idolpro | Shrike's Heart (#2)

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!heart games

Shrike's Heart (#2)

The woman before you is beautiful—fair of features, with lovely golden skin and luxurious long black hair, petite. You have the immediate and distinct impression that she's just let go of your hand, and she steps back, and smiles.

It's not quite a happy smile.

"I'm sorry," she says. "There's just nothing I can do, as things are. But the way is there; it just needs to be lit."

You open your mouth—maybe to say something, or to express confusion—but you have to cough, and taste something metallic, spattering black blood onto the ground in front of you. Then you realize—blood seeps from opening wounds in your arms, your chest, your stomach, your face. It rims your eyes and trails from your nose and you feel like you're dissolving—

—and you fall through the ground like it's the surface of a lake, and go down, down, down.

> Wake Up

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Both Imeeji and canon powers are OFF. HOWEVER, you now operate on wuxia movie logic and are understood to be competent with whatever weapons you choose to use, including bare fists.

All characters in the run occupy the same spaces, so you can talk to each other.

You begin with 0 WILLPOWER. Upon completion of certain activities, you will gain more, including but not limited to the below:

1. Pay proper respect to the dead - close their eyes, say a prayer over them, and so on, twice per area.
2. Spill the blood of others.
3. Accept the advice of the Neverborn, at a cost.
4. Experience a moment of peace.
5. Display a moment of great compassion, valor, temperance or conviction.

To perform certain activities, you will be told you need to SPEND an amount of willpower to do it without incurring the WRATH OF THE VOID. It is not usually a bad idea to spend the Willpower when asked.

If you don't know what to do, you can ASK THE ADVICE OF THE NEVERBORN once per area. Their advice may not be great! But it may get you in the right direction and will net you Willpower. Otherwise, poking around in the environment and talking to anyone you might find around is not a bad idea; depending on the action and the intent, any action taken might be useful.

Edited 2020-02-20 00:54 (UTC)

You are instinctively aware that these will help do what the woman at the beginning asked you to do.

Try and fulfill as many as possible but you only need to fulfill five.

1. Do not accept mercy.
2. Preserve something for the future.
3. Decide what's important and protect it.
4. Encourage growth.
5. See the sun rise.
6. Write a letter home.
7. Find strength amid fear.
8. Make a house a home.
9. Don't die.
10. Give Sorrowful Blade of the Softly-Falling Blade her name.

Many of these are abstract and can be fulfilled in multiple ways (apart from the last two), but consider that they should probably be fulfilled in the spirit of a way Shrike would interpret it.

Once at least one person has completed an objective in an area, the way ahead will be clear to the whole group, but you will not be able to return to previous areas.

You may also want to pick up items you find along the way; they might be useful later.

go here

Once, there was a maiden...
...who lived in a tomb, and the tomb was made in her image.
Because she lived in a tomb, she became like the dead.
She slept, and dreamed.
And sometimes, woke, and walked within the confines of her tomb.
"Why do you move?" her own ghost asked. "Why walk at all?"

[ You hear the voice of the woman from before distantly, and then silence.

At first, it might seem like you have your eyes closed—it's so dark, but no. This world is sunless, lightless, silent; low, dark water covers the ground, although, it's a little hard to tell there's water, because—

—because what also covers the ground are corpses, as far as the eye can see. Some of them still have their eyes open; some have obvious wounds, and some don't. Some hold weapons in hand, and some have weapons driven through them.

This is a place for the dead. What does that make you?

But you can move, and sit up, and stand up, if you have the stomach for it.

Some distance away, you can hear water moving, like there's an uphill or downhill, and there's a vague sussuration at the edge of your consciousness that you instinctively strain to listen to.

You are also aware of the objectives and rules, instinctively. ]

[ And then, inexplicably, a light appears at your feet, extending out into a single gold line—and there, a path, spiraling up onto a long, long staircase you couldn't see before. Maybe to somewhere other than here.

"I am not trapped while yet I run," says a voice.

Perhaps you'd better.

Proceed. ]

Edited 2020-02-19 17:28 (UTC)

Once, there was a maiden...
...falling forever in the water. She reached for purchase, but found nothing; her arms swung through the sea.
The water did not slow her, nor the chill,
but she could not breathe.
Each time she gasped and found no breath, a human child died; and thus, she lived.

[ As you go, the ground slowly grows marshier, softer, and smells creep in. They're ordinary earthen smells—peat and damp and marsh, but there's a hint of the metallic tang of blood, and the acrid note of smoke in the distance.

The clang of metal rings out to your ears as you emerge from a reed bed next to a small, algae-choked pond, but it's clear the bulk of the fighting has long been over, from the only intermittent cries and the way you can see thatched roofs smouldering.

Though, nearby, there's a rustle from the same reeds you came from—like you're not alone. ]

[ "Survival is acceptance," a voice says.

And the same gold line unwinds from your feet, and into the fields beside the village, off into the distance. You don't have to follow it this very moment, but you can.

