trollthumper
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Temperance looked to Mister Strix. She wanted to say a few things about his view on his state - maybe ask some questions - but she had a good deal of experience in someone else telling you that your view of your own state was not what you thought it was, and how much that could feel like sandpaper rubbing on a very personal place. "If we need a place to recover and freshen up, I think I can comp a hotel room," she said. "It may be crowded, and I will likely be hung out and flayed if anyone orders room service, but it will at least give us a base of operations to plan, figure out our next move, and not have to deal with the stench of otherworldly abomination."
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It was not the most disturbing thing she had seen, but it would definitely be taken a high place in the rankings. Temperance tried to turn her attention away from the very impromptu surgery happening in front of her. She was glad that the influence of that thing was being driven out in the harshest manner possible, but that didn't help when she could smell the ocular jelly sizzling like an egg dropped on a hot griddle. It merging with the brackish fluid on the floor just made everything worse. She tried to focus on the ice, the one seemingly clean thing in the room. "So," she said, trying very hard to breathe through her mouth, "it seems like we need to find our local occultist and have a talk with him about the things from outside the chain of being. Things that should not be summoned anywhere, even a town like --" Temperance then noticed the crackling of the ice, and realized that there were sometimes disadvantages to not feeling the cold. She turned to Mister Strix. "I admit, I don't know much about your... state, but is that normal?"
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She could do nothing. Temperance was used to the fact that her strength lay in elemental power. She was used to the fact of being of water and ice and the realms ephemeral. She was used to the fact that her purview, as the daughter of an elemental, was limited. But never before had she hated it like this. There was one thing she could do - at least, one thing she could think of. There was a good chance it might end poorly, and it would require her to make a deal... or, perhaps, beat someone down to the point that they'd be willing to go against their nature. She wasn't exactly thrilled with that prospect, on an objective level, but given what she'd be beating down... well... She turned to Mr. Strix, Set, and Sekhmet. "Can you keep her from harming herself?" she asked. "I may be able to keep this contamination from biting deeper, but I need to go out into the city..." Well, girl, might as well be honest. "...to go discuss terms with a spirit of insanity."
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Yet another Power Stunt - this time Transform (water into blood) 9. Temperance will just take the Fatigue for now.
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Temperance knew there was only so much she could take. But at this point, it felt like everything was just splashing against a cliff wall. "Divinity and a vampire," she said. "Something told me this might not end well." This was really outside of her territory. Water had associations with healing, and spirits did always dance on the side of the metaphorical... but there were also close divides and the rigidity of the bureaucratic. Water was associated with healing because it was life-giving. And she swore there were stories about running water... To do this, she would have to do something that might get her in a lot of trouble. I really hope Dad doesn't find out about this. There was a lot of rough biomatter in here, even if some of it was sluicing into a puddle of filth. Blood was thicker than water, but only by how much? It was just a matter of adding iron and other binding agents, really... She drew the water from her pack and ran it through the room, catching traces of biological matter. She tried to use as little of the abomination as possible, because she could only see this ending horribly if she fed it to Strix. But in time, with distillation and effort, it turned into blood. She carefully dripped it into Strix's wounds, hoping that this might do something.
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"You know, I could stand here and count all the ways that you're wrong while waiting to see whether gravity is stronger than the grasp of the angry dead..." Nick extended his will, and the telekinetic bonds started to reel in, drawing the struggling teenager out of the pit. "...but that's really not how I play." He lay the teen on the ground, making sure to extend a token hold so that he didn't try doing this whole thing over again. "Now. What's going on in your life that would make you think throwing yourself into the gnawing void to give yourself over to Shub-Niggurath would be a good idea? I'm really kinda curious."
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Temperance felt the last fleeting tendrils of madness detaching themselves from her brain. It was unpleasantly like feeling an octopus's suckers detach from one's hands. There was still that feeling that things weren't right. Given all the defilement of spiritual concepts that had happened within the basement, that feeling would not go away for some time. There was also the matter of the smell, which was both less unsettling and more aggressively offensive at the same time. But for now, the great, necrotic sore on the face of reality was gone, and she could breathe a little easier. Entirely through her mouth, of course. "Well," she said. "That... was singularly horrifying. And yet, that thing had somebody higher up the hierarchy. It was calling to 'Him.' So now we need to climb that ladder, greased and fetid as it may be." Her boot touched the still limp Mister Strix, and quickly withdrew. "Is he... I mean, he was from the start, but I thought dead vampires usually decomposed rapidly? Or has media been lying to me again?"
