We Do WHAT In The Shadows!? - Ep. 23

Socrates begins to question being just a head. We need to get him a body ASAP!

Turns out turning dozens of innocent people into vampires takes a toll on one's own body and soul. We become more feral, but don't worry, we're still hot!

Content warning: Profanity, violence, twinks

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Special thanks:

Tim Hutchings for designing this awesome game,

Epidemicsound for additional episode music

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Hello and welcome to your worst nightmare, another RPG actual play podcast. Solitude, a journaling RPG podcast, is just me in a room, not to brag, with a journal, a solo RPG, and some damn good coffee. I play to see what happens in the story, I write in my fictional journal, and you get to hang out next to me by the fire. My name is Aori. Welcome. I hope you enjoy our time together. This is Solitude. We do what? In the shadows. I feel like we really got on well in in the America arc. It's starting to shape out like how it's it's gonna go. I'm probably gonna to quote the great Parapa the rapper, Step on the Gas a little bit. There's a reference for the kids. To make big bolt choices. Just to just to get the mogul arc going real nice. I will sent a link to a WikiHow article, shout out WikiHow, titled How to Run a Small Hotel. While the Bone Tell isn't small anymore, I think there there might be some good tips here. So let's let's look at a few to get our juices flowing for tonight. Part 1. Conducting market research. Uh this is this is the content you come to the Vampire podcast for. Oh, that's a good tip. If you buy, it'll be cheaper. If you build, it'll probably be more expensive. Well, since it's the late 1700s, I just rented out a house and I started renting rooms in it. I suppose starting a new small business was a lot simpler in the 1700s. Things really were way better back then. Investigate other hotels, guest houses, and BBs in your area. Like espionage. I know about industry espionage. I've played Yakuza Zero. A great vampire game, by the way, Yakuza Zero. Understand your primary market. People who need to sleep, so mortals. Uh creatures from the dream realm, probably. Haven't met those yet. I think Dr. Liquid might know a few. Oh, now we're getting to some good stuff. Hire an accountant. I would fucking love an accountant's NPC. I'd like a whole team if that's possible. If the prompts bless us with new NPCs, uh that would be great. You should draw up a business plan with a description of the services your hotel offers. Room. You may select a slice from a selection of five different exciting pies. And you get to hear me sing. Yes. Barigaldi will massage the customers who who so wish. And then she will report me on a scale from one to ten the tenderness of the customer's flesh. And I will eat the tens, lick the nines, and I will bite and change one through three. The middle ones get to go home. With uh very little mutilation done. Future earnings, investors and accountant, yes, the fucking ac I need a fucking accountant. I wonder if I could get Bob. You remember Bob? Yay. Hair, two eyes. Bob. Spoke, had a body, had feelings? Not too many, but a few. Bob. I think this is enough. So I think we should roll some dice and get on with it. Oh, it's the head one.

unknown: 4:21

Wow!

