Disclaimer: this is an open game. Still, there are some requirements concerning characters. Though fantastic and horrific in nature, this is not a d&d game, nor a vampire gore-fest. Try to fit the theme, please.

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The streets of the city were drenched in blood. It poured off balconies and bubbled up from the sewers below. It ebbed against the garbage and clung to the bodies that lay strewn across the cobblestones.
They were deserted, these streets, at least for now. In the ever setting sun the golden liquid reflection almost made it look like a paradise rather then the birthplace of an apocalypse.
Tall broken buildings lined the streets with Victorian posture; mahogany doorposts and iron railings bearing organic patterns wept in the reality of their existence. There was not even a memory of salvation. How long had they stood there, eternally deteriorating, but never breaking down completely? Their recollection of ages had been eroded by the grainy gusts of wind that always roared, yet always came unexpectedly. They were numbed; had even forgotten that their current state was one of sorrow. Joy had left them so long ago that in comparison to the bleak reality of repetition there was only ‘being’. And ‘being’ was a form in which emotion and hope had no place.

This was hell

One of the broken forms that had once been a man moved. An arm was raised and snapped painfully back in its original position. A cry was smothered into a gurgle by the wash of blood against the man’s face.
Slowly he managed to get up, unseeing where he was or where he went. His eyes had been bound by a dark cloth, now soaking red. He had no recollection of ever seeing. It was as if he had been born in that very instant. The stone cobbles underfoot felt cold, slippery, and after taking one step he fell back against a pile of bodies.
Unknowing and blind, he rested against them for a moment as a soft refuge in a hard world.
Panting from pain and the strain of being the man lay there for a few moments. Slowly a feeling began to form in the tips of his fingers. He brushed the smooth and cool surface below him, unknowing that it was a woman’s calf. Then, with the recollection of sensation, other memories returned. He remembered being able to see, he remembered hearing and lov…

…a hard, sandy wind struck him in the face. He shielded it with his hands as in a reflex, then felt the cloth binding his eyes. With some difficulty the man pried the blindfold from his face and slowly opened up to the world. His vision was blurry, the diffuse orange glow from the sky even too much to handle. It would take many hours before he could see as he once did.

When the faint blur had somewhat sharpened up to a gruesome world, and feeling had returned to his whole body, the man got up and inspected himself. What he had thought to be the rough textile of a shirt turned out to be his own skin, ragged and torn, and loose as if he had borrowed it from a larger man. He touched his face, and there too seemed his skin too big, it sagged and wobbled almost like that of a Shar-pei dog. The hair on his chin were long, not the stubble of a day without shaving, but at least the length of a week’s neglect.

He was stumbling through the streets now, trying to keep a steady foot in the slippery and sticky liquid. He did not remember that it was blood. He did not remember a lot of things; his own name for one, or whatever happened to him to make him wake up in a place like this. He tried focusing on thoughts that seemed to whirl about in his mind, eluding him yet beckoning him to give them attention. Exhausted from the effort of living, the man dragged himself to one of the houses. They all looked damp and rotten, but at least it would give him some shelter from the tugging winds and pressing weight of the air.
With great determination, he made his way up to the porch of an old four story building. The doorway to the place carried blistering paint, and its door hung loose on one hinge. But when he tried to enter, the oak entrance snapped shut in his face.
He did not even have the strength to try to open it, and sunk down like an old rag.

Resting his back against the scratched walls of the building, he eyed his surroundings listlessly. His head seemed to weigh a ton, and he let it dangle on his neck, blinking his eyes in an attempt to stay focused and alert. Drowsiness slowly caught the better of him, but before he collapsed, he noted black lines on his lower left arm. Before he fainted he recognized them as letters, carved into his flesh.

Slumped on the wooden boards in front of the house, he managed to read the words:

IM HERMAN

“I have a name,” he thought, and fainted.

Pain.

There was pain. Nothing but pain.

It was driving deep within the very core of his being, excruciating pain that would make any man beg for death. But in this he found solace for pain meant something to him – something he could hold on to like a drowning victim in the ocean.

