Polyphemus

The Invasion of the Behemoths- A Kaiju Matinee

IT COULD HAPPEN TOMORROW!

The Harryhausen Meteor Shower, a once-in-a-lifetime event, just occurred last night. A free lightshow of shooting stars, visible all over the world. People crowded rooftops, balconies, and other open spaces in order to enjoy the show. Now, in the light of day, people are getting back to work, moving on.

But not all of the meteors burned up harmlessly in the atmosphere. Some fragments made it safely to earth, landing unnoticed in lakes, isolated forests, open fields, city parks, locations scattered all over the entire world. Charged with a strange and unknown radiation, they began to work bizarre changes on the plant and animal life that came into contact with the meteors. Mutating and growing to immense size, the creatures predictably head for the nearest metropolitan centers and begin to wreak havoc.

COLOSSAL GIANTS RAZING PROUD CITIES IN A MAD QUEST FOR BLOOD!

This, then, is the time for people to resolve their petty differences and band together. Scientists, military men, police, journalists- square-jawed men and plucky women everywhere must handle and combat the devastation wrought by the horde of giants. Will mankind be destroyed by giant monsters? Or we will once again bend Nature to our will?

A DESPERATE RACE AGAINST TIME TO PREVENT COMPLETE ANNIHILATION!

Okay, so this is a little more light-hearted and fun kaiju game that's meant to play out more like a creature feature of the 50s and 60s. Despite being set in the modern era, everything in this RP is going to play out with the same sensibilities of those eras. The monsters look suspiciously like men in rubber suits or animals placed on a model set. The human characters are one-dimensional, more tools than people.

And of course, you'll be in control of both. Each player makes both a giant monster and one of the humans trying to stop it. While you'll be scattered all over the world, eventually you'll all come together.

And of course there will be epic kaiju battles. I'm counting on it, really.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

BULLETS CAN'T HARM THEM! FLAMES WON'T KILL THEM! CAN ANYTHING STOP. . .

THE INVASION OF THE BEHEMOTHS!

West End

"Chasity! What a pleasant surprise seeing you here!" Levin greeted the young woman with a warm smile. As much as he liked all the Adler boys, he found them to be a prudish lot, a little out of place in the modern era. Thus it gave him some pleasure to see Chasity dressed in modern fashion and smoking a cigarette- were it up to those boys, she'd be wearing a corset and hoop skirt and would probably swoon from all this excitement. "This here is a Pimm's Cup, lassie. A fairly weak drink, true, but it does one good to stay sharp sometimes."

He waved off her apology for the cigarette, then quickly looked to see if her brothers were watching. Satisfied that they were not, he extracted his own gunmetal cigarette case and extracted three of his own gaspers. "Here, try a few of mine. I get this blend made specially, it's a mix of Virginia and Turkish tobacco. If you like them, I can give you the name of my tobacconist." He tapped the side of his nose conspiratorially.

"In answer to your question, Miss Adler, I'm really not much of a dancer. I've no sense of rhythm. No, I just made a few donations to some charity or other, and they gave me a ticket to this soiree out of thanks. It'd be poor form not to show up! No, lassie, were I here for my own amusement I'd have picked someone other than the most boring man in Britain as my plus one.," he said with a wave to Iceberg.

Levin stopped for a moment, considering. Might as well let the young things have a little fun. "Berg, give me your dance card. I want you to show this lady a nice, proper time. That's an order," he said, leaning back.

Berg handed it over without a word. Leaning back forwards, he grinned impishly as he pushed it over to Chasity. "My young friend Mr. Isaac Berg is a little shy, but he requests the honor of a dance, Miss Adler."

West End

"Good God, Berg, have these people not heard about austerity?" Isidor Levin commented to his bodyguard as the two men walked into the Great Room of the Grosvenor House Hotel. "We only just stopped rationing meat, but if this lot keeps carrying on like this we'll be right back to eating Woolton pie again!"

Isaac Berg merely grunted. The younger, bigger man was not exactly a stimulating conversationalist- his cold demeanor and hulking size had earned him the nickname "Iceberg". Then again, Levin did not employ Berg to be scintillating. Berg's continued employment had more to do with his service in the 1st Commonwealth Division in Korea, not to mention the Enfield revolver concealed beneath his roomy dinner jacket.

Iceberg obediently trundled along behind his boss as the older but vigorous man made his way over to the bar. Rather than wave or call out to the besieged servers, Levin instead waited patiently and humbly for the red-vested barman to make his own way to Levin.

"And what is sir's pleasure?" the barman asked.