SPEAKER_00: 4:22

Okay. The head wants a body. And you must give it one. Check a skill. Well, my only skill I haven't checked is business. So Socrates wants a body, yes. I like that. Uh that's that's really nice. Uh he's been out of the focus. Well, he hasn't really been the focus yet, so so uh this is actually pretty cool. So all these years that I've been growing and building my Bone Tell Empire, Socrates has been around. And I've been doing some vampire hunting with him. Uh not a lot. I go with him to like do a patrol every now and then. I haven't done any real vampire hunting work since I don't really believe in that anymore. I've tried to keep him happy, and I've tried to keep my tendencies secret. I think Socrates hasn't known about my deal with Miriam Liquid. Socrates doesn't know that I eat other people now. He's been content with his situation, but the years go by and he's not further along. What I think it's about is that Benjamin Franklin and the the people in the philosophical society, they don't like Socrates. They think he's he's a remnant of the old world. Oh yes! They don't know about me being a vampire, but they know that Socrates lives at the Bontel Philadelphia with with uh with the guy whose face is a skull and hand is a flame. So yeah. So they don't trust him. Like these past years in Philadelphia and all around, Socrates has been trying to form connections and get them to trust him, but they don't. And Socrates always has good counter-arguments, but they don't listen. That's the problem with Socrates' approach, is that he always wants to ask follow-up questions, and if if the other person isn't up for talking, it's really hard to convince them. So Socrates really ends up arguing with himself, and that uh I know Socrates well enough already. Uh guy knows him well enough already that that he knows that uh nothing pisses Socrates off more than having to argue with himself. So one night we're staying at Bone Tell Philadelphia of Boston, now in New York. We're having dinner. I sometimes eat with Socrates just to have some conversation and company, since Barigaldi isn't here with us. Barigaldi is running the original hotel in Philadelphia when we're away. I'm feeding Socrates some nice lamb. And we're having a discussion about beauty. I say that beauty is man's responsibility. If you are born beautiful, it's your duty to maintain it. If you are born not beautiful, it is your duty to get a hold of it. Socrates asks what means are acceptable in acquiring it and I answer By any means necessary. Even murder, he asks. He gets a look in his eyes. He's gauging me and my response for the first time he really confides in me. He says that his life is standing still. His will to live is faltering. He needs a change. He needs a disguise. Yes, yes, okay, yeah, yeah, now I got it. We do a huge makeover for Socrates. We bond, we do a makeover, and he still doesn't figure out my deal that that I've made with Miriam Liquid, or that I'm actually uh an active vampiric threat to the to the populace. So we do a makeover, we change him into another guy, so he's able to get into the philosophical society. Since they don't trust Socrates, he'll just have to become someone else. He's already been Rocrates. So what I need for him is a body. I don't think it's gonna be enough if we put a wig on him and some eyeliner and say, this is this head is a completely different guy. Where do I get him a body from? Is it just a customer or a specific kind of body? And at that point, it is revealed to me that our discussion about beauty wasn't just theoretical, it was Socrates making mental notes about what kind of a body would be ideal. He trusts my aesthetic sense, so he's going to want a body that I would find aesthetic. A twink. Twinkrates? Socrates wink? We could get Socrates a female body. Let's do that. Why not? And for that, we will invent beauty pageants. We'll hold the first Miss America contest, and the winner will become Socrates' body. This is wonderful. I'm connected. We can have the contest in Bone Tell Philadelphia. All the states will send uh a local talent. Fuck the twinks, we need a Miss America. I mean, it can still be a Twink, but doesn't have to be, but it can. It's my own Miss America contest. Fuck you. It can look however I want it to look. So Socrates allows me to kill one person for this. It has to be a body that's suitable for vampire hunting, has to be a body that's reasonably young, healthy, before death, obviously. And that's why Miss America Contest is the perfect way to find the body for Socrates because it's not just about beauty, it's also about function. That's why there's a talent show. It all makes sense. So we halt the contest and we get a winner. The winner is from Virginia. It's a lady named Catherine, and she's tall, her body's strong, and her talent is juggling. That's for sure gonna come in handy for Socrates in Vampire Hunting. So Catherine wins and is slaughtered immediately. Wait, fuck. How do we attach how do we attach the head? We I was so into getting the body, I'm like, okay, we we have a dead Miss America, we have the head of Socrates. Uh I don't think there's a guidebook on how to get out of this situation. I think it's gonna have to be improvised. Um what if this is where my flesh pile family could come in handy? They must know all sorts of weird shit about flesh. They they are flesh. So they hear about this Miss America contest, and then they're like, that guy looks familiar. We know this guy. He's got he's got flesh on him. There's a hard structure at its core, but on the outside, that's flesh, and they know instantly I'm related. So they send uh a young woman of the family. They send Throat Fleshington that's the most disgusting name. So Throat Fleshington rolls in and has a beautiful evening gown at the party. Uh they live down south. So maybe Georgia is the most uh southern state, and