Cazin saw the weird, unique demons starting to spread out, and he knew what he must do. Without another thought, he lobbed the shield module at these new, far more threatening demons with all the strength he had obtained from countless years of hard hauling, sending the module flying like a missile. He then immediately tried to dash into a nearby building, hoping things were far less hellish within.
[Evil In The Air: 5+1]
You whirl around in a mighty put, sending the module rocketing toward the floating greater fiends - it flies with a terrifying hum, outputting impressive heat as it covers the distance in less than a second... and then stops. The fiend you threw it at unerringly appears to have raised a finger, and suddenly a silence has fallen over the alley as all motion save you and your five watchers has ceased. You hear speech as one of the fiends gestures at the module, then at you for a second, making unutterable sounds of argument. Another interrupts him with a cunning drone of thousands of beating wings. A fourth points at you once again and balls its many fingers into a clawed fist, gesturing upward as it makes what would be surely be a stirring speech to anybody with the eldritch organs to perceive its otherworldly subtleties.
By that point you've started running, and they've started arguing in earnest as the module hangs there - the final thing you hear as you spring through the hallways of the evacuated tenement is the sound of the fifth, the one you aimed the module at, unmistakably laughing, its voice making a sort of music of many overlaying tones suggesting levity, fury, sadness, relief, bitterness and triumph, and over that you hear the rising sound of the module as time begins to flow once more, and the laughter bleeds into the incomprehensible roar that follows in the moment afterward, an explosion that makes your ears bleed as the shield module erupts into a catastrophic kinetic malfunction, followed by a catastrophic spontaneous detonation of all the munitions of the security forces held in that spot, followed by a wild discharge of pure magic as many demons die in the same millisecond, in a probabilistic cascade of disaster you know to be the swan song of a being older than the stars themselves, caught out by a bizarre twist of fate at last.
A silence - a real one this time - descends on the street right afterward.
You are clear from danger.
Turn into a bat and GTFO (go home). Considering the state of everything around me, I don't really have enough time to drink that bleeding person's blood. A real shame, that.
Sorry for missing last turn.
You take to the skies as you leap and reform into a bat, interrupted briefly by the smoke as you rise above the rest, leaving the guard bleeding in your wake as you notice something large and unmistakably dangerous flying up and past you toward, as far as you can tell, empty space.
[Thunder In The Sky: 5]
A dreadful sense of premonition overtakes you as the longest moment of your life ensues, time seemingly dilating as you try to fly up and away from the carnage and ruin about to occur, getting as high up as the rooftop when the flying module violently erupts into a wave of space-warping kinetic discharge that you ride half-misted along the streets, getting past the scattered few security checkpoints past the barricade as you hear the soft and distant sounds of the security presence continuing to mobilize along the streets after the catastrophic destruction of one of their key cordon points in some manner of karmic cascade of mass destruction. A few pieces of artillery rain down on the rest of Hell from the exploded security checkpoint, the orgy of destruction having left naught but a three-block radius of leveled structures where Death's Gate used to be. Leaving it behind for good, you start shuffling to the graveyard.
You are clear from danger.
(Apologies for the delay)
"I could just go, but... Eh. Jal seems like a good luck charm for me. I mean, he doesn't have much else going for him, so I won't derive him of that."
Turn back into human and walk through the security presence. However, if Jal runs into trouble, leap up and stuff his bat form into my pocket (don't ask), then proceed through security like nothing happened.
Oh, and if theres any dying folks on the ground, drain them sneakily.
[A Killer's In The Bloodshot Streets: 6]
You've never been good at turning into humans, to be terribly honest, can never get the beard right, but you do manage to regain your own fetching form as you slide down the side of the building on the other end of the security checkpoint and proceed to start walking away briskly from the giant demon-security fight right behind you.
While this wasn't the plan, you also happen to be skating away from an explosion in the process - the street behind you explodes first in a flameless wave of pure directed force and spacetime manipulation, mangling and crushing most everything already there. Then everything in the street that could feasibly explode (and indeed more than a few things that you wouldn't expect to) proceed to catastrophically detonate all at once, including a massive overabundance of artillery shells that blasts out the windows from here to nearly the nearest topside elevator and sends you rocketing forward along the street and, after a valiant but doomed attempt at a right turn, straight through the window of a drugstore with a resounding , a shopkeeper with a shotgun diving out from the counter and only barely refraining from filling you with a flechette volley as he notices you squarely lodged in his opiate display.
Holy shit, says the storekeeper, flush with what to your eyes looks like a more than adequate amount of blood, are you all right? Thought you were, like, one o' them demon types or what have you.
Mmh, you respond, bathed in synthetic morphine analogues that seep into your glass-related wounds that, being that you're a vampire, completely fail to bleed.
The shopkeeper begins to lower her shotgun, but not too quickly - you
aren't one of them demon types, are ya?
You look her in the eye, smiling gently. C'mere, you whisper. The shotgun is lowered as her own eyes grow wide, and she begins to absentmindedly walk toward you. You take her hand, rising out of the display, pull out the larger bits of glass with her help, and lean into her ear to whisper thanks. Then you bite down.
You are clear from danger.
Stumble in, Mr whats his name probably won't try to kill me?
[Down In The Tunnels Where The Deadly Are Rising: 2]
You stumble in with an incoherent plea to not be shot - and as it happens, you aren't, Yeller just looks up at you from his pint of whiskey and seems briefly nonplussed as suddenly a tone kicks up in the corner of the cistern, a speaker pointed in your direction opening up with a distorted demonic scream that seems to vibrate your very soul as Yeller looks on for a moment.
