CYBERDWARF
Abuse and Abasement
in a Far-Future Fortress
SALULREKSAS, 'SKINSIN' thrums and roars and glows, and goes on forever - or the closest thing to it. Within it you eke out a living on the edge of society, an unlogged speck outside the purview of the Great Houses of Commerce, the bookkeepers and owners of all that can be legally owned, and most of what can't be as well. Skinsin is a place of infinite possibility lurking down every tunnel, lit brighter than day, legendary in its pleasures and horrors alike, a once-fortress of untold wonder now harboring 20 million malcontents just like you.
You love Uptown for its spectacular engravings, pulsing and screaming seconds at a time with images of the finest cheese wheels, the most sumptuous kitchens, quick flashes of elves melting and dwarves laughing and vice versa, the descent and ascent and innumerable ignoble deaths of a thousand gods in the waning years of the Age of Myth burning themselves in your unconscious memory, overwhelming you with sensation. You hate them for the stores underneath, packed with the finest goods dwarfkind has ever produced at prices physically impossible for you to afford, and you hate them for the hammerers walking the streets, ready to slam you with a loitering charge for so much as stopping on a corner in the middle of the sweating, chattering hordes of uptowners, humans and goblins.
You love the Middle Layers for their clinics where you can score upper-class drugs and neural chips and sometimes implants that fell off the back of a cargo tram, all at half-price and affordable even for the scum of the earth, unacknowledged by the Great Houses despite being forever their best customer. You hate Midtown because there's not enough people to lose yourself in the crowd, and the security cameras are always watching and judging, waiting for you to tip security to turn them off. But more than that you hate Midtown's people, the assholes who make up Uptown's gawking crowds and who'd be the first to send security after you if your miserable state didn't make them feel so much better about themselves.
You love the Magma Quarter because for once nobody can see you because nobody's around, and nobody should be around - the smelters and workshops and everything that dwarves used to do themselves is now done by automated bronze machines helped along by the refined sorceries of the Great Houses. You love it because you can throw an inconvenient body into a magma flow and nobody will ask any questions, as it should be. But you hate the Magma Quarter because it reminds you of the fact that the only reason you are not obsolete is because you can consume, which is the only use for you that the Great Houses of Commerce will permit.
You hate Hell because the stench of the glowing pits is somehow newly horrible every day, the unknowable depths brimming not just with demonic horrors but also with centuries' worth of toxic waste, the whole of demonkind now reduced to retching at the excess of dwarves, the new masters of depravity. You love Hell because that's the only place that'll take you, a place for everyone like you - lost to the world and a menace to society as you know it - to live and flourish in the shit and horror of the deep. You love it also because it is better than outside, where enchanted forests have become petrified from the smoke of the underground factories where they haven't been leveled by the titanic clear-cutter machines, and skeletal unicorns roam the miles-long shoreside mermaid graveyards, a relic of one of the many great market crashes.
But most of all you love Hell because you need alcohol to get through the working day, and Death's Gate on the corner of Apethreat and Onyx is the place to get it. That is where our story begins...
As you may expect, this is an RTD. You probably know what the rules entail in that case - 1 is a critical failure, 6 is an overshoot, 5 is a perfect success and 2-4 are appropriate results in between. You play as a dwarf living in the colonized quarter of Hell beneath the mercantile dystopia of Skinsin looking to make it big by whatever means necessary.
The tone is comically violent, lightheartedly grim and transdwarfin where possible. The mechanics are going to be a lot like Our Salvation if you've read that, but with a bit more limb damage if I don't forget.
Oh, and if you miss five turns, you're out of the game and replaced with the next person.
You play as a dwarf and you're on the lowest rung of society, the dregs of the dregs, and the rest is up to you. Sheets are first-come-first-served.
Your Name: something snappy, preferably.
Your Concept: you could be anything from a street axelord to a rockerdwarf to a would-be necromancer to a rogue soapmaker with a taste for pugilism. What's your deal?
Your Talent: you're not to be fucked with, even if you don't necessarily know it. Why is that?
Your Malfunction: but if you were really that good, you'd be out of here already. What holds you back from the big time?
Your Residence: you gotta sleep somewhere. Where do you live and what does your living space look like?
Skinsin is as much the fortress-city of the players as it is my own setting - don't ask where something is, tell me where you find it and what you did when you went there last. Don't ask me who's around, tell me who you see and how you intend to make them help you. Make up the bits of setting that you'd find interesting and I'll roll to see how well they play into your hands. Remember that anything is possible in Skinsin, and that Skinsin never sleeps. Embrace the madness. Give me your ideas without reservation.
Bold your actions. Don't bold your RP. If I forget to tell you about something, consider it as free license to fill in details. I'll certainly do the same for you.
Furthermore, use lines of dialogue only as lead-ins and follow with a bolded line stating your intent for the conversation. It slows the game down to do speaking line-by-line unless you're talking to another player, and even then it's kind of a crapshoot.
Your Name: Urist mac slughterfriend
Your Concept: A violent Miner that doesn't really care anymore
Your Talent: He spent thirty years in a goblin pit, and came out a master miner without digg'in a single foot. (Raised by goblins, Rescued a bit late, Killed lots of people with a pick)
Your Malfunction: He... owes some people quite a bit. and with the interest rate, that bit is bigger then you might expect.
Your Residence: A hole in the wall of the sewer he carved himself.
Your Name: Jalormis
Your Concept: Vampire Necromancer
Your Talent: Necromancy
Your Malfunction: Is a vampire
Your Residence: A small camp in a mausoleum in the Graveyard District (of Hell). Imagine a Boy Scout campsite (for one), but in a mausoleum. That's basically Jalormis's house. Also, he probably isn't allowed to be living here, but not enough people give enough of a !@#$ to kick him out. Plus, he'll sometimes take corpses that need to be buried, and that saves work for the gravediggers. He's mostly kept his vampirism secret, only nibbling on hobos and such (which are in large supply here in Hell).
Ever since that incident with night creature blood getting into the water supply a ways down Apethreat the vampire population has sadly boomed in Hell, and you've sure had a hell of a time staying ahead of the menace eradication agencies with your double whammy of being a foul bloodsucker and a grave defiler as well.
[At Death's Gate: 6]
Naturally you're welcome at any time in Death's Gate. The management recognizes that your situation warrants getting especially blasted out of your skull at all hours. Having a necromancer about helps the place's reputation, you know, keeps it the kind of rough-and-tumble place that keeps the rubes turning up.
You crack open a dwarven wino with alcohol poisoning (gotta love happy hour) in Dark Corner #6 of the establishment while enjoying tonight's musical performance, the acclaimed dwarven found noise artist known in artistic circles as Yeller, to his friends as Bear and to his creditors as Mr. Lovegod. Suffice it to say, you and Mr. Lovegod have some unfinished business. He seems to be sweating a little as he glances in your direction, though maybe that's just from the bright white floodlight that's giving him a distinctly beatific look as he shouts profanities over industrial machinery while seemingly having a seizure on stage.
Your Name: Enir Nazush
Your Concept: Vampire barmaid. While her brothers and sisters of the night infiltrated the nobility, she ended up in a bar in Hell.
Your Talent: Well, Enir’s a vampire. She’s charismatic, beguiling you with her stare, making you feel like the most important dwarf in the world...
Your Malfunction: … Then she says “Goddamn, you're ugly. When you were born, did your parents leave you for the afterbirth?” , because Enir is a snarky son of a bitch and can't let an insult slip by.
Your Residence: Depends. Usually the residence of whatever drunkard is dumb enough to take her home despite the rumors. If not, she sleeps in the ale cellar between the barrels.
There's a raging asshole within every vampire's heart, you've heard, but yours just isn't so much raging as outright berserk. Your personal therapy assistant (specifically assigned by the Hell Synergy Committee after their complaints file on you got too heavy to easily carry singlehandedly) says you may have some unresolved issues with people in your life. You don't correct it on that last bit, it never learns anyway.
[At Death's Gate: 1]
Though you do believe you'll be having a heart-to-heart with it later tonight, as you A) just got fired from the Asylum not fifteen minutes ago, B) found out from management over here that they don't even hire barmaids around here, they've got a special mechanism for that (it even sings! can you sing? of course you can't) and C) despite your better judgment are still wearing your former work uniform, a shitty schoolgirl-dominatrix outfit, on account of having no change of clothes handy because of an unfortunate artery puncture last night on a would-be human customer.
But that's not all, because in the last five minutes you've also established that D) Dark Corners #1 through #8 are packed, as are Incongruous Opera Boxes #2 through #5 (#1 is closed for bad luck), which can only mean that it's Vampire Night and you're basically gonna get no action here even as a patron. Though E) Bear seems like he's landed a gig here, which means he'll have some money by the end of tonight, but F) you can't actually remember if he owes you any money or not.
You stroke your naturally silky black beard thoughtfully as you listen to the sweet tunes Bear's putting out. You bet all these fucking vampires have no appreciation for this fire he's putting out. There's definitely a way to turn this night around. But what is it?
Your Name: Urist mac slughterfriend
Your Concept: A violent Miner that doesn't really care anymore
Your Talent: He spent thirty years in a goblin pit, and came out a master miner without digg'in a single foot. (Raised by goblins, Rescued a bit late, Killed lots of people with a pick)
Your Malfunction: He... owes some people quite a bit. and with the interest rate, that bit is bigger then you might expect.
Your Residence: A hole in the wall of the sewer he carved himself.
Scion of the honored mac Slughterfiend clan, separated at birth from his noble lineage, reunited after a while and then tragically separated once more by several dwarfslaughter charges and a summary disowning! They did let you inherit the debts at least, which was awfully nice of them on reflection.
[At Death's Gate: 2]
Nursing your pint of whisky, you examine the room around you and ponder your line of credit. By your count there is exactly one person here that you don't owe any money, and that's the dude on stage having a horrific mental breakdown set to a horrific mechanical breakdown of the soundsystem. You have no idea if this is supposed to be happening, but you figure he'll either be paid for this marvelous display of auditory obliteration or will be entitled to claim restitution from the establishment - in either case he's the only dwarf in this bar who's not out to bleed you dry, which if you consider that by now you are altogether too drunk to easily walk out of the bar, makes him also the only person in the world who may stave off your demise by, say, a week.
All you need to do is gain his attention somehow. If only you knew the fucker's name, or were at all able to read it on that sign next to the stage.
Your Name: Cazin Crundle-Smasher
Your Concept: Retired Miner, current bookkeeper
Your Talent: Deduction skills beyond that of what should be reasonably possible
Your Malfunction: Refusal to accept that the surface exists
Your Residence: Some actually quite nice quarters behind his office in Midtown. There is the slight problem that his bedchambers are hooked up to the lava disposal system of olde, once used to eliminate nobles; now not in use, but there is a danger that it might give out at any point.
Ah, Hell. Always good to come back down here to remind yourself of your roots. And your history! And of all the poor bastard dwarves who couldn't cut it in night school and experience your degree of infinitesimal upward mobility. Look, you've got a business card and everything! Just you watch, you'll be on top of the heap and running the House of Leaves in no time at all!
[At Death's Gate: 4]
Part of this indubitably is your sideline as manager to a lineup of horrid little malcontents like one Mr. B. "Yeller" Lovegod over there on the stage playing his strange popping rock music or whatever it is these dwarf kids do these days. You're the money dwarf (not that there is much, this is more of a diversification thing - diversifying your portfolio is good, you've heard), not the manager. Mr. Lovegod insists that he is his own manager. To be fair, he does appear to understand his own appeal - whatever this hellish soundscape is supposed to represent, the local vampire population is loving it. You suspect they're being ironic, but these being vampires, further proof is likely needed.
You have a nip at your beer and look at the catastrophe on stage. Mr. Lovegod better not keel over from the stress of performing, you stand to actually get reasonably paid from this gig! And you do need the money, the rent on your Midtown office has recently upgraded from merely atrocious to fucking ludicrous, apparently due to high demand.
You can't help but shake a very bad feeling, however. Mr. Lovegod really isn't the sort of impressive artiste to fill out even a place like Death's Gate, acclaimed though his reclaimed noise may be. You're pretty sure this crowd's here for some other reason, and you're damn sure you're not going to like what that turns out to be.
Jalormis, Extremely Undead Guy
Alternatively Souled: Vampire
Death's Gate: Guest of Honor
Money: 2
Old Yeller: A Horrific Debt
Enir Nazush, Barmaid of the Night
Alternatively Souled: Vampire
Outfit: Awful Schoolgirl-Dominatrix Uniform
Death's Gate: Too Many Vampires
Old Yeller: Found Noise Appreciator
Money: Flat Broke
Urist mac Slughterfiend, Miner on the Edge
Money: Flat Broke
Gruesome Insolvency: Surreal Debts
Cazin Crundle-Smasher, Uncanny Bookkeeper
Money: 1
Old Yeller: Carefully Money-Dwarfed
Your Name: Cog
Your Concept: Street-wise mechanic.
Your Talent: Mechanics. Cog has learned to tinker with the best of them, at least when he's working with gears and springs. He has little experience with more expensive tech, but he's got the talent and a burning desire to learn.
Your Malfunction: Cog is an orphan and an urchin, and he doesn't know much about life beyond the streets. He can interact with society well enough to function, but his ignorance and complete lack of social graces make it hard to pass as anything except what he is.
Your Residence: A small space in the magma quarter, spared from both the movement of the machines and the pools of molten rock. It isn't much, but he's gathered enough odds and ends to make it a decent workshop.
Cazin, keeping half an eye on the performance, looks for a sufficiently unintelligent dwarf to swindle with some meaningless but impressive buzz-words.
[One Born Every Minute: 1+1]
You scope out a dwarf you know as Clark, his real name lost to the twin sisters of time and drugs. He's vibrating to the found noise, undulating on his table, his hand on a monofilament battle axe that he revs up in tune to the noise, adding just one more layer to the overpowering sonic hellscape of the bar. He grins at you with diamond-tipped teeth as you sidle up to him with a drink in hand and begin to explain to him the finer points of buying a timeshare. You even have some brochures on your hand.
Despite your best efforts, however, you're not sure Clark can understand you because it's difficult to hear anything in the bar without getting much more intimate with him than you'd like (might give him the wrong idea). That and he seems to be hopped up on enough combat drugs to put his higher reasoning seriously into question. Plus he's staring at Mr. Lovegod on stage in the sort of way that, to you, implies that he is either here to kill him or maim him in some extreme fashion, which means he's on a job, which in turn means he's presently very far in the negatives of his bank account or he wouldn't even be on the prowl.
Your bad feeling intensifies to a very bad one indeed as you look back at Mr. Lovegod and he takes a moment to put in another layer of earplugs and puts a datastick into one of the soundsystems. As a solo of cosmic noise-wall combines with cymbal death in a potent ear damage combo, the entire bar begins to shake.
"Heeeey Brommy! Sorry for interrupting your poker game, boys, but the only thing Bromrek sucks at more than cheating at cards is actually playing them, so you're not missing out." pulls seat out from random mobster across from Bromek, knocking him on his ass, then sits "So, your shitty robot told me I don't work here anymore. Cos of automatization, it said. I guess they automatised firing your workers to their face, so we'll both be out of a job soon. Anyway, I got a bone to pick cos this job is kind of my life. Especially since, y'know, I don't got the other kind. I was giving, and continue to give, 110% to this sinking shithole of a bar. I was planning to give my never-ending existence to this place. So, my redundancy package is gonna have to account for that. I'll be generous and say you only have to pay me for the first 500 years. I'd prefer it in cash, too. Sound good?"
Storm into the shady backroom poker game and yell at Bromek Brokeshin (my former manager) until he gives me a reasonable (i.e ludicrous) redundancy package.
[Backroom Dealings: 2]
He didn't fire you because of automatization, Bromek screams at you (always was a screamer, ol' Brokeshin), he fired you because you were driving away traffic! Yer bad fer business, Nazush, yer a loose cannon! The Asylum needs team players, it needs synergy! Way of the future! And you ain't it, Nazush! You ain't it by a long shot!
Plus, he shouts over the sounds of Yeller seeping in through the back, you ain't got a contract or nothin' either. Employing vampires is against the law, dontcha know. That means when he says you git, you git. Now git!
You sense the telltale motion of heavy armament being readied under the table. Probably not heavy enough to put you down on the spot, but you never know what these Hellbound crazies might be packing. There could be flame rounds in 'em. They are probably aware it's Vampire Night, after all.
One thing is for certain, however, Yeller is really putting out his best material tonight. It's knocking the dust off the ceiling even in here. You look back for a moment and notice your personal therapy assistant in the belt of your skirt, inaudibly tut-tutting your self-destructive behavior.
Finish eating my "meal", then reanimate it as a zombie and tell it to wait outside in the alleyway so that I can pick it up later. Hopefully, its stumbling about will be attributed to drunkenness.
Listen to Yeller's performance while also inspecting the other bar patrons.
[Raising the Dead: 6+1]
You sip a bit at the wino until he's nice and weak, then set him down on the side and give him a moment to recover. That done, you lean into his ear, your beard gently brushing over his poxy cheek, and whisper to him that he is a zombie now, a mere thrall to your will, a member of the living dead.
Best part is, he's drunk enough to believe you. You send him to wait outside, figuring you'll pick him up later and maybe do the several hour ritual to make a proper zombie out of him over in your place. Otherwise he'd just fall apart within like half an hour and that'd just be wasteful.
[At The Opera Tonight: 5]
You're not a particular fan of Mr. Lovegod's work, but you dare say it's quite a lot better than what you've heard thus far. That thing you did for him seems to have paid extreme dividends, because there's no way what he's putting out now isn't some of the dopest shit you've ever heard as a connoisseur of the blackest, darkest corners of dwarfin experience. It's almost enough to forgive the ear damage.
The others at the bar seem to be enjoying themselves a lot as well, but you can't help but notice that a lot of them aren't letting this stop them from sharpening their proverbial axes, knives and altogether less proverbial explosive devices. It seems Mr. Lovegod has attracted quite a lot of attention, particularly from the dark corners - you think you spot your old friend Count Beardless in one and he's never been up to any good for as long as you've known him, and this time he's brought heavily armed friends as well.
