11-17-2013, 04:28 PM
[OOC: I know we don't have a moot this month but I didn't want to try to condense how badass y'all were into a few XP/renown recommendation emails. BOOM.]
When he takes to the center of the circle this night Echoes of the Lost wears his human skin and an expression somewhere between delighted and disturbed. He has a prop today. An actual prop, not mere reliance on his hair being up or down to signify a character change. He pulls a tri-folded piece of legal paper out of the back pocket of his jeans and points it out into the audience.
"Treads the Ashen Path-rhya," the Uktena says in a tone of voice that is normally punctuated by a cry of YOU'RE THE MAN, "I think I might be a little bit scared of you."
That's one way to set the tone for a story. Hector takes his gaze back from her and casts it out over everyone else. Time to get this ball rolling. He holds up the yellow lined sheet and starts to unfold it with exaggerated motions.
"Alexis Lambros, Éva Illésházy, Lola Hawkes, and Samantha Evans all got letters. Not through the post, these letters didn't turn up in their mailboxes. They were in envelopes, but the envelopes were stuffed into the doors at their apartments or wedged underneath piece of furniture on their front porches. Miss Hawkes' said:"
Big-big inhale. He clears his throat and looks as if he's reading from the paper but he has it memorized by now.
"'I know what your baby's father is.'" Pointed lift of his eyebrows. If the Nation wasn't aware of Lola's pregnancy after Echoes of the Lost beat the shit out of Pokes the Mind's Eye they are now. Oops. "'I cannot prove it. But I know. I also know the names of several other people you call friends, and I know what they are. I worry my sister is one too.'"
He starts to fold the thing back up as he slowly wanders from one side of the circle to the other.
"It went on like that. Whoever wrote it wanted the Kinfolk to meet the next day at the Cash Register Building. You know: the building right by 1999 Broadway. The last line of the letter was 'Don't make me come to you.'"
The envelope does not go back into his jeans pocket but stays in his hand so he can flail it around for emphasis later if he needs to.
"Ominous, right? This person knew who they were, knew who we were, knew enough to reach out to a bunch of Kinfolk but not enough to take the sister to the Sept. Wanted to meet after dark right in front of Cold Crescent. Of course the Kinfolk went. It wasn't like they didn't have a choice, we always have choices, they could've stayed home and ignored it, but they were suspicious, so they didn't.
"The person who wrote the letters was a human woman who didn't give them her name until they asked her." An exaggerated pensive expression. "No, actually, Samantha asked her nicely and Lola said 'WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU I DON'T TRUST A FUCKING THING THAT'S COME OUT YOUR MOUTH TONIGHT I DON'T EVEN THINK THIS SISTER EXISTS.'"
Not an accurate impersonation of the Uktena woman but it was close enough.
"All they got out of the woman at that meeting was that one of their friends had bitten her sister - her twin, as it turns out, and she didn't see any difference between us and the Wyrm, and she was willing to put her sister down if she kept changing the way she'd supposedly been changing. She wasn't willing to give up much about herself or how she'd gotten hold of so much information. As it was she was ready to offer up everything she and her sister had on us if it meant the Kinfolk could fix her. They couldn't do it right that second, but they figured if there was a chance they could save this person instead of just burying her, they would take it. The agreement was they would meet up again the next week on Friday and if they could fix her sister, this woman - Nina - she would hand over everything and the Nation would never hear from them again.
"This isn't a story about bravery in the face of insurmountable darkness or how we're stronger united than we are separate even though we're all very different or how the smartest course of action when you're dealing with a Psychomachinae-possessed huntress is to call up a spirit-talker who doesn't mind getting herself further into debt with local Incarnae. Nobody draws a weapon and nothing goes up in flames."
He gestures behind him with the folded-up envelope. Like to indicate a scene change or a flashback. Holds his arm behind him and his eyebrows up.
"The woman who wrote and delivered the letters was the daughter of a leech hunter. Their family came over from Russia when she and her sister were little girls and these two grew up hearing stories about the things that used to happen to people who knew too much or saw too much or just did too much while the government was watching. They came over here and the only thing their parents thought to do to make a living was go around killing off leeches and witches. Honorable work, right? The twins had an older brother. He and the twin took to carrying on the family business while Nina held down legitimate enough work that this country's government would stay out of the family's business."
He lowers his arm.
