All right... moving at a bit slower pace than would be ideal, but progressing nonetheless (though I'd still really like to hear from @rocketrobie2).
Does Morgraine have any reactions to get out of the way about Torquil going through the lantern or Arcturus deciding to stay behind before the time-skip, @bloonewb?
Currently working on the outline of the time-skip before actually writing it, and I'm debating how far to skip ahead. Essentially, the trip to the Cathedral Ward, which would be Morgraine and Victor's ultimate destination, would have several minor encounters and situations that I'm unsure whether Morgraine would actually stop and want to interact with. And so, for the time being, here is a brief outline of what the journey will entail so you (bloonewb) can figure whether Morgraine would react strongly enough to interrupt the time-skip and RP events:
Firstly, outside the clinic they will be on a plateau with a row of seemingly uninhabited houses to their left, and a ledge with a guard rail to their right beyond which is an view from above of the rooftops and streets of Old Yharnam, with smoking pyres and packs of beasts visible. Victor will close and lock the door to the clinic and light the censer beside it.
Just a little further away, Victor will ask Morgraine to watch Adelicia for a moment while he enters the only house on the street with a lit censer, citing it is to "check on them". There will be some minor commotion inside as he unceremoniously kills several of them before returning and ushers Morgraine and Adelicia onward.
A ways down the plateau, after the city beneath it transitions from Old Yharnam to Yharnam proper, they will arrive at an elevator. Outside the top of the elevator will be some blood smears, but little else of note. At the bottom of the elevator, however, they will find the remains of a battlefield with copious amounts of spilled blood, one dead church servant, a dead church giant, three dead and thoroughly mauled scourge beasts and, a little ways away, a dead Hunter in the garb of the White Church, lying face-down with the back of his garb torn apart and a broad strip of skin seemingly having been cut off his back.
Next they will arrive at the shelter, where they will simply deposit Adelicia before moving on, now much faster since they aren't limited by the speed and stamina of a relatively normal human.
And finally they will arrive at the Cathedral Ward.
That's about the outline of the full trip. For the sake of a balance between brevity and proper RP, I'll let you decide which would be the first among those that would cause Morgraine to go "Hey, wait minute!"
He is not, no. There is a Church Pick on the ground a ways off from him, but it has been snapped to pieces. Otherwise all that is immediately obvious would be a burned-out torch on the ground next to him. She could search his corpse if she wanted to see if he had anything else of use, but she wouldn't be able to tell at a glance.
I am writing my next post at the moment (a longer one, I can reveal) and was repeatedly referring to your post, bloonewb, when I noticed a sentence that had escaped my notice the first time I read it:
However, even at a full near-run, she found she did not even become slightly winded. Is this the saint's blessing, this strength that fills her?
Was this just a spur-of-the-moment expression assuming that her Hunter-transformation was the result of the blood of a saint, or did Morgraine actually accept Adelicia's blessing (which is to say, her blood)?
Should I try to go for a follow up post, describing Arcturus doing things in the clinic or something? I was gonna wait on a time skip post getting him into the dream before posting again, but I suppose there's more about his actions I could describe.
Oh, that's what was supposed to happen? I'm very sorry, I'll get right on writing something for Arcturus, then... though it might get a little awkward in terms of desync, since time will have passed since Nigel and Torquil went to the Dream, yet he will effectively show up before anything has really happened... Eh, I guess it is a dream...
Mayhaps I should've given him a post detailing his actions in the clinic first, so Torquil and Nigel have time to do things... I can still do that, if you want?
We could do that, though it would still depend primarily on @rocketrobie2, who supposedly hasn't logged in for 7 days according to RPGuild... Had it just been Torquil it wouldn't have been a problem (obviously, since then the scene would be all NPCs).
Oh... hm. Okay, I think it's time to talk about one of the secrets I have been keeping from you, since this is the point where your input actually starts to be rather relevant in how this is done. You may have noticed how, when Nigel and Torquil used the lantern and went to the Hunter's Dream, that I included a part in the posts of them arriving that went:
With a little text describing them sensing something odd here.
This, I may as well clue you in on, is a consequence of them being false Paleblood Hunters; certain conditions will trigger events signified by that message, and one of those events happens to have been triggered on them going through the lantern to the Hunter's Dream. OOC, what happens in practice is this: I have made a small application that I have, and when the event triggers, I click a button and the application randomly chooses one of more than seventy outcomes of that event. Technically speaking this happens through several layers of RNG in the background, with different likelihoods of different outcomes, but you don't really have to worry about that. All you need to know is that I made this to essentially place the results of these events outside even my own control (aside from me having decided the odds for each outcome and the list of outcomes to choose from) and make them truly random. With Nigel, the application returned:
For Torquil it was:
But, here's the "but": some of these consequences involve physical changes to the characters' bodies, and one of those came up when I clicked in the application for Arcturus:
Now, I know that some players are highly invested in their characters' appearance, which is why I am now telling you all of this. I want to give you the option, at least for these particular results of the event, to veto the outcome if such a change hinders your enjoyment of the RP.
So... there. For DrabberRogue, I'd like to explicitly ask whether he is okay with something as described in the screenshot happens to Arcturus, and for everyone else, if the event triggers for your characters and results in physical changes to your character, always remember that you have the option to veto. If you (any of you) reject the outcome of the event, I will simply click the button again and have it select a different outcome.
@bloonewb, while I appreciate the initiative and would have been totally okay with it in a different collaborative writing effort, I would really prefer if you (and the players of the RP in general) abstained from describing as-of-yet unspecified details in the environment, let alone entirely new areas and NPCs. It makes it extremely awkward for me to GM the story if I don't control the context for your characters... you could even say that it's the entire point of the GM to do so.
I'd much prefer a very short IC-post or even just an OOC-post to a post that sets the scene. I ignored it so far because it has primarily been about environments just observed in passing, but... yeah. Generally speaking it is probably for the best to stick to your character, and if they interact with something or go somewhere I haven't detailed yet, that's probably a good point to end the post and let the GM take over.
No no, I guess I was just erring on the side of caution as to whether to advance things before receiving confirmation that there was no further questions or conversations to be had before entering the next area. I apologize for the confusion, I just didn't want to propel Morgraine onward until I had definite confirmation that she was ready to be propelled...
