Let's Play: Vampire: Bloodlines

[Mirai Gen]

Playing as the Malkavian and doing that plot was especially cool.

But, yes, I'd recommend holding out on reading that spoiler before anything else, it's especially cool to be shown to you later on.

[Jagos]

Damn temptation...

Alright, I'm holding out until we get through this... >_<

[Melfice]

So, I ain't never seen that one blurry shot with the big red TERROR IS THE FEAR OF DEATH thing.

Did you add it yourself, or did I miss something?
Mind you, I've never done the psycho-sidequest...

[Sir Pinkleton]

Yeah, you guys do realize that there's an entire ten posts worth that I can't read? Cursed spoilers.

[bananarama]

Originally Posted by DFM

V Yo there be game story spoilers up in this bitch.

Well, Fuck shit fuck shit fuck shit fuck shit fuck shit fuck shit fuck shit fuck shit fuck shit fuck shit fuck shit fuck shit fuck shit fuck shit fuck shit fuck shit fuck shit fuck shit fuck shit fuck shit fuck shit fuck shit fuck shit.

^ Yo if you read that it's your fault

......... Damn my curiosity!

Though in hindsight I should have at least thought of that...

Oh yeah don't bother trying to find the spoiler in the quote and then blame me for it BTW....

[DFM]

OKAY I so badly wanted to get an update out I'm putting this up even though it isn't done yet. I'm sorry about taking so long and it won't happen again and I mean it this time not like before when I was just bullshitting you.

It's a long walk through heavy rain to the edge of Santa Monica, but I don't have much of a choice. There's no train to that end of town and I haven't seen a cab since I got here. Therese had said the Ocean House Hotel was outside of town, near the beach and just far enough off the interstate to avoid the noise. Prime real estate for a tourist trap. I'd asked her why the owner even sold it in the first place if it was such an untapped gold mine.

She never did answer me.

About two miles out of Santa Monica, following a questionably paved two lane road, I end up outside a massive wrought iron fence with a badly weathered sign advertising room and board at Ocean House. Thunder crashes in the distance. I use the key Therese gave me to unlock the gate and step into the construction site that made up what was once the hotel's front lawn.



Charming. Absolutely charming.



That must be the trailer she mentioned. The door isn't locked, so I head inside. Water drips down from the ceiling and you can hear the rain still pounding overhead. Shoddy. I think about waiting out the rain, but I'll probably be rutting around inside the hotel for awhile. Enough time to dry off and maybe enough time for the rain to stop.



The key to unlock the hotel's front door is hanging on a key rack next to a computer that would have been out of date in nineteen eighty five.





I pluck it and head back out into the mud.



There's something menacing about the building that I can't quite place. Beyond the Norman Bates exterior and the thunderstorm coming down around me. There's something else, something... wrong with it. Must be the ghost.

I don't know what I'm supposed to expect from a ghost. Not a real one, any way. If those old ghost hunter programs were anywhere near accurate the most I'll have to worry about are haunting footsteps from empty rooms and furniture that slides around on its own.

Of course, this one scared off three construction crews in as many weeks so whatever theatrics it was pulling must be a little more flashy than that.



I head up the stairs away from the rain and towards the massive oak doors that marked the front entrance of the building. This whole place is an over sized, Gothic monstrosity. I near the door and something explodes in my ear. I jump to the left and unleash a haymaker that plows through empty air.



Little flecks of glass litter the porch beneath the broken light. Stupid. Ghost's already messing with me. I undo the ancient, rusted lock and head inside the hotel.



The door eases shut behind me, and I hear a click. It sounds like a lock. The entire entry is lit with a flash of lightning. There's a low grinding noise to my right.



A trashcan rolls across the dusty hardwood floor. Thunder shakes the house.



The trashcan hits the wall and stops. Silence. Just the pounding of rain outside the building. The air is heavy. Stale. Like old newspaper. Dust is everywhere. I think I smell something rotting in another room.



Another flash of lightning. A floorboard creak. Even an empty house shouldn't be this quite.



I pull the revolver from my purse as the thunder comes.



That wrong feeling I had outside is stronger now and it's almost overpowering. It feels like I'm being watched. Maybe by one thing, maybe by a million. I can't tell. I wish Therese had known more about what exactly was in here. The only sound is the rain. I don't really want to take another step further in. Nothing's moving. Nothing's breathing. The further in I go the more the building is going to envelope me. I can feel the hotel around me, like it's a... a thing. Something sentient. Something aware. Something that's more than the sum of brick and wood and stone.

It feels... odd. It feels like a dead thing. I know it was never alive, but I don't know how else to put it. It feels like... like me. Something that's dead, but... isn't. Like there's something wicked writhing just beneath the paint.



