The Campaign Builder's Guild

[ic=Alisandre]Temptation salaciously grinds on Alisandre's psyche. So distracted, she wanders the midnight streets, still clad in her Cemetarian garb, as she searches for a place to rest her bombylious head. Once or twice, she becomes disoriented amidst the tight, tortuous alleys of the Tangle. Tired klaxons sound from the Clockwork Rail above. Below, the variegated din of half-abandoned, half-asleep buildings mingles with the sparse echo of cobblestone footfalls and lonely wagonwheels.

Dimly, Alisandre heads down a pipe-crossed snicket, drawn to a flickering, partially lit gas-tube. It's cracked, vermiform shape announces the establishment's name: the Flukewash Hostel.

Before she can enter, however, she is ambushed by a trio of tattooed graftpunks. They emerge from the pipe-spewed mists, sauntering with naked malice. All three wear threadbare pantaloons and stained frockcoats loosely hanging from their shoulders. Their bare torsos are inked with fantastical images of devils urinating fire on screaming parliamentarians.

Their leader -a bottle-clenched thug with grafted goat-horns- sneers at Alisandre:

"You's gotta pay the tax, mothlicker."

His lackeys laugh. The first, a stout bald man, saddles behind Alisandre as he nervously licks a scaled, demonic claw grafted to his wrist. The second, a multi-pierced woman with mismatched fangs, hefts a pair of flintlock pistols.[/ic]

[ooc]The alleyway is rather narrow and they have you penned in, all 4 of you are in immediate distance away from one another. Roll a DC 2 Initiative (agility-based) to go first. Remember, you suffer a -1 to all Intellect checks.[/ooc]
 

[ic]Alisandre regards the ruffians with cold disdain. She opens her beleaguered psyche to the aether, and by way of response to their demand for a toll, begins to mouth words of power...[/ic]

[ooc]Initiative:

This dice roll has been tampered with!
Rolled 1d6 : 2, total 2[/ooc]

[ic]Slay the leader. The others may lose heart.

Heart.

Struck by a sudden morbid whim, Alisandre extends her hand towards the horned cutthroat, palm upwards and fingers spread, as if grasping a large object. She pictures the man's thumping, beating heart, and begins to squeeze. She wills his breath to falter, to come in strangled, rattling gasps. She wills the sweat to pour from his brow. She wills his heart's muscle fibers to tug and twitch in horrid discordance, like a can of writhing worms being crushed between a giant's hands.[/ic]

[ooc]Using grave's call. Spending 1 grit to negate my addiction's penalty. 4 dmg if I hit him.

This dice roll has been tampered with!
Rolled 1d6 : 3, total 3

Pools: Might 6/8 (0), Agility 4/11 (1), Intellect 5/17 (1)[/ooc]

[ic=Alisandre]Alisandre's hex catches the gang off-guard. The horned thug can barely scream before his heart implodes into a sanguine pulp. His still-warm corpse crumples to the ground. His blood, violently translocated by witchcraft, profusely spills from Alisandre's clenched fist. 

The stout, claw-grafted thug gapes in shock, then turns to flee. The pierced woman similarly recoils, but reflexively aims and fires her pistols at the nigromancer.[/ic]

[ooc]DC 2 Agility check to dodge or take 4 might damage[/ooc]

[ooc][blockquote]Rolled 1d6 : 5, total 5[/blockquote][/ooc]

[ic]Alisandre jerks behind the alley wall, just in time for the hail of bullets to harmlessly ring against stone. She whips out and points a red-drenched finger towards the fleeing pistoleer. The blood on her hands begins to sizzle, hiss, and smoke. Then writhe. The nigromancer motions sharply, and a burning, sanguine missile flies towards the woman's head.[/ic]

[ooc]Same deal, 4 dmg if I hit.

This dice roll has been tampered with!
Rolled 1d6-1 : 6 - 1, total 5

Pools: Might 6/8 (0), Agility 4/11 (1), Intellect 5/17 (1)[/ooc]

[ic]Catena waits things out, allowing the Watchmen to disarm her if they wish. There's little point in offering resistance - not when she's up against so many men, alone. With any luck they'll leave soon and she can have a look around the Ghul's room. Perhaps she can find some clue amongst the grave-spawn's possessions.[/ic]

[ic=Alisandre]One of the poorly-aimed bullets catches the fleeing claw-thug in his leg. So injured, he crashes into a nest of pipes. He drops, bruised and bleeding.

Meanwhile, Alisandre's ensorcelled blood hardens into flesh-piercing cruor. It stabs through the woman's skull, imbeds into her brain, and causing a chain reaction of ischemic clots. The eldritch stroke first paralyzes, then plunges the graftpunk into unconsciousness.

