Dark Jack

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

Industrial Ward, Southeastern Yharnam

“Spare? Uh...” Gregory turned and looked to the man at the workbench toward the back of the room, a spindly fellow who looked to be even older than Gregory himself, possibly in his seventies. “Jayden, you have a knife you's not usin'?”
The even older worker named Jayden rummaged around his table for a bit before eventually producing a small carpenter's knife that looked thoroughly neglected and worn, its edge dull and its blade dotted with red spots of rust.

While that was going on, Gregory remained focused on Ophelia's questions. “Offerings? I don't think so, miss Ophelia. She hunts her own food, she does, and she doesn't take anythin' from here. She mostly just wants to be left alone at the mountain. Her and the Crow Hunter.”

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

Industrial Ward, Southeastern Yharnam

Looking up intending to visually inspect the inside of the roof, Ophelia instead found herself looking at a ceiling that was much too low for that, suggesting that the workshop might have a second floor or an attic of some description. Regardless of why it was, it meant that she would not be able to spot any damage to the roof from where she was.
“Ain't nothin' brave 'bout it,” the blacksmith chuckled, absentmindedly scratching his cheek with his left hand and leaving large smears of soot. “We's gotta work 'round here to earn our keep. 'sides, beasts don't usually come 'round here... nor do Hunters.”
“Oh, uh, pleasure,” he replied awkwardly when Ophelia introduced herself, apparently struggling to think of a proper and polite way to respond. “I's Gregory. Pleasure.”
“Gettin' to the roof... well, we's got a ladder lyin' 'round ya can use. Don't know why the city-folk treat ladders like they has to be stuck in place-like. Should be long 'nough to get up there.” He pointed toward the back of the room, where a somewhat flimsy-looking but serviceable ladder was lying up against the far wall. “Might be a bit dirty, though. Hope ya don't mind.”

“Crowmother...” He mused, speaking the word slowly and thoughtfully, as if trying to formulate how to tell them about it. “She came 'round here maybe seven-eight years ago? We's all scared out of our minds at first, of course; she's huge, she is, as tall as ten men, and ugly as sin. We thought she was just another man-eatin' beast, but she talks and acts like a person... mostly at least.” He shrugged. “As long as we don't cross her or her babes she's gentle as a lamb, I swears, and she keeps the other beasts away. Even the big one stompin' on our roof was no match for her! She's real clever, too, she is. Without her, we'd all been eaten by beasts a hundred times over.”

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

Industrial Ward, Southeastern Yharnam

The old blacksmith reflexively took a step back when Ophelia entered the building, in part intimidated by the realization that his workshop had been visited by not one, but multiple Hunters, and in part because she was carrying a huge glowing sword. As impressive as something like that was even to other Hunters, it was something from the realms of impossibility in the eyes of regular civilians such as this one.
The three other workers kept working, though they clearly slowed down quite a bit and tried their best to overhear the conversation.
“Right, right,” he muttered, his tone almost apologetic and clearly submissive. “Aye, we heard plenty. Obv'isly everyone heard tha' big ol' beastie howlin' like a randy tomcat earlier, but we heard even more, we did! Damn thing came 'round here and went stompin' 'round our roof! T'was so loud, we thought t'was gonna break and come tumblin' in here. Had us holdin' our breath, it did. Even killed a few o' the crows, stupid mutt. Pissed Crowmother right off.”
He turned to Farren. “The talismans keep monsters away. Crowmother taught us to make 'em.”

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

Industrial Ward, Southeastern Yharnam

Saying that Farren's attempt at picking the lock “worked” was probably a potential subject of debate. While he did indeed succeed in manipulating the tumblers of the simple mechanism on the door, the tip of his Blades of Mercy – a weapon that occupied an awkward middle-ground between dagger and short sword – was no lockpick. The lock was indeed opened, but it was also likely damaged sufficiently in the process that it would be incapable of being locked again. By technicality Farren did pick the lock, but he also broke it.

