OOC Thread-->
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=153197.msg6515881#msg6515881[You hear the tender click of a recording machine being turned on. An antiquated device, but it's likely anything more sophisticated would not work in the Presence.]You want to know the story? About how you came to be born? It is a long tale...one that could last many nights, or just one. Depending on which mirror you glance through.
In one mirror, four strangers enter a dark building owned by no-one at all, and...they vanish forever. No one hears of them ever again, and in truth, few bother to look. They leave dark holes in the lives of the people they left behind, questions best left unasked, and certainly never to be answered. The World forgets about them. It's like they were never here. In this mirror, you're never born. And the World, ignorant of this potential, is grateful for that small blessing.
Of course, that's the opposite of what you were asking for-a happy ending. You want a tragedy. A great and dreadful tale of how such a thing as yourself came to be, by the unwitting actions of a few good (and not so good) folks, but a small taste of the horror you intend to sow. A story of the great and miserable irony of a handful of genuinely well meaning people managing to bring about the end of everything they knew and loved.
Very well. I shall be your
Scheherazade. It's quite apt, don't you think? Only, I suppose the whole world is at the mercy of your bowstring.
[There is a momentary sound you first liken to static, but as it continues you begin to think it sounds more like a voice. An electric saw that somehow learned to laugh, I have heard it described-I admit the subject lacked imagination, and that was probably better for him. It is a sound that fills one with deep, unrelenting despair. It is the end of all things. Many people openly weep. Or laugh. Most shut the recording off at this point, even if not instructed to, even if instructed not to under threat of pain. Others, are driven to physical violence against the machine, striking it over and over till their fists bleed, or drawing weaponry (If provided) and attacking it. If restrained and forced to listen over a length of time exceeding one hour, my studies show a man or woman will attempt to destroy themselves, at least 80% of the time. The rest suffer long term, if not permanent, mental trauma.
I have not listened to the recording myself, but I have been able to piece together a somewhat incoherent narrative from the words of my patients.]...
The three people I was talking about before-Madeline, Agris, and Diane-they first met,
waiting for an elevator. Fairly dull for an opening line, I admit. They were all feeling that sense of lazed detachment and bitter, deep seeded depression-poetically, you could call it doom-that had been infecting them ever since they saw the damned ad, and to be honest for their entire lives. Three persons who couldn't be more alike, despite their physical differences...in some mirrors, they spoke to one another, formed a bond, that helped them later...well, 'helped' is a relative term...
The deepest shadow can still flinch, do you know? It can draw back in the face of a bright, hot light...even, if it's not defeated entire.
...
I know you don't want to hear that.
[I have not been able to make any sense of what I have heard here. Something about a door? A Key? And a flower?]...
In another mirror-they remained lost in their own thoughts, watching the blood-red, electronic numbers run down the elevator door, feeling nothing, waiting for the end, waiting to be called. They kept their distance and didn't look each other in the eye. After all, they might be competing for the same job. Of course, that's when the first twinge comes. That sense of wrongness, of deep regret, of profound, heartless inevitability. What sort of job were all they looking for, anyway? It's hard to hold onto...and, discouraging to try. Better to not think too hard about. Better to keep your eyes to yourself, and wait to be called.
...she was an old, dying woman, full of regret-a truck driver, by trade. The sort of genuinely kind, yet inherently foolish person who might, on a whim, go to save a stray cat in the middle of the street, and be struck down by a speeding van. An odd duck. Her life was...safe, ordinary, boring. No doubt, how she preferred it. Of course, she didn't like to dwell on all the things she had missed. It was a big part of that, which brought her here...unassertive, a doormat in all things, she has been just letting things happen her entire life. Letting things float on by. Now, she found herself, very shortly in a situation where there would be no choice but to stand her ground. Personally, I didn't believe in her either.
...
He's what we call a plodder. Dependable, optimistic, enduring. Unimaginative, dull, boring. Pick whichever you prefer. He's not entirely unlike Maddy-a person with a genuine good heart, cursed with a lack of directive, of initiative. He wanders. He watches. He lets things...pass him by. Not that he lets it bother him...still, he's a man forever with one foot in his distant, painful past. He regrets what he did, he blames himself...He didn't pull the trigger, but he hears the gunshot-that may, or may not have been-many nights, as he tries to sleep, his nonexistant legs somehow still managing to itch in the dark watches of the night. Oh, well, he assumes it was a gun. In his waking, at least. Guns don't do that to people, do they? No, no they don't.
