Naril

Priest & Hawthorne Investigations - A Modern Fantasy Adventure!

Priest & Hawthorne Investigations

A Modern Fantasy Adventure

An introduction

The moon was a crescent of hard silver light the night Cameron walked into the aging room of his distillery and found a spider the size of a Volkswagen. There were other shapes nearby - coccoons, smaller than a person but not by so much that he thought he'd stick around and take a closer look. Cameron swallowed hard and backed out of the rooom, afraid that if he rolled the door shut he might wake the thing up. At the same time, though, if he left the door open, the spider might have an easier time getting out. Deciding that discretion really was the better part of valor, or at least of not being eaten at exactly this second, he walked backwards with slow steps past the threshold, back out into the night. Overhead, a sodium lamp cast harsh orange shadows over the rust-streaked exterior of the huge warehouse, lent only a little extra color by the watery headlights of Cameron's truck, which had been new sometime before the first time humans set foot on the Moon.

He pulled his phone out of his pocket and looked down at the screen, then back up at the door to the aging room. He called up a dial pad, but...who was he supposed to call? The police? Animal control? An exterminator? He imagined the last conversation and let out the first bite of a barking, hysterical laugh, something that yipped out of his mouth and bounced off the corrugated metal wall in a sharp spray of discordant echoes. In front of him, the huge spider shifted, one giant leg coming uncurled from the apparently-sleeping mass with an almost delicate motion. Cameron took a step back, the phone slipping out of his hand, panic welling up behind his eyes while he watched another leg unfold, opposite the first. No longer caring how much noise he made, Cameron scrambled toward his truck, out of view of the door, and started digging in his jacket for his keys.

He was well into dropping them for the third time when he heard another sound coming up the driveway, this time something more familiar. Tires crunched on the gravel road, along with...something else. Cameron turned away from the slowly-unfurling spider, raising one hand against the glare of another pair of headlights, the sound of John Denver's Country Roads wafting into the night. The lights resolved into another truck, just a little newer than his own, and it came to a sliding, skidding halt a couple of meters from the door, spraying gravel all the way to Cameron's boots.

The truck's doors opened and a handful of people piled out, stepping over one another in no particularly good order. In the headlights' glare, Cameron couldn't quite see who these people were, save for the driver, who stepped out and took the few paces over to the man with long, quick strides. He could just make out her blue-green eyes, the curve of a cheekbone, the cut of her tailored suit. She looked at him, then at the warehouse, then back, and she shoved a hand through sweat-dampened hair.

"Hey, so," she said, sounding almost a little sheepish, "I've got a weird question for you."

Cameron looked at the woman, at the shapes of people behind her, back at his warehouse. He tried to speak, but all that came out was a kind of squeak.

"Right," the woman said, "Look - this probably sounds ridiculous, but..." She took a deep breath and pointed at the building, "Is there a huge spider in there?"

Cameron gawped, a proper gawp, the kind that left his jaw hanging loose for a moment. It took him a long, long moment to get enough of his muscles under control to nod and point.

"Okay, thanks." The woman turned and gave a thumbs-up to the people behind her, and they came forward.

Cameron saw the group now, in the hard shadows of two sets of headlights. They didn't look 'official' - no matching suits, no coordinated gait, not even the same kinds of haircuts. One held a shotgun, another had something wrapped around his arm, three objects pulsing with white light orbiting it with no obvious connection to one another. The woman, though, his attention kept coming back to her. He couldn't help it, something he could no more resist than the pull of gravity.

"Who...who are you?" Cameron managed, after what felt like an eternity.

"Ah," the woman said, "...I'm Morgan. We're from Priest and Hawthorne Investigations."

Behind her, the spider had finished unfolding. It turned in place, its legs making the kind of thumping sounds on the ground Cameron usually associated with forklifts. One of the newcomers shouted, and the shotgun boomed. Cameron winced and fell against his truck, hands covering his ears. Morgan, for her part, stood steadfast and turned toward the warehouse. The spider shrieked, the sound almost louder than the shotgun. Morgan turned toward the warehouse, then looked back at Cameron. To her left, the metal wall buckled, and half a meter of monsterous spider-leg punched through and started slowly tearing the sheet metal toward the ground.

"I wouldn't worry," Morgan said, reaching into her jacket, "We have this perfectly under control."

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Hi there!

Welcome to the OOC thread for Priest & Hawthorne Investigations, a modern-fantasy RP!

In this story, the players will take the part of people working for the titular Priest & Hawthorne Investigations, a small paranormal-detective service operating out of Chicago. You are people from all walks of life, and have come to PHI by various means - maybe you're a police detective who couldn't overlook something that was obviously a monster attack, maybe you're a Real Actual Wizard but still need a way to make rent, maybe you're a park service ranger who's seen one too many Bigfeet. Whatever the reason, you're living in that liminal space between the mundane and the supernatural, and sometimes helping keep people safe from things that they never knew meant them harm.

The tone of this story is going to be along the lines of Hellboy, The Dreseden Files or The Iron Druid Chronicles, probably with a dose of Hellblazer, The Sandman, and because I don't believe in grimdark, Ghostbusters. Depending on what I'm reading at the moment, I'll probably toss different ideas into the pot, and I am also very pleased to hear suggestions and interesting ways to push on the world.

