NO EXITS

After the seventh day at precisely 1:32 AM, the campus once more resets. Everyone trapped in the experiment falls unconscious (if not sleeping already) only to wake up sometime afterward in their assigned bed, in their assigned room, in their assigned dorm in the exact condition and age they arrived, wearing the precise clothing they arrived in.

This time the campus appears in quiet, rural upstate New York. It's picturesque if not a little shabby, and while it's a small town, it does feel a little too quite. That's because it's 71 days after a devastating alien invasion that has wiped out most, if not all, of life on Earth. All that's left are small pockets that managed to protect themselves, mostly by luck initially.

The noise inside Butler Hall quickly shows why. Before anyone can leave the dorm, monsters are attracted to the sound of talking inside it. Thankfully the wards on Butler appear to be holding, but the creatures take no damage to themselves as they continue to try to force themselves in, even taking to slamming themselves against the walls and doors.

The rest of the campus isn’t safe though. A small handful of monsters took out this entire time, and now there’s the matter of the monsters everyone attracted to the campus before they realized what was going on. The residents of Derleth are going to have to work together on this one: to protect each other and make sure everyone has what they need to survive.

Don’t get too comfortable though. Will the wards hold? Will the monsters take out power? If Derleth's residents don’t try to quiet themselves this week, you might find out the limitations of the magic protecting Butler. Given what’s trapped on floors two and three, that’s probably not a good combination.

The more noise you make, the more monsters you attract to campus, making survival harder on everyone. The more monsters that come to campus, the more likely the power will go out, interfering with your ability to communicate silently on the network.

How do you figure out it’s the slightest level of noise that attracts them? Worst case: old newspaper clips and trash from a nearby abandoned town will begin to roll in on day two, but hopefully someone is smart enough to figure it out before then.

• These monsters came from another planet which broke apart into pieces, flying through space for potentially billions of years on asteroids without atmosphere, and survived reentering the Earth’s atmosphere. They’re essentially an invasive species, decimating the local wildlife.

• These creatures are the perfect killing machine with one drawback: blindness. Thankfully they don’t have echolocation, but they have an amazing sense of hearing and will come after and attack anything that makes a sound. Make a sound, and a death angel will be on you in less than a minute, seconds if they’re already present on campus.

• They have an exterior shell that is bullet proof/impenetrable. For the purposes of this plot, we’re also going to say it gives them a limited immunity to magical tampering as well. (Their exterior can’t be tampered with or breeched when closed.)

• Their presence does cause electromagnetic interference. If you get too many of the monsters in one place, they will cause electrical blackouts similar to an EMP. What does that mean for the plot? The networks will sometimes be unreliable, especially if you’re pinned down by one of the creatures nearby. (Play with this for fun, but of course, I want you to use the networks for AC. You can play with the tension of not being able to ICly communicate reliably however you see fit.)

• In a nutshell: these are powerful predators. Perhaps one or two wouldn’t be enough to take down the likes of Carol Danvers, Scarlet Witch or Stevie Universe, but the more noise made means the more monsters show up. (And also killing just one takes extreme precision, not power.)

  Enough of them together are strong enough to take down any one character in the game. These are creatures that took down the combined military forces of the world, they’re not to be underestimated. They survived on a friggin’ asteroid hurtling through the dead void of space. They’re powerful.

• How do you kill one of these creatures? Basically you have to wait until their exterior shell opens up and reveals the fleshy center. They don’t do it often. Let’s face it. Derleth residents aren’t going to “win” this week in the traditional superhero movie sense. The goal is just to survive.

• The fandom location of this plot is upstate/rural New York as seen in A Quiet Place. It’s available to stream on Paramount+ but rentable anywhere.
• You can watch the first ten minutes of the movie here, legally and free on youtube, content warning for death of a child.
• This youtube video has a great rundown of the monsters.
• Timeline-wise, the events of Quiet Place 1 or 2 haven’t happened yet. So there’s no helpful radio signal to help you defeat the monsters.

My character is super powerful. Can they beat up or magic away the Death Angels?

No. Teleporting might work, but more will just come back if there’s still sound. Be creative. The fun of RP is dealing with the problem and keeping things tense, not solving it right away so others can’t have fun with it.

No. Again, they survived an exploding planet and hurled onto Earth via meteor through the void of space. You can hide behind other noises if they’re loud enough, like a waterfall, but again you might not want to make a lot of extra noise and risk attracting more Death Angels.

Talk to me about it, but it was a very specific frequency that was found by accident so I’m leaning towards no. That doesn’t mean you can’t pitch me an idea.

You know guns are really loud, right? You can, but it will attract more monsters into the area.

The wards around Butler won’t allow you to cast additional spells on it. So no blocking out noise on Butler. You’re safe but your characters need to be as quiet as possible. If you want to make another sound proof room somewhere on campus, it depends how/if it’ll be successful. Talk to me about it and pitch the idea.

Keep the whispering to a minimum, try to walk barefoot to minimize the sound of footfall, etc. That front door of Butler tends to be noisy when you try to exit. Anyone have some WD-40? Don’t slam any doors!

Let’s try to avoid the characters in the movies. But yes, if you want to NPC a survivor, go for it. Will they be friendly? Scared? Driven mad by trauma? Try to steal your stuff? One thing is for sure, they’re getting left behind at the end of the week so try not to get too attached.

Here are the first ten minutes of the movie so you can get an idea of the vibe/visuals. Content warning for the death of a child.