[OOC] Night of the Hunt - a Bloodborne RP

[Bright_Ops]

Oh okay. Sorry just... It didn't click before. Draco would be a Huntsmen then. A pretty good one too in order to have survived as long as he has, considering he and his family were in Hemwick during the hag occupation from start to finish (even if the family Christmas card list was massively reduced doing so).

[Dark Jack]

To have had any kind of even partial success against beasts and creatures of the nightmare (like Mad Ones, who served the Witches of Hemwick), he would have to be a pretty extraordinary huntsman, yeah. I have to stress that he'll still have a really hard time and be at a significant disadvantage in pretty much any fight, though, and will most likely get himself killed unless he becomes a Hunter or a beast. Draco will basically be a slightly-better-than-normal-human facing off against mainly superhuman opponents.
As long as you understand that, I accept your character.

[Dark Jack]

After giving it some thought and having started planning a post to introduce Draco into the RP, it occurred to me that the CS makes no mention of what Draco has been doing since fleeing to Yharnam proper besides "seeking shelter and safety". It has been almost five years (specifically about four years and eight months) since beasts and Hunters started invading Hemwick, after all, and I doubt that Draco and his remaining family would be taken care of as refugees for all that time. How did they survive? How has he been making a living?

[Bright_Ops]

Oh, I can add stuff but... well, Draco and his dad managed to survive by employing their talents as blacksmiths. With the surge of hunters, weapon creation and maintenance were in high demand and thus anyone with the right skills could easily find employment. While the massed hunters also meant a reduction in the need for huntsmen, the Russ' also developed weapons for them (through not trick weapon hunter grade, they still did solid work) and outright offered tactical advice from their experiences in fighting the inhuman so that the new huntsmen weren't going into their first hunts blind.

While the Russ' fought witches and the Mad Ones rather then beasts, they do impart good solid tactics like how to mask ones scent, the value of picking your fights, using the terrain to your advantage, how to spot an ambush before its too late, why blind panic will get you killed but feeling fear will save your life and most important of all: Why you need the element of surprise on your side and how to make it count.

The Russ family as a whole only managed to take down two Mad Ones during their engagement with the Witches of Hemwick. The first Mad One alone killed most of Draco's brothers between the initial engagement and the avenging ambush afterwards, but the second one was killed without a single loss due to better understanding of what it could do and luring it into a trap where they dropped a number of heavy stones on it to stun and cripple it before rushing in to finish it off before it could recover.

[Dark Jack]

Makes sense. Also sort of sounds like Draco and his family would be a good fit for the Fire Dancers with those tactics, had they been Hunters and willing to partake in crime.

One last question: what is the Russ family's (or Draco's specifically) relationship with the branches of the Healing Church? Indifference? Reluctance? Loyal? Antagonistic?

[Bright_Ops]

The relationship would be professional. The hunters and people they send his way are good business and in return he'll be polite and know how the basics of the Healing Church faith work to keep them happy.

[Dark Jack]

Okay, for starters, here's the character that will be escorting Draco and the other civilians with him:

Stefan

Name: Stefan
Race: Hunter
Age: Middle thirties
Faction: White Healing Church
Appearance: A plain but well-groomed gentleman, Stefan has a relatively lithe form the size of which contradicts how well-defined his musculature is, giving him a phenotype that could be described as athletic. He has fairly long legs proportionally to his body, lending to his mobility, and a fair bit of masculine width to his shoulders. His face is neither handsome nor ugly but mostly unremarkable, with his features having neither a masculine nor feminine emphasis – narrow jaw, thin lips, low cheekbones, full cheeks and a forehead of average proportions – but wears his facial hair in a neatly trimmed full goatee and his hair cut short and smoothed back. His hair color is dark brown, and his eyes, which have a slight outward slant and what seems to be perpetual bags of exhaustion under them, are a light hazel color.
His final battle left him bloody and beaten, his jaw broken, a lot of his teeth missing and the intestines ripped from his body. His body was later discovered and found to have had a wide swath of skin cut from his back, leaving a sizable area of naked flesh.
Height: 178 cm (5' 10”)
Weight: 95 kg (210 lb)
Clothes: Wears the garb of the white church, though the garb is now soiled with blood and torn open numerous places.
Hunter gear: A church pick is lying near his corpse, though its blade was broken in half, along with a burned-out torch.
Biography: Having contracted a rampant plague in a country northeast of Yharnam shortly before the Night of the Blood Moon, Stefan arrived in Yharnam mere days after that night to find the city practically in ruins and all infrastructure destroyed. With no organization or leadership there was no control or readily available experts in the Old Blood, and thus no way for him to receive blood treatment to save him from his wasting sickness.
Discovering this, Stefan, realizing that he would not have the strength to seek alternative means of treatment, found a shelter along with others in similar circumstances to himself. This crumbling ruin became his home for nearly a month, as he and his fellows struggled to feed and care for themselves in the ruins of the city, all while avoiding the beasts that still roamed, the opportunistic looters that endeavored to pick the city clean, and the remaining members of the old Healing Church that tried frantically to hold together the remnants of their organization. He watched dozens of desperate souls die, as often from their own failing health as from the teeth and claws of beasts, and found himself anticipating his own end with ever-lessening apprehension, at times almost wishing that death would find him sooner rather than later to end his pointless struggle.

