((OOC: What sort of information are you trying to determine?))

In reply to The Stray (msg # 208):

ooc: Let's say meaningful event in the last 24-48 hours?

[[ { {{PUFF}} } ]]

[[Is it cloth?  19:13, Today: Alouette got the result "My reply is no" on the magic 8-ball.]]

Jake grips the splinter, rain roping from his hatbrim. Concentrating, he throws his mind out into the darkness. For a moment, the Serpent seems loath to reply, but then a faint fraction of attention turns, strikes. Jake's consciousness rushes away from the mortal world with a pressure in the skull and a snatching away of breath, almost like a fall at incredible speed to incredible depth...


...until at last, truly only a heartbeat later, Jake's mind slams into resistance as heavy and dense as titanic scales and is scraped back into awareness with his next breath.


[[*whistles at the raise* poke the awakening snake god with a stick why doncha...]]

"Well that was informative." the hexslinger said to no one particular. He tossed splinter wood onto the ground were he found it. His hand touched his ear and felt something warm and wet ... blood. "Huh ... seems I'll start to pay that snake sooner than I reckoned."

"Vampire feedin' frenzy. Seems we're in for a heck of a time here folks."
This message was last edited by the player at 21:47, Thu 27 Feb 2014.

Vincent looks furious.

Father O'Rourke makes a noncomittal noise, staying alert and trying to keep an eye on their suroundings. He squints at the doors of the nearer barn a the moment and seems about to speak, but then catches movement at the edge of his vision and startles into staring wide-eyed at the house, his accent momentarily thicker as the words seem to catch in his throat. "Jaysus, what was that?"

[[Father William O'Rourke, rolled -2,8 using d6-3,d6-3, rerolling max with rolls of 1,(6+5)11. Notice? I suppose nearly being shredded by an opportunistic vampire makes one sort of wary...]]

Evans, about to ask Jake to elucidate further, catches sight of the good Father reacting to...something. He brings the barrel of his flamethrower up to bear quickly. "What fresh hell is this?"

"It was...like a lizard or a big spider, someting moving there, on the wall, just went around the corner," O Rourke manages to report, then realises how that sounds. "When I say big I mean...bigger than a dog. Man-size, maybe. Head down like a lizard."

"We might not have time to go looking. Marshal, try your flamethrower, if you please. We can still use the artillery if that doesn't finish him."

Jake frowned as he sorted out the visions in his head. "Apparently these vampires are rather adapt at moving on any surface... floor, ceiling, walls. Torching the place might not be a bad idea."

"But then Doctor Ward would shoot him from ten paces away," Alouette points out, then ticks some more.

Lightning flashes overhead, almost immediately followed by a roll of thunder like a thousand bowling balls on a tin floor. The shadow along the crack of the barn doors seems to stick a moment, then flinch away from the light.

"Much as I'd like to agree," says the priest, still staring at the empty wall, "-we don't know if all the survivors are dead, or where they might be hidin themselves if they're not - could you live with yourself, Bitter Waters, if you condemned even one innocent to burn?" He looks at Jake a moment, then picks up his light.

"Besides, even those poor girls tried to remember themselves - if another one might come to us quietly there's no sense in riling them until they're set to attack f'sure." William gets the frown this time. "Even this fellow," he nods down at Vinny, who looks furious.

"-was only acting by his nature - probably tryin' to save you from associatin' with me." It's a small smile this time, the injured priest not looking much of a predator. "There-"


He's cut off by a last crack of thunder, immediately followed by screaming from around the back of the house: the awful, fractured sound of someone trying to scream terror whilst already crying with pain. It's hard to tell though the rain, but it sounds like a woman.
This message was last edited by the GM at 09:35, Sat 01 Mar 2014.

"I'm inclined to agree with the good Father here. It wouldn't sit well with me to burn an innocent man alive just for the sake of efficiency," he said. "I like to know who I'm killin' before I'm killin' 'em."
This message was last edited by the player at 21:28, Tue 04 Mar 2014.

"Er..." the priest half-starts, distracted.

"Fear Not!" Alouette declares, all other tasks suddenly deprioritised by a mortal being Sad and Loud nearby (which was probably the worst kind of Sad). "Self will help!" So saying, it hares off into the rain.

[[maxed its running die. Hilarity ensues.]]

Jake realises what's going on first - as the automaton gets within a few paces of the porch, several dozen pinprick points of red appear. The porch shadows detach themselves in a boiling, cawing mass. The automaton doesn't notice until they're right above its head.

