Dark Jack

Night of the Hunt - a Bloodborne RP

@Ashgan?

Night of the Hunt - a Bloodborne RP

Okay, there's two things I'd like to bring up here for discussion, one short-term and one long term: the current IC situation with Arcturus and the general state of the RP.

For Arcturus, RPGuild reported that @DrabberRogue didn't even log in to the site in twelve days until a couple of days ago, at which point he did not contact me in any way regarding the RP, and he has not been on since. It hasn't been long enough that I'd presume that he's just gone (though it is long enough to make me worry), but Arcturus being "stuck" sort of makes progressing time consistently across all characters a bit awkward. In order to enable us to actually continue the RP with or without DrabberRogue and Arcturus, I propose one of three solutions:
DrabberRogue conveniently shows up and posts. This would be preferable, but not something I can make happen and at this point not exactly something I would count on.
I puppet Arcturus based on what I've seen him do until now, trying to keep specifics and inner workings vague or absent so that DrabberRogue can fill in to his preference when/if he returns. This will keep the scene moving about as it is now as much as possible.
Or I engage a deus ex machina and use my GM powers to interfere in the scene with an external actor, changing the circumstances so that DrabberRogue's posts aren't immediately needed for the story to progress.

For the RP in general, I can't help but notice that we've, eh... had an unusually high rate of players quitting. Everyone stated their own reasons, of course (though I can't help but wonder if the RP/I somehow cause people to leave), but it does leave us with an unfortunate reality: the RP only has three players left, of which DrabberRogue's presence is currently somewhat nebulous. Despite how early in the RP we are, do you think it would do us any good to try a recruitment effort to get more players?

Night of the Hunt - a Bloodborne RP

If it had not become clear already from the brutal nature of the echo's attacks, there could be no doubt anymore that it, at least, either did not understand or just did not care about the hoarse man's admonition not to kill the Hunters. As Marcus tried to cut past the Mad One by putting a row of cots between himself and it, the creature simply changed its trajectory to always move in the direction he was in, knocking over cots and trampling comatose Hunters-to-be as it went.

In a stroke of what could be viewed as luck in a very pragmatic way, something distracted the monster from its pursuit before it could reach him. The squirming body of one of the sleepers happened to get thrown onto its head and left shoulder as it knocked over his bed, resulting in the frenzied echo seeming to forget about Marcus for the time being, gripping the defenseless person with both hands instead, flinging him into the ground with a loud crash before plunging its hands into the man's abdomen, ripping out his entrails and scattering them around like the world's most gruesome garlands.

Night of the Hunt - a Bloodborne RP

He ripped its hand? Hmm?

(...)He felt great pain in his shoulder as the claw twitched again and dig deep in his shoulder.(...)

Habibi359

(...)By instinct alone, he gripped the hand.(...)

Habibi359

(...)He pushed with his both hands so that claw would release it’s grip(...)

Habibi359

It was likely that if this succeeded, Marcus would fall to his back and the creature’s claw would make deep, nasty marks to his right shoulder.

Habibi359

From what I can tell, those are the only mentions of the Mad One's hand in your post, and I didn't interpret any of them as Marcus "ripping" anything. Even looking back at previous posts I'm not sure how it would have lost a hand... Am I missing something?
But either way, if you want to we can say that Marcus snapped its wrist hard enough to actually break off its left hand when he escaped its grasp? If so its hand would indeed just grow back pretty much instantly and it would still end up assaulting him with both hands intact.

Night of the Hunt - a Bloodborne RP

It's not going to be the sole contributors to what I'll consider as the character's insight, obviously, but I figure it'll be helpful for keeping track nonetheless. Out of the currently introduced characters I'd count Victor as having the highest insight due to experience fighting beasts and his... less than stable emotional state (since madness will also contribute), and Adelicia as having the second highest from her studies with the Healing Church.

