Welcome! This guide holds the summary of every major event and meta that This is Halloween (TiH) had ever held, and will be updated as more of these events and metas take place. Keep in mind that if your character did not go through these events/metas personally, and nobody told them about it ICly, they should have no knowledge of the information. So, please keep in mind that the information stored in this thread is strictly for OOC use, and are mostly flavor text.
Who are you?
Student A Halloween denizen (Demon/Monster/Ghost/Undead/Reaper) enrolled in Amityville Academy, a well-known high school located in Halloween. May come from all walks of life, as Halloween is a huge and diverse world/society. Goal: To obtain a passport for travelling into the human world upon graduation; however, many students have dreams/goals/aspirations of their own! For more information on Amityville Academy, please proceed here. For more information on the world of Halloween, please proceed here. The main forum for RPing Students is here.
Hunter A human who is a part of Deus Ex Machina, an island/facility located within the Bermuda Triangle, on the edges between the Human World and Halloween. Possess sentient weapons - former Halloween denizens transformed into (mostly) willing partners - capable of absorbing Fear. Goal: To protect humanity by extinguishing the darkness of FEAR. For more information on hunters, please proceed here. The main forum for RPing Hunters is here.
Horsemen Horsemen, also known as Horsemen of the Lost Clan/Horsemen of the Apocalypse, were created through human FEAR of the end of the world. Used to be known as 'The Four Clans', but after their former home was destroyed by the Hunters, the Horsemen survivors sought refuge in Halloween, and renamed themselves 'The Lost Clans'. Goal: To bring about the fabled End of the World, and rule over all humanity For more information on horsemen, please proceed here. The main forum for RPing Horsemen is here.
Some of these events revolve around very specific NPCS.
List of Notable NPCS
gaia_crownAmityville:
Hellma: The headmistress of Amityville Academy, a creature with her own hidden agenda. She isn't afraid to send those she thinks as miscreants to a terrible place called the princess corner.
Red: Amityville Academy's gymnasium teacher, and also leader of the Bogeymen. She is a werewolf who was also formerly part of a strange organization called the Defenders...
Arel: Amityville Academy's secretary and speculated to be ???. He has a hard time following current events but always tries to protect the students. Is often mistaken for either a gnome or an elf from Xmas.
Noxious Firth: Also known as Nox, head of the Trick or Treaters, a group of Halloween creatures who specialize in collecting Fear. A feisty Ifrit who's quick to jump on his feet.
gaia_crownDeus Ex:
Caelius : Head of the Death Division, the Hunter who most Hunters will see first and last before a mission, usually gives out impossible tasks with short deadlines.
H: Head of the Life Division, a Hunter who involves himself in personal projects, tasks, and the development of Deus Ex internally. Only involves self in missions for self benefits.
Aria: Head of the Mist Division, a Hunter who is spread very thin and thus not seen as often. Fills herself in on all tasks, the in-between for all missions. Thinks H and Caelius are primadonnas
gaia_crownHorsemen:
Medea: Head Priestess, also given charge of leading and preserving the remains of the Lost Clans, or horseme. Has the ability to see things through Trance.
gaia_crownMisc:
Sandy Claws: A mysterious man who lives in Xmas. Rumour has it that he's not so jolly when Xmas rolls around
Jingleberry: A fabled warrior from a mysterious land, looking for someone very important to him....
Clockwork: The Ancient of Time, this strange being is often seen in his tower inside the Haunted House, watching people, although for reasons unknown.
Posted: Sun Jan 16, 2011 12:53 pm
Campus Opens - August 2010
The grand opening of the grounds of Amityville Academy! The first students start to arrive.
Students were invited to take a train ride, and were abruptly thrown in to a who-done-it situation when a student suddenly falls dead during a temporary black out. Students were split up in their decisions of who had been the culprit, and used their skills in deduction to smoke them out. Unknown to the students, there were a few psychologically sound members in the group, using the borrowed power to 'feel out' for the culprit.
During the event, the attacker would strike every so often, leaving some of the students in the injured cab, whereas those who had been accused, but not found out, were stuck in the accused cab to mull over who had actually been the culprit.
Ultimately, it was realized that it multiple members of the train's commuters were behind the attacks.
During the finale of the increasingly violent battle, and avarice demon of Pride takes the stage as it's final boss. Trick or Treat recruiter Noxious Firth attacks her in the end, only to end up going with her through a mysterious portal leading to a mysterious island. An equally mysterious necklace is also picked up by Arel, and eventually copies of it are given to the surviving bands. Nox seems to have disappeared.
