21 - 30: A rat scuttles out of a crossing in front of you. Its shadow seems... strange, in ways that you cannot explain. Should you choose for some reason to pursue it, you will find that it evades you entirely, and that your flashlight beam seems strangely less effective at penetrating the darkness in the tunnels where the rat flees.
Harper trailed behind the other two, the flashlight beaming around trying to figure out where they were besides being somewhere underground. There was nothing other than the notable paw prints of rats that had aimlessly scattered round in the dust, not a sign or scribble of being in some sort of location. A frown stretched across her face as Austin tipped one of the abandoned bags with his foot as fruit fell out, it was a little weird that it was still there but she kept her concern to herself as the Mist found another bag further away another series of paw prints.
Turning around she looked behind them where the portal had conveniently let them out, watching as something moved giving a muffled squeak before freezing when the beam of the flashlight grew to close.
“Eewww…” Her lip curled as she took a step forward, a rat of course if there were paw prints there would be a rat not too far away. It wasn’t that she was terrified of them white mice were cute, but rats were not, especially ones that lived in the sewers. It stood there for a moment, the flashlight casting a shadow, but something was off, as if it was wrong in some way. The hunter couldn’t pinpoint it what and before she could think of what it was the rat had moved and a minute later disappeared in the darkness.
and be blue
Beejoux
and be blue rolled 1 100-sided dice:
45Total: 45 (1-100)
Posted: Sat Dec 12, 2015 8:03 pm
Quote:
A bag of dried fruit and stale bread lies in a corner alongside an abandoned backpack that turns out, if examined, to contain supplies for impromptu urban exploration, but no identification. The dust is studded with dozens and dozens of rats' pawprints, but the food is entirely untouched.
"...this place is disgusting, yes." Austin offered it over his shoulder to Harper as he came upon another pile of abandoned belongings -- and shuddered at the criss-crossing network of horrible little rat prints that laced all the dust around his feet. There must have been thousands of the things, must have been enough to fill the catacombs. Where were they, then? And...
"What are they eating?" It came out slow, puzzled. He nudged at a wrinkled and rotted apple core. "Not the food..."
31 - 40: A long, long line of French graffiti in black ink stretches along this corridor at shoulder height. If your character can speak French, they will find that it starts out with the lyrics to a tune currently popular on French radio, before taking a turn for the bizarre in the middle with random words (often "légion") inserted incorrectly, and then disintegrating into complete gibberish and random strings of letters before stopping suddenly mid-tunnel.
Quote:
We're gunna pretend for the moment I didn't roll the boss
Silently Zeke agreed with the other young man. The catacombs were filthy, but they were also undeniably intriguing, even looking beyond whatever odd Fear inspired weirdness might be plaguing the place. The sheer history that surrounded them, as well as the architecture, the planning, the work. Ezekiel wasn't usually much of a history buff, but he could appreciate this.
Drawing the beam of his flashlight away from one of the walls, he aimed it down towards the bag Austin had found, lips twitching in an unreadable way before following one of the criss crossing trails of prints away from it. "The people that left these behind, perhaps." They probably weren't dealing with normal rats anymore.
He kept walking, following the trail for a few meters, flashlight beam making slow back and forth lines across through the tunnel until something on one wall made him stop. "We've got some writing." It was french and seemed to follow a certain flow phonically, like lyric. Except peppered throughout were words that didn't seem to belong. "légion," he read, giving the word the proper accent before continuing along the wall. "It makes mention of that several times before just melting into complete gibberish."
1- 20: You find a pile of blankets and a bag of worn belongings suggesting that you've stumbled on a vagrant's sleeping place. There is a large quantity of dried, reddish brown stains, including a clearly-marked but streaked footprint and handprint on the floor, that lead to the edge of one of the underground canals, then disappear. Many of the smaller spatters are clearly the tiny pawprints of rats.
Harper looked over at Austin and then to Zeke as he answered the blonde’s question, the answer was already in her mind but unlike the mist she had no interest in saying it out loud. The thought more or less sent a little bit of a shiver up her spine at the thought of being completely devoured alive by tiny little mouths with sharp little teeth and creepy little nail finger things. Trailing behind she followed them, and continuing not really paying a lot of attention to the words on the wall that Zeke was reading out loud to the both of them. Instead a pile of rubbish, more like a series of plastic shopping bags, paper cups, wrappers tattered blankets and things caught her attention.
The smell was awful, not that the catacombs smelled any better, but it gave her a vague idea that it belonged to a few vagrants hiding out. There were no longer in sight but the dark red splotches with the a series of paw prints trailing away meant that they were likely gone like the owner of the backpacks.
The dark hand print made it even more clearer what their fate had been. “Definitely eaten.” She looked back at the other two as she spoke, her voice soft more so being afraid of being heard by anything else.
and be blue
Beejoux
stella cinere
Ice-Cold Codger
Offline
and be blue rolled 1 100-sided dice:
7Total: 7 (1-100)
"What, and then the rats are picking up the bodies and carrying them off somewhere to be finished in quiet?" It was sarcastic, snapping: Austin didn't think that was altogether likely. He shot a look after Zeke, investigating some boring lyrics on the wall, and then decided to creep over and look at Harper's finding instead.
