A Movable Colossus- Open to males and females. Open to four players including I
Summary: This RP is a period survival horror inspired by a combination of dreams and the works of H.P Lovecraft, particularly "Nyarlathotep" and "The Haunter of the Dark". It involves a semi immortal man touched by the evil and as a result was given the gift of near immortality but also cursed to flee the ravenous appetite of accursed creatures normally unseen and normally unable to interfere with mankind. With unlimited time, he spent the centuries collecting wealth to build a massive estate on land that seemed safe from the things that had stalked him. With and without physical form and seemingly confined to places and objects, Lawrence hid himself in a luxurious prison and busied himself with the tedious tasks of business and hiding himself from anyone who might realize that the heir to Highwind Estate bore an uncanny resemblance to his "father" in his youth.
History: Blessed and cursed with a craven nature, Lawrence was content with building more and more wealth. The other near immortals who'd been created along with him were all dead, either consumed early by those things or killed in Providence, Rhode Island in 1880 in an ill-begotten attempt to destroy what they believed was
a source of nightmare plaguing them. Whether there were others was unknown to him, but if there were they certainly seemed to be doing a good job of hiding their origins.
Conflict: Uncertain times and hopeless sentiment were pervasive in Europe; class strife and pestilence wrought havoc upon the institutions of power and the long standing authority of religion. Used to the centuries of malady and disease, Lawrence barely concerned himself with the contents of the newspaper dated 1 MARCH 1901 until an article caught his attention and filled him with a familiar and warning terror. Underneath a blurred photograph of a crowd before a dark figure, Lawrence took in the words that confirmed the thing, or at least a thing that had hunted him unsuccessfully for ages had finally introduced itself to the world. A nameless man, of old stock, tall, dark in appearance like the ancient pharaohs of old, had first arrived in Damascus and shown wonders to the Muslems. In the night, guided by a sense of desperation, cities had emptied into the streets and sought him when he was near. His origin was unknown, but some spoke that he had come from the plains of the Nile Delta, while others swore he had come out of the dunes of Arabia. It was said that he imparted answers to any question, and that when he'd finally introduced himself to the European Continent in Spain that hundreds of Arabs and Africans followed in his wake, stopping only to praise and discuss his words. So strenuous was his pace that scores of the exhausted died on the roads behind him. Speaking in Gibraltar, European newspapers reported of his wondrous advances in magnetism and electricity as well as his inhuman nature; it was said even the wild beasts licked his hands.
For potential partners: I've written a sadly extensive backstory on Lawrence, but will leave that for the RP itself. For your character, feel free to create anything and everything, male or female, with a few exceptions. The story doesn't necessarily have to have a happy ending, although in the same sentence I'm not committed to killing of our characters or making them insane.
*Don't play as someone who's killed or successfully fought whatever is it haunting Lawrence and humanity. It's OP.
*Please don't make someone infinitely older and/or incredibly powerful where he/she can fight the monsters initially. That develops later.
*Don't have all of the answers in the beginning. Try to approach it from the perspective of you, as a human being trying to deal with someone infinitely beyond your power to resolve.
With that being said, go ahead and make your character to the limits of your imagination. Take liberties and make them interesting.
Added note, to those who I proposed a very very rough draft of this several months ago, I apologize for it falling apart. The story wasn't ready.
In the guest house where he usually preferred to stay, Lawrence perused the "family" books as he carefully rerecorded ancient pages from centuries past onto a modern ledger. It was tedious work that kept him protected from his "parents" in the event that they tried to skim from him; in truth, he allowed a certain level of corruption to keep them satisfied, to a point. These parents were one of the better guardians he'd chosen, and with the exception of womanizing on the part of his father and an obsession with philanthropic causes on his mothers he never felt the slightest inkling that either would betray him. Still, they were aging. Buried in the one room truly kept to himself on the manor, Lawrence stopped writing for a moment to look upon the stones above him in reflection; it was one room that he couldn't afford to modernize, and it betrayed the post medieval roots of the structure. In truth, it was the oldest of all the buildings on the estate and his first home.
