Dark Jack

The Prophecy

Okay, I presume that means we still have Lum on board, though Claw is still awkwardly removed from the rest of the characters. Boa'Noktus sounds worryingly similar to various would-be and actual megalomanic deities, by the way; from the descriptions of her I'd heard, I had honestly expected her to be more... I don't know, reserved. Rational.

If I am to presume that Claw's trip to wherever is going to take more than the night, I guess Jaelnec and Aemoten (I think that's all that would actually participate at this point?) could start handling the business they have in Zerul City?

Night of the Hunt - a Bloodborne RP

Heh, I could be cruel and just say that Draco doesn't know, but the shelter was actually below the plateau and further north down there. Draco and the civilians have already moved past it.
Although Stefan didn't communicate this in his hurry, ascending the elevator wasn't to reach the shelter, but to put an obstacle between the civilians and the various hostile entities in the street.

Night of the Hunt - a Bloodborne RP

Eh, I prefer to handle those kinds of things on a case-by-case basis, but generally I leave it to you (the players). @Habibi359, would you like to get a post out before DrabberRogue posts?

Night of the Hunt - a Bloodborne RP

Eastern Yharnam, relatively near the Hunter's clinic, on the high plateau

Setting off along the singular northward path available to them, Draco and the other civilians walked cautiously on this seemingly completely unpopulated area for several minutes. The trail of blood leading that way seemed to fade and disappear a short ways in, leaving only faint tracks of someone else having passed by here previously.
The entire way their right flank, to the east, remained guarded by a row of almost identical dark-windowed dwellings that stood side by side, presumably awaiting a time when the population of Yharnam grew enough to need the additional homes. On their left was the edge of the plateau, topped by a metal guardrail that was just a little more than waist-high, which did little to obscure their view of the city below.
And indeed, as they traveled north this unobstructed view of the lands below allowed them to witness a change come to Yharnam, as buildings seemed to first gradually grow newer and smaller, all while the terrain seemed to slope lower and lower, removing itself ever further from their position high above on the plateau. After a few minutes the small, new buildings down there seemed to transition to older, more run-down buildings, many of which bore damage, some almost reduced to rubble and most at least partially burned, though there was no fire to be seen, hinting that the damage was not recent. The streets down there were old, worn and filled with trash... but also much worse. Though it was hard to make out details now, as the plateau now stood about eighty meters (262 feet) over the city below, the streets of this ruined part of the city seemed alive with movement as countless forms moved through the streets, some slow and deliberate, others with terrible, inhuman speed, and most larger than humans should be.
Faint howling and barking could be heard from below, growing ever-more intense as the sun disappeared past the horizon and darkness gradually came to Yharnam. Draco, being a native to Yharnam, would recognize the land below as Old Yharnam, the part of the city claimed by no less than two plagues: the scourge of beasts and the Ashen Blood. Hunters had tried and failed for years to cleanse the area, and looking down now at streets filled with what seemed like hundreds of beasts, it was not hard to see why.

As they went further north they an end of their path eventually came into view, as the street was abruptly blocked by a wooden single-story building, perpendicular to the dwellings lining the right side of the street and filling in the area all the way to the edge of the plateau. While the building was still distant, however, frantic movement appeared at the door of the building, as five figures emerged into the street and ran in the civilians' direction. As they came closer, several things could be observed about these men: they were all bloody and battered to some degree, they were all dressed in common Yharnam clothing, they all looked absolutely terrified, and they were all unarmed.
The men went to give Draco's group a wide berth as if to simply pass by them back towards the elevator.

Night of the Hunt - a Bloodborne RP

@Habibi359, just in case you don't have time to post IC anytime soon, since I kind of need to know the decision: is Marcus going to allow the huntsmen to flee?

