New Testingstan

excellent, Straha

So it's a weekday evening in town, in the middle of the summer. What are your characters doing?

Secondly, there have been some rumors going around town. Pick one of these rumors and tell me what your character thinks about it. Or, alternatively, tell me what your character thinks of life in this town.

1. The Needleman Killer, a serial killer known for leaving puncture marks in odd places on his(?) victims, has been rumored to be making his way northwards towards Saint-Germain.

2. The old paper mill has had cars out front and guard dogs on the grounds several times in the last week. No signs of life otherwise.

3. Stories are swirling about how the Rutherford girl made off with a good chunk of her family's money.

4. They say that the ghost that's supposed to haunt the Dorsch Library has been unusually inactive lately.

Dr. Stanz is grading papers in the faculty lounge. He's not getting a lot done, because he keeps getting distracted by his latest "invention" - a device that translates spoken language from english to russian.

It currently manages to repeat everything spoken into it in a very bad, saturday morning cartoon russian accent.

He's a little nervous going home tonight, as he's heard that the Needleman Killer's been in the area, and with Ray's luck, he'll be the next victim.

Baks-kun wrote:1. The Needleman Killer, a serial killer known for leaving puncture marks in odd places on his(?) victims, has been rumored to be making his way northwards towards Saint-Germain.

A bit creepy. Some of the people in the war, on both sides, started doing shit like this to civilians. You couldn't really court martial them due to the lack of evidence, but most officers weren't going to say anything about them getting in between you and the enemy when you were shooting. It would just be tragic misfortune if you shot your own men.

So, hopefully there is a tragic misfortune there.

2. The old paper mill has had cars out front and guard dogs on the grounds several times in the last week. No signs of life otherwise.

The place has made a lot of money for its former owners. Maybe someone's trying to get some more money out of it. Capitalists, ¿eh?

3. Stories are swirling about how the Rutherford girl made off with a good chunk of her family's money.

You teach a girl that money is all there is in life and this is how she ends up. It's not surprising at all. Though, I may have worked for the Rutherfords a few times as a gardener, but I don't really remember.

4. They say that the ghost that's supposed to haunt the Dorsch Library has been unusually inactive lately.

Marx never said anything about no ghosts.

Freewheeler Zabby Porkotelli thought himself cursed; though being devastatingly rich, handsome, and full of amusing factoids had afforded him an undeniable security in his life, this security has enabled him to drink deeply from life.

Too deeply.

Zabby can't recall wanting for anything; he has always had a warm place to stay, good food, and good company. And for lack of any pressing urgency in his life he has become shackled to his own hedonistic desires. He has experienced sensation beyond decency. He has sampled every flavour the world has to offer. He touched a lady one time. And he has learned much.

So much, in fact, that while the unwashed filth scurry around without a care in the world as he strides intensely towards a new acquaintance's flat, Zabby is taken by a terror he dares not relate to anyone. It wasn't long ago in conversation that someone related to him a fashionable bit of gossip: "..I hear the Needleman Killer's making his way to Saint-Germain, of all places!"

An amusing tidbit, to be sure- at the time he thought nothing of it, reminding himself to tell it to someone else to make himself look knowledgeable and trendy. But a mind so full of facts and wisdom cannot help but dwell on such things, and so we find Zabby stopping dead on the rain-swept pavement, his brow furrowing as the pieces finally come together to reveal a horrifying truth he knows that lesser minds could not hope to comprehend:

"Saint-Germain is this town", he whispers.

Henry Bemis, as he put in order misplaced books for what seems to be the thousandth time this week, feel the urge to murder his trainee, who just left for the day and can't seem to wrap his head around the librarian's system of book classification.


Returning to his desk, he grab on the daily newspaper rack one of the three copies of the Saint-Germain Times, the local rag with delusion of grandeur. Sitting on his leather chair, he skips through the pages of local politics, gossips, articles on the latest performances of the local football team and news of the surrounding area ; and directly go the page which interest him : the crosswords.

Reaching for his coffee, he start a grid, thinking back on some of the things that happened today.


As he was calling the Dorsch Library earlier for work, his correspondent jocked a few times on the suddenly improved working conditions as the “ghost took vacations for the summer”.

While eating at the cafeteria, he heard gossips that the Rutheford's girl went away with a non-negligible amount of her parent's money. Seems like another set of parents failed to correctly educate their brat.


Finishing-up his grid and his coffee, he mentally take note to visit the Dorsch Library tomorrow as he need to check some ancient tomes for his personal researches.


