I imagine that the OG was decently famous in Night City, so is it possible that this guy is a Poser? A borged-out cannibal serial killer would be a pretty fucking good Enforcer for the newly-resurgent gang of wanabee actors.
His sharp teeth were bared in a full blown smile, his yellow eyes wrinkled in a smile, a hint of mischief peeking through the professional facade that he wore on his face.
[X] Plan Back up Loudly
-[X] Detective Montoya (Pick Two)
--[X] Open fire on the Cyberpsycho (Support Lycan)
--[X] Grab Lycan and pull him the hell out of the room (Retreat into a larger space)
-[X] Aequitas Veritas(Pick Two)
--[X] Montoya has some of your power in you, but Lycan doesn't. Grant him a bit of protection. (- 3 Faith)
--[X] Desperate times call for desperate measures. Reveal yourself to Captain Wei, tell her that her people are in danger. (-5 Faith, ????)
[X] Plan: Rewarded faith
-[X] Detective Montoya (Pick Two)
— [X] There's no time to call for help. Grab the nearest object and throw it out the window. Hopefully someone will call the cops and it doesn't fall on anyone's head. (Bonus to Reinforcement Roll) --[X] Grab Lycan and pull him the hell out of the room (Retreat into a larger space)
-[X] Aequitas Veritas
—[X] Summon Divine Chains to bind Wendigo and slow his movement: 8 Faith.
[X] Plan Back up Loudly
-[X] Detective Montoya (Pick Two)
--[X] Open fire on the Cyberpsycho (Support Lycan)
--[X] Grab Lycan and pull him the hell out of the room (Retreat into a larger space)
-[X] Aequitas Veritas(Pick Two)
--[X] Montoya has some of your power in you, but Lycan doesn't. Grant him a bit of protection. (- 3 Faith)
--[X] Desperate times call for desperate measures. Reveal yourself to Captain Wei, tell her that her people are in danger. (-5 Faith, ????)
[X] Plan Back up Loudly
-[X] Detective Montoya (Pick Two)
--[X] Open fire on the Cyberpsycho (Support Lycan)
--[X] Grab Lycan and pull him the hell out of the room (Retreat into a larger space)
-[X] Aequitas Veritas(Pick Two)
--[X] Montoya has some of your power in you, but Lycan doesn't. Grant him a bit of protection. (- 3 Faith)
--[X] Desperate times call for desperate measures. Reveal yourself to Captain Wei, tell her that her people are in danger. (-5 Faith, ????)
We need some way to bump up how much faith we're getting. Showing ourselves to the Captain seems like a good first step to getting the precinct as outright followers.
"-nd he does the paperwork, willingly!" Luci gushed over her phone, the square brick in her hand as ugly as it was able to clobber someones head in in an emergency. Seeing as its lower half was coated in brownish residue, it probably had been used as such. Or she had merely let it fall into a puddle after rain; only God and Satan knew what fucked up chemicals there were in the rain these days.
"Yes, yes, you've already mentioned that three times, Luci," Marcy, one of her oldest friends, said with no minor amount of exasperation in her voice. "If I had known that you talking about boys would devolve into talking about your job again, I wouldn't even have picked up," she added, some needling entering her words as Luci could practically feel the eye-roll of her friend.
"I am sorry, but do you know how rare it is to meet a man willing to do actual work?" Luci shot back with a smile, dodging the old woman in front of her as she weaved her way through the alley market, fending off picksockets and annoying vendors as she now dearly missed being able to walk with her uniform through the crowds. Damned regulations...
"Why do you think I married Lu?" Marcy replied at the same time as Luci swatted the hand of someone trying to sell her something by forcing her to stop. The glint of iron in her slitted eyes and holster forced the vendor to reconsider and choose another target.
"Because he is an utter cutie-pie, and you could not bear to ruin my plans with him?" Luci answered back with fake heat, dodging around an arguing couple as she turned from the market into a wider, less busy street after reading the barely legible signs attached high on the walls that barely escaped being painted over with various gang tags.
"Oh, I'm so sorry that I didn't want my boyfriend to be turned into a goat and sacrificed in your satanic blood orgies as the sacrificial goat, my dear Lucifer," Marcy said. Luci only laughed, her head scanning for-there!