Students do battle with Rare Elite Reindeer during the train ride. Trick or Treat recruiter Hexidecimal fails to impress anyone. However, the school's new career counselor impresses several young ghouls ... and a couple boils as well. The gnomes ruin several cars of lunches out of spite, and everything is nice and calm until the train crashes.
Students are given a mission to fight their way through Christmas to steal something from Sandy's workshop! Their malfunctioning pins, lack of FEAR, and a ninja make this much harder than they would probably like. Finally, they manage to reach their goal only to be blocked by the rare elite Santa Scouts! After crushing these as well, our brave students enter the main warehouse only to find epic amounts of fail, no extra loot, and not even a Sandy Claws to give them an autograph.
Elsewhere, Hellma and Hex are seen dragging away a large bag that is suspiciously lively.
Someone took liberties with one of Halloween's most treasured tales and the result was spectacular...-ly awful, even with the addition of a very special guest. After the curtains close, Hellma and Sandy Claws settle in to have a nice chat and come to an agreement: he'll locate a very mysterious island for in return for something she took long ago.
Amityville recruited students on a mandatory "survival training" field trip, setting off for the location of an island situated on the barrier between Halloween and the Human World, on what was half a rescue mission, and half an investigation! Not that anyone bothers to tell the students that.
Many students do not make it. Before they even set foot on the island, ships crash or are lost, and by the time they reach the beach, not a single teacher is in sight. No one quite expected there to be a barrier around the island, created to keep Halloween's powerful adults out, while imprisoning the weaker, still in-training students in.
With their FEAR and abilities blocked, students powered through much of the island on guts and desperation alone. Facing strange, reaper-like attackers with glowing weapons, and insanity caused by the fog of chaotic FEAR, they investigated the island and its mysteries to find a way home.
In the final, desperate battles, many students died, and due to a problem with the island's barrier...they couldn't simply reform. Death provided the unfortunate with lonely uncertainty, a disturbing sight, and terrible memories for those who survived to see their friends fall.
With the help of two powerful, though quite insane, heirs of Halloween's Horsemen clans, the students manage to reach the Island's Dark Cove and the long-missing Noxious Firth. They also found themselves confronted by an enemy no student was capable of handling, with the threat of permanent death looming before them... and then the teachers finally showed up. Having been ported into the middle of the ocean by the barrier, they made their way back in a less than thrilled mood, only to have it worsened by the fact that they would have to wait for the barrier to be altered or broken. But even the sight of murderous faculty wasn't quite enough to intimidate their enemy, his backup had arrived. The cost of a battle at the moment would have harmed both sides grievously, and so it was with much ill-will that Amityville Academy left for home, and the enemy allowing them to do so.
Many reunions, both joyful and subdued, followed on the school campus as student came back, and those who died finally reformed. It could almost be considered a happy ending to an admittedly traumatic story. But those who knew the truth also knew better. This wasn't the end. This was the prologue.
The Mysterious Island Part 2: Hunter Candidate Trials - May 2011
A strange dream about an odd figure, lecturing you in a classroom? Waking to find yourself without memory, identity, or even able to see your own face. A strange suit and mask covers you head to toe, and as you look around, there's others just like you wandering around as well. You're given weapons, minimal information, and no direction. It's implied that only a few will succeed in the end, and perhaps finding a pendant will help you in this. Nothing is certain. Everything is dangerous. The rules are never fully or clearly given, but your mind and instinct fill in the blanks as you go. You want to live. You want someone else to live. You want to know what this is really about. You want to know who, what, where, and why. How is probably better left alone. You want either a lot of things, or simply a few very important things.
You don't get them. Congratulations, you just died.
And surprise! With death comes memories and answers. Not that they'll do you any good.
But maybe...maybe you caught the attention of the right people, made a good impression, or sparked a bit of intrigue? Maybe you get lucky. Maybe you get to come back. Maybe you get to come back and look into the face of the person who killed you. Maybe you look around, do a head count, and realize how many people didn't. People you liked. People you hated. People you killed. But at least you're alive, so maybe you can live with yourself and your actions.
Welcome to Deus Ex Machina. Job well done, Hunter.
Hard at work once again, the Student Council created a night of dancing, drama, gambling, romance, theatrical performances, snacks... and some most excellent music.