Priest & Hawthorne Investigations is a very small office, perhaps 10 or so people. The founders, Ada Hawthorne and Samuel Priest, are not often around, and the nominal person in charge is a large man named Sol - don't worry, there will be a list of important NPCs toward the bottom of this post. PHI has been a going concern for about 20 years, but you don't have to have been with the organization for that entire time, of course. Jobs are handed out by Sol, and how he gets them is a surprisingly normal combination of referrals, hearing about weird things going on in the area, and people calling PHI with weird problems - you are, after all, on Yelp.

I don't mean to scare anyone off, but I tend to have rather high standards for posts and characters. I'd like this to be quite a small group of people (maybe up to five, including myself), and it will not be first-come, first-served. I don't have specific roles in mind, but I would ask that you consider what makes a good team dynamic and a good story. I am, for example, generally not looking for silent and distant loners, violence-crazed psychopaths, vengeance-driven walking armories, or children.

Other than that, I'm not placing too many restrictions on characters - Fae creatures, Literal Actual Angels, or even Literal Actual Humans are completely welcome. I would caution you that I am personally fairly tired of vampires and werewolves, but if you impress me and make a good narrative case for yourself, I'm very easy. That's really the rule for most things - make a good case for whatever you want to write, and I'm not too hrad to convince. :3

I do have several story arcs in mind, but they're deliberately designed to be flexible and to allow the players to push on the world; I will rarely say "no, you can't do that," since the yes-and of collaborative storytelling is my favorite part. :3 That is to say that this is emphatically not a bring-your-own-adventure sandbox, although I am more than happy (and am expecting to) tailor the world for the characters in it.

Finally, to contextualize the introduction above, the RP starts on a night where PHI has been chasing reports of a gigantic spider across the city. It has, over the course of the night, managed to get away from you a number of times, either directly running away or, in one case, causing a different problem that you had to deal with instead. You've been tracking it (if one of you has a means to do that, great, otherwise I'm totally handwaving how), and appear to have cornered it at a distillery some distance away from the city proper. What happens next is, well, up to you. <3

And now, without further ado, the character sheet and other useful information!.

Character sheet!

Name:

Gender:

Race/Species:

Age (Real and apparent):

Appearance: Pictures may be worth a thousand words, but I tend to prefer written descriptions.

Personality: Broad strokes is fine, I don’t need to know every bawdy joke they like to tell. Please don't make this a bulleted list.

Powers, Traits, and Abilities: Let this cover supernatural powers, mundane skills, and whether or not they’re particularly good at Ski-Ball. Be brief but complete, and include at least one thing that isn't related to fighting monsters - a hobby or passtime, for example.

Background: I do not want a biography here. Write me a scene that tells me the important things someone would need to know about the character. This can be (for example), a police interview, a last will and testament, or if you can squeeze it down that far, a fortune cookie. If there are Big Secrets you don't want the other characters to know, that's fine, but I would like to know them so I can incorporate them into the story. Be direct, be oblique, but above all, be interesting.

Important NPCs!

Ada Hawthorne - One of the founders of PHI. She is a handsome woman that appears middle-aged, red hair threaded with hard, bright silver. She is not in the office often, and what she does when she's not around is also not entirely clear. Many supernatural creatures in the area seem to know who she - and her Investigators - are, and mentioning her is something that will open some doors and close others violently. Her name is the one on your paychecks.

Samuel Priest - The other founder of PHI, a man with silver hair tied in a tail and a full beard, who wears a bowler hat and the kind of vest that went out of style in the late 1800s. He is in the office more than Hawthorne, but his direct appearances are fairly rare. He will occasionally call in with jobs for the rest of the cast.

Shiloh Cooper - One of PHI's support staff, who is in charge of the company's archives. She organizes the various magical trinkets and artefacts Investigators have recovered, and files records of cases. The PHI Library is by far the largest room in the small office that PHI rents, and Shiloh is its mistress. Taking things without asking can be grounds for something far more serious than a dressing-down. She is approximately five feet tall with dark hair and bright blue eyes, and despite that gives a very strong impression that she is no-one to be trifled with.

Solomon (Sol) Roberts - A great bear of a man with a soothing, basso voice, Sol is the nominal 'office head' of PHI. He is one part dispatcher, one part investigator, one part administration, and in total, a very busy man. All of you have known him for as long as you've been at PHI, and it's possible his was the first face you saw at the office.

My character, Morgan Blackwood

Name: Morgan Silas Blackwood

Gender: Female (And female-presenting)

Race/Species: Succubus

Age (Real and apparent): Over 90 years old; appears early thirties

Appearance:

By any measure, Morgan is a striking woman. She is tall, though not quite approaching six feet in heels, with fair skin and a tumble of blue-black hair that falls to her shoulders, tied with a piece of leather cord into a loose tail. Large, blue-green eyes set off the wicked, elegant lines of her face, with sharp cheekbones and a strong jawline that stops just short of masculinity. Her lips, full and inviting, often tilt into an expression of playful mischief, at least when she's not concentrating on something else. She is possessed of a lean, dangerous figure, unmistakably feminine, and she works for it. Morgan moves with a long lifetime's practiced grace, a kind of lazy confidence shared with apex predators.