they are very well known artists. They are very rich. They own galleries and museums and things like that. Uh they're like old money rich. So Throat Miss Throat and I have a discussion at the party. Their art, the sculptures their family creates are beautiful but horrifying. They are mounds of flesh combined with other things glass, metal, even bone, who would have thought? So they create their art by fucking other materials, and then things like me emerge. She's young, but they they're hundreds of years old. She's just a pile of flesh in a beautiful evening gown. It's like a six feet tall thumb with nice makeup and a wig. An acquired taste. And she agrees to do the ritual for Socrates. On the condition that Socrates will leave their family alone, the philosoph the philosophical society has been on to them for a while and pestering them, trying to find out if there's something strange about this family, the Fleshingtons. But nobody seems to be able to figure it out. Their disguises are amazing. The Miss America contest ends. The winner, a young woman from Virginia named Catherine, a beautiful woman with the body of a juggler. She's taken backstage where I cut her head off and proceed to eat it. Ah, so good. Delicious. So the ritual is finished, and Socrates now has the body of Miss America and the head of the ugliest man in Athens. That's a dream combo. That's already quite a bit on the prompt, so. At six prompts forward, which means your body is undergoing further corruption and change. When do you first notice these new changes? Create a mark. I already have the burning hand and the skeletal half face. I'm gonna make this a strong one, a big one. As a few decades go by and my wealth reaches an absurd height, I am probably the playboy of the United States. The war is over. We're in the early nineteenth century. I've been turning so many people into vampires, it's starting to take a toll. I didn't understand it at first, but every soul I condemn to eternal torment. It always eats a part of me. Something inside me is corrupted every time. And I've done dozens, I've probably done hundreds already. Socrates was accepted into the Philosophical Society of America, because they didn't recognize him anymore. He wears a pink wig, some nice makeup, wears killer heels, pun intended, and he goes by the name of Notrates. He goes by the name of Notrates. So how could anybody make the connection? It's not Socrates, it's Notrates. So Notrates is out doing his thing uh all over America. Maybe he went out west. Uh, but he's working with the society. Uh I'm with Barry Galdi, who's still innocent, who I will not turn, who's who's my little pet, who does everything I ask and loves me implicitly. But I start to notice my body falling apart. Like I'm becoming more bestial. My ears are getting more pointy. My eyes are becoming fierce. My teeth can't really chew on human food anymore. Only human food. They're sharp and long. I'm still beautiful, I still have my resource beauty. Uh but I'm beautiful in a feral way, like a like an elven king. Surreal and eerie. All my features are pronounced, my cheekbones are almost bursting out of my flesh, my muscles getting bigger and bigger. I'm getting leaner, but my muscles are getting big. My elbows and knees are sharp with protruding jagged angles. I start to notice this when I'm singing and performing, when I'm playing music for my guests at my ho uh at the bone tell. There's two types of audience members. There's those who avert their gaze, and then there's those who can't take their eyes off. And those are the ones I seduce later. What you're gonna do? Man's gonna do what a man's gonna do. People are starting to have a very strong reaction to my appearance. Either a very strong positive, uh, since my features are extremely striking, or negative because they see this is not natural, there's something's wrong, something's wrong with this guy. So I think that's it. I'm at the height of my fame and beauty in a sense. Uh I'm becoming ferociously beautiful. And I grow like five inches. I'm like 6'5 now. So like a little under two meters tall. Notrates is out there doing his thing, and I think we're off to the memories then. So for getting Socrates a body in the Miss America contest, I'm gonna put that in the same one where I have receiving Socrates. And then becoming feral and more animal-like. That doesn't fit with anything I have. So I'm gonna have to get rid of my memory of joy. Sounds fun. Uh, it only contains my memory of learning casketball from Freya. And instead, I'll create a memory called Becoming a Monster. And an experience is ears ears get pointy, teeth become pointy, bones become pointy, and I get super tall. Overnight. And the experience is making people into vampires destroys my being. Excellent. That's it. I think we've got quite a bit going on now. We're into the very early 19th century now. And we'll see where things move on from here. I'm a little scared that we've that I don't have any skills to check, so if we get a skill to check next time, it's bye-bye for our guy. Hopefully not. Losing skills isn't that common in the province. I think I've just had bad luck on it. Because I have four resources not checked, uh, but my skill situation is very different. So I think with that, uh I'll see you next week. Thanks for listening, folks. My name is Auri Itamaki, and Solitude is my personal project. I hope you enjoyed this episode. You can follow Solitude on Instagram at SolotudeShow, and if you got something to say, please send me a message or comment. Also, please rate and review the show so people can find it a little bit easier. Tell a friend, tell somebody who might enjoy it. Uh, would be awesome if more people found the show. Additional episode music and sound effects, courtesy of epidemic sound theme song, courtesy of me. Thanks again for listening. Everybody, I'll see you next week. Bye.