Satisfied with his work as he finished the ledger, he blew out the candle before navigating his way through the darkness to the door; since he could remember the room had been the same, and expertly he arrived at the worn handle. Despite being several hundred years old, the room was kept immaculately dry as it housed the finances and histories of his namesake. As he'd arranged, the more managerial aspects of day to day business were handled by his father although Lawrence preferred to sign off on all agreements of importance himself; unbeknownst to him, his forgeries had become sloppy and distinguishable to the discerning eye. To others, he preferred to be a polite if not quiet young man trying to take an active role in the governance of his household. Underlying this seemingly organized and repetitive lifestyle was a terror that seemingly only affected him, and was the primary reason that the young master rarely left Highwind Estate.
He first realized its existence long ago, shortly after he realized his aging had ceased in the apse of an abandoned and decrepit abbey; in those times, pestilence had stripped him of his true parents, friends, and lover. Alone, he'd come for solitude and to seek the compassion of whatever higher being was present and had instead come face to face with some immortal and nameless horror; at that time, it didn't even have form, just a malevolent presence that left him petrified before he fled, covered in the blood and grime of those who had been his companions. Somehow, it seemed tied to that place back then, but as the years and generations progressed he'd come to find that almost nothing was beyond its grasp. Nothing except for the land he'd found and built his dynasty upon. The grounds themselves had seemed so lush and full of life back then that he was sure it was special somehow, and until recently on a chilly winter morning, it had been.
03-16-2013
Closet Nerd
I haven't read the post all the way and I have to leave about now but I'd like to mark my interest here.
03-16-2013
Terminal
Interested.
Here's a rough-draft for a character. Interested to see whether this takes off.
Abiram Chesed Miltiades is the name of a lad born to a scholar of Religious history in 1781, bearing a name that was his own if neither his father's or mother's. A fateful name, that one, chosen in innocence but ultimately damning nonetheless.
Still, of that Scholar's seven sons and daughters, Abiram was the only one to live past childhood - three died at birth, two more of cholera, one of smallpox and the last vanishing under mysterious circumstances in the middle of the day during a brief lapse in attendance by both parents. Determined to not let their own inattentiveness be the death of him, Abiram was positively lavished with attention, but also shut away from the world at large. His memories of the time remain vague, but Abiram's father had a clerical position of some sort as part of the French Monarchy, while his mother had been of common birth. As such, his family had the rare experience of both being a part of the French Revolution on the side of the rebellious lower class, and refugees of the now infamous Reign of Terror. Seeing the winds beginning to turn, Abiram's father arranged for the family to move as far away as feasible at the time. Though the reasons remain unknown to this day, Abiram's father was adamant on not moving the family North.
Such were the circumstances, when the family arrived at the coastal city of Tunis on the day of Abiram's twelfth birthday - his father had obtained a position with an archaeological team surveying the ruins of Carthage. His work was peculiarly secretive, and he had encouraged Abiram's mother to keep the boy indoors at all times, away from the populace of the land. The nights were secretive and fearful, with the door being firmly barred and the windows shuttered. No callers were to be taken then, and though nothing of note happened in the region for the next several decades, the locals soon fell into a similar pattern of behavior, the city of Tunis turning into a dead and empty space each night as all fled indoors in fear of a Haggard force that watched the streets, growing ever more powerful with time.
Time passed, and Abiram eventually turned fourteen - he was sent away to Britain, his father having pulled a few of his remaining strings to have him apprenticed to a mercantile company there - it was a sensible choice, with Great Britain being the most stable region upon the globe at the time, and in the coming decades would grow to become the greatest power in the world for a time. Abiram lived an unremarkable life there, going on to become a quartermaster at age 19 and marrying at 21, later divorcing at 24 on the grounds of infidelity. His wife bore one child, though her parentage remains questionable. Abiram lived the next eight years of his life picking up several vices in order to fill the void his relatively high position granted him - he took to drinking and gambling, and was well-known for a time amongst the brothels of the resort-town Brighton. During this period, he remained suspiciously free of disease and illness and retained the vigor and health of a man in his early twenties, conceiving no children out of wedlock despite his lecherous ways.
