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 Give it a listen (music not optional): https://youtu.be/OviWbd8Z7Qo Tulsa's a small city, but it is still a city, with everything that entails. It's one of the trendiest and most popular cities to move to in the US these days, combining low cost of living with a decent local economy and plenty of job opportunities. It's got skyscrapers, condos, industrial districts, a couple universities, art galleries, its own suburban sprawl, and some of the best examples of art deco architecture in North America. It's got one hell of a nightlife, with a wide selection of bars and clubs and party venues to cater to every taste. It's also got a bunch of mass graves under the trendy arts district from that time in the 1920s where the KKK murdered all the black people and burned down half the city, but we don't talk about those. We also don't talk about the back alleys full of shadows, the massive homeless population, the slums, the entire neighborhoods full of decaying urban ruins, the post-oil-boom ghost towns you'll find crumbling just outside of idyllic suburbia, or the largest and most heavily-contaminated Superfund site in the country, America's own little Chernobyl, which is less than two hours away. Anyway, tonight, the nightlife was the part you were interested in. You were part of the crowds bouncing from celebration to celebration all throughout New Year's Eve. You may have swung by Winterfest, stopped by the concert on Guthrie Green, had a drink at one bar, another bar, another. You might have looked down on the city from the penthouse club on the roof of the Mayo Building. Maybe you hopped on the dancefloor at Legends, or at Majestic if a gay club is more your thing. However your night went, eventually you ended up at a party at some house or other, in one of the poorer neighborhoods in West Tulsa. It looked like a squat but the music was good and the drinks were free. Somebody had a TV showing Times Square. There was a countdown. 3...2...1...Happy New Year! All hell broke loose. The things come, the shadows. They come from windows, doorways, the loving TVs. They snatch people and they're just...gone. People seem to vanish into thin loving air. Panic sets in. Everyone scatters into the night. More of the things appear – for just an instant, out of the corner of your eye, strange alien shapes reaching out to pull a running figure into a car windshield, a puddle, a storm drain. You run, through back yards and back alleys and vacant lots, individuals being picked off one by one, until eventually you're passing a tunnel and then one of the shadows is in front of you, this one seeming like a great pitch-black bear-thing, with white teeth and white claws. You could have turned around, kept running. But something in you just snaps. The fight-or-flight instincts settle on 'fight'. With whatever you can get your hands on – sticks, rocks, bottles, trash, maybe a few of you were even packing knives or guns – you make your stand together against the thing from your nightmares. It fights back – some of you die, torn apart and left bleeding out on the pavement. But you hurt it. It bleeds its black blood. Eventually it isn't moving anymore, prone, still, dead. And then it's gone, disappeared into thin air like all the people just stolen away. There are no more shadows. No one else is taken. So here you are. It's a little past midnight on January 1, 2017. You're in Tulsa, Oklahoma. You've just killed some sort of hosed up giant bear, and you don't have a corpse to prove it. Over a dozen people have just disappeared, abducted by...something, some sort of monsters. Some of those people were probably your friends. Three of the ones who escaped are now dead, killed in the fight. Unlike the shadow, their corpses are still right here, and the police probably won't believe they were killed by an ethereal bear made of darkness. As for the rest of you – maybe you knew each other before this, maybe you didn't, but if introductions need to be made, you better make 'em fast. Okay, let's take a step back from storytime here, what the gently caress is this? This is going to be a play-by-post game of the New World of Darkness gameline Hunter: The Vigil, in which the players are a group of ordinary people who have found themselves on the frontlines of a secret war against the many things that go bump in the night. For the sake of simplicity (and because I don't have The God-Machine Chronicle), we'll use the 1e rules. In this game, 4-6 players will attempt to unravel the mystery of what happened on New Year's Eve, and keep their city safe from the sanity-crushing horrors that lurk around every corner - or die trying. Experience with this game, or other games in the setting, is not required. This will be what is generally called a 'Tier-1' game, which means that absolutely none of your characters will have any prior knowledge of the supernatural, nor will you be involved with any existing Compact or Conspiracy at the start of the game. Your characters will start at the 'New Recruit' level, which is to say no bonus experience. Characters should not be currently-serving police, active-duty military, or an elected government official, unless you've got a drat good justification for why you were partying at a random squat house on NYE. Post a link to your character sheet, a short background, and answers to the following questions: What's the happiest memory you have? What's the worst nightmare you remember having? Who did you lose tonight? Are they one of the missing, or one of the dead? What were they to you? Optionally, you may also ask one question of your fellow hunters, and optionally answer any question asked by another applicant. If you have any questions, comments, suggestions, or issues, hit me with them, either here or by PMs depending on which you prefer. Looking forward to seeing what people come up with!
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Jan 23, 2017 10:41
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My interest is piqued. Thinking about making a scrappy local level investigative journalist type of character.
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Jan 23, 2017 15:56
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Where should we make our sheets?
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Jan 23, 2017 18:44
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Kavak posted:Where should we make our sheets? Here are some fillable sheet PDFs. Use the regular ones, not the Mortal Remains ones.
