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[NWoD] (IC) Rhapsody: When the Night falls
DJP3710
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Rhapsody
Prelude-Welcome to the Depths
Every dream up until now has been locked on rails, your actions (or lack thereof) completely impossible to oppose. All you could do was stand there and watch, an observer locked in your own body. Tonight, however, things have changed…
You’re standing in the middle of a city cross-street. There are no cars on the road, no pedestrians on the sidewalk, and none of the noises you’d expect from the city. This is that place, you know it unquestioningly: you’ve been here enough to recognize the lack of color, how everything exists in shades of black.
This alone is an oddity. Every time you’ve dreamt of this place, you were standing on a beach and facing the ocean; until now, the locale has never changed. Now you’re in a section of civilization, though. Well, close enough, anyway: the multi-story buildings offer no lights or noise, towering dead hulks of what they should be, and the lack of any activity on the street doesn’t help to ease the creeping otherworldly aura of this place.
Not only that, but you can move of your own free will. Someone has taken you “off the rails.” Looking around, you see vaguely familiar faces: these are other humans from your dreams. All of you stand out in stark contrast compared to everything else, drops of colored paint in oil.
What do you do?
Prelude-Welcome to the Depths
Every dream up until now has been locked on rails, your actions (or lack thereof) completely impossible to oppose. All you could do was stand there and watch, an observer locked in your own body. Tonight, however, things have changed…
You’re standing in the middle of a city cross-street. There are no cars on the road, no pedestrians on the sidewalk, and none of the noises you’d expect from the city. This is that place, you know it unquestioningly: you’ve been here enough to recognize the lack of color, how everything exists in shades of black.
This alone is an oddity. Every time you’ve dreamt of this place, you were standing on a beach and facing the ocean; until now, the locale has never changed. Now you’re in a section of civilization, though. Well, close enough, anyway: the multi-story buildings offer no lights or noise, towering dead hulks of what they should be, and the lack of any activity on the street doesn’t help to ease the creeping otherworldly aura of this place.
Not only that, but you can move of your own free will. Someone has taken you “off the rails.” Looking around, you see vaguely familiar faces: these are other humans from your dreams. All of you stand out in stark contrast compared to everything else, drops of colored paint in oil.
What do you do?
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"Looks like we're allowed to move and talk this time" said the rather plain-looking middle-aged woman quietly, and quite a bit more calmly than you'd expect given the situation. "Assuming you aren't creatures of darkness yourselves, I'd be careful what you say here. We are not in Kansas anymore, and we probably don't want to know what happened to poor Toto."
Unfortunately, even when you had previously researched this place, while having access to libraries and your own personal pool of information, your results had been sparse. Worlds entirely made of black came up in modern art, and in a variety of paintings, but you very much doubted they were actually talking about this place. For all intents and purposes, either information about this place was out of your reach or it was an entirely new phenomena.
"Well, this is new," Drew says to himself after finishing his investigation, taking a couple of steps back experimentally, before a lazy jump forward. "Yeah, definitely new. Heh."
He's dressed well, overdyed black bootcut jeans over a pair of harness boots (also black), with an orange silk shirt and a black blazer. He brushes blond hair out of his eyes, and turns to face the other speaker.
"Oh, I could move around and talk before, kinda, on the beach," Drew replies. "But it was real hard, now it seems pretty easy." He steps forward to offer Celia a hand, while his other rest on his chest. "Drew. Drew Kristoph. I've been here before, pretty regularly, but only at night, y'know? Pretty sure I've seen you here before, actually. It's hard to remember faces when you can't quite control your eyes to get a good look at them, though."
3DS FCode: 1993-7512-8991
An ugly scarred face was framed by a pair of sunglasses and short cropped gray hair. Beat up black leather boots, dirty old denims, and a tight leather motorcycle jacket patched in many places with a skull and a stained, faded gang affiliation stitched to the back. Not a young man by any means, but the body underneath his worn clothes clearly betrayed the "joint build" of a long-time convict.