In her professional capacity, Morgan prefers well-tailored suits in colors that flatter her with contrasting, button-down shirts and slightly heeled boots. What jewelry she wears is typically studs in her many-times-pierced ears, and she has a pendant around her neck on a leather cord. Her shoulder holster is carefully concealed by excellent tailoring and body language, but there is only so much you can do to hide a handgun. Outside of her official capacity, Morgan prefers jeans, old band t-shirts and a battered denim jacket. For reasons that Morgan has only occasionally been truthful about, she has a rich, plummy, London-private-school accent.

Personality:

Playful, flirtatious, and apparently fearless, Morgan is a force of personality. She is gregarious without being boistrous, friendly but not overbearing, loyal, warm, and only occasionally viciously witty. She's kind of person you both love hearing stories from, and telling stories to - entirely without artifice, she is a perfect audience, gasping and all but applauding at exactly the right moments. She is, in general, collected under pressure, and responds to stress with humor and smart-assery. She is neither secretive nor open about the fact that she isn't human, but is careful with the specifics, depending on who's doing the asking. If pressed, she would probably identify as bisexual, but few enough bother to even wonder.

Powers, Traits, and Abilities:

By her nature, Morgan is a manipulator, through psychic weaponry, pheromones, body language and even the timbre of her voice. However, since she believes, at her core, in the primacy of free will, there are lines she will not cross and things she will not do; active choices made consciously out of a sense of responsibility and foundational to her sense of identity. She's not above using her supernatural allure to get a guard to focus only on her if another member of the team has to sneak into a building or to get a better deal on her cell phone plan, but she will not grab someone by the psychic brainstem and dragoon them into her bidding. Though she reins in what she is consciously, it isn't something she can entirely turn off - heads turn, and other supernatural creatures know she's there, and some of them even know exactly what she is by nothing more than the way she smells.

Morgan also possesses a psychometric talent, by which she can make physical contact with an object and discern important events from its past. These do not appear in a linear, digestable narrative, but rather take the form of often-abstract, disjointed visions that express important moments in the object's past, where it received or created a psychic imprint. These images are seared indelibly into Morgan's mind, and she cannot forget them even if she wants to, rendering this a skill she uses carefully.

She is remarkably hard to kill - nobody has managed it quite yet. She doesn't have a mutant healing factor, but her body is very resilient and heals more quickly than one might expect - something that has saved lives, and left her with several interesting scars. And, of course, extended stays in a recovery bed.

In the mortal world, Morgan is an FBI-trained investigator, though she no longer has any contacts with the Bureau. She has kept up on the world of modern technolgy in large degree, but she is not anything like a hacker or digital-forensics specialist. she can drive, call a Lyft, and order delivery with the best of any other mortal.

Outside of her position with Priest & Hawthorne, Morgan is a skilled belly dancer, an enthusiastic karaoke singer, and a vintage hi-fi enthusiast. She has a large collection of vinyl records (most bought at garage sales or thrift stores), and spends a lot of time on her couch, listening to music through a pair of very old, very nice headphones. She has a cat, who enjoys Morgan's music by sleeping on her stomach. She is not particularly good at Ski-Ball.

Background:

"Do you know what you are?"

Morgan lifted her head, tried to blow away the strands of hair stuck to her face. Almost every part of her hurt and the crust of dried blood above her left eye itched and her fingers were almost numb, but she managed to pull one corner of her mouth up in a wry grin.

"Special Agent Morgan Blackwood, FBI," she said, each word made sumptuous by her accent.

Another woman stood in the room, proud and glorious and terrifying. She let out a short huff, somewhere between a laugh and a sigh, and shook her head. Her long legs flashed, turning away from Morgan with the scrape of a polished heel on hard ceramic tile. She circled the chair Morgan was cuffed to, every movement a predatory stalk and dipped one long-nailed hand into her jacket. Though her vision was still blurry, Morgan couldn't help but appreciate the way every seam flattered the other woman, tracing and accenting her figure in smooth, dark cloth. The woman pulled something into the light, like a cigarette case. She opened it with a click, and the smell of spices filled the air.

"You're better than this, Sister," the woman said, now to Morgan's left, "We are so much greater than you know. You - we - were meant for such great things." She set something on the ground with a glassy clink, "And here you are, a pet monster. A nightmare on a leash. And happy to be there."

"And your way is better?" Morgan said, turning her head to keep her captor in view, "You're trying to sell me on Juliet's Path to Purpose and Happiness? I'll pass, thank you."

"You really don't understand, do you?" The woman, Juliet, sighed, "We looked for you for so long, Sister. You were the last piece of the puzzle, the checkmate play. But I suppose even we can't account for everything." She set something else down, a rustling noise, "I remember that night - the storms, the summoning, the ritual. But when we came to find you, there were nothing but bodies."

Morgan heard her stand, a few quick steps, and a voice by her ear, "Were those your first, Sister? Did you take them? Can you imagine that feeling, that thrill, whenever you-"

"No," Morgan interrupted, her voice ragged and hard. This close to Juliet, she could smell copper and salt.

"No? Then..." Juliet started, then walked in front of Morgan again. She considered, and then her expression broke into the kind of smile that starts religions.

