Dark Jack

Night of the Hunt - a Bloodborne RP

Just half a second after Marcus threw the axe to Joseph, a distant cry, muffled by the walls and door surrounding them yet still easily audible,could be heard. To a native Yharnamite like Marcus, the horrid shriek would likely be easily recognizable as the voice of a beast, though he might not have the experience to determine which one, especially since the church tries to limit the knowledge of the public regarding beasts.
The Messengers also seem to get a little agitated. The little ones crowding on top of the dead suddenly fall off their cots entirely, either scattering on the floor or disappearing into tiny portals. Within a couple of seconds, the number of Messengers in the room has halved.
Approximately twenty seconds after the shriek, the cry of a corvid followed.

Night of the Hunt - a Bloodborne RP

Eastern Yharnam, relatively near the Hunter's clinic, bottom of the elevator

So says the ex-Hunter of the Harrow, Victor thought grimly, inspecting Raine's eyes more closely than ever before for signs of the scourge as a fit of paranoia overwhelmed him. For a moment he actually fully expected his fellow Hunter to abruptly sprout fangs, fur and claws, and Victor realized with mild displeasure that if this was to happen with the current formation of their little group, Raine would be able to disembowel Adelicia, or rip her head off, or brutally murder her in other bestially imaginative ways long before anyone could do anything to stop him. Well, aside from Adelicia herself, but there was no way she could stand against a Hunter turned beast.
Somewhere, far to the west nearer the city center, a piercing, high-pitched wail echoed through the streets of Yharnam, inhuman yet unlike the howls of regular scourge beasts, causing Victor to offer silent thanks to the gods for having placed him so far away from it. That sound was unmistakably the cry of a cleric beast, and Victor, for one, had no desire to face off against something like that. Other Hunters might have suicidal aspirations to fight ever-stronger opponents to increase their own power, but not him. Victor was quite satisfied slaking his bloodthirst on the weaker critters.

“Yeah,” he said out loud, holding up his silver sword to let it gleam in the subtle light of the nearby lampposts. “This is the only cure for the scourge.” He reached for his belt with his left hand, retrieving the blunderbuss hanging from his belt there and grasping the firearm properly, hooking his fingers in the trigger to be ready to fire. “Just so you're prepared, we're going to kill these people. It's going to get bloody.”
The sound of the elevator descending was getting much louder, and Victor was suddenly assailed by an urgent sense of dread, causing him to spin around and stare intensely at the elevator coming down the last few yards, teeth bared and sword grasped tightly. He was certain that something was riding the elevator down to them, ready to ambush him while his back was turned, before Raine could do more than yell in warning.
The elevator – a twelve-by-twelve feet metal platform with a very obvious button in the middle floor – arrived at the bottom, and the folding door slid aside. Aside from a worn, dirty-brown hat in the near-leftmost corner, it was empty.

Victor allowed himself a sigh of relief, trying to slow his heartbeat back down to its resting pace now that he was no longer fearing for his life. Somewhere in the distance, possibly to the northwest, he heard a noise the likes of which he had never heard before, sounding vaguely like the cry of a corvid. Could possibly be an unusually large corrupted crow. So... cleric beast to the west, crows to the northwest, and mad Yharnamites on the plateau east of them. This Night of the Hunt was escalating much quicker than expected, especially considering that beasts tended to get more active later in the night, and the sun had not even fully set yet.
Frowning at the threshold of the elevator, Victor shot a glance at the snoring giant to his right, his eyes going from its axe to the bell around its neck. He was not sure why he kept looking at the bell, only that it felt important somehow... until he suddenly, not even knowing why, turned to look at the corpse of the church servant again. Giants were former servants. Servants wore bells too. This servant did not have a bell.
Why? That the Yharnamites had taken his staff was one thing – at least a staff could be of some use – but why would they have stolen the bell? A bell was useless; the only reason giants and servants wore them was so that citizens were warned that one of their kind was near, since they were undeniably carriers of the scourge and a little dangerous to be near.
He turned back to the giant again, looking at its peacefully resting face. Then he turned to the others.
“Should we just leave the giant here?” he asked, being mostly interested in Raine's opinion. “He might be useful... or dangerous. We could wake him up and try to bring him along, or kill him in his sleep.”

