Adventure! RPG: Dark Tidings - Chapter One: In the Dead of Night

[Lady Millicent]

Millicent, very much despite herself, blushed. When the black man came into clear view she just couldn't help it, a kind of cold heat swept over her body and settled in her cheeks (and other less proper places). With considerable willpower she sank the feeling deep, she shouldn't be considering a man like him, and much less at a moment like this. Nevertheless, she was sure he'd noticed, and when she continues she's slightly mollified.

"I am investigating this case," she quickly cooks up the half-lie, after a quick look inside the door, "you are breaking and entering, whether it's a friend of yours here or not."

With this she continues walking forward, not expecting to be stopped, and calls out to John, "Please don't touch anything. In fact, please just leave," just as she looks with somewhat strained composure around the room and prepares to do a thorough gathering of clues.

[Buzzkill]

John finally looks up and realizes someone else has joined the little group. His hand is res with the gel-like blood as he stands up to his full height, just inches from the ceiling and stares down at the woman who just came onto the scene. The despair and confusion is etched onto his pathetic face as he trembles unsue what to do.

"Can you help? I tink he's hurt real bad, maybe dead! And I saw what did it to him, and my friend Fadder Paddy is gone! He was trying to fight it! You gotta help me!" he pleads.

['Crossroads' Johnson]

Jackpot, Crossroads smiles inside to match the one on the out. The sweet young thing flushed just a little bit, and even in the streetlit darkness of the city, it was plain to see as she made a passing swoop under the beam of the pale light from above. He loved how you could always see it when a white girl blushed.

The dame says that she's investigating the apartment, which didn't track at all. Crossroads had run afoul of plenty of cops in his day, and every damn one was awfully eager with a flash of his badge and to show off his uniform. For that matter, who ever heard of a skirt police detective? Not even in Boston! If she was a private dick, she was the brassiest one Henry'd ever seen. Hell, she was plenty brassy, already. It was fair to say Crossroads liked her right from the start.

Crossroads doesn't break his confident smile for an instant as the young woman breezes past him into the house. With a chuckle, he mutters loud enough to be heard but not obvious enough to sound like he wanted to be heard, "Dayum. Looks mighty fine comin' an' goin'."

As she enters the house, Henry slaps the magician's back gently, but hard enough to shake him up a little bit, and pitch the both of them towards the front door, where Crossroads leans affably against the doorjam, watching the scene unfold.

"Hate t'tell y'this", the musician croaks, his plain happiness replaced with a matter-of-fact calm, "but motherfucker looks pretty damn dead t'me."

[Strange Ways]

Leland coughs, staring at the ground and hoping that no one would require much of him for another minute or two. He lost complete composure as he spoke to the woman, and Crossroads made his move. She wasn't his type anyway.

Leland doesn't respond to anything said; he is too busy thinking about the war and its horrors. He snaps out of it when Crossroads slaps him on the back, and is able to compose himself slightly better. He moves to the door with Crossroads.

"Let the Fräulein handle it if she wants. Dead body ain't nothing I can do anything for."

Leland looks out onto the street for activity, torn between running away and helping John. He decides to take a step in to look for a sign of the Father. 'Door was pretty barricaded' He thought to himself 'and I doubt it got this way from the outside.'

[jameson (ST)]

Millicent moves into the apartment and begins to deconstruct the scene, taking in all of the clues. Behind her Henry leans against the door and watches her move through the place. Leland moves into the small home as well eyes scanning the area. John meanwhile is dawning to the conclusion that Mr. Smythe is quite dead and, given the coldness and stiffness of the body, has most likely been so for a while.

Walking carefully through the room Leland and Millicent both notice the sheer volume of blood; Smythe's body looks to have been exanguinated, drained of all its blood. Oddly that blood appears to have been deposited directly to the floor. Stranger still the body lies a good foot or two from the edge of the pool of congealing blood and an cursory examination of the body reveals no obvious wounds which would have caused him to bleed out. A chill runs up both their spines as they realize what has happened to Mr. Smythe.

Continuing to search the room reveals fairly Spartan living arrangement. This appears to have been both living space and bedroom; a small narrow bed is tucked up against the wall. The room has a single armchair by a fireplace and a small stand by the bed. A table rests between this room and a small kitchen and beyond the kitchen a small bathroom. The only sign of damage to the apartment is the shattered door and an overturned chair by the table.

