usesthekeys (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
usesthekeys) wrote2011-12-15 12:00 am
usesthekeys) wrote2011-12-15 12:00 am
Entry tags:
FR APP // completed
Player name: Jessi
Journal:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jessihoney
AIM: jessihoney18
Email: jess[dot]piggin @ gmail
Other characters: Nope~
Character name: Tyler Locke
Age: 17
Canon: Locke & Key
Canon point: The start of chapter 5 in the fourth collection, Keys to the Kingdom—just after he visits his Uncle Duncan's boyfriend Brian in hospital and starts to piece stuff together.
Totem: The Hercules key (he has the necklace as well, but the key alone is his totem). During fissures, the power of the key won't work at all and the metal of the key itself will seem duller than it usually is.
Weapons: None.
Abilities/powers: Tyler's a strong kid—he's powerful and big for his age (because I have a character type. :|) but on his own he has no supernatural powers. He's just athletic.
HOWEVER, due to the nature of Keyhouse, there are a number of powers he has access to. The power comes from a series of keys that all unlock different keyholes which, when someone uses the door/object with the keyhole on it, create different magical effects. The ones that Tyler has or the ones that are definitely in Keyhouse at his canon point (relevant due to his brought location) are these: the Hercules key, the Shadow key, the Giant key, the Mending key, the Skin key, the Head key and the Angel key.
As a note, normal adults mostly can't use the powers of Keyhouse. That is, unless they're particularly imaginative or creatively inclined or have some connection to magic themselves. It's a kid thing, and apparently this is a defence mechanism of the house itself, to protect itself. It appears that when drunk (and probably under the influence of other drugs) adults have a better chance of seeing and understanding the powers of the keys, as they're less likely to tell themselves they can't be real and dismiss what they've seen.
Mods, feel free to pick and choose which of these he has access to or how limited the power they have in limbo is. I'm not sure how much of this stuff will be acceptable. I'm going to say that, due to the fact that most of the keys are tied to doors or things within the Keyhouse, he won't have them on him until he finds the house in game. I would like for him to have the Hercules key, though, as it's a comfort thing for him now. He may also have the Shadow key, but the crown itself is hidden in the house, so he won't be able to use it. The other keys will remain in Keyhouse and nerfing can be worked out for if/when the location appears in limbo--like the Giant key, for example: the key itself will still be there in the floor but the keyhole window will be missing from the wall. That sort of thing.
Also, there are lots of keys I haven't gone through here, which I'll be writing up a list of in another post, and there are definitely keys we've never seen the power of in canon. At least one of them has been shown but not found by the kids, so as canon progresses there will be more. I will, of course, discuss any new keys with you mods if I wanted to bring them into play or whatever.
Location: Ty will be bringing Keyhouse with him. It's a big, old estate house in Massachusetts, with lots of rooms and secret places. The house is quite large and very old. The grounds are huge too, but he won't be bringing all of the wood areas or the cliff/sea area at the back of the house (or the Drowning Caves in the cliff underneath the house). It's a pretty big mansion place and contains a whole bunch of keys and secret doors which were mostly created by an locksmith ancestor, Ben Locke, who made them out of strange, unearthly metal. The house looks to be about four or five stories high, with a few more rooms/levels in the two towers. It's very old and full of nooks and crannies. There's also a large wine cellar (very well stocked) with entrances inside and outside, plus a seperate wellhouse not too far from the main house.
Have some pictures of it: one, two, three, and the grounds, and one of the bathrooms (the one with the Mending key's cabinet) and the kitchen.
I can, and probably will, add some more pictures and stuff when I can find them.
Personality: Tyler comes off as a bit of a dumb jock type at first. He's quite big for his age, he plays ice hockey and he doesn't do so well at school. He's not overly talkative to strangers and he can be a sullen, too-cool-for-this teenager with the best of them. He's quite stubborn and on that edge of adulthood where he thinks he knows what's right a lot of the time. Tyler is smarter than he seems--he's able to get alright grades if he works hard and he's the one who puts together all the clues and finally figures out the identity of the dark lady--and when he applies himself to something he can usually do okay at it. The actual motivation to apply himself, however, doesn't usually happen in regards to schoolwork, though it does to other things. He can handle a lot and acts, a lot of the time, as a pillar for his family to support itself with after his dad's death.
While he is wary of people, Tyler is also a friendly dude. He's a genuinely nice person, wanting the best for almost everyone (everyone who deserves it, anyhow). He's loyal to friends and family, and apart from running his mouth sometimes, isn't the kind of guy to get in trouble. He's mostly supportive of the people around him, though he can crack under pressure and, like anyone, have moments of being an ass. Although he sometimes does a lot of teenage posturing, pretending like he doesn't care or thinks things are dumb, his dad, the guidance counsellor, raised him to be open and honest and kind. Even with the worst of teenage hormones, he rarely did anything deliberately hurtful to people, and most of his screw ups were the result of poor judgement or just stupid mistakes.
Tyler's willing to help out with things like chores and stuff around the house with no complaint, partly because he takes this stuff as his duty but partly because it's the right way to behave. He's actually a pretty selfless guy, for a teenager, and he wants people to do well. For example, when Jordan is freaking out about her school work, he offers to camp out in the library with her for days to help her study. This kindness sometimes leads to him trying to 'fix' people (particularly after his dad's death, because he seems to subconciously see it as another way to prove himself) which doesn't always work out so well.
Ty can be quick to anger, particularly after breaking up with Jordan and when wearing the Hercules key, though this isn't usually random physical violence. After Jordan cheats on him, he channels his anger into fighting the dark lady and her attacks and playing hockey with a new, brutal edge. He does yell sometimes, often when someone does something he feels puts the family in danger but also when Kinsey or Bode do something he doesn't like. He's sometimes hypocritical, notably when he chews out Kinsey about wanting to share the information about the keys with her friends after he had already shown two kids he barely knew the Head key. Although he basically always has good intentions, Tyler sometimes makes bad decisions and acts without thinking things through enough or thinking about the consequences. He also is quite proud, particularly in terms of relating to other teenagers—that peer pressure 'I'm cool' thing, despite the fact he doesn't always like himself that much.
Tyler can be sarcastic at times and he likes to veg out in front of the TV and chill. He likes a day off school and doesn't like to do a lot of homework. In a lot of ways, he's your typical teenager—way more comfortable with kids than adults, wanting to be liked and not thought of as a freak, awkward at times in school and classes—but he's also set apart by his experiences with the murder, Sam and the dark lady. The magic of Keyhouse and the keys themselves put him in a different league so he finds it hard to relate to people sometimes and tends to keep to a smaller group of a couple close friends and his siblings (more usually Kinsey, as she's nearest his age). Although he will joke and make stupid comments and act like an idiot, he's a lot more mature than a lot of kids his age thanks to all this stuff he's been through. He's also more wary and less likely to open up to strangers than he used to be, thanks to a combination of his guilt and his new self-created identity as 'man of the house'. He acts like he's completely self-sufficient a lot of the time. Not to say that he won't accept or thank someone for their help if they give it to him, because he will, but he won't usually ask for it and doesn't like to admit he needs it. If someone helps him out, he'll be inclined to help them in return.
After Bode tells Tyler and Kinsey about the keys and they finally realise he's telling the truth and start using the keys as defence for themselves and the Keyhouse, Tyler uses the keys in a mostly practical, utalitarian way. He uses the keys that will help him protect himself and his people in the easiest and most effective way and doesn't experiment with them as much as Kinsey seems inclined to. He's also just plain more wary of the keys than she is because he still has his fear. Even after he uses the Head key to stick knowledge into his head once, he doesn't immediately leap to do it again, reasoning that maybe sometimes you need the experience of learning instead of just knowing something straight off. He yells at Bode when the kid uses the giant key to play cars with REAL cars with a little friend of his. He's more acutely aware and concerned about the danger to the family through the use of the keys than the other two kids are.