No. Get a grip. Grow a pair of balls. It's just a ghost playing with shit in your head. It's probably not even a ghost, you're probably doing all of it yourself. You're just imagining things because you're wet, you're alone, you've been through hell and someone thought it was a good idea to build an ocean resort that looked like the goddamn Holmes Motel. Piece of shit. I take a step away from the front door and into the lobby.



Nothing. Just the creak of the wood underneath the carpet. I take another step. I wait. Listen. Nothing. Another step. Then another. Nothing. Rattling.

Rattling?



I barely have time to jump back before the chandelier crashes onto the ground a foot in front of me. A solid hunk of gold painted iron smashes into the wood. I can hear it splinter in places.



Fuck. There's no way that happened on its own.



If some poltergeist is going to start launching shit at my head that isn't whatever magical gold amulet I need to haul out of this place, Therese can go to hell because I quit.



There's a flash of lightning. I'm not going to start rooting around under the second chandelier. I decide the stairs are probably going to be my best option because of all the dark and nightmarish corridors in the building, they're the least dark and nightmarish. Thunder.



I can hear something coming from another room. Very faint. A little girl singing. I can't make out the words, but sounds like a lullaby. Then it's gone, and all I hear is the rain. The rain, and then a snap. There's nothing underneath my foot.





After a brief flash of terror, I find myself lying on a cold cement floor, staring up at an unlit overhead bulb and the hole I just came through. Footsteps. Footsteps coming from above me. Another rumble of thunder. There's someone else here. It might not be a ghost at all. There's timber around me, most of it in splinters. I roll onto my front and get on my hands and knees. I lost one of my shoes in the fall. After a few moments of groping for it in the dark, I lose my patience and tear the other one off instead. Six thousand dollars. I glance around the room, squinting to make out the details.



I don't have the gun. I must have lost it in the fall. God knows where it is now.

Shit.




Shit.

Alright. Get your bearings. You're in the basement. If there's something valuable to the... ghost, then it's probably not down here. So. First thing is to get out of the basement. Then you can figure out where to go from there.



The elevator might not work, but there's probably a maintenance ladder I can climb up and an emergency hatch I can blow.



I don't feel like I'm being watched anymore. The sensation is wonderful.



I signal the elevator. Dead. Figured that. I search around the doors for a bit, but I can't find any way to manually force them open.

Didn't figure on that.



Everything's off the grid. There's probably a staircase somewhere else in the basement... although the generator could be down here, too. The place is definitely hooked up to its own power source, and if the generator is just off and not broken, I could get the elevator running. More importantly, I could get the lights back on.

I head back to the room where I fell. Other than a few empty storage closets, there's two hallways branching off. I decide to take the one on the left since it looks a little brighter and less imposing than the one on the far wall.



I hear a scream.





She runs past in an instant, looking over her shoulder. There's blood on her hands. Blood on her dress. No footsteps. The basement falls silent again.

I'm being watched.



I decide to take hallway number two.

[Odjn]

This is the best update. Fear it.

[bananarama]

Wow.... I kinda wish that I could play this game... although vampires and the whole blood-sucking business scares the fuck out of me (yes, a guy who's afraid of vampires... and he's participating in a Let's Play of a game that is about vampires... shut up). Though, man, this update took a while, but it was well worth the wait.

[DFM]

Shorter update today because oh man I am crazy tired. Writing isn't quite up to snuff, sorry about that. Next time will be better.



There's a single pipe that runs along the length of the cement hallway and the air gets colder the further down it I go. I can hear something crash against the floor upstairs. Glass shatters. Then... noises. I can't tell if they're footsteps or just a derelict old house creaking in the wind.



There's a door at the end of the hallway. Not sure where it goes to, but I can see a light coming from the crack above the floor. I don't want to think too hard about why.



That doesn't make sense. Everything was powered down, I checked half a minute ago. I make my way towards the light, hoping to see a wire I can follow or batteries I might be able to use. As soon as I get close to it, the bulb explodes in a high pitched whine.





The whine bounces around the room like an echo, and the second it begins to fade, it brings in footsteps. Not footsteps like before. These ones are pounding, slamming down one after the other in a run. Coming from somewhere in the basement and getting louder.



Something slams against the door and I can see the hinges buckle. I jump back against the wall and brace myself. I've got nothing to defend myself with, the best I can hope for is distance. Distance means time, and the longer I have to react to whatever comes through that door, the better. There's a sudden rush of cold air through the cracks in the doorway, and then everything goes dead. If I was still breathing, I would have held it. Nothing moves.



There's a thud from behind me as a paint can falls off the shelf and rolls to the door. It hits the metal with the faintest clink before everything falls silent again.



I move away from the door towards one of the side walls, and I notice a section of cement blocks that seem looser than the others. I might be able to make a big enough hole to fit through, avoid having to go near that door again altogether.

