Death Is The Road To Awe

[Grey]

This RP will begin in Autumn, as is proper.





There are no cloaks, nor even umbrellas; only hoods and hats. No candles or censers; only a few electric torches and flashlight apps. Only three concessions to the old ways are present; thirteen stone steps, a hand-carved bone dagger, and the stroke of midnight.


"Descend the steps, cut your palm, and the Way will be opened," Lockerby says, bullethole in the centre of his forehead glistening. Calista sniggers, pox scattered across her cheeks, and Lockerby rounds on her. "Take this seriously, for once, or you going down there with her," he snarls, and looks back to the new pledge.


Andrea is scared, and cold, and soaked from the rain, staring down those thirteen steps, in this mostly-forgotten Seattle cemetery.


Relax, little sister, her new friend whispers from somewhere inside her head. She can see him in the corner of her eye; cracked sunglasses and omnipresent grin. I'll be right with you.


She descends the thirteen steps.


She cuts her palm, and holds out her hand.


The world cracks inward and drags her with it.


The air is still. Silent. No rain here; no sky. Only an eternity of narrow, twisting tunnels lit dimly by phosphorescent moss.


Andrea notes it mostly grows in the shapes of skulls and bones, and clutches the guitar that has appeared in her hands tighter, her talisman and keystone.


"Find the right ghost, ask the right questions, and get out to join the gang - how hard can it be?" She asks, of no one in particular. The Blues Singer with his forever-exposed grin leans against a wall ahead.


"Piece of cake, sister."


=================================


This is an RP set in the modern day. There will be 5 characters. It will demand creative investment.


Your character must be an ordinary person, with two crucial criteria.


1. Their whole lives, they have seen ghosts. A flicker in the corner of the eye, a looming face in a distant window, a voice in the night.


2. They are going to die in the first few pages of the RP. How is up to you, but ideally each one will die in a different way, under five headings.

• Violence - The Bleeding Ones, Victims of Malice, Chosen of the Red Horseman, Marked by Murder and Conflict
  
• Deprivation - The Starved Ones, Victims of Neglect, Chosen of the Black Horseman, Marked by Starvation and Need
  
• Sickness - The Ravaged Ones, Victims of Plague, Chosen of the White Horsemen, Marked by Poison, Virus and Bacterium
  
• Nature - The Drowned Ones, the Eaten, Victims of the Elements, Chosen of the Pale Horsemen, Marked by Claw, Wave and Earth
  
• Sheer bad luck - The Lightning-Struck, Victims of Misfortune, Chosen of the Grey Horseman, Marked by Fate's Injustice
  

This will be a game of contrasting light and dark, life and death - though in the end, it will be very much about death. Those of you who have caught on to my antics; no spoilers in the thread, thankyou.


Once you have a character concept, please answer the following from your character's perspective.


1. What is the worst thing you've ever done?


2. What is the worst thing you can imagine yourself doing?


3. What is the worst thing you can imagine someone else doing?


4. What is the most traumatic thing that has ever happened to your character?


5. Strange things happen in every life - what have you forgotten?

 

[vinom]

Interesting... what system does this us?

 

[Grey]

nWoD.

 

[vinom]

Never went to the new one...

 

[Cirno]

I'm intrigued. Do we need to know about ghosts in the nWoD setting? Is this game open to nWoD beginners?

 

[Bardiel]

I begin to walk the 4 kilometres of The Land Where Time Began, and by the end I am crawling towards the Crocodile's maw.

 

[Grey]

No, you don't need to know a thing. It is open to beginners.

 

[Cirno]

Name: West Rahman

Spoiler

Someone singsongs. "Hey 'Sim. Hey 'Siiim. Earth to Simian!" Hoots all around.


Wedged inside the window seat, Wassim doesn't say anything. He keeps his school bag to his chest, knees drawn up and chin tucked in, protecting the last of his pencil stubs, exam notes that fit two rows over each blue-ruled line, and essays with stars and smiley faces.


They get his bag one day when he falls asleep, having tuned them out. Wakes as they uncrumple the one paper with a 62%. "Cheater," they jeer, after ripping out another and seeing a star haloed like a firework (done in rainbow gel pen by the Social Studies teacher) and full marks.


It rings through the halls for days. Eventually the English teacher talks to him after class. Shows concern and sympathy. And then slaps him in his soft, kind voice. "But I do have to ask..."


He whispers no. The truth chuckles in his ear with a touch of regret.





He learns to be average, to slump his gangly form down into the wooden seats without them creaking. Shrinking in helps keep them out.