"Ah...I see. The detective, the raid. It was their doing, yes? And then...of course." The expression became something that was not a smile, "She didn't complete the ritual - but that detective did. You have a conscience." She spat the words.

"They were madmen," Morgan said, her voice quiet, "Working with power they didn't understand. Connor-"

"Is that what you think?" the woman said, incredulous, "Is that what they told you? After all these long years - oh, Morgan."

Her voice softened to a purr, an inch from Morgan's ear, "I'll ask you again, and don't be cute with me. Do you know what you are?"

Morgan looked into Juliet's eyes, the same eyes she saw in the mirror every morning. She saw a certainty there, a depth of understanding, and it called to her across almost a century. There are questions you never really give up on, no matter how distant they might be or how foolish the quest to answer them, and a desire unlike any she'd ever known flared in her chest. She spat the words at the air, hurled them across decades.

"A mistake," Morgan said, "An unintended consequence. A predator."

Juliet pulled away, her expression almost triumphant.

"Oh, Sister, no," she said, chuckling, "That was no barely-literate secret society, luring members with promises of orgiastic rites. They were part of something so much grander than themsleves, a piece of a vast and intricate machine that even now coils across the world." Juliet started walking again, and enough of Morgan's vision had come back that she could see what the other woman was doing.

There were lines drawn on the floor, circles and points and arcs, careful paths of white salt forming sigils and runes. At the edge, a final line that finished the design, containing a figure of five equidistant points. Four of those points already had objects placed there, things that could only be ritual totems. Even in her battered state, Morgan could feel the power thrumming off them, her skin prickling. With a start, she snapped her head to Juliet, standing from placing the final object, and she realized what she was seeing - a Practitioner of the Art, walking deisul around their sacred circle.

"We are their weapons, Morgan," Juliet said, "Their harbingers. We prepare the way for...well. What comes after." She took a long, slow breath, her eyes closed in concentration, "The perfect point of the most subtle spear. What else motivates these mortals but their desires, their hungers, their lusts? The entire race comes with their own bridle and saddle, we need only take the reins." She looked over at Morgan, and crossed the lines of salt with care.

Juliet knelt, brought herself ot eye level with Morgan. Her eyes roved over her sister's face, and she brought one hand up to touch her cheek, cool fingers rough with dried blood. She leaned in with viper-strike speed, and Morgan felt the woman's lips against her own for a moment that lingered like a dying breath. Then she stood, turned, and took two long, delicate steps.

"But none of that is for you, I can see that now. Losing you will be hard, Sister," Juliet said, her back to Morgan, "But the arc of time is long. Another decade will mean little. And with-""

A small sound pierced every other sound in the room - a metallic click, then a rattle. The noise cut off Juliet's words like shears on thread, and time seemed to stop. Juliet spun, and her eyes met Morgan's for the length of an indrawn breath. Then Morgan exploded from the chair, her hair a dark comet trail, and she brought an arm dangling an open handcuff up, fingers clenched into a tight ball. Her fist connected with Juliet's temple, sending her sprawling to the floor with a sharp gasp, the designs beneath her spraying away in a chaos of tumbling grains.

Morgan spun, her shoes further scuffing the careful runes, turned to her left, eyes scanning in a frantic search. There, surrounded by its own tangle of magic, a dagger made of glittering black glass, the handle wound in rough twine. She lunged for it, her hand tingling where she brushed away another magical working, fingers wrapping around the handle in the skin of a second.

When she touched the weapon, Morgan felt a pressure against her mind. The dagger pulsed with history, with fable, with emotion and the weight of time. It dragged at her soul, her vision swam, and she nearly lost herself in that current. With an effort of will, she shoved the sensation away from her mind - there was no time to allow that connection now. She stood, started to turn back, then white light blossomed behind her eyes from a blow to the back of her head. It seemed her sister had recovered more quickly than Morgan had expected.

Morgan stumbled forward, her hands almost nerveless from the blow. She gritted her teeth, tried to swallow down sudden dizziness and nausea, and then she felt something else. Gasping, she managed to stand and turn back to Juliet, who stood with hand outstretched. Morgan could feel power flowing from her, something that should have been a crashing wave; a dark, vicious pull at everything primal and carnal inside her. But she felt all of it split and flow around her, something she was aware of but was not affected by. Morgan shook her head, and she met the other woman's eyes again.

"You really are one of us," Juliet said, her voice tinted with pleasant surprise.

Morgan straightened, stalked toward her, brought the glass dagger up in a hard, sharp punch at Juliet's side. She felt the woman's silk jacket part around the tip, the fibrous tearing of the blade through her skin, the scrape of glass on bone.

She watched her sister's eyes, found herself suddenly lost in those gemstone depths. She felt her lean into a sudden embrace, one arm around her shoulder, the other still wrapped around the dagger's handle. Morgan felt the power sluicing over her mind flicker and back away, but Juliet's eyes didn't waver. They were deep, intelligent, wicked, and when the other woman fell, Morgan found that try though she might, she couldn't pull her own gaze away. Only when Juliet's eyelids flickered closed did the world return, and Morgan realized she hadn't been breathing. She looked down at her hand, saw the blood dripping off her own fingers, and she swallowed against a hard lump in her throat.

