Dark Jack

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

Below Rebirth's Rise, Eastern outskirts of Yharnam – Farren and Torquil

Torquil listened to Farren's explanation and instructions, and offered a firm nod in response. Indeed, if there was a sentiment he could get behind, it was to make an effort not to die. Again.
He backed up toward the elevator without taking his eyes off the house Farren had pointed out to him and without dropping his guard for even a second. But even with all the noise they had just made and the bullet they had sent through the upstairs window, the interior of the residence remained completely still. Even the curtains were perfectly motionless, not shifting even slightly to betray the presence of breath or movement within.

Just a couple of seconds after Farren had sent his own message, another pair of Messengers came to deliver another one for him:

“Going to break barricade. We're in only entrance. Got to protect sleepers from 'Skinner'.”

Ophelia's Message

The Hunter's Dream – Ophelia

“Both,” the doll conveyed on behalf of the caretaker of the Dream. “The Shopkeeper yet longs to hunt, but the bells are meant for you to use any time you need them. They leave it to your judgment how often that is.”

Consulting the Messengers and showing them the silver bell she had received from the Shopkeeper, the little creatures presented her with a scroll on the subject:

Moonborn Bell
A small silver bell created by the Moonborn of the Hunter's Dream.
Its ring resonates across worlds to call its creator, who will be summoned to the user's side, no matter where they are.
Though their own hunt has passed, the Moonborn still yearns for strong prey. Hunters of the Dream can summon them freely, but they should be aware that the Moonborn is their ally, not their servant.
It will be a long hunt tonight. It would be a shame if they missed it.

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

Below Rebirth's Rise, Eastern outskirts of Yharnam – Farren and Torquil

The gunshot from Farren's pistol cut through the otherwise disturbingly quiet evening air with a sharp bang that echoed loudly through the empty street. It was so loud, in fact, that they could barely even hear the bullet hit the window... which did significantly less damage than one might expect. The small, high-speed projectile did not shatter the glass as a rock with far less force would have, but merely punched a tiny hole through it and continued through into the darkness within.
Torquil jumped at the sound and took a second to gather himself after, shifting nervously from one foot to the other, but otherwise the bang of the pistol died out and left nothing but silence. To the south, Victor sped up from a jog into a sprint at the sound of the gunshot, putting more and more distance between himself and what they presumed was an imminent danger.

Just a couple of seconds after firing his pistol, two Messengers emerged from the ground next to Farren, eagerly unrolled a scroll and showed him its contents:

“Understood. Just returned to Dream - no little ones in White Church. Discovered a lot. Got supplies for us all. Joining you as soon as I can.”

Ophelia's Message

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

Below Rebirth's Rise, Eastern outskirts of Yharnam – Farren and Torquil

Torquil moved to follow Farren's instructions without hesitation and was now focusing all of his attention on the house Farren had pointed out, shield and axe raised and ready for battle... or at least as ready as someone who had only been in one fight could be. The house seemed rather still, with just a bit of flickering of the light suggesting an airflow that disturbed the lantern, candle or fireplace lighting the interior.

Victor, however, actually started backing away from the house and took a couple of steps down the street leading south. “No way,” he declared firmly. His voice was no longer trembling and he did not sound particularly frightened, just resolutely opposed to Farren's plan of action. “If this is really the Skinner, he's supposed to be incredibly dangerous. Our orders if we encounter him are to retreat and alert the workshop so the First Hunter can go kill him. You might be immortal, but I'm not! I'm not going to throw my life away fighting a Hunter-killer like that!”

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

The Hunter's Dream – Ophelia

“The Hunter's Dream and everything in it, myself included, belongs to you, for you to do with as you please,” the doll informed Ophelia in response to her query about bringing the rune workshop tool with her outside the Dream. She glanced at the silent figure next to her, then added: “The Shopkeeper has also given their consent, though they request that you either bring them back when you are done or leave them somewhere a future Hunter of the Dream can find them.”

Again the doll looked to the Shopkeeper when Ophelia asked for recommendations for guns, before conveying their advice: “The Shopkeeper wants to let you know that you already took the Rosmarinus, which draws its power from quicksilver bullets, and that your chosen weapon – the Holy Moonlight Sword – can likewise empower itself when fed with quicksilver, both of which would be quite potent with your affinity for the arcane. But given that they also sense a somewhat powerful bloodtinge in you, if you did want a firearm, they recommend an Evelyn.”
The Shopkeeper held out their right hand with the palm upturned, only to grasp at the air and, with a subtle bluish pulse of light, summoning an unusually long, sleek and elegant pistol into its grip.

At the same time as the doll told her this, droplets of blood hit the mercury on Ophelia's person, turning it into quicksilver. As soon as this happened, the whispers of the Holy Moonlight Sword entered her mind as well: “Huntress... You possess quicksilver... which can unleash the power of your blood... Give quicksilver to the sword... and swing... and it will project its holy light at a distance... or thrust... and its cleansing radiance will drive back anything near you...”

