Path of the Vampire forum

The schism beneath him opened wider and the man leaped to the side. From within the hands of a thousand, ten thousand, a hundred thousand dead men and women reached up for him, screaming for his blood. The rose up from his seated position, crab-walking backward on his hands and feet, scurrying back from the void rent in the concrete, deeper into the earth, deeper, past the physical into the Aether... he backpedaled and fell, just like in the horror movies as body after body emerged from the chasm.

Each one reached out toward him, desiccated husks seeking a fullness that only he and those like him, humans, could provide them. Them swarmed from the hole in the earth, in the world, a hole that went further. He turned to run and felt their hands reaching out, clawing at him. In a blind panic he screamed at he ran…

His alarm clock screamed along with him as the man awoke in the motel room. His arms and legs flailed ineffectively against the fresh sheets cast atop a mattress containing the remnants of ten thousand couplings, a thin veil of cleanliness and purity cast haphazardly over the filth beneath.

The dream, vivid, real begins to fade as the man catches his breath. Sitting bolt upright in the bed, four walls and a locked door of safety around him he begins to feel silly for the whole episode. The freshly laundered sheets are soaked through, likely drawing the nastiness they separate him from out of the mattress beneath the bedspread. He gets up and immediately heads to the shower feeling tainted and disgusting.

Another ****-hole shower in a ****-hole room in a ****-hole town or city. He’s lost track. Having been on the lam for the past eternity the man knows only that he must remain under the radar, beneath the notice of those who matter. Those who would take away what he has hid for, fought for, ran for for so many days he’s forgotten what it was to be able to live. Now he merely survives. There has to be more than this.

The hot water seems to wash away the remnants of the dream as though he had been truly sweating out the terror it contained.

The bar is like any number of holes in the wall the man has frequented briefly during his travels. There are the regulars, laughing, joking, vying for the bartender's attention (he doesn’t blame them, the bartender is cute) while the newcomers are gazing around, trying to act like they are important, seeking attention from hot chicks and guys they are no more likely to go home with than they are to suddenly sprout wings, turn into pigs and fly away.

The man sits quietly at the bar. He orders a beer.

Some of the people seems well put together. A brief glimpse would tell the casual observer they were doing good in life. The man noted the dirt beneath their fingernails, a slight stain, mostly washed away. He noticed their hair changed subtly. They had showered before coming here, likely thrown on their best clothes. The women he saw were looking for a guy, but, using the internet method, exclusive more than inclusive. Speed dating based on first reaction rather than conversation. Weeding out the men who seemed too eager to please, too detached, too whatever.

The guys from the office, fresh off the job looking to have a brew before heading home looked as though they’d been through a rough day at the office. They looked tired. The man who’d ordered the beer noticed the women didn’t seem interested in the guys who looked stressed, they went for the freshly showered, shaved and dressed guys who likely worked at Burger King and were wearing a suit their fathers used to wear ten or twenty years prior. He barked a laugh at the scene just as the bartender set his drink down.

Leaning over, producing a bosom that likely earned her more tips than the quality of her mixing abilities, she said softly to him, “Wanna share the joke stranger?” The man looked to her, his expression in between a smile and a smirk as he reaches for the frosty mug. “Sure,” he says, “I think it’s hilarious that the gold diggers here are digging in the valleys and ignoring the hills.”

“What do you mean?” The bartender looks confused at the comment. The man explains his logic briefly, pointing out a few examples. The woman laughs quietly, tells him she’s noticed the same, even points out a few regulars famous for putting on airs. The man knows this is the part she is working him for a tip. She’s doing it right. He would feel like they were closer than they are, co-conspirators with a connection. They were having fun. She was agreeable. She’d flirted. He was meant to tip well now. That was the way of things.

The man lifted the mug to his lips and took a long drink from the contents of the mug. Setting it down he smacked his lips, glancing around and finding a fairly hot random girl in the crowd. “What’s her story?” he asked. That wasn’t the question on his mind really. He wanted to ask her how they managed to hook the beer kegs up to the urinals and yet avoid getting busted by inspectors year after year. He’s pretty sure the keg is either skunk or the lowest of the low quality of homemade wannabe beer this side of Vancouver. He took another swig, ignoring the taste.

“Oh her? Local. She’s been coming here forever. Got a boyfriend but you wouldn’t know it the way she flirts. She’s harmless though. Her man comes in every night about this time and she settles down.”

The man pretends to listen. Really as his eyes remain facing the direction of the woman in question, his checking out the clean cut looking guy seated at the table behind her. A very slight lump on the man’s chest, covered most of the time by the guys jacket is either a rare form of tumor or it’s a gun. He’s clean cut though so it’s not likely the guy is packing illegally. He reeks of cop. The woman looks as though she has seen everything there is to see. She looks almost haunted. So does he for that matter.

