The Manor Is Not Enough - Maid RPG

"Well...that's a new one." say Junko. "Oh well as long as we don't pass ourselves going the other way it's probably not anything to worry about. If that happens it either means we've gone completely nuts or...well I'd rather not talk about that."

"Huh?" Elizabeth was still swivelling her head around, trying to see exactly what it was that had her compatriots so rattled. Something about the hallway was a bit off, but she was still distracted by the time. "Did you say something, Ms. Junko?"

"Well yeah...either I've lost my mind...again, or there's something rather...redundant about this hallway. But like I said as long as we don't pass ourselves going the other way I can take it."

"I personally wouldn't mind other versions of us nya," Tammy remarks. "Maybe there's a version of me who can turn into an actual cat, or a version of Hitsugi who's not grumpy all the time, or even a version of Jessie who's still alive nya."

"We probably would not recognize the living me," Jessie replies. "Had I kept living, I'd probably be a middle-aged..." The ghost then frowns upon realizing she's contributing to a pointless conversation. "Ugh... Please focus, ladies. If this is another of the 'Doctor's' traps, we need to find a way out of it."

(Jessie rolls 1 x Cunning 2 = 2 for her search.) Jessie looks around but, if there are any discrepancies in the pathway's pattern, she doesn't notice any. "Um- You've got sharper eyes than we do, Miss Tammy. Think you can look along the walls for any inconsistencies in the hall's pattern?" Starting to think she's being taken advantage of, Tammy grunts, "Ugh, fine, fine, I'll look nya," then gazes along the wall as she proceeds. (Tammy rolls 4 x Cunning 2 = 8 for her search.)

edited 25th Mar '15 5:43:35 AM by 1jimbo10

"Fair enough." says Junko. "Personally I think I'd die of shock I ever saw a Hitsugi who was capable of smiling, I kinda like the old sour face." After Jessie's attempt to get thing back on track she smacks herself in the head. "Right sorry got my wires crossed. Anything in particular you think we should have an eye out for?"

As Tammy scanned the hallway she noticed something odd out of the corner of her eye. When she turned to look there was nothing there, and yet the feeling that something was there didn't go away. Eventually she was able to figure out that on the periphery of her vision there was... an arrow, like on a street sign. It was small and green and just sort of floating there, steadily blinking in and out of existence. Anyone who rolls cunning or luck and gets a 6 or higher can see it too.

edited 29th Mar '15 11:16:25 AM by Alhazred23

Cunning = 2

"I...don't see anything," muttered Elizabeth. Either they were all starting to go off the deep end, or she was. After even a few hours in this crazy manor she'd have accepted either hypothesis. "Where do we even go now? Just down the hallway?"

edited 29th Mar '15 8:44:57 PM by SabresEdge

luck roll=3x3=9

"Hmmm....well there's a glowing arrow over there if we're interested in following it..just to make sure I'm not the only one seeing that am I?" says Junko.

"I see it too nya," Tammy says after wiping a hand over her eyes to make sure she's not just seeing things. "Any idea what it could mean nya?" Jessie replies, "I wouldn't know, having never been in this area before." The ghost then starts mumbling, "Oh, I hope my body's okay in the well,"

Tammy's ears twitch as she hears Jessie's faint rambling. "Your body? You still keep tabs on it nya?" Irked by the question, Jessie snaps, "Of course. You only get one for your life, don't you? You'd do the same if you were in my situation, would you? Besides, if someone is twisted enough to set traps like this and the chessboard, I'd doubt there's anything they wouldn't stoop to.”

"Makes sense to me." says Junko, "And that's probably good thinking there Jessie. As for what the arrow means will either it's a go here type of thing or it's marking a trap, and I wouldn't bet on the second one. Or it's just there to mislead people guess that could be to." she shrugs. "Right now I ain't laying even money on anything."

"I'm resigned to it probably being a trap, but we don't have any better places to go, do we?" murmured Elizabeth gloomily. "I mean, we know there's at least one other faction in here, maybe they'll be nice enough to set off the nastier traps ahead of time for us. Lead off, Ms. Junko."