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Jan 23, 2017 19:06
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Oooh, this sounds cool. Posting a bit of interest/ will need to purchase the book.
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Jan 23, 2017 21:51
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Interest post, will get on it tonight
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Jan 24, 2017 00:13
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I might get something going for this.
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Jan 24, 2017 07:04
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Writing up a member of the homeless community, that wasn't able to get into a shelter for the night. He's wandering around and meanders into the party to try and find food for his pet. Hank thought he was acting pretty cool and was faking his way through the crowd, but hey he smells and is obviously not a hep cat, so the police were already on their way, which is unfortunate for the people who survived the murder bear and have a pile of corpses laying around now!  Hank Wallace I'll be working on him sporadically tonight and tomorrow, so the sheet above should soon be fleshed out and I'll have an actual backstory up here relatively soon. I'll need to re-familiarize myself with the 1e rules a bit too. Question for the GM. Obviously my homeless dude isn't going to have disposable income via the Resources merit, but I'm trying to justify him having a cost 2 gun (Glock 22 for picture parity) by having it be a piece of evidence from a semi-recent murder case that has yet to be solved, which he'd snatched out of a trash can at a murder scene he was near. I imagine he wouldn't start the game in possession of any bullets after the life or death scenario with the bear, so he'd need assistance or a new job to reload. I'm wondering if that's cool with you or not? 
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Jan 24, 2017 09:13
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Successful Businessmanga posted:Writing up a member of the homeless community, that wasn't able to get into a shelter for the night. He's wandering around and meanders into the party to try and find food for his pet. Given that real-life Tulsa had already had two unrelated shooting homicides within the first 6 hours of 2017, that actually makes perfect sense, so go for it.
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Jan 24, 2017 10:07
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Never played a WoD game, new or otherwise. I'll see about getting something up today if possible. You said no active-duty cops, so would a retired one be okay?
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Jan 24, 2017 10:30
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Mister Bates posted:Given that real-life Tulsa had already had two unrelated shooting homicides within the first 6 hours of 2017, that actually makes perfect sense, so go for it. Sweet deal! Hank'll be robbing a Denny's in the name of fighting the forces of evil in no time at all! The cops have to forgive me! It's for the GREATER GOOD.  I like having the dangling plot hook of a PC carrying around an active murder weapon anyway haha, it could be used to spice things up if needed.Optional Listening Name: Hank Wallace HP Boxes- Bashing: 5/8 Lethal: 0/8 Aggravated: 0/8 Willpower: 6/6 Morality: 6 Hank was on track to have a pretty good life, he'd apprenticed under his Father to get into the mechanic's business and he was on track to live a decent and productive life. Life on the other hand, as it usually does with folks, had other plans for the Wallace family. In his early twenties things collapsed, his Father's business failed and in turn, when ol' Dad was unable to support the family, his Mother left. Hank's Father collapsed under the weight of the piled on stress and didn't last long after a brief hospitalization. The next 20 years were rough. Hank skated by on the money he got for selling his Father's possessions and eventually home, but that money only lasted so long; after a point Hank ended up on the streets and had to learn how to survive quickly. Oddly enough Hank took to the life as well as you could, his immune system and stomach were iron clad and the man could survive eating week old half rotten food from a dumpster when he had to. The last few months have been action packed for Hank; he made a new friend of sorts, a cat he'd named Bug which had wandered into the alleyway where he'd been sleeping and crawled into his coat. Later that December in the same alleyway a man who'd been embezzling funds from his company was shot dead, the murder weapon haphazardly tossed into the pile of trash bags where Hank had been sheltering from a light snow. Hank had always had sticky fingers and instead of simply leaving the scene of the crime or waiting for the police, Hank was quick to abscond with the dead man's wallet and the cause of his demise. Then we reach the present day. Unable to claim a place in one of the few homeless shelters in the city, Hank found himself simply wandering the streets to keep himself warm as the new year. His meandering brought him to the west side and, attracted by the rambunctious noise of the parties going on, Hank invited himself into a packed home on the sly. Bug hadn't had a proper meal in almost a week and Hank was sure the occupants of the party were surely so drunk and high they had no chance of noticing him. As it turned out they were simply remaining calm as the police had instructed, the filthy man who'd wandered into their party wasn't acting out dangerously yet and officers were on the way. In a room away from the kitchen, where Frank had begun to pilfer a few luckily found cans of cat food, he heard the exhalations ringing