Abolish nICE

A Writing Experiment - One Story, Multiple Authors

I could see myself giving this a crack

Night Terrors- A Modern Horror RP

I know this is apparently full but I love the concept and I had a character I wanted to roll up. Let me know if he's okay and you might like to include him at some point

Romeo Rodriguez

Romeo Rodriguez



Physical Description: Romeo is an older Latino man whose face is gaunt and weather beaten. His dark, long and straigght hair is interrupted intermittently with a series of thick mats and knots which he seemed to pay little mind to. His facial hair is mottled and wispy as he prefers to use his razors to slice suspect stills out of roles of Kubrick films than he does apply them to his face. The bags under his eyes betray the years it has been since he has gotten more than 4 hours of sleep a night, owing partly to his obsessive quest for and torturous knowledge of The Truth, and partly to a low grade amphetamine addiction meant to enhance the former. In small town Iowa he had become a local eccentric, a strange sight for visitors but a kind of comforting mystery to the locals who became used to his presence, handing out mimeographed summations of his “explosive findings” outside the supermarket.

Age: 38

Role: Believer

Psychic: Yes

Skills/Abilities of Note: Incredible work ethic bordering on obsessive, excellent aptitude for research and collation/organisation of information, strong knowledge of the occult, history and parapsychological subjects

Willpower:

Background: Romeo had always loved patterns. As a child he loved to watch the clouds roll by in small, pastoral Iowa town which was his birthplace. He’d puzzle out their shapes and assign identities to them, making up little stories about each as it rolled its way across the sky. As a child he loved detective stories, from Sherlock Holmes to Phillip Marlowe. They seemed to see things no one else ever could, picking out the extraordinary realities that hid behind the mundane appearance of everyday objects, able to spill simple things into an expose of shocking truths. It was this which led him to head to college to study English literature.

It was in a Renaissance literature class that something cracked in Romeo for the first time. He was listening to his Professor dryly explaining the history of connections between Renaissance art and the esoteric history of magical orders and secret societies. Hidden codes in poetry and paintings uncovered an secretive group of intellectuals emerged in a world of occluded signs and mystic spells. He sat shocked as he saw the rest of his class staring at the projected words slack jawed ad bored. To him this was a hidden and mystical reality exposed in centuries old tomes...how could anyone be bored by it? He finished out his degree programme in relatively successful normality, all the while secretly affixed by the notion of hidden signs and codes in literature. He pored over the texts accredited to ancient occultist Hermes Trismegistus and held onto a dog-earred and scribbled on copy of The Catcher in the Rye from which he hoped to glean some secret into the creation of Manchurian candidates.
Following college, and sensing little else to do with a literature degree, he settled into life as a junior reporter at his small town newspaper in Iowa. He hoped to use his position to uncover some of the conspiracies and occult rituals he increasingly saw pulling the strings beneath the veil of reality. To his disappointment he found himself mostly inhabiting a hum-drum world of photographing Quinceañeras and writing page 18 pieces on beef prices. However Romeo’s restless mind would soon lead him to a real conspiracy. Romeo discovered a plot by the local mayors office to dump nuclear waste from a near-by plant in an unregistered lot near local Latino community. He came to his editor with a folder full of hastily compiled evidence and requested he be allowed to pursue the story. For his trouble he got fired and so the current phase of his life began.

Romeo is now a transient, living out of his janky Winnebago RV which is plastered with newspaper cutouts and blurry pictures of UFOs harvested from bbs boards.He maintains an irregular blog tracking an ever expanding conspiracy of occult happenings and political manoeuvrerings that seemingly no one else can see.

