Encounterlogs
Coltons Odd Encounter Sr Eric 241129
In a neon-drenched barcade named The Trove, Colton, a man defined by both his physical strength and competitive spirit, finds himself challenged by two exasperated employees to open an unyielding box discovered during an accidental demolition. Driven by an innate inability to reject a challenge, Colton leverages his brute force to pry open the seemingly impenetrable container, unwittingly unleashing a blinding light followed by a haunting, spectral mist. This supernatural occurrence reveals a sinister skull atop a stone pedestal, ensnaring Colton in the eerie gazes of ancestral wolves manifested from the beyond. Despite his initial bravado, the sight of the skull and the judgmental presence of his ancestors stir a deep, unsettled feeling within him, hinting at a connection and a history far more complex and mystical than Colton had anticipated.
The narrative escalates as Colton, attempting to confront and reconcile the expectations of his spirit ancestors, endeavors to relocate the cursed artifact away from the public eye. His journey, laden with self-doubt and familial scrutiny, leads him across town to an environment known as Hell, intending to either dispose of or destroy the artifact in hopes of appeasing the spirits. The aggressive, even violent, spectral wolves challenge Colton's every move, questioning his loyalty to familial legacies and his capacity to restore the honor once held by his lineage. The critical voices of his ancestors, mingling with Colton's stubborn defiance, paint a vivid picture of a man caught between the tangible world and the spectral echoes of his familial past, driving him into a confrontation where the physical and the ethereal violently collide.
(Colton's odd encounter(SREric):SREric)
[Thu Nov 28 2024]
At The Trove Barcade
This room is dominated by a sprawling, weathered bar. The bar's surface, polished to a high sheen, is inlaid with a mosaic of colorful sea glass, glinting in the dim, lantern-like lighting.
The walls, painted a deep, oceanic blue, are adorned with an eclectic assortment of nautical paraphernalia. Aged maps, and faded flags are interspersed with vintage arcade game marquees. The ceiling, draped with tattered sails and thick, knotted ropes, gives the impression of being below deck on a ship.
In the corners of the room, clusters of arcade games flicker and beep, their colorful screens casting a kaleidoscope of light onto the wooden floorboards. The air is filled with the clatter of pinball machines, the electronic melodies of video games, and the occasional thud of an axe hitting its target.
Behind the bar, a vast array of bottles is displayed, their contents ranging from craft beers to exotic rums. The bartenders, dressed in pirate garb, deftly mix cocktails, their movements punctuated by the clink of glass and the hiss of a freshly opened beer.
North/South: Restrooms
Northeast: Games
East: Axe Throwing
Southeast: Competitive Games
Down: Laser Tag
It is afternoon, about 49F(9C) degrees, and there are a few dark grey stormclouds in the sky.
(Your target and their allies find a mysterious artifact which has the ability to interact with the spirits of the deceased. The artifact starts to draw in spirits from the surrounding area, some of whom may not have the best intentions. It's up to the characters to figure out how to manage these spirits, and decide what to do with the artifact.)
SREric says "Bonjour. Should I be drawing in anyone else?"
Set on the river's southern end, to the edge of town as if fitting in so poorly, the barcade is a relic of its own kind, a neon-drenched anachronism nestled between old brick buildings of indeterminate age. Its name, The Trove, blinks erratically in the same sea glass that also lines the bar, casting garish shadows over the cracked asphalt outside. The place smells of spilled beer, burnt wires, and the faint metallic tang of sweat. Inside, the cacophony of synthesized music mixes noisily with the staccato beeps and boops of arcade machines bothis afternoon is alive, charged with a buzzing hum that may be electricity, or may be something else entirely - the unusual and strange has a habit of piping up in this strange town after all. Beneath the faint vapor in the air, beneath the flashy lights of pinball machines, beneath the people duking it out in Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, and other fighting games, beneath the people throwing axes to unleash their inner Viking, is a darkened arena where people will play their laser tag. Its perimeter is marked by pulsating blacklights and ropes of LEDs that bathed the area in an eerie ultraviolet glow, turning every speck of lint and dust into tiny stars.
And up from that arena emerge two burly-looking men, both clad in denims with the barcade's logo on it, sweaty and hauling up with them what looks like something akin to a chest, a crate, a strongbox - all three. Heavy enough in its iron confines, with strange inlaid stone marking the container also, the men huff as they let it sag down to the floor, looking about themselves exasperatedly.
"Does ANYONE feel up to a challenge today?" The shorter of the two, irritated, sweaty, wipes off his forehead. "We found this box when some IDIOT smashed into the wrong wall, too hard. Won't even budge! You get it open - We'll put your name on a plaque, or something. Just get us to figure it out so the bossman won't have our ass for 'not doing our jobs!'" He even makes the air quotes, seemingly anticipating a tongue-lashing he prays may never cmoe
(fix, it had to be the LAST word too) Set on the river's southern end, to the edge of town as if fitting in so poorly, the barcade is a relic of its own kind, a neon-drenched anachronism nestled between old brick buildings of indeterminate age. Its name, The Trove, blinks erratically in the same sea glass that also lines the bar, casting garish shadows over the cracked asphalt outside. The place smells of spilled beer, burnt wires, and the faint metallic tang of sweat. Inside, the cacophony of synthesized music mixes noisily with the staccato beeps and boops of arcade machines bothis afternoon is alive, charged with a buzzing hum that may be electricity, or may be something else entirely - the unusual and strange has a habit of piping up in this strange town after all. Beneath the faint vapor in the air, beneath the flashy lights of pinball machines, beneath the people duking it out in Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, and other fighting games, beneath the people throwing axes to unleash their inner Viking, is a darkened arena where people will play their laser tag. Its perimeter is marked by pulsating blacklights and ropes of LEDs that bathed the area in an eerie ultraviolet glow, turning every speck of lint and dust into tiny stars.