"The father and the older brother died fighting a shifter last year and the sister became obsessed. Turned away from leeches and witches and focused on werewolves. She'd spent the last year and a half studying us and our activity. Had boxes full of intel stored up. Maybe she was planning some sort of all-out cleansing of the local werewolf population. Maybe she'd just gone insane in her grief and this was the only thing she could do to convince herself she wasn't just a victim. Whatever it was, her mind was fractured enough for a Bane to sink its claws in but strong enough to fend it off until Nina got her loaded her into a car on Friday evening to drive up from Colorado Springs and meet a couple of Kinfolk and a spirit-talker in a parking lot off of South Federal Boulevard."
He points out into the audience with the folded-up letter to find the guardians of the Kinfolk he mentions next. Broad strokes.
"Miz Illésházy and Miss Evans did a bit of hacker magic in the week before the meeting and found out the family history and the history of the property where Nina wanted them to meet and forwarded it on to Mister Lambros. Calden White, the Fianna kinsman who owns the cattle ranch way out--" Hector gestures in a vague northwestern direction. "--in the hinterland, he suggested to Miss Hawkes maybe having a spirit-talker there wasn't such a bad idea. They got Desert Oracle on the phone and Desert Oracle let them borrow Treads the Ashen Path for the night."
Now he puts the letter back into his pocket. He wants both hands free so he can gesticulate as he returns to slow-pacing before the fire.
"Miss Hawkes met Mister Lambros and Treads the Ashen path at this strip mall across from a fried chicken joint. Totally cleared out that time of night. The address belonged to what looked like an electronics store. Nina rolls in and leaves her sister in the car while she talks to Alexis and Lola. Same defensive attitude she'd had the week before. Lola goes off to collect the sister and Alexis convinces Nina to unlock the door to the electronics store. Turns out it's a front. There's nothing inside. Lola and Treads the Ashen Path goes up to the car to see what's going on with the sister and she comes flying out of the car making this noise--"
And he could have described it with words. Adjectives don't accomplish the same thing in a live performance as do sound effects and this particular Galliard is a decent imitator of other people's accents. Though he does not howl in this form, from his throat still comes a scream that could have come from the throat of a person who had opened their eyes one morning to find themselves not in their home but in a nightmare realm. A person whose insides burned as a Bane sought to infest it.
He screams and it doesn't sound anything like the Roar of the Wyrm. No one present that night knew the possessed woman was trying to invoke a Gift and no one in the audience feels a compulsion to get out of their seat and flee. No clawing desperate fox frenzy comes for them. But the sound sends a chill up the spines of those still capable of feeling empathy for humans. It was not a human that made the noise he replicates and it does not sound human.
As sudden as it was it cuts off as Echoes of the Lost takes a sharp step back and continues the story in a normal tone of voice. Like he hadn't just rent the calm of the air with that tortured roar.
"The Kinfolk at least entertained the idea that the sister might've been a Lost Cub, for a while. Nina didn't know what happened the night the shifter attacked her sister. If she was a Lost Cub coming up on her First Change that would've been a victory on its own. They could do something about that. Take her home, show her our ways, mend the rift.
"She was turning into a Fomor right in front of their eyes. That Lost Cub idea went away when Lola grabbed the sister - Olga, her name was Olga, Lola grabbed her by the throat and jacked her up against the car. There wasn't any point reasoning with her. They tried, and she just hissed at them."
This isn't a feel-good story because what it really is is a story about what it takes just to save one person.
"You've all heard about how Desert Oracle summoned Water during the fight against Beloved Horror last month. All of them worked together to pull Her out of the Umbra and push Green Dragon back enough for our teeth to do some damage, right, you remember that? Imagine that, but you've got one Ivory Priestess without her pack, and she's summoning Unicorn instead of Water because..."
And the moondancer looks baffled for a moment.
"Well, because the boulevard is full of folks who haven't given up on the idea of a better future and underneath the graffiti and the bloodstains you have the hopes and dreams of parents who fled their crumbling homelands because their children deserved better. Unicorn didn't take long to get there. Three hours. No big deal. Three hours of an Uktena kinswoman making sure a vampire hunter turned Fomor doesn't get up and run out of the room, and a Black Fury kinsman making sure her sister didn't snap and try to go inside while Treads the Ashen Path was working. And then Treads the Ashen Path convinced Unicorn to exorcise the Bane from this woman."
