Radasanth Nights: Part One ((OPEN))

[The Cinderella Man]

Left 4 Dead (The First Wave)

((Open to three))

There was no end to them.

In his right Aicha smoldered like a freshly lit cigar, tireless in this waltz of death and fireworks that overtook the street. She sang her thunderous song over and over again, spewing bullets on the oncoming sacks of flesh that used to be human, but even that wasn’t enough. For every one that she perforated and left bleeding on the pavement, three more popped up, heedless to the fate of their kin. They moved like puppets on a set of strings, languid and clumsy, with a set of eyes that looked at him like a ravenous man would look at a freshly baked roast. Some tripped and fell, some dropped down to feed on the flesh of their fallen brethren, but there was so fucking many of them that it didn’t matter. They were a tide of clammy limbs and gapping maws, ready to sink their teeth into anything juicier than a piece of rock.

It was a little bit like being stuck in a story, Victor thought as he replaced the magazine of his pistol with his eyes on the encroaching mob advancing through the benighted street, the kind that someone told by a campfire in the middle of the night. He didn’t like that thought, though, or the train that carried it. Folk in those stories usually wound up chopped up, torn apart or cooked in a large pot with a bunch of crazies dancing around. And while the ex-boxer didn’t value his life a whole lot these days, he was pretty damn certain that he didn’t want to end up as the main course on a zombie festival in some back alley of the Radasanth’s Slums.

Yes, zombies, that’s what he believed they were called. He didn’t know much about the lore or whatever, but he had overheard enough barroom stories told by adventurers that dealt with monsters and he was pretty sure this is what they talked about. Slow, brainless, hungry, very resistant to damage, check, check, check and check. Now if only he could remember what they had said about killing the goddamned things. Alas, Victor Callahan was a boxer and boxers got hit in the head a lot and thus seldom have a very good memory. Not that he particularly needed the info right now. The fact of the matter was that he didn’t have nearly enough bullets to fight off this rapidly growing stampede (an agonizingly slow stampede, but still). So he ran.

And Victor bloody hated running. It had nothing to do with his hurt pride or male bravado, though. It was simply that he wasn’t built for running. He was always a slugger, a bludgeoner, somebody who relied mostly on his strength to get the job done. As such, he could probably punch a bull in the head and get away with it, but he couldn’t run in a straight line for more than five hundred yards before he was puffing like an overloaded steamboat. So some four hundred paces and a couple of nondescript alleys later, he was standing below one of the street lamps, breathing the fire out of his lungs and staring down the end of a long avenue. It was quiet. Too quiet. It wasn’t that late in the night. There should still be people around, hookers parading their damaged goods, shady hooded creeps with twitchy fingers, and maybe even a patrolman or two that lost his way from the Bazaar District about half a mile north. But there was no one. Only the growing stench of death, the sourly sweet reek of rotting flesh and spilled blood. Something terrible has happened, and it happened fast.

Hours ago he had been in Saddle Ablaze, a puffed up whorehouse that was easy on the eyes and heavy on the wallet. Victor didn’t care much about the money (and didn’t have that much money to care about anyways), but he always seemed to scrounge enough for a brew or three. Combined with the half-naked chicks dancing around and smiling like you’re the last man on earth and they all wanted to procreate, it made all the life’s shit easier to swallow. But somewhere around the third beer things went to hell in a hand basket. He remembered windows being smashed, girls screaming, bloody faces and crooked teeth and Aicha banging her deadly drum and recoiling like an untamed stallion. Five of them made it out of the madness of the bar, a pair of showgirls severely underdressed for what awaited them (Kitty and Amber their names, Victor gave Kitty his coat), the fat barkeep with his club adequately dubbed The Bouncer, a gentleman wearing a suit and sporting a monocle (who pissed his overpaid pants the moment they stepped out of the frying pan of the bar and into the fire of madness outside) and a grizzled old prizefighter. For all he knew, they were all dead now except for him. He saw the barkeep go down and Amber pulled into the darkness and the lanky business man cowering behind some garbage cans, but that was about it. He lost sight of Kitty somewhere between the third and fourth corner they veered around. He missed her. He missed his coat.

He needed some kind of a plan, even he wasn’t thick enough to disregard that little fact. Locking himself up in some house wasn’t a bad idea, but it sounded more like postponing the inevitable and less like a solution. No, he needed to get out of here and fast, needed to get out of Radasanth and keep going east until people around him are eating turnips and not faces. But that wasn’t a feat he could accomplish alone. He needed some support and the nearby barracks of the Radasanth Watch was a good place to start looking for one. Abandoning running for the time being, Victor moved through the streets at a hurried pace, Aicha cocked and ready at his side.

