Tempest - RP Topic

Community Role Playing
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“O, Harmonious ones! Let not your reverberations be silent tonight!”

After the apple cider, ginger snaps, and more apple cider, you were undoubtedly ready to lie down for a while, but the candlelit woods were undoubtedly too eerie to allow that as a legitimate option. Regardless of your reason for being there, and regardless of your level of discomfort, the suspicious ceremony was proceeding just as planned… You think.

At least, it seemed like the fog machines undoubtedly buring in the ground were really doing their work, as the blonde bulky man with his pointed beard waxed so heavily it could be used as a candle droned on and on about all the nonsense that he had concocted, no doubt in the back of some volkswagen with psychedelic colors plastered on the side.

And it was all good fun - if watching paint dry could be considered fun - until the blue flames wrapped around, cloaking the ground around your feet in a perfect ring. You, and several others also surrounded by the flames, began to float off the ground in ominous fashion, strange words seeming to flow out of the center of the smoke… Words that spoke inside your mind…

And then a tremendous flash of fire that seemed to consume the entire world before your eyes before it suddenly cut to black, y’know typical stuff.

When you awoke, you were back home, in bed, almost as if the event had never happened… Well, aside from the piece of paper laid over your face, bearing the words ‘return to the forest.’

Oh yeah, and the bizarre Revenant watching you sleep.

Character Pairings

@MakutaOisli’s Dan Heng is paired with @wild_toa’s Emm
@Kirathel’s William Pinbacker is paired with @Spawner’s Hacktop
@NOTaHFfan’s Kay Martins is paired with @TheMOCingbird’s Ozymandia
@ajtazt’s Brickil Stritch-Hazeley is paired with @keiththelegokid’s Pernille L. Christensen
@keiththelegokid’s Sarah Appleton is paired with @Kirathel’s Striding Supervening Horizons
@Spawner’s Henderson Henderson is paired with @MakutaOisli’s Syn
@wild_toa’s Cody Hendricks is paired with @NOTaHFfan’s Zenn
@TheMOCingbird’s Kipper is paired with @ajtazt’s Blockade

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Dan was scared. Horrified. He just had one of the worst nightmares, of floating images and monsters, and now…Now there’s one. Watching me right now…

Syn was chuckling. He looked over the sleeping figure, his mechanical fingers twitching.
Well well well. And who do we have here? I taste madness, anger, and, oh yes. Fear.
“Wakey wakey. It’s about time you woke up.”
He said, looming over the bed.
@Spawner

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Kay Martins was familiar with the term “sleep paralysis”, a bizarre state between sleep and waking, in which you stay conscious but cannot move. He was familiar with the term “sleep paralysis demon”, a figure that one can see when they are experiencing sleep paralysis, as well. Kay Martins had never experienced any of those things.

So there he was, laying in his bed inside of his room (the room was certainly his, the pile of dirty laundry in the corner, the considerable lack of space, the peeling paint on the wall, the noisy old computer on the table, and the Bionicle 3: Web of Shadows poster on the closed door were giving it away), covered in cold sweat, too terrified to move or even blink, staring at the unmoving statue-like figure right next to his bed, wondering if that’s what sleep paralysis was like.

That thing looks just like a Weeping Angel from Doctor Who, it’s going to kill me as soon as I blink… I cannot blink no matter what…

Was there anything that could be done? He could scream, wake up his dad, but what’s next? He could run towards his window and jump out, but his body didn’t want to listen to him. If that thing was truly a Weeping Angel, only a blue box-dwelling eccentric British alien with a fancy screwdriver could save Kay.

Please wake up please wake up please wake up please wake up please wake up

A weak voice of rationality spoke at the back of Kay’s mind. Maybe this was all a prank? Maybe these lunatics from last night’s meeting decided to play a joke on him? Decided to make fun of him for believing in Slender Man and staircases in the woods which were all real of course, how else would they get all those pictures?

That was certainly the most rational explanation. Except for two things. Kay Martins did not remember coming back home and putting that piece of paper over his forehead.

(@TheMOCingbird)

Why does he get to have that comfortable bed all to himself? That’s just unfair.

Zenn got a little sleepy from all of that waiting for the human to wake up, and was floating in mid-air next to his bed, looking ridiculously out of place in his room, sleeping peacefully with her top pair of arms folded behind her head and the other two arms, just as massive as the first pair, resting on her stomach. Her hair, which covered her eyes, emanated a slight soft glow, serving at the only light source in the room.