He makes room on the dirt stage like to indicate a transition from rising action to climax, to indicate where the victim lay at the time that Unicorn finally came across the Gauntlet to do the Silver Fang's bidding. A moment of great weight settles on him and he lets it sit as the fire crackles behind him.
When he speaks his voice lacks the youthful hyperactivity it tends to project when he's talking about badass things his brethren do when they're out in the world fighting the Wyrm.
"Every few minutes Treads the Ashen Path had to break a healing gourd to keep the woman's insides from bleeding out of her. The Bane was rooted in deep. By the time Unicorn finally showed up everyone within earshot'd gone home. Nobody but the Kinfolk and her sister could hear her screaming. Three hours of summoning, and then she had to keep this human alive while the Bane had its claws ripped out of her. Three hours of standing there, guarding the door, guarding those two, and Lola Hawkes had to hold the Fomor down so she didn't attack everyone in the room. Alexis Lambros had to hold the sister back so she didn't attack everyone in the room. They were all dead on their feet at the end and it would've been easier just to put a bullet between both their eyes and bury them somewhere. They didn't, and in the end the woman who wrote the letters walked out of there with her sister and gave the Kinfolk everything she had on us and drove off. The final condition was that we never see or hear from them again."
Another final silence, broken by a frown and an expression of confusion as the Uktena wanders off the stage. Even those in the back can hear him murmuring to himself because his voice can project pretty far but it's not clear if he's genuinely musing to himself or if he's affected the voice for dramatic effect.
"I wonder where that Bane went..."
---
jamie @ 10:27AM
Trying to decide what one would roll if one were attempting to imitate the Roar of the Wyrm without having it actually scare the shit out of everyone in the audience.
jamie @ 10:29AM
Let me see what happens with Char + Empathy:
Roll: 4 d10 TN6 (3, 6, 8, 10) ( success x 3 ) VALID
Samael @ 10:33AM
TBH that seems like a Performance thing to me.
jamie @ 10:33AM
*throws on another die for Performance*
Roll: 1 d10 TN6 (1) ( fail ) VALID
jamie @ 10:33AM
Nice one, Ghosh.
Samael @ 10:34AM
Haha, well still 3! (And witnessed)
When he takes to the center of the circle this night Echoes of the Lost wears his human skin and an expression somewhere between delighted and disturbed. He has a prop today. An actual prop, not mere reliance on his hair being up or down to signify a character change. He pulls a tri-folded piece of legal paper out of the back pocket of his jeans and points it out into the audience.
"Treads the Ashen Path-rhya," the Uktena says in a tone of voice that is normally punctuated by a cry of YOU'RE THE MAN, "I think I might be a little bit scared of you."
That's one way to set the tone for a story. Hector takes his gaze back from her and casts it out over everyone else. Time to get this ball rolling. He holds up the yellow lined sheet and starts to unfold it with exaggerated motions.
"Alexis Lambros, Éva Illésházy, Lola Hawkes, and Samantha Evans all got letters. Not through the post, these letters didn't turn up in their mailboxes. They were in envelopes, but the envelopes were stuffed into the doors at their apartments or wedged underneath piece of furniture on their front porches. Miss Hawkes' said:"
Big-big inhale. He clears his throat and looks as if he's reading from the paper but he has it memorized by now.
"'I know what your baby's father is.'" Pointed lift of his eyebrows. If the Nation wasn't aware of Lola's pregnancy after Echoes of the Lost beat the shit out of Pokes the Mind's Eye they are now. Oops. "'I cannot prove it. But I know. I also know the names of several other people you call friends, and I know what they are. I worry my sister is one too.'"
He starts to fold the thing back up as he slowly wanders from one side of the circle to the other.
"It went on like that. Whoever wrote it wanted the Kinfolk to meet the next day at the Cash Register Building. You know: the building right by 1999 Broadway. The last line of the letter was 'Don't make me come to you.'"
The envelope does not go back into his jeans pocket but stays in his hand so he can flail it around for emphasis later if he needs to.
"Ominous, right? This person knew who they were, knew who we were, knew enough to reach out to a bunch of Kinfolk but not enough to take the sister to the Sept. Wanted to meet after dark right in front of Cold Crescent. Of course the Kinfolk went. It wasn't like they didn't have a choice, we always have choices, they could've stayed home and ignored it, but they were suspicious, so they didn't.
