Encounterlogs
Tabithas Odd Encounter Sr Legion 240409
In the eerie setting of Void Drive under a canopy of storm clouds, Tabitha encounters the ghost of Alice French – a former fellow coven member and Tri-Delt sister whose tragic end had seemed resolved years ago. Alice, recognizable by her translucent, ethereal form and the horrific absence of her eyes, filled with a black, ichorous substance, reveals the unsettling truth that her spirit could not find peace. She discloses that another friend, Liz, was not in the afterlife as expected but remains a prisoner of the vampire, Paul, who had lured both Alice and Liz into his clutches. Alice's plea to Tabitha is rooted in the desperate hope that Liz is still alive and can be rescued from her eternal torment.
Tabitha, grappling with the shock and heartache of seeing Alice in such a tortured state, learns of a powerful skull artifact used by Paul to enslave Liz. Alice shares the incantation of a spell she believed could free Liz, but which ultimately led to her own demise. Despite the risks, Tabitha is swayed by the gravity of Alice's request and the slim hope of saving Liz. Alice, through tears of ichor, imparts the spell to Tabitha, marking a poignant moment of connection between the worlds of the living and the dead. As Alice fades into the forest, Tabitha is left to ponder the cost of wielding such power and the moral complexities of engaging in the supernatural, tasked with an immense burden that bridges friendship, loss, and the pursuit of redemption.
(Tabitha's odd encounter(SRLegion):SRLegion)
[Mon Apr 8 2024]
On Void Drive
A dirt road veers off from the intersection between Mariners Highway and Prospect Street to the north and makes its way through the trees to the south. The dirt itself is rather strange, rather than your typical brown soil packed down and hardened, it's a bitumen black. The trees that run along the verge arch over the road, doing a good job of blocking out some of the sky, and creating a natural near-tunnel to drive through.
It is afternoon, about 57F(13C) degrees, and the sky is covered by dark grey stormclouds.
(Your target is possessed by an angry spirit that is forcing them to act out and putting themselves and/or others at risk. They must either defeat it or find a way to calm it down.
)
Tabitha is standing in the middle of a road, texting. She looks frustrated, and perhaps even angry. She shakes. Perhaps that is for the cold, however.
Void Drive -- and the cold, as some figure walks into view. She's wearing yoga pants and a sports bra, with an unzipped light hoodie over it, and she has an iPod in her ears. Oh... and she's dead. Tabitha can see that from the way the trees are visible through the young woman's translucent, milky-pale figure. There's something eerily familiar with her as she moves in diagonally to the northeast, in the general direction of Town Hall.
Tabitha looks behind her to the windmill in the distance and with a chew to her bottom lip, turns back to face the direction in which this ethereal spirit has gone. To follow or not? That is the question. It is less that this entity is clearly dead, but the familiarity found in her appearance that leads her toward the northeast.
The ghostly young woman doesn't seem to notice Tabitha following -- not until she does. She turns, then, and recognition dawns on the ghost. "Tabs!" she says, her voice ethereal. Now the redhead recognizes the dark-haired young woman -- it's Alice French, who when Tabitha was first at White Oak was a fellow Tri-Delt and a member of the coven. Along with some others, Alice was part of a little circle of witches on campus... until things went wrong. Things did go wrong, too: because this is Alice French, just as Tabitha and her friends found her in the end. Alice, eyeless, with black melted goo in each of her sockets where eyes should be.
Tabitha stops dead in her tracks. She stares at Alice, who is at least showing herself to her at the moment. "Alice," she greets with fair less exclamation at the end of it. "I thought we put your soul to rest," she says with a little frown coming over her again. And that small amount of glisten in her ocean eyes.
