Dark Jack

Night of the Hunt - a Bloodborne RP

@DrabberRogue seems to have slightly dropped off the face of the planet again, so I guess I'll work on a short post to progress Victor and Torquil. And just to reiterate, if the steps I take during my posts are too short (as in, you don't feel that I have provided anything worthwhile for your characters to react to), just say so and I will progress things further.

Night of the Hunt - a Bloodborne RP

So, eh... what's up? Does anyone have a post burning a hole in their pocket?

Night of the Hunt - a Bloodborne RP

Eastern Yharnam, Hunter's clinic

Victor mostly seemed as if he was barely even listening to what Draco and Marcus were saying, apparently concentrating on retrieving his weapon off the ground. Interestingly the Messengers near him, visible only to Marcus, Arcturus and Torquil, started making rude gestures and just generally taunting the Hunter as he crouched to pick up his sword, without Victor in any way indicating that he registered their behavior or presence.
With his weapon in hand he stood back up, swinging the giant sword over his right shoulder and onto his back, where he took just a moment to find the right place for it. Once it was in place the mechanism inside the blade produced a faint click, and the much smaller silver sword within the greater Holy Blade was released through the edge of its blade-scabbard, leaving the giant blade stuck to Victor's back. The stark contrast between the relatively clean, pristine silver blade of the small sword compared to the rest of the bloody and beaten man's appearance was quite remarkable.

The only times Victor had any kind of perceivable reaction to the others' words was when Draco mentioned that the offending Hunter had had “beast like claws,” and when Marcus finished his own contribution to the conversation with an utterance of “for now.”
Even someone barely paying attention to his expression would likely notice Victor's frown at the mention of the beast-clawed Hunter, showing intense displeasure at hearing about it, but someone paying closer intention might also register that an actual physical change overcame the Hunter's eyes as he frowned, with his irises starting to shift and churn once more, and for just a second the animal glow returned to his pupils. Then he seemed to calm back down, his expression relaxed into its resting look of general annoyance and disinterest, and his eyes resumed a more human appearance.
At Marcus' utterance a similar look of displeasure came over Victor's face, only this time without the unnatural change in his eyes. “You're one of those...” he muttered under his breath, his disgust evident from the hushed words, but likely too quiet for Marcus to hear himself.

“Here's what I'm gonna do,” Victor finally spoke out loud, glancing around the room, still showing no signs of awareness of the Messengers at all. “First I light the censer outside of here to keep other beasts from getting in here. Then you –” he indicated Draco with a nod, “– take me to where these other people are holed up, and I kill the madmen before they can make an even bigger mess of things. Once that's taken care of I'll take the saint back down to the shelter and stash her – and anyone else that comes with and wants to – in there. Now, I only have one...”
He padded the bag on his left hip as he said this, only to suddenly stop mid-sentence as he apparently was not feeling what he was expecting upon handling the pouch. Looking down, it seemed that Victor only now noticed the empty blood vial that was still sticking out of his left thigh, which he simply stared at with disbelief for a couple of seconds before he reached down with his left hand and quickly pulled it out, only to pocket the empty vial.
“I have no blood vials left,” he corrected himself, a hint of distress in his voice as his eyes started shifting nervously around the room, his confidence visibly shaken, “so next I'll head back to the Cathedral Ward to resupply before joining the hunt. You can follow as far as you want. I don't care. But if you come with me, you can properly arm yourselves at the Cathedral Ward, get some blood vials of your own and maybe find some other Hunters to band together with. You know, so you're slightly less likely to die tonight.”

Marcus, meanwhile, would know that the currently unloaded rifle he had taken from the huntsman was still in the back room of the clinic, with the cots with comatose Hunters-to-be. Going back to retrieve it would be a simple matter. Turning back towards the door, however, he might notice a second rifle, similar to the one he had seized, on the floor in this room, seemingly one of the weapons dropped by the fleeing huntsmen. Next to it, among some other rubble, lay two small pouches: one shapeless against the floor, its opening closed with a piece of string, and another that had fallen with its string untied, spilling a handful of small dark-gray pellets among the debris.

Night of the Hunt - a Bloodborne RP

Who wants to go next? Or do you want me to assume that no one does anything and progress things a little?

Night of the Hunt - a Bloodborne RP

Eastern Yharnam, Hunter's clinic

Both Torquil and the thoroughly bloodied, freshly revived Victor focused their attention at Draco upon his arrival, though with quite different demeanor and reactions to the words being shared. Torquil seemed a little dazed and distracted at first, his eyes still shifting to the Messengers and the lantern-wielding arm – neither of which were in any way perceivable to Victor, Draco or Adelicia – but grew more focused as Draco spoke, he seemed to grow increasingly concerned, especially once he started speaking of endangered civilians.
Victor, meanwhile, was panicked, confused and defensive at first, entirely at the mercy of his fight-or-flight instinct, but gradually seemed to return to his senses and calm down as words were shared among the others. As he calmed he also seemed to grow less and less interested in what Draco was saying, his expression turning indifferent and his gaze starting to scan the room they found themselves in. By the time Draco had finished speaking Victor seemed fully back to his senses and thoroughly unimpressed with the supposed severity of their current circumstance.