A few more unsteady steps took her to the door, and she shoved it open. The hinges shrieked, the heavy metal banging against the wall. Her balance still shaky, she had to lean against the doorframe for support and she paused, her breatg ragged in her throat. She swallowed in a few gulps of air, then she heard a voice from ahead - familiar, with a deep Southern twang.

"Morgan?" Came the voice, "'Zat you?"

"Sam!" Morgan shouted, "Sam, I...give me a minute, I'm just down by the..." Her voice trailed off.

She came into Morgan's view with her pistol at the ready. Her shirt was open farther than Morgan had ever known it to be, the buttons torn, threads dangling. Her eyes were wide, her green pupils dilated, spots of color on her cheeks.

"Best get back in there, Miss Blackwood," Sam said, raising her weapon, "She's got plans for ya."

Morgan felt her shoulders slump. "Oh no, Sam. Not you, too," she managed. Then she stood, straightened, swallowed.

"I'm so sorry."

-----------

An hour later, Morgan pushed her way through another heavy steel door. She felt the oppressive humidity of a Georgian summer evening slap her in the face like a wet towel and in that moment, nothing had ever felt so wonderful. She pulled in first one breath, then another, her throat hot and sore, her body protesting from every muscle and joint. Groaning, she propelled herself away from the wall, digging in her pocket for her keys. They would know what vehicle to track, but Morgan had ben suspecting a day like this would come. She didn't have many options, but she'd made sure she had more than none.

She fell into her car with a hard puff of breath, started the engine, felt the air conditioner struggle against the boiling darkness. She had warned them. There were memos and emails and texts and lunch dates and screaming, arm-waving fights. They knew there were other things like her - myths given life, ghosts, and monsters from folktales. She'd known that eventually, those forces would come for the mortal world, for the Bureau, but they hadn't cared. And now, this.

The air conditioner finally started to catch up with the outside temperature, and Morgan felt the cool, dry kiss across her skin. It was time for something new. She had always looked for answers to other people's questions because she'd already known all her own answers. In the space of an evening, all of that had changed. She wondered if they would look for her, and decided that she didn't care.

With another groan, Morgan straightened, reached up and put the car into gear. She drove into the rising sun, and she didn't look back.

Please do ask any questions you have - I'm happy to answer! :3

Priest & Hawthorne Investigations: A Modern Fantasy Adventure

I'm still working on the OOC, don't worry my little ducklings. <3 That thread will probably be up Monday afternoon or evening. Can't wait to see you all there. :3

The Sunday Group

I am so here if you're wanting to continue. <3

Priest & Hawthorne Investigations: A Modern Fantasy Adventure

@HeySeuss - I'm intending for the story to at least start in a large American city that I haven't quite decided on, though right now the top contenders are Seattle and Chicago. That said, those are both cities that are extremely connected to other parts of the world through various means, so there's no real reason the action can't go somewhere else, or that characters need to start their lives there. :3

And @Penny - You did? Hoooo boy. You've already got alternate-universe Morgan...I'd be very interested in a corresponding alternate-universe Tragellan. :3

Priest & Hawthorne Investigations: A Modern Fantasy Adventure

Well, excellent. I’ll build up an OOC post here in a little bit! :3

Priest & Hawthorne Investigations: A Modern Fantasy Adventure

@Potclean - Great questions! To be brief:

- The story is set in 'the present,' or perhaps just a little bit in the future, if that ever really becomes a question.

- I'm fairly flexible with what toys the cast has access to, with the idea that they should be appropriate for an office of not more than about a dozen people that is not connected to a government or eccentric billionaire. I'm perfectly okay with something like a proton pack, but I'd have a lot of questions for Magical Batman. Really, this is kind of a 'convince me it makes good storytelling' and I'm pretty easy. That said:

1.)The Queen of the Winter Sidhe owes you a favor - This is very good. I want to know everything about you.

2.)You can call upon the spirit of an Elder God and level a city at a thought - I am less interested in this unless you make a very good case.

- The setting for the story, for narrative convenience, is fairly standard urban fantasy. The mundane and supernatural worlds are, by custom and practice, separate from one another. By and large, mortals go about their daily lives without worrying about magic and monsters. The precise status of the mortal and supernatural worlds can be transposed in large part from The Dresden Files, with a council of wizards, vampire courts, the Fae, but that's not rigid and precise. There may be an analogue to the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Development, or a competing outfit that's more Monster Hunter International than your spooky-gumshoe outlook, too.

Priest & Hawthorne Investigations: A Modern Fantasy Adventure

Priest & Hawthorne Investigations

A Modern Fantasy Adventure

An introduction

The moon was a crescent of hard silver light the night Cameron walked into the aging room of his distillery and found a spider the size of a Volkswagen. There were other shapes nearby - coccoons, smaller than a person but not by so much that he thought he'd stick around and take a closer look. Cameron swallowed hard and backed out of the rooom, afraid that if he rolled the door shut he might wake the thing up. At the same time, though, if he left the door open, the spider might have an easier time getting out. Deciding that discretion really was the better part of valor, or at least of not being eaten at exactly this second, he walked backwards with slow steps past the threshold, back out into the night. Overhead, a sodium lamp cast harsh orange shadows over the rust-streaked exterior of the huge warehouse, lent only a little extra color by the watery headlights of Cameron's truck, which had been new sometime before the first time humans set foot on the Moon.