in the new year begin, and then he heard the screams as the nightmares made real began their dark work. The next few moments are a blur in Hank's memories, he remembers the screams and sights of the creatures bearing down on folk and at some point remembers drawing the partially loaded pistol he'd stolen weeks ago and emptying it into a hulking form, but his memory only really came into clarity when he noticed the lack of pressure on his chest, Bug no longer tucked away safely in his jacket. Firing the last round in his pistol into the ground, Hank speaks for the first time in weeks as he yanks open his jacket to confirm Bug is nowhere to be seen "Where the gently caress is my cat!?" Questions What's the happiest memory you have? Hank's happiest memory comes right before his Father's business collapsed, the departure of his Mother and then his Father's sharp decline in health stand in sharp contrast to the memory of completing his first solo job in his Father's workshop. What's the worst nightmare you remember having? Hank prides himself on, and basically owes his continued existence on the streets thus far, having never fallen into addiction. Needless to say it isn't surprising that Hank's nightmares reflect what he's seen happen to his fellow members of the homeless community, meth does a hell of a job on the body and Hank still gets the shivers thinking of the imagery his brain had flung at him that night. Who did you lose tonight? Are they one of the missing, or one of the dead? What were they to you? Bug the cat, Hank isn't sure if she died or if the drat creatures took her, but the small splotch of red blood on his coat didn't speak well for the poor critter's chances. Hank had lost many things in his life, but losing his best friend in this day and age wasn't going to stand. Henry Lambert posted:Do you know what it's like to lose... a child or someone like that? Question for other survivors Have you ever directly or indirectly caused another living creature grievous harm before tonight. Notes Willingly dropped Hank's Morality down to six instead of the starting seven, he pretty much consistently partakes in petty theft and that's the breaking point for Morality seven. Likewise tacked on a few points of bashing damage for fun haha, I imagine he didn't get out of a scrap with a demon bear without being bonked at least once. Bashing heals a point every 15 minutes for mortals, so it's pretty much just an aesthetic thing. Frank's Merits are pretty flavor based haha. He's got Natural Immunity which functionally boosts his Stamina to superhuman levels for the purposes of resisting any illnesses, and he has an Iron Stomach basically so he dumpster dive to eat that 3 week old moldy hunk of bread and then wash it down with a few mouthfuls of gutter water with no issues.  Iron Stamina lets him keep on trucking while injured/tired by ignoring a point of a penalty for each dot, but on the other hand if he takes advantage of the merit he falls into a 12 hour coma functionally the next time he sleeps. e: Ugh I wrote too much, haha. e2: In game book-keeping re: xp spends. Total XP Gained: XP Spent: Purchases: Successful Businessmanga fucked around with this message at 13:15 on Feb 6, 2017 |
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Jan 24, 2017 10:54
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OscarDiggs posted:Never played a WoD game, new or otherwise. I'll see about getting something up today if possible. You said no active-duty cops, so would a retired one be okay? Retired police or military are just fine.
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Jan 24, 2017 21:01
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I got a couple of ideas, a down mid30s divorcee whose exwife left him due to his depression, he works as a garbage man, he would have been there due to gaebage collection. #2 is a college student who thinks of himself as a YouTube celebrity when infact he is mocked constantly for his poor skills in editing. He mainly focused on let's plays, unboxing, pranks, and his attempts at extreme sports. He would have been there after running away from a prank gone wrong. He attempted to scare someone but they caught him and started beating on him before he got out and ran. Third is a poor dairy farm guy from blackwell ok, who decided to party in tulsa instead of his normal Enid or Arkansas City. He would have been heading to a different bar when he got there.
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Jan 25, 2017 01:00
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i'm toying with an "amateur chemist" from sapulpa with a rap sheet and a shotgun
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Jan 25, 2017 02:16
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Senior Scarybagels posted:I got a couple of ideas, a down mid30s divorcee whose exwife left him due to his depression, he works as a garbage man, he would have been there due to gaebage collection. Hank basically ate my character concept so can I poach one of the two you don't use for myself? Also Mister Bates you need to swear to me we can get Bug back alive or I'm not playing  (Semi-serious, I really don't like violence against animals)
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Jan 25, 2017 02:27
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Kavak posted:Hank basically ate my character concept so can I poach one of the two you don't use for myself? Take one of the three you like: garbage man, dairy farmer, or YouTube celebrity.
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Jan 25, 2017 02:37
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Kavak posted:Hank basically ate my character concept so can I poach one of the two you don't use for myself? Sorry! Even if I'm not in, the party must rescue poor Bug!