Night of the Hunt - a Bloodborne RP

Eastern Yharnam, Hunter's clinic

Upon examining the man in the vandalized antechamber, Arcturus found that though the man's clothes bore at least three distinctive, recent-looking tears – a long one on his right shoulder and two small, almost identical ones on the chest and back, respectively – there were no wounds matching the damage to his clothes. What he found instead was the man's skin bearing what seemed like hundreds of small fissures and punctures, none measuring more than a couple of centimeters (about an inch), all of which seemed to be in the process of very slowly mending themselves. Aside from the absurd number of these tiny injuries they were also remarkable by the fact that they were all somehow wrong, as if the wounds themselves were almost inside-out. The punctures seemed like the external damage resulting from an open bone fracture, and the places where the skin was rent in tears seemed more like the skin had been messily pulled apart than cut.
Now that Arcturus was closer to the man he would also notice an odd, subtle noise coming from the man's head. The man's eyes just shuddered slightly behind closed lids, but at his mouth his tongue was rhythmically snaking between his lips, dipping its tip and side into the puddle of blood he was laying in, scooping up a little and drawing it back into the mouth. After each slow, methodical lap of his tongue his throat would contract as if swallowing.

Turning his attention to the pouch at the man's side, the Messenger moved aside to let Arcturus' handle things. The pouch, he found, was internally padded and divided into twenty or so small compartments evidently made for long, narrow objects. All but one of these slots were empty, and the final slot held a small capped vial filled with crimson liquid; something Arcturus may or may not have encountered before, being a foreigner to Yharnam and only newly acquainted with blood healing, as a blood vial.

Night of the Hunt - a Bloodborne RP

Why can't we delete posts?

Night of the Hunt - a Bloodborne RP

Eastern Yharnam, Hunter's clinic

“Ignore the little men. They are of no harm, at least haven’t been so far.”
Torquil stared incredulously at the nightmarish little creatures, eyes wide and terrified, as he contemplated the true depth of the meaning of the words “so far.” No one has been horribly eviscerated by the wolf so far, so it is probably harmless. And these little creatures? Compared to them, even the black-skinned, intestine-throwing creature and the vaguely humanoid beast he had awoken to finding seemed mundane and unalarming. And yet they seemed... familiar? Torquil felt like he had seen these tiny beings before somewhere, and it took him a moment to realize that they had shown up in his dreams, too, just before he had awoken as a Hunter.
Grumbling under his breath he aimed a kick at one of the ghoulish things – hard enough to be dismissive and threatening, without actually intending to harm it – only to find that his foot went straight through the faintly glowing form of the creature without resistance. The little one made a rude gesture at him in turn, but seemed otherwise unaffected and unfazed by his show of hostility.

Stumbling for a moment from the kick, Torquil decided to heed Marcus' advice and just ignore the “little men,” whatever they were, and hurry on to the barrels of weapons before he embarrassed himself even more. He perused the weapons in there for a moment, looking at the spears, axes and swords, and realized just how little he actually knew about weapons. He knew what they were, obviously, and the fundamentals of how one was supposed to use them – generally “the sharp bit goes into what you want to die” – but trying to think about it, he could not conjure any knowledge of tactics or technique at fighting. He could probably strike “soldier” from the list of possible professions he could have had before becoming a Hunter, which was less than encouraging; he figured that preexisting skills at fighting would probably have improved his chances of survival.
Channeling mental images of heavily armored knights and heroes of legend, Torquil's first instinct was to pull a sword from the pile, simply because swords were the most presentable of the three. Frowning at the alien feel of the blade in his hand he allowed himself to get a feel of the weapon, turning and tipping his grasp to feel the balance and weight of it, before tryingly swinging the sword twice through the air and finishing with a thrust.
He threw the sword back into the pile, strangely unsettled by the weapon. Wielding it felt unnatural, somehow, as though some part of him was protesting against the way his body moved while using the sword.
Of the remaining options, there was little doubt that a spear was a more impressive weapon than an axe, but... Torquil found his gaze lingering at the wooden handle of one such axe, and felt oddly drawn toward it. Even just looking at the weapon he already knew how the handle would feel in his hands, knew the heft of it, could imagine himself holding it, swinging it. He hesitantly picked up the axe, grasping it with both hands, and instantly felt that this was a much better fit for him. He swung it a few times, twice horizontally and twice vertically, and realized that his body was already intimately familiar with those motions. Axe it was.

Now adequately armed for whatever awaited beyond the door – or at least armed as well as he could be for the time being – Torquil stepped away from the barrels, carefully avoiding the little inhuman people that seemed to burrow out of the floor at random now, and went to the other Hunter. Not-Marcus, who had not yet introduced himself and had apparently been checking an extremely ill-looking woman.
Not wanting to demonstrate his broken ability to speak more than necessary, he simply waved at the man and gestured at the door, meaning to wordlessly ask whether he intended to leave as well.