Proceed. ]

Edited 2020-02-19 17:29 (UTC)

Once, there was a maiden...
...whose battles called her far from home.
She slew the thing she feared most, and conquered the land that feared her.
As she fought, far away, she knew her children needed guidance.
She knew they faced tyrants.
She knew they faced fear.
In her homeland, things were broken.
So, she held up her hand before the sun, and cast a shadow on the world, and drowned the troubles of her home in darkness.

[ There's blood on your weapon, you realize—the weapon you hold in your hand, and if you didn't have one before, you have one now, whether it's sword or axe or war fan or chakram. It's no surprise from the bodies that lay in the trampled-down field behind you. It looks like it used to be for growing, but now nothing will grow there again, probably, even though a few bags of seeds sit aside it.

A clatter; one of your soldiers tosses another sword atop the pile of discarded enemy weapons.

Ahead of you lies the small border city that your forces have just conquered. ]

[Well, this is okay. I like this.

But first, if this is a place of the dead, it is not right to simply let them lie here like a charnel house. She kneels down, pulling out weapons, closing their eyes.]

I will not fail you.

[ Nice here, isn't it?

A little nicer, now that you've made the dead a little more restful. You gain +1 WILLPOWER for your consideration.

The corpses stretch for some distance—all real-seeming, distinct faces, still and ashen in complexion. Some seem like total strangers, or perhaps vaguely familiar at best. Mixed in with all of them are the bodies of your fellow idols—you might see your own face mirrored there, though for whatever reason, it seems wholly unfamiliar, if unsettling. ]

[Bending down to examine "herself" closer!]

[Ren normally had barely an issue seeing at night, even though this place limited many of her natural abilities as a vampire. This place was different. It was dark and she could barely see her own hand in front of her face. The smell - the smell - was awful. The smell of the dead, just like her memory with her father teaching her to be a Hunter, was absolutely nauseating.]

Hello? How many of us are here?

[She tries to get to her feet, narrowly avoiding slipping on what was probably a corpse with the squishing sound it made. She sucks in a breath, trying to find a wall, a tree, something to hold her up.]

Edited 2020-02-20 01:11 (UTC)

[ Well, she certainly looks like you, down to the haircut and clothes, but it's a little like looking at a photograph that is clearly of you but that you don't remember being taken.

And you're standing right here, aren't you?

She seems to have been killed with a sword, though.

Meanwhile, water might be soaking into your shoes, but it doesn't feel cold, here.

It doesn't feel like anything.

The whispering just at the edge of your hearing grows a little more distinct. It's like they're coming from somewhere, a little ways away. It feels like you should follow, eventually, but it's not urgent. ]

[ There's nothing vertical nearby to hold onto, though if you squint, a little ways into the distance, you can see... the vague outline of something large, like a wall, or a building's front.

But you manage to stand, and find your footing amongst the dead. Water might soak into your shoes, but it doesn't feel cold, here.

It doesn't feel like anything.

The whispering just at the edge of your hearing grows a little more distinct. It's like they're coming from somewhere, a little ways away. It feels like you should follow, eventually, but it's not urgent. ]

[Investigating the idols' bodies, to determine if there is any sort of there is any sort of pattern to who is here, and who is not- and if they have all been killed in the same way.]

Nova? I am here.

[Climbing to his feet and surveying the absolute sea of dead.]

This was one fuck of a battle.

[He glances at the corpses nearest him, looking for one with a spear.]

[ There's enough bodies here that every idol in Tokyo-F could easily be among their numbers—it's hard to find them all, in the dark, and overlapping as they are. There's even some transferred idols here—Harpy, with sword in hand, as if she fought until the end. Griffin, clutching a spear. Cardigan, skewered on three swords.

Oh, and that's Kohime, with her hair matted bloodily across her face, a spear driven through her chest. Nearby, the tallest member of BARiTONES has fallen, the back of his head crushed into a bloody mess, dyeing the white sections of his hair red. ]

[The whispers aren't clear, but she knows to follow them. They would lead her somewhere. To where, she had no idea. She scours the corpses for the nearest weapon-like object she can get her hands on as she moves in the dark.]

[ you survey the corpses, and find a spear sticking up—

it turns out to be still clutched tightly in the hand of Griffin of avante en garde, who lays with a bloody gash across his stomach, and one across his neck. ]

[Well. Fuck.]

[He bends to ease the spear out of his hand - hesitates, frowning, and closes Griffin's eyes.]

Oh! I'm so glad.

[Well, not glad, but it's a familiar face so she can't complain.]

Any ideas where we are?

[ there are so many—you have your pick, honestly. the only kind of weapon you don't see represented here is anything modern, and there are no guns whatsoever.

the whispers mount as you continue walking. like a chorus of chattering voices—some quiet, some occasionally rising to audible phrases, like snippets of conversation you're not a part of that you just happen to catch. you hear—

the place where you stand is the place you were born for

—and then that particular voice gets drowned out by others. ]

[ You close his eyes. He looks very... different, in death, somehow. But perhaps it can bring him some measure of peace, if you pick up his weapon and let him rest; you gain +1 WILLPOWER. ]

[Does he know anyone else among the dead?]

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Shrike's Heart (#2)

RULES

OBJECTIVES

WILLPOWER TOTALS

> START

A PATH

THE RUINED TOWN

A PATH

THE BATTLEFIELD

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