The Post Office
The Post Office is as pristine as can be, and the Postman greets you with a cheerful, toothy smile. "Hey howdy, neighbor!" he chirps (and is it just you, ladies, or is he eying you up and down?) "Good to see you, good to see you! How's the family? Great, great! Here's your package, and- oh, gosh, I nearly forgot, there's a tiiiiny little processing fee- if you'd be so good as to sign on this dotted line..."
He hands you a sheet of paper, most of it covered in meaningless addresses and stamps. There's just enough room for you to sign your name and claim your package... if you so choose.
---
And choose you will! For unlike the free regain packages that arrive at your house after most events, packages claimed from the Post Office come with a price. In order to claim their regain, characters will need to give up something in exchange! Upon signing on the dotted line, your character will instantly lose one of the following, to be chosen by the player:
Body parts. Eyes, ears limbs, organs; the Mailman is not picky about what he receives. What does he do with them? You don't know, and you're not entirely certain you want to. Upon your signing, the sacrificed body part disappears immediately and violently, bleeding out as if it had just been surgically (or perhaps not-so-surgically) removed. If the character dies from their wound, they will awaken with it healed the next morning, but the affected body part still missing. (For example, if a character loses an arm and dies before receiving treatment, they will awaken the next morning to find their arm stump fully healed and no longer bleeding, but the arm itself still gone.) Lost body parts that will always be fatal (the heart, brain, major organs, etc.) are not considered viable sacrifices. If the character is regaining some kind of regeneration ability and sacrifices a body part to get it, the regained ability will not allow them to regenerate that specific body part. Similarly, dying and coming back from the dead will not restore sacrificed body parts.
For body parts, the importance of the lost body part corresponds to the importance of the regain. Things like hair, kidneys, or digits will only be allowed for smaller, less important regains (mementos from home, clothing, minor powers), while major regains (powerful items or abilities, mainly) will necessitate the loss of important organs or limbs. We trust you to judge what's minor and what's major, but if we feel that your character isn't sacrificing enough for the desired regain, you may be asked to sacrifice more. (Trying to sacrifice your character's nose hair in exchange for the ability to bend reality to their will is not going to fly.)
Memories. You can give up a memory or series of memories in order to claim a regain! Memories must sacrificed in increments of time. A character could sacrifice their memory of everything that happened between the ages of 6 to 12, or everything that happened between a certain span of months; they could not, however, sacrifice memories such as "my parents" or "how to whistle". These lost amounts of time are "filled in" with false memories of the character's life in Mayfield for an equivalent amount of time. For example, if Tim McGenericcharacter forgets the eight months that he and his friends spent saving the world from a demon monster, he will instead find that memory replaced with eight months spent in Mayfield playing baseball, going to school and eating his assigned mother's home cooking.
As with body parts, the importance of the regain will correspond to the importance of the lost memory. This can get pretty nebulous: years' worth of time will generally be worth more than months or weeks, but Those Weeks My Friends And I Spent Saving The World will be worth a lot more than That Year I Spent Learning To Juggle In Cabo. Again, we typically trust you guys to decide what's a fair sacrifice, but if we feel you're not giving up enough in exchange for the desired regain, we'll request more before we can give it to you.
Regains. Characters can give up regains already received in order to obtain a new regain! If you've grown tired of a character having one regain and wish to exchange it for another, this is the option for you. Pretty simple stuff!
Regains obtained from events are pretty much good to be exchanged for anything; you were able to pick whatever regain you wanted back then, so we don't really have a problem with you trading it in for something different now. Regains obtained from the two Post Office methods detailed above, however, will be handled on a case-by-case basis. Giving up your nose hair in exchange for a photo of your pet squirrel and then trying to exchange said photo for the power of omniscience isn't going to work, for example. If you're using this method to exchange one regain for another, make sure you specify how the regain you're trading in was obtained.
---
You may use the Post Office to trade in for a regain once every two weeks. Characters, unless already tipped off by a character who's already experienced the process, will not know that they are about to sacrifice something. In your comment, please OOCly specify what you would like your character to lose (you can do this in brackets/parentheses/small text at the bottom of the comment, however you like); however, try to make it a big or small enough loss to be appropriate to the power of the regain. This is the honor system, but we'll let you know if the loss is too small for the regain.
If you're regretting the trade you've performed, no worries! You can reverse the trade whenever you want, just comment here. The regain will be taken away, but your sacrificed memory/body part/regain will be restored. Similarly, you can use up a post-event "free" regain to reclaim something you sacrificed here at the Post Office. We can answer any questions here, but be clear about what is OOC, as this post is primarily for IC purposes.
Upon your signing, the Postman cheerfully pats you on the back, completely ignoring the fact that you may possibly be bleeding out all over his nice marble floor, and hands you your package. If you sacrificed a body part, he's holding it. You're free to try to take it back from him! The keyword, if you may indulge us a cliché, is try.
And with a wink and a laugh, the Postman vanishes behind into a locked back room, not to be seen again until the next package recipient comes a-calling.