r/whowouldwin • u/Proletlariet • May 22 '23
Event Character Scramble Season 17 Round 1A: Crimson Butterfly
Round 1A is finished and the thread is locked! Please use this form to vote. Voting ends 48 hours after it began. You MUST vote if you are competing!
Round 1A includes Matches 1 through 8 on the bracket. Check to see if you're in before you write.
The Character Scramble is a long-running writing prompt tournament in which participants submit characters from fiction to a specified tier and guideline. After the submission period ends, the submitted characters are "scrambled" and randomly distributed to each writer, forming their team for the season. Writers will then be entered into a single-elimination bracket, where they write a story that features their team fighting against their opponent's team. Victors are decided based on reader votes; in other words, if you want people to vote for you, write some good content. The winner by votes of each match-up moves on to the next round. The pattern continues until only one participant remains: the new Character Scramble champion, who gets to choose the theme, tier, and rules of the next Scramble!
The theme of Character Scramble 17 is Silent Hill. Round prompts will be based on scenarios and setpieces from classic survival horror games, which participants’ characters will be forced to endure all the while avoiding the terrifying Slasher characters also submitted this season.
Join the Character Scramble Discord!
Round 1A: Crimson Butterfly
Fleeing from their encounter with their Slasher in R0, your team find themselves in the oldest part of Scramble Hill where the roots of its curse run deepest.
Their presence disturbs more than just the rotting timbers of the old fashioned buildings. The dead of Scramble Hill begin to stir. Their baleful spirits have been consigned to linger there for all eternity by the town’s curse, and over their long years stuck in this purgatory they have grown more and more desperate for an escape.
One of the oldest and most powerful of their number--your opponent’s Slasher--has whipped the restless bunch into a fervour with the promise of a solution; they believe the only way to bring their souls to rest is to reenact a ritual of sacrifice that once kept the curse at bay. Unfortunately for you, they require a living vessel to complete it. And they won’t take no for an answer.
Your team’s Slasher has other ideas. Whether the ritual works or not, they’re not taking any chances. They will stop at nothing to interrupt it before it can be completed. They might even go as far as to protect your Survivors from the restless spirits. Or just as easily decide to preemptively kill the would-be sacrifice themselves.
Round Rules:
Key Points: Your team is being haunted by the ghosts of people who’ve died in Scramble Hill, including your Opponent’s Slasher. They want to force your team to complete a sacrificial ritual to end the town’s curse and put their spirits to rest. Your Slasher doesn’t want the curse to be broken, so they’re dead set on interrupting the ritual. For more details about the setting and circumstances, keep reading.
Beyond the Spirit Gate: The barrier between the human and spirit worlds is blurred in Scramble Hill, but it is still not easily breached. Ghosts are out of step with mortals---you can’t fend them off with fists and bullets. Normal people need a tool just to see and interact with them; a special flashlight lens, an occult symbol, a camera obscura. Ghosts, on the other hand, can touch you just fine. Your team will need to find something to ward them off if they hope to survive.
Crimson Sacrifice: The rite the spirits wish to perform requires two living participants, one of whom is forced to ritually sacrifice the other. The ghosts will possess the living bodies of Survivors (yours, your opponent’s, up to you!) and use them as their pawns to carry out the ritual.
Master of Ceremonies: Your opponent's slasher is the one officiating the Crimson Sacrifice. Who are they? A priest? A cultist? A former victim of the ritual? Are they a ghost themselves, or merely being possessed to do the bidding of one?
Over YOUR Dead Body!: Regardless of if it could truly break the curse, your team’s Slasher won’t allow the ritual to be completed. They’ll do whatever it takes to interrupt it. Whether that means protecting your team members from the restless spirits, or preemptively killing the would-be sacrifice themselves.
Normal Rules:
There was a hole here. It’s gone now: The environment of Scramble Hill is disorientating and hostile: creeping industrial rust, out of place landmarks, stairs and corridors to nowhere. As much as Slashers might pose a threat to your characters, the town itself should feel like an antagonist.
Fear of Blood creates Fear for the Flesh: This is a horror themed Scramble. You don’t have to try to scare the reader with your stories, but they should include spooky elements. Scramble Hill is full of things that would make a normal person shudder. How do your characters react when they encounter them?
We're safe... for now: This is the story of your characters’ survival against terrifying forces. This means that however scarred and broken they emerge, they’re going to make it out alive. Even if your characters have only a small chance of victory, write that small chance happening!
If I kept it, I'm not sure what I might do…: Survival Horror is all about scavenging for something, anything you can use to stave off the monsters in the dark. You are absolutely encouraged to write your characters gaining or losing equipment/abilities/injuries/sanity. However, your opponents are not expected to keep track of these in-story changes and vice versa.
The only me is me. Are you sure the only you is you?: Give a brief summary to introduce your characters at the start of your post. Be sure to mention things like powers, personality, history, just stuff that the average reader should know before reading.
