Video Game Forums

Everyone goes to Hell, Jacko reasoned. From experience, his logic was sound; even in his life as a dog, he'd only known murdaers, tieves, and cutthoats. Now, as a loyal, respected pumpkinheaded servant of Satan, the only difference was in how often he encountered the self-righteous.

Jacko thought everyone would need something to do. So he opened a pub in Ciacco, Hell's third kingdom. Black snow: the weather outside was always terrible. Like the garbage people made of their lives that would land them in this pub in the first place. Keeps 'em inside, drinking more, Jacko thought with optimism.

And there wasn't really a need to GO anywhere, noting Hell's lack of tourist attractions. So why not add some beds.

Before long Jacko's will was done, and his favor with the Accuser rendered an immediate loophole through Hell's zoning bureaucracy. His hotel was built, CIACCO 6 CENTS flashed in tremendous blacklight neon in Hell's churning starless night.

Inside, he hung the rules plain to see:
1. Life's a party. When the party's over everyone goes to Hell. If they want to keep partying, then they come here.
2. You've got a lot of nerve, to behave the way you do!
3. We already know life was so cruel.
4. The beer is so black yous hit your pants laughing

In the corner, Mr. Sicks-Pence hired his friend GP, a retarded midget Frankenstein sewn out of body parts and a sack of flour, to bang on a drum set. The least he could do, though Mr. Sicks-Pence; when he was a dog he used to piss on that sack of flour.

[OoC: Since there's been interest in the old battlefield ways, and since the Virtual Hotel hasn't gotten a hit in a year, I thought I'd try to start one off. And I suppose, given the location, all your characters have died and gone to Hell? Or not, whatever]

"There hasn't been a hit in a while," Jacko said to himself with disappointment. GP, the retarded Frankenstein, was stuttering out his stand-up routine to the empty inn.

Jacko stood behind the bar, staring at the cracked veneer. He poured himself a bowl of vermouth and spread it over his pumpkin mouth, then he remembered he quit drinking.

Where were all the drinkers? All the slobs, the gluttons, the fatties of Eternal Damnation? This was Ciacco, Hell's third kingdom--where was the sloth?!

"GP! Crack that window!" Jacko yelled three times, increasing in volume until GP understood. The Frankenstein stretched his flour-sack arm to draw the curtains, but when they were open still nothing could be seen. Jacko ran to the window.

"When I tell you to do something next time you do it faster!" He yelled, and slapped GP across his mold-spot beard with a soft thud. But his dough eyes staved off further violence. Jacko turned his attention to the window.

"There seems to be some obstruction..." he observed. But then the grease stains pressed into glass revealed the answer: some morbidly obese inmate had rolled to a stop in front of the 6 Cents Inn. Of course: that's why the mass seemed to be waddling!

"Well then take this, you son of ab itch," Jacko growled. From his coat he pulled a bomb, and lit the fuse with flame from his thumb. He opened the window with a rattle and embedded the grenade in the cushy fat, leaped from the window and rolled behind the bar. The blast blew out the glass, and there was an immense roaring groan outside from the helpless obese. Blood sprayed the room and the damned soul rolled his huge body into the street.

There was a moment of silence. And then: "GP! Get the ropes, you're gonna have to pull that corpse out of the street!"

Interesting. When I get some spare time!

*Clink*
The golden coin glittered, and bounced a few time on the bar. Three more joined it.
"Five and a tenth drams of pure gold, each. Gimme the strongest stuff you've got until that runs out. If you don't take gold... we'll figure something out. " A voice like fire intoned.
He sat there as he spoke, swathed and completely shrouded in a cloak of purest white silk. Speckled and spotted, by the black snow. His right arm, a muscular thing belonging to athlete or fighting man, was the only thing to be seen. A serpentine creature was burnt on the flesh, it's scales glittering like the coins on the counter. From shoulder to hand, tail to head, it coiled around the arm.

Jacko was surprised at first. The man had not been there a moment ago. Nor had he seen the white clothed one enter the establishment. The pumpkin shrugged it off. He was in hell after all, stranger things happened. More importantly however, this man was the first to arrive, and was a heavy drinker at that.

