The hotel itself was somewhat safe, free from the swiping talons of the crazed birds outside. Jan rubbed his neck where there should have been a really nasty gash from the bird which had tried to take a chunk out of his flesh, but there was nothing, just a lingering pain which didn't seem to have a proper origin. He was glad of it at least.
Looking around he took a bit of stock of the hotel and the people fearfully trying to block up the entrances and windows from their airborne assailants. It was like walking into a horror movie and Jan couldn't help but find it fascinating, old habits dying hard as he found himself wondering how many people had left expensive jewellery and cameras unattended in the fray.
The first order of business it seemed for the Chosen - as he'd been told they should refer to themselves - was to help organise this place and fortify the area further. This he was all right with getting stuck in with, again not an altruist but of the opinion that a strong wall between everyone else and the godforsaken birds was a wall between him and them also.
"You doing ok?" he asked Rodney with a smile. "Lets help keep these things out of here. You are good and strong, I don't think I could lift much. Together though we should be all right."
He didn't mention what - if anything - he brought to the partnership.
Each player starts by rolling 4d10. Match your results to the list below, and roleplay out the discovery.
1: A couple smashed chairs. 2: A mattress with half the stuffing torn out. 3: Plastic shower curtains, surprisingly sturdy. 4: A silver platter, complete with plates and silverware. 5. Logs from one of the fireplaces. 6. 8 mens' ties of very good quality. 7. A suitcase filled with womens' formal clothes. 8. A cleaning cart, half-stocked with standard supplies. 9. Two sharp steak knives from someone's room service. 10. Something of your choice, appropriate to a hotel.
After you've completed that, roleplay out how you use each item you rolled. Be creative!
If you complete this prompt with a minimum of 500 words you will receive 10 XP. You can only complete this prompt once.
Everyone was tearing the hotel apart. It was a sort of...communal looting. With the staff helping. Rodney kept his own belongings close by. He didn't feel great about it, but there were a lot of windows and not as much furniture. People were quiet, and busy, and watching. There was less activity inside than he would have expected. He'd spot patches of blood (too much blood) on people's clothes.
"I didn't think we'd be walking into a Hitchcock movie," Rodney joked a little nervously, checking himself over too. No scratches. His hair was still in place. He fiddled with the bracelet and flat metal piece on his wrist. "I guess...it really works." He looked out of place, with the giant bow. Like a LARPer.
He put his hand through his hair. What did it mean? What did it mean about God, and gods, and these people, if they died they'd...be sent to the Underworld? Everybody, no matter what...?
"Are you okay?" He asked Jan, bending to pick up a suitecase that burst open, sitting like a broken set of jaws on top of a pile of clothes.
He paled as one of the items he fished up was a bra.
Lawr laughed at Rodney's comment. "It is a bit Birds isn't it? If it was back on the forums they'd already be blaming it on government modifications, maybe some sort of Montauk experiment using birds." He sighed. "As it is I am already getting the feeling that any true explanation is infinitely more strange than even the things people could dream up."
Well, people who were still alive anyway. Seemed that the ancient greeks had been right on the money more or less.
"Isn't that thing heavy?" he asked Rodney as he eyed him "It looks reall-" he trailed off as Rodney held up a bra and his expression changed into a grin. He didn't explain what he was thinking, instead he said. "You know you didn't seem the type for panty raiding."
Over in a drawer he found some fancy ties. Very fancy ties. The one he liked best got pocketed, the others were held up for inspection. "Could use these to tie someone up, in a pinch." he said. It wasn't much use for fortifying though.
Posted: Mon Aug 08, 2016 5:49 am
"T-tie someone up? Why would we... but, we could use it to bind some of the furniture together. Here," he said hastily, stuffing the clothes back into the suitcase and closing the lid with a little more desperation than necessary. "S-see what else you can, um, here's...here's some wood. I think. Is it plastic...?"
He dragged a couple of thick logs from the fire place, and the heft of the stuff confirmed it wasn't.
"No. Real. These are heavy..."
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Posted: Mon Aug 08, 2016 7:30 am
Jan gave Rodney a slow blank look at his question and decided against saying what he'd been thinking or any of the situations which could warrant tying someone up. Instead he nodded and moved over to lift eyes the logs, they looked very heavy and potentially also very dirty, there were three of them and he didn't want to touch them.
"Maybe they could be piled up against something to keep the birds out." he volunteered, not really willing to get stuck in and do any real physical labour. Instead he turned and skimmed into the nearby bathroom, there was a sound of tearing and he came out carrying two shower curtains.
"Now these could block a window a bit, if we had some nails."
Posted: Mon Aug 08, 2016 7:43 am
"Or ties," Rodney reminded him. "Throw them on the mattress, it looks a bit torn up anyway. We'll drag it all out."
He seemed grateful to get rid of the suitcase. Some of those clothes had...also been ripped.
"I hope...whoever was in this room is okay. Who...why would anybody tear the stuffing out?"
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Posted: Mon Aug 08, 2016 7:56 am
Jan didn't look as enthused about using fancy ties as building materials. "They are probably fine, it's only birds that we've seen, maybe they got changed and went to help with other things or were rescued in the first wave." He shrugged.
"As for the stuffing maybe they needed it to block something up, like corners or something." He didn't voice the fact that maybe there had also been other strange metallic mutant animals, like rats or insects which might have been able to fit into smaller spaces. "Probably best to make things as impermeable as possible."
He laughed. "That or this place was just ground zero of some really strange orgy."
Posted: Mon Aug 08, 2016 11:51 am
"J-jan," Rodney hissed, flushed, and then, correcting himself, "although...I suppose it doesn't matter any more what anyone says. Or does." He seemed slightly glum about it.