The Haunted House, located in the Human World with a deep connection to Halloween, had long been used for Bogeymen training. Professor Red, using her connections to them, was able to open the House to the students of Amityville. While she introduced the House as designed for training and testing the students' mettle, it would shortly become clear that there were deeper machinations involved...
Students were divided up into teams, challenging the Ten Rooms within the Haunted House - a constantly-shifting maze of hubs and individual strings of rooms, populated by obstacles and the House's population of Boos, small ghostlike beings spawned by the House itself in response to the 'intrusion'.
Before long, groups began to encounter teams of Hunters. While at first conflict between the two groups was limited to brief fights, it soon became clear that the Hunters were here in force, and for a reason. Some students were even captured by Hunters, taken to their Tent stronghold, where they witnessed other Halloween creatures being transformed into Hunter weapons through the Hunter's runic technology.
Eventually, a large number of students were summoned out of their rooms by an unknown force, finding themselves dropped into a battleground in The Gauntlet.
More than just Boos lived in the Haunted House: the students had been summoned by the Soul Harvester. a creature of immense power known as an Ancient. The Hunters wanted her power for themselves. The Soul Harvester was guarded by thirteen beings, all of whom had been captured by the Hunters and were being tortured and turned into weapons themselves. In her desperation, she summoned aid from the students of Amityville.
However, the Soul Harvester was captured by the Hunters' traps, and many students suffered injuries (although they did manage to free other captured students). In the end, she was at the mercy of the Hunters... or so it seemed until The Summoning.
The Soul Harvester cried out to an unknown figure, claiming a favor long-owed - a favor to be granted only once, and never again. Without warning, the students of Amityville were all transported back to the entrance of the Haunted House. There was nothing but a smoking crater left where the Soul Harvester had been, and the Hunters' base camp was in shambles.
With the threat dealt with, the students re-entered the Haunted House and continued their way through the challenge rooms...
The Haunted House - Deus Ex Machina - October 2011
The Hunters of Deus Ex Machina arrived at the Haunted House with one mission: to enter the Haunted House in teams and find a particular 'artifact'. They too had to face the challenges of the Haunted House and the Boos within.
They had been warned that they were outnumbered, and soon they began encountering groups of monsters - the Amityville students. Some students were even captured and taken back to the base Tent that Dr. H and his Life Division technicians had set up in the Haunted House's backyard, with the end goal of weaponizing them.
But the Hunter's true goal was not an artifact at all. In fact, it was a powerful entity known as an Ancient, a being so powerful that it could not become a normally wielded weapon... but that didn't mean that weapons formed from Ancients were not powerful. Two Ancient weapons were already in Deus' hands, the great weapons Merlin and Excalibur.
In order to draw out the Soul Harvester, the Hunters captured her thirteen guardians and imprisoned them, torturing them and converting one of them into a weapon each day. At last, the Soul Harvester could not wait any longer. She recruited the Amityville students to help her and raided the Hunter's base camp.
However, the Soul Harvester was captured by the Hunters' traps, and it seemed as though the Hunters were going to win the battle decisively, taking the Soul Harvester and all her guardians for themselves, along with a number of Amityville students. Until... The Summoning.
The Soul Harvester cried out to an unknown figure, claiming a favor long-owed - a favor to be granted only once, and never again. Without warning, the students of Amityville were all transported back to the entrance of the Haunted House. There was nothing but a smoking crater left where the Soul Harvester had been, and the Hunters' base camp was in shambles. The Hunters had no choice but to pick up the pieces and regroup, returning to the Haunted House to salvage what they could...
The Haunted House - Finale - October/November 2011
Amityville students and Hunters alike continued to work their way through the Haunted House, and were once more brought together. Without warning, members of both factions were taken to The Domain of Time, where its inhabitant greeted them. This being seemed neutral, and was only concerned with "getting them where they needed to go." The two sides could only stare at each other until their mysterious host let them go, opening a portal to The Gauntlet Redux.
Once again, the Hunters and Amityville students battled in the Haunted House backyard - exactly the same as before, with the Soul Harvester directing the students to fight "just as we rehearsed it". It was as if time had been rewound...
What the Hunters did not realize was that the Haunted House actually had two Ancients: the Soul Harvester (of the domain of space) and Clockwork (of the domain of time). The Soul Harvester had cried out for Clockwork's help: though the two entities acted separately, he agreed on condition that it was a one time deal. He would save the students and grant her one last wish: to rewind time and 'replay' the Gauntlet event once more, so that the students would be saved and that the Soul Harvester herself would die rather than fall into the hands of the Hunters.
