"I fucking knew this would happen."

Five years. Five years of living in the apocalypse — the kind where anarchy ruled the streets, governments were nonexistent, and groups of sixteen or so kids would be gathered up and forced to violently slaughter each other — and fate finally got around to choosing me, if waking up in an unfamiliar room in this day and age was enough evidence.

"'Killing games barely happen once a month anymore' they said," I grumble to myself, rolling over in an attempt to get off the bed I found myself in, "'life is back to normal, let's open up a Hope's Peak college campus'. Ah, what a load of shit."

Admittedly, I'm the one that opened the letter that invited fresh-escapee-of-childhood Hideki Nakahara (that's me) as the Ultimate Criminologist and decided the title was too cool-sounding to pass up, but in hindsight, that was a proper stupid fucking idea.

I think the worst of it all is the fact that I'm clearly in a high budget one, too. This isn't some cheap, shitty abandoned building as it often is. I look around, and I'm surrounded by a wealth of wood and stone, with intricate designs carved into the bed's headboard. Above it is a round shield protecting two crossed swords. A small arched window indented into the wall lets the light, whatever's able to make it through the clouds, pour into the room. Wooden dressers and such line the walls, including a massive armoire and a chest at the end of the bed. Yes, your stereotypical treasure chest.

"A Western medieval setting," I murmur. "Not bad. This one's bound to get some views."

Actually. On that note.

Up and on my feet, I swing around to— yep, there it is. Like clockwork. In the corner of the room just above the door, there's an item that's distinctly not of medieval times but rather like last week: a CCTV camera, with its little red light pointed directly at me. I feel like saying something snarky, but I can't come up with anything, so I instead opt to just flip it off. I'll figure something out later.

Next, let's see what I've got in my pockets. It's always different for every game. Sometimes they allow you your phone, just without internet. Sometimes it's a Hope's Peak ElectroID, repurposed to show you autopsy reports of your dead friends. I check, and this game appears to be the former. I walk over to look out the window with phone in hand. No service, no bars, but…

A text, for some reason.

The caller ID is scrambled, which is nice for horror's sake but is definitely just some variant of 'kaldsjhfksdlhf' sent through a generic text generator, sent me a rather fitting message as I look up outside the window. Just nearby is a towering castle of stone blocking the cloudy sky, welcoming me just as my phone did.

"Welcome to Zetsubou no Shiro," the text read.

'Castle of Despair'. Well, alright. Bring it on then.

Notes:

The setting is 5 years after The Tragedy, or around 1 year after DR3. No memory loss here, everyone's fully aware that a big chunk of their life was in the apocalypse.

I plan on accepting 8-10 high school characters, and 8-10 college characters. Old talents are chill

I'm allowing people to send up to 3 characters, but I plan on only accepting 1 from each individual. This is just a contingency plan. Also, if you're more confident in sending 1 really good character than 3 meh characters, please do that instead

You may send OCs from other fics as long as they are not currently ongoing. They may also be survivors of previous killing games. That said, if you're going to reference another fic as canon in your form, you should probably check with the author first.

The full form, as well as submitted talents, is located on my profile. If you're here from FFN, send me a PM with your character name and talent in the subject. If you're here from AO3, I'll leave my Discord and my FFN on my profile for you to send the form to one or the other (if this doesn't work for you let me know in the comments).