((Yes, the zombie cliché. I just want to kill some stuff and have some brainless fun, so let's for once not worry about extensive storylines and whatnot. Only one thing to keep in mind really. If you go inactive, your character gets left behind. And gets his brainz eated!! ;)))

[Jillian Verna]

Elena stumbled toward the end of a dark alley. With the two buildings clamped so closely together, the night's shadows hid every detail out of sight. The only source of light came from the street ahead, but even that was dimmed by the dead of night. Her bare feet banged into a trash can, knocking it over and breaking the total silence enveloped around her. The lid toppled and rolled into the paved road, filling the air with a clanging sound that echoed thoughout the street before it finally fell flat. Her feet slipped on some of the spilled contents that felt very much like rotten vegetables that had sat outside for too long, turning into a soft sludge.

She finally made it to the street, her white patient gown sporting some of the green contents of the trash and some spots of dirt. She absent-mindedly brushed some of the mess away, focusing on her unusual surroundings. There wasn't a lot that caught her attention as she found herself on a typical road, wooden and brick homes and shops lining the sidewalks. She couldn't tell what city she was in, though she had to assume it was Scara Brae. Though she spent most of her life in Mortileu Hospital and thus had no knowledge of how the city may look like, Scara Brae was her hometown. Something didn't feel right though. She couldn't remember leaving the hospital.

At a crossway between two streets, her bad feeling heightened. Regardless of it being so late, it was odd for absolutely no one to be out. A light breeze brought an ungodly stench to her nostrils. The smell was one she couldn't place, but the words "rot" and "death" came to mind. In fact, everything in the oddly silent city felt like death.

She kept walking down the same street simply because it contained the most light. She was bound to run into someone and didn't want to find herself in a darker part of town. The hospital patient, while willing to defend herself if needed, wasn't particularly strong. She was quick to anger though, and the uncertainty surrounding her was prodding that temper.

"What's going on?" she asked somewhat vocally, hoping to draw some sort of attention. Her only answer was silence, and a sound that oddly resembled the sounds she made when biting into the cobs of corn her hospital fed the patients daily.

Crunch, crunch, crunch.

She continued down the street, listening to the crunching grow slightly louder, step by step. It was a quick, almost ravenous sound. As she got closer, she was able to note that it was indeed the crunching sounds made from eating. She wondered if she was nearing a late night cafeteria of some sort, though it was odd that she couldn't hear the buzz of conversation that typically surrounded such places.

Crunch, crunch, CRUNCH.

She was right next to the sound. A constant slurping was added to the mix, but she found no building to be particularly inviting. No candle lit windows seemed fitting for any respectable restaraunt. It was as though the people were hiding from her on purpose. Then she pinpointed the sounds. No more than ten feet from the frilly gowned patient, the sounds were coming from another dark alley, just beyond her sight. She needed to know what it was. She needed to find someone, to tell her what in the world was going on.

She stood at the edge of the alley, unsure of how safe it would be to step in blindly. An arm fell from the darkness, fresh blood running down the wrist and over its fingertips. She took a step back and the crunches were interrupted by a low moan. Some rustling from the darkness pushed the arm further into the light, loosely attached to a body that followed. She barely recognized the body as a child. Slowly, two more figures, much more lively, crawled over the corpse. They were children as well, some skin and chunks of bloodied bone falling from their lips. She almost threw up, realizing they were eating what very well could have been their friend. Their eyes were lifeless, but she knew they saw her.

She felt an odd pull on her insides, forgetting momentarily who she was. She looked at the childlike creatures, her eyes growing wide with fear. The patient, Abigail, let out a scream. Her whole body shook as she took a few backward steps. The creatures stood and began to walk toward her, forgetting their current meal. She screamed again, then ran.



Jillian went through a personality change during this post, from Elena to Abigail.

[Requiem of Insanity]

Terror wasn’t in Cassandra’s vocabulary. It was in other people’s, and she inflicted that emotion in those she tortured and killed. But to her, she could never feel the shivering cold grip of the feeling. She had never once had succumbed to her bones quaking and her skin crawling. Her spine never tingled and the hair on the back of her neck never rose.

Her eyebrows, on the other hand, lifted upwards in mute interest as she watched the shambling horde of undead people walking forwards in a shambling congo line from her window in the Radansath Hotel. She gave out a derisive laugh as she heard a shallow moan come from behind her. A swift motion on her heel and she turned to see the man upon the table giving up his last few breaths to the world.

He was lacerated and cut from head to toe. His right nipple was cut off and his lower lip was missing as well. She had thought he died when she shoved the butterfly knife up his rectum, but the man showed incredible resilience to holding on. “Today is just full of surprises.” She sighed walking over to her work table, picking up her tools and knives and slowly putting them away. Silence endured on for the next few minutes, and Cassandra dressed back into her night traveling clothes. She adjusted the strap on her harness which was overfilled carrying her bag, her sword and her axe. Both weapons were not really something she used often, preferring to stay in the shadows and hunt her victims. They were more like trophies; Useful trophies she’d admit.

As her hand moved gently over to the door she turned back to the man upon the bed. “Next time, Jerhi, do us all a favor and try not to bully people. It feeds that darkness that I search for in a person.” She smiled to him, blowing a gentle kiss as she wrapped her hand around the doorknob. Another moan escaped into the air, and she heard something begin to move.