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"First priority should probably be enclaves," said Cavalier. He was trying to figure out a way to phrase this that didn't make him sound like a complete bastard. "The Khanate... you know as well as I do. Dissent's up there with 'poison in the royal champagne' when it comes to things that don't go down well with the Khan. Your people have likely already evacced from the major population centers, but if you have any kind of redoubts, any sort of doomsday bunkers that you organized for the great people in charge in case everything got lit on fire... I'd consider opening them. Just in case. Because it may not stop with that 'meteor.'" Having greatly crapped on the carpet, Cavalier took a deep breath. "The second thing we could use is interference. Given the announcement from the Justicar, odds are they're planning some great 'nuke it from orbit' tactic beyond just the meteor. If there are other ships coming for backup, we could use something that could scramble comms, make it harder for them to coordinate whatever they might be planning - plus, if it interferes with whatever's puppeteering the big bastard, that could help, too." He snapped his fingers, which didn't have as much of the desired effect, what with metal scraping on metal. "And there's number three. Is there anywhere we can try to lure this Khanate Mecha-bastard so that it punches through some soft loam and ends up on some really rough footing?"
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Temperance Confuse: 25, so I think she's good. Also, if it wasn't automatically apparent, she's spending an HP to negate the Fatigued. As I'm bouncing between pages, if that's already happened, let's go with it.
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Great. There were times Nick hated having to make the snap decisions. Especially when they involved sacrifices to things beyond. The book was a loose variable. If it was "primed," perhaps, it could serve as a ritual component, just as potent as a life offered to whatever lurked in those shadows below. Then again, that was a "could." The cultist throwing himself into a pit of his own free will, likely offering chants to some hot blasphemy on the way down, was a "would." And Nick had played enough video games to know that you never gave the sorcerer a chance to dance on the threshold of death and possibly come back changed by it. He turned to Ms. Thursday. "Can you tackle the book?" he asked. And, without really stopping to get an answer, he extended his will outwards, trying to get a hold on the young cultist before he did something truly terrible - either for himself, or for everyone else.
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Nick is going to power stunt on his Telekinesis so that it becomes Telekinesis 12 (Extra: Perception) and tries to get the target out of the hole. Opposed Grapple: 33
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Just like a part of Antarctica falling into the sea, Temperance's mind broke cleanly. There was a part of her that recognized that she had seen worse. That she had dived into the guts of the ephemeral, seen horrors trapped within groves of life, seen cities that hungered to replace normal civilization and feast on those unaware within its buildings and corridors, seen things of decay and rot and fears of insanity. All that logic, however, was stuck behind a wall of ice, looking outwards at everything that was being driven to scream at the sight of this grand atrocity. She turned to run, only to find her path blocked by what she hoped to Christ was more couch than organism. And in that moment, realizing the sheer absurdity of it all, everything went cold and clear again. She couldn't look on it. She knew that much. In these cramped quarters, throwing ice blindly would just make things worse. But it seemed the best option of a lot of bad ones. She drew deep within herself. Crafting ice of this density would normally be an issue... but this basement was practically a swamp already. While she didn't want to think about what the ice would look like, it would at least put some distance between them and the horror.
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All right, Temperance is Confused, so let's see what the hell she's doing this round... 14. Cue "Yakety Sax," as she runs for the goddamn hills. EDIT: However, due to the obstructions, Grumble has given me the option to roll again until I get a result other than Flee. And I got a 4, so that means "Act normally." Of course, Temperance is still Blind, which makes actually attacking the thing an issue. So instead, I am going to power stunt for Create Object 9 (Extras: Continuous) in the name of putting some distance between them and the abomination.
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Temperance Initiative: 16 Just don't look!: 25, so there we go Reflex Save vs. Confuse: 11, so that's not happening Will Save vs. Confuse: 15
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The Big Brain (PL12) - NPC Tier 3
trollthumper replied to RocketLord's topic in Non-Player Characters
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I'm fine with moving forward from here.
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"'Our place'?" Nick took into account a few things - the age of the woman, the unnatural tint to her hair that might not have entirely been dye... "Wait, were you --" The inquiry was cut off as he saw the young man sprinting into the building, and what he was carrying. Great. Cultists with books. That never ends well. Especially when it means running towards the heart of chaos. He broke off from the other young cultists, tearing towards the building. "Come on!" he yelled to Ms. Thursday. "This is the worst place for a solo ritualist to try and pull something big!"
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Vampires. Of course. They were... a part of the world, Temperance reckoned. As much as the vampire bat, or spirits of death, or... The more she went down this path, the weirder it would get. And, as somebody whose very existence depended on a water elemental deciding to impregnate a human, she knew she wasn't really one to talk about what was and was not a violation of the natural order. "Very well," she said, slowly slinking the ice and water back into their pack. "We haven't had any dismemberments in our city - or if there are, they're being kept quite under the radar. Though, the number of dismemberments might explain that 'ten thousand eyes' detail. I just dread finding out what they've been planted in." As they moved further into the building, Temperance felt that itch at the back of her head more and more. The first thing to set it off was the mold, but it was more than that. It was the seeming lack of spirits of decay and fungus, who should have been running roughshod over a fetid feast like this. But all that seemed to be answered when they found the hideous growth in the midst of the mold, the growth that stared back at them. "...right. Really regretting that joke now." Temperance looked to the group. "Somewhere in this building is a grand insult to the silent machinery of the universe. I say we go find it and kick its teeth in."
