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 DRYH Introduction posted:You can’t sleep. It started like that for all of us, back when we were garden variety insomniacs. Maybe you had nightmares – gods know we all do now – or maybe you just had problems that wouldn’t let you get a good night’s rest. Hell – maybe you were just over-caffeinated. It doesn’t matter. Whatever it was, eventually you got to a point where sleep became a choice, rather than a mandate … and then it just dropped off the list. And then, and only then, something clicked. What the hell is this? Don't Rest Your Head is a neat little RPG where you're slowly ground down by lack of sleep and a nightmarish Mad City until you collapse and die. Or maybe the horrifying reality-warping power you've gained (or perhaps been cursed with?) drives you insane and transforms you into a Nightmare, the very creatures that have been hunting you and your friends. Or maybe you give in to despair and choose survival at any cost; you go native, letting the Mad City devour you and turn you into another one of its hollowed-out permanent residents, cursing you with an eternal life in a hellish dreamworld with no identity beyond your job. But hey, you aren't a monster and you're technically alive! Sometimes, you survive, at least in body. You find a way to unshackle yourself from the Mad City, find a way to sleep again, and return to a normal life. But that's not likely. And you certainly won't get there without suffering first. Nobody walks away from this without some kind of limp. The Mad City hates you. It devours the weak and the unlucky alike. What kind of game is this? I'm looking for 4-6 players. This is going to be on PbP with Discord text for OOC and mechanical stuff. Actual gameplay and character interaction will happen in the game thread (mostly, at least). However, the game uses a dice system that's sort of like the Star Wars RPG dice system, except on six-sided dice. I have to be able to tell you what the difficulty of any given roll is so you'll know what to roll. There's 3 types of player dice (basic Discipline, creeping Exhaustion, and Madness superpowers) and 1 GM type (PAIN). I tell you the difficulty of the situation, expressed in Pain dice, you decide what your character is going to do and assemble the dice pool. 1s, 2s or 3s are successes. If you get more successes on your 3 kinds of dice than I do on mine, you accomplish whatever you were trying to do; however, whichever of the dice pools has the highest (or the most highest) rolls on the dice "dominates," flavoring the result and adding mechanical effects. Only Discipline dominating is good for you; the rest are designed to slowly but surely grind you down, even as you succeed. Things are always desperate in the Mad City. In case it hasn't been clear, this isn't going to be a very cheerful game. The game's fluff is set up to be simultaneously goofy and disturbing (much like dreams tend to be), and the GM and players are free to play up whichever half of the equation they like. I'm not going to be relentlessly grimdark, but the long-term outlook for your characters is bleak. If they end up surviving, they're going to have earned it. Edit: Because someone expressed concerns in chat and I want to make this very clear: there will not be any kind of sex/rape/weird fetishy poo poo. So don't go there with your characters, because I'm definitely not going there with the plot. We're sticking with violence and non-sexual fears. It's horror, but it's not going to be creepy. I'm interested, but I've never heard of this game/I don't have this game. Yeah, I'm not surprised. On the plus side, you can find it in downloadable PDF format for very cheap. Above and beyond that, it's pretty simple from a mechanical perspective and it's very story-driven. Frankly I can talk you through character creation and the rules even if you don't have the book in front of you, although obviously it'd be a lot better if you had it. You don't have to worry about getting the "Don't Lose Your Mind" splatbook, it's basically just an in-depth explanation of the Madness powers and suggestions on how to use them. It's nothing I can't tell you myself. Anyway, if you want me to point you in the right direction, come onto the Discord. I mean, you gotta be in there to play anyway. What do we do and when do we start? Join the Discord here, I'll be idling in there all the time. I'm in EST and sometimes I get a little busy, but I'll do my level best to get back to people ASAP. Make me a character sheet and post it in here along with a bio and a character pic. The book features five guiding questions for your bios; answering those is the best way to get a solid character going for this. Picks will be made once I have 4 or 5 people with finished apps. I'll give a 48 hour warning so anyone else who hasn't finished their characters will have a chance to post. Dachshundofdoom fucked around with this message at 04:06 on Feb 18, 2017 |
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Feb 16, 2017 07:43
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 My Name Is Stephen Key... And I Am starting to think I need stronger meds What’s been keeping you awake? “Well, I was working the night shift at the security desk for so long, right? I just never really got back into the whole ‘daytime’ thing. I’d be scheduled for a ten to six and tell myself that I‘d get to bed as soon as I got home, but that never happens. I get off work and figure, ‘I just spent eight hours sitting on my rear end and I got all this energy’ ya’ know? So I grab a six pack from the corner spot and by the way, that guy ain’t got no room to judge me buyin’ a six pack at the crack of dawn. Anyways, I get home have a couple of beers for dinner-breakfast and by then It’s like eight or nine and I remember I got some errands to run so I go down to the post office to pick up some stamps, I go throw some laundry in the machine, and you know you gotta wait for that or you’ll see the guy down the hall wearing you best tee shirt. So I wait for my laundry to finish and now I’m actually hungry for real food and my buzz is dying down, but I haven’t gone to the grocery store in a couple days and my heart can’t take that 23 cent ramen for the fourth time this week so I head back out to grab some Chinese. I’d get delivery but the guy in the apartment above me is doing two years for stabbing the last delivery guy, which is weird cuz I swear I hear someone making noise up there but the super insists that it’s empty. So I get that, head home, eat, and by this point it’s like two in the afternoon and I gotta clean up, cuz if I leave any of those boxes out, them roaches will come back with a vengeance. And now I have to hit the gym, take a shower, iron my uniform, polish my low quarters and all that. Then I can maybe lie down for a bit, but they keep doing construction outside and what am I gonna do? Complain that I’m tryna’ sleep at four in the afternoon? So I kinda lie there, trying to ignore a headache while looking at the ceiling, wondering if that wet spot is getting bigger or if it’s always been that shape. Before you know it, my alarm is going off and I’m getting dressed and grabbing one of those packs of ramen as I head out the door. Well, that’s how it had been for a few months anyways. A couple weeks ago my boss was waiting for me when I came in to work. He said that maybe I should ‘take some time off for myself’ that maybe some vacation might help with my ‘stress.’ Like I said, that was a couple weeks ago and they haven’t put me back on the schedule. I still get my separation pay and it’s just me in the apartment, so I’m not hurting. But, I’ve been keeping on this night schedule-well actually it isn’t much of a schedule at all really. Sometimes I’m up for 24 hours before a realize what’s happened. What just happened to you? “I just… I don’t know. It’s just been… hard to adjust. You get used to everything being laid out and regimented. ‘Be at morning formation at 0500, eat at 0530, gear up at 0600, out on patrol by 0700.’ You know exactly who is in charge and there are rules and regulations for every aspect of your life. You know that I couldn’t get three boiled eggs from the chow hall? Yeah, the service guys were told to only give out two or four eggs. I even told him ‘You give me four and I’ll just throw one away.’ He just shrugged and handed be a bowl with four. Anyway, it’s hosed up but I miss it. What’s that? Oh, recently? Yeah, right. Uh, so I get myself a discharge on account of some ‘traumatic brain injury,’ but I’m sure you knew that. I get back to the states, mom and dad have been dead for a couple years now and I have no idea where my sister is off to these days so I’m basically on my own. I get that gig as a security guard cuz the guy is super gung-ho about hiring vets. I just think he’s happy to get someone that likes working all night that he can pay minimum wage. Anyways, I’m walking to work the other night and this car races down the street. This guy had to be doing at least fifty. So he zooms past, right, and then I hear it: SKREEEEEE!!! WHAM!! I’m thinking ‘Oh poo poo, this fool just killed some kid.’ So I turn around and start to book it to the accident site, but… there wasn’t one. No car, no pedestrians, not even skid marks on the pavement. Now, I know they said I might have some ‘abnormal sensory incidents’ or whatever but that poo poo was real. Like I said, he was flying and that’s a pretty narrow street. I felt the wind come off this sucker. Well, anyhow, I shake it off but now I feel like people are watching me and I got another headache coming on. Now, I don’t want to sound crazy or anything, but I swear I keep seeing this same car. I’ve started taking different routes but I still see the damned thing. Sometimes it’s the same, I see it speed down the street like a bat out of hell and swear it crashes, but there is never any accident. Other times it just creeps, real slow like, staying just ahead of me. And yes, I’ve tried to chase it down. End up looking like a crazy person I bet. Before I can get to it, there’s this shooting pain through my skull. Sometimes a nosebleed. By the time I can see straight again, it’s gone. I just got a workup done over at the VA, they say it ain’t cancer and that it’s probably stress related. That’s mainly why I’m here. I told those Army docs I didn’t want any more ibuprophen and they thought I should talk about it with someone. What’s on the surface? Stephen is recently discharged from the Army. He had been deployed in Afghanistan for four months when a patrol he was escorting was hit with an IED. Stephen suffered a nasty blow to the head which led to a diagnosis of traumatic brain injury and ultimately his discharge. He has been out of the Army for only three months now. He maintains his fitness at a decent level and keeps his hair short. He could be considered reasonably attractive, but he has some facial burns from the explosion. He can come off as short and reserved, but will actually talk at length about any topic and doesn’t spare any personal details. He tries to uphold his professional demeanor while at work and in dealing with strangers, but easily slips into a more casual disposition after getting to know a person. What lies beneath? Stephen is deeply haunted by the events of the war. Not only was there the IED explosion that killed several of his friends and left him with his injuries, but there were also several other skirmishes and battlefield horrors that took their toll on his psyche. He is in denial about his PTSD and masks it with sarcasm, defiance, and alcohol. He jokes easily but is very self conscious about his facial scars and is scared that he is slowly losing control of his mental faculties. What’s your path? Stephen is troubled by a car that seems to come from nowhere and disappear into nothingness before he can catch it. He feels compelled to catch it and each time he sees it gets a little bit closer… Responses Fight: 2 Flight: 1 Exhaustion Talent Big guy...for you: Stephen used the FOB's workout area