"Marcy, we have Mary for the Sacrificial Lamb part. He would have been the perfect person to be the Black Goat leading the sacrifice," she replied with such utter seriousness that Marcy snorted.
"Yeah, yeah, you freak. ...so?" She asked after a moment of silence.
"So...what?" Luci asked with faked innocence.
"Don't get cocky with me, young lady! The ~new guy~, you going to ~ask him out~?"
Luci stopped at her destination and looked at her phone. "Marcy. He is cute, does the paperwork, is clearly a proud exotic, does the paperwork, and talks in Cat. Puns.I am going to wife him, and not even whatever higher force he prays to will be able to beat me back," she spoke with such utter conviction that, for a moment, a certain Lt stopped writing, his ear flicking as he swore...no, back to work.
"Well, don't do anything that will get you caught," Marcy laughed and clicked off.
"Yes, Mother!" Luci snarked sarcastically, stowing her phone in her pocket with an eye roll. Then...she looked at the stairs into the underground tunnels with some trepidation, but...well. The artwork was new, and the guy who painted it had been flagged in the system for information gathering and she needed the extra eddies. With a sigh, she went down.
Fun Fact for those who never had to venture into the underground portions of the city: they could hold nearly the entire population of Night City with some squeezing and no small amount of imminent violence if that were ever required. Constructed during the Time of the Red and when the city had been under siege, the various tunnels, underground bunkers, transit stations, illegal dumping grounds, reservoirs, warehouses, shops, housing units, and more structures than she could list in an hour had sprung up like slums during a recession, the volume of the rooms estimated to be equal to the space above.
Second Fun Fact for those who did have to venture down there: if you weren't walking with a map, you either died of dehydration or by a hobo zeroing you for your boots. Or a scan for your cyberwar. Those two were interchangeable sometimes.
Shaking her head, Luci put those thoughts out of her mind and clicked on her flashlight, hoping that the eddies she had paid for the triangulation of the potential hideout of her mystery artist had been worth it. Settling in for a few hours of walking around in her off-time through tunnels filled with vermin of the animal and human variety, Luci set off...for about a minute. Then she was staring at the entrance to a maintenance tunnel with the words [Templum Iudicii Aeternum Quaesivit.] painted in bright yellow above it.
"Huh. Convenient. And in Latin...so that is likely the guy's doing," Luci muttered, quickly swapping out the munitions within her weapon with the APHE variant. If someone tried to fuck her over, they'd have a bad time, and she would have a much lighter wallet. Walking onwards, the old and rusted pipes snaked alongside her, the yellow words on the walls continuing with her even as Luci could not read them. "Laus scienti culparum, peccata enim eorum nullius sunt ponderis, nisi sua. Wonder what that means..." she spoke, wandering through the darkness for a solid minute.
And then..."Is that fucking Montoya?" She said as the tunnel opened up into a medium-sized chamber. It was indeed. Painted in the colors of the NCPD, Tanner Montoya stood with closed eyes, his left holding a white-gold scale level with his head as his right carried a black revolver with its cylinder swung out, six bullet casings falling to the ground. Underneath the mural stood the words: "The Gear of Justice."
Looking to her right, she saw another mural, this time of a woman painted in shades of grey with splotches of red. Her head lowered as if in prayer, her eyes closed. Her hands were crossed over her chest, blood-stained ripper-doc gloves on her hands, as two mechanical arms loomed over her, tears of white gold flowing down her face. Underneath it read: "The Vow of Mercy."
Further along, next to Montoya, was another mural, this one painted in a hundredfold riot of colors. A man holding a rabbit mask before his face just so she could see a white-gold eye staring with determination at the world while he carried a white-gold dagger behind his back...just above his rabbit-leg cyber-legs, much to her silent approval. Underneath: "The Blade of Innocents."
And then, to her right once more, another painting. Red. Brown. Black. A man kneeling and holding his bloody hands up as if begging or trying to cup water, with four corpses stabbing him with spears, his face obscured behind dirty hair as his head hung low. And over his hands, a single drop of ichor eternally falling, never reaching. The words read: "The Prophet of Sin."