In the world outside this one... this might have been a monster. Here? There wasn't really a way of knowing.
There are definitely pieces of locations from Atlas City in this dark place, certainly. Could this be someone's dream version of Atlas, or maybe more appropriately a nightmare? That's certainly a possibility. If this really is a dreamscape, though, it's all open to interpretation.
(For the rest of the scene, Drew is welcome to, in orange font, make assumptions or interpretations of things he sees in this world. During Storyteller responses, his assumptions and interpretations will receive answers such as "That certainly sounds possible" or "That's not very likely." A Hot/Cold Style system)
Down the street comes a voice, though something about it makes it sound much farther away than just that. A man, features obscured by darkness and body slightly translucent, comes rushing down the street, shouting into a cell phone. "If that bitch wants all my money, you can tell her she'll get it when she calls me, instead of talking to me through you, you god damn vulture!" He reaches the end of the street, just a few feet from the group, before dissipating into smoke.
He started to pace. His left hand reached over to grab onto his right arm out of tension. Oddly he became aware of something he never was aware of in his dreams before; materiality. Glancing down he saw that he was wearing his almond thermal henley; he wasn't wearing that when he went to sleep. He definitely wasn't wearing the dark brown cargo pants or the black Doc Martens. He definitely didn't have the seemingly expensive belt with the archaic looking lion belt buckle.. he wasn't completely sure if he had that in real life.
"If that bitch wants all my money, you can tell her she'll get it when she calls me, instead of talking to me through you, you god damn vulture!"
He raised his head and glanced over. The sickening feeling he had since waking up just increased as he saw him disappear; its not like he didn't expect something odd to happen in a nightmare.
"So we're in a world of dreams...a world of nightmares, from the looks of it. For now, you can call me 'C'."
"Okay, okay. First thing's fir-" he starts to say, before being interrupted by the loud gentleman on the cellphone, who then dissolves into mist. "Right. Okay. Uh... so, you familiar with Atlas City, C?" he asks Celia. "How about the rest of you, unless you're all about to... fade away. Second thing. Whose dream is this?"
Drew's pretty certain that he's dreaming, but he's also certain that this is Someone Else's Dream, who most likely is not present. Hot/Cold?
3DS FCode: 1993-7512-8991
"Hey, you two aren't going to vanish also right?" he asks almost desperately "I.. I don't want to find out what happens when you do."
On the other side of the sheet is a black arrow. As you turn, you find the arrow continues to point in a single direction, turning like the needle of a compass. It aims down the street.
Sticking to the sidewalk, he runs off in the direction shown on the coupon as fast as he can.
When the advertisement lands at his feet, Drew squats down with one elbow on his knee to pick it up. He scans the image and the words quickly, then lets a low whistle escape his lips. "Looks like an invite from the top, guys," he says. "Or if not from the top, from someone who knows something about the place, at least. Name's a bit worrying, though. Mephisto, as in, Mephistopheles. The demon who tempted Faust in the play of the same name. I wouldn't offer to trade anything with him, but this..." he waves his advertisement about, noticing the arrow on the back. "This seems free. And hello, is this some sort of compass?"
After investigating the strange shifting arrow, Drew looks up, perhaps to see if he can see the moon.
If the dream itself has no 'soul', can I sense the life-force or vitality of any other people in this dream? Specifically, the other PCs - can I identify them as something from home, something foreign to the environment we are in now?
3DS FCode: 1993-7512-8991
"Well, if Mephisto wants to offer me a free coffee, I better not refuse. I could go with a coffee anyways, an Irish one hopefully." He begins following the arrow as one of the others runs off. He turns back to the ones remaining. "I don't know if this is a dream, or a nightmare, or something worse, but I can only think going off alone is a bad idea. Maybe you're all figments of my booze-filled imagination. Maybe not. Either way, I'd suggest we stick together."
Dan reaches under his tan trenchcoat, wondering is his gun is with him.
As the group follows the directions of the arrows, they see more things like the man on the cellphone: phantasmal images of people in moments of extreme hatred, jealousy, lust, all of which quickly fade.