And up from that arena emerge two burly-looking men, both clad in denims with the barcade's logo on it, sweaty and hauling up with them what looks like something akin to a chest, a crate, a strongbox - all three. Heavy enough in its iron confines, with strange inlaid stone marking the container also, the men huff as they let it sag down to the floor, looking about themselves exasperatedly.
"Does ANYONE feel up to a challenge today?" The shorter of the two, irritated, sweaty, wipes off his forehead. "We found this box when some IDIOT smashed into the wrong wall, too hard. Won't even budge! You get it open - We'll put your name on a plaque, or something. Just get us to figure it out so the bossman won't have our ass for 'not doing our jobs!'" He even makes the air quotes, seemingly anticipating a tongue-lashing he prays may never come
Well, Colton here has a mighty fine competitive streak and more muscles than he does brains, so calling out like floods his system with a dopamine rush so intense that he probably could not be held legally responsible for his response. He simply does not have the choice of refusing.
"Fuck yeah I do," he declares, tipping his bottle of Bud Light up so fast that a lesser man's tooth might have chipped against the glass as he sucks the beer down without tasting it. He sets the hollowed-out beverage carcass down on the bar top and slips off his stool to wander over cratewards, nodding his head at the two dubiously-employed and rather sweaty men. "You gotta be careful when you're fucking around with old boxes like this though, guys. Probably some Arkwright's property and they're cranky fuckers. No worries, I'm a Moore, so you can trust me with this one, right?" He nods his head at his own logic, then hunkers down to dig his fingers into seam of the lid. There's not been a goddamn box that could keep Colton Moore out in the last eight years or so. He heaves.
The box did not yield for crowbars. Trying to screw and wrench open the metal did not in any way reveal its secrets, nor did trying to actually hammer the lid into compliance have an effect. Insofar anything gets it to even budge to begin with, it is the sorts of strength that defies any reason - or, at the least, the reason of two dumbfounded janitors watching a more-than-man wrench open that which, perhaps, should well have stayed locked behind layers of material with occult significance rather than bared to the world in a matter of mere moments.
A flash of light that is, perhaps, eerily well at home in the barcade accompanies the most accursed of unboxings that takes place, the room erupting in a searing radiance that dissolves into hazy, spectral mist. the two janitors, the people drinking at the bar, and the few dozen people playing their games become quite tough to see, replaced with a power that does not sit well in the man's chest at all. It calls to him with the ring of a wretched aunt's forgotten lullaby, perhaps, and the object he uncovers is something he ought to recognise less than he does: a low stone pedestal was boxed inside, atop which rests the skull of a creature large enough to be a moose - but horned, rather than antlered, three such pairs lining its oblong face, cords of leather lined with teeth and little claws rattling from it.
All is not well in its presence. What looms in that ghostly haze is not but the dead gaze of a yellowing skull fetish, but eyes eerily similar to his own. Looming over him, tall, imposing, cornered preternaturally by spirits from the beyond, are the silhouettes of fellow wolves. Not mere fellow wolves: ancestral wolves, the names of which are spoken but in quiet curses and with all the requisite dread, from times before modernity had sundered so many forests and paved over so much wild land. The disapproval in those eyes is very real, as half a dozen such gazes already look down upon the man, chief among which is a particularly tall and red-maned woman with a scowl upon her face
Colton's not above stumbling backwards and away from bright flashes of light, especially when it's immediately preceded by him ripping open some impossibly tough old box. When he's not, in fact, exploded by an IED, he relaxes a little - just a little - and creeps back over to the box. His first instinct is damage control, and he layers his voice with the subtle art of psychic persuasion as he suggests to the two workers, "Damn. Not sure where you took this from, but it does look like some Arkwright cemetery stuff. You'd better keep this to yourselves." He'd track them down by smell later, make sure to muddle their minds with a bit of amnesia. Now he just had to get the damn thing out of here so he can deal with the spirits he's steadfastly not meeting the gazes of. Not in front of the damn humans. This thing looked like it was straight out of Hell, so after a moment to collect himself, he takes the box and scarpers in a hurry, trotting off north. Let the spirits follow him; he'd deal with them in private.
It is just as well that those janitorial staff really are, in fact, merely human - that anyone in Haven learns not to ask too many questions - that he can absolutely bolt away with the large, trinket-adorned skull while struggling with it only because of its unwieldy bulk. Where the skull goes, so too do those spirits, chasing after him in bounding, all-four strides, derisively low laughter haunting his ears as he's stalked by a pack keeping pace with such very real ease. "You'll not lose a soul in that cutesy monkey suit of yours," one black-furred wolf growls, its accent strange enough to be a century old at the very least. "You bear our name.. But not an inch of what pride we all built up!"
"You lost everything our family had to the fucking Wilsons," Colton grumbles, possibly sounding a little nuts to any passersby as he jogs his way over the bridge and northeast towards Hell. In fairness, he's a Moore, and muttering to himself about the Wilsons isn't that unusual. "And I've just come back to town to set things on a better course for us. You probably aren't even real ghosts. Just shitty recreations of your lives' bitterness and suffering, like a recording made by some Demon. I'm going to get this thing back where it came from. I'll fucking smash it, if you want. Put you all to rest."
More contempt. More derision. It is somewhat unclear to those spirits who Colton may even try to convince - them, or himself. "Talk, talk, talk. I did not bite that accursed monster's leg from its socket and butcher its head to be denied by my own blood. I demand more than but your insolence!" Even in death - are they even dead? - these canine few can raise their voices and talk on back, stalking Colton across the pavement and over the bridge, unbothered by lights or pedestrians or vehicles. "You speak your nothings and run from your troubles and hide your nature so.. You've already lost before you even tried! You will get NOWHERE unless you can prove in blood and iron you are more than what I see in you!" The woman's voice echoes harshly within his ears yet, undaunted perhaps by the prospect of that artifact being brought quite so far away
It's not that Colton's a monolith, unshaken by the words of his apparent ancestors, unfeeling and robotic. It's just that he's spent the last nine-and-a-bit years having people yelling at him while he worked to begin with, and the memories of it haven't been given any time for the desensitisation to fade. He's lucky, really. Still, it does get an enormous frown out of him, and he stops to whirl around and face the red-headed matriarch in particular, staring into her eyes.
