Forum > Undead_Man

Ode to the Tributer

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Hey all, so I got this recent idea for a supernatural roleplay. The plot is that you live in Arlington, a city with a steep mountainside on one end and a dense forest on the other. The city is isolated with thick walls, and travel outside is scarce as you need permission. Permission from the Tributer.

The Tributer is a human(?) or some sort of humanoid entity, the uncertainty arises due to the fact it is clothed to the tee, and due to its supernatural capabilities. The Tributer comes once a month to Arlington, to collect a certain amount of produce the city has made, and a corpse from the city’s cemetery. Nobody knows what it does with these. Month after month, it doesn’t miss a beat, on the same exact time of the day every time.

It’s said to live somewhere in the Arlington forest, yet venturing too deep into the forest will somehow alert it and it will appear. It never speaks, but seems to understand speech. It isn’t a reactionary being by any means of the word, but you will meet swift and fatal consequences if you provoke it, and it does seem to “listen” when you talk to it, such as when you want permission to leave Arlington. If approved, it will escort you to the other city, of which every single one is also isolated and on the same situation, except a different Tributer.

So my idea is that you are a resident of Arlington. Perhaps one of the people who you hold dearly is dead, and the bureaucracy of Arlington decides to offer the corpse to the Tributer instead of the oldest corpse as usual, in order to hide their tracks that they were the cause. Or perhaps you have an idea.

I mirror post length usually but atleast a few sentences is preferred so I can work with something.