Thus, the students began their battle anew, but after only a few minutes of fighting all the Hunter Trainees were called to a new location, vanishing from the battlefield and leaving more experienced Hunters to hold off the attacking students. Like any time rewrite, events went quite differently than before. Not only did the Soul Harvester get captured, Dr. H managed to unleash several of his experiments and test subjects on the students.
However, with the sheer numbers of students this time, and the awareness that some had of the original Gauntlet timeline, they were able to overpower the Life Hunter and his team. In addition, they managed to find the generator and stop, thus effectively forcing Dr. H to make his move too: retreat, destroy his own base, and then reprogram the Hunter pendants to return to the Island. The Hunters lost that half of the battle, and the Soul Harvester as well, who fulfilled her part of the bargain and disappeared from time and space.
Meanwhile, another group of students had been taken to The Domain of Space, where the Hunter Trainees had been summoned to. They ambushed the students with trap guns and captured them in large numbers. The ambush was a success: dozens of students fell prey to the Hunters.
Aria, the Mist Division Lead, appeared. Caelius thanked her for the information she'd provided him, which had allowed the Hunters to so successfully ambush the students - and then promised her an immediate death...
Because the woman who had been masquerading as Aria for months was not Aria at all, but Professor Red of Amityville. Red had assumed Aria's form, and seemed to have Aria's weapon as well. Caelius had been suspicious of her motives for a long time, but only now were his suspicions definitively and publicly confirmed, in front of Hunters and the Amityville students alike.
The Domain of Space fell into chaos as the Red (and the few students who had not been captured) set about freeing the trapped students and began fighting back against the gathered Hunters. In the center of it all, Red and Caelius were locked in intense battle. Due to a moment of distraction, Caelius damaged Red's weapon. The weapon backfired: instead of her using the weapon, the weapon used her, until it absorbed her entirely. Caelius threw the weapon down into the darkness, but--
When Red was absorbed by her weapon, a new creature was created, one that combined the Fears of both Red and her weapon. Unfortunately, since Hunter weapons were only meant for Hunters to wield, there was a side effect: Insanity. The maddened Red lashed out at students and Hunters alike, as her weapon urged her to destroy everyone. The battle continued, and Red realized she could never free herself from the monstrosity she had become. The only real choice she had left was to destroy herself, eliminating the Insanity and her weapon as well.
And so she did, turning herself into stone, giving her life to protect the students not only from the Hunters but from herself. The Hunters retreated, and the exhausted Amityville students were quickly taken home.
Red was dead, but the gym instructor would have been proud to know that they did indeed, learn to grow stronger.
As the Hunters returned to home base, it was reported that Aria was a double agent. It turned out that Aria's weapon was actually a twin weapon. The weapon Red bore was the twin, not Aria's original weapon - and Aria herself was recovered shortly thereafter, mostly unharmed and entirely innocent.
On the Halloween side, the students returned home to recover and pay their respects to Red. The Boogeymen, however, seemed to be intent on keeping the Hunters as well as Red's death a secret, and were willing to put the school under suspension if anyone so much as breathed a word to the public...
With the Haunted House and Red's death tied to Amity, boogeymen close down the school, deeming it unfit to teach halloween's next generation. Students rallied together as they made an appeal of the ruling. Students were subjected to various tests, and at the end, Amityville Academy was the highest scoring school and was allowed to open it's doors once more.
The school play starts up, with promises of no odd events or death. After the cast was chosen and the play carried on, it was a bit surprising to find that nothing bad happened in or at the play. The end however was quickly followed by an invasion of things, some yet unseen in Halloween.
The Invasion of Christmas - December 2011/January 2012
The school play getting overrun with Christmas creatures was not isolated as the School and the local Maul were overrun as well. Inside the school students and several staff were trapped, unable to escape due to a mysterious barrier. Christmas music played through the school, and the students fought to protect what was theirs. The school had gone missing from the outside, vanished from where it normally sat, leaving many not knowing the status of friends and fellow peers. Meanwhile in the Maul, students, the occasional faculty member and the assortment of halloweentown residents were stuck fighting off the joyful invaders. However as time progressed on, the invaders became less cheerful, grey patches forming on them until they ever utterly grey, each one with the need to go home.