Victor looked at Draco once he fell silent, idly scraping the side of his left hand against his face to wipe off as much blood as he could.
“You talk too much,” he told him with a sigh. He looked down at himself in disgust, fully realizing that his clothes had been completely ruined by his recent trials. Then he looked back at Draco.
He held up his left fist, extending his index finger. “Firstly: I guess the state of your snoot means you don't smell a lot, but Hunters stink. Anyone can smell a Hunter. You don't need to be a beast for that.” True enough, the air in room they were currently in, occupied at the moment by no less than four Hunters, was thick with the unique, but not unpleasant, scent of Hunters, if somewhat intermingled with the smell of blood and viscera.
He extended his middle finger. “Secondly: yes, they're mad. I fought them, and they were helping jerkyman over there.” He nodded at the bisected corpse of the Pthumerian. “But they seem to have left their weapons here. We should be okay for the moment.”
Finally he stretched his thumb. “And thirdly: I have a job to do. I protect her.” He nodded at Adelicia across the room. “I'm getting her to safety. Your group can follow. I don't care.”

Victor moved to retrieve his Holy Blade from the ground. “I'm Victor. Of the white church.” He glanced back at Torquil, Marcus and Arcturus. “And you're the new Hunters.”

Night of the Hunt - a Bloodborne RP

Eastern Yharnam, Hunter's clinic

As the needle of the blood vial pierced the unconscious Hunter's skin and went deep, finding the artery within, the vial seemed to abruptly get sucked dry in but an instant despite the lack of any kind of mechanical delivery mechanism. It was as though the specially treated blood within, as soon as it came into contact with the Hunter's blood, rushed to join the bloodstream by a will of its own. And as the vial emptied itself into the man, bestowing innate regenerative power beyond what could be harnessed from normal blood of man or beast, Arcturus would witness every single wound on the man's body heal in but a second.
His body physically mended the Hunter remained on the ground, eyes closed, but started turning onto his back and groaning, his breath becoming deeper and steadier as his life force stabilized. Witnessing the restorative power harnessed by the Healing Church was always impressive, especially when it came condensed into such tiny vessels as this vial, but watching this man recovering to seemingly perfect health from the verge of death would nevertheless likely be a particularly impressive sight.

Leaving the still-unconscious but restored Hunter alone, Arcturus turned his attention to the tall ghoulish creature that lay carved in two, the pools of its blood – one surrounding its legs, one its torso – overlapping and mixing with the blood of the Hunter he had just saved from the clutches of death. He inspected the bell next to the creature – the one it would likely not be too hard to identify as the “hoarse man” from beyond the door – and the Messenger next to it moved aside to allow him a better view. It looked at Arcturus for a moment, hanging its arms and head in what seemed like confusion and disappointment with its own findings upon examining the bell, and vanished into the floor.
The bell, on a closer look, seemed entirely mundane. It was very easily recognizable to anyone who had more than a passing experience in Yharnam as the bell carried around the neck of a church servant. It was big, clunky, made of brass and bore a number of dents and bruises from having been in use for an extended period of time. Aside from the bloodstains that marked it, much like many other things in the room, the bell seemed entirely unremarkable.
Arcturus managed to wrap and pad the bell well enough with the ripped cloth of the corpse, without sound, and it seemed that handling the resulting bundle was safe.

By the time Marcus read the note presented to him by the Messengers, Torquil had also entered the room, axe in hand. He looked around at the surrounding carnage in awe, though his attention was helplessly drawn to the bizarre sight of the skeletal arm sticking out of the floor and, more importantly, the unlit lantern hanging from its hand. He seemed fascinated with it and the way this mass of little ones was trying to draw their attention to it.
About at the same time, however, the now-restored Hunter on the ground seemed to stir. He moved sluggishly for a second, as if waking from a deep slumber, before suddenly rolling backward, away from everyone and deeper into the corner of the room, and jolting swiftly to his feet. He faced them all, fists held up in a defensive stance, his breath now rapid and panicked, as his gaze shifted rapidly from Arcturus to Marcus, to Torquil and to the huddling Adelicia. His eyes seemed strange for a moment, the irises seeming to shift and writhe with a life of their own while his pupils seemed to shine like those of some animals' eyes. Once his gaze found the woman, however, his posture seemed to somewhat relax, and his eyes lost both the unnatural moving irises and their inhuman glow, resuming the appearance of normal dark blue eyes.

And just then...