"The person who wrote the letters was a human woman who didn't give them her name until they asked her." An exaggerated pensive expression. "No, actually, Samantha asked her nicely and Lola said 'WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU I DON'T TRUST A FUCKING THING THAT'S COME OUT YOUR MOUTH TONIGHT I DON'T EVEN THINK THIS SISTER EXISTS.'"
Not an accurate impersonation of the Uktena woman but it was close enough.
"All they got out of the woman at that meeting was that one of their friends had bitten her sister - her twin, as it turns out, and she didn't see any difference between us and the Wyrm, and she was willing to put her sister down if she kept changing the way she'd supposedly been changing. She wasn't willing to give up much about herself or how she'd gotten hold of so much information. As it was she was ready to offer up everything she and her sister had on us if it meant the Kinfolk could fix her. They couldn't do it right that second, but they figured if there was a chance they could save this person instead of just burying her, they would take it. The agreement was they would meet up again the next week on Friday and if they could fix her sister, this woman - Nina - she would hand over everything and the Nation would never hear from them again.
"This isn't a story about bravery in the face of insurmountable darkness or how we're stronger united than we are separate even though we're all very different or how the smartest course of action when you're dealing with a Psychomachinae-possessed huntress is to call up a spirit-talker who doesn't mind getting herself further into debt with local Incarnae. Nobody draws a weapon and nothing goes up in flames."
He gestures behind him with the folded-up envelope. Like to indicate a scene change or a flashback. Holds his arm behind him and his eyebrows up.
"The woman who wrote and delivered the letters was the daughter of a leech hunter. Their family came over from Russia when she and her sister were little girls and these two grew up hearing stories about the things that used to happen to people who knew too much or saw too much or just did too much while the government was watching. They came over here and the only thing their parents thought to do to make a living was go around killing off leeches and witches. Honorable work, right? The twins had an older brother. He and the twin took to carrying on the family business while Nina held down legitimate enough work that this country's government would stay out of the family's business."
He lowers his arm.
"The father and the older brother died fighting a shifter last year and the sister became obsessed. Turned away from leeches and witches and focused on werewolves. She'd spent the last year and a half studying us and our activity. Had boxes full of intel stored up. Maybe she was planning some sort of all-out cleansing of the local werewolf population. Maybe she'd just gone insane in her grief and this was the only thing she could do to convince herself she wasn't just a victim. Whatever it was, her mind was fractured enough for a Bane to sink its claws in but strong enough to fend it off until Nina got her loaded her into a car on Friday evening to drive up from Colorado Springs and meet a couple of Kinfolk and a spirit-talker in a parking lot off of South Federal Boulevard."
He points out into the audience with the folded-up letter to find the guardians of the Kinfolk he mentions next. Broad strokes.
"Miz Illésházy and Miss Evans did a bit of hacker magic in the week before the meeting and found out the family history and the history of the property where Nina wanted them to meet and forwarded it on to Mister Lambros. Calden White, the Fianna kinsman who owns the cattle ranch way out--" Hector gestures in a vague northwestern direction. "--in the hinterland, he suggested to Miss Hawkes maybe having a spirit-talker there wasn't such a bad idea. They got Desert Oracle on the phone and Desert Oracle let them borrow Treads the Ashen Path for the night."
Now he puts the letter back into his pocket. He wants both hands free so he can gesticulate as he returns to slow-pacing before the fire.
"Miss Hawkes met Mister Lambros and Treads the Ashen path at this strip mall across from a fried chicken joint. Totally cleared out that time of night. The address belonged to what looked like an electronics store. Nina rolls in and leaves her sister in the car while she talks to Alexis and Lola. Same defensive attitude she'd had the week before. Lola goes off to collect the sister and Alexis convinces Nina to unlock the door to the electronics store. Turns out it's a front. There's nothing inside. Lola and Treads the Ashen Path goes up to the car to see what's going on with the sister and she comes flying out of the car making this noise--"
And he could have described it with words. Adjectives don't accomplish the same thing in a live performance as do sound effects and this particular Galliard is a decent imitator of other people's accents. Though he does not howl in this form, from his throat still comes a scream that could have come from the throat of a person who had opened their eyes one morning to find themselves not in their home but in a nightmare realm. A person whose insides burned as a Bane sought to infest it.