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Jan 25, 2017 04:52
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One thing that might be worth noting when thinking about what you might be carrying is that, as of last year, concealed or open carry of 'bowie knives, daggers, dirks, switchblades, and sword canes' is legal everywhere in Oklahoma, including hospitals, schools, and government buildings. It's just those items, though, you can't carry a machete or a broadsword or anything. Open carry of firearms is technically allowed but restricted to a fairly short list of 'legitimate purposes', mostly hunting-related, and is also restricted by location (you may be able to carry a knife into the post office, but you sure as hell can't carry a gun). Concealed carry is allowed with a license. There are no restrictions on magazine size, and in fact basically no restrictions on firearms at all except for federal restrictions. Like Texas, Oklahoma is one of a few states in which there is technically no restriction on attaching a working firearm to a vehicle, provided the firearm itself is already legal for you to own, although that doesn't mean you should do it. Who do you know in the local homeless community who just might know something about what just went down? What makes you think that? Mister Bates fucked around with this message at 06:55 on Jan 25, 2017 |
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Jan 25, 2017 06:50
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Mister Bates posted:Like Texas, Oklahoma is one of a few states in which there is technically no restriction on attaching a working firearm to a vehicle, provided the firearm itself is already legal for you to own, although that doesn't mean you should do it. Clearly at some point we're going to have to attach a minigun to a dune buggy and go all mad max on some vampires or something haha. Mister Bates posted:Who do you know in the local homeless community who just might know something about what just went down? What makes you think that?  Madeline might know something. All the regulars in Hank's circle didn't know what to make of her when she appeared in their neck of the woods, but after a bit of snooping on one of her more lucid days they figured out that her family had essentially abandoned her to the nursing home she'd been placed in and ceased payments. The home held on to her for a while, but in time she became too much of a hassle and was loaded into a taxi and dropped off in an empty lot with no idea where she was. On her good days Madeline is a boon to the community, making pretty decent slapdash meals over a camp stove the more technical minded folk had jury rigged together, but more often than not she is in a bad way. Hank hadn't put any stock in the fantastical things she'd rave about before, but having seen what happened tonight? He's not so sure she's just a crazy old bat anymore. Successful Businessmanga fucked around with this message at 13:19 on Jan 25, 2017 |
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Jan 25, 2017 07:20
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edit: Sheet done, starting on writing now. Antonio "Tony" Notte His mom had been worried about how far away Tulsa was, she was nervous about letting him go. He reassured her that if anything happened, it'd only take one plane to get there, that he'd be fine. Privately he wished he could have gone farther, but past Tulsa it just got too expensive, so this would have to do. He should probably feel bitter towards his mother, after all she's the reason he's out here instead of sunny California, but he just couldn't. At least her insistence on him becoming a doctor hadn't only been bad, even if he dropped out 2 years in, that was still more knowledge than about half the people applying for an EMT job here. To his surprise, he actually enjoyed the work, or maybe this was just what it felt like to actually do something that you chose to do, instead of what someone else decided you would do. Tony couldn't tell, but he knew he liked it. So he jumped into his new job, new life, with full force. He socialized, actually got to know the people he worked with and around, made friends, he lived. On the advice of his new friends he took classes, some basic self defense, just in case he got an especially rowdy patient. It took several months before he realized how useful those classes actually were, thanks to a surly drunk that decided to start taking swings at him in what was technically his first fight. Just like that, 2 years flew by. Tony settled in, enjoyed his job, his friends, and his life, one that he built. And then tonight happened. Tony was just out to live it up a little, taking advantage of not drawing the short straw and having to work the New Year's shift for the first time since he came to Tulsa. Just his luck that he'd end up right at the spot where the world decided to stop making sense. When he can finally put together a coherent thought, Tony drops the battered plank he found himself holding, and actually takes in what's around. No thing, 3 people that his medical instincts tell him are almost certainly dead. Happy New Year. Questions What's the happiest memory you have? Well, as simple and stupid as it's gonna sound it's probably the time that I moved to a new place here in Tulsa. It was something that I did, because I wanted to. Like I said, stupid. What's the worst nightmare you remember having? I had a reoccurring thing with drowning for years, 'til I was about... erm maybe 15 or 16. I can swim just fine, so it wasn't like, a fear thing. Just... you go under. And down, down, down, down, and down. Light starts to die out, but you just keep going down. Eugh. Who did you lose tonight? Are they one of the missing, or one of the dead? What were they to you? Sophie Carlovsky. It's kinda... complicated, honestly. She's big into long distance running and that sorta thing, and a few months back she was way out there when she pulled a muscle, bad. She called and it happened to be me that got sent out. Since there isn't a whole lot you can do for that sorta thing we had time to talk while we got her back into town and we kinda hit it off a bit. We hadn't gone out on any like, dates or anything but you know. I'm not sure what happened to her, I don't think those things could have caught up to her if she got a chance to run, but then why isn't she out here? ShootaBoy fucked around with this message at 21:39 on Jan 27, 2017 |
