Fetzen

Dark Streets - Urban Fantasy Noir

Othen turned on his heels, his attention having been drawn by the calm voice that had addressed him from behind. By the latter he could already tell that this was no other policeman, but someone else. However the gargoyle wasn't prepared for the sight of that particular man and one could quite see it written in his face even with only a basic understanding of body language. The clothes, the cigarette, the gold around his eyes... As silently as he stood there the guy was crying out 'I'm a snob!' loudly.

Othen made a step back -- not out of respect for the probably several thousand bucks clinging to the body of this man, but for the sake of his own lungs who wouldn't be fond of inhaling any smoke. Only after a little more time of inspection the gargoyle was actually able to identify whom he was talking to with great certainty: Sadjic. It was like adding another massive layer of slime onto an already quite respectable one. He tried to find a decent answer that wouldn't make him slip on that.

"Something tells me it might very well not be you."

He spotted the even more pompous vehicle, it's driver looking as if waiting for his client to return.

"Looks like you're busy and in a little bit of a hurry, aren't you ?" Othen continued, his eyes' focus returning towards Sadjic. "It happens I am as well. Would it disturb your schedule too much if you made a slight detour and dropped me off at my place ?" Othen knew that his request was close to complete bullshit. Not even the average businessmen would offer a ride to half a stranger that spontaneously, but the way Sadjic had spoken it was pretty clear for Othen that it essentially was Sadjic requesting for him to get into this car. At least Othen hoped so... He could already sense a bad feeling rising inside him.

Santa Celia: Coast to Coast

Here's my application. Please note that I'm not entirely happy with the faceclaim and it thus might be subject to change (if not ordered anyway), but I hope that's not the priority here.

Hider

L A Z A R U S

_______________________________________________ Rókur Gjanarsson _______________________________________________ 10.03.909 | 30(1) | Caucasian _______________________________________________ Unmarried | ♂ | Male _______________________________________________ Largely uneducated | Sanitation worker _______________________________________________ Physical Profile ___________________________________ [+] //Basics: • Height | 6'-10" • Weight | 302 lbs • Build | Very massive • Hair Colour | Reddish • Eye Colour | Unremarkably gray Miscellaneous Items ___________________________________ [+] //Notes: (1) Not accounting for the time in which he has been 'dormant', or effectively dead in other words. 'Lazarus' is the name of a biblic man who has been called back to life by Jesus several days after succumbing to a severe illness. It's not like Rókur would have thought about this kind of nickname himself, but instead it has been given to him by his friends. Note that the (artistic) faceclaim is not my own intellectual property. However I had to rescale it in order to make the sheet's layout work, thus why it doesn't reside on its original host. //Paraphernalia: ▼ Bow and quiver It seems incredibly aged and is no match for a modern firearm in terms of rate of fire or impact energy, but just looking at arrows so sharp and dark as if they were black holes forged into that particular shape makes one's heart feel impaled. ▼ Ritualistic garment Thick, coarse cloth drenched in red dye and decorated with gold and runes. Stylish in its own way, but what kind of person would wear such ?