He pulled his phone out of his pocket and looked down at the screen, then back up at the door to the aging room. He called up a dial pad, but...who was he supposed to call? The police? Animal control? An exterminator? He imagined the last conversation and let out the first bite of a barking, hysterical laugh, something that yipped out of his mouth and bounced off the corrugated metal wall in a sharp spray of discordant echoes. In front of him, the huge spider shifted, one giant leg coming uncurled from the apparently-sleeping mass with an almost delicate motion. Cameron took a step back, the phone slipping out of his hand, panic welling up behind his eyes while he watched another leg unfold, opposite the first. No longer caring how much noise he made, Cameron scrambled toward his truck, out of view of the door, and started digging in his jacket for his keys.

He was well into dropping them for the third time when he heard another sound coming up the driveway, this time something more familiar. Tires crunched on the gravel road, along with...something else. Cameron turned away from the slowly-unfurling spider, raising one hand against the glare of another pair of headlights, the sound of John Denver's Country Roads wafting into the night. The lights resolved into another truck, just a little newer than his own, and it came to a sliding, skidding halt a couple of meters from the door, spraying gravel all the way to Cameron's boots.

The truck's doors opened and a handful of people piled out, stepping over one another in no particularly good order. In the headlights' glare, Cameron couldn't quite see who these people were, save for the driver, who stepped out and took the few paces over to the man with long, quick strides. He could just make out her blue-green eyes, the curve of a cheekbone, the cut of her tailored suit. She looked at him, then at the warehouse, then back, and she shoved a hand through sweat-dampened hair.

"Hey, so," she said, sounding almost a little sheepish, "I've got a weird question for you."

Cameron looked at the woman, at the shapes of people behind her, back at his warehouse. He tried to speak, but all that came out was a kind of squeak.

"Right," the woman said, "Look - this probably sounds ridiculous, but..." She took a deep breath and pointed at the building, "Is there a huge spider in there?"

Cameron gawped, a proper gawp, the kind that left his jaw hanging loose for a moment. It took him a long, long moment to get enough of his muscles under control to nod and point.

"Okay, thanks." The woman turned and gave a thumbs-up to the people behind her, and they came forward.

Cameron saw the group now, in the hard shadows of two sets of headlights. They didn't look 'official' - no matching suits, no coordinated gait, not even the same kinds of haircuts. One held a shotgun, another had something wrapped around his arm, three objects pulsing with white light orbiting it with no obvious connection to one another. The woman, though, his attention kept coming back to her. He couldn't help it, something he could no more resist than the pull of gravity.

"Who...who are you?" Cameron managed, after what felt like an eternity.

"Ah," the woman said, "...I'm Morgan. We're from Priest and Hawthorne Investigations."

Behind her, the spider had finished unfolding. It turned in place, its legs making the kind of thumping sounds on the ground Cameron usually associated with forklifts. One of the newcomers shouted, and the shotgun boomed. Cameron winced and fell against his truck, hands covering his ears. Morgan, for her part, stood steadfast and turned toward the warehouse. The spider shrieked, the sound almost louder than the shotgun. Morgan turned toward the warehouse, then looked back at Cameron. To her left, the metal wall buckled, and half a meter of monsterous spider-leg punched through and started slowly tearing the sheet metal toward the ground.

"I wouldn't worry," Morgan said, reaching into her jacket, "We have this perfectly under control."

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Hi there!

Welcome to an interest check for Priest & Hawthorne Investigations, a modern-fantasy RP that I've been putting back together for a little while.

In this story, the players will take the part of people working for the titular Priest & Hawthorne Investigations, a small paranormal-detective service operating out of a large American city. You are people from all walks of life, and have come to PHI by various means - maybe you're a police detective who couldn't overlook something that was obviously a monster attack, maybe you're a Real Actual Wizard but still need a way to make rent, maybe you're a park service ranger who's seen one too many Bigfeet. Whatever the reason, you're living in that liminal space between the mundane and the supernatural, and sometimes helping keep people safe from things that they never knew meant them harm.

The tone of this story is going to be along the lines of Hellboy, The Dresden Files or The Iron Druid Chronicles, probably with a dose of Hellblazer, The Sandman, and because I don't believe in grimdark, Ghostbusters.

I don't mean to scare anyone off, but I tend to have rather high standards for posts and characters. I'd like this to be quite a small group of people (maybe up to five, including myself), and it will not be first-come, first-served. I don't have specific roles in mind, but I would ask that you consider what makes a good team dynamic and a good story. I am, for example, generally not looking for silent and distant loners, violence-crazed psychopaths, vengeance-driven walking armories, or children.

I do have several story arcs in mind, but they're deliberately designed to be flexible and to allow the players to push on the world; I will rarely say "no, you can't do that," since the yes-and of collaborative storytelling is my favorite part. :3 That is to say that this is emphatically not a bring-your-own-adventure sandbox, although I am more than happy (and am expecting to) tailor the world for the characters in it.