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Jan 25, 2017 08:55
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 Name: Henry Lambert I was not drummed out of the Tulsa Police as some Internal Affairs agents would like to think. I left on my own accord. I wasn’t greedy and I didn’t want power. I didn’t want to win. I just wanted to make some money! I was the youngest of eight kids, so I never had much that wasn’t halfway broken. It got worse later on when the factories shut down and my old man was kicked out of the job. He was always going on and on and “working hard” and “respecting the boss”. Didn’t get him poo poo when the company moved on to India or whatever. I was taught desperation as a child, but I was also taught humbleness and humility. Heh, you may find it hard to believe, but really, I am NOT greedy. For greed, you need to talk to my friend Jack Boyd. Now see, Boyd’s Dad was a cop. And he was cop during the golden age of copping. Where criminal types would be lining up to pay you not to do your job. The Boyd’s were rich by my standards and when Jack said he could get me in on his Dad’s orders I was on. Unfortunately, by the time we got in the game, it was getting harder and harder for a dishonest cop to make his fortune on the mean streets. But that was okay, as long as we played smarter. And I was always smarter. So me, Boyd and a few others became the next generation of cops willing to let a few things slide for a quick buck. Now they had their sights set big. They all wanted the big chairs; captain, commissioner, mayor. Now trouble is, that’s only three seats and the no one in the group I was running with was willing to be first of the losers. I knew trouble was coming so I got out. Retired on a private pension at the age of fifty. They called me mad. Now? Mostly if I need to, I call them in jail. Or I pay a visit to their gravestone. Not Boyd though, Boyd made it out okay. We still play poker on Thursdays. Anyway, maybe I folded a little bit to early. I could have eked out another couple of hundred thousand in five years, but I didn’t want to. See, my wife Martha had just had our third. I has always resented how I was always kept busy on business or “business” with Carol and Blake and their special occasions so with little Jack, named after his godfather, we decided he would the benefit of two full time parents. Maybe that was a mistake. My two eldest turned out just fine. Carol going on to become a doctor and Blake went and became a *spit* Lawyer. Oh but I still send him gifts on Christmas. But not birthdays! Hah, I’m joking. I love all my kids, even if they are Lawyers. Anyway, they turned out fine. Little Jack though, he wanted to be like his old man. Constantly going through my old things, pulling out uniforms and badges and what have you. And he would constantly ask for stories, first from me and then when that wasn’t enough from my friends… then from people who weren’t my friends, then old newspapers with a bunch of lies in them, then a bunch of poo poo on his computer about me and the “Tulsa Eight”. He was so angry, and so was I. We argued and fought and he left. I thought it was just to blow off some steam, but he disappeared. That was 10 years ago. I burnt most of my savings and what few favours I had left either tracking him down or dealing with the trouble he got himself into. My dear Martha… passed on. I got out of contact with Carol and Blake. We still talk occasionally but their busy, and I was obsessed. It was just after Christmas that I got something concrete. Jack was seen playing groupie to some lovely new age band. No, not even a band. You wouldn’t see them play in concert or at a disco hall. No, this little group was going to be playing at some squat on the outskirts o Tulsa. I couldn’t believe my luck. Of course finding him was the easy part. Bringing him back was going to be harder. He looked good for essentially being on the run for 10 years. And he recognised me instantly. We talked and we fought over the crappy tunes of the blitzed out of their minds band. And then midnight struck. He was there one second and then he wasn’t. I don’t know why, but I knew right then, at that very loving moment, that something terrible had happened. I saw some of the druggies milling about, a bit confused over what was happening. But not me. I had my gun out in an instant and then people started screaming. Not because of me, because of the thing cutting people up. I can’t remember much of what actually happened. It was like I was on one of those teacups at the county fair. Spinning on the balls of my feet at what felt like 50 miles per hours just hollering and shooting at flashes in the night. It ended. The ghost, bear, thing died and shrivelled away. My son was gone. I was surrounded by corpses. And I had just emptied my entire clip in a private residence. Like I said, first NWoD character and definitely first Hunter. I think I got it all though but I'll keep going back and forth. If another character has stuff mine is missing, I'll see about fixing it. I also gave Henry a pistol, mostly like a souvenir from being a cop that one time. I also dropped his morality a bit as well because although he's a better person, he's still not that great of one. Successful Businessmanga posted:e: Ugh I wrote too much, haha. You've got nothing to worry about with me around. ------ What's the happiest memory you have? Oh I hate to play favourites. But it would have to be when Carol was born. Blake and Jack are close seconds and Martha saying yes would be third. But there’s nothing compared to becoming a father for the first time. What's the worst nightmare you remember having? We’re going back a ways but… I was about eight. Dad was still working and no one was old enough to look after me yet so I had to stay with Grandmother Charlotte. Not Nan, not Granny. Always Grandmother. She was always so still… and just watched me… all the time. Freaky. She died when I was about 10 and I was forced to go to her funeral. Mum dragged me right up to the open casket so I could “kiss granny goodbye”. And you know what? She looked exactly the same. I had the nightmare for weeks after. That she was somewhere in the house. Watching… waiting… Who did you lose tonight? Are they one of the missing, or one of the dead? What were they to you? My son, my darling little stubborn bastard of a boy Jack. I don’t know if he’s dead. He was one of the first to disappear and I didn’t see his body but… Have you ever directly or indirectly caused another living creature grievous harm before tonight. …Yeah… yeah… yeeeeeeaaaah… My question for others. Do you know what it's like to lose... a child or someone like that? OscarDiggs fucked around with this message at 17:05 on Jan 25, 2017 |