Since unseen forces of darkness began to brush up against reality and especially since his own encounter (elaborated below) Romeo has manifested a minor psychic ability he refers to as his ‘radio bursts’. On rare occasions Romeo will experience a dull headache accompanied by a sound like static in his ears, occasionally interrupted by disjointed lines of dialogue or just indecipherable groans. Romeo is unaware that these are moments of minor and random telepathy and from time to time seem strongly related to his hunt for the unusual

Previous Encounter/s: Yes

Encounter Summary:
The cassette arrived in a nondescript manilla envelope. It had taken him months of Ebay trawling and forum cross-referencing but Romeo had finally found it. The cover of the VHS was blank and white, with only 3 little words scrawled across its front in Sharpie: “Stairway to Nowhere”. This was a missing element of a series of television reports by French journalist Jean-Teddy Filippe investigating unexplainable events and made in the 1990s. The series, entitled Les Documents Interdits, aired on German television and ran (supposedly) for twelve episodes depicting a variety of unexplained phenomena and strange footage. Since its airing many had been proven hoaxes but rumours persisted of a separate, unaired segment that had since gone missing since its first airing. The segment, which Romeo now held in his hands, had been spoken about on paranormal forums for years, owing to its apparently extremely unsettling nature. When Romeo opened the clamshell he found a napkin with an odd insignia (that Romeo would later discover originated in a hotel in Marseille) with a series of instructions scrawled on it. It began “Go to the location”.

The location was provided by the tape itself, which appeared to consist of five minutes of static followed by approximately 9 minutes and 37 seconds of a single still image of a set of disconnected stairs standing in a clearing. Romeo soon reasoned that a series of ‘cigarette burn’ flashes at the end of the footage were in fact morse code and provided him with a series of geographic co-ordinates located in New England. From there it wasn’t much of a thing to make a road trip there from Iowa. Strangely, throughout the journey, Romeo never once felt the urge to watch the strange tape again, although ordinarily he would go though repeat viewings of such a thing with a fine tooth comb. He escape the final that the single still image had moved and changed in subtle ways throughout and that an additional viewing might expose him to whatever lurked in that stillness.

The additional instructions once he came to the forest in New England were clear, simple and strange. He walked fifty steps blindfolded. He knocked on a specific birch tree and said “bring out your dead to the emptiness”. He crossed a small stream, splashing up to his shins, hopping only on his left leg. And then he came upon it, alone and silent. The stone grew moss and the ornate carvings on the sections of wood panelling seemed to hold no historical meaning he could discern. Romeo gingerly set one foot on the staircase and his breath caught in his throat as he noticed, right up at the top, the final stair had begun to bubble. Before he could breath again the final stone step extruded, fleshy and whispering, another step higher into the void. Romeo gathered all his strength and set his foot on the next step up. Again, another fleshy protrusion of a mysterious step. Then all of a sudden an overwhelming feeling of being watched. He ran lightning quick as his heart race and his breath stopped until he got back to his RV. As he hightailed it out of New England, to wherever his new destination would be, he swore he saw the delicate geometry of the stairs burned ghostly into his little CRT monitor.

Resources: Access to an online world of fellow conspiracy theorists and occultists all around the US and the world, his beat up old Winnebago that runs like a workhorse and heaves with documents and blurry photographs and screeds, a .22 rifle he’s not quite sure of how to use but he keeps around for the day he’s sure the New World Order is going to take over

Odds of Survival: 1

Teen Titans: New Beginnings

Name:Eleanor Peltier

Alias:Comanche

Image/:


Age:19

Gender:Female

Race:Human

Alignment:Neutral

Mentor:Green Arrow

Skills/Meta Abilities:

Energy Constructs: Can be wielded as both a bow and arrow and, her preference, twin tomahawks that she uses for close quarters combat

Astral Porjection: Requires entering a trance which can be used to remotely view and scope out locations (slightly draining) or communicate with spirits (majorly draining)

Personality: Eleanor is headstrong and dedicated in her mission to find justice. She is an opinionated loud mouth and can come across as brash and boorish, which emerged out of her seething hatred of the "quiet wise Indian" stereotype. She is independent-minded and can have quite a "means justify the ends" perspective. However she will fight like hell for her allies and any perceived 'underdog'.

Likes:Justice, Equity, History textbooks, playing a banjo from time to time

Dislikes: Inequality, injustice, law enforcement, apathy, pacifism

Backstory:Eleanor was born to an American Indian mother, who ran a women's shelter for Native women, and an African American father, a professor of political science and philosophy in a Star City community college. She was a spirited and bright child but her life changed forever the day a visit to her grandfather on the Star City Comanche reservation unlocked her metaphysical abilities. Initially she applied her still new abilities working as a kind of contemporary medicine woman, helping to heal the trauma of the mothers and children her mother enncountered in work as well as working with a organising sex workers in Star City. She was devouring her textbooks and working on college applications by day and spiritually healing and organising in marginalised communities by night.