He screams and it doesn't sound anything like the Roar of the Wyrm. No one present that night knew the possessed woman was trying to invoke a Gift and no one in the audience feels a compulsion to get out of their seat and flee. No clawing desperate fox frenzy comes for them. But the sound sends a chill up the spines of those still capable of feeling empathy for humans. It was not a human that made the noise he replicates and it does not sound human.
As sudden as it was it cuts off as Echoes of the Lost takes a sharp step back and continues the story in a normal tone of voice. Like he hadn't just rent the calm of the air with that tortured roar.
"The Kinfolk at least entertained the idea that the sister might've been a Lost Cub, for a while. Nina didn't know what happened the night the shifter attacked her sister. If she was a Lost Cub coming up on her First Change that would've been a victory on its own. They could do something about that. Take her home, show her our ways, mend the rift.
"She was turning into a Fomor right in front of their eyes. That Lost Cub idea went away when Lola grabbed the sister - Olga, her name was Olga, Lola grabbed her by the throat and jacked her up against the car. There wasn't any point reasoning with her. They tried, and she just hissed at them."
This isn't a feel-good story because what it really is is a story about what it takes just to save one person.
"You've all heard about how Desert Oracle summoned Water during the fight against Beloved Horror last month. All of them worked together to pull Her out of the Umbra and push Green Dragon back enough for our teeth to do some damage, right, you remember that? Imagine that, but you've got one Ivory Priestess without her pack, and she's summoning Unicorn instead of Water because..."
And the moondancer looks baffled for a moment.
"Well, because the boulevard is full of folks who haven't given up on the idea of a better future and underneath the graffiti and the bloodstains you have the hopes and dreams of parents who fled their crumbling homelands because their children deserved better. Unicorn didn't take long to get there. Three hours. No big deal. Three hours of an Uktena kinswoman making sure a vampire hunter turned Fomor doesn't get up and run out of the room, and a Black Fury kinsman making sure her sister didn't snap and try to go inside while Treads the Ashen Path was working. And then Treads the Ashen Path convinced Unicorn to exorcise the Bane from this woman."
He makes room on the dirt stage like to indicate a transition from rising action to climax, to indicate where the victim lay at the time that Unicorn finally came across the Gauntlet to do the Silver Fang's bidding. A moment of great weight settles on him and he lets it sit as the fire crackles behind him.
When he speaks his voice lacks the youthful hyperactivity it tends to project when he's talking about badass things his brethren do when they're out in the world fighting the Wyrm.
"Every few minutes Treads the Ashen Path had to break a healing gourd to keep the woman's insides from bleeding out of her. The Bane was rooted in deep. By the time Unicorn finally showed up everyone within earshot'd gone home. Nobody but the Kinfolk and her sister could hear her screaming. Three hours of summoning, and then she had to keep this human alive while the Bane had its claws ripped out of her. Three hours of standing there, guarding the door, guarding those two, and Lola Hawkes had to hold the Fomor down so she didn't attack everyone in the room. Alexis Lambros had to hold the sister back so she didn't attack everyone in the room. They were all dead on their feet at the end and it would've been easier just to put a bullet between both their eyes and bury them somewhere. They didn't, and in the end the woman who wrote the letters walked out of there with her sister and gave the Kinfolk everything she had on us and drove off. The final condition was that we never see or hear from them again."
Another final silence, broken by a frown and an expression of confusion as the Uktena wanders off the stage. Even those in the back can hear him murmuring to himself because his voice can project pretty far but it's not clear if he's genuinely musing to himself or if he's affected the voice for dramatic effect.
"I wonder where that Bane went..."
---
jamie @ 10:27AM
Trying to decide what one would roll if one were attempting to imitate the Roar of the Wyrm without having it actually scare the shit out of everyone in the audience.
jamie @ 10:29AM
Let me see what happens with Char + Empathy:
Roll: 4 d10 TN6 (3, 6, 8, 10) ( success x 3 ) VALID
Samael @ 10:33AM
TBH that seems like a Performance thing to me.
jamie @ 10:33AM
*throws on another die for Performance*
Roll: 1 d10 TN6 (1) ( fail ) VALID
jamie @ 10:33AM
Nice one, Ghosh.
Samael @ 10:34AM
Haha, well still 3! (And witnessed)
Look. I have school. And RP. And all my other time is taken up by sheer, unreasoning panic. I don't have time for Reddit.
-- ixphaelaeon
-- ixphaelaeon