"Cease!" it tells them, then vanishes from view and hearing under the feathered cloud.


[[19:33, Today: Alouette rolled 0,0 using d4-2,d6-2, rerolling max with rolls of 2,2. Notice? No surprises there.

Close enough? Alouette got the result "It is decidedly so" on the magic 8-ball.

The birdies rolled 10 using 2d4, rerolling max with rolls of (4+3)7,3. attack! attack! (Night Crow Swarm auto-damage) +4 for the Drop = 14 and 1 wound Shakenfor Alouette, who proceeds to muff its soak roll:

20:04, Today: Alouette rolled 3,1 using d8,d6, rerolling max with rolls of 3,1. go go gadget soaking. Ah well, Nerves of Steel counts for something.]]

Jake looked back at the priest with cold eyes but said nothing, something about his stance and the way his gaze fell just past the priest after a moment would properly give give one the impression that he would be okay with torching the place.

---

Jake upon seeing red eyes then the birds just shook his head, "Told ya to burn it, they're all dead." His right hand gently touched the rosary that had been his wife's and upon his wrist for so long, "Are there any innocence in this place anymore?"  After the thought passed the huckster drew his pistol and backed away from the murder of crows.

[[music!]]

The crow-demons not currently mobbing the clank with raucous cries spiral out and upward in the wind like ash flakes scuffed from a fire. Whoever was screaming behind the house is getting rapidly hoarse and intermittent, clearly in pain.

O'Rourke gives Jake a look that's only briefly angry, fading in a moment to deep disappointment before he turns to try and call the others to action: "Pierce! Please, since you're best equipped against our foes, would you go round the building right presently, we'll join you. Vega - sorry, but you're dead already - would you try to draw them off Alouette so that the Marshal can get them with his flamethrower. Evans, please."

"You two find what shelter you can, I tink." He gives Jake the light, retaining the crowbar.

"Sure thing, Irish," he said gruffly, taking his gun and aiming at where Aloutte was. If he took any offense, he didn't show it. He moved quickly in an arc, fanning out from where the others were. If he did draw off some of those things, no point pulling them towards everyone else. Holding his gun steady, he aimed his weapon. Gritting his teeth, he his mind reached into that dark place it went from time to time and seized something big with a fist of spirit, wrestling it into submission with all the force of his willpower that he could bring to bear. It was a chancy thing, but he was able to subdue it and its power was his.

"Alright birds," he said quietly to himself. "I got three bullets from Hell with your names on 'em."

---

• Dealin' with the Devil: Adrian needs 3 Power Points to power his hex. I draw 10 cards (5 cards are baseline, 4 cards for his 4 Grit, and one card for an Edge). Here's the draw:
  17:02, Today: Adrian Vega drew the 10 cards: BJ!, AH, 7H, 5C, 5D, 8S, QS, 6H, 4D, KH using the Deadlands system. Deal with the Devil for 3 PP.
• The final hand is a Straight (4D, 5D, 6H, 7H, 8S), which more than powers the Hex. Please note that that the BJ! was not used, so there is no Backlash!
• To hit, I roll a d8 three times, and only get the wild die on one of the bolts:
  17:10, Today: Adrian Vega rolled 4,1,6,5 using d8,d8,d8,d6, rerolling max with rolls of 4,1,6,5. Three Bolts.
• That's a 4 and a 6 that might hit.
• Here's damage roll:
  17:13, Today: Adrian Vega rolled 5,12 using 2d6,2d6, rerolling max with rolls of 4,1,2,(6+4)10.
• Damage: 5 and 12, correspondingly, if they hit

"Yes, Father", Pierce replies, drawing the second, Jenny's, pistol from his belt.
"But somebody ought to put Vincent out of his misery. He's got the same nature as me, after all. And I didn't attack you."

Guns at the ready, he strides forward and to the side, to come around the corner of the building.
This message was last edited by the player at 17:55, Sat 08 Mar 2014.

"No, my son...you are at least in some part yet human," the priest says softly as Pierce lopes away, but turns his attention to being Evans' backup.

{{CRACK}} {{CRACK}} {{CRACK}}

The unearthly whine of Adrian's hell-bullets cuts the air. One of the crow-mob vanishes completely with an impact, reduced to a puff of bloody feathers. The murder explodes out in all directions, cawwing in alarm.