For all that, he has an admirable amount of endurance. For a man with no direction in his life, he is profoundly determined to keep moving forward. Not quite an unstoppable force, Agris-but, the old saying still fits-what happens when he meets an immovable object?
...
Young, hopeful, shy in bearing, not as gentle or frail as she seems-a deep pride runs in her, like a vein of some dark, alien metal. You wouldn't think it, but murder is not a complicated thing for Diane. Good. Bad. Binary. Bad people are okay to hurt, to kill. There is a capacity for violence in her...as of yet, an untapped well. She's a doctor, at least she hopes to be one. Few friends, a wallflower for the most part-an incredible intellect. A truly expansive mind,. I wouldn't mind allowing you to taste it myself. Such a capacity for reasoning and logic. Yet, not tempered truly by an inherent sense of kindness or mercy, at least not for those she considers enemies. She's more like you, than the rest of them.
...
Of course, we shouldn't forgot the
4th character in out little vignette.
An angry young woman. She knows about us. Yes, one of them took an eye from her...on no more than a whim, surely. She was angry before that-ever one to nurse a grudge, to harbor a bad thought, and with the inherent lack of moral integrity to stop herself before acting on those thoughts and grudges. A great and terrible rage in her heart-striking outward, so it doesn't delve inward. She fights the nightmares she can, with her fists, her bat, her gun. In such a small, wasted life-it's the least sort of vindication she'll ever get.
And yet! So human. She frames her each and every action, from the smallest sin to the greatest tragedy, as done in the name of the greater good. Helping her sister. Getting her out of the shitlife. Trying to save her from a future of thuggery and prostitution which she assumes-of course-that her sister will fall victim to. Alice isn't good at thinking around corners, though. How does she know her sister is so base and corrupt to follow the same path? What use is destroying herself, to save the one person who truly loves her? Alice is blind to the pain she causes her sister, the fear in her eyes every time her older sister comes in, battered and bruised, limping, one foot in the grave. And the marks in her arms, the one she sometimes forgets to even bother covering up with a long sleeved shirt. The things in the little glass bottles, that she no longer even pretends kill the pain...
Alice may still have one eye, but she's more blind than anyone in this story.
...
Well, to business. You want action, excitement! Enough exposition. More explosions. Fine. You really are a child, aren't you? Somehow, that makes this so much worse.
...
Alice is blind in many ways, but she sees further than the idiots waiting for the elevator, like so much cattle in a feed chute. She sees the telltale tingle of dense, ambient magic, spun like a spiderweb around the building-and for much the same reason. She sees the guards, no one else saw-standing stock still on either side of the door, hands loose around their wastes, not moving an inch. Inhuman, her senses warn her. Not right. She remembers why she is here...
Diane Ceres. Her father, a wealthy man. Old money and old friends. Diane's father got a warning. Diane's father, desperate, enlisted the help of a local scumbag (though a talented one) by the name of Alice Konicek to retrieve her from whatever pit his daughter has gotten herself into. Money has been promised, a great deal of money. It's straight work, as straight as can be. Find Daddies little girl. Don't hurt her more than you have to-bruises can be lied about, a missing head not so much-get her in your piece of shit car, drive to the pickup spot. Don't get caught. Don't embarrass the Family Name. Keep it quiet. Above all, get the girl.
Get the girl.To think, if she'd been a bit faster-might have nabbed the bitch outside the door, been off without seeing whatever no doubt terrible things are hiding inside what her tentative research has shown is to be a building owned by no one at all. Well, the first she saw of Alice, she was too close to snatch. Too close to those stiff, statue like men with the splayed hands. The ones she is concerned about.
Nothing to do about it but think on her feet, try to figure a plan...or, tell off, call Daddy and send flowers-tell him to buy a nice satin coffin. Hah. Alice is many things, but a she does have a sense of right and wrong. Of justice. Of what is owed and what is to be paid. Her old friend, rage, rises like smoke in the back of her mind. They're doing this. Them. In her city. It's not right. It's never been right.
And she's being paid, of course. That helps quite a bit to motivate her.
She had a plan. Or die she? Let me tell you what happened next. (Player Actions)
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Topic: World of Darkness (test campaign) Scene 1 (Read 6941 times)