uneasiness becomes an urge to live with the conveniences the visitors know. And when this happens, they must leave. Because one cannot live with communication technology and stay in New Salvation.

And of course, this is a giant lie.

On a peak above New Salvation there is a fort. Though it looks dilapidated, there is life inside. Experiments are run every day. For the refurbished fort is the last remaining base of T.A.I.C.H.I. Corp. T.A.I.C.H.I. Corp. which, with it's visionary leader Rob Hemming, was in the news a lot in the 2010s. The company was well known for its advances in medicine- especially prosthetics. In 2023, Hemming announced that he was on the verge of something creating usable, artificial organs- without using DNA or donors of any other sort. Just as the was in a flurry over what this new announcement meant, T.A.I.C.H.I. Corp. shut its doors and closed down most of it's operations.

A few months after T.A.I.C.H.I. Corp. disappeared from the radar, the founders of New Salvation were approached by Hemming. New Salvation was in a bad way. Like many TFCs, it was folding do to economic trials. Hemming offered them all the money they needed to stay afloat indefinitely- for a price. The founders, who believed their cause was right and just, accepted the price.

Every year, a child from New Salvation goes missing. Little is said of it- it's attributed to a wolf pack that runs up here. The fact that New Salvationites haven't seen a wolf in several decades doesn't account for much.

I have to go back a bit. You see, Rob Hemming isn't a bad guy. Well, he probably is, but he wasn't always that way. There was a time when all he wanted to do was help people. He had a son, you see. The son had a wasting disease, and this boy was Hemming's inspiration for dedicating his life to medical advancements. And he was on to something with Datter.

Datter is the stuff Digimon are made of when they appear in the physical world. It can interact with other physical world objects as well as matter does, but can change it's shape in seconds like data. Objects could be coded as data in the Digital World and sent back through to the real world as datter. With this discovery, limbs, organs, even how new bodies could be made for cheap. No one had so be sick or suffer or die again!

Of course, this meant breaking down the wall between the real and Digital World. It's understandable to say that not many people would feel comfortable taking that action, so Hemming didn't talk to the media about Datter.

But everything changed for Hemming when his son disappeared into the Digital World.

The walls between the Digital and physical worlds were not quite broken down yet. Hemming knew that the only way he was going to break them was if the Digimon pushed them out from the inside. He also knew, from his research, that the creatures who lived in the Digital World were fascinated by human children. That's why the New Salvation children were taken. What was done with them is anyone's guess.

One day, Hemming succeeded. The walls were paper thin and Digimon were running about in New Salvation. They are made contact with children and those children are forming bonds with the Digimon. Suddenly, a new generation of New Salvationites have useful things called Digivices. They must keep their Digimon and their Digivices secret from their parents and the other townspeople, for their very way of life is founded on the notion that they are evil.

A week after the Digimon started appearing in New Salvation, the entire town was swallowed up into the Digital World.

Now instead of a mountain in the physical world, the people of New Salvation find themselves and their homes in a desert in the digital one. Talk about isolation! Trapped in the one thing their forefathers sought to avoid, they must journey across an alien land in order to find a way home. Oddly enough, their best hope of survival are the children who bonded with digimon. These human/digimon teams can use quick transformations in order to battle the creatures that want to harm the humans. And believe me, there are many creatures who mean the New Salvationites harm...

Writing Advice

Man, I must be pretty damn egotistical to be giving writing advice. Would it help to say this really is more like common sense advice, and you find the same thing just about on every writing forum? I don't tell you how to use techniques in here at all. All techniques have their place, and it's not up to me to decide which ones get used.

Sort of copied from the advice I gave some kid writing a novel, but it can work for rps or other things too.

1. Read A LOT. When you read you get an idea of what works and what doesn't in fiction. You also get ideas from those authors and then experiment in your own fiction.

2. It (almost) goes without saying, write A LOT. I heard a statistic that it takes 10,000 hours of doing something to get really good at it. I don't know if its true but even so, but every time you write you get a little better.

3. Get to know your characters really well. Get to know them as well as (or better than?) your friends and family. Which leg do they step in first when putting their pants on in the morning? Know your characters and their world inside and out and their story will become that much more easier to write.

There are websites to help you with this. They're called character charts and they're just a bunch of questions you can ask about your characters. You don't have to answer all of them or even any of them. The questions are just meant to make you think. I find the easiest way to get to know characters quick is to write quirks first, and the rest of the character sort of builds itself around that.

This is a conversation I have honestly had.

Me: Oh! They sell tuna-and-egg salad here? Roger would love that!
Mom: Who'd Roger? Your boyfriend?
Me: Yuck Mum. He's thirteen. *blush* He's my character.

4. Don't take it too seriously. Writing is an art, not a science. Experiment. Even if you don't think something will work, try it. And don't think you have to emulate the style of other authors. Figure out what works for you and you will have found your voice.

5. Don't take /yourself/ too seriously. You are not God's gift to literature and it won't help you to act that way. Not everyone will like your work- get over it! Don't let your emotions get you worked up- understand what critics are trying to tell you.

As a corollary to 5, know the difference between flames and critiques. While a critique can be helpful a flame just rips you down. Unfortunately, many people confuse the former for the latter and get very defensive. Remember, a flamer will only say the negative about your work and probably will throw in a few personal attacks. A critic will tell you how you can improve.