"I --" Alice pauses, then. "I..." There's a faltering, and there's something that would be tears, if she had eyes. Of course -- she doesn't have eyes, and so instead of tears black ichor leaks down her cheeks, like the worst and most grotesque ruined makeup. She takes a step towards Tabitha. "I know," she says after a wavering moment. "But I couldn't, Tabby. I couldn't. I thought I'd go... wherever, and Liz would be there. That'd he'd killed her," she says. "Except she wasn't there, in that other place." The afterlife is a mystery even to the dead. "She's still here. With him. A prisoner, somewhere."
"She's gone, Alice..." Tabitha says. "She hasn't been heard from since then." She does not get close to the spirit, despite the urge. She wobbles a little to and fro, in her desire to try to hold a friend she knows she won't be able to. "Sometimes... they're just -- gone."
Alice drifts closer, then. "She's not gone," she says to Tabitha, and now there's urgency in the black-eyed girl's face. "She's not." There's a pause. "I don't now where she is, though," says the young woman. She wrings her hands. "I don't know where he took her. He was, he is..." He was a vampire, old and powerful. There was some terrible attraction there -- for Liz, for Alice, perhaps even for Tabitha, some competition when he seemed like just a magnetic young man who didn't like the sun. It's hard to know how ancient the un-dead are until it is too late. "But she's not dead." This said with conviction.
"You have to rest, Alice..." Tabitha says, uncertainty in her tone there. Is she alive? Liz? She may very well be alive, where Alice is not. "By now, he's probably turned her and they do not want to be found..." She shakes her head. "When you died, we didn't stop looking. At first. You know." she licks at her lips, reddening them. "But after a while, cases go cold." Like her?
"I know." Alice drifts closer still. She's almost able to touch Tabitha, but not quite. "You -- all of you," she said. "You had lives to lead, Tabby," she whispers. It's the voice of the friend the redhead knows, but it has a kind of rasp to it, a ragged edge: like someone who has been crying. But then, Alice has been crying for the better part now of seven years, hasn't she? "But I couldn't. I can't," she says. "I can't let it go. And maybe he has?" There's some fret, twisting the cords of her iPod around her fingers. Who still uses an iPod? Who has corded headphones. "But does that mean she's just his slave forever?"
Tabitha shudders a bit, rubbing at her arm and stepping back from the floating figure of what was once her friend. "Maybe..." she does admit. "Paul was an ass...." She says, fretting with her own hair, now, twisting it and tugging it around a finger. "But maybe she got away, too." Ah, youth and naivity.
Alice steps closer again. "I hope," she admits to Tabitha, but then she raises her face to see her friend. Her eyes are pits, melted pits -- whatever power the young witch tried to wield was too much. She tried to meet the ancient vampire's eyes, but instead of breaking him? Her own burned out. There is a slow, seeping weep of midnight puss down her cheeks. "But I don't think so," she confesses. "I think he has her. I don't... I don't know what." A start. "How long has it been?" Time means less, across the veil of life and death. "A year?" It's been seven.
"Seven, Alice." Tabitha says to Alice, softly. "I'm sorry. I --- know how close the two of you were. I know --" Does she? Why couldn't Alice give up? This is written in her ocean eyes as she peers into the dark oozing depths of her once-friend. "I hope, too, Alice. But it isn't your fight anymore. You should rest..." Then, another thought, "How did it happen, Alice?" She gestures to the ghostly face. "What spell? We were just children, and we didn't understand the consequences..."
"There was..." someone' mind flits back to memory. "There was a skull," she says. "One of the teachers talked about it," she admits. "I wasn't supposed to hear. It had a golden crown, and black cut onyx for eyes," she says. "I knew he'd -- he'd used that power on Liz," she explains. "Some kind of terrible abomination of a power. He made her his slave," she tells Tabitha. "And with the skull? I could do the same." Her memory makes her ghostly form shimmer. "I could look at it, and then look at him, and -force- him to release her. And I felt it," she says. "I felt my eyes go black... but I couldn't."