Jalormis, Extremely Undead Guy
Alternatively Souled: Vampire
Death's Gate: Guest of Honor
Money: 2
Old Yeller: A Horrific Debt
Evil Minion: the Honorary Zombie
Enir Nazush, Barmaid of the Night
Alternatively Souled: Vampire
Outfit: Awful Schoolgirl-Dominatrix Uniform
Personal Therapy Assistant: Quietly Disapproving
Death's Gate: Too Many Vampires
Old Yeller: Found Noise Appreciator
Break Yo Shins: A Severance Unpaid
Money: Flat Broke
Urist mac Slughterfiend, Miner on the Edge
Too Slow: 1
Money: Flat Broke
Gruesome Insolvency: Surreal Debts
Cazin Crundle-Smasher, Uncanny Bookkeeper
Money: 1
Old Yeller: Carefully Money-Dwarfed
Fniff's action is a good example of doing things right. Consult Best Practices for optimal results.
Also, you can use a point of Money to get advantage (I roll twice and take the best roll) on any action, but you should explain what you bought, who you paid off or how else you creatively used the cash to get that advantage.
Cazin decides now may be the time to put some distance between himself and the stage. He wisely retreats to the back of the bar, buying himself another drink on the way, and tries to enjoy himself.
[A Safe Spot: 5+1]
Since the dark corners are awfully packed, you decide the time-tested tactic of keeping low and out of the way is a better idea. You pick a spot where the bar meets the wall and hide carefully behind the barstool while having another drink and listening to Mr. Lovegod's musical stylings. He seems to be rejiggering his setup mid-performance - you didn't think the racket could get much louder but he's somehow managing it, in addition to rolling out a strange device that reminds you strongly of a theremin.
You look around, and spot that the bar looks to have obtained some new patrons. It's hard to make out much about them in the haze of the smoke machines and the flashing lights, partly because at least some of them look like congealed darkness within which small pinpricks of light glow, not always in an eye-like configuration. You think you also make out slavering maws, acid-dripping claws, odd numbers of limbs and wisps of smoke coming out of the corners of their many mouths.
Nobody else appears to have noticed them yet, at least nobody who managed to scream before meeting a horrible fate. The audience looks spellbound at the found noise antics of Mr. Lovegod. You pour the pint of Z-beer down your throat.
Everyone's waiting for the beat to drop. You have seconds to react.
"... Okay, Bromek! I'll just remove myself from the premises and not cause any trouble on the way out, because I deal with my problems in a healthy and constructive way."
Sneak back into my residence/ale cellar, pour out all the casks onto the floor, throw down a match, then run like... Heaven?
[We Don't Need No Water: 5]
Ale isn't the most flammable thing in the world, but there's plenty of whiskey and Z-booze precursors too, and those are gonna go up like a charm - whiskey to provide extra flammability, Z-booze ingredients to give it staying power. Standing ankle-deep in a viscous alcoholic soup, you lean up on your tiptoes to sabotage the fire alarm as well (can't have the suppression system just spray your would-be arson down, can you?), walk up the stairs and casually flick a lit match behind you - the fire spreads instantly, filling the cellar behind you as you jog upstairs and toward the back door for the flawless escape to go with your perfect crime.
[The Back Path: 6]
You open the door, look outside and then close it, thinking for a second. You open it again just to be sure, and are met with a hiss and a ball of boiling acid that burns a small hole through the door that you manage to shut again in the nick of time. A taloned, scaly hand bursts through the newly made opening, searching for a doorknob despite the door being as far as you know completely automatic. Nagging voices screech in abyssal tongues to the demon, asking to be given a turn to try opening the door themselves. You don't think you have more than a few seconds before they figure out it's easier to just melt the damn thing and come in that way.
Luckily you don't really have to wonder what to do with the time because that's when that corpsefucker from the graveyard decides it'd be a brilliant idea to push past you like you're barely even there and open the door despite the clearly demonic arm poking through it, which the demon on the other end clearly appreciates as he pulls the door out of its frame as it starts to close again, rolls it up like ain't no thing and tosses it away.
On the bright side, at least corpsey-boy seems to have their full attention at the moment. Maybe you could kick him into the horde as a momentary distraction.
Attempt to crawl out while everyone is distracted.
[A Dogged Escape: 3]
You slide off the barstool and keep low, beginning your retreat from Death's Gate. The place is packed to the gills and only getting worse as you wriggle eel-like through the multitude of legs, heavy weaponry resting on the ground and other things as well, muttering to yourself all the way that there is no way any of this is going to end well for you.
Thus your suspicions are only further confirmed when what look like fine snakeskin chaps turn out to actually be a set of scaly legs terminating in saurian feet, the skin seemingly a few dozen degrees past boiling as you inadvertently brush up against it.
Looking up, you see a torso with three grinning mouths with four eyes around each, and all of them look very happy to see you as a ring of goat-headed acid-dripping tentacles around them all glance at you. The noise is building up, and seems about to crest.
Get out before someone starts a fight and brings the cops down on us. Take the "zombie" back to my home and properly zombify him/it.
You slide out of your spot and with vampiric grace (if you may say so yourself) glide right along the edges of the bar, sensing things are about to go very poorly for at least someone here, and you can't afford to be caught by the cops at this stage, not with a would-be zombie on your person and blood still on your chin. You make your way to the back door for a discreet exit.
Seems like that vampire girl (what was her name? everyone calls her barmaid) is wearing one of those weird mixed-fetish getups, which gets a mildly disapproving glance from you as you shoulder past her with a quick "excuse me".
[Pack It In Early: 1]
Then you open the door, getting it right on the second try when a scaly, extremely muscular arm withdraws from the hole in it to avoid being caught in the door mechanism again, and come face to face with an 8-foot goat-headed six-armed demon which in turn appears to have been followed by enough demons to pack every inch of the back access tunnel.
You look at Enir (that was her name!) and push the button to close the door. The demon places a hand under the closing door and its accompanying steel security barrier, pulls it out of the doorframe and rolls it up as if it were a sheet of paper, grinning wickedly as it tosses the door behind itself. You hear the telltale sound of fireballs and globs of burning acid being prepared in your direction.
Jalormis, Extremely Undead Guy
Alternatively Souled: Vampire
Death's Gate: Guest of Honor
Money: 2
Old Yeller: A Horrific Debt
Evil Minion: the Honorary Zombie
Enir Nazush, Barmaid of the Night
Alternatively Souled: Vampire
Outfit: Awful Schoolgirl-Dominatrix Uniform
Personal Therapy Assistant: Quietly Disapproving
Death's Gate: Too Many Vampires
Old Yeller: Found Noise Appreciator
Break Yo Shins: A Severance Unpaid
Money: Flat Broke
Urist mac Slughterfiend, Miner on the Edge
Money: Flat Broke
Gruesome Insolvency: Surreal Debts
Cazin Crundle-Smasher, Uncanny Bookkeeper
Money: 1
Old Yeller: Carefully Money-Dwarfed
kick Jal into the demon horde as a distraction
Nah. Enir's low, but not that low.
stares at the horde of demons blankly for a beat"Excuse me, I'll be with you once I finish chatting with my colleague." takes Jal aside "Are you a hobgoblin? Because you just pulled a lever without thinking it through and as a result fucked everyone. I thought necromancers were supposed to be smart. What'd you learn your secrets off, a bathroom stall? Whatever, just shut up and keep them busy, I gotta warn Bear." turns to the demons with a winning grin "Sorry about that. We'll be happy to serve you in just one moment. In the meantime,
let my colleague regale you with the time he fucked a corpse and caught dickrot." runs away
Run back to the bar and warn Bear that shit is about to go down and that we should leg it using a language to gestures we've developed over the course of our relationship as barmaid and performer.
You leave Jalormis to sort out business with the demons as you sprint back into the barroom, where much to your chagrin you spot the demons having made much more progress through the front door, their absurd and horrifying shapes menacing from the smoky shadows by the entrance as they appear to listen to the performance.
[The Sound of Noise: 5+1]
You signal to Bear on stage and get his attention easily enough. He looks at you, a dwarf at the top of his game, excited beyond belief in this moment as a horde of creditors and thugs look on in anticipation. You gesture wildly and shout at him about the arson and point at the legions of hell gathering in the barroom, and he does look for a moment before nodding, and fetches two spare sets of earplugs that he tosses over to you, motioning for you to put them in. And you might be many things, but you're not stupid enough to ignore Bear suggesting ear protection.
You plug your ears and glance back just in time to see a barstool arc through the air and melt into slag against the faceless head of an emaciated, six-armed 8-foot figure. It turns to the corner of the room that the chair came from unerringly, and you feel the telltale tingling of a sudden buildup of pressure in the barroom corner currently hosting a mildly regretful middle manager. The demon points all six fingers in that direction, and Bear's stubby fingers travel to a particular button on his ramshackle sound setup, timing the ensuing explosion of flame perfectly with a sudden grinding twist in the found soundscape - where the fuck he found this sample, however, you feel you'd rather not know, it sounds like a forgotten beast having violent sex with a bronze colossus at its most charitable.
Bear ducks down and you follow his lead as all hell breaks loose, the gathered demons opening up on the drinking public with merciless fury, their mob seemingly pushed to boiling point and kicked all the way off the other end as Death's Gate goes from wretched hole to no-man's-land in mere seconds - you see heads being cleaved in three places at once, hair and clothes catching fire from near misses, a vampire attempting to turn into a bat and getting swallowed by a long-limbed frog-thing with sixty-six eyes of fire covering its body and simultaneously glaring at every single thing in the room, yourself included...
... and you also spot a small hole in the back of the stage, the half-hidden figure of Bear urging you to follow before disappearing down it.
So the bar was full of armed dwarves and (maybe?) demons, which I assume the dwarves aren't fans of. So I just need to get a fight started, and hope everyone works things out from there...
Cazin stands up, draws in his breath, and shouts like only middle-management can:
"They're all out of booze! Kill them all!
He then lifts up a nearby chair, not his safety chair, and throws it into the crowd of demons. He then immediately ducks back into his safety place.
[I Predict A Riot: 1]
You spot a demon standing tall - a spindlier sort, no eyes, leathery, about eight feet tall - and figure that'll do nicely as you steal a chair from underneath a nearby deckdwarf and hurl it at the enormous figure, the steel chair twisting around its shape as it leans away like a tree in the wind... but the chair doesn't fall off it again, simply stays there for a moment as it first turns red, then white-hot and begins to liquefy as toxic fumes waft up toward the ceiling. It leans back up and shakes off the molten metal every which way like a dog coming out of a river, hitting several dwarves (who collapse screaming immediately) and a dozen or so smaller demons surrounding it (who seem mildly annoyed).
Then it turns toward you unerringly, six arms unfolding and pointing in your direction as suddenly an infinitesimal chunk of the bar next to you develops a crisis of being as it considers whether it wouldn't prefer to be matter rather than light, and then proceeds to follow through.
[Duck And Cover: 3]
The bar's soundscape suddenly becomes an unearthly and horrid scream dug out from the very deepest pits of hell underlaid by a hell of a beat, harmonizing perfectly with the sudden massive explosion next to you and the deathly screams of ~24 dwarves per second being horrifically ripped apart as the demonic horde boils every which way, crawling up the walls in sheer ecstasy of destruction, flooding over the ceiling, flying every which way vomiting fire, acid and neurotoxins all over the place.
Really, you must have incredible luck to have been blasted all the way to another corner of the barroom and merely getting nearly buried in a blast of dust, barstools and scorched, screaming dwarf chunks while literal pandemonium unfolds all around you.
"So, er... Nice weather we're having today. Hey, aren't you that guy from, um, y'know, that place?
Not one for conversation? Well, uh, I'm just gonna walk out this way and let you guys come in, okay? No hard feelings about the door thing, right?"
Awkwardly leave the alleyway, then book it with my "zombie" back to the graveyard.
If you think you're walking by this many demons (decidedly too many at last count) without so much as a how-do-you-do, you've got another thing coming.
[Sir, Please Let Me By: 3]
The demons push in through the door, pawing at you, pushing you toward the wall, lifting you off the ground as waves upon waves of other fiends wash past them, screaming and crawling on every surface. The large one, however, has taken an interest in you as it pushes its boiling-hot snout into your face, sniffing you all over.
SING, it snarls with breath that makes the wallpaper behind you bubble and peel. SING, it says and starts to squeeze you, nearly ripping one of your arms clean off as it starts to look for something to pull. You sense a horrific depraved desperation behind its eyes, a black and hungry pit where a soul ought to be. It seems to have identified you as some manner of musical instrument, which may be the single reason why you aren't six kinds of horribly murdered right now.
Oh shit. oh shit. shit cocking shit.
Scream, then make like diarrhea and run.
[Escaping Under The Influence: 5]
You roll serpentine away from the tentacled demon, and while you dare not open your eyes to look you're pretty sure it's lost sight of you or at least contented itself with murdering and eating the next dwarf within reach instead as you break into a run on all fours, screaming all the way as you try to simultaneously escape the demons and the bar that the demons are in - you mutter prayers to the many bloody goblin gods as you scamper and trip dwarves of all ages in the audience, all building up to the point where everything explodes into an orgy of demonic violence, all of which you are exceedingly glad to miss as you finally hit a wall. It buzzes as you brush up against it, which is unusual enough that you're forced to open your eyes and look around.
The first thing you see isn't very heartening in that it appears to be a tornado of demonic carnage whirling all around you in about a three-foot radius, innumerable eyes looking at you like the supernaturally delicious morsel you are. On the bright side, you appear to be separated from them by some kind of force barrier, seemingly maintained by a symmetrically whirling array of modified top-grade drones that orbit around a central point - in this case a hyperventilating, wiry dwarf clutching a remote control to her chest, muttering fuckfuckfuckfuck to herself as she gets a very handsome view of the mass destruction all around.
The demons are shrieking and murdering. The drones gently spark every second or two. The surviving patrons appear to be getting their weaponry out.
Jalormis, Extremely Undead Guy
Alternatively Souled: Vampire
Death's Gate: Guest of Honor
Money: 2
Old Yeller: A Horrific Debt
Evil Minion: the Honorary Zombie
Too Close: 1
Enir Nazush, Barmaid of the Night
Alternatively Souled: Vampire
Outfit: Awful Schoolgirl-Dominatrix Uniform
Personal Therapy Assistant: Quietly Disapproving
Death's Gate: Too Many Vampires
Old Yeller: Come Along With Me
Break Yo Shins: A Severance Unpaid
Money: Flat Broke
Urist mac Slughterfiend, Miner on the Edge
Money: Flat Broke
Gruesome Insolvency: Surreal Debts
Cazin Crundle-Smasher, Uncanny Bookkeeper
Money: 1
Old Yeller: Hopefully Dead
Too Close: 1
Too Close is the measure of how close your luck is to running out. When you reach 5, you will die in an exceedingly painful manner.
Decrease Too Close with relaxation, sustained substance abuse or, optimally, a mixture of both.
Cazin slithers out of the pile and makes a break for the door, crawling quickly along the floor.
[There's A Pounding At The Door: 2+1]
You're not entirely sure it'll be any better outside, but it's got to be better than being crushed against a wall while the world burns around you, so you slither out and try to make your way outside, hoping to be tiny enough to miss but large enough to be difficult to crush underfoot.
[The Burning Barroom: 5]
The unlikely blur of Clark sweeps past you into the horde of demons, propelled by untold cybernetic enhancements as his monofilament axe rips through demons all around him, creating a slight ebb in the storm of violence that you waste no time in using to your advantage, scampering through the lull like a panicked rat in a maze, then diving into another momentary clearing as what is clearly a highly illegal railgun blasts through the chest of a particularly rotund demon, the other horde getting out of the way as it falls to the ground, and finally you manage to skip out between the legs of a dwarf that seems to have unfolded into a living assemblage of distorting blades right before he jumps into the fray and is immediately torn in half by a crablike armored fiend, the two halves nevertheless fighting on as they plunge into two separate directions in the crowd.
You finally make it to the front door past the old cloakroom, now inhabited by a fireteam of mercenary dwarves spraying lead into encroaching horrors, and look outside.
Much to your chagrin, the demons appear to have appeared in force - Apethreat is backed up three blocks long with the encroaching horde, and Onyx is even worse, part of it seemingly having slid down into a newly formed glowing pit.
This being Hell and property values around here being what they are, you expect security forces to start showing up within about twenty minutes from now. This likely doesn't bode well for anyone still inside.
Looks at the hole, looks at the bar, looks back at the hole.
"Maybe in a minute, but first... Bitch gotta get paid."
Runs for the bar, jumping over brawls and sliding under demons.
Run to the bar, crack open the safe holding Bomrek's double-barreled crossbow and tonight's earnings. Take it all, then get to that damn hole and shoot anyone or anything that tries to stop me.
It's just like Happy Hour, you say to yourself, except the patrons are interested in flesh in a more literal sense. And them putting hands on you is a lot more lethal. So really it's the masterclass that ought to test everything you've learned thus far, especially service with a smile.
[The Burning Barroom: 2+1]
You weave and whirl through the room, dodging among other things a burst of silver-tipped needles from a flechette cannon, a floating sentient ball of writhing maggots, this one guy named Clark and an Incongruous Opera Box being hurled past you, a screeching marquis of the night still within it as two particularly immense demons seem to have paused their destruction for a spirited game of catch, which makes you stop for a second as you do a double take.
This proves long enough for a sprinting skeletal horse demon to both call a shot and get right up to you, at which point he punts you hard enough that you turn into three different bats at once, flying behind the bar and circling a moment before reforming, dizzy and off-balance.
After a moment's recovery you look around the nearby neighborhood, and make out the safe beneath the bar, standing on top of which is none other than Bromek "Bomrek" Brokeshin, double-barreled automatic rocket crossbow in hand and no less then six goons kitted out in enough hardware to easily serve double that number, attempting and somewhat succeeding in holding off the encroaching demonic waves as they unload a lifetime's weapons investment to protect their employer.
[The Fruit of Arson: 1]
There is a muffled explosion from below, wholly distinct from the unmuffled explosions from above and the chunk of bar directly behind you leans downward before the panel supporting it snaps and collapses inward, the substandard construction seemingly having melted beneath to the point of failing to support it.
[Vampiric Reflexes: 6]
Sensing fire, you run toward the wall of the Gate and also slightly up it, hissing defensively as tongues of blue-white flame start coming out of the floor, accompanied by evil fumes of z-booze gone horribly wrong - behind you the back of the bar continues to collapse in earnest, a vicious inferno rising up behind it.
Demons in the cellar, you hear one of Bromek's security team shriek mechanically, they're coming in through the floors! Game over, another less optimistic one shouts in response! Bromek opens the safe with a thumbprint and quickly grabs several generous handfuls of credsticks that he shoves in his pockets, screaming something about retreating to the backroom while there's still time. Though the pocket of safety they carved out immediately begins to collapse as they try to retreat along the west wall to the backroom, they seem like they'd have good odds of getting there with minimal losses.
