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You wander in a dream through the empty halls of a school at night, footsteps echoing down the corridors. You came here with a ghost of what looked like a high school girl, which seemed completely normal in a dream. Explorung a little, you find the place has all the usual things a high school has, although you can't get any computers to work or find a way to contact anyone. And other things are obviously strange here. No matter how long you wander, the morning never comes. Occasionally you catch a glimpse of other ghosts, fleeting mirages, brief impressions of other people that let you know you weren't the first here. (Like in Dark Souls.)

Many are walking in and out of a particular classroom with varied expressions, and thanks to the dream logic you just know there's an important decision to be made there. The girl gestures you towards it and smiles before vanishing.

Taking a deep breath, you bravely step inside...

You see an old fashioned black chalkboard, and standing next to it a figure in dark, hooded robes, features hidden by the deep blackness. The being holds a silver scythe and has an aura of immense power.

"I...I really loved Eternal..." you stammer out.

"You have me confused with someone else." The being says flatly, and you realize that this is not your favorite IF author, but Death itself.

"You are one of the chosen few, brought here to be offered a deal."

"But why me?"

"Ask no questions. Choose quickly, for you only have until the dream ends."

You're about to complain you don't even know what the offer is, but suddenly you do know. It feels like you've always known.

Three names can be written on the chalkboard. It HAS to be three. When you do this, those three people will die. You can even decide how and when. You will never be found out, and face no consequences for doing this in your lifetime.

After death however...

You will be trapped in this school with the other ghosts, forever.

And here's the second choice: you can live forever here in a physical body, alone except for Death. The school will never run out of water and food or any other essentials. Or you can become an ethereal ghost and once a year enter the dreams of mortals. If you can convince thirteen souls to take the offer and each kill three others, you may take over the body of the last one in the real world outside the dream. Furthermore, you WILL have the chance before that body dies to take the deal again and continue the cycle. Though you are eternally locked in as a ghost in your time here...choosing to stay physical in the school forever was a one time thing.

DEATH extends a hand, offering you a long piece of chalk between two bony fingers, and patiently waits.

Do you take the deal, and how would you spend your afterlife if so?


(Hi CYS, it's been a little while. This is just a discussion I had with a couple of friends that I adapted for the forum, I thought people here might have creative input on it. Yes the Death Note influence is obvious.)

Who actually wants a specific other person to die? It seems like something that would only be useful as a plot device (cough Death Note cough). The second choice seems obvious. I mean, it would get boring, but a computer is an essential in this day and age, right?

You sweet, naive child.

I'm not committed to anything yet, but how much info or choice would the ghost have about the people whose dreams it entered? Seems like that would be a significant factor. Either it's completely random and it could take decades to end up with enough of the right kind of people, or you could cherry pick super desperate or bitter folks with an axe to grind and have pretty much a guaranteed pass back to Earth every thirteen years.

Either way, a downside here seems to be needing to know the names, and needing to pick on the spot. If you don't know anyone personally you hate that much, you might want to research what specific assassinations might have the most impact, which was a clear advantage the Death Note method had over this.

Mhh I'm more a fan of the Hell Girl method. If i hate someone enough to access the site in the first place then we have issues. Plus it's just simple target goes to hell now. After I die I go. Plus I make sure whatever fucker pissed me off is in hell. Your deal could in theory having the asswipes making it to heaven. Simple straight forward and deals wth the problematic person immediately. Three people seem a lil excessive aswell so its a no from me.

I don't think you realize how much power this gives.

I take the chalk and write:

Xi Jinping - tomorrow, nuclear bomb
Vladimir Putin - tomorrow, nuclear bomb
Joe Biden - tomorrow, nuclear bomb

I will hang out as an immortal in the school forever. A nice gym and a good library will keep me occupied awhile anyway. And I sincerely hope I'm the thirteenth so that ghost bitch gets to immediately inherit the hell world I've created while I dodge all consequence.

In fact, I'm not supposed to face consequences anyway, does this mean I survive WWIII handily and become king of the wasteland?

No, Posadism happens, and you're really not a fan.

Lol I like Klokwerk's nuclear Holocaust option.

To paraphrase a great wordsmith, so your king of a wasteland? That don't impress me much.

I mean using that idea, couldn't you just do something like this

Faggot number 1- super volcano

Faggot number 2 - asteroid

Faggot number 3 - black hole

With the earth completely obliterated, I'm guessing the library is just floating in space.

I think the entire school is some kind of purgatory realm, not anything dependant on the state of the planet.

The deaths of three people is not really enough to save the world, can't make a clean sweep of any of the more evil power structures and there will always be more and more unpredictable assholes to fill the gaps. Hell, I'm not even sure if it'd be enough to save interactive fiction.

