The Worst Kind of Surprise Party

[all_too_familiar]

There is a man. He's meditating, and floating several inches off of the ground. This is fairly normal for him - at least he's not floating various furniture this time. Just himself. He doesn't feel like exerting himself any further. It's been a long day.

He realizes it's going to be a lot longer when he's no longer in his room.

"I hate surprises," he sighs, and he opens his eyes to look at his new surroundings. He's still floating, and surprisingly calm.

Comments

[unmarred]

There isn't a whole lot of information around. One exit from the throne room leads to a large, luxuriously appointed bedroom with several full bookshelves, but the books are mostly not about vampires or summoning rituals or whatever the hell that trick was with the candles and the black fire. In fact most of them seem to be fiction.

Also, neither the throne room nor the bedroom has any windows. The bedroom does have electric lighting controlled by a simple mechanical switch in the wall.

The lack of windows is explained when the other exit from the throne room leads to a stairwell that takes him up to the aboveground portion of this bizarre quasi-castle. There's a dormitory there that seems to have housed the cultists, and more simple electric lighting. Very low-tech, this place. All the doors operate mechanically, no automatic opening, no powered movement, just hinges and a handle. There are a few windows on the ground level; outside, it's a clear night, with one large and quite beautiful moon in the sky amid a totally unrecognizable configuration of stars.

Meanwhile, Mark is discovering that dismembered cultist blood seems to pass muster with his new vampire appetite. He experiments with deploying and retracting the fangs-and-forehead-ridges ensemble. It seems to be very definitely a package deal, more's the pity.

[all_too_familiar]

This is very low-tech. The lights aren't a surprise. He's seen lights before. Doors that open by hand and not in a bizarre complicated fashion, though? He's sort of delighted by the novelty. He takes a few minutes to familiarize himself with how these sorts of simple mechanical doors work. Easy to break into, of course, you can just take out the hinges with a blaster and you're in, and it's impossible to open or lock them remotely. He's seen some things like them before, but it's more high tech than he's used to for a mechanical door. Usually it's hand-crafted wicker-nonsense or high-tech blast doors, no in between stage. It's interesting. Also fun to mess with.

(He only giggles a little when playing with the door.)

Revan takes some time to sort fiction from nonfiction. It's - uh, a challenge. Especially when one doesn't actually know the history of the planet. He copes, anyway, and digs up what seems to be a history book on something called the 'American Civil War.' He verifies that it's nonfiction by skimming it; it's too dry and technical for fiction, and there are various citations in the back. He's almost entirely sure that it's nonfiction.

He's going to get Mark to check it anyway. It's not like Revan's familiar with Earth history. He heads back down to the summoning location, book in tow.

"I haven't found any information on, er, this. Or vampires. And most of the books I've found seem to be fiction." He hefts his discovered book. "This was about the only book I could reliably identify as nonfiction."

[unmarred]

"Hm," says Mark. "Let me have a look."

He only has to glance at the title. "Yeah, pre-Jump Earth, all right. I recognize the historical event in question. Let's have a look at the publication year." He opens the book. "1998. Which puts us somewhere between 2010 and 2030, I'd say, judging by the quality and condition of the paper. Paper books show their age pretty reliably, some of them. If this Earth's future is congruent with my past, interstellar travel will not be invented for another couple of centuries."

[all_too_familiar]

"Poor souls. May the Force be with you, brave galactically isolated warriors," says Revan.

He visibly brightens upon Mark's analysis. He correctly found a book that was nonfiction, and correctly guessed that Mark could figure out more from it than he could. It's the little victories, really.

[unmarred]

Mark grins.

[all_too_familiar]

"Well, by rights of conquest the too-tactically-pathetic-to-accurately-be-called-a-castle's ours. But I don't know about you, I don't want to stay in the murder cult base. I think once we're done we should find somewhere else. I might have missed something in my pillaging, though - you are welcome to check for anything."

[unmarred]

"Yeah, I'll take a look around."

He pokes his head into the bedroom, then comes out looking thoughtful.

"Is it just me, or does the lack of windows really not fit with this man's image?"

[all_too_familiar]

"It's not just you," agrees Revan. "The entire place is built for - well, to look innocuous on the outside, and then for his minions to treat him like a god on the inside. It isn't very practical, but it's not impractical in the way I would normally expect. Where's the opulent room at the top of the tower that overlooks everything? The dramatic balcony and the stained glass windows? He didn't seem to me like a man that lacked the ordinary tasteless style from these sorts of people. You saw the fur robe. He had a sense of the theatrics. I wonder why the design choice. I feel like I'm missing something..."

[unmarred]

"Vampire-related reasons would be my first guess, which makes me reluctant to go upstairs. But I don't intend to stay in the murder cult's windowless basement for the rest of my immortal unlife... Some legends have it that vampires react badly to sunlight; that might be it."

