[FEB CONTEST] All's Quiet

[kaninchen]

330, Age of Exploration. Early spring. 0750 Hours.

The abandoned village of Calchester, 10 miles from the front lines.

You are a private in the Noble Clan Armed Forces, specifically the Expeditionary Forces regiment. You and your buddies are scouts, spies, snipers, and message-runners -- sometimes a thankless job, but it's far better than being one of the grunts slogging through the mud and blood. You've heard about the Silver Covenant and their legionnaires use brutal tactics out in the trenches. You're glad you're here, where the worst thing is the cold nights and occasionally being woken up by distant artillery fire. It's been 43 days since you've been posted in this village, and your job is to watch for any suspicious activity.

Nobody has passed through since you've come here, save for the weekly truck coming through to drop off rations for you. Otherwise, you are alone. You have holed up in the belltower of the local Temple of Tam. This town has been abandoned for about a year now, with all the residents fleeing the nearby fighting. You're loathe to steal from these people, but they left many things behind. You decided to ... "appropriate" ... some blankets and bedding for yourself. You also found a blank journal, which you have been writing in. So far, every day, you have begun every entry with the same thing:

"All's Quiet"

It's true. Every day, nothing happens. You're even thinking of getting rid of the journal. You write the day, the hour, your current level of rations, roughly how cold it was last night, and the same two words. All's Quiet.

You're letting your tea kettle warm up nearby, and you sit against the wall with your trusty Chesterfield Model 6 leaned up beside you. You're a bit of a marksman, but you daren't waste any ammunition taking potshots at bottles, birds, or squirrels -- you know that you'd have to explain the loss of ammunition to your superiors, and that's paperwork. Paperwork sucks. So right now, you rest a moment.

All's Quiet.

So, private... what's your name?

[Morphimus]

Bengus Brimwater

[Eversor]

Tronkle Whittlefever

[ten11]

Abery Averstein

[kaninchen]

Your name is Abery Brimwater.

All's Quiet.

Until it isn't.

You hear something outside the window. It sure as hell wasn't artillery fire, or a gunshot. What was it?

[Morphimus]

The blaring twinkley sound of a large music box. Like the kind they use in ice cream trucks.

[minitiate]

The rumble sounded like thunder at first, but now you can make out individual hoof-falls above the din...

[Eversor]

>The Beast.

[Fish]

the beast is your friend and also in charge of an ice cream cart. he gives the best hugs and has the least deformed character ice pops with gumball eyes

[kaninchen]

You look out the window.

Out in the town square, which the belltower overlooks, is a man. They're dressed in military gear, in the colors of the Silver Covenant. The enemy. How'd they get behind your lines? But your attention quickly switches to what's behind them...

Something large. A shadowy form, somehow escaping the sunlight. Twice the size of the soldier, pouncing down on them with sharpened obsidian claws.

You have no love for the Covenant and their jackbooted thugs, but your stomach churns upon seeing this man. This beast, a monster you've never seen before, begins to tear him to shreds. Talons rip into his flesh, sending a spray of blood onto the cobblestone. His screaming pierces the silence, until the beast lunges for his neck. A gurgle, and then...

All's Quiet.

The beast continues to tear the corpse apart. It doesn't even eat anything -- part of you wished it would. Somehow it's worse, seeing it destroy this body with no real reason. Hunger, the basest of needs, is absent from this thing. Something even baser is within its inky-black body. Anger. Destruction. An unfocused need for chaos.

You keep yourself hidden from view, still peeking down at the beast. You are unsure as to what to do next...

[adventurezealot]

Look for your fellow soldiers to deal with the beast.

[minitiate]

> I don't suppose you've looked around this shell of a town much... Are there any reports of mysterious, brutal killings in their sherrifs office or equivalent? Windblown diary entries detailing the local cryptid lore and possibly weaknesses?

> See what kinda tracks or marks it's making, on case you can follow it later with some kind of plan, or in case you need to prove to your compatriots that you Know What You Saw

[tronntronn]

>Go tell officers Ted and Alice that you saw an enemy soldier. Better leave the shadow part out, they wouldn't believe you and you probably were hallucinating anyway with what the stress induced dissociation and all.

[Eversor]

Lay down, try not to cry, cry.

[kaninchen]

You're alone out here, hiding in the belltower, peeking out the window at the shadowy beast that turns the enemy soldier into a pile of gore.

Ted and Alice, two others from your squad, are out on a supply run. Other than you and this beast, the town is devoid of life. You never heard any reports of shadowy figures in this small, sleepy town. As far as you know, Calchester was your typical sort of Noble Clan town: humble folk, pleasant air, and a few nice pubs. Very little crime, at least nothing beyond drunken rowdiness and school boys throwing rocks at windows. You visited here once, as a child, to see your nana before she passed away. She always had nice things to say about the town.

But here and now, it's a shell of its former self, citizens evacuated to safer towns as the front lines inch ever closer.

Then, it hits you. You think you know what this ... thing, this beast, could be.

You go over to your pack and search through your things. Ammo, food, a canteen of water, several little packets of tea, a flare gun for calling an artillery strike, and two flares -- one red, one yellow. And your journal, of course. You don't have much to work with, and you daren't make your position known to the beast.

You peek your head back out the window, and your stomach drops so hard you almost expected it to come out of your ass. Slinking out of the alleyways, more and more of the beasts come forth. Various sizes -- some hardly taller than a child, others three times the size of a full-grown man. All are inky black, with a dull carapace and razor claws. A swarm of them silently enter the town square, surrounding the destroyed corpse.

Manchatii. That's what they are. Chaos demons, cruel and twisted. They haven't been seen in nearly a hundred years, though a few folks say they spot one now and again. Mothers would use them as a bogeyman to scare kids into staying home at night. You knew they were real, but you thought they were a thing of the past, cut down in droves during the Great Siege of Okuramoto before slinking into the mist, never to be seen again. But they're here, swarming the town square, with only the vague noise of claws tapping against cobblestone breaking the silence. How in hell did all of them get here?

Your heart is beating rapidly, your palms sweating and your legs shaking. Your vision is blurry. You're panicking, you know that. And you can't seem to stop, either. Gods... what is there to do?