Meanwhile, you find yourself in the middle of this wall party that the demons are having up here by themselves, with the addition of several vampires fighting with them in the vain hope that their ability to scale walls will provide them with some kind of fleeting advantage. A few of them notice the cozy pool of steel-melting fire beneath them and dive in with hellish squeals of delight, some forgetting to put down the vampires they were dismembering at the moment as they do so, the screaming deaths of the latter making you feel really glad for a moment that you don't appear to have found a dance partner yet.
Once more, you have seconds before you are noticed, and no floor to run across in the near vicinity.
Sing. For the love of Moradin, sing.
[The Dwarven Concertina: 3]
You begin to sing a song nervously, and the demon listens critically for a moment, staring into your black soul with subtly faceted eyes. It doesn't seem very impressed at first, and so continues to squeeze and pull until you start to involuntarily shriek, at which point it starts to tap its foot and nod its head to the tune of your suffering. Then, seemingly satisfied for the moment, it tucks you underneath its arm in a sauna-like embrace and begins to make its way into the barroom in long, easy strides amid the ocean of chaos, finally landing on the stage.
Then it presents you, unfathomably sharp claws digging into your stomach as it plays a scream solo on you - the demons all around cheer, and several more gather on stage with their own creatively mutilated dwarves and vampires, gathering a six-piece torture band on stage, completely ignoring the sound system as they appear to intend to make you sing loud enough to outscream Mr. Lovegod's still-playing oeuvre through purely natural means.
Pray to the goblin gods, perhaps my old boss from before I got kidnapped by my dwarven family is in the crowd of demons.
Nuxkagoslust, you scream the name as you go from merely crawling to actual genuflection, save this poor pathetic nothing from the dark of the night, shelter them in black wings and carry them to safety! Bring doom and destruction upon those who would bring you harm!
[The Dark Masters: 1]
You repeat the prayer many times as the chaos around you grows quieter and quieter, and becomes muffled to an impressive degree before you open your eyes again and see what's happened.
The shield seems enveloped on all sides by something that is not quite darkness, but instead looks like a butterfly pattern of black and blacker, swirling lines and circles moving all around you before focusing on both you and the riggerdwarf, and suddenly opening into something darker still.
Shit, you didn't think Nuxkagoslust was actually real, but as the mass of staring eyes peers at you there is the strong urge to become a true believer. Their gaze is heavy and terrible, searching your heart for weakness and pulling at it experimentally, sending a chill down your bones as it tries to get you to submit - to do as it says and jump into its many maws as a momentary snack to sate its neverending hunger.
You glance to the side and see the riggerdwarf staring blankly, her fingers trembling as she begins to reach for what you recognize easily enough as the off switch for her drone barrier, and realize that maybe your old boss had a much brighter view of Nuxkagoslust than Nuxkagoslust seems to have of you for obvious reasons.
Jalormis, Extremely Undead Guy
Alternatively Souled: Vampire
Money: 2
Old Yeller: A Horrific Debt
Evil Minion: the Honorary Zombie
The Abyssal Players: Immortal Instrument
Too Close: 2
Enir Nazush, Barmaid of the Night
Alternatively Souled: Vampire
Outfit: Awful Schoolgirl-Dominatrix Uniform
Personal Therapy Assistant: Quietly Disapproving
Death's Gate: Too Many Vampires
Old Yeller: Come Along With Me
Break Yo Shins: A Severance Still Unpaid
Money: Flat Broke
Too Close: 1
Urist mac Slughterfiend, Miner on the Edge
Money: Flat Broke
Gruesome Insolvency: Surreal Debts
Eyes of the Butterfly: Spotted In The Crowd
Cazin Crundle-Smasher, Uncanny Bookkeeper
Money: 1
Old Yeller: Hopefully Dead
Too Close: 1
"Bromek, you beardless bastard... At least the explosion's a good distraction, thank you past me."
Leap from chandelier to chandelier (required in every bar since the Errol Flynn Act of 1024), then swing down on one of their ropes to pickpocket the credsticks from Bromek.
[With Catlike Tread: 4+1]
Bromek's left a generous enough furrow in the swarm that you manage to swing right after him and, save a few stray bullets passing a comfortable enough distance past you, manage to get right on top of them as you swing on chandeliers and use the flying demons as platforms every now and then, culminating in a final dive. Your hands form claws and you momentarily merge with the flickering shadows shed by the blasts of hellfire, a mere speck in Bromek's vision as you pass...
[Swipe The Planet: 4]
And then you swing back up far enough for your momentum and shadowy presence to carry you right back to the ceiling just shy of the Incongruous Opera Boxes or at least what's left of them. Taking care to avoid a perpetually vomiting hellbeast, you survey the bounty of credsticks in your possession, the minute chip in your palm tingling encouragingly as you sweep it across each one in turn. The place seems to have been packed, and damn if the night's earnings don't reflect that - you could have a pretty fine night in Uptown with all this dosh!
Now to the business at hand, which is to say not getting horribly murdered by this demonic horde. You notice Jalormis seems to have found a new career on stage as a guitar for that demon that opened up the door, and boy if he's not working hard. Seems like the fiends have struck up a band.
Use my necromantic powers to scream like a banshee (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/wailOfTheBanshee.htm).
[Death Growls: 6+1]
You shriek with the soul-stilling bleakness of the dark fields beyond dwarfin experience, the black streams that no living thing has crossed and come back, the infinite realms of the dead and forever lost beckoning all that lives to finally and inescapably die.
Your wail resounds through the room, exceeding the volume of Mr. Lovegod's noise by several degrees of magnitude as many a dwarf in the crowd suddenly goes still, the very life squeezed out of their bones as they slump to the ground, so irrevocably killed that you can almost hear their souls being ground to dust. Cybernetic horrors stop in their movement and fly out of control, crashing into walls and demons alike as their operators spontaneously expire, and even some of the smaller demons scream delightedly as they melt into unrecognizable goo.
The rest of the demons, however, begin to rock out like never before, which does have the momentary bright side of the abyssal player holding you being a bit too lost in the beauty of it all to remember to torture you for even more impressive sounds.
RUN AWAY, LOOK FOR THE BATHROOM, GET TO THE SEWER!!!
You look at the riggerdwarf and decide not to help in any way. You've got a lot of skin, after all, and you expect saving it to be enough work for your liking. Taking up an appropriate starting position for the maneuver you are about to pull, you get low and sweat profusely, hoping that you're not about to die a horrible death.
The riggerdwarf's finger lands on the button, but the ceasing of the drones' buzz is very much outweighed by the pressure wave of Nuxkagoslust encroaching hungrily. You do not hear the poor rigger scream. Instead you hold your breath and dive forward, using the floor as your guide as you try not to look at or listen to the unique sound of Nuxkagoslust's insides.
[I Am Your Butterfly: 5]
And after what feels like far too long you miraculously you emerge on the other side, or at least another side - behind you lurk the Wings of Doom, and they're definitely not fucking well chuffed at your escape. They take a moment to reorient - enough for you to start sprinting to the bathroom, feeling the most frighteningly sober you ever have in your life.
[Bathroom Break: 2]
Your fastest sprint, however, is not a very fast sprint by any standards, let alone the properly demonic - you try and make up the difference through clever maneuvering as the consuming void shrouded in black butterfly wings trails behind you, leaping through the throng of demons as a horrific shrieking in the air threatens to rip your very soul out of your body. And yet you persevere and push forward to a particular end of the bar leading to a familiar vomit-encrusted, foul-smelling Hell in its own right.
Nearly smacking into the door as Nuxkagoslust bears down on you, you pull it open and are immediately met with a bizarre sight - the shreds of stalls litter the inside of the bathroom, the toilets exploded and fire racing up from the sewers as if from a burst gas line, the faucets on the sinks twisted and melted, a small contingent of demons having a shocking amount of fun with the meager spoils from the overpriced cigarette and condom machines brutally ripped from the wall and eviscerated.
Your heart suddenly clenches and you double over, half from the unearthly wail from the barroom, half from the sudden remembrance of all the good times you've had in here, half from the creeping realization that Nuxkagoslust is at best a second behind you and about to push your day's ruination into the further reaches of experience.
Quickly clamber up the wall of the tavern, ignoring the demons, and begin regretting my life choices on the roof.
[Driven Up The Walls: 4]
The extremely corrosive runoff from the Magma Quarter, while hardly ideal for afternoon walks, does have the pleasurable side effect of making any lasting structure in Hell possess the twin conveniences of extraordinarily proofed roofing and drainpipes so sturdy that a couple of demons appear to be blowing a solid stream of boiling acid through one and it doesn't even feel warm to the touch. You waste no time and climb up, dodging the occasional fireball as you clamber up onto the roof of Death's Gate about three floors up, the roof of the massive hellcave above you glittering with beautifully worthless glass inclusions.
[What A Lovely Day: 2+1]
You gaze all around as you try to avoid the notice of five grim, horned figures standing twelve feet tall each, all standing in a circle and chanting in a tongue that sounds like a volcano of bees as well as the assortment of smaller winged creatures sitting on the edge of the roof like gargoyles, making bets on whether they can hit one unsuspecting dwarf half a mile away or not (which you observe to have about a 50% success rate, unluckily for the unsuspecting dwarves in question). The party seems considerably calmer up here, though you don't wager this'll last if they see you milling about.
On the brighter side, the sudden demon outbreak does seem to be limited to about a three to four block radius as far as you can tell, which bodes well for your survival prospects if the security forces do indeed manage to find the time to arrive at some point. On the other hand more of them are obviously coming in, flying and crawling out of the glowing pits of Hell in unceasing, excited numbers as they crowd and fight in the streets around Death's Gate, buildings crumbling in their wake.
Jalormis, Extremely Undead Guy
Alternatively Souled: Vampire
Money: 2
Old Yeller: A Horrific Debt
Evil Minion: the Honorary Zombie
The Abyssal Players: Immortal Instrument
Too Close: 2
Enir Nazush, Barmaid of the Night
Alternatively Souled: Vampire
Outfit: Awful Schoolgirl-Dominatrix Uniform
Personal Therapy Assistant: Quietly Disapproving
Death's Gate: Too Many Vampires
Old Yeller: Come Along With Me
Break Yo Shins: Down Payment
Money: 3
Too Close: 1
Urist mac Slughterfiend, Miner on the Edge
Money: Flat Broke
Gruesome Insolvency: Surreal Debts
Eyes of the Butterfly: Nuxkagoslost's Wrath
Too Close: 1
Cazin Crundle-Smasher, Uncanny Bookkeeper
Money: 1
Old Yeller: Hopefully Dead
Too Close: 1
Quickly loosen up my muscles by doing some relaxing, relaxing yoga, then try to leap to a nearby rooftop, preferably one either lower or around the same altitude. Oh; and one with fewer demons. If no such rooftops seem to exist, then simply flop down on the tiles and act as if I'm dead.
Shouldn't be very hard, considering my work has already killed everything inside of me.
[Infernal Sprawl: 2+1]
The rooftop of a nearby tenement, now also swarming with demons and filled with screams, is almost the same altitude and not overly far away - it's not quite a perfect fit for a heroic leap and you'll definitely need a hell of a running start, but it's better than sticking around here in the mouth of madness itself.
Besides, one of the horned figures appears to have spotted you checking out the nearby rooftop, and as the other four also stop chanting and look in your direction with their fiery eyes you suddenly develop more than enough motivation to try regardless of any physical obstacles or risks in the way.
[Parcours du Nain: 6]
You don't really make it to the rooftop, mind, even with the sudden burst of fear and desperation propelling you further than is perhaps reasonable, but you do manage to plunge headfirst through the window as the five figures lazily begin to hover toward you, rolling along the floor covered in broken glass, only mildly regretting the choices that brought you to this point in your life.
[The Projects: 2]
You've heard a lot of talk about the projects while up in Midtown, and for once the rumors look to be accurate - screaming comes from all the corridors, parts of the apartment floors look to have given beneath the weight of the demon hordes and building code violations. A heavy chemical miasma fills the building, a mixture of evaporated demon spittle and the unmistakable fumes from burning drug labs, crossing the blood-brain barrier in seconds as a dizzy feeling begins to come over you. Diving through a pane of glass might also have had something to do with that, you suppose as you pick out the shards, wondering where in Hell could you possibly be safe right now.
Turn into a bat while my player is distracted and GTFO.
[Ain't Too Proud To Bat: 6, 4]
Saying a quiet thank you that vampire powers don't give a rat's ass about conservation of mass, you enter a brief state of liquid shadow as you slip through the demonic player's fingers and then immediately shift into bat form, taking upward flight to get as far away from immediate reach as possible - in the distraction and the echoes of your wail you manage a whole second of a head start before your player looks up, evidently quite displeased.
All the briefly amused demons look up as well, wondering if this is part of the performance as you continue to scramble upward right in the path of a heroically swinging Enir who lets go of her ropes to clutch your confused and batty self, plunging through the air right onto the stage, the abyssal band all sparing her exactly one look before she opens up the trapdoor and slips right in, shutting it tightly and sliding in place what looks to be a suspiciously freshly installed set of durasteel bolts.
Down here it's still very loud, but in a more remote and appreciable sense you get from not having a million demons ruining everyone's shit all around you. What's more, there's equipment - an incredible wealth of sound equipment, all of it covered in sticky notes with numbers and words on them vaguely pertaining to frequencies and resonances, with the occasional bits of dog-infernal sprinkled in where mere dwarven letters didn't suffice. In the middle of it, tuning an impressive array of jury-rigged instrumentation, is Mr. Lovegod, a manic expression on his face that widens as he sees Enir and then immediately dampens when he also spots you.
He doesn't have many words for you two - primarily he mutters something to the effect of 'what took you so long?' and 'nearly done here'. Simultaneously you hear the sound of a massive claw of some kind attempting to dig into the trapdoor, but meeting what definitely sound like Commerce-grade fortifications. Mr. Lovegod looks up and excitedly mutters something to Enir while gesturing at the equipment, then returns to his urgent work.
CLIMB OUT THE WINDOW
[The Art of Yaargh: 3]
You sprint right up to the small window in the back of the bathroom and scratch your way up the wall cat-like, an enterprising demon having already done the work of bursting in through it and leaving only the bare minimum of sharp glass for you to navigate. In fact you make it about halfway out of it, looking briefly out into the demon-filled alleyway behind Death's Gate before the cold grip of death, horror and oblivion seizes your legs, Nuxkagoslust not so much nipping at your heels as going straight to swallowing them hole. Your hands grab at the sidewalk, nails digging into pavement with the desperation of a dwarf with precious few lifelines left. You screech in horror for help, figuring it can't get much worse at this point.
And that's when you notice the beatific figure of a beardless dwarf woman wearing a flowing red dress, looking down at you with a bright smile and burning green eyes from behind her long black locks. She patiently extends to you a single hand, still grinning as you scream.
"I better go but... Shit, there's Jal. It'd be kinda shitty if I left him to die twice."
Assist Jal by swinging down, grabbing his bat form, then leaping through the hole Bear left for me.
[To The Rescue: 4, 6]
You're not sure you like Jal enough to rescue him from the literal arms of an angry demonic vampirist, but luckily Jal is thoughtful enough to not force you to make that decision, escaping on his own by turning into an incredibly frightened bat that's altogether more convenient to heroically rescue, and you intercept him readily as you dive to the ground, a dozen fiery eyes looking in your direction as you lift the heavy trapdoor Bear seems to have still left open and slide through, slamming it shut behind you and bolting it in three more places than you'd personally expect on a regular service tunnel.
Personally knowing Bear like you do, you immediately spot some of his personal favorite pieces of equipment down here, oscillating joyfully under his personal guidance, plastered with his cryptic yellow-and-pink sticky notes on what looks to be a very complicated procedure featuring both technical expertise and, if you remember your demon-runes, quite possibly elements of vile darkness as well. He's definitely very engrossed in the process of manipulating it feverishly, although not enough to fail to note your arrival.
He's momentarily curious about what took you so long before noting Jal and proceeding instead to be momentarily curious about why you had to bring him along of all people in his own subtle way. Could have at least rescued his money guy instead, you know? He looks up as there is a resounding drag of a claw across the trapdoor - it'll delay them for a minute at most, so if you'll excuse him he just needs to finish up here right quick and then you can all run like heaven, eh?
Jalormis, Extremely Undead Guy
Alternatively Souled: Vampire
Money: 2
Old Yeller: A Horrific Debt
Evil Minion: the Honorary Zombie
The Abyssal Players: Immortal Instrument
Too Close: 2
Enir Nazush, Barmaid of the Night
Alternatively Souled: Vampire
Outfit: Awful Schoolgirl-Dominatrix Uniform
Personal Therapy Assistant: Quietly Disapproving
Death's Gate: Too Many Vampires
Old Yeller: Come Along With Me
Break Yo Shins: Down Payment
Money: 3
Too Close: 1
Urist mac Slughterfiend, Miner on the Edge
Money: Flat Broke
Gruesome Insolvency: Surreal Debts
Eyes of the Butterfly: Nuxkagoslost's Wrath
Too Close: 2
Cazin Crundle-Smasher, Uncanny Bookkeeper
Money: 1
Old Yeller: Hopefully Dead
Too Close: 2
"Eesh, one hell of a retirement party... Hey Bear, got any downers? My hand's shaking faster than a whore's arse."
Partake in whatever narcotics Bear's willing to spare to calm myself down after all that crazy shit.
At the same time, consult my Personal Therapy Assistant and ask for an update on my mental health status.
[Emergency Supply: 2+1]
Sadly Bear doesn't have a lot on him presently, kind of used up his weekly allotment before the show, y'see. He's not lying either, you notice - you can't even see the dwarf's irises, his dilated pupils staring incredibly black and wide at you. This kind of thing gives a dwarf nerves, you understand.
... okay, don't give him vampire eyes like that, he says and searches through his pockets for a second, presenting you with a handful of assorted pills that you scarf down like your unlife depended on it. Then you wait a second, looking at your hands as they steadfastly continue to shake, and back up at Bear. You're gonna need a lot better to offset being ambushed by demon hordes, you say.
Bear just laughs. Those weren't to make you stop shaking. They're so you start shaking in the right phase. But what's the right phase, you may ask? And the answer is simple: about a half-step from this, Bear laughs as he slams down a button on his console.
