Sept NBR The Indiscriminate Void Versus Showgirls

[Thechosenone]

35 ss Hamelin Versus Showgirls

:coletteShowgirls

Turf war

Sabotage

Bodyguard

:hamelinThe Plague

Stake a Claim

Plague on Malifaux

(Turn one)

Cassandra creeps through the warehouse ruins of Iron Twist, the tangle of train rails and supply depots deep in the heart of Malifaux. The evening sky is difficult to see through the burnt out monolithic buildings that rise overhead and swallow up the night.

Every step is calculated and keen. Her hard heeled boots make barely a sound as she deliberately places her footfalls. Her poise breaks only momentarily as a droplet of water lands on her nose. A light rain starts to fall.

The scything metallic fingers of her Coryphee companions mimic her displeasure.

“I was at least hoping to be done with this before the rain got here.”

The duet of Coryphee stare at her with eyeless faces. The twitch of their blades is like a grating language that she understands well enough. The chill of rain creeps into their gears and soaks their clothes. They want to be done as soon as possible.

Cassandra points to a building a block away. Abandoned and ruined but solid and positioned near other still functional businesses. It’ll burn long and hot and so will everything near it. It’s a prime target for completing Collette’s assignment from Ramos, sabotage the warehouse row of the Iron Twist district.

Cassandra gives the order to her duet and watches the pair of lifeless constructs dance their way through the rain and into the building.

And then she waits.

(Turn two)

But there is no burst of flames, no plume of smoke, nothing. Just rain.

She pulls her blade after another quiet moment. Something’s wrong. The Coryphee are not simple killers like the Wardens and Peacekeepers. They’re good at what they do and they do it quick. This could be a Guild set-up and catching the Coryphee in that building is more than enough to implicate the theater in the Arcanist conspiracy.

Cassandra moves to the back of the building and crawls in. She’s free from the rain which is a small comfort. The only sound is the water dripping offer her dress and hitting the concrete slab beneath her.

She stalks the dark with blade in hand looking for the duet. But there’s nothing but water soaked rats and dusty floors.

After a moment of quiet there comes something else other than the droplets of water tapping the floor, a soft laughter that echoes through the building. The shadows play across the tomb like warehouse and in them there are shapes. The dark is host to something that she cannot see clearly.

A soft scissoring noise grabs at her attention. A door half closed obscures the source. She reaches for the knob and gently pushes it open. The wind from the growing storm strikes her immediately. The duet is here, sitting on the floor twitching their fingers. Grease and oil weep through their faces like tears.

“What’s wrong?” Cassandra asks. The Coryphee mime a deep sadness that she reads in their gestures and jerks. One of the Coryphee tap on the concrete gesturing to the source.

Something rises up through the floor, a ghastly shimmering entity made of death light and peering through the dark with wicked eyes. A dog, bloated with decay, whose insides are being eaten by ravenous spectral rats. But it’s not alone. A flash of lightening illuminates the room for a brief moment and inside there is a child. Its eyes milky pools, its flesh pale, its mouth a lifeless slit that twists up into a smile.

She raises her weapon preparing to defend herself but another flash of lightening directs her attention to the window outside. There’s a man there dressed in filth covered coat. His face is death, sallow, pale and horrid. But his eyes grab at her soul; those empty pockets of void try to permeate her very being.

“Not Guild. Not Guild at all.” She mutters.

The man’s voice seeps through the cracks in the room, infects the wind that blows in and bubbles up through the cracks in the floor.

“The Void calls to you. All things are ash and embers waiting to return to nothingness. Come children, come home. Answer the Void.”

Cassandra watches the duet stand. No dance to their movement, no grace. Just slow sad steps that take them through the window and toward the man outside. “Stop! What are you doing! Stop!”

They don’t listen. They hear nothing but the voice of oblivion. She watches them walk before this man and a portal of darkness opens around him. It wails into the night like the death scream of a dying god. The Coryphee duet starts to wither and rot before her eyes. The flaking matter from their forms drifting into the hungry black while man in the coat watches, feeling nothing at all.

She leaps out the window, followed by the dog, and back into the rain. Every droplet of water that falls curves strangely and flows into the portal around the sallow man. The Coryphee merely stand there, content to become one with nothing.

“We’re leaving now!” She calls to the duet but show no sign of caring. She’s about to rush into the dark and pull her constructs away when something tugs at her soul. The dog that follows her, its mere presence alone makes her want to fall to the streets and weep. It’s an unloving sadness that consumes her will and chokes out her drive with an aura of despair. But she fights it.

