Hellmouth Seals Intro & Blood Sacrifice Event, End of the World 2012 Plot

The end of the world.

We hear it all the time. We hear people use it everyday. I’ve seen plenty people try to pretend
they haven’t seen, haven’t heard it from the old bearded man in his dirty clothes and his hollowed
out cheeks shouting on about the end is nigh, the fellow in his Cossack and collar, preaching on
about the end of days. And we’ve ignored them, because it’s easier that way. We bluster on,
cause it can’t possibly be true or they’re all just crazy. But it is true. And they probably aren’t.
The world is ending. And if we don’t do something about it we’re all gonna die. And not in the
‘we all die a little every day’ sort of way. In a gut wrenching, storms of blood, sky gone dark,
plague and apocalypse, demons and vampires running amuck, streets run red sort of way.
And not in a hundred years or a thousand, either. More like… now.

We should’ve seen it coming. The sun gone black, the Great Revelation, the return of the First, the
rise of the Mother-of-All, and that’s just what comes to mind in the last decade. Throw in the World
Wars, the decades death and destruction and starvation and the way mankind’s gotten into the habit
of falling to the wayside of their own morality… it’s been a thousand years coming, only we’ve gotten
so caught up in each our own little troubles that we’ve missed all the signs. And now they’re
screaming, flashing neon lights the size of the Hollywood sign over our heads.

How did we not see it coming? We live on a thing called the Hellmouth – I might not be a bonafide
expert of the things supernatural and creepy crawly but I think that sounds pretty self explanatory,
don’t you? There’s whole books on the thing, though. End of the world, apocalyptic, rip a hole
through to hell and let all the bad things out, right under our noses and we somehow didn’t see this
coming – evil bleeding out into the whole city, bit by bit, and it isn’t going to be pretty, it hasn’t been,
and it’s just working on getting worse off.

I’ve seen what’s coming. I’ve seen the earth writhing with the monsters and the bad, the streets
run red, the screaming and the dying that’s to come if this thing isn’t put down, if these things aren’t
stopped… and for the first time in a really long while, I’m really glad I don’t dream.

---

One of the plot features of NI is that the city of New York rests upon a Hellmouth, much like existed
in what used to be Sunnydale. We are looking forward to utilizing that feature more heavily in the
future, especially as we begin our first overall Apocalypse plot. A Hellmouth is a seat of increased
supernatural energy – a place where the veil between dimensions is weaker, allowing for phenomena
of many different kinds to affect the place where it is located, or more particularly, where the focal
point of the Hellmouth is located. This focal point serves as a doorway, or a portal, between the Hell
dimensions and the Earthly dimension, and the stronger the foothold of Hell becomes in the location
of the focal point, or Seal, the more Hellish creatures and effects began to take place in the city that
the Hellmouth resides under.

Apparitions of ghosts, strange effects upon the emotionally traumatized (such as someone who feels
as if they are invisible to the world actually becoming invisible), the appearance of the ‘Ubervamp’
(otherwise known as Turok Han), the re-emergence of the First, social affectations such as the
predatory hunting packs of the high school’s cliques taking on animal instincts, hungers, etc. – these
are all examples of symptoms of the Hell bleeding through into the general population.

As an integration into the Natural Instincts overall plot, we are creating a series of steps, a planned
number of seals that will be mini-plots in the Apocalypse – Hellmouth plottage that will be set out over
the remainder of the year for those that wish to participate in can throw their characters into to revel
in (or panic at) the chaos and evil that will ensue. There will be many opportunities for every fandom
and those that are not fandom-specific to be involved, be it as an affected character, or one fighting
the evil, or one helping it, as you see fit.

---

We have begun work on a series of plot ideas for the year to tie in to our overall apocalypse plot,
including a series of Seals for the Hellmouth, and we hope to get our first one up and running by the
first of April.

Seal One :: The Breaking of the Seal – a sacrifice of blood over the literal / physical representation of
the Hellmouth, the Seal, which must be of at least one human’s equivalent of liters of blood. While
there is no technical requirement of species, sex, or ‘purity’ that is open to interpretation as the
person performing the sacrifice would wish. We are looking for a character (or characters) who might
be interested in being the one working to make the sacrifice (either a single post such as with the Eve
plot opener, or a thread, if someone wishes to npc the sacrifice and/or the First). This could be
someone with the sole intent of opening the Hellmouth, or someone who has been deceived by the
First, or something like a team effort – witches, vampires, or a WRH team, etc.

100% interested in helping out with this and putting Killian in the plot. I'd like to get him involved in the sacrifice in some way. Obviously, as sheriff, he probably can't be the forerunner on this plot publicly, but he's the kinda guy to organize things behind the scenes so that his hands look clean to the naked eye. I'd love to plot with someone else who wants to do this so we can get the finer details figured out!

I can offer up Willow for any magical assistance/detorant if it will be needed!

Just for a general FYI, if it's necessary Stephen Crowley, WRH CEO will happily prove or have a flunky provide an appropriate sacrifice, general random person or per specifications if there are any if it is needed.

In other notes, Annie has gotten the visions of what will come, but has not gotten anything specific to the sequence of events of how the Hellmouth will be opened, but will be warning those at Angel Investigations and the hunters that something is coming down as the time approaches. Dakota is oblivious for the time being, she has her own drama unfolding. Illyria is unaware, outside of what Annie will pass on to the AI team, but is always available for monster smashing if pointed in the right direction by someone that she knows.

Mandy, I sent you a PM to your mod account about this. Let me know what you think!

