We Do WHAT In The Shadows!? - Ep. 4.5 (Journal entry)

The journal entries from ep. 4 is a combination of therapy and murder. Both scientifically proven to be good for you! We move to Paris and finally deal with Garibaldi, in a manner of speaking.

Content warning: Profanity, murder, general horniness

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Special thanks:

Tim Hutchings for designing this awesome game,

Epidemicsound for the music

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Hello and welcome to Your Worst Nightmare, another RPG actual play podcast. Solotude, 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. So welcome, I hope you enjoy our time together. This episode is a dramatic journal entry reading for the prompt we got to in the previous episode, so some things might have changed a little bit from the decisions I made in the episode, since I've had a bit of time to think things through and write stuff down. This is Solotude. We do what in the shadows? Prompt 11. Fucking Garibaldi. Note the emphasis. Not fucking Garibaldi. Fucking Garibaldi. July 1582. Garibaldi loves me like a fist loves an asshole. with good intentions but way too much ambition. I have just realized that perhaps our love wasn't as pure as I had led myself to believe. I've loved him for who he is, but he loves me for what I have become. Right now, his mere visage inflames both my heart and my right hand. I have given up my holy ball skills for good. For him! The secret cabal and I came to an agreement. I resigned my talent in its entirety into their mystical sporting orb, patent pending, and my blood oath is thus fulfilled. My soul is an indifferent gardener who delights in nurturing nettle. over lilacs. My decision demands explanation. I have been feeling uncontrollable bloodlust, most likely because of the secret cabal draining my skills every night. Every sunset for the past weeks, in my state of frustration, I've burned and maimed, feasted on the blood of the innocent. Yet, For some reason, it hasn't left me feeling any better about myself. Garibaldi told me it would. I got tired of him telling me who to eat and how, pushing me further and further on a one-way street called Bloodlust Boulevard. I felt hopeless and stuck inside. So I undertook the most arduous task of my unlife so far. I sought public health care. And what a menacing reality I did uncover. If finding a trustworthy doctor of the body is like finding a needle in a haystack, discovering a capable doctor of the soul is like looking for a specific needle in a needle stack. Through a gruelling process, I managed to catch a cancelled appointment to an animist, a doctor of the soul. This is a transcript of the discussion as I remember it. The doctor did not sound exactly like this. This is me doing the voice in my journal. Mr. Lanzoni Where do you suppose this, you call it, bloodlust comes from? Remember to use I feel statements. I feel that I'm not allowed to be the man I was supposed to be. I was always a beautiful, sensitive, creative, social person. Now I'm a vampire and I- Please, Mr. Lanzoni. I feel like a vampire. Uh, yes. I suppose I do feel like a vampire. It all started when Big Papa G spit my hand, and it became inflamed. Perhaps an infection? I was struck into darkness and despair, with no other purpose but to eat the sun-kissed flesh of the innocent ones. So not an infection. Father Weishneger never explained why he did this to me. He must have had his reasons, but for some reason he kept them to himself. I am grateful for the everlasting beauty and better than average sporting skills, but this unlife, this bloodlust of fucking Garibaldi just enjoys it. He's always... Hold on, hold on. This Garibaldi is enjoying your... What did you call it? Unhealth? Unlife. And yes, he enjoys watching me maim, crush, destroy lives, adults, children, sometimes entire families. Now I know it sometimes feels like we are a burden to the people in our lives, but that doesn't make it true. And Garibaldi is your brother in Christ. Right. Homosexual partner. He just... He only seems to like me when I murder. When I'm dangerous. When the cult of the elderly sportsmen siphon my abilities. I'm left with a hollow frustration. And that leads to the bloodlust. That also happens to be the only time when Garibaldi shows affection towards me. What if you gave it all up then? The holy ball. What? Gave it up? I couldn't. If this Garibaldi pushes you to act in ways that hurt you, you must put an end to that cycle. You must see that. You are a genius. Now I see it. Clear as moonlit night. He does not love me for who I am, but as an instrument for his own violent fantasies. So since bleeding out my holy ball skills is driving me to bloodlust, giving that up, I would force Garibaldi to love me for me. Now that's not what I meant at all. My apologies, Doctor. I feel Garibaldi would be forced to love me. Thank you, Doctor. I know what to do now. Then the animist required payment, so I ate his face. That concludes the transcript. Wish me luck. Persimistically hopeful. Guido Lanzoni, 26 years old. Prompt number 12. Paris, je t'aime. September 1582. The three best things I have ever done to cultivate my own peace are 1. My nightly affirmations. I am beautiful. I am an artist. I'm scary in a hot way. Two, move my life away from Italy into Paris, where staying inside is now enforced by law. And three, murder Marcel Delacroix and steal his family. If you haven't tried it, I really cannot recommend number three highly enough. A thorough reinvention of one's identity feels like a true bomb to a burning soul-born rash. One can be anything, anyone. So this one decided to try his hand at being Marcel Delacroix, a music-loving nobleman with silky trousers and a wig collection to put any drag queen south of Stockholm to shame. Gone is Guido Lanzoni. A lost child raised by a convent of brothers whose faces have become difficult for me to recall. I am a man of the world, a social butterfly, ready to conquer the