Casting Shadows

Our detour into alternate areas of the map infographic continues for another entry as we stick with the adventurous misadventures of the escaping abductee ghostbuster in our gaggle of four misfit paranormal investigation and elimination professionals. Today’s prompt numerically is light, but for us here at the Casting Shadows Blog it will be close.

Of all the prompts chosen for this event, close is my favorite due to its ambiguity. What did we mean when we chose it and later approved it? Did we mean close or did we mean close… or close? Did you read two of them differently in your head? It is by far not the only ambiguous prompt, by design, but it is my favorite of them – with light a close second…

Of the options for close, I am going to go with close.

You will see which one I mean when we get there~

In our last entry, Dunhill had been trying to run and keep quiet which, much to his own surprise and surprised chagrin, turned out to be a success and he quietly plowed into an unsuspecting Class V full roaming vapor. Said vapor, a vaguely shaped and purplish-hued floater of the bean-counter persuasion launched into him verbally.

Not that interested in what the spook has to say about manners, Dunhill’s player lets me know that he wants to keep moving but that he also wants to get as much slime off of himself as possible.

“Fruitless, I know, but hope springs eternal,” he tells me with a smile.

As he gets back in motion, dripping purple ectoplasm with every step, the ghost bellows indignantly, “I’ll tell my supervisor!”

Dunhill stops, “Linda? Go for it, she is really in the mood for a chit-chat right now.”

The purple jello hovers for a moment, considering the implications of Dunhill’s remark, then rushes after the once-more-fleeing Dunhill who decides he does not have the time or the luck to wrangle the ghost into a trap by himself and so turns tail.

As the ghost accelerates through the air at the be-slimed ghostbuster, it transforms into a being not unlike Linda’s current form, though translucent and purple. Its long foreclaws and wickedly curved mandibles glow with a malevolent force as it nears its prey – prey, it should be noted, that has to sprint fully encumbered down a long hallway in combat boots and dripping with slime.

It is time for everyone’s favorite roll, the contested roll. This time it is Moves vs Moves and as the spirit of Dunhill’s flight is not to get caught, I let him know before he asks that his Dodge talent will be active. This not only gives him a fighting chance to avoid getting torn apart, it also gives him good fuel for description other than, “I run” as now he is dodging… or at least, trying to dodge.

He beats the ghost’s roll by a single point and of course in good Ghostbusters style we make the most out of that narrow margin of victory. I let Dunhill’s player know that at the end of the hall, the ghost catching up with each one of his heavy – but strangely stealthy – bootsteps, there is a door with a frosted glass panel in it with gold letters that read ‘Etheric Engineering Division’.

“That’s an odd thing to find in an agricultural R&D center,” Diego’s player muses quietly, as Dunhill’s player describes leaping fists first through the glass of the door to clatter and slide painfully across the floor on his proton pack on the other side, while the ghost hits the door frame and discorporates in a spray of more purple ectoplasm.

“That was close!” he says wiping purple ectoplasm off of his face.

This gets some nods and cheers around the table and I pick the reins of description back up to let him know what sort of room he has exploded into.

The first thing I mention is the fog in the room as heat from a closed metal door to his right wars with a steady cool breeze from his left. The fog momentarily shrouds a dark growth of the animated vines, quivering in the chill night air pouring into the room… or perhaps quivering at the thought of tearing into his flesh. I leave that decision up to him.

“I gotta get out of this place!” he mutters as he weighs his choices.

As I tell him the door seems almost too hot to touch, Lemmon’s player starts humming, but I think I am the only one to get the reference. “BoC or Animals?” I ask.

“I am imagining Nancy Sinatra covering it with KISS in make-up,” he says.

“Does Gene or Nancy have the better boots?” asks Gray Stent’s player.

“Nancy’s boots were made for walkin’ so I have to go with Gene,” is the thoughtful answer as I nod my head toward Dunhill’s player indicating his desire to learn if he dies or not. Attention returns to the slimy ghostbuster caught between a ghost and a vine place with side order of hot metal door.

“This job is definitely not worth $11,500 a year,” Dunhill quips under his breath as he tightens his grip on the proton pack’s stick and the player lets me know that he is going to try to blast a way out through the vines toward whatever crack or doorway is letting the air in.

“Throw it!” we all say together – because there is a magic in that sort of thing.

Firing a weapon like the Proton Pack is not Dunhill’s greatest area of expertise and he does not have the Talent, but I look at him and repeat that it is wall of vines with a large section waving and twining in the wind.

“You almost literally cannot miss it….”

“Thanks,” he says dryly as he tosses me three Brownie Points from his dwindled pool and rolls the dice at an Easy Difficulty. He hits, but we are kind and do not explore how close he came to missing.

The vines burst into splinters, gouts of purplish glowing sap, and start to burn with a lot of smoke.

Dunhill, pack still firing, charges through the hole he has made and finds himself back outside under the awning. The van is sitting where they left it, but the vines clinging to the awning seem to be awfully upset about something.

They rear back and then close on his location like vipers coming in for the kill…

Questions: Ok, which close did I mean? Actually, of the closes I used, which one meant the most and had the most impact?

What is the purpose of having such close calls and what is the difference between and out and out attack and having an opponent close on your position?

Video Link: In a few hours, or so, a video will be embedded below which talks about and expands upon these concepts, but with brevity~