The room in question was certainly not made with eight foot tall Revenants in mind (a big oversight on the architect’s part), so Zenn took up most of the available space.

(@wild_toa)

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Will groans as he blinks awake, the lousy bed he’s lying atop digging into his back as he sits upright. The world returns to clarity and with it a sense of immediate regret.
I came all the way back for this? What, a woodland gathering and some idiot high on his own supply preaching about ghosts?

He shook his head and rubbed his temples, trying to parse through his memories. He’s back in the motel room he rented, odd enough. It was far enough away that he had to drive to the meet, and yet he cannot remember driving back. Must be a fugue state…hope I don’t have any of that guy’s drugs in my system. Gonna be hard enough to find someplace to work at as is.

He frowns and glares at the ceiling. Those flames, the words…so much information he can’t parse yet. It just doesn’t make sense.
“What a lousy dream,” he grumbles. “Didn’t even make enough sense to adapt…”
“I can’t believe I came home all this way for this-”

He trails off as he finally looks toward the room proper-
-and sees the impossible, pale white figure looking back at him.
For some, insane reason, the hallucination looks like it has a top hat.

Will blinks and pokes himself. “-wait what the-”
“-why am I still dreaming?”

@Spawner

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Emm was just barely floating above Dan’s nightstand, watching him curiously up until the moment that he started staring at her. Frozen by a combination of curiosity and terror, Emm felt too powerless to break eye contact with the big, strange creature.

Cody is a naturally very heavy sleeper. So bad, in fact, that many people joke a tornado could rip his roof off in the middle of the night and he wouldnt notice. An added fact of being very slow to begin moving in the mornings made him an utter nightmare to get anywhere on time.

Both of those flew out the window the moment he rolled over and saw that thing.

He initially yells and reaches for the nearest thing to defend himself, an alarm clock, still plugged into its outlet near the floor, before realizing that it wouldnt do much. He instead scurries back against the wall, trying to create as much space between him and the huge mass of purples and blues staring down at him.

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“I know Susan… I know. Give me five more minutes,” Henderson said is a half waking stupor. He attempted to roll over to lay on his side, but the piece of paper slid off his face, the sensation of which finally got him to notice its existence. He picked it up and stared at it blankly, trying to figure why it was there and it there was any extra meaning behind it. Hell, he couldn’t even make sense his own memories of last night. Unfortunately, he could not figure out anything, not that he could even if he was fully awake.

“Well whatever, I need to take a dump anyway,” Henderson grumbled as he got up from his bed. It was only then when he actually saw Syn floating there next to him.

Henderson stared at Syn blankly. “Did you transition or did I forget to take my meds again?”
@MakutaOisli

Hacktop has been staring at Will silently for quite some time. If he had a mouth, it would be totally agape in awe. He doesn’t respond to Will’s statements for a few moments, as his mind is abuzz with questions of his own.

Just what is this? How was this programed? Since when did they create AI this advanced? Just how many…

Hacktop then snaps back to the present and suddenly attempts to grap Will by the shoulders. His featureless face barely portraying the panic that he feels.

“Who created you?” Hacktop said in a frantic voice.
@Kirathel

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Sarah Appleton yawned, stretching in her fold-out bed that was sandwiched neatly in the back of her van. She had parked it near the library parking lot today; her favor of dealing with the rat infestation last year had won her some brownie points with the staff, so they hardly minded.

She rolled over, the piece of paper she was supposed to be paying attention to sliding off onto the floor unnoticed. Last night had been way too late; realistically, she wouldn’t have gone if it hadn’t been for Vyv wanting to go; although she’d canceled, so she’d just been watching out for her impish ex-friend instead. She gave a broad sigh. She wasn’t a bad kid, but some days, she really wore her out, and she didn’t much like the idea of them being all out alone in the middle of the forest.

Realistically, she wasn’t that big of a forest gal herself, but she had taken some hunting trips with her Uncle back in the early days of high school, they ended up being glorified fishing trips once he realized how little heart she had for shooting cute animals, but he had taught her a lot about common sense in the middle of nowhere, and those lessons she’d quite taken to heart.

