Stalkers RPG: Dustwoken - Main Action and Team Status [SEASON 1]

[Scytherwolf]

Well, guess it's time to search the interior (23a) of Seabourne Hospital.

[DayBreak]

[ I'm not sure what else to do from here, but I'm going to interview Korak the Nidoking, and just in case, I'll have Lyric go into Diplomacy mode should the need arise. ]

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Lyric spent the entire afternoon after delivering Ralon's body just recovering at Benni's farmstead, trying to process everything. Ralon mentioned that Exonull was particularly aggravated, and they just knew that it had something to do with the stunt they pulled getting the encrypted stake. They were just glad his family didn't have to see that.

Having heard that one of the Macabre Mantra pieces was found in Korak's house, they figured they'd pay him a visit tonight to see if they can't get any info off of him. They hoped that this would be a little easier with the evolutionary line that they shared.
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"Excuse me mister, mind if I speak with you a moment? I've heard you teach archeology at Beachwood University and was wondering if you've heard of any interesting discoveries, or possibly even had them yourself."

They wouldn't normally admit this, but in their Ampharos incarnation, back when they were a Flaafy, they were a bit of a bookworm, spending entire days reading whatever had caught their fancy. Of course, they seldom had good grades on account of their fixations almost never being on what they were studying at the time. Still, they felt they'd be able to get more information by relating their previous self's interests to those of the Nidoking. Plus, getting information was probably just mildly important, so it was worth giving up a bit of their self-imposed "cool and calm 'mon" image for this particular incarnation.
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"I may not look it, but I've actually been quite fascinated by ancient history. I feel there's a lot we can learn from cultures gone by! Plus, it never hurts to learn more about Pokémon that came before us, and I believe that the more we know about them and how they lived, the more we can improve life for everyone in the present and future."

... Even though they meant what they said about everything else, the part about their interests was slightly stretching the truth. They only had in interest in it when it was their active fixation, and that stuff changed like the weather.

[C0L0R3D]

Time to go digging in a place where my hunches direct me so! And by that, I mean going to a place we’ve already looked at. Hand me that mantra and wish me luck!

[ACTION DECIDED: Take the Macabre Mantra to the mural in Seabourne Hospital and read that bad boy out! See if we can follow up on anything with Korak!]

[Lychee]

Chi chi had an accidental nap all day (wait, do I have to post to say I slept/did nothing and healed? Oops!) but is ready to do some chatting tonight!

Following up on the chat with Altrea, ChiChi logs that old lady as someone to talk to later. Unfortunately, if she dies tonight, at least it's likely they'll be able to find that Putki orb at her house. If Santea dies, then they'll never know how much she knew...
So ChiChi is off to talk Diplomatically, of course, to the librarian. She's gonna take a Putki, and spark up exactly the same conversation that Altrea has already had with her-- show her the orb, ask about Puhdistus, and possibly dig for more locations or items or rituals. And you know what, maybe see if she's friends with that Nidoking in archeology- since its ancient things we are talking about here. If she's friends, be a little more wary. If not, possibly just tell her not to bother talking to him.
ChiChi may be glowing like some sort of weird godly figure, but that's not actually out of the ordinary for her species of Pokémon, so she's hoping that nobody else will find it too weird either.

[Chakramaster]

I'll take things a little easy tonight and search (14) Greenvale Centre Apartments

[EmeraldSky]

I will explore Centrebrooke Apartments

[sammy0295]

Search (58) Bakot’s Bed and Breakfast (ABANDONED)

[Neo Emolga]

Search (58) Bakot’s Bed and Breakfast (ABANDONED)

As the night comes, you head east toward the broken and derelict side of Seabourne. After leaving Benni’s farmstead behind you as you head eastward into the night, you take in the still night air, quiet as if the air itself were petrified. Nothing moves except for you, as if everything else has been frozen into the stillness of death.

Virtually no sound is made around you save for the trotting of your hooves on the gritty, solid ground. As you head further east, the surrounding terrain is almost empty and devoid of life. For a brief moment, it seems like you could be in the middle of a vast wasteland whisked off to an empty and barren world forgotten by all. The realization that you could never be found by anyone feels both relieving and terrifying at the same time.