as a way to escape from the disturbing images of the war. Since he's been home, he maintains his weightlifting regimen almost religiously. He was fairly strong before but now that he's sleeping less that means more time in the gym. In fact, since developing his insomnia, it has been even easier to pack on muscle. Some of the other big lifters at the gym have asked him what he's using to get so big, implying steroid use, but he stays clean. Madness Talent THE DESERT D is for Desert Sunny and dry Drink plenty of water Or bake till you die The heat of the sun beats down about your head and back while the sand radiates it back into you feet. The crunch of the sand lays an uneven backdrop to your dry, raspy panting. In the distance, the heat rising from the horizon shimmers, cruelly reminding you of a pool of cool water. The wind kicks up a dust devil and the sand stings your face as it passes over you. Reaching the summit of another dune, you see the sun-bleached bones of a victim of the wasteland. You hear a cry above you and a dark shadow ripples over the sand. A carrion bird has found you. It calls out again, a sound of encouragement, though not for your survival. Your tongue grates like a sponge on the sandpaper that has become of your mouth. Perhaps just over the next dune you’ll find salvation… A second shadow joins the circular dance over the sand. What can you do? The Desert has begun to make a wasteland in your mind. Unrelenting heat. Rays of sun that seem to never end. Sand, always sand. Bringing these to bear on an unprepared individual can result in crippling effects. If the extreme environment doesn’t drive a person to madness, the isolation will. Not all is desolate though. Countless ancient civilization have come and gone in the history of The Desert. Some of them have left great monuments with ancient knowledge long forgotten waiting to be uncovered from beneath the dunes. (1-2 dice) Clear your mind and feel the sun warm your body. Push yourself to the limit of human endurance, and then keep going; surviving the Desert means never surrendering to such trivial matters such as thirst or delirium. (3-4 dice) You recall a memory (or was it a dream?) of a buried temple. Wandering its halls to escape the heat, you find yourself transfixed by the ancient pictographs covering the walls. Perhaps studying them will give you some insight on your current troubles. It may even be a map, but how could there be a map of the city in this dark tomb from ages long past? (5-6 dice) The Desert imposes its will on your surroundings. Water quickly evaporates; fire ignites more readily and spreads with ease. Those around you begin to sweat and become delirious with thirst. Or perhaps you can bring someone to the desert with you. They may help decipher the hieroglyphics in an underground chamber only to find their name counted among the buried. How does it break me? Fight- Going without food or water for days can turn the most timid man into a raving lunatic. In this state, you would do just about anything to get your hands on something to quench your thirst. Flight- Just over that dune may be your only hope of survival in this place. Over that next dune may be an oasis. You may still be able to escape this place if you can just make it to the horizon. How do I change? At the end of the day, you kick off your shoes and sand pours out of them. At first it was just a sprinkle but these days you are dumping small piles from your boots. No matter how much you sweep or vacuum, you can never seem to get rid of the sand. Then there is the constant thirst. You have resorted to carrying a gallon jug of water with you everywhere. You drain it regularly, yet curiously you don’t really need to pee. A shimmering mirage of an oasis seems to follow you on the horizon, and even on cooler days you can feel heat rising off the pavement. What am I becoming? More and more your skin begins to dry and crack. You don’t need to drink water any more. You welcome the heat of the sun and avoid rain and showers like the plague. Everyday more of your body is covered in dry, rough patches. One day you have a strong urge to visit the beach. You walk barefoot in the sand, not realizing that you are slowly sinking into it. Eventually, all is dark and your body is gone. Yet you are still aware of your surroundings. In the heat of the midday sun you find the strength to emerge from the sand. Your body reforms and you are stronger than before; you are The Sandman. PyroDwarf fucked around with this message at 14:13 on Feb 22, 2017 |
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Feb 16, 2017 14:29
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 Gretchen Lightfellow What’s been keeping you awake? College is a stressful time, especially for a habitual overachiever. Gretchen's parents had never been satisfied with anything less than straight A's, and she'd be damned if she let them down now because perfect grades are what is expected of her. Volunteer work at a homeless shelter for resume padding because that is what is expected of her. Go to the clubs with friends and pretend to enjoy herself, because that is what was expected of her. Dinner date with Trevor (he's working on a medical degree, of course. Mother was very insistent that Gretchen not settle for less) and listening to his incredibly banal problems like how his dad bought him last years model Porsche and how unfair that is, because that is what is expected of her. Go to work after classes at the nearby grocery store to pay the rent and cover the costs of textbooks and school supplies, because Mother and Father paying the tuition is quite generous enough, young lady. Incidentally, this is a loan, and you are accruing interest on it, so step lively. Call the parents on Sunday, two PM sharp, and God help you if you slip up and address them as anything but Father and Mother or Sir and Ma'am. "Dad" and "Mom" is entirely too familiar, and thus entirely unacceptable. Everything strictly regimented and laid out with no room for deviation. Quite a lot of things to handle on a week by week basis while also pursuing personal interests. So it's hardly a wonder that coffee, No-Doz, and Adderall are the order of the day. Every day. Oh, sure, it is incredibly unhealthy. But she only has two more years of busting her rear end and she can finally relax. Or collapse. Sleep is overrated anyhow. Wasted hours that could be spent improving herself, making connections and building prospects for the future. Besides, the crushing exhaustion is really doing wonders for her art. Ideas and tableaux that never would have occurred to her without that altered frame of mind. Things spring onto the canvas that were truly hers, not the pop culture pablum that passed as "art" these days. Sure, it was a bit dark. Okay, a lot dark. And if art truly was a look inside its creator's mind, perhaps that didn't say anything great about hers. But hell. It worked for Giger. What just happened to you? She'd been venting her stress on this canvas for months. She had approached it with no clear purpose - just a desire to put paint down and not think about anything. It started as a nonsensical mess. Yet as the days and weeks passed, more and more layers of paint were added, and it started to kind of look like something. A chaos of clashing colors taking form. Purple faces screaming up at a green sky while sickly blue buildings loomed over them. Distant inhuman figures, vaguely obscene, howling from their multitudes of mouths. When she worked at her laptop, Gretchen could swear she saw it breathing out of the corner of her eyes. When she managed to sleep, she often started awake, staring into the corner where the canvas sat. It was the stress getting to her. The college workload. Old Mick at the shelter puking all over her shoes last night. Her "best friend" Jessica complaining about the relationship drama she had caused in the first place. The anonymous rear end in a top hat that left the frozen pizzas in the cereal aisle. Trevor sticking his hands where they weren't wanted. Same old, same old, but it all just builds up. Today took the cake, though. Dinner with her parents, and with Trevor, and with Trevor's parents. Everyone dressed to the nines, on best behavior, at a very posh restaurant with a maître d' that you just knew could smell your credit score. And Trevor, that arrogant prick, had the balls to propose. In front of his parents. In front of her parents. In front of all those rich assholes at the nearby tables. And out of the corner of her eye she had seen her mother's face. She had had a proper surprised smile on her face as appropriate. But her eyes had no joy in them. Only that stern look that said, You will do as you are told. You absolutely will not embarrass me and your father by saying No. All this on...no nights sleep. She couldn't even be certain when the last time she had slept even was. She had said yes, and cried, because that was what was expected of her. It hadn't seemed politic to point out those tears were from absolute despair. Gretchen hated herself for being too much of a coward to throw a No right in everyone's smug prick faces. So here she sat, furiously hurling paint onto canvas. Not caring that there was the faint but persistent sound of breathing surrounding her. Unaware of how the canvas seemed to grow and shudder. Not until she sat back, looked at her work, and realized it was Done. Done for all time. And Gretchen stepped through. What’s on the surface? Gretchen is intense. Everything she looks at, she is looking at it. Usually with a sketchbook out, staring at the subject as her hands go about their work. Despite this, she doesn't talk much, and she is soft spoken when she does. She finds direct eye contact very uncomfortable. She absolutely never slouches and does not use contractions when speaking. She gives the impression of a somewhat uptight but very grounded individual who has her poo poo together. Never seen without her backpack, which typically contains her phone, wallet, a sketchbook, and lots of drawing implements. What lies beneath? Gretchen is a high tension wire about to snap. She loves her parents for everything they've done for her. But deep down, in the part of her heart where she is afraid to look, she utterly despises them for demanding unrelenting obedience and excellence. She has thus far managed to meet their expectations and grudging approval, but it can't last. The wire will eventually snap. When it does, nobody can say how far she'll fall. What’s your path? Gretchen is falling apart. Her story is about becoming her own person, rather than the warped creature people want her to be. Responses Fight: 0 Flight: 3 Exhaustion Talent Artistic: Gretchen is quite skilled at translating what is in her head to paper, canvas, tablet, or bare wall if necessary. Madness Talent P is for Pictomancy, Expressing your heart. Realer than real, Creating life through your art. Given a tool and a medium, Gretchen can draw things and give them true substance. Pencil on paper, paint on canvas, blood on concrete, whatever. At it's simplest, she could draw a knife or a hamburger and pull it from the page. In all respects, they would be a knife or a hamburger, except instead of coming from a forge or a McDonalds, they came from her mind. Putting a bit of herself into something, really sweating it out and letting her creative juices flow, she could make something of true value or complicated design. Draw a car on the side of a building and drive it away. If she only had chalk to work with it would be a very strange looking car, granted, but it would function generally as expected. Or maybe get out the expensive paints and recreate that $30,000 dress she saw at the Oscars last night, and be the envy of all her friends at the club. Or perhaps she is being hunted by something too terrible to face. She puts her heart and soul into a sharpie doodle on an abandoned subway wall and draws something from her darkest nightmares to protect her. Of course, such a thing might not appreciate being...rushed. Unfinished.