Tyler harbours a whole bunch of intense guilt about his father's murder. Although it wasn't actually his fault in any way, the arguments that he had had with his dad and his longing for something bad to happen (he'd specifically hoped for an earthquake, but still) so that he could get out of their holiday home added to the guilt. Most importantly, however, was the off-hand joking frustration he'd expressed to Sam Lesser after Sam had commented that sometimes he woke up thinking he should kill his dad. Tyler, fed up with his guidance counsellor father had replied, 'Well. You ever decide you want to kill your dad, do me a favor, and kill mine while you're at it.' Of course, Tyler didn't mean it—it was that teenage 'I hate my parents ugh' venting—but then Sam actually did it. He told Tyler as they fought that he only killed Rendell Locke because Tyler had asked him to and that he'd told Tyler's dad that Tyler had asked him to kill him before he shot him through the eye. Although he knows rationally that it wasn't his fault, particularly after finding out about the dark lady from Bode and her attacks, the thought that he caused his dad's death eats at him. He blames himself somewhere deep inside and his desperation to prove to himself that he's not that person, that he can be better than the boy that made that offhand comment, drives him to protect his siblings and his mum and uncle as best he can. His drive to act and be a protector basically entirely stems from his guilt, desperation and depression due to his dad's brutal murder.
Before his dad was killed, Tyler would have protested if anyone had tried to call him innocent, but the loss of innocence that he suffered when Sam murdered his dad and Sam's associate Al raped his mother, when Sam came after the three Locke children with a gun because Tyler knocked over paint tins after seeing his father shot, when Sam followed Tyler's paint trail down into the basement to kill him and Tyler fought a desperate fight with a brick and his fists to put down the crazy guy who'd destroyed his family's life, was obviously huge. Sam breaking out of prison, following the Lockes to Massachusetts and almost killing Tyler and Kinsey, then the continuing attacks by the dark lady have all taken their toll on Tyler and basically all he wants at this point is to not have to be scared that someone is going to come try to kill his entire family and he won't be able to stop it. Overall, Tyler just wants to feel safe and strong and sure again, things he hasn't completely felt since his dad was killed.
Of course, this is stuff he doesn't talk about, not even to his family, because when your mum is falling apart and spiralling into a drunken mess, your sister is near your age and literally fearless, and your little brother is six years old, you can't say anything to any of them. He can't tell his friends, because he's a teenage boy and that kind of opening up would be unacceptable, so these are his secret goals. His less secret goals are college and girls and not failing every single class in a new school. He doesn't want to be known as a victim, he wants to make his own high school identity, hence the hockey (which is the reason he crams his study notes into his head with the help of the Head key) and anything else that helps him become someone other than just the kid whose dad was murdered.
His initial reaction to Limbo will probably be to think it's something related to the keys (can you blame him?), most probably some sort of new attack or something by the dark lady, particularly because of his canon point. He'll be wary of the people and the place itself and probably look out for the lady to see if she shows up and demands the Omega key from him yet again. However, it probably won't take too long for him to realise that the people in Limbo aren't lying when they say they have no idea who the dark lady is or what keys he's talking about (if he chooses to talk about them, that is, which isn't a certainty) and after he figures out they actually are trapped there like he is as well, he'll drop the worst of the hostility and wariness. He won't instantly tell people all his secrets or his past or anything (particularly because he can and probably will take the opportunity to not be the kid with the murdered dad :c), but he'll start to open up and be more willing to trust people. It really depends on how his interactions with people go, but he will probably become attached to at least some of them and want to protect them (because protecting his people is important). And he'll be hella worried about Kinsey and Bode, because his conviction that this is down to the lady is probably not going to waver as she's got some bad magic and can do a lot of stuff and this kind of thing is not out of the realms of possibility for her as far as he knows. He's going to be looking for answers and a way out, especially if/when he finds the Keyhouse, because surely there's an answer in one of the keys.
History: THERE ARE LIKELY TO BE MANY, MANY SPOILERS IN HERE, UP TO AND INCLUDING STUFF FROM THE VERY START OF THE FIFTH TRADE, CLOCKWORKS. :V
Tyler Locke had a fairly normal childhood, living with his mum and dad, Rendell and Nina Locke, his younger sister Kinsey and younger brother Bode. The Locke family lived in San Francisco and visited Rendell's brother Duncan in their old family house, the Keyhouse, a few times as Tyler was growing up, though they hadn't been for a good three or four years at the time the canon starts. They had a pretty good family relationship, though as he got older and turned into a teenager, he and his dad butted heads a bit, as teenage boys often do. Not too long before the start of the canon, Tyler had had an argument with his dad at school and was sitting frustrated outside waiting for him to finish work and drive Tyler home. Sam Lesser (Rendell's future killer) commiserated briefly, making his apparent joke about wanting to kill his dad sometimes. Tyler, as I already said, replied with a flip, 'You ever decide you want to kill your dad, do me a favor, and kill mine while you're at it.' and thought nothing more of it.
The series itself starts with the Lockes on vacation in Willits, California. Tyler was longing to get out of there and have a good time with friends rather than spend time working on the holiday house with his dad. Painting is overrated. While he and his siblings were taking a break out in the backyard and Rendell and Nina were inside, a couple students from Tyler's school (where Rendell worked as a cousellor) rocked up to the house, saying that they were there to see Tyler. Both of them had been to see Mr. Locke as their guidance counsellor, and although it was a bit weird, Nina let them in. Big mistake.
Al Grubb was basically a thug along for the ride, there because of his lust for Nina Locke. He dragged her into the bedroom and raped her while Sam dealt with Rendell. Sam, however, was not a dumb thug. He had been manipulated by a dark lady (or a creature masquerading as a dark lady) trapped in the wellhouse at the Keyhouse, with her promising him a better life and all sorts of things (plus, probably using magic on him as well) if he would find Rendell Locke and get him to reveal the locations of two keys: the key to anywhere and the key to the black door. Despite holding a gun to his head, Rendell revealed nothing and Sam shot him through the eye, killing him instantly.
Tyler saw this happen through a window, and Kinsey and Bode heard the gunshots. They all tried to get away but Tyler, in shock from what he'd just seen, knocked over the paint tins, making a huge racket. Sam heard and came after the three kids with his gun. Tyler sent Kinsey up onto the roof to hide with Bode and headed down into the cellar himself. Sam followed the obvious paint trail down, talking all the time, telling Tyler he'd done it because Tyler had asked him to, but fortunately, Ty had taken off his paint-covered shoes and hidden in a place where he could jump Sam from behind. Armed only with a brick and his fists, he desperately attacked Sam and, somewhat miraculously, managed to avoid getting shot as he disarmed Sam and proceeded to beat him to unconsciousness. Then, he moved upstairs where Al was waiting, ready to attack Tyler—he'd counted the shots fired from the gun and knew there were no more bullets in it—but Nina got there first, chopping Al in the back of the head with an axe, killing him before he could do anything more to her family.
There was a funeral, of course, then the kids moved with their mother to live with their uncle in Keyhouse. They all spent some time adjusting to life again as they started new schools and a new life. Bode was the one that first found one of the keys. He found the Ghost key, that opens a door that allows a person to step out of their body as a ghost when they pass over the threshold. Bode started to spend a lot of time as a ghost, then eventually decided to tell Kinsey and Tyler about the key. He tried but they didn't believe him, of course. Instead, they just both thought he was making things up and carried on with their lives—Tyler spent quite a bit of this time seriously depressed, even considering suicide briefly. He'd just had enough of everything for a while.
Then Bode found the “echo” in the well, as she called herself. She told Bode she was his echo and he started spending time talking to her and hanging out in the wellhouse. She told him she couldn't get out of the wellhouse through a normal door, and asked him to get her a mirror and a pair of scissors so she could cut her hair. Bode, being the nice little six year old kid he is, got her the mirror and the scissors.