You press forward, trying not to think about it too much. Soon the old, abandoned café and hotel comes into view, and you can tell it used to be a calm, quiet, and homey kind of place built on Bakot the Patrat’s hopes and dreams of having a small business of hospitality. The exterior once appeared to be a warm and welcoming wooden cottage-style building, but after only three years of bleak business, the boarded up broken windows, the quiet darkness surrounding it, and the emptiness that remains is all that’s left.

Now, too much wear and tear has come upon the building for it to ever be useful again and Seabourne never saw the growth Bakot was hoping for. This side of town became like the dead, diseased limb of a tree, withering and broken with no life to show for it or fruit to bear.

Tonight, the air is still, the atmosphere is cold and quiet as a tomb. You start your search around the exterior of the building, working your way through the dead shrubs and bushes that don’t seem to hold anything besides dead memories. In the back, there was even a small picnic area with tables and chairs, only those too have rusted over and have fallen apart with age and neglect.

On the side of the stone building, you find a cellar door that leads downward and you recognize it as the area where supplies and food stock were stored. You soon approach it, hoping to see if it can still be opened and if there might be something useful inside…

@Unhinged Nightmare – DARK (4 Health Damage, 4 Purity Damage)@ Trap 40% Evasion Test: 6 out of 100: Success!

…Instead, you quickly back away, just a mere second before a shadowy tentacle-like tendril tries to take a swipe at your throat and inject its dark, defiled soul venom into your essence. Thankfully, the dark abomination is constrained and bound to a close proximity to the cellar door, so as you make further distance away from it, it can no longer reach you, as if held by an invisible chain that you cannot see. It withdraws in disappointed frustration, hiding back into the cellar door and hoping for some other unsuspecting victim to strike at from the shadows.

You make a note of this trap, making sure the others know about this before they attempt to deal with it.

@{Blackened Cellar Door: Blackened Keyhole OR <Security>} Unhinged Nightmare - DARK (4 Health Damage, 4 Purity Damage)@ has been noted in the Team Records.

From what you can see from your position of safety, the black cellar door seems to be locked. Unfortunately, you don’t have the key with you and you don’t even want to attempt to pick it with the limited knowledge that you have, especially with that abomination still there. You decide it’s best to just leave it alone for now until someone else can deal with this.

Instead, you head inside from the main entrance. The front doors are both unlocked, but as you enter, you find there really isn’t much besides empty worn-out rooms that have had everything stripped away and removed. What you come to is an empty café where not even the tables and chairs remain, simply a large empty dining room and waiting area. The once-colorful murals of Seabourne Town on the walls have become faded over time and the weather damage to the walls almost makes the scenes look more post-apocalyptic instead, as if the town as a whole is discolored, crumbling, and falling apart.

Meanwhile, the ten rooms that were meant to serve as the inn upstairs have been stripped clean of anything. All the furniture is gone and the only things that remain are boarded-up windows, although some of those boards have fallen off by now from time and the weather.

There is one room that looks like it was used as a temporary hideout for a short while. Whoever was here knew no one would come looking for them in this quiet abandoned place. A few things were left behind, including a small candle lantern, a large bedroll, some bottles of water that have half-evaporated, a few cans of soup and other food, and a few pans and pots, as if whoever was here last had prepared to go camping. You find a few papers, which look like writings about Majutsu, but one note in particular stands out for you…

They are protected now, Radaven.
Only the Tatsujin can harness the Power of the Yume no Saidan.
Only the Savants can hold this potential.
To answer the cries of this world and stop the Demoni.
We will find them with the power of Majutsu and remove these evil threats.
I have hidden the Shiryoku in the places of protection.
We will need them later.
Then we will need the memory conduits.
The things the victims of the Demoni hold dear to their hearts.
Know the name of the vile Demoni.
Know the name of the Victim.
Yume will answer and we can save them all from the wrath of this evil.

=The Red Message= has been noted in the Team Records.