"Yeah there's a fair chance of that. With that sunny disposition you must be a hit at parties." says Junko, though oddly enough her tone indicates she's being completely serious. "Personally I'd rather not lead off but if no one else wants to...with luck I'll just get hit in the head, I've taken so many blows to the melon I can't feel much there anymore."

At first the maids didn't notice anything odd as Junko started walking, but after a minute or two it became disturbingly apparent that the bend at the end of the hall wasn't getting any closer. No matter how quickly they walked it always seemed to be just as far away, and if they tried to turn around and go back the hall behind them behaved in the same fashion, like they were on some sort of treadmill. The only thing that changed was the light level and background noise: after a short while the bright white of midday began to grow tinged with the pink of afternoon, and eventually there was what sounded like a chime, after which the chatter seemed to grow more distant. All the while, the glowing arrow continued to blink in the corners of their vision; by this point all of the maids could see it.

"Well that's a neat trick." says Junko. "I knew this was going to be a long day, but this is just getting silly."

"This is not how—" Elizabeth bit her lip. Complaining, not ladylike, she knew the drill; her mother's litany had been more or less engraved onto her consciousness by now. It'd been far too optimistic of her to expect that the next trap would be up ahead instead of right there, screwing with perceptions and—

And—time was a perception, too...

Her breath catching in her throat, Elizabeth paged through her functions. Watch, watch, where was the bloody watch, if the trap was screwing with their perception of time it might well also be affecting space...

As Elizabeth thumbed through the various arcane functions of her phone, trying to find where she'd stashed all of the more mundane apps, she came upon an icon that she hadn't seen before. It was labeled 'Stats' and its thumbnail was a sort of graph. She eventually found the 'Clock' app, which currently displayed the time as 4:32 PM. If Elizabeth opens the 'Stats' app it displays a sort of 'radiating spokes' diagram. The bounding figure is a hexagon, and six lines radiate from the center of the figure, each toward one of the corners. Each corner is labeled and going by 'o'clock' positioning: 1200 is 'Athletics,' 0200 is 'Affection,' 0400 is 'Skill,' 0600 is 'Cunning,' 0800 is 'Luck' and 1000 is 'Will.' On each spoke a point is marked some distance from the center, with 'Luck' being the closest to the center, followed by 'Athletics, Cunning and Will' which are all roughly the same distance away. 'Skill' is still further out and 'Will' is the furthest, though none of the points is all the way to edge. A line is traced between the points to form a spiky, lopsided sort of polyhedron inside the hexagon.

edited 15th Apr '15 10:24:30 PM by Alhazred23

"We're moving, but we're clearly not going anywhere nya," Tammy says. Part distraught by the situation, part wanting to give her feet a rest, Jessie rises herself slightly off the floor to float forward... and passes the others immediately. "Hey, don't leave us nya!" the cat girl calls out.

"What the?" Jessie stops, hovering in midair as she looks toward the others just behind her, appearing to be walking in place. The flickering arrow now apparent to the ghost, she decides to float right by the wall where the arrow is. "Maybe the arrow has a clue we ignored?" she guesses as she leans against the wall in attempt to determine what the arrow is about. (Jessie rolls 4 x Cunning 2 = 8 for her attempt.)

At the moment, Elizabeth was still distracted by her new shiny, poking and prodding and subvocalizing commands to bring the graph around. Experimentally she turned to bring Tammy into view...

...and realized that the ghost maid was, indeed, shifting position around relative to the rest of them, apparently free of the trap.

She joined her voice to the chorus of "hey, wait, don't leave us!" briefly before she realized that whatever Jessie was doing, it was probably more effective than blundering around in this hallway. That arrow was probably the key...corner of vision, hmmm. And Jessie apparently was free of the molasses-hallway effect. Double hmmm. Except...