Sam Lesser was in prison at this point, but the dark lady was still able to talk to him through the water in the sink, thanks to her creepy magic. She could also give him things through it, and so Sam Lesser's cell is where Bode's nice mirror and pair of scissors went. Sam used them to break out, killing a number of guards on the way, and with the information the dark lady had given him, started on his journey to Massachusetts, to Keyhouse and to the lady in the well. The Lockes were told about his escape and police had been posted at the front of the house, but he snuck around across the water at the back. Nina had also bought a gun and told both Kinsey and Tyler where she kept it, just in case.
Sam travelled across country and murdered a bunch of people and managed to get to Keyhouse without too much trouble. He beat Kinsey with a flashlight until she passed out, then dragged her down into the basement, where he quietly locked Nina and Duncan into the wine cellar before asking Nina where he could find the two keys the dark lady wanted. She yelled for Tyler, who came downstairs to see what the trouble was, only to find Sam pointing a gun in his face. Sam kicked him down the stairs and beat him with a piece of timber before tying his hands and telling Nina through the door that he would kill Tyler then the other two kids if she didn't tell him where the keys were. Nina, thinking fast, told him that they were upstairs in a drawer—the drawer that really held the gun—and that Tyler could help him find what he was looking for. Tyler knew what she meant and Sam followed him upstairs.
Meanwhile, Bode had been having dreams about his father for a while and thinking about the echo in the well more closely; he had decided that she wasn't his echo and he didn't want to spend time with her any more. Unfortunately, he went to tell her this on the night Sam turned up on the Keyhouse peninsula. The lady knew that Sam had arrived and grabbed Bode, telling him that Sam would kill his entire family if he didn't do what she wanted. Bode agreed to go and find the Anywhere key so she could escape from the wellhouse in return for stopping Sam after she got out. He went and used the Ghost key to try to pinpoint the location of the Anywhere key, which eventually worked—it was hidden in Kinsey's favourite bracelet. In his haste to save his family, the little dude left the Ghost key in the lock on the door. Bode ran to her and took the bracelet from her unconscious body, telling Nina and Duncan that he was okay and was going to get help. He took the bracelet to the lady, who used it to vanish into the house without another word.
While this was going on, Sam and Tyler were fighting. Tyler had tried to get the gun, but Sam had caught him and taken it. Sam had turned his back and Tyler had slipped his tied hands from behind his back to his front and then made a break for it. He managed to get to a certain door, unlocking it and almost making it outside to yell for help. Sam caught up to him and they scuffled, Sam choking him—the struggle pushing Tyler through the doorway. The doorway that he'd just opened with the Ghost key. His spirit jumped out of his body and he figured he was dead for real, that Sam had actually killed him. His ghost self went to his mother when he thought about her, getting there as Sam was telling her that he'd had to kill Tyler. Ty desperately wanted to not be dead and his spirit jumped to the door. Finally, he remembered what Bode had told him about the key and the door: when you want to stop being dead, you go back through the door and you wake up in your own body.
So Ty woke up, attacked Sam and tried to take him out but failed. Sam grabbed a shovel and was about to beat him down with it when Kinsey woke up and took up Sam's gun, firing wildly and hitting him in a few placed. Sam ran for it, bleeding, knowing the gunshots would attract the cops. And then the dark lady from the well—now a young man, thanks to the Gender key—showed up. She promptly took Sam, snapped his neck and tossed him through the Ghost key door. (Yeah, Sam kind of got a raw deal. Even if he killed Tyler's dad.) Then the boy took the Ghost key before using the Anywhere key to escape the house. The Lockes were left to clear up the mess, the police came and examined Sam's body and everything was apparently over.
And then a new boy in town named Zach Wells befriended Tyler and the other Locke kids. Zach, of course, was the dark lady from the well.
(BACKSTORY: The lady had been a boy called Lucas Carravaggio (also known as Dodge, which is what Sam knew him as) and he had been a friend of Tyler's dad when they were teenagers. Rendell had shared the knowledge of the keys with a group of his friends (they'd used the powers of the keys to put on a fantastic production of The Tempest using real magic for the effects, for example) and they had been inseparable. They had ventured into the Drowning Caves under Keyhouse and found the black door, the one the Omega key locks. They must have opened the door, Lucas was infected or taken over by a parasitic demon thing from the other side of the black door (and the canon that I've read hasn't revealed all of this story yet, so this is a bit of a best guess scenario, but:) and a few of Rendell's other friends were killed there. Ellie Whedon, who later became a teacher at the school—and Kinsey's running coach—was one who survived and, as she had been in love with Lucas, saved him ~somehow~. And so, the dark demon thing got out and was free to try to get the keys. It particularly wants the Omega key so it can let the rest of the demons out onto the world. Rendell hadn't trusted Luke after the day in the Drowning Caves, though it seems like he hadn't exactly known about the creature; he had hidden the keys from Luke after that. )
Back in the present, Zach was recognised as Luke by a couple of people, first a teacher at the school who had taught Rendell, Dodge and the rest of their crew when they were in high school. Zach murdered the teacher to keep him from snooping further and uncovering his identity. Tyler and Kinsey both found the murder hard to deal with, as they had had a lot of nasty experience with death; they both hung out with Zach to help them cope. Kinsey started to form a little crush on Zach as well, though nothing came of it yet. Around this time, Tyler was asked to join the ice hockey team, and also met Jordan out of school for the first time when he embarrassed himself by getting caught sitting on her motorbike. Also, Zach took Tyler surfing and on the way back to Keyhouse, they ran into Tyler's uncle, who was leaving Keyhouse to finally get back to his life with Brian after getting the family settled. Duncan half-recognised Zach but couldn't pinpoint where from. He had been about 8 years old when he last saw Luke. Zach immediately knew he had to do something about it.
Fortunately for Duncan (because had this not happened, Zach would probably just have murdered him straight up), Bode had found the Head key in a pond at the house. He had been trying to work out what it did for a while and finally realised it fit in a keyhole at the back of a person's neck and opened their head. With little boy exuberance, he showed Tyler and Kinsey, to prove that the stuff he had been talking about with the Ghost key was true as well. They both freaked out, naturally, because seeing your little brother open the top of his head is just a little bit crazy. But through experimentation—Bode shoving a Chef's Bible cookbook in his head and being able to regurgitate entire recipes word for word, for a start—the two older kids realised that it was all true. Tyler put all his weeks of study notes (and possibly a textbook) for the classes he was behind in into his head. Then, in a fit of bad judgement, he decided it was an awesome idea to share the power of the Head key with two kids he barely knew. That is, Jordan and Zach. He showed them by opening up the top of his head in a “surprise!” kind of way, and naturally Jordan freaked out. She told Tyler to basically fuck off with his crazy shit and left.
Zach, however, pretended to be amazed and acted like this was all brand new information for him. He helped Tyler help Kinsey take out her sense of fear and her ability to cry from her head, because she was sick of being scared and crying all the time. Later, he took the Head key while the Locke kids were sleeping and used the Anywhere key to take a visit to their uncle. He used the Head key to open up Duncan's head and take out any memories of Lucas and the memory of his visit that night, but he hadn't known about Duncan's boyfriend Brian. He ran into him in their kitchen. Thanks to the fact Zach had a big-ass gun and clearly had no qualms about killing him, Brian ran out of the house and got hit by a ute (belonging to some homophobic ladies he and Duncan had run into and had a scuffle with in a bar, which is what Duncan assumed had happened when he found Brian later) and fell into a coma. Zach basically shrugged and went to put the Head key back in Kinsey's room; she woke up and nearly caught him out but he palmed her off with a quick lie and they shared a kiss.
Tyler woke up to his mum coming into his room drunk and telling him about Brian, saying she needed to go to Provincetown to see Duncan. Tyler volunteered to take care of Bode and Kinsey while she was gone for however long she needed to go for. After getting back to bed, Nina heard some weird noises (actually Zach fighting with Sam Lesser's ghost—which is still hanging around Keyhouse) and went to see what it was. Zach managed to get out of there without being seen, but he accidentally left behind the Echo key, which Nina found and gave to the police detective who had been assigned to the case before she left to go see Duncan. Then, after an awkward confrontation with the newly-fearless Kinsey about how much she was drinking, Nina left for the night.
