Penny

The Sunday Group - Paranormal Detectives

Sure go for it! @trashcann

At Stars End

“An excellent notion as the operation I have in mind will require a drop ship pilot,” Keene all but crooned. Mave struggled to resist the urge to glance sideways at Gnash. The Maddie had two small armed dropships that served as tenders and couriers. Each could carry a crew of about ten, perhaps fifteen if they were good friends. The vessels were capable of short jumps, though they had nothing like the range of even a small corvette like the Maddie. Mave couldn’t imagine where his mind was going with this but she was fairly confident she wouldn’t be much pleased when she discovered.

“As you are both such excellent, and dedicated officers,” he simpered, “I cannot imagine you will have any difficulty convincing Khan Zang, to release our citizens.” Mave didn’t react at first, not because she didn’t understand the words, but because they were so outlandish they refused to fit together in her mind. Tiypo Zhang was the self appointed Khan of Lout Shai and by all reports a psychopath as well as a savage. Lout Shai had an official treaty of friendship with the Arcadian Union, though that had been signed several revolutions ago. Lout Shai had been a Hegemony Possession at some point, but even before the war the Terrans had grown so tired of being shot at by every clansman on the planet they had simply pulled up stumps and left the place to rot. Unfortunately for the newly liberated Lout Shai, the only thing holding its fractured clans together had been the Terrans, and with the mutual enemy gone, they turned all their guns and unspent savagery on each other. Settling blood feuds was as common as breathing and the only thing as certain as the fact that one blood thirsty tyrant would fall was that the next one would be worse.

“Well Sir,” Mave began carefully.

“I’m sure that with an AU corvette above his city…”

“Ah you misunderstand me Lieutenant,” Keene interrupted, positively glowing with malice.

“The Madame De Pompadour, will not be accompanying you. It is going to take us a further four days to rebuild starboard thrusters 2 and 3 and I feel this matter cannot suffer that delay.”

Mave gaped at her captains words. The Khan might have been cowed into aquiencence with the presence of a warship in orbit, but he was certain to be afronted by a single dropship with a dozen armed sailors aboard. He would have them strangled with their own guts. Belatedly she managed to close her mouth a heartbeat before the Captain could comment on her shock. The AU would take a dim view of its officers being killed, maybe even send troops to topple the regime and install a puppet government. That might even be the idea behind the whole hairbrained scheme, and though Mave supposed she was a patriot, that certainly didn’t extend to dying in order to provide a pretext for the diplomats to justify the occupation of a backwater.

“We could…” Mave began but she closed her mouth. Nothing she suggested now, while the Captain’s blood was up, was likely to garner a useful response. Instead she merely nodded.

“We will gather a crew from the on duty watch at once Sir,” she replied instead. Keene’s grin grew even deeper and his face took on a falsely gentle rebuke.

“Now Lieutenant, the on duty watch hasn’t had a chance at shore leave yet, recall a party who have already had some fun.”

“Yes Sir,” Mave replied, doing her best not to clench her teeth. Rousting drunken spacers out of brothels and bars and chivying them into a crew would neither be quick, nor pleasant and her name would be mud with spacers for yanking them away from their good time.

“I’ll expect you to be lifting within the next four hours Lieutenants,” Keene said with a final self satisfied smirk.

“You are dismissed.”

Mave followed Gnash out into the hall way and down the companion way till they were well out of ear shot of the bridge, then she slumped against the bulkhead. Pain stabbed up her side from the bullet wound.

“We are so fucked.”

At Stars End

“Ah Mr Gnash, so good of you to join us at last,” Captain Keene drawled mockingly. He was a spare man, six feet and with slightly pudgy features that belied his preference for heavy diet and the lessening of physical activity that came with his rank. His retreating scalp and bulbous nose gave him a vaugle canine look that matched his personality perfectly. Keene was an older man in his late forties who had spent the entire war out here in the outer territories while other officers gained promotion and acclaim in the central theatres. He resented fate, he resented the navy and most of all he resented his two Lieutenants, both of whom had seen action enough during the war to earn themselves postings in the much downsized peacetime fleet. Though his remak suggested they had been waiting for some time, Mave had only preceded Gnash by a few seconds.

