Editing Night Birds

A slightly surreal dark urban fantasy PbP game of ''Cartoon Action Hour Season 3'' run by Max.

Closing credits: [https://tinyurl.com/yyxka4ly Julee Cruise, "Until the End of the World"]

'''''Night Birds''''' takes place in a world combining 1930s fashions and moods with 1980s technology, inspired by things like ''Batman: The Animated Series'', ''The Big O'', ''Dark City'' (1998), ''Twin Peaks'', and more generally ''film noir'', hard-boiled crime fiction, urban fantasy and magical realism. The visual style is stark and sharp, with clear strong lines, solid black shadows and sparingly used highlights of bright color. The soundtrack uses '80s dreampop and contemporary dark synthwave. The protagonists are various people entangled in some way with the crime and corruption of the city - police detectives, journalists, criminals, private eyes, vigilantes and plain old survivor types - imperfect heroes or goodhearted crooks with too much decency to merely look away when they see a wrong too great to stomach.

People dress in suits, dresses or casual sportswear. Everyone wears hats, caps or bonnets. Everyone smokes.

Mass media consists of TV, radio and newspapers. Music comes on vinyl records, 8-track cartridges and compact cassettes. Computers are boxy things with text-based operating systems, clicky keyboards and bulky CRT displays. Telephones have recently started using buttons instead of rotary dials. Portable devices are suitcase-sized, expensive and finicky. Phone booths are common in most urban areas. Text-based datatransfer using phone lines is available between select locations, mostly universities and government offices; fax machines are used by most organizations and available in some public libraries.

'''Continuity: 2''' - Episodes are mostly self-contained, but connected by some overarching storylines and character arcs, and the events of any given episode can change the status quo of future episodes.

'''Star Power: 3'''

 

 

No "goofy" comic relief characters unless you want to be shot.

You can get back up and rejoin the action at any point after being Defeated, but if you do so and gain even one more Setback Token, you are not only Defeated again but <u>dead</u>, even if neither Defeat is physical in nature.

=== Player Character Name (Player Name) ===

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Brief description of the character's background, manner and looks, including one signature piece of color (blue dress, red tie, yellow hair, green eyes etc).

'''Signature Quality:''' Player-Controlled Protagonist

'''Traits:''' Trait Name 4 (Special Rule), Trait Name 3 (Special Rule), Trait Name 3 (Special Rule), Trait Name 2, Trait Name 2, Trait Name 2, Trait Name 2

== Other Characters ==

=== Anita Voorheisen, Chief of Police ===

 

 

The ''de facto'' head of organized crime in the city and notable philanthropist. Big, loud, flamboyant, likes white suits and cheap cigars.

=== Charles Donovan, Mayor ===

Notorious astrologer, clairvoyant and crimefighter. Alluringly mysterious, roguishly charming and insufferably competent.

=== The Matchstick Girls ===

An army of street vendors who sell matchsticks, cigarettes, candy, flowers and other such small things. Some also offer more suspect merchandise for customers who know when and how to ask.

A celebrated singer, actress and socialite with a taste for slumming.

A glittering pile of crime, corruption and urban decay. The state capital of Washeegan, ??? was heavily built up in the preceding decade; after the Depression hit, much of this new development has been abandoned. Unemployment is rampant. Everyone is desperate for money and a moment of relief. Not a great place to live, but many have no choice and some can make a big profit.

=== Downtown ===

Tall, grey and blocky. Features one of the city's great architectural mysteries, an inexplicable gaggle of gargoyles perched at every ledge and roof corner.

A large, still pond surrounded by a small public garden, home to a flock of semi-tame black swans adopted by the city and beloved by the populace. A favored spot for families by day and lovers by night.

=== Harbor ===

Opening south-east onto the Larramet Bay, this was once a major hub of maritime transport but now many of its docks and warehouses sit rotting in silence, abandoned and empty. Most of the facilities still in use are haunted by groups of dockhands and sailors looking for work. Seagulls wheel, eerily quiet, above the drifting fog.

The wreck of a cargo ship resting level as if carefully placed on display on a rocky reef near the north bank of the river mouth. In the absence of anyone willing to claim ownership or responsibility, the jolly green hulk has become a local landmark, an accidental island often explored by bored kids and sometimes used as a concert stage.

A communal area of tended woods, lawns and hedges next to the former site of the city's oldest graveyard (now an open air cinema). Populated by murders of talking crows.

An evening at the Beauregard is interrupted by screams and sirens. Hijinks ensue and a dark thing comes to light.