And then came the first huge assault on the three kids and the Keyhouse. Zach broke into the house and found the Shadow key, using it to attack them. He wrapped himself in shadows that took the form of the dark lady and tried to get Tyler to tell him where the Echo key and the Omega key were. Tyler, hanging upside down in a shadow cocoon, refused with a macho “I can't wait to climb down from here and get large on you, bitch.” The detective from earlier chose this perfect time to rock up to the house again, with the Echo key, and Zach sent a couple shadows to take him out and to use the Head key to make him forget he ever had the key and that he'd wanted to come to Keyhouse that night. Kinsey and Bode, armed with an emergency beacon flashlight, managed to get the Echo key and the Head key from the two shadows, which pissed Zach off. He called all the shadows to him and formed into a huge shadow creature to chase down Kinsey and Bode with. Tyler was left alone and ran to use the Giant key to even the odds. He became a giant and defeated the shadows with the help of a lighthouse, though Zach managed to get away without being seen. Tyler found the Shadow key and the crown and took them back to the house, picking up his brother and sister on the way. This was really the first time he connected completely with the house, calling it their home and saying that the kids weren't going to run from shadows there, not ever. He also took the memories of the shadows out of Bode's head to protect the kid.
Nina got back to a trashed house and freaked out a little, but Tyler managed to calm her down a bit. However, her drinking was getting worse. One night, Bode came to her crying as she was watching an old videotape of Rendell—he'd fallen off a stool in the bathroom trying to get a new key. She patched him up and then got the key down. It opened a small cupboard in the bathroom, which she shoved a few broken things into to get them out of the way. However, as this is Keyhouse, when she opened the cupboard, the things were fixed again. She experimented drunkenly with the power, breaking plates and fixing them again, then finally working up the courage to take Rendell's ashes and put them in, hoping it would fix him. After it didn't work immediately, she figured that maybe it just would take more time, so went to clean herself up in preparation for Rendell returning. Coming back to it later, she saw what she thought was Rendell in the bathroom and went to embrace him. Of course, it wasn't Rendell, it was Tyler. Nina freaked out, yelling at Tyler and pulling the urn out of the cupboard. Tyler tried to take it from her but it ended up falling to the floor and breaking. This resulted in a fight between Kinsey and Nina where Kinsey brought up the rape and Nina slapped her in front of Tyler and, more importantly, Bode. After more emotional confrontation, the kids started cleaning up the house. Tyler took the bathroom—and in his dad's ashes, he found the Omega key, the key to the black door.
A number of things happened after this—Bode continued to find more keys, Kinsey started dating Zach, Tyler started dating Jordan. The shadow attack marked the start of a continuing series of attacks on the house. Zach told the Lockes that he had to travel to Boston to work on a project every weekend, and almost every weekend the kids were attacked with new key powers. Tyler had hidden the Omega key somewhere, not even sharing the location with Kinsey, despite her urging (and Zach's), so most of the attacks were focused on him. Kinsey, without fear, was reckless with her friends and their emotions and ended up isolating herself. Jordan cheated on Tyler, as a way of self-sabotage and pushing him away, which worked. He got harder and more robotic, using the Hercules key to give him extra strength to keep holding the family together and protecting them from the dark lady, but also as a way to not feel weak and out of control in his own life.
Then his uncle's boyfriend Brian woke up from his coma, and he remembered what had happened with the boy who had inexplicably been in his house. He told Duncan and Tyler about this, basically describing Zach down to his super cool silver lip ring. And Ty started to put it together. He remembered one of the attacks—where both Bode and the dark lady had been animals, thanks to the Animal key—when the lead wolf attacking him and Kinsey had been male. And he started thinking that maybe the dark lady was a dark guy... and maybe that dark guy was the friend who had mysteriously transferred to school just after Sam Lesser was killed and the dark lady got out of the wellhouse, the friend who was now dating his sister. He started thinking about the timing of the attacks, always on weekends when Zach was nowhere to be found, and the way the son of Ellie Whedon—who Zach was living with, who said he was her cousin—had told Tyler that Zach was the enemy, which Ty had just assumed was in the context of make believe.
And then he fell asleep, planning to get more proof, and woke up in Limbo.
3rd person sample: The salt in the water stung in Tyler's eyes, the corners of his mouth and the scrape on his arm from where he'd grazed himself on a rock working on the garden as he dragged himself out of the waves, coughing the brine out of his throat. He had no idea how he'd wound up in the ocean. Last thing he remembered, he'd been in his room falling asleep after getting back from the hospital, then bam, he was waking up in waves, hacking cold sea water from his lungs.
Dragging himself—and his sodden, sandy clothes—to an upright position was an effort and he growled under his breath as he did it, his irritation distracting him from the freakout brewing in his chest. He'd woken up in a weird place through some weird unknown means, and when weird stuff went down it was usually related to the keys. And the dark lady, whatever she actually was. And neither Kinsey or Bode was anywhere to be seen. Shit.
"Where are you, you bitch?" Ty asked, a little louder than a mutter but softer than actually calling out with the intention of being heard, eyes searching the darkening beach. The sun looked like it was going down. Waiting for something to happen, anything, Tyler told himself that whatever else the dark lady was going to throw at him, he was ready. With that thought, he groped in his pocket for the Hercules key and was starting to slide the necklace over his head when he realised his hat was missing.
He cursed and looked around, not seeing it. After a few tense moments, Tyler spotted the dull glint of the dying sun reflecting off his dad's fishing lure. He cursed again, under his breath this time, and waited for what seemed like forever, until he realised that if the dark lady was planning to throw something nasty at him, she would have done it by now. Slowly he relaxed a little, but kept the Hercules key where it was. Making his squelchy way over to his hat where it was being licked at by the waves, he tugged his soaked sweatshirt over his head and started wringing it out. He grabbed the hat and settled it into place, touching the lure with a gentle tap then looking around. However he'd got here, wherever here was, he needed to find his brother and sister.
"Kinsey? Bode?" he called, a bit louder now, as he moved towards the weird buildings. No answer. "...anyone?"
1st person sample: Look, I-- [There's a pause as he clears his throat. He sounds more brusque when he goes on:] I'm having trouble processing all of this. So I go to sleep at home, then I wake up on the beach, being tossed around in the waves like an idiot. Sure, yeah, I can see how she could do that.
[Another pause, and he sounds a bit more irritated as he continues:] I don't know where I am, and it doesn't even look like anything I've ever seen before. Yeah, I can work out explanations for that too, I guess. Hell, even all you other people out there, if you're people at all—she could make that happen.
But why would she bother bringing my stuff here? How does that make any sense at all?
[There's a longer pause and then a sigh.] What even is this place?
Journal:
jessihoneyAIM: jessihoney18
Email: jess[dot]piggin @ gmail
Other characters: Nope~
Character name: Tyler Locke
Age: 17
Canon: Locke & Key
Canon point: The start of chapter 5 in the fourth collection, Keys to the Kingdom—just after he visits his Uncle Duncan's boyfriend Brian in hospital and starts to piece stuff together.
Totem: The Hercules key (he has the necklace as well, but the key alone is his totem). During fissures, the power of the key won't work at all and the metal of the key itself will seem duller than it usually is.
Weapons: None.
Abilities/powers: Tyler's a strong kid—he's powerful and big for his age (because I have a character type. :|) but on his own he has no supernatural powers. He's just athletic.
HOWEVER, due to the nature of Keyhouse, there are a number of powers he has access to. The power comes from a series of keys that all unlock different keyholes which, when someone uses the door/object with the keyhole on it, create different magical effects. The ones that Tyler has or the ones that are definitely in Keyhouse at his canon point (relevant due to his brought location) are these: the Hercules key, the Shadow key, the Giant key, the Mending key, the Skin key, the Head key and the Angel key.