The bridge of the Maddie, as the crew nicknamed the ship, was ten meters wide and roughly circular. A raised dais with ring of consoles surrounded it save for the foremost section which housed a high definition holographic display. A star ship had no need to see the space infront of it, as manoeuvring room was theoretically unlimited and the sensors provided better data orders of magnitude greater than what the naked eye could hope to gather and naval architects saw no need to expose a ships COC behind so flimsy a shield as glass or transparent steel. The holographic viewport was remoting the feed of one of the sensors and displaying a pixel perfect replica of the view from the dorsal A sensor battery that was located directly above the bridge. It showed the harbor of Paradise and a section of the town beyond, twinkling with lights that rippled off the sea between the quay and the docked starship.

A trio of officers were at their stations, though all save the XO, a sour faced man named Halberstadt, at least pretended to be preoccupied with their duties. They were in a safe port with a developed harbor and a rudimentary orbital watch, so those duties likely consisted of catching up on paperwork or personal reading, mostly they were just there because the regs required the ship have at least a minimal anchor watch. Halberstat was an unpleasant man, though his hatred was more general and thus somehow more bearable than Keene’s.

“Well I see we have a spacer pretending to be a marine and a marine pretending to be a spacer,” Keene drawled, evidently very pleased with the jibe. Mave bristled at the barb but kept her face professionally impassive. She had started out her military service with a vacuum commando unit, an elite force intended to board ships in orbit, or to undertake other sensitive zero-g operations. Vac commandos had alot of the same technical skills as spacers, though they tended towards the technical side for sabotage and capture of enemy vessels. Mave had been good at the job, good enough that she had been given a slot in an advanced OCS designed to fill the leadership vacuum in a rapidly expanding war time fleet. Mave had jumped at the chance, hoping to return to the Vac Commandos as an officer, but her scores at OCS had shifted her into a signal intelligence program that pushed her onto a career track in the regular fleet. Despite a number of conscious and unconscious attempts to get busted back the VC, here she remained. Keene certainly knew that and was using it to twist the knife of his own petty grudge.

“Sir,” Mave and Gnash spoke at once in an the identical fleet response, the refrain of the put upon junior officer dealing with the abuse of their superiors. Keene looked slightly disappointed at the lack of reaction.

“You are my operations officer are you not Ms Cyckali?” he asked, abruptly beginning to pace back and forth in front of the two Lieutenants.

“Yes Sir,” Mave responded, keepng her eyes locked on the hatch combing of the starboard entry port rather than following the stalking Captains progress.

“Ah, I see, and as my operations officer is it not your duty to inform me of any operational developments?” Keene sneered triumphantly.

“Uhh.. Yes Sir..” A sinking feeling was very rapidly balling up in her stomach. Keene produced a hard copy sheet and waved it around like a victorious battle flag.

“Then how does it come to be that I learn that an AU citizen has been taken prisoner on Lout Shai, from the officer manning the comms station!” Though he had started the sentence in a reasonable tone, he was screeching by the end of it. Mave very deliberately told herself that whatever she did, she should not say she was in the infirmary.

“I was in the infirmary sir,” her traitours mouth declared without missing a beat

The Sunday Group - Paranormal Detectives

@trashcann

I only have one character submission so far so absolutely!

Tales of Tamriel

Kris climbed up into the wagon beside Dax and a pair of dunmer soldiers. She winked at him surreptitiously but it was hard to know what was going on in that reptilian brain. He just had to trust her to get him close enough to Vorn. Whips cracked and the wagon jolted down the rough cobblestones towards the city.

Black Light was a strange city to Kris’ eye, a fusion of Dark Elf and Nord architecture, ringed by high walls of black volcanic basalt. Pennons of red and brown snapped from the tall angular towers, but she didn't know or care enough about the Dunmer nobility to particularly care about who was on top in this place. Predictably, the streets were quiet, with most of the population having turned in long since, but a number of soldiers bustled about evidently getting ready to go after the escaping slaves. Signs creaked on their chains in the slight wind and a few dog howled at the disruption to their routine.

