pife
2014-10-07, 08:36 AM
It's hard to say what part of the last two weeks has been stranger.. Finally, after God only knows how long (literally), you were freed from your semi-existence. The torture of being able to dimly sense humanity all around you, to know that you lived only in their nightmares, and had no way to comfort, teach or inspire them, was a crushing weight that had finally been lifted. You still had no answers as to why, or even how this had occurred. Perhaps just as bizarre, you are continuously amazed at the scope of your current existence, living as one half of a symbiotic relationship with this troubled man, Quentin Trilby.
As it had done on five other occasions, a "storm" of sorts raged just outside the boundaries of the Abyss. And because it had happened five prior times with no tangible effect on you or the other fallen, you largely ignored it. But this time was somehow different. A sort of charge ran through you, leaving your skin tingling. After so long with limited stimuli, this felt sublime, and you found yourself walking blindly toward.... it? What you were heading toward, you couldn't say, it didn't look like anything, but you were drawn to that spot as inexorably as a moth is drawn to flame. Once there, you felt something, had a sense that something was... different here. There was nothing to touch, nothing to interact with, but the more you concentrated, the more you were able to wrap your mind around something. It was as though you were scrabbling against a glass wall in the dark, with no joins or corners or weaknesses of any kind. And then there were. In your minds eye, you could only describe it as finding four hard points. Pushing your thoughts against them, you felt one of them wiggle, just infinitesimally. Had you imagined it? After so long in the Abyss, you were used to your mind playing tricks on you, used to allowing your hopes to set you up for a long fall. But as you continued to force your consciousness against these four hard points, you felt as though you were beginning to slip between them. Pressure. So much pressure, it felt as though you were being squeezed into nothingness. Was this what it felt like being born, you wondered? But this was still something that you had not experienced in all this time, this eternity, and as such, you seized upon the sensation, throwing yourself at the points with growing excitement, trepidation, joy? Pressure turned to pain, and you felt a tearing sensation. Was it you that tore, or your surroundings?
You had no time to consider the answer to that question, because you immediately had the sense of great speed. All around you, the souls of the damned, those unlucky masses who lived in eternal torment and agony, clawed at your formless being as you were swept along in a current that somehow excluded them. But you were not alone... You felt many of your brethren being drawn along with you, being buffeted and twisted, while a dull white flash repeated itself ahead of you, as though it was lightning seen through a screen of thick clouds. The feeling of movement, of falling, intensified, and then.. everything was still and quiet. Your vision cleared, and you saw your surroundings, your NEW surroundings for the very first time.
You were in some kind of store. Your limited ability to sense humanity and their deeds allowed you to know at least what you were looking at. Handwritten signs painstakingly attached to the multitude of shelves proclaiming the price of each individual item. It was dim here, and you could hear the rumble of heavy thunder just outside. You realized that you didn't have a body, but were just a mass of senses without form. Taking in your surroundings, from the large cockroach crawling it's way across the ceiling, to the highly polished woodslat flooring, the reflection of the store brightening in the split second strike of lightning outside coming from the large mirror behind the storekeepers counter. And one other thing; you heard a whimpering, and fast, panicked breathing.. Without moving, you sent your senses over the counter, and saw behind it a man, curled up on the floor with his hands over his ears, eyes squinched tightly shut. You sensed the emptiness in this man, the absence of purpose, the fear and anger and bitterness. Alas, it was as though he had nearly no sense of himself any longer. The thunder, every peal of it, caused him to shrink in on himself, and now he breathed only in short, staccato gasps, rolling onto his knees, and covering his head with his arms. No, he whimpered piteously, Stop it, stop, stop, stop, make it stop, Lord save me, make it stop.
If you had had eyes at that moment, they would have bulged at the sensation that filled you. At once a feeling of exultation and of dread, of unfulfilled potential, and unmitigated terror. Because you realized something. "Make it stop", he had cried out, and he had petitioned God to make it so. You sensed without trying that this was not a penitent man, had no real belief that the Lord even existed, much less intended to see him safely through his terror. For one brief moment of complete understanding, you saw this man's life open up before you, saw the terror that he lived with and hid from every single day. His mind was broken, but more than that, his spirit was shattered too. He didn't believe in anything any longer. Not in God, not in himself, nor in Love, or Hope, or Justice, not even Goodness. Every day was a parade of fear and anger, terror and anguish, without end. All of the things that makes life good for these humans had withered away in this man, leaving him little more than a shell. A shell, you suddenly realized, that was calling to you. Yes, this Quentin Trilby, in his terror had flashed back to the war, not so many years before, where he had just watched several of his friends turned to red mist and flying bone.