- The Hercules key—when someone wears the necklace it's a part of and turns the Hercules key in the lock on it, they become a whole lot stronger (think bodybuilder muscles, even on a little kid). Tyler likes this key A LOT. After he breaks up with his girlfriend because she cheats on him, he starts wearing it regularly instead of just when the dark lady attacks the kids, because he's "sick of feeling weak".
- The Shadow key—putting the key into the crown of shadows and then putting it on allows the person to command and control all shadows around them, also making the shadows corporeal and able to interact with the world. The dark lady used this to launch a big attack on the house and Tyler managed to repel the attack and take the crown back. His dad was a big fan of this key, though he doesn't know that. He hasn't used it himself.
- The Giant key—when someone takes this huge key and turns it in the keyhole/window, they turn into a giant, only able to get out of the house by opening the entire side of the building. Tyler used this key to embiggen himself and take out the huge mass of shadows threatening Kinsey and Bode.
- The Mending key—putting broken things into the (magical size-changing) cabinet this key opens then closing the door on them will make them come out whole again. In canon, this extends to human and probably animal injury, according to the writings of Ben Locke, but doesn't work on the dead. Anything like broken plates and stuff work just fine. Tyler doesn't really know what this key does; his mum was the one who discovered its power and used it.
- The Skin key—this mirror key has the power to change anyone's race to a number of different ones by looking in the mirror and turning the outside edge of the key, which has seven different options. Tyler hasn't actually used this key and probably won't find it necessary to use it at any point in game. (Also, this has the potential for iffy race stuff, so. Yeah.)
- The Head key—this key turns in a keyhole in the back of a person's neck and opens up the top of their head completely. They can then put things in (in-canon examples of this are cookbooks, videotapes of fencing technique and study notes on Machiavelli) or take things out (in canon examples are memories of certain events, memories of an entire person/relationship and the ability to cry/feel fear). They can look into their own head, or others can look in and see their thoughts and the stuff they have on their mind constantly, that sort of thing. People can also use this key and share memories with one another by putting them directly into each other's heads. Dodge also uses it to place completely fabricated memories into someone's head. Tyler uses this key a little, to finally catch up with his homework (with a questionable level of success, as he can regurgitate all the facts and information but doesn't have a good, proper understanding of what it means) and also to take memories of certain dark lady attacks out of Bode's head so that he won't have nightmares forever. Ty's a bit tentative with this key, because it's weird and also because Kinsey taking out her fear and her tears has changed her a lot and it worries him some.
- The Angel key—this key, when turned in the keyhole on the back of a harness, allows the person to fly using the wings attached to the harness as if they were really part of their body. Tyler hasn't used this key, but he's seen Kinsey do it, so he knows how to if necessary.
As a note, normal adults mostly can't use the powers of Keyhouse. That is, unless they're particularly imaginative or creatively inclined or have some connection to magic themselves. It's a kid thing, and apparently this is a defence mechanism of the house itself, to protect itself. It appears that when drunk (and probably under the influence of other drugs) adults have a better chance of seeing and understanding the powers of the keys, as they're less likely to tell themselves they can't be real and dismiss what they've seen.
Mods, feel free to pick and choose which of these he has access to or how limited the power they have in limbo is. I'm not sure how much of this stuff will be acceptable. I'm going to say that, due to the fact that most of the keys are tied to doors or things within the Keyhouse, he won't have them on him until he finds the house in game. I would like for him to have the Hercules key, though, as it's a comfort thing for him now. He may also have the Shadow key, but the crown itself is hidden in the house, so he won't be able to use it. The other keys will remain in Keyhouse and nerfing can be worked out for if/when the location appears in limbo--like the Giant key, for example: the key itself will still be there in the floor but the keyhole window will be missing from the wall. That sort of thing.
Also, there are lots of keys I haven't gone through here, which I'll be writing up a list of in another post, and there are definitely keys we've never seen the power of in canon. At least one of them has been shown but not found by the kids, so as canon progresses there will be more. I will, of course, discuss any new keys with you mods if I wanted to bring them into play or whatever.
Location: Ty will be bringing Keyhouse with him. It's a big, old estate house in Massachusetts, with lots of rooms and secret places. The house is quite large and very old. The grounds are huge too, but he won't be bringing all of the wood areas or the cliff/sea area at the back of the house (or the Drowning Caves in the cliff underneath the house). It's a pretty big mansion place and contains a whole bunch of keys and secret doors which were mostly created by an locksmith ancestor, Ben Locke, who made them out of strange, unearthly metal. The house looks to be about four or five stories high, with a few more rooms/levels in the two towers. It's very old and full of nooks and crannies. There's also a large wine cellar (very well stocked) with entrances inside and outside, plus a seperate wellhouse not too far from the main house.
Have some pictures of it: one, two, three, and the grounds, and one of the bathrooms (the one with the Mending key's cabinet) and the kitchen.
I can, and probably will, add some more pictures and stuff when I can find them.
Personality: Tyler comes off as a bit of a dumb jock type at first. He's quite big for his age, he plays ice hockey and he doesn't do so well at school. He's not overly talkative to strangers and he can be a sullen, too-cool-for-this teenager with the best of them. He's quite stubborn and on that edge of adulthood where he thinks he knows what's right a lot of the time. Tyler is smarter than he seems--he's able to get alright grades if he works hard and he's the one who puts together all the clues and finally figures out the identity of the dark lady--and when he applies himself to something he can usually do okay at it. The actual motivation to apply himself, however, doesn't usually happen in regards to schoolwork, though it does to other things. He can handle a lot and acts, a lot of the time, as a pillar for his family to support itself with after his dad's death.
While he is wary of people, Tyler is also a friendly dude. He's a genuinely nice person, wanting the best for almost everyone (everyone who deserves it, anyhow). He's loyal to friends and family, and apart from running his mouth sometimes, isn't the kind of guy to get in trouble. He's mostly supportive of the people around him, though he can crack under pressure and, like anyone, have moments of being an ass. Although he sometimes does a lot of teenage posturing, pretending like he doesn't care or thinks things are dumb, his dad, the guidance counsellor, raised him to be open and honest and kind. Even with the worst of teenage hormones, he rarely did anything deliberately hurtful to people, and most of his screw ups were the result of poor judgement or just stupid mistakes.
Tyler's willing to help out with things like chores and stuff around the house with no complaint, partly because he takes this stuff as his duty but partly because it's the right way to behave. He's actually a pretty selfless guy, for a teenager, and he wants people to do well. For example, when Jordan is freaking out about her school work, he offers to camp out in the library with her for days to help her study. This kindness sometimes leads to him trying to 'fix' people (particularly after his dad's death, because he seems to subconciously see it as another way to prove himself) which doesn't always work out so well.
Ty can be quick to anger, particularly after breaking up with Jordan and when wearing the Hercules key, though this isn't usually random physical violence. After Jordan cheats on him, he channels his anger into fighting the dark lady and her attacks and playing hockey with a new, brutal edge. He does yell sometimes, often when someone does something he feels puts the family in danger but also when Kinsey or Bode do something he doesn't like. He's sometimes hypocritical, notably when he chews out Kinsey about wanting to share the information about the keys with her friends after he had already shown two kids he barely knew the Head key. Although he basically always has good intentions, Tyler sometimes makes bad decisions and acts without thinking things through enough or thinking about the consequences. He also is quite proud, particularly in terms of relating to other teenagers—that peer pressure 'I'm cool' thing, despite the fact he doesn't always like himself that much.
Tyler can be sarcastic at times and he likes to veg out in front of the TV and chill. He likes a day off school and doesn't like to do a lot of homework. In a lot of ways, he's your typical teenager—way more comfortable with kids than adults, wanting to be liked and not thought of as a freak, awkward at times in school and classes—but he's also set apart by his experiences with the murder, Sam and the dark lady. The magic of Keyhouse and the keys themselves put him in a different league so he finds it hard to relate to people sometimes and tends to keep to a smaller group of a couple close friends and his siblings (more usually Kinsey, as she's nearest his age). Although he will joke and make stupid comments and act like an idiot, he's a lot more mature than a lot of kids his age thanks to all this stuff he's been through. He's also more wary and less likely to open up to strangers than he used to be, thanks to a combination of his guilt and his new self-created identity as 'man of the house'. He acts like he's completely self-sufficient a lot of the time. Not to say that he won't accept or thank someone for their help if they give it to him, because he will, but he won't usually ask for it and doesn't like to admit he needs it. If someone helps him out, he'll be inclined to help them in return.