He makes the mistake of looking up when a new girl arrives. She rocks a bit on her heels, wavering, he realises with a sinking feeling, between two Armenian girls with hijabs like hers and himself, the only one close to the color of her skin.


He resignedly says his name. She slides into the seat behind him. Slips him a piece of paper minutes later.


Who starts passing notes on their first day? Already fuming, he unfolds it to find heavy black calligraphy in a language he does not know. He puts his notebook over it and does not pass anything back. It's smeared by the end of class.


He has to share textbooks with her. He coolly returns her gaze whenever her eyes leave the page, searching for answers from him instead. She leans in sometimes, breathing soft as she copies his work. He doesn't say anything. But some days, he decides enough is fucking enough, and plants an arm over his worksheet.


He snorts with the rest of the class at her accent.


Before the semester's over, the teacher announces the girl is moving. She hands Wassim an envelope with the same sweeping black scrawl as before and waves farewell with a small smile.





The class is assigned to read The Heart of Darkness and The Stranger. Wassim stays silent in the daily discussions, only reading the relevant passages the night before revisions. The words sink into his core, revulsion and confusion preventing more than snatches of sleep.


Except he finds peace of understanding once. He lowers the book, feeling the warm weight of a spent gun, and stares at the ceiling light as if it were the sun. He doesn't sleep at all.


He's already killed a part of himself. Feeling lightheaded, he hunches in further as the quizzes are passed down. He can barely feel the wood chair against his legs. He can't smell anything, even as his classmates scribble away furiously with their graphite pencils, and from his own hand the words flow and flow and he's flipping the paper over for more space.


The next week, the teacher gives her quiet approval as she returns his graded quiz. He trudges back to his seat, already feeling hot tears pressing behind his eyes as he looks at full marks and words that aren't his own.





--campus at night, mobile, news flash--





He never questioned why his tormentors didn't take the seat next to him. It was always taken by a boy with too-limp hair, clutching an enameled lunch pail. He forgot how easy it was to get to his own seat.


At home, he once learned the shape of his name when his great-granduncle flicked his cigarette, ash vanishing in midair, and asked who the love letter was from. He hovered over the rubbish bin before shoving it into the recesses of his desk drawer. He forgot the shape of his name.


He can't remember the last time he was certain any thoughts were his own.

 

[Grey]

Bumping in the hopes of more takers.

 

[maddcatz00]

Is this still a thing? Cause it sounds pretty cool.

 

[Grey]

Assuming more applicants.

 

[Bardiel]

It stands at four potential interests at the moment?

 

[Grey]

Seems so. Only one attempt at character concept so far.

 

[maddcatz00]

Byron Griggs is not a terribly likable person. A high school drop out and a drug dealer, Byron is one of the reasons people lock their doors at night. At least, that’s the way he tells it. If the truth is told, Byron isn't much more than an opportunistic bully who abuses his physical aptitude for the purposes of intimidation and bravado. He is a leach, feeding off the money and stolen goods given to him by the junkies for just one more sweet does of the poisons to which they are addicted. Byron's mother is an Emergency Room nurse and he utilizes her resources and knowledge to steal from the hospital's pharmacy, while keeping her in the dark about it of course. Byron is no fool, however, and knows that stealing from a hospital is a risky venture. Thus, he has a couple other ways to procure the drugs he peddles. As an infrequent volunteer in an elderly outreach program, Byron has nearly free access to whatever prescription medication he can lift from the poor old folks while maintaining a façade of interest and a friendly demeanor. But the most common way he restocks his supplies is by venturing to another city where the drugs are cheaper, buying them there and returning home to gain a little revenue by over charging his clients.


He may not be nearly as potent a threat as he pretends to be, but Byron is still not a person to underestimate. With a "career" like his, Byron has seen and done many things. He is a skilled brawler and has developed a canny sort of tactical sense for urban combat. He even knows how to use and maintain a gun properly, though he rarely has to. Given his history, Byron is not afraid of most things. But there is one thing that terrifies him beyond rational thought. A thing that keeps him from sleep. A thing that pushes him to the brink of sanity.