R1A Dread Pool
This round, you may draw your opponent's Slasher from either the character they adopted in R0 or one of the following Dread Pool picks:
Zs'Skayr (Ben 10)
Psycho Mantis (Metal Gear Solid)
Liliana Vess (Magic the Gathering)
Scar (FMA)
The Zealot (Fate)
Tak Se'Young (Rooftop Sword Master)
Shishio Makoto (Ruroni Kenshin)
Mortarion (WH40k)
Judge Dredd (2000 AD)
Round 1A will run from Monday May 22nd to Friday June 9th Thursday June 15th and end at 11:59 PM Central Daylight Time on the dot.
In recognition of confusion over previous deadlines, we're switching to a compromise time zone that works better for most Scramblers. For reference, that is 12:59 AM on the 16th EST or 5:59 AM BST.
To make things even easier, check out this site to convert the deadline to your timezone.
The universal code is - 1686286740
Copy this and paste it into the "Epoch to human time" slot.
Character limit is 5 full length Reddit comments, or 50k characters.
While it is fine to go a little bit over, anything that far surpasses this limit will be disqualified. This limit does not include intro posts, or analysis of the matchup.
5
u/7thSonOfSons Jun 03 '23 edited Aug 25 '23
Jill’s brow furrowed. She kept her gun steady on Soma’s chest. “What are you saying? We saw the Witch Devil on the news. The redhead out there with the zombies!”
“She’s just a familiar! A reanimated body to draw you out. A witches trick…”
“No… You’re wrong. I don’t know what's going on, but you’re just a kid. Devils don’t look like you. They don’t talk like you. They’re-”
“Monsters?” Soma’s voice was bitter and empty. “You think I don’t know? I know it better than you could ever.”
Jill’s mind was racing. Devils didn’t wear jeans. They weren’t students. They didn’t have shaky hands under the gun. They were the living manifestations of human terror, beasts who became stronger with every atrocity.
Soma sighed. He held out his hand. There was a crack of lightning between them. After the flash came a burning bright circle on the floor. It hummed and whirred, and from its centre crawled a rotting-flesh zombie. Jill pointed her gun at it, but Soma waved his hand, and the zombie became a pile of black cats.
He snapped his fingers, and the cats ran off. “Do you believe now? I can do worse if I have to.”
It didn’t sound like a threat. It sounded sad.
Jill kept her gun lowered, but she looked at Soma. “Alright… alright. So you’re the Witch Devil. Sure. But why are you here? Why tell me? What was the point of all this? Why did you-” she cut herself off. One step at a time. If she got too heated, if her judgement became compromised, she could make a mistake. Now was not the time for a mistake.
“Because,” Soma says, “I had to do something. I couldn’t let it happen again. When I heard the news, that Vought had put together a new team to hunt and kill Devils. You get it, right? If the tables were turned?”
Jill’s shoulders slumped. “Yeah… yeah, I guess I can see why that would be a problem. For a kid like you, Devil or not, it has to be scary, having Homelander and Star pointed at you.”
“Ha.” Soma shook his head. He ran his hand through his hair. “No, no, no, that’s not the problem. They’re not the problem. Those two are strong, but we can deal with them. We can hide. We can distract. We can run. No, It’s that woman. It’s her.”
Jill’s hands tightened around her gun. “... Makima.”
Soma froze up. His eyes darted about. He waved his hand, and a sword filmed his palm. He turned his back on Jill and gripped the hilt. “That woman. She’s worse than any of them. When she was in Japan, we weren’t safe. None of us. She ground us into dust under her heel. She didn’t just kill Devils, Officer Valentine, she broke us. Everyone in Tokyo knew what it meant if her Bloodhounds came for y-”
”Bang”
Soma’s torso disappears.
The rest of him hits the floor.
He is dead.
Jill looks down at his scattered body parts.
She nearly vomits.
A hand comes down on her shoulder.
It’s Makima’s.
“There there, Jill. You did what you had to do. I’m sure it doesn’t feel great, but he was a Devil.”
Makima smiles at her.
Jill stares at the floor.
Blood pools at her feet.
“What? Makima how did you…?”
Makima tilts her head.
“How did I do what?”
“I saw you. You were… dead.”
Makima frowns.
“Jill, are you okay? I’ve been behind you since you ran after that Devil.”
Jill is breathing deeply.
She is trying to stay calm.
It is not working.
“He shot you, Makima. Through the back of the head and out the front.”
Makima brushes her bangs out of her face.
Her forehead is perfectly fine.
“Devil’s don’t shoot people, people shoot Devils.”
“But I didn’t-”
“Six shots. Perfectly placed. Even through whatever trick the Devil pulled, you did your job admirably. Especially for a first timer.”
Jill ejects her magazine.
3 shots. One in the chamber.
She puts her gun away.
Her hands are shaking.
Makima puts her arm around the shoulders of Jill.
Makima smiles at Jill.
Jill is swallowed up in it.
Her body is still shaking.
“We’ll have to send for special services to collect the body. Everything in this lab is already Vought property, so I want that back for examination as well.”
Makima puts her hand on Jill’s head.
“You did very well, Jill. Whatever you’re feeling now, it will pass.”
Makima walks to the window.
The night is silence.
The dead are dead.
The moon is bright.
Makima frowns.
“Go back to the car, Jill. Put on some music, it’ll help you relax.”
Jill snaps out of her haze.
“What about you?”
Makima looks back.
“I’ll be right behind. I have to make a phone call. It seems we’ve another problem.”