"There was..." Alice's mind flits back to memory. "There was a skull," she says. "One of the teachers talked about it," she admits. "I wasn't supposed to hear. It had a golden crown, and black cut onyx for eyes," she says. "I knew he'd -- he'd used that power on Liz," she explains. "Some kind of terrible abomination of a power. He made her his slave," she tells Tabitha. "And with the skull? I could do the same." Her memory makes her ghostly form shimmer. "I could look at it, and then look at him, and -force- him to release her. And I felt it," she says. "I felt my eyes go black... but then I lost control."
"Do you ...." Tabitha starts, hesitates, and twists her hands around nervously. "Do you remember the incantation?" She swallows. It's probably clear, if anyone where to pass by, that the cogs in her brain are moving. Control... she is better at it now, right? "I could use it, Alice... Now."
"I remember the incantation," Alice says to Tabitha, her voice quiet. "But you'd need the skull." She looks up at the redhead. "The power was in it," she says. "It was -- it belonged to someone," she says. "But if you had it? You could use it," she admits.
The skull -- Tabitha knows that when Alice was found, after her final confrontation with Paul, no artifact was there, and indeed the brothers and sisters at White Oak had some consternation about something missing at the time of Alice's death and Paul and Liz's disappearance.
Leaning forward, Alice begins to whisper -- murmuring words of some enchantment into Tabitha's ear. As she gets close, her ghostly hand touches her living friend's shoulder, and there is some terrible chill.
Tabitha freezes, literally, when the hand touches her. The skin freezes. She flinches. She tries to concentrate on what is that Alice whispers, but the hand... It bites into her flesh, and her mind whirs with ideas, concerns. Including that of her very dead, very mournful friend. "Alice..." she whispers. "I'm so sorry."
"I know," Alice tells Tabitha, her voice quiet as she steps back. For a moment, her pale, white hand has some color, even as frost seems to remain on the redhead's shoulder. She steps back away again. "Find her?" she says, even as the memory of the enchantment rattles around the living woman's brain. Tabitha needs to write it down -- she needs to write it down, fast, before it slips away. "Save her," she says. "Please." As if that's the bargain: the enchantment for Liv's life. Everything, after all, has a pric.e
(re) "I know," Alice tells Tabitha, her voice quiet as she steps back. For a moment, her pale, white hand has some color, even as frost seems to remain on the redhead's shoulder. She steps back away again. "Find her?" she says, even as the memory of the enchantment rattles around the living woman's brain. Tabitha needs to write it down -- she needs to write it down, fast, before it slips away. "Save her," she says. "Please." As if that's the bargain: the enchantment for Liv's life. Everything, after all, has a price.
Tabitha searches around her tote to start writing down those chilled whispers that leave her own lips blue. No need for a reliving of Army of Darkness. She looks up at Alice, sadness there, again, though her tears might be frozen at the corners of her eyes. "I will try." she offers. Try. She hasn't for seven years.
Try, indeed: Alice would offer Tabitha sad, hopeful eyes, but of course she doesn't have eyes. She has black pools where the power of magic melted out her very vision, leaving it as messy, bloody runs down her cheeks. She smiles, though, as she puts the earbuds from her iPod back in, and when she turns Tabitha can no longer see the ghost's ruined face as she walks away, into the wood.
Tabitha watches as Alice slowly disappears, her pen still scribbling lightly on the paper.
As Alice drifts into the woods, the early spring chill settles into the Forest. Here, just south of Haven, quiet seems to loom -- and it is awful thoughts for Tabitha, perhaps. Her friend disappeared seven years ago. Terrible things happen all the time in Haven, of course: if Tabitha were to try to stop them all, solve them all, there'd never be a moment for joy or peace or happiness or fellowship or anything. But is it right that she trades a promise to a ghost to find her friend for magic? Should that be the bargain she strikes? Or is it merely some instrumental good, to give Tabitha a benefit in her fight as she does the right thing? What is the right thing at all -- even when the mists aren't high, the path always seems a little murky and shrouded the more magic becomes involved.