Appearance Details ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ Rókur's skin is unusually pale, often leading to people referring to him as a vampire either jokingly or seriously. While it appears perfectly young and smooth there are a few fine scars on both his face and other parts of his body. He prefers keeping his hair long, maybe even as long as it can get, and in a rather chaotic state. The latter can't be said about his beard which is accurately braided and cut in defined lines along his chin. The general outline of his frame is impressive: Scratching at no less than seven feet in height he is capable of sticking out of the crowd. He's not perfectly lean as a fully trained athlete would be, but obviously a large lot muscularity has taken precedence over a small, though not invisible amount of belly fat. When he's not in his civilian work dress he prefers clothing as simple as possible: A woolen or synthetic sweater is as fine as work pants are. However he usually wears another set of clothing underneath the upper layer that can't really be seen until he deploys his Path In The Void ability. Personality ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ The outside observer could easily discount Rókur as a brute. Indeed, on first approach, he is very prone to appear as a not so nice person, but those not fended off by this demeanor are more likely than not to break through the hard outer shell and discover the large amount of insecurity inside of it: Rókur's issue are not bad manners that would be intrinsic to his person, but the fact that so far he lacks experience to do much better by today's standards. Of course he could explain himself in detail, but towards the vast majority of people that's not a real option. So he has to come up with cover stories, more often than not spontaneously which can make a bad situation even worse. He is prone to leave people behind with more questions than they had before. Rókur is a tenacious individual, meaning that a number of odds needs to be stacked against him in order to make him abandon a plan that has already been put into the execution phase. However this doesn't mean that he'd be particularly stubborn: While in the creative phase of decision making he is quite open-minded towards the different alternatives and happily participates in discussions. Brutal violence has been a very successful approach for a major part of his existence so far, but he has been given sufficient knowledge to see that times have changed and other approaches are preferable more often than not. It still is sometimes difficult though: Taunted or insulted properly or in a desperate situation he might fall back into very old habits and virtually go berserk. It would not be the first time for him make a local pub need an entirely new set of furniture... Rókur's intelligent and capable of grappling with rather steep learning curves, but suffering from the lack of a teacher.

_{Character Synopsis
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A long time ago in a land far, far away...

Things didn't go well for neither the scots nor the norsemen in 10th century England. Æthelstan, king of the anglo-saxons, had driven the latter out of York in 927. A mere decade lader his armed forces did the same in what would later become known as the Battle of Brunanburh, a massive onslaught whose outcome effectively put an end to the first attempt of vikings to colonize Great Britain. Most of them were slain, but a small number survived and made a hurried escape further northwards. Along those was a man called Rókur, an impressive warrior that had suffered a major blow, but could still run. He never reached Norway though, but died from gangrene even before leaving English soil. To his honor the effort was made to bury him on site. Since then Rókur was supposed to rest in his hastily constructed burial mound, but noone could see and check if things were going alright below the earth...

A year prior from now

Vladimir Kondratyuk was – and still is – someone who can deem himself very much upper class in Santa Celia. Situated close to the upper end of wealth and power he can afford a lifestyle that suits his need for extravagance and luxury. He's a lover of art and antique, but pratically noone has a true idea about how far his network of smugglers, thieves and other criminals actually stretches out in order to keep his residence as exquisite as it reasonably can be. Or probably also more unreasonably... The man had already an aegyptian mummy on display in his home, along with pretty much all of the objects found along with it. By the time he had set his mind for 'expansion' towards other regions, cultures and historic times of the world.

He had organized for a special delivery to be retrieved, wrapped up and put into a maritime container to be delivered to the US. The ship's destination was the Pacific Port of Santa Celia which not only helps in keeping the metropolis supplied, but also larger parts of California around it. The operation went perfectly smooth until the vessel approached the east coast. Only two dozen miles away from the city a distress call was received, yet by the time coast guard and other local authorities arrived at the scene there was radio silence. With the ship still moving it couldn't be boarded in time, causing it to crash into one of the docks with engines still running at cruise speed.

Officially the carnage of steel and concrete at the size of many million bucks was sold as a 'series of technical malfunctions, leading to loss of control' to the general public, but behind the scenes the follow-up investigation found proof that this was not what had happened. Modern freighters are giant monsters with a comparably ridiculous small number of civilians on board, assembled from different nations depending on who's the cheapest bidder. The majority of these men were found hiding themselves somewhere deep in the bovels of the ship, but a few others were found dead with no visible injuries. Instead they all seemed to have found a natural death, but according to the records none of the crew was particularly old or had known, severe illnesses.

