Hecatoncheires
un jour je serai de retour près de toi
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"Where we are,
There's daggers in men's smiles.
The near in blood,
The nearer bloody."
- William Shakespeare, 'Macbeth'
In your defence, it probably wasn't your fault.
You were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Wrong shortcut. Wrong alley. Wrong party. Wrong date. Doesn't matter. Just because it wasn't your fault doesn't mean you can't suffer for it. One moment, everything was hunky dory.
Next moment, you're waking up in a mass grave amidst a burning building, trying desperately to figure out what the fuck is going on and why you have a thirst like the Devil's own.
You might be thinking that this is the worst moment of your life. And you may very well be correct in that thought. But let me tell you, friend: the night is still young. Things are going to get so, so much worse for you.
Call it a disease. Or even a curse, if that makes you feel better. In a world of blood-transmitted horror, you got the shortest straw possible: you've just become the monster's monster. In the eyes of the beasts that made you, you're a combination of leper and harbinger of the end times. A Thin-Blood. Dead yet not. A monster with half their foot still precariously hanging over mortality. Don't expect a warm reception. Except from the flames currently consuming the building you're lying in.
You don't know it yet but you've just been dumped, naked and afraid, into a world that exists beneath the one you used to call home. A world of shadows and blood, of ancient monsters and terrible secrets mankind was made to forget. A world of bloodlines and alliances forged in times so ancient they make the biblical flood look contemporary. A world of hierarchies, and be assured that you're at the very bottom of every single one of them.
Only saving grace is that you're not alone. There's a whole bunch of bodies in this mass grave, after all, and some of them are still breathing. Metaphorically speaking. Your new comrades in catastrophe, unified in just how universally fucked each and every one of you are.
So get up. Get moving. Because there's far worse than flames coming for you at this moment in time. If you survive long enough, you might just make some sense of the mess you've just been thrown into.
And if you're very lucky? You might have a chance to get even with the bastards that did this to you.
° 'Shovelhead' is a Horror RP about receiving the shortest end of the stick possible, set in the world of 'Vampire: The Masquerade'. Players will take the role of a small group of people awakening to discover that they have been transformed into Thin-Bloods, a diluted form of vampirism that marks them as pariahs in the undead world they are about to be thrown into. Assuming they can scramble out of the mass grave they find themselves in before the building they are in burns down. Dumped into a city they do not know and an underworld that largely wants them dead, what unfolds will be a story of desperation, survival and mystery.
° The goal of this RP is to be brutish, nasty and short - like a good hanging. You will be playing the ultimate underdogs, strangers in a strange and brutal land. Your survival is very much not guaranteed, but with enough ingenuity and cunning you might just last long enough to turn things around.
° No prior knowledge of Vampire: The Masquerade or the World of Darkness it belongs to is necessary. If anything, not knowing anything about it will help you get into character all the more.
° 'Shovelhead' makes use of Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition's ruleset. I chose this both because it offers the most potential for running a Thin-Blooded story and because (as the most recent edition) there are a number of quite excellent Actual Plays available online to help people get to grips with the system and the vibe. Yes, this means this RP does involve dice and the rolling of them. Yes, like D&D. Only not quite. If classes and levels and fantasy races have perhaps thrown you off in the past, you may find that Vampire's more free-flowing, narrative system is more your pace.
You were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Wrong shortcut. Wrong alley. Wrong party. Wrong date. Doesn't matter. Just because it wasn't your fault doesn't mean you can't suffer for it. One moment, everything was hunky dory.
Next moment, you're waking up in a mass grave amidst a burning building, trying desperately to figure out what the fuck is going on and why you have a thirst like the Devil's own.
You might be thinking that this is the worst moment of your life. And you may very well be correct in that thought. But let me tell you, friend: the night is still young. Things are going to get so, so much worse for you.
Call it a disease. Or even a curse, if that makes you feel better. In a world of blood-transmitted horror, you got the shortest straw possible: you've just become the monster's monster. In the eyes of the beasts that made you, you're a combination of leper and harbinger of the end times. A Thin-Blood. Dead yet not. A monster with half their foot still precariously hanging over mortality. Don't expect a warm reception. Except from the flames currently consuming the building you're lying in.
You don't know it yet but you've just been dumped, naked and afraid, into a world that exists beneath the one you used to call home. A world of shadows and blood, of ancient monsters and terrible secrets mankind was made to forget. A world of bloodlines and alliances forged in times so ancient they make the biblical flood look contemporary. A world of hierarchies, and be assured that you're at the very bottom of every single one of them.
Only saving grace is that you're not alone. There's a whole bunch of bodies in this mass grave, after all, and some of them are still breathing. Metaphorically speaking. Your new comrades in catastrophe, unified in just how universally fucked each and every one of you are.
So get up. Get moving. Because there's far worse than flames coming for you at this moment in time. If you survive long enough, you might just make some sense of the mess you've just been thrown into.
And if you're very lucky? You might have a chance to get even with the bastards that did this to you.
° 'Shovelhead' is a Horror RP about receiving the shortest end of the stick possible, set in the world of 'Vampire: The Masquerade'. Players will take the role of a small group of people awakening to discover that they have been transformed into Thin-Bloods, a diluted form of vampirism that marks them as pariahs in the undead world they are about to be thrown into. Assuming they can scramble out of the mass grave they find themselves in before the building they are in burns down. Dumped into a city they do not know and an underworld that largely wants them dead, what unfolds will be a story of desperation, survival and mystery.
° The goal of this RP is to be brutish, nasty and short - like a good hanging. You will be playing the ultimate underdogs, strangers in a strange and brutal land. Your survival is very much not guaranteed, but with enough ingenuity and cunning you might just last long enough to turn things around.
° No prior knowledge of Vampire: The Masquerade or the World of Darkness it belongs to is necessary. If anything, not knowing anything about it will help you get into character all the more.
° 'Shovelhead' makes use of Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition's ruleset. I chose this both because it offers the most potential for running a Thin-Blooded story and because (as the most recent edition) there are a number of quite excellent Actual Plays available online to help people get to grips with the system and the vibe. Yes, this means this RP does involve dice and the rolling of them. Yes, like D&D. Only not quite. If classes and levels and fantasy races have perhaps thrown you off in the past, you may find that Vampire's more free-flowing, narrative system is more your pace.
"I know always that I am an outsider; a stranger in this century and among those who are still men."
- H.P. Lovecraft, The Outsider
- H.P. Lovecraft, The Outsider
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