Wednesday, December 25, 2013

Entry 16: Sunday, Bloody Sunday

Bloody Sunday for us started at 6 in the morning when we returned to Lost Angels  at 6 in the morning, on a Sunday in the middle of April in the year 1876.

    After we got to the docks, we quickly headed to the pi shop to meet the owner. We informed him that the meat pies people were being fed were made using human flesh, and that without doing that the population of Lost Angels was likely not sustainable, but that we should take him down anyway to stop his atrocities (and get the HD back) and that we needed to act fast since he was planning something big today. So we quickly mobilized the troops, while we were tasked with convincing the population that Grimme was evil and we were the good guys. A daunting task, but if anyone could pull it off, it would be our ragtag group of actors, especially with Cassanova and Malady to help. We were advised that bullets might not be enough to win this battle, we would need to cut away his support. We agreed that that was most likely true. The pi shop owner eagerly pulled out a massive Gatling gun and the rebellion began getting pallets of dynamite ready with labels for different places.

    When we exited the pi shop,the city was completely deserted and the sky was completely cloudy (which was odd considering we were in a desert) and gave off a ... bad feeling. The air was strangely think, and the smell of ozone was everywhere. We decided to rush to the church, which when we got there was enormous, holding the entire population of the city within it (hundreds of meters in either direction). As we got there the clouds began to release their contents, burning what it touched, it seemed that the sky was full of acid rain. So we ran into the atrium of the church, and before we entered Old Pete tossed a pair of extra colt walkers to Jasper, matching the pair he had. After we entered the atrium we loaded our weapons and prepared for a showdown with Grimme. The guards at the event seemed very anxious and Jittery, and the inside of the auditorium seemed to be the eye of the storm raging on outside. The auditorium was full of pews which I pointed out would make good sniping points to take out Grimme before he managed to do whatever he planned to do. The Auditorium also seemed to have somewhere around 20,000 people in it.

     We also spotted our objective, the Heart of Darkness was sitting on the pulpit and glowing, which probably meant we were too late, but we couldn't give up when we were this close.  So we began taunting and rally the people against Grimme to varying degrees of success. Smoke, as usually decided to go out and bellowed across the massive stadium "You sick cannibalistic FUCK, how could you butcher your own followers, and make them into those meat pies" (the last part may have been a bit different, I was rather busy trying to kill Grimme before he could finish what he was doing. Unfortunately, despite having shot him squarely in the eye, he didn't even flinch and at the same time, the air seems to shatter behind Grimme and a colossal Creature appearing to be a demon shows up standing at least 60 feet tall. Strangely Grimme turned to face it and began glowing, looking for all intents and purposes to be a divine conduit for some wrathful god. Why he went through such lengths to summon a demon to fight it is quite a puzzle to me, perhaps he was proving to his worshipers that he was an actual divine messenger. The demon releases and aura of his own, but its aura is harsher than Grimme's and is less oppressive feeling. Grimme begins to look enraged at the demon, while the demon begins to laugh, which was truly a grating sound to hear.

     The Demon then breathes out a cloud of thick black smoke over the crowd, causing thousands of abominations that seemed as if they were dredged up from our worst nightmares. The smaller abominations quickly began tearing into the crowd of people in the stadium while Grimme was wrestling with the demon.  As we were fending off the human sized monsters, a towering creature nearly 15 feet tall with one eye and 5 globuous pustuoles began advancing towards us and breathes out a stream of fire at Ziggy bellowing "Die! ... Again". (Interestingly it seem to be aware that he is harrowed). Smoke tosses a flash grenade at it, and like so many of the devices he used it acted weirdly with half of it flying off and hitting a wall while the other half exploded with lethal force. (Well it seems to be working out for us fairly well so far).  Eventually with more shots and effort than It normally takes to kill something we managed to blow the demon thing in half, but were quickly attacked by more of the smaller amorphous creatures swarming the stadium. As I glanced back at the podium I noticed that the Heart of Darkness was gone.  The smaller creatures began fusing together into an emaciated looking but much bigger demon, and the fire breathing one with pustuoles reformed itself. Apparently the giant one is something known as a fear-monger.