As the door opened and Farren entered, weapon in hand and alert for threats, he found the interior of the building lit not only by several lanterns, but by the dull glow of a lit furnace. Four men were working in the room various tools of the trade, one tending to the furnace, two sharing an anvil and banging a small glowing metal blank into shape, and one was sitting in the back at a workbench, though at this angle his body covered whatever he was working on. It took a couple of seconds before one of the men at the anvil – a balding fellow in his late fifties by the looks of it – looked up from his work and noticed the invasion, and immediately stepped away from his work to approach them.
Initially he walked toward Farren with a firm, steady stride and a firm grip on his blacksmith's hammer, but then his eyes narrowed as they found the Blades of Mercy, then the Bulwark and the Beastflayer and finally the pistol. His nostrils flared once as he sniffed intensely, only for his weathered features to turn pale at the realization of who – or rather, what – had just entered the building.
“Bloody shit,” he said, the aggression draining from his voice and posture alike. “Ah, eh, g'evenin', master Hunter. Fancy seein' one o' ya 'round here. How'd you...” He glanced at the door. “You could've just knocked, you know?”

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

Industrial Ward, Southeastern Yharnam

“I guess so,” Torquil said, somewhat surprised at suddenly being consulted on anything, despite the thing he was asked being something as personal as simply whether he was coming or not, which only he could answer. He was mostly just uncomfortable with everything at the moment; uncomfortable with how things had worked out with Victor; uncomfortable with the smell here; uncomfortable with the crows watching them; uncomfortable with people working nearby even though a huge fight had obviously just happened; and, needless to say, very uncomfortable with the giant beast that had reportedly been killed by an even bigger beast.
Part of Torquil thought that he had maybe seen some of the worst Yharnam had to offer when the Mad One killed him, but now, looking at the corpse of the cleric beast and hearing what Moira had to say, he just wondered how much worse it would get. Even the beast that was already dead and was no longer a threat looked huge and insanely dangerous, to the point where Torquil would not even have known where to start fighting it. Chopping at its knees with his axe while trying to avoid getting pummeled to mush? Having seen it for himself, he definitely understood why Victor had been so opposed to fighting one. It looked terrifying.

With that out of the way, their little seven-man group started splitting up. Moira began stalking through the mist further southward, while her Black Church Hunters started heading back north to leave the Industrial Ward. Farren, Ophelia and Torquil headed back to the factory where Farren had discovered the scattered crow feathers.

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

Industrial Ward, Southeastern Yharnam

Moira looked to Ophelia. “No reason to call on Dietrich yet. Still don't know what we're dealing with. Might be overkill. Might not be enough.” She turned back to her Hunters. “You head back. Go hunt something else. I'll stay a while and survey the area. See if I can learn more.”
All three Black Church Hunters looked at each other for a moment before Liam took a step forward. “We can help, Mother Moira.”
But Moira shook her head. “I'm not hunting, I'm scouting. Not going to fight. One person can hide better than several.”
She turned back to Ophelia. “I don't see the little ones anymore, no. I see other things, but not them. If you need me, your best bet is at our workshop. But I'm not like Dietrich. I'm not a logistics officer, and I'm definitely not a politician. I'm a Hunter. Also technically a priest, but that's not worth much around here. I'm most useful when I'm out hunting. I'll resupply at the workshop.”