After Bode tells Tyler and Kinsey about the keys and they finally realise he's telling the truth and start using the keys as defence for themselves and the Keyhouse, Tyler uses the keys in a mostly practical, utalitarian way. He uses the keys that will help him protect himself and his people in the easiest and most effective way and doesn't experiment with them as much as Kinsey seems inclined to. He's also just plain more wary of the keys than she is because he still has his fear. Even after he uses the Head key to stick knowledge into his head once, he doesn't immediately leap to do it again, reasoning that maybe sometimes you need the experience of learning instead of just knowing something straight off. He yells at Bode when the kid uses the giant key to play cars with REAL cars with a little friend of his. He's more acutely aware and concerned about the danger to the family through the use of the keys than the other two kids are.
Tyler harbours a whole bunch of intense guilt about his father's murder. Although it wasn't actually his fault in any way, the arguments that he had had with his dad and his longing for something bad to happen (he'd specifically hoped for an earthquake, but still) so that he could get out of their holiday home added to the guilt. Most importantly, however, was the off-hand joking frustration he'd expressed to Sam Lesser after Sam had commented that sometimes he woke up thinking he should kill his dad. Tyler, fed up with his guidance counsellor father had replied, 'Well. You ever decide you want to kill your dad, do me a favor, and kill mine while you're at it.' Of course, Tyler didn't mean it—it was that teenage 'I hate my parents ugh' venting—but then Sam actually did it. He told Tyler as they fought that he only killed Rendell Locke because Tyler had asked him to and that he'd told Tyler's dad that Tyler had asked him to kill him before he shot him through the eye. Although he knows rationally that it wasn't his fault, particularly after finding out about the dark lady from Bode and her attacks, the thought that he caused his dad's death eats at him. He blames himself somewhere deep inside and his desperation to prove to himself that he's not that person, that he can be better than the boy that made that offhand comment, drives him to protect his siblings and his mum and uncle as best he can. His drive to act and be a protector basically entirely stems from his guilt, desperation and depression due to his dad's brutal murder.
Before his dad was killed, Tyler would have protested if anyone had tried to call him innocent, but the loss of innocence that he suffered when Sam murdered his dad and Sam's associate Al raped his mother, when Sam came after the three Locke children with a gun because Tyler knocked over paint tins after seeing his father shot, when Sam followed Tyler's paint trail down into the basement to kill him and Tyler fought a desperate fight with a brick and his fists to put down the crazy guy who'd destroyed his family's life, was obviously huge. Sam breaking out of prison, following the Lockes to Massachusetts and almost killing Tyler and Kinsey, then the continuing attacks by the dark lady have all taken their toll on Tyler and basically all he wants at this point is to not have to be scared that someone is going to come try to kill his entire family and he won't be able to stop it. Overall, Tyler just wants to feel safe and strong and sure again, things he hasn't completely felt since his dad was killed.
Of course, this is stuff he doesn't talk about, not even to his family, because when your mum is falling apart and spiralling into a drunken mess, your sister is near your age and literally fearless, and your little brother is six years old, you can't say anything to any of them. He can't tell his friends, because he's a teenage boy and that kind of opening up would be unacceptable, so these are his secret goals. His less secret goals are college and girls and not failing every single class in a new school. He doesn't want to be known as a victim, he wants to make his own high school identity, hence the hockey (which is the reason he crams his study notes into his head with the help of the Head key) and anything else that helps him become someone other than just the kid whose dad was murdered.
His initial reaction to Limbo will probably be to think it's something related to the keys (can you blame him?), most probably some sort of new attack or something by the dark lady, particularly because of his canon point. He'll be wary of the people and the place itself and probably look out for the lady to see if she shows up and demands the Omega key from him yet again. However, it probably won't take too long for him to realise that the people in Limbo aren't lying when they say they have no idea who the dark lady is or what keys he's talking about (if he chooses to talk about them, that is, which isn't a certainty) and after he figures out they actually are trapped there like he is as well, he'll drop the worst of the hostility and wariness. He won't instantly tell people all his secrets or his past or anything (particularly because he can and probably will take the opportunity to not be the kid with the murdered dad :c), but he'll start to open up and be more willing to trust people. It really depends on how his interactions with people go, but he will probably become attached to at least some of them and want to protect them (because protecting his people is important). And he'll be hella worried about Kinsey and Bode, because his conviction that this is down to the lady is probably not going to waver as she's got some bad magic and can do a lot of stuff and this kind of thing is not out of the realms of possibility for her as far as he knows. He's going to be looking for answers and a way out, especially if/when he finds the Keyhouse, because surely there's an answer in one of the keys.
History: THERE ARE LIKELY TO BE MANY, MANY SPOILERS IN HERE, UP TO AND INCLUDING STUFF FROM THE VERY START OF THE FIFTH TRADE, CLOCKWORKS. :V
Tyler Locke had a fairly normal childhood, living with his mum and dad, Rendell and Nina Locke, his younger sister Kinsey and younger brother Bode. The Locke family lived in San Francisco and visited Rendell's brother Duncan in their old family house, the Keyhouse, a few times as Tyler was growing up, though they hadn't been for a good three or four years at the time the canon starts. They had a pretty good family relationship, though as he got older and turned into a teenager, he and his dad butted heads a bit, as teenage boys often do. Not too long before the start of the canon, Tyler had had an argument with his dad at school and was sitting frustrated outside waiting for him to finish work and drive Tyler home. Sam Lesser (Rendell's future killer) commiserated briefly, making his apparent joke about wanting to kill his dad sometimes. Tyler, as I already said, replied with a flip, 'You ever decide you want to kill your dad, do me a favor, and kill mine while you're at it.' and thought nothing more of it.
The series itself starts with the Lockes on vacation in Willits, California. Tyler was longing to get out of there and have a good time with friends rather than spend time working on the holiday house with his dad. Painting is overrated. While he and his siblings were taking a break out in the backyard and Rendell and Nina were inside, a couple students from Tyler's school (where Rendell worked as a cousellor) rocked up to the house, saying that they were there to see Tyler. Both of them had been to see Mr. Locke as their guidance counsellor, and although it was a bit weird, Nina let them in. Big mistake.
Al Grubb was basically a thug along for the ride, there because of his lust for Nina Locke. He dragged her into the bedroom and raped her while Sam dealt with Rendell. Sam, however, was not a dumb thug. He had been manipulated by a dark lady (or a creature masquerading as a dark lady) trapped in the wellhouse at the Keyhouse, with her promising him a better life and all sorts of things (plus, probably using magic on him as well) if he would find Rendell Locke and get him to reveal the locations of two keys: the key to anywhere and the key to the black door. Despite holding a gun to his head, Rendell revealed nothing and Sam shot him through the eye, killing him instantly.
Tyler saw this happen through a window, and Kinsey and Bode heard the gunshots. They all tried to get away but Tyler, in shock from what he'd just seen, knocked over the paint tins, making a huge racket. Sam heard and came after the three kids with his gun. Tyler sent Kinsey up onto the roof to hide with Bode and headed down into the cellar himself. Sam followed the obvious paint trail down, talking all the time, telling Tyler he'd done it because Tyler had asked him to, but fortunately, Ty had taken off his paint-covered shoes and hidden in a place where he could jump Sam from behind. Armed only with a brick and his fists, he desperately attacked Sam and, somewhat miraculously, managed to avoid getting shot as he disarmed Sam and proceeded to beat him to unconsciousness. Then, he moved upstairs where Al was waiting, ready to attack Tyler—he'd counted the shots fired from the gun and knew there were no more bullets in it—but Nina got there first, chopping Al in the back of the head with an axe, killing him before he could do anything more to her family.