A humanoid creature walked in; a humanoid creature with wings of gold and red, talons instead of feet, and other birdlike parts. Strangely enough, he seemed to not have been touched at all by the dark snow outside; steam was coming off his body. His talons scratched the floor noisily as he walked across it. He sat down a few seats away from the white-robed stranger.
"Give me a glass of wine. Burning wine. Deadly wine. Nectar of Demons, I'm sure you have that here." He said as he dropped a couple of pieces of silver, some jewels, and a few chunks of unrefined gold ore on the counter. Jacko responded with a suspicious raising of one eyebrow-like structure and a wineglass of a steaming acidic substance. The Pheonix-man took a few slow, deliberate sips, savoring the pain. He turned to the white-robed stranger.
"So what're you in here for?"

The cloaked one downed his drink and spoke, without any pause for a breath.
"SPRING BREAK! WOO! VACATION!" He tossed his head back and roared with laughter, hood falling back. Hair in tone to match his fiery voice waved about even as he settled into a chuckle. Long, short, haphazardly cut. Every strand short enough not to be able to get in his eye from any angle, and almost long enough to do so. His golden right eye turned towards the bird man as the chuckle died down. The eye of an amused rabid beast. An eye patch over the left held runes forming one larger exactly where an eye would be. The phoenix-man knew some of them, fire, flame, and immolation in the ancient language of the fire birds. He could make an educated guess on the meaning of the rest easily enough.

A scar started from within his hair, a slight difference in color that never changed it's position no mater how his hair waved about, down into his flesh, on the eye patch and runes themselves. Down and down into the cloth below. His face was framed by more letters, runes, symbols and whatnot. From shaven chin, along the jawline across the temples, above the bow, and ending with three more prominent at the middle of his forehead. The three points of a perfect pyramid, a fiery sunburst within. Each seemed a tattoo, a thing of ink. Yet, the flesh was scared, much like a brand. The same as the golden dragon around his arm, and the more markings across near every inch of his bare flesh.

"Seriously though, I'm just bored. Wandering about where my feet take me." He chuckled, swallowed another drink, and lifted an unshod foot. More of the marking were on his calf, and something bigger, but not enough flesh was exposed to be determined just what it was. "Ended up here. You? Don't much expect one you types to be around this part of the realms." He chuckled as another drink went down his gullet, unable to disturb the sound coming from within. The glasses and amount in them growing larger each time. The flame branded within his palm was of no apparent bother as he grasped the fourth. "Names Aidan Dreiks by the way."

”We’re gonna go
walkin through the park, every day
Baby”

The checkerboard flat-cap pulled low over his eyes, obscuring their likeness and deep-socketed countenance – which was just as well. Cook might have been taken for malnourished were they to see his eyes. Then again, did it really matter? They glinted, bright but quiet, as he sauntered drowsily to his corner of the Ciacco Six-Cents bar. Six cents – made sense, we are Hell so why should they overcharge? It would alleviate the mood if they did. That act of feigned compensation seemed to make the atmosphere that much more despondent.

He sat his weight at the end of the bar – away from the idiots who bantered like the act of conversing redeemed their situation. He would have lit up a smoke, but he was already smoking, and it flared hot as he shook black flakes of snow from his tousled shoulders. Rugose leather, collar pulled up, stitched and sewn back together and rain-washed and anti-climactically out of character. Here and there signatures ran like frost would run across Christmas windowglass. One of them was Jimi Hendrix’s. One of them was Ice Hendrix’s, and that knowledge made him crack a grin and brood morosely.

The dim lighting – what other lighting would there be, in Ciacco – and where were the strippers? Only the slow promise of sex without love and without even the sex could perfect this place for the damned – made impossible any distinguishing characteristics that would describe the acoustic guitar he removed from the sling across his shoulders and laid over his lap. He thought, why not, he would play, but first, something stiff.

