geistnet | I'm Waking Up: Origin Stories.

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I'm Waking Up: Origin Stories.

You’re an old man who had a nasty run-in with Something That Went Bump in the Night, and once believed that the only way to make sure that you never had another problem like that again was to pick up a gun and shoot supes in the face before they killed you or hurt your family – and then some government shitheads called you up and told you that they’re your friends, you all have to get along. They took your weapons, sent you to some fucking program that felt too much like Alcoholics Anonymous. You hang up on them every time they check on you, but they still know exactly what you’re doing, every second of every day.

You’re a house wife in a quiet little town, accustomed to turning a blind eye towards the strange things that happened to people after dark because the local police either didn’t have a clue or were letting those things happen in the first place – and then some nice people in coats came in from God Knows Where, arrested some crooked cops, and made it all go away.

You make a new batch of cookies every Sunday, to give to the coated fellows who still hang around at the street corners downtown; some of them are young, so very young, and remind you of your younger brother. Your little ones want to be just like them someday.

You’re the kid who learns Judo rather than Track and Field after Math every day (Teacher Felipe says that you have to know how to defend yourself), then takes a quiz all about vampires, fairies and werewolves in Occult Studies. Every Wednesday, you tumble around with your classmates, and get mad whenever your best friend does his Superman thing and beats everyone to the top of the hill by flying there. Every Friday, a guy with more guns than you have teeth comes to school, takes over PE classes, and talks to everyone about what he does for a living. Sometimes, he takes “special kids” with him to another school, for special people like them. You hope that he won’t take your best friend away.

You’re the manager of one of the biggest call centers in the country. You’re happy because life’s been great ever since you opened your doors to the local vampire community. They’re damned good at their jobs, and you don’t have to deal with the HR nightmare of overtime, of medical bills and lawsuits anymore. And you feel safe, because you know that if one of them ever steps out of line, you know exactly who to call.

You’re the girl who leapt through time, who met a handsome stranger who took you to a fantastic place full of talking trees and flying fish, the girl who was loved and fucked and tossed aside when you started getting boring.

You came home and found that your house wasn’t your house anymore, that your parents have been dead for decades and all of your friends were old and gray while you haven’t aged at all.

They found you crying on a swing. They told you what happened, and helped you set things right.

You’re the drunkard at the local bar who sees monsters in every face, and still remembers what it was like years ago, when you didn’t have to be afraid of the dark, or wonder what’s beneath all the human skin and human smiles of every person you meet. The Truth fucked you up, you see. You wish that once upon a time, you had the better sense not to listen.

Whoever you are, if you were born between 1999 and 2066, you know about Hunters. You know about the conspiracies and compacts they are a part of, and the Vigil they keep between Day and Night, Light and Shadow. You know that some of them are human, and some of them aren’t, and some of them are somewhere in between. You know about why they’re here, and what they do while nobody’s looking. Hate them, love them, worship them, or revile them: it doesn’t matter. The World of Light and the World of Darkness have blended together, and that means that Hunters are around to stay.

o r i g i n s t o r i e s.

This post is devoted to threading out the stories of player characters of Waking the Dead prior to their arrival at the Falner Estate. Tag in and tell us yours. We have a feeling it's a good one.

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"I never really did anything. Always falling in line with Father. I wanted to graduate and do something so I could rub it in his face." She chuckles, but that turns out of be a bad idea because suddenly everything hurts again for the next few seconds, and then she's just a teary mess. Ella wipes her tears with an already numbing hand and sighs weakly. "Can't really blame him though, can I?" It wasn't as if her father had forced her to do anything.

"I'm just rambling now, sorry."

"It's okay."

It really is, in Barbie's perspective. She's had moments like that in the past, and all of them were situations when she had been certain that she was going to die.

Between her and Ella, though, she had been lucky.

"This is going to sound pretty strange, but... if you had another shot, would you take it?"

The expression on her face might be able to tell Ella that she's serious, and she's also hoping that Ella will ride with her on this one.

It catches her by surprise. Maybe anyone else would have thought about it, because seriously, finding yourself in your deathbed with a vampire right next to you? But Ella truly didn't think about it until Barbara said it.

"I..." Her look is the one of someone who doesn't know whether is being fooled or not. "I don't want to force you to do anything you don't want to."

That's probably the most difficult thing she has said in her entire life.

"But I refuse to go down like this." A hint of the fire that filled when she was in the alley returns. "It's only another shot if it's given willingly."

"It is."

Barbie pauses there, and looks down almost shamefaced at her hands. Vampires didn't actually feel anything; they only reacted to echoes of the emotions they once had. Such echoes were only as strong as the vampire's will.