That all changed when her father was killed by the Star City police force despite being entirely unarmed and posing no threat as he worked on an original piece of research in a trap house in Star City's lower east side. In a rage she manifested her energy construct powers and attacked a local police patrol before Green Arrow intervened. The Emerald Archer agreed with the police that she would not be charged if she was taken under his wing and turned into an asset for the city.

A year or so passed and things seemed to largely be going well, with Green Arrow showing her how vigilantism can be used to further the cause of social justice and improvement in marginalised communities. But the day she discovered that the man who killed her father would be receiving an honour from the mayor as a result of a bank heist standoff, she snapped. She managed to stealthily wound the officer with an energy construct arrow before Green Arrow intervened. He castigated her, dismissed her as his apprentice and told her to skip town. He told her that her heart was in the right place but her extreme commitment to political violence (and the small-time robberies he suspected her of to aid her mother's financial strapped women's shelter) meant she needed guidance and allies if she was to move from revenge-minded vigilante to true superhero. She had no idea that he had arranged her application to an organisation that just might provide such guidance....

Black Fall: The Ghosts of LA (Superhuman romp in a destroyed Los Angeles!)

Rp dead now

@Ghost Note

Oh damn for real? :/

Black Fall: The Ghosts of LA (Superhuman romp in a destroyed Los Angeles!)

[hider=Alistair Callaghan]

"Freshman councilman and community organiser Alistair Callaghan looking comfortable in his new office following a shocking campaign which unseated machine veteran Mike Christman -LA Sentinel Newspaper

⫸ B A S I C I N F O R M A T I O N ⫷

"It don't matter if a man can shoot fireballs from his hands, what matters is what he's got when he puts those hands back in his pockets. Same as it ever was"[/center]

▼ | BIRTH NAME : |

Alistair Fidelio Callaghan

▼ | ALSO KNOWN AS: |

Al, Councilman Callaghan

▼ | GENDER : |

Male

▼ | AGE : |

31

⫸ A P P E A R A N C E ⫷

"My Pa always taught me that you stand up straight, comb your hair and make sure you've got a funny little thing called a trouser press. The boss expects you to come to the table like a raggedy little orphan, all begging and pleading. But you show up with a clean shirt, a clenched fist and a good goddamned attitude"

[indent]

▼ | P H Y S I C AL S T A T S : |

▸ HEIGHT : | 6 feet 1 inch
▸ WEIGHT : | 175 pounds
▸ ETHNICITY : | Caucasian
▸ HAIR COLOR : | Jet black
▸ EYE COLOR : | Green

▼ | PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION : |

Alistai's appearance has been practiced and polished over the course of years as it is, like so much of him, another weapon in his arsenal of bargaining, negotiating and campaigning.Oh sure as he teen he had the long greasy hair, the band t-shirt and the hand-rolled cigarettes pressed to a sneer but nary a trace of that teenage rebellion can be seen on his clean cut, square jawed All-American face now. I took him a couple of years to figure out his grandfather, a veteran of the United Auto Workers sit downs in the Depression, and his father, a child of the Students For a Democratic Society industrial strategy of the 70s, might have been speaking some sense when they told him to "cut that damn hippy hair, and tuck in that shirt". When you're a working stiff fighting for a decent life you gotta look like you should be taken seriously.

Combed, close cut hair. Crisp white shirt. Corduroy coat that looks smartly vintage. Pressed slacks. Shined dress shoes. Hell even the receding hairline seems almost like a calculation to be oh-so-relatable, and not the product of so many fitful hair pulling negotiations and actions. Look closely enough and beneath the polished exterior, somewhere between "Leave it to Beaver" and "The Grapes of Wrath", you can see the great big black bags beneath the eyes that are the shrapnel of a dozen or so years of terrible jobs and dictatorial bosses and vampiric shift times. And the slightly crooked smile with the gap in the teeth? Oh he's got the insurance for a dental correction, but that's all part of the charm his Pa gave him