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Feb 17, 2017 20:39
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Posting a rough draft about a burglar who breaks down the wrong door. I'll add in more fluff, the five questions, and a pic later. *  Thomas Rich --likes to go where he shouldn't (like other peoples houses) --likes to take what isn't his (like other peoples money and valuables) --likes to stay up late (better to break and enter when everyone else is sleeping) --likes to work odd hours (when you work, he knows you're not at home) --likes to wonder how to get into new places (attic window? Basement crawlspace? Bullshit the superintendent?) --gets curious about that one door...(huh, never seemed to notice it, almost like it just appeared) --picks the lock, and oh ( ) * What’s been keeping you awake? Worry. Recently he had some jobs go bad, and he's wondering if either he needs to think up a really great gig, or quit while he's behind and try to learn a honest profession - if he's able. What just happened to you? Limping away from a job gone wrong. Very wrong, as in gunshots fired, almost dead wrong. As in it was like the drat house was fighting him, hallways seeming to lead elsewhere than when he got in. What’s on the surface? At first glance, nothing out of the ordinary. Blends in. Get a bit too close, you notice his eyes darting around, looking for opportunity or threats. What lies beneath? Why did he turn to crime in the first place? Perhaps family issues, trying to prove himself to a father-figure. Perhaps he believes if he pulls off "the perfect job" he can win this "respect" and feel like he can leave. Alternatively, he realizes he doesn't need to live to someone elses standards, and go his own way What’s your path? The Last Job. Figure a way to quit wen you're ahead and feel comfortable about staying outta the game * Responses Flight 2, Fight 1 Exhaustion Talent I Blend In: Whether by looking easily ignorable, or like he belongs in the crowd, or just hiding really good; as long as Thomas isn't blatantly doing illegal activities, odds are he can get around without too much hassle. Madness Talent L is for Lockpick Nimble, Sharp, and Thin You Can't Keep Him Out When IT Wants To Be In... Tom can open locked doors. Doesn't matter how secure or high-tech the lock, Tom can get them open. Hell, if he can concentrate long enough, he can get picked open doors to open to other places. Tom tries to ignore the strange little skritching sounds from inside his gut, or his head, and tries to not worry that, just as he can open things to get in, something is trying to open him to get out... Dedman Walkin fucked around with this message at 02:29 on Feb 22, 2017 |
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Feb 18, 2017 04:01
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Decided to completely reprise my character because I got a better idea for a madness power... and no, it's not the awful, awful baby one. Also, a disclaimer: I actually really love dogs, but Luna views them through a distorted lens for reasons that will become obvious. Luna Ross My name is Luna Ross. I'm 35 years old, 36 this May. I'm a sales and marketing expert and VP of Sales for a major retail chain. I live at 10148 Magnolia Avenue, Apartment 302. I moved here because there's a strict 'no pets' policy, but sometimes I can still hear them barking. Snarling. I work from home, most days. I'm lucky my boss lets me, if I'm honest. Still, sometimes I have to leave to go meet with a client, and that can get... well. I'm careful about the doors I walk through nowadays. It's just a nervous breakdown. None of this is real. But there's no way I can go back to the hospital. There's no way I can go back. I'm afraid I'll look up and see her broken body lying there, the wreck of her face, not even recognizably human any more... I don't want to hear her screaming any more. What’s been keeping you awake? / What just happened to you? My sister's death, about three months ago. She was 6 years old and living with me at the time-- I'd just gotten custody of her from our parents. Awful, awful people. I've still got the burn scars, and when I saw the little weeping cigarette burns on Holly's little arms... well, I got CPS involved. I applied for guardianship, proved to them that I earned enough to support her, and there she was. My little angel. It took the better part of a year to make her smile again, to teach her how good people could be, and even then she still had a lot of healing to do. Our house wasn't big, and we didn't have much money, but I hoped to show her my world, my normal. The ice cream shop down the road. The playground. Her new school, where the parents actually let her come over to play with their kids. A home where she could have friends over without fear. Love and support and understanding. Our neighbors, they had... animals. Beasts. I'm sorry, I can't... I can't say the name. Horrible, half-feral animals, animals that they tried to convince me were "so well trained" and would "just love Holly." I didn't let her outside when they were around. There were probably 20 of them, large and small and everything in between. I don't know why I didn't call animal control. I should have. There was barking, always barking, snarling, some of them had untreated wounds from fighting all the time. I didn't let Holly out of my sight with them around, when one or two inevitably hopped the fence. The stench from that backyard... you wouldn't believe it. I was looking for a new place to live, but nowhere else was affordable in that school district, and... gently caress, I'm just making excuses. I should've moved her. I should've gotten a second job. Two. Three. I should've... ...well. I suppose it doesn't matter now. She's gone. I ran inside for a second, just to get a toy from inside. The lock on the neighbor's gate failed. Holly ran into their yard... what little girl doesn't want to pet puppies? I lost two fingers trying to pull them off her. By the time the paramedics arrived, there wasn't much left of her face. They stabilized her and rushed her to the ICU, me there holding her hand in the ambulance. I stayed with her while she fought for three whole days. Three whole days of holding her little mangled, bloody hand... because even though the touch hurt her, being alone would have hurt her more. I watched as her little body gave up the fight. Whenever I would fall asleep, I would see them, boiling out of the gate and out of drains and up the walls, teeth and fur and howling, and Holly's screaming, always Holly's screaming, turning to a wet gurgle at the end. It was easier not to sleep after a while. I moved to my apartment-- a crappy little one bedroom, but it doesn't allow pets. Sometimes I can still hear them barking. Sometimes a tail wags just out of sight; I can feel the air move, hear the thump,thump,thump on the floor above. There shouldn't be a floor above, but sometimes I can see extra stairs when I leave my apartment. I don't want to take them. But sometimes I wonder if I can find peace at the top of the stairs. What’s on the surface? I keep it together. Mostly. I rarely leave my apartment, but I'm doing well at work. My coworkers shoot me pitying glances whenever I see them, which is rarely. "You couldn't have prevented it," they tell me. "It was just an accident." And I smile and I show them that vapid little face I show to customers to make them like me, and I sell to them just like I've been selling clients my entire adult lives. "Oh, I'm coping well. Nothing to see. I just want to talk business, if you wouldn't mind. She wouldn't have wanted me to stop working." I'm charming and sociable and people like me. And I do my drat job, and I do it drat well. What lies beneath? I know they're saying things about me. I know I was unfit to be her guardian. I should've prevented this. It's my fault she died, and it's my fault she was in as much pain as it's possible for a human being to be in while she died. I deserve to put a bullet in my head... but I'm a coward. A goddamned coward, a slave to my own survival drive. And my coworkers see it too. I don't have any friends any more-- they know I killed her, and they wouldn't have done the same. Holly deserved better. I shouldn't have gotten custody in the first place. At least she would've been able to overcome cruelty. Food tastes like ash-- colors aren't colorful any more. I lost 30 pounds the first month-- I was fat to begin with, so this isn't such a big deal. I don't deserve to eat anyway. My therapist says I need to focus on making progress, on digging myself out of this hole, but... I'm not sure I want to. I know Holly would have wanted me to... but she saw the good in everyone, to a fault. What’s your path? ...honestly? Honestly, I know Holly would have wanted me to get better. She would've grabbed my cheeks in her little hands and given me a kiss on the forehead and told me I was the best big sister in the world. Even when I lost my temper. Even when I was shorter with her than I should have been. And selfishly? I'm so, so, so tired of hating myself, hating the world, hating my own heartbeat. I want to heal. I want to sleep again. I want to get better. I want to get to a place where I can live my life so well I can live it for the both of us. I want to be someone Holly would be proud of. --------- Responses 1 Fight, 2 Flight Exhaustion Talent Sales: Ever hear of the phrase "she could sell ice to Eskimos?" That's Luna when she starts to get tired. Her instincts become sharper, her smile becomes easier, and she seems to know instinctively what to say to get someone on her side. She wouldn't call it lying. It's just explaining why her product or course of action is the best one, as simply and effectively as possible. Madness Talent D is for Doggies, With bark and with bite; Their waggy pup tails are a child's delight. What can I do? They tore her apart... they tore her apart, and I can hear them, calling to each other. They're always around--everywhere I go, there they are, and they're watching me. Almost as if they're... looking to me for direction. I don't want them, but they keep coming. Sometimes, when it gets bad, when I scream for help inside my head, when I feel my brain start to unmake itself... they're there. Watching me. Helping me. Leading me to things I need, or taking out something trying to kill me... which happens a lot more recently. They always seem to go for the throat, or the face. I can make them search for things for me, if I concentrate. I can make more, and more, and more come out of the woodwork. Their howling, their barking, their stench... their tongues, their disgusting slobbery tongues, licking the stumps where my fingers used to be. I don't want them. I don't want them, and I never asked for them, and the more I lose my grip the more of them there are... 1-2 Dice: Summon one or two large dogs to track a target, distract a target, or to attack a target. 3-4 Dice: Summon an entire pack of dogs. Useful for a strategic mauling, or to fan out and hunt a target, or just confuse someone trying to track you. 5-6 Dice: Barking, snarling dogs boil up out of the sewer, out of the shadows, out of the alleys, out of your hands, out of your target's face. Tear things apart, or just crush them under the sudden influx of biomass. How does it break me? Fight: Sometimes, you hate someone so much you want them to suffer. You want to tear them limb from limb, rip their throat out, sink your teeth into their flesh. You can feel the call to hunt rising inside you, and presented with such a compelling target, it's hard to resist doing just that. You can think of no worse way for someone to die, and sometimes, when the rage gets so bad it boils all your humanity away... well. Humanity is overrated anyway. Flight: Barking, barking, constant barking. Their horrible little doggy grins and their absolute glee as they go for the throat... and in numbers they're so much stronger than you. They coordinate. They're social. There's a horrible kind of intelligence in their eyes, and when they zero in on a target... you run. You don't want to die. If you can find a tree to climb, a lamp-post, ANYTHING to go where they can't follow... How do I Change? The more you use them, the more they show up uninvited... behind doors, in walls, always watching, always smiling their little doggy smiles. You feel your body hair start to thicken, and your mind getting narrower. More focused. More predatory. Your color vision starts to weaken, and your posture stoops. What am I Becoming? They watch you, with their eyes, their eyes that never seem to leave you. They still swarm to your beck and call, but they know something's wrong. You can see it in those eyes. They love you, you understand that now, and they know you have so much more potential. And then, suddenly, they're upon you, tearing your skin off to reveal the fur underneath. You raise your new snout and howl at the moon, fur rippling as the wind hits it for the first time, the concrete scratchy under your new paws. They've made you so much faster. So much stronger. So much better. Your pack dominates the alleys, and woe unto anyone who comes there uninvited. You have loyal ears and eyes and noses everywhere, and anyone who badmouths you is in for a very aggressive surprise. You rule the back-ways. You've become the Alpha Bitch. Axqu fucked around with this message at 16:49 on Feb 22, 2017 |