The Golden Hand's will was incredibly strong. She wanted to reach Golconda one day.

"Your safety was our responsibility. This should not have happened." Another pause. "I checked in with some very reliable sources. The Coldshadow is a strain that even our own medics at Ziz cannot cure, and the entities that do have the power to save you and give you a more normal life aren't going to budge."

After that, she's looking back towards Ella.

"That just leaves me as your final option."

The girl is smart enough to know what Barbie is talking about, of course.

Whatever discussion that might have happened...doesn't. There is really no need for them, and even less time to worry about it. Ella took the choice the moment it was presented, but she needed to make sure she wasn't going to ruin someone else's life for her own sake. There is only one thing to ask.

"Will it hurt more than this?"

"I can make sure that it doesn't. In fact, I think that I can make sure that it will not hurt at all."

Barbie is grateful, and not for the first time, that she has the resources to ensure that now, and the skill. If she had found herself in this situation years ago...

No. It was best not to think on it.

Ella swallows.

"Okay, okay. Aaaah, okay. Before I lose my bloody mind."

She's just going to stay very still (not too hard considering she was dying over there) and let her to whatever she has to.

Barbie, of course, takes that as her cue to stand up. She moves in close and leans over, locking gazes with Ella. When she speaks next, her voice is low, modulated, and seems to move like smoke all on its own.

"You're not going to feel anything from this." The magic of the words will likely take hold instantly. "You're going to close your eyes, relax, and remember nothing else but the things and the people you cherish."

Everything goes calm, and the pain seems to slowly fade. The last thing she sees is Barbara getting closer, but then her eyes are closed.

At first, she sees nothing, but then the memories come back. Soft, toasted skin. Hair like black silk, fingers going through her hair. It's just her and the other person that ever really loved her the way she did, and while she was gone, the memory of her was enough to block everything else out.

It would be a simple matter to read what Ella is thinking, and use the memories that she is taking refuge in to make this process more enjoyable for herself.

Barbie does not. This isn't about enjoyment. This is about saving a life.

She positions herself properly, making sure that, in case anything happens, Ella will not be able to see anything but her eyes. Then she's taking one of the girl's wrists. The nails on her hand extend into claws, and rip her wrist open.

The bleed out will take a while, but her 'spell' will last longer.

While there is no outward reaction to having a wrist ripped open, something else is going on inside of Ella's head. While she's well protected in her memories, which strangely enough, seem to be going backwards, the awareness that she's dying becomes manifest; for someone who was already in the brink of it already, noticing a different kind of death feels bizarre, but she can tell there is a different contrast to it. This is a quieter death.

So on the inside, she's but a little girl know, hair wild and down to her waist as she runs through a hill of lush grass under the sun, her perfect little white dress ruined as her father shouts at her at the distance.

On the outside, Ella is barely getting any paler, as she didn't have much color on herself to begin with.

Edited 2014-08-06 15:52 (UTC)

And Barbie is thinking, almost distractedly, back to what it had been like for her to turn. The funny thing was, she did not remember any of it. She only managed to see what had happened on a CCTV camera recording years after the fact.

Someone else is entering the room: Raura. Her husband doesn't say anything, and only stays long enough to plant the device that will collect all of Ella's blood.

She severed a major artery on purpose. Three minutes in, and then she's sealing the wound with a press of her fingers. After that, she's bringing her own hand up to her fangs, and drawing Vitae from her own vein. Those drops, she places gently upon Ella's lips.

The change, after all of these preparations, will simply be strange. It also won't take more than an hour.

It might just be Ella's overactive imagination, but the landscape inside of her mind shifts, darkens and becomes colder as she becomes depleted of blood. The moment when there is no more to take, she feels as if she were floating on a lake, her body sinking slowly towards nothingness. And for a moment, Ella wants this. The moment passes quickly enough though, and she remembers herself, what she wants, her choices.

And like a confirmation that her will is where her words were put, something pulls her up from the waters, yanking her towards a different kind of darkness.

Roughly twenty minutes after Barbara's blood touched her lips, Ella's chest shots upwards, hands moving to the edges of the bed as she gasps, eyes open wide as her last human breath slips away, fangs sprouting for the first time. She then collapses on the bed again; she's disoriented, scared, cold but above all so ridiculously thirsty.

Slowly sitting up, Ella's eyes become more focused. She's not panting, she doesn't feel the urge to breathe anymore. It's only then when she notices Barbara, although Ella realizes she knew the woman would be next to her all this time.

"I- oh." A hand goes up to inspect her mouth, touching her fangs tenderly. "I have fangs."

At least she's not kicking stuff and making an embarrassing spectacle out of this?

