Keystone: Lucky Strike Pack (+3, The Torn, Passion)
A simple pack of cigarettes, from 1923, as fresh as the day they were bought in the Prohibition era. Only one cigarette remains in the pack, but as soon as it is removed and smoked, another appears in its place.
The smoke from the cigarettes doesn't smell normal. Rather than the traditional tobacco smell, the smoke smells strongly of burning wood and flesh.
Charm: Building Site ID card (+1, The Torn, Pyre-Flame)
A burned identity card, from a worker who fell into an incinerator. The photograph and name are blank until held, whereupon they show a picture and name of the holder, in the moment of their death.
'Close your eyes, this is going to really hurt...'
Lindsey Wyatt, aspiring musician
Geist, The Crowd Surge
Virtue - Fortitude, Lindsey was never a coward, even faced with an unimpressed crowd or a Geist with a cruel sense of humour
Vice - Envy, however she never was one to take rivalry well, particularly anyone she saw as more skilled or attractive than herself
The hazy air of the bar rippled with the patronizing sound of polite applause. A gentle 'well done' to those who stood before the indifferent and distracted, a nusicance, an interruption to conversation that may as well have been white noise. A pat on the back and a free drink voucher was all their effort had amounted to.
It was Lindseys first open mic night. The first time she had played the songs that seemed to write themselves. The first time her private words, phrases and rhymes that she seemed to pluck out of the very air itself would be heard in public. She pushed her long, black hair from her eyes and squinted into the light of the room.
A man sat near the stage belched heavily. Tough crowd, it seemed.
Lindsey thanked the crowd in her cut-glass English accent and smiled to herself. Her Converse shoes squeaked on the varnished wooden stage as she began to walk from the uncomfortable barstool 'It could have gone a lot worse,' she thought, 'I could have fallen off the stage on the way up here, smashed the guitar, broken something. That would have been embarassing....'
She reached to pull the guitar cable out of the bar PA system, a heavy metal box that would have looked more at home attached to the side of a industrial refergerator. She gave the lead a tug.
The room went black.
The bargin was made. The Crowd Surge, his blinding, colour shifting, empty eyes that blazed with light and arced with flowing blue electricty, started her heart beating once more. Lindseys' eyes snapped open as the agonising pain of the fatal jolt worked its way through her chest. She sat bolt upright from her new position on the floor and took a sharp, deep breath of the stale air of the bar. She turned, slowly to face the patrons, trying not to hyperventilate. The Crowd Surge sat in the front row, grinning.
'You've... been... a great audience...' |