There was a funeral, of course, then the kids moved with their mother to live with their uncle in Keyhouse. They all spent some time adjusting to life again as they started new schools and a new life. Bode was the one that first found one of the keys. He found the Ghost key, that opens a door that allows a person to step out of their body as a ghost when they pass over the threshold. Bode started to spend a lot of time as a ghost, then eventually decided to tell Kinsey and Tyler about the key. He tried but they didn't believe him, of course. Instead, they just both thought he was making things up and carried on with their lives—Tyler spent quite a bit of this time seriously depressed, even considering suicide briefly. He'd just had enough of everything for a while.
Then Bode found the “echo” in the well, as she called herself. She told Bode she was his echo and he started spending time talking to her and hanging out in the wellhouse. She told him she couldn't get out of the wellhouse through a normal door, and asked him to get her a mirror and a pair of scissors so she could cut her hair. Bode, being the nice little six year old kid he is, got her the mirror and the scissors.
Sam Lesser was in prison at this point, but the dark lady was still able to talk to him through the water in the sink, thanks to her creepy magic. She could also give him things through it, and so Sam Lesser's cell is where Bode's nice mirror and pair of scissors went. Sam used them to break out, killing a number of guards on the way, and with the information the dark lady had given him, started on his journey to Massachusetts, to Keyhouse and to the lady in the well. The Lockes were told about his escape and police had been posted at the front of the house, but he snuck around across the water at the back. Nina had also bought a gun and told both Kinsey and Tyler where she kept it, just in case.
Sam travelled across country and murdered a bunch of people and managed to get to Keyhouse without too much trouble. He beat Kinsey with a flashlight until she passed out, then dragged her down into the basement, where he quietly locked Nina and Duncan into the wine cellar before asking Nina where he could find the two keys the dark lady wanted. She yelled for Tyler, who came downstairs to see what the trouble was, only to find Sam pointing a gun in his face. Sam kicked him down the stairs and beat him with a piece of timber before tying his hands and telling Nina through the door that he would kill Tyler then the other two kids if she didn't tell him where the keys were. Nina, thinking fast, told him that they were upstairs in a drawer—the drawer that really held the gun—and that Tyler could help him find what he was looking for. Tyler knew what she meant and Sam followed him upstairs.
Meanwhile, Bode had been having dreams about his father for a while and thinking about the echo in the well more closely; he had decided that she wasn't his echo and he didn't want to spend time with her any more. Unfortunately, he went to tell her this on the night Sam turned up on the Keyhouse peninsula. The lady knew that Sam had arrived and grabbed Bode, telling him that Sam would kill his entire family if he didn't do what she wanted. Bode agreed to go and find the Anywhere key so she could escape from the wellhouse in return for stopping Sam after she got out. He went and used the Ghost key to try to pinpoint the location of the Anywhere key, which eventually worked—it was hidden in Kinsey's favourite bracelet. In his haste to save his family, the little dude left the Ghost key in the lock on the door. Bode ran to her and took the bracelet from her unconscious body, telling Nina and Duncan that he was okay and was going to get help. He took the bracelet to the lady, who used it to vanish into the house without another word.
While this was going on, Sam and Tyler were fighting. Tyler had tried to get the gun, but Sam had caught him and taken it. Sam had turned his back and Tyler had slipped his tied hands from behind his back to his front and then made a break for it. He managed to get to a certain door, unlocking it and almost making it outside to yell for help. Sam caught up to him and they scuffled, Sam choking him—the struggle pushing Tyler through the doorway. The doorway that he'd just opened with the Ghost key. His spirit jumped out of his body and he figured he was dead for real, that Sam had actually killed him. His ghost self went to his mother when he thought about her, getting there as Sam was telling her that he'd had to kill Tyler. Ty desperately wanted to not be dead and his spirit jumped to the door. Finally, he remembered what Bode had told him about the key and the door: when you want to stop being dead, you go back through the door and you wake up in your own body.
So Ty woke up, attacked Sam and tried to take him out but failed. Sam grabbed a shovel and was about to beat him down with it when Kinsey woke up and took up Sam's gun, firing wildly and hitting him in a few placed. Sam ran for it, bleeding, knowing the gunshots would attract the cops. And then the dark lady from the well—now a young man, thanks to the Gender key—showed up. She promptly took Sam, snapped his neck and tossed him through the Ghost key door. (Yeah, Sam kind of got a raw deal. Even if he killed Tyler's dad.) Then the boy took the Ghost key before using the Anywhere key to escape the house. The Lockes were left to clear up the mess, the police came and examined Sam's body and everything was apparently over.
And then a new boy in town named Zach Wells befriended Tyler and the other Locke kids. Zach, of course, was the dark lady from the well.
(BACKSTORY: The lady had been a boy called Lucas Carravaggio (also known as Dodge, which is what Sam knew him as) and he had been a friend of Tyler's dad when they were teenagers. Rendell had shared the knowledge of the keys with a group of his friends (they'd used the powers of the keys to put on a fantastic production of The Tempest using real magic for the effects, for example) and they had been inseparable. They had ventured into the Drowning Caves under Keyhouse and found the black door, the one the Omega key locks. They must have opened the door, Lucas was infected or taken over by a parasitic demon thing from the other side of the black door (and the canon that I've read hasn't revealed all of this story yet, so this is a bit of a best guess scenario, but:) and a few of Rendell's other friends were killed there. Ellie Whedon, who later became a teacher at the school—and Kinsey's running coach—was one who survived and, as she had been in love with Lucas, saved him ~somehow~. And so, the dark demon thing got out and was free to try to get the keys. It particularly wants the Omega key so it can let the rest of the demons out onto the world. Rendell hadn't trusted Luke after the day in the Drowning Caves, though it seems like he hadn't exactly known about the creature; he had hidden the keys from Luke after that. )
Back in the present, Zach was recognised as Luke by a couple of people, first a teacher at the school who had taught Rendell, Dodge and the rest of their crew when they were in high school. Zach murdered the teacher to keep him from snooping further and uncovering his identity. Tyler and Kinsey both found the murder hard to deal with, as they had had a lot of nasty experience with death; they both hung out with Zach to help them cope. Kinsey started to form a little crush on Zach as well, though nothing came of it yet. Around this time, Tyler was asked to join the ice hockey team, and also met Jordan out of school for the first time when he embarrassed himself by getting caught sitting on her motorbike. Also, Zach took Tyler surfing and on the way back to Keyhouse, they ran into Tyler's uncle, who was leaving Keyhouse to finally get back to his life with Brian after getting the family settled. Duncan half-recognised Zach but couldn't pinpoint where from. He had been about 8 years old when he last saw Luke. Zach immediately knew he had to do something about it.
Fortunately for Duncan (because had this not happened, Zach would probably just have murdered him straight up), Bode had found the Head key in a pond at the house. He had been trying to work out what it did for a while and finally realised it fit in a keyhole at the back of a person's neck and opened their head. With little boy exuberance, he showed Tyler and Kinsey, to prove that the stuff he had been talking about with the Ghost key was true as well. They both freaked out, naturally, because seeing your little brother open the top of his head is just a little bit crazy. But through experimentation—Bode shoving a Chef's Bible cookbook in his head and being able to regurgitate entire recipes word for word, for a start—the two older kids realised that it was all true. Tyler put all his weeks of study notes (and possibly a textbook) for the classes he was behind in into his head. Then, in a fit of bad judgement, he decided it was an awesome idea to share the power of the Head key with two kids he barely knew. That is, Jordan and Zach. He showed them by opening up the top of his head in a “surprise!” kind of way, and naturally Jordan freaked out. She told Tyler to basically fuck off with his crazy shit and left.
