Forums » General Roleplay » Trick or Treat: John Doe

((This will hopefully serve as the springboard to get me out of my writer's block and the stress of my real life. Anyway, John currently lives in the sewers away from normal people. He is a creature not too dissimilar to the famous Frankenstein's Monster; I.E. tall, strong, made up of body parts from different people and reanimated, surprisingly intellectual and likes to be left alone. But he is no scrooge when it comes to holidays, so on the one day his kind are accepted he prepares his abode for potential trick-or-treaters. Though his thought of a "trick" may disturb and his "treat" may not be what you would expect to receive. Happy Halloween...~))

John was not usually a welcoming type, if it wasn't his horrifying appearance that drove people away in fear it was his personality. He just preferred to be alone, no one cared about him or would accept him anyway; he was a freak of nature - an abomination. But there was one day of the year that came around like clockwork in the centuries he had been around. Hallow's Eve, or Halloween as most people in this century liked to call it. It was a time when he could open up and be himself around people without fear of persecution, they always thought he was a really good costume designer.

John lived in the bowels of your local metropolitan sewer system, it was only place dark enough as well as out of the way where useful things always seemed to wash down the gutters to him. His "home", as it were, was a small hole in the side of a wall barely big enough to fit his massive form and his few belongings. So normally the passageways to his home were blocked off by heaps of garbage and debris but tonight was special. He had spent weeks prior to today clearing them away and arranging a maze through the networks of cavernous brick and concrete passages the led to his living area. There would be different colored arrows painted with phosphorescent spray paint to illuminate the gloominess of his world for others.

The night before he had tossed out several handmade invitations throughout the city and suburbs to invite people to trick-or-treat in the sewers. Just as he had for the past couple of decades. It was a usual thing and he made sure to keep a close eye on everyone who entered to make sure they remained safe all the way until they left.

The invites themselves always held a clue on them of how to solve the puzzle of his maze. He never lived in same place every year so the destination was always different from year to year. This year's invites had colored words and hidden directions built into his invitations. For example at one the beginning of the maze you might see the word "left" highlighted in blue, a clever person would be able to draw the conclusion to follow a glowing blue arrow painted on the wall to get where they need to go.

John would watch from the shadows and remain perfectly silent to remain undetected in the darkness. Though it wouldn't always stop a more perceptive person from noticing a pair of yellow glowing eyes peering at them from the gloom off in the distance.

---

John peered out of a nearby manhole that over looked to entrance to his maze he had worked hard to complete. "Not too many people so far but the sun hasn't set just yet. And there's still all night for people to turn up." John said to himself as he looked on from the distance at the couple of people milling around outside of the culvert that led into the depths of the city's sewers. He would drop down back into the manhole and sunk into the deep darkness of the sewers. He would wait for his first visitors in almost a whole year.

A curious treat had come into Juri's possession as she had ventured through this town. At current, she had been relaxing at one of the local inns, and had been seeking out some fresh air. Unbeknownst to her till last night, there was a celebration that had been going on, and this curious letter that was in her hands seemed to have been an invitation to a get-together, or something like it.

The curious side of Juri got the best of her as she followed some of the instructions on the paper. Finding herself at an arrow that pointed her into a certain direction, Juri had clacked her hooves against the ground before looking about. What would Vale have said if she ventured too far and got hurt?

Juri shrugged.

This was a night of celebration, so she had been told.

Pulling her cloak around her a little more snugly, Jurini had started following the blue arrow till there was something else that she needed to move onward to the goal. It was like a game.

Present, after the sun sets, is a woman in a blue trenchcoat and fedora. Her hair dyed pitch black, she wears a skin-colored, absolutely featureless mask on her face and her candy bag is styled after a briefcase. Peeking from one of her pockets is the slightly crumpled invitation that she received the night before, and on her right hand she carries a small, but potent, flashlight.

In her experience, parties in the sewers tend to be disappointing. And yet, here she is, wishing she brought her wellingtons.

The first clue went as such. "Enter through, follow blue and stop dead once you see the red." A fairly easy clue to follow, the walls inside the sewers were mostly grey concrete or a baked clay brick house that were light brown in color. So any color that was down there would be instantly recognizable, easily seen and very distinguishable from anything else down there. Luckily for the participants that night a rain storm a few days back had washed a goof amount of filth and debris away to who knows where. As such the ceilings, walls and for the most part the floors were relatively clean. Aside from recent and scattered deposits or a trickle of water from somewhere above.

John watched as the first two entered into the tunnels it would take them both a few minutes to navigate through the labyrinthine tunnels that would spilt off or converge at any given point.

As they would walk along the sounds of rushing water could be heard far off in the distance somewhere in the deeper parts of the sewers. The girls would take a left, then a right, then the center path of three before coming to a junction of paths that went eight different ways. Painted around each door was a red faux door frame. And above each of them was a geometric symbol and a large inscription on the dry floor.