You believe you have an understanding of the note and what it is far. The “memory conduits” as you read are the mementos that were mentioned earlier. Items of remembrance and recollection that the victims of the Stalkers have some emotional ties to… something that would make them recall earlier memories. But to make the ritual possible, you know you will need these mementos and to know the name of the Demoni and the name of the Victim. Only then can the victim be empowered to fight off their own demon…

The message here makes it clear that a Shiryoku is needed as well, and this ritual needs to be performed by a Tatsujin at the Yume no Saidan, or the “Dream Altar” as you’ve interpreted. If the others didn’t know about this, this makes it clear now. The final pieces are coming into place. Radaven, if he or she was ever here at one point, might not have received this message, but you’re confident you can continue the work where this author left off. What they attempted to do may not be in vain after all.

You search through the rest of the building, but there is only dust, debris, and refuse. You decide to head back to Benni’s farmstead. As your four hooves trot upon the dusty, forgotten arounds, you have further understanding of what’s required for this Majutsu ritual, realizing that it’s not something to be feared, but instead something that may turn the tide of this war against the Stalkers and their Demoni puppet-masters.

There’s still time, but you must hurry…

Sam the Deerling (S: Normal / Grass)

Health: 16/16 | Sanity: 20/20 | Purity: 24/24 | 2/10 Kurosuōbā | Dodge Rate: 40%
Perk: Repair
Reincarnation Forms: Nidorino, Krabby, Blaziken, Ralts, Delcatty
EQUIPMENT:

• Defense Armor: <Empty>
• Jewelry: +|J| Ruby Pendant+ (2S, 1P)

[Noblejanobii]

I'll search (19) Overlook Apartments

[Neo Emolga]

(Sorry for the few days of silence, it’s been kinda a busy week!)

SPECIAL DISCLAIMER NOTE: Core content components of this search result were planned and made months in advance, but I also found out and I’m sure some people here also learned about the overturning of Roe VS Wade US Supreme Court verdict that happened just today. And I know some people on both sides are pretty passionate and adamant about their beliefs and feelings about it. As you have already found out, Fallow's Stalker route does have a modus operandi with killing children and that just happens to land right down in this search post. That said, you probably have a good idea of where this is going.

This was a total freak coincidence and what you read here isn’t meant to be a political message injection on my personal behalf. PLEASE don’t take it that way, I generally try to avoid doing this but in this instance it’s pretty impossible given the nature of things and how this just happened to occur at the same time.

Regardless of what your views on the whole subject matter are regarding abortions, this was made on the basis that for it or not, it’s gruesome and bloody either way and this encounter was built with that in mind. I did try to think of ways to spin this whole encounter in another direction and I kept drawing a total blank because to go off course and deviate from it goes against the Stalker’s MO and their route storyline with it being connected to Seabourne Hospital’s abortion clinic area. I did my best to try and rethink of ways to handle this in less of a gruesome way so hopefully what you may read here (and what might be to come with Fallow's route) doesn’t anger anyone considering what just happened with the SCOTUS decision, but my options were pretty limited.

That said, I’m hoping no one is particularly bothered by this, but if you are and want to talk about it, let’s please take that to private messages. Please bear in mind everything in Stalkers RPG is all fictional and is just meant for some dark spooky fun. This isn’t meant to step on or sway anyone’s political, religious, or personal beliefs and I try to keep what happens in Stalkers RPG detached from that stuff. The timing of this was just… wow, but it’s bound to happen every now and then.

Thanks for your understanding.

Well, guess it's time to search the interior (23a) of Seabourne Hospital.

After having searched the exterior of the large Seabourne Hospital, you decide to use tonight to look around inside. There’s quite a bit of ground to cover, so you head out early and get started.

It’s a slightly cold night tonight, which seems unusual given the kind of temperatures you were experiencing earlier. Though your hard dark-blue carapace does shield you from most of the chilly winds, every now and then it does make you shiver on your way south toward the hospital. It leaves you feeling once again that something dark and macabre will happen tonight…

When you finally arrive, you see this is one place in Seabourne that is always active at all hours. When you enter through the front door and end up in the hospital’s lobby, you find it to have a very cold and mirthless feeling, as if the hospital itself is self-aware that far more misery comes from this place than happiness.

Tonight, you still find plenty of Pokémon in the waiting room and you see faces of anxiety and doubt. In one corner, you see a father Pignite trying to keep his anxious Tepig daughter calm. Besides them is a Toxel in a wheelchair that seems to be in a great amount of pain, but the ER is simply too backed up to admit her at the moment. All she can do is wait and wince, hoping someone can help her soon.