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Feb 20, 2017 06:21
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 Jason King What’s been keeping you awake? / What just happened to you? It's been four years, and I still feel her loss. I'm thirty three now, but every time I close my eyes, I see it happening all over again; climbing those stairs, seeing her there on the bed, and everything that came after. The screaming match with her father, the grief, the anger. It just.. it's all that comes to mind when my eyes close. No... that's not entirely true. Sometimes, I see the happy times. Her laughter, the times we just drove around at night, listening to music. The somber times, when we found out we weren't going to be parents. The fights that, over the years, lead up to me leaving for work that morning, angry as hell. I can't sleep any more. I push myself harder every day, trying to rack up my successes to outnumber my failures, but.. I'm so, so tired. Things just don't seem right any more. I think I may have finally snapped. My cat spoke to me. Warned me of something impossible, told me she loved me, but I needed to run. I tell myself I'm no runner, and I ask her, feeling a fool the whole time, how to stand and fight. She tells me all I've done is run from what happened, that I shouldn't try to fight now when I'm not ready. My cat is right. I'm being taught a lesson about myself by my loving cat. And something about that infuriates me. I've always been fairly athletic, though I let myself drop a bit in highschool. I tell her straight up, I am fighting this, and she can help or she can leave. She looks like she caught a canary because I said that. Ware the shadow, she purrs. I don't like that. But she's right. THEY come. THEY know how long I've been awake, and THEY don't seem surprised that I can see THEM. I have all the lights on, but still THEY pull themselves, cackling and screaming, from whatever puddle of shadow they can find. Grey, wrinkled hands flecked with dried blood reach languidly for something to grab on to, and THEY pull their sinewy bodies from whatever hell they come from, tall and thin and dark with eyes full of dark mirth. They laugh and they laugh and they grin from ear to ear, their faces splitting unnaturally. gently caress them. I feel my mind twist as my anger boils over. Everything I did for her, everything that was done to me, it fuels a fire in my chest that makes me feel... inhuman. The cat screeches a warning, but I ignore her, tackling the first of the monsters and pounding my fists into it's face. I barely notice red glow about my body, or how my muscles strain and bulge. All I can feel is satisfaction as the thing's skull gives way, and its body melts into the floor. The other two hesitate. And that costs them. I punch clean through them both, slamming them together and spraying shadow across the walls that drips down, down to the carpet and into the places where the light doesn't reach. Oh God, I feel so tired. I sit down hard on the bed, feeling its siren call. The cat simply stares at me, judging me. I need to get out of here. I need to move. I need to get ready to fight again. What’s on the surface? I'm a funny, outgoing guy. I do well at my job, I do well with other people, but.. they know I'm still sad about her. It's hard to hide. They think I'm strong for pushing on through all I've been through, and I play on that strength. I AM strong. And I like it that way. What lies beneath? Anger. Sickness. Whorls of depression and grief. I wish all of my problems could be solved by punching them, but.. I think I may have gotten my wish. What’s your path? I don't even know. I need to find my path. I can't just go along in life, picking fights and trying to just stay ahead. I don't think that'll work for too long. But I don't even know how to ask for help or what I need help WITH. Responses 2 Fight, 1 Flight Exhaustion Talent Evasion: Even though I'm tired, I find it within me to just.. get out of the way of things. Oncoming traffic, fists, bullets; I seem to be able to duck it all. Madness Talent R is for Rage To not go gently into the night, Struggle and scream, little man, Show them a fight. What can I do? It's always been there, under the surface of my skin. I've never had trouble controlling it, squashing it down, going the high road and talking things over and working them out. But that time is over. I'm Awake now. I see what I can really do when I just.. let go, and get angry. I never got angry at her, and maybe that's what I'm tapping into now; maybe, if I'd just yelled at her, like she wanted, I wouldn't be here right now. Maybe.. 1-2 Dice: The rage makes you stronger, but you keep your head on straight. You can rip car doors off of their frames or cause a nice dent/hole in something steel or brick. 3-4 Dice: A red tint falls over the world, and it's harder to keep control. Your strength increases even further, and you can tear holes in steel and rip up slabs of the street to toss around. 5-6 Dice: You become rage incarnate, a being of nothing but anger and aggression; you can level entire houses or a large swath of your foes with a pulsating red beam of light from your mouth, or simply juggle cars and hurl them great distances, or punch out the foundation of a building just to hold it up for laughs. How does it break me? Fight: When all you have is a hammer, you will want to use it. Every little thing starts to make you angry, until all you see is a world of nails. Flight: You can't deal with this right now. You just can't. You're too angry to see straight. Literally. You have to distance yourself from this, put holes in walls if you have to, just.. get away. Breathe. How do I Change? The strength starts to stay; your muscles stay swole, your vision stays red. It's easier to just smash something than it is to figure it out. Violence makes the world go 'round, after all, and baby, you're making it spin. What am I Becoming? Eventually, there is only anger. Everything is standing in your way just to annoy you, to get under your skin and irritate you. They WANT you mad. They WANT you to lose your cool and rampage. And that's what they're getting. A being of throbbing veins and foaming mouth, teeth bared and knuckles hammering against the ground. You are more upper body now than anything, a tiny head on a massive, muscular torso. You've become The Tank.
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Feb 20, 2017 15:54
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Jennifer Sorento What’s been keeping you awake? Deadlines. Jennifer couldn’t make her deadlines. She’d tried, every day sitting in front of her keyboard with her hands on the keys, like a pianist about to perform Beethoven… But writer’s block had left her staring at the blinking cursor, unable to make even a single word appear. There was no way to complete it on time now. She had to turn in a finished manuscript in two weeks or she’d lose her contract with the publishing company. She didn’t even have the first chapter done. It was impossible. She drank another cheap cup of instant coffee, rubbed at her eyes, and stared at the cursor. Impossible. What Just Happened to You? JENNIFER COULDN’T SLEEP. She could hear the click-clack of keys as the words appeared on the ceiling above her bed. She stared at them, at the old typewriter font and the cursor, blinking after the period. Mocking her. The ceiling was white and square, just like a page of paper. “Now I’m hallucinating,” SAID JENNIFER. “What the fu-“ JENNIFER SAT UP AND GLARED AT THE WORDS ABOVE HER, DARING THEM TO KEEP APPEARING. WHICH THEY DID. The monitor across the room flickered on, and she could see more words populating the document that had previously been empty. Words about how she felt, words about what was going through her mind, words about her being hungry. Her stomach growled. The keys clicked in response. JENNIFER WENT DOWNSTAIRS TO GET A YOGURT. It did sound like a good idea. Carefully, without saying a word, she put on her slippers and went downstairs. The house was silent. No keystrokes followed her. When she opened the fridge she remembered she’d already eaten the last of the yogurt though, the previous morning. “I’ll just have some toast instead,” she said, not sure why she was talking to the invisible typist. She really must be going nuts. Click-click-taptaptaptap-click. Words appeared on the white plastic of the back of the fridge. JENNIFER OPENED THE CRISPER DRAWER, AND FOUND ONE OF HER YOGURTS HAD FALLEN INTO IT, WHAT LUCK! “No, I’m pretty sure I ate all six of them…” she said, reaching for the butter. JENNIFER WAS OUT OF BUTTER. “I can’t be I just bought a whole… new… pack…” The butter drawer was empty. Frustrated and more than a little nervous she opened the crisper drawer and sure enough, a brand new cup of yogurt stared up at her from between the lettuce and the carrots. The light from the fridge highlighted it dramatically. Jennifer laughed, a little insanely, as she took it. “Sure, fine, I must have missed it. Right. But no one’s going to read a book about a middle aged woman getting yogurt at two-thirty in the morning.” WHAT JENNIFER DIDN’T KNOW WAS THAT HER LIFE WAS ABOUT TO GET VERY INTERESTING. The words were on the kitchen cabinets now, which were painted white too. Everything in her apartment was white, she realized. Walls, ceilings, carpets, furniture. She liked white. She liked how clean and crisp it looked, how it reflected light. But she didn’t like this at all. “Interesting?” HER APARTMENT WASN’T AS EMPTY AS IT APPEARED. “S-stop it! You’re scaring me!” Something in the living room hissed softly, like a tire losing air, and Jennifer jumped. “What the gently caress is that!?” IT WAS A DEMON. A CREATURE FROM ANOTHER PLACE, A PLACE SHE HADN’T BELIEVED EXISTED. AND IT WAS HERE TO KILL HER. “WHAT?!” HER SCREAMS DREW IT CLOSER… She saw it then, standing in the doorway between the kitchen and the living room. A SERPENT WITH EYES OF FIRE, SCALES THE COLOR OF DEAD FLESH. Jennifer almost screamed again then clamped her hands over her mouth to stop it. The words said her screams drew it closer, so she mustn’t scream. “What do I do?” she whispered. “Help me!” JENNIFER THREW HER YOGURT AT THE DEMON. “That’s not help that’s the dumbest idea ever!” she whispered, furious. The cursor blinked imperiously at her and the keys were silent. Cursing silently under her breath, Jennifer lobbed the yogurt cup at the giant snake. The snake’s eyes tracked the small, foil covered object and struck. Then it writhed on the floor as the alien taste of strawberries and cream fouled its mouth. WHILE IT WAS DISTRACTED, SHE GRABBED HER CAR KEYS AND RAN. That was an order she was happy to follow. BUT WHO HAD SENT THIS DEMON AND WHY? The words appeared on the screen where her car map display should, as she peeled out of the driveway. IF SHE EVER WANTED TO GO HOME AGAIN, SHE’D NEED TO FIND THE ANSWERS. “I guess at least I got through chapter one,” JENNIFER MOANED. BUT IT WAS ONLY THE END OF THE PROLOGUE. What’s on the Surface? Jennifer Sorento is pencil thin, white, wears heavy glasses, and has long brown hair that she hides behind. She’s thirty, just old enough to not be young anymore. She’s an opinionated woman who has always been independent, and people often say she’s level headed and smart. She recently published a book titled “Tangle of Feathers” that was about a girl in a long distance relationship who learned her boyfriend is secretly an angel. She was trying to write the sequel when she lost her ability to sleep. What lies Beneath? Really, Jennifer is a mess. She doesn’t eat properly, never sleeps right, and keeps everyone at arms’ length. Some days she doesn’t even want to get out of bed because it all just seems so hard. People say she’s responsible but she never feels like that’s true, or when it is then it’s just an act she puts on for other people. She procrastinates until the last minute every time she can and then overworks herself to make the deadlines. Mostly she feels like a fraud. Like somehow the world hasn’t seen through her yet, but surely tomorrow it will. Surely it would just be easier if someone told her what to do... What’s your Path? Jennifer is going to finish her book. Even if it kills her. Everything she’s done so far in life is tied up in this one final deadline. She has to do it to prove she isn’t a fake, that it wasn’t a fluke that someone published her first book. She needs validation that she’s worth something to someone. Her journey is one of discovering her own self-worth and finding her free will. Discipline, Responses 3 Discipline, 1 Fight, 2 Flight Talents N is for Narrator Pulling your strings Do what they say Or regret everything
