Clockwork Abattoir: Sordid Tales

[Rose-of-Vellum]

[ic=Hadric]Confusion, awe, and fear initially overwhelm the dumb-struck girl. Her employers' manic ebullience, however, soon assuages her trepidation, if not perplexity.  

"Are you a demon-prince?" she asks Hadric with childhood wonder and the hint of lingering fear. She soon asks other questions, sometimes to the sheevra, other times to his erstwhile familiar. "Do you eat children?" "Do you eat candles –is that why you glow?" "Do you know where my mother is?" "Why is your demon not chained?" "Did you know my father, Kravec?" Each query is touched by a similar, if slowly diminishing, degree of ignorance, curiosity, and dubiety.

Together, the trio returns to the perfumed avenues of the Indigo Ward and Hadric's residence therein. Tatiana continues, if permitted, to ask about her new masters and responsibilities, interspersing her questions with answers of her own, particularly of her own upbringing and ancestry. Nibs happily converses between gulps of butter. He asks her irreverent koans, tests her fluency in Low Phlegethian, and repeatedly demands to know what she's making for dinner. By the time they reach the former bordello, Tatiana and Nibs are bosom companies, and the pair trounce off, Nibs slithering between her feet and tickling her cheeks with his plumage. Merrily, they raid the cellar and nigh-empty pantries. Nibs catches a six-footed rat, Tatiana prepares the pot. Hadric, meanwhile, is tired, especially as he walks his domicile's dusty corridors and smells the soporific aroma of his bedroom.[/ic]

[ooc]Hadric learns a few things about the girl on the ride home. Some are unsurprising: no, she does not speak the smoke-ring speech of the se'irim's paraphysical yeomanry. Others are. Namely, Hadric is somewhat shocked by her age: she is just 7. To Hadric's admittedly untrained eye, she appears perhaps 10, but her height and stocky build make her seem much older than most rail-thin, malnourished urchins of the Ebon Ward.

Tatiana, or Tatia as her parents called her, is the daughter of Virdal, a freelance machinist and Kravec Chemoley. the third son of Ludovic Chemoley, a landless noble from Old Gromlech in the Northern Baronies. According to Tatia's report, Virdal was an apprentice-mechanic in the Palace of Chimes, with aspirations to become one of the vestal-machinists that tend the Sortilege Engine. Kravec, however, wooed her, and doing so dashed her dreams of joining the virginal order. As allegedly related by her mother, Kravec's father was a famous painter, known for his seditionist-slanted paintings of the Northern Baronies and the Lords and Ladies Revenant. During the Northern Uprising, Kravec and his eldest brother Feodor fought against the zehrers' forces. Feodor died on the field of battle, blown apart by a necromechanoid. Ludovic was assassinated by a Whisper. Ludovic, Galkin's middle son, bowed the knee to Somnambulon. Outraged by his brother's capitulation, Kravec joined the Sons of the Wolf. Shortly before the Adumbral War, Kravec and a small contingent of the Sons were hired by Skein to perform certain recon missions on the defenses of Crepuscle's tributary settlements. In between these missions is when Kravec met and wooed Virdal. Tatia doesn't remember Kravec, save for a daguerreotype print of her parents that graced their family's mantelplace in Ravel Row. Tatia explains that her father died during the last battle of the War, where Kravec's grenadiers where slaughtered by the Dead Men after the Son's corsair reinforcements failed to arrive. Virdal was left to care and provide for Tatia on her own, and poverty soon forced them to move to the Ebon Ward, where Virdal began working on the sewers' pump-motors. Exposure to such disease-ridden environs eventually left Virdal ill. She had been going to the apothecaries of the 'Salvers for treatment. Ten nights ago, Tatia started to show symptoms of the sickness, and Virdal raced to the 'Salvers for more medicine. She never returned. Days later, the still-sick and starving Tatia started wandering the streets to look for her mother. Qiao-Fae found her, nursed her back to health. And thus you found her at the Petite Joug.