Below Rebirth's Rise, Eastern outskirts of Yharnam – Farren and Torquil

Left to his own devices, Victor quickly found that Stefan did indeed have a couple of blood vials left, one of which the shaking White Church Hunter immediately pulled from his fallen comrades bag, unscrewed the lid of and moved it to his lips. He drank its contents greedily, his eyes closed in bliss, and stopped trembling. In fact he seemed to calm down quite significantly after imbibing the blood, and calmly transferred the other blood vials from Stefan's bag to his own... revealing in the process to anyone paying attention that his bag now contained no less than five filled vials.

Farren's examination of the area around where Stefan and the giant had fallen was not overly easy, as this had obviously been the site of an intense battle that had scattered what seemed like obscene quantities of blood all over the cobblestone. The teeth did not seem to make any particular pattern either, seeming to have just been either flung or have slipped out past Stefan's broken and slack jaw after whatever impact had hit it. The guts hanging out of him, too, seemed to simply have been left where they fell, suggesting that they had not been extracted for any other purpose than to do damage to the Hunter.
Spending a minute or so looking around, as Victor finished looting his comrade and Torquil nervously kept spinning in place, trying to keep an eye on all three streets at the same time, Farren would eventually notice something. Past all the high-impact bloodspatter in the area from the battle, there was a faint trail of low-impact droplets as well that would have come not from combat, but someone passively dripping blood. Following that trail, Farren would find that it lead to the door of the nearest residence with a lit censer and light behind their windows.

Touching the massive, surprisingly firm and muscular form of the church giant, Farren would find that its corpse was indeed still warm.

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

Below Rebirth's Rise, Eastern outskirts of Yharnam – Farren and Torquil

Trying to shrink down and hide behind his shield as best as he could, Torquil moved very slowly to follow Victor, his axe always at the ready. He kept focusing down first one open, empty street of the T-intersection, then the next, then the first, looking frantically for movement or anything that stood out... and, in particular, anything that was coming toward them. Like someone coming to kill them. Which would be bad, at least in his humble opinion.

Meanwhile Victor's hands were trembling as he licked his lips and swallowed, his eyes scanning rapidly up and down the corpse of the man who used to be his companion. He hesitantly crouched and, without letting go of his sword, rolled the body onto its back to reveal a person who was just barely recognizable as Stefan. His jaw appeared to have been shattered, and Victor only now noticed that not only did Stefan's weapon – a church pick – lie broken and discarded a couple of meters from the body, but the street was also strewn with bloody, broken teeth. The sight brought back recent memories of the beast-man slashing Victor in the face, though Stefan appeared have been hit even harder, and with blunt force rather than a sharp instrument.
Even more noticeable, however, was the fact that – aside from miscellaneous other small bloody tears in his garb – there was a sizable hole right through the front of Stefan's coat and into his belly, with his intestines hanging out for the world to see.
“Visceral attack,” Victor muttered with a nod of his head. “A Hunter definitely did this. I've heard of this guy. They call him Skinner, because he always takes a patch of skin from his victims. He's a mad Hunter that's been killing everyone, beasts, Hunters and humans alike, for months. I had heard he was really dangerous, but this... is worse than I'd imagined.”
While he spoke, Victor's hand went to check the corpse's bag of blood vials.

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

Below Rebirth's Rise, Eastern outskirts of Yharnam – Farren and Torquil

“Have I seen anything like it?” Victor exclaimed incredulously, though he was wary enough to not raise his voice while doing so. “I don't think you understand; giants are what keep beasts away from the Cathedral Ward. Even cleric beasts are scared of them, and even Hunters are scared of cleric beasts! And this...”
He stepped closer to the motionless giant and found numerous clawmarks on its body... but not of the enormous kind left by the likes of cleric beasts. The wounds were clearly left by bestial claws, but whatever had done it had not been significantly larger than human-sized judging by the wounds. And despite the small size, it looked as though whatever had done this had been powerful enough to downright tear chunks of meat out of the poor, simple-minded creature. Examining its corpse, it looked as though something had first thoroughly maimed the church giant's legs, only to then rip out its throat. It did not seem to have any other significant wounds on its back, and it was much too heavy for them to try to turn over to examine its front.
Moving on past the giant, Victor went to his fellow White Church Hunter, who was quite clearly dead, lying face-down in a puddle of his own blood. Not only that, but the back of his coat looked as though it had been cut open and moved aside to bare his back, after which someone appeared to have skinned the entire area from Stefan's neck to his waist, leaving nothing but naked, bloody flesh.
“A beast didn't do this.”