So, that's the pitch. The IC thread will very likely be the continuation of the introductory scene above.

Who's interested? :3

Resol'nare - How the Mando Boys (and Girls) Won the War [Star Wars]

Boats really should rock, Rin decided. Not too much, just enough to give you that quiet sense of motion and make it hard to stay awake. And a drink - a proper boat should have a drink. Then again, this was hardly a proper boat at all; the hum of the repulsorlift made that more clear than anything else. The hull was over a meter from the water below, and she could hear the occasional snap of an electric discharge from the lift pads. And, of course, to every side, the sound of a blaster turret’s power generator, the scent of armored suits, and a wire-taut tension she needed none of her unusual senses to feel.

She sat on a crate of spare ammunition, legs up over the speeder’s railing, leaning on the huge blaster emplacement welded to the back of the transport. There would be excitement in the fullness of time, but for now, the only sounds nearby did little else but lend texture to the quiet. Rin tilted her head back and pulled in a long breath of the heavy, wet air, and took care to listen.

“You think she’s really blind?” came a voice - a man, Krenna, young enough to make Rin feel nostalgic. He hadn’t stopped staring at her since Resol had introduced them.

“The fuck does it matter?” Another voice, this time that of a young woman, Soli. Modulated through her helmet, the harsh edges from her accent were rounded off.

Krenna made a dubious noise, “I dunno, just….you don’t think that’s a little weird?”

The sound of someone moving quietly in armor, “I think you’re weird, Krenna.”

“I’m just saying-” Krenna began, but then the whole boat shifted, tipping everyone standing just a step off balance.

Rin swung her legs off the railing, coming to her feet while the boat rocked with a second shockwave, stronger than the first, enough so that she could feel the heat of the blast on her cheek. The sound of explosions, fractured into a thousand muted echoes washed over the boats, startling small flying animals into the air with their own multifarious cacophony.

Rin could feel the way her crew’s attention snapped into focus, radio chatter streaming in through their commlinks in a sudden crescendo. The same sounds tickled Rin’s ear where the comm-link nestled, hers without the benefit of a helmet. Two assaults, the first big and flashy, the other doubtless to become so, but only one that really mattered. Rin took a last long breath, letting the taste of moss and green leaves linger in her mouth before she spoke.

“Mister Krenna,” Rin said, “Ahead full, signal the other boat to follow at ten meters’ distance. I want the cannons ready to fire by the time we clear the breakwater. Soli, on the cannon controls, and wait for my command to open fire.”

The two nodded and moved with the competent speed that only comes from long practice. That swiftness of action should have been reassuring, but it was taking a considerable amount of Rin’s willpower to not get lost in the details of the life, the purpose swirling in coruscating arcs about her charges. This wasn’t the first time she’d been surrounded by people filled with the kind of purpose that Mandalorian training could bring to bearm and the last time hadn’t gone well for anyone involved. Memories made sour by time and distance threatened to burst anew, and that was something nobody could afford at the moment.

Instead, she focused her attention on the world ahead of the boat. They picked up speed, but the steady stream of sodden air past her skin did little to pull the sweat away. The boats were quiet, but there would be guards at the Sultana’s manor, and they wouldn’t be friendly. The boat tilted beneath her, coming around a stand of gnarled trees. At the same instant, or even before, Rin shifted her weight, wrapped her fingers around the boat’s railing, and closed her eyes. Her world shifted, changed, her awareness no longer centered only on her body.

Chaos, panic, pain, fury, precision - everything Rin could feel swirled in an ugly maelstrom. Ghosts of sounds swept by her, the thrum of weapons, the crunch of a thrown fist, a dozen different orders. Pain, too, crackled through her mind, fractal and branching. It should have been overwhelming, part of her wanted it to be. But instead, Rin picked the pieces out that she needed, letting everything else slide through her mind like water through a net.

The boats shifted again, rushing up to the manor’s breakwater with an eerily quiet speed. Rin spent another moment in her reverie, then pulled her awareness back to herself with another effort of will. She unwrapped her hands from the railing, looking straight ahead, her hair lashing behind her in the slipstream.

“Soli, get the cannon hot,” Rin said, and raised one hand, “On my signal.”

Another rising whine, this one of the blaster’s power supply coming to life. Even at the prow of the speeder, Rin could feel the heat coming off the thing. A few seconds later, and the boats cleared the breakwater, engines still whirring at full speed.

Rin spoke the instant they were past the breakwater, “Turret ahead, twenty meters to starboard, take it down while they’re trying to figure out where to aim.” She dropped her arm, the signal to fire, and the world exploded, torn apart by the sound of heavy blaster fire.

“Target down,” came Soli’s voice in Rin’s ear, “But they damn well know we’re here now.”

“Pull up to the dock,” Rin said, “Keep the blasters hot, that won’t be the last time we need them.” She turned, pointing to the crew of the other boat, “Keep a pilot with the boat, the rest of you, with me. Krenna, Soli, shoot anything that even smells Imperial.”

She paused, “...And blow a hole in the wall while you’re at it, we may as well take some of the heat off Resol and the boys.”

