CURSE TOWN, USA *** Supernatural creatures have lived among humans for as long as civilization has existed. They tend to favor the most remote places, or the most crowded, to live in. One such place is Smalltown. It is an isolated settlement smack in the middle of the US of A, surrounded by woods for miles around. Many creatures live here, working normal jobs, living tranquil non-eventful lives. That is, until the curse began. The human population of Smalltown is going insane. They walk down the street in droves, distracted and irritated. Sometimes they fight each other randomly, and other times they drive into lamp poles. The curse is working slower on the creatures, but they fear they will go mad as well. Of course, they could tell the witches to reverse the curse. But there's only one problem: all the witches in town have gone missing. *** Roleplay in this story: A Curse has descended on Smalltown that is driving everyone crazy. Everyone can roleplay how the curse effects them, humans more than supernatural creatures. Devise plots to stop the curse from destroying the entire town. A hidden enemy is working against you behind the scenes. Other than those four guidelines, do as you please. *** List of creatures and how many players are allowed to be each one: 1) Vampires(5): Vampires are bloodsucking undead creatures. They are immortal unless killed, and possess inhuman strength, rapid healing, and enhanced senses. They are also deathly pale with fast-growing hair and nails, burn in the sun, and can only die of a wood stake to the heart or beheading. If they look someone in the eyes, they can glamour (aka, hypnotize) their victims into doing anything they want. Vampires love Fey blood as it tastes like sunshine and happiness to them, gives them a feeling of intense euphoria and allows them to walk in the sun without their Rings for several hours. (All vampires in this story have Daylight Rings, normal rings enchanted by the witches to allow them to walk in broad daylight. Take them off during the day and you turn to ashes.) 2) Fey(5): Nature-loving creatures with enhanced senses, known for their ability to read minds. They can also make their bodies glow, or focus light into a concentrated beam that can blast their enemies away or severely burn a vampire. During the day their light beams are golden; at night their light beams are silver-blue. They do not possess actual wings, but can levitate at will. Vampires love Fey blood, so Fey are extremely careful around them. The Fey are mortal, long-lived, and possess soft, angelic features. 3) Lycan(4): Commonly known as "werewolves", Lycans turn into a huge wolf whenever angered. They have super-strength even in human form, rapid healing, and enhanced senses. They are prone to rages and are nearly unstoppable when angered. Silver burns right through their flesh and bones like butter, and is one of the only things that can kill them. 4) Evo(2): Mortals that can change into any animal, or a mix of several animals. They have normal strength and speed in their human-shape, and can turn into other people if they so wish. They can also turn into any other supernatural creature and mimic their powers, but also share their weaknesses when they become them. Evo are considered one of the most dangerous and powerful supernatural creatures. 5) Witches(1): Mortals that can invoke change in the material plane through mystical means. They are known to levitate at will, may possess a few psychic abilities, and can conjure and manipulate any element. If they overuse magic they will spontaneously combust and become invincible spirits made of blue fire called Ifrits. Once they become an Ifrit, they are consumed by rage and destroy anything in their immediate surroundings and evaporate into nothing in five minutes. (If you play a witch, you are the only witch that has not disappeared and you have no idea how to un-do the curse.) *** Character Template: Name: Age(20 and up): Gender: Creature(Vampire, Fey, etc): Appearance: Personality: Other: *** Rules: This is a new type of RP with more room for you to stretch your creativity. Do as you please as long as you don't God-mod. The GM will sprinkle clues into the story about how the curse came to be and who is behind it all. Remember to have a fun!
The stone pavement was hot today; the sun was beating down annoyingly hard today. He wished he'd have brought some sandals or shoes with him on the hunt. Ugh, something else he'd forgotten the past week, and Tooth was paying the price for it. It was still definitely worth it; he could still taste the meat on his teeth. The others didn't want him doing that. One old and foolish wolf had said, "The forests are dangerous, fellow Lycan." Tooth rubbed his two front teeth together. Then, he flexed his muscles. No, you idiotic old man, I am dangerous. Hunters are not. Tooth stopped as a crowd of humans walked through the street. Oh great, another one of these insane crowds of cursed idiots. They came towards him, a swarm of bumbling bees looking for a flower. Of course, Tooth was no flower. Tooth walked into a nearby alley; it was between the doughnut shop and the Cafe. If they followed him, they were following him. Would he be justified in punching one of them if they followed him? He hoped so. Sure enough, the humans followed him. They walked aimlessly towards him. If he didn't know better, he'd say that the group of women were after him because they were in heat. Many wolves say that humans don't get into heat; Tooth knew different. They mate just as often and as crazily as the Lycan at times. Of course, Tooth didn't know much about this curse, so the group might actually be in some heat-curse mixed state. Not that it really mattered to Tooth at the moment. All he had to do was ignore them and they'd eventually leave him alone. He walked along for about an hour, across shop-laden streets and through dark alleys at random. They were still following him. "You. Women. Stop following me."