But then, at last, Alice is gone completely -- and it's just Tabitha, alone with her thoughts, shivering. Tonight she's tried to save one woman, promised to save another... and perhaps she will succeed. But if it's true that all power requires sacrifice, then what will she sacrifice to achieve it? With night's fall, only the redhead will be able to answer, and some answers go with you to the grave.
Tabitha, grappling with the shock and heartache of seeing Alice in such a tortured state, learns of a powerful skull artifact used by Paul to enslave Liz. Alice shares the incantation of a spell she believed could free Liz, but which ultimately led to her own demise. Despite the risks, Tabitha is swayed by the gravity of Alice's request and the slim hope of saving Liz. Alice, through tears of ichor, imparts the spell to Tabitha, marking a poignant moment of connection between the worlds of the living and the dead. As Alice fades into the forest, Tabitha is left to ponder the cost of wielding such power and the moral complexities of engaging in the supernatural, tasked with an immense burden that bridges friendship, loss, and the pursuit of redemption.
(Tabitha's odd encounter(SRLegion):SRLegion)
[Mon Apr 8 2024]
On Void Drive
A dirt road veers off from the intersection between Mariners Highway and Prospect Street to the north and makes its way through the trees to the south. The dirt itself is rather strange, rather than your typical brown soil packed down and hardened, it's a bitumen black. The trees that run along the verge arch over the road, doing a good job of blocking out some of the sky, and creating a natural near-tunnel to drive through.
It is afternoon, about 57F(13C) degrees, and the sky is covered by dark grey stormclouds.
(Your target is possessed by an angry spirit that is forcing them to act out and putting themselves and/or others at risk. They must either defeat it or find a way to calm it down.
)
Tabitha is standing in the middle of a road, texting. She looks frustrated, and perhaps even angry. She shakes. Perhaps that is for the cold, however.
Void Drive -- and the cold, as some figure walks into view. She's wearing yoga pants and a sports bra, with an unzipped light hoodie over it, and she has an iPod in her ears. Oh... and she's dead. Tabitha can see that from the way the trees are visible through the young woman's translucent, milky-pale figure. There's something eerily familiar with her as she moves in diagonally to the northeast, in the general direction of Town Hall.
Tabitha looks behind her to the windmill in the distance and with a chew to her bottom lip, turns back to face the direction in which this ethereal spirit has gone. To follow or not? That is the question. It is less that this entity is clearly dead, but the familiarity found in her appearance that leads her toward the northeast.
The ghostly young woman doesn't seem to notice Tabitha following -- not until she does. She turns, then, and recognition dawns on the ghost. "Tabs!" she says, her voice ethereal. Now the redhead recognizes the dark-haired young woman -- it's Alice French, who when Tabitha was first at White Oak was a fellow Tri-Delt and a member of the coven. Along with some others, Alice was part of a little circle of witches on campus... until things went wrong. Things did go wrong, too: because this is Alice French, just as Tabitha and her friends found her in the end. Alice, eyeless, with black melted goo in each of her sockets where eyes should be.
Tabitha stops dead in her tracks. She stares at Alice, who is at least showing herself to her at the moment. "Alice," she greets with fair less exclamation at the end of it. "I thought we put your soul to rest," she says with a little frown coming over her again. And that small amount of glisten in her ocean eyes.
"I --" Alice pauses, then. "I..." There's a faltering, and there's something that would be tears, if she had eyes. Of course -- she doesn't have eyes, and so instead of tears black ichor leaks down her cheeks, like the worst and most grotesque ruined makeup. She takes a step towards Tabitha. "I know," she says after a wavering moment. "But I couldn't, Tabby. I couldn't. I thought I'd go... wherever, and Liz would be there. That'd he'd killed her," she says. "Except she wasn't there, in that other place." The afterlife is a mystery even to the dead. "She's still here. With him. A prisoner, somewhere."