"Here. Put that on the mattress too. I'll get it. Is that everything?"
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Posted: Mon Aug 08, 2016 12:40 pm
Rodney got a confused look for his comment, Jan even stopping what he was doing with the shower curtains to pay attention to the other man. Over the years they'd gotten into more than a few arguments about the nature of life and religion and it sounded distinctly out of character for him to say that it didn't matter at all what anyone said. Jan had marked him out as a puritan to the extreme. "Really?" he said and tilted his head slightly. "I thought it was pretty important what people said, that they were kind and worked towards improving their big tally list in the sky."
He dropped the curtain onto the mattress and cocked a hip. "You telling me you are going to start swearing and being crude now? Because ah think I'd better rethink my friendship if you are going to go getting all R rated."
Posted: Mon Aug 08, 2016 12:52 pm
"There isn't," Rodney said definitively, "a sky tally. No one's going to heaven. Or hell, for that matter. Just the Underworld. I mean, you saw, right? We walked through fire. Those eagles...they aren't...they aren't, I don't know what the right word is, organic. The vision that told us to come here. We should have scratches all over us, but my skin isn't even red. I mean, you know, call me easy to sway, but," He tugged at the mattress, saying softly and a little tremblingly, "I had another vision. Before this one. That's why..."
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Posted: Mon Aug 08, 2016 1:15 pm
Jan gave the other man what could only have been a sympathetic look. "That's true I suppose. From what I heard from other people their encounters with their recruiting gods were even more fantastic and strange than mine." He'd been sceptical and still on some level was, his own encounter with Hermes entirely possible to dismiss as technology or something else that wasn't supernatural at all. Yet after the hotel it was difficult to stay that way, Rodney really was right, they had been free from harm after several difficult fights and they were almost all fights where he should have been cut wide open by long and lethal bird talons. He didn't have a scratch.
"I suppose both of us were wrong in some way if this is all true. If there truly is such thing as a god or gods. Still, it doesn't sit well with me, I am not pleased with the idea that I do not have control of my own future and life. Control was what I had to keep me going."
Helpful as always he made no effort to touch the mattress and instead shrugged at Rodney. "What happened to you? Back then?"
Posted: Mon Aug 08, 2016 1:38 pm
"The...greek. Or the Roman, or....whichever we're dealing with, are not omniscient. Or omnipotent. Or...in charge of Fate. You're in control of what you do, still. It...I guess it just doesn't matter anymore."
He twisted the mattress to get through the doorframe.
"My brothers are dead," Rodney said. "It was my junior year of highschool. There was a car accident. And I had a dream that they were angels. They came back to tell me it was okay. That they were okay. And it didn't feel like a dream. But I guess it was. I guess they were in the Underworld the whole time, and there was no way for them to get back to me, and that nothing we do matters."
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Posted: Mon Aug 08, 2016 1:51 pm
Jan didn't know Rodney all that well as a person, a real life offline person, but even he could feel something of the disappointment in the other man's tone. He couldn't really understand how it felt to lose control of the definition of your faith entirely, but he knew it was horrible when he lost any solid thing he'd learned to count upon.
"I'm sorry that you feel that way pardner." he said. "And maybe there's more to that than it just being a dream. Maybe things are weirder than we know and there's an equivalent out there. Maybe they are still okay." He knew that people liked to hear reassuring things and this was about as reassuring as he could go.
"Maybe things are just different. Not completely shoved off the table." threading one of the ties (reluctantly) though a loop on a shower curtain he looked up at the curtain rail above the window and realised it was way too high up for him to reach. "Maybe this is just a time to re-evaluate rather than give up."
Posted: Mon Aug 08, 2016 2:02 pm
"The greek gods," Rodney said, and reconsidering just in case, toned it down to a whisper, "are not moral in any definition of the word. There's...affairs. T-torture, murder, orgies, b-bestiality. There are... taboo things you get punished for. Like, um," he shifted his definition of moral around to remember what the greek gods did consider wrong, "Killing family," he said, just as mournfully, "Guest rules. I think, killing a guest. Temple defilement, that's...r-raping a priestess, or something, or...tearing down a temple statue. Tricking gods, I don't know, they're mad if you get caught, but... But it's all...it's all arbitrary. You can get turned into a tree as a reward or a punishment. How can it not all be different? It's completely different. And none of that effects the afterlife, which, regardless of spiritual belief systems, is still the majority of our existence."
He looked to where Lawr was looking. He was taller, but not much taller. Rodney looked for a chair, or something, but those had been looted.
"Here," he said again, taking a knee so Lawrence could scramble up on his back.
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Posted: Mon Aug 08, 2016 2:10 pm
"That's true also I suppose. But it's like everything else in life, it's just something we need to deal with. It's probably harder for you I suppose, for me I've just." And he reached out into his thoughts and considered for a moment if he should even say this to Rodney or if a lie would be more apt. "I've just never had anything, there isn't hope for anything beyond this, or hope for anything at all. Just existing and doing what I can to thrive as best I can." He decided it was fine to admit for now, after all, Rodney probably thought all atheists felt this way. "Everything in the world has always been arbitrary. Life, death, luck, fate. Makes more sense that even the gods would be just as hedonistic and callous to me."
Jan didn't register at first WHY Rodney had knelt down and in the wake of the conversation about the many and varied things the greek gods traditionally got up to found himself giving the other man a slightly wide-eyed look.
Mercifully common sense wasn't too far behind him and he moved to climb up on Rodney and fasten the tie to the rail.
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