"Fuuuuuuck," Luci whispered. "This is a cult..." she murmured...and stopped. There was something above the drop of ichor.
A finger.
Silently, she crept her flashlight up the finger, hand, and arm to the ceiling, where she noticed a figure.
Born of marble, gold, silver, and black, the large, well-muscled torso of a man greeted her. He was adorned with the scale impaled by a pillar upon his back, and his featureless face stared down impassively as three other arms were placed above the other murals.
"Why the fuck is a cult sending out coffee machines to the police?" Luci whispered, her brain shrugging in exasperation as it tried to figure out what it was seeing.
"Coffee?" A voice said, and Luci whipped around, painting the emaciated figure of a man in rags with hands scabbed over to an extreme degree in the doorway from which she had entered the room.
"NCPD! HANDS UP!" She screamed on instinct, aiming center mass.
"It is not coffee," the man continued, raising his hands. "It is a blessing of the only God willing to help us."
Templum Iudicii Aeternum Quaesivit.
=
He sought the Temple of Eternal Judgment.
Laus scienti culparum, peccata enim eorum nullius sunt ponderis, nisi sua.
=
Praise be to those who know their faults, for their sins are of no weight but their own.
[X] Plan Back up Loudly
-[X] Detective Montoya (Pick Two)
--[X] Open fire on the Cyberpsycho (Support Lycan)
--[X] Grab Lycan and pull him the hell out of the room (Retreat into a larger space)
-[X] Aequitas Veritas(Pick Two)
--[X] Montoya has some of your power in you, but Lycan doesn't. Grant him a bit of protection. (- 3 Faith)
--[X] Desperate times call for desperate measures. Reveal yourself to Captain Wei, tell her that her people are in danger. (-5 Faith, ????)
[X] Plan Back up Loudly
-[X] Detective Montoya (Pick Two)
--[X] Open fire on the Cyberpsycho (Support Lycan)
--[X] Grab Lycan and pull him the hell out of the room (Retreat into a larger space)
-[X] Aequitas Veritas(Pick Two)
--[X] Montoya has some of your power in you, but Lycan doesn't. Grant him a bit of protection. (- 3 Faith)
--[X] Desperate times call for desperate measures. Reveal yourself to Captain Wei, tell her that her people are in danger. (-5 Faith, ????)
Luci stopped at her destination and looked at her phone. "Marcy. He is cute, does the paperwork, is clearly a proud exotic, does the paperwork, and talks in Cat. Puns.I am going to wife him, and not even whatever higher force he prays to will be able to beat me back," she spoke with such utter conviction that, for a moment, a certain Lt stopped writing, his ear flicking as he swore...no, back to work.
Aves: "What do you think you're doing?"
Salem: "Dad..."
Aves: "Don't 'Dad' me, you're not even a week old! Filthy cradle robber."
Salam: "DAD!!"
What would happen? Aves has been the only Divine entity so far, and while God Shenanigans are probably an option... Aves doesn't seem the Romantic type, so it never seemed relevant before.
What would happen? Aves has been the only Divine entity so far, and while God Shenanigans are probably an option... Aves doesn't seem the Romantic type, so it never seemed relevant before.
Demi Gods maybe? Or something similar. Plus we haven't had anyone to wife yet. Finding another goddess that we didn't create and is friendly would be the main candidate for I am all for divine romance
Well, if Salem is not willing/conents to being wifed, Luci will most likely get absolutely get hammered, sob at home about how nobody likes likes her while watching some aweful romance movie, and then...probably try to befriend him anyways?
If he is interested...expect Salem to rapidly find out if he can have children.
Almost a shame I have zero clue what Cyberpunk's media landscape must look like, imagine all the jokes poor Nyantalie would face- probably have people assuming she got Biomods, when no she's naturally like that. Oh yeah, I should have realized that sooner, what with people thinking Salem is just an eccentric Exotic instead of a genuine Man-Cat.
Really, we should have given him bunny ears, just to make it blatant this eccentric weirdo is somehow a well-respected Police Officer.