Dominic was having a good night. He hadn’t been run over by anybody yet, he hadn’t been shot in the face more than once, and he’d managed to stop some food from setting herself on fire. He shuddered to think what would pass for a “good night” if he was still stuck here just a year from now, let alone 10 or 20. He still wasn’t having any luck finding witches in town, so no way of escaping the town, no way of keeping more of the food from killing themselves and each other, no way of even finding out if the town had drained his ring or not. Short of trying to use it, but if the whole point was that he didn’t know if it would work or not, then he didn’t really see a point in finding out that it didn’t actually work. He would definitely need to find some witch to read it first; there was no reason why he should need to die checking something like that by himself. Were he anywhere else, Nic would dread the reek of witches, they always reeked of the toxic fungus, they always kept fungus, fungus that would poison any food that ate it, what right did the food have to poison themselves just to make their deaths useless to him; always reeked of the animal feces, human feces, maggots eating feces, who the bloody H*** kept bags of maggots eating feces; it was always the reek, they always reeked, always made him feel like drowning drowning drowning drowning drowning drowning drowning … Nic punched himself in the gut to force himself to focus, focus, focus on the time, what was the time, how much time did he have? He checked his watch, his watch said it was 3 AM, 3 AM was plenty of time to get back to the house, plenty of time to keep the food from - The food! He forgot to get food for the food! He’d been out for 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 5 hours and he hadn’t even gotten food for the food yet, how the H*** had he lost 5 hours? He’d be dead if he stayed out another 5 hours, how the H*** had he let himself lose 5 hours on a simple grocery run? Focus, focus, focus. Nic forced himself take about a minute of deep breaths. Not, strictly speaking, life or death anymore, but surprisingly relaxing. Yet not as relaxing as food would be, he needed food, he’d found that being hungry made the fogginess in his mind worse, he was going to need to feed himself if he was going to stay clear enough make it home and feed the food he had at the house house house house house … Focus! Nic needed to get out. He didn’t think he’d be able to take even a month here.
Tooth decided to be clever; he'd turn onto an alley, and maybe lose these lumps of useless flesh in the maze of alleys that were in this city. He turned quickly into the maze, and the women followed him, relentless. Honestly, they were practically zombies. He hoped this curse would end soon, it was driving him nuts. Or was the curse doing this to him? He could feel the anger boiling inside him, but he staved it off. No, he'd get in too much trouble if he transformed now. Running as fast as he could, he soon lost their scent. They were gone. Tooth breathed in heavily the garbage-riddled smell of the back alleys of the town. Goddamn this place to hell. Tooth walked through the city, making sure to not to put any unnecessary attention on himself. He walked past the baker, whose rolls smelled so enticing. He walked past the barbershop, with an old man receiving a nice trim. Tooth barely understood why Humans did this; It was not attractive to have more hair? What kind of female species was this? He made his way to his small home on the edge of the town, at the contours of the forest. It was a rather large dome of fabric supported by wooden planks firmly implanted in the ground. Tooth pushed open the door, which was large enough to fit him. Inside, he sat down on his familiar bed, and let out a sigh of relief. In his dreams, there were no rules, there were no people stopping him from doing what he wanted. Why, he could run through the forest, hunting rabbits any day he wanted. Then, after that, he could swim in the freshwater stream, and feel the water slide all over his big, wolven body. Maybe he could even have a duel with the leader of all the Lycan, and win without getting a single scratch. Sadly, it was all inside Tooth's head, and he knew it. In this town, cursed by something strange, freedom and sanity were taken away from everyone. Any human was subject to the effects of the curse. Even some of the monsters had suffered. Earlier, he'd had a hallucination that he had sliced through Elder Bernard's chest, and watched him bleed as he spoke the nonsense he always spoke. *** "Tooth." "Yes, Elder Bernard?" "You are a disgrace! The forest is not a playground! It is a sacred place designed by the gods as a home of beauty and nature!" "Excuse me, Elder Bernard, but we are nature" "You are wrong, warrior! We are manifestations of god's will, designed to prove to god the worth of life! You are an insult to the great god of this world, and you will never become a true Lycan!" *** Elder Bernard was the disgrace, not Tooth; the rules of the werewolves were always signed by his silver fist. Someday, Tooth would kill him, and maybe a few humans for the heck of it, just to see the other Elders' shock. Yes, they'd all fear Tooth. He would be the most powerful wolf of all time. Tooth dreamt of killing and genocide, and his teeth grew from his mouth. Oh, how he wanted it.