The boats swept up through the harbor, moving with comparative freedom - the docks had been made for luxury ships and pleasure cruisers, and provided more than enough space for the pair of overpowered transport skimmers, though they crushed a few timbers coming to a stop. Rin hopped off the railing, heavy blaster bolts roaring past her, the sound of shattered masonry filling her ears. Dust rolled in a cloud and she couldn’t help but cough, but that was no barrier to knowing what lay behind the wall. Half a dozen manor staff, heavily armed, standing with what could only be an Imperial stormtrooper. Through the smoke and billowing dust, she could see them coming to their feet, hands grabbing for weapons.

Rin reached to the small of her back, pulled out her stunstick. The snap of it clattering out to its full length came in counterpoint to the shattered pieces of wall settling against themselves, underlined by the quiet buzzing of the electrode at its tip.

“Walk away,” Rin said, “This isn’t worth your lives. Please.” Her voice was a command, clearer than a bell and loud enough to made her own ears hurt.

The men behind the wall looked at one another, then to the stormtrooper. Rin couldn’t see behind his helmet, but he could see the way his thoughts gathered about him, and she was ready when the man raised his weapon. She ducked, the blaster bolt coming close enough to her head that it burned a lock of her hair, and launched herself at him. Behind her, Resol’s troops raised their own weapons, the sharp reports of blasters tearing the air anew.

The first bolts went wide, of course they did. The dust hadn’t entirely settled, and there were too many targets, too many things moving too quickly. Rin strode forward, her legs swallowing the short distance between her and the knot of manor guards. Another shot and she spun, moving like a dancer, another bolt flying past with a finger’s width to spare, her pace never slowing. With a viper-quick motion, she grabbed the trooper’s weapon by the barrel and forced the barrel up, her ears assaulted by the noise of another blaster bolt. The trooper made a noise somewhere between a yelp and a gurgle, and Rin twisted at her hips, yanking the man off balance and throwing the weapon behind her with a clatter.

She brought the stunstick up in a hard, sharp jab at the joint in his armor between the breastplate and his helmet, meant to leave the man a quivering puddle on the ground. But the trooper had been well-trained, and he recovered quickly, sweeping his own arm down and deflecting the strike, the electrified tip of the stunstick skittering over his armor. In the skin of a second, the trooper pulled a short knife from his belt, and he punched it toward Rin’s side. Her feet still planted, she shoved hard at the trooper, felt him tip past his point of balance, and felt the hard, but blunt, impact of the trooper’s armored forearm rather than the knife. The man fell to the floor in a clatter of armor, and Rin took a step forward.

In that quiet fraction of a second, Rin could see that to either side, a pair of the other manor guards had fallen, shot by Resol’s troops. Another was apparently running, having thrown his weapon behind him; the gods alone knew where he thought he’d get to. The trooper, though, grunted, and started to shove himself to his feet. Rin kicked at the hand that held the knife, a movement bringing the power of her entire body along with it. She felt bones crunch at the blow, heard the knife go clinking away across the manor’s floor. This time, the stunstick found its mark, and Rin shoved it hard against the trooper’s neck, until she knew he wouldn’t be bothering anyone until long after they were gone.

Another blaster bolt, and one of the remaining manor guards collapsed in a heap, weapon spinning out of his hand. Rin was only a couple of meters away, and she saw the guard look at the pair of Mandalorian warriors, then at her, and swing his elaborately-engraved rifle toward her. One of Rin’s charges was reloading, and the second missed her shot, the bolt going wide of the last guard. He was too far to close the distance before he could pull the trigger, and too close to have any expectation that he could miss.

Rin’s arm moved with the kind of speed that seemed like it might produce its own thunderclap, a hard, fast overhead arc. A piece of a second later and the remaining manor guard screamed, his left arm going numb at the impact of Rin’s thrown stunstick, his shot hitting nothing but air. At the same moment, Rin yanked her own sidearm from its holster, brought it up in her free hand, and split the air with a final bolt.

Rin holstered her weapon, walked over to the man she had just killed. She swallowed, leaned down and picked up her stunstick, only now realizing how hard she was breathing, how her heart was pounding in her ears. She collapsed it, but didn’t return that to its holder, keeping her fingers wrapped around its familiar shape.

“You two,” Rin said, pointing at Resol’s troops, half-swallowing a breath, “Make sure the rest of the docks are clear. I don’t think there’s anyone out there, but we should check anyway. Be ready to get back on the boats once Resol gets here, the less time we’re near this place, the better we’ll be.”

Without waiting for acknowledgement, Rin brought her hand to her commlink, pressing the transmit button. “Docks secure,” she said, “And we made you a new exit, too, if you get lost. If-” Her voice trailed off.

There was something else coming. Something that made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. With a start, Rin looked to the sky, her head twisting to the decoy attack.

“Fighters!” She yelled into the commlink, “Fighters incoming, coming from the east!” She swallowed, and made her way back toward the dock proper, “Resol, hurry it up, we’re about to have to deal with air support.”

All Together Now (Superhero Team RP)

Wow, the week got away from me.

Writing this evening and tomorrow. I'll be out of town starting on Friday, but I'll be somewhere with great internet access and very few things occupying my evenings, so.

Symphonis: Three Part Sci-Fi Adventure

The idea and the pedigree of others expressing interest have piqued my curiosity in a big way. :3