Out on the streets people called him Lucky Lenard. A street kid with a reputation for making deliveries on time regardless of the dangers between Points A and B. "A legit Gibson," his friends said, "knows what to watch out for with only a single look."
He didn't think of himself as lucky. If he was lucky his parents wouldn't have been murdered by drug addicts. If he was lucky he wouldn't have been thrown out of his apartment two days after being orphaned. If he was lucky he wouldn't have been named Lenard.
What he was, was perceptive. Though not in a way most people would expect.
-X-
'Damn this is heavy.' Lenard thought to himself. 'The hell are these boots made of, lead?'
It didn't really matter to him either way. Those Mox girls had paid him to move eight pairs of custom-ordered high-heeled boots from Santo Domingo to Westbrook and by his reputation as a delivery boy he would do it! That and the eddies they were paying him, of course.
He would still bitch about it though. They were heavy. And the cobbler who gave them to him had smelled like a dead hobo.
"Grrr." Lenard pulled himself out of his musings at the growl. Something wasn't right.
A subtle glance to the left and he understood what.
A man was watching him; not in a blatant or violent way. Just a normal looking corpo-rat sat on the train with his eyes just a little too focused to be staring off into space. It was the corpses clinging to his suit that betrayed his appearance of normality.
Lenard fought the urge to avert his eyes as he looked at them. Each one of the men and women had been sliced open and left with their innards on display. Their faces were twisted by hate and loss into something inhuman. And every one of them moved, shuffling around the man with fingers scrabbling to make purchase.
Lenard exited the train on the next stop. Forcing himself to not turn his head, he used the reflection off the delivery box (made of metal and also unnecessarily heavy) to look behind him. The man from the train followed behind him, angry spirits in pursuit.
"Find me an alley, Mojo." whispered Lenard. A bark only he could hear alerted him to a mangy dog, maybe half-rottweiler, sat in front of a dingy alleyway. Lenard turned into the alley Mojo had singled-out. It was a cluttered mess barely better than a trash heap but still navigable for a fourteen year old Lenard even if an adult might struggle to squeeze through.
Lenard was almost to the exit when the sound of something sharp cutting through plastic made him turn his head around. The man from before had deployed a mantis blade from his right forearm and was hacking his way past the obstructions. As their eyes met he smiled at Lenard. All of his teeth had been filed into points.
Lenard bolted. As the sounds of chopping sped up behind him his mind began to race processing his environment. The street he was on was largely empty, no chance to hide amongst the crowd. Avoid the alleyway that leaked blood no one else noticed, that was never a good sign. Can't duck into any shops, the only one open at this time of night was full of screams.
Another fit of barking came from just ahead to Lenard's right. The delivery boy didn't even hesitate to follow Mojo as the dog led him down a cross-section. Rapid footfalls followed as Lenard ran as fast as he could with his package weighing him down. It wasn't enough. The man was closing on him.
Suddenly Mojo was standing on the other side of an intersection. His barking now an insistent call to join him.
Panting, Lenard dug deep and pushed just a bit more speed out of his flagging legs. His vision focused on Mojo, he had barely made it across the street when a massive truck barreled through. Now given a chance he slid in between a dumpster and a wall. He had just made it when the same footsteps from earlier entered his hearing range.
Breathing as silently as he could manage, Lenard kept his eyes on where Mojo stood acting as lookout. Five terrifying minutes passed before the footsteps walked out of hearing and Mojo gave the all-clear.
With a sigh Lenard extricated himself from his hiding spot. "Thanks Mojo." The dog rubbed up against him with a wagging tail and Lenard shivered as a sliver of cold dug into him from the contact. Unpleasant as it was, Lenard didn't do anything to stop it. The chill was Mojo's payment. The price Lenard had to pay for the ghost's aid.
A look at the street signs showed that the drop-off for the Mox boots was close by. Really close, actually. Lenard must have covered more ground than he thought. Not bad for a guy whose legs were still 'ganic.
Now moving at a causal stroll Lenard was free to wonder about what his life had become. He wasn't crazy; he knew that much. But seeing dead people wasn't normal either.
