It's where my demons hide, oh it's where my demons hide.

[sphererpmod]

Who: Everyone
What: The August nightmare log.
When: August 13->28th
Where: All over.
Notes: Please check the plotting/notes for the plot and it's specific timing here! Also please run things by other players if you're doing them!
Warnings: Demons, creepiness, possession.

August Nightmare Log: Demons

Days 1-3

Like so many bad things, this nightmare starts in the middle of the night. It starts with the sensation that the private domes and moves outwards from there. For the first two-three days of the nightmare, you experience the sensation of being watched, even if (especially if) you happen to be alone in the space. As the feeling intensifies, characters see things out of the corners of their vision, and if they turn around, or look quickly, whatever they thought they saw is definitely not there. The things that they see are nothing more than vague shadows that could be anyone (anything) but if there ever was it’s gone when they look. As the times progress, people start to hear whisperings in guttral, perhaps dead languages but the sound is too faint for anyone with the ability to speak them to hear. It’s mostly just gibberish whispering from far away.

On the third night, something new comes along. It’s a discordant sound that has no natural reference. It’s frightening, but also beautiful somehow in it’s sound. If nothing else, it’s definitely interesting. Of course it probably gets less interesting and more annoying the longer it goes on, or if you happen to know just what exactly it is. However, the sound of it ushers something new with it on day four.

Days 5-10

Between days four and ten, the Unsound has done what it’s supposed to do, allegedly and it’s begun to summon demons into the Sphere domes that are affected with the nightmare. During the day, the Tall Pauls are more shadow than anything else, but at night they solidify. They solidify and become more frightening. For the most part, all they do is watch. Tall Pauls are described as: looking like a gnarled tree made of shadow, with large and hungry of eyes, and the twisting length of its too long arms and branch-like fingers and the crazed over-sized smile. (Basically? Slenderman. We’re kinda talking Slenderman here only with a face.) They will watch, they will loom and they will terrify and fed off that sort of fear. Tall Pauls only wanna be your friend, and sacrifice you when your ready for it! Hopefully it won’t get to the point where you’re ready for it.

Tall Pauls will particularly bother sleeping people, children and those who have seen demons before, or those with the magical ability to shove them away. Go nuts.

Night of the Tenth Day->Day 14

Beginning on the night of the Tenth day and running til the fourteenth the Tall Pauls will be joined by their more terrible cousin: The Helvation. The Helvation is described as: “It's tall, hunched and black with gnarled teeth and hair. It looks old, ancient, as it slowly tilts its head the children finally see it, drop the camera and scream. And I don't know why I didn't notice this when I first viewed the tape. Perhaps I was tired, maybe I was asleep, but the creature... it looked like one that appeared in my dream last year, one that stood at the side of my bed” With the further description of the demon in her nightmare, edited for content (dream animal death). “And there was this woman standing at the end of my bed, she had long black hair and she was hunched over. But when she turned to face me, I could see that she had this crazy maniacal smile on her face. A twisted smile that literally stretched from ear to ear as if she had no cheeks, just this mouth - a dark mouth. [...] I wanted to scream but my voice was stuck in my chest. And it looked like the woman was laughing, her shoulders were going up and down. That smile…

“But all I could hear was a baby crying. I realized she wasn't laughing, she- she was changing into something bigger. Something wet and dark and horrible was coming. And this time, it wasn't coming from under the bed. It was coming from within the old woman. She- she turned and started crawling up onto my bed. Hitting me beneath the covers, my arms to my sides. Like I couldn't move. Her mouth opened wide, peeling back and the- the dark thing started to crawl out of the old woman. And I knew with absolute certainty that once it left the old woman, it was going to enter me.”

The Helvation will start by being creepy, doing what the Tall Pauls did times a thousand. However, it’s more violent in what it does. And it’s goal is the possession of the character. However, no more than one person may be possessed in a scene due to the nature of the singlar Helvation. Fighting off the demonic possession is going to be extremely difficult, and only possible for those with magical or psychic abilities or those who are divine. However, even that fighting should only be partial, as the demon is fed by the ability of the Sphere. No one should be possessed the entire last four days, and removing someone from the affected areas will definitely remove the possession. However, the possessed can use the network if the player is so inclined.

Any personal abilities that characters have are turned off by the demon, instead leaving them with super strength and telepathy is based particularly about character’s guilt and things that are in their pasts. (This is something else that players choosing to do this scene should talk about in advance. It can be feelings of guilt or history of the person possessed, just spilling the character’s own guts as it were, or surface reading from a second party.)

photo inspiration

Comments

[11calls]

"I swear I deal with cults on a daily basis now." Or rather a cult, as she knows now because The Order of the Cenophus and Warren's cult and Tiamat's are all the same thing and they all fall under the umbrella of one Thomas fucking Warren. "It kind of became a meme at work." Something wrong: cultists. Someone drank the last cup of coffee and put the pot back on the hotplate so it did that gross burning thing: fucking cultists. Alex losing her shit? Oh, that's definitely cultists. Like right now.

