Inquest [Molly Mood]

[Kenna]

Thursday, August 22nd

Molly didn't fall asleep from the night before until about 7:30am, well past the point of the sun cresting the mountains and raining light down upon the city. She then drew the black-out curtains of her bedroom and fell into a fitful, restless sleep.

The night was filled with twisting dreamscapes that erred on the side of nightmare-ish. She was stuck in an unfamiliar part of the a gray backdrop of the city, pacing from one end of a five block space to another. She would encounter men with pocked faces and guns chasing her into an alley. She ran to a big boulder of a figure with a severely broken nose in his silhouette, but the instant she called for its attention and reached out for it, the figure would simply vanish.

Then there was the tall, lean man with the handsome face. He would smile and show sharp teeth, a too-strong hand grasped her arm and squeezed it tight. Then he turned into a billowing shape, like a sheet stretched into the wind, and enveloped her.

She woke with a start and panicked, realizing she was unable to feel or locate the arm that was squeezed in her dream. It was with a curse and a frustrated flop back into her sheets that she realized she'd fallen asleep with her arm pinned under her side and now she couldn't feel it.

Uncomfortable and ill-rested, Molly went about her morning routine.

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Once dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, Molly took a backpack, pulled her bike down her apartment building's staircase, and set off on the town.

She had a printed list with her of different book stores and their addresses as they existed about town. During her day she visited four stores in different points of the city, mercifully three of which being close to the downtown area (or within reasonable bicycling distance anyways). Each of these shops were smaller book stores, locally owned rather than extensions of corporations.

She would find a chair in these shops and thumb her way through books dredged from the occult section. She was hunting for the oldest publications she could find. She dug through history sections rather than fiction, searched old folklore and superstitions of times long since past.

When something seemed like it was promising, or at least insightful and interesting (but most importantly, based on old stories: she didn't buy anything that observed the modern take of the myth she was researching) she would purchase it at the counter and stash it in her backpack. This happened twice-- three books at the first store, and one book at the last store.

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The day was long and stretched out, but well worth it in the end. The binge on research had Molly feeling precisely as wary as she had been last night when she found herself walking with a corpse (no, it wasn't a dream, she remembers it and the terror and the aftermath too clearly for it to have been anything but absolute reality), but accomplished. Her brain buzzed and swam with all of the information she'd soaked up, but having a background knowledge in Tales of Old gave her a little bit of confidence in what to brace herself against.

If Molly had to live in a world where Vampires might be a truth, then by the heavens she would be ready for it.

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Kenna @ 2:55PM
[Intelligence 3 + Occult 1, WP Spent: So, what is there to know about these 'Vampires' anyways?]
Roll: 4 d10 TN8 (3, 3, 9, 10) ( success x 3 ) [WP] VALID

Samael @ 2:56PM
Witnessed!

[Joey]

Tattered Cover is one of the handful of bookstores Molly comes across in her (re)search.

A stone structure with bones of wooden pillars and steel beams, antique (hear how they creak) floors and bookshelves, tables and chairs, a magnificent staircase connecting its two stories packed with books and walls with tall windows that fill it with a good dash of natural light. She binges on transposed and translated oral histories and myths, folklore and esoterica, separating the wheat from the chaff to get at the practical logic behind the magic they describe.

That magic? Of creatures that feed upon the sometimes-figurative and sometimes-literal lifeblood of the living. Sometimes the wisdom she wrings from the pages comes in drips, and other times in torrents too great to absorb in one sitting. The imagery is as ghastly, ghoulish, and bloody as she might have expected, of creatures painted from indulging in their choice (if only it was a choice) method of sustenance.

What fonts of darkness are reported to spawn them ranges from witchcraft to the excommunicated, from those with bodies violated by animals to possessed by spirits, and some of the myths count them as beings wholly outside the creation of man and woman as many religions understand it. The number of herbs and flowers though to ward off these entities, whatever their true nature, include mustard seed, garlic, hawthorn, roses borne in wild soil. Blessed items such as the crucifix or holy water are also included, and some legends say they are bound from sacred grounds, others that light refuses to touch them and telling it is why they hold no reflection or shadow, burn in the true sunlight of the Lord, and still others saying that mirrors might keep them away.