He had his father to thank for that, unbeknownst to him. In 1813, having drifted through a life of ignorance and wanton pleasure and greed, Abiram received a missive penned by his father's hand.
By the time you receive this letter, I shall have been devoured by the bones of the Earth. Were there but anything left of my estate, I would hereby bequeath it to you - I trust that my sacrifices have ensured your continued comfort, wherever you may be or circumstances you may find yourself in. Know that this shall always be true - I have, through means nothing short of providence itself, assured that such shall remain a constant. The world is as your plaything, my son, but now that I have passed your years of leisure shall now be accompanied with duty. With this letter you should have received the figuhttp://i196.photobucket.com/albums/a...psceed826d.pngot to be mishandled. You must preserve it to the best of your abilities - no servant, craftsman, artisan or assistant must ever lay hand upon it. I do not know what consequences would result if http://i196.photobucket.com/albums/a...ps28cf7d70.pngd so if you find that you need answers, you must find the remnants (whomever or whatever that may be) of the CRC, and you shall know its symbols as follows:
The package that had arrived with the missive bore signs of tampering, the package and binding being cut, broken and retied. Nothing remain within except for a small fragment of what looked like smoky quartz. Not seeing anything legibly useful in the letter, Abiram was dismissive of its contents, leaving both letter and the fragment of quartz inside a desk drawer in the study of his home.
It did not occur to him that something was wrong until nearly 30 years later when an old colleague accused him of impersonation, as he looked not a day older than when he had received his father's letter. A cruel investigation at the hand of British authorities followed, though Abiram managed to eventually convince them that he had maintained his youthful looks with the assistance of 'a tea ritual involving rare herbs' that he had learned from an Egyptian prostitute. These were not the end of his troubles though - the attention he had gained from the authorities had brought with it the notice of several anomalous events involving the routines of his life, mostly involving entire sections of his manor that had rotted through without his notice and the discovery of a desiccated maid's corpse in his offices at the docks. Dice would grow brittle and frigid after being tossed by him, and mirrors and metals tarnished as he passed by. Though he tried to dismiss all of this, as the next two years passed, more anomalous events began to conspire about him. Fresh soil turned to salt flat as he walked over it, women he touched would become barren, and some would then die of an unquenchable thirst mere days later. All drink began to have a brackish taste to it, and centipedes started to follow him about, skittering and hiding within his shadow.
Enough was enough - after pondering upon the legion of unusual circumstances surrounding his life, Abiram eventually traced his steps back to his father's letter, only to discover that the small fragment of quartz he had left with the letter had gone missing, though the drawer had been firmly locked and filled with dust, and the wrapping left as it had been.
Reviewing the contents of the letter, it was then that Abiram made the connection between it and his unnaturally long life, making the decision then to move to America - there, he would hopefully outdistance the esoteric happenings that plagued his life in Britain. Arranging for his holdings, business and fortune to be shifted overseas took Abiram more than six years, and once he arrived he was forced to stop in Boston when a steamboat that had caught fire nearly burnt down the entire city of St. Louis, his planned destination. Convincing himself that he had moved far enough away from Europe to evade the continuous plague of anomalous events that had harried him at seemingly every step, he simply set up shop in the coastal city and so conveniently road out the entirety of the American Civil War when it sprang up exactly a decade later.