The hum of the upgraded soundsystem briefly makes you wonder if your head is going to implode, but the drugs kick in admirably fast and you just dimly sense it permeate the rest of walls, tension rising in the reinforced concrete of the bar as it slowly starts to bend inward. Give it about fifteen seconds, Bear indicates, and then you can all start getting the hell out of here.
[Making Good Progress: 4]
This reminds you to check your personal therapy assistant. Though its screen appears to have cracked in all the excitement, it nevertheless evaluates your progress in becoming a profitable member of society. Your ranking among the people in this particular block as estimated by net worth has skyrocketed by several hundred ranks in the past 10 minutes! Congratulations!
Judging by the metrics that follow, you are currently the twelfth most well-adjusted person within the neighborhood, trailing behind one Bromek "Bomrek" Brokeshin at #1, a "Clark" at #2, an Unidentified Vampiric Vagrant currently sharing the room with you at #11, but considerably ahead of the dead-last Bear Lovegod at #13 whose negative value to society is to yours as the sun is to the moon.
The assistant would like to take a moment to inform you that the next logical step would be to return to regular therapy sessions, which fortunately your present wealth can afford perhaps as many as two of! A listing of specialists in Midtown follow with colorful ads about well-adjusted dwarves walking out of their offices, and even a few celebrity endorsements.
"Th... Thank you. Thank you so much."
"I can try to remotely and temporarily raise some of the dead dwarves on the floor above us, if you'd like. It might distract the demons for a moment."
If neither of my allies objects, do just that.
Bear doesn't appear able to hear you very well, communicating instead with Enir through a medium of gestures and incoherent shouting, a language they both seem impressively fluent in. Enir gives you the go-ahead, and Bear doesn't look like he's about to object, so you suppose it's time to raise some dead!
[The Dead Don't Shuffle: 4+1]
If you recall correctly, quite a lot of the dwarves up there were pulped or at least decidedly chunked. This is good news, as that means you don't need to be very precise with this particular spell or even terribly worried about the effects - just fire into a mass grave and forget, the dark tome you got it from recommended. And indeed you sense it taking with amazing gusto as a foreboding sensation spreads through the walls in tune with Bear's slight music change. The claws on the trapdoor pause as you sense another unearthly screech, a dozen mouths melding into one as something you're a little glad you can't see right now comes to life. Undead - they give you the breathing room they don't need.
[The Sound of Noise: 6]
You almost confuse the sensation you immediately develop with a splitting migraine, but after a moment spent examining the distinct infernal aftertaste of this particular bouquet of pain you recognize a particular sample either you or one of your associates must have donated to Bear, as that is quite definitely not a sound that's supposed to be heard in the mortal world. Thinking quickly, you deaden your ears to the terrible racket and just let it bother the walls instead. And make no mistake, the walls look definitely very bothered.
Thankfully this looks to have been planned, you deduce as Mr. Lovegod examines his machines with a proud grin, gesturing wildly to Enir in a way that clearly suggests some kind of enthusiasm. Either that or he's gone utterly mad, and he's definitely on enough drugs at the moment that the line has become very fine indeed.
Take their hand, being eaten by a demon is worse then being eaten by a vampire... or anything else that is sensible for that matter.
[A Helping Hand: 2]
Nuxkagoslust isn't willing to let go of you, but this helpful woman looks determined in her own right as she plants her heels on the ground and grabs your hand with both of hers, pulling hard. She holds with unlikely fortitude as you are subjected to a sensation not unlike being placed on the rack in your dark fortress days, your body stretched between two seemingly equal forces with naught but a bathroom window between them. There is a moment where she falters and you find yourself tugged backward, yelping again as you grab at her with your other hand as well. The lady mutters a foul curse.
She bares a set of white teeth in effort as she pulls you back, her eyes starting to burn a very bright green indeed, her body twisting in a profoundly unnatural way as she gives an unearthly shriek and rips you out of the demon's grasp, which has the dual effect of making her sprawl backward and you slam into the opposite wall of the alley from the forces at play, simultaneously slightly injured and incredibly relieved that Nuxkagoslust seems to have given in before your arms did.
The woman turns around as you scramble to your feet, unbothered by the demons around you as her grin spreads ear to ear. Behind her you see rising the shadow of Nuxkagoslust, denied but not defeated, displaying its full height as it crawls out through the window like a squid about to pounce, untethered by any form of gravity you're aware of.
Jalormis, Extremely Undead Guy
Alternatively Souled: Vampire
Money: 2
Old Yeller: A Horrific Debt
Evil Minion: the Honorary Zombie
The Abyssal Players: Immortal Instrument
Too Close: 2
Enir Nazush, Barmaid of the Night
Alternatively Souled: Vampire
Outfit: Awful Schoolgirl-Dominatrix Uniform
Personal Therapy Assistant: Overjoyed
Death's Gate: Too Many Vampires
Old Yeller: Come Along With Me
Break Yo Shins: Down Payment
Money: 3
Too Close: 1
Urist mac Slughterfiend, Miner on the Edge
Money: Flat Broke
Gruesome Insolvency: Surreal Debts
Eyes of the Butterfly: Nuxkagoslost's Wrath
Green-Eyed Lady: A Tug In The Alley
Too Close: 3
Cazin Crundle-Smasher, Uncanny Bookkeeper
Money: 1
Old Yeller: Hopefully Dead
Too Close: 2
Too Slow: 1
Run further into the building. Doesn't really matter where. Just try not to lose consciousness.
[Thy Heading Is True: 3+1]
The demon swarm is blissfully thinner here and the halls are familiar enough - you've been in one prefab Hell-project, you've essentially been inside all of them. What you need here, you reason, is probably some kind of cover, which means you want an apartment to hide inside of. Which means you want someone who values security and good escape routes, so probably one of the local drug dealers or weapons smugglers... who should have a door not unlike the one that you come upon in the middle of the hallway, dodging skillfully out of the way of a passing speed demon before shuffling through the semi-darkness to get a closer look.
Still looks unbreached, you note, and not for lack of trying. These demons probably spent a fair few minutes trying to bust it down before they seem to have lost patience and left for greener pastures to defile.
[Eyes In The Sky: 3+1]
You are definitely being watched, you think as you examine the security system, which looks somewhat questionably penetrable even under optimal conditions. Not just by the little blinking light in the door that just took your picture either, definitely by something else as well.
Yell
"ITS BEHIND YA LADY!"
Then try to get away from Nuxkagoslust with or without her, My priority for survival is ME. Though helping someone who saved me is still on the "Probably a good idea" list, because owing more people just isn't great...
[All Mine: 3]
The lady turns around and, spotting Nuxkagoslust, lets out a deeply upsetting guttural hiss that seems to even give the great demon some pause - not one to waste a good opportunity to run the fuck away, you turn tail and immediately begin to sprint away, and both the lady and the winged monstrosity trail after you, the former on all fours and the latter nearly, but not quite taking flight. On balance the lady looks a little bit faster, gaining on you steadily as you shoot out of the alleyway like a man possessed.
Oddly, the demons clear a path for you as they hoot, spit fire and observe - they are eager to see you run down by the two following you, and at your current rate there is no question that they will do just that very soon indeed.
Follow the rest of the gang; there doesn't seem to be much else that I can do here.
"...
Dude.
You're a vampire necromancer stuck in a hole with a bloodsucking barmaid and a maestro of noise, about to break out into an army of demons from the bowels of Hell itself fighting a horde of your zombies, in a shitty bar at the bottom of the worst fortress in the Realms of Circumstance, and you don't think there's anything you can do?
Watch. And. Learn."
Acquire a chainaxe and rollerskates from Bear's 'found instrument' section, then tell him he knows what song to play. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSsfjHCFosw) When the fifteen seconds are up, roll out the door, and rip up any demons/dwarves who stand between me and the exit.
Here's hoping this either succeeds perfectly or fails embarrassingly.
[At Death's Gate: 3]
You do manage to retrieve a pair of rollerskates, certainly, there's a sizable pile of them in the corner. And there's a mint condition fire axe as well (what kind of madman would fight fire with an axe anyway?), for all the good it'll likely do you. You slip on the skates and roll up to the trapdoor, which seems to currently remain unmolested on account of a slight distraction offered by whatever horrible fuckery Jal seems to have perpetrated up in the barroom without even looking. Sometimes you forget the little nebbish has some pretty scary powers.
Anyway, you say as you lift the axe and prepare to roll out, it's long past time to make a break for it. You motion for Bear to hit it!
[I Fear There's A Way Out: 5, 2+1]
The noise goes wild as you kick open the trapdoor, Jalormis trailing in your wake as you skate out into the barroom where the demoniac party has taken a turn for the seriously wild - animate bits of blackened, melted dwarf appear to have taken new shape as a monstrous plague of amorphous flesh wages war on the dance floor, tossing winged figures left and right, manifesting teeth and hooked tendrils as it tears right into the bigger demons with no heed to its own safety. The walls themselves have begun to peel inwards from the noise and the floors wave as Bear's carefully managed cacophony aligns itself with the resonant frequencies of virtually everything in the bar, the few bits of unexploded glass choosing the moment of your entrance to completely shatter, which on the average demon appears to have about as much effect as a shower of confetti, savage claws going up in the air like they just don't care.
Your song rings out through the cacophony, as if it were meant just for you as you use it to guide yourself through the chaos, the floors rippling and inclining in perfect harmony with your own roller derby escape as you jump over malevolent pools of bubbling flesh and bury your axe into any small fry demon dumb enough to stand in your way and then use the slight amount of give from their skulls to make sharp turns, carving a serpentine path through the barroom with Jalormis trailing in your wake, animating whatever's left to cover your escape. The sound system screams and wails, the bar itself thrashing in its death throes as the ceiling starts to buckle, and finally you reach the front door, which looks to have been pushed in, then kicked open, then ripped apart, then entirely melted by increasing size categories of fiend.
[Make Way: 3+1]
With a final twirl for effect you land out front in the parking lot of the quickly crumpling ruin of Death's Gate, the sea of demons outside roaring and pushing up the walls themselves, swarming into the collapsing building past you with reckless abandon, the seemingly irresistible screeching within echoed out here with a thousand mouths.
There is a sudden pause - perhaps they recognize true game. Or perhaps it's the way the bar behind you looks like it's about to be crushed like an aluminum can - the demons look on with a kind of peculiar innocent fascination, clearly anticipating amazing fireworks to occur. You can feel it too - the final drop is coming in, and Bear's about to bring the entire house down.
Observe and absorb information (watch and learn).
Do that while following her out and firing some necromantic blasts at enemies, of course.
Enir pops on a pair of roller skates and gets the fire axe, ready to get the hell out or die again trying, and you're just about ready to cover her as well - as the found noise swells and mutates into a new and somehow more violent movement, the two of you burst out the trapdoor into the barroom, where your uncontrolled flesh horror appears to be doing extremely good work controlling the demon population, seemingly having spread throughout the bar in no time at all and assimilated pretty much everything within easy reach. Shame that it doesn't have any way to tell friend from foe, but you guess they can't all be perfect.
[I Fear There's A Way Out: 2+1, 5]
As the fortified trapdoor is slammed shut behind you, you can't help but hesitate a moment as Enir dives headlong into the chaos, maneuvering by skates and axe in equal measure through the throng of fiends while you slide along behind on her trail of split skulls and loose limbs. The building seems to be slowly turning to jelly as you proceed through it, demons and scattered survivors alike disappearing as stray bits of abused architecture fold in on them. As the horde follows emboldened, you throw what spare power you have into momentarily animating whatever demonflesh flies your way and sending it to die gloriously to buy you as much as half a second of wiggle room at a time.
Streaking across the room in random digressions and last-minute turns like a bolt of lightning, Enir makes it to the front door in good time, and you slip out right behind her to the front of the bar, where a sea of demons lies ahead, singing horrific dirges about the Feast of Feasts and serenading the half-collapsing, half-exploding husk of Death's Gate, welcoming the destruction of all things as the final peal of Mr. Lovegod's evil noise assemblage is echoed in their fevered cries.
Jalormis, Extremely Undead Guy
Alternatively Souled: Vampire
Money: 2
Old Yeller: A Horrific Debt
Evil Minion: the Honorary Zombie
The Abyssal Players: Immortal Instrument
Too Close: 2
Enir Nazush, Barmaid of the Night
Alternatively Souled: Vampire
Weapon of Choice: Fire Axe
A Pair of Beat-Up Roller Skates (worn)
Outfit: Awful Schoolgirl-Dominatrix Uniform
Personal Therapy Assistant: Overjoyed
Death's Gate: Too Many Vampires
Old Yeller: Left To One's Devices
Break Yo Shins: Down Payment
Money: 3
Too Close: 1
Urist mac Slughterfiend, Miner on the Edge
Money: Flat Broke
Gruesome Insolvency: Surreal Debts
Eyes of the Butterfly: Nuxkagoslost's Wrath
Green-Eyed Lady: The Hunt Is On
Too Close: 3
Cazin Crundle-Smasher, Uncanny Bookkeeper
Money: 1
Old Yeller: Hopefully Dead
Too Close: 2
"Shit. We better go, the beat's about to drop and we do not wanna be anywhere near it when it lands."
Skate down the road into the maze of streets, attempt to seek solace in the Back Alley Outside Space, an alleyway so obscure even the Gods can't find you in there.
As you consider escape, Death's Gate continues to fold behind you, the structure bending in grossly unnatural and violently unsafe ways as if somehow searching for the most explosive way to collapse completely to shit under the noise onslaught emanating from within.
[Skate Or Die: 1, 4]
You get low and get going, leaving the bar behind you as you slip along tiny gaps in the roiling chaos of the parking lot, avoiding errant claw swipes and good-humored gobs of flesh-eating venom for a good long time before you nearly smack into a large, six-legged, six-armed horse that takes exception to your rudeness, emitting a column of fire with its protesting neigh before seizing you by the collar, about to present you to the crowd and then presumably burn you to cinders while they watch. You swing the axe at its head, but even with the fair amount of force you can put into it the damn thing's hide just seems too thick, and for a moment you suspect you might be fucked here.
Then you spot Jalormis, rushing after you and pointing his bony finger at the horse's arm that's raising you up - there's almost a negative flash from it as unseen energy courses through the air, some tendril of dark power shooting into the demon's arm. Its fingers twitch wildly as two animating principles begin to fight to the death within it, and bones start breaking shortly as the demon shrieks and inadvertently lets you go, an opportunity you do not waste as you skate into a clearer part of the area, now about a block away from the bar as a result of you and Jal's combined efforts.
[The Alley Outside Space: 5]
It's a very clear part, actually - the demons seem to have given way to something coming in your direction. Specifically it seems to be a dwarf who's freshly turned a corner and seems to be running as fast as he can, clearly quite upset about something. Look at him go! Seems like he's heading toward the Back Alley as well, though whether he knows he's heading there is another question.
As you spend a second pondering, an amorphous writhing mass of winglike shadows scales a nearby roof, taking flight as its dozen burning eyes focus on the fleeing miner with a mixed look of hunger and rage - immediately afterward a wild-looking dwarf woman turns the same corner the fleeing dwarf did, though she's chosen to do this on all fours, a tongue that's rather a bit too long to be natural hanging out of her mouth that, from the looks of it, seems to have far more teeth than you'd find reasonable as well.
You feel conflicted. On one hand, this definitely looks like the sort of thing you should get the fuck out of the way of. On the other hand, this path that's cleared ahead is leading basically right to the Back Alley Outside Space.
Try knocking. If there's no response, knock harder. If there's still no response, knock the door down.
[Come Back Tomorrow: 3]
You knock on the door and instantly several cameras focus on you, analyzing your every move and likely your basic chemical composition as well - the cameras themselves might look dinky but it doesn't take a genius to spot that within those frames there's some serious shit planted in, around and more likely than not behind this door.
It is at about this point that you notice the ceiling above you has something on it - it's a little difficult to say what exactly, given that they seem to have formed several chrysalides around what are more likely than not several dwarves, but the occasional drops of concentrated acid from metabolic runoff would lead you to guess they're probably some kind of demon thing. They stir a little at your knock, but settle down immediately afterward.
There is a moment where the only sounds in the hallway are the not-too-distant screams of demons and the busy hum and zoom of the sensors trained on you. An intercom slowly opens on the side of the door.
Go away, it whispers, there's no space. Go away.
KEEP RUNNING
[Gone Til The Morning Comes: 4]
As the streets open up and the road grows clearer, demons in your path jeer and spit as your run past them in their evil tongues, wishing you a short chase followed by an extremely painful death in such an earnest way you have to wonder if this is legitimately some kind of sporting activity in the uncolonized (on account of adverse temperatures more than anything else) areas of Hell. You turn a corner, hoping to get out of sight before Nuxkagoslust can get to you and claim your soul forever.
What you see past the corner as the demons give way is a pale, dark-haired dwarf woman on roller skates, looking around in momentary puzzlement as she keeps both of her hands on a fire axe, tightening her grip for a moment as her eyes glance briefly above you and then behind you. You dare not look yourself, knowing it'll slow you down and take precious seconds away, but instead use the implicit confirmation that your pursuers are, well, still your pursuers and continue to sprint as quickly as your little legs can carry you, perhaps even more so.
Moments later the woman on skates is joined by a bony, pale dwarf who seems to be one of those vampires who doesn't really bother pretending to be anything else in his spare time, and also doesn't have the money to properly own it and dress like nobility from three centuries ago either. He looks at you too, and devotes an even longer look at the shadow above you that lets you know this running thing really isn't working out at all from the way his eyes widen.
"... Where's Bear?"
Run like the wind (with Fniff).
A good question - he definitely didn't come out with you. He didn't even come out the trapdoor, now that you think about it, only shut and bolted it behind you as you went. And now the building's collapsing right behind you, the whole bar folding up in immense cacophony as you continue getting the hell away.
[Skate or Die: 4, 1]
Enir skates ahead, slipping around and beneath the demons gathering and cheering at the festival of carnage happening within the bar, cheering the deaths of all who happened to remain within, cheering just for the Hell of it when they can't think of anything else - the demons celebrate so hard that they don't even bother to eviscerate either Enir or you as you proceed deeper inward, until invariably one of them gets wise - some kind of horse insect thing, six arms, six legs, six feet tall at the shoulder, very classical in its symmetry. Little surprise that it's so straight-laced as to grab Enir by her head and attempt to make an example out of her - too old to be hurt by something as simple as an axe, it breathes a column of fire upward and is about to present your associate to the crowd.