[all_too_familiar]

"Possibly. It's night. If it's sunlight you should be all right, unless reflected moonlight counts enough."

[unmarred]

"Well, there's one way to find out."

Up the stairs he goes!

He does not explode in the moonlight.

[all_too_familiar]

"Oh good, you didn't explode," says Revan sincerely.

[unmarred]

"I am glad I didn't explode. So, moonlight's safe. Sunlight is still an unknown."

[all_too_familiar]

"Yeah. And we should find a spot for you to stay in case sunlight turns out to be deadly. Mm. Here's better than nothing but it still screams 'This will end badly' to me."

[unmarred]

"Does it?"

[all_too_familiar]

"Mm. I don't know what kind of - magic, I suppose, that they did. I don't know what its limitations are or what rules it follows. It doesn't feel like anything strange is happening around us right now, but I didn't feel anything strange happening right before they threw the candles and I had the Force ripped away from me. I don't know if their ritual sacrifice thing was to do anything besides feed their 'god,' or if they had any safeguards in place for if things went horribly wrong. I don't know if they chose this location based on that, if there's something inherent in this place that's bad. It's all very mysterious, and I don't know about you, but I don't want to be caught off guard.

"Furthermore, the place is built to look unassuming, to fly under the radar - but it's got nothing to back it up. It's kind of pathetic, actually. I'm not asking for security cameras in every room and key cards for every door, but I would like a layout that isn't made for, 'everyone upstairs is caught off guard and slaughtered, and the one person downstairs gets time to flee.' Except, and correct me if I'm wrong, there's no place for the one person to flee to, unless that ritual is two ways. I didn't bother to look for secret exits, and there very well might be one, but it wouldn't improve the inherent 'everyone that is not me is expendable' aspect of the building design. I take offense to that kind of building design.

"Worse, there aren't any obvious resources nearby that make staying here worth any of that. I didn't see any nearby towns, I didn't see any major roads, I didn't see mines or factories or key locations that make this place worth putting up with. It's made to not be valuable enough for anyone to care about. That would be useful if people were actively hunting us, but as far as I know we've killed anyone that would even know we're here. As it is, we're in a situation where it's wise to be known and ask around and talk to people - you're obviously highly trained and physically enhanced, and I have laser swords that cut through nearly everything and Force powers. I don't think we should assume that we'll automatically win against everything we encounter, but I think skulking is a bad move.

"And then anyone that meets us will connect us to the cult that we just killed, if they knew of the cult. Again, that could be valuable if they were a well known cult, and we were trying to present ourselves as righteous cult-killers, but they weren't well known. In the much more likely event that people we talk to don't know of the cult, then we're suddenly the creepy murderous duo with a pile of corpses in the basement. I don't know about you, but I do not want to be the duo with a pile of corpses in the basement.

"... Also I don't want to clean up said pile of corpses." He smiles. "So that all adds up to 'I think it's a bad idea to stay here for longer than a few days.'"

[unmarred]

"Yeah, that's a fair analysis. I'm reluctant to flee immediately without taking the time to figure out just why a vampire would prefer to live in a windowless basement, though."

[all_too_familiar]

"Sure. That's fair. We can take a day or two to figure that out before we leave."

[unmarred]

Nod.

[all_too_familiar]

Well, with that decided: "Then I should go clean up the corpses to avoid the smell. Might also look for secret passages, maybe this place is less of a tactical trainwreck than it appears to be."

[unmarred]

"Weren't you just saying you didn't want to clean up the corpses?"

[all_too_familiar]

"Oh, I don't," he says lightly. "But I want to deal with rotting corpses even less."

[unmarred]

"Valid preference. I'll help."

[all_too_familiar]

"I appreciate it!"

Cleaning up the bodies isn't much of an ordeal. Revan decides to just avoid physically carrying dismembered corpses. He has the Force. He can carry them that way. Besides, he only has one set of clothes, he'd rather avoid ruining them before he has another set to change into. And he's lazy.

They can be piled outside in a pit (dug by Revan, with the Force, because he's a cheating bastard) and then unceremoniously set on fire. It won't get rid of them completely, but it will keep the smell from getting too bad.

[unmarred]

Mark, once it is established that Revan is capable of dealing with all the body parts by hismelf, locates cleaning supplies and starts mopping up the blood on the floor of the throne room. It's not such a big problem as the corpses, but it's already getting sticky and gross. He also hauls what's left of the throne upstairs and dumps the bloodstained pieces in Revan's fire pit, to get it out of his way. (It was an early casualty in his fight with the robed man.) On consideration, he does the same thing with the blood-soaked fur robe.