[OOC] Night of the Hunt - a Bloodborne RP

[Ashgan]

Adelicia is probably the antithesis of what you expected people to create in terms of characters, I imagine; weak, vulnerable, afraid of everything. Does it make me a masochist or a sadist, I wonder? I'm already thinking about what awful trials she'll be put through. And I have some thoughts as to what might occur if beasthood should swallow her after all. I want to say everything will work out just fine for her but... well, I just don't know about that. Got this feeling. :P

[Bartimaeus]

Working on my post. I wonder what weapon(s) Raine should wield..

[Dark Jack]

Hmm... My first thought when I looked at him was actually the beast claw, but thinking about it logically I figure that it - looking at its description - is probably a unique weapon rather than a mass-produced one. It also probably wouldn't exactly help his image as a man trying to come back to civilization after spending time with the Harrow. Maybe something like the saw cleaver/spear, or the Hunter's axe? Or the beasthunter saif or beast cutter?

[Habibi359]

I'll make an IC post either this night (my aim) or on Sunday.

[King Cosmos]

Should we be moving our character sheets over to the other tab? Just to they're easier to find.

[Dark Jack]

I'd prefer to keep them in the OOC tab and just link to them in the OP for management reasons, but if you want to keep them in the actual Characters-tab, I suppose there's no harm.

[Bartimaeus]

@Dark Jack Does the church servant’s body appear to be...intact?

[Dark Jack]

I pondered whether to specify the condition of the church servant in the IC post, but figured that at the time I left off Victor or the others would probably not be able to tell the details. If Raine intends to run over and check it, however, he will find that the servant has been slashed, stabbed and bludgeoned numerous times.

[Habibi359]

About to put my post up and wake Marcus up from the clinic, but before I do that couple of questions: do all these Palebloods wake up at the same time or is Marcus able to sink in that he's only one awake in the room? Is Marcus feeling in pain or something (I plan to have some disarray in his memories)? And is Marcus waking from underneath a pile of messengers like the dead ones (or... Are they really dead?) or just with just a few over him?

[Dark Jack]

The (false) Paleblood Hunters won't wake up simultaneously, no, though given that most of them probably received the treatment to become Hunters at about the same time, their time of awakening will probably be reasonably close to one another. Since you're the first one with a character in that scene to post, you kind of have control of how much time your character has before the next one wakes up (within reason... think minutes, not hours).
I don't think a Hunter waking from metamorphosis would be in pain, no. By the time he was ready to wake up the transformation would be complete, and there shouldn't be any reason for it.
And no, the (false) Paleblood Hunters waking up won't be buried in Messengers; the Messengers only do that to the dead. They don't even crawl on them at all. Rather, he will just wake up to being surrounded by them, with them sitting at the edge of his cot and on the floor, staring at him.

[Dark Jack]

Had a bit of a "duh"-moment and realized that characters might also know a thing or two about these guys:

Vicar Harold

Name: Harold
Race: Cleric/Vicar (“Greater Yharnamite”)
Age: Early fifties
Faction: White Healing Church
Appearance: A somewhat feeble-seeming, dignified man, Harold is a strikingly average-sized man in many ways, lending to many believing that the frailty apparent in his behavior originates from a matter of health rather than fitness. With short hair, elegantly trimmed facial hair and normal-thickness eyebrows all in a light-gray color on an otherwise wrinkled, but masculine and sound-seeming face, it is clear to most that the vicar takes good care of himself. He has light-brown, heavy-lidded eyes and thin lips with pronounced smile lines.
Height: 180 cm (5' 11”)
Weight: 75 kg (165 lb)
Clothes: He wears the robe, trousers and boots that were once the uniform of the Choir.
Hunter gear: He is known to possess and be able to wield the Choir bell, with the power to reactivate the regenerative powers of anyone who hears it without the need for them to consume blood, and a roughly fist-sized, glowing larva capable of summoning devastating arcane powers from worlds unknown.
Biography: Not much is known of Harold from before he became the first vicar of the new Healing Church. After the Night of the Blood Moon, when the population of Yharnam and its fiefs was in disarray, Harold simply showed up and started putting the church back together with an implied wisdom and authority that none, for a time, thought to question. Providing funds from sources unknown Harold organized the repairs and citizen relief-efforts that ultimately lead to the recovery of the city.
Due to his innate charisma, intelligence and resourcefulness, Harold was, to most, the obvious choice when the Healing Church arose anew and needed a new vicar.

