CRP: Requiem for a Vampire

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Silence

CRP: Requiem for a Vampire

Post by Silence »

((CRP between Alder and Varann... contact tpb Varann if you want to be involved))

'Nothing but time'

And not all that much of that anymore either.

Alder's previous ordeals had left him with very little of what he had once had. His plan was now unachievable, and because of that, his resolve to keep pressing forward had started to fail as well.

But he did have one thing that he had not had at the start of all of this... power. He no longer had a reason to be powerful, but he did have the power he'd gained over the years, and not even a set of crippling injuries could take that from him. He simply grimaced, placed those injuries on his inside so they didn't show... they still hurt, yes, but pain could be ignored or just blocked out. After doing that, he laughed and moved on.

After he'd come this far, there had to be something he could do with this power, right? Yes, maybe he couldn't fix this stupid world anymore.

He had spent his life walking along a metaphorical beach, looking at all of the fish which had been stranded by the tide and working towards a way of making it so that the sea would stop killing its inhabitants.

Now that had failed, his life's work had failed, and nothing was going to stop those fish from dying. In the grand scheme of things, picking them up and throwing them back in wouldn't matter. What kind of impact could somebody as insignificant as him really make? Yes, he was powerful now, but every day, he heard tales of another village destroyed by a marauding demon or some psycho cutting down a handful of people before being arrested, and he couldn't be everywhere, he couldn't help everybody. For everybody he tried to help, he had to let another person slip away. One situation was brought under control, but he lost control of another.

But when he'd been young and powerless, he'd spent his days cowering and hiding and wishing that somebody would come and help him, somebody with power... yes, he couldn't be there for everybody, but that didn't mean that he couldn't be there for at least one or two people. His actions wouldn't really matter... but to those one or two, it would.

A marauding demon threatened a small village that he'd never heard of. It demanded a tribute of seven people sacrificed to it every week so that it would leave the others alone.

A beetle had reported it and Alder had taken a short trip out of Widu for a few days... the demon had spent a day bound to a rock in the abyssal plane and having its organs force fed to it while a changeling calling itself 'Youken, Lord of Lies' hummed songs to itself and reminded it that it would find itself back here if it ever stepped foot out of the abyss again.

His actions didn't matter... that village didn't matter. Yet that week, seven people who had been left outside that village to die were found still alive the next morning.

And so it was... he couldn't do everything, but at least he could do something.

It was for that reason that when Varann had let him know that xie had a problem, Alder had been delighted to drop everything and take a trip to Paz... thinking about it, he had somebody he'd given a lot of money to in that town... for some reason, he'd seen a reflection of a powerless street urchin in her, a street urchin who had been spurned for being something they were not and who had the potential to do great things once day... maybe he'd been mistaken since he'd heard nothing from her since then... how was whatshername doing anyway?

There had been a long and unsettling encounter half way there, but that was in the past by the time he actually reached Paz.

Stat's problem was actually quite simple compared to some he had dealt with... of course, the complications to it, while simple, also made any potential solution stupidly complicated. It basically boiled down to one person, one very mortal person who could be intimidated since they actually feared stuff... what's more, they were susceptible to drugs, weren't so overwhelmingly powerful that they could obliterate in a thought and didn't have an army behind them.

So far, this was looking like the work of about an hour to solve. The issue came with the fact that they were a vampire, one old enough to be fairly damn powerful... so, direct combat, while an option, was not necessarily going to work out well. Then you had to consider that they were established in an area that he had visited once before. Setting up a network of beetles to convey information and keep an eye on the streets could take weeks in an area as big and convoluted as a large city... like Paz. The other issue was that he had no idea what this vampire looked like or who they really were other than that they were old and female... they had taken on multiple personas during their life and was established in the area... so they had a major home field advantage.

And then they had Stat's soul. So, he couldn't kill them. So long as they knew he wasn't on Stat's side, he could intimidate them without that soul becoming a bargaining chip, but he couldn't actually follow through. Still, that wasn't too much of a problem, he didn't kill people anyway... he just made them think that he was going to or else he left them unconscious in a very dark place surrounded by very nasty things until he decided what to do with them. There were ways to make sure you never had to deal with somebody ever again other than killing them. But the issue was that he needed to get that back before he got rid of the vampire.

And Stat seemed to be getting weaker every day while he tried to locate a single promising lead. With only 'female vampire' and a few other bits of information from Stat to go on, he'd tracked down seven different humans who were enthralled to a vampire and through them, tracked down three female vampires who seemed to fit the criteria he was after...

None of them were the right one. After silencing each one of them and making sure that nobody noticed their disappearances (wouldn't want word of some kid searching for vampires to get out), he had moved on, cursing his luck... Fate never seemed to be on his side when he did this sort of thing... there was probably a good reason for that.

Still, he hadn't really expected to get anywhere this quickly. He still needed time to get a network over Paz, make sure that he had eyes and ears everywhere, all looking for this vampire. With unlimited time, he could have tracked down that vampire and then made plans to extract Stat's soul from them. He didn't have that sort of time. Stat was fading pretty damn quickly.