The rest were ordering their demonic and retarded drink orders in an effort to out-imagine themselves. Beer fermented from rare weed sprung in clusters across the tundra of Cocytus – wine harvested from the rotted grapevines grown alongside the rare fruit of men’s souls in the orchards of Azmodean… make it strong! I am a man, I am the darkest of Men, my whiskey must first be singed across the anvils of Gehenna’s hottest forge and spiced with the blood of firstborn children!

He ordered. Sicks – he came to know him as Sicks – drew a king cobra from cabinet nest with one arm, sliced him with surgical precision with the other, and let its blood run down the coils of its thrashing body to the wine goblet below. The memory of Zhang Lao came to him – sipping a mixture of this and Chinese rum in the merlin’s workshop. To my health, he thought, and the curvature of his lips around the glass was perverse.

Outside, a white Lightning Bolt came from the sky and hit the ground with a loud boom. The Area flashed with the brilliant white light. The Demons, and Hellspawn that were arouund ran screaming, expecting a god to come pouring out to deliver justice to them. Instead a Black Haired man with his somewhat long hair in a ponytail stepped out. He was in a Rust colored tanktop, and Black pants with pointed shoes. He walked into the inn and walked up to the keeper, who was holding up an 6.5 for his enterance.

The man throws a few large gold coins on the table. "Give me a bottle of scotch, a glass, and the largest block of ice you can fit in it."

Jacko complied and gave him a glass and a bottle. The man poured the scotch into the glass and stared at it for a moment.

"Name's Qual. Servent of the God of another Dimension." said Qual.

Jacko paid no attention to him. He wouldn't try to understand the idea of dimensions, even if he liked this guy.

Alright then, the servant of a god of another dimension. That must suck, being restricted to particular dimensions... a real god could eat ya like jello, Jacko thought. GP was holding up a sign from his fetid corner, '6.5' smeared with feces. "Put that **** down yaf ucking idiot," he yelled, and reached under the bar and threw a turtle at him. A thick slap of the turtle shell striking wet flour that smeared GP's face with cobra blood. Jacko noticed that and used a dirty rag to wipe down the sacrificial bar, wondering how GP was learning his digits.

Ice Hendrix took his red rum and his guitar and strolled toward the microphone. "Why did Sicks throw a turtle at you?"

There was an agonizing delay while GP's face expressed his struggle to comprehend. Then: "C .a.u . s I.'m s.l. o.w.w," he groaned. Hendrix decided a conversation this slow should go no further.

Mr. Sicks-Pence finished with the rag. Caught up with cleanliness, he turned to the phoenix and said, "make sure you preen when you're in here, I don't want any ticks or fleas in the establishment." But one cannot be rude to the patrons: he produced the fruitspawn, a pear with a vicious mouth, and he tore the mouth open and squeezed it, screaming, until its saliva ran into two glasses. "Two Nectars of Demon, on the house," he said.

Ice Hendrix was trying to steal the microphone, to GP's feeble dismay and pathetic attempts at prevention. There was more commotion at the door: "Rompa room!" Someone roared, and Dregan Claydius kicked open the door, a bottle of gin already in hand. He scanned the room with a look on his face like he just smelled some piss, and the first thing he spotted was the microphone. He stomped forward. drew a heavy pistol and stuck it right in Hendrix's face. "You better learn to wait your turn, cause I get kinda hyphy going on a little gin, you don't like it? Say hello to my little friend."

"Take it easy son--"

"I'm a mac not no son," Dregan interjected, "and playing with that microphone is like playing with my emotions, so you better watch who you interrupt before I cut your balls off and handem to ya, buddy."

Jacko watched with aggravation from the bar. Fiend! He thought.

The door swung open as a trench-coated figure entered the pub The entire tavern fell dead silent as the mysterious man slowly walked up to the bar and glared at the barkeeper. "I'd like a bottle of your finest vodka and a glass. And don't forget the ice." the trench-coated warrior growled as the bartender rushed to get his vodka.



The barkeeper returned moments later with a bottle of vodka and a glass full of ice. The trench-coated man then threw a small bag of gold coins on the bar. "Keep the change." he said as he took the bottle and glass and looked for a place to sit. The trench-coated man then turned back. "Oh, by the way, my name's Nightshade." Nightshade then plopped down on the nearest barstool and took a swig of vodka.