You reached out, and reached 'into' the man's shaking, huddling form, and, almost as if he had been waiting for you, holding the door until you arrived, the man that was Quentin Trilby.. left. At your touch, his sense of self-collapsed, and the body itself would have died had you not continued. You entered, became one with Quentin Trilby. Veteran of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Battalion_(World_War_I)[the Lost Battalion (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Battalion_(World_War_I)). Quentin did not come out of that battle whole, and now, you could see why. As your vision sharpened and cleared, you were bombarded by a wave of memories, thoughts, beliefs, everything that WAS Quentin Trilby now flowed through you. At peace, finally, the soul of Quentin Trilby departed, leaving only his memory and his instincts.
You still had to battle against those instincts from time to time. Quentin had been no saint, you came quickly to realize. Something of a bully, and a definite coward since his return from Europe, he had managed to make life rather unpleasant for himself and those who cared about him. There weren't many of those left. His long-suffering girlfriend Adara was close to leaving him, and his family avoided him just to avoid conflict. The grocery store that he had opened after the War was doing adequately well, but some of that was due to illicit dealings that Quentin had arranged with BOTH the Jewish and Irish gangs. His employees were terrified of him, having had to endure his frequent rages over the last few years.
All in all, Quentin's life had been spinning out of control, though he may not have known it. He had forgotten what happiness felt like, contentment, affection. Everything the man had done was petty in nature, small, mean. As Eligor, you welcome the challenge. You just hope that Quentin's shortcomings, and his instincts, don't burden you overmuch in this strange symbiotic relationship you currently reside in. You have spent much of the last two weeks pondering the "why", and the "how" of your escape and subsequent 'rebirth', but one thing is certain. Humans have done more damage to Paradise than you would have imagined possible. So many people live in fear, or live in squalid conditions, so many revel in hate, and spite, and greed. Were these, truly, the Chosen of God? How could they possibly have fallen so far?
Even now, on the morning of March 23, 1923, before the sun has even risen, you see the price of man's deceit writ large..
"Che cosa stai cercando di tirare, Quentin?", Antonine yells. What are you trying to pull? Squizzy tells me that there was a cop in your store yesterday. Was he buying lettuce? Huh? Did you sell him beans, eh? Spilled beans, maybe? What are they sniffing around here for, huh? What did you tell them? . You are standing in the narrow alleyway behind your store, on the loading dock that trucks use to offload your shipments. Antonine and Squizzy arrived unexpectedly just before one such truck is supposed to. Mostly, the truck is filled with stock for your store. But there should be about 50 bottles of premium Scotch Whiskey are supposed to be hidden on the truck as well. And Fat Tommy is supposed to be here to pick it up! The situation is going from inconvenient, to dangerous. Answer me, you two-faced bastard!
You are unaware of any visit by a cop. Neither you (nor Quentin before you) did anything to betray either of your criminal contacts. The Irish use your store as a place to have bootleg alcohol delivered, hidden in the truckloads of actual foodstuffs you order. They pick it up and take it somewhere else as soon as it arrives. The Italians use your basement as a place to store alcohol that has recently been delivered. You aren't sure where it comes from or how their getting it, just that a couple of times a week, a truck shows up with a ton of the stuff. Somehow you have managed to avoid them finding out about each other, and have been profiting handsomely.
Let me know if you have any questions, or if you need any information before you get started!
