Looking closely at Tao Jing where he's hunched, John abruptly notes that what looked like simple decay on the man's teeth is instead a weird and spreading darkness, coating and sharpening them as he rasps open-mouthed for breath like a poisoned animal.

It's happening to his nails, too: as Evans and Mrs. Bruebaker start up the stairs, oblivious, Tao Jing gives a kind of hoarse groan and almost pitches over, saving himself by bracing his palms on the floor. Tendons stand stark on his hands as claws dig into the wood, lengthening as John - or Sutton - watches.

"We should git him out," Dave says, distinctly ill at ease. He readies the pistol but can't bring himself to move closer.

Tao Jing looks up and in John's general direction, bronzed skin so ashy with sickness he's almost green. His useless eyes are becoming black as stones, darkened blood breaking into the whites - there's not even hatred there, such human thought scraped away by pain. Only fear remains: agonised and endless fear.

PM

The gangster's body jerks, the blood dripping from his lip becoming darker, slowing.

"Lemme see those shoes, kid," he said to Percy, taking the shoes from the young man to get a closer look at them. He didn't seem to think there was anything much to them, at least not that he could gather

"These the vamp's shoes?"

OOC:

• Casting Boost Trait: Notice
• Dealing with the Devil for power points: 2 points, which is sufficient to power the hex (phew!)
• NOT using the Joker, so no backlash.
• Spellcasting: 5 (success) - Notice boosted to D6
• Notice: 3

13:14, Today: Adrian Vega drew the 10 cards: 10D, 9D, KS, 7C, 3C, AD, RJ!, 5S, 8S, 8D using the Deadlands system. DwtD.
13:18, Today: Adrian Vega rolled 5,4 using d8,d6.
13:23, Today: Adrian Vega rolled 3,3 using d6,d6.
This message was last edited by the player at 18:30, Sat 05 Apr 2014.

"Percy," Percy corrects automatically, pushing his glasses up a little, but hands him the shoe. "I don't know where the other one is - Abbie brought it up. It's not Ma's, nor any of the Bruebakers."

"We did have the lady vampire caught in the kitchen when she first appeared at the ranch, though, before Whateley let her out and went after the-" he has to pause and blink hard on grief, "-the other hands. I-I'm sorry." He takes off his glasses and scrubs the heel of his hand over his eyes, not bothering to pretend there's dirt in them but determined not to cry, either. "It might be from then."

The shoe looks much the same as when Adrian first saw it - pale, sort of fancy, more of a tassled dancing slipper than anything meant to be walked far in, with a few smudges of blood on the underside. It may or may not be related to the dim track of blood-prints away from Bruebaker Adrian saw on the stairs when he was hiding in the water closet.

"Sorry, Percy. Old habits. Guess you're a man grown now, watchin' over these womenfolk," Adrian said, hoping to bolster the youth a bit with words of encouragement.

"Anyhow, I saw the dog messin' 'round with it earlier, but I figured it was from one o' these womenfolk," he said. He put it down on a table there, and reached into his pocket where he kept a trusty deck of cards. "You play poker? We should get a game some time. After all this shit gets worked out." He dealt himself a hand and looked at them, then put them back into the deck, which he slid into his jacket pocket.

OOC:

• He's going to cast "Hunch" to see if he can't draw some aid from his powers. Needs 3 points.
• Dealing with the Devil: Two Pair (2C, 2H, 3S, 3H) which provide 4 points.
• Spellcasting: 9 (a success - and a raise)

13:17, Today: Adrian Vega drew the 10 cards: 10C, 2C, 3S, 7D, 5S, AS, 3H, JC, 2H, 9S using the Deadlands system.
15:39, Today: Adrian Vega rolled 4,9 using d8,d6, rerolling max with rolls of 4,(6+3)9. spellz.
This message was last edited by the player at 20:48, Sat 05 Apr 2014.

Percy swallows and looks over at the closest woman, then has to laugh a bit. Gangatsu just rolls her eyes and sips her coffee, grudgingly accepting the cat onto her lap in response to a repeated paw-tapping at her leg.

"If by 'play', you mean 'get cleaned out for pennies', I guess," the youth smiles as best he can. "I...I hope it's done by morning, but I suppose the Comanches aren't going to go hide from the light. Were you in town?"