"All of you had the same goddamn chances at me to handle this shit yourselves. How many of your brothers and your cousins are still walking around, popping in for family reunions? You think Uncle Runs-With-Wolves sits around bitching about how fucking white people took the land unjustly?" He probably did do that a lot, in fairness, but Colton hasn't been making a lot of the family cookouts for a while." He lets out a huff, setting back off for hell. He knows there's no point in arguing with ghosts... It's just not something he's ever had to do before. It wasn't something he /could/ do, most of the time."
(fix) It's not that Colton's a monolith, unshaken by the words of his apparent ancestors, unfeeling and robotic. It's just that he's spent the last nine-and-a-bit years having people yelling at him while he worked to begin with, and the memories of it haven't been given any time for the desensitisation to fade. He's lucky, really. Still, it does get an enormous frown out of him, and he stops to whirl around and face the red-headed matriarch in particular, staring into her eyes.
"All of you had the same goddamn chances at me to handle this shit yourselves. How many of your brothers and your cousins are still walking around, popping in for family reunions? You think Uncle Runs-With-Wolves sits around bitching about how fucking white people took the land unjustly?" He probably did do that a lot, in fairness, but Colton hasn't been making a lot of the family cookouts for a while. He lets out a huff, setting back off for hell. He knows there's no point in arguing with ghosts... It's just not something he's ever had to do before. It wasn't something he /could/ do, most of the time." "
What specific merits this or that uncle, alive and well, might just have isn't quite the particular sorts of point these lot are quite interested in. Not with Colton right here, anyway. "It was NEVER my failure- not OURS! People like YOU will be the end of us!" Badgering introspection into people not merely old, but so ancient as to be long-dead, really may in fact just be a non-starter. "People denying our nature, running from our problems.. Fighting battles on the wrong terrain - the wrong way - you would leave behind everything we can be just to try and be something we are- not!" More accusations, more dead-set confidence on behalf of those ghosts that chase the man down. They may even be right; certainly they sound convinced of themselves and deeply assured enough for it.
All his older goddamn relatives, living or dead, were utterly convinced of themselves and deeply assured about whatever the hell they wanted to rant about. Colton loved his family, he did, but he had a god damn demon skull in a box to transport.
"I've got some people in the Blue Hills," he grumbles, trying not to set his jaw too hard. His teeth might crack. "We're working on taking the fucking land back. I'm not /hiding/ what I fucking am, they /made/ me like -" He cuts off briefly as he realises what he's saying, and his lips draw into a tight, thin, pissed-off line. He marches on in silence, compelled not to explain anymore by forces he most certainly could not try and crack - and then, finally, he trails the last few steps of that eastern turn off Black Ash.
"Right," he says. "Hell. Hold tight." And through he steps, into the blasted-out shell of District 82; an utter shithole populated only by a few refugees from the endless Sirenian War and the random fucking pig farm everyone seemed to live off. He eyes the endless expanse of black woods, keeping watch for roaming demonborn, then says, "I'm going to either toss this fucking thing into the woods or I'm going to stomp it into dust. Your call, everyone. Don't take long."
Colton is either a very bad listener, or those long-dead relatives, if they're even that, certainly would consider him so. The prospect of bargaining and choosing between those evils is one they do not relish at all is one thing that has them talk no more, also. The more aggressive, violent, primal of those wolves leap at Colton and seek to claw his face right off. This, frankly, does not work: it does so very little that the sensation doesn't even tickle. It just isn't there. He's reminded of friends dying off in sandy places and very much alive relatives locking him in small rooms, but hurt-
Hurt is what he gets from those more devious relatives. Well aware of their weakness, they harness what power they can do till the soil in this place, to dredge up what they can. Hell is a place of ghastly surprises, and Colton gets no rock thrown at him, no blunt object, no Scottish broadsword, not quite. The ghost's spectral claw animates a venerable Claymore with a track record of biding its time more than fifty years in the soil. A terrifying crash of an explosion dashes any hopes someone may have had at being subtle, and sees shrapnel go flying to shred at and past him at lightning speeds. Absolutely savage. It might, perhaps, communicate just what those ancestral spirits prefer to choose his way very well indeed.
It turns out that Colton is either a very bad listener, or those long-dead relatives, if they're even that, certainly would consider him so. The prospect of bargaining and choosing between those evils is one they do not relish at all is one thing that has them talk no more, also. The more aggressive, violent, primal of those wolves leap at Colton and seek to claw his face right off. This, frankly, does not work: it does so very little that the sensation doesn't even tickle. It just isn't there. He's reminded of friends dying off in sandy places and very much alive relatives locking him in small rooms, but hurt-
Hurt is what he gets from those more devious relatives. Well aware of their weakness, they harness what power they can do till the soil in this place, to dredge up what they can. Hell is a place of ghastly surprises, and Colton gets no rock thrown at him, no blunt object, no Scottish broadsword, not quite. The ghost's spectral claw animates a venerable Claymore with a track record of biding its time more than fifty years in the soil. A terrifying crash of an explosion dashes any hopes Colton may have had at being subtle, and sees shrapnel go flying to shred at and past him at lightning speeds. Absolutely savage. It might, perhaps, communicate just what those ancestral spirits prefer to choose his way very well indeed.
Christ. The place was just about a tip heap of forgotten weapons, and there's no safe place for Colton to dodge to that isn't just as laden with steel for his fucking family to throw.
"Jesus Christ," he yells, echoing his earlier thought. "Fucking - fine! Jesus." He drops the box and kicks it a little ways off the road. Not beyond sight - just beyond foot traffic. "I'll go bring you a goddamn fucking wizard to uncurse the damn thing. Breaking it would have done just as fucking well." He leaps right back out of the gate immediately, out of the range of any more goddamn flying swords or the cursed artifact. Now he just had to path over to Blue Hills and get one of the ritualists to come release the ghosts which may or may not actually be his family...
