Jewels

(open) Beyond Humanity: Chaos Quarantine (Supernatural, modern fantasy)

She didn't know what the bartender was getting at when he suggested that there was a better way, but he had a kind manner about him. She turned so he could see her wound.

When he touched the broken skin, she winced, but she didn't pull away from him. She saw blue light in her peripheral vision and in an instant, felt all of her pain subside. She hadn't really expected kindness after yesterday, especially from a super-powered person, and it made her eyes tear up a little, though she didn't actually cry.

”Thank you,” came an incredulous retort. It was inspiring to her to see someone with a power that could be used to help others. She wished she'd gotten something like that. What she had control over... felt like an abomination. The bartender offered to get her a drink, and she asked for water. When she became emotional, she became less stable, so she definitely didn't want to see what inebriated looked like.

She happened to notice the woman at table three beckoning her over. Nicole didn't recognize the woman, but she stood anyway and made her way to the table, curious as to what the lady wanted to say to her.

“Hello, my name is Lilian Patterson. And you are?”

“Nicole Woods,” she said, dragging out her response a little almost like a question because she was surprised at the pleasant manner of the lady despite the circumstances they found themselves in.

“Nicole, it's great to meet you. It looks like you had a rough day yesterday.”

”That's a purdy fair assessment, yeah.”

“I work as a journalist. I say 'work' because I am trying to gather the stories of the survivors. I think one day it will be important to report exactly what happened here. I was hoping you might tell my something about your experience... Were you attacked by one of the Supers?”

”I... was, yes. He turned invisible.”

“And how did you get away?”

”An... old friend came to my defense. She died.” Nicole, of course, neglected to tell Lilian what order those two facts occurred in.

“I'm sorry to hear that... You and your friend, did either of you develop powers?”

”Yes.”

“It was you, wasn't it?” She didn't waver at all when she asked.

”Yes,” Nicole answered, forfeiting all plans of hiding herself. Lilian continued to look at her, and she decided to head her off at the pass and answer the question she would be asked. ”I can reanimate the dead.”

“And what will you be using that for? Self-defense? The greater good? Looting?”

”Look, I just want to go my own way. Mind my business... I don't want to hurt anyone. I just want to go home.”

“To the states?”

”Yes.”

Lilian smiled. “I thought so. Thank you for talking to me, Nicole.”

"Anytime."

All That Remains [Elle Santiago]

NAME Abigail Gunn

PERSONALITY
ALONE
When left to herself, Gunn is free to malfunction in any way she likes. If she has access to alcohol, that will be her method of choice. She is careful not to say too much about what she's thinking when she drinks. If she is “alone in a crowd,” she may get herself into a fight just for the sake of activity. She takes risks others might think idiotic. People might think that, frankly, because they are. Gunn is immensely self-destructive, with an addictive personality. She is something of an adrenaline junky, and has been a substance abuser in the past. She never progressed to hardcore drugs. Her drug of choice was painkillers – Loratabs in particular. These days, she'd hardly be picky. Nobody to live for but herself, and that's a person she has been at odds with for years.

INTERPERSONAL
The four possible relationships are enemies, acquaintances, lovers, and friends. Most people never leave the enemies, acquaintances, or lovers quadrants for Gunn. Lovers are not, in her mind, necessarily closer to her – beyond proximity – than acquaintances. Friends, now – those are a rarity. Enemies and acquaintances she has in abundance. Lovers... perhaps to an extent others would consider “abundant.” With other people, Gunn tends to be abrasive, harsh, and off-putting. She wouldn't hesitate to save a person's life, though. She is... good-hearted. But hard to handle.

MORAL CODE
Gunn wouldn't watch a person die, any person, without mounting a rescue attempt. After the immediate threat is quelled, though, it would be rare for her to take on any additional responsibility for the individual unless more danger presented itself. She feels too out of control to provide stability for anyone else, and the idea of failing them haunts her mind more than one would imagine.

Fighting, not killing, is a fair means of expression. If someone leaves with a bloody nose or cracked ribs, all is still good. Gunn intentionally seeks fights when she's particularly bogged down with thoughts, and so starting fights is perfectly alright by her standards. She wouldn't progress to killing, though, and when she fights for the hell of fighting, she engages only in hand-to-hand combat.

Gunn has a sense of justice. Anything she perceives as injustice, she will bluntly involve herself in, particularly if it involves a weaker or defenseless group. She will make herself judge and jury, even executioner, if she feels she has to. On the flip side of this, she will not act on anything that will break her persona. If it challenges her morality but interferes with her revenge, she'll overlook it... if she isn't doing it herself.