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Feb 21, 2017 00:57
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 My name is Ashley Schneider, and I've got to keep clean, now more than ever. What's Keeping You Awake? It's the baby. Abbie's only a month old, and she's a fussy baby. She's a good baby, don't get me wrong, I love her, of course I do -- but she's a bad sleeper and she's up most of the night. I'm up with her, because I'm on maternity leave and Aaron has to get up early for work, so that's that. "Sleep when the baby sleeps," they tell you, but even when I can get Abbie down, I've just got so much to do. There's the laundry, and the cleaning -- have to keep the nursery nice and clean, and I may as well do the house while I'm at it, because I'm home anyway -- and fixing meals. I make Aaron's lunches for him, of course, so he doesn't have to go out and eat that garbage, and then I work on dinner, and then it's time for my food. There's the shopping for fresh food, of course, and making green smoothies, and cutting up salad stuff... It shouldn't take as long as it does, but I'm very careful. You really have to get things properly prepared to avoid the toxins. And then I need to work out; I'm hoping I can get back to the Crossfit gym soon, but right now I'm doing bodyweight exercises and trying to get the baby weight off. Not that there's much! I was careful! I shop organic, of course, non-GMO, gluten-free. Even then, I have to be careful to choose the right things to keep myself cleansed. Sometimes I still slip up, so... I have to shed the toxins somehow. Did you know about mung beans? They're great for intestinal toxins. It's ayurvedic. ... It's also a good diet tip. The more time I spend making food, the less time I spend eating it. The less time I spend tempted to cheat again, buy all that toxic trash from outside. I have to be healthy and clean for Aaron and Abbie. A detox diet is so energizing! Sometimes I don't even think about sleeping anymore. What Just Happened To You? Someone's been knocking on the door, late at night, for a week or two now. Sometimes I don't notice because I'm upstairs trying to walk Abbie to sleep -- skin-to-skin contact, for bonding -- but sometimes if we're downstairs, I hear the knocks. It's always three, a pause, then one, a pause, then three again. I thought it was just some local kids. This neighborhood is really good, but kids will pull pranks anywhere, you know? Last night... well, last night, I finally got Abbie to bed, but I kept hearing funny noises on her baby monitor. Odd burbles and static? I think the stupid thing's dying, is what it is, or it's not compatible with my phone? Anyway, so I was upstairs and downstairs, and Abbie was always fine, thank God, but the last time I came downstairs the knocking had started, and I was just done. You know how sometimes something just breaks and you have to give someone a piece of your mind? After you've been pushed and pushed and pushed? So I didn't check the peephole, I just opened the door, ready to yell at those kids once and for all... It wasn't my neighborhood outside. Let's... let's just put it that way, for what I saw. What's On The Surface? Ashley is one Wordpress subscription away from being a stereotypical mommy blogger. She has all the accoutrements of the millennial new mom: a few month's maternity leave from a mid-level corporate HR job, a screechy baby with too many tiny pink outfits and flowered headbands, a pushy tech-guy husband and a three-year marriage fraying at the edges, and an absolute obsession with fad fitness and nutrition pseudoscience. She loves kombucha, hasn't made up her mind about public schools, and is trying to figure out if she can take the household vegan without too much pushback from her husband. Ashley is a good-looking woman, in a sort of tired, desperate way: lean and toned, if still clearly carrying some baby weight around her stomach and hips, with her dark brown hair in a bob. Her work wardrobe is clean, crisp professional wear, but these days she's more likely to be found in yoga pants and basic workout tees, hopefully without too many baby-related stains. What Lies Beneath? After a childhood with critical, demanding parents, Ashley has low self-esteem, terrible body image, and an extremely poor relationship with food. She suffers from orthorexia, an eating disorder centered on obsession with "healthy food" to the point of deprivation and self-harm; in truth, her anxiety about "toxins" in food is based on this disorder and on the subconscious desire to punish herself for her perceived weakness. It also masks her other anxieties about the future of her marriage and about her ability to be a decent parent to her daughter. What's Your Path? Ashley's story is about coming to understand her disordered relationship with food and accepting herself as a good, if imperfect, person. It's also about developing healthier relationships with others, particularly the ability to be a good mother and not perpetuate the cycle of neurosis that drove her to becoming Awake. Responses Fight 1, Flight 2 Exhaustion Talent Crossfit: Ashley's fad fitness obsessions haven't been for nothing. She's surprisingly limber and athletic, often for very strange applications. Madness Talent T is for Toxins That pile up within. Everything is poison; Consumption is sin. What Can I Do? You know the secret, the one that's revealed half-assedly on "natural wellness" websites but here in full flower to you: toxins are everywhere. Most of the food we're sold by the big corporations is processed, adulterated, full of poisonous fillers and malicious genomes. Apples are loaded with nicotine and sprayed with pesticide. Bread is a ticking time bomb of gluten and starch, things our body wasn't meant to eat. Rice isn't even real -- white "rice" is an artificial plant, like eating plastic. Only a careful, difficult diet is free of toxins, and almost nobody is without sin. The toxins don't leave you once you've taken them in. They collect in your intestines and fester, undigested, forever a roiling pit of impurity in your gut. You know the secret ways to detoxify yourself, cleanse the toxins that pollute your organs and blood, but most people don't and never will. When you tell them just what they've taken in, just what lurks within them and what harm it'll do to their body... well, that harm hits them hard and fast. It's what they deserve. Of course, you're not free of toxins either -- you've made your mistakes, haven't you? But you, at least, know how to coax them out. They come up from your gut and leave through your mouth, purified semi-liquid black gunk, acidic and poisonous. Sometimes, distasteful as it is, these toxins have their uses. Sometimes, if you have the right stuff, you can detox others and cure their ills -- get them green tea and lentils, start getting their toxins flushed, help them feel better. It's so much easier to use toxins to punish, though. Everyone's got some, and everyone's guilty. (Not all toxins come from food, of course, although most are consumed or consumption-adjacent. Feel free to tell them about the chemicals leaching into their water from plastic bottles, or about the damage their drugstore soap is doing to their skin. They'll appreciate it, once they get themselves right and heal.) 1-2 Dice: Tell someone about a toxin they have in or on them and watch the symptoms develop: usually digestive distress, for food, but possibly skin damage for soap and shampoo. Retch up a little wad of acidic toxin, to dissolve something or poison someone directly. Help someone get over a cold or minor illness with green tea and sympathy. 3-4 Dice: Bring down a serious whammy on someone based on the toxins they've consumed: sudden-onset Crohn's, explosive psoriasis, or something similarly nasty. Vomit out a stomach's worth of black toxin onto someone or something that deserves it. Treat serious illnesses with proper detoxification tools 5-6 Dice: Give someone cancer -- right now, metastatic, everywhere -- or cure it -- gradually, with fruit and kombucha and thorough mindfulness. Disgorge a wave of toxins, more than your body could possibly hold, poisoning and corroding everything it touches. How Does It Break Me? Fight: Oh, God, can't you smell it? The toxins in these people's pores, the poisonous miasma that they shed in their sweat and breath? It's absolutely intolerable, and it's poisoning you by proxy, you just know it. It's time to show them the consequences of their unhealthy lifestyle. Flight: The world is saturated with our bad choices. Every inch of asphalt is greasy and acrid; the air is full of acidic vapor, eating at your lungs, polluting your resolve. With this much sheer toxicity around, sometimes all you can do is just run, try to find a safe place, a place where the air isn't rancid and you can have some detox water. Any, any escape at all from the death that's coating the world. How Do I Change? The more your toxin sensitivity grows, the more you see trace amounts everywhere. It becomes harder and harder to force yourself to consume anything; even food you thought was clean is now transparently polluted, and water has an oily, poisonous sheen when you look at it directly. You restrict your diet more and more, spend more and more time detoxing, and start simply vomiting up your toxin load to try and keep off the death treadmill. It's hard to keep up a normal life or the energy for it, now that you've realized nothing gives you energy that doesn't also rot you from the inside. What Am I Becoming? One day, as you measure out the microdoses of nutrients for the last smoothie recipe you can stomach, you realize: it's all been futile. The toxins own your body, and they always have. Inside every cell, unclean fluids, misfolded proteins, nasty mutations, every nightmare incarnate in every mote of you... and with that, every cell within you dies, purging its toxin load in one final detox push. Your last moment is only briefly painful. Once the biological dust of the final purge settles, what's left of your body is mostly dead skin layers and a framework of dead bone matter, just enough to disguise and support what's left: purified toxin, colorless and odorless, a glistening poison that fills out what was once your body. It feels fantastic, in complete harmony with itself, and ready to pick up where you left off. The Mad City is full of the plagued Awake like you once were, and all they need to begin their own detox journey is a drop of its pure, sweet ichor: in a drink, say, or from a kiss, or in a vein from a syringe. You've become the Juice Cleanser. Antivehicular fucked around with this message at 09:57 on Feb 22, 2017 |
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Feb 21, 2017 01:41