Slowly, she forced her eyes open and, picked up the old timey alarm clock and squinted at the time. The alarm was going to go off in a couple minutes. She flumped back into the bed, gave a moan of pain, and rolled over a couple times, shutting her eyes tight before forcing herself up and out of bed. Her feet slid into a pair of deerskin slippers, and she groaned, stretching back and forth before moving toward the middle of the car and washing her face in the sink.

Brushing her teeth with one hand, she used the other to move her old laptop to the dry side and switched onto the library’s wifi with a deft movement. Soon a fun little song she’d discovered last week was playing in the cabin, “Deeeep maaan’s high time, looow fall, thiiin lines. Boooth eeends buuurning, sharrp wounds bleeeding!”

As the folk music played on the crappy speaker, she paused, something caught in the corner of her eyes, and she turned with a quick, decisive motion. There, standing in the front of her van, standing right in the way of where she kept her ax, was a tall, imposing figure in a type of heavy set armor…with a mess of swirling tentacles for a face heralding a singular eye. Sarah didn’t move, frozen as she tried to process whether she was asleep…or if today was going to be the most dangerous day of her life.

And the music played still, “Run as fast as lighting 'cause you’ll never really hide! Appalachian woman tellinnnng Rocky Mountain Lies!”

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The monochrome thing he’s sure he’s been dreaming is suddenly grabbing him, yelling at him in a voice that doesn’t feel like a dream. It’s not some vague impartation of info, like it should be. It’s not a feeling. It’s an actual voice.

He can feel its weird fingers digging into his shoulders.
“Who created you?” The dream-that’s-not-a-dream yells. It has no mouth, no face, but it is talking. Yelling. Screaming.
This is a dream, he thinks deliriously. I’m dreaming. I’m tripping off whatever that guy in the woods dosed me on. This can’t be real. This isn’t happening.

“I’m dreaming,” he blurts out, not bothering to fight back for fear of acknowledging the terrible fake talking thing. “This isn’t happening. I’m high on that guy’s supply, I’m dreaming, I’m going to lie back down and I’ll wake up and everything will be ok.”
He attempts, weakly, to fall back onto the bed. The strange creature’s grip does not abate, so he kind of slumps back in its arms, muttering to himself about how this is a dream.

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Syn rolled his eyes. “I am not your girl, you idiot. And no, you’re not seeing things. Remember that little, tiny memory of last night?” He said, towering above. “ It was no dream.” He stared at Henderson. His robotic frame creaked as stepped closer to Henderson. “ You phoned for behind the veil, and it was granted. I stepped out.”

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“AAHHHHHhh!!!”

Zenn is woken up and startled by the human’s scream, responding with one of her own. In shock she is flung back by whatever force is keeping her afloat, slamming her head into the shelf opposite to the bed and knocking over all sorts of the human’s belongings. She presses against said shelf, still flabbergasted by what just transpired and looks at the human, who seems to be doing exactly the same thing on the other side of the room, for a good fifteen seconds, with a distressed look on her face.

Finally, she pushes herself away from the wall and gently floats down towards the bed with a long, drawn out yawn. Looks like she was not getting any more sleep any time soon.

“You startled me. Let’s cut down on all of the screaming, okay? I was trying to sleep here.” She spoke in perfect English, but had a slight strange accent, unlike anything Cody had ever heard. There was something extremely soothing about her voice. It felt ethereal, otherworldly.

She finally had a chance to have a proper look around the room. She didn’t have much to compare it to, it was the first room she was seeing in her life, but to her it seemed quite modest. A bed, a desk, a dresser, all the essentials. Three windows. A rug on the floor. The room was filled with the human’s belongings including a number of posters of a band Zenn didn’t know. In fact, she didn’t know any bands. (OOC: got the room desc from Wild himself, so it’s all good)

“Speaking of here, what a nice place. A little cramped though. You live here?” Zenn eyed Cody with a bizarre mix of curiosity and boredom. It was near impossible to tell what she was truly feeling. Can’t really have eye contact when there’s a thing of glowing blue hair in the way.

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Upon hearing clear english, Cody begins to relax before realizing that the words came from the thing in front of him. Eyes nearly bugging out of his head, he quickly glances down at his things that just got knocked off his shelves, momentarily scanning to see if his ipod was ok.

Mouth agape at the total lack of contact the creature had with the floor, Cody slowly creeps closer in curiosity, though never going past the edge of his bed.

Cody, still staring in disbeleif, slowly nods in response, before stammering out “wh- wha- who a- are you?”