Cook looked at the man whose booze-fogged breath was intoxicating his air-bubble and his facial expression - while not overtly displaying anything like wrath or insanity - seemed to recede into the flesh of his face, like artefacts in sand. The deep-setted pits of his sockets seemed to grow deeper beneath the wide brim of his hat. His lips turned (and it was not a gesture conductive to tranquility) downwards into a kind of purse. He said nothing in response. But his fingers - which were long like a concert pianist's; very long, although somehow too bony, like branches from a dead tree - slid gratingly down the strings of his instrument to the base of the neck. He crooked, pulled, and twisted - like he was wrenching the still-beating heart from a sacrificial lamb and not playing music at all - and the strings thumped heavily (large dose of E).

Dregan's entire frame registered an attack - but when nothing beyond that happened, his reflexes cooled like embers in a campfire - and then of course, something did happen. Not all at once - like a flood, there was an enormous sensation of rushing, like he was sweating from the inside out, like he was standing in an elevator that wasn't there and it was lowering and taking him with it even though the world as he saw it remained static-

He collapsed to his knees, bent forward, and the stew of his puke spattered across the stage and his pants like old blood. He convulsed - a kind of inside-out shudder - and fell on his side, and vomit boiled from his mouth and nose and he would spend a good part of his immediate future no better off.

Cook stepped off. Goodnight, Springton, there will be no encores. He knocked back the rum and blood, a trickle of it running from the corner of his mouth down his chin and dropped the glass. It struck the floorboards beneath his feet like a small crystalline bomb and its fragments glittered minutely in the dimness of the speakeasy, turning red and orange in an electrically arterial manner.

"Sicks," he muttered. "Going for a stroll. I'll be back. Maybe."

"You didn't pay for that, music-boy!" Jacko rumbled, dishrag moving across the bar like a clumsy ballroom dancer.

"My credit's good here."

"The hell it is!"

"The hell it isn't. The hell does it matter?" He gave a chuckle, ashing his cigarette out on a bar-stool, stepping out through the entrance.

"You'll be back, Cook."

"Is there anywhere else to go?" There was nowhere to go. Deeper into Ciacco? There was no way to the other levels. None that he knew of, anyway, and this wasn't the country-side in which a man could go bombing random rocks or lifting bushes. Countryside.

Ciacco didn't pass time. There was no sun. An illusion of light - light as a concept - existed, no more than bleak, nightless moonlight. Sometimes, when the clouds broke (no clouds, when the shapes broke) the sung hung black like a spot of ink, lightless but too bright to look at - too dark to look at without damaging your retinas, like that spectrum of black was simply beyond ocular comprehension. There was no day, or night - but there was hot, or cold. Flakes of snow rose around him, pointed and sharp as sleet or glass, slicing superficially at the flesh of his face, tangling in his eyelashes, bleeding his lids. He smiled. Pain flared across his face - an image of halogene lamp sacs lighting up like match-heads over his flesh. The cold froze his blood to his face and made the cuts sting like fire-rods. Distantly, the shapes of hills rose and fell with imposible sheerness - like hills out of Chinese artwork, made up of angles and moving shapes. An eight or so of the horizon was occupied by the silhouette - there was no way in which to see detail - of a titanic, monstrous city. He knew geographically it lay on the shores of Hell's rivers - and that there was no measure of distance between where he stood and where it hung. He could walk for years - not allowed to die from hunger or thirst or exhaustion, and never reach the city, crossing chasms and deserts and oceans. Ciacco was not measured in mathematics.

The cold seemed to cut at his face as viciously as the snow. He threw his heavy, autographed coat over the ivory lapels of his suit and the satiny, crimson triangle of his chemise. He pulled on his gloves - leather that clung to his hands like flesh, creaking, and it took some time to work them on (but all he had was time). Slinging the accoustic over his shoulders he stepped off into the negative, and his voice rose up and around him like the echoes of a wind which only blew to cut and shred.

"And we're gonna go, walkin through the park every-day..."