Darkness, light - what's the difference when you can't truly see in either extreme? - Jason Santiego This is a list of the players in the game, along with their PC's descriptions. Players Characters Occupation aslhk Quentin Masters Private Investigator Quentin Masters is a scrawny man, about six feet tall and one hundred and Caltak Hubert Brown Gas Station Attendant Hugh seems to be about 20 or so. He has a strange quality about him, but isn't ugly. The size of his head seems just on the larger edge of normal, and he has pale blonde hair, that seems almost to be thinning already. His eyes are hidden behind mirrored sunglasses that he seems to wear all the time, even at night. He dresses casually and unspectacularly, wearing a dark brown jacket, t-shirt, jeans, and sneakers. FirestormZero Alexander Priest PC Description |337C4Bb4g3 Michael Splardonski Bard Mike is 5'10", 150 lbs, and is in his mid-twenties. He looks as if he has seen better days: his brown hair is long, and slightly unkempt, and his eyes have a haunted look about them, as if he has seen things that man was never meant to see. Still, there is something strangely compelling about him... a sense of majesty and otherworldliness, and a sort of tentative surrealness, a feeling that you could turn your back on him for a moment, and find that in that brief span he had vanished back to whence he came, like the memory of a particularly poignant dream as the morning rays break through the mists of slumber. NPCs People change and forget to tell each other. - Lillian Hellman Name Occupation Joshua Evans Reporter Joshua is 6'2", with short, well trimmed brown hair, green eyes, and a serious look about him that would be scholarly if he did not project an aura of self confidence and competence. He doesn't look too observant or sensitive, instead, you suppose, being absorbed into his own world of conjecture and thought, based on the way that he completely ignores those who aren't relevant to him or his life at the moment. He is dressed sharpl y, but unremarkably, with some khaki slacks, a button-down shirt, and some fairly new athletic shoes. Kyle Redford Police Officer Kyle is 5'9" weighs 147lbs. He has penetrating blue eyes, and blonde hair. He is of average build, but has quick reflexes. Nicole Saunders That's a good question. No idea. Student maybe. Nicole is a short (5') girl with long white hair and bright, silver eyes. She's pretty, in an extremely exotic way. She wears a long sleeved t-shirt, some baggy pants with deep pockets and has a large jean jacket on. Note that some of these NPCs were PCs at one point. Roll Call “Everything is consumed, Will, sooner or later. Living and dying we feed the fire.” - Clive Barker, "Sacrament" This is going to be the list of deceased PCs and how they died. No PC has died. Yet. One will soon, though. Session Summaries The hidden stone ripens fast, Then laid bare like a turnip Can easily be cut out at last But even then the danger isn't past. That man lives best who's fain To live half mad, half sane. - Jan Van Stijevoort Sessions are listed by a summary note, followed by the date (RL // Game), a summary, and who earned what exp. Session 1: 'When you're paranoid, everything makes sense.' (July 28 // Oct 8 02) Boy meets girl. Boy asks to help girl. Girl says get lost, but can I use your phone? Boy says yes. Girl calls a cab. Boy figures out no cab is coming and Girl is just going to leave. Boy and Girl argue. Girl leaves. Spot tries to shoot them, shoot, shoot, shoot. Boy and Girl try to drive away in car. Spot get spooked. See Spot make a spoot! See Spot run (away)! Boy and Girl drive into Crossing, drive, drive, drive. Experience: 3 for Hubert, 2 for Nicole. Session 2: 'Convictions make convicts.' (July 29 // Oct 8-9) The recent past unveiled, gossamer truths Explained, woman to man (the lies beneath Common to all meetings of the sexes). Then, ah! then she vanishes in her home And he searches but is found by seekers And finds another seeker. Darkness strikes; Daylight brings pain, illuminates nothing. She returns. (& says she was never gone.) Reality enters, words are spoken And unsaid, and then spoken yet again. A man is imprisioned by injustice, The woman wishes to free him from this. To all things: a price. She asks him to stay so that if she failed One would know why she strived. No doubts assailed Her ... isn't that nice? Experience: 4 for Hubert, 2 for Nicole. Session 3: 'A place is nothing, not even a space. Unless at it's heart a figure stands.' (Aug 1 // Oct 9) Interoffice Memo From: Bill Tagger To: Joshua Evans RE: The magic show reporting Josh: You kept in the word count. Good. The first half was interesting, with the kids and the nice crowd. Now, I know you seem to like fiction writing, but a man in a box dissappearing for real, babbling about "bindings", a sword fight (well, blow, but you need to learn to emphasize things) with a pool cue, a chair hruled by some kid in glases way to strongly, your writing down that one of the miners told you that Isaac was a pedophile and a bartender threatening to blow people away is a bit much, don't you think? This isn't the Enquirer, son. I nean emphasize, not take the facts and turn them into at least two law cases against our office and outlandish stories. Stick to the truth, and we won't need to edit as much. - Bill Well, Josh could have written the truth. :) Experience: 3 for Hubert, 5 for Josh Session 4: 'One truth is clear: whatever