Real talk...Levi's flashbacks seem to imply that his Social dicepool wasn't exactly a big one, and that was before he became a sea monster who worships Khorne.
Whichever option we choose is probably going to backfire, and of all the backfires Seasnake Hulk trying to be gentle and harmless because hey, I'm pretty enough to pull it off sounds like the most interesting fail state.
i'm going to pretend to myself that Pigtails was asking us to dance to pull a Carrie at the Prom just so i don't feel too horrible about what a little shit we were
[X] Confident, courageous, and brave. Maybe a bit of swagger if you can work up the strength to stand, some all-purpose posturing if you can't.
Note that most of Changelings weren't little shits that got what they deserved, but instead victims who happened to be in the wrong place. The former is more fitting for the OChangelings (both the characters and the player base).
You pluck at the line again, flinching a bit as a serpent butts against your neck. Tongue flickering, fluttering out. The steady pressure of passing water pulling it lopsided. You hesitantly reach up to stroke the thing.
[X] Gentle, harmless, and sweet. You're no threat to anybody and, hey, you're pretty enough that you can play it up and wring out some sympathy.
We trick them with our inherent cuteness, make then lower their guard and then we'll... Okay, I don't really have any idea what we'll do to then, but we can improvise!
I came because I heard there were cute snakes here.
That's a cute snake all right
[ ] Gentle, harmless, and sweet. You're no threat to anybody and, hey, you're pretty enough that you can play it up and wring out some sympathy.
We trick them with our inherent cuteness, make then lower their guard and then we'll... Okay, I don't really have any idea what we'll do to then, but we can improvise!
[x] Curious, cautious, and observant. You...don't actually know how smart you are, but if people think you are that's half the battle right?
Eh, even when you pretend to be observant and curious you probably can't be entirely oblivious to what's happening around you, and we could use some of that.
i'm going to pretend to myself that Pigtails was asking us to dance to pull a Carrie at the Prom just so i don't feel too horrible about what a little shit we were
The surface spreads across your field of view, silver scraped to the edges of eternity. It's a giant's mirror, an insane, inverted, landscape. The sky beyond the color of a dirty, burned out bulb. Clouds of oil ooze across the heavens; swallowing stars, veiling the moon.
You're flat on your back. Your tail drawn into a corkscrew coil by the pressure of passing water, a green and jet ribbon curling behind you. Mutely watch as the waves rise and crest and crash, the chop building. Their motion pulling you, rocking you, aquatic turbulence shuddering through your body. Each one is as tall as a grown man. Each one is a miniature mountain and the chasms yawning between them are so deep they almost brush your body. The hair-thin fishing line slices through it all like wire through cheese. Sea-spray shrouding that burning filament. You can see the rest of the reel stretching away into the darkness; drawn across your chin, shooting past your nose and vanishing into the murky nothing.
Reach up. Reach out. It's not a bubble, it's not going to pop, it's not all going to vanish if you touch it. Drag your glossy, gleaming claws through the ocean's skin. See the mercury trail wrapping around your fingers as surface tension ruptures and air flows down. The line shifts, the angle changes, it jerks you up and your head breaks the waves. The cold slaps you in the face, digs icy talons into your cheeks and grinds its frozen palm to your lips. Hair plastered to your scalp. Salt spray flecking your clear lids. The scorched out sky is a blurry smear of rust-orange and bruised purple. Blue-white lightning spiderwebs through heavy banks of black, printing itself against your retinas. Thunder rumbles, barely audible over the endlessly roar of raging water. You crash through the side of a swell and just like that you're back in the pleasant cool. Sucking in deep, fluid-filled breaths.
Snakes wrap themselves around you, a protective blanket of sleek scales and smooth muscle. You can feel their simple thoughts, their needs, like pinpricks just on the edge of sensation: hungry and curious and frightened. Their bodies (your bodies?) warm against bare skin. A dozen spade-shaped heads rubbing your neck, winding around your chest. The current catches, you roll over. Maybe a dozen yards down you can see the muddy sea floor. Aluminum cans glinting dully among grey rocks. You pass the rusting wreck of an overturned hull. The struts shrouded in algae, small darting fish in a school around it. A single serpent extends, jaw unhinging as it lashes out like a living whip. Puzzled and unhappy as it suddenly comes up short, its base straining against the skin and brawn and bone that braces your spine. It gloomily trails after you, watching the meal pass out of sight.