Zach, however, pretended to be amazed and acted like this was all brand new information for him. He helped Tyler help Kinsey take out her sense of fear and her ability to cry from her head, because she was sick of being scared and crying all the time. Later, he took the Head key while the Locke kids were sleeping and used the Anywhere key to take a visit to their uncle. He used the Head key to open up Duncan's head and take out any memories of Lucas and the memory of his visit that night, but he hadn't known about Duncan's boyfriend Brian. He ran into him in their kitchen. Thanks to the fact Zach had a big-ass gun and clearly had no qualms about killing him, Brian ran out of the house and got hit by a ute (belonging to some homophobic ladies he and Duncan had run into and had a scuffle with in a bar, which is what Duncan assumed had happened when he found Brian later) and fell into a coma. Zach basically shrugged and went to put the Head key back in Kinsey's room; she woke up and nearly caught him out but he palmed her off with a quick lie and they shared a kiss.
Tyler woke up to his mum coming into his room drunk and telling him about Brian, saying she needed to go to Provincetown to see Duncan. Tyler volunteered to take care of Bode and Kinsey while she was gone for however long she needed to go for. After getting back to bed, Nina heard some weird noises (actually Zach fighting with Sam Lesser's ghost—which is still hanging around Keyhouse) and went to see what it was. Zach managed to get out of there without being seen, but he accidentally left behind the Echo key, which Nina found and gave to the police detective who had been assigned to the case before she left to go see Duncan. Then, after an awkward confrontation with the newly-fearless Kinsey about how much she was drinking, Nina left for the night.
And then came the first huge assault on the three kids and the Keyhouse. Zach broke into the house and found the Shadow key, using it to attack them. He wrapped himself in shadows that took the form of the dark lady and tried to get Tyler to tell him where the Echo key and the Omega key were. Tyler, hanging upside down in a shadow cocoon, refused with a macho “I can't wait to climb down from here and get large on you, bitch.” The detective from earlier chose this perfect time to rock up to the house again, with the Echo key, and Zach sent a couple shadows to take him out and to use the Head key to make him forget he ever had the key and that he'd wanted to come to Keyhouse that night. Kinsey and Bode, armed with an emergency beacon flashlight, managed to get the Echo key and the Head key from the two shadows, which pissed Zach off. He called all the shadows to him and formed into a huge shadow creature to chase down Kinsey and Bode with. Tyler was left alone and ran to use the Giant key to even the odds. He became a giant and defeated the shadows with the help of a lighthouse, though Zach managed to get away without being seen. Tyler found the Shadow key and the crown and took them back to the house, picking up his brother and sister on the way. This was really the first time he connected completely with the house, calling it their home and saying that the kids weren't going to run from shadows there, not ever. He also took the memories of the shadows out of Bode's head to protect the kid.
Nina got back to a trashed house and freaked out a little, but Tyler managed to calm her down a bit. However, her drinking was getting worse. One night, Bode came to her crying as she was watching an old videotape of Rendell—he'd fallen off a stool in the bathroom trying to get a new key. She patched him up and then got the key down. It opened a small cupboard in the bathroom, which she shoved a few broken things into to get them out of the way. However, as this is Keyhouse, when she opened the cupboard, the things were fixed again. She experimented drunkenly with the power, breaking plates and fixing them again, then finally working up the courage to take Rendell's ashes and put them in, hoping it would fix him. After it didn't work immediately, she figured that maybe it just would take more time, so went to clean herself up in preparation for Rendell returning. Coming back to it later, she saw what she thought was Rendell in the bathroom and went to embrace him. Of course, it wasn't Rendell, it was Tyler. Nina freaked out, yelling at Tyler and pulling the urn out of the cupboard. Tyler tried to take it from her but it ended up falling to the floor and breaking. This resulted in a fight between Kinsey and Nina where Kinsey brought up the rape and Nina slapped her in front of Tyler and, more importantly, Bode. After more emotional confrontation, the kids started cleaning up the house. Tyler took the bathroom—and in his dad's ashes, he found the Omega key, the key to the black door.
A number of things happened after this—Bode continued to find more keys, Kinsey started dating Zach, Tyler started dating Jordan. The shadow attack marked the start of a continuing series of attacks on the house. Zach told the Lockes that he had to travel to Boston to work on a project every weekend, and almost every weekend the kids were attacked with new key powers. Tyler had hidden the Omega key somewhere, not even sharing the location with Kinsey, despite her urging (and Zach's), so most of the attacks were focused on him. Kinsey, without fear, was reckless with her friends and their emotions and ended up isolating herself. Jordan cheated on Tyler, as a way of self-sabotage and pushing him away, which worked. He got harder and more robotic, using the Hercules key to give him extra strength to keep holding the family together and protecting them from the dark lady, but also as a way to not feel weak and out of control in his own life.
Then his uncle's boyfriend Brian woke up from his coma, and he remembered what had happened with the boy who had inexplicably been in his house. He told Duncan and Tyler about this, basically describing Zach down to his super cool silver lip ring. And Ty started to put it together. He remembered one of the attacks—where both Bode and the dark lady had been animals, thanks to the Animal key—when the lead wolf attacking him and Kinsey had been male. And he started thinking that maybe the dark lady was a dark guy... and maybe that dark guy was the friend who had mysteriously transferred to school just after Sam Lesser was killed and the dark lady got out of the wellhouse, the friend who was now dating his sister. He started thinking about the timing of the attacks, always on weekends when Zach was nowhere to be found, and the way the son of Ellie Whedon—who Zach was living with, who said he was her cousin—had told Tyler that Zach was the enemy, which Ty had just assumed was in the context of make believe.
And then he fell asleep, planning to get more proof, and woke up in Limbo.
3rd person sample: The salt in the water stung in Tyler's eyes, the corners of his mouth and the scrape on his arm from where he'd grazed himself on a rock working on the garden as he dragged himself out of the waves, coughing the brine out of his throat. He had no idea how he'd wound up in the ocean. Last thing he remembered, he'd been in his room falling asleep after getting back from the hospital, then bam, he was waking up in waves, hacking cold sea water from his lungs.
Dragging himself—and his sodden, sandy clothes—to an upright position was an effort and he growled under his breath as he did it, his irritation distracting him from the freakout brewing in his chest. He'd woken up in a weird place through some weird unknown means, and when weird stuff went down it was usually related to the keys. And the dark lady, whatever she actually was. And neither Kinsey or Bode was anywhere to be seen. Shit.
"Where are you, you bitch?" Ty asked, a little louder than a mutter but softer than actually calling out with the intention of being heard, eyes searching the darkening beach. The sun looked like it was going down. Waiting for something to happen, anything, Tyler told himself that whatever else the dark lady was going to throw at him, he was ready. With that thought, he groped in his pocket for the Hercules key and was starting to slide the necklace over his head when he realised his hat was missing.
He cursed and looked around, not seeing it. After a few tense moments, Tyler spotted the dull glint of the dying sun reflecting off his dad's fishing lure. He cursed again, under his breath this time, and waited for what seemed like forever, until he realised that if the dark lady was planning to throw something nasty at him, she would have done it by now. Slowly he relaxed a little, but kept the Hercules key where it was. Making his squelchy way over to his hat where it was being licked at by the waves, he tugged his soaked sweatshirt over his head and started wringing it out. He grabbed the hat and settled it into place, touching the lure with a gentle tap then looking around. However he'd got here, wherever here was, he needed to find his brother and sister.
"Kinsey? Bode?" he called, a bit louder now, as he moved towards the weird buildings. No answer. "...anyone?"
1st person sample: Look, I-- [There's a pause as he clears his throat. He sounds more brusque when he goes on:] I'm having trouble processing all of this. So I go to sleep at home, then I wake up on the beach, being tossed around in the waves like an idiot. Sure, yeah, I can see how she could do that.
[Another pause, and he sounds a bit more irritated as he continues:] I don't know where I am, and it doesn't even look like anything I've ever seen before. Yeah, I can work out explanations for that too, I guess. Hell, even all you other people out there, if you're people at all—she could make that happen.
But why would she bother bringing my stuff here? How does that make any sense at all?
[There's a longer pause and then a sigh.] What even is this place?