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

Industrial Ward, Southeastern Yharnam

“Can't say that I have,” Moira responded to Farren's question, walking off to examine some of the gashes carved into the ground. She laid her Impaler on the ground next to her while reaching her hands into the crevice – for the clawmark was wide and deep enough that both of her hands could comfortably fit in there – before picking up her weapon again and walking over to the enormous feather. “I agree, though: the one who did this was not human. Whether it is beast or something else...”
She crouched by the feather to examine a small puddle of blood. Again she set down her oversized spear, only to this time take off one of her gloves as well to dip the tip of her index-finger in the blood. She spent a moment rubbing her index-finger against her thumb, feeling the texture of the blood between them, before raising it to her face and sniffing deeply... only to raise her visor and lick her bloodstained fingertip.
“Definitely a beast,” she finally asserted, lowering her visor and retrieving her weapon before standing back up. “Big. Bigger than this one.” She gestured to the dead cleric beast. “Probably the biggest beast I've encountered. Too big. Too many unknowns.”
She turned to her Black Church Hunters. “We're aborting the hunt. We need more information. Probably more Hunters, too. Maybe ask Dietrich for help.”

While all of that was going on, a pair of Messengers appeared in front of Ophelia and held up a scroll for her:

Hi Ophelia!
That's amazing! Of course I'll definitely want to meet you as soon as possible! I'll finish up what I'm doing and head straight for the Hunter's Dream! This is so exciting!
With love,
Gerlinde

Message to Ophelia

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

Industrial Ward, Southeastern Yharnam

Farren and Ophelia quickly discovered that trying to find Moira was no simple task, of course; she and the Black Church Hunters had all been swallowed by the misty night as they spread out the same as the environment. Going around searching for them for a little while, Farren – and perhaps Ophelia as well – might find that as they got near other buildings lining this street in the Industrial Wards, they would find doors and windows similarly warded as the ones at the factory. While Farren did not find any more instances of the ground being strewn with feathers, they did find more corvid skulls hanging in windows and mounted on doors, all marked by that very same symbol. While neither of them knew what the symbol meant, Ophelia would be able to intuit that they were almost certainly Caryll Runes.
Looking up as they traversed the street, they would also find more crows perched on the edge of every roof they could see, simply sitting there and watching them in silence. A couple here, half a dozen there, sitting in small groups huddling and fluffing their feathers against the chill of night, though not even a faint breeze seemed to disturb the mist around them.

It only took a couple of minutes before a voice cut through the stillness surrounding them: “Hey, guys! I think I found something!” It was Liam shouting, his tone sounding somewhat unsettled.
Going toward the sound, and toward where it sounded like everyone else's footfalls were headed, lead them further south along the street some fifty meters or so, at which point the cobblestone under their feet gave way to bigger square stone tiles, arranged neatly in such a way that each tile was turned just slightly at a different angle than the last, making them draw a soft curve... and, assuming the space they were entering was large enough, likely draw concentric circles. They seemed to have entered some kind of central square of the Industrial Ward. It was difficult to gauge just how big a space it was due to the mist and darkness, but judging by the echoing of sound, it was probably sizable.
As they kept moving, they soon came upon cracked and crushed tiles in the ground, then ones that had been ripped clean out of the ground or split by something sharp dragging across them with tremendous force. They were signs they were quite familiar with, as they had seen damage to the cobblestone that was quite similar back where Skinner had fought Stefan and the church giant... only these were marks left by much bigger claws. Some of the clawmarks were as much as six meters long and looked like they carved deeply into stone and soil alike.
Additionally, they finally came upon the kind of things Farren had originally intended to look for. Blood was spattered on the ground here quite generously – far more of it than a human could feasibly lose and continue to function optimally – and they found large clumps of long, tangled grayish fur. But just as notable as the fur were the feathers lying about. In terms of shape, color and texture, they seemed very reminiscent of crow feathers... except they were much too large to be from a crow. Some of the regular feathers looked to be a good half meter long, and the single wing-feather they saw – which was hard to miss – was nearly three meters long.