“Don’t go.” A child with lifeless eyes begs her.

“Stay and die. Please.” Another child covered in vermin whispers.

Cassandra releases a fire work signaling to Colette. Immediately she is gone, pulled by the conjurations of her master. Some flickering fire of survival rises up in the duet.

The Coryphee are about to try and flee, the sallow man can sense the sudden return of survival instinct. From his tattered sleeve slithers a long violet length of tendril that fits into his hand and stiffens into a staff that he blocks their escape with.

“Existence is not worth all this trouble little dolls. Stay with us and embrace the end.”

The duet finally pull themselves from his Void and flee back to the staging zone with Colette and Cassandra.

(Turn three through five)

The sallow man points to the darkness outside the warehouse. Two skulking figures step forth, festooned with rat traps and infectious wounds, their leering smiles and infected eyes meet Hamelin’s gaze.

“Take this place I’ll deal with them myself.” The Plagued leaves, his children and his rats following like a congregation of zealous worshippers.

Hamelin walks through the streets of Iron Twist. The apathy and indifference of the district resonate within him. The rain burns at his skin, pure and clean. He hates it. Pools of fetid water form around him as tainted rain trickles down Hamelin’s coat.

He watches to the east on Carlisle Street, he can see one of his Stolen walking silently toward one of Colette’s performers. The child is lured into the reach of the woman and infected with a deadly poison. He can feel the potency of the toxin and delights in it. The child will die from it, but he has no intention allowing that to happen. The child will die, but to fuel his magick.

Hamelin opens the Void to the stricken child channeling its essence into him and leaving behind nothing but ash. With it he targets the girl with the blade. His voice scuttles over the rain slicked streets like crawling insects.

“Cassandra, look around not with your eyes but with your soul. What do you see that is worth fighting for? The only thing that endures is oblivion.” His words infect her soul and poison it with despair.

She sinks to the ground as Colette paces pack and forth issuing orders to her girls. She watches her understudy flop into the rain water weeping.

“Cassie, you need to get up.” Colette shakes her. “You need to get up and we need to get out of here. Ramos’ bon fire will have to wait. Come on. Please, come on.”

Cassandra stands, weak and consumed by sorrows that she can’t control. “Good, now…. What in all hell?” Colette watches her Mannequin leave her side and the duet abandon their station. The duet walk toward the sallow man and the screaming void around him… and they vanish. They burst into debris and are consumed by the nothingness. Gone.

She looks back to Cassandra, her advisor and her friend, but right now all she sees is a girl who can barely hold back her despair. Behind her there is something else, a phantasm of a hound that bursts through the warehouse wall they are butted up against and with it the sinking sorrow that wears like a cloak.

She looks back toward the sallow man to see one of her performers there. She too is falling into despair. Colette releases her fireworks and magick, swapping places with the girl and immediately discharging one of her soul stones into the man. The power rips at the shell of the man and exposes a depthless darkness within his body.

“What are you?” She stares into the nothing inside him.

“I am the Void, indiscriminate and all consuming. I am the shepherd that leads you along the path of the inevitable truth. I am the end of all things.”

(Turn six)

Colette bounces around her staging area avoiding the sallow man. Only she and her performer are of any use. Cassandra lies in the streets near her enemy weeping uncontrollable. She was pulled by his words and nearly ground to dust in his void.

There’s nothing left for her here, no hope for victory, no possibility to extend the Arcanist’s turf into Iron Twist and no chance of igniting a raging inferno.

Her only hope now is escape. She, her performer and with some luck Cassandra too. Living to see tomorrow is her only goal. That and hoping to never meet this living oblivion ever again.

Outcome

4VP for Hamelin for Stake a Claim

2VP for Showgirls with Bodyguard

:hamelin

Edited January 31, 2012 by Thechosenone

[Hoyled]

Very nice report. I always like the going into the unknown style, and it fits very well with Hamelin. Other then that Hamelin and the gang were nicely creepy, and the showgirls reactions were good. Other then that maybe expand a little more early on, Colette and the performers popped up out of no where half way through with no mention early on. I know the action was centered on Cassandra and the duet early on but a throw away line highlighting the rest of the forces wouldnt be out of place. Still very good.

[Thechosenone]

thanks for reading and thanks for the feedback. Lot of times nobody says a word.

I probably should of said something about where they were staged.

Glad you liked it otherwise