Post by Legionnaire on Jul 14, 2018 7:49:41 GMT
Oddhaven, 1985
The Seaside Palace, the 'Crown Jewel of Bright Shore'
The young woman on the small bed felt a painful prick as she pressed the needle into her arm and depressed the plunger. There was a surge of sensations as she pulled the needle away, and then she flew away from the small motel room. Leaving Bright Shore behind, she soared on winds of ecstasy into the sky above Oddhaven. A dark line flowed across the city as night fell and lights twinkled, and then the sun rose behind her back and melted steel towers into fountains of delight. Spreading her wings, she flew higher and higher, into the sky, past birds and planes and into the clouds themselves which parted to welcome her into their embrace.
The young woman felt a chill sweep through her body, and the clouds wrapped tight around her like rope. They were not clouds, she saw now, but bats, thousands upon thousands of them, and they held her in place as the sky split open and they descended upon her to drain her blood through a thousand bitemarks. When she screamed, her voice was the wail of a soprano, hauntingly beautiful, and the bats raised the tips of the wings towards the sky as if to celebrate her final, pure note.
On the small bed in the quiet motel, the young woman convulsed, her mouth filling with spit. Eventually, the shuddering stopped.
*
The police detective watched as a sheet was drawn up over the body of the young woman. The flash-click-whine sound of a camera photographing the crime scene roused him from his investigative reverie.
"Constable Shaw said the cleaner found her this afternoon," his partner finished. "She's been dead at least a day."
Snapping onto his hand, the police detective plucked off of the nightstand a small vial displaying a familiar logo on a paper sticker - an intricate network of pipes that formed the shape a face in bliss.
"Flush," he muttered. "If this was Emilia Maciel, then she's the first Flush user to OD that wasn't some bum junkie."
"If this is Maciel, the heat's about to come down," his partner commented. "Her family's got enough strings they can pull that this'll be our job for the next year."
"Better get started now," the police detective declared as he stood. "Let's go ask some questions. Normally this shit is just for the bums and the desperate, but now..." He slid his sunglasses out of his pocket and onto his face. "It looks like our Flush dealer's played his cards right."
*
The Sheriff of Oddhaven, at that time, was a hard-nosed, hard-fighting, hard-headed member of the Rabble, put into the position after he'd figured out, as one of the Hounds, that the previous Sheriff was dealing on the side by feeding information to Sabbat informants. After the Rabble had staked the old Sheriff out to meet the sunrise, the Prince had rewarded his efforts with a promotion. The Rabble's name - these days - was Solomon Cord.
Now his Prince had asked him to resolve the issue of a new, potently lethal variant of heroin that was circulating in Oddhaven's underbelly. Its name was Flush, and his Hounds told him a staggering 40% of people who had used it had overdosed. But the drug was cheap, so cheap even the poorest of Oddhaven's poor fucks could afford it, and nobody gave a shit when a bunch of homeless people went missing, did they? Except it wasn't just homeless people anymore - the lower class was being affected, and some of the Camarilla herds had started losing members. Responding to their requests for intervention, the Prince had decided the recent overdose of a wealthy heiress - rumoured, in fact, to be one of the Prince's own favourite Kine, although the Sheriff had decked the shitty little Gangrel who'd crowed that out - was proof the drug's effects were serious enough to require their intervention to protect the herds.
The Prince had told Cord that he didn't care how it was taken care of, just that the dealer, his cook, and any witnesses were taken out - and, of course, that the Masquerade was upheld. Autarkis, Camarilla, even Caitiff - anything that wasn't a Sabbat and got the job done would get well rewarded.
Such was the motivation for Solomon Cord reaching out to several Kindred he thought could get the job done, even as his Hounds spread the word that any friendly Vampire that took Flush off the streets would be adequately rewarded. The more Kindred on the case, after all, the quicker it was solved.
---
Outline: This mission is expected to run 5-to-10 pages so that I can whet my teeth on this system. It will be concerned with finding, cornering, and killing the dealer and his cook while contending with the mortal police investigating the affair and helping, hindering, or hurting other Kindred after the reward; it will consist primarily of an initial investigative phase followed by a combat/action phase. This mission needs at least 2 participants with a maximum of 5 - your affiliation, unlike the last version of this story, doesn't matter - unlike the last version, this story will use pre-made characters rather than one of your characters.
This way, anyone can join in regardless of what characters you have - of course if you have a non-Sabbat character that was active in the mid 80s you're welcome to still play as them, but if not, everyone will be playing a pre-made character out of the the V20 Ready Made Characters document (PM me privately if you have trouble tracking it down and I'll get it to you). Participants can select a specific character from the document to play as - otherwise I'll choose them for you.