Barbie, of course, had moved off a bit to the side to give the girl some space. At that first comment, though, she smiles.

"They do take getting used to." She tilts her head, looking over with concern. "How do you feel?"

This is the first time that she has ever done something like this, although she has had many good elders teaching her, and explaining the theory at length. She's also witnessed a few Embraces herself. She just has to make sure that this one went as smoothly as she promised it would.

"Huh," Ella touches them a bit more. "Can they...go away?"

Now sitting, Ella looks down at herself, her hands, her legs. A hand moves to her chest, as if trying to find her heartbeat, and then she twists as she pats her back. Nothing.

"Okay, I guess? Different somehow. Stronger? And thirty." Now that she says it out loud, the need is evident in her voice.

"Think about retracting them, and it will happen."

She's giving those instructions as she's handing what looks like a blood pack over. The pack, however, has Netach's insignia on it, and the crest of Ordo Daywalker. The blood within it looks like its moving of its own accord.

Vitae.

"Here. This is all for you."

The girl probably needs it.

Ella takes a completely unnecessary breath and focuses. True enough, her fangs retract a moment later.

Then she sees the blood and they pop back out. "Oh darn."

She holds the bag, eyes fixed in it. She has no idea of why, but the mere sight of blood is making her salivate. The bag comes with the usual tube that gets connected to whatever machine it's used, so she pulls it and takes a tentative sip.

"Holy crap." She's not gonna say anything for the next few minutes that it takes her to drain the blood.

Barbie watches her with amusement for a moment before she's sitting back down and fetching a pack of her own.

"I can't believe I'm saying this, but... you're kind of lucky. Vitae didn't used to come in packs."

Once the bag is empty, Ella lets go, sighing as her fangs retract. She's getting better at it.

"I was wondering why the blood felt so weird. I mean Good Weird, I guess blood will now taste good to me from now on? But it's probably scary for newly embraced Kindred to wake up thirsty and have to bite someone..."

And Ella goes silent at the thought of her biting someone. And no longer being able to see the Sun...and not even being able to eat food again.

Edited 2014-08-09 21:55 (UTC)

"It is, although I think that I'm going to have to train you on how to feed on somebody eventually. Just so that you know how to do it."

There were methods, after all. Ways of making sure that a vampire didn't end up killing somebody.

Ella had a lot to learn.

Ella smiles weakly. "Yeah, I don't want to accidentally kill someone. The idea of actually biting a person feels...strange though. I guess it'll feel different when I actually need to, but if I can make do without it..."

She swings her legs out of the bed and jumps to her feet. Her balance is great. No, excellent. "Do I really just fall asleep when the sun goes up? Do I...need a coffin?"

And then she remembers earlier that night and facepalms. "Can I even keep studying?"

Those questions remind Barbie of the kinds of things that she used to keep Riley up with, back when she knew close to nothing and had too many strange assumptions.

Since the girl is standing, though, Barbie is standing as well. She's also sending a mental missive to Celeste.

Prepare my car. I'll make my own way back with Ella... she needs some space.

"First: no, you don't. Second: no, coffins are ridiculously showy. Third... yes, you can. But you'll have to focus your efforts on studying how to be a vampire first, and on learning a little more about the World of Darkness."

She looks towards the door, then back at Ella.

"Would you like to go? I can fetch some good clothes for you, and give you a bit of time to freshen up."

"So I don't get tired or anything and it's like...going to bed? Also how much Sun is too much Sun? Or any Sun at all is a bad idea. Indirect light, maybe?"

She can't help but smile at Barbara's opinion on coffins. "Yeah, I figure I need a crash course at being a vampire. Or three. Who are you exactly, anyway? I've seen your face on the Internet, but I rarely do anything else besides studying." Quite the sad confession, but that was Past Ella, right?

On then does Ella notice the bloodstained clothes she's in."My flat? All my clothes are there. I don't really do...freshening up. Do we need to use the services or bodily functions are not a thing?"

"Bodily functions aren't a thing for us, beyond hungering for blood."

Saying that with just a touch of wryness.

"I can send some people over to your flat and have them fetch all of your belongings. That way, we can go straight to the Falner Estate." She smiles. "I'll answer all of your questions once we're there. One at a time, of course."

Winking at that. Ella's mood shift was nice and a little relieving.

"Oh, okay."

She's not answering the rest until they move, it seems. "W-wait, to Falner? Me? Can I even enter there?" Well talk about being surprised by rather obvious news.

Ella simply walks towards Barbara, but waits for her to lead. That's half their newly sire-childe bond speaking (which Ella has no idea about just yet) and half reminding her manners.

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Toggling vampiric abilities. No roll needed for this one.

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