But instead of saying that, Alex just takes another sip of her scotch, and gives him a thin smile. Pulling herself together in order to make a joke takes effort, but she knows that's what Alex Reagan would normally do and she wants to get back to that part of herself and away from the part that's basically drowning in her own version of hell. So: "Well, I guess if you're losing all of that beautiful facial hair..."

[10milliondollars]

"That must be draining. Trying to stop the end of the world, or just investigating them?" He does understand the joking, of course. He and his friends had had their own memes. And that last joke actually pulls a little snort of laughter from Rhys.

"Y'know, if I could grow a beard that magnificent, I'd be afraid of losing it, too. It's a real gentleman's beard. Facial hair that garners the respect of everyone from a distance, even if the man wearing it isn't exactly worthy of that respect." He's certainly feeling lighter now as he takes another sip of scotch. Maybe it's the alcohol loosening him up, or maybe it's simply being in the company of someone he knows he can trust. They may be dealing with some rolling horror spreading out over the domes, but at least they're not alone in it.

It doesn't ease his fears that others will discover things he's worked hard to bury. "So, is this nightmare gonna get worse? Anything else I should look out for?"

[11calls]

"Both actually. Investigating them in order to try and stop the end of the world." From the faint twist in her lips, it's clear that Alex is aware how completely ridiculous that manages to sound, but it's also the truth. Even if it's as simple as Richard says with 'The Cult of anything is always trying to end the world' it's something that Warren and the rest of them are trying to do, and would keep trying to do until they went to Geneva and Richard opened the door, or if he didn't.

But the smile is somehow more real at the teasing of Max's beard, and Alex takes a sip of her scotch, killing it and refilling it before she offers him the bottle to do the same if he wants to. Granted, drinking around the whole demon thing is probably not the most wise decision she'd ever made, but it's just one more in the pile of bad, and being as she can't do anything about the bad... She's just going to do this and offer Rhys something else to laugh about. "You know, Richard grew a beard for a while. He definitely looked like the unabomber. The interns--and me I guess--said that it was 'unabomber chic' at the time." And of course, he'd had the flannels to go along with it, but thankfully had gotten better around the time that Coralee had reached out to him. Even if she didn't know what it was at the time.

Still, this distraction of Richard's flannel phase isn't enough to stave off the question he'd asked, and she just takes another long sip of her scotch before Alex answers. "I don't know. I mean..." It comes with a sigh. "There was a worse demon in my nightmares. It was this big hairy witch like thing. It definitely was worse than the Tall Pauls by..." Alex just shudders, and her hand shakes a bit. "By a lot."

[10milliondollars]

Rhys follows suit, draining his glass in one gulp and refilling it with a much less shaky hand than he'd had before. "Y'know, the way Jack went after bandits almost seemed like he was doing the same. Chasing a cult and trying to stop them from destroying the world. A very disorganized cult, though..."

The next bit catches him off-guard and he almost spits his next sip of scotch out. Richard had a beard? "What? Are you serious? And what's a...unabomber? Is it bad?" He makes a face, trying to picture Richard with any facial hair at all. The only thing that seems fitting is a pencil-thin moustache, and even that is a bit of a stretch.

The last part is the most interesting. The Tall Pauls are scary, but they seem docile enough. It doesn't seem like it would take much to be worse that them. "What...What did the witch do?"

He isn't sure he wants the answer.

[11calls]

As a response to the question about Richard and his beard, Alex just depresses the side of her head behind her ear and sends him along a picture of how he looked when he'd spent all of his time and energy in the search for Coralee. It's not that bad, but it certainly isn't pretty, especially as he's definitely traded in the tailored and bespoke suits for unbuttoned flannel shirts over white t-shirts that he leaves untucked and unbuttoned. Sometimes she thinks that it was only the fact that Alex herself would look at him with worry (and the smallest bit of pity) that he'd ever shaved it off and put the suits back on. 

But doing it is a distraction from the question that he'd asked her, and Alex is trying very hard not to think about those dreams, about how bad they'd been. About what they'd meant. More than that, she's trying very hard not to think about how what had been a hairy witch-demon thing that had stroked her foot so lovingly with one of the most terrible things that she can imagine, (It has not escaped Alex's attention, in the some almost two years since, that the cat that she'd felt was protecting her in those dreams had Richard's eyes. Nor what it could possibly mean.) had appeared in a black tape that had been made when Alex herself was still in high school. How it had been a video that she'd never seen until well after Richard had returned from Italy, how it had been a year later that they'd watched them together.

Alex shivers, because she can't help it. Reliving her personal nightmares feels more than a little bit akin to someone walking over her grave. "You don't want to know." Her voice is soft, but certain. No one really wanted to know, not when there was the possibility that it could show up.