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Jan 25, 2017 17:00
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 Name William Polley I tell ya, "I could've made it big" may as well be my motto at this point. Not that I blame anyone for my station in life, it's just frustrating is all. Flashback to my high school. Newton, Kansas. I was a hot poo poo on his way to a full ride baseball scholarship. Had the world in the palm of my hand and people telling me I could play for the KC Royals. I was in hog heaven with an ego bigger than the stadium. Then, Junior year rolls around and life comes crashing down hard. Turns out teenagers aren't invincible as it turns out. I came sliding in to third base and the baseman didn't move out of the way. We collided and he came toppling down on top of me. Blew out my knee, dislocated my ankle and tore ligaments. It took the rest of my Junior Year and most of my Senior year to get through all the physical therapy and by that point I was out of the running for any sports scholarships. They dropped me just like that. I was crushed, I raged out, lashed out at any and everyone, it broke my heart. If it wasn't for my dad basically forcing me, I probably would of skipped out on college completely out of sheer dogged resentment to the institutions that cast me aside. But my dad, he gave me the will to actually move on with my life. My college years were rather mundane. Bachelors in journalism with a minor in English studies. Didn't graduate in the top of my class, but also not in the bottom of the class either. Not good enough to get me a position in the evening news, but I had made enough contacts to land me as a war correspondent in Iraq and Afghanistan. Covering the wars was about what you would expect during those years. Lots of disinformation and need to know bullshit. The grand scale of the war was never my interest though, I wanted to know the stories of the men on the ground, the ones fighting and dying for a cause that probably didn't mirror the ones of the people calling the shots. I wanted to write their stories in a book, The Triumphant and the Tragic. I had a whole section dedicated to the failings of the logicstics and chain of command when I found out that whole squads were given body armor that didn't have trauma plates in it and then expected to march into occupied cities to liberate them. I even followed up with soldiers after their deployment ended and they got home to learn of their reception and what they did after the war. It was going to be my Magnum Opus... ... but on the release of the book, something happened. Privates and Sergeants I had interviewed recanted their tales and accused me of writing falsehoods. Several higher members of the millitary came forward offering "definitive" proof that my account of troops being undersupplied for the amount of danger they were in was unfounded. I was labeled a coward, a traitor, un-american, that 'I made them less safe with this garbage'. Someone high up in the chain wanted me buried and de-legitimizing my work was the best way to do it. It ruined me on a national stage and basically dead-ended my career. Fast forward a couple of years later. The Tulsa World is about the only place that'll keep me around, but not for a lack of trying. They won't even officially have me on the paper, so I work freelance and using psuedonyms between taking odd jobs. Stuck covering city council meetings and selling stories to rag magazines and what little actual viewership I have left on my blog. It was all ok though, because I have Claire. She's been my rock since I came back to the states. I keep meaning to propose to her, but the timing always feels off. I hope she's okay. What's the happiest memory you have The first time I got published. It was my freshman year of college and it was an expose about members of the student council using council funds to host a kegger in their frat house. They tenured resignations from the council that same week or risked academic censure. I still have the article framed in my apartment. What's the worst Nightmare you remember having My dad died a couple of years ago. Lung cancer brought about by being a 2 pack a day smoker that spread to his spine. Its weird though, the though of him being dead is actually way more comforting to me than the image I remember of him dying. The hospital visits were nightmarish and it broke me to see my father wither away to the point where he looked like someone who just got pulled out of a Nazi concentration camp. The worst part was that even when he was unconscious, his hand would still move up to his lips to smoke a phantom cigarette and then slide away to tap off imaginary ash off to the side. It still gives me nightmares to this day. Who did you lose tonight? Claire, my girlfriend. It was her idea to come to to this little hole in the wall, she liked the band way more than I did. She stepped away to use the bathroom a couple of minutes before the attack started and I can't find her. I hope she got away. Have you ever directly or indirectly caused another living creature grievous harm before tonight. No. I've come close a couple of times, but no. Do you know what it's like to lose... a child or someone like that? No. I've never had kids. Me and Claire talked about it, it just never felt like the right time. DeathSandwich fucked around with this message at 19:49 on Jan 27, 2017 |
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Jan 25, 2017 22:05