Of course, utilizing his widespread connections, Vladimir kept track of the event since his special delivery was still on board that ship. He naturally was quite worried about its integrity, so he bribed, threatened and cheated his way back into the equation as soon as possible and went on a search of his own. He found the container in question completely intact and still sealed standing on deck, but as it was unloaded and opened in his backyard it turned out that the most important part, somehow, had gone missing. It appeared to him that Santa Celia, already known for unique abilities to occur in people, had triggered and woken up something extremely rare that had already been lingering for over a millennia. Almost needless to add that this was very much to his concern: Losing a very pricey asset that apparently had turned ghost and could now do nothing but spend its time in Santa Celia, probably completely overwhelmed by the situation while very well knowing the concept of being harmful. His shady business had picked up its own dynamics that could both reveal it and come back to haunt him.

In the meantime, Rókur did not know anything of this. He was facing different issues, the primary one being that over thousand years had passed since he had been able to see, hear, smell and posess any kind of consciousness for the last time. Whatever kind of world that was around him -- it didn't seem to be Valhalla. To his luck though the streets in this more industrial part of the city were rather populated by trucks than densily crowded by passenger cars or pedestrians. Ignoring traffic lights and plenty of other rules of the modern world he spent days roaming around cluelessly, just barely hovering below the threshold at which people would start to call in the cops. His strong magical presence invoked others though...

The tourists picked him up, or rather they arrested him in a sudden assault. The decision had been made to get him off the street before anyone else with more malicious intentions could do it. After all, disposing of him in a lethal manner still was an option if he would not cooperate in any way. On the other hand a massive mutual exchange of information about the past and the present would give their 'client' a real chance. Faced with means of containment Rókur could not escape from he was forced to listen and to try to understand what these people had to say.

Present

To say that trying to get Rókur up to speed was a laborous and more often than not rather difficult undertaking would be an understatement, but within roughly a year at least the basics of surviving in the US could be achieved: Speaking modern English (though with a severe and strange accent), essential societal rules, papers that would identify him as a legal immigrant to the US. Even a job, even though it's a more lousy one. He doesn't need much money to live. The lesson that there were alternatives to attacking people -- for the sake of his own long-term survival -- was probably the most important thing though. Alternatives nobody would care or even mourn for.

At this point the next logical step was to 'release' him onto the streets, letting him walk on his own again. That doesn't mean that he doesn't have to do anything with The Tourists anymore though. There's still a more or less loose bond between him and them, with the latter rather taking a bit of a supervising role.

_{Abilities & Skills
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_//Abiliites:

▼ Path In The Void

Old sagas tell of revenants being able to leave their burial mounds by means of 'swimming' through stone. In Rókur's case this has come true, though not exactly this way. Instead he can suddenly disappear into a thin cloud of dark mist, completely disconnecting himself from the world as we know it. In this state he does not interact with matter or energy, denying him the ability to use any of his senses in order to notice what his going on in the ordinary world or to grab, move or attack anything. He can't use The Ravages Of Time or any magical items either. On the other hand this is a mutual effect: He can't be detected, moved or attacked from this plane of existence or blocked by obstacles. Any stay in the void is merely limited by his need to 'eat' which cannot be satisfied there.

► Limitation(s)

Entering this special state is not the issue, nor is it staying in there. The problematic step is returning to the ordinary world since, ironically, it involves a lot more very mortal physics than he can easily compensate for.

The first issue is that, at re-entry, his body has to displace whatever matter is occupying the spot where it happens in a very, very short amount of time. The outcome of this struggle naturally depends on the sturdiness and density of the object in question. In the case of a solid wall there will be a very violent explosion along with Rókur's immediate death. A solid body of liquid is more survivable, but will result in severe damage to flesh and bones alike. Smaller objects like chairs or otherwise not too massive pieces of furniture will cause injury, but are survivable. Gas like air on the other hand is very light, can dissolve in water and be vented slowly afterwards. However this process consumes time. For this reason a burst of maybe half a dozen events within a short period of time is okay, but anything more will have increasingly unpleasant side effects. Also he should know the layout of any building he moves around in prior to doing so.