Abruptly as it began, the altercation ends. A weary silence fills as the alleyway. Cyan light continues to flicker from the Flukewash's sign.[/ic]

[ooc]Make a sight-based perception check, but otherwise proceed with whatever action you wish. The woman is dying. The guy is just knocked out -but bleeding from his leg and may die. The leader, obviously, is dead, dead.[/ooc]

[ic]Alisandre gestures at the comatose woman, and her head explodes in a gory shower as the nigromancer causes her skull to splinter into dozens of fragments that leap to escape their fleshy prison. She waves two fingers and the bone-shards fly towards the man, shredding his face into bloody tatters. Skein was better off without such people, who had dared raise hand against one of noble blood. Disguised or not.

She calmly proceeds towards her destination without a backwards glance, muttering a last invocation to clean her clothes.[/ic]

[ooc]Perception:

[blockquote]Rolled 1d6 : 2, total 2[/blockquote]

I didn't see any rules for coup de graces, but assumed killing helpless foes is possible without dice. If not, feel free to roll my attacks for me.[/roll]

[ic=Alisandre]The Flukewash opens its chymical-slick gate, admitting Alisandre and the incarnate wash of aether that trails her psyche.

Inside the dim-lit hostel, a tattooed, creased-face bellhop looks up at the Cemetarian-garbed necromancer. There's a muttered exchange, a passing of crowns, and a cot is arranged. Above and beside, other beds hold somnolent occupants. Their murky shadows lie still and silent. A lonesome fly buzzes slowly in the dark. The cot waits, more indifferent than inviting.[/ic]

[ic]Alisandre represses a scowl at the accomodations. The family crypts were not luxurious, yes, but they were home in a way that no other place could be.

She changes out of the Cemetarian uniform into her usual attire; white frock and hose, gray mantle-coat, black leather gloves to cover her maimed hands, and the plaster of her dead mother's face that she saw the world through--on more levels than one. When dawn comes, she returns to the Eastern Cemetery without delay. Madame Fontanelle had promised to remain in contact, and Alphosine would no doubt desire to be as well--the best thing would be to remain somewhere they knew they could find her.

Those reasons, among others.

Alisandre strokes the transparent glass top of her mother's hermetically sealed casket, gazing upon the rosy cheeks flush with faux-life, the elaborately coiffed and styled hair, the closed eyelids that seemed ready to flutter open at any time when their owner woke from death's sleep. Alisandre had outdone herself on that embalming job, but family deserved nothing less.

"Suicide, Mother? Did my failed chaining-rite drive you to such despair, or was there another reason?" she asks the preserved corpse without preamble.

As ever, Alisandre cannot tell if the response--if any--comes from her mother or her own mind.[/ic]

[ic=Alisandre]"Suicide?"

Belphia's corpse –or perhaps Alisandre's nectar-fogged psyche- responds:

"My dear, sweet-dreaming childe, how can the dead commit suicide? I died long before your Chaining."

"Don't look surprised, my darling. You all of all people should know. After all, you killed me. From the moment your zygotic worm blossomed in my womb, I was dead."

"But I'm glad you're home, my darling. I so missed you last night; the gala was not the same without you. Your absence particularly vexed your father. I tried to assuage his fears, but he was ever a sentimental man. If you can still call him that. The taxonomy escapes me."

"No matter. Today, whilst you sleep, I shall recite one of your favorite cradle-poems,The Thirteen Fits of Agony, starting where we last left off. The closing of the twelfth canto, I believe? Yes, the thirteenth approaches."

"Seek me with thimbles, seek me with care,
Pursue me with forks and hope,
Threaten my life with well-coiffed hair,
Charm me with smiles and soap..."

The recitation, real or imagined, continues. As it does, Alisandre notes that the crypt has been meticulously cleaned and restored to its typical, lifeless polish –no sign remains of yesterevening's deeds. Even the foxlight fungus has been exactingly pruned.

"...meagre and hollow, but crisp,
Like a coat that is rather too tight in the waist,
With a flavor of will-o-the-wisp..."

Sadly and perhaps surprisingly, though, the crypt is otherwise barren: neither presents nor missives from Alphosine or Madame Fontanelle rest therein.

"Rouse me with muffins –rouse me with ice,
Rouse me with mustard and cress,
Rouse me with jam and judicious advice,
Then set me conundrums to guess..."

Clockless time tics on. The cravings for nectar gnaw at the ex-magistra's mind. Thirst paws at her throat.