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 Name: Stanley Richards Stanley, Stanley, Stanley…35 years of age, a philosophy major who got a masters in it, turned into a garbage man. He was smart, kind, a bit neurotic, a bit depressed, and alone. When he wasn’t working as a sanitation worker, he drank instead of working on his magnum opus, a story about a philosophical discourse in the form of a science fiction novel that is light on the science part. Stanley lived alone with a cat, his only friend these days. His wife of 10 years left him with their daughter, heading to New York to go be with her lover that she had been seeing behind his back. Stanley took to drinking, bottles of various alcoholic beverages filled his kitchen and his meals usually consisted of cheap ramen. Stanley only recently took to the gym again, usually a physically fit guy, he had given up right after his wife left him five years ago. He took to it hard, spending his time pushing himself more and more as he struggled to maintain his own sanity. Today however he found himself working downtown tonight, getting called in on New Year’s Eve to help with the thousands of garbage cans that are getting constantly filled. He had been working in the poorer neighborhood in west Tulsa when he noticed people started being grabbed. Shadows…alien forms that he could not recognize. However, he knew one thing and was clear on what he needed to do. He ran to his truck and grabbed his crowbar, and turned just in time to see a thing come right at him. Fear gripped him. He knew he was going to die if he didn’t swing, and almost instinctually he began swinging like mad. Stanley whacked the thing in the face sending it to the ground, Stanley wasn’t done…he had gone psychotic, bashing the thing in the head until it stopped moving. Black blood pooled around the monster’s head, matting into the hair of the…giant hosed up thing. Kind of bear-like thing. His mind came back as he saw the dead bear thing in front of him. Terrified he went to his truck to contact emergency services, however, when he turned to look at the bear thing had disappeared…along with his daughter. He trembled…his daughter was missing from the truck he told her to stay in, the passenger side forced open. She was only ten! He calls out to her but no response. He trembled…what was going on in this world and where was his daughter? He was going to find out and his fist is going to meet the person that took her. What's the happiest memory you have? The happiest memory he had was when he first met his wife, back in the first day of high school for both of them. She had come over and started talking to him and they sort of just hit it off. He remembered the day when she accepted his proposal, and the small wedding they had. What's the worst nightmare you remember having? He remembers the one nightmare he had, one that left him in sleep paralysis. It was a strange dream, he had been laying in bed and across from him a person was sitting on an old knotted wooden chair staring downwards, their eyes bleeding, drips of blood slowly flowing down towards his bed. His bed felt wet in his dream, as he could see that his body was being enveloped by the blood that was flowing over his body. He couldn’t scream, his mouth was gone and his eyes were only showing colors red and orange. Who did you lose tonight? Are they one of the missing, or one of the dead? What were they to you? His daughter had come down to celebrate new years eve with him, having fought with her mother for five days straight until she ran away. He was going to send her back to her mother immediately after he got off work, but, she insisted on spending new years with him. So he took her to work with him. She promised to stay in the truck and not touch anything. So where did she go? Senior Scarybagels fucked around with this message at 15:03 on Jan 29, 2017 |
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Jan 26, 2017 02:19
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Planning to make a character. Also, in case anyone doesn't have the Hunter books, they're on sale at https://www.bundleofholding.com for another two weeks.
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Jan 26, 2017 04:44
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Who was your most reliable 'customer' in the criminal underworld? Are they still in the game? Why are you still in touch with them, even though you aren't a cop anymore?
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Jan 27, 2017 06:50
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Mister Bates posted:Who was your most reliable 'customer' in the criminal underworld? Are they still in the game? Why are you still in touch with them, even though you aren't a cop anymore?  Pauline Cable. Started out more like a day trader then a criminal way back when, providing start up capital for your more average mooks. We would trade lax patrols around her heaviest investments for a percentage of the profits. Well, it was more money and less walking so, win win, right? When she started to get a bigger and she could afford the “hazard pay”, me and the boys would pull the odd triple patrol in areas that weren’t so accommodating to her business, muscling out the competition. Then there were the odd jobs she paid for here and there. I once worked a month of midnights working as her “finance reclamation officer” if you can believe it; paid well enough to cover most of Carols college fund. When I left the force, trading for favours became trading for cash. Of course, I couldn’t do much work at that point because I didn’t have the badge to protect me and internal affairs had started to breath down our necks real bad. Still, if you could afford her commission, no one is more trustworthy then Pauline. She’s sort of set herself up as the Switzerland of Tulsa and in fact, she was my main launderer in the early years when a lot of my money was still dirty. It was only after Jack disappeared that I started our working relationship back up in earnest; my kids are going to have a much smaller inheritance now but Pauline’s info was always good.
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Jan 27, 2017 14:33
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Finished my character out.
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Jan 27, 2017 19:47
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Mine should be done as well. Let me know if I hosed something, only other time I've done WoD was for 2 sessions like 5 years ago.
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Jan 27, 2017 21:41
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I'll be observing, so don't wait for me.