You manage to quietly slip by security at just the right moment and deftly swipe a visitor’s badge from the security check-in desk. As you brisky walk away from the desk and then return toward a normal pace once you’re further down the halls, you see plenty of nurse stations, supply cabinets, patient rooms, and plenty of visitor waiting rooms. All around you, you have a sympathetic feeling… just wondering how much pain has been felt here and how many tears of sadness have fallen upon these cold, tiled floors…

Because of the vast number of rooms, you try to focus your attention… using your Savant senses to direct you toward anything that might be an anomaly. You don’t detect anything on the main patient floors, but the whole time, you feel a cold and melancholy aura around you. As you pass by the individual patient rooms, you feel a sense of hopelessness and doubt. In one room, a Shuckle recently had to have a limb amputated and now he is unsure what this means for his future. As you pass by the nurse stations, you sense frustration and a feeling of being overwhelmed. One Raichu nurse that looks like she’s worked too many hours is just barely keeping it together with a cup of coffee while another Breloom nurse looks like she’s on the verge of collapse as her legs continue to hurt.

And as you walk these halls, you see different areas for different patient abnormalities. It seems the Pokémon of Seabourne aren’t quite as advanced as humans are. There are no machines, no computers, no heart or eKG monitors. Their oncology area seems the most in disarray and you find these Pokémon don’t have anything like radiation treatment or chemotherapy. The best they can do is try to surgically remove tumors and use the few herbal medicines they have available.

Their medical devices also seem as though they’re at least seventy years behind what humans have. And in addition to that, their surgeons and doctors struggle with diagnoses and treatments given the vast variance in Pokémon species that are admitted into the hospital. Still, you don’t find anything that raises any red flags when it comes to the investigations into the Stalkers.

At least not yet…

When you get to the basement, you find most visitors aren’t allowed down here, but you do your best to keep to the shadows and hide yourself. Down here is the morgue, which seems to get too many new admissions. But what comes after that feels like an anomaly and you suddenly detect the presence of a Stalker coming from the abortion clinic’s door. Here, given the notice sign on the door, it seems as though unwanted Pokémon eggs are taken here for termination.

However, when you approach the double steel doors, something seems odd and there’s a puddle of blood, murky vital fluids, and pieces of infant body parts surrounding the doors. There’s roughly a one-inch gap between the floor and the bottom of the door and it’s enough for all this grotesque goop to spill through. In the murky, bloody liquid, you find what looks to be pieces of a Igglybuff’s hand, part of a Tyrogue’s toes, and other infant remains.

Steeling your stomach, you reach for the door and…

@Diabolic Razor Edges – STEEL (3 Sanity Damage)@ Trap 30% Evasion Test: 17 out of 100: Success!

You suddenly realize the door is demonically infused with a hideous diabolical energy, turning the metal of the door handle into a spiritual lacerating trap. You quickly pull your hand away and take a closer look, seeing the handle itself is a bloody mess and there’s even blood trickling out of the keyhole. Though a normal Pokémon would think this was a gruesome accident, you detect the foul presence of a Stalker’s dark handicraft at work here.

@{The Aborted Blood Door: Bloody Keyhole OR <Security>} Diabolic Razor Edges STEEL – (3 Sanity Damage)@ has been noted in the Team Records.

Unfortunately, you don’t have the key and you don’t have the means to pick and disable the lock itself. Still, you figure if the key was recently used for this door, chances are good the key itself has blood on it as well, and might be in another location where blood might be found to disguise its grim nature.

You make a note of this and decide either you or one of the other Savants might need to check this out later.

By this time, you’re feeling a bit tired and you’ve combed through most of the hospital already. You decide to head back to Benni’s farmstead and get some good night’s sleep. It’s been a long day, but you feel you may be onto something here…

Scy the Heracross (M: Bug / Fighting)

Health: 20/20 | Sanity: 15/20 | Purity: 20/20 | 8/10 Kurosuōbā | Dodge Rate: 30%
Perk: Repair
Reincarnation Forms: Heracross, Scyther, Centiskorch, Snom, Volcarona
EQUIPMENT:

• Defense Armor: <Empty>
• Jewelry: +|J| Diamond Necklace+ (2S, 2P)