If it feels good, do it. That's her recent philosophy on life. She has no qualms about people being indiscreet sexually or any other wise that hurts nobody but themselves. Out for endorphins, she considers it, and everybody knows those are a scarce resource these days. Funny how much people pay for the drugs when the happiness was more a scarcity.

BACKGROUND
Daddy was a cop; mommy cut open dead people.

Hardly glamorous, but true. Abigail Gunn was born June 13th, 1985, to Samuel Gunn (29 January 1953 – 5 August 1998) and Charlotte Gunn (29 July 1956 - ?). Sam was a police officer for more than twenty years, and Charlotte was a medical examiner. She was born in Beckley, West Virginia, but this is a fact that she forgets later in her life... or, rather, in her death.

Sam was a quiet man, someone who often had nothing to say but the occasional guttural agreement or dissent to the conversation. The most part of his conversations with Gunn were instructions or corrections. Most politicians were lying bastards in his mind, and his television shows of choice were generally news or sports-oriented. Anything else he tolerated or snored his way through. He enjoyed gardening, growing things with his hands, and building things. Charlotte, on the other hand, was very talkative, predominantly about her passion. She almost seemed to lose touch at times, so engrossed in her puzzles of the human body, but Gunn was fascinated by her. They had a closer bond than she had with her father, if only because her mother was the more talkative and friendly of the two. While the world sometimes might have seen her as aloof and cold, she really treated her daughter as more of a companion than a child.

Her childhood was abnormal, to say the least. Where most children got the canned “stranger danger” speech, Abigail got photographs of very real, very dangerous men as part of their morning routine. Between Charlotte's dispassionate tales about a boy whose neighbors had killed him and locked him in a chest freezer and Sam's stories about taking down the absolute dreggs of human society, Abigail grew up a painfully aware young woman... but, not afraid. She had preconceptions about justice and the world. She didn't really feel like anybody was beyond the law, or beyond catching. She came to believe that justice would always prevail, basically, which was a very naïve expectation.

Charlotte and Samuel weren't the most social people. They had a circle of friends that consisted mostly of co-workers, and Abigail had an even smaller circle of friends consisting of the few children of that group. In her early life, she was a mirror of both Sam and Charlotte---the placid and quiet sort, and full of disturbing conversations. As in, they had a drawing of a boy she'd colored in violet aquamarine and a very passionately alarmed letter from her first teacher, so Abigail was encouraged not to communicate the things that she thought of most often in the earliest years.

One might think that her oddity made her a primary target for bullies, and they would be right. Young Abby had a very unique way of handling these situations, though. Initially, she tried to fight her own battles... then, later, she simply paid other bullies to handle her problems. In middle and grade school, this amounted to bribes of candy or maybe her break money. In high school, she spent her time with the people who were considered delinquents. If people thought her friends were rough, her boyfriends were real beasts. Some of her friends got her into martial arts and kickboxing, and after some time, she never needed anyone else to help her in her battles again.

Regardless of who she spent her time with, though, she had a straight aim to what she wanted. She wanted to follow in her father's footsteps.

In August of 1998, barely a month after Gunn's sixteenth birthday, her father had a massive heart attack. Her father had been taking Cumadin, a blood thinner, for the maladies his heart was affected with. The initial symptom presented as a nosebleed, with him calmly going to the hall and flicking on the light to see his way to the kitchen for paper towels. His hand was bloody from the initial reaction of feeling his face for the blood, and he left a smudge on the light switch. There were a few smaller droplets, perhaps indicative that he'd coughed on his way to the kitchen. Dots of blood on the floor showed the trail he'd taken. He was passing Gunn in the hall when he fell flat to the floor, smashing his nose open on the hardwood.

He hadn't had the innate reflex to bring up his hands to brace for the fall. It was what the funeral director described to her as a light-switch heart attack. He was dead before he hit the floor. After it was over, before the walls and floors were cleaned of his blood, Gunn slipped into the house to retrace her father's footsteps, to hover her hand over the bloody handprint on the wall. It was so surreal that it almost seemed he'd never been. She needed that, for some strange closure. She can still point out where the handprint was, behind the lamp on the opposite side of the wall from the light switch with the smudge of blood.

Gunn missed a week of high school, and was back, trying to act as if nothing had happened. She was plagued with bouts of random breakdowns, simply bursting into tears in the middle of conversation or in the middle of some mundane task---even when she didn't have it at the forefront of her mind. Her friends were quick to embrace her, to hold her through the moment, until she could choke down her emotions. Her father was her first true experience with mourning. She'd had other relatives die, people she had seen but didn't have that daily familiarity with.

The grieving process is a difficult one for everyone, and she was certainly no exception.