(Your target is approached by a member of The Black Flame cult who claims to have had a change of heart and wishes to defect. They bring with them an artifact they claim is being used in the cult's rituals to hasten the arrival of the eldritch horrors. Your target and their allies must decide whether to trust this person and if so, how to safely handle and dispose of the artifact. However, they soon find themselves pursued by other cult members intent on retrieving the artifact and punishing the defector.)
Seth steps back into the bedroom, fresh out of the shower, his hair still wet and plastered to his head. He makes his way lethargically to his clothes, in a pile in the corner, and pulls them on, before exhaling a sigh and moving to sit on his bed, where his phone has been left resting on his pillow. He picks it up and unlocks it, and begins to scroll through his messages and social media. Nothing new. He lies back with a sigh, and peers up through the skylight overhead. This time of the year, though it's still relatively early in the evening, the sky has already darkened, dark stormclouds rolling overhead and blocking out any view of the stars that might not already be consumed by light pollution from the town. Only the moon is occasionally visible, a murky glow seeping through the grey cover. He blows out a breath. Perhaps this day will be as uneventful as the last few.
What a relaxing evening, really. Lying in bed, and watching the stormclouds roil and twist across the nights sky? Uneventful. Peaceful, almost.
Or at the least, this was the case, until with little warning Seth's bedroom door bursts open, and a stranger runs into the room. They're scraggly looking, their dark hair mattered and twisted over dark features. Wet, though not from a shower but stress. There's a handgun in one of their hands, and a large bowling bag in the other as they skitter their gaze around the room until they finally come upon Seth, "Yo!" They call out to them, as if the bed-lying fellow was the one who wasn't supposed to be here, "Who the fuck are you?"
Seth places his phone down at his side and closes his eyes, once he realises there's nothing new for him to see. Though his boot-clad feet are still firmly on the floor, he seems about ready to fall asleep. That is, until the door bursts open. His eyes open and he straightens up with a startled jolt, eyes widening. "H-hold up" he stutters, raising his hands flat in front of him to show he's not armed nor dangerous himself, before he pushes slowly and carefully to his feet, not taking a step closer, "It's alright man" he says, "I live here, alright?" He draws in a sharp breath, and realises he doesn't feel the weight of his revolver in his pocket. A glance to the corner of his vision, and he notices it lying there where the pile of clothes he had clambered into used to be resting. It must have slipped out of his jacket when it was there. "What do you want? Money?"
"What?" There's a certain edge of offensive in the home invaders tone at the question extended by Seth. Money? What does he think he's some sort of burg- Oh, right. He's just burst in waving a gun, and covered in sweat. The man shakes his head rapidly, "No, no- I need-" He pauses and saunters back toward the door, peeking out into the rest of the penthouse suite. "Listen, where are the Russians? And who the fuck are you?" He blurts out then, waving the gun toward Seth once more, "One of Korina's pets?"
Seth snatches up his phone and quickly stuffs it away, when the intruder glances out the door, attention, for a moment, elsewhere. When they look back, he edges around the bed a little, slowly, still not making any move to actually approach the intruder. "Korina's pets...?" he asks, mentally noting that this guy, whoever they are, is probably aware, "No, no I'm not. Korina doesn't live here any more. It's just..." he begins, but then seems to think better of revealing the roster of inhabitants to this stranger with a gun, and closes his mouth for a moment, saying nothing, until he adds, "Russians? There aren't any Russians. Listen, whatever it is, I'm sure I can help. You can put the gun down, or just... stop waving it around."
"oh, son of a bitch!" The man cries out in response, raising the gun and bag both toward his forehead and smacking himself a few times in frustration. He's clearly agitated, that much is certain. The intruder starts to pace back and forth then, looking Seth up and down, and specifically over the items of jewelry he's wearing, "Look, are you at least Hand, my guy?" He asks, gruffly, waving the gun around some more, "You got a car? A bike? We need to move. Soon."
Seth takes a step back as the stranger smacks himself on the forehead with his likely loaded gun. "Hey, it's alright!" he says, hands still raised in front of him, "Yes, yes, I'm in the Hand" wincing as the weapon is waved around haphazardly again, "And no, no I don't, have a car or a bike. Listen, just, tell me your name and what you need, yeah? I'll see what I can do to help."
"What I /need/ is for someone who knows what they're doing to be her-" The fellow cuts himself off, and cocks his head to the side, "Hear that? They're here. We need to move, bucko. I ain't got the Sanctuary, and without me? You only got half what you need." He shifts closer to Seth and tosses the bowling bag toward him. Should the fellow decide to peer inside of the unzipped bag? Well, he'd come face to face with a face. An old face. Mummified, perhaps, or preserved in some manner, and practically bleeding magical potential. It must've belonged to a woman, and that's confirmed in short order, "Last daughter of the Romanov, hm?" He starts to dart back out, though pauses to try and man-handle Seth along with him.
Seth hears nothing at all, but has no doubt this aware stranger, with knowledge of the Hand, is some kind of supernatural, with better hearing than most. "Alrigh-" he begins, but is cut off as the bowling bag is thrown into his hands. He does indeed unzip it and peer inside, unable to contain his curiosity, coming face to face with... a face. Even he can feel the magic coming off of it, and he looks up at the stranger with his eyes narrowed. "How the fuck did you get this..." he says, but his words are not answered as the man makes to drag him out. He pulls away and says, "Wait!" before scrambling over the corner where his revolver is and plucking it up, stuffing it away into his jacket pocket. Hopefully that doesn't get him shot, as he and this man appear to be unlikely allies now, "Alright" he says as he makes his way out into the apartment at large, still following along, "Tell me what's going on."
SRBrock doesn't make for the front door this time, as the sounds of banging can be heard against it now. Instead he half-steers, and half-leads Seth towards the balcony, and out onto it. "Christ on a cracker, we don't have time for this!" He insists, though starts to explain for Seth anyways, "You heard of the Black Flame, fella? I work with them. /Worked/ with them. The people who used to live here offered me a better deal, one that involves more fun, and pleasure and less ending the world ourselves, yeah? They were supposed to be here to back me up, but I was a few.. months late." There's a beat or two, "And here we are now." Another pause, "You even jumped down here?"