Antonine is one of the soldiers that works for Tiello Bonini (your Contact). He is one of Tiello's oldest friends and business associates. Squizzy is Antonine's shadow, a slimy little bastard who does Tiello's dirty work.
http://i1294.photobucket.com/albums/b604/Pife/Antonine_zps6478bc26.png (http://s1294.photobucket.com/user/Pife/media/Antonine_zps6478bc26.png.html)
Squizzy Sorento
http://i1294.photobucket.com/albums/b604/Pife/SquizzySorento_zps85712828.jpg (http://s1294.photobucket.com/user/Pife/media/SquizzySorento_zps85712828.jpg.html)
Fat Tommy
http://i1294.photobucket.com/albums/b604/Pife/FatTommy_zpsde3c0bb8.jpg (http://s1294.photobucket.com/user/Pife/media/FatTommy_zpsde3c0bb8.jpg.html)
As it had done on five other occasions, a "storm" of sorts raged just outside the boundaries of the Abyss. And because it had happened five prior times with no tangible effect on you or the other fallen, you largely ignored it. But this time was somehow different. A sort of charge ran through you, leaving your skin tingling. After so long with limited stimuli, this felt sublime, and you found yourself walking blindly toward.... it? What you were heading toward, you couldn't say, it didn't look like anything, but you were drawn to that spot as inexorably as a moth is drawn to flame. Once there, you felt something, had a sense that something was... different here. There was nothing to touch, nothing to interact with, but the more you concentrated, the more you were able to wrap your mind around something. It was as though you were scrabbling against a glass wall in the dark, with no joins or corners or weaknesses of any kind. And then there were. In your minds eye, you could only describe it as finding four hard points. Pushing your thoughts against them, you felt one of them wiggle, just infinitesimally. Had you imagined it? After so long in the Abyss, you were used to your mind playing tricks on you, used to allowing your hopes to set you up for a long fall. But as you continued to force your consciousness against these four hard points, you felt as though you were beginning to slip between them. Pressure. So much pressure, it felt as though you were being squeezed into nothingness. Was this what it felt like being born, you wondered? But this was still something that you had not experienced in all this time, this eternity, and as such, you seized upon the sensation, throwing yourself at the points with growing excitement, trepidation, joy? Pressure turned to pain, and you felt a tearing sensation. Was it you that tore, or your surroundings?
You had no time to consider the answer to that question, because you immediately had the sense of great speed. All around you, the souls of the damned, those unlucky masses who lived in eternal torment and agony, clawed at your formless being as you were swept along in a current that somehow excluded them. But you were not alone... You felt many of your brethren being drawn along with you, being buffeted and twisted, while a dull white flash repeated itself ahead of you, as though it was lightning seen through a screen of thick clouds. The feeling of movement, of falling, intensified, and then.. everything was still and quiet. Your vision cleared, and you saw your surroundings, your NEW surroundings for the very first time.
You were in some kind of store. Your limited ability to sense humanity and their deeds allowed you to know at least what you were looking at. Handwritten signs painstakingly attached to the multitude of shelves proclaiming the price of each individual item. It was dim here, and you could hear the rumble of heavy thunder just outside. You realized that you didn't have a body, but were just a mass of senses without form. Taking in your surroundings, from the large cockroach crawling it's way across the ceiling, to the highly polished woodslat flooring, the reflection of the store brightening in the split second strike of lightning outside coming from the large mirror behind the storekeepers counter. And one other thing; you heard a whimpering, and fast, panicked breathing.. Without moving, you sent your senses over the counter, and saw behind it a man, curled up on the floor with his hands over his ears, eyes squinched tightly shut. You sensed the emptiness in this man, the absence of purpose, the fear and anger and bitterness. Alas, it was as though he had nearly no sense of himself any longer. The thunder, every peal of it, caused him to shrink in on himself, and now he breathed only in short, staccato gasps, rolling onto his knees, and covering his head with his arms. No, he whimpered piteously, Stop it, stop, stop, stop, make it stop, Lord save me, make it stop.
If you had had eyes at that moment, they would have bulged at the sensation that filled you. At once a feeling of exultation and of dread, of unfulfilled potential, and unmitigated terror. Because you realized something. "Make it stop", he had cried out, and he had petitioned God to make it so. You sensed without trying that this was not a penitent man, had no real belief that the Lord even existed, much less intended to see him safely through his terror. For one brief moment of complete understanding, you saw this man's life open up before you, saw the terror that he lived with and hid from every single day. His mind was broken, but more than that, his spirit was shattered too. He didn't believe in anything any longer. Not in God, not in himself, nor in Love, or Hope, or Justice, not even Goodness. Every day was a parade of fear and anger, terror and anguish, without end. All of the things that makes life good for these humans had withered away in this man, leaving him little more than a shell. A shell, you suddenly realized, that was calling to you. Yes, this Quentin Trilby, in his terror had flashed back to the war, not so many years before, where he had just watched several of his friends turned to red mist and flying bone.