The man rises from the bar stool, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a crumpled wad of ones, tossing them down on the bar. He turns from the bartender even as her face changes from a sort of amused anxiousness to confusion and heads toward the exit.

One cop in a bar is one too many.

He turns as the bartender calls out to him. “You’re meant for more than this. We’ll meet again!” The man says nothing and exits the bar.

Stepping into the cool night air the man wraps his jacket, a Gore Tex jacket he picked up in a random thrift store in a random town or city he can’t remember he glances about the street. Harper Rock seems so opposite from other major population densities in that the people seem to fear or reject the nightlife rather than look forward to it. The man shakes his head at the near empty streets and starts walking. The direction doesn’t matter really. He’ll arrive where he’s meant to arrive because that’s where he’s meant to end up. Something will catch his eye, he’ll investigate, something will happen that will add to this experience that is life until it stops.

Pretty simple theory. Keep going, experience everything until you experience nothing. Or Heaven, or Hell, or Reincarnation. Something.

Tonight the experience again seems fairly minor. An abandoned subdivision, derelict homes. A place where an interloper like him can spend the night. He’s spent the last of his meager savings on beer that tasted oddly like piss. Shelter is still a necessity so he makes his way toward the boarded up houses that held only the memories of families living their lives beneath their roofs.

He wondered if the houses could be haunted, like the dreams that seemed to elude him whenever he tried to conjure them. They meant something, he knew that much yet he couldn’t remember a single one of them. Just the panic, just the fact that he woke terrified and damned near wetting himself with the fear they brought on.

When he was meant to know he would though.

Everything was zen, everything was copacetic.

An NPC here recognises a great potential in your chi energy. He is willing to help you gain the Sorcerer class. In return he wants $10,000 cash. In order for you to begin your training, though, he says that you will need to go into the wilderness, spend some time there, and study the animals who live there. He instructs you to get close to 5 wolves and study their movements, and then escape only when the creature attacks (before you are defeated). In doing so, the sorcerer explains, you will gain an understanding of both your own body, and the body of the Earth Mother, while attuning yourself to the natural "chi" of the universe.

Taking this path will prevent you from learning other human classes right away, and there is no going back.

However, becoming a Sorcerer will immediately boost all of your stats, it will make you level up much faster, and will enable you to learn special powers. These powers are best used in a support / healing capacity, but later powers can eventually be used to cause serious damage to your enemies.

If you decide to go ahead with the change, there is no going back. Are you absolutely sure? Click here.

“I sense a great potential in your energy, your chi,” says the Oriental man, garbed in traditional robes to the young Canadian before him. He had a Fu Manchu mustache and a roadie beard going on.

“Oh yeah? What does that mean exactly?” He is tempted to be a smart-*** but finds all the sarcasm drained from his by the steady gaze of the self-proclaimed sorcerer. The old guy just has a certain way about him that brings a mellow and serious mood to the younger man.

“I can teach you to unlock the potential that has eluded you throughout your life. It will be dangerous and you will need to understand things beyond the world we humans have created. You will need to get back to the natural world. Learn to think as an animal, to be in touch with nature and see your place in it.”

“Huh, sounds interesting, what do I have to do?”

The aged Oriental man explains what he wishes the young Canadian to do in his soft-spoken and even tone.

“You shitting me old man?”

The wolf’s jaws closed an inch from the man’s foot as he pulled himself up into the safety of the tree branches. That made five. He had no idea why the strange oriental man had wished his pupil to be tormented by nature’s children, but had promised to teach him a Path to power if he did as instructed. Perhaps he was just a sicko that wanted to send him to an early grave. Once the pacing canine left he would know. He’d met the sorcerer in Willow’s Court and if the man was legit and not a swindler. The wolf glared up at him in his perch. Don’t howl for your friends pooch, don’t you do it. There’s better prey around these parts…

AHWOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!

Oh for ****’s sake!

The cry was answered by others. The man guessed he had only a few minutes to get away before the tree was surrounded by the canines. The one below had what almost looked like a grin on it’s face. That was probably the man’s imagination. “Bad dog!,” he scolded, reaching out and snapping off a branch within reach. Okay, here we go…

He leaped, the branch over his head as he descended, the wolf tensed, tried to slink backward, it’s haunches raised and belly down toward the ground. Too slow, too late. THUD! The branch rebounded off the wolf's skull and it let out a whimper, bolting away from the now screaming man who immediately turned and ran the opposite way. Caught between the instinct to give chase and the pain of the thumping from the attack the wolf merely snarls and slinks off toward the other howls breaking the silence of the Hunting Grounds.