⫸ P S Y C H O L O G Y ⫷

"I worry if there wasn't this great fight for justice and equity, I'd have to make it up just to keep me breathin'"

▼ | PERSONALITY TRAITS : |

To all the world Alistair is the same Councilman Callaghan they see at the meet-and-greets and see in the little election flyers- warm, full of humour and empathetic as all get out. He's what they call a "people person" in the "job requirements" for service industry hell holes flipping burgers and making coffee.But underneath the gloss is a sense of dogged, earnest do-gooderism. Give Al an injustice or just a damn inconvenience, especially if the "little guy" is getting the short end of the stick, and he'll burn the candle and both ends, working doggedly to make it right. This comes with a sometimes black and white sense of morality, and a real rigid stubbornness.

Oh and ah, ya didn't hear it from me but I hear, in private, the guy has a nasty temper. One of the guys down at Plumbing Local 158 said he got a wrench hurled in the general direction of his head a couple of times when things weren't quite going Al's way

▼ | SKILLS : |

Oration: Al never met a soapbox he didn't like. And they say he used to get home from a 12 hour shift at the plant and unwind, not with "Married With Children", but with some old tome of Melville or some great long Lincoln address to such and such a detachment of the Union Army. This guy can string words together to make a dang poet sweat.

Small Arms Proficiency: Word is "Togetherness and Brotherhood" Callaghan keeps a little Saturday Night Special in his coat. I've heard he explains that Dr King did the same, but I don't know about that. Either way, the halls of power can have seedy underbellies, especially in those bars where the labour men and the mobsters rub shoulders (allegedly) and Al Callaghan's little pistol is for anything but show.

Connections: Al has friends in high places, low places and lower-than-low places. His years in the LA community have left him a pretty hefty contacts book, only enhanced by taking his first rung of political power. Word is if you need something or someone, Al ain't a bad guy to have on the other end of a telephone

▼ | BACK STORY : |
I miss Ohio in times like this. All the rust and the hollowness came on with time. People just seemed to seep out of the towns and factories like shadows over the years. But LA now...that's damn instantaneous silence where all this brightness was. Like a snuffed out candle.

Al likes to say he was raised in "the corpse of the American dream". Lorain, Ohio is a shell of its former self and the land bears the marks of the Ford Plants and Ship Building Companies that once made it hum and thrive with life. In some ways, Al maybe does too. He grew up in that ghost of a town raised by his father after his mother died in a robbery at a young age. Al's father was a complicated man,still nursing a wound from his days as a troop in the Grenada invasion ("no one remembers that damned war now, but I sure as hell do" he'd say) primarily with a prescription of Hiram Walker triple distilled. The living was alright, a UAW and a military pension made sure of that, but Al felt a sense of ringing loneliness drifting around that decaying town. He turned into a teenage tearaway with ripped shirts, long died hair and clothes that smelled of stale beer. Everything was going just great until Al's father decided he needed "straightening out" and got him a job in a nearby meat packing plant.

Al went along with it, figuring the couple of paychecks he might get before he went and got himself fired would make for a mighty bender or two. But to his shock, and despite it all, the young man thrived in the new environment. With his new co-workers, who came from just across the street, or out-of-state or even out of the country, he got on like a house on fire. Soon enough he was wheeling around in a forklift, unloading trucks and shooting out bawdy jokes that always got the whole plant floor guffawing. It was here, shoulder to the wheel with his peers, that Al finally began to feel at home in his emptying city.

But Al was his father's on after all and before long he could no longer make do with wise cracks about the endless days, back breaking intensity and paychecks that hardly covered the gas for the journey there and back. One day he began organising and, with nearly preternatural speed and efficiency he was linking arms with the whole plant floor and marching on the boss. 18 days of sit down wildcat action ensued and the boys cracked open a bottle of single malt just for Al when they won. But then he got called into the supervisor's office...

Al had been expecting a slap on the wrist. Hell in his gut he was even prepared for a firing. What he got was something else entirely.It started with quizzical questions:

"There's men have been down there for years without a peep...and you've got them smashing machines inside a fortnight?"

"There's lazy old drunks that never cared for anything except Milwaukee's Best and colour TV they're whole lives..and they look like they'd take a bullet for you?"

"Half of them don't even speak English!"

