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cityofhex2016-10-29 08:29 pm
modmachine) wrote in cityofhex2016-10-29 08:29 pm
WEEK 01
Somewhere, a gear slips.
It's sunset on Halloween night; a night of celebration for the dead and the once-dead, a night of wariness for those bound closely to the spirits. Everything seems to move more freely on this night; the sensation of boundaries crossed is almost palpable.
A handful of those native to the city will certainly feel such. Between one step and the next, there's a feeling of pushing against something, something you didn't know was there before - and it gives. Physically, nothing changes, but you now know something is wrong, as though waking from a dream. Something has slipped, and you remember. Hajime will feel the sensation most keenly, as the things he recalls lack the sharp details of a demon's memory.
Meanwhile, somewhere in the Sixth, the New Arrivals all also find themselves taking steps - the first thing the group will become aware of in the city is being shoved out the door of what seems to be some kind of broken down factory. The alley they step into is wide enough to get a truck through, but shows little sign of human habitation; only a cardboard box, half-dissolved by rain, and a few bits of stray glass from broken bottles can be seen. Their phones and any other communication devices they possess all beep loudly, once, after the door slams shut.
Except... What door? When they next blink, while there's still a vaguely door-like outline, the concrete wall has changed; where the door was, there's a metal sheet, machined with faint circular patterns, seamlessly integrated with the concrete. Banging a fist on it produces a solid sound, as though the metal was at least an inch thick. Though there is a feeling of being watched in the alleyway, no one will approach until they leave it, not even a passerby walking the not-quite-yet-dark street at either end. Until they step out of the alley, it's as though they don't exist.
And there's a good amount of foot traffic passing the alleyway by. Though it tends towards people in a college student age bracket and people in a vaguely street punk sort of fashion with odd accessories, neither is an absolute rule by any rule. Following the flow of traffic leads to a run-down park that's mostly skatepark with a few picnic tables and a small greenspace that's been taken over for a dancefloor. The tables are covered in odd junk and there seems to be some trading going on.
Haseo and Ryoji will both have better knowledge of what the place is, and have standing invitations to the party that's starting up as the Sin-Eater trading post winds down.
Elsewhere: On a beach bordering the bay, a group of changelings holds a bonfire. Periodically, someone throws a papercraft skull into it with extreme prejudice; almost all the skulls are inhuman in some way, though the craftmanship of the paper-mache makes it difficult to tell at times. Those in the know have to be aware that such an overt display won't pass unnoticed by the Autumn King... But the tall and built woman who seems to be the center of the festivities shows no fear in the season of fear.
In the Residential District and even a few places in the Sixth, trick-or-treaters are as much a feature as they are every year. Children in costume run about with little concern for who they approach, while their parents maintain appropriate wariness from sidewalks or cars. A small group of children, however, galivants with no supervision - and there is something uncanny about the trio. It's best to give them a treat if they approach you, else you might find yourself the recipient of a cruel trick in return. Unlike the other trick-or-treaters, they're out and about well past midnight; nearly to dawn, in fact. When the sky begins to lighten, however, all three stop immediately in the middle of what they're doing and - with the sound of mad, fey giggling - bolt off in the direction of the farming district.
The prompts from the Test Drive also remain available for interaction.
The rest of the week:
Weather forecast: Though Halloween is a clear night, clouds steadily roll in for most of the rest of the week, hanging overcast in the sky with occasional breaks and sprinkles of rain slotted in. Mornings are foggy and chill, warming slightly in the afternoons but not varying all too much in temperature. Frost has yet to set in, though, making it possible to sleep outside if you have adequate cover, but it won't be very fun.
Moon Phase: The 30th was a New Moon, so Halloween's sky is decorated by a fingernail crescent that grows to almost a half moon throughout the week.
The Clean-Up: After Halloween, of course, everything must slowly go back to normal. Most folks clean up their own messes throughout the first morning of November, but shards of gutted and thrown pumpkins can be found most everywhere, and at the park where the Sin-Eaters partied, a lone Security Officer inspects the aftermath for signs of unusual activity. Aside from the remains of pumpkins, which are mostly left to rot, decorations vanish over the course of the week and all but a few are gone by Thursday morning.
The College: Though enrollment for the fall semester is over, the deadlines for winter are fast approaching, and there are a number of tables set up in a large area to entice prospective students. Most of them are manned by undergraduates, but the English program's table is staffed most of the time by a single Tired Professor with mousy brown hair. Occasionally, the Tech Student at the next table over takes pity on the man, bringing him a hot-chocolate to help warm his fingers.
[Feel free to use this post as a jumping-off point for logs and interactions! You are also welcome to post your own logs to the community as needed. Mods will be available on plurk and discord to answer questions, and can be hailed for exploration logs off this post.]