It's almost dinner-time, time to close the library for the day.

Dale is cruising around town in an unmarked Postal car on surveillance. If any postal employee is smuggling bottles into Michigan it’s right now, late enough so that no one will see them while still being early enough for them to check the trucks in to the depot without raising an alarm about postal workers doing overtime. He’s not quite sure how to crack this case, or even if there is a case to crack, it just doesn’t seem to fit the modus opperandi of the average postal worker to engage in a prolonged and involved scheme like this. Maybe if it was a postal worker’s friend? Even that wouldn’t make much sense though.

He is keeping an eye on the old papermill, going by every thirty minutes to an hour. He’s heard about activity there, late nights, guard dogs, but only on certain nights? Something is a foot, and criminals like that will try to avoid being tracked by avoiding the more high-tech parcel services in favor of the post-office. No one thinks they can track you down through a few .32 cent stamps. So Dale’s watching not just the mill but the surrounding mail boxes and drop slots, trying to see if any places are getting a sudden upswing of packages, or if there are suspicious packages being sent without a return address.

He’s also concerned about this serial killer in Michigan. An out of the way murderer who mutiliates the victim in odd ways? Disturbing. The more law enforcement on the street the better, especially in unmarked cars like Dale. Stories like that make Dale glad that he’s authorized to pack heat, and that he does. It wouldn’t be the first time that he’s stopped a would-be murderer on the streets while he was trying to do his job. He likes to think about the people he’s put away in prison telling their cellmates that they were busted by the postal cops. It makes him happy.

He likes these nights. He still isn’t used to being in Michigan, and he doesn’t know where to go to have fun yet, or even if he can have fun in the small towns he’s been touring like Saint-Germain. The other night he’d tried out a local bar, but he’d been noticed by an off-duty cop who recognized his picture from his last big case. The case that had made him a special agent.

He’d been in Maryland, on assignment trying to investigate allegations of mail fraud surrounding a coupon magazine. Hard work, little in the way of witnesses, and no real investigative work to be done, just constantly going over paperwork hoping for some discrepancy to show itself. He’d been on the case for a couple weeks and was bored out of his mind when he overheard a route worker talking about a house where he’d been attacked, driven off by an angry man for ‘asking too many questions’. What made it interesting was that the worker swore that he saw all sorts of people going into the nondescript house, and that they brought their children too, but it never seemed like the house was busy and, more importantly, it never seemed to get any mail.

Dale went on his own and staked it out. Sure enough, over the three days that he watched the house it became clear that men were going in and out of the house at all hours, and they brought children with them, but the children never left. What really raised the alarm for Dale was that while the house never received any mail, a day didn’t go past when there wasn’t a crate of mail to be taken away. So he got a warrant to search their mail, and the next day he found they were sending out hundreds of photos. Blurry dark photos. Signs of an amateur lab. In just a few photos, however, you could clearly make out children and babies in states of undress. Within an hour the FBI was called, a warrant issued, preparations were being made. Dale went back to watch the house until the FBI and local police could arrive, but before they got there he saw three children go in. Rather than let anything happen to them he called it in and went in alone. Inside he found almost a dozen boys and girls drugged, sedated, bound and gagged, and two babies on an altar surrounded by robed men.

A cult? Of course not. The FBI had disproven the accusations of cultish child abduction over a decade ago, it was chalked up to disturbing role-play. The men offered no defense or explanation, and simply pled nolo contendere to charges of kidnapping, sexual assault, and (of course) mailing and distribution of illegal material. It was kind of a big deal, Dale made the papers, earned the thanks of a grateful town and parents (none of whom seemed to know their children were missing until they were told about it). He even got a phone call from his mother (who kept a scrap book of any mention of Dale in any news outlet whatsoever) horrified that he’d gone in alone and begging him to think about his own safety next time.

Nobody would listen to him about what troubled him the most. If you looked long enough at them the shadows in the pictures moved. They made disturbing unreal shapes, shapes that seared into your mind and refused to get out. Shapes that sometimes still came back to him out of the blue and overwhelmed him. He’d recognized one or two from old books and websites, they were important, evil, but nobody would listen to him. They chalked it up to him being kooky, or just plain weird. There was no further investigation, the case was simply considered closed.

Two weeks after the big bust there was an award ceremony, the Chief Postal Inspector himself had pinned a medal on Dale’s chest, and he was ‘surprised’ with promotion to Special Agent, the youngest man to make the rank in the last fifty years. The next day he was shipped out to Michigan.

