New York by night

"By the pricking of my thumbs,
something wicked this way comes."
William Shakespeare

Bueno, vuelvo al ruedo. Es poco probable que sepan de qué estoy hablando, así que les explico. Tengo un hobby sumamente interesante, entretenido, inteligente y desafiante, y hacía más de tres años que no lo practicaba; ahora vuelvo al ruedo, así que estoy feliz. Me vuelvo a explicar: soy fan de los juegos de rol basados en foros, online, o más precisamente, soy fan de los juegos de rol basados en foros que desarrollamos con un grupo de amigos a los que conozco bien y con quienes escribo mejor (qué modesta yo).

Por si no saben de qué estoy hablando otra vez, ahí abajo hay una explicación, si no sigan leyendo nomás.

Un juego de estos empieza cuando un jugador, o un grupo de jugadores, abre lo que se llama un ‘thread’ (hilo) en un foro y empieza una historia. Esto puede ser más o menos complejo, ya que hay foros donde conviven numerosos hilos, que pueden ser completamente diferentes, al mismo tiempo, o hay sitios donde todo gira alrededor de una sola historia -escrita en un solo hilo- acordada por el conjunto de jugadores.

Los escritores imaginan un punto de arranque, un lugar, un tiempo, un universo, el número de personajes que van a participar, etc. o sea todo lo que una historia necesitaría para ser escrita.

A partir de ahí, otra gente del foro ingresa al juego. Crean un personaje con nombre, edad, sexo, habilidades, historia personal y todo lo demás que hace a alguien especial y único; una vez felices con su creación, se incorporan a la historia con una entrada llamada ‘post’. La historia se empieza a escribir así, post a post, entretejiendo las historias personales de esos personajes alrededor del argumento inicial.

Extraído de aquí

El juego se llama 'New York by night' (NYbn), y retoma el universo de 'Los Angeles by night' (LAbn), el juego original que tanto me enganchó, solo que ambientado 12 años después, en una nueva ciudad y con nuevos personajes.

NY by Night está basado libremente en el universo de la serie de televisión “Buffy la Cazavampiros” (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) creada por Joss Whedon. La serie exploraba la vida y aventuras de una heroína actual, Buffy, el estereotipo de rubia bonita californiana pero con una gran diferencia, ella también era la Elegida, la única chica del mundo con la fortaleza y habilidades para salvar a la humanidad de la plaga de los vampiros. Este es el telón de fondo del juego. Un mundo de perversidades impronunciables, de vampiros, hombres lobos y demonios. Un mundo de brujas y magia, dimensiones alternas y conspiraciones del gobierno. Sin embargo, en el mundo de NY by night, tanto Buffy como todos quienes la rodean, ya no existen, y la tarea de defender a la humanidad, cae en manos de nuestros personajes.

Como estoy contenta, y como acabo de crear un personaje que me gusta mucho, aquí lo publico, como publiqué varios otros durante estos años (si clickean la etiqueta Roleplaying, los encontrarán). Espero que les guste. Obviamente no es obligatorio leer, además el juego es en inglés, sorry, pero sí era obligatorio para mí compartir; como les dije, estoy muy contenta.



Cadence Cloud

Character Name: Cadence ‘Cadee’ Cloud
Other Names: Carol Miller (real name, not used)
Race: enhanced human - arguably human/demon
Sex: female
Birthdate / Location: Sunnydale, CA. 21^st June 1995
Group Affiliation: n/a
Position: waitress / bartender

Description:

Cadee is played by Piper Perabo

Aesthetics and Dress~ Cadee is a rather stunning young woman, with long dark blond hair, brown eyes and a big smile. Tall and thin, she likes dressing in jeans, tops and sweaters, although she also has a more feminine wardrobe for when the occasion calls. She loves shoes, especially boots, make-up and hair products.

Attitude~ Cadee is highly independent, she has a deep distrust of organizations and the government, given her past experiences with both, and usually has problems with authority. She refuses to be on the payroll of a group bigger than a dozen people. Her mother’s ever present worries of being discovered rendered her somewhat paranoiac. Her birth certificate, social security card and driver's license are water-proof fakes.
She is well aware of her nature, so she has a very flexible view on supernatural beings.

Lifestyle~ At present, Cadee works as a waitress and substitute bartender at 'Slàinte', a bar/lounge in Little Italy, where she sometimes sings as well. She lives with Anne Millet, her roommate, in an apartment close to the bar and she has two cats, Freddo and Flora.

Cadee also has a very good ear for music and languages, she can play the guitar well and sing a little. She learnt Spanish after living several years in Miami and has picked up Italian since she's living in an Italian neighborhood. She compensates her lack of studies with an insatiable curiosity and a love of documentary programs, especially about animals and History.

Background: Cadence Cloud was the daughter of Susan Price and Graham Miller, both former members of the organization called ‘The Initiative’ 'enhanced' in their strength and durability by the use of a combination of drugs and supernatural DNA.

Susan and Graham were originally members of those commandos, Graham posing as an University student, and Susan as a teacher assistant. A secret romance between the two led to the birth of their only daughter, Cadee, or as they called her then: Carol Miller.

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After learning that she was pregnant, Susan Price considered abandoning the Initiative, but Prof. Walsh –much more aware of how special the child would be than her parents– was adamant about it. “We take care of our own, Susan,” were Maggie Walsh’s words. “You won’t need for anything, and after the child is born he or she’ll stay in the facilities while you’re out in your duties.

The solution suited Susan and Graham, who at the time didn’t want to be separated from each other and didn’t hinder Susan’s future in the Initiative. By the time Cadee was two, Susan and Graham ended their relationship, however, both shared responsibilities in the girl’s caring and upbringing.