During this time the girls would have ample time to talk amongst themselves or not depending on what their individual personal preferences were. John meanwhile had silently crept through the nearby tunnels making sure to keep his distance for now and remained perfectly silent and nigh-undetectable.

Glancing down to her note and then to the path that it mapped out with its words, Juri had soon come to be grateful for her dark vision as she continued to walk forward. Before long, she had come across the blue arrow, and afterwards, Juri had looked to the area around. The tiefling had also taken pause to go ahead and listen to the water.

In her time to herself, Juri had heard someone else that had been following this series of clues as well.

Putting on a small smile, Jurini had looked to the woman before waving politely to acknowledge that the other individual had been there.

"Greetings! I take it you're here for this game, too?" Juri asked the ginger-haired woman. "I just started following the clues on this sheet of paper."

The flashlight is pointed at the other, and the masked woman tilts her head. Even though her features are hidden, her tone is cordial. "Yes! But frankly, I wasn't expecting something so complex. As much as I appreciate them, I was always terrible at riddles."

She hmms, pacing back and forth. "Well, we see the red door frames. We've stopped dead. Now what?"

With his back against a wall a level above the two girls John could hear them conversing about his puzzle. "Did I really make it too difficult?" John wondered, his barely audible voice was drowned out by the echos already present in the tunnels. John peered around the wall and down the drain hole to the room below where Alex and Juri were. He saw that the two were where they should be but hadn't seen the next part of his puzzle. Below the two girl (literally under their noses) was a shape that gave them their next clue. A circle with a square within it. There was an identical symbol on the passageway to the right of where they girls were talking.

John leaned down to grab a stone on the wet floor beneath him, with a quick toss John silently threw the stone down the drain and into the room below where it clattered across the floor beneath the girls. John meanwhile would have ducked back behind the stone wall and become unnoticeable again. If the girls understood the clue and followed the right path they would find a piece of paper nailed to the stone wall directly in the middle of a diverging hallway. If they took any other path they would find either a dead end, a spillway up to the surface or a few barricades of garbage and debris.

In the moment that Juri was about to reply to the lady that had showed up, she had been started by the clattering of something upon the ground. Looking about, it did not take long for the tiefling to walk over a bit and catch sight of the symbol where the both she and the ginger-haired lady had been standing. Clearing her throat, the tiefling had turned back to the woman with a sheepish expression.

"I, uh... I was about to suggest that perhaps we go through one of the passages to see where it led. Though it seems... perhaps this might be... um... a clue?" Juri said, looking to her note once last time before looking down to the symbol.

A thought came to mind after the slight kick of adrenaline had worn off from being startled.

"Oh, uh... by the way, my name is Juri. Pleasure to meet you."

"Oh! Yes, that does sound like a good idea. Pleasure to meet you, by the way. I'm Alex." Though her tone is friendly, there's a certain hurry to the greeting. It probably has to do with the situation they currently find themselves in. "Off with us, then. So... do you know who our lovely host is?", she asks. Some smalltalk as they make their way through the passageway marked by the symbol matching the one on the ground.

Once John was satisfied his tip had been taken and as the two girl would make their way down the correct path he would go on ahead to wait on them further ahead to the location of where their next clue would lead them.

Juri smiled at the greeting and went over Alex's name in her head so she did not forget it. However, when Alex had asked her question, the tiefling's smile faltered somewhat.

"Ah... I unfortunately do not. I simply came across this puzzling invitation," Juri informed Alex as they walked along their path. "I thought that it would be fun to follow the riddles and whatnot. This holiday is supposed to be, um... spooky, right? I'd say that this seems to be pretty good in setting the spookiness!"

Juri remained ever cheerful about the situation, though perhaps it was also because of a certain naivety that she retained.

Glancing back down to her invitation, Juri looked for anything that may have assisted them further.

Alex chuckles. "This is spooky alright. Almost too spooky. I'm starting to think this isn't the community event I expected it to be." She shrugs, her hands in her pockets as they continue down the hall.

"I like the costume. Very imaginative. You came as a... uh... satyr?"

"'Satyr'?" Juri repeated, thinking back on what that was. She knew she read something about them when she had been taught to read from one of the other servants back when she actually had a master. However, that aside, Jurini had tapped a finger to her chin.

"Ah, no, no... I'm a tiefling!" Juri said happily. "Satyrs are more like... goats. I'm more like a, uh..."

Juri paused. She did not want to say 'demon', that just seemed like it would elicit all kinds of bad connotations about her race.

"Like a ch... chimera. Yeah! Something that's like a mixture of things! I guess I can kind of see my feet being like a goat's, though. I always thought of them as more deer-like myself!"

"Oh! Well, whatever it is, it's quite convincing! Those feet in particular, they must have taken a long time to make.", says the woman, looking down. She is visibly impressed. "How did you pull that off? Some kind of prosthetics? Maybe for next year, you could help me make one for myself!"