Night of the Hunt - a Bloodborne RP

Just in case you aren't one to take silence/lack of objection as agreement, you're free to go ahead, Habibi.

Night of the Hunt - a Bloodborne RP

Hmm... arguable whether I'd say that the left hand doesn't look like a human hand; the lack of details and general stylization of the motif makes it hard to tell. My assumption was that it was just a hand with fingers outstretched and turned sideways relative to the perspective of the viewer/artist, and the rest being the feather/fin wrapping around the arm and hand. Still... it hadn't even occurred to me that the thing might not be something on or in her arm, but could be an actual part of her arm. At first I thought it might be an early stage of a lost child of antiquity, but it just doesn't look right for that. Then I thought maybe it was actually a fin, like with the fishmen from the fishing village... but why would Cainhurst venerate those?
Then, playing some more Bloodborne yesterday and finding a certain rune, it hit me: I was thinking too narrowly. I don't think its a feather or a fin anymore; I think it's a leaf. I think the arm bears a striking resemblance to the arms of a cauliflower Hunter (otherwise known as Lumenwood Kin) that you get from equipping the Milkweed rune, only possibly even further along since it has grown a leaf. If so, the implications are quite interesting... It's as if she has somehow limited the transformation to just part of herself, becoming kin while retaining her humanity... not unlike Hunters. (EDIT: In fact it's a striking parallel to Hunters being able to beastify just one hand to perform visceral attacks.)
I still have no clue what the doughnut is supposed to be, though. There's nothing in the game I'd say really looks anything like it.

And yeah, I'd spotted the connection to the tidbit from the Old Hunter Trousers myself (rather, I remembered that it was mentioned somewhere, but not specifically which piece of legwear had the lore attached to it). What fascinates me so much about the knights, however, is that they predate the old Hunters, meaning that this superstition existed even before Byrgenwerth discovered their medium of blood healing... which meant that they knew beasts were people even long before the Healing Church.
And the fact that these one-legged statues are found specifically at Cainhurst, along with carvings of a maybe-not-quite-human woman... I must admit, I kind of feel the idea of the Vilebloods having been different even before the Healing Church galvanize with this.

Also, happy New Year whenever you hit midnight!

Night of the Hunt - a Bloodborne RP

I actually went back and played Bloodborne some the other day for various reasons, and found various quite interesting things in the game I hadn't noticed or seen mentioned before, especially in Castle Cainhurst. Like, did you realize that every single one of the multitude of statues of mounted knights there are missing their right leg, just like Gehrman does? Despite these statues presumably predating Gehrman and the Healing Church?
I spent quite a while studying the different statues and paintings at the castle, and noticed one particular carving that seemed really interesting: (found pictures online, because taking screenshots on PS4 is annoying) upper and lower part. Been wondering what it means. The way that carving seems to levitate just over the ground reminds me of when Lady Maria enters her final phase. I have no idea what the doughnut-looking thing in her right hand is supposed to be, but the thing on her left arm looks faintly feather- or fin-like. It also may just be my imagination, but doesn't it look a little as though it's wrapped around her wrist rather than held in her hand?

Also, @Th3King0fChaos? Are you still with us?

Night of the Hunt - a Bloodborne RP

Update? @Ashgan @Bartimaeus @Habibi359 @Th3King0fChaos @King Cosmos?

I mostly just want to confirm that you're all still with us and how the next posts in line are coming along. I don't expect them to be dropping just now, of course - we are in the busy holiday season now, after all - and I don't want you to guilt you or have you explain yourselves; I just want to hear from you, if for no other reason then just to remind you that the RP is here.

I figure it's Ashgan next in Adelicia's scene, since I kind of posted for Bartimaeus. If you don't feel like there's anything worth posting yet, I can post again and skip to the elevator actually reaching the bottom.

Who is next in the clinic? Not Habibi, obviously. @Th3King0fChaos? @King Cosmos? Or do the characters need a little push from the GM?