You laugh hysterically to yourself. Poor guy.
A second passes, the sea-floor draws nearer. You feel the idea infest you. Percolating in the meat of your mind. C-can you do that? Silently stretch your jaw, stretch it wider, wider. You wait for the sudden tension. You wait for the pain but it doesn't come and you don't stop. You should, you know you should, you have to but like a kid picking at a scab you just can't. Gotta peel that dirty red-brown clot off, pick at it until you see the pink underneath. Come on, let's see it. Let's see it. Wider. Wider. Wider.
You can feel the dull impact as it comes loose. The spine-to-skull shudder as your jaw is unmoored. The numb crunch as your mouth shifts, bone denting, cheeks withering. The tugging, slithering, beneath slick flesh as two ivory arcs swing down. Hidden hinges working beneath your slick gums. Feel the pressure, feel the ache, feel the hungry itch as they slot neatly between your canines and eyeteeth and just hang there, dripping You gag and work your slack jaw, trying to swallow it down, cram it back in, your hands shaking your chest trembling. And just like that it all snaps back into place. Fangs folding away like switchblades. Take in a deep, shuddering breath, the taste of brine and mud heavy on your tongue.
Your legs hit crushed shells and sucking sand. You come up, choking, and a wave slams your shoulders back down.
Lay there for a second; gather your strength, try and work stinging muscle, try and ready yourself to leap out. Come on, come on you can do this. You can do this. You can be brave. That's your natural reflex isn't it? That's...that's what you do right? Fumble through your mind and there you find it, like it was waiting for you this whole time just waiting for you to find it again. A metal mask that slides into place and locks into the landscape of your brain. Be brave and strong, it murmurs, swagger it up. You can be confident can't you? You can be strong can't you? Yeah, yeah you can. Never back down. Never say die. Never let them see you cry. Never-
A silver threaded net splashes in the water and drapes itself around you. You panic, claw at it, try and buck it off but the the weights are glowing white, burning from the inside out, and they shoot through the surf like comets. You roll ass over kettle, knocked off your knees, as it bundles you up nice and snug. Sobbing as your spine bows, the hook drawn free of your body like an oversized splinter. It's made of silver too and it melts and sizzles as it bleeds and oozes through your flesh before it finally just pops out through pinched skin and zips away through a gap in the netting. Lean arms gather up the bunched weights and start dragging you ashore. You thrash but the wires cut cruelly into your body. Raising red welts just from how tight they're drawn, digging trenches in your tender back, pressuring sensitive scales. You try to kick but your feet tangle and snag. You try to tear but one arm is pinned against your belly, the other against your chest. Your snakes bite, but the rope holds. Humming, buzzing, giving and bending but never fraying. Never snapping.
You're drawn up into a forced fetal position, tail pressed to your thigh, as you leave the weightless water behind. Up you come, heavy as lead and trembling like an old man. Cheek on the cold, soaked, sand; gritty grains clinging, caking your body. Your guts convulse and you vomit, sea-water rushing out in a torrent as you take ragged, raw-throated breaths. The air feels like it's laced with frozen razors. The world is filmed over, like you've got vaseline smeared over your eyes. Nictating membranes flutter and roll back.
Stare up at the city with slitted snake eyes, stare up at the towers that soar skyward. At the spires piercing, gouging the stormwracked night; stone and steel heaped up and hunched together, everything washed out in that amber glow. Everything skeletal and sharp-edged and horribly organic; like some rough beast washed up on shore. Not quite dead. Not quite safe.
Stare up at her.
She's tall. She's lanky, and lean and looks like she was stretched out on a rack. The proportions of a normal person spread out over an extra half with more to spare. Her webbed hands could comfortably palm your skull. Those blue nails slicing into you easily as knives. Shark's teeth the color of cobalt shine in the half light, her eyes sparkling like gems. Rocky growths etched into her flesh like scales. She's a cross between a statue and some fucked up mermaid. A mermaid and a sapphire hoard. Her limbs are stick-thin but she manages, leaning into it as she drags the dead, flopping weight past the tidal line. Bare heels digging divots in the sand. You keep struggling even though it doesn't matter. You can't give up. You can't give in heh, y-you can't. You can't.
