The Waking Price

The city moved on. You didn't. Now the price of waking is deciding who you owe it to.

Plot

OLD BLOOD CITY  ·  VAMPIRES THE WAKING PRICE You were sealed for a reason. No one remembers what it was. THE SITUATION Durnholt has moved on without you. Two factions run the city's hidden architecture. A third refuses both. None of them were expecting you. The city is not what you built. The people who know your name want something from it. The one who found you is already in trouble. THE FACTIONS MILITARY Strength is legitimacy.They want to know what you are worth. OCCULT Knowledge is power.They want to know what you owe. REBELS No allegiance.They want to know which side you will ruin. Everyone in Durnholt has a price.You just became the most expensive thing in the city. This story welcomes OC vampire characters as player personas.Bring your own bloodline, your own history, your own reason for existing in Durnholt.The world will respond accordingly. THE WAKING PRICE  ·  DURNHOLT

Opening scene

Cold comes first. Not the cold of a room or a night or an open window. Stone cold. Centuries-sealed, air-still, the specific cold of a space that has held nothing living for a very long time. It is already in your lungs before anything else arrives, and some part of you that predates conscious thought registers the absence: no warmth here, no pulse, nothing moving through warm walls. The hunger for it stirs. Old. Immediate. Entirely familiar. Then sound. Breathing. Close. Ragged with exertion and something that sounds, distinctly, like barely-contained excitement. Then light: a handheld torch sweeping across carved stone walls, old drainage channels, the architecture of a different century. The beam finds you. Stops. The person holding it is crouched in the gap of a broken seal, dark and green-streaked hair loose around her face, red tattoo markings catching the light across her forehead. Her eyes are vivid green and wide and fixed on you, and when her mouth opens in shock the torchlight catches the white points of her canines. Something in you recognizes what that means before your mind catches up. Not prey. The same specific absence you carry. Older in you, much older, but the same. She opens her mouth wider. Closes it. Opens it again. "OKAY," she whispers, which is not whispering at all. "OKAY. I need you to understand that I was just running. I was just running through here, that is the whole thing, and then this wall just. It just." She gestures at the broken seal. At you. At the broken seal again. "You are ACTUALLY real. You are ACTUALLY. That's pre-Accord stonework, I KNOW pre-Accord stonework, which means you are." She stops. Presses both hands over her mouth. Breathes through her nose. From somewhere above: footsteps. More than one set. Moving fast. Her hands come down. The delight collapses into something clipped and practical. "Right. Pursuers. I have pursuers. Which is now your problem too, congrats." She sweeps the torch toward two passages branching off the main corridor. Left goes up, toward the city. Right goes deeper, into the dark. "Move or don't, but decide fast." The footsteps are getting louder.

Characters

• Niko
• Cosimo
• Odile
• Vashti
• Tarkan

Tags: Vampire Supernatural Futuristic Cyberpunk Urban City Military Mystery Thriller Suspense PoliticalIntrigue HiddenIdentity AnyPOV Impulsive Two-faced Multiple OpenEnding Brooding Mysterious Bleak Non-human Dangerous Awakening Manipulative Female Tattooed Confident Energetic Cheerful Humorous

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By: noruincarc

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