"Pimm's No. 1. Easy on the fruit, and add a splash of Gordon's to keep it from being too anemic." Levin looked back over his shoulder at Berg, keeping a watchful eye out over the crowded ballroom. "Berg?"

"Seltzer water, please," the big man said, stolid as ever.

Levin sighed as the barman scurried off. "You're a young lad, Berg. It'd not be wrong for you to enjoy yourself once in a while. Take it from an expert, there'll be plenty of time for fretting and fussing later in life."

Berg merely grunted.

The barman returned with Levin's cocktail and Berg's drink in short order. Levin smiled and slipped a fiver across the bar at the man. "Keep the change. There's something you can do for me, though. Anyone comes about asking after me, be a good chap and let a fellow know straightaway. Can you do that?" The barman enthusiastically nodded assent. "Good man."

It never hurt to know what was going on around you.

With that in mind, Levin took an appreciative sip of his Pimm's and carefully scanned the room, on the lookout for any faces he might know. Rumor was there might be a few other people in attendance here who traded in his peculiar field.

West End

I guess I'll show up at Chastity's shindig. The young lady needs a chaperone, right?

Surviving: The End. (Season 1) (CLOSING, look for reboot!)

@Polyphemus Hey, really like Dierdre. Excellent post by the way. How would you feel about our characters meeting up at some point?

@Vandy

Yeah, I'd definitely be on board with that. She's a tough old bird, but there's no way an old woman can ride this all out alone.

West End

Have we officially started?

Surviving: The End. (Season 1) (CLOSING, look for reboot!)

JULY 2008

“You should respect your elders.”

“C'mon, lady, don't make this difficult,” the mugger snapped. “Just hand it over.”

Deirdre Miller refused to budge, still holding the bag of groceries protectively in front of her. “Hell no. I worked hard for this money. I earned it. You sure as hell didn't do none of that.”

The mugger- he couldn't have been more than eighteen- sighed, pulled back his unnecessary Rams hoodie and lifted his oversized white tee enough for her to see the handle of the 9mm tucked into his waistband. “You don't want none of this, lady.”

Deirde just snorted in derision. “That supposed to impress me? Think no one's ever pulled a piece on me? Who you trying to impress, anyhow? No one's going to say 'shit, what a tough motherfucker' when they find out you rolled a fifty-two-year-old woman for three bucks and a paper bag with bread and eggs.”

The kid made the fatal mistake of trying to stare down Deirdre. She just looked right back into the young man's eyes.

The mugger broke first. He looked away, trying to play it off as if checking to see if anyone was coming down the sidewalk towards the two of them. But the woman knew she had won, established herself as more trouble than she was worth. “Now get the hell out of my way,” she commanded. “It's rude to block the sidewalk like that.”

Muttering curses and empty threats, the young man awkwardly shuffled aside, eyes cast down at his scuffed sneakers. Deirdre breezed past him, grocery bag swinging. “The 7-11 on Vandeventer is looking for help,” she advised as she passed the young man. “Check it out.”

JULY 2017

“You should respect your elders.”

The younger woman scowled. It was clear that at some point before the world fell apart she had been a monied individual- her dirt-streaked clothes were good designer brands, her speaking betrayed an excellent education. The .38 she pointed at Deirdre, however, ruined whatever positive impression she might have made. “Food. Ammunition. Anything else of value,” she ordered.

Deirdre shook her head. “Why you gonna do me like that? It's nearly a hundred degrees out. I'm an old lady, I need these supplies.”

“So do I,” the young woman said flatly. Somewhere nearby, a cicada began to drone. The two stood in the middle of Route 50, the sun-warmed asphalt soft beneath their feet.

“You're young, you got a gun, you can scavenge,” Deirdre protested. “I can't do none of that. Just let me by.”

“There's nothing to scavenge around here.”

“Sedalia is just four miles down the road,” Deirdre pointed vaguely behind the bandit. “There's gotta be plenty of supplies there.”

“I just came from Sedalia. Nothing there but a few thousand zombies and some maniacs holed up in the fairgrounds.”

“I need these supplies,” Deirdre protested. “C'mon, I'm just an old woman.”

“You want me to rob armed men instead? You're an easy target. Hand it over, Grandma.” The younger woman slowly thumbed back the hammer on the .38. “Now.”

“Where's you damn pride?” Deirdre grumbled, slowly pulling off the old gray backpack. The cans of food inside clinked suggestively together as she tossed the bag at the younger woman's foot. The bandit immediately knelt to inspect the treasures.