That made him pause, considering, gone quiet for a very long moment --
61 - 80: You enter an area with a high, vaulted ceiling, full of a strange squishing, echoing sound. Something falls to the ground in the beam of your flashlight. It is a maggot. Should you decide to point your beam upwards, you will find the ceiling completely crawling with the same, all apparently hellbent on reaching small cocoon-like objects, roughly the size of a softball, strung thickly across the ceiling.
Austin's comment had the effect of renewing Zeke's smile, and he glanced back at him, expression condescending at best, an wondered if he'd ever seemed that new to all this. He suspected not. From day one the intermediate had had very little doubts in the strange going-ons around him. Less skeptical by nature, apparently.
"If anything about this seemed normal, we wouldn't be here." Despite personal thoughts, his voice was even and almost patient. "Any rats we find here are going to be twisted things, influenced by an influx of Fear." Which meant, in his mind, that it was entirely plausible for rats being responsible for the complete lack of any bodies around. With as much as Zeke had witnessed in his time as a hunter, things just stopped being all that unlikely. At least strange things.
They kept walking, Zeke keeping the beam of his flashlight trained on the walls in case there as anymore writing to be found, but found nothing as they reached an opening. Here the ceiling was higher, he could tell as much just from the quality of air, the movement of it as they stepped into that thick darkness, the sound of their footsteps echoing outward. (There was another sound, harder to recognize.) Zeke swept his flashlight around the room in a slow circle, until something dropped straight through the beam.
It made him stop, pace slowing as he approached cuatiously. "A maggot?" It seemed a little larger than normal. He frowned down at it before glancing upward towards the ceiling, the beam of his flashlight rising. He had a good idea as to what that sound was now....
The ceiling was moving, and just the sight of it, of so many small, squirming bodies, sent a shudder through the Mist.
61 - 80: You enter an area with a high, vaulted ceiling, full of a strange squishing, echoing sound. Something falls to the ground in the beam of your flashlight. It is a maggot. Should you decide to point your beam upwards, you will find the ceiling completely crawling with the same, all apparently hellbent on reaching small cocoon-like objects, roughly the size of a softball, strung thickly across the ceiling.
Harper shot Austin a look at his comment, brows knotted at doubting that the bloody handprint could really be anything but human. If anything living in a world where shadowed zombies lurked for a month she had gotten a little more use that things were likely as bad as they seemed. Not that she didn’t doubt they could handle it, it was if something seemed strange it was likely so.
She trailed behind Zeke, her flashlight dodging along the canal looking for any other sort of hints of something that had maybe been dragged in and survived. Any sort of debris or even worse something giving more signs of where the twisted rats where hiding or what direction their little nest was in. There was of course doubt that it was little, or even much of a nest. Instead her mind dodged to the thought of a swarming black mass of shadowy rats consuming a human whole.
The thought caused a shiver to run up her spine as she stopped realizing that the size of the room had changed as the sound of something fleshy like hit the ground catching both the older hunter’s attention. Taking a few slower paces closer to Zeke she glanced at the oversized maggot before following the beam of his flashlight to the ceiling.
“Are they all maggots?” Her voice was barely a whisper as her skin prickled from the shudder that ran through her body, it was a squirming white like mass all heading in some direction of a cocoon.
“What’s that?”
Beejoux
and be blue
and be blue rolled 1 100-sided dice:
95Total: 95 (1-100)
Posted: Tue Jan 05, 2016 8:29 pm
Quote:
81- 100: BOSS ENCOUNTER: - The sound of scrabbling paws is faint at first, but soon grows into a din punctuated with the chatter of many, many oversized teeth. The beast that manifests is a King Rat: a writhing mass of rodents joined by the tails, so that the teeth all face outwards. This is clearly a creature of FEAR, not of nature: each rat is substantially larger than the average dog, their beady eyes gleam bloodthirsty and manic, and the entire unit moves with a cohesiveness that suggests a hivemind at work. They (or it) fully block the tunnel ahead.
- BOSS MECHANICS: This boss is a mob that has collective 100 HP. Every time you attack it (following the general battle rules), you TAKE 8 damage. Make sure to tally the boss's total HP (the damage you did to it) at the bottom of your post as well as your total HP and the damage you did that round. If the boss's HP hits 0, you have defeated it, and your team can now take the portal back.