And their destruction? This must be something she is looking into, and means are many and varied. Staking the most common, various woods given greater or lesser approval by the writers. Mouth, stomach, though the heart seems to be the most common target for sharpened wood. Beheading, as with most living things, also seems an idea attributed with great merit.

All of this seems folklore and oral tradition until the 12th century, which may indicate that if these creatures are indeed real, they fed mainly (or most conspicuously) upon those uneducated and unable to write, because it is only then that recorded accounts become more common. Much of their weaknesses were further codified during the Spanish Inquisition: Beheading, staking, fire, sunlight, dismemberment, and a weakness for religious artifacts when wielded in their direction by those of the faith.

Then and onward during the supposed Renaissance and Age of Enlightenment reports become more frequent, vampires and werewolves the few creatures of folklore surviving the squashing of myth and legend in favor of science and logic. Historians most commonly point to rabies and other misunderstood diseases, as well as mass hysteria and self-fulfilling tests identifying the accused as vampiric.

Africa, Asia, even the Americas with its southern continent's blood gods and mythology, the stories are different, but have common threads that make the idea of this archetype almost universal amongst cultures.

But into the 18th and 19th centuries it finally begins to taper off, other than a marked resurgence in literature, works of fiction and drama, and later television and film. Thankfully for Molly she has avoided the rabid fans, young adults and not-so-young, frequenting the fiction and roleplaying sections.

Of course the occult and antique shelves have their own denizens.

Like that gentleman. The one in the light blue sport coat with suede elbow patches. The one in the cuffed beige shorts with brown brogue shoes – no socks thanks to the heat – that's what really makes him easy to pick out. A mop of unruly brown hair and round glasses that flash with a glare of light at him turning away.

Was he looking at her?

He definitely was.

And wasn't he...

At the mom and mom occult shop she'd just come from? Not in it, no, maybe across the street. That's right. He had definitely been at the coffee shop she'd stopped in before venturing into that den of eccentrics... And possible even at the much smaller (but very fruitful) antique book shop before that?

But it's now she finally picks him out.

And he was definitely just looking at her. That or the book in her hand, but it might as well be an extension of herself as Molly is finishing devouring it and heading with it toward the cashier.

[Kenna]

The day had been interspersed with stops beyond the book stores alone. She had a coffee at the cafe next door to the first book store she'd stopped by, and paused for fifteen minutes so she could order and eat taco stand tacos. Another two, and then a pit stop at a smaller coffee shop in a different part of town for an iced coffee beverage and a croissant.

It was there that she vaguely remembered the man with the curly hair and shorts. He made her think of Angus Young in an off, bemused sort of way. She'd smiled politely, briefly when she passed by him on her way back out of the shop to head across the street to the last stop on her list. The gesture was forgettable, and she completely would have forgotten if she hadn't caught him staring.

It took her a while to notice, enough time that she'd finished her drink in one of the chairs at the book shop and browsed through the pages of an awkwardly sized book that she had laid in her lap. It was only as she closed the book, deciding to take it home for a full read through, and as she first looked up from the pages that she noticed. She stared back for a second or two, then frowned suspiciously and rose to her feet.

The book was tucked under her arm, and the empty plastic to-go cup that her drink had been in is carried along with her. She'd deposit it in the garbage can outside near the front door. She didn't stare the man down, but she did glance curiously toward him again when she reached the counter, before her attention was refocused on the woman that was working the register.

Unless interrupted, Molly would simply avoid coming into contact with the man. She didn't confront him there in the bookshop, didn't ask him if or why he was following her. Those things made you come across as paranoid and self-deluded anyways. It would cause a fuss in this book store, and she had full intentions of coming back here in the future if her conclusion of the day was true (well, if vampires are real now, who's to say the other things I saw in these books today aren't?). Goodness knew what other things she might have to come read up on later.

No, instead-- unless stopped or blocked in some way-- Molly made her way out the front door, tossed her cup away, and tucked the book away in her backpack beside her bicycle, which was secured to a lamp post near the curb.