The second problem is that he cannot accelerate, decelerate or change direction of movement while being in the void, simply for the lack of anything to push against. Thus any momentum required to actually move has to be gained prior to entering the void and (if necessary) be gotten rid off after exiting it. For example, in order to travel upwards, he has to jump and then enter the void while still being on the ascending part of the jump.

The third limitation is that he naturally can't hold on to any object, be it worn on his body or held in his hands. While this can be very benign in the case of burning gasoline on his skin or handcuffs around his wrists it is much less so if he wants to take any piece of equipment with him. There are two exceptions to this rule though: His bow and his garments, essentially the items that have been put into his grave, had over a thousand years to become infused with his magic.

► Weakness(es)

Disabling his legs and arms will render him unable to pick up momentum before entering the void, thus forcing him either to reappear at the same place he disappeared at. Also, even if mobile, he can't escape from prisons too convoluted with obstacles for him to re-enter anywhere safely. Aside from this it is possible to figure out that he always goes in a straight line, allowing to move oneself while he can't see anything so it is less dangerous when he reappears.

▼ The Ravages Of Time

Time is the worst enemy of almost everything, but it passes by at a rate of merely one second per second. While technically not messing around with that, Rókur can still amplify the ubiquitous forces of decay and add quite a touch of his own to them. The precise effects depend on both the object in question and the circumstances, but a rough classification can be provided.

People and animals will at first experience non-physical effects: A cold sensation encroaching upon them, the feeling that one's throat is cording up. None of this is really happening, but it increasingly feels as if. These psychological influences will disappear immediately if the exposure to Rókur's influence is stopped. If not the second stage will set in and induce a state of increased physical exhaustion, leading to a gradually increasing reduction in the affected individual's strength, speed, stamina and reflexes. This is fully reversible in a more or less short amount of time, depending on the individual's state of training. Continued exposure after this stage however will allow for real damage to occur. Bones will become brittle and break much more easily, tendons might snap and any wounds sustained by other means will likely be more severe than they would have been otherwise while those already existing are prone to be torn open even wider. This stage can also be fully recovered from, but it takes time comparable to healing out 'conventional' wounds. If exposure should still persist after this stage has been passed the victim's doom is pretty much imminent: While being unpredictable for Rókur, he can count on some kind of organic malfunction or infection to ultimately kill the target.

Using his magic in this manner also serves as food for him: He virtually drains life itself. This doesn't have any boosting effects, but satiates his hunger and is a requirement for his regeneration process. However it allows him to notice if he actually hits a living object or not. For example he can probe an adjacent room for the presence of individuals without having to visually inspect it. Walls do not stop this kind of magic.

Material and technology on the other hand does not have any feelings, but nonetheless can fall victim to him. One can literally see rust growing on previously blank steel or fatigue cracks growing in solid concrete until they have lost the entirity of their mechanical strength. The latter is not important to electronics, but these are dependent on components working properly and not drifting away too far from their original specifications. What kind of malfunction will appear at the end of the process again is unpredictable, but the system will ultimately be out of service and in need of reconstruction. The strength of the material or complexity of the system to be affected has no influence on the required duration.

► Limitation(s)

The spell works in a limited volume of space, usually just about large enough to encompass the entirity of a human, that is projected to a specific location. The range of this projection is several yards at best. Also, since the methods employed against them are so different, Rókur can't act against living and inanimated objects at the same time.

While consuming far less time than they originally would, the ravages of time still take a while. It is magic uncapable of delivering a 'quick fix' to any kind of hostile or otherwise dangerous situation. As a rule of thumb one can say that going through all four stages requires roughly 15 minutes, either in one go or as a series of shorter exposures, provided that there's no significant opportunity for the target to regenerate in between. The magic has to be cast actively, consuming the majority of Rókur's attention while in use.

