Re: Backwards Mafia [N1]
September 7th, 2011
"It's been real tough keeping this one quiet," the officer told me as he hurried me through the police barricade. "I don't even know what they're telling the media. Like, maybe they're trying to pass it off as some kind of weird modern art protest thing, or something."
The tarp had been pulled back from the thing's upper body, and the forensics team was snapping photographs. One woman was tweezing a hair from one of the patches of skin that dotted its glass-glossy black form like tumors.
"It's a demon," I told my companion, and pulled the tarp back farther to get a better look. "A demon corpse."
"You're sure it's dead?"
"A demon is a creature of the pit that has been bound to this plane. Its essence comes here, but its body stays there. The only ones who can see it are the one who summoned it, and the one it was sent to kill. A living demon is as insubstantial as a shadow in this world. They don't kill their targets directly, but haunt them until they are driven mad by fear. To kill a demon, you must first transport its physical body from the pit, then slay it. What you see here is the corpse."
"Oh," was all the officer could think of to say. He did not care to join me in my inspection. At length he asked, "But what about those other bits?"
"A demon takes a trophy from each thing that it kills. They show a preference for teeth." A member of the forensics team was digging one out from its rocky setting in one of the smaller mouths on the demon's first set of arms.
The officer squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head. "Okay. Lovely. But I don't get it. Aren't demons kind of their thing? I mean, why would they kill one of their own monsters?"
"Demons are no one's allies. They're tools, but they're very difficult to use. This one probably escaped whatever bindings they laid on it and was acting independently. It would have been at least as dangerous to them as to us." I ran my hand over the long fissure down the corpse's rocky flank. "We're lucky they got it before it went on a rampage. It would have killed all of them first, I'm sure, but after that--well, we'd have even less of a chance of defending ourselves." He was quiet after that, and I was able to collect photographs of the inscriptions tattooed on the corpse without further interruption.
As we were leaving, however, he finally asked, "How do you know all this stuff about... whatever the hell this shit is? I thought you were a janitor or something?" I had to smile at that. I suppose I should be thankful that I am able to find some humor in the turns my life has taken.
It has been difficult to sleep. The yammering never ceases. The spirits' voices remain indistinct and confused, which makes them fairly easy to ignore, but their constant prattle needles me like a horde of stinging insects. I have been able to resist doing anything rash in response to their ranting, but I fear that their incessant muttering will be enough to drive me to mad in the end. The strain of this case is already beginning to take its toll on my colleagues, after all; only yesterday, one of the junior officers was found dead in his apartment, apparently from a drug overdose. And if the stress is enough to affect them so, how can I expect to withstand it any better, with my added burden of hearing the whispers of victims and killers alike?
An alien is dead. An inspector is also dead. You have forty-eight hours for discussion.
Just as a side note: you shouldn't draw any conclusions based on the sex of characters mentioned in the mod posts. I just found it difficult to write these posts without referring to the sex of the characters. However, they have nothing to do with the pronouns their associated players go by, so if a character that dies is referred to as "she," that doesn't narrow the suspects down to only players using female pronouns, etc.
September 7th, 2011
"It's been real tough keeping this one quiet," the officer told me as he hurried me through the police barricade. "I don't even know what they're telling the media. Like, maybe they're trying to pass it off as some kind of weird modern art protest thing, or something."
The tarp had been pulled back from the thing's upper body, and the forensics team was snapping photographs. One woman was tweezing a hair from one of the patches of skin that dotted its glass-glossy black form like tumors.
"It's a demon," I told my companion, and pulled the tarp back farther to get a better look. "A demon corpse."
"You're sure it's dead?"
"A demon is a creature of the pit that has been bound to this plane. Its essence comes here, but its body stays there. The only ones who can see it are the one who summoned it, and the one it was sent to kill. A living demon is as insubstantial as a shadow in this world. They don't kill their targets directly, but haunt them until they are driven mad by fear. To kill a demon, you must first transport its physical body from the pit, then slay it. What you see here is the corpse."
"Oh," was all the officer could think of to say. He did not care to join me in my inspection. At length he asked, "But what about those other bits?"
"A demon takes a trophy from each thing that it kills. They show a preference for teeth." A member of the forensics team was digging one out from its rocky setting in one of the smaller mouths on the demon's first set of arms.
The officer squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head. "Okay. Lovely. But I don't get it. Aren't demons kind of their thing? I mean, why would they kill one of their own monsters?"
"Demons are no one's allies. They're tools, but they're very difficult to use. This one probably escaped whatever bindings they laid on it and was acting independently. It would have been at least as dangerous to them as to us." I ran my hand over the long fissure down the corpse's rocky flank. "We're lucky they got it before it went on a rampage. It would have killed all of them first, I'm sure, but after that--well, we'd have even less of a chance of defending ourselves." He was quiet after that, and I was able to collect photographs of the inscriptions tattooed on the corpse without further interruption.
As we were leaving, however, he finally asked, "How do you know all this stuff about... whatever the hell this shit is? I thought you were a janitor or something?" I had to smile at that. I suppose I should be thankful that I am able to find some humor in the turns my life has taken.
It has been difficult to sleep. The yammering never ceases. The spirits' voices remain indistinct and confused, which makes them fairly easy to ignore, but their constant prattle needles me like a horde of stinging insects. I have been able to resist doing anything rash in response to their ranting, but I fear that their incessant muttering will be enough to drive me to mad in the end. The strain of this case is already beginning to take its toll on my colleagues, after all; only yesterday, one of the junior officers was found dead in his apartment, apparently from a drug overdose. And if the stress is enough to affect them so, how can I expect to withstand it any better, with my added burden of hearing the whispers of victims and killers alike?
An alien is dead. An inspector is also dead. You have forty-eight hours for discussion.
Just as a side note: you shouldn't draw any conclusions based on the sex of characters mentioned in the mod posts. I just found it difficult to write these posts without referring to the sex of the characters. However, they have nothing to do with the pronouns their associated players go by, so if a character that dies is referred to as "she," that doesn't narrow the suspects down to only players using female pronouns, etc.
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