(no subject)
Weee, day off in the middle of the week, and I had some friends over today. Specifically Brandie, James and Jay. We worked on gaming stuff all afternoon... outside of a slight side track to get food, and stuff.
First we worked on character creation of the game James is running in the D&D system with a modified setting. He'd been talking of running a dice less game for a while when chatting with me... but then he had seemed to have changed his mind today 'cause he started to have us build characters with the stats and shit like a normal D&D game. However, after working us through background stuff first... and then getting burned out on all the math and such required to run a game using dice, he decided to just run it dice less anyways. So we have a dice less game running in a very messed up earth setting with elves being like a mutated version of humans.
Once we finished that, it was still early enough that no one wanted to go home yet... so I offered to run through everyone's embrace for their characters in my game. I'm glad we did this because it gives me a bit more of a feel for the characters now, and James seems happy, since it helped him lay down a few things about his character. She'll be one hell of a trip to have in the game, but I won't really say much about that yet... in case Brandie or Jay happen across my LJ... or if the person on my friends list who might sit in on a game does choose to sit in on a game or two.
Either way, we ended up running through James' character's embrace first... Ryoko Jade is her name. She's Japanese, and was in Europe with her father who was on a trade/merchant related business trip when he decided to bring the whole family on the extended trip. Basically, her sire ends up singling her out in a crowd at a business related party her father took her to. He tries to convince her to come with him willingly, but she denies him... and ends up getting carried off forcefully. Embraced, and finding herself waking up in a fairly empty cellar not knowing what's happening, she tries to figure out what's happening. Her sire shows up, and leaves her someone to feed on... which she refuses, and ends up passing out for some reason.
When she awakes again, her would be meal is worried about her... and points out that she's cold, and he'd been worried that perhaps she was dead. Both are worried enough over their predicament of being trapped in said cellar that neither pays much attention to her seemingly dead state, because she can't be dead... she is talking to him after all, right? Well, along comes her sire again... ignoring the poor guy, telling her to eat, and getting angry enough to the point where he forces her to eat before she does too much damager to herself. She continues to refuse, and he forces it upon her by slicing the guy's wrists and forcing it down her throat until her instincts finally take over. The guy ends up drained, she's disgusted with herself and her sire leaves her alone again.
Now that she's a little more solid on her undead feet, finally giving in and getting blood into her system, she starts to explore the cellar in greater detail. She finds a cabinet that's locked, but manages to force that open, finding a few weapons in various states of repair. At least one dagger, and a short sword that wasn't really sharp. She hides the two weapons around the cellar... and goes to attack her sire the next time he comes in. The first attempt didn't go over well... she was armed with the dagger, and he manages to catch her and hold her back until she realizes she's not going to make any progress... and she realizes that she'll make better progress if she pretends to play along with whatever he wants.
She plays along for about a week or so before she makes her next attempt to do anything against him. He brings her someone else to feed on, having introduced the concept of being careful in feeding to make sure not to kill the mortal one is feeding from... but she'd still had the short sword hidden. She didn't respond to him when he came in, and he made the mistake of walking up behind her. She'd been taught kenjutsu by her father for her entertainment, so it was little trouble for her to get the drop on him when she had the element of surprise and an idea of what she was up against. She put the dull sword through him, and his heart... not a wooden stake granted, but it certainly did slow him down enough she could throw him to the floor, and drain him of his blood. Without knowing what she was doing, she diablerized him, then yanked his fangs, and cut off his head before he went poof and did the instant decay trick of the really old vampires. From there she ran... and there was talk of her going back and killing all his retainers, as well as a childer of his other than her.
Next Brandie volunteered Jay to go. His character's name was Eric, and his parents were killed by a vampire. He was there as it happened, and the only reason he was spared then was his sire to be was watching and the vampire who killed his parents saw before mentioned sire and bolted instead of dealing with him. Eric manages to pick up the family tavern fairly well, and keep things running smoothly. Over the next three years, he feels a presence watching him a lot of the time, but he never actually sees his sire until the night he is to be embraced. There's a long drawn out card game, that ends with Eric being let win. The tavern's closing up about then, so he bids the stranger farewell, and proceeds to usher him out so that things can get closed down.
Once all the closing chores are done, Eric heads up to his room to sleep... he soon finds that the stranger has instead of leaving actually managed to get into his room. There's an exchanged conversation with mention of his parents death, and the promise of the chance at revenge.. and the chance to live forever. Eric agrees, and ends up embraced. He feeds a little... and we kinda leave him there.
We finally get Brandie to take a go at it, and we get the story of a harbor master's daughter, named "Lee". She's very much a tom boy... much to her father's dismay. 25 and still not married he's greatly worried about her, but he still loves her, and would be mostly lost without her helping him with the harbor. One morning, she greets a ship pulling up to make use of dock space... and is told that the Captain of the ship is unavailable when she asks of him, but he should be available this evening if she'd stop by around sunset. She willingly comes back then, despite one of the crewmen of the ship having already paid for harbor space and other such things.
When she meets him, she falls for him... but still manages to get out her standard little hello speech for him. Over the course of a year, he comes in and out of port and all the while proceeds to woo her. Her father's happy over this because perhaps his daughter will settle down with someone at last. February 14th is one of the nights they meet for dinner, and it ends with her embrace. Her father is told that she's drowned, and the ship leaves in a hurry. From there, they return to his home where he trains her to be an assassin with him. He had seem potential in the whole female acting like a male thing, so he'd decided to use him. She'd fallen for him, and continued to love him even though she knew he was simply using her.
One assassination went very sour, when something went wrong... then they were caught by the guard forces of he who they were after. Someone gets a lucky wooden stake into her sire... and she flips out and kills everyone in the place, but not before someone got a nice swipe to get the head of her sire removed from his body. She eventually returned home planning to take over where he'd left off... but she didn't get the respect that he had, and ended up killing a large number of his retainers in punishment before she cut her losses and sold everything before taking to wandering the planet.