EMP 001 ● JUNE 2025

[uruz]

 

 

EMP

 

ᛗ

  Behold, an opportunity to gather.

Welcome to Somnia's first EMP! This is the place to be if you're interested in the game's setting, if you're unsure about who you'd like to bring or if you just want to check out the vibes. Remember that the EMP is open to all, and you don't need an invite to participate in the slightest!

Dates to note are as follows:

- TDM: June 7th
- RESERVES: June 21st
- APPS: June 22nd - 26th
- GAME START: July 1st

An opportunity for players who do not have invites to post their interest in receiving one will be available on the TDM as a mod comment to reply to. Just like our EMP, you do not need an invite to participate in the TDM, either (only to reserve and app). Mod-run invites will also be available then, so I thank you kindly for your patience!

Use the form below to show us those pretty white jaws!

  <span style="font-size: large; text-align: center; font-family: courier;">ᛗ <b>PLAYER</b></span> <b>Name:</b> <b>Contact:</b> <span style="font-size: large; text-align: center; font-family: courier;">ᛗ <b>CHARACTER</b></span> <b>Name:</b> <b>Canon:</b> <b>Blurp:</b> <b>Vessel Type & General ideas:</b>

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[faa]

I have an invite so I'm not in need for one but I wanted to introduce myself and make some TDM plans + solicit some thoughts from the hivemind!

ᛗ PLAYER
Name: Yasmine!
Contact: redmaresociety on discord; PM; bluehellgazette

Tweaking this to make it an umbrella with diff comments for characters bc I'm now ruminating on a couple of potential different choices!!

freddie — original character

[faa]

ᛗ CHARACTER:
Name: Freddie Lavoie
Canon: Original character! He's pulled straight from 2025 in a completely 1:1 realistic world. Here's his infosheet!
Blurp:

Please read content warnings and don't hesitate to opt out if you'd rather not engage with his character!! Content warnings for this blurb include bulimia with emeto, internalized fatphobia and diabetes stigma, and participation in US action in the Middle East.

Freddie's a former-military, 33-year-old lapsed Catholic commercial pilot in modern NYC. Personality-wise, he's friendly, genuinely kind, witty, and can be fun to be around, but he has some serious commitment/intimacy issues stemming from the parental divorce that made him a devout atheist at age 7 and getting cheated on during his first deployment ten years ago which have left him chronically incapable of attaining the intimacy he craves. Instead he just chases it with a life full of hookups, which he consistently self-sabotages by ghosting or calling it off after two or three meetings before he actually gets the kind of affection he's seeking. Despite his poor body image and the repressed feelings of inadequacy further fueled by a childhood in which he knew he wasn't particularly wanted, he gives the impression of someone confident and in-control - when in reality he spends each day feeling like he's holding on by his fingernails.

This feeling is largely because he has spent the past 4 months skating under the radar with severe undiagnosed bulimia, which he developed within a week of being told at his biannual FAA medical examination that the recent weight gain that had come with landing the dream job at an international airport was "concerning" and that the gene-environment interaction of the dramatic dietary change had led to pronounced, symptomatic insulin resistance and prediabetes bordering on Type 2. A diabetic pilot who requires insulin loses their pilot's license - and with it Freddie's all-consuming purpose and greatest joy in life - so when the medical examiner adopted a scare tactic, shame-tinged approach and told him that at this rate if he didn't make "some serious changes" he'd be "obese and Type 2 diabetic in a year", Freddie panicked, attempted extremely restrictive dieting for a week, and fell into bulimia when that wasn't possible for him.

It sort of spread like wildfire as soon as he started doing it, and the disorder pretty quickly took over his life and started seriously damaging his body. He doesn't take his prescribed medication for his insulin resistance because he's ashamed and sees medication as "the easy way out" of something he "did to himself", and he really thinks that he can fix it through his disordered behavior. At this point he's purging 3-4 times a day, has malnutrition and some serious dental issues, and his thoughts around body image, his own health, and food are very warped. He's a man on a limited time - he has about a month left of this before his body buckles under the strain of what he's doing to it and puts him in the hospital, but the game setting is going to be quickly giving him the push he needs to finally acknowledge that this is not sustainable and start the process of recovery.

Vessel Type & General ideas:

Freddie is going to be a Valkerie! Except he's not going to be able to use that to immediately use that to the fullest because his body is so run down at this point due to the purging/malnutrition/unregulated IR that it's not ready for the huge energy demand of flying. I plan on really playing with having him learn to fly all over again, and relearn his body - he's effectively going to go through a fledgling stage, just like a regular bird, in which he needs to both build up the muscles to fly and learn how to control his wings, ride the wind, etc etc. Super excited for this because he's been flying for 11 years now, so he's got thousands of hours under his belt and is pretty masterful at what he does. Starting at near-0 (because he does still understand how lift etc. work, which will help) will be very frustrating for him but an enjoyable, fascinating challenge at the same time! I would love to get some Flight Practice threads in!

