Crime and the Occult: M seeking F

[Arion]

Hi there and welcome to my "looking for" thread :) I've been gone for a while, but recently an idea appeared in my mind and it just won't go away, so... here I am.

The basics of it are as follows:

Our characters are detectives in a city police department (the city is one taken from a NWoD book, more fully detailed by myself to serve as a setting for a tabletop game; if we get together for this rp, I'll provide you with a copy of it).  We initially don't know each other; my character is a middle-aged man with a shady past- he's generally not a good guy and might be "dirty", while yours is a young firebrand right out of the academy, full of noble ideals and an unflinching belief that the system is just and that the bad guys always get whats coming to them.

We're called into an office and meet with an FBI agent, who tells us we're going to be paired up for a case.  There's a kidnapper out there who strikes once every ten years, like clockwork.  On her birthday a sixteen-year-old girl goes missing, only to turn up exactly ten years later, her body covered in strange tattoos.  The young women freely talks about most of their experiences  while being held captive- things like rape, sometimes torture, but also other, more strange and sinister things, like being taught about science, religion, archaeology, history, medicine, philosophy, etc.  The girls, before being taken, are all bright but typically shy, depressive, and don't do well in school; when released, their intelligence is off the charts, and each seems to have been trained for a specific purpose, such as becoming a physicist or doctor.  Each is known for going on to make groundbreaking discoveries in their respective fields.

Even more strange?  Each claims that, while it all begins with rape and abuse, they eventually come to love their captor, becoming so trusted that not only do they have free reign over his home and property, but are even trusted to go into town for shopping, meals, etc.  They refuse to divulge any information about him or his whereabouts, saying only that they would do anything for him, even kill or die for him.  And when two or more of the women are in the same room, they begin talking to one another in an unknown, coded language that defies translation.

Our characters working together on the case?  That's by the request of the kidnapper.  In the past, when law enforcement has failed to comply with his requests, terrible thing happen as punishment.  He never asks for much, but gives no explanations and expects his orders to be carried out with swift exactness.

The most troubling thing of all?  These cases go back for more than a hundred years... and all of the women who have been released agree that it has been the same man the entire time...

As the RP goes on our characters, who are at odds with each other at first, slowly grow closer, with romantic themes eventually developing.  My character softens over time and warms up to yours, while yours eventually comes to see that the world isn't as black-and-white as she once believed.


I'd like this to have the same atmosphere and feel to it as the first season of HBO's True Detective; it should be dark, with hints of the occult and possibly supernatural.  Not looking for a ton of smut here; the story should focus more on how the case develops as our characters are drawn further and further into the kidnapper's bizarre world, where nothing is at it seems, where what at first appears to be cases of extreme Stockholm Syndrome are eventually revealed to be something far, far worse.  I'm not saying that there shouldn't be any sex or smut though- my character definitely wouldn't be against paying for sex, and yours may have a boyfriend- or girlfriend- before she begins to develop feelings for mine.

A good chunk of this should be things like interviews and research, both with the women who were previously taken by the kidnapper and with other experts in different fields, but also possibly a "flash-sideways" that follows the capture and experiences of the kidnapper's most recent victim.

If interested, please feel free to post here or to shoot me a pm with your thoughts and ideas- I want this to be very collaborative, and am willing to alter my base idea to fit with new and better/more interesting ideas.

Can't wait to hear from you :)