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Jon Martell (pen name: Anton Hexam) What’s been keeping you awake? So, I'm a writer. I wrote about five novels at this point. Working on my sixth. Thought this process would get easier, but this novel is hard as hell to write. I got my agent on my case to finish it, but it's not happening. Writer's block is the excuse I gave to her. That makes sense right? Writers get it all the time. Nothing weird about that right? I don't want to tell her that it's because my muse ran out on me. My muse isn't a real person either. What I call my muse is or was an imaginary friend from my childhood. It, I don't think it has a gender, started to talk to me when I was a young kid. Bathin, that's its name. Bathin came to protect me from the monsters in my closet. At first it did this by putting himself between myself and the closet door. Later on, it encouraged me to write about the monsters. When the monsters were written down, they couldn't plague me any more. It was like they were locked up in the writing. When I got older, I started to take what I had written and turn them into stories. At first people were shocked at what I had written. I learned to soften my writings. It made them more palatable for people to read. In college, In college, I majored in writing. I had a lot of trouble with my writing in college. Outside of horror, my writing happened to be mediocre at best. I mean, I could hack the basics and write something that was technically proficient. My writings weren't very interesting. I think one comment I got was that all my descriptions were bland and the stories themselves were lacking in depth. The criticisms were devastating. What I want to be was a good writer, not some hack who puts out horror stories. I gave up the hopes of being a good writer when one of my stories got picked up by a publisher. Given the choice between pursuing my degree or making money, I took the money. My stories made good money too. People loved the poo poo I put out. I didn't like to think about how much they liked my stories, I just concerned myself with the money. As long as the money came in, I didn't care what it took to make it. And all the time, I had Bathin whispering ideas into my head. All sorts of monstrosities that dwelt in the dark shadows of the earth. All I had to do was to write up narrator's reactions to the things they encountered. I thought I could keep doing this, but after a couple novels worth of horrors, I started to have trouble sleeping. And when I slept I had nightmares. Seemed like the same monsters that showed up in my stories stayed around in my nightmares. I started staying up later, getting less sleep. It helped me to deal with nightmares, less sleep less nightmares. It became a habit. Try to avoid sleep and stay awake. I managed to keep this up for years. Somehow I wrote a few more books. All that time, I had Bathin whispering ideas to me. Now that I started my sixth novel, the voice disappeared. I can feel a void in my head where Bathin used to be. I know he isn't real, but I can feel it's loss. This doesn't make sense, but that's how it is. Bathin left and now I got an empty place in my mind. Any chance to write again is lost without Bathin to guide me. What Just Happened To You? Staying up most of the night, staring at a blank screen its not productive. I have to do something to get my mind off of my troubles. I go for a walk. Bradbury was a big proponent of walking and if a legend of writing thinks something is good, then who am I to contradict him. When I go walking tends to happen when I'm attempting to write. I write at night, so I walk around at night. In my city I'm not worried about being mugged or anything, the streets are safe (for me anyhow). Once in a while I get stopped by police, but that's expected. People walking in the middle of the night don't always have good reasons for doing it. Even so, when I go out walking it helps reduce stress. Tonight when I went out walking, I found myself somewhere else. I can't explain it very well. Looking around, the buildings didn't look familiar. The street names weren't familiar either. I barely walked a mile, I don't think I could get lost that close to home. Keeping calm, I checked my phone to see if I could find a map of the area. No luck there. And I had no signal. Lacking a better option, I figured I'd just start walking. Sooner or later, I was bound to see something I recognized. What's On The Surface? An unassuming brown haired middle aged man. There's a five o'clock shadow on his face and his clothes are usually disheveled. Writing under a pseudonym meant that he didn't have to worry about keeping up an image or anything. Even his neighbors didn't know what he did for a living. In contrast to how he was in person, he had a completely different look for Anton Hexam (which he occasionally had to dress up for, whether it was book signings or the author picture on the back of the cover). Anton had pale skin and black hair (always well styled). Clothing-wise Anton wore black suits with red shirts. No one could tell that Jon and his alter ego were the same person. In addition to how Jon and Anton dressed, their personalities were different as well. At first his publicist suggested that at signings Jon should walk with a swagger and have a general attitude towards anyone who looked at him. It was supposed to be gimmick to help sales and when it worked, he had to act that way when he appeared as Anton. In comparison to his Anton persona, his regular personality happened to be friendly and quiet. A lot of people would forget he's in the room, unless he said something. What Lies Beneath? Even before Bathin disappeared, he happened to be a nervous wreck. Even though writing and Bathin helped to contain the monsters that plagued him, not all of them were contained. It was normal for a child to believe in monsters, but he kept seeing monsters as an adult. He never told anyone though, he didn't want them to think he's crazy. They would assume that, he knew it. He dreaded the thought of being labeled mentally ill. Instead of being mentally ill, he preferred to deal with the monsters he saw. At least he knew how they could keep most of them at bay. The strain got to him. While most people thought his look and demeanor was due to neglect, the truth was different. He found it difficult to think about how he looked when most of his mental energy was spent dealing with monsters that only he saw. Unbeknownst to everyone, the persona of Anton Hexam was a projection of the darker side of himself. The part of himself that didn't fight the demons, instead Anton accepted the demons. Anton became their conduit to the world. Most people assumed it was all an act, and he struggled to make sure no one knew what was happening. So far, he managed to keep the Anton persona in check. What's Your Path? Although he needs to finish his book, for his own sanity he needs to come to grips with the demons he sees. Maybe it involves finding Bathin and learning what is going on from him. Perhaps he needs to understand the demons that plague him and find out what they want. His life right now is unsustainable. He needs to find peace within himself. The path before him will take him to face his demons and the horrors that plague his life. Responses Fight 2, Flight 1 Exhaustion Talent Fake it till you make it: It isn't just about lying, rather its about being the lie. Not everyone is going to believe you, but most people just assume someone who acts like they know what they are talking about is an expert. Doesn't mean you suddenly are an expert, you just seem like you are. Madness Talent Open Book The demons, unclean spirits or whatever entities he has captured in his writing can be called forth to do his bidding. Having written them down, he has control of them. With a thought, he can conjure them up and demand service of them. They are obliged to do his bidding, but they will twist and distort the commands given to them. And there is nothing they like more than to create havoc. (A reskinning of the Goblins talent from Don't Lose Your Mind). quote:1-2 Dice (The Beseeching of the Baubas): A Baubas is an evil spirit with long lean arms, wrinkly fingers and red eyes. A group of them come and give you a little advantage or work a little mischief. How does it break me? Fight—They make it so easy to unleash your wrath. Just let them loose. You wrote about them and now they can be unleashed. They are your nightmares unleashed.+ Flight—Sometimes, seeing how eager the demons are to do horrible things for you is enough to make you run. You’re running from your own creatures, to get some distance between yourself and the slaughterfest you can call up at will. Other times, a scream warns of something bad coming. Trust them, and run like hell… even if sometimes they get you running justfor a laugh. How do I change? At first, the demons came and did things only when you called them. But more and more, they’re just showing up on their own. You see them sneaking around, just out of everyone else’s sight. You hear their whispers when you’re trying to sleep. And they’re trying to be helpful—they’re even starting to help out when you’d really prefer them not to. DocBubonic fucked around with this message at 02:52 on Feb 23, 2017 |
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Feb 21, 2017 03:58
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pre:_{EXT: AN OPEN ROAD AT DAYBREAK}
[We fly slowly down over the dingy, grime smeared highway, taking in the
building glory that is the start of a vivid sunrise. A somewhat prismatic illusion
momentarily causes the cement to take on a neon-purple glow as our shot
hovers down over it. We adjust our angle so as to allow ourselves to see the
on-coming traffic – a large, black sedan approaches. Or rather a throwback muscle car?
Perhaps a 2002 3.8L V6 Chevy Monte Carlo SS? With trim done so matte it looks…
Yep, it’s spray-painted.
We let it pass beneath, hovering just over the hood for a moment, before watching
it motor willfully beyond and away, tearing into the barren road ahead;
into a surreal skyline of dancing colors.]
_/jumpcut/
_{INT: FRONT SEATS AND DASHBOARD}
[Now inside the vehicle, we get a look at DRIVER JANE. She’s slouched
desperately over the wheel, periodically shoving drapes of platinum hair behind
her ears, trembling fingers brushing impatiently, stiffly. Still, her overlong bangs
continue to collapse over the dark, sunken circles that rim her overlarge, gray eyes.
After a minute or so of this, we began to feel as though she may be in some sort of
trance; as if the endless loop of well-worn pavement cycling underneath her wheels
has gouged those pretty peepers with unseen hooks, reeling her ever onwards.
Or maybe inwards? But let’s not toy with perspectives just yet. It would be too
hard for her to sort right now anyways, what with the gnawing, sub-conscious
certainty of the sort of raw reckoning that follows a binge like this. Bitter remains
of this ride, this amphetamine-fueled slipstream she’s allowed herself to get caught
in again.]
_/gently caress/
[The word seems to echo – we’re not sure if it was said out loud or not,
but constructive, psychological concern is snuffed out as the sound of a
sputtering CB radio interrupts the numb silence with what sounds like a
man clearing his throat.]
RADIO VOICE #1
*Ahem-hurm* Alright so…
Coops coming up and a trucker has this dead hooker stuffed in the back of his cab…
[He’s abruptly cut off by a weary-sounding, gravel-voiced dude.]
RADIO VOICE #2 – (GRAVEL)
Seriously, BC. You don’t have to loving break out the drat book already.
Break that poo poo, man – it’s too goddamn early.
RADIO VOICE #1 – (BC)
Wow. Good morning to you, too!
You know I’m just warming up the airwaves for our favorite little dream weaver.
However, I do appreciate your effort to acknowledge a true Beaver Catcher,
despite how hard it must be for you to accept.
Your mom thinks you’ll come ‘round eventually.
GRAVEL
‘Bear Catcher’. ‘Bear’.
Why don’t you tell us about your generous donations to the county’s finest this month?
More tickets than a loving rube at a carnival.
BC
drat. Sorry, I got trigger happy.
The memory of those dark days you spent as a sad circus-freak can’t be easy to cope with either.
GRAVEL
Holy… seriously with the clown bit again?
How many strained laughs you gonna try to squeeze outta that poo poo?
It was a one-time side gig. Some occasional birthday parties.
I wasn’t on Barnum and Bailey’s goddamn payroll...
[Throughout this exchange, DRIVER JANE’s expression doesn’t so much as
flicker. It’s almost as if the grating ‘conversation’ emanating from the clunky,
oddly out of place CB on her dashboard might only be a figment of her drug-addled...]
RADIO VOICE #3
Speaking of those drugs… I wonder when this crash is gonna hit?
Our girl would usually only be passing through later this evening.
No wait… Calendar check?
BC
Couple days off there, Lulu!
DJ… you took off without us?
[Suddenly, DRIVER JANE’s lip begins to curl. She swipes again at her hair, then
makes a frustrated fist and rubs her right eye,leaving a soft smear of black eyeliner
along her cheek. For a split second, her eyes glance nervously at the glove-box...]
LULU
Now there’s an answer, dream girl!
Just stick your little paw into mommy’s medicine cabinet…
Something’s gotta get you over that line, right?
RADIO VOICE #4
Don’t tempt her.
The woods are crawling.
BC
All the more reason to roll on, MF.