The man asks, and without waiting for an answer, shoves Seth off of the railing before jumping after him, sending them both tumbling down into the bushes below.
The narrative escalates as Colton, attempting to confront and reconcile the expectations of his spirit ancestors, endeavors to relocate the cursed artifact away from the public eye. His journey, laden with self-doubt and familial scrutiny, leads him across town to an environment known as Hell, intending to either dispose of or destroy the artifact in hopes of appeasing the spirits. The aggressive, even violent, spectral wolves challenge Colton's every move, questioning his loyalty to familial legacies and his capacity to restore the honor once held by his lineage. The critical voices of his ancestors, mingling with Colton's stubborn defiance, paint a vivid picture of a man caught between the tangible world and the spectral echoes of his familial past, driving him into a confrontation where the physical and the ethereal violently collide.
(Colton's odd encounter(SREric):SREric)
[Thu Nov 28 2024]
At The Trove Barcade
This room is dominated by a sprawling, weathered bar. The bar's surface, polished to a high sheen, is inlaid with a mosaic of colorful sea glass, glinting in the dim, lantern-like lighting.
The walls, painted a deep, oceanic blue, are adorned with an eclectic assortment of nautical paraphernalia. Aged maps, and faded flags are interspersed with vintage arcade game marquees. The ceiling, draped with tattered sails and thick, knotted ropes, gives the impression of being below deck on a ship.
In the corners of the room, clusters of arcade games flicker and beep, their colorful screens casting a kaleidoscope of light onto the wooden floorboards. The air is filled with the clatter of pinball machines, the electronic melodies of video games, and the occasional thud of an axe hitting its target.
Behind the bar, a vast array of bottles is displayed, their contents ranging from craft beers to exotic rums. The bartenders, dressed in pirate garb, deftly mix cocktails, their movements punctuated by the clink of glass and the hiss of a freshly opened beer.
North/South: Restrooms
Northeast: Games
East: Axe Throwing
Southeast: Competitive Games
Down: Laser Tag
It is afternoon, about 49F(9C) degrees, and there are a few dark grey stormclouds in the sky.
(Your target and their allies find a mysterious artifact which has the ability to interact with the spirits of the deceased. The artifact starts to draw in spirits from the surrounding area, some of whom may not have the best intentions. It's up to the characters to figure out how to manage these spirits, and decide what to do with the artifact.)
SREric says "Bonjour. Should I be drawing in anyone else?"
Set on the river's southern end, to the edge of town as if fitting in so poorly, the barcade is a relic of its own kind, a neon-drenched anachronism nestled between old brick buildings of indeterminate age. Its name, The Trove, blinks erratically in the same sea glass that also lines the bar, casting garish shadows over the cracked asphalt outside. The place smells of spilled beer, burnt wires, and the faint metallic tang of sweat. Inside, the cacophony of synthesized music mixes noisily with the staccato beeps and boops of arcade machines bothis afternoon is alive, charged with a buzzing hum that may be electricity, or may be something else entirely - the unusual and strange has a habit of piping up in this strange town after all. Beneath the faint vapor in the air, beneath the flashy lights of pinball machines, beneath the people duking it out in Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, and other fighting games, beneath the people throwing axes to unleash their inner Viking, is a darkened arena where people will play their laser tag. Its perimeter is marked by pulsating blacklights and ropes of LEDs that bathed the area in an eerie ultraviolet glow, turning every speck of lint and dust into tiny stars.
And up from that arena emerge two burly-looking men, both clad in denims with the barcade's logo on it, sweaty and hauling up with them what looks like something akin to a chest, a crate, a strongbox - all three. Heavy enough in its iron confines, with strange inlaid stone marking the container also, the men huff as they let it sag down to the floor, looking about themselves exasperatedly.
"Does ANYONE feel up to a challenge today?" The shorter of the two, irritated, sweaty, wipes off his forehead. "We found this box when some IDIOT smashed into the wrong wall, too hard. Won't even budge! You get it open - We'll put your name on a plaque, or something. Just get us to figure it out so the bossman won't have our ass for 'not doing our jobs!'" He even makes the air quotes, seemingly anticipating a tongue-lashing he prays may never cmoe
(fix, it had to be the LAST word too) Set on the river's southern end, to the edge of town as if fitting in so poorly, the barcade is a relic of its own kind, a neon-drenched anachronism nestled between old brick buildings of indeterminate age. Its name, The Trove, blinks erratically in the same sea glass that also lines the bar, casting garish shadows over the cracked asphalt outside. The place smells of spilled beer, burnt wires, and the faint metallic tang of sweat. Inside, the cacophony of synthesized music mixes noisily with the staccato beeps and boops of arcade machines bothis afternoon is alive, charged with a buzzing hum that may be electricity, or may be something else entirely - the unusual and strange has a habit of piping up in this strange town after all. Beneath the faint vapor in the air, beneath the flashy lights of pinball machines, beneath the people duking it out in Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, and other fighting games, beneath the people throwing axes to unleash their inner Viking, is a darkened arena where people will play their laser tag. Its perimeter is marked by pulsating blacklights and ropes of LEDs that bathed the area in an eerie ultraviolet glow, turning every speck of lint and dust into tiny stars.
And up from that arena emerge two burly-looking men, both clad in denims with the barcade's logo on it, sweaty and hauling up with them what looks like something akin to a chest, a crate, a strongbox - all three. Heavy enough in its iron confines, with strange inlaid stone marking the container also, the men huff as they let it sag down to the floor, looking about themselves exasperatedly.