Tatia has bone-pale skin, blue eyes, wheat-hued hair, and the heavy-frame of her father's ancestry. She has the deep-slanted epicanthus of her Skeinite mother, though. She bears no Somnambulon accent, but speaks Hellspeak with a middle-class dialect. She knows her letters and can read. A little. Her math skills are much better. Like her mother, who let her tinker with tools and scraps, Tatia has an interest in mechanical things, although it's a rather inchoate affinity. She says she knows how to cook and tidy a place, as that was her job at home. However, upon further reflection, Hadric has reason to be dubious. Not only is the girl quite young, but the standards of Ebon Ward cooking and cleaning are quite, quite distinct from those of Skein's nobility –nobility he needs to impress if Ulle-Shi's counsel is correct.[/ooc]

[TheMeanestGuest]

[ic]"Nibs! Tatiana!" Hadric calls sleepily down the hall. "I'm taking a nap. I shall wake at dusk to commence the hunt, as we find ourselves in imminent need of funds." he continues - yawning - as he slowly curls himself up in bed, lulled by softness and warmth. "I'll get groceries..." he half-whispers, surrendering to the weighty grasp of sleep.[/ic]

[ooc]Daily third recovery roll: This dice roll has been tampered with!
Rolled 1d6+1 : 6 + 1, total 7

Pools once edited stand at:  Might - 13/13, Agility - 12[11]/14, Intellect - 9/9[/ooc]

[Ghostman]

Initiative roll, spending Grit:
[blockquote]Rolled 1d6 : 3, total 3[/blockquote]

[Ghostman]

[ic]Xavier curses as he struggles with the rapidly escalating disaster at his hands. His tongue is stilled when his attention is drawn to the loathsome threat suddendly emerging from the darkness. Confronted by this abominable mechanoid, the assassin decides on his course of action in a split second. There's not enough time to do anything about Maryse-Liang and the press, he realizes. Immediately determined to abandon the former to her doubtlessly grisly fate, Xavier darts forth to try and escape from the room and grab the almost finished paper from the malfunctioning printer on his way.[/ic]

[ooc]Agility roll, spending Grit:
Rolled 1d6 : 3, total 3[/ooc]

[Ghostman]

[ooc]
Stat pools:
Might 10/10 (0), Agility 12/14 (1), Intellect 8/12 (0)
[/ooc]

[Rose-of-Vellum]

[ic=Xavier]With one fluid -if treacherous- tumble, Xavier snatches the still-wet pamphlet and rolls below and away from the leaping monstrosity. He does not look back as he flees the catacombs. He does not see what befalls Maryse-Liang or the press. The sounds, though, he hears. They will surely haunt his nightmares to come.

The echoes chase him up the stairways, through the floors, and around the tortuous corridors of the House. The reverberations and metallic shrieks -or are they screams- hound him. Eventually, though, he outpaces the horripilating cacophony.

In time, he is able to collect his thoughts. His breath assumes its typical placid rhythm. Looking down, he inspects the pamphlet still clutched in his no-longer shaking hand. Finished save for a last few lines, its bottom edge is smeared and rumpled from the stained rollers and rough retrieval. Still, it's a convincing counterfeit, so long as one doesn't inspect its end. He and Maryse-Liang -the unbidden image of the arachnoid horror implanting eggs into her seizuring, cog-locked body drifts before his prosthetic eye- successfully added into the headline article his selected pseudonym and prognosticated site of the lady's lace explosion.