[[Rules update! Apparently taking out members (cutting or piercing damage) doesn't wound the Swarm itself, which counts as a creature. Grenades & area attacks work, but mind the clank... Anyway. Does Evans get 'em with a flamethrower?

18:35, Today: Alouette, for the NPC birdies, rolled 9 using 1d10, rerolling max with rolls of 9. Agility.

18:32, Today: Alouette, on behalf of The Amazing Evans, rolled 9,4 using d6,d6, rerolling max with rolls of (6+3)9,4. Agility. Gonna roll with Defender Wins here, since they're about to do...this!]]

The weird night crows regroup into two masses. Evans gets his flamethrower up, but is forced to duck with the priest as half the birds barrel overhead in a beeline for Adrian. The others resettle more or less on the clank, hopping and flaring as it flails to right itself.

The birds come at Adrian like a closing fist of little bodies, blacker than the darkness around, wings whispering past his face in a scything of feathers, birds cawing, close...then they fall on him.

Adrian feels their weight hit his shoulders, his front, chest and face, even scrabbling on his back and clinging to his trousers. Then nothing more. They're just...hanging off him, dozens of them rasping away in their harsh voices, like he's the world's most inefficient scarecrow.

[[fudging a little to get William actionwards - you're sort of wedged into the top right corner of the sketch map at present, with everyone else slightly nearer the porch than the X where they were before.]]

Meanwhile, Pierce jogs around the building, alert and on edge. He finds there's a carriage house and cuts around that, too, sparing a brief glare at the loose side door that's slamming in the wind. He peers round the corner warily, into the teeth of the storm, and the first thing that slips under his conscious thought is that something smells amazing. The best steak William ever ate after going hungry for days just isn't in the same league. Aged whiskey might be, but if anything that smells so damn good exists in that realm it's outside Pierce's experience.

He sees the source of the screaming between 25-30 feet away, haloed by a glitter of broken glass - a cowboy is knelt astride her torso, her hair and both wrists pinned back with an ease that belies how hard her heels are gouging into the mud in trying to throw him off. His face is turned away, bent low to her throat. She's small: plump, but no more than a child. Which would explain the scent of virgin's blood.

Pierce is as soon distracted by the familiar shine of a pistol: red eyes echo the gleam from under a nearby tree. The Dust Adder leaning there looks straight at him like caution and darkness meant nothing at all, then merely touches his hatbrim and nods at the girl as though asking if he wants some, recognising another of his kind.

"You don't owe 'em nothin'," he calls over in encouragement, clearly waiting a turn himself. "Ain't a man no more - come join in."



[[monster buddies for everyone!]]
This message was last edited by the GM at 21:01, Sat 08 Mar 2014.

William's jaw begins to ache and he looks at the blood, mesmerized. Then he glances down at the snarling faces on his Ghost gun and with an enormous effort of will looks away, looks at the fellow in line waiting.
He carefully tucks his pistols into belt and holster and strides over.

He lets his mouth hang open, his fangs clearly visibly. They feel larger now, and he tries to not breath to shut out the sweet, sweet smell...

"Howdy", he rasps, glancing over at the girl again and the guy who feeds on her.

Just a few seconds... that's  all I need.

"I'm looking for the Lady, Marina. Any idea where to find her?"

[[take a white chip for sheer cold-blooded bastardy and once again making me look fiendishly smart by setting yourself up for Hell.]]


William gets a faint awareness of a voice as his fingers brush the metal of the Ghost Gun, distant but still clear: uh...we're all sitting on the old man here, he's, um...don't draw us right now, there's an even chance he might get free an' shoot you in the head.

The Dust Adder keeps his pistol out, alert, but it's held low. "Can't say, rightly...we all split up n' went to ground when her husband showed up." He thinks a moment, the same struggle for thought William's seen before, with the girls. "Come t'think...she wasn't about after we tried to light the porch, before Widow Bradshaw called up them devil birds. Prob'ly up high somewheres to watch the fun when Tom and Johnny get back."

The girl quiets to harsh gasping sobs where she lies, weakened by loss of blood.

[[Ginny Bruebaker rolled 1 using 1d4, rerolling max with rolls of 1. vigour vs. blood loss. Fatigue point for Ginny.]]

"Thanks for dealing with Mister, by the way - pity you dint get the priest, too," the once-man looks over. "There really ain't no point seeking salvation when you're going to live forever." He grins. "Sin's for mortals. We...can do anything." His attention snaps to a figure rounding the corner.