[Swear I Saw A Young Dwarf Down In The Gutter: 2]
You begin to scream too as your heart starts working overtime, your muscles all seize up and in less than three seconds a mixture of tears, snot and a large amount of blood have seeped into your beard as you stand there with your joints locked up and your body seizing wildly. You lose control of your bowels and begin to vomit wildly at the same time in the brief instant before Yeller reaches to flick off his sonic doom cannon, at which point you're laid out on the floor of the cistern in a pile of filth and screams.
Fuck me, says Yeller, didn't expect it to work that well. Must be the metal cistern, he mutters before taking another second to watch you expire slowly. Something to keep in mind, he guesses.
[Starting To Foam In The Heat: 6]
Then he pulls out a syringe and with the kind of certainty that tells you he's surely incredibly drunk jabs it right between your ribs into your heart, and you inhale as suddenly a moment's respite is given to your deteriorating nervous system.
There there, says Yeller, you've weathered the worst of it. Only gonna get chiller from here. As you continue to convulse with decreasing intensity as the drugs take hold, he withdraws the syringe and pours some of his whiskey into your open mouth. You lay there a while, still unable to coherently speak or move, and in not too long the whiskey runs out and Yeller switches instead to rum, which you enjoy a little less but which interacts wonderfully with whatever relaxant he stuck into you previously. The dreams come soon, filled with shadows and butterflies and fire and clowns and all kinds of things.
You are clear from danger, though it'll probably be at least a week until you can walk again.
End of Chapter One
[When It's Over You Know: 4]
You hate Hell for its persistent troubles - if it's not demons, it's poison in the water or security raids or gang violence or vampires or worse things still. But you do love it for its adaptability - you blow up a good chunk of it and nobody seems bothered, even when it's pretty clear that even with the security checkpoints an absolute shitton of demons got free anyway, a fair number of which have set up shop in quite a few of the less inhabited (mostly because they are also uninhabitable) areas of Hell - some go into the sewers, some haunt graveyards, a fair number just stay in the glowing pits. But make no mistake - the gates of Hell have decidedly opened, and how things really work may change soon around here.
[You'll All Be So Alone: 3]
Not that any of you guys are better off for it.
Cazin knows that he could have gotten a pretty penny for that shield module if it hadn't exploded, but other than that he's pretty much lost track of Yeller and also completely failed to get any kind of recompense for that disaster of a show on account of most everyone involved being incredibly dead. His Midtown office rent is definitely coming up soon and there's gonna be a reckoning if he doesn't do something soon.
Jalormis has gone back to the graveyard and noticed that the vampire population of Hell appears to have drastically decreased, a large number of them having gone to the show and met amazingly terrible ends at the hands of the demonic invasion. The demons have then proceeded to move into what was left behind - including a couple that are now slumming it in the graveyard with him and all the free corpses they can defile at their leisure. Jal figures this may turn into a problem soon.
Urist recovers within a week from the near-fatal experience at the hands of Yeller's sonic attack, largely due to Yeller's own untrained but nevertheless earnest care. After all, Yeller doesn't owe him any money and vice versa, which is a refreshing change from most every other relationship Yeller's had. The dwarf musician seems very enthused about his next move - that show at Death's Gate really brought the house down, he says, but he's got to refine it a little bit, really get himself on the next level for that followup performance. He's been toying with the idea of various new projects, floating them by you in your convalescence while you could only grunt in response, seemingly having made himself your de facto roommate in the Hotel d'Hell.
Enir, meanwhile, has simultaneously come into a bunch of new money (specifically her dead former boss' money), but the recent disaster also has made her homeless in the process of making her rich. Her personal therapy assistant seems to consider this a mixed success - she may be unemployed and homeless, but she's never had more money (specifically, four money - after laundering fees, that is) in her unlife!
So how have these people been changed by their experience at Death's Gate, and what do they plan to do next?
When a chapter ends, the characters enter downtime. Loot is converted into Money and Too Close is cleared.
In addition, it's heartily recommended that you repost your character sheet and alter whatever you think has substantially changed along the course of the chapter. For example, whether Urist mac Slughterfiend still considers himself a violent miner who doesn't care anymore after spending an eventful night getting his shit ruined and running from demons as fast as he's able to. The changes in your concept (and you can just add stuff on top if that seems appropriate) don't need to be brief at all - you can, for example, expand it from three words to a sentence if need be.
Finally, the end of the chapter isn't going to go on for terribly long, but your actions in it are substantially more far-reaching than the ones in the middle of a chapter. You have access to the whole of Skinsin to one degree or another and the timeframes involved can be days or even weeks long.
Jalormis, Extremely Undead Guy
Money: 2
Alternatively Souled: Vampire
Old Yeller: A Horrific Debt
Enir Nazush, Barmaid of the Night
Alternatively Souled: Vampire
Money: 4
Weapon of Choice: Fire Axe
A Pair of Beat-Up Roller Skates (worn)
Outfit: Post-Nuclear Stripper Getup
Personal Therapy Assistant: Mellow
Green-Eyed Lady: Worthy Foe
Old Yeller: Left To One's Devices
Fresh Lipstick
All-Purpose Cleaning Solution
Plastic Raincoat
Nice Comb
Urist mac Slughterfiend, Miner on the Edge
Money: Flat Broke
Eyes of the Butterfly: Foiled!
Green-Eyed Lady: Diverted!
Old Yeller: De Facto Roommate
Cazin Crundle-Smasher, Uncanny Bookkeeper
Money: Nominal
Old Yeller: Hopefully Dead
Closed-Circuit: Thief!
The Threadspinners: Honored Killer
Author
Topic: Cyberdwarf: Concession and Cancellation in a Far-Future Fortress (Read 15125 times)