Astronomika - Shooting Down Falling Stars is a play-by-post roleplay set in the fictional town of Road's End in the state of Washington. The year this roleplay is set is early 90's: September 6th, 1994 to be more precise. This is the start of a new school year in Pinefall High School for Troubled Youth, the main location of the roleplay.
When gazed with your eyes shut...
Pinefall High School for Troubled Youth is a school that differs from its peers in numerous ways. Thanks to its remote location and small number of residents, the actual high school of Road's End was shut down five years ago, the few students it had commuted to the nearby town of Carlsborg. It was only thanks to the Oceandrop Program, financed by a philanthropist known only as Mr. Oceandrop, that the local high school was renovated and started up once more - this time as a place of healing for youth around the world who had been abandoned by the society... or who had abandoned the society themselves.
Indeed, Oceandrop Program and Pinefall High School for Troubled Youth are very much global in the sense that they have sought out the most troubling cases of social exclusion among teenagers. America, Europe, Asia... all around the globe specialists have searched for individuals that are 'unfit for society'. Or as they are known in the medical lingo of Oceandrop Program: Droplets. Each case was assigned their Drop Distance (how far they have fallen and how removed they are from normal life) and among them 29 worst cases were chosen. The attempt of Oceandrop Program is to have them spend a year in the safe environment of Pinefall High School and the town of Road's End in general. There these students are able to heal, learn how to behave among others of their own age and overcome their various fears and troubles. The end goal of this program is total rehabilitation which they hope to achieve in at least half of the students by the end of the year.
You play as one of these students. Thanks to your past, you have been counted as one of these 29 cases where the Drop Distance was calculated as higher than 50. Whether it is fear of other people, delinquency, behavioral problems, shut-in tendencies, inability to separate fiction from reality or anything like it, you have a very good reason as to why you were chosen. Whether you were forced to attend, or took a chance on this new beginning in an environment where nobody knows you, well... that is up to you.
Just know that the staff of Oceandrop Program, Pinefall High School and even the residents of Road's End are there to help you heal... even if they might seem odd or strange at times.
When gazed with your eyes open...
Well, that is what the general populace knows, anyhow. With you, the situation is somewhat more complicated. After all, you are not a normal youth. You are someone who is neck deep in the turnside of the world - the supernatural side of the coin hidden from those who have no aptitude or knowledge in it. As luck would have it, you were chosen to be one of the students at Pinefall High School for Troubled Youth making you an important game piece for the plans of your superiors or those of your own. After all, in recent years the town of Road's End, Washington has become a hotbed for supernatural activity that is your particular cup of tea.
Whatever group or faction you belong to, you have a clear mission - one you have chosen yourself or one handed to you by one of your superiors. It might have something to do with the town itself, locating an object lost in the area some time ago or even hunting down a supernatural foe hiding among the students and populace. Don't expect this mission to be easy, however. As far as you know, most if not everyone else in your environment are innocent civilians... and the first, iron-clad rule of the turnside is to make sure these 'normal people' do not see anything they should not or find any sort of evidence of supernatural even existing. Those who are exposed to the turnside and become thus threats to its existence must be dealt with swiftly... and if memory-alteration is not an option, this often means silencing them permanently. Repercussions for exposing civilians to the supernatural could be global in scale, endangering tens of thousands of individuals, so keeping up this secrecy is paramount.
In short, you must hide your true identity while trying to complete your mission... something which might be harder than it looks, especially if your mission involves eliminating a supernatural threat that might be posing as one of the students, the faculty or even the townsfolk.
In-game terms, if you choose to be one of the individuals belonging to the turnside (this means any other Origin than Human Origin), you will be given a mission by the Game Master. Your goal in this roleplay is to succeed in your mission without blowing your cover to other players and non-player characters. This, of course, means that you have to be careful in how you approach your mission, what choices you make and how you prepare yourself. In the worst case scenario, your mission is not as simple as you thought it would be, requiring the aid of those with different skills than yourself. This poses a dangerous question: who can you trust to ally yourself and expose your identity to? After all, those who might be able to help you might just have a mission of their own, one that involves hunting down someone like you...
Trust is a dangerous thing, especially on the turnside of the world.
When gazed with your Third Eye...
Road's End is an anomaly. A looping week without an end that can be seen. From Wednesday to Sunday, you experience the same days - over and over again. There is no way out and there is no way to hide from it. It is a hellish loop of time, and infinite loop, that does not want to let you go. Because... it is also a week of tragedy. It is a week on which every single member of Pinefall High School's First Class is fated to die. Every single one of them. You included. And you are already part of it, trapped in the dark woods without an escape.
Such a hopeless fate, a week that ends in your death, and no way to break free of this loop...
Will you go mad?
Will you struggle to survive?
Will you keep clinging to the hope that some way you can find salvation?
Or will you disappear into the woods... just like the people of this town, so long ago?