Dietrich of the Shining Wing

Name: Dietrich of the Shining Wing
Race: Hunter
Age: Early thirties
Faction: White Healing Church (also honorary Executioner)
Appearance: A man considered by many to be the epitome of nobility, masculinity and elegance, Dietrich is a quite handsome man who makes an obvious effort to maintain an appearance bordering on the perfect, seeming always freshly shaven, always with his shoulder-length golden-blonde hair in a clean pony-tail and always with a confident smile on his lips, occasionally revealing perfect, white teeth. He has a highly unusual eye-color that is such a pale blue that it seems almost white with a dark rim along the edge of the irises, making it seem as though his eyes almost shine with a light of their own. He is known to move with an easy grace that makes him as admired at noble courts as he is feared on the field of battle.
Height: 185 cm (6' 1”)
Weight: 93 kg (205 lb)
Clothes: He wears a white variant of what was once known as the uniform of the League, only without the helmet. Aside from having it tailored in white, the cape of the attire has also been altered to being nearly twice as long, reaching to just over the ground, and split in two down the middle until the middle of the back. Each half of the cape bears symmetrical silver-embroideries resembling stylized feathered wings.
Hunter gear: Wields his unique greatsword, the Shining Wing.
Biography: Rumored to be descended from royalty, an adventurous noble, a crusading knight and an actual prince, depending on who you ask, there is no shortage of stories to be told about Dietrich of the Shining Wing; so many, in fact, that no one has any idea what is truth and what is fabrication. All that is known for certain is that Dietrich came from the mountainous regions to the north of Yharnam and arrived about eight months after the Night of the Blood Moon, worn and battered by the harsh terrain that dominates the area and carrying nothing but the clothes on his back and an iron greatsword of the highest quality, already stained with blood.
Upon arriving in Yharnam word immediately started spreading of his exploits; of how he, a mere human, had personally slain numbers of beasts ranging from ten to two hundred, depending on the source. Though his legend was blatantly exaggerated, it soon became clear that Dietrich really was a formidable fighter and that he, after becoming a Hunter, was more than a match for anyone else in the service of the Healing Church. After proving his worth once and for all by personally slaying a fearsome blood-starved beast in the deepest parts of Old Yharnam during a failed effort to fully purge the area, Vicar Harold finally named Dietrich the “First Hunter” of the new Healing Church.
With the power and resources of his new position, Dietrich had a new uniform and weapon commissioned for himself, and began a campaign to exterminate the surge of beasts that emerged from the Night of the Blood Moon, as well as officially declaring the Vilebloods as the enemy of the church.

Vicar Moira

Name: Moira
Race: Former Paleblood Hunter
Age: Late thirties
Faction: Black Healing Church
Appearance: Accused of being too manly for her own good, Moira has the look of someone who could not care less what she looks like, with a muscular body that bears its share of scars and a face dominated by sharp lines and early ravages of time. She has pale skin, brown eyes and wild, untamed brown hair that is unevenly cut for no other reason than to keep it shorter than shoulder-length, as if with shears.
Height: 178 cm (5' 10”)
Weight: 80 kg (176 lb)
Clothes: She wears what was once the uniform of the Hunters of Yahar'gul.
Hunter gear: Has been known to use a wide variety of Hunter weapons, but tends to favor the saw cleaver and blunderbuss.
Biography: A well-known veteran of the wars fought south of Yharnam, Moira arrived in Yharnam approximately one year after the Night of the Blood Moon and would likely have been offered to be made a Hunter even if she had not been a bearer of Paleblood due to her renown as a warrior. Afterwards, when Moira realized that she was now bound to the Hunter's Dream and could not die, she is said to have become the beasts' worst nightmare. During her reign as an immortal, Moira slaughtered more beasts than could even be counted; so many, in fact, that the huntsmen trailing behind her struggled to keep up with burning all the corpses. She hunted with complete disregard for anything but the hunt itself, paying no heed to whether her brutality was observed by civilians or whether the beasts still possessed some humanity; the moment someone showed the first signs of falling to the scourge of beasts, being noticed by Moira was a death sentence, leading Vicar Harold to excommunicate her from the Healing Church for repeated perceived murder of innocents. In spite of this Moira ended up becoming quite renowned and liked among Hunters for being helpful to them in the field, and to never show any hesitation to put herself in harm's way to protect her fellow Hunters.
What exactly Moira experienced during her time as a Paleblood Hunter is unknown, as she has not spoken of it to anyone else, but eventually she claimed to have been released from the dream and that her next death would be final. By then she had gained a reputation as a horrifyingly deadly Hunter, immortal or not, and though some Hunters tried to take advantage of her mortality to execute her for her crimes, none of them lived to tell the tale. It is said that even Dietrich of the Shining Wing balked at the prospect of challenging her, lending even greater merit to her legend.