"GET OFF MY SISTER!" The sturdy young woman with the skillet certainly has a good pair of lungs. The vampire who was feeding looks up.

"Abbie! Tree! ...gun!" the sister shrieks, and yes, the Dust Adder is already aiming, low because they'll want her alive. To last longer.

[[Abbie Bruebaker rolled 4 using 1d6, rerolling max with rolls of 4. Agility.

Vampires! rolled 4 using 1d8, rerolling max with rolls of 4. Agility. Eh. Reckon they're the defenders here, roll with it for consistency.]]

*clikt*


[[Vampires! rolled 1 using 1d6, rerolling max with rolls of 1. shootin'.]]

"Fucking..." the vampire begins, but trails off, the wet gun dropping from his fingers as Abbie decends upon them like a Valkyrie fresh from Valhalla.


"YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!"



[[Abbie knows the only way she's going to get out of this alive is to make sure the vampires never work out they're so much better fighters than she is, so she goes for Intimidate.

Abbie Bruebaker rolled 3 using 1d4, rerolling max with rolls of 3. banzaii!
...plus a GM red because damn, this kid's brave:
Abbie Bruebaker rolled 5 using 1d6, rerolling max with rolls of 5. red chippit. -> 8
William, can you keep your head in the face of fearsome frying pan fury? 8 to beat.

Vampires! rolled 4 using 1d6, rerolling max with rolls of 4. eep. Your new highly stakeable chum can't. He's Shaken. Also, if you like, roll Notice at -4 (-2 for the distraction of Abbie in your face, -2 something I can't tell you yet). It's not important but it may help.]]

Abby ruined my game plan.

20:29, Today: William Pierce rolled 8,6 using d8+4,d6+4, rerolling max with rolls of 4,2. Spirit.

20:31, Today: William Pierce rolled 11,5 using d6,d6, rerolling max with rolls of (6+5)11,5. Notice. Alertness and Catseyes canceled out by the penalty..


William's eyes narrow. The girl with the pan would be dead in 5 seconds, once the vampire would realize who she was: Just a girl scared out of her wits.
Her sister, though, would be dead in one second... unless...

William turns around, his coat billowing, revealing the makeshift stakes he picked up before.
He pulls one, flipping it around in his hand. He lifts the vampire feeding off of the girl, half-turning him, then plunges the stake at his heart, burying it deep in the thing's chest.




Next round initiative: 20:42, Today: William Pierce drew the single card: 6D using the Deadlands system. Initiative.

Fighting. Pretty sure Abby ruined The Drop for me, so I spend a few chips for a total of 12.
Modifiers: +2 Wild attack, Quickdraw cancels the MAP, -4 called shot.

Damage:
20:40, Today: William Pierce rolled 7,7,4 /total 18, plus wild: 20) using d10,d4,d6, rerolling max with rolls of 7,(4+3)7,4. Stake damage.

20:38, Today: William Pierce rolled 8 using 1d6, rerolling max with rolls of (6+2)8. blue chip.
20:38, Today: William Pierce rolled 4,2 using d8-2,d6-2, rerolling max with rolls of 6,4. white chip.
20:37, Today: William Pierce rolled 4,2 using d8-2,d6-2, rerolling max with rolls of 6,4. Fighting, Wild, called shot to heart.

[[ *laughing* she was probably going to anyway, but now she's a witness to you hanging out with the vampires and being untrustworthy...]]

Abbie gasps a little as William darts away and across to her sister - clearly she couldn't see there were two men there, nor any details in the dark. The staked Dust Adder just slumps, his nose, lips and fingertips blackening with the early stages of decay like he's been dead a few hours.

Little sister curls in a ball as soon as the vampire is hauled off her, then starts off at an urgent, scrambling crawl for the wall. This close, the scent of her injuries - several glass cuts as well as the wound in her throat - is almost intoxicatingly strong.

William is, however, distracted by a bounding spot of white near Abbie's dress - it's a Peke, and neither wet enough nor dirty enough to have spent many minutes outside a clean, cosy room. Another thought catches at him: these 'hired help' acted slightly smarter than the whores did...either it was because they were fresher, or Marina's connection to them is sourced a lot nearer...



[[Rounds it is, then:
Ginny AS
William 6D
Tao Tao 6C
Abbie 3S
Ed the vampadder 2H

Oh, and Tao Tao is Small with a bonus to stealth, which is why he was hard to Notice.]]
This message was last edited by the GM at 20:26, Sun 09 Mar 2014.