Dominic heard a car behind him. He thought it was funny, funny that there were still cars running, he hadn’t thought there would be enough petrol for the cars to still be running, but then he remembered that there had been more than one petrol station, the town had more than one station, and there had only been one explosion, of course only one explosion wouldn’t … CAR! Nic forced himself to jump to keep the car from hitting him, how could he almost let the car hit him? Bloody H*** he was losing focus, he was so hungry, he needed food food food food food … he needed to eat, find something to eat, he needed to find something to eat, where was he going to find something to eat, there weren’t any food for him to eat … The car! How could Nic forget the car, of course there was food, there was food in the car, how could he forget that there would need to be food driving the car, he’d almost been hit by the car, how could he forget that somebody was driving the car? Nic ran after the car, he caught up wit it, he saw the food, caught up with the food driving the car. He punched the passenger window, no, not the passenger window, the driver was behind that window, that was the driver window, what the f*** was the driver doing behind the wrong window? Stupid, bloody colonials trying to get themselves killed, trying to kill themselves driving backwards, were they trying to starve him to death driving backwards… Focus! He forced himself to focus on the food, the food driving the car, focus on the driver driver driver driver driver… The food looked out the window at Nic, looked out the air that used to be a window window window… She looked at him, looked at him and yelled “Blue!” Why “blue,” why would she do that, why would she yell “blue”? What was so special about blue blue blue blue blue blue blue… She started yelling again. “Pink, blue, green! Red red, green green, blue blue, green green, red blue yellow green!” F***ing H***, she needed to shut up, Nic needed her to shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up… He looked the food in the eye and forced himself to focus on mesmerizing her to: “Stop the car and get out.” She smiled, gave him a thumbs up, what the f*** was the thumbs up for, and told him “Green, blue, green, blue, green”, before stopping and opening the door. “Yellow yellow, pink pink, purple purple, blue?” Nic was pretty sure that her last sentence, no, not a sentence, just words, random words, her last words sounded like a question, question, question, stupid question, what the H*** was the question? Never mind, never mind the question, just eat, focus on the eating.
John found himself darting through the silent alleyways more than usual on this silent night. As he peeked around the Old Town Baker he saw that street was empty. Taking the rare chance in stride, John bolted from his cover, canvas bag bobbing against his thigh. He didn't stop running until he was safe behind the hardware store's high brick facade. Giving himself the benefit of the doubt, John let out a deep sigh. He was safe. For now. Pulling his black windbreaker closer, John gazed down at his bounty. His dangerous nighttime escapade had taken him to Bernardo's Deli, the only place in town where a client with his condition could have some... discretion. Twenty pounds of still oozing beef swung in the canvas bag at his side. For years he had tried to ween himself off the stuff, even going as far as not eating for weeks, but to no avail. At the end of month long fasts, John had tried to eat the processed food that regular folk lived off of. But he could never stomach it for more than a few minutes before it covered the floor of kitchen. In the end, he always needed gorge himself on pounds of raw, bloody flesh. Most of the time he simply ran off to the Deli. But there was one time... He didn't want to remember that. Twenty years ago he had been attacked. Twenty years ago he had stopped being a human. Something twice the size of the biggest man John had ever seen and reeking of blood savaged him in the forest. It was a hunting trip gone wrong. John still had the gouge mark on his chest where the thing bit him, and his arms and face were scarred from massive claws. Near death, John had dragged his bloody body out of the forest. He left his friends for dead back in the clearing where they were attacked. He had seen a monster. He had seen his friends die. He was in more pain than he ever thought possible. All John wanted to do at that moment was die. But John didn't die. John lived. Not as a human, but as a