"Fffuuuck you're a heavy guy huh? Guess you didn't lay off the sausage rolls on the other side." You stop moving for a moment, she's hunched over and panting; catching her breath, cocking her head as she sees you looking at her. Staring at her. She jabs you with her foot, hard enough that you cry out and curl in. Snakes writhing in agitation, skin pushed up in little ridges of dead white from her nails. Fresh blood wells up, beads and mingles with the still drying sea. "Eyes down Mr. Payday. Don't forget the shit you learned over there just yet."
"Why do you talk to them like that Suzy?" A second voice, a man's voice, tinged with echoes and reverb and an odd, wavering quality. The woman steps to the side, looking over her shoulder.
He stands beside a simple fishing rod, long wooden pool threaded with liquid moonlight, that mercury-hook hanging. A broad beach umbrella shelters him from the rain, plastic-canvas flaps fluttering in the wind. You see a towel and a cooler by his feet. A can of cheap beer in the holder on top. He's built big, broad shouldered and deep chested. His flesh a waxy green-white. The angles of bone and brawn sharp but the flesh looks...soft. Like if you push your fingers in hard enough they'll go right through his chest. Greasy red flames dance through frozen, wax-coated hair. Yellow tallow light gutters in his eyes. More flickering and fluttering along the slick, bony spurs that rise from his back and shoulders like so many candles. Beyond him you can see bodies laid out in a neat row. Shadowy forms, wrists and ankles bound in white plastic ties. Black bags over their heads, cries softly muffled as they squirm and wiggle, on the sand. Three. Four. Past them a flat-bed truck parked right there on the beach. Tire tracks leading higher up the dunes.
"I dunno! I like talking. Makes the night pass y'know? And you're just a taciturn motherfucker sometimes."
He doesn't say anything. He just sighs and takes a small swig from the can. Eyes flickering as they glance away, scanning the horizon. Suzy seems to start, as if realizing her misstep only a few seconds too late. She utterly ignores you, striding up the bank, her long, long legs eating up the ground. She comes up behind him, fearlessly pressing her hands to his chest. Her chest to his back. He closes his eyes and leans into her touch. She's not paying attention, the net's weights resting a foot in front of you. Start testing your bonds. Start rolling, stomach tightening as you try to right yourself. Ears straining, you can hear them talking.
"Heyyyy, I'm sorry Jack I didn't mean it. I just forget y'know? I can be really scatterbrained. It's alright to be quiet, nothing wrong with that. And hey if you want to be pretty and quiet too you know I'll never say no right?" You glimpse the half-smile that curves up his greyish lips. Easy and shy, he flexes a bit just to show off and Suzy giggles. Hiding her face in his neck. Holding him tight. You manage to put yourself so your knees are back beneath you, netting scoring your shoulders, leaving you staring at the ground.
"I'm fine. Really I am." Thunder rumbles in the distance. You focus, sweat dripping down your brow. Focus this time. Hydra-heads probe the inside of the sack, pressing their snouts to the holes. You take a single length and start rubbing a claw against it. Back and forth. Back and forth. Come on, come on, fucking snap. "...Honey you've still got-"
"Shit shit shit it's fine! He's fine! We're fine!" But she dashes back anyway. A single shove with the sole of her foot is enough to send you crashing back down. A snake snaps at her and she just stomps on your stomach by way of reply. You taste brine on your tongue, brine and bile and slippery mucus. Eyes hazed by tears, acid burning the back of your nose. When you blink it away you realize she's looking at you. Really looking at you. Trussed up and nude and soaking wet. "Huh...not bad. You must have been someone's favorite huh?"
There's a slow pounding in your head: building, depending. A second heartbeat, sending waves of prickling, stippling heat through your veins with every pulse. The taste on your tongue sharpens to something harsher. Something colder. She's looking down at you. She's looking down at you like you're some fucking bug. Looking at you like you're a piece of meat. Your nerves are humming, your eyes forced wide. This...this isn't fear heh. This isn't fear.
This is fury.
"Should I be worried?" Jack calls out, you can hear the smirk.
"Nah! Too scaly for my taste. Pretty guy though and I haven't seen this kind of snake-head thing before."
"How'd you mean?"
Look at her. Look at how nothing she is. How utterly, unspeakably, weak she is. You can see her now, really see her, and it's nauseating. It's exhilarating. Your eyes drink her in and you feel it singing to you, calling out to you. Turning your head and breathing "see? See?" in your ear. See the parts of her that have been cracked apart and taped together, the spiderweb fractures where she chipped and shattered. You could dig your fingers in if you wanted. Press those taloned thumbs to her sternum and crack her chest open. Rip out her heart and fucking eat it.