Jo will obviously be involved in attempting to stop this; I imagine that there'll be hunter groups like the one that went to W&H once they discover what's happening with the seals, attempting to stop them being broken as the Winchesters did for the 66 Seals?

Caroline too will be trying to stop it, if she's aware - she's happy to be part of the extended Team Badass if they need an extra girl with super powers, and she promises to be useful.

I think both Rebekah and Ella's involvement depend on Klaus, really, since Bekah will do what he wants, probably, and it depends how taken in by him Ella is, so yeah, can't really plot them yet. xD

I think Killian and Danika are gonna be working on opening the Hellmouth. I don't know that they really want it too known so much as a "Surprise, Hellmouth is open!" but if you wanna plot to get in on it, either for or against it, that'd be awesome!

Yes, at the moment we are looking to get the event off with a bang, with the first seal to be broken -- only after that, when the turok han start creeping out will there be an awareness that the hellmouth has opened and then the other seals will be plotted in progression. (:

If the Hellmouth is under Washington High, wouldn't the seal be there as well?

My suggestion in this would be having NPC demons (WRH flunkies, The First flunkies, etc) kidnap 5-10 characters from all across the fandoms - and OC's, of course - (people who want their characters kidnapped would volunteer, of course) and taken to the seal for a collective blood sacrifice. That way you have enough blood to open the seal and none of them dies in the process. Also, if at least half of them are special (wicca or some other kind of enhanced human), their blood could be more effective.

The advantage of having a group of playable characters being the sacrifice is that the people who know them will automatically have a strong reason to get involved and stop it all.

Personally, I find that to be far more captivating and motivating to have characters from all the fandoms be there when the seal is open. At the current moment in plot, none of the people in any of the other fandoms (non-BTVS/ATS) know about the Hellmouth. If the Hellmouth opens in secret and all they see is a turok-han on the street, then it will be only another demon for them; they won't know where it came from or how to connect it with the Hellmouth. If you get characters involved into the opening more directly, then the Hellmouth can finally be known across fandoms.

I know that threads with multiple characters are a bit hard to manage and that it sounds like it might take too much get things moving like this but there could be a thread to have people volunteer and once the sacrifices are decided upon, the thread can start with the said characters already being tied up and set in place close to the seal, possibly waking up after being sedated/knocked out cold.

Once the seal was opened, and the Turok Han were loose, it was meant to be an opportunity for the Buffy and Angel characters to spread out and spread awareness about the Hellmouth, kind of a jump start for them to act as a spearhead for the first bits here and during all of the other seals there are events that will spread out across the entire board without any sort of preference so there will be plenty of evil to go around regardless of how the first sacrifice works out. =P

If there are others interested in the mass sacrifice concept, feel free to let us know and will work on getting it sorted. I know that Killian's player is eagerly looking for other people to play flunkey and such so if anyone else is interested, please do tell!

Edit: Somewhere in the getting this started, I failed to gather up the information that the Hellmouth was under the High School. My bad. The Seal will be in the basement, etc. and further details might follow later.


Further Edit: If there is anyone that wants to play sacrifice(s) or sacrifice-r(s) (for Killian, for the First, for WRH, for whoever) please let us know!

I really like the mass sacrifice concept. I think it makes the whole plot feel bigger when it's started that way, with different characters pulled in that way. I don't have anything really to add to it, just that I love the idea of the sacrifices coming from across the fandoms. It's more interesting to me.

Also, I imagine Dean would toss in with Jo when it comes to wanting to stop it.

I can't see Tyler having a lot of involvement here.

Lucifer, on the other hand, I think he'd be aware of it opening. Since angels seem to have that sense when those things happen. Though it would probably be something he watched to see how it pans out without being directly involved.

I can throw in Elena or Nina.

Elena is a homicide detective, who focuses on supernatural cases.

Nina is a nurse, but has ties with the BH crew.

The problem with making it a group thread is that the administration would like this to be taken care of at the very beginning of April. That is, the thread should be wrapping up around the time April 1 rears its head. Group threads tend to take a long time so it'd have to start pretty much three days ago lol. But if you guys want to do that, I'm sure we can figure something out.

We'd need everyone who wants to be involved to have a conversation on what we're going to do, though, and that'd need to take place before the day's over if we wanted to get that going and have it done in time for April 1.

We would like to see the thread move forward, starting on the first and hopefully keeping up a forward momentum to get people involved in the event and to sort of set the tone, but if it takes longer, then we understand -- if there is an interest in the group thread we can work it out (:


Edit: If there is anyone that is interested in playing a sacrifice (as their character or an npc), or one doing the sacrifice (character or npc) please let us know!

Well that's good then! It gives a bit more leeway on the timeline.

Nicky, are you volunteering Elena or Nina to be part of the sacrifice? Of course following Wesley's player's suggestion they wouldn't be killed or anything, just offering up a little blood with another large crew. If you wanna do that, I'd love to speak with you on AIM or something if you have a chance and try to coordinate something?

Cyn, The First is going to appear to Killian (sometime tonight I'll have that thread up) and convince him to open it. Maybe Lucifer is on this somehow? I don't have any good suggestions on that, but we could probably hammer that out pretty easily. Other than that, I was planning to have Bonnie have a vision about the Hellmouth being opened. Maybe she could see Jo and Dean in her vision and seek them out afterward to get them aware?

I'm glad more people wanna be involved! These are just a few of my suggestions. They're all just a couple of ideas of course but hopefully it can spark a brainstorm to get everyone involved!