Gangatsu watches the dealing with suspicion.


Abbie reappears with a garish combination of what's presumably an old gardening shirt, a fancy shawl tied as a skirt and decidedly ill-fitting golf sweater over her undermost underwear (which is nonetheless ankle-length). She's still a little mud-streaked in patches, but cleaner. "Could we get some more tea for Ginny? She's awful shook up."

"N-no, I don't want it - then I'll have to pee and I don't want to go in the bucket!" Ginny protests from the corner.

"Hush, pretty - the birdies will clear the way to the facilities for you, it's all right," Widow Bradsaw says. Ginny crawls to the front of the nest to stick her head out and looks up at her a moment. Clearly the girl wants so badly to believe there's somewhere safe in the world and that the grownups can make it all right. Then Ginny gives a shuddering breath, gingerly touching her wound, then buries her face in Bradshaw's petticoats to cry.

Percy jumps to sorting tea since Gangatsu doesn't move (and has a cat on, anyway). "Did you kill any vampires or Comanches on the way in, Mr. Vega?" Abbie asks, a little awkward with his name. To be fair, 'Mr. Vega' is probably childhood memories of Adrian's father to her.

Evans, speaking with Mrs. Bruebaker, asks her a few pointed questions of his own

((OOC: Mostly consisting of "Who is still here? When did Ward leave? Just how involved were you in all this Enlightened Society business?"))

Caught up as he is getting information, he doesn't notice Tao Jing's decent...

"Well, crap." John says with a deep frown. He moved to Evans. "Marshall Evans, whatever has him, it's changing him, I'm thinkin' we need Allouette or the Father, and right quick too."

Dave notices the sick man's claws as Tao Jing grabs ineffectually for the departing John in what may be a gesture of malice or just a blind desire not to be left.

"Holy shit!" Dave looks after John as he heads upstairs after Evans, then back at the man on the floor. Tao Jing has collapsed onto his side, the deep-tendon paralysis affecting his right leg visibly taking hold in his left and spreading to his arms. "Shit shit shit!" Dave shoots him, then shoots him again and rapidly a third time, because his brain is having trouble with comprehending bullets that bounce off skin.

Mrs. Bruebaker exclaims something shocked about shooting in the house, but it's lost as an involuntary scream is finally torn from Tao Jing. The Triad twitches about on the floor in jerking spasms, claws scraping up splinters from the wood. Another hoarse, no longer human-sounding scream is ripped from him before he flops onto his back in exhaused silence. His injured ribcage moves sharply as he breathes in and out and in and out and in...and stops.

Dave has drawn a sharpened wooden salad fork; his knuckles whiten over it as he tries to will himself to go over there.

There's a considerable pause. Tao Jing's body lies utterly still for as much as three minutes, commanding attention at first by its inaction. Al reappears from the kitchen, concerned about the shots.

The body lies still.

Then, in utter defiance of all laws of physics, the corpse's arms shift to its sides and it flips straight up like a target at a county fair, stiff as a board. Dave yells as the mute dead thing starts hopping in his direction and flees into the living room.


[[musics!

Guts checks, please! As before, -7 + Grit, and apologies in advance if the thing's stats change a bit: I'm working from memory and stats cobbled together from several sources whilst waiting for the Stray to be alive enough to send me the official version.

Mighty Dave, rolled -2,-3 using d6-6,d6-6, rerolling max with rolls of 4,3. fear!
Mighty Dave, rolled 16 using 1d20+2, rerolling max with rolls of 14. fear! He gains a Minor Phobia of grasshoppers.]]

"Oh yeah, I was in town when the Comanches came through. That was hell. I haven't had a chance to kill a vampire yet, but hell maybe 'fore the day's done I will. Well, I reckon this shoe do belong to the vamp - one that attacked the Mayor'd be my guess. Probably took 'em off cause she didn't wanna leave a trail o' blood. From what I saw when-" his words cut off sharply, whatever he was going to say put on hold as the sound of gunfire from below came at them.

"Well, shit. That's the sound o' trouble if I ever heard it." He drew one of the strange guns he had taken while in town, with the scythe tipped blade on it. Well, on their way over he had before jammed that blade through a sharp piece o' wood cause that would be a helluva lot more use than metal. He looked at the other stakes he had collected earlier in his belt, and bolted downstairs - though he would slow at the end to make a careful entry.