However, you do have something to say about a thing like that - you don't often try to animate living tissue, the results are just too unpredictable and the targeting can be off, but since you know for a fact Enir herself is undead and you don't particularly care whether the rest of the demons suffer, you just go ahead and pile up animating power in the fucker's arm. As you let the two spirits get a good whiff of each other within the arm, they waste no time in getting at each other's throats as the demonic equivalent of a massive allergic reaction makes the arm instantly seize up and the horse-insect demon screeches in agony and starts very frantically biting its arm off for safety's sake. All of this gives Enir enough time to kick out and slide onward, you trailing low in her wake into a clearing shortly afterward.
She appears to have stopped for a second in the middle of a path the demons have cleared, watching enthusiastically as a panicked dwarf sprints for dear life down the street in your direction - behind and considerably above him you spot the swooping shadow of an elder demon, all black butterfly wings covered in unblinking, staring eyes, and after a moment a dwarf - no, you correct yourself after a moment, definitely not a dwarf - turns the corner on all fours and sprints after him that way.
[Dark Words From Dark Tomes: 4]
Both look terribly interested in him and him specifically, and you're not quite sure, but you think you hear some demons in the crowd feverishly placing bets while others look to have worked themselves up into a vicarious hunting frenzy on behalf of one of the two demons following him - but definitely not both, this is certainly some kind of contest they're honoring for the time being (until it becomes funnier to interfere, anyway).
Jalormis, Extremely Undead Guy
Alternatively Souled: Vampire
Money: 2
Old Yeller: A Horrific Debt
Evil Minion: the Honorary Zombie
The Abyssal Players: Immortal Instrument
Too Close: 2
Enir Nazush, Barmaid of the Night
Alternatively Souled: Vampire
Weapon of Choice: Fire Axe
A Pair of Beat-Up Roller Skates (worn)
Outfit: Awful Schoolgirl-Dominatrix Uniform
Personal Therapy Assistant: Overjoyed
Death's Gate: Too Many Vampires
Old Yeller: Left To One's Devices
Break Yo Shins: Down Payment
Money: 3
Too Close: 1
Urist mac Slughterfiend, Miner on the Edge
Money: Flat Broke
Gruesome Insolvency: Surreal Debts
Eyes of the Butterfly: Nuxkagoslost's Wrath
Green-Eyed Lady: The Hunt Is On
Too Close: 3
Cazin Crundle-Smasher, Uncanny Bookkeeper
Money: 1
Old Yeller: Hopefully Dead
Too Close: 2
"Hooo man, thanks Jal, I was pretty close to being horsefeed there..."
spots the crazytrain heading into the alley
"Oh what is this shit!? Everyone knows the Backalley Outside Space is MY FUCKING TURF! Get out of there, you deadbeat sons of elves!"
Using the fireaxe, smash the brake chain on a minecart train filled up with barreled gremlin tears (the humans keep trading it and we don't know what to do with it) then kick it down the street into the alley. Hopefully it'll crush that pileup of turf-snatching extradimensional morons.
The way you know you're truly in Hell's worse neighborhoods is the abandoned minecarts full of gremlin tears. There's always at least one barrel handy, and always at least one dwarf willing to risk degradation and madness from drinking them in lieu of booze. Thus it's rightfully earned its place as Hell's 3rd least favorite substance among those who can't outbid the people who had it all carted here to begin with.
[No. 3 Coming Up: 3]
Taking advantage of an unfinished set of mag rails you turn a gremlin tear cart toward the Back Alley Outside Space and, with a little doing, launch it at speed into that direction, which does make any demons still in the way get out of it quite readily. Off in the distance there's a crash as the cart fails to turn the corner into the Alley and smashes right through a wall.
Rather uncharacteristically, what spills out of the building are very much frightened dwarves. Much more expectedly, what spills back in are some distinctly overjoyed demons - the slight rain of gremlin tears must add a delightful tang to the apoplectic terror of the survivors as they are set upon by the horde.
On the bright side, the demons ahead seem quite distracted! You are about to tell Jalormis about how the path looks to have cleared up ahead, and notice that while you've been clearing a path ahead he looks to have opened some kind of netherworld rift (you can tell by the ringing in your ears, if nothing else) and slimed a giant butterfly monster, which you choose to count as an effective moment of cooperation as the panicked form of the chased dwarven miner is about to pass you right by.
So basically I, a businessdwarf, must get an unwilling individual to open up their door, eh?
Offer them something in exchange for my safety. If necessary, flaunt the one "money" I have.
You might be tempted to ask how much one money really is. The answer to that, of course, is "enough".
[Do You Want To Make A Deal: 4+1, 5+1]
Listen, you explain quietly to the intercom as you brandish a suitably ostentatious hologram of the wealth you've got on you (the actual number helpfully obfuscated in the vast amounts of financial finagling required to keep yourself barely afloat in Midtown), you're a dwarf of business and also really sick of being out where the demons are, and what the fellow on the other end of this door clearly has is a marketable service, which is a seemingly safe place to keep oneself arrive until security happens to arrive and sort all this shit out. So there's two ways this can go, you explain, either he acts like a civilized dwarf and lets you pay him a frankly ridiculous amount of money for merely opening a door, or you can stand around here and keep attracting attention to his little hidey-hole. Such as that, you pause a moment in legitimate concern, that twelve-foot horned fellow staring at you from the end of the hall, rubbing its three-fingered hands together as the eyeless darkness behind the robe peers in your direction.
Could wait for you to get murdered by demons and take your shit, the voice retorts. Ah, you argue back, but that would mean he was still opening the door and getting your money, except with a lot more risk of getting mauled by whatever demon made you a corpse to begin with - and you're not exactly an easy one to murder, if you may say so yourself.
There's a moment of quiet as you lean in toward the sensor. Glancing back down the hall, you notice that the horned figure seems to have disappeared. Or maybe just run off someplace without making any kind of sound, which may in fact be even worse. You look all around you to make sure the damn thing isn't literally behind you or something, but before you're fully satisfied the door does open a titch, and you are dragged inside by a mechanical claw, the door snapping shut right behind you as several dozen countermeasures pop back into place not just on the door itself, but also the surrounding wall from the looks of it.
The apartment is of the studio variety, or rather converted into one with a bit of hard work. The windows seem to have been bricked shut and the only thing illuminating the inside is the blue glow of several dozen server banks, in the middle of which on a custom throne there sits a dwarf. Well, he doesn't exactly sit - he appears to be missing any organic bits from about the waist down, and looks to have grafted himself onto the throne, which towers over the rest of the room, bristling with twin laser cannons that could very likely cut you into twenty thousand pieces in about a second flat.
It takes you a moment to notice that the dwarf himself is just a screen, an image projected on the top of a protective shield of some kind that he seems to have put up for the moment. In addition to that you see a great many sensors in the room - motion, electromagnetic, smoke, visual and much more -, each of them linked to hidden weaponry of some kind from the looks of it. The whole place is a minefield of booby-traps infesting the last few remnants of regular dwarven habitation - an old fridge, a washing machine, a table with two empty chairs next to it, a toilet with the seat up visible through the open bathroom door.
He'd like to have his money now, your host says. Feeling like he's got a pretty good argument for such a thing on account of all the extraordinarily heavy weaponry, you wire it straight to an offshore bank of his choosing. He waits for it to clear, wondering if there's any point to keeping you alive when it does.
MAKE SEVERAL QUICK TURNS AND TRY TO REACH THE SEWER!!
[Hell's Sewer: 2]
The trouble with Hell's sewer is twofold, you realize. The first is that a lot of Hell just chooses to drop its raw sewage into the ubiquitous glowing pits, so the sewers aren't really quite as interconnected as one would hope. The second problem, of course, is that a sewer that could get you much of anywhere is pretty far away - at least four blocks from here over at the water tower, which does fortunately look demon-free (although the same can't be said of the four blocks you need to go to get there).
You don't get much time to think about this, mind you, because there are a whole two demonic horrors right on your tail and about to swoop in - until that bony necromancer dude decides to be strangely helpful and somehow web up Nuxkagoslust right the hell up, taking them out of the sky with a satisfying crack of their terrible carapace followed by hateful screeching in the abyssal tongues as the weird lady leaps over the body, clearly now in the lead in the race to get to you.
You look at the necromancer - he tells you to come with him if you want to live. Which is odd, because from the look of him you wouldn't say living is something he's had much experience with in the past several decades.
Use my magic to create a web of ectoplasm to restrain the two demons that are chasing that poor dwarf. Try to make it look like that spider demon over there did it (maybe use a will-o-wisp or two to make it look like the spider demon just channeled some magic?).
Then, as always, follow Enir.
If my discord-creating tactic worked:
"You there!" Point at Urist. "Come with me if you want to live!"
Bring Urist with me in our Enir-following train/party thing.
[Trapped In A Spooky Web: 6+1]
The best thing about massive fatalities is unquestionably the easy availability of corpses right after in a variety of shapes and sizes. But the second best thing is definitely all the ghosts - so many ghosts, you don't even know. Well, you know, of course, you're a necromancer. But most everyone doesn't. Especially not this elder demon just flying about like they own the place. Which technically they do, ancestrally-speaking, but still, they don't know jack. Which leads you into the third best thing about massive fatalities - these ghosts? They're goddamn pissed.
The heat of the rising air suddenly turns to a deathly chill as you rip open a localized rift into the land of the dead (hey, if you're gonna bring forth ectoplasm, might as well go big with it) right in the big butterfly-shaped bastard's path and the stupid thing just flies right into it - the ghosts adhere to its form like flypaper, covering it in a thick layer of what is in polite society called ectoplasm and in regular society is merely known as ice cold ghost snot, the sheer mountain of it immediately grounding the beast as they slam into the ground with a wet splortch, getting snot everywhere as they slide surprisingly far forward, shadowy wings all stuck together and tangled up as they writhe on the ground, ghosts still streaming out of the rift (not just the victims either, you definitely see a couple of party crashers in there).
On the altogether more negative side, what follows next is that the dwarf-shaped demon leaps handily (and, you note, a bit cheekily) over the prone form of the struggling butterfly demon and continues to sprint in your direction, seemingly thoroughly enjoying herself as her mouth hangs open. Strangely there is little bloodlust in her eyes - this genuinely does seem to be a mere game to her.
Having caused what would in most circumstances be an undeniable disaster up the street, you look back at Enir and see what she's been up to down it - the answer to that question seems to be that she's caused a separate yet mostly unrelated disaster involving a magnetically propelled minecart full of gremlin tears and a whole bunch of frightened dwarves that are now being eaten and brutalized by demons, not necessarily in that order.
Jalormis, Extremely Undead Guy
Alternatively Souled: Vampire
Money: 2
Old Yeller: A Horrific Debt
Evil Minion: the Honorary Zombie
The Abyssal Players: Escaped Instrument
Too Close: 2
Enir Nazush, Barmaid of the Night
Alternatively Souled: Vampire
Weapon of Choice: Fire Axe
A Pair of Beat-Up Roller Skates (worn)
Outfit: Awful Schoolgirl-Dominatrix Uniform
Personal Therapy Assistant: Overjoyed
Death's Gate: Too Many Vampires
Old Yeller: Left To One's Devices
Break Yo Shins: Down Payment
Money: 3
Too Close: 1
Urist mac Slughterfiend, Miner on the Edge
Money: Flat Broke
Gruesome Insolvency: Surreal Debts
Eyes of the Butterfly: Foiled!
Green-Eyed Lady: The Hunt Is On
Too Close: 3
Cazin Crundle-Smasher, Uncanny Bookkeeper
Money: Broke
Old Yeller: Hopefully Dead
Too Close: 2
Closed-Circuit: Guest at the Bachelor Pad
The Threadspinners: Observed
Phase dwarf-demon's spirit slightly out of her body so that the angry real-dwarf ghosts can get enough of a handhold on it to grab it (from the ethereal plane), pull it out of her body, and tear it to shreds. Maybe some real-dwarf ghost will inhabit the empty, soulless husk that's left behind, or maybe the husk will just straight-up die. The result of removing a soul varies from creature to creature.
Then follow Enir to her special alley.
[The Flesh Is Weak: 4+1 vs. 6]
The trouble with demons, you find, is that they don't actually have souls. Or spirits, for that matter. They're just about the fleshiest, most carnal and profane possible creatures formed from the primal malice and chaos of a universe done wrong, so you could say it's more like they're all spirit, really - and your attempt to phase the demon (assuming, sadly incorrectly, that it was a demon-possessed corpse as opposed to a demon legitimately shaped like a fetching dwarf girl), while it does entirely succeed at the aim of putting her slightly out of touch with reality, seems to neither impede her in any way nor even harm her - if anything, the ghosts look to immediately lose interest as she seems to suddenly show the mark of a mortal body - a spiritual component surrounded by flesh - and focus on the big butterfly creature instead.
The dwarf-demon approaches in leaps and bounds, excited by this strange power you've worked on her - she'd clearly like to subscribe for more, you sense from the way her tongue lolls out and her mouth begins to spread vertically open to reveal another row of teeth beneath the regular ones, and presumably another row beneath that as her face starts to unfold into a rosette of red gums and sharp white teeth. Her spiritual bits shake back into her body slowly as she rips forward along the street, heading right in your direction.
Sensibly, you turn around and run the fuck away, taking the hapless dwarf miner with you - he's about as fast a runner as you are under the circumstances, which you consider quite the compliment indeed when you realize he had a more than reasonable head start on you when it started to look like things were going bad.
You arrive in the Back Alley Outside Space with the demon hot on your heels as the rest of the demons hoot and cheer at your dismal failure, some of them taking to the skies to get an imp's eye view of your likely demise in the dead end to follow. The fiends currently dining on the contents of a refuge give way - they wouldn't want to get in the way of the horrors about to be visited upon you by this creature, no sir.
blanches at disaster she caused"Oh... Well, I gave them the perfect opportunity for escape and they didn't use it, so fuck em. Jal, you handle the eldritch skank, I'll try the alleyway and see if I can find some less shitty clothes."
Go to the Alleyway Outside Space and change into my street clothes (miasma-filter mask, giant spider silk bra, garters, panties, goose leather knee-high boots, and cape) and dig out my go-bag. I stocked this up while shitfaced, so here's hoping drunk-me knew what I'd need...
[Alley of the Damned: 2]
It doesn't look like your mine cart stunt did much to discourage the demonic invasion of the Back Alley - they smell dwarf blood on the air as good as anything, and have begun to swarm - it's only by virtue of the many defenseless snacks already present that you are not accosted by the fiends present, although they definitely see you on the way in, the way their debauched mental slaughter checklists register you as a secondary priority nearly audible over the background of terrified, agonized screaming and the sound of Death's Gate still slowly collapsing in a curiously controlled manner.
[Go Time: 2]
Let's see, your go bag, in addition to the ever-fashionable post-nuclear stripper getup (the miasma filter mask sucks ass and is hard to see through, but saves on questions about how exactly you're breathing down here), seems to include fresh lipstick, some all-purpose cleaning solution and a raincoat for all the blood and some other stuff you expected after your nightly date, a comb and a flashbang for good luck. Shit.
Then you turn around and spot Jalormis and his new friend running in, eyed by demonic entities all about and trailed by that eldritch skank you took note of earlier, though she's developed a tooth-covered rosebud for a face, a huge tongue lolling out of it right now. The demons clear the path between her, Jal and his friend, which happens to also include you.
GO WITH HIM SINCE I WANT TO LIVE
[Running With The Devil: 2]
You go with him! Or, rather, are about to go with him as he turns to the woman still following you and appears intent on doing some kind of terrible necromantic harm to her - what it really looks like, however, is that he gives her a stare and starts waving his hands about with no real effect beyond seemingly irritating the demon somewhat (and she definitely is a demon, you think you establish from the way her face opens in many more places than you recall faces normally doing), and you do not wait for him to complete whatever he's doing before you start running - rather wisely, so does your new friend as you make your way toward where that barmaid lady went, through the gap in the demon forces as you feel the searing heat of a demon regarding you fondly from behind, urging you to run faster until you've reached where the other dwarf was.
Rather unhelpfully she appears to have used her time to change into perfectly reasonable street clothes and go through her bag, which much to your chagrin (as well as hers) doesn't look like it contains either high explosives or automatic firearms, or even any sort of holy symbol to pray to while you've been eviscerated.
As the demon closes in from behind, and the rest of the fiends crowd around you in a circle with a sense of finality approaching, you get the feeling following this undead guy might not have been the best decision of your life.
Cazin transfers his one "Money" to the cyberdwarf.
"Sorry for seeming so rude or untrustworthy, but considering you have a lot of weaponry currently pointed at me and the fact that once I transfer all my money I'll be expendable, I'll not be transferring it all at once. I'll start with this quite modest amount as an indication of trust, but the rest will come once I've managed to ride out this nightmare.
A pretty fair deal, don't you think?"
Acceptable, says your host. You do you, and he'll only shoot you later if you don't pay the full amount. The taste you give him (just a little bit of the full amount you've got set up and linked to a list of subtle cues from you to be wired as appropriate depending on your survival) is quite enough to convince him that you're entirely serious. If you like you can sit down at his table, he says as you faintly hear the readouts and reports of demonic activity from his sensors pour in decrypted snippets of security comm chatter, seemingly quite excited about all the toys they'll get to test out in a couple of minutes when command gives the go-ahead. Pretty impressive response t-
[A Sense of Displacement: 1+1]
-ime, you say as you look at the three chairs parked around the kitchen table, momentarily confused but not entirely sure why, an uncanny sense of jamais vu sweeping through your mind in a chilling manner.
Jalormis, Extremely Undead Guy
Alternatively Souled: Vampire
Money: 2
Old Yeller: A Horrific Debt
Evil Minion: the Honorary Zombie
The Abyssal Players: Escaped Instrument
Too Close: 3
Enir Nazush, Barmaid of the Night
Alternatively Souled: Vampire
Weapon of Choice: Fire Axe
A Pair of Beat-Up Roller Skates (worn)
Outfit: Post-Nuclear Stripper Getup
Personal Therapy Assistant: Overjoyed
Death's Gate: Too Many Vampires
Old Yeller: Left To One's Devices
Break Yo Shins: Down Payment
Loot: Concert Night's Earnings From Death's Gate
Good Luck Flashbang
Fresh Lipstick
All-Purpose Cleaning Solution
Plastic Raincoat
Nice Comb
Too Close: 2
Money: Flat Broke
Urist mac Slughterfiend, Miner on the Edge
Money: Flat Broke
Gruesome Insolvency: Surreal Debts
Eyes of the Butterfly: Foiled!