The wagon titled up a long boulevard and began to climb a shallow hill towards the center of town. The houses rapidly grew grander, simple houses and working class taverns becoming opulent town houses and expensive stores. Guards were more evident here, stirred by commotion that might mean thieves about. More than once Kris thought she caught eyes watching from the rooftops. Evidence that the city’s thieves were likewise being inconvenienced this night.

The wagon pulled up in front of a stone fenced townhouse, sharp spikes of wrought iron summonted its ten foot wall and impressive gates were shut. Behind the gate stood a pair of Aldmeri soldiers in golden mail, curved sword sheathed but eyes keen.

“This is the place,” one of the guards growled and Dax and Kris climbed down. The gates swung open to admit them and the wagon clattered of without another word. Kris took the opportunity to lean close Dax.

“Once we kill Vorn we will torch this place,” she whispered. The greatest fear of any government was not enemy attack, or riot or even famine. Fire could sweep through a city in hours and destroy everything within the walls. Even a small fire would occupy the entire attention of the guard for hours, the property of the nobility being far more important than a few run slaves. Her message convey she passed by the scowling Aldmeri, working hard to control a hatred she had learned during years of losing battles.

“Keep your eyes open,” she advised him as they passed inside.

Star Crossed: The Duke's Rebellion

Rene made no attempt to dissuade Solae from changing her will. He was after all, technically a commoner, and the business of the Great Houses were not his. She also knew, as well as he did, that enforcing such a will would be a difficult and dangerous process as Solae’s cousins would go to any length to prevent it from being enforced. It was unlikely that a peniles soldier would be able to win a protracted legal battle in Imperial courts but there was no point in belaboring the obvious. It was further complicated by the fact that Rene Quentain, in an Imperial legal sense, wouldn’t offically be a person until his tour in the Marines was up.

A smart looking human of middle middle age and androguyns sex arrived within a quarter hour and took Solae into one of the casino’s glass doored meeting rooms. The spoke for perhaps a half hour before the attorney closed the expensive electronic data case they held and stood, shaking Solae’s hand. The attorney looked a little wild eyed as well they might. Solae Falia was easily the most important person on Zatis and almost certainly the most important the Attorney had ever met. As they stepped out of the door Ten, flanked by a pair of guards, appeared in the hallway. The attorney looked startled but Ten smiled calmingly.

“Im afraid I am going to need to insist on you remaining my guest Tanzen,” he said smoothly. Tanzen must have been the attorney’s name, though Rene hadn’t caught it in the initial pleasantries. Solae gave Ten an arch look but he held up his palms in a placating guesture.

“No harm will come to Tanzen Lady Falia,” Ten said with a shark like smile. Rene too had been worried that Ten might simply have the lawyer killed. Afterall he knew exactly who Solae was having worked on her will.

“As you intimated, it is in my own interest to have this will circulate should the worst happen. If I were unable to produce the man who wrote it, it would only serve to weaken that case.”

Rene nodded and everyone, including Tanzen seemed to relax a little and the lawyer allowed themselves to be led away without further incident.

It had been hours since the light breakfast they had so Rene and Solae took a luxurious elevator to up into the casino. The bar they entered probably wasn’t physically located at the roof of the casino, but it had been elaborately prepared with holographic projectors to make it appear as though they were on the peak of the building, though, impossibly, beyond the dome. Gray clouds of lightning swept gas spread in all directions, with the glittering dome spread out beneath more pristine than it must have been on the day of its construction. There was a central kiosk with a circular bar ringing it with a dozen tables radiating out from it, each commanding a view across the vastness of Zatis’ untamed landscape. Each of the tables was at a slightly different height, raised up by subtle series of steps which muted conversations between them. Rene offered Solae his arm and an attractive server saw them to their table, arrangements having already been made courtesy of Ten’s meticulous planning.

Rene drew out a chair for Solae and then seated himself across the small table from her. The soft murmur of harp music competed for space with the gentle sound of synthesized wind. The menu was old fashioned paper, though it had been elaborately decorated with embossing and scroll work. Rene turned it over in his hand smiling slightly.

“What is it?” Solae asked. Rene set the menu down and smiled at his beloved.

“It is strange to have a moment to spend with you doing something so…” he waved a hand at the restaurant around them.

“Normal,” he concluded wrly.

“Its wonderful, but strange,” he concluded reaching across to grip her hand in his own.