The damn girl. She has always been there. Even when Byron couldn't see her, he always knew she was watching. She is ghastly thing, though Byron would use cruder terms. Lank, pale hair frames and partially masks her face. Her eyes, when they can be seen, are emerald green and always wide, never blinking or looking away. And her smile, the smile that haunts Byron, is wide, toothy and simply exudes sadism. The girl wears a white tanktop and well worn jeans that are two sizes to big. Her clothes are flecked with blood, though Byron doubts the blood is hers. If the girl is a ghost as Byron suspects, then she must be the ghost of a mad woman and the blood must be that of her victims. What most likely ended her, is hinted at by the discolored bruise circling her throat. Very rarely she sings Byron lullabies, sometimes she'll tell him bits of seemingly random information that prove useful later on but mostly she is silent. When Byron hurts someone, she laughs.


Byron believes that if he ever dies, and he does say 'if' as though the event may never occur, that it will be by violence, in a blaze of glory. The truth is much more dismal and far less impressive. For he is fated to end sheerly by a stroke of bad luck. (idk if you choose that for us or not, but if we get to pick, bad luck is the death I want for him.)


I had the opportunity, not long ago to converse with the ill-fated boy and I asked him many questions, only five of which mattered. I asked him, "What is the worst thing you've ever done?" And he replied.


"I actually regret this one, so don't go spreading it around…" he paused and heaved a sigh. "I was drunk one time and I came home real late. Woke mom up. She came in and started nagging at me, ya know, quit drinking, stop running with those gang types, stuff like that." I notice him grimace and glance briefly at the corner. "Well I was drunk, like I said and I didn’t… well, she was just laying into me ya know? I got mad. Broke her nose and her jaw and-" Byron stopped his story short, leaping from his seat to stand facing the corner he had glanced at a moment ago. "Will you shut up?!" he was screaming at empty air, telling it to stop laughing and to be quiet. I assumed it was the girl he had told me about earlier and let him be. Once he calmed, I continued my questions.


I asked him, "What's the worst thing you can imagine yourself doing?"


"I don't know." He replied with a shrug. "Killing someone, I guess." he then seemed as though he'd made a mistake and corrected himself by adding, "Not that I've never killed no one before." He then glared at the corner again for just a moment.


I asked him, "What's the worst thing you can imagine another person doing?"


"Messing with a kid." He answered as though it should be obvious. "I mean, I ain't scared to bust somebody up, but that’s a grown up. You shouldn’t ever hurt a kid."


I left him after that. Politely, of course. But the last two questions were not ones that he would answer easily. I went into his dreams that night and asked him there. I asked him, "What is your most traumatic memory?"


The response I received was one of a family member, his uncle. Byron had been abused severely by the man on several occasions before the man was found out and arrested.


The last question I asked him was, "What have you forgotten?" In his answer I actually felt sorry for him. For what I saw there was a boy. A young Byron filed with hope and wonder and ambition. He was playing with legos and other building blocks. He was playing games with his younger sister. He was dreaming of the day he would be an engineer and have a family of his own. What young Byron had forgotten was his himself and his dreams.

 

[maddcatz00]

@SnowFeather , any of you want in on this?

 

[Becky]

I would like to join :3


 
If its still open of course

 

[Grey]

Still open - it'll remain open until the end of Summer, and I will be very selective with who is accepted.


In the meantime, take a look at this list of my other RPs that are open.

 

[Becky]

Name: Rebecca


*************************************************************


Rebecca is a teen girl who often finds herself sitting in hospital rooms alone trying to stop her boredom by browsing magazines. Her family is very supportive of her since she was born with many medical problems. One night when her parents left the hospital after being informed visiting hours were over she pulled a magazine up to her bed tray and flicked through the pages


The worse thing about hospital supplied magazines was they were always stupid and about fashion something a sick teen wouldn’t even care about. About to close the book of glossy paper something caught her eye. It was a strange questioner which had 3 questions. Switching on the over head lamp in order to read better she examined the questions getting a pen ready to answer them.


What is the worst thing you've ever done?


TOLD MY MOTHER AND FATHER IT WAS THEIR FAULT I WAS SICK


What is the worst thing you can imagine yourself doing?


DYING AND LEAVING MY FAMILY BEHIND.


What is the worst thing you can imagine someone else doing?


KILLING OR RAPING SOMEBODY


What is the most traumatic thing that has ever happened to your character?


Was playing soccer as a child and fell over only to vomit up blood because of a internal bleed. She would never forget that day. The day she vomited up a large sum of blood while people just looked at her. She felt helpless and cried for her parents to help her but they couldn’t. She was sure she’d die and as she blacked out she knew it was the end. Until two weeks later she woke up out of a coma and was alive.


Strange things happen in every life - what have you forgotten?


Rebecca has forgotten what it was like to live. Since being told she had a serious blood clotting disorder she had stopped LIVING and just started surviving from day to day.