"She's gone, Alice..." Tabitha says. "She hasn't been heard from since then." She does not get close to the spirit, despite the urge. She wobbles a little to and fro, in her desire to try to hold a friend she knows she won't be able to. "Sometimes... they're just -- gone."
Alice drifts closer, then. "She's not gone," she says to Tabitha, and now there's urgency in the black-eyed girl's face. "She's not." There's a pause. "I don't now where she is, though," says the young woman. She wrings her hands. "I don't know where he took her. He was, he is..." He was a vampire, old and powerful. There was some terrible attraction there -- for Liz, for Alice, perhaps even for Tabitha, some competition when he seemed like just a magnetic young man who didn't like the sun. It's hard to know how ancient the un-dead are until it is too late. "But she's not dead." This said with conviction.
"You have to rest, Alice..." Tabitha says, uncertainty in her tone there. Is she alive? Liz? She may very well be alive, where Alice is not. "By now, he's probably turned her and they do not want to be found..." She shakes her head. "When you died, we didn't stop looking. At first. You know." she licks at her lips, reddening them. "But after a while, cases go cold." Like her?
"I know." Alice drifts closer still. She's almost able to touch Tabitha, but not quite. "You -- all of you," she said. "You had lives to lead, Tabby," she whispers. It's the voice of the friend the redhead knows, but it has a kind of rasp to it, a ragged edge: like someone who has been crying. But then, Alice has been crying for the better part now of seven years, hasn't she? "But I couldn't. I can't," she says. "I can't let it go. And maybe he has?" There's some fret, twisting the cords of her iPod around her fingers. Who still uses an iPod? Who has corded headphones. "But does that mean she's just his slave forever?"
Tabitha shudders a bit, rubbing at her arm and stepping back from the floating figure of what was once her friend. "Maybe..." she does admit. "Paul was an ass...." She says, fretting with her own hair, now, twisting it and tugging it around a finger. "But maybe she got away, too." Ah, youth and naivity.
Alice steps closer again. "I hope," she admits to Tabitha, but then she raises her face to see her friend. Her eyes are pits, melted pits -- whatever power the young witch tried to wield was too much. She tried to meet the ancient vampire's eyes, but instead of breaking him? Her own burned out. There is a slow, seeping weep of midnight puss down her cheeks. "But I don't think so," she confesses. "I think he has her. I don't... I don't know what." A start. "How long has it been?" Time means less, across the veil of life and death. "A year?" It's been seven.
"Seven, Alice." Tabitha says to Alice, softly. "I'm sorry. I --- know how close the two of you were. I know --" Does she? Why couldn't Alice give up? This is written in her ocean eyes as she peers into the dark oozing depths of her once-friend. "I hope, too, Alice. But it isn't your fight anymore. You should rest..." Then, another thought, "How did it happen, Alice?" She gestures to the ghostly face. "What spell? We were just children, and we didn't understand the consequences..."
"There was..." someone' mind flits back to memory. "There was a skull," she says. "One of the teachers talked about it," she admits. "I wasn't supposed to hear. It had a golden crown, and black cut onyx for eyes," she says. "I knew he'd -- he'd used that power on Liz," she explains. "Some kind of terrible abomination of a power. He made her his slave," she tells Tabitha. "And with the skull? I could do the same." Her memory makes her ghostly form shimmer. "I could look at it, and then look at him, and -force- him to release her. And I felt it," she says. "I felt my eyes go black... but I couldn't."
"There was..." Alice's mind flits back to memory. "There was a skull," she says. "One of the teachers talked about it," she admits. "I wasn't supposed to hear. It had a golden crown, and black cut onyx for eyes," she says. "I knew he'd -- he'd used that power on Liz," she explains. "Some kind of terrible abomination of a power. He made her his slave," she tells Tabitha. "And with the skull? I could do the same." Her memory makes her ghostly form shimmer. "I could look at it, and then look at him, and -force- him to release her. And I felt it," she says. "I felt my eyes go black... but then I lost control."