"He's got a bunch of snakes growing out of his back. They move on their own and everything, how cool is that?"
Silence. Nothing but the rolling rumble of breakers coming ashore and raindrops drumming on the beach, clotting the sand, to break the stillness.
"What."
Acid courses over your tongue, sour and sweet altogether. Murmur the words. Your teeth are chattering and you slur the start instead. But she glances down at you, glances away from Jack and leans in, ear cupped mocking. You stare up at her and hiss it again, draw it out. Savor it.
"H-heh. Oh Suzy, we both know he deserves so much better than trash like you."
You can pinpoint it, the exact moment where the words work their way in and bridge the gap from ear to brain. It's the second where her face freezes, that sarcastic smile as blank and vacant as a wax mask. And then she's lunging for you with those claws. Howling, hurling herself on top of you, reaching for your throat.
And you bite her. Again and again and again and again.
Your mouth cracking open, fangs puncturing her forearm. A dozen sets of hypodermic teeth punching into her calves, her thighs, her side. Everywhere she's close enough that you can work your jaws through the holes of the net. The scream turns into a wordless, high-pitched wail. She rears back, rips herself off and stumbles away. Warm blood splatters you, copper stains your lips. You see him rushing towards her side at a dead sprint, dropping with her as she collapses, convulses, veins turning black.
"J-jack, I-I can't feel my legs heh..."
She pitches forward, bonelessly twitching against his grey chest. He's stroking her hair with shaking hands, babbling something about a doctor, about how it'll be okay. How it'll all be okay, he'll figure something out. It doesn't matter. It's just talk. After a minute she stops breathing. You feel it when she stops moving. Slowly, slowly, he turns his head and stares at you. At your bloody and bruised body half-coated in sand, your eyes wide and shining in the dark. You see his pure, primal fear. You see his fractures. You see how you can make him shatter.
Run your forked tongue over your teeth.
"I know you, don't I?" You breathe to the utter stranger.
You're going to get out of this net. What's the most important thing after that?
[ ] Saving whoever you can. There are others on the beach, they're the closest, start with them.
[ ] Saving those most in need. There are others in the water, drowning and swimming, start with them.
[ ] Killing him. Killing him and savoring it.
Adhoc vote count started by TenfoldShields on Sep 8, 2017 at 2:20 AM, finished with 113 posts and 14 votes.
[X] Saving those most in need. There are others in the water, drowning and swimming, start with them.
Snakes wrap themselves around you, a protective blanket of sleek scales and smooth muscle. You can feel their simple thoughts, their needs, like pinpricks just on the edge of sensation: hungry and curious and frightened. Their bodies (your bodies?) warm against bare skin. A dozen spade-shaped heads rubbing your neck, winding around your chest.
A single serpent extends, jaw unhinging as it lashes out like a living whip. Puzzled and unhappy as it suddenly comes up short, its base straining against the skin and brawn and bone that braces your spine. It gloomily trails after you, watching the meal pass out of sight.
Do not mock snek, he is a good boy and tries his best.
A second passes, the sea-floor draws nearer. You feel the idea infest you. Percolating in the meat of your mind. C-can you do that? Silently stretch your jaw, stretch it wider, wider. You wait for the sudden tension. You wait for the pain but it doesn't come and you don't stop. You should, you know you should, you have to but like a kid picking at a scab you just can't. Gotta peel that dirty red-brown clot off, pick at it until you see the pink underneath. Come on, let's see it. Let's see it. Wider. Wider. Wider.
You can feel the dull impact as it comes loose. The spine-to-skull shudder as your jaw is unmoored. The numb crunch as your mouth shifts, bone denting, cheeks withering. The tugging, slithering, beneath slick flesh as two ivory arcs swing down. Hidden hinges working beneath your slick gums. Feel the pressure, feel the ache, feel the hungry itch as they slot neatly between your canines and eyeteeth and just hang there, dripping You gag and work your slack jaw, trying to swallow it down, cram it back in, your hands shaking your chest trembling. And just like that it all snaps back into place. Fangs folding away like switchblades. Take in a deep, shuddering breath, the taste of brine and mud heavy on your tongue.