---

Eastern Yharnam, outside the Hunter's clinic

The four bloodied Yharnamites did not wait to hear what Draco had to say, but simply fled into the house as soon as the door was open, leaving him to address the group of civilians that had been traveling with him. The civilians seemed deeply perturbed by Draco's words, and although several faces lit up with hope at the mention of possibly being escorted to a shelter, it was pretty clear that there was a predominantly grim and fearful mood among them. Even the few that seemed to respond positively soon resumed expressions of wariness and fear.
As Draco headed for the squat building that marked the end of the path, about half of the group seemed to immediately run into the nearby house where the four other Yharnamites had gone, before the rest started slowly, hesitantly filtering in there as well. By time Draco had reached the sole entrance to the building, the entire group of civilians had vacated the street and hid within the house, the door they had entered through swinging shut with a barely audible noise. It seemed that whatever admonitions and recommendations Draco could offer, staying in the street when beasts were about, let alone actively pursuing an area with beasts, was too much for these common folk of the city.

Draco entered the open doorway, the censer beside it unlit, to find the room beyond wrecked and devastated in a way that suggested targeted harmful intent toward the actual furnishing of the room more so than collateral damage in a fight. A fight had undeniably occurred, however, evidenced by the large amounts of blood scattered across mostly the far side of the room, with but a few drops having fallen just inside the doorway. Immediately to Draco's right was a young woman, seeming little more than a girl, in the garb of the White Healing Church, keeping her distance from everything else in the room.
Directly in front of him were three men, all in commoner's clothes and wielding mundane weapons, but all looking a little bloody, with one of them, a tall, pale, blonde and icy-eyed man currently handling a small bundle of cloth of some kind, seeming to have taken the worst of it, the entire lower half of his body seemingly drenched in blood, though seemingly not his own. There were also two corpses, one of which was a Yharnamite not unlike the four Draco had just encountered outside, with a deep gash across his torso. The other one could only somewhat be justifiably referred to as “human,” seeming more like an unusually tall, partially mummified corpse clad in simple robes. This inhuman creature was even worse off than the Yharnamite, having been carved in two at the waist.
Past the sundered corpse of this creature lay what would probably be a familiar sight to Draco, namely a Holy Blade in its giant form, its placement and bloodiness heavily suggestive of this having been the tool to kill the two fallen. And finally, standing in the far right corner with his back to the wall, was a man in the garb of the Healing Church, though whether it was black or white was rendered unrecognizable by the sheer amounts of blood he seemed to have been drenched in. This man, all color erased by a near-perfect coating of blood, stood defensively with his fists raised in front of him and jolted once more into a wary and defensive stance as his eyes came to rest on Draco.

The Prophecy

Jaelnec will probably try to find Aemoten (and Thaler), and Olan try to find Thaler (and Aemoten), heh. Trouble is, neither of them have any idea where Aemoten and Thaler went aside from "Zerul City," so chances are that they'll end up asking around the city together trying to track them down.

Night of the Hunt - a Bloodborne RP

You know, I was looking at the Bloodborne wikis and realized that I, without really meaning to, had fundamentally redesigned blood vials for the RP without really explaining this redesign (because I wasn't conscious of doing so). As a reminder, their design in the game was this:

Original blood vial design

Which doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me considering how Hunters use them (by injecting them into their thigh), unless the Hunter is actually supposed to take a bigger vial, draw its contents into a syringe and then inject themselves. Conceptually, the blood vials of the RP will mostly follow this design:

RP blood vial design

A small, narrow glass vial with blood, fitted first with an inner cap with a needle for syringe-like injection, and then with a second outer cap that shields the needle. If that makes sense.

Night of the Hunt - a Bloodborne RP

Eastern Yharnam, Hunter's clinic

As he went to seize the Messengers' scroll, Marcus' hand – much like Torquil's foot just moments ago – found no purchase, but seemingly just passed straight through both parchment and creatures without resistance. But the little ones not only seemed to not be bothered by the gesture, they seemed outright excited by it. Each Messenger eagerly grabbed one side of the ethereal scroll and, with combined effort, unrolled it and held it up as far as they could for Marcus to read.

The scroll bore little text, but what was there was written in exquisite calligraphy:

“Glance calmly upon the lantern's pale gleam,
and find safe haven within the Hunter's Dream.”

Night of the Hunt - a Bloodborne RP

Eastern Yharnam, outside the Hunter's clinic

The four bloodstained Yharnamites came to a stop when Draco stepped toward them, their wide, fearful eyes shifting from him to the strange weapon in his hands. The front-runner among them started to take a cautious step back the way they came, only to freeze when Draco's words reached them, their already overwhelming dread becoming discernibly more intense.
“The giant woke up?” one of them muttered to his fellows, while another two started looking around as if hoping for an escape route to spontaneously apparate in the vicinity. “Without the Speaker we don't stand a chance!”
The fourth Yharnamite, however, stepped to the front of their group and overtly sniffed in Draco's direction twice before seeming to calm down a little. He pointed back toward the building they had just come from, still looking at Draco. “A bunch of Hunters were fighting beasts in there.”

One of the three back Yharnamites ran to the front door of the house currently closest to them, tried the handle and opened it unhindered.
“We can hide here!” he said, and the other three started hurrying to join their fellow. Behind Draco, several of the civilians started hesitantly moving to join these strangers in hiding.