I glance back once before sitting down in front of the wall and slamming my bare foot into the crumbling section as hard as I can. Much to my surprise, it starts to break apart. With a flurry of undead might I kick the weak spot four more times and blow a flurry of concrete and powder into the adjoining room.





On the other side it looks like an old storage room. Probably held the hotel's laundry when it was still operational. I wonder how long it's been out of service? Place could be three hundred years old for all I know, I never was an architect. Or a historian. I squeeze the handle of the door at the far end of the room.



Locked. Should have figured. I turn around to head back through the hole when I notice something I hadn't on the way in.





The edges are curled and blackened, obviously survived a fire. Probably left by one of the vacated construction workers. I lift up the fragile old paper and squint, trying to make out at least the headline in the darkness.



There's a faint creaking from behind me.



This place can go fuck itself.

I wrap a hand around the door frame and ease myself through the open doorway into the next room, half expecting to find a laundry room and a child's severed head.



What I got might have been worse.

I glance up at the ceiling, and the whole I'd fallen through. Three branching hallways. One a dead end to the elevator. One loops around on itself. Which leaves...



God damn it.



Fine. Fucking fine. I'll play the idiot. I'll play the idiot and when I get out of here Therese is going to owe me so much more than a truce with Tong.

I jaunt quickly down the hallway. The less time I spend there, the better, it feels like. I take a left where the girl ran through. My feet are almost as cold as the cement. I hadn't noticed that when the shoes were on. I'm getting that feeling again, like something's watching me. The hallway stops at a dead end and a door. It's quiet and there's no light from the other side. Better keep moving. I push it open and stop halfway through the doorway.



Oh, no.



No, this... this isn't the only way through. This is bad, this isn't...

There's a low creaking sound.



Oh god...



It's sitting against the side wall. I can feel it staring at me. Same model. Same angle. Door fucking ajar.

Part of me wants to scream, wants to run. I can feel panic coming. I start moving, but I never tell myself to. It's like I'm watching someone else. I start to walk towards it and with every step I start screaming louder inside my head.







My hand throws open the window.



I pull the reflective metal from inside the washing machine and hold it in my palm. I want to laugh, but I think I start crying instead. Not even a trace of blood inside the machine. The key... The ghost... or house or... whatever it is... must be asking me to go to the boiler room. It's like Himmler asking you to take a shower.



I don't know what's going on, but it's not like I have much choice anymore, short of tearing down the wall and digging my way to freedom. I walk out the far door and follow the only route I can. I reach a door labeled "Boiler Room" and slide the key into the lock. It opens with an unusually loud click.



A frying pan and a fire.



The stairs continue down for what seems like ages, getting redder and louder and hotter the further down I go. For a place that's been long dead, there must be a warehouse of machinery groaning down here.









I finally reach the bottom. It's hot down here. Too hot to be from the machinery alone. I leave the stairwell and enter into the boiler room on the right.



It takes almost a second for me to leave again.



Shit. Shit. He had a fucking axe. Jesus Jesus Jesus he's going to murder me. He was coming this way, he must have seen me... he wants me to run. He was walking too calmly, he knows I can't get away. Or that there's something else waiting for me if I turn tail and run. Shit shit shit oh fuck. Fuck.




He should have come out the doorway by now. He's hiding. He's waiting for me to come to him. Jesus, I wish I still had my gun.

I think for a moment, replaying what I saw in my head. The man walking towards me with an axe, his midsection visible through the pipes.

I didn't hear any footsteps.

It's a mirage. It's got to be. Or a ghost. I don't know how it works. Axe murderer. Fits with the child's head. And the woman in the bloody dress. Alright. As long as it's a phantom and not a physical threat, I think... I think we should be okay.



I head back into the boiler room. There's a half dozen boilers, all lain out like a maze you have to bend and twist around to get to the other side of the room.



I don't see any axe murderers.



Don't hear anything besides the rumble of the boilers.



Eventually I see a light at the end.



Fuse box.



Looks like whatever took out all the lights just shut them down from here. I flick the switch to restore power to every level of the hotel that happens to be wired.



I hear an explosion. Steam. A bolt rips through the air in front of my head and smashes against the cement wall on my right. I hear another bolt whiz just above my head. I make a dash through the gauntlet.



Metal shrapnel bangs and screams all around me, entire bolts being shot from their gaskets to ricochet all around me.



I can hear them pass within centimeters, luck or fate keeping me unharmed as I passed through death valley. As I near the end, a single bolt slices through my ankle and makes me stumble, but I land on the bottom of the stairway and limp out of harms way.



The ankle already begins to heal as I make my way up the never ending flight of stairs to the maintenance door at the top.



And God said let there be light.

[Sir Pinkleton]

My only complaint is that you keep writing "quiet" as "quite", as in "it is quite and proper to have tea and biscuits."

Still an awesome story. I'm really liking the character of... what's the protagonist's name again?