You reached out, and reached 'into' the man's shaking, huddling form, and, almost as if he had been waiting for you, holding the door until you arrived, the man that was Quentin Trilby.. left. At your touch, his sense of self-collapsed, and the body itself would have died had you not continued. You entered, became one with Quentin Trilby. Veteran of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Battalion_(World_War_I)[the Lost Battalion (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Battalion_(World_War_I)). Quentin did not come out of that battle whole, and now, you could see why. As your vision sharpened and cleared, you were bombarded by a wave of memories, thoughts, beliefs, everything that WAS Quentin Trilby now flowed through you. At peace, finally, the soul of Quentin Trilby departed, leaving only his memory and his instincts.
You still had to battle against those instincts from time to time. Quentin had been no saint, you came quickly to realize. Something of a bully, and a definite coward since his return from Europe, he had managed to make life rather unpleasant for himself and those who cared about him. There weren't many of those left. His long-suffering girlfriend Adara was close to leaving him, and his family avoided him just to avoid conflict. The grocery store that he had opened after the War was doing adequately well, but some of that was due to illicit dealings that Quentin had arranged with BOTH the Jewish and Irish gangs. His employees were terrified of him, having had to endure his frequent rages over the last few years.
All in all, Quentin's life had been spinning out of control, though he may not have known it. He had forgotten what happiness felt like, contentment, affection. Everything the man had done was petty in nature, small, mean. As Eligor, you welcome the challenge. You just hope that Quentin's shortcomings, and his instincts, don't burden you overmuch in this strange symbiotic relationship you currently reside in. You have spent much of the last two weeks pondering the "why", and the "how" of your escape and subsequent 'rebirth', but one thing is certain. Humans have done more damage to Paradise than you would have imagined possible. So many people live in fear, or live in squalid conditions, so many revel in hate, and spite, and greed. Were these, truly, the Chosen of God? How could they possibly have fallen so far?
Even now, on the morning of March 23, 1923, before the sun has even risen, you see the price of man's deceit writ large..
"Che cosa stai cercando di tirare, Quentin?", Antonine yells. What are you trying to pull? Squizzy tells me that there was a cop in your store yesterday. Was he buying lettuce? Huh? Did you sell him beans, eh? Spilled beans, maybe? What are they sniffing around here for, huh? What did you tell them? . You are standing in the narrow alleyway behind your store, on the loading dock that trucks use to offload your shipments. Antonine and Squizzy arrived unexpectedly just before one such truck is supposed to. Mostly, the truck is filled with stock for your store. But there should be about 50 bottles of premium Scotch Whiskey are supposed to be hidden on the truck as well. And Fat Tommy is supposed to be here to pick it up! The situation is going from inconvenient, to dangerous. Answer me, you two-faced bastard!
You are unaware of any visit by a cop. Neither you (nor Quentin before you) did anything to betray either of your criminal contacts. The Irish use your store as a place to have bootleg alcohol delivered, hidden in the truckloads of actual foodstuffs you order. They pick it up and take it somewhere else as soon as it arrives. The Italians use your basement as a place to store alcohol that has recently been delivered. You aren't sure where it comes from or how their getting it, just that a couple of times a week, a truck shows up with a ton of the stuff. Somehow you have managed to avoid them finding out about each other, and have been profiting handsomely.
Let me know if you have any questions, or if you need any information before you get started!
Antonine is one of the soldiers that works for Tiello Bonini (your Contact). He is one of Tiello's oldest friends and business associates. Squizzy is Antonine's shadow, a slimy little bastard who does Tiello's dirty work.
http://i1294.photobucket.com/albums/b604/Pife/Antonine_zps6478bc26.png (http://s1294.photobucket.com/user/Pife/media/Antonine_zps6478bc26.png.html)
Squizzy Sorento
http://i1294.photobucket.com/albums/b604/Pife/SquizzySorento_zps85712828.jpg (http://s1294.photobucket.com/user/Pife/media/SquizzySorento_zps85712828.jpg.html)
Fat Tommy
http://i1294.photobucket.com/albums/b604/Pife/FatTommy_zpsde3c0bb8.jpg (http://s1294.photobucket.com/user/Pife/media/FatTommy_zpsde3c0bb8.jpg.html)