Play@YSDC

Delores sprawls on an onyx parapet, in the middle of a bizarre alien city. Huge buildings loom like some opium-nightmare vision of Manhattan. Most of the buildings are featureless black stone, but others are decorated with intricate arabesques or green-gilded carvings. Streets lead off in every direction.The tops of the taller towers are lost in a thick purple fog. Shapes move in the fog far above.

[Stability test (Difficulty 5, 4 points)]

Few of the buildings have reachable entrances, as if the city was designed for things that can fly, but one nearby building has steps leading up to a twisted, quadrilateral opening. There are windows on its upper levels. In the darkness beyond the opening there may be a way up to the windows.

Delores stares around her wildly, spinning left and right. She'd not really thought about what she was doing, she'd just just mimicked Merivana. She tries to work out where she is and realises that it's nowhere she's ever seen before. A small voice inside her tells her she's not on earth anymore but it's being drowned out by the screaming in her head.

She feles herself starting to panic and has to stop and breathe deeply. With shaking hands she breaks open the shotgun and lifts out the two spent shells, letting them drop to the floor and fishing two new shells out of her bag, reloads the shotgun, then looks around for signs of where Merivana may have gone.

OOC,Any bloodstains?

OOC,Delores lost 6 Stability!

Delores does find a blood trail along the paving stones. Even more indicative, she finds the mask that Merivana was wearing!

She begins following the trail of blood, very intent on the round, red, glistening circles until she finds herself thinking of Hansel and Gretel and wondering whether she'll stumble across a gingerbread cottage. That thought makes her giggle, then laugh right out loud!

When she manages to stop laughing, she realizes that she's wearing the mask. She also realizes that she feels more energetic and alive than she has in a long time.

She has reached the building she sought and the bloodstains lead inside. By the light of her flashlight, Delores can see that the corridors of the building are covered with carved hieroglyphs and symbols that seem to crawl when looked at directly. There are mummified corpses in niches all along the stairs that lead up to the windows. The corpses might have been human, once, but their limbs are unnaturally long and have extra joints. Other corpses have strangely-shaped heads beneath the bandages, as if the corpse’s human head had been replaced by that of a crocodile or ibis or lion or other large animal.

The steps that are both uneven and jaggedly sharp. [Make an Athletics test (Difficulty 4).]

Looks like 6.

Delores ascends the strange staircase without incident, doing her best to ignore its disquieting decorations. From the flat, open upper level, Delores can see out across the city. There are gaps in the purple clouds off in the distance, and through them she glimpses strange stars. As she gazes at them, she realizes she lost the blood trail at some point.

There is a bridge across an expanse of black water, and on the far side of that there are many bone white buildings shining as though made of alabaster and lit from within. One looks like the Tower of Pisa, another like the Eiffel Tower, another like Big Ben. There’s one that is a replica of the Chrysler Building. Others have the appearance of other Earthly styles of architecture – Chinese, Arabic, Indian, Russian – quite unlike the weird buildings that do not glow. These all flicker in and out of sight every few seconds. Winged things circle around them.

Delores surmises that her way home involves the simulacrum of the Chrysler Building. Across this observation deck, she sees another staircase, identical to the one she ascended, but leading to the bridge side of the building. She carefully makes her way downstairs again.

Delores moves on carefully, subconsciously absorbing her surroundings and the sights further afield. At some time she would want to write about this, but she isn't sure anyone will ever believe her.

Delores makes it to the bottom of the stair without accident and emerges onto the street, turning toward the bridge she saw from the deck, which is only about a half mile away. Within a block or so (hard to judge with alleys and lanes emerging at various angles, she sees in the dim and uncertain light a cluster of small creatures about something in the middle of the pavement.

Her first thought is stray cats, but as she draws nearer, she realizes they are not, of course, normal cats. Although they move like cats, prowling and leaping and screaming at one another in the shadows, they have fins running down their spines. More disturbing, their eyes are more like human eyes than feline. A stream of the weird animals files past her then, emerging silently from the alleyways and running down the wide street.

A dozen of them are gathered around something on the street. When she is a few steps away, she realizes that the 'cats' are devouring a human body, dressed in the tatters of khaki trousers and a light jacket, heavy work boots still on its feet. The beasts are stripping the flesh from its bones with the efficiency and gusto of a piranha swarm.

Delores moves closer, wary but determined. As soon as she is within reach, she kicks one of the creatures sharply in the ribs, trying to drive it away from the body. "Hey!" she croaks, what should have been a yell dying in her throat.

The kicked 'cat' yowls and darts off into the shadows. The others hiss and spit at Delores, but slowly back away.

As she approaches, the reporter realizes that, despite having had most of the skin and muscle devoured from head and hands, the man is alive! His leather jacket has been tattered by claws more on the order of a tiger and the torso beneath has been stripped of flesh down to the ribcage, the ragged ends of intestines and other half-devoured organs exposed. Mercifully, he is unconscious.

[Please make a Stability test (Difficulty 5, 4 points).]

There is a wallet protruding from a torn open pocket.

OOC,[i]Arse! I'd planned to spend some points but I hit the button and made the roll before I'd added the modifier :( [/i]

Delores looks away and vomits on the ground, spitting in an uncouth manner to clear her mouth. She turns around, trying to remember what she's seen that attracted her attention. She sees the wallet again and moves closer to the man on the floor, gingererly picking it from his pocket. She moves back a couple of steps and with the sawn-off cradled in her arm, opens the wallet to see what it contains.

The cats hiss and spit at her approach, but draw back enough that Delores can get the wallet. She thumbs through it with a reporter's eye, finding twelve dollars in notes and a union card that identifies Karl Hoffsen (the name means nothing to her) as a member of the International Longshoremen's Association. She also finds the usual clutter of laundry tickets, grocery lists, an IOU from someone named Charley for fifty cents, a couple of racy and well-thumbed cigarette cards, a condom wrapper, and a rent receipt from a rooming house in Van Brunt Street in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn.

OOC,Since even a one-point spend would have met the target, I'm allowing it and removing the shaken status -- [i]for now[/i]. You can spend one point on [b]Evidence Collection[/b], if you choose. Also, make a [b]Sense Trouble[/b] test (Difficulty 5).

OOC,[url=http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/3327871/]Find Evidence roll with +1 spend. (1d6+1=3)[/url] Suspect that might not be enough :( [url=http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/3327874/]Can Delores sense danger? (1d6=1)[/url] Nor that... ...

Delores flicks through the contents quickly, prudishly tucking the condom quickly out of sight. She doesn't see anything of interest so folds the wallet and drops it in her handbag before looking around to decide which way to go.

In the back of Hoffsen's wallet, Delores finds a piece torn from a newspaper. It's an advertisement.
The address is the cult building you entered tonight.

Delores studies the advert for a moment or two, trying to work out which paper it was taken from but quickly gives up, reckoning that getting out of here is more important.

She looks down the street and starts to walk hesitantly towards the bridge.