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Well, there were a lot worse things that could have been sacrificed. Many of which had two legs. Of course, Nick knew that there was a quick and easy way to make sure that sacrifices like this did not occur. Then again, given that the unfortunate pig already seemed to be pinned down, he really didn't want to risk playing tug-of-war while one of the backup cultists moved in to make sure the bloodshed took place. So, it was time to make them all see how the pig felt. Tapping into the dead here felt strange. He didn't like the angles of the ectoplasm that emerged from the soil, and the grasping talons that snatched at the robes of the cultists seemed a little too sharp for his liking. And he knew from sharp, eldritch talons. Still, the grasp was certainly tight enough... and he was somewhat surprised that the arms, almost of their own accord, reached in and snatched up the pig, taking it far away from the ritual blade. Still, there was something about the chanting that didn't seem right... "You know, it's rare to find cultists that don't even know how to name the thing they're sacrificing to. I know, a lot of these Outsiders sound like if you hocked up a loogie while talking into a fan, but even then, that's no excuse."
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None of this was good. There was the sense of a draft in the fabric of the world. Temperance had only encountered this feeling a few times. Once, when she and Sharl had fought against a strange city-parasite that seemed eager to impose itself on the spiritual landscape of Freedom. Another time, when dealing with cultists of a hideous fire entity that had infiltrated the Freedom FD. Dealing with the bureaucracy of spirits meant getting a sense of the machinery of the world, of everything having its place... which always resulted in an awful sensation when you lifted the hood, only to find a tumor growing on the engine. Then there was the etching. She was perhaps a bit too used to the blood-stained ramblings of madmen, but this still made her feel a chill. And nothing made her feel a chill. She was trying to figure out what it might mean, racking her brain for mentions of a ten-thousand eyes monster, when the man in the suit appeared. Finally. Something familiar. Somebody stepping up and thinking they were Billy Badass. The room dropped several degrees quickly as water flowed from Temperance's Camelback, swiftly forming into a dance of shards of ice. "I don't know how they do things in Bedlam," she said, "but I did not come a thousand miles to try to avert some terrible malfeasance, just to end up getting lectured at by somebody who wears white after Labor Day. If you're a vigilante, perhaps we can talk as equals. If you're a cultist... you really chose the wrong time to speak up."
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Nick could feel the picking at the scab of reality - the sense of somebody viewing where a wound was healing and desperately trying to get at the hot blood beneath. It was never a pleasant feeling. He rushed in behind Ms. Thursday, realizing he was never going to be the necromancer who'd win the 100-yard dash. Once he had a good sense of the magic in the area, and a relative sense of where the cultists might be, he tried to reorient his senses so that he could hear the cries of departing souls. If the pig was being used for a sacrifice, he'd know it. But, there was always the possibility it wasn't being used for a sacrifice. It might be used like the canary in the coal mine. I really, really do not want to fight Hogzilla. Again. He readied himself to draw up wards against whatever eldritch influx might be ready to burst out like a ruptured boil. He really didn't want to grow more eyes by the end of the night.
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Notice: 17 Search: 12 Will: 11
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Eliza had been expecting a bombed-out craphole. She hadn't quite been expecting this bombed-out of a craphole. It had started with seeing the tower extending into the sky as her plane descended. She was instantly reminded of that grand, stately bombed-out pyramid that seemed to eternally hang in the middle of Pyongyang. It was nowhere as tall, but it seemed to exude the same energy - a monument to greatness whose reach vastly outmatched its grasp, an attempt to add grandeur to the fallow soil it had sprouted from. And then there was the city itself. Temperance didn't like to pass judgment on cities - she knew all too well that the difference between "a vibrant community with some local misfortunes" and "a ghetto" could often lay in the local melanin count. But it seemed like, in most other cities, there would be some force sweeping in to try to pretend that they were "revitalizing" the community, finding the glorious and peeling away the unworthy (which, in a number of cases, involved the original residents). There was none of that here. It was as if certain chunks of the populace had decided there was little worth saving. A part of her wanted to peer backstage, to see the animistic landscape and get a sense of how deep the rot went... but doing so would likely leave on some dark, obsessive jag that might end in her painting "REDRUM" on the walls. So, she focused her gaze on the mundane, taking in the surroundings and eventually settling on the apparently shuttered Hawthorne's. "So. Who wants to knock?"