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aluminum plastic rubber magnesium titanium-

Striding Supervening Horizons turns, another seven feelers extending from its head and reaching out to run gently over the car’s hood. Sensations are logged, metallic components catalogued. A pair extend from Horizons’ immobile wrists and crawl under the hood, their surfaces generating masses of eyes and yet smaller feelers to catalog the interior of this strange, strange machine.

It is bigger than Horizons, made of so many variant metals and materials it sticks out horribly amidst the forest. The world outside is chaos, disorderly, continuous competition. But this thing, this strange and unnatured thing is different; made of materials that don’t even occur in this region (from what is has observed, at least). It is inactive, even though the myriad of wires and devices that run through imply it has some greater function.

And then, the catalogue is interrupted. A creature is standing in the interior of the machine, looking out through a layer of transparent material. And this-
-oh, this is different. It’s moving like some of the smaller lifeforms that are out here, but it moves differently. It has different structures that compose it. Different muscles straining under odd pinkish skin, under strange fur? Scales? Some kind of material covering its body.
What a strange creature. What a wonderful creature.

must know more
must understand
must comprehend

Striding Supervening Horizons straightens, gingerly retracting its sensors from the machine interior as it steps toward the van door.

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Zenn follows the trajectory of Cody’s gaze with her eyes.

“Oh. Um… sorry for that. I got scared by your screaming. If something broke, I can- well, never mind…”

She touches her chin with one of her four hands and a wondering expression appears on her face. She thinks for a couple of seconds, trying to gather all the information she knows about herself. “Zenn. Just Zenn. Listen, I don’t know much more than that. I was hoping that you’d shed some light on that topic, but looks like you’re just as clueless as I am.” She shrugs her shoulders, seemingly unbothered by her lacking knowledge about herself. A slight smile appears on her face. “Whatever. As long as I get to take naps and hang around, we’re golden.”

She pauses for a second. “But why is the talk only about me? Who would you be, friend?”

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With a deft movement she grabbed her glasses from a shelf and slid them on, the beast outside becoming suddenly quite crystal in her view. She moved to the side spitting out the toothpaste suds into the sink and slipping out of view of the windows.

She took a deep breath and looked around, her axe was in the front seat, and she’d have to take a quick movement to get to it in time.

“Seven devils evil under Allegheny skies! Rich in valley beauty but a devil in disguise!” still, the music cheerily played in the background as Sarah ruminated, providing hopefully, a good distraction.

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Hacktop is taken aback by Will’s response, let him within Hacktop’s arms. He has never been in a situation like this before, nor has any program that he was worked with at all been this sophisticated. He wishes to ask it more questions, but this AI, if I can even be called that, is running into to many errors that it can’t be worked with without potentially breaking it more. And boy oh boy he doesn’t want to break it even more than it is already breaking itself.

Attempting to best follow his local restoration procedures, Hacktop proceeds to gently lay Will back on his bed, since that is were Hacktop first found him. He takes Will’s blanket can tucks him back to sleep. Hacktop then readjusts Will’s pillow and pats him on the head.

“You can do back to sleep,” said Hacktop hesitantly, hoping to calm will down, “You can go back to sleep. You are dreaming. Everything is going to be okay.” Hacktop then slowly backs away, wondering if that did the trick to ‘fix’ Will.
@Kirathel

Henderson reached behind him and scratched his back, not sure what to do with this situation. This didn’t quite match the description of sleep paralysis demon manifestations that Gramps told him about. Although he wasn’t quite sure about the accuracy of Gramp’s claim either, because the least time that he met a paralysis demon Gramps was fully awake and ended up blowing a hole in the wall.

“Listen man, I am not sure what I saw those Al Qaeda deep infiltration operatives did to me, but is was down right weird and has major spy movie vibes, you know?” Henderson turned to walk away and headed to his motel room’s restroom. “At this point, I am not wanting to question anything. I heard that that was bad for your mental health. At least that is what my Gramps told me at least.”

Henderson shut the door behind him and answered nature’s call. “Oh by the way,” he shouted through the wall, “Do you happen to know where my gnomes went?”
@MakutaOisli

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“Im uhhh…” Cody pauses before deciding wether to give his actual name to the strange being or to only give the same alias he gives when strangers ask who he is.
Deciding that the behaviors he’s seen so far are genuine enough, he decides to use the former. “Im Cody. Cody Hendricks. Youre um… really tall. And you have four arms. aand your blue”

“Wait, what do you mean you dont know more than that? You dont know where your from?”