When Gunn graduated high school in May of 2000, she had a 4.0 GPA and was in the Beta and Spanish clubs at her school. She had been awarded a full academic scholarship to a New River Community College, where she pursued an associates of science in their law enforcement track. By the time she graduated in May of 2002, she was in all of the academic honor societies: mu alpha theta, sigma kappa delta, and phi theta kappa, for excellence in math, English, and general academics, respectively.

Abigail joined the police force in 2002. Her family friends were quick to get her on with the department her father had served all those years. After 8 weeks in police academy, she was on the force. It was largely uneventful, but she was proud to have accomplished it. If you'd asked her in first grade what she wanted to be, she'd have said a police officer. She was one of the few people out there who woke up every morning doing exactly what she'd wanted to do.

In late 2003, she was responding to a call. To make a rather short story even shorter, she was shot on duty by some meth-addict, left to die in her own blood. She used her radio to gurgle out her location, and against her expectation, she survived.

She went through rehabilitation to learn to walk again, pain management, doctors visits, surgeries, on and on and on the medical merry-go-round. She became addicted to the painkillers she was given. Loratabs. She was discharged after she was caught buying prescription pain pills illegally. The litigation really didn't matter to her; once she'd lost her way, she dove headlong into everything she could put in her veins.

All That Remains [Elle Santiago]

[SETTING DETAILS TO COME]

(open) Beyond Humanity: Chaos Quarantine (Supernatural, modern fantasy)

@Melo I'm still around! Have been moving into a new place and unfortunately caught a bad cold/flu. I'm getting better now though. Will work on a post today!

Seeking a Friend for the End of the World

bump

Let's B!tch. I feel it's a healthy release for our roleplay annoyances 2.0

Well, if it's in the interest of advancing the RP, then it's totally fine - but, otherwise, you're just being a dick.

@Mr Allen J

Oh, I didn't mean the story-telling aspect of it/generating events. I've seen mods make characters that didn't conform to the standards they'd set for no real reason other than they wanted it for personal use, and also roleplay scenarios that they'd specifically banned. For an example, I remember running across a site once where they'd banned mature sexual content, except the owner decided to break that rule in the public forum anyway... it was rather bizarre.

Let's B!tch. I feel it's a healthy release for our roleplay annoyances 2.0

@Shorticus

It's almost like you were there...

Let's B!tch. I feel it's a healthy release for our roleplay annoyances 2.0

I like the concept. Since I haven't really gotten involved in this community before, I'll talk about a previous one.

1. People who attach their ego to their character and become so eager to shine their character in an awesome light that they're unrealistic in abilities.

2. People who break character in RP because of OOC issues with a person.

3. When GMs break their own rules

(open) Beyond Humanity: Chaos Quarantine (Supernatural, modern fantasy)

She'd spent the previous day hiding in the alley way she'd found herself in, taking turns between having bouts of panic and mourning. She hadn't returned home for anything. At some point, she'd fallen asleep, but she hadn't really been aware of it. Honestly, it felt as if she'd been awake for days. She felt like a corpse; speaking of which, she could feel so many. They were in the building at her back and the one across the alleyway. They were in the streets. She was wearing a simple black t-shirt with a Deadpool symbol on the front and jeans, something she'd just thrown on to lounge around in so she wouldn't be in her pajamas the day before.

When she started into the streets, it was so quiet that she felt everyone had to have been killed. She felt like a wraith wandering down the streets, even among other people. Some were talking, but many were just reflecting what she felt, this silent realization that the surreal was their reality, carnage had come into their lives, and the prior day wasn't their end like it was for so many others. She knew better than they did perhaps, because she had this... sense of them, like they were doors waiting to be opened, senses waiting to be tapped into.

People were keeping a wide berth of the cadavers, and she flowed with them. She'd always found the accents of native people charming, for the most part, but now every foreign voice just made her feel that much more isolated. In a single night, the place she'd made into her home had become just another thing that was no longer familiar. The streets that she'd learned to recognize were transformed and sinister. It felt as if something terrible might be waiting to happen again, like the thin barrier between the peaceful passing of those moving through the city today to the atrocities that had rocked it yesterday might be pierced at any time.

She'd often wondered how people could stomach going about day-to-day survival when something this crushing happened, and it occurred to her that she was living it. This wasn't something she saw in the headlines in passing and felt sad for the people in a sympathetic but detached way. She was in the middle of it, and she felt nothing for the moment. She felt tense, but she had made it a stretch beyond terror and came to something else, something where there were no emotions, like her mind wanted to wait and save its energy to produce some more when something happened.

