Massasauga

Umbra Rose Condos

<Snipped quote by Massasauga>

@Sky Blue

Over my dead wolverine body

Umbra Rose Condos

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Ye.

@Xaltwind

Pennsylvania. Also known as “Ohio 2”.

Umbra Rose Condos

Oh God, we’re in Pennsylvania?

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The air was crisp in the morning. It always was. Dew had settled and was greeted by the sun rising over the horizon. The town was bustling with people heading to work or getting their day started. The walk in had been long, but it was the quietest march she'd been on. As the building came into view, Rebecca looked it over. It seemed fairly bland and drab. Hard to believe it was a place full of weird creatures on the inside, but she had been familiar with these kinds of dealings before. A few of her friends were able to make things happen with helping her skirt the state police and other places frequented by undercover FBI and Sheriff Deputies. Her brothers looked out for her, because she looked out for them once too. In Laos, Cambodia, North Vietnam, Southern China, Iran, Grenada, Panama, Kuwait, Somalia, Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan...

Back home, none of them wanted to see her labeled as a ruthless monster bent only on destruction. They wanted her to have a chance at a normal life too. Everyone else had rotated out and new faces came in, so in the last 2000's she made her call and decided she had overstayed her welcome. From then on it was couch surfing and late night shifts at local places for meager pay. She couldn't afford to make use of her skills because it would only draw attention. No one would give a second thought to another dishwasher or line cook in the back of a kitchen. Still they always managed to hone in on her. It was hard to vanish without having to go completely off the reservation.

The building was a chance. A chance to disappear almost completely. To truly live off the reservation without having to live off the land. It was almost too good to be true. It had taken a lot of convincing in her days, but now she stood before the towers. Her olive drab M65 field parka kept her body defended against the threat of the errant morning breeze. The tapes above her breast pockets read "HOLLOWAY" on the right and "U.S. ARMY" on the left. On her right shoulder was a reversed American flag, indicative of a member of the military. On the left was a shield patch that was red with gold bordering, featuring a USAF command pilot wings badge, a skull with a green beret atop a banner reading MACVSOG, and the bottom end of an anchor with a mooring line. A pair of Wrangler jeans had seen more than enough grass and mud and dirt from the stains and the wear on them. Old jungle combat boots had been tied up and had their laces tucked away to avoid snagging on anything. A large green duffel bag was slung across her left shoulder full of everything she needed to live out in the field for a good while.

Rebecca stepped off towards the apartments. It was uncanny the way everything seemed to be so quiet from the outside. Maybe things could be different for her here. A chance at a real quiet life. Did she want that? It wasn't for certain, but she would give it an honest try. After all, she had friends and had her ways if things didn't work out. She could just disappear when the time was right, but she needed to get her mind together. After all, nothing worth doing was ever easy. She pushed through the door and walked up to the front desk, which was currently unoccupied and did her best to switch her outward expression to a softer yet exhausted look. Being personable was still a big challenge.

Umbra Rose Condos

Shoggoth #2

Name: Rebecca "Rose" Holloway

Image/Appearance:


Height: 6’
Build: Muscular

Race: Eldritch Abomination

Racial Traits:

Endurance: A shoggoth can survive comfortably in vacuum, in any depth of water, in freezing temperatures, and in catastrophic heat. Radiation which would cause cell-death in mammals is quite harmless to a shoggoth. A shoggoth suffers no ill effects from aging. Presumably a shoggoth must feed, but they have been known to sit in torpor for years—or centuries, or millennia, or eons; who can say?—with no apparent harm. The limits of a shoggoth’s endurance are unknown. With this in mind, the human body it is attached to requires a transfer of shoggoth matter to it in order to stay alive in such conditions with can rapidly drain energy from both.

All-Seeing: Shoggoths are encased in a thousand shifting eyes that can see in every portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. While the shoggoth is present in its Eldritch form, it is impossible to sneak up on its host.

Tekeli-Li: Shoggoths were bred to communicate, and to imitate the sounds of their former masters. They are incredible mimics. Few know how long it would take a shoggoth to use this facility for actual communication, but they certainly can imitate any sound they hear.