“I don’t know exactly what is going on…” Cassandra lifted her hand to the Butcher’s Bill, her sword, and drew it keeping her back to the corpse that was slowly starting to shift. “But it’d be in your best interest to stay down.” With her threat in the air the corpse rose up, a wail of anguish and fear on its lips as it dove at her like a small child with both arms held out. She twisted on the spot putting all her weight into the swing, and the blade dipped deep into the torso of her victim.

Not even a peep as to the pain it should have been feeling. “Ugh, how boring. If your not going to scream for me you may as well have stayed dead.” She kicked him off her blade and it flailed backwards, rolling onto its back. With half its body dangling to the side it slowly began to lurch upwards. “Stubborn jackass!” She charged forward with her blade, impaling right into the heart of the matter. It grabbed her hand and began to pull with inhuman strength. “What the hell!” She darted her eyes around, looking for something to help her with this current predicament. She found nothing to help her and she began to lose her cool. In a fit of anger she reached for her axe, her hand pulling it from the harness. She rested her hand at the top of the peak, and she swung downwards in a mighty blow cutting off the hand that held her.

“Your stench is vile, beast!” Cassandra chided as she back pedaled. With axe held high she charged forward, and one swift motion took the creatures head off. She inhaled deeply and rose to her full height. She ripped the Butcher’s Bill out and held both like a warrior goddess.

“This is going to be one long day…” She whispered as she heard the shuffling dead start to scrape at her door.

[Vramii]

"I am not very in tune with myself today," Vramii mused as he sat cross-legged in a small garden, consisting mostly of grass and few yellow lilies, out back at a small building near the center of the city. He could not block out the increasingly irksome moans and cries of that night. They had begun nearly ten minutes earlier and the druid could not shake his thoughts from them. He slowly opened his eyes, taking in the darkness of the night, which he much preferred to the unrelenting sunlit Radasanthian days. His keen night vision was a great factor in this preference. The druid stood slowly and picked up his crescent staff from the ground beside him, stretching his arms and legs as he did, thinking, "Let's see what the cause of all this noise is." Vramii walked around the side of the building and into a dark street, lit only by a small, flickering firelight post.

The street was quite empty, Vramii noticed, as he walked its length, his staff in his right hand. A few paces away he heard the rattle of metal and turned toward the source of the sound. Two small trashcans sat with lids placed crookedly atop them. He moved toward them removing one of the lids.

"Leave me alone! Go away demon!" The scream startled Vramii as he peered into the trashcan to see a small, dirty child. His look was only of confusion and he had had no intention of harming the child, but the boy quickly jumped out of the trashcan and sprinted down the street before the dumbfounded druid could utter a word.

"This is turning out to be a strange night indeed," Vramii concluded as he resumed casually walking down the street, following in the direction of the child. He was passing an alley to his left when he heard again a strange and muffled moan like the ones which had disturbed his meditation minutes before. He turned a half-circle to face the dark alley. There he saw a figure moving unnaturally slowly toward him. Even with his improved vision in the dark, the druid could not make out much of the figure in the extremely dark alley. Vramii stood for a moment as the being approached him at its crawling pace. He could only shudder as the figure crept out from the darkness and into the lit street. It, for it could be called nothing else, dragged its bare feet across the ground. The light of the street revealed its bloody pants with a huge chunk missing from its left leg as if it had been bitten. As his eyes moved up the creature’s pale torso to its neck, a look of horror crossed Vramii's face as he noticed the creature's lower jaw was dislodged and dangling to one side. He looked up slightly more to meet the blank gaze of the thing's all white eyes, which seemed to have had all life drained from them.

"What vile and criminal act against nature is this!?" Vramii cried out as he stood horrified at the visage that still crept toward him. The creature raised its arms simultaneously as it neared the druid. Vramii took a stumbling step backward and pulled his staff upward, gripping it tightly. He jabbed it toward the creature as he warned, "Do not come any closer." The creature did not even slow to consider his command. Vramii stabbed forward, hitting the creature in the chest. As he did, the being's arms drew up to his staff and ensnared it. Vramii pulled with all of his strength, but the creature would not yield. Letting go of the staff for a moment, Vramii clenched his fists, showing his bear-clawed gloves on each hand. "You are a perversion of the natural order and so do not deserve life." Vramii struck a hard blow into the creature's face. It stumbled backward and dropped the staff. Vramii gathered his weapon quickly from the ground. As the creature began again to move forward, Vramii stepped up and delivered two powerful blows the its stomach and side. It seemed unaffected.

"Perhaps its weakness is in the mind," Vramii thought as he envisioned his first blow. He again lifted his staff toward the being and jabbed, this time at its face, with all his might. To his surprise, the creature's head rolled from its shoulders onto the ground. The body soon followed, crumbling into a heap. Another moan at his back sent Vramii spinning around to face his next attacker. This time, however there were three more of the creatures sidling towards him. His eyes widened as he looked past the first three to see a small army swarming behind them. "This place is not safe. I must leave,” Vramii said, then turned and quickly ran back in the direction he had first come, thinking the startled reaction of the boy he had found in the trashcan was now entirely justified.