is, is right.' (aug 4 // Oct 10) Josh gives his story of the odd events, Nicole spends the night at Huberts sleeping - on the couch. The next day, FirestormZero's pc Kyle came into existence, but since he must have always existed no one really noticed. He found out about an odd theft, and some oddness around it while Josh researched stuff Isaac had said and Josh & Hugh interviewed Isaac, who tended to be remarkably uninformative. Wow. A normal session summary. Whoda thunk it? Experience: 4 each for Hubert, Josh and Kyle Session 5: 'All other things being equal, the simplest solution is usually the correct one.' {Aug 8 // Oct 10) Still shots, moments of time frozen for eternity in this black box, on this translucent film. Each tells it's own story worth a thousand words, and words are cheap. A bar, old fashioned for this time and place. A magic show played for kids, but watched by miners and teenangers ... why? More miners, a murder of them if they were crows, dressed in dark clothing. Anger, in the purity of line and form. A man falls, untouched, as if struck by nothing. A man dies, still shots, of a bo- dy shred- ding and fall- ing apart. A pool cue defies gravity, a marker for the dead. Fear, purer than anger, as men rush for a door. And leave. A man, wearing shades, touched the cue. It shatters. His outline is warped. There are no pictures of him after, except one from the side. Alive. And unwarped. Another picture, of the broken ooze that was once a living man. A desk, somewhere, a place of papers and hiding and concealment. Eighteen thousand words, summed up in one hundred and eighteen. A coincidence? Perhaps. But ... there is more to these than pictures. This wasn't a movie, with Lucasfilm graphics in it, or computer alterations. This happened. And it cannot be explained - not by logic, nor reason. Occam's Razor is a bloody, messy thing. But this is a darkroom, a place of shadows and secrets. And there is the door, and your negatives, and light that purifies and burns. It would be so easy .... Experience: 3 each for Hubert, Josh, and Kyle Session 6: 'All other things being equal, the simplest solution is usually stupidity.' {Aug 7 // Oct 10) Experience: 3 for Hubert & Kyle, 1 for Josh Session 7: The lowest depth to which people can sink before god is defined by the word "journalist" {Aug 15 // Oct 10) Hubert drops off Pat in NY using his UFO, Kyle talks to Julianne and Isaac. Josh does a B&E on Hughs, meets Hugh afer and ends up in the hospital. Experience: 6 each for Hubert, Josh & Kyle Session 8: Ah! but it was something to have at least a choice of nightmares. {Aug 15 // Oct 10) Hugh goes to the Hospital and finds that Pat's friend Tim is in a coma and Pat in the hospital as well. He attempts to help them. Things get worse. He leaves and is found by someone and offered a job, then returns home anmd goes to the ValuMart, being followed by a minivan. Experience: 5 for Hubert Note For New Players October 8th 2002: Johnathan Cross of the Cross family (and recent lottery winner) had something stolen from him on the way home. The local news is basically about John Cross's lottery winning - he hasn't said what he plans to do with it, but is offering an unspecified reawd for the theft of a personal item. The newscaster makes a vague reference emphasisnig the "personal" in that, but does report that "the Cross has failed to say what the item actually is, which is confusing the police as much as it must confuse his insurance company." The rest of the news is about the Nov. 1st celebrations and the halloween ones, some local stuff about the odd theft of some john doe bodies from the morgue recently, some library books, an increase in petty vandalism and the like. Nothing of any real note. October 9th: The town of Crossing is preparing for it's bicentary November 2nd. It's currently not snowing but is expected to any day now as winter slowly separates Crossing from the rest of Pennsylvania. Crossing is a small town with a lumber industry, a dying mining one and one of those places with a road off the interstate that winds up into the moutains .. one road, leading somewhere. Like they say, "Pennsylvania is made up of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, seperated by thousands of miles of Alabama." Crossing is somewhere within those thousand miles, just another small town except that it has a low crime rate. A traveller was picked up on charges but Isaac Dane of no fixed address has been here before, 10 years ago, and was realsed with police apologies around noon today. About that time the police began an odd manhunt on the woods, for someone who,. according to rumour, tried to free Isaac from jail. Rather hard to do when he wasn't really in jail. October 10th: The local news reported the theft of the gravestoe of one Norton Cross from years ago as well as the death of a prominent local doctor, Harold Poins, of heart failure. The funeral was closed-casket. As well, there was some incident at Adam's Bar last night that involved at least one corpse but the police have laid no charges to date. October 11th: The morning paper is about the odd barn fire last night. Burnt right to the ground in winter, the horses were apparently skinned alive as well. No one knows who did it but the police have set up a hot line asking for tips. The only other notice is from the family of one Tim Donahue. He apparently woke up last night with no memory and is on life support in the