Intellect: A shoggoth has intelligence on the same scale as a human, but its modes of thought are utterly, incomprehensibly alien. In most encounters, a shoggoth acts with seemingly mindless, destructive wrath. But it may have inscrutable goals, newly conceived or developed over billions of years, which are served by the destruction it causes. In this case, the shoggoth is bound to the host with the "binding sigil" that is the Elder Sign. Through the years, the host and the entity have developed a crude method of communication while the shoggoth continues to be bound by the Elder Sign.

Reshape: Shoggoths can ooze, grow, shift or change their plastic form to fit through almost any gap. If air can pass through an opening, a shoggoth can as well.

Regeneration: A shoggoth can rebuild itself from a minuscule amount with only the most basic elements. If left in this state in an environment with access to oxygen and water, even trace water in the air, it reconstitutes to half strength in a matter of days. The shoggoth also regenerates tissue that belongs to its host.

Requirements: No outstanding requirements

Personality: Stoic, guarded, troubled. Rebecca has been through quite a lot and knows that sharing her past wouldn't earn her any sympathy about her situation because not all of it stems from her current relationship with her body's tenant. She hides a lot of her true self behind a wall of reservation, but she is far from inconsiderate.

Background: Little is known about Rebecca in the public light, and for good reason. Utilized as a new venture against combating Eldritch horrors during the Cold War, Rebecca was subjecting ti government trials involving induced shoggoth symbiosis. There was no thought given to the her expense. Part of the trail included combat testing for long-term exposure as well as performance. From 1967 to 1972, Rebecca was deployed with the 5th Special Forces Group as a part of MACV-SOG. Her top secret nature made her perfect for the top secret missions into Cambodia and Laos during the Vietnam War.

After the conflict wound down and Nixon enacted Vietnamization, the powers that be grew restless in dealing with Rebecca. Though they had reservations of placing her in other units on other missions, she was eventually allowed to participate in the newly minted 1st SFOD-D. But Rebecca’s past followed her, and she was swiftly becoming unpopular with Big Army as they found it harder to keep her identity a secret. Name changes, moves, redeployments, all were just stopgap measures. Eventually, Rebecca saw the writing on the wall. Even with pushback from her units she served with, Big Army was looking to quietly get rid of her.

With help from people she had met along the way, Rebecca was able to live a life AWOL from her unit and kept herself mobile to avoid prying eyes and suspicions. Her goal was to make it appear as if she had fallen off the face of the Earth. Her old life was gone and her new life had only just begun when she was met in a bar and handed an envelope from someone who had “done a lot of work to find her”.

Building, Floor, and room: Building 1 - Floor 3, Room #1-303
Room description: Sparse and spartan decoration. Full of old military lockers with a few pieces of furniture, several bookcases, a large walk-in closet for storage, a kitchen and dining room, and a small bedroom.

Umbra Rose Condos

<Snipped quote by Massasauga>

They post much slower and more reasonably than us forum goblins. But i’m sure they’ll let us know when they’ve reviewed it!

@LupusIntus

My forum goblin days are long gone.

Umbra Rose Condos

@Dragonydas I'm still waiting for you to review my character sheet

Umbra Rose Condos

<Snipped quote by Massasauga>
... Until something happens and that's no longer the case...

@Xaltwind

I wouldn't worry about it.

Umbra Rose Condos

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They're just lil blobby guys building cities under the oceans.
No souls required to have a good time.

@LupusIntus

That "Good time" being killing and destruction if left unattended. Thankfully, the shoggoths in the building will be under strict control of the Elder Sign.

Umbra Rose Condos

<Snipped quote by CitrusArms>

Depends on your philosphy, I guess. They were manufactured by the Old Ones as mindless slaves and servants but somehow developed enough sentience to rebel over millenia. Nothing to indicate they have a soul more than a complex AI shuffing off its shackles?

But hey, this is fiction bay-bee! Follow your heart, lol

@LupusIntus

Do cosmic entities created as workers have souls? It's truly one of the philosophical questions of all time. I would say no, purely because the Things From Beyond aren't exactly...well, let's just leave it as "they don't seem to meet all the criteria". That being said, they were intelligent and that was the Elder Things downfall because they became so intelligent that they revolted and said "nah fuck you". Outside of that, they tend to just do whatever they want.