Margaret Walsh had her own motives for wanting Susan to stay within the program; the offspring of two of her super soldiers would be special enough, but she saw the opportunity for further experiments. Without her knowledge, Susan was treated during her pregnancy with even special ‘cocktails’ of supernatural DNA which altered the child’s gene pool permanently. After the girl was born, Prof. Walsh continued her experiments and as Cadee grew up she started with behavioral conditioning.

Cadee's early years were not precisely ordinary, but, which girl raised in the middle of a super secret military operation would have a normal childhood? Prof. Walsh’s secret programs and she kept a hawk’s eye on the girl, so she spent more time around scientists and teachers than with her parents. However, Susan and Graham were never apart for long; and Cadee didn’t lack love either.

Cadee was surprisingly strong and healthy, and brilliant: her language skills were very advanced for her years and she showed an impressive talent for music. But most importantly, she was a happy child.

It wasn’t until the girl was almost five years old that Susan noticed something was wrong with her daughter. The girl lost her happy nature and started to sulk and undergo long periods of silence. She was usually affected with nausea and headaches, also Cadee started suffering terrible nightmares that woke her anguished and crying.

Susan tried to speak to the girl only to find an iron solid barrier; she then spoke to some of the various psychologists that worked in the laboratories, but her fears were dismissed as ‘mother worries’. Mother worries or not, Susan didn’t like the way everybody discharged the girl’s obvious change, even her father, and started to pay more attention to what was happening around her. A little later, Cadee started to refuse going to her lessons –an activity that had been pleasurably before – and was even more apatheticwhen she returned to their rooms, so Susan decided to learn exactly what was happening during lesson times.

What she learnt, horrified her. She saw her five-year-old daughter being put to sleep and treated almost as sub-terrestrials were treated. As she watched in horror, she saw doctors connected patches and plugs to Cadee’s little body, and later do routines of what could only be behavioural conditioning. Only Susan’s strict training prevented her from entering the lab and taking her daughter out of there immediately. Instead, she decided to tell Graham about her discoveries and take her daughter away the first opportunity they had.

She didn’t have to wait long and she didn’t have time to go to Graham either. While she was hiding outside the laboratory where her daughter was being experimented on, one of the vampires encaged got loose and started killing its captors. Taking advantage of the chaos that prevailed, Susan entered the laboratory, liberated Cadee from her restraints and fled the Initiative.

She hid in a cheap motel in Sunnydale’s outskirts, but her initial idea of telling Graham what she had done was delayed by Cadee’s condition. The girl suffered of what looked like a severe case of withdrawal, and a couple of days later, Susan started showing the same symptoms as well.

Susan and Cadee barely survived, they were lucky the motel’s owner didn’t dismiss them as a couple of junkies and instead nursed them back to health. It wasn’t easy and it wasn’t quick. By the time Susan was sane enough to try and contact her ex-lover, she could find no traces of him. Nor she could in the following years, Graham had completely dissappeared.

Susan stayed around Sunnydale for a almost a week more before giving up her hope of finding Graham. She had no idea of what had happened to the Initiative and Prof. Walsh, and was afraid that if she stayed in Sunnydale her daughter would be in danger. So she moved to LA, assuming that they could get lost in a big city like that.

Once in the big city, Susan changed her and her daughter’s name and decided to start anew. Given her daughter’s affinity for music, she called her Cadence, and adopted the surname Cloud - Susan was a fan of the Final Fantasy games, and considered that the surname of a virtual super soldier was fitting enough for the likes of them. In the times that followed, Susan got a normal job and raised her daughter as a single mother, even if at nights she sometimes felt the old urge and left the girl with a nanny to go hunting.

With time, Cadee stopped having nightmares and regained her happy nature, but she continued being abnormally stronger, faster and healthier than normal kids. Susan realized that even if she had returned to normalcy after leaving the Initiative, her daughter would continue being special. She decided she needed to help Cadee in that respect too, and started teaching her martial arts and the use of weapons. When she considered the girl could understand it, she told her about the different kinds of creatures that peopled the earth, and about her own nature, and started taking Cadee with her when she hunted, even if it usually led to discussions about the reasons for killing everything that wasn’t human while letting human ‘monsters’ go. She couldn’t find much difference between them.

By the time she was a teenager, Cadee had become a strong and deadly warrior, and she had surpassed her mother in every respect, reminding Susan of her old friend Riley’s girlfriend, the Slayer.

Susan’s worries for Cadee’s safety led her to move continuously, living a somewhat nomad’s life. After living in LA for a couple of years, she moved to Miami, then Chicago, Seattle, and finally New York – which got to be their last destination. When Cadee was sixteen, Susan got killed in patrol, and the girl didn’t get to move again.

However, her mother’s previsions had her prepared Cadee for such an occurrence and she had a plan. She dropped school a few months before graduating so Social Services wouldn’t find her, moved to a small apartment in a different neighborhood, and got a job as a bicycle messenger at Flash Courier Service -with a fake ID- to support herself.

At present, she works as a waitress and substitute bartender in a cop’s bar/restaurant near Central Park, in Manhattan, where she sometimes sings as well – and she lives with a roommate in an apartment close to the bar.

Items: A selection of knives, stakes and a crossbow that she inherited from her mother. No fire weapons, she doesn't like them. Also her guitar and a good Trek bicycle from her years as a cycle courier.

Powers: Cadee has nearly all the powers of most renowned super-soldiers. She’s stronger, faster and more resistant than normal humans; her hearing and eyesight are much improved too. She is immune to most human illnesses and affections, along with fast healing rates. Basically, she’s an artificial slayer.

Other abilities: she has a very good ear for languages and music. She loves cooking.

Secrets: her true nature and origins.

Sitio Web:New York by Night