Deirdre was fast, much faster than most would expect a heavyset old woman to be. She was already moving forwards, her shin deliberately knocking against the revolver in the bandit's hand. Sweat and excitement had loosened her grip, the .38 slid across the hot roadway. The bandit looked up, gaping. She had been pretty once.

The heavy weight of the claw hammer came down directly in the center of the bandit's face. For a split second, Deirdre had the horrible image of her face collapsing inwards, like a basketball deflating. The woman fell forwards, her crushed face slamming to the asphalt. The arms moved, grabbing for Deirdre. The old woman brought the hammer down again, with all of her considerable weight, this time aiming for the back of the bandit's head.

Underneath the drone of the cicada, there was a sound like an eggshell breaking. And underneath the smell of Missouri in summer, there was a hot coppery scent.

After a moment, Deirdre stood, back up, panting in exertion, blood staining her scavenged clothing. “Sorry, lady,” she whispered. “So sorry.”

Surviving: The End. (Season 1) (CLOSING, look for reboot!)

I'll have a flashback post up for my char in the next couple days.

Surviving: The End. (Season 1) (CLOSING, look for reboot!)

Deirdre Miller

Name: Deirdre Miller
Group: Walkers
Age: 61
Occupation: Various odd jobs to supplement welfare benefits
Family life: Single
Sex: Female
Hair: Black, fading to gray
Eyes: Brown.
Weight: 178 lbs.
Blood type: A+
Immune: Yes
Gear: Old gray Jansport backpack. Contents: two mismatched changes of clothes, a beat-up old blue blanket, a can of generic green beans, a can of Dinty Moore beef stew, a can of peas, half a bottle of maple syrup, a Heath bar, an unopened 375 ml bottle of Jim Beam bourbon, a half-liter bottle of Evian water, an 8” meat cleaver with cardboard wrapped around the blade, one toothbrush, travel-sized toothpaste, a bar of Irish Spring soap, a paperback romance novel.

On her person, Deirdre carries a Swiss Army knife and a photo of her daughter. A 16 oz claw hammer hangs from her belt, tucked at the small of her back is an old Smith and Wesson Model 10 loaded with six .38 rounds. She has no spare rounds and no means of cleaning the gun.

Picture:

Bio: Deirdre Elizabeth Miller was born into poverty and has known nothing else in her life. She was born in 1956 and raised in the notorious JeffVanderLou district of St. Louis, Missouri. Her father had disappeared long before she was born, and her mother Carol was rarely around, struggling to support the two of them with long shifts at a local diner. Left to her own devices, Deirdre quickly discovered the dark side of JeffVanderLou- rampant drug use, corrupt and venal police, gangsterism. Before she was even twelve, Deirdre had adopted the sort of world-weary fatalism common to urban dwellers.

While she was far from stupid, Deirdre was a poor student- not that the local schools had much to offer- and dropped out at age fifteen. She shuffled from menial job to menial job throughout her life, never staying at one for long. Her mother died when she was twenty and working as a hotel maid, and Deirdre found herself alone in the world, at least until the following year. Her daughter Suzanne was born in 1977, the product of a one-night stand with a businessman from Philadelphia (she never did catch his name).

Deirdre found her life transformed by the responsibilities of parenthood, which she enthusiastically and wholeheartedly embraced. With more than herself to worry about, she found her cynicism turning to a hard edge. Where once she had seen drug dealing and blight as simply part of the landscape, she now viewed them as walls of a prison, something to escape with along with Suzanne. She began, desperately and silently, to dream of something better. More than that, she tried her best to instill values of citizenship and morality in Suzanne. Voting, going to church, donating to charity- these were the activities she enforced on the young girl.

They didn't take. As she grew older, Suzanne found a habit she liked better, cocaine.

Deirdre could only watch helplessly as her teenaged daughter spiraled into addiction, becoming friendly with a local dealer in exchange for an unlimited supply. Deirdre tried to help Suzanne, on one heart-stopping occasion staring down her armed punk of a boyfriend and telling him to leave Suzanne alone (the young man actually did as asked, but Suzanne simply found a new dealer). She attempted to get Suzanne into rehab or a support group on numerous occasions, but nothing ever came of it.

Finally, in 1994, Suzanne died of an overdose.

The last twenty years have been something of a standstill for Deirdre. Her cynicism knows no bounds, and as much as drug dealers and corrupt cops both know to stay off her street, she no longer sees the point in trying to make the world better- it's always going to be dark and blighted.