OOC:
On second thought, gonna not go down below.
This message was last edited by the player at 15:19, Mon 07 Apr 2014.

[[If you really, really want to bolt right downstairs into the stiff little arms of a jiang shi, roll Agility to get past everyone on the stairs and in the corridor, since they're mostly either blocking the way or moving in the opposite direction like sane people.]]

Percy raises an eyebrow at the weird gun and Abbie makes to speak, distracted, but Adrian's already rushing off like his arse was on fire. "..."

Immediately outside he ends up almost running into Mrs. Bruebaker, who is just as keen to rush in. "Books! I need a book on this! Not possible to...dead, he was dead! Let me in!"

Beyond her, Adrian can see a bunch of interested crowlets looking down, Evans just realising something's up on the landing with john a step below him, and Jake backing up the stairs, gripping the bannister and muttering to himself, darting glances between something below and the birds above.



[[Martha Bruebaker rolled 0 using 1d8-7, rerolling max with rolls of 7. fear! as an Extra, she's Panicked, but not too badly.
Dust Adders rolled -4 using 1d6-7, rerolling max with rolls of 3. fear! Al should probably have some Grit from living with Tex, but it makes little difference - he'll flee, Panicked, back into the kitchen and stay the hell out of this.

Alouette, on behalf of Jake Lawrence, rolled 3,1 using d10-3,d6-3, rerolling max with rolls of 6,4. fear! He'd probably want me to chip that.
 Alouette, on behalf of Jake Lawrence, rolled 3 using 1d6, rerolling max with rolls of 3. blue add. 6 for Jake. He's fine, if probably just as scared of the crowlets as the Uncanny Valley-movin' corpse.]]

John cringed at the sounds of gunshots. Nothing had been right in this town, especially this evening, and he was not quite keen to encounter the next horror that arrived. It seemed Tao Jing might be that very thing. "Guessn' it's too late now." He said as he turned and readied himself for whatever might make an appearance at the bottom of those stairs. A resigned sigh seemed to be his calling card of late.

OOC:
(This was supposed to be guts check by the way. Sorry for the typo)
John Smith rolled 3,-3 using d10-5,d6-5, rerolling max with rolls of 8,2. Fear Check.
John Smith rolled 12,-3 using d10-5,d6-5, rerolling max with rolls of (10+7)17,2. Fear Check White Chip. Guts check: 12

The stiff corpse of the man that had been Tao Jing hits an invisible barrier at the living room threshold and feels it out with its claws. Dave, understandably unnerved by this performance, shuts the door on it. The jiang shi doesn't respond at all, claws now tapping and scraping along wood.

After a few moments it seems to decide the door is a wall and starts moving in eerie little stiff jumps along it until it comes to the nearest light. Long nails tap over the surface, then suddenly puncture the glass fitting, an awful strength evident in the twitch of its fingers. The light goes out.

The jiang shi pauses, still as death, then apparently gets an idea of the next nearest source of active chi and whuds alarmingly into the side of the stairs, out of the vision of the men thereon. They can hear its claws determining the obstacle, however: a soft scrape-scrape-tap.

"None too bright, is it," Jake remarks, crouching on the stairs to watch this performance. The jiang shi gradually reappears by little hops, Tao Jing's tears and blood just about dried on the man's dead face.

It has no expression as it turns, feeling the air, the stone-black eyes telling it nothing about the men watching above. It can certainly sense them, though, as it seems to point its outstretched arms at Jake, marginally closest, and hops up on the lowest step.

Evans sucks in his breath, but he'd honestly been expecting something of this sort to happen sooner or later.

((OOC: Rolling Fear!

02:50, Today: The Amazing Evans rolled -1,-4 using d8-5,d6-5, rerolling max with rolls of 4,1. Fear. Screw that. I'm using that Legend Chip I got.

02:51, Today: The Amazing Evans rolled 7 using 1d6+2, rerolling max with rolls of 5. Legend Chip. That's more like it. Total of 6 overall, which means Evans is fine. Are we supposed to be pulling initiative?))

The hopping corpse hops up another step.