"There was silence supreme! Not a shriek, not a scream.
Scarcely even a howl or a groan,
As the man they called Mortality told his tale of woe,
In an antediluvian tone."

A scuttering, swift and soft, begins to echo down the crypt's ingress. No wards, demoniac or mechanical, are triggered by the approaching entity. The echo, despite its unnatural mien, is familiar to the disowned noble.

"Softly and suddenly vanish away,
and never be met with again..."

The disembodied hand emerges. It races across the marble floor, embalmed fingers flexing and glyph-burned nails clacking like a grotesque, porcelain spider. A bone-shaved signet ring, depicting the seal of House Mei-Vourne, rests prominently upon the thing's middle digit. With horripilating dexterity, it clambers towards Alisandre: the unliving left hand of Xaphan, her half-nephew.  

With a spastic leap, it lands at Alisandre's feet. The servitor then rolls itself over, as if waiting for something to be placed in its necrotic grasp.[/ic]

[ooc]During your rest, you are able to spend your prior day's last recovery roll. Also, should you wish, you can spend additional time this 'morning' at the crypt to use some of today's recovery rolls. Regardless, you have the option to either use the roll(s) to restore points to your pools OR you can spend a roll to attempt to shake off the nectar addiction (Intellect defense roll vs DC 4). If not, roll an Intellect defense roll vs DC 3 to resist the craving (and withdrawal if you don't sate said craving).

As for Xaphan's hand, you would recognize the gesture as requesting a writing implement. The hand has a number of 'names' among the family members, including Geierfingers, Penance, Memento, the Sinistral, the Usurper's Hand, and Nails. [/ooc]

[ic=Catena]As the Watchmen escort the grave-spawn prostitute out the Impregnated Stallion, the officer halts the sergeant and some of the guards.  

"Sergeant, while our primary mission is resolved, I think we would be remiss if we did not address the flagrant safety hazard before us. Why, look at these miscegenationists and flesh-traitors all crowding together in this drug-fogged den. I shudder to think what would happen if a fire broke out and they were unable to escape."

"Don't you agree, Sergeant?"

The officer does not wait for a reply, but departs in a staccato click of boot-heels.  

The sergeant, meanwhile, answers with a lightning-swift pair of rifle-shots. The bullets surgically blast the joints of the Stallion's sign. The gas-tube sea-horse plummets, blocking the entrance with its wreckage of spewing glass-shards, vapors, and elyctric sparks. At the crash, the patrons rouse from their torpor. Yet, before the screaming, now-shouting mob can truly respond, the sergeant's aides fire a final salvo. Thermobaric rounds slip through the all-but blocked ingress and explode in cancerous fireball![/ic]

[ooc]Make an Agility defense roll. Also, make a Might defense roll.[/ooc]

[ooc]Last night's recovery roll:
[blockquote]Rolled 1d6 : 6, total 6[/blockquote]

Today's addiction-kicking roll:
[blockquote]Rolled 1d6 : 6, total 6[/blockquote][/ooc]

[ic]Alisandre pours a cup of mulled wine from Alphosine's earlier presents, closes her eyes, and listens to her mother's grave-song. She knew the rest of the words by heart.

You may charge me with murder--or want of sense--
We are all of us weak at times
But the slightest approach to a false pretence
Was never among my crimes!

Alisandre savors the rich spiced taste, but just as much, admires the crypt's upkeep. She didn't need to see her surroundings to do so; she could feel it in her blood. All was in its proper place. All was as it should be. Within this house of the dead, this most revered of places for a Mei-Vourne scion, a craving for alchemical substances seemed utterly insignificant. Alisandre would inevitably be as lifeless as its present occupant someday. All desires were as nothing before the grave. The insatiable, unrelenting pounding her head for more quiets to a low thumping, then ceases altogether--like a once-vigorous man faced with the specter of his mortality, blanching in terrified denial, and finally breathing his last.

Xaphan's hand stirs the ex-magistra from her reverie. That confirmed it; Father had certainly paid a visit. Perhaps he merely wished to pay his respects to his deceased wife--such was no trivial thing to one of the family--but somehow, it seemed probable that wasn't his only reason.

Alisandre grimaces behind her mask. Best get it over with. She retrieves a dip pen for the hand's use, then lays a blank sheet of vellum over the skull-and-stone memorial bench repurposed as her dining table. She even lifts the thing up if it requires assistance, though from what she'd seen it was more than capable of managing on its own.[/ic]

[ooc]Talk about a portentious set of rolls to resume the game with.

Pools (including the +1 I left out): Might 6/8 (0), Agility 6/11 (1), Intellect 10/17 (1)[/ooc]