Familia Tenebrae Amor/home sweet home
From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe
Contents |
"They're Killahs, so they're Crew"
For a while, both Witch and Marci maintained rooms in the base of the secretive Serial Killers, part of the RP metagroup Killers of Virtue (Website now defunct, alas)
Witcharc's space in the Serial Killers' base.
Witch, ever somewhat insular, took up residence in a smaller room on the fringe of the base. While not deliberately antisocial, she doesn't mingle much, is seldom seen in base, and never truly "entertains" in her space. The other Killers seldom see her come and go...she's either there, or not.
It's always easy to tell when she's definitely NOT there (which is most of the time...noone in the SK knows where in the Isles she truly lairs.)- the room is almost empty, stark and gray, unpainted walls, unornamented.
Only two pieces of furniture, and they dominate the room: A GIGANTIC canopy bed, of truly antique vintage, and a large glass-doored breakfront of almost the same age. This contains a macabre collection of relics: A Huntsman's helmet, a Fortunata's hat, a full set of Mu robes, a golden scalpel, a slew of RIP badges...other less identifiable fragments, including skulls and bones from creatures that could only have been shadow-spawned. This is her honor chest, where she keeps mementos of those who have faced her courageously and fought furiously for their causes. There are always blue, white and black candles burning before it, in tribute.
The room is filled with an odd melange of smells: Sulphur, roses, blood, ozone, fresh rain, and an unidentifiable acid-sweet odor, faint and not entirely unpleasant.
At other times, the space...changes. Shadows hang heavy in the room, cast by an eerie, sourceless blue glow. The bed and candles are JUST visible from the door at these times- the breakfront is lost in the gloom. Strange, haunting scraps of melody float through the air, and flickers of brighter light seem to dance at the corners of one's vision. Sometimes the rare visitor will be startled as she pops out of nowhere, sitting lotus on the bed, or floating in the air, wearing (usually) her fancy blue "party" robes or (sometimes) her tattered black fighting gear. Other times, no amount of calling, coaxing or investigation will reveal whether she's actually in residence or not.
While she spent some time here, mostly she was bunkered down with Marci in the Warrens.
Marci's room in the SK base
Marci's room in the base is VERY spartan; there's a cheap cot, a few blankets, and a small fridge...she rarely uses it.
Marci's HOME, however...
The Warrens
Out on the rim of the Pit, there's a collection of tumbledown shacks, slap-board huts, and tin-can lean-tos. The homeless, the insane, the downtrodden, the outcast...this is their place. One hut in particular, one room it could be called at best if you're in a charitable mood. Oddly enough, all the "locals" leave it alone, even when it's raining in buckets or snowing sideways and there's not enough other places to sleep...Nobody uses it. The word's spread, you see; sleep in THAT hut...and you disappear. Ghost stories circulate about it, how this man or that woman was murdered there and now seeks "company" from anyone fool enough to risk them...but they're wrong. Unseen eyes watch the hut, from without and within both...but they're living eyes. You see, this rude, ramshackle pile of rotted boards and rusty nails...it's the door to Marci's home, and some of the vagrants, drunks, loonies, and bums who inhabit this junktown...aren't.
A trapdoor hidden VERY well in the floor opens to an eight-foot wide hole in the ground; a pair of ladders lead down about thirty feet. There are ALWAYS at least ten of Marci's named boys on duty as guards at the base of this ladder. From there, you can enter the tunnels...a confusing, chaotic MESS that makes the spaghetti-style Council bases look neat and orderly; crosstunnels, loopbacks, dead ends, various booby traps, and doors off the sides; some lead to rooms, some are false-fronts that hide deadly gifts to intruders.
Marci and Witch, and later Tia Lynn operated out of the tunnels for some time, until heavy Arachnos pressure forced them to move offshore. (see Moving Day)
The Good Ship 'Headcase'
The current base of operations for Familia Tenebrae Amor.
(under construction)
"Marci? Marci. MARCI!" The flow of techbabble finally stopped, and the greenhaired psycho scientist looked up at her towering friend. "M...you're the techie", Witch said in a tired voice. "Right now? I'm just a plumber. You point..." and she held up a hand, one finger surrounded by a bright blue nimbus of power..."and I weld. And QUICKLY, dear, before this cursed thing sinks out from under us..."
That's not REALLY the ship's name- they've been too busy keeping her running to bother with something so trivial as naming her, and her previous owners had only given her a registry number. "The Boat" is often referred to in less-than-affectionate terms as "rustbucket", "junkheap", and, on particularly bad days, "her again?"
Their current home is a mid-sized Longbow supply and covert-insertion ship that they captured at sea as a "favor" to a contractor. Since the contractor only was interested in the cargo, and Witch and Marci were beginning to think that mobility might equal safety, they kept the ship after offloading...ALMOST all of the cargo. The intent was to upgrade her with ECM and weapons acquired from shore and convert the vessel into a combination floating hotel and stealth corvette. The best laid plans...
Unfortunately, once committed to life on board, they found that their new prize was a stereotypical government project: overpriced, underengineered and unmaintained. Marci and her tech boys weep over the engine and equipment spaces. Witch still spends a great deal of time finding and repairing hull leaks, broken pipes, and electrical failures (she's pretty good at mechanical skills, but lacks a great deal of practical technical theory). And the interspaces of the ship were infested with large, agressive mutant rats. Tia and Zange loved this last part- they grinned and went big game hunting.
Slowly, they're getting it set to rights. Witch has slowed the water intake to a trickle. The showers USUALLY work, and the lights USUALLY stay on. After a lot of work, the main hold doors now open properly, so the Familia has airskimmer service to parts of the Isles, rather than relying solely on a few Zodiac runabouts. And they have a rudimentary steatlh system installed that works well enough at least to keep the Rikti from taking photos of them while they're sunbathing...
((At some point, an idealized base map will go HERE. It'll take some time in-game before we can actually build all of it))
Theres something in the hull!
Recently some have begun to notice the odd occasional gurgling between bulkheads, but despite intense investigation, nothing is ever found of leakage. Mostly the occurrences are blamed on Tias wandering green slime monster, but a few crew have muttered that it sounded like something was moving around entire rooms at a time.
