Lian "Louise" Chao's page

I think I've kind of lost the plot. Louise is in the car but I'm not sure what the car is currently doing?

Louise needs to run, but she doesn't have too many options down in the pit. It seems unlikely she can cross one of the metal plates with without it killing her, however exactly it would kill her. That means running directly at the alter, and that means bringing the flying thing to exactly where everyone else is converging. Bad.

Besides, she needs to be running toward something that could provide her some cover. She doubts she can just run away from it forever.

Louise screams and runs toward the car.

Fleeing: 1d6 + 2 ⇒ (3) + 2 = 5

So, looking over Lian's character sheet for options, she has no points in firearms, weapons, or scuffling. Can she do those things at all? She does have points in fleeing, preparedness, and athletics. Do those provide any options here? On the bright side, I was wrong about driving, she can. She seems to be quite capable at electrical repair, and her credit rating seems to be excellent. Does the flying creature care that she's responsible with money? :p

I believe the idea was to keep the car running for a quick escape, not to do anything with it.

Louise urges the other women to get moving down into the pit.

"Eugene is going to need us there as a distraction before he makes his move. We need to go now!"

Regardless of their role as a distraction, Louise still thinks it best they get in close without too much notice from the man or the thing above. She keeps a low profile and moves as quietly as she can. She also readies her camera flash, holding it tight in her hand.

Stealth: 1d6 + 2 ⇒ (1) + 2 = 3

"I don't know how to drive" admits Louise.

"Yes Eugene, try to do that. We'll go down there and try to delay him. That", Louise points to Amanda's pistol, "will be our bargaining chip."

"We'd better hurry! I don't like how those metal plates are glowing. Something bad is going to happen."

Louise pulls at Amanda and Fran to get them all moving down into the pit.

Sense Trouble: 1d6 + 1 ⇒ (5) + 1 = 6

Louise is both shocked and disappointed by Eugene.

"Chadwick's life is in danger. We can't just leave him."

Louise screams, albeit with a hand over her mouth, because Amanda screams. But nothing terrible seems to happen and she continues on to the barn and house with the other woman. Louise helps with looking around through the mess inside while trying to touch as little as possible.

Once Amanda has looked through the papers found among the chaos in the room and tells them what it probably means she agrees to continue on to the quarry.

"Is it far? Should we get the car and drive there?"

OK!

Louise takes a moment to consider their situation. She concludes

"I think we should go join Eugene. Standing here isn't going to help anything, and there's nowhere else to go."

She does check the car, carefully trying not to touch the body, for a radio or some other means of distance communication.

I'm currently in hectic work project mode. I'll be back in action on the boards Thursday. Please bot as needed.

Ultimately Louise settles down enough to do something, so she does what she knows how to do. She photographs the car with the policeman, the gruesome display of animal carcasses, and the symbol. She does this carefully using multiple photos so the entire scene can be reconstructed from them.

"The police will need to know what has happened here" she explains dejectedly.

Louise is too shaken by what she sees at the farm to speak.

Sanity: 1d6 + 1 ⇒ (2) + 1 = 3

Louise approaches Amanda and Eugene, who are over by the body, again. She pockets the charm Amanda handed her. Can't hurt to have it I suppose.

"If the policeman's book says his partner went to a farm nearby we should go find him and report this."

I am. I've been waiting partially for others to post who haven't yet, and partially because I'm a little stuck on what to do.

If I understand correctly there are some clues to uncover before we move on from where we're at, but I don't have any skills that seem applicable at all to finding anything of them at this scene.

I was hoping someone else would do something clever. :)

As some moments pass without anything suggesting the winged creature has returned, Louise lifts her head begins to scan the sky and surrounding area. When she notices the flashlight, and in its light the policeman's body, she knows what to do.

Louise stands up and pulls her Nagel and flash from its case in the car. "Don't touch anything yet. I should photograph everything exactly as it is for the police."

Although the sight of the man's torn body makes her want to gag, Louise takes several photos of the scene. Combined they will show a complete visual panorama of the scene of the killing and abduction.

"Does anyone have any idea what that was? I've never heard of such an animal. It seemed far too big to fly."

Louise screams at what she sees. She scurries back to the side of the car, where she kneels down and curls up into the smallest ball she can while flattening herself against the side of the vehicle.

Stability:1d6 ⇒ 4

Louise steps out of the car as well, looking about while keeping a surreptitious eye on what's happening with the police. Something almost catches her eye, out in the dark far to the side in her field of vision.

"I saw something move out there..."