It's sunset on Halloween night; a night of celebration for the dead and the once-dead, a night of wariness for those bound closely to the spirits. Everything seems to move more freely on this night; the sensation of boundaries crossed is almost palpable.
A handful of those native to the city will certainly feel such. Between one step and the next, there's a feeling of pushing against something, something you didn't know was there before - and it gives. Physically, nothing changes, but you now know something is wrong, as though waking from a dream. Something has slipped, and you remember. Hajime will feel the sensation most keenly, as the things he recalls lack the sharp details of a demon's memory.
Meanwhile, somewhere in the Sixth, the New Arrivals all also find themselves taking steps - the first thing the group will become aware of in the city is being shoved out the door of what seems to be some kind of broken down factory. The alley they step into is wide enough to get a truck through, but shows little sign of human habitation; only a cardboard box, half-dissolved by rain, and a few bits of stray glass from broken bottles can be seen. Their phones and any other communication devices they possess all beep loudly, once, after the door slams shut.
Except... What door? When they next blink, while there's still a vaguely door-like outline, the concrete wall has changed; where the door was, there's a metal sheet, machined with faint circular patterns, seamlessly integrated with the concrete. Banging a fist on it produces a solid sound, as though the metal was at least an inch thick. Though there is a feeling of being watched in the alleyway, no one will approach until they leave it, not even a passerby walking the not-quite-yet-dark street at either end. Until they step out of the alley, it's as though they don't exist.
And there's a good amount of foot traffic passing the alleyway by. Though it tends towards people in a college student age bracket and people in a vaguely street punk sort of fashion with odd accessories, neither is an absolute rule by any rule. Following the flow of traffic leads to a run-down park that's mostly skatepark with a few picnic tables and a small greenspace that's been taken over for a dancefloor. The tables are covered in odd junk and there seems to be some trading going on.
Haseo and Ryoji will both have better knowledge of what the place is, and have standing invitations to the party that's starting up as the Sin-Eater trading post winds down.
Elsewhere: On a beach bordering the bay, a group of changelings holds a bonfire. Periodically, someone throws a papercraft skull into it with extreme prejudice; almost all the skulls are inhuman in some way, though the craftmanship of the paper-mache makes it difficult to tell at times. Those in the know have to be aware that such an overt display won't pass unnoticed by the Autumn King... But the tall and built woman who seems to be the center of the festivities shows no fear in the season of fear.
In the Residential District and even a few places in the Sixth, trick-or-treaters are as much a feature as they are every year. Children in costume run about with little concern for who they approach, while their parents maintain appropriate wariness from sidewalks or cars. A small group of children, however, galivants with no supervision - and there is something uncanny about the trio. It's best to give them a treat if they approach you, else you might find yourself the recipient of a cruel trick in return. Unlike the other trick-or-treaters, they're out and about well past midnight; nearly to dawn, in fact. When the sky begins to lighten, however, all three stop immediately in the middle of what they're doing and - with the sound of mad, fey giggling - bolt off in the direction of the farming district.
The prompts from the Test Drive also remain available for interaction.
The rest of the week:
Weather forecast: Though Halloween is a clear night, clouds steadily roll in for most of the rest of the week, hanging overcast in the sky with occasional breaks and sprinkles of rain slotted in. Mornings are foggy and chill, warming slightly in the afternoons but not varying all too much in temperature. Frost has yet to set in, though, making it possible to sleep outside if you have adequate cover, but it won't be very fun.
Moon Phase: The 30th was a New Moon, so Halloween's sky is decorated by a fingernail crescent that grows to almost a half moon throughout the week.
The Clean-Up: After Halloween, of course, everything must slowly go back to normal. Most folks clean up their own messes throughout the first morning of November, but shards of gutted and thrown pumpkins can be found most everywhere, and at the park where the Sin-Eaters partied, a lone Security Officer inspects the aftermath for signs of unusual activity. Aside from the remains of pumpkins, which are mostly left to rot, decorations vanish over the course of the week and all but a few are gone by Thursday morning.
The College: Though enrollment for the fall semester is over, the deadlines for winter are fast approaching, and there are a number of tables set up in a large area to entice prospective students. Most of them are manned by undergraduates, but the English program's table is staffed most of the time by a single Tired Professor with mousy brown hair. Occasionally, the Tech Student at the next table over takes pity on the man, bringing him a hot-chocolate to help warm his fingers.
[Feel free to use this post as a jumping-off point for logs and interactions! You are also welcome to post your own logs to the community as needed. Mods will be available on plurk and discord to answer questions, and can be hailed for exploration logs off this post.]