Abiram's plan had worked - no longer did his drink turn to swill, no longer did the soil he trod upon become sterile, and no longer did the skittering of hundreds of tiny legs follow him wherever he left. Determined to make the most of his immortality, Abiram turned over several new leafs, swearing off alcohol, gambling and women. He began to attend Sunday masses, and took up a healthy if tangential interest in regional politics. He established a presence as a reliable and honest trader and businessman. Though he found himself less educated than even the common layperson of the Western World, he did his best to adapt and was known to his fellow man as a dignified and honest gentleman. In the late 1860s, he withdrew from society at large under the pretense of ailing health, and began to make arrangement for his 'son' to inherent his business and holdings, waiting a cautious decade for people to forget his face before daring to walk boldly in public once more. And then, just to be safe, he made through with his original plan to move to St. Louis when he had first come to the land more than a score of years before.
And, just as with every other move Abiram had made in his life, the most recent one came with rather fortunate timing. Not but two years settled in his new home in the year 1880, his old home in Boston was thoroughly ransacked and reduced to timber and rubble by unseen perpetrators overnight, with neighbors reporting no unusual sights or sounds between dusk and dawn to shed any light as to what had occurred. This marked the resurgence of the anomalous events that Abiram had originally fled Europe in order to escape - his first warning came when he saw twelve centipedes tangled in a knotted heap atop his kitchen counter one morning, whereupon he immediately retrieved the ancient and worn document his father had sent to him nearly half a century before and half a world away. It had become clear to him that he would not ever be able to fully escape the reaches of whatever force plagued him, and so he began pulling strings and plying his numerous connections to have investigators and experts of history to study the document and its contents in order to locate the mysterious 'CRC' alluded to therein. Abiram's childhood memories of Tunis and the ruins of Carthage were but vague and nameless memories to him, and so there was little he could provide his agents with other than immense monetary compensation.
Years passed, and Abiram no longer left the city of St. Louis unless absolutely necessary, and even then at speed, preferably by train. Haggard figures had begun to haunt the edges of his vision, visages with indistinct forms that were depthless and infinitely tractionable, hurtful to the eyes and nerves. Abiram took several mistresses and hired dozens of new assistants, servants and attendants for the sole purpose of never having to be alone wherever he went, a habit which eased but failed to reduce the occurrence of anomalies about him. He began to purchase and sell properties, moving in and out of houses and manors, staying in them only for as long as it took before crystalline chasms began to occupy the threshold of each window. Years passed in this way, and still no answers came of his investigations.
Finally, in 1901, he received a telegram from one of his hired men overseas - a short message, telling him to look for a single person who might be able to help him.
In the afternoon of the next day, as he arranged to depart from the city, he received word that several of his associates had vanished - and when he turned his back on one of his mistresses for a scant moment, when he had turned around again he had found that she had turned from head to toe into a statue of salt. Residents living in his previous homes began to die under mysterious circumstances. As he boarded a train leaving the city, centipedes swarmed along the tracks, slowly pursuing the steam engine and its carriages as it left the station, and Abiram saw many 'passengers' aboard the train who did not belong, neither there nor anywhere else upon the world. As he peered out of the windows into the countryside, he saw hellish visions of landscapes too bleak to be seen even in the deepest and more fiercesome of nightmares...
He sincerely hoped this enigmatic 'Lawrence' would be able to shed some light onto the occurrences about him. It was unlikely the Abiram was long for this world if things continued to progress in this fashion...
03-16-2013
Johan
Thanks to both of you for your interest. I'll give it a day or two waiting for a fourth person before I make the OOC.
I might add, Abiram seems to be a very fitting addition to the cast.
I realize that I left it rather open ended, so I've created a few premade concepts if that helps anyone.
*Researcher having spent time acquiring ancient artifacts and becoming introduced to disturbing finds. He/she could have published on the subject and come to the attention of others that way.
*A reporter who found evidence of something otherworldly and again published or wrote on the subject.
*A detective or curious person that investigated Highwind Estate for one reason or another and became aware of the strangeness there.
*Someone being used or manipulated by an unknown party for their own purposes.
Again, just some ideas but by all means create your own persona.