"Does ANYONE feel up to a challenge today?" The shorter of the two, irritated, sweaty, wipes off his forehead. "We found this box when some IDIOT smashed into the wrong wall, too hard. Won't even budge! You get it open - We'll put your name on a plaque, or something. Just get us to figure it out so the bossman won't have our ass for 'not doing our jobs!'" He even makes the air quotes, seemingly anticipating a tongue-lashing he prays may never come
Well, Colton here has a mighty fine competitive streak and more muscles than he does brains, so calling out like floods his system with a dopamine rush so intense that he probably could not be held legally responsible for his response. He simply does not have the choice of refusing.
"Fuck yeah I do," he declares, tipping his bottle of Bud Light up so fast that a lesser man's tooth might have chipped against the glass as he sucks the beer down without tasting it. He sets the hollowed-out beverage carcass down on the bar top and slips off his stool to wander over cratewards, nodding his head at the two dubiously-employed and rather sweaty men. "You gotta be careful when you're fucking around with old boxes like this though, guys. Probably some Arkwright's property and they're cranky fuckers. No worries, I'm a Moore, so you can trust me with this one, right?" He nods his head at his own logic, then hunkers down to dig his fingers into seam of the lid. There's not been a goddamn box that could keep Colton Moore out in the last eight years or so. He heaves.
The box did not yield for crowbars. Trying to screw and wrench open the metal did not in any way reveal its secrets, nor did trying to actually hammer the lid into compliance have an effect. Insofar anything gets it to even budge to begin with, it is the sorts of strength that defies any reason - or, at the least, the reason of two dumbfounded janitors watching a more-than-man wrench open that which, perhaps, should well have stayed locked behind layers of material with occult significance rather than bared to the world in a matter of mere moments.
A flash of light that is, perhaps, eerily well at home in the barcade accompanies the most accursed of unboxings that takes place, the room erupting in a searing radiance that dissolves into hazy, spectral mist. the two janitors, the people drinking at the bar, and the few dozen people playing their games become quite tough to see, replaced with a power that does not sit well in the man's chest at all. It calls to him with the ring of a wretched aunt's forgotten lullaby, perhaps, and the object he uncovers is something he ought to recognise less than he does: a low stone pedestal was boxed inside, atop which rests the skull of a creature large enough to be a moose - but horned, rather than antlered, three such pairs lining its oblong face, cords of leather lined with teeth and little claws rattling from it.
All is not well in its presence. What looms in that ghostly haze is not but the dead gaze of a yellowing skull fetish, but eyes eerily similar to his own. Looming over him, tall, imposing, cornered preternaturally by spirits from the beyond, are the silhouettes of fellow wolves. Not mere fellow wolves: ancestral wolves, the names of which are spoken but in quiet curses and with all the requisite dread, from times before modernity had sundered so many forests and paved over so much wild land. The disapproval in those eyes is very real, as half a dozen such gazes already look down upon the man, chief among which is a particularly tall and red-maned woman with a scowl upon her face
Colton's not above stumbling backwards and away from bright flashes of light, especially when it's immediately preceded by him ripping open some impossibly tough old box. When he's not, in fact, exploded by an IED, he relaxes a little - just a little - and creeps back over to the box. His first instinct is damage control, and he layers his voice with the subtle art of psychic persuasion as he suggests to the two workers, "Damn. Not sure where you took this from, but it does look like some Arkwright cemetery stuff. You'd better keep this to yourselves." He'd track them down by smell later, make sure to muddle their minds with a bit of amnesia. Now he just had to get the damn thing out of here so he can deal with the spirits he's steadfastly not meeting the gazes of. Not in front of the damn humans. This thing looked like it was straight out of Hell, so after a moment to collect himself, he takes the box and scarpers in a hurry, trotting off north. Let the spirits follow him; he'd deal with them in private.
It is just as well that those janitorial staff really are, in fact, merely human - that anyone in Haven learns not to ask too many questions - that he can absolutely bolt away with the large, trinket-adorned skull while struggling with it only because of its unwieldy bulk. Where the skull goes, so too do those spirits, chasing after him in bounding, all-four strides, derisively low laughter haunting his ears as he's stalked by a pack keeping pace with such very real ease. "You'll not lose a soul in that cutesy monkey suit of yours," one black-furred wolf growls, its accent strange enough to be a century old at the very least. "You bear our name.. But not an inch of what pride we all built up!"
"You lost everything our family had to the fucking Wilsons," Colton grumbles, possibly sounding a little nuts to any passersby as he jogs his way over the bridge and northeast towards Hell. In fairness, he's a Moore, and muttering to himself about the Wilsons isn't that unusual. "And I've just come back to town to set things on a better course for us. You probably aren't even real ghosts. Just shitty recreations of your lives' bitterness and suffering, like a recording made by some Demon. I'm going to get this thing back where it came from. I'll fucking smash it, if you want. Put you all to rest."
More contempt. More derision. It is somewhat unclear to those spirits who Colton may even try to convince - them, or himself. "Talk, talk, talk. I did not bite that accursed monster's leg from its socket and butcher its head to be denied by my own blood. I demand more than but your insolence!" Even in death - are they even dead? - these canine few can raise their voices and talk on back, stalking Colton across the pavement and over the bridge, unbothered by lights or pedestrians or vehicles. "You speak your nothings and run from your troubles and hide your nature so.. You've already lost before you even tried! You will get NOWHERE unless you can prove in blood and iron you are more than what I see in you!" The woman's voice echoes harshly within his ears yet, undaunted perhaps by the prospect of that artifact being brought quite so far away
It's not that Colton's a monolith, unshaken by the words of his apparent ancestors, unfeeling and robotic. It's just that he's spent the last nine-and-a-bit years having people yelling at him while he worked to begin with, and the memories of it haven't been given any time for the desensitisation to fade. He's lucky, really. Still, it does get an enormous frown out of him, and he stops to whirl around and face the red-headed matriarch in particular, staring into her eyes.