The Sunday Group - Paranormal Detectives

@Naril I will be revising my role as Ellie Tregellan doctor and adept of the mystical arts. Canonically (to the extent there is such a thing) this story takes place after the events of the first attempt.

The Sunday Group - Paranormal Detectives

Welcome, please post proposed characters below in any CS format you think works. If I have questions I shall ask! Please dont move characters to the character section until they are approved.

Character Creation

**Please note that I will only be accepting a small number of Characters. This is so I can try to create a high quality personal dynamic. Please don't be upset if you are not selected if there is enough interest perhaps I will create a Wednesday Group and have occasional crossovers!**

I'm not a particularly stickler for character sheets but just so that others have a reference Id like to have applications vaguely resemble the outline below.

As far as the writing sample goes, please write a short piece which illustrates who your character is. It can be anything you like, from an action scene to an email just so long as we get a sense of who you are.

___________________________________________________________________________

Example character:

Name: Penny

Age: 32

Appearance: Tired and Stressed

Concept: Doctor Neutral

Powers/skills: Super judgey, Sublime arrogance, lofty ambition

Writing Sample:

Amazing Writing

@DJAtomika@Naril@karamonnom@sassy1085@Habibi359

The Sunday Group - Paranormal Detectives

Everyone has a story. You know the story. The one you Aunt dusts off every Thanksgiving when the wine is flowing and the sense is going? The one about the old house on the end of the street where flowers never grow and maybe old Sweeny killed his wife and hid her in the drywall. Or perhaps it was the time your grandmother swore that she saw something floating in a broken window grinning at her. Maybe it was you. Maybe you heard strange voices out in the woods, or glimpsed something in the fog out at sea one night. Maybe you saw the same pale woman everywhere you went for a week and you swear the bitch had no reflection.

There are thousands of stories like these and they all have one things in common. Ninety nine percent of them are bullshit. Of course ninety nine percent certainty means that one time in a hundred you’re dead.

There are things out there in dark. Sometimes they leave us alone, hell maybe most times, but sometimes the snatch up babies and sacrifice them in stone circles. Sometimes the feed on the minds of the living. Sometime they set fires for the joy of watching people burn.

Who do you turn to if something like that happens? Cops can’t help, write you a prescription and ship you to a mental hospital if you even mentioned it. You need professionals, and frankly there aren’t that many people stupid enough to put their heads in that particular noose. People who know, know enough to be fucking terrified. Usually they find the deepest darkest hole they can climb into.

Want to turn to the sort of broken desperadoes still stupid enough to stand in the line of supernatural fire? Good luck with that.

Welcome to the Sunday Group

This RP will follow the adventures of the members of the Sunday Group. It is a story about the occult world behind the world, and those brave or foolish enough to want to understand it.

Somewhere in a big city in America, there is a nondescript building. It is a few stories tall and it has an extensive basement. It could easily be the Law Offices Of Boring, Dreary and Bland, no one would guess that it is the home of one of the nation’s only occult detective agencies.

Employees of the Sunday Group are a diverse bunch. Small time magical practitioners, those with strange abilities, broken down cops who have seen too much, or just regular folk who saw something they shouldn’t and want to do something about it. Everyone who works for the Group has touched the supernatural world in some way or another, and for whatever reason just cant let it go and sink back into the comforting security of the mundane.

The World

The world is very much like our own except there is a secret magical world beneath it. It isn’t happy Twilight Magical though, think of it as somewhere between Harry Dresden and the Call of Cthulhu. Many of the trappings of any Urban Fantasy will apply here and I encourage you to introduce them into the setting. Think a shotgun filled with rocksalt will take out a ghost? Great, it is in. Want werewolves to have a silver allergy? No problem. Anything you want to introduce into the setting will probably be ok. If I have a problem with it, Ill ask you to reconsider privately.

Magic for the Modern Age

Some humans have the ability to handle arcane forces, either innately or through elaborate ritual preparations. Some people gain magical powers via congress with spirits or demons, even Gods there is always a price to pay for subverting the natural order though. Sooner or later the bill comes due.

