CHAPTER ONE: Travis' Journey: Arrival

[Laine]

10:30..I didn't realize how late it has become..I have to get up in the morning..I can call them both in the morning..

Travis doesn't make it to his room, rather he curls up on the sofa with his panda and the eyes of Walter watching him as he tries to fade away into sleep.

Perhaps I won't dream tonight..that would be easier.

[Laraqua]

The dreams are a rush of random imagery that assaults his sleeping mind's eye. A naked Walter stands before him, arms out-spread like some sort of Christ-figure, surrounded by an aurora of beautiful light ... that fades into the crackle of fire and a young girl's voice screaming. A man slinks across a blood-smeared rusted catwalk, shotgun cradled in both arms, as he mouths a prayer to the Mother, and then pounces onto Travis with all of the speed of a panther, knocking him off the catwalk and tumbling down into darkness onto to land in a pool of black, brackish goo. The warm fluid, thick as oil, tasting salty like blood, rushes up his nose and fills his throat, as he struggles to find his feet and pull himself upright. The fluid still reaches his knees even as he does so, wiping fluid off his stained face with a soaked sleeve, and squinting around into the ambient glow of a rust-red building several storeys high that is crisscrossed with rusted catwalks, hung with barbed chains that hold twitching, skinned humans in thrall on multiple levels above him. A voice thrums through his ears like waves of vibration, too loud to make out the words, though it seems so very familiar, so very masculine, so very frightening. The voice of a bygone era ... of pain in the past. His father's? Calvin's? Himself? It merges, sounding like both of them, one of them, none of them, both human and inhuman. He stands in a pool of this blackish water that is surrounded by a concrete walkway with stairs that head up and down. His heart hammers in his chest. This all feels so real to him.

[Laine]

"Leave me alone!! I don't want to go back there, to that bed!! I just want to go outside and play! Go away dad!! Don't hit her anymore, don't hit me anymore! I just want us to be able to love eachother.."

He struggles to scream as the fluid spews forth from his mouth in the process.

Travis turns frantically around and uses the panda to try and desperately wipe away the black water that has soaked through his clothes.

My dad poured whiskey on me once..not anymore..He loves us even when he is drinking...

He puts the bear over his head and ears as he had done many times in the past in vain attempts to muffle out the sounds of his parents fighting. He struggles to make it to the stairs and tries to walk up.

This is just my subconscious and nothing else, but I have to wake up.

[Laraqua]

Travis reaches the concrete walkway and manages to pull his sodden body up onto the walkway. All of those twitching bodies seem so familiar ... like he somehow knows who it is, whose body is repeatedly tortured, repeatedly damaged again and again. The bear, at least, the panda, while sodden, somehow seems to have avoided getting any of the fluid on it. As he steps out of the fluid, the ambient light lowers and then brightens in time with the rhythmic voice that pounds in his head. He feels like he's inside his own ribcage. As though his own heart beat is pounding into him even as it pounds within him. The doors that line the concrete walkway are covered in thick, greasy chains, padlocked in the middle, but each one has a peep hole set within them, as though they were the front doors to someone's home. There are about a dozen of them that line this chamber.

[Laine]

As the world becomes more damaged the more abstract it becomes...

Travis looks frantically around himself, and to any of the bodies hanging from the wall.

"I am sorry, why did it come to this? I want to help you..you can't be dead..I am so, sorry I didn't mean to make you fight. You are fighting over me..."

None of this makes sense, but then Travis always internalized his experiences. When his parents fought it was always his fault, or at least he thought it was every time he cried himself to sleep or peered through the crack in his parent's door when his father beat his mom or raped her, whichever suited his desire at the moment.

Mommy, I can't help you..

The memories of his mother's screams seem to join the cacophonous chorus that rings through his soul as he gazes through the peep hole in the door closest to him.

[Laraqua]

The peep hole reveals a brunette man standing before some sort of altar with an image of some sort of disturbing angelic figure on the wall. The man simply stands there, swaying slightly, but otherwise standing still, and he doesn't hear any words if Travis calls out to speak with him. At least that rhythmic pounding is a little gentler the closer his eye is to the peep hole. There is a vague whiff of jasmine coming from the door.

[Laine]

"The angels..Walter talked about angels..That's all this is, just my mind processing everything that happened today, nothing more."

Jasmine..my mother's favorite tea was jasmine, she'd put it on in the morning after dad had been out drinking. She knew he wouldn't be up for a while. It was as close to peacefulness that she could come.