So the unironic smartest option is what you and Klockwerk went with. If you're killing people with good intentions, you need the biggest shakeup possible to a difference. And if you're killing them for lols...why think small?

Another option is killing three people you sort of mildly dislike for entirely petty reasons, then going on to be a serial killer rapist or a mass killer or something. (In Norway, so you'll be rewarded if caught.) Because eternity being bored and alone in a highschool is only really a step up if otherwise you'd definitely be going to hell.

I would choose option 3 without a second thought. I don't want to stay in the school for all eternity either as a ghost or in a physical body. No matter how much entertainment there is in the school, it will eventually run out, and you'll be bored out of your mind. With option 3, I can easily find one person each year who's vindictive enough to choose option 1 and thus return to the real world every 13 years to live out a full and interesting life. I could also target a rich or powerful person as my 13th to live a particularly good or interesting life and even alter the course of world events.

Why would a rich and powerful person need the help of a sketchy dream chalkboard to kill a mere three people?

Anyway, odds are they already made a deal with Satan a long time ago, Death probably has some kind of non compete clause.

But the viability of the ghost choice depends a lot on whether you can research and choose the people you approach somehow.

That's a good point about the rich and powerful. I would still choose the ghost choice regardless of whether I can choose who I appear to once a year. Even if I get a random person every year, I will still eventually find 13 who are willing to go with option 1 simply by chance. Even if it takes 100 years to get those 13 people, that's still better than being stuck in the school for all eternity. I think people underestimate how boring that would be.

Think about 100 years ago versus now though. In another hundred you'll be completely out of place, any knowledge you have now will be useless and everyone you know and everything you care about will be gone. And statistically odds might have a good chance of placing you in one of the shittier parts of the world.

Both choices are pretty bad, I'm pretty sure I'd take neither unless it was some height of WWII equivalent situation where there's at least one obvious person to take out that would fix an obvious thing. To me any number of years as a disembodied ghost would suck very hard, at least the school would have the possibility of a normal daily routine to keep time passing, and lots to do with an infinite supply of paper. I'd create a second library that was all just the most useless world building notes for starters.

Still a better deal than what vampires get, so there's that.

Although now that I'm thinking of it more, this raises the question of just how long this system has been in place. The typical high school hasn't been very typical for long. Half the ghosts lurking around could've started out before those even existed, unless this offer has only started circulating very recently.

And if there are multiple people that choose to stay physical, why not just let them hang out together rather than (I presume) having to bring multiple parallel dimensions into this so that they can each be totally alone?

I didn't consider that you could choose neither option, and I agree that that's probably the best option if it is indeed available unless your life currently sucks and nobody loves you. Between the other options, I still maintain that jumping between bodies is the best option. Haven't you ever wanted to see what the world will look like in another 100 years? In 1000 years? 10000 years? If you're young enough, you might live to see 100, but with this option you can follow the course of humanity until its demise, and you won't even have to witness every boring detail since you'll have long intermissions spent in the school. I assume we'll inherit our new body's knowledge, so we won't be terribly out of place in the world. And if we ever get into a really shitty situation or a really shitty life, we can just kill ourselves and return to the school. It's not half bad. As for lurking as a human in the school, you can build a new library or two new libraries or even 100 new libraries and not pass even a tiny fraction of the eternity you'll be spending there. Eternity is a long time. You make a good point about the age of the high school. If the high school changes to match the appearance of a typical high in the current time period, that could make the stay slightly less boring, as the school is upgraded with new technologies as well as new bathrooms to match contemporary social norms.

This school better include internet, sexdolls and a sick gaming rig under essentials if it wants to begin tempt me into eternal solitary, maybe some delivery service as well.

Because that's just being Japanese with extra perks.

The computers not working is the biggest downside, no one would pick that option.

Like I mentioned earlier, I think eternity in the school would be a lot more viable if all the people who made that choice were thrown in together. From a story perspective too, it'd be interesting finding out more about all these others and why they wanted to kill so badly. (Maybe spice things up with some extra rule about being able to escape if you kill thirteen of the others?)

This is starting to feel very Japanese though. But besides the Dangan Ronpa that would add to the Death Note vibes, this kind of thought exercise reminds me of the old Fisher King threads.

A building filled to the brim with people who are full of anger, but were too pussy to do any killing themselves would turn into just the passive-aggressive fuckfest found in Japanese society or a cog forum.

So it'd be a couple of Antifa/fascist fags in a sea of niceguys that are periodically picked off by psychopath serial killers who found the perfect way to partake in their cravings. Hell, that'd make a good story.