The Soldiers of Skin await their new commander and incendiary orders.[/ic]

[ooc]Let me know, either IC or OOC, what the printed persona and site are, but you otherwise free to proceed with your ruse. Depending on the persona, you may need to roll a disguise check. A deception check, however, is definitely necessary. Remember, you have mastery in the former and expertise in the latter -and the pamphlet grants you a 1-step benefaction (would've granted more, but its unfinished, light-ink nature reduces it, and without it, you'd suffer a huge hindrance). Don't roll the 1. :)

Also, thanks for posting your current Pools.[/ooc]

[Rose-of-Vellum]

[ic=Hadric]
Hadric awakens from his somatic day-dream. He sinks through a delightful arboreal space, flooded with peridot sunlight, suspended between an unfathomably distant, yawning ocean and a sky of heart-lifting beryl. An infinity of amaranthine-leaved arbors surrounds him. Lemurs with whisper-studded masks cavort nearby. One has a bushy serpent for its tail, with the conjoined pair chasing each other between the spiderweb of branches. Their laughter freezes in the warm air, crystallizing into delicate, succulent sounds. The tittering-crystals plummet to the frothing abyss. Ignoring the giggling precipitation, another lemur, this one dark-haired, silently wretches atop a knotted trunk. Each regurgitation causes its belly to swell. Another, meanwhile, brachiates between the branches, its legs plucking a salacious melody on a voluptuous viola. Other lemurs flit further from Hadric's gaze. They pick colorless berries from the cinnabar leaflets. They sing to the fruit, causing them to crack open, revealing grey-mewling worms that instantly combust into hoary flames. The lemurs sip the miniature conflagrations with cries of ecstacy, choking back tears before serenading another floral ovary. Hadric realizes he is famished.[/ic]

[ooc]Welcome to the other side of Hadric's Looking-Glass. You have your Intellect pool. Certain actions will sap or strengthen it, as well as other possibilities. Since we're mucking in Hadric's subsconscious, feel free to take whatever narrative liberties strike your fancy. However, beware: the Aether is not without its danger –and though sheevra are skilled oneiromancers, the lucidity of their dreams make them vulnerable to certain menaces of the dreamlands.[/ooc]

[Rose-of-Vellum]

[ic=Decarabia: Flight of the Butterfly]
The gibbous moon shats its bony light across the Sepia Ward. It exposes the naked industry of the dyer's district, revealing its stark functionality compared to the chitinous opulence across the river. Brick warehouses slouch against factories crowned by nests of belching smokestacks; cranes and scaffolds sprawl about towers not of gilded carapace but iron girders. Between the maze of locked storehouses and night-forlorn sweatshops, Watchmen patrol the gaslamp-lit streets with readied spear-swords and wheellock pistols. The cobblestone echoes with their hobnailed steps, but the district's streets are otherwise empty.

Decarabia, however, does not traverse such lowly roads –at least not tonight. She stands above their gaze, outside the muddy illumination that bathes the streets and storehouse walls.  Atop the factory roofs, swaying gantries, and bat-covered gablets, the shade stalks her prey.

The Midnight Papillion.

A black-market art-dealer reputed to hold nocturnal auctions of taboo and illicit artistry, the Midnight Papillion is a hard man to find. After a week of shaking down shady curio-dealers and avant-garde artists, Decaraba was finally able to get the name of the Papillion's current assistant, a tattoo-faced courier by the name of Jun-Moise. He put up quite the fight when Decarabia confronted him in his Damask Ward flat. Yet, after a few broken bones, pistol-whips, and a cocked carbine to his head, the courier traded his boss's secrets for his life. Nicodemius, he said, was the Papillion's name. Likely not his real one, but the current one at least. He claimed he didn't know for sure where Nicodemius stayed, since his boss always contacted him via penned letters when they needed to arrange a meeting. However, Jun-Moise –feeling helpful after Decarabia didn't blow his brains out- shared his suspicion that Nicodemius was staying in the Sepia Ward, atop a factory that processes cuttlefish ink. Has a certain smell, he explained, one that marked his letters as well as his clothes. It was the best –and now only- lead Decarabia had. And her employer wanted results.

Madame Fontanelle, as usual, had contracted Decarabia for a job. This time, however, it was strictly for her own reasons, rather than Mei-Vourne's more oblique interests. Another bricoleur had set up shop in Skein. This one, the governess related with milk-teeth-clacking ire, had not only failed to present itself to her, but had allegedly started producing flesh sculptures. Human flesh. This could not be tolerated, she proclaimed. It clearly violated the law and could bring retribution against all grave-spawn if discovered. It also transgressed the bricoleur's purity of bone-artistry. Decarabia was not certain which crime offended the governess more. Either way, she had contracted the shade to track down the bricoleur and see that justice was done. One way or another.

