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This is an RP journal for my character from a story I'm attempting to write, Helena Crawford. Her basic premise is a modern-day Lovecraftian setting, crossed with a minor superhero type plot. Major themes will be survival, sense of identity, fear of losing connection with reality both figuratively and literally.

Here is where most of my preliminary notes are stored, but they're largely incomplete.

Essentially, Helena was a student at a fairly prestigious science university built in a swampy, formerly isolated town in southeastern Virginia. Then there was an accident with the experiment that her professor (Professor Tillinghast) was working on, things happened, people died, and she had to go on the run. Luckily, the police force in Witchlight Point isn't the best or most active, so she probably could have just come back after a little while.

Maybe that would have worked if she hadn't been struck by some sort of alien or inter-dimensional being from space, or the sky, or whatever the hell it came from. The thing attached itself to her lower neck and spine, like a parasite or symbiont. She has control over the substance, which moves like some kind of liquid but can solidify into a shape by her will (crude hammers, blades, etc). It tends to only extend to her chest, arms, and head, but it could be possible to redistribute it to other areas in an emergency (it's just easier that way; there's not enough to reliably cover all of her and maintain the same strength).

As for WHY she needs to make weapons, well. The impact of the trans-dimensional symbiont caused her to be shunted just ever-so-slightly out of alignment with her native dimension. While still physically in our world, she's now visible to things from the other side of the veil, like dipping your arm into a pool of water filled with piranhas. While normally not visible in our reality, these creatures have keyed in on Crawford's existence, and when in her vicinity they begin to gain cohesiveness. At first they can simply cause disturbances in the air, with electrical bursts or gusts of wind, but it doesn't take long until they can physically interact completely with our world, crushing and smashing things while remaining invisible to the average onlooker. So she finds herself fighting these sanity-defying monsters in public sometimes, while other people only see her getting tossed around by nothing while wearing some horrible fucking monster over her head (see icon - when in combat, the hood reaches fully over her face like it's eating her head; the teeth come down to her chin, and yes it's every bit as horrifying from her end as it sounds).

She's somewhat sardonically started referring to herself as "Outsider", since it's a name that's popped into her head during some of these fights, presumably psychic echoes from the monsters from beyond the veil. I should point out that though I use terms involving "dimension", it's not quite as simple as "alternate realities". The idea tends toward quite literally being other dimensions, planes of existence separate from ours. In classic cosmic horror form, the things inhabiting these planes are difficult, if not impossible, for our minds to comprehend by their very nature. Whether it's the influence of her symbiont acting to counter-act the effects or if her mind just naturally parses what she sees into a form she can understand, Crawford tends to see the monsters as masses of limbs and flesh and tentacles and mouths, teeth, eyes, etc. It's anyone's guess as to whether or not they actually look like that, though.

Helena is a good person, she really is, but she's also something of a coward. She doesn't fight because she wants to. She doesn't fight because she feels like she has a responsibility for it. She fights because the alternative is to get eaten alive by monsters. Most of her time is spent wandering the city, trying to keep a low profile in case she's suddenly attacked without warning, but sometimes she can't help but run into other people. Despite herself, though, she gets lonely easily.

She was very close to her family before going to college, and drifted apart from them a little as she started working as a graduate student for Tillinghast (work just became too hectic to keep a regular schedule). Her older sister, the more upbeat and strong-willed of the two, is currently working on the other side of the water at Wallop's Isle's NASA launch facilities, and there will likely be a plot to involve that at some point, too.

Witchlight Point is a (fictional) island town meant to evoke the old isolated creepy town common to Lovecraft lore, like Dunwich or Innsmouth. The name comes from old tales of will-o-the-wisps that were sighted on the island. The university that sits near the town was established not long after a bridge was built over to the (largely swampy) island. The population of the town has been largely mixed since then, but you can still tell a native to the town from others; they just tend to seem a little more lifeless or pale. People don't tend to stay long in the town itself unless they've always lived there. Still, attempts at modernization have been stubborn and have made long strides. The town even has internet now, spotty though it may be.

The university itself is meant to harken back to good old Miskatonic U, though it's more of a new age physics/science college than the historical type of college MU was. Astral physics, astronomy, biomedical sciences, etc. It's seen as an eyesore by older natives, but the current generation is more apathetic.

Worth mentioning is the Cult of the Observed, who worship entities known as The Eyes, cosmic observers whose observation gives our reality substance/relevance. They believe (incorrectly) that the creatures haunting Crawford somehow relate to the Eyes, and (initially, at least) see her as an interloper in their affairs. They see her as a heretic, because the phenomenon surrounding her threatens to bring things from those in-between spaces into our reality, bringing these "unobserved" into view of the Eyes and thus giving them undue relevance and substance. Whether the Eyes actually exist or not, the cult isn't necessarily correct about its perspective on events.

The overarching plot revolving around Helena involves her trying to find a way to re-anchor herself in our reality, presumably through removing the symbiont, which seems suspiciously benign. It may or may not have an agenda of its own, and that's what's worrying about it, since it seems tied to all of these things in the first place. Helena will meet a lot of strange people, see even stranger things, and will have to risk her life and/or her sanity to break free of the doom hanging over her head (literally).

Please note this profile will hopefully be more cleanly organized at some point in the near future, this is just a temporary info dump.

Be sure to ask me if you have any questions concerning details I haven't put in yet (like about abilities, etc). PM me and I can give you other contact info if you'd prefer, but PMing works fine for me.