Caracas: Hole in the Heart, IC Thread Options

[Abschalten]

[Tuesday, 17 November, 2071, 01:30 Local Time]

Nights in Caracas are even hotter than the days. The air swelters like a furnace, and the pollution makes every acrid breath feel like you're inhaling battery acid. Sure the sun goes down, if you could even see the fucking thing through all the rain. But as it dips down below the horizon, sinking further down into a nearby ocean just over the Muralha Verde, the shadows begin to creep out of alleyways and spill into rain-flooded streets, broken only by flickering neon bulbs and the sputtering glow of trash fires. The darkness swallows the heart of this city, suffocating it. And in doing so, the real face of Caracas is revealed.

Those too weak to face the horrors of the night find refuge in their homes, sometimes shantytown shacks, sometimes towering apartment buildings that seem to decay right before ones very eyes. Of course, the truly desperate overcome their fears and go back out into that awful, predatory murk to offer up their bodies or perhaps more for the chance that they might make a better life for themselves. And of course this city just chews them up, gristle and all. It doesn't even bother to swallow, just spits them back out and leaves them broken down to their very souls; a ruined mishmash of dreams deferred and exploited.

Nobody really makes it. You might see the finish line, but you'll never get there. It's a dream, puto, a fucking illusion. The nearer you get, the further it moves away from you, and the more you'll have to bleed to make it even a hair closer.

But it doesn't stop you from trying, does it?

Tonight the rain is coming down in sheets like God's Wrath, perhaps to drown all the wicked in a second deluge. Even the muñecas, pimps, pushers, and predators are starting to think that maybe tonight isn't the best night to make the dinero. Gusts of wind scatter trash through streets already full of the detritus of millions of metahuman souls falling apart in unison. But tonight is unusual aside from the rain. Tonight is when the city really gets nova-hot.

A few battered, world-weary metahuman souls, each for their own reasons, find themselves stuck in this hole of a town, out in the heart of the South American jungle. None of them are saints. They grapple with demons that aren't hidden, but rather lurk just beneath the skin and peer out of their eyes at a world where nothing is safe, and nothing is sacred. It is a world that they have to be harder than in order to survive. Before it's all over, people are going to die, and lives will be destroyed, before they've had their way and left their mark on this town. Think Caracas is bad now? You've seen nothing yet, amigo.