As the two study the crime scene they notice that somebody appears to have tried to blot the pool of blood with some substance. By the looks of it ashes were taken from the fireplace and used to try and contain the blood at one side. The fireplace is still quite full of ashes itself. Further searches of the room turn up some broken glass. The glass is wet and likely came from a much larger break or from a small vial or bottle.

[Lady Millicent]

If it was a vampire, she thought, it was a pretty big if, but the vampire could've drained the man now lying on the floor, and then there was a priest, or at least the big one that had broke the door was mumbling something about a "Fadder", and if he was a bit more than a regular man of the cloth, he could've been fighting off the creature. The pieces of glass... from a vial of holy water? Did the priest win with that? And the ash... it was said vampires turned to ash when they died, but did the blood they'd drunk spill out of them like that? All a theory, a theory she better start checking with the facts.

She knelt down over the body and checked its neck for possible bite marks. And if not, for wounds anywhere, there had to be wounds, with so much blood.

[Strange Ways]

Leland moves to the blood, and kneels down next to it. The smell would gag anyone with less a experience with it, Leland thought.

"Its obvious enough what happened here, I think. Lets worry about the possibly alive, and not the dead."

Leland looks over at the lady, she seems to be checking over the body. It seemed that tonight was made for giving him the creeps.

"Do you know him?" Leland says to Lady Millicent. It occured to Leland that John might need some sort of comfort, but in looking at him, Leland decided he was not the man to do so. "The dead, I mean."

During this time, Heydrich has been cautiously crowding the Lady. He gets like this, Leland thought. Though he usually is never careful while doing so.

['Crossroads' Johnson]

Henry couldn't much help feeling about as useful as a deck without an ace, which was to say, pretty fuckin' useless. The big moose looked like he was beyond consolin', and even if he wasn't, Crossroads wasn't the one to offer it. The street magician, Leland, he thought he remembered, poked around the room like he was hoping to trip over something useful. And the beauty - goddamn was she somethin' - was making Crossroads envy the dead.

Even if he knew something about the scene, he remembered what his auntie had always told him about too many cooks in the kitchen and decided he'd serve best by sticking to the doorway and keeping an eye on the action outside. While his eyes scanned the perimeter, his ears sifted out the bits of conversation coming from inside, and his brain started to piece the whole scene together. If anybody here knew anything about creatures of the night and horrors that crept in the dark corners of man's understanding, it was him.

Now, if only that raven-haired beauty wasn't so damn good at bein' so damn distracting.

Quote:

Crossroads rolls Occult based on the information he's picked up via osmosis from the other people in the room. He also rolls Style to look cool and suave while he stands around, enough to look "natural" and hopefully deflect outside suspicion.

[jameson (ST)]

Millicen begins to check over the body but is unable to find any wounds on the exposed skin surfaces, no slashed wrists, or cut throat. Carefully she pulls up the legs of the man's pants and open his shirt; still nothing. She's baffeled by the fact that the man appears to have been drained entirely of his blood but there is not a single open wound on his body.

Out at the door Henry keeps watch, leaning easily again the jamb and smoking a steady stream of cigarettes. He listensi in on the conversation and if somebody who knew him took the time to read his face they would say that it was lined with the kind of thoughtful and worried look that might just mean trouble. Then again, trouble seemed to follow Henry around so it could just be anopther Saturday night ...

Leland watches the woman go about her work uncertain how she could be so calm considering the situation. On the flip side John was the picture of barely restrained panic, it was almost as if the two were trading expected rolls, with the large man worried and nervous and the woman stick still and steely nerved.

[Lady Millicent]

"No, I didn't know this man," she answers shortly to Leland, and then, after searching the man thoroughly, with a frown, "this is mightily puzzling," she turns to John, and her tone softens slightly, and she's almost soothing, "what did this to him? You said you saw, what happened?"

Quote:

Millicent is obviously using Investigation and Occult as appropriate, and will now attempt Brain Skimming on John to get a clear idea of what he saw happening

[Buzzkill]

John wipes his eyes and nose on the back of his hand as he tries to compose himself.