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

The Hunter's Dream – Ophelia

The doll listened intently, and one might assume the Shopkeeper did the same though it was difficult to ascertain without seeing their face. In the end, after Ophelia had given her urgent report on what she had discovered, the doll looked at the caretaker of the Dream for a moment before turning back to Ophelia.
“Troubling though this is to hear, good Hunter, I fear we cannot claim that this is the first we have heard of it. Moira and Gerlinde both spoke of something similar, though you seem to have discerned considerably more than either. We cannot even begin to fathom what manner of power could successfully ward against the little ones...”
She bowed her head submissively before continuing: “As far as Gerlinde is concerned, I think you may be mistaken. Gerlinde is quite aware of something untoward residing at the workshop of the White Healing Church, and though we have seen her return to the markers there occasionally, she has shown no particular affinity for them. Perhaps when she returns to the Dream you can speak to her yourself, to allay or confirm your fears?”

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

The White Church Workshop, Upper Cathedral Ward, high above western Yharnam – Ophelia

“You are free to come and go as you desire, as are your fellows on the other side of Yharnam,” Dietrich declared, loudly enough that the others in the hall could hear him. Then he lowered his voice once more to normal speaking volume: “As I said, unless I am needed for a hunt, you can find me here.”

With that and a final, elegant bow, Dietrich turned and started climbing the stairs, heading back to his office and returning to his duties as First Hunter, leaving Ophelia to her victorious exit from the White Church Workshop under the envious glares of men and women of the church alike. But though she still garnered some attention, she could see and hear business in the workshop resume its normal pace even as she left, and by the time she had returned to the golden lantern the sounds that reached her from there were practically indistinguishable from when she had first arrived. Despite all that had happened, it seemed that the machinery that was the workshop, and perhaps the White Healing Church as a whole, kept churning just the same.
Though the golden lantern was obviously different from the one she had used at the clinic on Rebirth's Rise, it proved to function exactly the same as it, in spite of the lack of Messengers. She looked into the light and felt herself rapidly growing drowsy, then fell asleep and awoke back in the Dream.

The Hunter's Dream – Ophelia

She found herself in the exact same place she had awoken the first time she had come here, and the Dream itself seemingly unchanged. The doll and the Shopkeeper stood idly by the side of the gravel path leading up to this much smaller workshop, and the birdbath remained sprawling with numerous Messengers.
Immediately upon awakening in the Dream, two Messengers emerged from the ground at Ophelia's feet and urgently unfurled and held up a scroll for her to read:

“Victor’s blocking the Clinic door on our way out. You’ll need another lantern to rejoin us.” - Farren

Farren’s Message

Night of the Hunt - Paleblood

The White Church Workshop, Upper Cathedral Ward, high above western Yharnam – Ophelia

“So it was the sword that told you that? How remarkable,” was Dietrich's response to Ophelia conveying what the Holy Moonlight Sword had told her about him. He thoughtfully tapped his index-finger on his chin, looking intently into her eyes. “I wish I knew what it meant, but perhaps I am not meant to know. We can only try our best to play with the cards the gods have dealt us. Or perhaps, if the vicar's experiments bear fruit someday, I might experience the Dream and its secrets one day as well.”

Regarding the rest of what she had to say about runes, meeting him when he joined the hunt and about demonstrating how formidable each of their swords were, Dietrich's smile faltered slightly. “That may be difficult. It is the paradox of being the most powerful Hunter of the Healing Church: I am the one who could slay the most beasts the safest, but I am the one who is held in reserve and has to stay here until called. My duty is to oversee my Hunters, but otherwise I am only to join the hunt if we encounter something too dangerous for the others to handle. But if we do chance upon each other – perhaps after this night has passed, in more peaceful times – I would be honored and grateful.”

The Prophecy - Dreams of Destiny

Freagon, Yanin, Jaelnec and Jordan – Outside the Fadewatcher station, Borstown

“Want the same?” Freagon repeated, scratching his deeply scarred skin thoughtfully. “I can't imagine that'd do them much good. They'd have to die first, and there aren't any benefits to it. On the contrary. I wasn't 'restored' so much as I was just 'made functional' when I was resurrected. You're right that the process was costly, both for me and the one who did it. It's why I'm still scarred like this.” He gestured to his one-eyed face. “New wounds can be healed, but even magic can't fix this anymore.”

“That sounds nice,” Jaelnec commented on Jordan's recounting of his time with his master, smiling at him even though he felt a slight pang of envy. He had a vague feeling that he had heard about the Galeids before, but could not quite pair the name with a place or a family in his mind. None of the names mentioned meant much to him either, except from Sir Yanin of course, but just hearing the names somehow made them feel more real. “You forget to appreciate having people around you can call friends. Sir Freagon...” Jaelnec shot a nervous glance in the direction of his master. “He's very goal-oriented, and has no patience for anything that isn't productive. I bet he's seething right now because we're not just going straight to the bandits. Part of me is surprised he hasn't just decided to wipe them out himself and run off on his own.”