It's going to be a wild ride, especially because his eating disorder stemmed from the fear of not being able to fly (orthorexic obsession with progression to Type 2 diabetes requiring insulin, and you lose your pilot's license if you require insulin) but now if he doesn't start eating normally he won't be able to fly. There's also the whole can of worms of really not being at peace with his body, and how that's going to change once his body more obviously is what allows him to fly—he doesn't see all the remarkable things it is able to do regardless of weight (fantastic eyesight, fine motor control, proprioception) because they're just something that are a given to him, something he's taken for granted. He's really going to be pushed to come to peace with his own form and stop punishing it because now his greatest joy in life (flying and being in the air) is being held over his head until he finds some measure of at least body acceptance.

BirdHeads, this is where you come in! I'm going to base his wings and tailfeathers (and Valkerie call) off of a real bird, but I'm super torn as to whether or not I want to go with a Cedar Waxwing or Snowy Owl and would love input from the hivemind on this.

On one hand, the Snowy Owl has some great themes to it because Freddie was a combatant in the air force, flying a very large quiet plane that killed, just like an owl; it's the provincial bird of Québec, which is fitting (and would be funny and feel weird to him) because he is half-Québécois on his father's side and sort of struggles with feelings of detachment to that side of his ethnolinguistic heritage despite being completely fluent in dialectual French: for instance, he's never written the diacritics over his full first name because he's unconsciously just never wanted to stand out as being different in that way, but it was very important to his father because it's a distinction that makes it very obvious that it's a francophone name. Freddie would sort of interpret the owl assignment as being the dream's reminder that whether he wants it or chooses to engage with that half of his cultural background or not, he simply is innately French-Canadian as much as he is Irish-American, and half-Québécois within the French-Canadian cultural umbrella specifically.

The other option is the Cedar Waxwing! I like this one because they're social birds - not unlike Freddie - and have very ornamental plumage, which sort of parallels how he's very fixated on being attractive to other people and how he presents himself. Their tendency to form deep bonds through things like mutual grooming also pings me as being very Freddie-adjacent, as he longs for closeness and intimacy with another person. And the fact that they're sort of just neutral colors except for this brilliant flash of yellow and red and white also pings, because I think that's kind of a neat callback to how in some ways he's just a thoroughly ordinary guy who just has a couple of very remarkable traits.

FAQ answer has confirmed that his Bird Traits can come and go... I'm also contemplating a situation in which he's in a state of flux between the two and never knows exactly what combo he's going to get... Ohhh we love impermanence...

john brady — masters of the air

[bellylanding]

Blorbo #2 everyone give it up for blorbo #2!! He is also an aviator because I think aviation is neat so I end up watching a lot of Flying Canons/having related character ideas because of it. Vicious cycle etc.

ᛗ CHARACTER
Name: John Brady
Canon: Masters of the Air
Blurp:

John's an introverted, stoic Irish-Catholic B-17 bomber pilot pulled fresh out of early WWII. He's generally pretty aloof, snarky with a very dry sense of humor, but deep down, he cares deeply about the people around him and is quite attuned to the emotions of other people, forming deep bonds with a select few as opposed to socializing with everyone (with the exception of after a few drinks). This is at odds with the image of 1940s masculinity he tries to exude, which leads to him doing things like lying to cover for someone he cares about in front of that person only to then immediately deny that he did so to their face.

Vessel Type & General ideas:

So first of all John's Catholic ass is 100% immediately assuming he has died and is in either Purgatory or Hell (TBA...). He's going to react to this experience with very intense stress, and he's going to deeply miss the castmates he had attachments to and be a little slow to start forming new bonds.

I'm super torn on what to choose for his Vessel, but right now I'm mostly rotating around Merrow (selkie), Satyr (deer-inspired centaur), and Valkerie (barn owl features) around in my head like a microwave.

On one hand, as is the case with Freddie, I think it would be super cool to write a skilled professional having to just completely relearn something that's second nature to them as a Valkerie who doesn't already know how to use these new body parts. John would also feel Really Weird about the wings given the whole angel thing!! This would take away the longing to get back up into the air he would otherwise feel.

BUT I feel like being able to put on a sealskin and go from a terrestrial creature to an aquatic one as a selkie would have some fun parallels with how he, a groundbound being, can get into a plane and experience flight in a way his body isn't innately made for, and I just feel like he would really enjoy that?? Also possibly enhanced empathy as one of his Traits to intensify how much he already feels.

Orrr - and this is merely me aesthetically thinking it looks sick af - he could be a centaur Satyr with his animal half being a grown red deer. I'm very much picturing the sort of quiet, noble, graceful animal appearance here. He's also a sax/clarinet player, so I'd want to do something music related. I feel like it also works because he's canonically very good at calming people and keeping a level head, and just sort of quiet and still in general. Plus like, antlers.