Her initial lead was only an ornately framed ambrotype. The velvet-backed glass depicted a    starfish-shaped assembly of flensed fingers and male genitalia spliced to a black-iron cog. Madame Fontanelle had acquired the grisly print from a contact who claimed she purchased it from the Midnight Papillion.

Now, a week later, Decarabia's all-too elusive quarry was near.

With spasmodic celerity, she makes her way across the Sepia Ward's skyline like a fearsome marionette. Her black eyes drink in the night. The darkness is her ally. With a final, preternatural leap, she vaults from a cooling smokestack to land atop the cuttlefish factory. A startled gull bursts into the air as she deftly lands. The factory is otherwise still. She takes in her surroundings. Beside a dormant smokestack and several ventilation pipes, the flat roof is dominated by a massive crane that creaks in the riparian breeze. At its base, a brick-walled pilothouse sits. A suitable safehouse.

Hands hovering near her firearms, Decarabia stealthily creeps towards the structure. Flitting between the cover of the ventilation pipes, she realizes that Jun-Moise spoke truthfully: there is a certain smell. An unpleasant one.

She sprints the last stretch. She kicks down the rusty door and draws Marchoisas in one frenetic, act of violence.

But the pilothouse is empty. There are signs, however, that it was not always so. A kettle and cup of lethe-tea sit on a rickety table beside a half-written letter. The tea is warm. The ink is wet.

He must have heard her approach, or perhaps a hex alerted him. Either way, she considers, he must be close. Stepping out of the pilothouse, she looks around. She spots him. The Midnight Papillion is a short man, mask-less, amply-ringed, dressed in a paisley frock-coat, white hose, and buckled shoes. He half-runs, half-climbs the crane's creaking trestle. Looking back, he sees he's been spotted. He gives a wind-muffled yelp of fear, then hastens his ascent.

The chase is on![/ic]

[ooc]No need to roll Initiative, as both of you are aware of each other and active. If you try and follow him up the trestle, roll a climb check (Might based: DC 3 for you) or jump check (Agility based: DC 2 for you). If you do the latter, you will also need to make a balance check (Agility based: DC 3 for you). While the latter option requires 2 rolls, it is definitely the fastest, especially given your expertise in running, and will cover ground more quickly.[/ooc]

[TheMeanestGuest]

[ic]Hadric grins at the antics of the lemurs, the length of his smile quickly stretching to the distant horizon. The lemurs freeze in their tracks and their eyes widen with fright, alarmed at the geographic extent of the intruder's delight. Hadric quickly purses his lips, removing the unwelcome blight. "Pardon me! I'll try to keep it under control," he calls. Seemingly satisfied, the lemurs return to their business. Realizing the extent of his hunger, Hadric flips onto his head and humms a lullaby his mother sang to him as a babe .

With a loud pop an enormous toad wearing a cream knit shawl materializes in the canopy of a nearby tree "Service, sir?" the toad inquires.

"Ah! Boilegard. Of course! What's on the menu today?" Hadric asks. With a mighty leap Boilegard sails from the treetop to land at Hadric's side, laying out a crisp white tablecloth in front of him.

"To start, a steaming bowl of baby's breath topped with a scoop of only the most insubstantial mountain air, imported directly from Red Red Rimigar. Our main is a delightful - " cries of horror emanate from a thousand lemur throats at the mention of delight, the cacophony toppling several nearby trees. A look of eminent consternation affixes itself to Boilegard's slimy face. Hadric gestures at at him bizarrely with his eyebrows. "Excuse me," Boilegard continues "That is to say an enchanting - " the howling barrage ceases instantly "cut of fat, trimmed from the cloying first efforts of would-be authors everywhere. For dessert, a piece of half-eaten toast."

"It sounds delicious," Hadric says.