And then something actually fortunate happened. He stumbled into a tavern, slumped to the floor against a wall and only then noticed that Stat was actually talking to him. In his almost eternal state of boredom, he nearly missed what xie said, his mind being taken up with potential interactions when two objects of different shapes collided... but something xie mentioned stuck in his mind.

The vampire was going to be here.

It was the work of moments to plant a handful of beetles on Stat xerself and then idly wait around. Perhaps, just once, chance was going to throw him a bone. If nothing else, he could locate the vampire now... and once he had them, he had no intention of letting them go. After all, he was now using his power to help who he could, and he was damn well going to help somebody who he called his friend if some idiot had decided to mess with them.

Ok, easy now... this vampire was still a major threat, allowing himself to feel anything other than a detached sense of curiosity would only harm his ability to do anything. He was powerful only so long as he remained able to think logically and stay two steps ahead of any enemy. The moment he stopped focusing on what mattered was the moment he started to make mistakes. Yes, if it was only his neck on the line, he'd have been willing to get excited, excited at the prospect of a real challenge, something that could break his boredom... but it wasn't just his neck on the line, and for that reason, he had to stay cold and emotionless.

He might as well see what this vampire was like before making any conclusions.
Varann

Re: CRP: Requiem for a Vampire

Post by Varann »

(sorry about this but one frustrating time trying to fix computer and this is what i have managed to rescue)

varann had for a few minutes felt relieved by telling Alder about Lady Esme arriving at the tavern, but with each passing moment since then xie was getting more and more scared of what would happen if she found out that he was after getting xer soul.

Pain xie could take but not the loss of the people xie cared about and lady Esme knew it and could use it to her advantage. still if things were to change then a fellow anomaly like Alder would help bring it about, at least that was the possibility xie hoped for even if the chances were only 50/50.

xie thought about what it was that was getting to xer, normally xie is very good at keeping xer feelings off xer face but when she fed from that night it was worse than usual it was like she was deliberately making it as painful as possible. tearing at xer soul as well as xer neck seeming to be angry with xer and wanting to make xer hurt, well it wasn't like she needed an excuse to hurt xer but to attack both xer soul and body was excessive even for her. Well at least it had been since she got xer soul before that she was quiet content to cut, burn and generally torture xer just to see how quickly xie could heal.

anyway if the plan worked Alder would at least have a clue as to what she looked like. And if he did what she ‘saw’ him do then he may even be able to find out her new haven which would give xer some sense of determination to deal with the pain.

Xie carried on drinking wishing for today to be over, when a sudden sharp pain in the back of xer head forced the bottle from xer hand.
Victor_Callow

Re: CRP: Requiem for a Vampire

Post by Victor_Callow »

Meanwhile, elsewhere:

"So, do you have anything on my keeper?"

"No... as usual, Daruhg the gamer-"

"Shhhh... you know the rules, we never speak their names."

Victor scowled at the young Lost before him... yes, the man was probably twice Victor's age, but if he was uttering the name of one of the true Fae, then he was young in Victor's eyes... he couldn't have escaped Arcadia very long ago. Still, he was the Autumn court's information broker in this area, so that meant that Victor Callow had to go through Og Sleapur to get what he was after. Somehow, all the information brokers seemed to update each other to within a few minutes, so if he didn't know anything about Daruhg, then that meant that the Autumn court as a whole still didn't know his old keeper's whereabouts.

Victor sighed and handed over a roll of paper.

"Well, here's what I've learned. Evaluate it, I'll take whatever you'll offer."

"You're... still trying to track them down and get revenge, aren't you?"

"What of it?"

"Well, I might be able to point you in the right direction, Vic, my friend."

Og, a tall man, built more like a rhinoceros than a man with a patch over one eye, had also been changed by his time in the Fae. Just as he saw Victor as a creature wreathed in shadow, its eyes black as night, bones poking through the end of his fingers and sharpened to points, every one, its mouth filled with spikes of mismatched sizes, its skin pale, almost transparent, his veins showing blue beneath the thin paper like substance that covered his body, Victor saw him as a one eyed giant with uneven teeth and thumbs disproportionately large for his hands. Still, to a human, he just looked like a large man with an eyepatch. He drew a folded piece of paper from one of his pockets and handed it to Victor, who curiously unfolded it and read what it contained, a smile spreading onto his face as he did so.

Finally, something promising... a seer, like the navigators that he'd heard about, like so many other mystics who frequented these lands, was actually within his grasp. If the Autumn court couldn't give him what he desired, then at least they could show him who could. And what's more, if he played his cards right, he could maybe get a powerful slave from this arrangement. Yes, the slave would only be a temporary matter, but it only had to last long enough for them to beat Daruhg into a pulp. And that was before you even considered the glamour he could negotiate from this arrangement.

Now, how was he to play this hand? Perhaps it would be best to feign ignorance of everything until he was actually in his first negotiation. First things first, he needed to establish how to give everybody what they wanted so that he could in turn take what he wanted from them.
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