predator of the night. Twenty years after the attack John found himself living in the quaint little conclave that was Smalltown. He lived the double life that many...people in his predicament endured. At forty he was one of the town's longest served police officers, but also at forty he was one of the youngest werewolves in town. John just wanted to live quietly away from the dangers that being a creature of the night brought. As he walked home, trying to forget twenty years of history in a single night, he ran his hand through his gray streaked hair. That was one thing that would never let him forget what he was. The others of his kind had taken to calling him Gray John. Where most werewolves managed to age slowly and appear youthful, John had aged like a normal man. His own personal curse. John just wanted to live a normal life, but he knew he never could. Deep shadows covered the way home. John saw it as a bad omen. He turned left where he should have went right and found himself at a dead end. Something wasn't right. With a wary look John turned around to go home. He'd just deal with the shadows that covered the street. There were people blocking his way. At least they pretended to be people. John knew they were Reavers, living, burning shadows that paraded around in men's clothing. Six of the damnable creatures blocked the alley. John saw the familiar glint of metal knives in their hands. More than likely the blades were forged of silver. "It is good you chose to walk this path," a seventh figure emerged from the deep shadows, "it makes for a simple death." The figured was robed in black, a simple black mask on its face. John couldn't tell what it was. "What do you want?" John snorted. He knew he wouldn't like the answer. "Blood," the robed figure answered,"the blood of your kind works so well in our craft." John snarled and threw the canvas bag to the ground. He blinked and his eyes changed from the earthy brown of man to the pale yellow of wolves. "If it's blood you want you'll have no easy time getting it!" John's snarl turned into a roar. The predator had come out to hunt.
Dominic felt his mind clear up as he finished eating. At this point, he wasn’t worried about hiding the body, as any vampire hunters that came to this Hellhole – and stayed sane enough to pose a threat – would have bigger problems to worry about than finding him. At least, he hoped that they would. Nic took the car keys and started driving. It was about 3:30 AM when he came to a snack-shop-with-burn-wreckage formerly known as a petrol station. Nobody was working there, so he had to break the lock on the door, but at least he wouldn’t have to waste any energy mesmerizing a clerk into giving him the provisions for free. The water and meat were completely gone, but Nic found enough fruit juices and nut mixes this time, so he didn’t worry about his food at home getting sick again. He was not, however, willing to risk another alcohol incident, so he left the beer alone. While he was collecting what little milk hadn’t gone bad, he heard more cars outside. He stashed his own finds in a closet, and he went to the front to assess the people that arrived. They certainly appeared to be the kind that would enjoy an anarchic wasteland such as this one: pistols, crowbars, pseudo-Sex Pistol jackets… Most importantly, none of them smelled of insanity. Perhaps they had come from out of town recently enough to not be affected yet? Nic would need to keep them safe.
Tyler stared blankly at the pile of corpses before him. His cleaver, held out to his right, and red with gore. Looking at the blood dripping from his blade and clothing, strangely, reminded him of his favourite show, Dexter. It reminded him so much of himself, aside from the no emotions thing. He loved many people...dearly. Footsteps coming from the trail and through the trees snapped him from his thoughts, and demons of his past, as a few more murderous people of all kinds crept towards him, at the front, a doctor with a chainsaw. It was an odd sight, Tyler thought, before each of the citizens-turned-killers rushed to their deaths at Tyler's hands. Whipping out his combat knife, he threw it between the eyes of the chainsaw wielding doctor, then gave the cleaver treatment to the rest as they came, taking many hits during, but he seemed numb to pain. It ended same as before, him standing before another pile of corpses. 'I need to figure out what's going on. This is too many, and they attacked too openly.' He thought, retrieving his knife and walking towards the town.