1d6 ⇒ 6

Hope you feeling better GM!

One of the more curious things Louise has found about Americans is their degree of superstition. China is crawling with Christian missionaries from all the occupying nations. But Americans stand out among them both because it seems to be practically the only reason an American comes to China, and because of their particular emotional investment in the project.

Louise had previously figured selection bias was at work. Those individuals most given over to supernatural beliefs tended to become missionaries. But after some time in America, Louise is no longer so sure. It shocked her how even well educated Americans so often accepted the notion of supernatural forces and beings in ways mostly found among China's peasantry. Both the doctor and writer in her present company were cases in point.

"Both of the men you mention could probably have benefitted from psychoanalysis."

Ha! For some reason it didn't occur to me to check in here yesterday.

So sad, the Leica III 35mm camera wasn't introduced until 1933. It was Robert Capa's early camera of choice.

Interesting that Lima, OH is mentioned since it was a hub of KKK and Black Legion (an offshoot of the KKK) activity at this time.

So it looks like Fran is the new person in the group, with the rest of us knowing each other prior to this car trip?

Louise watches the vague shapes that roll by outside the backseat window. She strains to make out details from the shadows to keep her mind active on the long drive. Louise doesn't like the dark. Not that she fears darkness, rather it frustrates her. If she could photograph darkness she wouldn't mind it at all.

Interesting but not delightful. Louise's recent mantra to herself floats through her head again. It's the most condensed summary of America west of the Eastern Seaboard she has been able to come up with.

New York City is the greatest place on earth as far as Louise is concerned. Shanghai is not far behind, but it is plagued with the kinds of troubles New Yorkers can hardly imagine. To Louise New York feels fresh, a place that is freer, easier, and more casual than Shanghai. It's possible to move, do things, experience novelty in ways that make anything seem possible.

New York was not without it's ironies for Louise though. As much as she would have loved to go to Chinatown for a familiar meal, or to hear and speak Chinese, it wasn't safe for her there. The Chinese Exclusion Act ensured an extreme scarcity of women in Chinatown. It was a community of bachelors. While Louise is used to eyes on her wherever she goes in the city, their curiosity, or puzzlement, or hostility she can deal with. But in Chinatown the eyes are hungry. After only one brief trip there with her roommate Ruth, she knew it would only be a matter of time before someone would act on that hunger in ways that would be very bad for her.

The car might be cramped with people, but Louise doesn't mind, especially in places like Ohio or Indiana. These places are empty, with too much sky overhead and too many unbroken horizontal lines stretching on forever. The geometry of the midwest (she supposes that's where she is?) is little more than a quick sketch of a place. There's little proportion, sometimes hardly even any perspective for her camera to grab onto. Flat spaces that one could tumble into forever.

Louise sighs and begins to run through the rules of baseball in her head again. She needs to be minimally knowledgable about the game in order to have conversations, but it's also impossibly convoluted and difficult to understand.

Lian Chao uses the English name Louise. She used to use the name Lisa, but after seeing a screening of the film Pandora's Box there was only one name that would do, so she changed to Louise after arriving in the United States.

Louise is from Shanghai, where her father is a financier principally invested in rubber. Her kindred spirit in the family though is her uncle Chao Feng, a professor of sociology. He was instrumental in convincing her parents to let her attend university in the U.S. He argued that not only would it benefit Lian, but potentially the whole family. Entrepreneurs like Lian's father are increasingly squeezed between Nationalist income extraction to support the army, and economic disruptions due to communist party sponsored labor strikes. Chao Feng pointed out it could be a great benefit for the family to have one foot in another country in case the situation continues to deteriorate. Since that time, a Japanese invasion of Manchuria is making it look more and more like a wise investment.

Lian is in her second year at Hunter College. Aside from her major in fine arts, she carries a major in economics, a condition of her parents' support. She has completed her freshman year. While she had hoped to intern in photography documenting the effects of the Great Depression on the American working class, a sort of pictorial anthropology, she got baseball. Oh well, eventually she'll be an upperclassman and rate better assignments.

Lian's english, learned in Singapore, carries a strong British cast.

Louise: Self-Portrait Taken With a Timer.

Louise carries three cameras when she expects to be doing serious work.

For portraits, landscapes, and architecture she has a newly purchased Nagel Recomar 18, which can be fitted to a tripod.

Her workhorse, and her first serious camera, is a Le Furet V2.

She carries a Kodac Brownie No. 2 as a backup in case her Le Furet malfunctions or there is no time to change film rolls. It's a folding camera small enough to fit in a pocket.