The third limitation is that, at least as far as material is concerned, there is a 'bottom end' at which further decay and decomposition is not possible. A barricade made out of small pieces of rubble or an earth wall for example cannot be affected. One can't burn ash any further or grind what's already dust to even smaller pieces.

► Weakness(es)

If one pays close attention to one's feelings one can detect being exposed to his magic at an early stage and try to get some distance between oneself and him. If this is not possible immediately one can at least do it while still being in the more easily reversible phase of his attack. Giving oneself a bit of time will then effectively reset the clock, allowing to jump back unharmed into action subsequently. As far as technology is concerned the best way to avoid his success is to have a good security network with systems that allows for fast response times before critical parts have been weakened critically. After all one could blow up structures using explosives or other tools of demolition as well if there's enough time as well.

▼ Nonexistant metabolism

Some major functions and metabolic pathways in his body are no longer relevant for his survival. The most important ones are burning calories with oxygen and the circulatory system. This has several beneficial effects for him:

• While he can still breathe in order to make people happy and prevent them from calling the emergency services it is a purely optional activity, allowing him to stay under water much longer and in greater depth than usual or to survive in a vacuum.
• Non-magical poisons, infections or drugs do not have an effect.
• He can survive wounds others wouldn't such as injury to his heart or piercing of his lungs. The method required to definitely kill him is decapitation, either by indeed cutting cleanly through his neck or by utilizing the means of the modern world than can blow up a skull in its entirity, such as very large caliber guns.
• He can regenerate from any non-lethal injury such as regrowing limbs, but this happens at a non-extraordinary rate. Lack of 'food' (his definition thereof) will prevent this process from functioning properly just as it would with an ordinary human body.

► Limitation(s)

The most important thing to know is that Rókur, by no means, is resistant to pain. A pierced lung or heart might not stop him 'mechanically', but the pain caused by such kind of injuries is bound to impair him very severely. Of course this also allows for him to be tortured.

While they are driven magically, Rókur still needs his muscles and the bones and tendons attached to them in order to move. Damage to these structures will impair his movements just like with any ordinary human. Also his senses are still coupled to their respective body parts: Burnt skin will disable the sense of touch, stabbed eyes will make him blind and without a nose or ears it will be much more difficult to collect these kinds of sensations.

His special way of existing does not come with any kind of supernatural enhancements with regard to strength, agility, reaction time or stamina. He can't run out of his non-existant breath, but physical exertion induces other kinds of strain that need time in order to be recovered from. Also, because conventional medications do not work, his regeneration can't benefit from modern medicine. If anything at all specialized magic must be applied in order to boost his regeneration process.

► Weakness(es)

Killing him is not something that can be achieved with a single blow by most standard equipment, but standard equipment is enough to work one's way towards this goal with a little outside the box thinking. By reducing his ways to escape the remainder becomes much more of an academic question. Aside from this many things like poisoning either by injection or by gas are situations that don't occur often in everyday street life, as violent as it might be. If someone really wants to pull things off that way modern technology has brought stuff that still can do the trick: Acids for example.

_//Skills:

▼ Archery

A skill from the past where this technique still was one of the primary means of battle or acquiring food. He's not a dramatically oversized Legolas, but still very good at it.

▼ Forging

Another skill that modern machines have taken over or made obsolete for the better part of it, but nevertheless he is able to craft new arrows or repair/reforge his equipment if it should be damaged or destroyed.

▼ Profound historical knowledge

Not really a surprise, is it ? If any high school or university would be willing to hire him he could very well become prominent with regard to his knowledge about the era he comes from. First hand experience is always the best.