At one point, a car literally manifests right before it rushes up the sidewalk, passing clean through Drew with no noticeable sensations. The woman inside the car is screaming angrily out her window, the faraway echo of her voice lasting only for a few moments before the whole car dissipates. Whatever these shades are, they seem unable to interact with anyone.
"If any of you ain't coming... fine. I think I got someone to talk to."
After the twentieth street turn, though, something happens. The air rings with the sound of a bells; thick iron bells, the bells of a clock-tower or a perhaps a church.
And then the starless sky is lit up by a rising ball of blood-red light. It lifts up high above, illuminating everything in a crimson haze. The surrounding streets seem to greedily lap up the light emitting from the giant sphere, muting what would normally be blindingly bright. Regardless, the addition of color, any color, is such a shock it's almost mesmerizing.
And then a scream of feral rage pierces the night, following by a chorus of similar cries. Every hair on your body stands on end, an almost animal reaction to that sound.
Another scream, this one of terror, comes from further up the street. "Help me! Someone, please help me!" A woman races around the corner; not a translucent phantom, but another real person. Her green dress is torn and dirty, her eyes wide with surprise and terror.
Then she disappears underneath a thing that lands on her. It's bigger than a horse, and far more deadly-looking. Four equally muscular clawed limbs, all attached to the over-muscled and over-sized torso of a man. Except there's no head, just a far-too-large black ribcage, rippling with grotesquely powerful-looking muscles.
She lets out one terrified scream, and then its ribcage body opens with a sickening crack, revealing the head hidden inside: a snarling canine-like skull lunges out, engulfing the woman's head in its jaws and biting down. Her screams are cut off, and after a few seconds it spits her out with a new addition; there is some kind of squid thing wrapped around her head like a mask, completely covering her whole skull; she lies there, twitching in obvious agony and making no attempt to remove it.
All of this happened in the span of about eight seconds.
Turning its revealed head towards the group, the monster's red eyes glow and it lifts up its canine appendage, roaring. The meaning behind the noise is obvious.
You're next.
The arrows, which were originally pointing ahead, all unanimously turn towards an alley to the left.
"Did... did you see that?" he asks the others, now visible shaken. "Whoever's responsible for this dream has some pretty strong emotional problems, huh." He's not so interested in the manifestations of deadly sin now, and instead stays closer to the people he's with - dabs of colour in an otherwise black world.
Later, the rising moon catches his attention. "Oh, that can't be good," he muses, grimacing at the red light that now suffuses the entire cut-and-paste city of nightmare.
And then, violence. Drew's eyes widen, and at first, he seems about to step forward to help the woman, until she's pushed to the ground by the deformed monster, and violated. As soon as the thing turns to look at him, he glances down at his 'invitation', and dashes into the indicated ally after Aedan.
"Never had a nightmare about those Alien movies before," he gasps, mostly to himself, as he sprints like his life depended on it.
Any hints on what the moon may signify? Even if it's just a common dream interpretation of a blood-red moon, or somesuch?
I don't think I need to ask to see if that girl just got 'harvested'. This is where we find out how important it is to not have the lowest speed in a survival horror game. I think Drew has the lowest speed, doesn't he?
3DS FCode: 1993-7512-8991
The revolver came out in a shaky hand, and Dan gulps. A shriek, and a woman screaming. She's not like the others, not a reflection, and before anyone can move, she's...she's...dead or worse.
"Yaaaaahhhhhh!" Dan yells firing a couple shots that had no way of hitting as he turns to run. His eye catches the paper's arrow changing. "THIS WAY!!!" He bellows, taking off into the alley.
As he ran down the alley, Hank's words were percussive, each syllable hitting the side of Dan's facewith a palpable wave of heat and malice.
At least he knew where he could get a gun if he had to... but he had a feeling that guns weren't going to be much help in Hell.
Everyone is about halfway down the alley when the creature comes barreling in behind them, letting out another reverberating cry. This sound is echoed in the distance, a call to arms by its fellows. It launches, claws outstretched and ready to pull both Hank and Drew down...