Green-Eyed Lady: The Hunt Is On
Too Close: 4
Cazin Crundle-Smasher, Uncanny Bookkeeper
Money: Nominal
Old Yeller: Hopefully Dead
Too Close: 2
Closed-Circuit: Guest at the Bachelor Pad
The Threadspinners: Observed
It should be noted that 1 Money is definitely a lot of money - regular money isn't covered by the system we're using, so you don't need to spend capital-M Money on mundane things necessarily - the reroll you get from Money, in fact, represents you throwing a fairly ludicrous amount of money at a problem. I've updated Cazin's status to reflect this, as even without Money he isn't broke - he just doesn't have the spending money to make problems go away easily. Why yes, it really does work exactly like Coin from Blades in the Dark, I'm quite glad you noticed this complete and utter coincidence.
Theoretically you shouldn't earn Money until you've managed to flip your assets either, so I'll just turn Enir's current Money into Loot, which is still something you absolutely want to keep to turn into Money later, but definitely not something you can easily spend at any time. Once you do have Money, however, feel free to spend it on things retroactively whenever you like.
Cazin hesitantly sits on the ground.
"Never liked chairs. Had a tendency to slip out from underneath me..."
You sit down on the cold floors and appreciate the occasional exposed panels - who did that? A drone, you guess - your eye goes to some panels in the wall briefly, those likely open... probably spots on the ceiling and floor as well, maybe even the throne of the dwarf himself.
[The Wolves Are Coming: 3+1]
A black shadow in the corner of your eye, a finger pointing to a very particular spot on the wall. You look up and see the owner - a twelve foot figure wearing a dark robe, two horns coming out of the front of its hood, its face completely invisible as it sits in the chair which is much too small to accommodate it, yet seems to fit perfectly. You can't see anything of it beyond the horns and its strange hand, but nevertheless it looks to be smiling. What it's pointing at is a spot on the wall, somehow darkened in relation to the rest, dancing before your eyes as it forms new infernal markings every few moments.
You look back at the chair, but the figure is gone now, leaving only its signature dread behind.
Fuck, you hear the throne-dwarf mutter, the cops are moving in already. You hear a button being pushed and a klaxon starts to softly howl as you hear the apartment slowly begin to make itself airtight.
"Goddammit, drunk me! Why are you so fucking practical?!" faces down the Eldritch Skank "Hey girl, who did your makeup,a blind troll? Here's my technique, it's called "CHOKE ON IT YOU ELFSUCKING FUCK!"
Lift up my mask, redo my lippy, THEN SHOVE MY LIPSTICK DOWN THAT ROSE OF SKINSIN'S NECKHOLE! Punch repeatedly into their throat until it's gone.
Then run, probably.
You step up to this so-called demon and let loose with a combination of choice words and some well-placed makeup, performing a lipstick-tipped open-palm strike straight into her overlarge mouth.
[Versus Evil: 4 vs. 4]
Which would have looked super cool, you have to admit, were she not quite perfectly able to dodge out of the way of even someone of your relative agility, ducking beneath your blow and going for a counterstrike that you manage to weave out of the way of - she twirls madly around as she ducks and goes for a swipe of her hand along your back that you get down on all fours to avoid and roll forward. She dives forward and her tongue gently waves through the air, barely missing your throat with the lightest of touches as she gurgle-laughs in the most awful possible tone.
[Sterling Observations: 2]
She's got a pretty flighty fighting style, you gotta say, because she sure seems perfectly content to dance around you like a feather for as long as needed rather than your preferred method of getting in there and kicking the shit out of the other person until they either stop resisting or moving entirely, whichever comes first.
You get the sudden terrible suspicion she knows something you don't.
Jalormis, Extremely Undead Guy
Too Slow: 1
Alternatively Souled: Vampire
Money: 2
Old Yeller: A Horrific Debt
Evil Minion: the Honorary Zombie
The Abyssal Players: Escaped Instrument
Too Close: 3
Enir Nazush, Barmaid of the Night
Alternatively Souled: Vampire
Weapon of Choice: Fire Axe
A Pair of Beat-Up Roller Skates (worn)
Outfit: Post-Nuclear Stripper Getup
Personal Therapy Assistant: Overjoyed
Death's Gate: Too Many Vampires
Old Yeller: Left To One's Devices
Break Yo Shins: Down Payment
Loot: Concert Night's Earnings From Death's Gate
Good Luck Flashbang
Fresh Lipstick
All-Purpose Cleaning Solution
Plastic Raincoat
Nice Comb
Too Close: 2
Money: Flat Broke
Urist mac Slughterfiend, Miner on the Edge
Too Slow: 1
Money: Flat Broke
Gruesome Insolvency: Surreal Debts
Eyes of the Butterfly: Foiled!
Green-Eyed Lady: The Hunt Is On
Too Close: 4
Cazin Crundle-Smasher, Uncanny Bookkeeper
Money: Nominal
Old Yeller: Hopefully Dead
Too Close: 2
Closed-Circuit: Guest at the Bachelor Pad
The Threadspinners: Indicated
If ever you should feel like the best thing you can do is try and hold out, you can declare a Total Defense to try and wait out this turn, guaranteeing no increase in Too Close, but also prompting a roll on the Die of Fate (remarkably nonlethal and nonfatal despite the name, it's used as an unmodified luck check to introduce unexpected help or, if you roll shit instead, a complication).
Cazin slowly draws in his legs and assumes a fetal position. He then just waits.
[The Beat of Cannon Fire: 6]
The room begins to rock within the next minute, the tenement seemingly among the first targets of the artillery barrage - you dimly sense walls crack in the distance, the building softly leaning as increasingly large parts of it cease to be there. The room leans as well, the third dining chair falling over.
You look again at the wall, and notice that there's a crack on it right where the figure had indicated. You ponder this fact as you roll slightly away to not be right under the crack as it continues to spread to encompass the room. You hear the demons awakening outside, the beat of several hundred pairs of wings as they sally outward from the ruptured building, the cussing of the throne-dwarf as structural integrity parameters for the building begin to come up less than promising.
Shortly afterward the floor begins to collapse, the room having fallen to a full 45 degree angle - the power goes out for a second and you see the dwarf begin to spasm for a second or two as he slams another button, a nuclear cell humming to life somewhere in the guts of the room as the lights come on again. There is a moment where the room rumbles, followed by silence.
Then the entire room falls like a single capsule, untethered from the structure of the building as you feel weightless - there is a partly digitized 'shiiii-' from your affixed friend as you drop a few more stories than you recall this building being tall, crashing into what must assuredly be a crater.
[The Great Crash: 5]
You're obviously unhurt, having taken care to assume the fetal position beforehand so that you can protect your actual vitals with your miner-grade skull, and despite having no real range of movement in that chair the sessile dwarf looks to have been merely yanked slightly out of his position, which he takes a moment to carefully plug himself back into with what little remains of his limbs.
The explosions continue, but more distant. The sensors have gone completely dark. Nevertheless you seem to have weathered a salvo of police artillery, not something most fortified apartments with crazy dwarves in them can claim!
Try to Survive for a bit longer.
You use the commotion to dive out of immediate range, disappearing into one of the many completely unused trashcans of the Back Alley Outside Space, letting the lid slip mostly over your head as you peek out and watch the waitress duel that creepy demon who was following you and, strangely enough, emerging momentarily victorious as the demon-dwarf is kicked in the face, beaten over the head and dropped into the pit - there is a terrible sound like screams, laughter and most of all promises of a soon return. Oh dear. She seems to have gotten intrigued.
[Totally Defensible: 4]
The demons look spooked at this sudden defeat of what you're fairly sure now was some kind of greater fiend - they watch the waitress as she stands on her roller skates, trying to pass this triumph off like it weren't no thing. A few look suddenly terribly apprehensive about the approaching rain of sanctified high explosives. Several look hungry enough to try and go for the waitress anyway.
In any case, nobody is looking at you right now. If ever there was a time to slip away, this'd be the one. Before Nuxkagoslust comes back.
"Oh no! She's too fast for me! She keeps dodging away! I hope she doesn't dodge sixteen urists to the left, I'd be truly defeated if that happened!"
Slash at her with the fire axe, intentionally missing so she dodges back up into a nearby glowing pit.
As you bring your axe into the fray, the demoness is driven back ever so slightly by your increased reach, looking for openings in your swing as the two of you maneuver, you on roller skates as you break out all you've learned from decades of roller derby experience, the demoness merely on her feet as she makes do with being tenuously bound by the laws of physics.
[She's A Maniac: 5 vs. 4]
She tries to circle, but you cut her off, pushing her back onward and onward, warding her through the Back Alley as her many grins spread wider and wider - she believes she is exhausting you, that you're going to slip up sooner or later. She's right, of course, but you make sure that you slip up on your own terms. Those terms naturally involve a glowing pit - you swing and overextend, and you sense the slightest hesitation before she dives for the opening, reaching out both of her clawed hands, only to find no purchase as you shift into shadow form and momentarily discorporate to appear right behind her - you hoped that she'd tumble into the pit on her own, which sadly she does not.
As she begins to turn around to face you, you're already swinging the axe - her hands reach up and catch it right before it would make contact with her had, her body not so much turning as reshaping itself to look your way with a playful sort of snarl as she opens her mouth to-
Suddenly the alleyway shakes, and you hear the telltale sounds of a good carpet bombing starting maybe a block away. You do not look away from the fight - the demoness, momentarily complacent, does. So you do the sensible thing and kick her in the face something fierce, seize the axe from her hands and bean her over the head (you do use the sharp end, but it doesn't seem to help matters) with it nicely, and finally sweep her feet out from under her and let her drop into the pit, which she does with what sounds like shrieking laughter.
The demons observing watch in shock and horror, and also mild curiosity at the approaching sound of heavy artillery about to rain down on the block.
Jalormis, Extremely Undead Guy
Too Slow: 2
Alternatively Souled: Vampire
Money: 2
Old Yeller: A Horrific Debt
Evil Minion: the Honorary Zombie
The Abyssal Players: Escaped Instrument
Too Close: 3
Enir Nazush, Barmaid of the Night
Alternatively Souled: Vampire
Weapon of Choice: Fire Axe
A Pair of Beat-Up Roller Skates (worn)
Outfit: Post-Nuclear Stripper Getup
Personal Therapy Assistant: Overjoyed
Green-Eyed Lady: Worthy Foe
Old Yeller: Left To One's Devices
Break Yo Shins: Down Payment
Loot: Concert Night's Earnings From Death's Gate
Good Luck Flashbang
Fresh Lipstick
All-Purpose Cleaning Solution
Plastic Raincoat
Nice Comb
Too Close: 2
Money: Flat Broke
Urist mac Slughterfiend, Miner on the Edge
Money: Flat Broke
Gruesome Insolvency: Surreal Debts
Eyes of the Butterfly: Foiled!
Green-Eyed Lady: The Hunt Is On
Too Close: 4
Cazin Crundle-Smasher, Uncanny Bookkeeper
Money: Nominal
Old Yeller: Hopefully Dead
Too Close: 2
Closed-Circuit: Crashing At The Pad
The Threadspinners: Indicated
GET HOME, NOW.
[Urist Come Home: 3+1]
You've had just about enough of this, you say to yourself as suddenly you find yourself harmlessly and darkly aflame, pausing in your escape attempt to stop, drop and roll before realizing that it doesn't seem to be burning you, only some other kind of damned soul. Filing this issue away at a lower priority for later, you dive for the nearest gutter - home isn't very close from here at all, but you've got much better chances underground than you do in the middle of all this shit.
With a Herculean effort you rip the grate out of the gutter and slide in, greased by fear and desperation as you slide down the tiny shaft and into the cramped sewer, made just large enough to inconvenience a sewage worker in their daily grind. This proves to be a pretty good decision on your part, as no sooner have you done this than you hear the deafening roar of an alleyway exploding up above you, artillery reducing it to dust within seconds.
[Footsteps In The Dark: 1]
As you wedge yourself into the service passage, you hear a sound from the direction you're fairly sure home was in - it sounds like whispers, the beating of soft and membranous wings, and of course the unquenchable spite and bloodlust of many millennia. Seems like someone else had the same idea as you!
Cazin looks for some debris (shouldn't be hard to find) and hides under it.
[Gimme Shelter: 6+1]
You cast a critical eye around the tilted room as the dwarf on the throne continues to cuss and fidget with his setup. There's a lot of debris, sure enough, but very little of it seems like it'd protect you as opposed to just crush you under it when the next artillery salvo comes in. Fine line to walk with debris, you recall from your mining days. Not nearly as good as-
-hang on, you wonder as you look at the throne, noticing a sparking component slightly poking out. Is that... you walk closer up, unnoticed by your host, and put your hands solidly on it. Looking up, you see he's still busy with his interface, and proceed to yank it out of its slot. Your friend immediately turns around - hey, that's his-
There's a pause as he looks at the module in your hands, and you simultaneously push some very particular buttons. A gauss turret levels with your head and fires off a salvo. The rounds fly through the air and stop about five feet from you as a resonant hum kicks up from the module in your hands, then fall to the ground.
Holding the spy-grade advanced vehicle shield module in your hands, you start grinning. This thing won't last a long time, maybe ten minutes, but it will protect you from anything short of a tactical nuke during that time period.
The other dwarf starts fidgeting rapidly with his controls in response, and you feel the room start to hum under your feet as generators kick into high gear.
Sorry for my absence.
Cast Protection From Holy Weapons (a very useful spell for an undead creature to have) on myself (and on Enir and the weird dwarf-guy, if they want to receive the spell as well).
Then make a wall of spooky ghost-flames that can't actually harm anything (but are supernaturally scary) across the entrance to the alleyway.
[Save Me, Dark Powers: 1+1]
You summon the powers of darkness itself to fortify your essence and fill you with resolve in the face of sanctified arms, and from your arms spring black flames that travel all around your body until you seem to be entirely on shadowy fire, smoke billowing from you in the shape of scenes of wild depravity beyond the wildest imaginings of mortal minds - it jumps to Enir first, then to the fleeing miner as he topples out of his trash can and begins to beat a hasty retreat, silhouetting all three of you in the alleyway even among the myriad disturbing shapes of demonkind swarming all around you and rendering you completely immune to any kind of religious iconography.
Sadly this does not at all apply to the napalm, high explosives and burning plasma also included in the munitions likely coming your way, but you figure the thought counts as the salvos draw closer and you aim your palms at the entrance of the alleyway.
[Wall of Fire: 2+1]
The fire jumps off your body and straight forward, spilling into a semicircle along the entrance to the alleyway before proceeding to rise in dark flames in its own right, filling the air with horrendous screams and snippets of the furthest reaches of experience, alien torments unknowable by earthbound intellects!
Needless to say, the demons love it, a bright spot in their day immediately interrupted by the artillery barrage to come.
[Brace For Impact: 3]
The building to your right is there one moment and gone the next as it is consumed in a sudden rising explosion of triple-threat artillery that forces you back to the other side of the alleyway, rolling along the ground as you come to a rest at the very trash can the escaping dwarf attempted to hide inside of, a timely counterexplosion of necromantic energy seemingly the only thing that stood between you and vaporization, or at least burns that'd take at least months to heal.
Peering over the ruins, you see the batteries the police have set up in the distance over five blocks of corpse-strewn rubble, the sudden demon infestation apparently having been taken as a priceless opportunity for urban redevelopment by the Houses of Commerce. You see a few demons taking flight in the distance and getting shot down by gauss snipers, magnetically propelled explosive smart rounds turning their skulls into red-green mist and sending them plummeting back down.
The wall you're resting up against has also seen better days - specifically it has seen them ten seconds ago, when it wasn't about to collapse on top of you any minute now.
"Hwaaaaaak... Ptoooo!" spits into glowing pit
Dig in my six inch heels and brace for impact.
Also, graciously accept the spell from Jal.
You dig in your heels as dark flames start rising from your back and the demons begin to party around an unholy fire barrier, gauging the direction the sounds are coming from - uh-huh, seems about right, so you need to face this way, strike a cool pose, look like this, and...
[Die of Fate: 4]
The salvo hits, and you are spontaneously vaporized - fortunately, you had the good judgment to also be vaporized the previous second, having taken the shape of a gentle darkly flaming mist as the shockwave briefly scatters you across the winds, and you momentarily resemble a plume of smoke before coming together all at once at the top of the cavern about a hundred feet up. You get a wicked rush of energy as your molecules rejoin and your body eases instinctively into a 5:1 glide, blazing a black trail in the air as you look down on the destruction below.
You enjoy the moment, mildly cognizant that you'll likely draw sniper fire from the security teams in maybe ten seconds at the latest.
Jalormis, Extremely Undead Guy
Too Slow: 2
Alternatively Souled: Vampire
Money: 2
Old Yeller: A Horrific Debt
Evil Minion: the Honorary Zombie
The Abyssal Players: Escaped Instrument
Too Close: 4
Ancient Words of Protection: Unholy Ward
Enir Nazush, Barmaid of the Night
Alternatively Souled: Vampire
Weapon of Choice: Fire Axe
A Pair of Beat-Up Roller Skates (worn)
Outfit: Post-Nuclear Stripper Getup
Personal Therapy Assistant: Overjoyed
Green-Eyed Lady: Worthy Foe
Old Yeller: Left To One's Devices
Break Yo Shins: Down Payment
Loot: Concert Night's Earnings From Death's Gate
Good Luck Flashbang
Fresh Lipstick
All-Purpose Cleaning Solution
Plastic Raincoat
Nice Comb
Too Close: 2
Money: Flat Broke
Ancient Words of Protection: Unholy Ward
Urist mac Slughterfiend, Miner on the Edge
Money: Flat Broke
Gruesome Insolvency: Surreal Debts
Eyes of the Butterfly: Foiled!
Green-Eyed Lady: The Hunt Is On
Too Close: 4
Ancient Words of Protection: Unholy Ward
Cazin Crundle-Smasher, Uncanny Bookkeeper
Money: Nominal
Old Yeller: Hopefully Dead
Too Close: 2
Closed-Circuit: Crashing At The Pad
The Threadspinners: Indicated
Spy-Grade Vehicle-Sized Shield Module (active, 10 minutes of juice left!)
Oh. Okay.
Run. Run home. Just don't stop running.
You recall your college days as you tuck the module under your arm and sprint for the nearest hole in the apartment wall.