[[Not unless you want to fight it. As specially noted in the OOC thread, it's not going anywhere and can't immediately get at anyone if you all act sensibly. Adrian might be planning a Leeroy Jenkins, though.]]

"Help 'er find a book!" Adrian ordered back to the others, trying to muster up some authority in this voice before turning to make his way out the door. At the sound of Martha's voice, he decided to hold his horses. Whatever was the cause of the bullets, it clearly was the cause of concern and panic for a woman that was by his guess not unaccustomed to matters related to the occult. He knew a little bit about such matters, having learned it in his work for the Lady Luck Society, but he wasn't an academic. Everything he learned, he'd learned out in the world.

Blackthorn had shocked him into an overabundance of caution, though he'd previously - while alive - been known to show more than a little recklessness and a foolhardy nature. That recklessness was about to assert itself, but he had a second thought about throwing himself down the stairs into an unknown conflict.

Something held him back, though. The priest's words echoed in his head. He was sent on first into the fray, since he was already dead. It only made sense, sad as it was to think on, but it was about time he embraced it. He couldn't leave this room full o' innocents without some adequate defense, and Adrian Vega knew no more adequate defense than himself. Well, maybe a little caution was warranted now, but he'd put himself between whatever it was that meant to come through this door and at least buy the innocents in this room a little time to escape, or just to live for a few more minutes.

Turning, he reached out with his mind and looked pointedly at Martha Bruebaker as she made her way into the room. If she needed to know something, maybe he could give her a little help. They needed all the help they could get.

---

OOC:

• Agility: 9 - On second thought, Adrian is not going to go charging down the stairs, but will instead use that roll to avoid colliding with Martha Bruebaker as she makes her way into the Library. He's going to stay behind and guard the civilians.
• Casting Boost Trait: Knowledge: Occult on Martha Bruebaker
• Deal with the Devil: Two Pair (3C,3H, 7S, 7H) - more than enough to power the hex
• NOT using the Joker, so no backlash. But that sounds like time for another The Joker's Wild!
  
• Spellcasting: 6 (Spent a Red Chip)
• The end result should boost Martha Bruebaker's Knowledge: Occult by one step, perhaps helping her as she researches the issue.

09:51, Today: Adrian Vega rolled 9,5 using d10,d6, rerolling max with rolls of 9,5. Agility.
10:02, Today: Adrian Vega drew the 11 cards: 3C, 4S, 7S, 2C, BJ!, 7H, 10H, 9D, 3H, QS, 6H using the Deadlands system. Deal with the Devil.
10:08, Today: Adrian Vega rolled 4 using 1d6. Red.
10:07, Today: Adrian Vega rolled 3,2 using d8,d6. Spellz.

NOTE: You may notice that I dealt myself 11 cards this time as opposed to 10 previously; it turns out I forgot to update my Grit when I hit Veteran and have been shortchanging myself one card per Deal with the Devil that whole time (and I get 1 extra card per Grit). Just realized that today.
This message was last edited by the player at 15:18, Mon 07 Apr 2014.

"On what?" Percy starts, but Mrs. Bruebaker's already flustered over to the desk and scooped some of the open volumes on the chair up onto the surface/old man.

"Chinaman downstairs - seemed to die of paralysing fits, got up again. Not like the walkers we've seen, or the vampires...he's sort of hopping...Abbie, try that volume, Ginny, come here, baby, Liz-?"

"I, ah...oh! This one," Widow Bradshaw locates a book among what seems to be a personal stash, or maybe volumes brought with her, and throws it over.

"Thank you. Mistress Su, if you can be of any help, would you-"

"Yer lookin' fer 'jiangshi' or 'gyonshee', 'pendin on whether they've writ it from Chinese or Japanese," Gangatsu growls at her, watching warily out into the corridor around Adrian but not yet uneasy enough to get up. Mrs. Bruebaker doesn't deign to respond to that tone, but starts fevrishly cross-referencing indexes. The old man being used as a bookstand stirs just enough to start snoring.

"What shall I do?" Percy asks, still not sure what's going on.