"You motherfucker, I told you to stay away from my daughter!" Whether by luck or something else, a phantasm materializes right in front of it, a portly and sweaty man holding a shotgun. He fires down the alleyway at a barely-visible running figure, the shot lined up perfectly with the monster's chest. The jolt from the shadowy gun doesn't seem to hurt it, but it definitely stops the creature's forward momentum enough for everyone to clear the alley.
Street upon street, one after another, everyone runs. And every time their monstrous pursuer is about to get them, a car appears out of nowhere or a pair of arguing figures phase in, offering just enough interference to stop the monster in its final moments. This can't be luck, but it doesn't seem like the phantoms are actively working against the monster, either.
Finally, you spill out onto a street much wider than the previous ones. And it's here you finally see it, a big neon (or at least what would be, had there been any color) sign of the steaming coffee symbol on your coupons. "Mephisto's Coffee: A Devilishly Good Flavor" says the lettering over the small coffee shop.
Unfortunately, what awaits farther down the street does a great job in crushing any inspired hope. At least four more of those creatures are waiting, and not far behind you comes not only your original pursuer, but another of its ilk: you're trapped.
The arrows point at the coffee shop's door, while the four creatures in front and the two in back let out triumphant cries.
Stamina + Athletics rolls
In this situation, one character can "transfer" one success to another (as in helping pull someone along, etc). Now also might be a good time to use Willpower, just suggesting.
Drew: Since the creatures only showed up after the appearance of the moon, they are definitely linked. The fact that the moon has color, as opposed to everything else, also suggests it is something foreign to this place, or at least not naturally occurring.
Drew has a total of 3 dice in Stamina+Athletics, he's not so hot. Willpower adds an automatic success, right?
3DS FCode: 1993-7512-8991
There are no creatures between you and the shop, but considering how fast they run it won't take the lot of them long to overtake you, hence the "hauling ass" roll.
I can do the rolls for anyone that doesn't or can't do it themselves right now. Just let me know through the OOC channel, including whether you want to use a point of willpower and whatnot.
3DS FCode: 1993-7512-8991
Drew: 3 successes (1 point of Willpower used)
Aedan: 4 successes (1 point of Willpower used)
Jeremy: 3 successes (1 point of Willpower used)
Dan: 2 successses
No, you can just transfer 1 success (per character) to another character. There's no Willpower cost to do that. You can use Willpower to increase the number of rolls, which increases your odds of getting successes.
Using one point of willpower for the test, giving one success to whoever gets the lowest.
3DS FCode: 1993-7512-8991
As they proceed through the streets and things begin to "save" them, she quickly realizes they're being herded...like sheep.
"I...hate...being...herded." she panted, as she gave it one last push to get into the shop.
Celia has 4 dice in sta+athletics- will use a willpower point on the roll for 7 dice total.
That pulse is the only thing in your ears.
Your heart is still beating in Hell.
Sometimes that's as good as it gets.
a ten to roll again: 1d10 5 fack
three successes
Then the door shuts, the bell hanging over its frame chiming cheerfully. The windows on this side are pitch black, offering no explanation as to why those monster haven't come crashing through already.
The group find themselves standing in a coffee shop, similar to a franchise someone might see on any street corner. Quiet, relaxing music plays in the background, and the smell of freshly-brewed coffee lingers in the air. Unlike outside, this shop is shaded in black and white, like an old movie. Shadows linger around the counter, a few bright lamps highlighting a number of tables and chairs.
"Hello Wanderers," says the man behind the counter, all but his outline hidden by the shadows. "I'm so glad you could come. My name is Mephisto, proprietor of this fine establishment."
"I assume I haven't been harvested yet.." a wry smile on his face,l even though he at a shadowless figure.
A bead a sweat drops down the side of his forehead. He taps on the fine print on the sheet .
"..aside from that. Hows your day going, Mr. Mephisto?" a confident smile on his face , largely out of relief from escaping the creature and largely because