[Cannonball Run: 5]
Fortunately there's no shortage of holes to take advantage of - diving straight out of one, you tumble out onto the smashed ruins of the tenement, and briefly consult your sense of depth by looking up for the ceiling - looks like you've sunk into the ground. So you sprint up the remains of some stairs - a demon dives out of some rubble and smacks into your shield like an impenetrable glass pane, crawling off deeply shamed as you peel out of the building by diving through what used to be a third story window but now appears to have come to terms with being at ground level - sliding out onto the street, you look outward - a few demons here and there, none of them at all likely to bother you, and off in the distance there's the security cordon. You take a deep breath and resume sprinting wildly toward them, and briefly slow down when you spot a snake demon chasing what is very obviously some kind of vampire necromancer along the street toward the barricades.
As you very kindly let them go first while still keeping your hands on the module (damn thing sure is heavy though, sure wish you could strap it on like a backpack, but oh well), you see the snake get shot through the head by the helpful guards out front with the help of what looks to be a stationary railgun - there's precious little left of the top of the thing's skull, that's for certain. There's also an explosion up top - you see something that must have got hit by sniper fire, which seems weird because she also still looks to be in one piece, which is not at all consistent with what you know about things hit by the kind of snipers Commercial security employ for heavy-duty work.
[Goon Speech: 1+1]
The vampire stops for a second, then resumes his approach at a slightly more sedate pace as he tries to decipher what the guards are saying to each other, but seemingly to little effect. A few of the guards look to you as well, their fingers going to their helmets as they find an appropriate vision mode to appreciate the beauty of a fine vehicle-grade energy shield, comparing its energy signatures thoughtfully with the phase on their own laser weapons.
If you're timing this right, and you know you are, you've got eight minutes of juice left in your shield module. Which is good, because you don't need to be a genius to figure out things are only gonna get dicier from here.
Cast Fortify Undead on Enir so that she won't be insta-gibbed by sniper fire that hits her (just maybe horribly wounded or something).
Then head towards the police encampment (preferably with Enir, if possible) while looking as innocent as possible (which probably means dismissing my Protection from Holy Weapons spell.
[Darkness In The Bones: 4+1]
You look at the shape of Enir up above and figure you ought to give her at least one more helpful enchantment - you've got a ton of these damn things in your spellbooks and you hardly ever find a vampire you've failed to hate sufficiently to use this on. A streak of invisible animating force launches from your fingertips and you see Enir suddenly loom larger in the sky, not because of growing in any physical sense but rather because the light itself appears to shun her, her shadow and her self becoming momentarily and horrifically one...
... damn you're good. Now to dodge right out of Hell as quickly as possible and not get blown up by the next salvo! Now the important thing here is to look innocent, you think. What would be the best way to do that?
[Wounded Vampire Gambit: 6]
You look at one of the demons crawling serpentine out of the rubble, slightly twisted but otherwise seemingly in good spirits. You point at it and screech in the abyssal three-tongued way - you, yeah, you! Your mother loves you very much!
The demon looks up at you, breathing steam through its mouth as its snake head hisses, six scorpion claws protruding from its back starting to clack one by one. He would like to inform you that, despite widespread cultural misconceptions, demons do not actually think that evil is good, they merely find that destroying things they don't understand is generally easier than studying them. Besides, the demon says, he hatched from an egg. He doesn't even know what his mother is, they could be like a three-headed bull or, really, anything as far as he knows. He just broke out of a shell and then mercilessly ate the rest of the weaker and softer hatchlings to become the chosen of his clutch. Then he got large enough to come to parties like this one and, well, that's about where he got all the education he's had or needed in life.
Okay, you say. Since you're being level with each other, does he feel like chasing after you and vomiting death every which way for dramatic effect while you try and dodge him and escape to safety?
You know, you could have just asked for that right away, the snake demon shakes his head, getting a good chemosensory bead on you. He loves chasing dudes around ruins! Here, he'll even give you a two second head start.
You nod thankfully and start sprinting along the street, screaming wildly as in two seconds exactly the snake demon hisses about how he's not had a fun chase in years and tears after you, his wings unfolding like leathery tesseracts as he follows eel-like after you, covering many a spot you were just in with caustic and likely horrendously diseased snot, the beast's eyes filling with rising naked bloodlust as well as mild fascination at several ex-landmarks you pass along the way as you run toward the barricade, arms flapping in the air. You see black visors with a faint blue gleam to them, heavily armored Commercial security leveling weapons at the best behind you.
This is so much fun, you hear the beast roar right before one of them levels a gun emplacement at him and puts three half-pound slugs through his skull, chunks of fiendish brain flying backward as the snake slumps to the ground, wings deflating and a faint line of sticky, lethal drool running out of its happily smiling demon mouth. You hear the tinny, near-unintelligible sound of two officer-looking security guys arguing about something while indicating you.
[Goon Speech: 2]
You feel exposed right now as you cautiously start walking to the barricade. Several security goons are eying you. Some appear to be laughing. Nobody seems to have a blanket handy for a poor refugee from a disaster area, that's for sure. The cordon doesn't look like it's parting either.
Noticing some of them looking very much behind you, you look as well and spot a dwarf, middle-aged and seemingly unremarkable, real accountant type if you've ever seen one, jogging in your direction with an incredibly thoughtful expression, accompanied only by some kind of box in his hands and an overpowering smell of ozone.
CRAWL, CRAWL, CRAWL
[Tunneler's Delight: 6+1]
Suddenly reminded for the one thousandth time today about all the shit (metaphorical, you've built up an immunity to the actual stuff from living here) that can kill you around these parts, you scurry for your life into the dank depths of Hell's lovely sewer. For instance, this particular sewage solution is a lot older than most - you're not far from the original descent into Hell (now long decommissioned for safety and expense reasons) and, for that matter, the Hotel d'Hell. And if there's one thing about the Hotel d'Hell that you love, it's the way the sewers become incredibly byzantine around there, a relic from an incredibly troubled original construction coupled with inconsistent building standards and, naturally, considerable demonic interference. It's like an onion of bad decisions, with nine separate unfinished or abandoned iterations of hotel built on one of Hell's less favorable plateaus, overlapping and intertwining with each other to create what would surely be a horrid deathtrap to anyone not familiar with its workings or at the very least accustomed to working in a goblin-run mine.
On account of its dereliction the place has become something of a cesspool, a drain that the nearby sewage systems gleefully dump everything into on account of it going much deeper and much greedier than any successor installation, in a time before they figured out how to make their plumbing non-toxic and before you could synthesize booze just about anywhere with a push of a button. You've familiarized yourself pretty well with the tunnels around here whenever you need to lay low, so you've got several hiding spots off the top of your head already, so you head to the first - the boiler (which used to double as a colossal still in a bygone age of dwarven ingenuity) on the seventh hotel layer, right above the charming bed & breakfast near the core (which in turn is above the old military barracks) but beneath the elaborate murder dungeon disguised as a mere hell hotel.
As you draw near the cistern, however, you sense several curious things. Firstly, there's light coming out of the hole that you usually used to get in there. Secondly, the light is accompanied by some seriously terrible music. Puzzled yet cautious, you draw closer to the hole and briefly peek into it.
Within you see... hey, it's the dwarf from the bar. The one who was on the stage. You were a bit too drunk then to remember his name, but he doesn't necessarily strike you as a person to shoot a fellow sewer refugee in the face if approached in a friendly enough manner. Then again that's not really something you get to be wrong about twice in your life, is it?
Ah.
That's a much more interesting position.
"HEY JAL IF YOU CAN HEAR ME I'M GONNA GO SEE IF I CAN FENCE ALL THIS SHIT I STOLE OFF BROKESHIN. MEET ME AT THE MARKETS! IF YOU CANT HEAR ME, SORRY!"
Glide on the wind, seeking to land beyond the police barricades (but close to them) and near a marketplace where I could find a construction crew and a good fence.
[Over The Cops And Far Away: 2]
You feel dark power surge into you as Jal gives you one last heads-up before the two of you split for now. You know, it's pretty cool having a dwarf around who can shoot pure dark magic into you to give you even more superpowers now and again, you think as you glide toward the barricade. Like this thing you just got hit with - feels like being a vampire, but somehow more so, like if you drank the soul of a billionaire or something (you know a dwarf who did that once, she hasn't shut up about the power high she got for three decades at this point). The strange feeling of perfection puts you in a reflective mood, gliding away on the drafts of the fires and explosions in your cape, weird boots with roller skates tied onto them, underwear and mask, missing only some spandex for the complete look.
... until you are hit in the side with a smart slug, of course, which feels strangely like a rubber bullet (those you have more experience with than smart slugs, the benchmark for which is putting down a bronze colossus from a mile away) as it explodes against your flesh and seemingly washes over you. You lose your composure for a moment as your arms flail and you disrupt your aerodynamic stability, starting to plummet perhaps about a block away from the barricade.
Of course, when there's one sniper round at play, there usually tend to be others, and that's the way it is here - a full salvo hits you next after that first testing shot, the smart ammo unerringly managing to strike you from everywhere at once. There is a sudden and terrible sense of pressure as Jal's enchantment is strained to the limit, and then with an explosion of dark power it ablates off you, leaving just regular old you, slightly charred and in a tailspin about eighty feet above the police cordon and about to hit the ground, which in the near vicinity is populated noticeably by a veritable legion of Commercial security, including several artillery detachments and, now that you think about it, probably a wizard as well.
You also think you see Jal in your peripheral vision somewhere, but it's hard to tell with the spinning, unlike with the security forces which, indeed, it'd take a lot more than mere angular momentum to miss with how goddamn many there seem to be out here.
Jalormis, Extremely Undead Guy
Alternatively Souled: Vampire
Money: 2
Old Yeller: A Horrific Debt
Evil Minion: the Honorary Zombie
The Abyssal Players: Escaped Instrument
Too Close: 4
Enir Nazush, Barmaid of the Night
Alternatively Souled: Vampire
Weapon of Choice: Fire Axe
A Pair of Beat-Up Roller Skates (worn)
Outfit: Post-Nuclear Stripper Getup
Personal Therapy Assistant: Overjoyed
Green-Eyed Lady: Worthy Foe
Old Yeller: Left To One's Devices
Break Yo Shins: Down Payment
Loot: Concert Night's Earnings From Death's Gate
Good Luck Flashbang
Fresh Lipstick
All-Purpose Cleaning Solution
Plastic Raincoat
Nice Comb
Too Close: 2
Money: Flat Broke
Ancient Words of Protection: Unholy Ward
Urist mac Slughterfiend, Miner on the Edge
Money: Flat Broke
Gruesome Insolvency: Surreal Debts
Eyes of the Butterfly: Foiled!
Green-Eyed Lady: The Hunt Is On
Too Close: 4
Ancient Words of Protection: Unholy Ward
Cazin Crundle-Smasher, Uncanny Bookkeeper
Money: Nominal
Old Yeller: Hopefully Dead
Too Close: 2
Closed-Circuit: Crashing At The Pad
The Threadspinners: Indicated
Spy-Grade Vehicle-Sized Shield Module (active, 8 minutes of juice left!)
Continue running past the security forces. If they try to block me, it's full-body-tackling season. Once I get past, just keep running away from the region of danger. I'd like to put some distance between me and then.
Failing that for whatever reason, just duck into a building to evade death.
[Coming Through: 1]
You hear the garbled shouting of the security forces as they make a token effort to ask you to politely stop and in the same breath open a shitton of fire in your direction, the combined firepower washing over your shield as you slam into the barricade and tumble over it into the larger mass of gun emplacements and reserve forces, all of which seem determined to stop you in your tracks. You shield module screams into overdrive, its power dropping very rapidly to the point where you suspect you have three minutes left at best on it, the opening salvo seemingly having taxed it nearly to the very limit.
Nevertheless you're on the other side, and...
[Good Luck: 2]
A flashbang goes off out of goddamn nowhere and blinds you on the spot, your sense of balance thrown off as the bang gives a good kick to your inner ear and you stumble forward disoriented and surrounded by extremely angry Commercial security.
Follow this guy through the barricade.
After getting past the barricade, head towards where Enir's falling (but don't get involved except as a bystander), because I have a feeling that she'll be needing a necromantic patching up or two quite soon.
[Brilliant Distraction: 4]
There's a hell of a commotion as the accountant-looking dwarf rams into the barricade, parting the sea of goons as he draws a veritable avalanche of heavy weapons fire and his energy shield begins to glow white, the module in his hands working overtime as most of the security present concentrates fire into him which rather fortunately gives you quite a nice opening to dive in through, keeping low and out of the way of anyone who might suspect you don't belong. You weave through the crowd and try not to get stepped on quite successfully!
[The Guards Must Be Crazy: 3]
You don't see Enir anywhere - she seems to have turned into a bat, flashbanged herself and then fallen into the throng somewhere, but with the commotion you can neither hear nor see her - but you do see something else. A shot barely misses your head, seemingly ricocheted off the shielding by some terrible twist of fate, and lands squarely in the chest of a guard right next to you - she falls backward with a collapsed lung as the armor is peeled back by the gauss round, a generous enough amount of blood spurting from the wound that your eyes are momentarily caught by the sight of her on the ground.
You don't have much time here. They'll definitely spot you in short order if (when?) they take the accountant-dwarf down. They might even spot you if you linger here for more than maybe a second. But maybe, just maybe you have enough time to get some blood? Just a little? Just enough to take the edge off?
"Ow, fuck! Hey, look at me, snipers!" waves at prospective snipers "You like having eyes, right? Well, FUCK YOU!
Throw Good Luck Flashbang to blind snipers, turn into bat to fly down and avoid effects of flashbang (I mean, bats are blind, or something? I got flunked out of biology after dissecting the teacher)
[Hit 'Em In The Nest: 1]
Using the strange inertial fuckery of an animal transformation you course correct and toss a flashbang in one and the same motion at what you in a spur of the moment judgment suspect to be where those heavy gauss rounds might have come from, and in a fairly desperate way flap your new leathery wings as you pull out from a dive and slowly realize that your own flashbang, which you seem to have thrown at a closed and shuttered window, is bouncing back at you. That's okay, you suspect, bats work by echolocation or some shit. It's not like you're gonna be blinded by the flash or something.
You are of course correct. It's more the bang that nearly blows out your batty eardrums and sends you flopping to the ground, screeching and flailing about as the world suddenly becomes screaming, and not the kind you use to find your way either. Power-armored boots thump all around you, seemingly having bigger concerns than a thunderstruck bat or, for that matter, that some kind of flashbang appears to have detonated and created a harmless notification ping on the eye and ear protection devices included in their helmets.
Of course, you realize as you scurry out of the way of a heavy boot, being trampled to death is still a very real possibility. One of the worst ways for a vampire to die, you hear.
Jalormis, Extremely Undead Guy
Alternatively Souled: Vampire
Money: 2
Old Yeller: A Horrific Debt
Evil Minion: the Honorary Zombie
The Abyssal Players: Escaped Instrument
Too Close: 4
Enir Nazush, Barmaid of the Night
Alternatively Souled: Vampire
Weapon of Choice: Fire Axe
A Pair of Beat-Up Roller Skates (worn)
Outfit: Post-Nuclear Stripper Getup
Personal Therapy Assistant: Overjoyed
Green-Eyed Lady: Worthy Foe
Old Yeller: Left To One's Devices
Break Yo Shins: Down Payment
Loot: Concert Night's Earnings From Death's Gate
Fresh Lipstick
All-Purpose Cleaning Solution
Plastic Raincoat
Nice Comb
Too Close: 3
Money: Flat Broke
Ancient Words of Protection: Unholy Ward
Urist mac Slughterfiend, Miner on the Edge
Too Slow: 1
Money: Flat Broke
Gruesome Insolvency: Surreal Debts
Eyes of the Butterfly: Foiled!
Green-Eyed Lady: The Hunt Is On
Too Close: 4
Ancient Words of Protection: Unholy Ward
Cazin Crundle-Smasher, Uncanny Bookkeeper
Money: Nominal
Old Yeller: Hopefully Dead
Too Close: 3
Closed-Circuit: Crashing At The Pad
The Threadspinners: Indicated
Spy-Grade Vehicle-Sized Shield Module (active, 3 minutes of juice left!)
Cazin, not one to be stopped by excessive force, recovers his footing and simply continues running forward. He doesn't need to see.
He tries to use his nose a little bit, however; if the smell of brimstone was getting stronger, that's a pretty bad thing.
[Blindly On: 1]
Your sight returns far too slowly, your sense of direction is completely thrown off, all you smell is blood and carnage, you have not the barest notion of anything but the persistent, massive heating of the shield module in your hands as it fast approaches overload under the focused fire of the security teams.
And then you notice something else through the painful burnout in your eyes: five horned shadows silhouetted clearly above, unnoticed by all save you as they gesture and susurrate, and then suddenly point their gnarled, unnatural hands at you and other things you couldn't make out even if you could see or easily stand.
It starts small. A gun explodes in the hands of an enforcer, showering her and bystanders with plasma. A grenade spontaneously detonates and no less than six enforcers die horrible deaths as a patch of street is completely glassed. One of the gun emplacements locks up briefly, then discharges into a massive explosion that covers the entire area in dust, and you hear very suddenly the sound of demons emerging - not from the sides, but from below as the earth seems to open and horrors untold emerge from ambush, falling upon the barricade's forces with utterly merciless efficiency.
And in the middle of it you feel the shield module in your hands, making a sound you know to be indicative of a catastrophic imminent malfunction. The kind of malfunction that'd be lucky to leave ash behind, you realize.
Up top, the five figures appear to be grinning, unseen by all save you as they begin to fan out over the area.
"squeak"
Flap away from the boots trying to find higher ground to lick my wounds. Attract Jal's attention if I see him.
[Good Ground: 4]
You manage to get your bearings quick enough to flap your way to a nearby wall, which you then start quickly climbing up as you begin to hear screams amid the gunfire. You are halfway up when the explosions start, and you've managed to only just get atop the nearby building and turn around when your echolocation turns up the definite annihilation of one of the larger artillery pieces present, the entire street filling up with debris and dust as some kind of disastrous cascade starts to unfold. You perch on the rooftop for a second longer before you pick up the quaking vibration that you have learned to recognize as the sound of the ground opening, sewer passages bursting open as a massed ambush force of fiends falls upon the Commercial enforcers, wild and disorganized fire mixing freely with the comparatively strangely calming sound of demons doing what they do best.
You look away from the rising cloud of dust and violence out into the rest of the non-leveled portions of Hell - the way out looks to be mostly clear beyond here, just a scattered security presence that you'd likely fool by just walking past. You're almost free and done with this fucking night of nights. You could go right now, even. Jal can take care of himself... right?