"All of you had the same goddamn chances at me to handle this shit yourselves. How many of your brothers and your cousins are still walking around, popping in for family reunions? You think Uncle Runs-With-Wolves sits around bitching about how fucking white people took the land unjustly?" He probably did do that a lot, in fairness, but Colton hasn't been making a lot of the family cookouts for a while." He lets out a huff, setting back off for hell. He knows there's no point in arguing with ghosts... It's just not something he's ever had to do before. It wasn't something he /could/ do, most of the time."
(fix) It's not that Colton's a monolith, unshaken by the words of his apparent ancestors, unfeeling and robotic. It's just that he's spent the last nine-and-a-bit years having people yelling at him while he worked to begin with, and the memories of it haven't been given any time for the desensitisation to fade. He's lucky, really. Still, it does get an enormous frown out of him, and he stops to whirl around and face the red-headed matriarch in particular, staring into her eyes.
"All of you had the same goddamn chances at me to handle this shit yourselves. How many of your brothers and your cousins are still walking around, popping in for family reunions? You think Uncle Runs-With-Wolves sits around bitching about how fucking white people took the land unjustly?" He probably did do that a lot, in fairness, but Colton hasn't been making a lot of the family cookouts for a while. He lets out a huff, setting back off for hell. He knows there's no point in arguing with ghosts... It's just not something he's ever had to do before. It wasn't something he /could/ do, most of the time." "
What specific merits this or that uncle, alive and well, might just have isn't quite the particular sorts of point these lot are quite interested in. Not with Colton right here, anyway. "It was NEVER my failure- not OURS! People like YOU will be the end of us!" Badgering introspection into people not merely old, but so ancient as to be long-dead, really may in fact just be a non-starter. "People denying our nature, running from our problems.. Fighting battles on the wrong terrain - the wrong way - you would leave behind everything we can be just to try and be something we are- not!" More accusations, more dead-set confidence on behalf of those ghosts that chase the man down. They may even be right; certainly they sound convinced of themselves and deeply assured enough for it.
All his older goddamn relatives, living or dead, were utterly convinced of themselves and deeply assured about whatever the hell they wanted to rant about. Colton loved his family, he did, but he had a god damn demon skull in a box to transport.
"I've got some people in the Blue Hills," he grumbles, trying not to set his jaw too hard. His teeth might crack. "We're working on taking the fucking land back. I'm not /hiding/ what I fucking am, they /made/ me like -" He cuts off briefly as he realises what he's saying, and his lips draw into a tight, thin, pissed-off line. He marches on in silence, compelled not to explain anymore by forces he most certainly could not try and crack - and then, finally, he trails the last few steps of that eastern turn off Black Ash.
"Right," he says. "Hell. Hold tight." And through he steps, into the blasted-out shell of District 82; an utter shithole populated only by a few refugees from the endless Sirenian War and the random fucking pig farm everyone seemed to live off. He eyes the endless expanse of black woods, keeping watch for roaming demonborn, then says, "I'm going to either toss this fucking thing into the woods or I'm going to stomp it into dust. Your call, everyone. Don't take long."
Colton is either a very bad listener, or those long-dead relatives, if they're even that, certainly would consider him so. The prospect of bargaining and choosing between those evils is one they do not relish at all is one thing that has them talk no more, also. The more aggressive, violent, primal of those wolves leap at Colton and seek to claw his face right off. This, frankly, does not work: it does so very little that the sensation doesn't even tickle. It just isn't there. He's reminded of friends dying off in sandy places and very much alive relatives locking him in small rooms, but hurt-
Hurt is what he gets from those more devious relatives. Well aware of their weakness, they harness what power they can do till the soil in this place, to dredge up what they can. Hell is a place of ghastly surprises, and Colton gets no rock thrown at him, no blunt object, no Scottish broadsword, not quite. The ghost's spectral claw animates a venerable Claymore with a track record of biding its time more than fifty years in the soil. A terrifying crash of an explosion dashes any hopes someone may have had at being subtle, and sees shrapnel go flying to shred at and past him at lightning speeds. Absolutely savage. It might, perhaps, communicate just what those ancestral spirits prefer to choose his way very well indeed.
It turns out that Colton is either a very bad listener, or those long-dead relatives, if they're even that, certainly would consider him so. The prospect of bargaining and choosing between those evils is one they do not relish at all is one thing that has them talk no more, also. The more aggressive, violent, primal of those wolves leap at Colton and seek to claw his face right off. This, frankly, does not work: it does so very little that the sensation doesn't even tickle. It just isn't there. He's reminded of friends dying off in sandy places and very much alive relatives locking him in small rooms, but hurt-
Hurt is what he gets from those more devious relatives. Well aware of their weakness, they harness what power they can do till the soil in this place, to dredge up what they can. Hell is a place of ghastly surprises, and Colton gets no rock thrown at him, no blunt object, no Scottish broadsword, not quite. The ghost's spectral claw animates a venerable Claymore with a track record of biding its time more than fifty years in the soil. A terrifying crash of an explosion dashes any hopes Colton may have had at being subtle, and sees shrapnel go flying to shred at and past him at lightning speeds. Absolutely savage. It might, perhaps, communicate just what those ancestral spirits prefer to choose his way very well indeed.
Christ. The place was just about a tip heap of forgotten weapons, and there's no safe place for Colton to dodge to that isn't just as laden with steel for his fucking family to throw.
"Jesus Christ," he yells, echoing his earlier thought. "Fucking - fine! Jesus." He drops the box and kicks it a little ways off the road. Not beyond sight - just beyond foot traffic. "I'll go bring you a goddamn fucking wizard to uncurse the damn thing. Breaking it would have done just as fucking well." He leaps right back out of the gate immediately, out of the range of any more goddamn flying swords or the cursed artifact. Now he just had to path over to Blue Hills and get one of the ritualists to come release the ghosts which may or may not actually be his family...
(Your target is approached by a member of The Black Flame cult who claims to have had a change of heart and wishes to defect. They bring with them an artifact they claim is being used in the cult's rituals to hasten the arrival of the eldritch horrors. Your target and their allies must decide whether to trust this person and if so, how to safely handle and dispose of the artifact. However, they soon find themselves pursued by other cult members intent on retrieving the artifact and punishing the defector.)