"Me and Fadder Paddy, we came to bring Mr. Smyte some soup, he been sick lately. I tink Fadder Paddy knew someting was going on, he brought da Sacraments wit him." he crosses himself. "And we knocked on da door, but no one answered. Fadder Paddy, he opened da door and we saw...it." John pauses as he gathers his wits and memories. "And it was standing over Mr. Smyte! And dere was blood everywhere! Fadder Paddy told me to run and he pulled out da Sacraments. Dat was all I saw, but Fadder Paddy wasn't gonna run, he fought it! But where is he?! What happened to Fadder Paddy!"

Tears rise again in the big man's eyes.

[jameson (ST)]

Millicent searches the room, eyes only, before bending down by the pool of blood and ash. She reaches out and plucks a fire darkened crucifex from the pile of ashes. "Certainly seems like signs are pointing to a vampire. The pile of ashes, complete with a burned crucifex. The bloodless corpse. The description John gave us. What doesn't add up is the blood, I don't know why it would be coving the floor in a pool like this. Further I cannot explain the lack of wounds on the body, if I didn't know better I would be inclined to say the body was dried but it is clearly to recently dead for that ... very strange."

[Strange Ways]

"Wait a mintue! Vampires!? This is rediculous!" Leland looks more angry than scared. "You're telling me what a person from a story did this? Come on! Why don't we just wait for our Detective Wolfman Bigby to come figure this out, huh? And we can call Frankenfuck and just throw back a couple of beers while we're at it."

Leland walks to the door, but Heydrich doesn't follow. Heydrich remains at the feet of the girl, sniffing her. Even when Leland whistles, Heydrich does not follow. "Vampires. Someone probably just set this up to get a good laugh. It was probably the Father, just messing with big guy over there. That would explain why we can't find him." Leland takes a step in, and leans against the door frame. "Vampires."

['Crossroads' Johnson]

An acid chuckle comes from behind Crossroad's lips. He waves the smoke curling off the end of his cigarette away as if dismissing it before turning to regard Leland and the young woman. "Sheeit", he croaks. "You be s'prised some'a th'things exist inna world like this." Disloding himself from the doorjam with a shrug of his shoulders and a flick of his expended cigarette butt to the streets, he steps inside the apartment to look at the scene himself, his normally intense eyes going calm and hard as he stares down at the rather large pool of blood. Whatever'd happened to this guy, he'd been done dirty, no doubt about it. He looked over the scene and though. Now, where th'shit have I seen this b'fore..?

Quote:

Crossroads rolls Occult, now actively studying the scene.

[Buzzkill]

John stands there uncomprehending as the rest beging to talk about what they think may have happened here. It takes a few mentions of the word 'Vampire' before he finally reacts.

"Strigoi!" he gasps and crosses himself fervently. "Dat's gotta be it! Mr. Smyte was bit by a Strigoi, a Vampire! Dat's why Fadder Paddy came wit da Sacraments! Maybe he's still alive! Let's head to da church and see! Come on!" he urges as he heds to the door.

[Strange Ways]

"Vampires!? Come on!" Leland yelled that last bit, but instantly looks around outside to be sure if he didn't catch anyones attention that he didn't want. "There's no such thing as vampires, and we all know it. Yeah, lets pull one over on Leland, thats it." He swears in a different language. "I mean, Come on!"

['Crossroads' Johnson]

Henry stands up from his crouch over the body, a sober expression on his weary face. "Y'be s'prised", he shrugged. "Mo' things'n 'eaven n' earth..."

He glanced over at John, urgently pressing them out to the church. Crossroads had identified what was going on, here. As much as he didn't care to get involved, he figured it still beat sleeping outside. Weariness was beginning to settle into his bones, but he fought it back with another smoke. "A'ight", he told the big grappler. "Les' go."

[jameson (ST)]

Millicent declines to accompany the men back to the church stating that she must return home to do additional research. You all leave together and manage to hail a cab for Millicent even though the hour grows very late indeed. Following John's lead you trudge off into the night and toward the church where John hopes to find Father Paddy.

Half an hour later and soaked to the skin by the light rain you arrive at the rectory where John lets you all in using a key from a large ring hanging at his belt. As he swings the door open you hear footsteps and teh door opens to reveal Father Paddy, a candle in his hand in his shirt-sleeves.

"John, where have you been? I was worried when you were nowhere to be found after I returned ..."