"I assure you sir, it is. As your pedigree is that of second scion of the Seventy-Third Strand, the Bent Ladle of the Ranarid Sous is contractually obligated to provide you with delicious fare, prompt delivery, and morose and presumptuous service." Boilegard says as he lays out the meal, silver trays deposited neatly atop the tablecloth from his stretching tongue. "Unfortunately as we are in the company of several individuals of an arboreal persuasion, I regret to say that refreshments are not included today, sir. In fact, they are expressly forbidden within a radius extending seven-thousand sighs from our current location," the toad finishes, the promised dishes arrayed before them. Hadric frowns at Boilegard's pronouncement and begins to sample the food.

"Remarkably insubstantial!" he declares of the baby's breath. "And this fat is enchantingly moist, cloyingly trite, and thoroughly underwhelming!"

"And the toast, sir?" Boilegard inquires. Hadric takes the slice between his teeth and crunches enthusiastically.

"It's a bit dry," he says of it. Boilegard sniffs derisively.

"Sir's palate is, as yet, woefully unsophisticated. Despite my long years of work." the toad complains. Hadric stares at the tablecloth sheepishly, contractually obligated embarrassment writ plain across his face. Boilegard harumphs.

"I am quite thirsty." Hadric says, his meal finished. Boilegard simply shrugs as the sun's light fades to a dull off-emerald, the lemurs manically scrambling about in search of shelter beneath the canopy. "I suppose I'll have to find myself a drink."[/ic]

[ooc]I think Hadric should have an arch-rival in the Aether named Snibs, who is obviously just Nibs wearing a moustache >_>[/ooc]

[Rose-of-Vellum]

[ic=Hadric]Hadric sinks further down the arboreal infinitude, as his tongue becomes heavy with the salty spray of benthic depths. To one side, he spots a patch of darkness between the trees: not an absence of light, but an umbral density framed by brazen trunks, wet and textured. The sound of chipping tea-pots peaks out from behind the brass-barked frames. The sound smiles, coquettishly of course. To the other side, musical instruments devour one another with reckless abandon. A cello swallows a sea of minnow-small piccolos only to be promptly gobbled up by a ravenous concertina, which in turn is sucked down the piped gullet of a harmonium. Boilegard looks down disapprovingly at the scene, his slimy countenance drawn inward by a pair of ludicrously large pince-nez. They do not fit well.

The lemurs are lost. Their flame-fruits now tiny stars in the porphyry eaves.

Hadric's tongue continues to fatten. It bursts from his mouth, rolling out like an impossibly long anchor. It bristles with sorrowful barnacles. They weigh him down. He must drink! To slough them off, to slake his thirst![/ic]

[ooc]Make an Intellect defense roll, and please continue by all means.[/ooc]

[Steerpike]

[ic]Catena narrows her eyes.

"I can find Tandy myself, if need be. But petty politics and scandals will not deter me." She uncrosses her arms. "I have connections you lack. I can go places you cannot, do things that Skein's laws forbid you. Perhaps we could come to an arrangement. You tell me Tandy's whereabouts - and in exchange I can help you. Perhaps track down some of these escaped dissidents. I have no sympathy with their causes."[/ic]

[TheMeanestGuest]

[ic]His tongue is heavy. There is little time! Salt rises in the Ae-Tringe, emanating in waves from a clear and cool heart. Hadric knows he must get below the brine belt, lest thirst claim his dream. And so he dives, accelerating rapidly. The scenery fades to a horizon point behind him. A cloud-panther spies his descent, and its own hunger is piqued. It chases after him, its great bushy beard fluttering behind it. The panther tries to gore him with its stare, but Hadric's mien is too fierce, and the gaze glances off. There, below! The crisp watery core. He can almost reach it![/ic]

[ooc]Intellect Defense: This dice roll has been tampered with!
Rolled 1d6 : 3, total 3

Hadric does have expertise in intellect defense vs. witchcraft produced effects, but I'm not sure if that applies here. Regardless, Hadric will now spend 2 points of intellect to add one point of grit, reducing his intellect pool to 7/9.[/ooc]