And then the FAMA man with the glasses showed up and after that everything was different for Alistair Callaghan.

He fell in working 'Delt' jobs around Ohio with the promise that Deltahumans got paid big money for specialist jobs. What he arrived to all over was a raw deal, working the empowered to the bone in exchange for a pittance. And of course once the boss got wind that he couldn't fly or lift 10 tonnes or shoot laser beams he became a far less attractive proposition. So he hooked up with the "Deltahuman Association for Real Equality [DARE]" a new organisation of Deltahuman workers engaged in activism to protect the empowered from exploitation. He became the youngest branch president in the history of Ohio and toured his state helping the empowered to know and defend their rights with legal cases and negotiation. And...well once in a while if a new construction site got melted and leveled by some stray laser eye-beams when the boss was uncooperative..well that was just one of those accidents of nature, ya know?

One day the Great Lakes reggional President of DARE brought the 26 year old Alistair into his office and put an interesting proposition in front of him. There was a serious position opening up in LA's FAMA office relating to Deltahuman Welfare. Counselling Delts, giving them legal advice, negotiating on behalf of Delt workers. For Al it was a chance to make his mark on one of the largest cities and states in the country, not to mention it wouldn't be a bad item on the old resume for his planned political career. Swapping his ghost town for the bright lights and endless sunshine of LA, Alistair took the offer.

The next couple of years were rewarding but a hell of a grind. Watching guys who could lift bulldozers over their head break down crying in your office because they don't know if they can keep the lights on this month..well that's a hell of a thing. But showing up outside a utility company with a bunch of pissed off Delts screaming and picketing so that guy can keep his air conditioning running..well there was just nothing like it. And when the rumour went out that a seat on the LA city council was opening up, and from the resiggnation of anti-Delt maniac Mike Christman no less, well it couldn't have been more perfect. And the day Alistair arrived at the office, carried by Deltahuman Joltin' Joe, a speedster who Al had helped out with some loanshark issues when he first moved to LA, everything seemed just damn perfect.

Then the incident happened. Now the levers of power that Al knew have slipped like sand between his fingers. He's the master of a system that now lies in tatters at his feet, the remnants of the council now hanging only like a thin vapour in the areas between armed FAMA checkpoints. But Al has always been a guy to build his castle out of rubble and desolation...

▼ | PERSONAL ARC : |

As mentioned Al clings to an old order desperately and is running out of traditional allies. He's going to have to learn how to build new and strange alliances, and maybe become a little more comfortable with solutions that might be less than totally to his liking

⫸ P O W E R I N F O R M A T I O N ⫷

"Try to educate a man about politics for years...give me 5 minutes up on a podium and I'll set his head straight."

[indent]

▼ | POWER CLASSIFICATION : |

Type-Blue

▼ | POWER DESCRIPTION : |

Empathy and Inspiration: Well it turns out old Al wasn't just giving the gift of a silver tongue and a quick wit. Al is actually a minor telepath, more specifically an empath. He feels the emotions of others deeply and intimately and can influence them with delicate words and a fair bit of concentration. Around him his allies grow in bravery, courage and power, while his enemies start to lose their nerve and doubt themselves just a bit. With enough force behind it and some well strung together sentences he can make acquaintances want to go to war shoulder to shoulder with him.Additionally Al can calm allies and, given long enough exposure, can even heal them of past traumas and psychic wounds although this is significantly draining for him .

▼ | LIMITS : |

Al's power grows progressively weaker when allies or opponents are beyond the range of his raised voice, or not making eye contact with him. Communication by phone or radio can still be effective but it requires an area of quiet and focus on both parties' part and is still significantly weaker than if you were in the room with Al

▼ | WEAKNESSES : |

Al can be easy to provoke if you threaten the life of someone he cares about and when enraged his power becomes weakened. He is not terribly physically able either and with few offensive or defensive capabilities must use his wits to get him out of trouble more often than not, but in a straight fight against even a non-powered opponent Al is likely to struggle.

[/hider]

Howdy, I'm new

Hey there!

I was into play-by post stuff years back and had a ball of a time. Going through a bit of a fiction writing dry spell at the minute so thought this might help kick things into back into gear.

Looking forward to playing with you all!