It had come out of nowhere. One day he was normal and the next his world was full of ghosts with no explanation as to what changed. His best theory so far was that one of his deliveries had been a cursed object of some kind that had marked him for touching it. Probably that box he handed over to the old ripperdoc in Japantown. He swore he felt something when he entered her clinic.
It worried him cause even with ghosts haunting his town the nature of the world hadn't changed. Everything has a cost. It was why he didn't shy away from letting Mojo freeze him. The way Lenard saw it, even the supernatural needed to be paid. Maybe not with eddies but something had to be given up.
He didn't like to think about what he owed for the ability to see ghosts. Or who to.
Thankfully the Mox standing up ahead distracted him from his thoughts. Just had to give them the heavy-ass shoes, take the pay, and he could go home and play BDs to ignore the ghost in his cheap apartment.
But even as he handed over the box, Lenard couldn't shake the feeling that something big was going to happen.
I am not well versed in the Cyberpunk franchise but I did my best to create something for this quest. Enter Lenard Wellman, Night City native and recently afflicted by the rising magic in the city. I thought that a burgeoning necromancer rather fit the setting. Not a person who commands zombies or such but someone with the ability to interact with the lingering dead and forge pacts with them. That's basically what happened with Mojo the dog. I wished I could have gone into more detail on the mystical side of how that works, the implications of how Lenard perceives them. But I have little time with class starting so this anemic attempt at an omake is the best I can do right now. Hope you enjoyed, at least a little.
I am not well versed in the Cyberpunk franchise but I did my best to create something for this quest. Enter Lenard Wellman, Night City native and recently afflicted by the rising magic in the city. I thought that a burgeoning necromancer rather fit the setting. Not a person who commands zombies or such but someone with the ability to interact with the lingering dead and forge pacts with them. That's basically what happened with Mojo the dog. I wished I could have gone into more detail on the mystical side of how that works, the implications of how Lenard perceives them. But I have little time with class starting so this anemic attempt at an omake is the best I can do right now. Hope you enjoyed, at least a little.
Is it wrong I vaguely want this adorable ghost pup to double as a Black Dog? Already a supernatural canine, and though they're 'just' people there is a group called Barghest. Honestly, I wonder how much weirdness is going to happen, I could totally imagine Banshees or something being a thing.
Hmm... Literally no idea how to do it but imagine- Mox Ghost that actively tries to prevent death. Really, the sudden existence of Ghosts is reminding me of a Quest with a Reality Bleed mechanic after Bleach was chosen as an option.
Is it wrong I vaguely want this adorable ghost pup to double as a Black Dog? Already a supernatural canine, and though they're 'just' people there is a group called Barghest. Honestly, I wonder how much weirdness is going to happen, I could totally imagine Banshees or something being a thing.
Hmm... Literally no idea how to do it but imagine- Mox Ghost that actively tries to prevent death. Really, the sudden existence of Ghosts is reminding me of a Quest with a Reality Bleed mechanic after Bleach was chosen as an option.
Mojo is honestly more of a familiar. He's the ghost of a dog that died without a Master/family to care for him and has been wandering Night City ever since searching for one. The pact Lenard struck with him essentially boils down to fulfilling this role as well as trading him vital energy in exchange for services (the chill that is mentioned).
I also had an idea for an omake where some Nomads stumble across a 'ghost ecosystem' outside the city. It would have to be set in the future when Aves' power has increased but the basic premise is that the spirits of the wild animals and plants that died thanks to the wars and rampant pollution end up being awoken by the rising magic and congregate into one area. This results in a location you can only find on nights when the moon is in the first quarter, half full, where animals and plants fill the air with unspoiled wilderness. Yet everything vanishes come the dawn and explorers find themselves waking up in the dust, wondering if it was all a dream...
It should be noted that until informed otherwise I am assuming that ghosts are not exactly 'conscious' in the same sense as the living. They have no brains to think with and can easily get stuck in old patterns and feelings. I have always imagined that, without a body to focus on, one's mind becomes...diffused is perhaps the right word? They don't move the same either; I failed to showcase it well but in my omake Mojo had a tendency to simply appear where he was trying to attract Lenard's attention. They have no physical form so does space really mean anything?