highest peaks of the insurmountable cliffs of the nobility. With my skills in composition and performance, I have no doubt I will scale this summit with ludic ease. That's Marcel Delacroix for you. A gentleman who plays the lute at small social gatherings, drains a dude in a street corner, and then looks for some blood to drink. A real romantic rhinoceros. Rawr. Much like the beginnings of a landslide, the smallest things in life may end up being the cause of the most significant of happenings. A simple everyday popping of a man's head led me to my beautiful and quite resourceful wife. Elise Delacroix became my counterweight in the scales of the tumultuous Parisian life, my trusted partner, and she welcomed me home with open arms. As I dropped her late husband's head in those very arms, to my surprise, she smiled gently. Apparently, there was great tension in their relationship. That was released via the beheading I performed on poor old Marcel. Elise has grand dreams for the Delacroix family, and old Marcel was too content in where he was to act upon them. The new Marcel, however, will do anything to aid this lively woman achieve the status she is warranted. I sense great determination in her eyes to become the number one noble family in Paris. Her proficiency in the rhetorical arts leaves me astounded. We have deep discussions every night about the state of the world, religion, my condition, holy ball, gossip, the relationship problems with her friends, and everything else between heaven and this earth. I find her a grand pillar of support in the echoey halls of my melancholic mind. I wish to aid her. It's the least I can do. Besides, our goals are intertwined. She scratches my back, and I scratch her political opponents to death. Tit for tat. Boob for barb. I had a startling realization. as I gazed through past entries in this very journal of mine, not having any recollection of many things written there. I read having loved this man that I have travelling with me, named Garibaldi. To my surprise, his impressive yet small penis had a burnt dent in the shape of my right hand. As if I'd caressed it before. All the memories I managed to muster of him are about him making me give up my skills in all things ball. I do miss the court. The searing flash of pain in my hand whilst a-spiking. The look of amazement in the eye of the opposition as the ball... It's the ground or their face. My journal paints to me a picture of lust, romance, and love between Garibaldi and I. Yet I do not feel it. All I feel is resentment for what he made me give up. I gave up my love for the game so he could love me. I abandoned my safe ship and jumped into the ocean depths of emotion, for I thought I saw his love for me buried in the depths. But it appears the ocean plays tricks on the romantic sailor. What I, the fool in love, saw as a sunken sign of deep emotions It was merely a game of light, a reflection of my own passion from the black surface of the sea. Love is a mirror, not a window. And here I thought I'd get to admire the view. I have a food courier, a young Austrian woman named Mercedes Uber Eats. She brings me food to my house at the behest of Angelique de Boulangerie. Angelique called Mercedes her familiar. A human servant who does her bidding with the promise of being turned into a vampire herself one day. I would be delighted to have someone love me in such an unconditional manner, like a dog, but with an affinity for language. I do not mean any offence, of course. After all, a dog is man's best friend. I have yet much to learn, but it seems as though the boulangerie family takes care of many. They aid the downtrodden, forgotten faces, who used to wander the streets but are now locked inside in fear of the explosive display of Christian love. The family Z, on the other hand... Live a life of seclusion. They do not partake in the feasts and the gatherings of minor nobility. Nor do they socialize with anyone else, for that matter. No carriage is allowed passage through their gates. But every night I see faint candlelight in their manors' windows. My memory is not what it used to be. Perhaps this is part of my affliction. The most important thing now is to gain a foothold for my family, so Elise and I may rise in the ranks of the nobility, so I may finally meet the parents who forgot me. I locked Garibaldi up in the attic. I cannot stand the sight of him right now. Perhaps a lover spat, nothing more. I want to be adored, worshipped. and served as something he never managed, for his fascination wasn't in me, only my grim powers. Now that I think of it, I may have a mutually beneficial proposition for him yet. With great expectations, Marcel Delacroix, 26 years old, Paris. Thanks for listening, folks! My name is Auri Itemäki, and Solotude is my personal project. I really hope you enjoyed this episode. Additional episode music and sound effects courtesy of Epidemic Sound. Theme song courtesy of me. You can follow Solotude on Instagram, at solotudeshow. And if you got something to say, drop a message or comment. I'm still absolutely figuring out the exact format of the show, so I'd be delighted to hear your ideas and suggestions on where to take it. I'd like to implement some stuff I didn't think of. So please, please tell me what to do, and I'll do it. No hypnosis required. Also, please rate and review the show so people can find it a little bit easier. I don't have a budget, I don't have a plan, it's just me playing a game on mic. So it would be awesome if more people found the show. Solotude drops every week. Every other week there's an actual play episode and on the off weeks I'll do a proper journal reading with music, sound effects, the whole deal. So you can enjoy Solotude as an actual play podcast or as an audio drama if you prefer to just listen to the journal entries. Or probably the best experience is to do both. Up to you, I don't know. I'm not going to check hypnosis on you just yet. So thanks for listening, folks. And see you next week. Bye!