She starts dream weaving all over the road and it’ll be like chum in the water.
You can make it, sweetheart, I believe in you.
I’d never leave you like that rear end in a top hat.
GRAVEL
What’s funny is you think DJ gives two limp fucks about you.
She’s beyond you, and besides, you would be an awful couple.
You two would be like a super fuzz magnet: a weaver and a catcher.
A loving fireball just waiting to happen.
LULU
Do it, girlie.
Forget these dickheads and their ceaseless cockfighting.
Finish the job right, come fly with me!
Remember last summer?
The last time you smiled?
MF
Except you know it’s all a ruse – all of this.
We’re all just creaks in the attic; like noises a house makes when it settles.
Block out the static and see things as they truly are.
If you dose again, the threat of a terminal crash is more real than it’s ever been.
Your brain is like a twisted tangle of Christmas lights, too knotted up to pull…
[DRIVER JANE’s hand darts to the knob of the other radio. The one she uses to
drown out the gentle, reasoned urging of the fourth voice. A lilting, synth-driven tune
bubbles out to fill the stale morning air with sound. Her hand slowly drifts past the glove-box,
then at the last second drops to the black leather purse in the passenger seat, from which
she gingerly retrieves a pack of cigarettes.
She absently licks her lips before shoving one of the bone-white coffin nails between them,
then fishes a lighter from her jacket pocket and lights up. She mashes the power button on a
phone sitting in a cup-holder just below the car’s stick shift, but it’s unresponsive.
She looks up again, blearily, through the hazy, reddish-purple kaleidoscope of a sunset that
seems to break just over the plastic horizon of her dashboard. She takes a drag, then
slicks her bangs back over the top of her head with a forced shrug.
She carries on, driving into a new day.]
  That Song What’s Been Keeping You Awake? The drugs? A reckless cocktail of speed, dust, mdma, uppers, and possibly, occasionally some hippy trail mix for uh… good measure. Maybe it helps to think all the weird things I’m hearing and seeing are just a side-effect of the ride, you know? Like it’s all not really happening. Like this batshit nightmare farm that somehow has overgrown into my reality will eventually pull back, revealing the blessed, drab normalcy I once took for granted. I use to stay awake, to get more trips in, to chip away at the colossal mound of debt that threatens to crush me the second I let off the gas. It's that sick sense of dread you feel, like when you’re going high up through the Appalachians, and you see those nets draped across the jagged sides of the towering cliffs you’re passing under, and you notice a stream of pebbles beginning to pour down? Only it lasts every second of your loving tick-tocking total existence. Every day I’m running, yet I constantly dream of escape. Of that final drive, that moment when I can surrender to sleep at last and really get away. Away from this drat car for good. Away from the… The voices? I don’t remember John ever installing this stupid, janky rear end CB. Who the hell puts these in a regular car anyways? (And more, who leaves their drat car behind when they're splitting a scene?) I can’t figure out how to take it out, or even turn it off for that matter. There’s no ‘POWER’ switch or anything. I don’t even have one of those ridicu-large antenna they’re supposed to need. It just works, unfortunately. But it definitely doesn’t work right. But then, what does any more? People talk at me all day and night on these god forsaken, marathon hauls. Usually different ones, depending on area I’m passing through. They all seem to know me, yet I have no idea who they are. I never see or meet them, but they still seem to know everything about me. And if that’s not creepy enough? Sometimes, when I’m riding hard, I start hearing voices that sound familiar. Dead ones. And I know lots of dead people. Guess it’s a historically probable consequence of making my acquaintance, especially lately. Which brings me to… The Glaives? A viking-like biker gang who have a serious beef with the bitch who’s accountable for the loss of a very significant stash she was tasked with holding and distributing. Which I guess brings me to… The boyfriend? That guy who, I don’t know, Hula-Hooped with my heartstrings, then Hopscotch skipped off in the night with said stash? Whose complete disregard for not only my delicately cultivated feelings, but also my feeble physical security, has left me making insane hauls for our connects. So naturally, I’m also dealing with … The bears? I mean, at least the voices will occasionally drop a hint about the presence of any sizzle nearby. But sometimes… oooh sometimes… the bears out there are more than just fuzz. Sometimes there's no fuzz at all, just hulking mounds of claw, teeth and sinew. And digestive tracts. Huh. Yeah. It might be time for another bump. What Just Happened To You? You mean besides these wacky Broke-Actual-Bad-Perma-Drug-gently caress-No-Fun-Run Adventures I like to binge on? How about last night? I’d only stopped to grab some orange juice and a few 5-hours, but of course bacon was cooking in the 711 around the midnight hours. Of course I was stupid enough to go in anyways, and of course a strap of my dress was hanging off my shoulder with the slump of my jacket a bit too far. Pupils maybe a bit too dilated. I probably looked like a horrowshow-turned-fairytail come true for those good old boys; and maybe I made a bit of a scene over an overpriced pack of smokes. then pulled out of there a bit too quick. Whatever. I got clocked by those bastards and caught up in their sadistic cat and mouse bullshit for almost an hour, trying to shake them as they stalked me all over the city. Meanwhile, the voices are snapping last-second suggestions, berating me the whole time. No matter what slipping maneuver I pulled, not matter how I timed the lights, none of my tricks sunk. Finally, I couldn’t take it. I flipped the dial to Crazy 88.8. For now let’s just say there’s more to the ‘DJ’ handle than just initials. It was something I stumbled onto by accident a month or so while driving through a pretty bad trip. I knew some Glaives were after me, possibly already locked on my tail, and I couldn’t go home. I had nothing for them, and you never, never face those guys like that. To them, there’s always something to take. Anyways, I was a tweeky wreck, nervously shuffling through stations, hoping to find a nice, steady beat to drown out the voices (who were of course loving with me something awful). It was then I found my voice. My literal voice, cutting through the airwaves, silencing the damned CB with a single string of curses. Confoundingly, it stayed a step ahead of my thoughts. It knew the turns I had to take, the moves I had to make, well before I did. It (or I?) played a soundtrack that carried my emotions back to a calmer state, guided by glistening, pop-rock rails of bass and treble. Soon, I was simply letting it take me to where I – where we knew we had to go. And the next thing I know, I’m staring out into the dawn of a new day, just like I am now, a couple hundred miles away and closing in on a pickup that would net me enough to get back on track. So back to Last Evening and the Pigs Poking my Tailpipe! After about an hour of being shooed up and down alleys, by empty parks and playgrounds, teased painfully around the edges of a complex mesh of suburban sprawl that was likely my only chance at eluding them, they finally sprung their little trap. A checkpoint on a lonely country road. My poor, hyper-sensitized heart stopped at the sight. If I got lit-up like this at night it wouldn’t be cops that would be waiting for me to roll down my window. Those… bears? … they’d suck me right out through a shattered windshield, skin first. I had to act fast, had to NOT freeze. My hand found the radio knob without me even looking (at least I don’t think I did), the station came on, the other voices cowed to a shaky silence, music started playing. My ‘DJ’ voice came on. It was sobbing and screaming. The music changed into a dark, almost sub-audible thudding pulse, with my heart keeping frantic time. I was screaming too, we both were. Screaming and crying and running through the dark woods, because there was no car, there never was one, there was just them and the teeth and the claws and the impossible heaps of raw muscle tearing through translucent flesh, and my legs slowly filling with acid and failing, and falling, and feeling them on me... feasting And then the car again. And then now – moving down a road that I might recognize in a couple hours, once everything washes back in. And the dawning, horrific awareness of what I’m guessing must have been at least a 6 hour blackout. I guess that sorta sums it up? So how was your evening? quote:What’s On The Surface? MADNESS TALENT POEMTIME posted: What Can I DO? Woven through the humming, glowing fabric of every city you thought you knew, even the ones you grew up in, are dark places. Secluded roads and alleys; hidden paths and trails; secret doors and tunnels. I know most of them but that doesn’t even matter. Nothing matters when you go Anyway. If I feel trapped, scared or lost, I can always just turn the channel. Wherever I end up, it’s not where I was. And sometimes, that’s all that matters. Right? DICETHINGS posted:1-2 Dice: Maybe there’s a door or route or something helpful or odd that suddenly becomes apparent to me. How Does It BREAK Me? Fight: I don’t really need anyone that can’t help me. On my ship, if you’re not grabbing a bucket to bail out the old S.S. JANE you’re getting shoved overboard. Let see how smug you look when that crank you ganked despite my warning literally blows up in your dumb, gaping face. Or when those directions take you straight to Zombieville, USA. Or when that Golden Deal goes south in the worst way. You can bet on one sweet, simple fact: I wont be there. Flight: I don’t care, I don’t feel, I don’t know. There’s no love, no peace, no justice – no one and nothing. There’s only the chase and the need to be free of it. I can’t keep it up. Can’t possibly face the burden of seeing this infinite gauntlet through to the bitter end of its bloody, miserable course. I can always just shrug it all off and drive. gently caress that god drat car and all that it is and all that it stands for… but at least its gonna have this poo poo in the rear view. How Do I CHANGE? The voices start to follow me. The band is everywhere, and I’m a walking receiver. I can no longer recognize the difference between people and the smudgy signs whipping by on the side of some nondescript stretch of pavement. Soon the road is driving me, as vague and clichéd as that sounds. At some point even the despair that drags on and on will cease to affect me, and I’ll just be… gone. My broken, starved body spit out into some barren ditch. What Am I BECOMING? A wandering ghost of the highway. Another Disembodied Voice wailing over the airwaves. suicide4sexbots fucked around with this message at 22:03 on Feb 22, 2017 |
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Feb 21, 2017 06:09