When the Rising happened, St. Louis was sadly but unsurprisingly one of the first major American cities to collapse into anarchy. From Chesterfield to Cahokia, three million people were caught in a hellish, burning war zone, a battlefield with no front lines and no succor for the weak. For every person who died at the hands of the dead, the living claimed still more. Somehow, through the determination and toughness required to live in one of America's worst neighborhoods, Deirdre survived, clawing her way out of the city and joining a column of refugees. The leader of the refugee column had the idea that the military could help them. A visit to Scott Air Force Base outside the city disabused that notion, leading to half the survivors dead and the remaining group fractured over what to do. Several set out on their own while the remainder decided to try to head to Fort Leonard Wood. Deirdre, unwilling to believe that any external force could help them now, left on her own.

That was nine months ago.

The summer was long and fraught with peril. Deirdre, on her own or occasionally joining with other groups for a week or two at a time, wandered aimlessly through Southern Illinois and Eastern Missouri, though she shed forty pounds from her heavyset frame and suffered through more than one illness. During that time, she found herself forced to kill two people. One, a woman who tried to rob her- Deirdre took the revolver she now carries off the bandit's corpse. Two, a man she traveled with for six days before his careless attempt to engage the dead with a Molotov cocktail had left him covered in third-degree burns she couldn't possibly treat. Her hammer had been the only mercy she could give.

Now, with early snow on the ground and winter fast approaching, Deirdre knows that wandering around out in the open will be suicide. She's heard rumors from other survivors that Fort Leonard Wood may be safe and has set out for the base, wondering if perhaps the group she abandoned months ago might have indeed made it safely.

West End

ISIDOR LEVIN

Name: Isidor Nestorovich Levin
Date of Birth: January 5, 1897 (57 years old)
Place of Birth: Odessa, Russian Empire
Occupation: Jeweler, pawnbroker
Affiliation: Levin Gang, subordinate to Hyde Park Gang
Modus Operandi: Protection, illegal gaming, fencing of stolen merchandise

Background/History: Isidor Levin was born into a Jewish family in the Ukrainian port city of Odessa, the only son of a talented and widowed jeweler, Nestor Levin. When the pogroms of 1905 broke out, the elder Levin's store was among those vandalized and looted, while several of their friends and neighbors were killed by the Black Hundreds. Thoroughly fed up with the Russian situation and seeing no future for his son and two daughters in Russia, Nestor Levin was among the many Jews to flee Odessa in 1905, striking out for greener pastures in London.

The eight-year-old Isidor immediately fell in love with London, but it was not as kind to his father. While they did indeed know greater freedom in the new country, the Levin family found their circumstances reduced. Nestor Levin found work exactly where he wanted, in a prestigious Hatton Garden jeweler's shop, but merely as a guard. The pay was adequate but not much more. They were just another immigrant family, not the famous Levins of Odessa. Determined not to let his skill and talent go to waste, Nestor began to pass on the trade to his son Isidor.

He paid close attention to these lessons, but the lad's life took a different turn. Returning from service in the Royal Army Service Corps during the Great War (though he is proud of his service, Isidor is still humble enough to admit that he saw no combat), Isidor noticed a troubling trend in West London. Jewish-owned shops were targeted for harassment and vandalism by other returning Tommies, usually due to the names of the proprietors sounding German to untrained ears. Isidor gathered together a few neighborhood toughs and organized patrols, standing guard outside the shops and turning away anyone with ill intent. Very politely, Isidor requested a small fee for his trouble from the shopowners, citing the difficulty in getting together so many nice young men willing to stick their necks out. The shopkeepers happily paid up, most of them not even realizing that the soft-spoken, polite young Levin boy had just set up a protection racket.

That was the start of the Levin Gang, a few Jews standing in front of delis and bookstores for pocket money. Isidor carefully saved the protection money, investing in a Seven Dials pawnshop in 1921. It was then that his financial prospects really improved. Not only did the pawnshop provide a good stream of legitimate income, it also provided him an excellent opportunity to receive stolen goods and fence them to an interested buyer. Not to mention the spacious basement made a nice private setting for high-stakes games of baccarat and rummy. The money allowed him to do a lot of things- send his sister Rachel to university in Newcastle where she met a husband, send his other sister Zara back to Russia, where she met Communism. It let him buy a nice flat for his father to retire in, donations to charity and local synagogues, a couple more pawnshops, even an old run-down jewelry store.

It also bought the attention of the Adler family. Harry Adler and Levin, both reasonable men, saw the benefits in absorbing the Levin Gang into the Hyde Park set- safety in numbers and increased wealth and resources for both. Levin, unambitious and satisfied with what he was earning, and content with the respect he got from the community, remained on as a permanent lieutenant to the Adlers throughout the years. He serves as both an adviser and something of an honorary uncle to the Adlers, many of whom he watched grow up.