Every night he could be found out on the streets, searching for more. He loved his job, lived for it, ate and breathed only so he could keep on the hunt for the people that would misuse and abuse the greatest part of America, or to bust up the people who gave the Service a bad name. It filled him with constant never ending excitement, joy even. Some nights, though, he just wanted to be up so he didn’t have to sleep…

Students need to have at least 30% of their coursework marked and returned to them by the drop date?

Bullshit.

Having failed to pretend to not be in his office, and then failed to pretend he was on a long phonecall, Norville scratched a '77' and 'stronger thesis needed!' onto the back of the paper, (hopefully this was in fact an essay) and pushed it under the door. He finally heard the student who'd been waiting outside the door leave, sat back triumphant, and to reward himself for his cleverness, did another line.

He heard people talking about a 'Rutherford girl'. Had he taught her? Maybe he met her once? Snorted blow off the small of her back? He was her doctoral thesis advisor? Were lecturers even allowed that position? Maybe? No?

Norville cleared his head and got back to thinking about frogs, as zoologists do.

Oxy: As Henry is getting ready to close the library, one of the pages- a young man he vaguely recognizes- comes up and says, "Dr. Bemis, there's a student in the west study lounge upstairs that won't leave."

Nietz: Norville is up in the clouds when someone knocks at his door. They knock three or four times without any discernible pattern.

Straha: Dale's surveillance turns up nothing noteworthy tonight.

What's the name of the river?

Aaron wrote:What's the name of the river?

The Raisin.

Zabs: You are in W Oak Street. It is raining. You are wet. Visible exits are E, W, N, S, and D.

Akhlut: What's your character spending his night doing?

Questor: Ray drifts off in the middle of working on a circuit diagram. Uneventful night.

Gordon, as he does every night is checking his lines and traps around the old pier he "claimed" near the junction of The Raisin and Lake Erie. He didn't catch much but it was enough to keep him in booze and smokes.

Tonight was another typical catch, some crayfish, the odd trout and a small turtle. Enough for a cheap bottle of gin and maybe some pot if the liquor store parking lot was busy.

He threw his catch into a couple buckets, prices convientantly stenciled on the side and commenced his walk to the liquor store.

I've got to try and warn my friend! I continue North at a hurried pace!

Saint-Germain is this town.

Grumbling, Henry asks the page to lead him to the troublemaker.

Not the first time some students thought that them cramming to pass their classes was more important that for him to have a good night of sleep.

Norville briefly considers exiting via the window, but trying to keep his options open, he just opens the window, then opens the door. Openly.

Zabs: Zabby manages to weave around the buildings and heads north towards the river. His friend is somewhere around here...

Oxy: The west lounge is simply a mirror image of the east lounge in this Brutalist building- plain plastic tables with plain plastic chairs arranged in neat rows and columns. The recalcitrant student is sitting close to the windows on the right side of the room. She is sitting and staring at a book, rebound in plastic. Her backpack leans against the back of her chair.

Nietz: In rushes a gangly kid with a box in his hand. The box is dripping. "Mr. Rogers! Mr. Rogers!" he cries. He holds the box out to you. "I found it out in the drainage ditches and I wanted to know what it was."

Aaron: Gordon makes his way on down to the liquor store, waving hello to the other fishers out tonight.

Making a mental a note to put this kid on The List for not calling him Dr. Rogers, Norville takes the box into his arms and tells the kid to follow him to the lab where they can make some detailed observations. Along the way, he'll try to get an idea of what it is.

The box is dripping ordinary water, as far as can be determined from touch. It's making its way down Norville's shirt. Whatever's inside shifts its weight only slightly, and it's considerable in weight- the box is shoebox-sized. There are no sounds from it before they reach Room 110- Biology Lab. Norville shifts the box onto one arm to get out his keys and then he hears it. In his state, it seems to be the croak of some primordial ancestor of Lissamphibia. It seems to emanate intangibly from the box before finally transforming into soundwaves and drumming into his ears. It's goddamn loud. The kid is affected by it too, holding his hands up to his ears. Norville manages to get the door open and the box inside without letting it out.

"So, kid, is this thing... subdued?"

Nietzslime wrote:"So, kid, is this thing... subdued?"

The kid says, "My name's Bill, Mr. Rogers. It let me pick it up, so I don't think it's dangerous. It's just a big frog, I think?" But his eyes are a little wary now, looking at the box on the table.