[Rose-of-Vellum]

[ic=Catena]Red Mei drums her fingers on the tin-plated tabletop like a pale, five-limbed spider. She scoffs, shaking her head, "Petty? You're hunting for a disowned drug addict in exchange for what, a few chit to rub between your fingers?  You don't get it, do you? You act like you're free of all this gleetstorm –you aren't. Come next Jubilee, Shenn's pretty face won't be gracing this wall. New bosses. New rules. Some of those would-be bosses don't like our kind. Not one bit. You –we, we aren't human in their eyes, not really. So don't play dumb like all of this Hellsdamned cluster-gleet doesn't concern you."

She sits back and breathes a heavy sigh. "Did you ever consider that maybe I don't want these dissidents found? That maybe you shouldn't either?"

She shakes her head again, red wig shifting on her sweaty brow. She matches Catena's incarnadine gaze with her own. She laughs:

"That face. Such an ugly piece of marble. Just as cold."

She pulls out a file, copies an address down, and slides it across the table.

"Already gave you her name, but that's Tandy's address, or more properly, the address of her pimp: Sacheverell, or Dr. Sach as he prefers to be called. She's gone to ground, so I figure she's holed up in his rat-nest. The doctor's a right nasty piece of work. He's got ties to the Orchid-Eaters. People who cross him, his girls included, end up sampling the syndicates' latest batches. Fancies himself a scientist, shackling his subjects and chronicling their symptoms. Give my regards."

"Now-," she says leaning forward, her finger still pressed firmly on the note, "-in exchange for those two pieces of information, I expect two favors in return. First, should you discover Xalmas' fate, you tell me first. As for the second favor, let's just say you owe me one. Like old times."[/ic]

[ooc]The address is to a flophouse, above the Impregnated Stallion, in the Indigo Ward.[/ooc]

[False Epiphany]

[ic]Alisandre listens patiently to Xedric's lengthy confessions, noting all with interest, some with triumph, and others with bafflement.

Suicide? Mother, what on earth...?

She brims with anger when her half-brother justifies ruining her life... at least, at first. As she looks down upon his delirious, dying, broken form, she can't help but wonder. The girl she used to be might've been able to stomach such a grisly sight, but she certainly would've lacked the strength to orchestrate it. What else wouldn't she have been able to do? Would she, in fact, have been a poor heir to the Mei-Vourne legacy?

Perhaps she did owe her former position to birth and not merit. But she had a chance to earn it through the latter now. She knew less of the family's business workings than she believed, but she could learn. She could manage them better than Xedric had--she was, after all, more intelligent (at least in her own mind) than he was. And in an odd way, she would owe it all to him.

After confirming from Alphosine that she is not unduly wearied from maintaining the glammer, Alisandre inspects Xedric's comatose form and calls on what medical knowledge she can to save his life, then has her reanimated servant load the coffin into Alphosine's carriage. After changing vehicles into something less identifiable midway through the city, she deposits Xedric's coffin outside the doors to the Mei-Vourne family estate.

You called for my death, left me charred, broken, and stripped of everything, yet I have preserved your life twice this evening, she thinks as the carriage rattles us off.

Consider us still quite uneven.[/ic]

[ooc]Intellect check to save Xedric's life. Spending 1 grit.

This dice roll has been tampered with!
Rolled 1d6+1 : 2 + 1, total 3

Might 2/8 (0), Agility 4/11 (1), Intellect 8/17 (1)

After this, Alisandre is going to lie low back in mom's crypt for a while. She'll retrieve her things from Alphosine (though keep the maid disguise, which could come in handy again), spend some time on the puzzle box, chatting with mom's maybe-spirit-maybe-her-own-mind, and recuperating her depleted pools.[/ooc]

[False Epiphany]

[ooc]Takin' a reroll if that failed. I want him around!

[blockquote]Rolled 1d6+1 : 2 + 1, total 3[/blockquote][/ooc]