After Boss defeat: When the final rat is slain, all the carcasses melt away. They leave, however, a scrap of evidence for you to take back to the labs for further research. Roll 1d4 to determine what is dropped 1. A single, normal-sized rat skeleton, bound together with striped baker's twine and sealed with a Belgian postage stamp. 2. A plastic baggie containing cigarette butts and bottlecaps. Shift the contents a bit and you will find that in the center of the litter is what appears to be a dead baby rat, hairless and pink--and still fresh. 3. What appears to be a bit of fur but on closer examination turns out to be a dessicated rat head (normal sized). Someone or something has nailed a bit of yellow legal paper to it, but all that remains is a shred. 4. A bundle of freshly-severed, normal-seeming rats' tails, bound together with what looks like an elastic baby's headband of pink lace.
"Why would you walk toward the maggot --" He reached out for Harper, but couldn't catch her before she was out of his range, and before he could follow, there was a sound from behind: scuffling and scraping. Austin turned but slowly, nervously, like he knew he wasn't going to like what he saw.
Probably because he didn't.
It came out fully into the light and he mad an involuntary sound of disgust, stumbling back away from the creature and trying to draw his weapon in a still-clumsy gesture, almost tripping over his own bow.
Twisted things indeed. Zeke tore his gaze from the ceiling, almost welcoming the distraction until he caught sight of what was moving down the corridor towards them. Gnashing, sharp teeth snapped with enough force for the sound to bounce off the walls, and that was over the snarled squeaking that seemed to grate on every nerve.
The Mist's teeth set on edge, and with a pale blue flash he had his axe in his hand, moving swiftly to place himself between the advancing beast(s) and the two trainees.
Heroics were always a bit of a mistake, even when it was part of your job. Zeke's Axe came up for a powerful downward strike on one of the rat heads, and other was coming in from the side, dragging sharp claws down his side and tearing through his shirt.
With a grunt he drew back, using the flat of the blades to push the beast(s) back. "Son of a b***h."
It was Austin’s voice that tore Harper’s attention from the squirming ceiling to the creature that was moving down the corridor towards them, as Zeke places himself between them and the creature. Green eyes widen at the size, intricate and disturbing display of the various rats lumbering towards them teeth and little red beady eyes ready. Despite spending a month with zombies it had not prepared her to face anything like this as she felt her hands starting to shake as they evaded the mist’s attack and returned with a powerful one of their own.
Be ready ghoul.
A flash of green as the dagger appeared in her hand, the chain clanging on the ground echoing against the wretched squeaking noises that made a shiver run up her spine.
Don’t stand, go!
She ran forward, picking up the chain as it clanked across the stone against, blade out in front as she swung low across one of the rat’s chest.
Too slow.
One of the other rats gazed its teeth down her thigh before she could retreat back to where Zeke stood. Harper gritted her teeth, stumbling backwards to get away.
HP: 32 DMG: 3 CHG: 1/3
Boss HP: 97
and be blue
Beejoux
stella cinere
Ice-Cold Codger
Offline
and be blue rolled 2 8-sided dice:
3, 8Total: 11 (2-16)
It was Austin's first battle and maybe, in the face of such a monster, he should have frozen up and freaked out, should have missed like the rest of them seemed inclined to do. Or near-missed. Somehow, instead, it cleared his head to a sharp kind of focus, made it that much easier to draw his weapon and pull back a bolt, even as he struggled to get out of the creature's grasp.
One step, two, and he was just far enough to release the string with a twang and a burst of light against the monster's side, knocking several smaller rats loose. And, as it hit, the world came back again. The bites against his calves made the breath shudder out of him, and he struggled to shake it off and regain that strange calm as he drew another bolt.
The trainees charged in, first Harper and then Austin with consecutive hits to the writhing mass of gnashing teeth and clawing limbs. Worst perhaps, the sounds that were coming from the collection of squirming bodies. A chorus of squealing snarling that grated on the nerves and just sounded wrong.
A claw swiped out from the knot, sharp claws racking across shield and flesh, and Zeke jerked into motion with a swing of his ax that took off the offending limb before it had a chance to withdraw back into the mass.
It was backing them further back into the room with the maggots, which was quite honestly the absolute last place the intermediate wanted to be.
Harper ran her fingers across the wound, her breath sucking back through her teeth with a low whistle at the slowly dulling pain as she watched the other two hunters take their turn. Both hit with far better skill than her as the beast screeched and writhed in annoyance lashing out towards them.
Well don’t just stand there move ghoul.
At the voice she lunged forward, the blade scarcely leaving a mark along one of the heads and paws of the beast. Part of it twisted around its claws digging heavily into her side as her feet were too slow to dodge away from it. Gripping her side she scuttled away from it, glaring.
HP: 24 DMG: 1 CHG: 2/3
Boss HP: 84
and be blue
Beejoux
and be blue rolled 2 8-sided dice:
7, 8Total: 15 (2-16)
Posted: Sun Mar 06, 2016 8:27 pm
People who knew Austin would probably be as surprised by him to find out that he could be calm in a crisis. All it took was another long, slow breath -- a hiss in the back of his mind -- and his focus narrowed down to the enemy, the drawing of his weapon, the loose of a bolt --
It hit with an explosion of light, and Austin blew out. This time, he didn't even notice the nibbling.