"I'll look like a bloody ninny," muttered Elizabeth. There didn't seem to be any helping it, however; it was her dignity or her mission. A deep breath: she screwed her eyes shut behind her glasses, and performed a quick bunnyhop/midair-turn in the direction of the arrow, fully aware that, even if it worked, she looked like a Tony Hawk wannabe in a skirt and apron.

She consoled herself with the thought that someone was going to get a good exorcising at the end of all this, if she had any say in the matter.

The rarely-used Athletics: 2x5 = 10.

While it did not accomplish quite what she intended, Elizabeth did notice something interesting as she attempted to 'correct' her facing with respect to the arrow: No matter which direction she attempted to turn in, the arrow always pointed to the right - so either the 'correct' direction was dynamic, or the arrow didn't indicate a 'direction' at all... Junko and Elizabeth may make Skill rolls.

Skill 3 x 2 on dice + 3 = 9.

As expected, Elizabeth felt very stupid. There was no point in following the bleeding arrow if all it'd do was to lead her in circles, like a particularly sloppy math problem; at some point you had to mutter curses under your breath and raise your hand for the teacher. Or, come to think of it, like a tangle of Python code caught in an infinite recursion; Elizabeth still had memories of that one time she'd experimented with Ren'Py and managed to make an entire scenario unwinnable because of a stupid never-ending loop...

Wait.

"Ren'Py," muttered Elizabeth, the realization dawning. "Ren'Py—corridors that never end until the prompt is entered...this is a scene out of a bloody visual novel!" This last at a shout. Nearly forgetting herself in the excitement, Elizabeth closed her eyes and jabbed at the arrow in her vision, as if it were a clickable prompt.

Simple solutions first.

With a clatter, one of the doors on the right side of the corridor in front of the maids opened. In a blink, a tall figure slid into view to confront them- as in she didn't appear move her legs at all as she approached. It was an adult woman of indeterminate age with long silver hair. She wore a pencil-skirt and long-sleeved blouse combination in purple and cream respectively, and the very slight downward turn of her lips revealed a pair of unusually long canines.

She also appeared to to the maids be totally flat, as though they might discover she were a cardboard cutout if they could look at her from the right angle. This was made all the more unnerving when she did start moving, crossing her arms and tapping a wooden ruler on her bicep testily.

???: '...Club activities have ended.'

The statement was... not quite heard, though the maids could almost imagine that it was, thanks to the subtitles that now glowed at the bottom of their field of vision. Below the words the ever-blinking arrow had appeared once more.

(Only Jessie: Recognizes Ms. Fruitorange, head maid of the manor.)

edited 22nd Apr '15 8:03:10 AM by Alhazred23

Hmm... There's something curious about the arrow, Jessie thinks as she starts to reach for the arrow. But Elizabeth jabs the arrow just before Jessie's hand gets to it.

"Woah!" Jessie jerks away a bit then realizes something's not right. The end of the hallway doesn't seem any closer despite being a bit away from the others. "Could this hall be a mirage?" the ghost wonders aloud as she returns to the group...

Then a side door opens in front of the group and a figure steps out. Recognizing the figure, Jessie approaches her; almost ready to embrace the figure before calming down, unsure of what the vampire would do with someone in her arms despite Jessie's ghostly status. "Ms. Fruitorange!" the ghost speaks up as she stands to attention. "Finally someone I recognize. Are you all right?"

With the group behind Jessie, Tammy hisses faintly as she tenses up with her tail raised, unsure of whether fight or flight would be the better choice.

edited 22nd Apr '15 7:23:04 PM by 1jimbo10

"Well," says Junko, "there's a surprise, someone you know Jessie?" she shakes her head, "And did I just stand there staring blankly ahead for a few minutes? Seems like I spaced out again. I guess I haven't quite gone as nerve dead up top as I thought. Or that ceiling was a lot harder then I thought."

edited 23rd Apr '15 7:02:32 PM by Barzark

...The arrow continued to blink as the pale woman stared at them, seemingly caught in a simple animation loop of tapping the ruler against her arm.

edited 23rd Apr '15 9:58:19 PM by Alhazred23