I’m alive
He opened his eyes but could not see. His eyes did not focus immediately, leaving him in a world of blurry images. He tried to move but his legs didn’t respond at first. He was covered in a sticky substance - blood? Is it mine?
The streets of the city were drenched in blood. It poured off balconies and bubbled up from the sewers below. It ebbed against the garbage and clung to the bodies that lay strewn across the cobblestones. He was lying in the street, half propped up against a decayed wall. His short cropped blond hair was matted with the blood, and his naked body seemed too thin to his focusing eyes. There were tattoos on his arms, vibrant green and red tattoos of long tailed serpents. Don’t let the serpents touch popped into his mind like a warning, but he knew not from where.

“Where?” He spoke the word out loud but it only came as a whisper. He didn’t know where or when or even who. He tried to remember back, grasping at anything. A fleeting image of a coffee shop at university – Diablo’s it was called. John was introducing him to Natasha. It was so long ago, why did he remember that?

Natasha this is my good friend Cathedral. Cat this is …
Cathedral. They called me Cathedral. It is not my name, but it is who I am.

Movement caught in the corner of his eye brought him back to the reality he occupied. His eyes were adjusted now and there was a man stumbling down the street near him. It was only then that Cathedral became aware of the bodies in the street and around him. So many dead… Was there a war?
Cathedral watched the man, unsure if he was an enemy or a possible ally in this world of madness. The stranger made his way up to the porch of an old four story building, its door hung loose on one hinge. When he tried to enter, the entrance snapped shut. Lacking the strength to try to open it the man just sunk down like an old rag.

“Hey!” Cathedral called out but the wind snatched his words away. He swallowed and wished he had a drink. “Hey!” he called again, louder this time while rising to his feet.

Even in unconsciousness he found no relief of pain and bewilderment. The silent bliss of the physical power-out lasted for only a second. Then he was pulled into a rush of awareness by an unseen force. He darted up as if slapped across the face and looked about in frightened confusion. He was still on the porch of this twisted mirror image of his memories, still half clad with only his three quarter jeans with ripped bottoms to cover him up.

He looked about frantically, then rested his eyes on the carvings in his forearm.

His name, he assumed; Herman. It felt good knowing something about himself. It felt good, knowing something about himself. It felt… good… knowing…
A memory pressed itself upon him. In the distance he heard somebody shouting:

“Hey!”

It was part of the memory, he knew. He was sitting on his knees in the trashed remains of a living room. White walls and a black carpet were the only recognizable features of the room. He had a piece of glass in his hand, and was slicing deep into his own arm, forming lines into letters into words.

“Hey!” he heard again, and turned around.

“Not now!” he hissed at the vague form of another human, who was pressing his weight against the only door in the room, keeping it shut. A slow pounding managed to seep through Herman’s focus, but faded away again, along with the rest of the memory.

“Hey!” he heard once more; while the memory became a memory once more. He looked around the ever disintegrating buildings. There, in the street, stood another man. Instinctively, Herman half-ducked away behind the wooden railing that lined the porch of the old house he had tried to enter earlier. Between the drops of blood that fell from the balconies above he pointed a finger at this newcomer. It was almost an accusing gesture; a reflex from a previous life perhaps?

“You there! What do you want from me?”

“Not now!” came the hiss from the form of another human, which was pressing his weight against the only door in the room, keeping it shut. To Cathedral’s eyes, it was more than an it than a he or a she. The buildings around seemed to be decaying rapidly around him, yet not vanishing completely – a never-ending pattern of corruption.

“You there! What do you want from me?” The other pointed a finger at him. It was almost an accusing gesture - You said you could help her
A memory of anger washed over him, so strong that it pushed Cathedral back a step. He pushed it back with his mind. “I was… I was gonna ask you the same thing.” He shouted back, hands held at the side to be open and non-aggressive. “Where the hell are we? Do you know how we got here?”

The other man staggered backwards a step at Herman’s accusing words. It was as if his accusing finger had pushed the man with an unseen force, like a wizard’s power in fantasy novels.