Standing behind the girl, a hand on the chair's back, he says "I'm sorry, ma'am, but the library is closing for today. I will have to ask you to leave."

Henry's hand accidentally pushes the chair forward slightly, and the girl slumps onto the table. She makes no sound but breathing, and her eyes remain in the same position, open, staring. Henry feels his pulse quicken for a second. (Henry loses 1 sanity point).

Assuring himself that he's probably just crashing and some new breed of deadly frog probably wouldn't be found on a roadside in Michigan, Norville tries to stay what he assumes would be 'professional'.

Telling the kid to watch the box, Norville decides to rummage around to see if there's any isoflurane or other equivalent gas anesthetics around for sedating this creature without having to touch it. If not, he plans to just dump it into a large and secure terrarium with some insects and start taking notes.

Joaquin stepped out of his small rental home and smoked a cigar. A Dominican one, unfortunately, but he would take what he could get.

He thought about visiting the graveyard soon. For Rosa. He had waited far too long to visit her and he knew he should be better about that. God and Jesus and the saints and ghosts were all absurd, he thought, but he should at least visit her grave, just in case. He still loved her, even if he had done a few things with lonely housewives on occasion.

Bah. For some reason, he kept wondering about that stupid Rutherford girl. The more he thought about it, the more he thought he had done some garden work for them. Maybe his initial thoughts on the matter were wrong. She seemed like a nice girl. If he was remembering right, she didn't seem like most of the spoiled little brats the rich families had. She talked to him, tried to learn some Spanish to speak in his own language, and sometimes wore a Che t-shirt. He asked her if she knew who he was. Not really, of course, but at least a little more than most of the youth in this town who wore his face.

He chuckled and wished he told her now that he had met Guevara a few times.

Joaquin sighed after a few moments. An old commando, living in the belly of the beast. And what had he done with his life now? Grown flowers for the bourgeoisie. Maybe he should do something more important. Put his old training to use.

Maybe he should find this girl, since he didn't think she really took after her parents' rapacious avarice.

Doctor E. Tokash sighed, placed his glasses onto the desk, and silently cursed the great state of Michigan's Department of Health and Human Services. The nervous excitement upon beginning the first day of his very own practice had eventually degraded into a migraine and a throbbing ache in his writing hand. Why did every form have to be hand written? Didn't they have computers there?

Tokash rubbed his temples and looked around the office. He'd clawed his way up out of a minor street gang, the first person in his family to graduate high school, let alone attend college. He'd fought tooth and nail, applied for every scholarship and grant within reach and worked his way through pre-med and his MD, working years in one of the most active trauma centers in the region. And now he had to fill out multiple forms justifying to the state's Medicaid program why he'd found it necessary to prescribe antibiotics for some kid's pneumonia.

"Bet you never see House dealing with this shit," he muttered, turning to the local rag. Lead story on the migratory patterns of the "Needleman Killer." Tokash wasn't particularly concerned for his own safety, having dealt with plenty of crazy assholes both as a kid and in med school ("Hey, [Redacted], I ever tell you the definition of insanity?"). But his patients (potential and actual) weren't just human beings with lives and dreams and shit, they were also the only way he'd make any damn money in this town. He idly wondered if the serial killer's projected path had anything to do with the guard dogs around that abandoned paper mill. That kid's father had certainly wanted to talk about it. Along with some rich kid running away from home. And a haunted library. Tokash was totally disinterested in the former and just confused by the latter. He didn't believe in ghosts or the supernatural in general, but how lame would you have had to be in life to end up haunting a library in Michigan?

Nietzslime wrote:Assuring himself that he's probably just crashing and some new breed of deadly frog probably wouldn't be found on a roadside in Michigan, Norville tries to stay what he assumes would be 'professional'.

Telling the kid to watch the box, Norville decides to rummage around to see if there's any isoflurane or other equivalent gas anesthetics around for sedating this creature without having to touch it. If not, he plans to just dump it into a large and secure terrarium with some insects and start taking notes.

He finds an aerosol of isoflurane and opens the box, holding it at the ready. Inside is what looks like the common bullfrog, rana catesbeiana, but its body alone is about nine inches long, and it's seven inches wide at the widest point. One eye is horribly undersized for the rest of the head, looking for all the world like a catesbiana's eye put in this Pantagruel of frogs. Norville sprays the hell out of the frog and it dozes off. Looking closely, he also notes that its left front foot is malformed, with two of the "fingers" fused together. Bill the kid says, "It was just lying there. Barely moved at all when I grabbed it."