[10milliondollars]

The image that comes through is...shocking, to say the least. It's such a stark contrast from the clean-cut, pristine Richard he's come to know. Had the man even showered during that time? Rhys cringes and shakes his head as he lets the image fade away. "That's really unfortunate...I'm glad he shaved it off. He looked like a crazy man."

He's trying to joke about it. Alex seems wholly shaken up, and he feels bad for digging into such an upsetting subject. She's his friend, and the last thing he wants is for her to be in any kind of pain. And she's probably (definitely) right about him not wanting to know what's in store next.

"You think he'd ever go for a more cultivated set of whiskers~? Maybe a fu manchu, or a set of porkchops?"

[11calls]

"He kinda was a crazy man. He was sort of going in that direction when I was kidnapped." Sort of? No, if it had been longer than Richard would have gone full on crazy conspiracy Strand and Alex knows it. It's just sort of who Richard was an how he'd go crazy and all in on the people he cared about, just like Alex herself does when it comes to a story. So, she doesn't judge that part of him. Not too hard anyway.

Still, with everything going on, it feels nice to laugh, even if it's something that feels a little bit like gallows humor for Alex's liking. "I told him that if he ever grew another beard like that I'd shave it off him while he sleeps." Which if he was that bad, he probably wouldn't end up doing, but that was neither here nor there.

[10milliondollars]

It certainly does sound that way. Rhys has known his fair share of crazy people, though. He laughs with her. "He'd deserve to have it shaved off. It looks terrible." At this point, he'd be willing to help her with that task.

"I'm glad he didn't. I don't know that the Sphere could handle him like that."

[11calls]

In something that's not entirely unprecedented, but certainly is unusual, Alex just stays silent for a moment, and she looks down at her hands. Looking back at the period where Richard wore his beard and flannel and grief like armor in the same way that he'd always worn his suits and Alex had borrowed the mantle of his assholeness isn't something that she's particularly proud of. It wasn't a good time, for either of them. But she can make jokes now. There's that at least.

And besides, it's easier than thinking about how Richard had been when she was missing, and how bad he might be if he actually lost her to something like this. So, she focuses on it, and the corners of her lips twist upwards, even if it's no where near as good as they normally would be. "Yeah Richard can be..." an asshole. "Intense about the people he loves going missing. He's definitely had reasons too." It's not really all that much of a secret with the show, considering Richard's own memory of when Coralee left again and refused him to allow him to go with her, and also had been jealous of Alex herself.

[10milliondollars]

"Yeah, it's...hard to lose people you care about." Though Rhys hadn't particularly looked too hard for Vaughn. He'd focused on starting over, getting his new company off the ground. It was a good thing Loader Bot had found them all. He finishes off his second cup of whiskey, but doesn't refill the glass. "People react differently to it, I guess."

Maybe he was just selfish. Maybe a normal person would focus entirely on finding the people they hold dearest. Maybe he doesn't really care all that much. Feeling bad about it won't change the past.

[11calls]

"It is." Alex knows how hard it is for him to lose people he cares about, she had to witness it first hand the night Coralee left. And then there's everything with Amalia, and how she could have (and probably should have, honestly) lost Nic with all of the stupid things that she'd been doing last year. The fact that she didn't just meant that she was lucky and Nic was forgiving rather than anything else.

But that's neither here nor there. "Yeah, they definitely do. I mean, without a doubt." Alex finishes her whiskey, and she holds off on refilling it. At least for the moment. "I'm sorry about this, you know. The whole..." Alex just gestures to the world outside of her dome, because there's that whole demon thing happening. "I wish it wasn't drawing things from our nightmares."

[10milliondollars]

"Hey, this isn't your fault. We have no say on the things that happen to us. And I'm sure you're not the only one wishing it wasn't drawing from our nightmares." He shrugs, giving her a half-hearted smile. "I certainly don't want it to pull from mine. I don't wanna relive it."

No, reliving that whole hero-turned-villain plot would just devastate him. And maybe embarrass him.

[11calls]

"It feels like my fault. If I wasn't so damned scared of them..." But Alex is, and has been since she was a little kid who had first seen The Exorcist. She doesn't know how not to be scared of them, either. It's something that's only gotten so much worse since the whole show and everything involved with it. Richard had always said that there was no such thing as demons, but Alex herself had never been convinced, and given what she'd discovered before things had gotten so bad and the two (three) of them had ended up here.

"I mean maybe if..." Alex just frowns and sighs before she picks up the whiskey and fills up her glass. "I'm sort of wondering if my memory from last month and everything that I'd learned about it after..." About Simon turning into a demon in order to save her, about he was the demon on her Black Tape... about everything else. "If that's what brought this about."

[10milliondollars]

"We've all got our fears. And no one gets to choose what memories or fears the Sphere digs up." He reaches over and squeezes her shoulder gently. He didn't really know what to say. Maybe there wasn't anything to say. Maybe they just needed to not be alone right now.

He certainly didn't want to go back to his room.

"What's Richard make of all this?"