She saw soldiers, and they made her nervous. Surely they would put her down after what those others had done yesterday. It put her even more on edge to see them, like they could somehow sense that she was guilty of... well, technically her only real crime would have been abuse of a corpse, but she only used it for self-defense. She didn't know what they'd be doing, but every piece of media she'd ever consumed about the dissection of aliens came to mind. One of the soldiers glanced her way and she quickly looked down. Too quickly. Now she looked suspicious... fuck.

She heard a lady's scream pierce the silence, with calls of, “He moved!” One of the bodies had jerked as she'd lost herself to her fearful thoughts, and her alarm sent another spasm of energy through it. Some people scattered and a few of the soldiers began making their way over. She walked more quickly away from it. She was surprised to see a bar open as she turned the corner, and she hurried toward it, ducking inside quickly and pressing the door closed. A long breath later, she turned to see... a medieval tavern-themed bar. She hadn't really taken in the facade of the building, but there were people here. Living people. It looked like...normalcy. Well, normalcy in a bizarre setting.

It was strange but, in the setting, she felt at ease again... as if closing that door had shut out the soldiers, the world, and she had some divine permission to just experience a moment of ease. And she really, really wanted to.

She ran her hand through her short hair, narrowing her eyes when she found something that felt like a dry crust and felt pain. She pulled her hand back to find some dried flecks of blood that she'd gotten from her head. That's right... she'd been hit, hadn't she? She'd really almost forgotten in her... well, ruminating. That's what it was called: ruminating. She felt like she'd been marinating in fear and grief and self-pity. She'd make someone a quaint little misery roast, wouldn't she? Why did that thought even occur to her? Latent cannibalistic leanings? God she hoped there were no telepaths in the room, and when that occurred to her, she also inadvertently began thinking of all the things she wouldn't want one to know about her. Great, now she felt ashamed and apologetic on top of it.

She approached the bar, quietly drawling out, “Excuse me, do ya'll got a first aid kit?” Her accent came out a lot... twangy-er than she was expecting, but she didn't even try to keep it from hanging out like Bubba's beer gut. Sounding like a hick was really the last thing she was worried about right now.

Enigma: Dawn Of The Rebellion [Sci-fi/Fantasy]

Name: Shakti
Age: n/a
Attire/Appearance: At present, Shakti has no corporeal form. It appears as a dark featureless body in the shadows with shafts of pure light for eyes. Its frame is compact and, when fully in view, it rises to 7' tall. By the clean and brutally deep slashes it leaves on its victims, one might assume it has talons that most closely resemble finely-sharped blades. It moves inhumanly fast as well.
Race: Cursed Spirit
Gender: None
Occupation: n/a
Location: Within a 5' radius of Casara Talbot
A Brief History: Shakti's history is closely intertwined with men. Men seeking to make sacrifice to the gods overtook a small village whose name has been long forgotten, and they razed it to the ground. They murdered the inhabitants, and took a small girl hostage. She became the embodiment of their sacrifice: mutilated, brutalized, violated, and left to die on a makeshift altar in the middle of the carnage, covered in her own blood, and filled with hatred. It was for this broken being that Shakti first emerged, using her blood as a portal between this world and the next. It had a form then, a being with slate gray skin, like a living statue, with black-feathered wings in the form of angels the girl had heard of in stories long ago. It carried her to safety and left her high in an enclave amongst the cliffs. She was mute, but Shakti didn't need her voice to respond to her, only her deepest desires.

For all that had been done to his master, Shakti returned in kind, leaving the village in tact, and the entrails of its inhabitants in the center.

Shakti cared for its master until she passed away of her injuries days later. Unbeknownst to Shakti and its late master, the guardian had not slaughtered the entirety of the village. Those who returned to the horror cried for the blood of the demon that had accomplished it, and called upon their mystics to bind it. They found the summoned being at the site of the lost village, having just finished burying its master in her homeland. Their mystics cursed the being to a torturous other realm, where its essence would be twisted and its mind broken.

The story became legend, and the legend diluted by retelling. It was said that at a place of great massacre, sacrificing an innocent soul lost in her anguish would bring forth a great demon to enslave and use in war.

In a more recent time, the dark ritual prescribed was performed in hopes of gaining a weapon to use, though it was performed ineptly. They released the guardian spirit and it attached upon its new master --- whom they had not expected to be their intended sacrifice. Shakti was bound without full form to the girl, Casara Talbot, and avenged her before her eyes. It had lost its essence, though, and saw nothing but evil to slaughter in everything near it. Aeons of suffering had left it uncertain of its true nature, a spirit of justice and retribution, and it became instead a plight upon Casara, attacking anyone who came near by night, even tormenting her mind in its own suffering.

Other: At present, Shakti can only manifest close to its master, and only in shadow. Its master, Casara, has begun to tame it simply by her virtuous spirit, tempering a murderous rage and desire to fulfill a purpose it has forgotten.