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Jan 27, 2017 21:45
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 Timothy Noel, Meth Cook http://sheetgen.dalines.net/sheet/47382 Ain't much to say about me. Grew up in Sapulpa, lived in Sapulpa my whole life, probably gonna die in Sapulpa. Ain't all bad, cops out here are more worried about speeders coming in off '66 than they are about crystal these days and that suits me just fine. I did alright growin' up out here, dad worked at Liberty and mom waited tables and I did good in school, (Go Chieftains!) but you get out and there ain't nowhere to go. Most people pack up and move to Tulsa or OKC, but I ain't most people and I figured out real quick that commuting to an office downtown wasn't for me. So you figure out what works - and, for me, what works is methamphetamine. I started cooking in high school for some extra pocket change, a gram or two here and there to help kids out when they couldn't find any addy. Demand went up fast, wasn't hard making it full-time, by the time I was outta school I was cooking by the ounce and making drat good money for my trouble. Thought I was Sapulpa's Meth King, for a while, till I got caught and my rear end got thrown in jail. (sold direct like some sorta fuckin' retard) First offense, bright upstanding young man, all that crap, got off with six months and probation. Couldn't carry a gun for a while, drug testing, it was awful. When I got out some friends set me up with an easy gig - just cooking again, no sales, no need to keep around a big inventory. Relatively safe while I had the cops breathing down my neck. Good money until my probation was up, and I had the contacts I needed to set up my own business again when the opportunity dried up. Big bust up the chain and suddenly Sapulpa had a void to fill again. Jail and Probation wised me up good, and I've been drat careful this time around. I hide my labs better and I don't sell direct, for starters. Not King Meth anymore, but I'm not in jail and I've got an income. If somebody gets busted down the chain, I burn my lab and start over a couple weeks down the line. Occasionally, I'll bring a big order out to Tulsa for some real money. That was the plan this week. West Tulsa is where some of my best customers live, and if there's a party in a bad part of Tulsa, crystal's gonna be there. Stashed a couple of kilos in my truck, picked up my buddy and we headed out. Barely pulled up to the party when it went all to poo poo. What's the happiest memory you have? Getting out of jail. Girlfriend picked me up, went to Braum's for ice cream, then we scored some crystal and hosed all night. Saw my probation officer a couple of days later and pissed clean. gently caress yeah. What's the worst nightmare you remember having? Jail. Quit meth cold turkey when I went in. It was a living hell. Wake up at night sometimes in chills when I think about going back. I'm careful now. Never gonna gently caress up like that again. Who did you lose tonight? Are they one of the missing, or one of the dead? What were they to you? Ricky. Ricky was like a goddamn brother to me. Held money for me when I was in jail, helped me score that easy cooking job. Could always count on him to be some muscle when we were running drugs someplace rough. Most of the people at the party disappeared, but Ricky was in two pieces and smeared all over the ground at this point. Lucky him. (Are we doing bonus XP for low morality? Starting at 5 either way given my background, book says 10xp but it's an optional rule so I thought I should clear that up) Mirthless fucked around with this message at 22:12 on Jan 27, 2017 |
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Jan 27, 2017 22:06
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Who's your friend on the St John's emergency room graveyard shift? Why are they stuck in that job, even though they're massively overqualified for it? Who among the journalist community in this town still thinks highly of you? Why doesn't that necessarily make you feel any better? Mirthless posted:
I don't generally do bonus XP for low morality, but if people have already built their characters with that in mind that's fine. Also, who do you refuse to sell to, even when they can afford it? Why do you care what happens to them?
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Jan 28, 2017 06:50
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I didn't drop my morality with xp in mind no; it would just be annoying for my kleptomaniac character to have to make a morality check every single scene haha, so I just dropped it ahead of time. Low morality isn't typically worth the incentive xp in most cases, hunters are going to do and see poo poo that has them constantly making checks to resist their morality dropping. Like I'll take the xp if we end up using the rule if it's on the table haha, but im not bothered either way.
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Jan 28, 2017 06:57
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I didn't even know you could get extra xp for dropping morality. Similar to Successful Businessmanga, I thought that it didn't make sense for my character to have an level "average" morality.
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Jan 28, 2017 18:21
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It's looking like we've pretty much got our crew and we haven't had any new applications in a few days, so I'm going to go ahead and close submissions. If you submitted a character application, congrats, you made it in. Going to give people a day or two to finish responding to questions and give Scarybagels a chance to finish their character, and then we'll get this show on the road.
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Jan 29, 2017 07:47
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Jan 29, 2017 08:12
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Sweet. Really looking forwards to finally playing WoD.
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Jan 29, 2017 08:37
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Mister Bates posted:
 Frank McVee is about the closest thing I'd call a friend in the business, and one of the few who completely and fully believed how I got set up on my book. He's employed properly by the local paper and made himself the self styled lifestyles critic just so he could skim free meals from restaurants and tickets to the movies whenever he could. To say that he's kind of a scumbag is a bit of an understatement, and he has a bad habit of drinking too much and trying to pick barfights. That being said though, he's my scumbag, and that's what counts.
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Jan 29, 2017 08:47
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Posted BG/Questions for stanley.
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Jan 29, 2017 15:03
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Mister Bates posted:Who's your friend on the St John's emergency room graveyard shift? Why are they stuck in that job, even though they're massively overqualified for it?  That would be Jackie Sun. He's another guy like me, wanted to get away from where he grew up and Tulsa was what he could afford, only he's from the opposite end of the country. You see, Jackie comes here from Trenton, New Jersey, or to hear him tell it he's from "Trenin', and I don't give a gently caress what the sign says!" He trained me on the job and we were usually on the same ambulance for my first year. Then he got a "promotion" to helping run graveyard EC. He's skilled enough and he's got more than enough experience to work daylight, maybe even shoot for head nurse or something, if it weren't for his record back home. It was all juvenile, he never did any time, but the director doesn't like the idea of someone with a "criminal past" being "too high up." It's bullshit, but what can we do about it?
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Jan 30, 2017 00:44
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| # ? Apr 25, 2024 02:54 |
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Just FYI, it may be a day or three before I can do my first post, I've got to get ready for a funeral here.
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Jan 30, 2017 14:56
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