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. ]

005-sad.png
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.
000-normal.jpg
"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.
001-happy.png
"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)

[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)

[Neo Emolga]

[ 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. ]

005-sad.png
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.
000-normal.jpg
"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.
001-happy.png
"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.

When the night arrives, you head down to Korak’s house, nestled among the several Shoreside Houses by the shore. It’s a bit chilly tonight as you take the long walk from Benni farmstead, but you keep focused and hope to learn something useful from Korak himself.

When you arrive, you knock on the door and he opens it to see you. He’s a bit surprised to have a visitor he wasn’t expecting, but he welcomes your arrival regardless.

“Excuse me mister,” you begin, “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 even had them yourself.”

#31 Korak the Nidoking has become Compliant.

“Hello there!” he greets you. “You’re close, I actually teach architecture at the university, but archeology is something I study on the side and when possible, I try to incorporate that into studies of modern floorplan design and drafting when it comes to my lectures about today’s architecture. There’s a surprisingly valuable wealth of knowledge and understanding that can be gained from learning and analyzing what Pokémon did in ancient history when it comes to building design. If these design techniques were understood then, we can use them to understand hem today. For example…”

You can sense he’s quite passionate about the subject manner and continues to discuss it as he invites you inside. He gives some examples from ancient history, the way old amphitheaters were designed and how that knowledge is used today. And he also covers areas where there were faulty designs and why those practices are no longer used. The whole time, it seems he automatically assumes you already have a vast knowledge about these kinds of things.

“I may not look it, but I’ve actually been quite fascinated by ancient history,” you tell Korak. “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.”

“Splendid!” he grins. “I wish a lot of my students felt the same way as you do! I can’t tell you how many of them assume old designs and ancient structural engineering practices are no longer relevant. The nerve! I’ve pointed this out plenty of times to them and still, a number of them continue to fail my exams because of these assumptions they make. How can they even begin to work on buildings of the future if they can’t understand the buildings of the past!? It just baffles me. They would do well to study harder, I’m sure.”

“I’ve studied quite a share of history in my time and I feel if one wants to prepare for the future, they need to learn what happened in the past, because as we know, the past has this tendency to repeat itself,” he tells you. “And it repeats because Pokémon fall into the same societal traps and misunderstandings! It’s a tragic lack of education that causes these things. To me, ignorance is a malaise and that spreads to others that don’t know either!”

It seems he likes to talk about these things quite a bit, but you’ve noticed the conversation hasn’t gone anywhere near toward what you’re hoping to learn about regarding the Stalkers. So when things settled down and you’ve given him the chance to spill his aspiration for history and archeology, you ask him about some of the more recent things going on around town. The odd weather, and the subject of the Stalkers.

“Yes, I think just about every Pokémon living here in Seabourne has had at least some kind of encounter with them,” he tells you. “Well, maybe not directly, but in some indirect capacity at least. I don’t know what they’re up to, however. I dare say I’m not well-versed into these kinds of things. The psychology of killers is just something I’d rather not touch, and while psychological warfare and things of such nature appear quite often in history, I don’t believe what we’re dealing with here falls within those same fields, if you know what I mean, of course.”

“The only thing I’ve noted as of late is one of the murals at city hall,” Korak explains. “Someone recently vandalized it and stole the bronze medallion that was there. if there’s anything I despise, it’s vandalism. It’s truly deplorable. I’ve seen what vandalism can do and all throughout time and history, it is a menace.”

“Well, it is getting rather late,” Korak tells you. “Thank you for a delightful conversation and I wish you good night.”

He then heads off to sleep and you decide to make your way back toward Benni’s farmstead. All the while, it still feels as though the night has gotten a bit colder.

Lyric Winterheart the Nidorina (M: Poison)

Health: 17/20 | Sanity: 20/20 | Purity: 11/20 | Dodge Rate: 30%
Perk: Diplomacy
Reincarnation Forms: Brionne, Mega Ampharos, Hisuian Goodra, Latios, Amaura
EQUIPMENT:

• Defense Armor: <Empty>
• Jewelry: <Empty>