"Make tea, darling, there's a good boy," his mother responds absently, just as Mrs. Bruebaker gives a sharp "Aha!" to something handed to her by Abbie:

"Jiang shi - 'stiff corpse'...it's a kind of vampire all right..." she skims on. "Abraham, I'll need some copy paper and ink...not affected by garlic or wooden weapons...ah, 'repelled by mirrors, cooked rice, the handbells of Oriental priests and in particular by the urine of virgins'." Abbie looks a bit uncomfortable under a sudden general scrutiny.

"Male virgins - some'tin to do with the humours an' how they see, I remember now."

Everyone looks at Percy.

"I can't do that on command!"



[[So many characters in here...

Martha Bruebaker, rolled 7 using 1d4+2, rerolling max with rolls of (4+1)5. researchin'.
Gangatsu, rolled 4,5 using d6,d6, rerolling max with rolls of 4,5. helping! Raise for their combined Kn:Occ check. They have a good handle on dealing with this thing.]]

"Well, you're gonna have to try. There's a vampire Chinaman on the loose, and your urine could save our lives," he said. He took his everpresent flask of whiskey, and he handed it to the youth.

"Drink this. It'll make you piss, and also feel like a badass." He scanned the room for receptacles in which Percy's urine could be reasonably contained for use against Tao Jing.

"I'm gonna go get a mirror, or part of one," he said. The bathroom was just across the hall, and he would be close enough to run back for help if he needed to, so he wandered over there to see if that mirror could be gotten.

---

OOC:
Is it a standalone mirror or somehow attached to the wall?
Are there any basins that are portable or containers?
This message was last edited by the player at 20:58, Mon 07 Apr 2014.

The jiang shi takes another hop up the stairs, and another. The crowlets mutter and fluff, clearly feeling something building up here.

[[Jake Lawrence, roll Agility please.]]

Percy can't even think of a reply to that, but takes the flask. "..."

Adrian can hear the lad coughing as a result of trying to knock back a whole gulp of the coarse stuff at once as he crosses the corridor to the bathroom.


[[It's hung closely to the wall, but Adrian should be able to get it off there if he stands on tiptoe and isn't too clumsy. Wooden frame, though, so it's heavy to wrangle - give me an Agility roll to get it down without dropping it on yourself, mashing it into the floor/doorway etc.

As for containers, they have a tin bucket in the library in case they got trapped there (it's where the wardings are strongest) - Ginny was complaining about it earlier.]]
This message was last edited by the GM at 21:30, Mon 07 Apr 2014.

Adrian got on his toes and reached up well as he could to get that mirror down. It was a heavy thing to wrangle down, but he managed it, and thankfully managed not to drop it on himself or run into things. "Comin' through," he called out on his way back to the library, setting it down gingerly and looking over at Martha Bruebaker.

"You think magic would have any affect on it?" he asked as he brought the bucket over to Percy.

---

OOC:

• Agility: 9

16:32, Today: Adrian Vega rolled 9,5 using d10,d6, rerolling max with rolls of 9,5. Agility!
This message was last edited by the player at 21:40, Mon 07 Apr 2014.

Abraham looks a little folornly at the mirror, clearly wondering how he'll get the house back in order after everything is done. Percy is stoically working on downing a pitcher of water, red to the eartips.

Mrs. Bruebaker looks up from her tomes. "About half the effect, as far as I can tell...the Orientals refer to aetheric potential energy as chi, and as far as I can make out that seems to be what the bouncing dead subsist on." She rubs her forehead with the heel of her hand at the realisation of quite how strange life has got in the past few hours.

"Oh no!" Widow Bradshaw exclaims. "Do you think it'll try and drink up my dear spirit birds? Have some more water, Percy."

"If it can catch them...I think magic would attract it: certainly anecdotal evidence here," she draws a book nearer, waking up the old man a bit. "-suggests even a peasant holding their breath is more likely to survive and pass unnoticed by the jiang shi than one that runs away screaming, purely due to the amount of disruption breath alone causes in the aether. How's the paper coming, Abbie?"

"It'll take a while," Abbie responds from the other side of the very confused old Chinese, working on something at the desk.

"What...going on?" the old man asks the room in general.

"We're getting ready to defend ourselves from a Chinese vampire using the bathroom mirror and Percy's urine," Adrian explains to the old Chinese man, succinctly summarizing the situation as far as he saw it. "Say, are you a Chinese priest with a handbell by chance?"