    Malady was attempting to rally the people in the stadium, and despite a good if corny effort the few who tried to rally were quickly cut down by the creatures, and soon they all ignored him in favor of fleeing in terror. The huge demon apparently grew wings from its back and began to fly above us, restricting some of our abilities to hurt it (or re-kill it), and the emaciated fused one breathed out a swarm of stinging insects all over us.  Ziggy in a dramatic act knifed the flying demon in the back with a silver dagger he had and held on to. We continued to fight the two monstrosities and eventually take the big one down again and had the fused one severely damaged, when Grimme dramatically punched the massive demon in the face, causing it to bellow out "He's too strong, we must flee my brothers" (I suppose as far as performances go it was well staged, if a bit brutal).

    The demons begin to retreat, melt, explode into lawyers, accountants, bugs, and other unsavory demon things (I am not joking about the lawyers and accountants one, apparently a few of the monstrosities were actually made of what appeared to be well dressed corpses with briefcase). The church was completely totaled from all of the fighting with 'demons' that had been going on, and there were still a couple hundred people who were still alive out of the tens of thousands that were there before, the carnage was ... staggering. Outside the church was a scene of destruction and Armageddon, and when we looked out at the waters, the rock, which we had only recently completely destroyed and sunk (by accident, but we still did), was perfectly intact. All around us are dead and dying people, this was the stuff of nightmares, the visions of this day will likely haunt me for the rest of my life along with the many other horrors I have seen, and what might be.  We managed to find Jasper uninjured and returned to Storinjor's warehouse where we were planning on meeting after we attempted to stop the incident, which sadly we failed at, but we survived, the warehouse, appeared to be relatively unscathed.  Old Pete had managed to snag the heart of darkness while everyone was distracted by the demons, which was a relief at the time, because Grimme had only had the stone for a brief time and he caused all of this, we were glad he no longer had it, and that we would finally be able to return it and wash our hands of the damned rock. Jasper appeared to have no nose and looks famished when we see him. Old Pete then took off his mask, and instead of what we had seen before it was a spitting image of Jasper Stone's face. Old Pete then told Jasper something like "Shall we, the future awaits".

     I will admit that this completely took me by surprise, I had trusted old Pete, and we went through all of the horrors of the rock, and the Sunday massacre only to  have the prize stolen from our grasps from our only ally in the city. I may have temporarily lost my wits and began spewing all sorts of conspiracy theories about how everyone was Jasper Stone in disguise and that stone killed stone, or something like that, I have trouble recalling exactly what I said during that brief time. The two Jaspers left through the wall and we couldn't really follow them through, being unable to apparently phase through solid matter.   Before we could try to think of a way to catch up to them and get the stone back, 10 zombies armed with guns came out of the crates in the warehouse and began opening fire on us, much more quickly than most zombies I have encountered (apparently I have encountered zombies a few times before?). After a bit of a shootout and a flash grenade, Ziggy pulls a vial of nitroglycerin out of his hat, and throws it at the zombies, setting the warehouse on fire. (honestly, what is it with boys and their need to set everywhere we visit on fire).

    In an unexpected twist, Grimme sent some of his angels to extend his THANKS to us for helping save his city. I was rather irritated at him, but given that he could have completely destroyed us without much effort on his part I Grimaced (hah) and accepted it. Apparently Grimme, the angels, and the populace considered us heroes. The city was full or makeshift infirmaries since the city was in triage mode, saving who they could and putting off grieving for later, if that would ever come in this city of tragedy. Walking to the pi shop we found that it was completely destroyed by what looked to be a large amount of shaped charges.  We decided to head out of Lost Angels before Grimme decided we had overstayed our "welcome" and silenced us, and as we left we got our weapons back, and for some reason I felt much safer having both my new rifle and my old rifle, they have both saved my life on more than one occasion, I even decided to name my rifle Demon Slayer, it certainly lived up to that name already.  As we were leaving the area, I felt something on the edge of our vision, and other sense that was similar to what I felt when the ringmaster died. Then I noticed that Grimme's followers here were building a church, which seemed rather odd why they would choose now to expand, given the lowered population and the similar amount of space in the city. Perhaps Grimme's little show was more than just a play on the emotions of his followers ...

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