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Post by The Administrator on Aug 26, 2006 14:46:41 GMT -5
Post Pier is named after Greg Post, one of Mercury City's celebrated educators.
It has several low-brow shops that most of the sailors of Mercury City go to, as well as a couple of food places.
Post Pier is not a tourist spot, nor will it ever be.
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Post by Anei and Hokori on Dec 8, 2009 20:26:32 GMT -5
OOC: December 8th, 2025. Minister, Silent Night, and Cultist Mooks only.
IC: This was bad part of town by any stretch of the imagination, a place for the desperate and the lost with nowhere better make a living or find a few hours worth of self-confidence. Off the 'main drag' it got even worse, home to nearly abandoned buildings and shells of shops not worth enough to sell or attractive enough to repossess. One such dilapidated shell had a worse reputation than most, having been site to a gristly series of murders by the previous owners and driving the appeal even lower.
Apparently, there were those who liked that kind of thing though. The Order of the Golden Grail was one of those kinds of cults started by a passing Adept of less than morally-stern upbringing, it's leaders given a rudiment of magical lore, and then left to it's own murderous devices as the Adept moved on. It wasn't entirely made up of fools, no cult could survive like that, so they made sure to take the most 'worthless' of indigents and least known of visitors for it's rites and to offer the right bribes to the local beat cops to ensure that they wouldn't be harassed in their day to day business, even if the less savory facts of their existence leaked out.
And business was good indeed. Numbers were up, one of their latest Neophytes showed good signs of being Acolyte material, and they had quite the unique find Bound in the back room, a prize sure to get the Master to return and bestow more power on them. The only sticking point was finding out a way to sacrifice the thing. But they'd think of a way. This was what the leading 'Triumvirate' were discussing. in the front room, with it's painted black windows, the outside guarded by two lesser cultists who fluctuated between vigilance and slacking off.
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Post by The Minister on Dec 9, 2009 3:08:52 GMT -5
Gabriel hated Post Pier. He hated what it was, and especially how it had sullied the name given to it.
There was work to be done, however. The Norman Building. Gabriel could still remember the news reports about the now condemned warehouse, and even from down the block, grizzly images flitted across his vision. If this 'Miller' character had sent him on a wild goose chase... well, that would probably be good. A long walk back would be preferable to trying to break up a satanic ritual. And unless the half-crazed man was an escape artist prodigy, he'll probably still be in that warehouse tied up with that weapons dealer where he had left them. He'd still have a busy night ahead of him, turning the two in to the police, seeing if he could follow up on who was funding the weapons dealer. Gabriel figured he could trace him all the way back to Cordite if he got lucky enough.
Of course, all that was wishful thinking. He wouldn't have gone half-way across Mercury City on the word of a madman. He knew something was happening. Shadowy figures, ruffled feathers, a small girl crying. His decision not to turn them both into the police first was difficult, but he needed leads. The Mercury PD would not be as cooperative as Walsh's law enforcement had historically been.
The Minister's train of thought ended as he grabbed the first guard from behind, first hand closing over nose and mouth, second arm pinning his arms as he is pulled out of sight. The second cultist, noticing his missing compatriot not even a minute later, turns the corner of the building calling out his name. He hears one muffled cry, and follows it to a darkened alley. A pair of feet lying just behind a trash bin.
He turns, a shout on his lips warning of someone, a shout that catches when he finds himself standing before a man in layers of armor, painted white and scarlet, an ornate staff affixed to his back. Then a armored fist.
The cultist with the newly broken nose placed neatly by his unconscious friend, The Minister approaches one of the black plate windows near the front of the structure and listens.
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Post by Anei and Hokori on Dec 9, 2009 23:29:57 GMT -5
"...But the question remains how to destroy the child with her innocence intact," intones a voice from inside, one of the cult leaders, "her father's gift protects her even now, and without..."
"You are a paranoid fool, Xavier," cuts in a second voice, "We've got the weapons, or shall soon anyway, and we can kill her however we can muster. Her death, however it's done, will draw the Master back to us, and we'll have all the power we need to take Post Pier for our own!"