hospital to be able to breathe. He was last seen with Patrick Rockford around Hodgin's Gas. The police weren't able to get Patrick to comment as his parents said he phoned them from New York. last night and was very .. confused when he got home. They booked him into the hospital as well for treatment of hypothermia. Session 9: The truth may be out there, but the lies are in your head. (Jan 10 03 // Oct 11) Hugh helped try and heal Pat's friend Tim. Epxerience: 4 for Hugh Session 10: The truth is the one thing that nobody will believe (Jan 11 // Oct 11) One True Occult Broadcasting Experience (OOBE) The Town of Bridge, where Magic and the Mundane meet. Jeff: Here's the memo you wanted. I weas all all night thinking about our new show idea and this just hit me out of the blue. A town of magick and change, where aliens and kings sit down to lunch in fast food franchises built on let lines Where servants of God find questionable refuge from Satan and get muffins, clothes and a map as Miracles from God. Where Satanists practise summoning demons and only one man can stop thm Where travellers from this world come back from alien worlds Where police offers are driven mad by Seeing the Truth Where people kill people and keep them in a kleptomaniacs paradise. I think I sent it on to Edward. Please tell him it was a joke. I don't know what came over me. We're an investigative occult thing, we don't make Charmed-like TV shows Thanks, Harold. Experience: 3 for Alex and Hubert, 4 for Quentin. Session 11: That which makes no sense makes the most sense. (jan 16 // oct 11 & 12th) One True Occult Broadcasting Experience (OOBE) Memo: To Jeff Jeff, it happened again! This time it's weirder, ok? I'm gettting character ideas, a normal town but with a Satanic Cult and someone who's like a motivator, but nuts, saying things like: "When I was your age, I summoned a demon too. He possessed me, and as a result, three of my friends died. He made shoes out of them!" or a priest who comes back from the dead and wants money and his guns or the alien who works in a gas station ... I can't stop it! I mean, girls with dead men in their bathtubs who make that into a diary. It doesn't make sense! Like the other priest, the one who has ties to some secret organisation and has to sell his soul to them or something to save the town and .,.. other stuff, like the shoes in a car or the kid whose been infected by an alien. It makes no sense. There's people who can't be seen getting captured by demons and freed by someone who is utterly terrified of demons, if that makes any sense at all. And there's a dead magician, like Merlin, but he's dead. And I felt like crying when I learned that, like when someone told me years ago that every time you say "I don't believe in fairies" one of them died. I felt like crying even though I knew it was a dream, but somehow I think it's somewhere. Not here, but it's in this world. I mean, it FEELS real, Jeff. This Bridge, or Crossing place. And I want to look into it. Not for a show, but because there is something real there, something not in other places. And it's got good and bad to it, but it's got heroes and I want to find it. I think it's real somewhere, Jeff. I think there's a place where magick is real, has always been real, never went away. Harold. One True Occult Broadcasting Experience (OOBE) RE: Memo: To Jeff Harold, it's stupid, but you've got the vacation and hell we can always borrow stuff. The equipment in room 333 is old but it works, and Denise gets off at 3:33 today. It even says so on the chart. What a weird shift. Anywho, we need $333 to put down for insurance on the van. And Harold, if someone brings up 3 3's again, I'm going to go seriously nuts. Oh, and why did you spell magic with a k? That's kinda weird. Jeff. Session 12: Intelligence is not what you know, but what you do when you don't know. (jan 18 // Sat. oct 12th) What do you do when the world has changed What do you do when nothing's the same? When girls become invisible and aliens are friends And you don't know the rules of the game? What can we do when our choices are few? What's left to fight for, alone in the city, When magicians die and demons rise And even for the evil we feel pty? When evil's just a little girl alone and confused Her friends have bretrayed her and she's all alone And her saviour is seen as evil incarnate And a temple of Satan's her home? When she gets idea as truths from movies L ike the Prophecy and Scooby Doo too And people who help you are indebted to you And help is so few - tell me what do you do? When wonder is everywhere and magick is true When the places where we stand are blurry and grey When heroes are madmen or not human or fools? Tell me, stranger, the words you would say? For the bindings are failing and it's all falling down Or changing or wakenings or whatever is claimed And the only thing left to save our city Are the fools, the mad and the damned? Then we find if sacrifices are really worth making And we find if the risks are really worth taking And w'll find that in the very end It all comes down to who has more friends. And none of it matters because in time The songs we sing become simply rhyme And we learn some evils may never die And truths are terrible and so are lies. - found by Mike at the Adam's Bar, scrawled on some napkins. Experience: 4 for Hugh, Mike, and Quentin. Session 13: "Doesn't take long for the world to fall apart, does it?" (jan ?? // oct 12th)