Magic exists in the world in a multitude of form and traditions. It is even possible to do some magic by computer. I dont want to put to many restrictions on people here. Many types of magic do not require the use of spells or incantations. Some people might be able to move small objects with their minds, read the surface thoughts of others, turn invisible or any number of other small boons you might come up with.

While magic can be very effective under the right circumstances it isn’t a be all and end all solution. A powerful practitioner might be able to hurl a bolt of lighting but it is normally much simpler, safer and more effective just to use a gun. Magic is a tool, use it wisely.

Who are the Players?

The players will take the roles of detectives in the drama, but this won't be an RP solely about solving crime. Personal relationships between characters, their families and dependents will be crucial to the story.

Be connected! The nature of the world is such that all the brooding loners with a tragic but unknowable backstory were exsanginuated long ago. You don’t need to like people, but you do need to depend on them to survive.

What Can I Play?

You can play a human (or near human) with some minor edge over the rest of the herd. You cannot play an immortal dragon vampire samurai. Your character should have some life experience. I don't want to flat out say that they need to be a certain age but my personal preference is to avoid the teenage types who no sane detective would want covering their back when the tentacle hits the pentacle.

Notes On the RP

This will be a small group RP. I’m looking for 3-4 players tops. I want personal interaction to matter and I just dont see that in large group RPs.

This will be a collaborative rp and we will create the world as we go, feel free to introduce detail! I will exercise some limited forms of narrative control if necessary but my instinct is to let it ride if it fits in the framework of the fiction.

This will be an 18+ RP. Sex, drugs, sex drugs and horrible nightmares from distant space times ect.

Inspirations and Style

Inspirations for this include Call of Cthulhu, Harry Dresden, Supernatural, Delta Green, the Laundry Files. The goal is to be not quite as bleak as Lovecraft but to maintain something approaching that level of horror and danger. The protagonists can effect the outcome but plenty of stuff out there is well beyond the weight class of the Sunday Group.

Tales of Tamriel

The dunmer soldiers called in alarm as they caught sight of Kris and the Argonian. There was a clatter of steel and the creak of bowstings being drawn. Clearly the arrival of the Vorn and the wounded Thalmor had raised their alert. Kris raised her hand above her head in what she hoped was a friendly guesture. She hadn’t considered that she might be filled with arrows by nervous guards, but she supposed that even if she had it wouldn’t alter her course.

The gates between the two towers swung open on squealing hinges. A half dozen dunmer carrying torches rushed forth. They wore a mismatch of armor and carried a variety of weapons but each of them wore a cloak of russet and scarlet and bore the flaming sigil of Black Light. Kris gripped the rope that tethered Dax and kept her other hand raised in a peaceful gesture. She had known dunmer in the legion, but they were by and large renegades and exiles. The natives of Morrowind were considerably touchier, clanish and proud. She did not care for them over much.

“Drop your weapons!” the a grizzled sergeant called in accented Imperial.
“And fuck you as well,” Kris called back cheerfuly, as Dark Elf soldiers ringed her with steel.

“I captured this slave,” she explained, thrusting Dax forward but not releasing the rope.

“The city has a bounty for their return does it not?” she called, refusing to be intimidated by the glowering soldiers. In truth she did not know that, but most cities and towns she had visited in Morrowind had such a reward. The sergeant seemed to hesitate for a moment, before barking out an order in his own tongue. The soldiers sheathed their weapons with obvious reluctance. They were escorted into the base of one of the towers. The room was small and spartan with a floor of dried straw. A rough looking table and a trio of cots lay against the far wall. Pikes were propped against the wall in careless profusion along with bundles of wickedly barbed arrows. The dunmer had clearly been preparing to go after the escaped slaves, but hand’t been willing to rush off without preparation.

“You captured this slave? Where,” the seagreant demanded gruffly. Kris made a show of glancing around the room and taking her time to answer.

“I did, I was coming from the west over the mountains. Ran into him and a bunch of others heading west towards the border.”

“There were a dozen or so, this one came at me with an axe, though he didn’t seem to know how to use it,” she told the dunmer.

“You ran into a dozen slaves and came back with one?” the grizzled elf sneered.

“The others ran off into the western foot hills. I figured one bounty was better than getting my skull stove in by a Khajit with a branch in search of a second.”