Arel's escape from the maul and discovery of a particular snow globe shaped artifact was interrupted by the arrival of the senior most hunters, wishing to take the artifact, and Amityville Academy with them. Between the some Amityville staff and on odd bunch of trick or treaters, the snow globe was brought into Halloween hands and taken to safety. The hunters made a hasty retreat: with the artifact gone and Deus being invaded, they had more important things to deal with, but not before a few students got wind of a particular treaty with the Horsemen.
In her attempts to 'help' her fellow hunters, the Moon assistant Julie infected the hunter island with JOY formula No. 5 via baking. Feelings of good will, cheer, merriment, and other festive emotions take hold in all the hunters and trainees as Christmas begins to draw near. Hugs abound along with the need to sing Christmas carols. Snow covers the normally tropical island, and cookies are a main course for meals. With JOY infected brains many hunters join in the fun festivities, one such being a snow sculpture contest.
In the end there was only one winner, and that was Julie and JOY.
The tag team of Julie and Clarice combined brought forth the Chritsmas gala, an assortment of presents to be had along with fun. Dancing, food, and merriment abound as even the leads managed to be in the same room and not hurl insults. As the festivities reached a crescendo, the presents came to life, attacking. Children to a 'Mother Present', it was only defeated when the mess the hunters had made was cleaned up. All in all, it was still the best Christmas ever.
Called out to get an artifact, intermediate trainees are left in charge of their fellow trainees. Thinking it was to be a simple 'mission' the trainees found themselves invaded by Christmas residents, destroying a good portion of Deus. Jingleberry returned to find 'home' only to find something else, his mother Mrs. Claus.
Taking the JOY back from the island, she healed her son of insanity and left, leaving the island a little bit sadder, and a little bit broken from the invasion.
Zoobey Artist
Magical Incubator
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Zoobey Artist
Magical Incubator
Offline
Posted: Thu Nov 01, 2012 7:13 pm
Deus 1999 - January 2012 The 1999 Storyline was not a meta, but rather a glimpse into what had happened twelve years prior and why it is relevant in the present.
In 1999, a group of hunters were called into action by their superiors of each of the divisions - Liam, from Death; Velda, from Life; Jonathan, from Moon; Ferdinand, from Sun; and Nkiruka, from Mist. This mission was something that had been planned for quite some time; an enormous mission, a dangerous one that they knew would most likely be harder than they had ever had before - and that they, in all likelihood, would not survive.
On December 31st, 1999, two hundred of Deus Ex Machina's hunters left the island and made a trip to Times Square in New York City.
The purpose of their mission was simple - stop the Four Horsemen (also known as the Four Clans) from beginning the Apocalypse. According to research done by the now severely lacking Death Division, the Four Horsemen had acquired an artifact of sorts, and had planted it in the middle of what was known as the Labyrinth, set in Halloween Town. This artifact, timed to go off at a certain time, would detonate, ripping a divide between the Human world and the Halloween world. Once that divide was created, the Horsemen and the creatures of Halloween would invade the human world - and as Liam stated: "Numbers are not in our favor." Sent to prevent this from happening, it was the mission most crucial to everything they had fought for.
A suicide mission, they called it.
The first thirty minutes were spent readying the hunters for what lay ahead. Creatures had been provided for them to raise the FEAR charges of their weapons while the division leads made sure that the opening between the Human world and the world of the Four Clans was still in place. When the time came, the hunters with FEAR weapons would enter the Labyrinth, search for the artifact, and return to the portal, where the hunters with Runic weapons would be waiting and protecting the portal.
At exactly 4pm, the FEAR hunters entered the Labyrinth. Thirty minutes - that was all the time they were given. For some, it was easy to navigate the winding maze; for others, they kept hitting dead ends.
Ambassadors from the Horseman Clans come to Amityville to host a tournament, with the public intent of testing Amityville's worth, and as a way to test themselves. In an auditorium assembly, the Horsemen representatives explain the Trials as a coming of age ceremony that their clan fledglings have long since been participating in.
The Trials consisted of three stages, each with a supposed lesson to learn. The students were allowed to form groups of three to five, with a chosen leader. If the leader failed, the entire group failed the challenge. Seventeen Amityville groups signed up. Winning each challenge sometimes offered advantages towards the next challenge. Participating in the challenge is then counted as a credit towards their next exam.