She jabs you with her foot, hard enough that you cry out and curl in. Snakes writhing in agitation, skin pushed up in little ridges of dead white from her nails. Fresh blood wells up, beads and mingles with the still drying sea. "Eyes down Mr. Payday. Don't forget the shit you learned over there just yet."
Well since I don't want to just quote huge blocks of description uhhhhh
Beyond him you can see bodies laid out in a neat row. Shadowy forms, wrists and ankles bound in white plastic ties. Black bags over their heads, cries softly muffled as they squirm and wiggle, on the sand. Three. Four. Past them a flat-bed truck parked right there on the beach. Tire tracks leading higher up the dunes.
These are loyalists. Changelings that capture and sell out their own kind to their Keepers and shit in Arcadia for various selfish asshole reasons. There was just a huge prisonbreak and these motherfuckers are cracking open a few cold ones while literally fishing up refugees to black-bag and ship straight back to the Fae.
Keep that in mind just in case you feel even the slightest bit sorry for them when
"H-heh. Oh Suzy, we both know he deserves so much better than trash like you."
You can pinpoint it, the exact moment where the words work their way in and bridge the gap from ear to brain. It's the second where her face freezes, that sarcastic smile as blank and vacant as a wax mask. And then she's lunging for you with those claws. Howling, hurling herself on top of you, reaching for your throat.
And you bite her. Again and again and again and again.
Your mouth cracking open, fangs puncturing her forearm. A dozen sets of hypodermic teeth punching into her calves, her thighs, her side. Everywhere she's close enough that you can work your jaws through the holes of the net. The scream turns into a wordless, high-pitched wail. She rears back, rips herself off and stumbles away. Warm blood splatters you, copper stains your lips. You see him rushing towards her side at a dead sprint, dropping with her as she collapses, convulses, veins turning black.
"J-jack, I-I can't feel my legs heh..."
She pitches forward, bonelessly twitching against his grey chest. He's stroking her hair with shaking hands, babbling something about a doctor, about how it'll be okay. How it'll all be okay, he'll figure something out. It doesn't matter. It's just talk. After a minute she stops breathing. You feel it when she stops moving. Slowly, slowly, he turns his head and stares at you. At your bloody and bruised body half-coated in sand, your eyes wide and shining in the dark. You see his pure, primal fear. You see his fractures. You see how you can make him shatter.
Run your forked tongue over your teeth.
"I know you, don't I?" You breathe to the utter stranger.
Granted Levi appears to have his own decidedly creepy and violent side but weighed against Loyalists hmmm *makes a scales motion*
[X] Killing him. Killing him and savoring it.
Everybody else can wait for a second, absolute number one priority is killing Lumiere so nothing like this ever happens again. Be my guest, be my guest, lEt'S rIp ThAt HeArT rIgHt OuT oF yOuR cHeSt
Snakes wrap themselves around you, a protective blanket of sleek scales and smooth muscle. You can feel their simple thoughts, their needs, like pinpricks just on the edge of sensation: hungry and curious and frightened.
And I had this cute mental image as I read it of a cute little candle boy that has self esteem issues and his flame gutters out, so he needs someone to keep him going. A cute little fish girl with pretty blue rocks on her...
Well, it turned out to be true in good old nWoD fashion. ;-;
[X] Saving those most in need. There are others in the water, drowning and swimming, start with them.
She doesn't let us stare yet she does it without issues. Hypocrisy! Double standards!!
Also, she's a Loyalist and thus a complete Piece of Shit (TM) according to Changeling's Morality Code. She even mentions what was learned "in the other side".
Also also, in true WoD fashion, she dies very quickly, as if her body was made of tissue paper. Even in narrative combat sucks. What's more, I suspect Levi used a Contract of some sort to say these punishing words. Either way, he is quite hardcore to do that while still being bound. Although it's odd that it's silver what hurts him, not cold iron.
Still, was his capture retconned from being caught with a rod to the net or something? The previous story bit seems to conflict with that. Speaking of which, which option did win, Ten?
Tempting, but does that assume we do that after killing that bastard? Or will he at least be knocked out/forgotten?
Need to know this before voting. Hopefully killing people scum is not an one-way trip to game over crazy land like the regular mechanics.
We also need to get a shotgun. Firearms can't be usually dodged in combat and shotguns can one-shot nearly everything.