_{Supporting Cast
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▼ Adam Schwarzschild

An austrian university teacher and professor with a long-running career of studying superhumans. He applied the scientific methods of his time, trying to explain what was going on with those special snowflakes instead of fearing them. One of his findings was that superhumanism does not necessarily become symptomatic at birth, but frequently only manifests itself in later stages of a person's development. His conclusion was that there is a significant fraction among the superhuman population that learns out their respective abilities as a surprise and that this might make them much more prone to psychological instability, especially in an environment that more often than not behaves hostile towards them. With his advice not taken seriously by those organizations that already existed he decided to help build up a new one: The Tourists. He was one of their founders, focusing on the superhuman side of things.

▼ Vladimir Kondratyuk

An industrial tycoon who also is a weirdo and a lover of art. He bribed his way into local politics and also utilizes his money to control a more or less extensive network of criminals in order to satiate his special kind of cupidity. He lives in an almost ludicrously large and expensive residence in Paradise on the Water with probably more than just one panic room.

---

Edit history
07.01.2018:
- Changed text color
- Changes to backstory in order to substitute The Sanctuary with The Tourists
- Some rewordings in order to clarify powers
- Removed original duration constraint from Path In The Void

The Five Senses

Sounds great.

The Five Senses

@Pezz570 When is this going to happen, very roughly ? IC I mean, of course :)

I'm wondering because there's also the idea about how to alert the nation of touch and if it will happen before or after the crucial moment of signaling.

Santa Celia: Coast to Coast

*starts taking notes*

Hider

Proposed supernatural ability: Spawn arbitrarily sized spank plank out of nowhere. Spawn arbitrarily sized nails out of nowhere. And a hammer! A BIG hammer!

Possible weakness: Is always worried that the ability might not work or produce unstable results, thus has a bad habit of testing the thing using noone else than himself each time he uses it. Is kind of a controlling freak and enjoys pain to a significant degree. Now unfortunately experience has proven that most victims can escape happily before this post-spawn self-test is over.

Limitation: It doesn't work without a companion in the first place. With three limbs nailed into place it is impossible for him to handle the hammer in order to get the job done completely, so someone else has to do it!

Santa Celia: Coast to Coast

Victim ? For... erm... what ?

Santa Celia: Coast to Coast

@Lord Wraith I've been 'stalking' this RP for quite a little while now. I know the join status says 'apply', but the CS-tab says that there currently are no less than four characters in the pipeline. Even with subtracting those who obviously are no longer I'd still like to ask if this is still open at this point prior to start working on a character ?

Into The Dark: Tales of Maroleth

I think we should slice off the Mantiraus' head and carry it back to the village. There's no snow there at the moment, but maybe we could put it up on a flag pole as a sign towards the drow!

And I wouldn't be opposed to more snow in this RP XD

Into The Dark: Tales of Maroleth

"We would be a humble shame of a patrol if we'd stop doing our job now that it has become easier than it was before!" An-Hasst's natural light-footedness had allowed him to listen in to the conversation well before reaching it and he wasn't afraid of telling his opinion. "I mean that beast seems pretty dead by now, so unless they grow children a lot faster than a bunch of mice there should be one less out there by now, shouldn't it ?"

The Skayleigh had not seen anything like this before, but at least he could put up a good excuse with his homeland being situated at almost the opposite end of the world. Carefully he inspected his bolt that was still sticking out of the creature's neck, blood all around it. It certainly had done its job -- the question was if it would be able to do it again. He started pulling strongly, ripping out even more flesh as the barbs put up the intended resistance. Then he put the bloody thing into his bag. Only after a decent cleaning one could tell if the supporting structure had suffered any fractures upon impact or not.

An-Hasst crouched and took a breath, inhaling the smell of the Mantiraus. "Who is the fastest of us ? Maybe it would be a good idea to send someone a little further ahead to give more pre-warning time." Of course there were the drow to consider as well, but they could ambush a single person from range as easily as they could ambush an entire group. The only increase in danger lay in the possibility of getting captured he thought.

@POOHEAD189@Gardevoiran@The Fated Fallen@BCTheEntity@Stormflyx@Mortarion