Trial of Famine: The trials begin with a simple jar. It was given to each group, along with a clue to opening it: 629428. The jar required a password combination of four digits, and within it was promised a valuable, limited prize. Only three teams answered with the correct solution.
The next day, the real trial began. Each team created a sand castle, using a few items that granted stability. In waves, creatures began to attack the sandcastles, destroying most. The winners were those left standing.
Trial of War: The trials of the clan of War functioned like an obstacle course.There were nine separate courses, each offering great duress and further hindrance from the wild weather changes. Each team member is given a chance to do one of the courses each day, as long as their team members haven't done that course on that day already. How well they did gave them a score, that tallied up in the end to determine the team with the highest score as the winners.
Trial of Death: The final trial began without the realization it was a trial at all. The students awoke to find the school gone, and their world rather abruptly changed. The path each team chose to take followed a CYOA format, eventually leading to the culmination of being killed in various ways. These include engulfed by monstrous fog, captured and killed or weaponized by hunters, or tortured. The trial was to show the students a world without the Four Clans, to encourage co-existence. They awoke in the Infirmary, and all this was explained. Then they lost consciousness again, and were returned to their dorms. For those who were ready for the next grade, a paper was left with them entitled EXAM AUTHENTICATION APPROVAL.
The hunters get sent out to collect weapons tablets from a Famine lair-- and bite off more than they can chew in the process. Sandy and Barney sacrifice their lives to save the group, and everyone escapes, a few more scarred than others.
After the Horsemen Trials, the students of Amityville Academy, along with a handful of Halloween citizens (Student quests) were invited to the Isles of the Horsemen, located outside of Halloween. It was a 2-week Cultural Exchange Program, where they took part in various Four Clan activities in order to learn more about the Horsemen's culture. Each person had to pick two of the four clans - Death, Conquest, War, Famine - and would stay on the Isle of their chosen clans for 1 week each; Amityville students got the opportunity to return to school over the weekend between weeks 1 and 2.
Each week featured a different class, hosted by a Horseman/Horsemen of that particular clan; running for approximately 5 days each, the classes were intended to showcase the culture/skills of each clan. There were also several large areas marked as 'Training Fields' on each Isle; each Training Field had a certain set of instructions of how to pass the training/challenge posed, and promised a rather impressive ego boost to anyone who dared surpass the requirements.
Meanwhile, the Hunters had arrived in the Sahara, and straight into a battle with giant centipedes upon exiting the portal. Escaping to the nearby Hunter outpost - a series of large tents within a barrier set up using Runic Daggers - they were then tasked with patrolling the area. The outpost was later attacked, and plans were made to evacuate - however, not everyone managed to make it to the portal leading out of the Sahara... And to the outpost in Antarctica.
After a short respite - a trip to the Infirmary, or to the Interview tent where they were asked to give details surrounding the attack on the Sahara outpost - the Hunters were briefed on a mission to retrieve an artifact from a modern day titan. As they could not risk weakening the Antarctica outpost - especially after losing the Sahara outpost - full Hunters stayed back to protect it while trainees were sent on the artifact retrieval mission.
After the 2 weeks allocated for the Cultural Exchange Program were over, both Amityville students and non-students alike arrived at the Portal Arrival Area - the floating island tethered to the rest of the Four Clans. However, there was no sign of any portal heading back to Halloween. A Horseman explained that there would be a delay regarding the setting up of the portal home due to a Four Clans Conference that was taking place; according to tradition, this meant that nobody was allowed to enter or exit the Four Clans until the end of the Conference. They were then invited to stay on the Isles of the Horsemen for another day, with portals set up to link the four Isles together, allowing them to visit each of the four Isles.
The Hunters, on the other hand, had left the Antarctica Outpost, arriving at an outpost located in the Amazon. After grabbing some supplies, they exited through a portal, and found themselves in front of a complex labyrinth. Making it through the labyrinth would lead them to where the Halloween students were - on the Isle of the Horsemen. It was then that both sides collided, meeting in a Room that was present on each Isle.
As the Rooms collapsed, both sides of the skirmish found themselves on the floating isle - the entrance way for the students back to Amityville. When the Hunters were ordered to kill or capture the Halloween denizens, the students were forced to fight back... Or risk death.
In the meantime, the Conference of the Four Clans were taking place, within the Spire located in the middle of the Horsemen Isles...