"Do you ...." Tabitha starts, hesitates, and twists her hands around nervously. "Do you remember the incantation?" She swallows. It's probably clear, if anyone where to pass by, that the cogs in her brain are moving. Control... she is better at it now, right? "I could use it, Alice... Now."
"I remember the incantation," Alice says to Tabitha, her voice quiet. "But you'd need the skull." She looks up at the redhead. "The power was in it," she says. "It was -- it belonged to someone," she says. "But if you had it? You could use it," she admits.
The skull -- Tabitha knows that when Alice was found, after her final confrontation with Paul, no artifact was there, and indeed the brothers and sisters at White Oak had some consternation about something missing at the time of Alice's death and Paul and Liz's disappearance.
Leaning forward, Alice begins to whisper -- murmuring words of some enchantment into Tabitha's ear. As she gets close, her ghostly hand touches her living friend's shoulder, and there is some terrible chill.
Tabitha freezes, literally, when the hand touches her. The skin freezes. She flinches. She tries to concentrate on what is that Alice whispers, but the hand... It bites into her flesh, and her mind whirs with ideas, concerns. Including that of her very dead, very mournful friend. "Alice..." she whispers. "I'm so sorry."
"I know," Alice tells Tabitha, her voice quiet as she steps back. For a moment, her pale, white hand has some color, even as frost seems to remain on the redhead's shoulder. She steps back away again. "Find her?" she says, even as the memory of the enchantment rattles around the living woman's brain. Tabitha needs to write it down -- she needs to write it down, fast, before it slips away. "Save her," she says. "Please." As if that's the bargain: the enchantment for Liv's life. Everything, after all, has a pric.e
(re) "I know," Alice tells Tabitha, her voice quiet as she steps back. For a moment, her pale, white hand has some color, even as frost seems to remain on the redhead's shoulder. She steps back away again. "Find her?" she says, even as the memory of the enchantment rattles around the living woman's brain. Tabitha needs to write it down -- she needs to write it down, fast, before it slips away. "Save her," she says. "Please." As if that's the bargain: the enchantment for Liv's life. Everything, after all, has a price.
Tabitha searches around her tote to start writing down those chilled whispers that leave her own lips blue. No need for a reliving of Army of Darkness. She looks up at Alice, sadness there, again, though her tears might be frozen at the corners of her eyes. "I will try." she offers. Try. She hasn't for seven years.
Try, indeed: Alice would offer Tabitha sad, hopeful eyes, but of course she doesn't have eyes. She has black pools where the power of magic melted out her very vision, leaving it as messy, bloody runs down her cheeks. She smiles, though, as she puts the earbuds from her iPod back in, and when she turns Tabitha can no longer see the ghost's ruined face as she walks away, into the wood.
Tabitha watches as Alice slowly disappears, her pen still scribbling lightly on the paper.
As Alice drifts into the woods, the early spring chill settles into the Forest. Here, just south of Haven, quiet seems to loom -- and it is awful thoughts for Tabitha, perhaps. Her friend disappeared seven years ago. Terrible things happen all the time in Haven, of course: if Tabitha were to try to stop them all, solve them all, there'd never be a moment for joy or peace or happiness or fellowship or anything. But is it right that she trades a promise to a ghost to find her friend for magic? Should that be the bargain she strikes? Or is it merely some instrumental good, to give Tabitha a benefit in her fight as she does the right thing? What is the right thing at all -- even when the mists aren't high, the path always seems a little murky and shrouded the more magic becomes involved.
But then, at last, Alice is gone completely -- and it's just Tabitha, alone with her thoughts, shivering. Tonight she's tried to save one woman, promised to save another... and perhaps she will succeed. But if it's true that all power requires sacrifice, then what will she sacrifice to achieve it? With night's fall, only the redhead will be able to answer, and some answers go with you to the grave.