The Vaults of Greed

Anything you might want to try out that doesn't temporally or thematically fit the serial should go here. This is an ideal space for all your what-ifs and might-have-beens, as well as for your average silliness.
User avatar
Karl the Mad
 

Posts: 1260
Joined: Wed Jan 16, 2013 4:27 am
Location: Oregon

Re: The Vaults of Greed

Post by Karl the Mad »

Finishing the chips, Mary went back and got a chicken sandwich herself, although she was tempted to get the ham sandwich just to see what Tom might say. "We'll find that blowhard and take his fingers, too," she replied. "Make him cut them off himself, even." She went silent while she had a few bites. "So when do we make our first move? In this not-so-mundane mob war of ours."
User avatar
IamLEAM1983
Site Admin
 

Posts: 3707
Joined: Tue Jan 08, 2013 4:54 am
Location: Quebec, Canada

Re: The Vaults of Greed

Post by IamLEAM1983 »

"As soon as we have a cadre of fake demonic zombies worthy of Tom Savini or Greg Nicotero," replied Tom, "we set the bait. I'll need a few minutes' worth of roof access before we leave to prep a convincing release of negative potential. Once I do, I want everyone in this tower who has even the slightest bit of acting prowess to scream, snarl, run around like maniacs and generally sell the idea that Mammon's dregs took over. I'll supply fake footage by hexing your camera network long enough for it to record a charnel house gone wrong - Fong might want proof that we are who we claim to be. Seeing as we'll be the ones moving, he'll never need to doubt of our claims' veracity."

He shrugged. "On the whole, the more volunteers you'll round up for makeshift makeup artist positions, the faster we'll be ready. If there's anyone in the company structure with an interest in beauty vlogs or serious cosmetology as a hobby, have them bring whatever it is they brought to work. If you have horror movie buffs or actual hobbyists in terms of special effects, even better. They don't need to be extraordinary - I'll augment whatever they make out of our reserves of rigid collodion and fake blood with a massive Veil."

He took a sip from his can. "The exceptions have to be both yourself and Auntie Song. You need to both look reasonably messed-up in order for my own Veiling work to have that seem indisputable. I'm already planning on making you look like your final possession spell made you took the mother of all bad falls. Protruding bones and Exosuit ports knocked loose, maybe half of your skull caved in..."

Magnus shrugged. "I'll improvise. The point is you're dead and one of Mammon's more motivated underlings took over. More motivation means more control over otherwise unworkable shells. Imagine an alien intelligence latching onto the idea that Marianna Jameson used to be damn proud of herself, and replicating that notion with the kind of swagger or haughty posturing you'd personally never take."

The warthog then hooked a thumb between himself and Aislinn. "I'll have an easier time selling both myself and Aislinn. I'm already focusing a boatload of power and Aislinn comes from Meris' blood, so we're both people ambitious Fiends would want to keep intact. I might tweak our respective eye shadows a tad, leave Evil Aislinn to come across rather subtly, while I'll just inject a few Quint-isms here and there."

Perhaps amused by his plans and wishing to mockingly elaborate on his own attempts at personal subterfuge, he ducked his head between his shoulders, sprang an exaggerated malevolent leer, rubbed his hands together fiendishly and added a few porcine chortles.

His adjusted voice was a little nasal and a little queasy, like a dweeb gone psychotic and terminally unaware of his clogged sinuses. "That should - hrrrk - that should work quite nicely, if I do say so myself. Hrrrrrk. Yeees..."  
User avatar
TennyoCeres84
Site Admin
 

Posts: 2929
Joined: Tue Jan 08, 2013 4:59 am

Re: The Vaults of Greed

Post by TennyoCeres84 »

Aislinn chuckled and smirked. "Let's hope Hollywood never has to employ actual Hellfire into its big, special effects movies. It'd be quite costly," she joked.
User avatar
Karl the Mad
 

Posts: 1260
Joined: Wed Jan 16, 2013 4:27 am
Location: Oregon

Re: The Vaults of Greed

Post by Karl the Mad »

Mary tapped a message to Auntie Song. Auntie, it's on. Call everyone we talked about up to the conference room, as soon as possible; we've got STAGECRAFT to get ready for!

"Alright, let's let the janitors do their thing here, and get to work," she told the other two. "Auntie's calling everybody up; I'll send couriers out for any supplies we don't already have. Don't worry, they'll be discrete." This last was aimed at Tom. "We don't need Fong and his little army guessing our gambit. It might take a bit longer to do it carefully that way, but we'll have the element of surprise on our side."

She sent a few more orders, then stretched. "So let's get a move on ourselves, then?"
User avatar
IamLEAM1983
Site Admin
 

Posts: 3707
Joined: Tue Jan 08, 2013 4:54 am
Location: Quebec, Canada

Re: The Vaults of Greed

Post by IamLEAM1983 »

Tom, Heathcliff and the Sin Seven's more artistically-inclined went to work, the normally businesslike spread of workers in Auntie Song's tower turning into corrals for people not yet made up, for those who had been under the brush and the rigid collodion, as well as those requiring arcane touch-ups.