Night of the Hunt - a Bloodborne RP

Insight gained: Unseen abductor

Adelicia, Victor

Out of nowhere, Adelicia and Victor witnessed their companion, Raine Provostus, being snatched off the ground by an invisible entity of sufficient brute strength to render the Hunter entirely helpless. While seemingly suspended mid-air, Raine vanished in an arcane burst.
They did not see the creature or have any idea what it was, but now suspect and fear just what it might be capable of.

Decided to start recording "insights" and linking them to the list of characters in the OP, both so I have some means of tracking how much insight a character might have and to have a reminder of what discoveries they have made.

Night of the Hunt - a Bloodborne RP

Eastern Yharnam, Hunter's clinic

Though the incessant chiming of the Pthumerian's bell did somewhat annoy Victor, he was too far given to his rage – and too preoccupied with fighting a battle that, to his knowledge, was at least seven against one – to ponder or care whether there was any deeper significance to the sound. He whipped the now-unloaded blunderbuss down with his left hand, smashing the huntsman he was lying on top of across the face with the barrel of the gun... only to be shocked out of his blind fury by the sight of the cracked skin and broken cheekbones mending themselves at a speed that would put the regenerative powers of any Hunter to shame.
“The bell! You have to stop the bell! It beckons monstrous things!” Adelicia cried as Victor blinked the sweat out of his eyes, trying to understand what was going on.
The bell... he thought he remembered hearing about bells being used for strange things, something to do with the arcane. He knew that the Vicar had some kind of fancy bell that could heal people, but the Pthumerian was not using a “fancy” bell, but a completely normal one; they had stolen it off the corpse of a random church servant, for Kos' sake! How could it be used for arcane purposes?

Gritting his teeth against the pain that suddenly caught up to him, reminding him that he was still in the midst of combat, Victor threw himself into a forward tumble. He tucked his chin against his chest to land on his shoulders, rolling onto his back and finally all the way onto his feet, using the weight and forward motion of his body to pull his sword with him out of the huntsman's chest. Once back on his feet he retreated several steps, habitually reloading his blunderbuss with his left hand while preparing to face his enemy with his sword in his right.
Victor was more familiar with wounds and their severity than Adelicia, not to mention aware of the fact that he had intentionally fought without activating his enhanced strength thus far to conserve his stamina, so it was not surprising to him to find that both the rifleman and the pitchfork-wielder he had slashed to still be standing, and even less so that the hatchet-wielder he had blasted with the blunderbuss was still able to fight. What did surprise him was that all three of them seemed to have already healed their wounds and, looking at the huntsman he had just rolled off and had previously impaled was standing back up, his stab-wound already closed. He had expected the ones he slashed and shot to at least be briefly incapacitated, and the one he had impaled to be dying.
In contrast to that, he realized, the pain in his right shoulder and abdomen did not seem to be dissipating, meaning that he had already reached the limits of his own regenerative powers.
Well, that hardly seems fair.
Hanging the blunderbuss from his belt again he quickly used his left hand to pull out a blood vial to inject himself with, nervously reminding himself that he only had one vial left now and had to be extra careful.

As five of the six Yharnamite huntsmen assembled before him, creating a line of defense between himself and the bell-ringing Pthumerian, Victor – once again driven by paranoia to constantly examine others' eyes – spotted that these people's eyes had all changed. Every color in their eyes seemed to have taken on a red tint, as if a colored veil had been hung over their eyeballs.
He scowled at them, waiting a couple of seconds for his wounds to heal. The bell beckons monsters, is it? Not this time, it seems; it's just turning these guys into monsters.
Off to the side, still by wall bordering the room with the supposedly transforming Hunters but having moved further back towards the same corner the Pthumerian was hiding in, the rifleman had retrieved his firearm and was once again working on reloading it.
Adelicia is right, the Pthumerian has to be stopped, Victor thought, glaring at his assembled adversaries. But fighting these guys normally won't work. I have no idea how much that bell enhances their regeneration, and simply wearing them down would let them surround or shoot me, or let them target Adelicia while I'm occupied. I can't afford to fight conservatively... I have to give it all I've got, and pray that'll be enough to push through and get to the Pthumerian.