Night of the Hunt - a Bloodborne RP

Eastern Yharnam, relatively near the Hunter's clinic, ascending the elevator

“What terrible beasts,” a woman muttered breathlessly, looking through the now-closed gate that bordered the entrance to the elevator the civilians had just used to board it, looking at the battle taking place below. Growling, roaring and loud, metallic slams could still be heard from down there, though the sounds grew somewhat more distant as everyone ascended the elevator shaft. “Thank Oedon we got out of that alive...”
“I can't believe one of them killed the Hunter,” a man murmured incredulously, clutching his chest with one hand while staring off into space with a haunted expression. “I thought Hunters were invincible...”
“'Twasn't a beast that kill'd him,” another man pointed out confidently, tapping the side of his nose with a finger. “I smell'd him. The beast-armed one wasn't no beast, 'twas another Hunter. Mad, most like. Or...” He shuddered. “Of the Harrow.”
“Another Hunter...” the woman whispered thoughtfully, turning away from the sight of Yharnam lowering under them.

Soon after the elevator reached the top, all but the loud smashing of the giant's axe reduced to unintelligible noises below, and folding doors opposite of the ones they had entered through opened in the elevator. Outside lay a surprisingly clean stretch of street with a row of single-floor, pristine houses lined up on the far side of the area. Many of these houses were made of wood rather than stone, and all seemed to be recent additions to the city, built from scratch after the Night of the Blood Moon. They seemed empty, and not a single one of the ones in sight had light inside or a censer outside, in all likelihood marking them as unoccupied. But although the area looked deserted, the ground just beyond the elevator and as much as a dozen meters (three dozen feet) from the elevator had splatters, drips and smears of mostly-fresh blood that spoke of a battle having been fought here recently. There were even faint scorch-marks in one place, very close to where lay a broken lantern.
Strangely there were no corpses, though there were some faint tracks through the blood that suggested that someone had moved through the gore and to the left of the elevator, further north along the plateau, which seemed to be the only way to go aside from entering one of the houses there.

~~~

Eastern Yharnam, Hunter's clinic

Looking around at the carnage surrounding them, hearing the silence of their far more powerful slain allies, the surviving five huntsmen turned to Marcus as he entered, staring at him in uniform horror.
After but a moment's silent but frantic deliberation one of the huntsmen turned to the only other door in the room – the one leading to the outside – and clumsily scrambled toward it, stumbling over toppled and smashed furniture along the way, not even sparing a glance for the weapon he had dropped at his feet. A second later the other four followed the first, fleeing the clinic as quickly as they could.

There were more Messengers in this room, too; two sat over by the man dressed in a thoroughly bloodied garb of the Healing Church, clawing powerlessly at a pouch on the man's left hip, which the fingers of the man's left hand was weakly grasping the top of. Another Messenger sat by a fist-sized abandoned brass bell on the ground, prodding at it and examining it without actually moving the bell in a way that suggested equal parts of curiosity and anxiety.
Most remarkable of all, however, was the crowd of Messengers – easily two dozen of them, maybe more – that surrounded and eagerly pointed to the one thing in the room that looked untouched by the otherwise rampant destruction that had occurred here. Seeming entirely out of place here as it arguably would anywhere, there was what appeared to be an entire skeletal human arm sticking out of the floor, reaching as high as it could, holding an unlit lantern in its petrified bony grip.
Two of the Messengers near this strange lantern-wielding arm seemed to be sitting apart from the others, and rather than trying to direct Marcus' attention to the lantern, these two appeared to be holding a rolled-up piece of parchment, looking at Marcus expectantly.
Adelicia would not be able to see any of this, of course; none of the Messengers, the arm sticking out of the ground or the lantern existed within a realm she could see. All she would see was the fleeing huntsmen and her guardian, Victor, collapsed on the floor.

Night of the Hunt - a Bloodborne RP

Nah, it's fine if you just correct the bit about the huntsmen; I generally try to avoid backtracking. The comment about letting me inform what the character might see was more for future reference.

I also really wish Ashgan would pop in for Adelicia, but until he does I suppose we'll just have to assume that she's petrified by the violence she just witnessed.