Nic pushed the doors open, making sure to be loud enough to attract the gang's attention. All of them turned to face him, and one of them - apparently the leader, despite standing the shortest - pointed a sawn-off shotgun in Nic's direction while his followers drew their handguns. Nic looked the short man in the eye and commanded him, "Take your hand off the trigger, and put the barrels in your mouth." Nic wasn't sure what scared the man's followers more: the fact that he obeyed Nic at all, or the fact that he did it so quickly and calmly. "Good. So do I have all of your attention now?" Everybody - except the mesmerised leader - answered over each other with a mostly-intelligible mess of Yes's, ****-yes's, please-don't-kill-us's, what-the-****-are-you's… Nic asked them, "How long have you been here?" The sole woman in the group answered, "Almost a week." "And have you seen what's been happening to people in this Hellhole?" "Yes." "Are you afraid that you all will go insane they way that everybody else has?" She didn't answer at first. She looked back and forth between her friends for a few seconds before saying, "That hadn't occurred to us." "Well, that's too bad, because I'm stronger than any of you and even my brain isn't safe, so I guarantee that you won't be stable for very long either. Worst part for me is, I am psychically incapable of leaving for some stupid reason that I don't know about. Have any of you tried to leave?" "No." "Well I think that you should. I think that you should go a few miles out of town, however far it take to not see any crazies any more. I think you should establish some kind of hideout, where you can get into town quickly yet not go insane yourselves." "And then what?" "Come back here in a few days, and we'll come up with a longer-term plan from there." "And if we don't?" Nic looked back at the leader. "Put your finger back on the trigger." He did. Everybody else aimed their guns at Nic, but he told them, "I could just force you to drop those, but I'm trying to be as polite as circumstances allow. Would you please stop pointing those at me?" The woman lowered her gun last, but eventually she did. "I'll be here every night between the hours of 2 and 4. If you find someplace to stay out of town, then you can pick up Napoleon here and leave somebody else with me. That way, none of you have to be here for more than a day or two at a time, and nobody goes crazy. Everybody wins." He pointed back at the leader. "And if any of you don't care enough about your friends to do this for them, then just remember that I can make you tell them that." The humans all looked at each other for a few seconds, and then started walking back to their cars. "If he's dead by the time we get back, we'll set you on fire." Nic just held up the hand with his watch. "Tick, tock, tick, tock." Everybody drove off. Nic took the shotgun from the man, ordered "Get in the car and wait for me," and went back inside for the food he'd found to feed his food at home.
Tyler walked through the woods, on the trail, baffled at what was going on. He eventually came to an opening, and in the distance could see some buildings. Suddenly, he had a flashback. He was in his teens again, stalking one of the trailer trash bastards responsible for what he called "the incident." As the boy approached civilization, Tyler swooped down and smashed his head open with his cricket bat. With anger, he repeated this, hitting him over, and over, and over, and over. That was when he looked down and saw the womans body. No marks on her, very unusual for the circumstances. THe people seemed to be tearing each other apart with bare hands in the streets! but this woman had only on indication of how she died: bite marks on her neck. "Strange" he whispered, looking around for the psycho that did this. Perhaps he watched too much Dracula movies.
Dominic's new friend - Nic was thinking about naming him Napoleon - was starting to recover from the mesmer. "What the **** did you do to me?" "I kept you from getting your friends killed. A little appreciation would be nice, but I guess I'll settle for I'll settle for -" That didn't seem to be what Napoleon wanted to hear. He started looking around for his shotgun, but Nic grabbed his skull, forced him to face forwards, and asked, "And, that would go differently," trailing off for dramatic effect, "how exactly?" Napoleon sat still. "So where are you taking me?" "I've got a pet doctor a couple of miles out who'd built a storm cellar under his house. If I find somebody who hasn't succumbed to the madness yet, I let them stay in the bunker so that they don't go crazy, and my doctor tells me what everybody needs to stay physically healthy." "Are you ****ing insane?" "Only when I'm hungry." Nic noticed a man walking down the road as he drove past. He stopped and rolled down the window. The man walking didn't smell crazy, so he told Napoleon, "Wait here. Trust me, I can run faster then you can when I'm starving, and I've eaten less than an hour ago," honked the horn to get the man's attention, and got out of the car to offer him a ride.
Tyler looked up to see a man approaching. It was dark, and he could barely make out any details. "Hello? Whats going on?" He asked, attempting to see if the man was sane enough to answer. He was clearly sane enough to drive a car without crashing it into a lamp pole. He gripped his cleaver tight regardless. It could be a trick, though he saw with the lights on that there was a man sittin in the passenger seat. "Yo, you guys aint insane are you?" He hollered, though it was a hypocritical question. He was maybe not as crazy as the people in this town, but crazy nevertheless.