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Will lets out a long, rattling sigh as the strange, impossible little man in the top hat laid him back on his bed and patted him on the head. “Strange dream,” he mumbled, determinedly closing his eyes. He waits a moment to fall back asleep, or to wake up, or to rouse from his dream.

The moment passes. He cracks an eye open and the impossible little man is standing there. “…”

“…you’re real, aren’t you? Real, or I’m tripping so badly I can’t tell what’s real, and what’s not anymore…”

The knight strode toward the door and gripped the handle firmly. It pulls and-
-click.

Horizons looks toward the door, through the transparent material, and then toward the door again.

aluminum iron related alloys
mechanism preventing entry?
rectify analyze obtain entry

It raises its left hand, red tendrils slipping from one of the cracks in the armor and gently resting on the door handle. One moves down and slowly pushes its way into the keyhole, sprouting several alternate ends that slowly poke and prod their way through, trying to catalogue all the parts of the mechanism.

It must obtain entry.
It must get inside.

@keiththelegokid

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The sound of clicking metal and tinkering tendrils was just barely audible over the cheery folk music playing from the laptop. Sarah heard it loud and clear however, and despite being in a full suite of pajamas dived for the front of the car, her hands grasping around the ax, and quickly tossing the covering to the side letting it skid somewhere into the bottom of the driver’s seat floor.

She then hid just under the door, just out of sight of the window. There was a good chance she’d been seen, but hopefully she didn’t need too much of an element of surprise…

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“A pleasure to meet you, Cody Hendricks!” she bows slightly, greeting him. That’s how you do it, right? Eh, whatever. I definitely won’t remember the long name. We’re sticking with Cody.

“Is that… not something you see very often?” A worried, self conscious look appears on her face. “That’s just how I am. Always have been.” But for how long has that always been going?

She tries her best to remember something, spends her entire mental fortitude on it, but nothing comes up. “I… can’t remember anything about myself. Not where I’m from, not for how long I’ve been around, not who I am. All I know is I am Zenn. Not that it’s bothering me or anything, but it’d be nice to know more about myself. Like I am sure you know about yourself.” She lets out a yawn again.

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Hey parental adults who aren’t supposed to be reading this but are totally getting a rundown copy.

Um. Yeah. I might have screwed up? I think I died in a fire.

Look, don’t judge :index_pointing_at_the_viewer:!! But I went to that harmonious whatever thing Viv was sneaking out to - which she lied about! No way you got sick! Liar!liar!liar! If I’m not dead and she’s not sick, she’s going to be.

Whatever, wasn’t worth it anyways, I fell asleep halfway through. Then I was shook awake, we were floating, and then there was fire. I swear I wasn’t drugged, I checked for needle pokes and stiches. All toes accounted. All I found was a weird paper telling me to go back to the woods and. . .

Styx sat in the middle of her bed crisscrossed, a bland comforter partially wrapped around her lower half. Thoughts of accosting whoever dared put her in bed while still wearing her shoes, let alone under the covers, would have to be journaled another time. She woke up, found that someone failed to do a kick-me prank on her, rolled over to check the time, and saw her.

At first, she thought the figure sitting there was Shan, but her sister wasn’t blonde. And how could Shan get in aways? Styx always locked the door. The realization that she didn’t remember coming home had yet to dawn, though the sun was fully up.

Next, she almost swore her mother’s name, blaming her for allowing some guest’s kid to stay in her room. But one eye dart around the room and that didn’t make sense to her either. Mom would have made her rearrange the room, there would be a…well, she probably couldn’t have gotten out last night.

The room itself was small, the walls still a pastel purple from when she was a little princess. That atrocious color was hidden as best she could by her wardrobe; clothes hung on hooks and from a few wires in the ceiling. There was no closet, but the dresser must be used for other things. What the clothes failed to hide, posters and other items adorned the wall. One corner even had a wrecked solar system with Pluto on top.

But sitting across from the bed, violating her steel chair at the desk, was a small little girl. Styx’s right arm slowly navigated the covers, trying to find where her bat was currently hiding. She just tried to stare into the girl’s soul and not blink.

“Ha ha, very funny. MOM! SHAN! Who’s this?!”

(@keiththelegokid)

OOC: I’m going to wait for @TheMOCingbird to go first before doing anything with my Revenant.

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