However, as they fought, something else was happening at the Spire. At first, it seemed as if light was glinting off at an unnatural angle at its very center. Less than a second later, the entire spire simply collapsed, crumbling entirely, giving in a pure white light that continued to expand, compress outwards in a wide sphere that buried into the ground. The floating isle beneath all the students and Hunters suddenly buckled, swayed, and then dropped, falling almost two hundred feet from the air into the water below.
The Isle of the Horsemen had been destroyed. It was the Hunters' victory.
All that was left was a monstrous crater. The ocean poured endlessly downwards, already consuming the edges of the nearly one-hundred foot drop down; blackened and twisted structures gave away under the pressure of the water filling in, and entirely blackened trees snapped as they swirled and drowned in the vortex.
However, it was far from over. The destroyed islands fragmented into bits and pieces - remnants of Fear, cracked and parched pieces no longer able to reassemble themselves, destroyed but not quite yet depleted... Insanity. The greys continued to spread, consuming what little Fear there was left, devouring it, changing it, warping it entirely within a matter of seconds. And from the aftermath, from the thousands of clusters, particles of Insanity that grew from the remnants of Fear, something else was born - an Insanity phoenix.
Both Halloween denizens and Hunters fought to keep the phoenix from entering the portal leading to Halloween and Deus Ex Machina respectively, although none were freed from the Insanity induced hallucinations regarding 'home'. As it was being destroyed, however, the phoenix hurled itself into the portal closest to it, sending it to the island of Deus Ex Machina, and forcing the Hunters into an underground bunker as they worked to clear the island of Insanity.
With the isles of the horsemen lost, Death places Medea ‘in charge’ of the renamed Lost Clans, the once Heirs now Protectors. In a plot to gain student trust, (or perhaps to further the agenda of the horsemen), she invites the students and staff of Amityville to take part of a Trance to show them an event of the past, one which many of the current staff had seen first hand. As students gathered and joined the trance they found themselves in bodies not their own. Seeing the events play out through the eyes of students of the past, the students were shown a time before hunters. For staff, a time before their graduating class was struck by tragedy.
The trance started off rather simply. The graduating class happening for third years upward, the most advanced class that Amityville had seen in years. Everyone was expecting great things from them. The final day of classes and tests, students milled about and discussed the Jack o Lantern Festival. The night where they would show off their skills and recruiters would come and perhaps offer them a job. It was to be their shining moment, years of hard work paying off as they made their way out into the real world. Students belong to three distinct groups, Defenders, thought who fought for the school. DETH, those who were pacifists who wished the help humans. And SCREAM, a group of students who didn’t want to get wrapped up in the other groups and wanted to make their own choices.
As the festival went on, fires broke out, booths burning up, but considering what the damages could have been it wasn’t the worst. A mysterious trail of blood, one a bright red and smelling like something the students had never encountered before was found, and following the trail they found themselves in a large cavern, a lake filled with treasure at the bottom. The most interesting things? A dead human. Something was ‘off’ about the lake, but before they got far in their investigation on the lake or the dead human, they were forced to leave. But not without making some plans to return. Around this time, one student went missing, though he would not be the last.
As the shame of a burned down festival bore into the students, the students were to clean up the mess they had made. But the arrival of a mysterious man who many of the trance induced students liked to Caelius, had the students of the past curious. He made a demand, as well as some offers. In the end, the students couldn’t give him what he wanted, sending them to the infirmary via dissipation. Two more students vanished, and it was becoming clear that the mysterious cavern was tied to everything one way or another.
As students gathered in their groups, DETH found themselves placing their trust in Professor Quibble, Defenders following Red’s lead to go back to the cavern, and SCREAM? They found themselves at the weeping forest, the man with two tone hair making an offer. An offer that many didn’t, or couldn’t, refuse. The taken students reappeared if briefly. Those lucky enough at the forest managed to escape, leaving their friends behind to fates unknown. As students flocked to the cavern to possibly find answers, DETH was betrayed by Quibble, and quickly those in the cavern found themselves fallen for a trap. Nets, ones students in the trance knew to be those of hunters took the students of the past to parts unknown. Very few made it out, many of them the current staff.
In the end, the vanished students, the class that was supposedly one of the best Amivtyville had seen in years, was seen as a disgrace, swept under the rug. As students woke up, they were left with many unanswered questions. What happened to the students? Why had Medea shown them that event in particular? Why had their teachers kept it from them? And more importantly, where was the entrance to that cave?