"Now, I am the one who makes tea after he's hurt me.."

Travis will vainly pull on the door handle despite the padlocks and chains laced across it.

[Laraqua]

The door handle rattles in the frame but does nothing more. The man, from what he can see, seems unfamiliar. Has he never met him before? But he seems strangely important...

[Laine]

Who is he?

Travis crumpled next to the door with his back turned to it, he plants his face into the faux fur of the bear in an attempt to block out the macabre surroundings that he has become entangled within..The stairs and the rattling of the door have exhausted his feeble body.

"Even in my dreams I cannot escape the prison that has become my body!"

He screams aloud as he crawls towards the next door, attempts to upright himself and looks in.

[Laraqua]

The same man again in some sort of store ... or perhaps a spare room. The items inside appear to be antiques of some kind.

[Laine]

Travis will attempt to wait longer this time, in hopes that perhaps the man turns around, so he can see his face. He clenches his body tightly with his arms and with the panda..

[Laraqua]

The man doesn't move or turn around. He simply stands there, staring off into the distance, and Travis might be forgiven for thinking he was a mannequin if not for the slight movements required to adjust his stance and keep him standing upright. The notepad appears to have something written on it but Travis can't quite make it out. One of the words is 'Antiques' at a guess, but the other words? Who knows?

[Laine]

The journal stands out to Travis, as do many of the objects in the room.

A store or a closet...?

Travis will take the time to try to make our the words on the note pad and any other items of intrest in the room.

[Laraqua]

The handwriting is too small for Travis to make out nor can he see anything else of note in the room as his gaze flicks around.

[Laine]

Travis will move away from the second door and will head towards the next one.


"I don't think I've had a dream quite like this before. What do these rooms mean? Why does he appear beyond these doors. Is he trapped inside or am I the one locked away?"

Many more questions that he is struggling to formulate speed through his mind like a rushing current.

[Laraqua]

The air itself smells like a mixture of sickness, charred meat, and decay. A warmth radiates from the doorway and the vibrations intensify as Travis approaches the peep hole. His father, dressed in a suit, dangles from a noose, unflinching, unmoving, as though all life has already fled from him. Yet behind him the walls appear red raw and inflamed with a mixture of rust, blood, and degradation. The very symbol of corruption. There is nothing else in the room but his own still father.

With a lurch his father jerks in the ropes, twisting and struggling and kicking out, causing the rope to swing this way and that in spasmodic twitches as his father struggles to live.

[Laine]

Travis drops the panda from his arms and tries to scream, but the air remains devoid of any sound. His scream at first is silent just as his cries from throughout his life were unacknowledged and therefore may as well have been silent.

"Daddy? No, this isn't real it's just a representation of how much he hurts himself with his alcholism and drinking, that's all it is!!"

Travis will again attempt to pull the door open until he is exhausted, it doesn't take long before he is reduced to a pitiful pile of a sobbing mess, crouched underneath the door. He reaches for his bear and pulls it tightly against his face as he continues to cry.

"How many times did I wish he would die?"

[Laraqua]

"I don't know," whispers a soft, girlish voice by his ear. "How many?"

The dream dissolves into sirens and screaming. The world falling apart as though obliterated by a nuclear explosion - everything erupting into ash and splinters - and Travis' eyes flicker open to find himself tear-soaked and panting. He full well knows sleep hormones paralyse the muscles, keeping one from leaping upright from internal dreams (the exception being external stimulus), which is lucky, because otherwise he might well have fallen off the couch at the very least. His neck aches from how he has laid and he can't feel one of his buttocks. Early morning sunlight warms the house, revealing that it's daytime already, and the clock flashes 6.56 at him.

[Laraqua]

Roll a 1d100 per skill that has a (+) beside it on invisible castle. Show me the links. In all cases where your roll is higher than your skill level, you gain a skill increase because it's assumed that what you did pushed the boundaries of what you know (i.e. Listen Skill 25% and a roll result of 33). You gain a 1d10 skill increase in all of those skills where you rolled high. Post that here and I'll edit your sheet!

Congratulations. You've completed a new chapter!

[Laine]

http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/3323584/

I rolled and will only have skill increases in natural history, first aid and listen. Those Are:

9, 3, 2.

http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/3323586/

Does my character gain any history or mythos based on what other characters have told me throughout in game dialogue? I am not certain how those situations apply to the skill levels of my character.