The Seaside Palace, the 'Crown Jewel of Bright Shore'
The young woman on the small bed felt a painful prick as she pressed the needle into her arm and depressed the plunger. There was a surge of sensations as she pulled the needle away, and then she flew away from the small motel room. Leaving Bright Shore behind, she soared on winds of ecstasy into the sky above Oddhaven. A dark line flowed across the city as night fell and lights twinkled, and then the sun rose behind her back and melted steel towers into fountains of delight. Spreading her wings, she flew higher and higher, into the sky, past birds and planes and into the clouds themselves which parted to welcome her into their embrace.
The young woman felt a chill sweep through her body, and the clouds wrapped tight around her like rope. They were not clouds, she saw now, but bats, thousands upon thousands of them, and they held her in place as the sky split open and they descended upon her to drain her blood through a thousand bitemarks. When she screamed, her voice was the wail of a soprano, hauntingly beautiful, and the bats raised the tips of the wings towards the sky as if to celebrate her final, pure note.
On the small bed in the quiet motel, the young woman convulsed, her mouth filling with spit. Eventually, the shuddering stopped.
*
The police detective watched as a sheet was drawn up over the body of the young woman. The flash-click-whine sound of a camera photographing the crime scene roused him from his investigative reverie.
"Constable Shaw said the cleaner found her this afternoon," his partner finished. "She's been dead at least a day."
Snapping onto his hand, the police detective plucked off of the nightstand a small vial displaying a familiar logo on a paper sticker - an intricate network of pipes that formed the shape a face in bliss.
"Flush," he muttered. "If this was Emilia Maciel, then she's the first Flush user to OD that wasn't some bum junkie."
"If this is Maciel, the heat's about to come down," his partner commented. "Her family's got enough strings they can pull that this'll be our job for the next year."
"Better get started now," the police detective declared as he stood. "Let's go ask some questions. Normally this shit is just for the bums and the desperate, but now..." He slid his sunglasses out of his pocket and onto his face. "It looks like our Flush dealer's played his cards right."
*
The Sheriff of Oddhaven, at that time, was a hard-nosed, hard-fighting, hard-headed member of the Rabble, put into the position after he'd figured out, as one of the Hounds, that the previous Sheriff was dealing on the side by feeding information to Sabbat informants. After the Rabble had staked the old Sheriff out to meet the sunrise, the Prince had rewarded his efforts with a promotion. The Rabble's name - these days - was Solomon Cord.
Now his Prince had asked him to resolve the issue of a new, potently lethal variant of heroin that was circulating in Oddhaven's underbelly. Its name was Flush, and his Hounds told him a staggering 40% of people who had used it had overdosed. But the drug was cheap, so cheap even the poorest of Oddhaven's poor fucks could afford it, and nobody gave a shit when a bunch of homeless people went missing, did they? Except it wasn't just homeless people anymore - the lower class was being affected, and some of the Camarilla herds had started losing members. Responding to their requests for intervention, the Prince had decided the recent overdose of a wealthy heiress - rumoured, in fact, to be one of the Prince's own favourite Kine, although the Sheriff had decked the shitty little Gangrel who'd crowed that out - was proof the drug's effects were serious enough to require their intervention to protect the herds.
The Prince had told Cord that he didn't care how it was taken care of, just that the dealer, his cook, and any witnesses were taken out - and, of course, that the Masquerade was upheld. Autarkis, Camarilla, even Caitiff - anything that wasn't a Sabbat and got the job done would get well rewarded.
Such was the motivation for Solomon Cord reaching out to several Kindred he thought could get the job done, even as his Hounds spread the word that any friendly Vampire that took Flush off the streets would be adequately rewarded. The more Kindred on the case, after all, the quicker it was solved.
---
Outline: This mission is expected to run 5-to-10 pages so that I can whet my teeth on this system. It will be concerned with finding, cornering, and killing the dealer and his cook while contending with the mortal police investigating the affair and helping, hindering, or hurting other Kindred after the reward; it will consist primarily of an initial investigative phase followed by a combat/action phase. This mission needs at least 2 participants with a maximum of 5 - your affiliation, unlike the last version of this story, doesn't matter - unlike the last version, this story will use pre-made characters rather than one of your characters.
This way, anyone can join in regardless of what characters you have - of course if you have a non-Sabbat character that was active in the mid 80s you're welcome to still play as them, but if not, everyone will be playing a pre-made character out of the the V20 Ready Made Characters document (PM me privately if you have trouble tracking it down and I'll get it to you). Participants can select a specific character from the document to play as - otherwise I'll choose them for you.