Continuing onward another several steps, they came upon the mangled corpse of some kind of furry creature. It looked to be a little larger than a human, but beyond that it was rendered unrecognizable from some manner of immense impact having squished it into the street. Another couple of steps, and they found one that was easier to identify: a fully transformed lupine scourge beast, colloquially called a lycanthrope... or werewolf. Though less mangled than the first one, this one was dead nevertheless and missing the entire lower half of its body.
A scant few meters further, and they would join Moira and her Black Church Hunters standing at the base of a statue. It was about three meters tall and depicted a well-dressed man on horseback, his steed frozen in mid-gallop, with one arm raised above his head with a saber ready to strike. It was difficult to tell details, though, since most of the statue was covered in blood from the creature impaled on the statue's weapon. This one was unlike the two other corpses nearby, firstly by being much, much larger – somewhere between seven and eight meters tall – with long, powerful limbs, huge claws and a forehead and snout covered in some manner of bony plate that extended off into a couple of long, asymmetrical antlers. The stone saber had pierced it through the back and out the chest, leaving its body slung over it with its limbs splayed out every which way, completely motionless.

“That's what we were hunting,” Moira announced, sounding mildly surprised but otherwise unfazed. “Seems it's not just the smell.”

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

Industrial Ward, Southeastern Yharnam

While Moira and the Black Church Hunters started spreading out and searching for any signs of a beast having come through the area and where it had gone, Farren began his own careful examination of his surroundings. It was more awkward than he might have expected, however, since just standing in one place and visually scanning the area around him turned out to be unfeasible at a certain point due to the mist and the darkness. Once he tried to look at the ground more than four meters away it became difficult to tell details from the contours, and eight meters away the world was completely swallowed by foul-smelling fog. Standing in the middle of the road he could just barely see the faces of the buildings nearest to him at ground level, but anything further away than that – their neighbors to the sides or the roofs above – was impossible to examine from afar.
Thus the initial bit of investigation proved quite unprofitable, as all he managed to do was confirm that the road immediately around him was indeed a road with no traces suggesting that something unusual had come through. As he moved on to the next phase and started walking around, thus shifting the sphere of reality that was perceptible to him, new areas became available for examination while others vanished into the gloom.

Moving between a parked carriage and a small cart, Farren approached the building on one side – a tall, dark-walled factory of some sort – and explored this new area. Quite surprisingly it did not take him long to find something once he got there, though it was not quite what he had expected. Rather than noticeable scuffs, cloth, fur or blood, he instead found feathers. The side of the street here was strewn with several dozen fairly large black feathers. Drawing on his experience, Farren would likely know this to be crow feathers, and that the way they were scattered suggested that the bird had been taken by a predator. The sheer amount of feathers suggested more than one bird, though. And whatever had caught them had either taken them all away somewhere else to eat them, or had eaten them without spilling so much as a single drop of blood.
Looking at the doors and windows, Farren would find that the people of the Industrial Ward had some rather unique decorations... though the way they were deployed made them come across much more as talismans. While each point of entry to a building did have a lit censer, it also had what appeared to be a crow's skull mounted on doors or hanging on a string in windows, each one with the same symbol drawn on its forehead.
Now closer to the buildings, Farren could also finally look up and pierce the mist far enough skyward to see the edge of the roof, only to find that he was being watched, too. Up there he saw a handful of crows – normal sized, flight-capable ones, not the swollen, deformed ones afflicted with the scourge of beasts – perched on the edge, staring at him with black, beady eyes.

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

Industrial Ward, Southeastern Yharnam

“Huh.” Moira turned to look first at Ophelia running over to the lantern and then Farren coming over to light it, since he was the only out of the Paleblood Hunters that had seen how. “Can't say I ever came here while I was bound to the Dream. Don't know if there was a lantern here back then. Wonder how the Gatekeepers choose where to put them.”
She paused, looking skyward for a moment as if to confirm to herself that none of them could actually see the sky through the dense mist seemingly shrouding this entire area. “Actually haven't been here since I first got to Yharnam. No reason to. Beasts avoid the Industrial Ward. Probably the smell. Wonder what made this one come here now.”
Finally, Moira turned to her Black Church Hunters. “Spread out and search, but stay within shouting distance. Look for signs. Tracks. Report anything you find immediately.”