Luckily for Mary, the external layers of most Exosuits could fall subject to wear and tear over time. Finding a ripped-up black bodysuit wouldn't have been too hard, considering. Tissue paper and fake blood laid the basics, she'd have stood in front of a mirror looking like an admittedly cheap zombie - and then Tom went to work. Bit by bit, her limbs were constricted. Not in painful postures, but in such a way as to imply the limited range of movement involved in severe injuries. Severe bruises bloomed on her face and the back of her head deflated like an old kickball left unattended under the sun. Bones protruded, the grinding and popping of jagged shards began to follow her every move...

Tom also altered her eyes in some nearly undecipherable manner. She'd look about the same underneath the caked blood and if her expertly-suggested right swollen eye was exempted, but Jameson would find that the deeper core of care, of normalcy that stood behind her expertly-erected shield of self-confidence and of maverick business sense and people skills, was missing. The warlock's Veil was precise enough to snuff out the woman in her who cared, who worried and who hurt, or to instead smother it in the exact appearance of alien malevolence.

Auntie Song required a bit less work. A little rigid collodion, tissue paper, fake blood, makeup and a few dabs of latex - and then, magic. The older woman had always been able to frame her business sense in grandmotherly warmth, if need be, or to dull the edge of her own wit with a wrinkled smile or the right twinkle in her eye - the usual perks of old age, of complete awareness of the Self, of how to make one's own body do the talking. A few charged words, a few careful suggestions and the gentle pull of via, and that essential part of her was snuffed out in the mirror. Snuffed out, more than likely, by the frighteningly convincing glass shard that protruded from her neck at an angle, her normally pristine clothes now bloodstained, her hair a mess of knots... Her and Mary's combined Veils even included the reproduction of the gentle rankness of early-onset decay, the arcane programming involved allowing Fong's own practitioners to possibly offer to work mending spells over their new collaborators' claimed shells. If they did, they'd find that both Mary and Song would "heal" convincingly, with the glint of their eyes exempted.

As Magnus had explained, both himself and Aislinn required almost no adjustments. McConmara was granted the cadaverous whiteness of the wholly dead and corrupted, a few fake slashes in latex were added to her forearms in order to suggest fresh defensive wounds, her fingernails cracked by desperate applications of arcane fire or lightning that wouldn't have panned out. The warthog merely altered the shadows around his eyes, making himself appear more ominous, more perceptibly evil.

Two last details clinched it, however. At Douglas' suggestion, Tom wreathed the entirety of the Song workforce in the appearance of a turmoil of displaced souls still desperately clinging to their usurped bodies. The Devils would sense that the real Marianna Jameson was perhaps just a plane of existence away, raging against the thing that had dared to usurp her carefully-crafted and hard-fought-for physique.

The last detail unfolded at the very top of the tower, as Tom mentally mapped a pentagram over Mary's helipad and used it to focus Hellfire and to raise up as many of the bay's tortured dead as he could.

"I, Tom Magnus, command you to wreathe this tower in your agony. You shall weave yourselves into a pall of suffering, a funereal veil to be draped over this fortress and its protectors in their time of need! In dispatching the Hellspawn across the bay, we bring justice to thee, O Tortured Multitudes! So wail for us, O Spirits - flail for us! Tear through the wards in these walls, inhabit every soulless body and thing in this tower, and exude your rage forth one last time, for your hour of deliverance is at hand!

I call to you, victims of the Red Devils, the Hundred Thousand Legions of the Damned - rage for us! Spit for us! Curse our enemies, but do so in all the treachery they have visited upon you. Yes - visit your fury upon us, instead, so that our subterfuge might be complete! I bind thee all to the Sin Seven for two nights hence, for our enemies to believe our crucial lies."


Around the helipad, Mary might get the sense that an invisible throng of people was pressing close to them, intently observing, silently agreeing and quietly waiting for more directives.

"Upon my word, Aislinn's or Mary's, Spirits, you are to leave us and visit your wrath directly upon the Hundred Devils. Should we be forced to contemplate the hour of our defeat, you shall act as our last hand, the swords and shields we will desperately require."

Tom's pulling at the restless dead had altered the weather. Even as mid-morning light settled in, the clouds grew low, dark and ominous over Victoria Harbor. The first few fat raindrops fell, soon followed by a heavy lightning-riddled downpour. In the lessening daylight, you'd almost see how a small throng of semi-corporeal ghosts had congregated around the helipad, all of them showing the marks of a violent demise, but their garb and overall poise spanning centuries. Mary might recognize some of the Sin Seven's own dearly departed, but would also fail to recognize several who heralded back to seventeenth-century China, with their partially shaved heads, tight ponytails and wide, curvaceous daibo swords. Everyone, from the forgotten highwaymen of the Sin Seven's forgotten roots to the first signatories of the group's existence as one of the Societies for Three Harmonies; one or two of the old merchant-kings with a foot in the mainland's criminal operations - all the way to the occasional odd sighting of a Caucasian or two in the mix. The Jamesons' association with the Sin Seven had always been known to be a long one, after all.
Post Reply