“Look away, Adelicia,” he called without looking, taking a step forward as he reached his right over his right shoulder, aligning the sword in his hand so that its blade was parallel with but to the side of the scabbard on his back with practiced ease. Once there he inserted first the tip of the sword through the edge of the scabbard, finding a nook inside it that fit the tip of the sword and locked it into place. Once the tip was in place, all it took was to align the rest of the sword with the scabbard, sliding the entire blade through the open edge of it and into the core, where the two – blade and scabbard – locked with each other with a faint “click”, while the same mechanism simultaneously released the clasps attaching it to his back.
“This next part...” He reached over with his empty left hand, gripping the hilt with both hands and activating his Hunter's strength to enable himself to properly wield the now 30 kg (66 lb) weapon. “...won't be pretty.”

~~~

The Mad One did not seem to comprehend nor care about what was happening around it, much less about voices coming from the other room; its attention was by now entirely focused on Marcus. Caught in the bell-empowered grasp of the creature, Marcus yet again accidentally discovered one of the results of the metamorphosis he had undergone as he placed his feet against the so-called echo's chest. His muscles would feel suddenly rock-hard and expand until it felt like his taut skin might burst; his veins would stand out clearly, bulging on his skin with increased blood-pressure; his heart would pump so hard that his chest expanded visibly with each mighty beat.
With the Hunter's strength and the utilization of his entire body in the endeavor, Marcus successfully tore the monster's hand from his bloody shoulder while simultaneously launching himself several meters away.

Stumbling backward a step from the force of Marcus' pushing himself away, the Mad One let out a cry of frustration before recovering its balance, after which it allowed itself to fall forward onto its hands and knees and – moving in an almost beast-like manner on all fours – skittered more than crawled toward him, its limbs moving in a disconcertingly jerky but rapid manner. Once it got in range it would start lashing out at the Hunter with its hands alternatingly, first its right hand, then left, then right again and so forth, keeping up a relentless assault, trying to claw and – if possible – grab him again.

Night of the Hunt - a Bloodborne RP

@DrabberRogue?

Night of the Hunt - a Bloodborne RP

Eastern Yharnam, Hunter's clinic

Though innately the property about Victor that improved the fastest with his growing power, his regenerative ability was not the primary reason he had managed to survive as a Hunter. Even as a human mercenary without superhuman durability or powers of healing Victor had still been a force to be reckoned with, despite not being particularly skilled at swordsmanship and plenty of soldiers being stronger and faster than him. His ancestral armor had helped his human self the same as his hardiness did now, keeping him alive, but that only helped him last longer, not win. It was an advantage, but not the true weapon that carried him to victory.
Victor's greatest strength was his bottomless, all-consuming and relentless rage.

Now in the midst of battle Victor was done thinking, done worrying, done planning; his vision went red, his heartbeat quickened, his pupils dilated... as with a wordless roar he swung the small sword in his hand, not with precision or skill, but seeped with every drop of malice flowing from him. He slashed to his right without looking, catching one of the huntsmen – one armed with a pitchfork – by surprise, aside the improvised weapon and carving a horizontal gash across his chest.
He immediately turned with the strike, turning around fully, before jumping at a huntsman that had tried to flank him from behind. The huntsman let out a yelp of surprise and pain, reflexively pushing his own weapon – a large hunting knife – into Victor's abdomen, while Victor vindictively stabbed the other in the chest with his much longer blade, running him through fully, as both of them tumbled to the ground with a crash.
A third huntsman – fourth if one counted the rifleman – rushed Victor from his right, from the direction of the door to the cot room, and performed a downward smash on the Hunter's right shoulder with a woodcutters hatchet, but Victor barely felt the pain anymore. The attack only made his left hand dart up from his side, in front of his mostly outstretched right arm, and instinctively aimed at center of mass of his assailant with his blunderbuss before pulling the trigger. With a blast of gunfire the hatchet-wielding huntsman staggered away, the entire front of his body bloody and torn from the barrage of quicksilver pellets.

While the two last huntsmen – one armed with another pitchfork and the other with what appeared to be a broken-off table leg – tried to find a way to attack the murderous Hunter without hitting or getting in the way of their four comrades, the Pthumerian retreated to the corner of the room to the far right of the door into the cot room. With gritted teeth the only somewhat humanoid creature raised his left hand, holding his bell aloft, and started swinging it quickly and rhythmically from side to side, producing a haunting, continuous and somehow desperate-seeming sound:
Ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding

~~~

Inside the cot room Arcturus and Marcus each engaged their own monstrous opponents. Marcus, having misjudged the Mad One's sense of self-preservation, failed to evade its seizing hand, allowing its long, sharp nails to dig into his flesh as it clutched him tightly. As the creature went to bite him, however, something in Marcus seemed to react to his adversary's badly weakened, badly injured state; allowing his instincts to take over he did not even realize that his right hand changed on its own, growing larger and forming claws before plunging into the monster's abdomen, ripping through the malleable organs within before gripping them and viciously tearing out as much of it as he could, covering the lower half of his own body in viscera as a deluge of blood poured from the creature's shredded middle.
The Mad One's body jerked from the force of Marcus' visceral attack, its head slowing its movement toward the Hunter's neck before stopping entirely about ten centimeters (four inches) from its target. It seemed to pause for a second, its grip on Marcus' shoulder getting looser, before its jaw went slack and the light in its eyes literally extinguished.

The bestial huntsman, meanwhile, was not as suicidal as his otherworldly fellow and reacted to Arcturus' attack by stopping its approach and even taking a step backward, shielding itself as best it could with the sword it had taken from Marcus while keeping its cleaver poised to attack. Stepping back only switched which leg Arcturus aimed for, however, and the newly transformed Hunter chopped at the creature's shin just below the knee, drawing blood. Unfortunately that seemed to the the only effect the attack had; the beast proved much more durable than the unexpectedly fragile Mad One, and the bone seemed to completely stop the blade before it could cause any more seriously crippling damage.

Ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding

A rapid, continuous ringing of the ominous bell from beyond the door punctuated the sounds of an intense fight outside, a different kind of ringing than before that somehow conveyed desperation, sounding very much like a last resort of someone expecting defeat. Though this might give the Hunters hope and hint to them that the skirmish had started to turn in their favor, it might also invoke instinctual wariness just from the fact that an opponent was never more dangerous than when its back was against the wall.
As the bell rang and kept ringing, Marcus would feel the grip of the Mad One's right hand on his shoulder suddenly tighten once again, driving its nails deep into him with newfound, bone-wrenching strength as its eyes reignited with even greater intensity than before. A crunching noise accompanied its skull seeming to right the indentation on its own, and the crushed bones in its left arm spontaneously snapped back in place, causing the limb to spring back to life as a hungry hiss left its throat. Below, though Marcus likely could not see it from his vantage point, its stomach regrew in an instant.
The Mad One proceeded to actually pick up Marcus by his shoulder, lifting him off the ground with one arm.

Over at Arcturus' part of the room the bell seemed to have an effect on the beast, too, this time, as its eyes seemed to suddenly glaze over with red, dimly glowing mist. Letting out a thunderous roar with all the fury the scourge of beasts could muster, the bestial huntsman threw up both of its arms over its head, ignoring the noise of its blades grinding against the wooden ceiling, before slamming both weapons down upon Arcturus with what would obviously be terrifying strength.

Night of the Hunt - a Bloodborne RP

Just a heads up, but if you don't post tomorrow, @Ashgan, I'll go by the assumption you suggested and write a post myself.