Soon after her release from the Hunter's Dream Moira started rallying Hunters behind her, wanting to gather like-minded individuals who were willing to do what had to be done to exterminate the menace of the beasts. Preaching understanding for the hardships experienced by Hunters, tolerance of their need to hunt and wanting to secure better living conditions for them, it did not take Moira long to gain a significant following of Hunters, which in turn attracted others, until even clerics and blood ministers deserted the Healing Church to join her course.
Merely two months after having been made a Hunter, the clerics following Moira declared her their new vicar, a title she only grudgingly accepted, and formed a new Healing Church in her name. After a short period of quarreling with Harold's church the two vicars agreed on a truce – possibly because no one in Harold's church dared to fight against Moira and her Hunters – and the current schism of the church was created, officially naming Moira as the vicar and First Hunter of the Black Healing Church.

[Dark Jack]

So... how is things? Who is working on posts right now, and how are they coming along?

I've also been wondering about Adelicia's censer, Ashgan: is it supposed to just contain some mundane incense that literally has no purpose but to mask her scent, or is it supposed to be the actual anti-beast incense used specifically to ward off beasts?

[Ashgan]

I figured it's the warding incense that they use around buildings, yes. Unless you see some kind of issue with that. Incense is relatively easy to carry and spread, after all, so I figured it would be a prudent thing to equip her with.

[Dark Jack]

No, it's fine, I just wanted to be sure because it's only ever been described as hiding her scent rather than actually repelling beasts. It was mostly to portray how beasts reacted to her better.

Unrelatedly I've been browsing the cut content from Bloodborne for ideas, and figure I might end up using some of it in the RP. Also been reading up on Lovecraft mythos for inspiration. Good stuff.

[Ashgan]

All right. By the way, do you have any speculation on what the incense is made from, or its origins? It occurred to me to ask the question and I don't believe I've heard anything about it. Maybe Redgrave has something in his Bloodborne manifesto, I forget.

I'm not too familiar with the game's cut content, though I remember one cut boss which looked a bit like the popular portrayal of Shub-Nigurath's dark young, as seen here. As for Lovecraft, it's never a bad time to read more of his stuff, or the authors he's inspired. Even some works that you may not immediately associate, like Conan the Barbarian, have some stories that lean quite heavily on grandfather HPL's ideas and are all the better for it. I really liked The Slithering Shadow, for instance.

[Bartimaeus]

Yes I am working on my post ^^ a bit busy today, but will get it up soon.

[Dark Jack]

Thank you, Bartimaeus, though I admit I was more interested in news from the ones playing (false) Paleblood Hunters with Habibi, namely @Th3King0fChaos and @King Cosmos, if nothing else then just to make sure that they aren't waiting for me or each other to post in that scene.

EDIT: As for cut content, I was interested in the one you found there, Ashgan, which is theorized to have been an early or alternate version of the Moon Presence. I'm also somewhat intrigued by creatures with such uninspired, clearly temporary names such as the snake ball, the Great One Beast and the beast horse.

[King Cosmos]

I'm still here, just haven't had much time to post recently. Slowly working my way through the RPs I'm in; I'll get a post up for this either tomorrow or Saturday.

[Habibi359]

Waiting for the kings of Chaos and Cosmos to make their posts, but I have an outline for Marcus's next actions planned unless something else is happening.

[Dark Jack]

Been thinking a lot about what the beast-repellent incense is supposed to be, and trying to find others theorizing on it, but it seems that it's a mostly unanswered question, the explanations for which I've found being only very loosely justified.

Here is what we know about the incense: it masks the scent of Hunters, and given that Hunters are known to smell very strongly, probably also masks the smell of Yharnamites and humans.

Ahh, a hunter are ya? Very sorry, the incense must've masked your scent.(...)

Oedon Chapel Dweller

We also know from how beasts interact with the heavily incense-filled Oedon Chapel that beasts are repelled by it, and that thick enough incense can literally act as a barrier keeping beasts out, making them stay back even in the face of someone attacking them from within the incense.
And finally, we know that incense is hard to come by. Citizens have a very finite supply, if they have any at all, some not even enough to get through a single night. All the larger stores of incense belong to the Healing Church and are used to block possible venues of access for beasts to the Cathedral Ward, suggesting that the church is likely also the producer and supplier of incense to the rest of Yharnam.

So it has a really intense smell, and it repels beasts; two traits that are not necessarily related. And the Healing Church has a bunch of it. We also know that if you break the containers supposedly filled with incense in Oedon Chapel, there's human remains inside.
In conjunction with a few scattered theories I found, but mostly from logic, I will then say that in the RP, incense is beasts. The Healing Church collects the corpses of beasts and somehow uses them, or part of them (bones, fur, eyes, blood or some other organ; could even be some kind of scent glands naturally developed by those afflicted with the scourge of beasts) to produce incense. I'd be tempted to think that the corpses of Hunters could be used as well, but the game seems to suggest that the smell of a Hunter is clearly distinctive from that of a beast, so I don't think that would be the case.
I also can't imagine that the incense has a very pleasant smell... but that's just me. Everyone has different preferences, I guess.