Seth steps back into the bedroom, fresh out of the shower, his hair still wet and plastered to his head. He makes his way lethargically to his clothes, in a pile in the corner, and pulls them on, before exhaling a sigh and moving to sit on his bed, where his phone has been left resting on his pillow. He picks it up and unlocks it, and begins to scroll through his messages and social media. Nothing new. He lies back with a sigh, and peers up through the skylight overhead. This time of the year, though it's still relatively early in the evening, the sky has already darkened, dark stormclouds rolling overhead and blocking out any view of the stars that might not already be consumed by light pollution from the town. Only the moon is occasionally visible, a murky glow seeping through the grey cover. He blows out a breath. Perhaps this day will be as uneventful as the last few.
What a relaxing evening, really. Lying in bed, and watching the stormclouds roil and twist across the nights sky? Uneventful. Peaceful, almost.
Or at the least, this was the case, until with little warning Seth's bedroom door bursts open, and a stranger runs into the room. They're scraggly looking, their dark hair mattered and twisted over dark features. Wet, though not from a shower but stress. There's a handgun in one of their hands, and a large bowling bag in the other as they skitter their gaze around the room until they finally come upon Seth, "Yo!" They call out to them, as if the bed-lying fellow was the one who wasn't supposed to be here, "Who the fuck are you?"
Seth places his phone down at his side and closes his eyes, once he realises there's nothing new for him to see. Though his boot-clad feet are still firmly on the floor, he seems about ready to fall asleep. That is, until the door bursts open. His eyes open and he straightens up with a startled jolt, eyes widening. "H-hold up" he stutters, raising his hands flat in front of him to show he's not armed nor dangerous himself, before he pushes slowly and carefully to his feet, not taking a step closer, "It's alright man" he says, "I live here, alright?" He draws in a sharp breath, and realises he doesn't feel the weight of his revolver in his pocket. A glance to the corner of his vision, and he notices it lying there where the pile of clothes he had clambered into used to be resting. It must have slipped out of his jacket when it was there. "What do you want? Money?"
"What?" There's a certain edge of offensive in the home invaders tone at the question extended by Seth. Money? What does he think he's some sort of burg- Oh, right. He's just burst in waving a gun, and covered in sweat. The man shakes his head rapidly, "No, no- I need-" He pauses and saunters back toward the door, peeking out into the rest of the penthouse suite. "Listen, where are the Russians? And who the fuck are you?" He blurts out then, waving the gun toward Seth once more, "One of Korina's pets?"
Seth snatches up his phone and quickly stuffs it away, when the intruder glances out the door, attention, for a moment, elsewhere. When they look back, he edges around the bed a little, slowly, still not making any move to actually approach the intruder. "Korina's pets...?" he asks, mentally noting that this guy, whoever they are, is probably aware, "No, no I'm not. Korina doesn't live here any more. It's just..." he begins, but then seems to think better of revealing the roster of inhabitants to this stranger with a gun, and closes his mouth for a moment, saying nothing, until he adds, "Russians? There aren't any Russians. Listen, whatever it is, I'm sure I can help. You can put the gun down, or just... stop waving it around."
"oh, son of a bitch!" The man cries out in response, raising the gun and bag both toward his forehead and smacking himself a few times in frustration. He's clearly agitated, that much is certain. The intruder starts to pace back and forth then, looking Seth up and down, and specifically over the items of jewelry he's wearing, "Look, are you at least Hand, my guy?" He asks, gruffly, waving the gun around some more, "You got a car? A bike? We need to move. Soon."
Seth takes a step back as the stranger smacks himself on the forehead with his likely loaded gun. "Hey, it's alright!" he says, hands still raised in front of him, "Yes, yes, I'm in the Hand" wincing as the weapon is waved around haphazardly again, "And no, no I don't, have a car or a bike. Listen, just, tell me your name and what you need, yeah? I'll see what I can do to help."
"What I /need/ is for someone who knows what they're doing to be her-" The fellow cuts himself off, and cocks his head to the side, "Hear that? They're here. We need to move, bucko. I ain't got the Sanctuary, and without me? You only got half what you need." He shifts closer to Seth and tosses the bowling bag toward him. Should the fellow decide to peer inside of the unzipped bag? Well, he'd come face to face with a face. An old face. Mummified, perhaps, or preserved in some manner, and practically bleeding magical potential. It must've belonged to a woman, and that's confirmed in short order, "Last daughter of the Romanov, hm?" He starts to dart back out, though pauses to try and man-handle Seth along with him.
Seth hears nothing at all, but has no doubt this aware stranger, with knowledge of the Hand, is some kind of supernatural, with better hearing than most. "Alrigh-" he begins, but is cut off as the bowling bag is thrown into his hands. He does indeed unzip it and peer inside, unable to contain his curiosity, coming face to face with... a face. Even he can feel the magic coming off of it, and he looks up at the stranger with his eyes narrowed. "How the fuck did you get this..." he says, but his words are not answered as the man makes to drag him out. He pulls away and says, "Wait!" before scrambling over the corner where his revolver is and plucking it up, stuffing it away into his jacket pocket. Hopefully that doesn't get him shot, as he and this man appear to be unlikely allies now, "Alright" he says as he makes his way out into the apartment at large, still following along, "Tell me what's going on."
SRBrock doesn't make for the front door this time, as the sounds of banging can be heard against it now. Instead he half-steers, and half-leads Seth towards the balcony, and out onto it. "Christ on a cracker, we don't have time for this!" He insists, though starts to explain for Seth anyways, "You heard of the Black Flame, fella? I work with them. /Worked/ with them. The people who used to live here offered me a better deal, one that involves more fun, and pleasure and less ending the world ourselves, yeah? They were supposed to be here to back me up, but I was a few.. months late." There's a beat or two, "And here we are now." Another pause, "You even jumped down here?"
The man asks, and without waiting for an answer, shoves Seth off of the railing before jumping after him, sending them both tumbling down into the bushes below.