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I'm Arthur Deschamps, my computer gaming habits are totally under control. What's keeping you awake? One more turn. One more turn. One more turn. I press the button and fifty years pass. A new city is built, soon to be a well placed manufacturing heartland in a few more centuries. Halfway around the world, I move my wizened, ancient scouts another couple of hexes into the unexplored fog, a task they have been doing for thousands of years. I continue massing my troops on the southern border, give it another quarter-millennium and I'll be ready to declare war. I press fast forward and my character ages, growing grey and wizened. His spouse passes beyond childbearing age and is put away, neatly severing that no longer useful alliance. Infirmity sets in, then incapability. Hurry up and die, your heir has really good stats and I want him to lead the next diplomatic expansion... I press the slider and consider the latest addition to this simulated family. Her parents were complete, their outfits, moods and ambitions picked out, but what did I want their children to be? About to go to college or newly arrived? I decide upon the latter, new start, new family, and regress her back from near-adult to teen to child to toddler to infant. Why is it light outside? Is it morning already? Ah well, I suppose I'd better get ready for work. It's a decent job, all things considered, tending a computer and phone in a cube farm, not too taxing or tiring, which is just as well. Don't think I've had a lick of sleep for... how long has it been? What Just Happened To You? I was driving home after another humdrum day, itching to get back on my machine and start living, when I pulled up at the traffic lights, a few blocks or so I thought from home. These weird guys pulled up alongside in a pickup truck that looked like it'd just delivered the props for a death metal album cover and had some of them still stuck on the hood. I looked across and there was something just off about them, uncanny valley, you know? Like CGI but not quite there yet. Almost like you could see the poorly matted out green screen, except not a green screen. Just... somewhere Else. Makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. Anyway, Us, traffic light, big deal. Not like that's too weird in a big city, right? Then the lights turned purple, and we started racing down streets I didn't know. Dark, flickering streets. Blink-and-you-miss-them streets. I just knew, knew that if I lost this race, I'd never see the sun again. So, I put my foot down, started sweating. Nosed ahead, only to hear them drop a gear and come roaring back. I didn't look behind me, half-couldn't, half wouldn't, like I knew what was back there but didn't want to tell myself. Took a corner sharp, wheels screeching, found myself back on my home street again, the horn of the guy I'd just cut up conveying his anger and irritation. No sign of the other guys. I- I don't want to know what happened to them. Looking around, I keep seeing weird alleys, strange buildings that weren't there before. Folks in shadow, Pixellated folks, like they're too much for my memory to handle. I have to wonder, who really won that race? What's on the Surface? Arthur Deschamps seems to be a fairly mundane guy, about 5' 10" tall, mousy brown hair, usually something between stubble and a beard framing his face, not too much in the way of swivel chair spread just yet. He has a quiet and unassuming mien, heavily introverted. Somewhat incongruously he has a great telephone manner and is just fine interacting online, but in the real world... let's say he isn't exactly a social butterfly. Generally dresses in blacks and charcoal greys, muted colours, stuff that he doesn't have to devote focus or effort upon. From the outside he seems pure straight and narrow, doesn't drink, doesn't smoke, doesn't own a firearm, doesn't go pubbing or clubbing, pays his rent well in advance, arrives home early, leaves the following morning, gets his groceries delivered via an online service. Does look a bit tired, though, eyes a bit shadowed, a bit reddened. Besides that, deems a decent guy, right? What lies beneath? Hell no. He's an addict, in way too deep, and because it's a socially 'acceptable' practically invisible addiction, there's not a lot of hope of getting outside help. Decent job, decent degree, but he damned near flunked out of his comp sci major because he couldn't tear himself away from his games long enough to do his project work. He's got less reason for self-control these days, so long as he shows up at work and does his job. He craves that free time to play, places the highest premium of anything in his life on it. Call it escapism, call it fantasism, call it what you will, just know that it's got its hooks in him deep. Gets jittery if he cant get on, irritable, snappish. Plots out what to do in his games when he's not at home, effectively playing them in his head. Heaven help anyone who keeps him from being to play. Of course, he's a master of self-deception. He's got this all under control. He can stop any time he likes, he just doesn't want to. It's not harming anyone, so why make a fuss? Live and let live, and if he chooses to live vicariously through games on a computer, what business is it of anyone but himself? "It's not a problem. It's not a big deal. Lots of people put in hours of game time. Look, just leave me be! Got this great new idea for a speedrun strategy that'll paint the map my colour in no time. Can't chat, busy busy. Leave me alone. I'm where I want to be, doing what I want to do." What's your path? Arthur's story is his struggle with addiction, in learning to deal with reality rather than constantly try to escape from it.It wouldn't kill him to become more personable, either, being that much of a loner isn't healthy for anyone, even given introvert tendencies. Will he learn to let go of the digital umbilicus and truly grow, or will he stagnate in a prison build of his own self-suborned free will? Responses Fight 2, Flight 1. He really doesn't like things getting between him and his destination. Exhaustion Talent Tactician: Even in his sleep, he's planning ahead, coming up with new ideas, new contingencies, things he can carry out as things develop - providing things are going to plan. Given time to think, he can come up with a decent solution for most obstacles. Madness Talent L is for lifespan, so fast, so slow, so long, I know where all the buttons are In case your number's wrong. What can I do? When fantasy and reality blend, I can almost see the buttons and sliders, the console for commands. Rewind and fast forward, tailored just for you. I press the button, and you advance a decade. Maybe you get infirm, maybe it's just cosmetic changes. I move the slider and shave a few years off, maybe you never picked up that skill, never had a chance to learn. It's all becoming clearer now, the truth beyond reality. Can't you see? this is just the window dressing, the 'look, pretty colours' user interface. Everything is just a few lines of code, and I know how to rewrite some of it. I know how to rewrite you, spool your life-line forward or back, see you like a big metaphysical carrot with a baby at one end and a coffin-filler at the other. Maybe I can move you back or forward only a little, but as I level up, as I activate hard mode, more controls are going to unlock... 1-2 dice: Adjust someone's age five years in either direction, temporarily suppress a skill or temporarily apply a minor status effect. 3-4 dice: Adjust someone's age fifteen years in either direction, erase a skill or bestow a permanent impairment or infirmity. 5-6 dice: Adjust someone's age forty-five years in either direction, delete their entire skillset, or glitch them in horrible ways. How does it break me? Fight: This is just too damned hard! Forget it, if I can't win fairly, I'm going to enter in the cheat codes, then they'll be sorry! My game, my rules, I get to win! Flight: Shitshitshitshitshit nothing is working! They're cheating, must be! Time to alt-F4 out of this, edit the save game! How do I change? The player is never truly a part of the game, just his avatar. The more he steps out of bounds, the less his focus is on that element, and the less details it has to have. No need to fill in what the player isn't seeing. He gets lower and lower resolution, more and more pixellated, fewer colours, fewer textures, less and less necessary to the interface. What am I becoming? A shapeless, formless, colourless minimalist representation, giving very little hint to what it once was, barely more than a control icon, a command prompt from which new cheats can be targeted or typed in. That malevolent alteration from a basic indicator is all that remains, delivering blights in binary and hexes in hex, when you have become The Cursor. AJ_Impy fucked around with this message at 01:50 on Feb 22, 2017 |
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Feb 22, 2017 01:31
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I just realized we're up to 10 apps, 9 of them basically finished. Holy poo poo, that snuck up on me. And all of them are really good stuff; I'm gonna have to cut this back to 6 people and I'm not looking forward to it, because there's a lot of effort and imagination on display here.  Anyway, I'll save further hand-wringing for when the time comes for picks, and that time is nigh:  24 hour warning: make any final alterations or last-minute apps by this time tomorrow!(And get a character pic if you haven't already)
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Feb 22, 2017 01:45
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Alright, picks are in. I ended up taking 7 instead of the 6 I'd planned, because the amount of effort on display here is fantastic, absolutely humbling. Pyrodwarf Shardix Axqu John Dyne Antivehicular suicide4sexbots AJ_Impy To the ones that didn't make it: it's not you, it's me. If I felt like I could physically handle 8-10 players, I'd take you all. If we lose anybody, you're definitely first in line for replacements. Seriously, thanks a lot for your contributions, they were all fun reading. I will have the game thread posted by this time tomorrow at the absolute latest.
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Feb 23, 2017 03:05
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Thread's up! Sorry about that delay! Alright, for the rolls: right now I'm thinking we'll do them on Orokos. If I give you a Pain rating for your situation, you need to roll dice. Otherwise, you're basically free to do anything without rolling; I'm only going to make you roll to do stuff when there would be consequences one way or the other. If in doubt, ask me in the Discord. As for the rolling on Orokos, right now I think the best way to do it would be like so. Demarcate the order of the dice in the description of the roll. Example Roll (D, E, M, P): 3#1d6 1 4 1 1d6 1 2#1d6 3 1 2#1d6 4 3 That example is 3 Discipline, 1 Exhaustion, 2 Madness, 2 Pain. That's a 5 successes to my 1, but with Pain dominating. Now, it's up to you how exactly your success goes. You're free to write as much or as little as you like; if you need inspiration on how it could go, feel free to ask me in Discord, but you're 100% allowed to make up your half of the story and scenery. Feel free to write out not only what you do, but also what other NPCs in the scene do, and precisely how you and/or they failed or succeeded based on what you roll. You can declare parts of scenery and then use them as you like; you're basically writing a description of how you succeeded or failed. I can roll with whatever you write and throw new situations your way. If you're not comfortable with that much freedom, I'm happy to write out what happens based on your rolls, but so far as I'm concerned this is your story first and foremost, and you get to flavor what the dice say happens. Oh, and I strongly encourage you to let me know in Discord what you have in mind for your character's future and plot arc as we proceed. If I'm straying from what you want to do with the character, or you have an idea for something to happen to you, throw it my way. The better I tailor this stuff to you guys, the more fun I think you'll have.
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Feb 25, 2017 06:49
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Alright, now that it's come up, I need to address how I'm gonna handle Despair coins in this semi-PbP format. For the sake of letting you guys post when you need to, you can still roll and post based on whatever happens based on your own rolls. If I adjust your rolls via Despair, I'll let you know after the fact. If you want to you, you can edit your post, but I'm fine with adding whatever bad thing I've made happen in my own response post. Let me know if you think there's a better way I could do it. I'll be tracking Despair and Hope at the bottom of my posts from now on; Hope will be first-come first-serve.
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Mar 4, 2017 06:17
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This isn't dead, it's just resting. Which is to say: I intend to update this by the coming weekend if at all possible. I've just been busy with end-of-semester college stuff, but I'll be done by Thursday and then you'll have all my attention again.
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Apr 17, 2017 06:09
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I've decided to close this game. You were all wonderful and I'm sorry to see it go, but I just don't think I can commit the kind of time this game deserves anymore, and I don't want to keep stringing everybody along with updates once a month. Thanks for playing, and I'm sorry that it didn't work out.
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Jun 9, 2017 04:57
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Fun while it lasted. Thanks for running.
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Jun 9, 2017 15:07
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