Night of the Hunt - a Bloodborne RP

Eh, it's actually pretty all right for me. Decent amount of free time (though occasionally earmarked for certain things) and more-or-less continuous access to my PC.

Now, regardless of whether you celebrate it on the 24th or 25th I'll just say it now: merry Christmas!

Night of the Hunt - a Bloodborne RP

Eastern Yharnam, relatively near the Hunter's clinic, bottom of the elevator

Adelicia seemed petrified by the sight of the dead servant, much to Victor's annoyance. It did not affect him the same way as it did her, obviously; even before becoming a Hunter he had been more-or-less accustomed to blood and corpses from his work as a mercenary, and giving up his humanity had only made him all the more indifferent to things like this. It was disconcerting to find the church servant dead like this, of course, but only because of the insinuations of his death and the fact that it had been supposed to be an ally, not because of the violence involved in its demise. Whether it had been softly suffocated with a pillow or torn to bloody ribbons made no difference to Victor; if anything the gore was mildly invigorating to him.
Somewhere in a deeply buried, nearly erased and almost forgotten part of his mind, Victor also felt regret that Adelicia was being subjected to something like this. A flicker of his eye caught her shocked, staring eyes, and he felt a heavy, dark remorse within himself that those pretty, innocent eyes were being subjected to something like this. Yet... a larger, fresher part of him, much closer to the surface, felt elation at her defilement. He wanted to laugh, to scare her more.

Raine, a veteran Hunter, seemed predictably no more affected by the scene than Victor was, and together the they approached, cautiously and ready for a fight, to examine it more closely, and only took a single glance to confirm that the servant was indeed dead; his skull was visibly caved in, deforming the top of his head. Though his first thought had been that the servant must have been attacked and killed by beasts, a closer look made Victor reconsider this assumption. The bloody servant was covered in singular cuts that did not run parallel, deep stabs and blunt force trauma that seemed severe more because of repeated impacts rather than the force of single strikes.
The cuts were clearly not made by claws, and the stab-wounds made it all the more clear that they were dealing with bladed weapons of some kind, at least for some of them. Some stabs were narrower and arranged up to three at a time, evenly distributed in a straight line; the telltale wounds of someone stabbed with a pitchfork. And the blunt blows... they were not delivered with the power of a beast or a Hunter, but something closer to the strength of a human. However, there were bitemarks on his neck, left by clearly inhuman teeth.

“Yharnamites did this,” he said after a moment, trying not to sound too relieved; for a moment he had been afraid that they might be dealing with something too dangerous for just the two of them, like a Vileblood or a Hunter of the Harrow.
He looked at the elevator. “They've gone mad with the scourge and started to turn, but probably have enough wits about them to know that the giant would have slain them all. They rode the elevator...” He shook his head. “Who knows why? Safety from beasts? From Hunters? Who knows what goes on in their heads. They probably thought the plateau was safer, and the servant was just in the way.”
Victor quickly walked over to the giant, stepped over its ridiculously oversized axe to get past the massive creature and unceremoniously pulled the lever next to it. Soon the sound of grinding gears and rattling chains could be heard, and high above the elevator started descending the shaft down to their level.
“Hopefully they don't know about the clinic,” he mused, stepping past the sleeping giant to rejoin his companions.

Night of the Hunt - a Bloodborne RP

It's quite all right, Bartimaeus; as long as we know what's going on, you don't drop off the face of the Earth entirely and the delay isn't outrageously long. But if you feel like you aren't going to be posting in, let's say, the next week, maybe you could just briefly summarize what Raine is going to say and do here or in a PM, and I will just incorporate it in my post to spare you the effort.

I think the post was fine, Habibi; seems natural for Marcus to reply when someone calls out and asks a question. Ishin can wake up whenever he's ready.

Night of the Hunt - a Bloodborne RP

Th3King0fChaos' character is a Paleblood Hunter, just not a false one, and has been turned along with the others; his character, Ishin, would be there too.

I just want to be sure that there is an actual plan of action so that we don't sit around waiting for each other while everyone thinks someone else is going first.