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Who is he to judge strange eyes, though? Given the completely unnatural appearance of his own, he's not about to assume someone else with strange, glowing eyes is automatically up to no good.
"Is that what you wanted me to see, friend?"
1/2
It takes no more than ten seconds, and it is not particularly pretty to look at. Or pretty at all. It's pretty nightmarish, really, bones and flesh and fur and scales and claws and all changing, shifting, cracking, breaking, realigning and mutating.
2/2
She's tall for a woman, though not ridiculously so, but the bat ears add a number of inches and... well, the only thing still giving away that she is a woman at all is a slightly female shape to her hips. Her face certainly doesn't, covered in yellow scales, with a long, forked snake tongue sticking out of it and tasting the air around her in quick, jerky movements, and the rest of her body only looks like the mismatched chimeric nightmare that it is - fur all over, a thick, long, bushy tail, bat wings, hands and feet that resemble those of mice, just with longer talons, and spinnerets on her abdomen.
Her tail twitches nervously as she makes a vague gesture towards herself, anxious for his reaction.
"I wanted to talk to you, but I can't talk while I look," what's the word, she's still only getting used to using those again, "presentable." That's what Lise used to say and laugh. You will never again look presentable enough to be among Kindred not of the same ilk as you and other things, and she would have closed her eyes and tried not to frenzy because that was what the Tremere wanted. "At least not to people." Whatever kind of person he is.
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She's a little busy to respond, though, probably. He continues to stare in wide-eyed concern, even when she's done changing. Apparently his worry that she's still hurting over-rides the weirdness of her appearance, at least for the moment.
"Are you all right?" is his first question, asked hurriedly and accompanied by some anxiously flapping hands-- and by extension anxiously flapping cloak, since that's mostly what's visible of his clothing. "That sounded horrible! Can I help you? Are you hurt?"
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Not that she really expected that, because he is a bit odd, which is why she showed herself in the first place. Very odd. "I'm not hurt. " That at least she can respond to easily. The rest of it... she hadn't even thought about what it sounds like before. And help her? Is she all right?
"...But I can talk to you now." She repeats it again, because that was the point here, and she's not sure what to do without it. Maybe this wasn't such a good idea after all. Her tail starts twitching nervously.
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"Supernatural." It feels weird to call herself that. She doesn't think she has ever done it. The way in which she was spoken about and spoke of herself was always much more precise, even if not necessarily in nice terms. "...It doesn't hurt. It's a ...different kind of feeling." She has no idea how to describe it.
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It's impossible to disguise his growing curiosity, now that she's assured him she's not in pain and he can't actually do anything to help her. But he's polite, and he doesn't want to pry-- not yet, anyway. Not until he knows he won't scare her off.
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There is only a moment of hesitation before she continues. He seems ready to reveal himself, and she has already taken the bigger plunge and landed softly. Sure, his creator might have told him terrible things about Kindred, but he also might have told him good things, or nothing at all. "Have you been told about," Kindred or vampire? The more commonly used one, probably, "vampires?"
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She can't see any fire, but that probably means nothing in a being as unnatural as the man across from her.
"He might have called us Kindred, though I think that is mostly what we call ourselves. At least the older ones." She shrugs her shoulders, a bit awkwardly. Out of all Kindred, she's really not the most well suited to explain anything about them. "Most of us mostly look like we did when we were human, but some do not, or ...stop after a while. I looked normal until a few years ago."
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...And she wants to keep talking to him. That too. It's been too long since she could have an actual, proper, friendly conversation with someone while they saw her.
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He doesn't sound particularly embarrassed about that-- maybe just a bit apologetic for his clumsiness that might get in the way of her secrecy.
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Naive is one thing, but she's starting to wonder just how bad his basic self preservation skills are. He ...well, he does remind her of herself when she had just started to live out on the streets and was still learning their rules and tricks. Or of the months after being embraced. Just ...a lot more trusting.
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It's hard to sneak, climb, and crawl around quietly when you're more than six and a half feet tall, really.
"So we can go with you as a fox, then, I suppose, if it truly doesn't hurt you."
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She concentrates but then pauses and looks up at the sky, trying to estimate the time of the night.
"You said it is some distance away. How long should it take?" She'll have to return to a place where she can retire for the day, after all. In a pinch, that won't be hard to find, but she'd rather avoid sleeping in someone's lawn or somewhere else where her emerging from the earth won't have a better chance of being hidden.
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Perhaps not the next night, or the one after - it all depends on how much time she has. She might not have duties, but she's getting the feeling that hunting for food will take up a lot of time, especially if she wants to avoid being seen by any other Kindred.
"You could show me where you live now, though, so that I will know then."
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