Jalormis, Extremely Undead Guy
Too Slow: 1
Alternatively Souled: Vampire
Money: 2
Old Yeller: A Horrific Debt
Evil Minion: the Honorary Zombie
Too Close: 4
Enir Nazush, Barmaid of the Night
Alternatively Souled: Vampire
Weapon of Choice: Fire Axe
A Pair of Beat-Up Roller Skates (worn)
Outfit: Post-Nuclear Stripper Getup
Personal Therapy Assistant: Overjoyed
Green-Eyed Lady: Worthy Foe
Old Yeller: Left To One's Devices
Break Yo Shins: Down Payment
Loot: Concert Night's Earnings From Death's Gate
Fresh Lipstick
All-Purpose Cleaning Solution
Plastic Raincoat
Nice Comb
Too Close: 3
Money: Flat Broke
Ancient Words of Protection: Unholy Ward
Urist mac Slughterfiend, Miner on the Edge
Too Slow: 2
Money: Flat Broke
Gruesome Insolvency: Surreal Debts
Eyes of the Butterfly: Foiled!
Green-Eyed Lady: The Hunt Is On
Too Close: 4
Ancient Words of Protection: Unholy Ward
Cazin Crundle-Smasher, Uncanny Bookkeeper
Money: Nominal
Old Yeller: Hopefully Dead
Too Close: 4
Closed-Circuit: Crashing At The Pad
The Threadspinners: Indicated
Spy-Grade Vehicle-Sized Shield Module (about to violently and horribly explode)
Cazin saw the weird, unique demons starting to spread out, and he knew what he must do. Without another thought, he lobbed the shield module at these new, far more threatening demons with all the strength he had obtained from countless years of hard hauling, sending the module flying like a missile. He then immediately tried to dash into a nearby building, hoping things were far less hellish within.
[Evil In The Air: 5+1]
You whirl around in a mighty put, sending the module rocketing toward the floating greater fiends - it flies with a terrifying hum, outputting impressive heat as it covers the distance in less than a second... and then stops. The fiend you threw it at unerringly appears to have raised a finger, and suddenly a silence has fallen over the alley as all motion save you and your five watchers has ceased. You hear speech as one of the fiends gestures at the module, then at you for a second, making unutterable sounds of argument. Another interrupts him with a cunning drone of thousands of beating wings. A fourth points at you once again and balls its many fingers into a clawed fist, gesturing upward as it makes what would be surely be a stirring speech to anybody with the eldritch organs to perceive its otherworldly subtleties.
By that point you've started running, and they've started arguing in earnest as the module hangs there - the final thing you hear as you spring through the hallways of the evacuated tenement is the sound of the fifth, the one you aimed the module at, unmistakably laughing, its voice making a sort of music of many overlaying tones suggesting levity, fury, sadness, relief, bitterness and triumph, and over that you hear the rising sound of the module as time begins to flow once more, and the laughter bleeds into the incomprehensible roar that follows in the moment afterward, an explosion that makes your ears bleed as the shield module erupts into a catastrophic kinetic malfunction, followed by a catastrophic spontaneous detonation of all the munitions of the security forces held in that spot, followed by a wild discharge of pure magic as many demons die in the same millisecond, in a probabilistic cascade of disaster you know to be the swan song of a being older than the stars themselves, caught out by a bizarre twist of fate at last.
A silence - a real one this time - descends on the street right afterward.
You are clear from danger.
Turn into a bat and GTFO (go home). Considering the state of everything around me, I don't really have enough time to drink that bleeding person's blood. A real shame, that.
Sorry for missing last turn.
You take to the skies as you leap and reform into a bat, interrupted briefly by the smoke as you rise above the rest, leaving the guard bleeding in your wake as you notice something large and unmistakably dangerous flying up and past you toward, as far as you can tell, empty space.
[Thunder In The Sky: 5]
A dreadful sense of premonition overtakes you as the longest moment of your life ensues, time seemingly dilating as you try to fly up and away from the carnage and ruin about to occur, getting as high up as the rooftop when the flying module violently erupts into a wave of space-warping kinetic discharge that you ride half-misted along the streets, getting past the scattered few security checkpoints past the barricade as you hear the soft and distant sounds of the security presence continuing to mobilize along the streets after the catastrophic destruction of one of their key cordon points in some manner of karmic cascade of mass destruction. A few pieces of artillery rain down on the rest of Hell from the exploded security checkpoint, the orgy of destruction having left naught but a three-block radius of leveled structures where Death's Gate used to be. Leaving it behind for good, you start shuffling to the graveyard.
You are clear from danger.
(Apologies for the delay)
"I could just go, but... Eh. Jal seems like a good luck charm for me. I mean, he doesn't have much else going for him, so I won't derive him of that."
Turn back into human and walk through the security presence. However, if Jal runs into trouble, leap up and stuff his bat form into my pocket (don't ask), then proceed through security like nothing happened.
Oh, and if theres any dying folks on the ground, drain them sneakily.
[A Killer's In The Bloodshot Streets: 6]
You've never been good at turning into humans, to be terribly honest, can never get the beard right, but you do manage to regain your own fetching form as you slide down the side of the building on the other end of the security checkpoint and proceed to start walking away briskly from the giant demon-security fight right behind you.
While this wasn't the plan, you also happen to be skating away from an explosion in the process - the street behind you explodes first in a flameless wave of pure directed force and spacetime manipulation, mangling and crushing most everything already there. Then everything in the street that could feasibly explode (and indeed more than a few things that you wouldn't expect to) proceed to catastrophically detonate all at once, including a massive overabundance of artillery shells that blasts out the windows from here to nearly the nearest topside elevator and sends you rocketing forward along the street and, after a valiant but doomed attempt at a right turn, straight through the window of a drugstore with a resounding , a shopkeeper with a shotgun diving out from the counter and only barely refraining from filling you with a flechette volley as he notices you squarely lodged in his opiate display.
Holy shit, says the storekeeper, flush with what to your eyes looks like a more than adequate amount of blood, are you all right? Thought you were, like, one o' them demon types or what have you.
Mmh, you respond, bathed in synthetic morphine analogues that seep into your glass-related wounds that, being that you're a vampire, completely fail to bleed.
The shopkeeper begins to lower her shotgun, but not too quickly - you aren't one of them demon types, are ya?
You look her in the eye, smiling gently. C'mere, you whisper. The shotgun is lowered as her own eyes grow wide, and she begins to absentmindedly walk toward you. You take her hand, rising out of the display, pull out the larger bits of glass with her help, and lean into her ear to whisper thanks. Then you bite down.
You are clear from danger.
Stumble in, Mr whats his name probably won't try to kill me?
[Down In The Tunnels Where The Deadly Are Rising: 2]
You stumble in with an incoherent plea to not be shot - and as it happens, you aren't, Yeller just looks up at you from his pint of whiskey and seems briefly nonplussed as suddenly a tone kicks up in the corner of the cistern, a speaker pointed in your direction opening up with a distorted demonic scream that seems to vibrate your very soul as Yeller looks on for a moment.
[Swear I Saw A Young Dwarf Down In The Gutter: 2]
You begin to scream too as your heart starts working overtime, your muscles all seize up and in less than three seconds a mixture of tears, snot and a large amount of blood have seeped into your beard as you stand there with your joints locked up and your body seizing wildly. You lose control of your bowels and begin to vomit wildly at the same time in the brief instant before Yeller reaches to flick off his sonic doom cannon, at which point you're laid out on the floor of the cistern in a pile of filth and screams.
Fuck me, says Yeller, didn't expect it to work that well. Must be the metal cistern, he mutters before taking another second to watch you expire slowly. Something to keep in mind, he guesses.
[Starting To Foam In The Heat: 6]
Then he pulls out a syringe and with the kind of certainty that tells you he's surely incredibly drunk jabs it right between your ribs into your heart, and you inhale as suddenly a moment's respite is given to your deteriorating nervous system.
There there, says Yeller, you've weathered the worst of it. Only gonna get chiller from here. As you continue to convulse with decreasing intensity as the drugs take hold, he withdraws the syringe and pours some of his whiskey into your open mouth. You lay there a while, still unable to coherently speak or move, and in not too long the whiskey runs out and Yeller switches instead to rum, which you enjoy a little less but which interacts wonderfully with whatever relaxant he stuck into you previously. The dreams come soon, filled with shadows and butterflies and fire and clowns and all kinds of things.
You are clear from danger, though it'll probably be at least a week until you can walk again.
End of Chapter One
[When It's Over You Know: 4]
You hate Hell for its persistent troubles - if it's not demons, it's poison in the water or security raids or gang violence or vampires or worse things still. But you do love it for its adaptability - you blow up a good chunk of it and nobody seems bothered, even when it's pretty clear that even with the security checkpoints an absolute shitton of demons got free anyway, a fair number of which have set up shop in quite a few of the less inhabited (mostly because they are also uninhabitable) areas of Hell - some go into the sewers, some haunt graveyards, a fair number just stay in the glowing pits. But make no mistake - the gates of Hell have decidedly opened, and how things really work may change soon around here.
[You'll All Be So Alone: 3]
Not that any of you guys are better off for it.
Cazin knows that he could have gotten a pretty penny for that shield module if it hadn't exploded, but other than that he's pretty much lost track of Yeller and also completely failed to get any kind of recompense for that disaster of a show on account of most everyone involved being incredibly dead. His Midtown office rent is definitely coming up soon and there's gonna be a reckoning if he doesn't do something soon.
Jalormis has gone back to the graveyard and noticed that the vampire population of Hell appears to have drastically decreased, a large number of them having gone to the show and met amazingly terrible ends at the hands of the demonic invasion. The demons have then proceeded to move into what was left behind - including a couple that are now slumming it in the graveyard with him and all the free corpses they can defile at their leisure. Jal figures this may turn into a problem soon.
Urist recovers within a week from the near-fatal experience at the hands of Yeller's sonic attack, largely due to Yeller's own untrained but nevertheless earnest care. After all, Yeller doesn't owe him any money and vice versa, which is a refreshing change from most every other relationship Yeller's had. The dwarf musician seems very enthused about his next move - that show at Death's Gate really brought the house down, he says, but he's got to refine it a little bit, really get himself on the next level for that followup performance. He's been toying with the idea of various new projects, floating them by you in your convalescence while you could only grunt in response, seemingly having made himself your de facto roommate in the Hotel d'Hell.
Enir, meanwhile, has simultaneously come into a bunch of new money (specifically her dead former boss' money), but the recent disaster also has made her homeless in the process of making her rich. Her personal therapy assistant seems to consider this a mixed success - she may be unemployed and homeless, but she's never had more money (specifically, four money - after laundering fees, that is) in her unlife!
So how have these people been changed by their experience at Death's Gate, and what do they plan to do next?
When a chapter ends, the characters enter downtime. Loot is converted into Money and Too Close is cleared.
In addition, it's heartily recommended that you repost your character sheet and alter whatever you think has substantially changed along the course of the chapter. For example, whether Urist mac Slughterfiend still considers himself a violent miner who doesn't care anymore after spending an eventful night getting his shit ruined and running from demons as fast as he's able to. The changes in your concept (and you can just add stuff on top if that seems appropriate) don't need to be brief at all - you can, for example, expand it from three words to a sentence if need be.
Finally, the end of the chapter isn't going to go on for terribly long, but your actions in it are substantially more far-reaching than the ones in the middle of a chapter. You have access to the whole of Skinsin to one degree or another and the timeframes involved can be days or even weeks long.
Jalormis, Extremely Undead Guy
Money: 2
Alternatively Souled: Vampire
Old Yeller: A Horrific Debt
Enir Nazush, Barmaid of the Night
Alternatively Souled: Vampire
Money: 4
Weapon of Choice: Fire Axe
A Pair of Beat-Up Roller Skates (worn)
Outfit: Post-Nuclear Stripper Getup
Personal Therapy Assistant: Mellow
Green-Eyed Lady: Worthy Foe
Old Yeller: Left To One's Devices
Fresh Lipstick
All-Purpose Cleaning Solution
Plastic Raincoat
Nice Comb
Urist mac Slughterfiend, Miner on the Edge
Money: Flat Broke
Eyes of the Butterfly: Foiled!
Green-Eyed Lady: Diverted!
Old Yeller: De Facto Roommate
Cazin Crundle-Smasher, Uncanny Bookkeeper
Money: Nominal
Old Yeller: Hopefully Dead
Closed-Circuit: Thief!
The Threadspinners: Honored Killer
Hello, Jalormis. You have ONE new message. BEEEEEEEP.
"DON'T YOU BEEP ME YOU ROBOT MOTHERFUCKER I'LL DECIDE WHEN I WANNA START TALKING!
"Hey Jal, it's Enir. Don't ask how I found your number, just listen. I stole a shitton of cash off Bomrek or Bromek or whatever the fuck his name is, during that fucking fiasco last night with the demons and stuff, and I know you got cash. Again, don't ask. I'm thinking with all the bars that got fuckiing devestated in the demon attack. The news is all like, hearts and prayers and sorry for your loss and all that bullshit, and I'm think GAP IN THE MARKET! I say we start up a bar together. Real classy place, I'll buy some nice property and do it up, you get me some undead servants to order around. It'll be great. We'll split the profits 50-50. Call me back soon. I'm on a payphone right now, but it's kinda my temporary home so just call me any time.
"Oh, and how's this for a name: JAL'S PLACE!
"Okay, love you, byeeeeeee--"*CLICK*
You have ZERO new messages.
Buy a vacant piece of property. Turn it into an upscale bar. Buy lots of booze. Await customers.
After listening to this message, Jalormis thinks for a bit. He looks outside at the demons that are toilet-papering the trees in his graveyard with strips of human skin, then back at the phone, then back at the demons again.
He accepts the offer.
Move out of the graveyard and join Enir in setting up a new bar. Turn my zombies and skeletons in cooks, waiters, and waitresses, and reap the massive profits that using free labor to run your business can give you. Sure, they're kind of offset by the needed bribes to local law enforcement, but the cops here are so corrupt that said bribes usually/mostly consist of a free drink at the bar every weekend.
I'll post an updated sheet soon.
[Buy Real Estate In Imaginary Places: 3]
You don't really have enough money to buy serious real estate by pooling your resources together, but you do manage to find a fairly good squat in the bad side of Hell and pay the Flower Children, the local protection racket and vice operation, enough to do actual business in one of their old crack houses, replacing the old zombies and skeletal fiends with your own personnel as you affix yourself inside of Hell's infrastructure in the coming week. You even get some foot traffic, mostly from dwarves confused about where the crack house went, slightly less confused undead servants that appear to have been cut loose by the death of the majority of Hell's magically talented vampires and also the occasional fiend in a trenchcoat that slinks into a dark corner. Distressingly, the latter category are the only ones that seem to order any number of drinks.
Needless to say, you don't see yourselves breaking even any time soon unless things change rapidly - however, you're doing a lot better than the last vampire-run, undead-staffed bar in the region did a year or two back, a helpful Flower Child intimates. Helpful tip - stay away from the Cave Spiders, huh?
[Excellent Business Decisions: 5]
Fortunately for you booze is a thing that keeps pretty well for the most part. And a lot of the good stuff only gets more valuable when it's properly aged, so that's even better. Maybe in a century you'll be able to sell some of this for a profit, huh?
Jalormis, Extremely Undead Guy
Money: Nominal
Alternatively Souled: Vampire
Old Yeller: A Horrific Debt
Asset: Jal's Place
Asset: More Booze Than You Know What To Do With
Enir Nazush, Barmaid of the Night
Alternatively Souled: Vampire
Money: Nominal
Weapon of Choice: Fire Axe
A Pair of Beat-Up Roller Skates (worn)
Outfit: Post-Nuclear Stripper Getup
Personal Therapy Assistant: Mellow
Green-Eyed Lady: Worthy Foe
Old Yeller: Left To One's Devices
Fresh Lipstick
All-Purpose Cleaning Solution
Plastic Raincoat
Nice Comb
Asset: Jal's Place
Asset: More Booze Than You Know What To Do With
Urist mac Slughterfiend, Miner on the Edge
Too Slow: 1
Money: Flat Broke
Eyes of the Butterfly: Foiled!
Green-Eyed Lady: Diverted!
Old Yeller: De Facto Roommate
Cazin Crundle-Smasher, Uncanny Bookkeeper
Too Slow: 1
Money: Nominal
Old Yeller: Hopefully Dead
Closed-Circuit: Thief!
The Threadspinners: Honored Killer
Your Name: Cazin Crundle-Smasher
Your Concept: Retired Miner, current bookkeeper
Your Talent: Deduction skills beyond that of what should be reasonably possible, and a knack for bartering and negotiation.
Your Malfunction: Refusal to accept that the surface exists, definitely traumatized by, well, every part of the first chapter.
Your Residence: Some actually quite nice quarters behind his office in Midtown. There is the slight problem that his bedchambers are hooked up to the lava disposal system of olde, once used to eliminate nobles; now not in use, but there is a danger that it might give out at any point.
Your Name: Urist mac slughterfriend
Your Concept: A violent Miner that doesn't really care anymore
Your Talent: He spent thirty years in a goblin pit, and came out a master miner without digg'in a single foot. (Raised by goblins, Rescued a bit late, Killed lots of people with a pick)
Your Malfunction: He... owes some people quite a bit. and with the interest rate, that bit is bigger then you might expect.
Your Residence: A hole in the wall of the sewer he carved himself.
"Hey you. Yeah, you. What are you doing tonight? Sitting at home? Watching paint dry? Chugging gremlin tears straight from the barrel? I'll just say it. Your life is meaningless and shallow. You lost everything to the demon attack. You have no family worth speaking of. You have no boyfriend. 'Oh,' you say. 'Why doesnt she say girlfriend too, since this is just a really general fallout?' Wrong, motherfucker, I'm talking to you, Bomrek Brokeshin. Everyone knows. You're so deep in the closet, you're lecturing Mr Tumnus about how much you love the ladies. Not being homophobic, I'm just saying it's incredibly sad. I'd feel bad for you if you were literally anyone else. Come to Jal's Place, a bar I bought with your money, and drink your many sorrows away. Oh, and other people can come too I guess.
Put up these video posters anywhere where the cops aren't looking.
Your Name: Enir Nazush
Your Concept: Vampire nightclub owner, that most ancient of jobs.
Your Talent: Well, Enir’s a vampire. She’s charismatic, beguiling you with her stare, making you feel like the most important dwarf in the world...
Your Malfunction: … Then she says “Goddamn, you're ugly. When you were born, did your parents leave you for the afterbirth?” , because Enir is a snarky son of a bitch and can't let an insult slip by.
Your Residence: Usually passes out behind the bar at Hal's place