At the end Stefan could barely even move anymore, his body thin and frail from sickness and starvation. He was slipping in and out of consciousness when suddenly he found their little shelter bustling with activity, with men and women in white garbs carrying the handful of survivors that remained from the place. Stefan himself awoke to find himself face to face with a man he later learned to be Harold, the new vicar of the Healing Church, and to be prepared for the blood treatment he so desperately needed. All he had to do was sign a contract, and he would be healed.
Thus Stefan became one of the first Hunters of the new Healing Church, and has served the white church with unquestioning loyalty and obedience ever since. He feels an endless debt of gratitude toward Vicar Harold and would happily give his life for him... or take any life that needs to be taken.

His mission on this Night of the Hunt was to escort civilians to a nearby shelter, though this mission unfortunately proved to be his last. He was assailed by a powerful beast-armed Hunter and was killed while trying to occupy this savage long enough for the civilians to escape.

[Bright_Ops]

@Dark Jack
Okay. So how are we going to be doing this opener then?

[Dark Jack]

I'll get to work on a post that will set the scene for Stefan escorting Draco and some other civilians, potentially including Draco's remaining family if they would have been around him when the bells rang, toward an intended destination of a shelter where the civilians can hide until the Hunt ends. Once the scene is set you can start posting, basically RP'ing with me (since none of the other player characters will be in the immediate vicinity) until Draco finds other player characters.

I'm otherwise occupied just now, but I'll most likely have the post done tomorrow.

[Bright_Ops]

Take your time man.

[Habibi359]

Good to have you on board @Bright_Ops! Welcome!

I'll make a post on Wednesday.

[Habibi359]

I hate when I proke my promise, but the post is here, 2 days late.

[DrabberRogue]

It happened again...

Sorry I vanished so abruptly once more. Guess I wasn't quite ready to begin posting again... This time I decided I'd lead my return with a post, so hopefully I'm actually back now.

Also I don't mind if you take control of Arcturus for a bit to move him over to the sidelines when I take too long. I don't want the rp to be held back if for whatever reason I end up taking forever again.

[Dark Jack]

That's great! Welcome back, then. Now we just need Ashgan to reemerge, and I'd actually feel somewhat comfortable posting in the interest check that the RP is looking for more players.

[Dark Jack]

Insights gained: Beckoning bell and Mad Echo

Marcus, Arcturus

With the threat of a hoarse voice from beyond a closed door, Marcus and Arcturus heard the clearly supernatural sound of a bell, only for the sound to seemingly summon a creature not unlike a Mad One within the room. This creature behaved strangely, however; it did not seem aggressive until injured, and only seemed to grow more feral, stronger and faster the more damage it sustained. While the Mad Echo did not seem to regenerate on its own, each toll of the bell seemed to instantly mend all damage, restoring it even from death. Upon the silencing of the bell the Mad Echo vanished, suggesting that the life force of the Mad Echo is somehow tied to it.
They do not have a full understanding of the mechanics of the bell or the Mad Echo, but have witnessed enough to possibly make some conclusions on their own.

Also:

Marcus, Arcturus and Torquil feel a strange sensation as something invisible and weightless clings to them. They all now have some unbound blood echoes.

[Dark Jack]

Just let me know if my posts haven't given you enough to work with and I'll progress time a bit further.

[Bright_Ops]

Draco has faced Mad Ones before and not only survived, but has actually been apart of a group that's downed two of them! (Not bad for normal humans). So an insane hunter charging at him doesn't have the same degree of pants shitting terror that it might have for most humans; That said, Draco is going to need to seriously unwind when he gets the chance to. Poor boy be shook.

[Dark Jack]

@Habibi359 Oh, you went ahead that far. Generally I would recommend that if your characters moves to see something they could not see before, you should really either let me describe what they see or at least confer with me to know what they find. In this case your post would be mistaken: all but one of the Yharnamite huntsmen in the next room are still alive (the one having been cleaved diagonally halfway through his torso being the only death among them). The remaining five have dropped their weapons and just just seem very frightened of and indecisive about the entire circumstance.

Likewise if you ever want to examine something closer IC, just have your characters actually examine the thing and I will provide additional details about it, sort of like I did with Arcturus and the disease-ridden corpse. I'll often exclude details from the quick overview of a thing based on what I think the characters would actually be able to notice.

I swear, the hardest part about GM'ing isn't keeping track of everything, but rather to restrain myself from telling the players everything...

[Habibi359]

@Dark Jack I see! I was perhaps bit overeager to write stuff and advance to the other side of the door. I had read and reread before making the post about what had happened outside and the outcome and perhaps was overconfident that I could describe -not accurately- whatever was outside.

But nevertheless, I shall edit my post to reflect that men are horrified/confused. Or do you prefer that I backtrack in my post that last thing Marcus does is he'll step over the Messengers?

[Dark Jack]

Nah, it's fine if you just correct the bit about the huntsmen; I generally try to avoid backtracking. The comment about letting me inform what the character might see was more for future reference.

I also really wish Ashgan would pop in for Adelicia, but until he does I suppose we'll just have to assume that she's petrified by the violence she just witnessed.