"And you are a fool if you think a simple butchery, however rare the victim, will call Him back to us," adds a third voice, this one female, "This is a something we mustn't rush, an opportunity beyond repeating. The cost in Neophytes and Favors alone..."
"And you think we can hold her forever? We don't have time to..," began the second voice again before the other two interjected and drowned his words in bickering, citing bastardized Lore at one another.
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Post by The Minister on Dec 11, 2009 18:12:20 GMT -5
"Her father's gift?" Gabriel whispers as a torrent of images assault him. He drowns in an ocean of feathers, attempting to push through, the feathers becoming bloodier and bloodier and he moves forward. Thunder cracks, and the feathers dissolve into a pair of wild, desperate eyes, reflected in them a tiny, naked girl, shivering. Gabriel looks behind him, to follow the reflection, to the girl as she is entombed.
"No!" He cries out, his location forgotten. The cry goes through the thin walls of the decrepit building, alerting those inside.
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Post by Anei and Hokori on Dec 11, 2009 23:20:11 GMT -5
The bickering stops instantly, the first voice, an older male giving blunt orders, "Peter, Check on the Sacrifice. Ophelia, call the brethren. I'll see to our visitor."
There's the click of a safety being turned off and the silhouettes separate, one toward a storeroom, another out of sight, and the third toward the nearest exit, a pistol in hand.
And in a locked storeroom, something feebly stirred, something huge that hung suspended from two dozen ghastly glowing, meat hook-tipped chains anchored in it's two dozen feathery limbs. The chains erupted out of empty air from swirling portals, magic fed by chalk-marked runes drawn below to hold Silent Night spread-eagled and helpless, an obvious spectacle of eldritch horror. But if one looked beyond the white feathers littering the ground in sound-drinking horror, beyond the hulking, muscled thing at the nexus of the wings, one could spot a spot a child joined to the beast by a column of flesh melded to her upper-back. A pale, well-nigh colorless girl of nine winter's age curled naked and vulnerable in uneasy slumber, her eye lids twitching in time to the monster's feeble struggles.
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Post by The Minister on Dec 12, 2009 18:01:47 GMT -5
Gabriel breaths heavily, feeling the grain of concrete in his hands as he grips the building. It's gone, he reassured himself, although he knew that wasn't quite accurate - the vision had passed, but the source was still there. A black oozing aura in his vision, coming from deep inside the building.
A footstep on gravel reminds The Minister that his position is not a safe one. Relatively speaking. His mind drifts towards the sound of the footsteps, and he's given a blurred vision of the man - the handgun a brilliant red. With a quick burst of speed, he turns a corner, putting himself face to face with the man.
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Post by Anei and Hokori on Dec 17, 2009 12:30:58 GMT -5
The cult leader, in addition to being an amateur Ritualist, has some experience with weapons and reacts to the encounter with what could only be a Super Hero with a one-two-three barrage of shots. He didn't have a whole lot of faith that that would work, but it might Ophelia time get more of the Neophytes here to pin the archaically-clad attacker down before he could ruin the sacrifice.
(And my apologies for not replying sooner. Feel free to pummel this guy into submission.)
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Post by The Minister on Dec 18, 2009 23:11:35 GMT -5
The Minister doesn't even bother to dodge as he closes the distance between the two of them. His layered armor was Type III or better - it was hard to categorize it normally because he wore more of it than a normal soldier would be able to carry. The first two shots hit center torso, the third pings off of his shoulder. The fourth bullet goes off into a wall as his hand is deflected, grabbed at the wrist and wrenched to the side. In the same fluid motion, The Minister's sends padded ceramic plate into the cultist's forehead with a backward-spinning elbow. Continuing the motion, he ducks under the man's arm, twisting it cruelly to force the man to his knees.
The cut on his brow now bleeding into his eye, Gabriel asks in a hard voice, "How many are inside?"
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