Fantasy novels?

The name implied that these books described situations that only existed in one’s imagination. Was he part of somebody’s twisted creativity at this moment then? Was this place a world far away from where he was supposed to be, and was his journey to discover himself again only valuable as entertainment to an unknown reader in a comfortable chair somewhere out there?
Such thoughts ran through his mind in the very instant it took the other man to recover.

“I am real,” Herman thought, “because I can feel, and see, and think. Even if it’s blurry and unfocused. I can do these things, and so can that man over there. This is reality.”

“I was… I was gonna ask you the same thing.” the man shouted back, hands held at the side to be open and non-aggressive. “Where the hell are we? Do you know how we got here?”

Can I trust him? That thought rushed by like so many others, brushing his consciousness but not really completing itself before carrying on. Trust was something Herman had forgotten, like so many other aspects of human life. In a way, it was as if he had truly been reborn into this pocket of hell, for he carried the self-reflection of an infant; projecting his own intentions and thoughts on others, for how could they be any different? What did he want from himself, he wondered? To know who he was? Or had been?

He stepped from the porch, with aching muscles and the weight of the sky on his shoulders. Slowly he made his way to the man.

“I don’t know. I woke up… in pain. Or maybe the pain came later… I can’t really remember. I can’t remember a lot of things.”

He staggered closer, feet dragging through the washing blood on the grey streets.
“I know my name though. I’m Herman.”

“I don’t know. I woke up… in pain. Or maybe the pain came later… I can’t really remember. I can’t remember a lot of things.” He staggered closer, feet dragging through the washing blood on the grey streets. “I know my name though. I’m Herman.”

Herman? He thought. It was the last name he expected to hear although he couldn’t have told you what he expected in the first place.

“I’m Cathedral.” He replied, “And it was the same for me. Pain and then this – like I was …” he trailed off looking around him. It all seemed so unreal. “If there are the two fo us, could there be more? What is this place?”

Cathedral looked own at the serpents tattooed on his arms. The strange light of this land played tricks on his eyes, as the serpents seemed to writhe as if in ecstasy. Don’t let the serpents touch

Cathedral? That was a pretty strange name for a man, wasn’t it? Herman thought. Or maybe it was a common name and his memories were messed up… well… they were messed up, he knew.

“I don’t know what this place is… my worst nightmare, or something like that. At least, that would be my guess. I’m doing a lot of guessing lately.”

He looked around aimlessly, thinking of what to say next. Nothing came to mind that would help them figure out what place it was they found themselves in.

“I haven’t seen any other people… alive anyway. But I’m sure there must be more.”

Then the sky changed suddenly, as soon as he had finished that last sentence. A rolling sound of anger crawled its way through the clouds at lightning speed. What had been a calm, almost idyllic sunset sky changed into a grey, swirling maelstrom that bathed the streets in shadows. The eye of the storm widened, and within seconds it began to rain.

Small drops fell in the thousands towards Herman and Cathedral, but they beheld a rain unlike any they had ever experienced. No memory of such a storm was hiding in the deep crevices of their mind, and Herman could do nothing else but stare in shock as the drops approached and grew in size.

It was raining grey corpses.

They splattered onto the roofs and pavements, bouncing away from the impact or falling limp like wet rags. Wide eyes stared into the world unseeing. Nearby, the naked body of an elderly man fell into one of the piles of corpses, scattering them in all directions. Herman wanted to scream, but found he could not. There was no expression for the terror her was living.

Falling. That's what he felt. Like he was falling.

He realized it was because he was falling, falling from darkness into darkess and into more darkness yet.

"Is this it? Am I dead?" He thought, dazed and confused, remembering nothing but falling and darkness.

Suddenly, he hit the ground and felt every bone in his body shatter. And yet, he was still conscious, if delerious. He looked around at his surroundings, trying to get a feel for where he was, and then realized that he was able to look up. The pain was sharp, but it ended as quickly as it had begun. For now, he thought, because nothing seemed normal about this place.

For instance, he was not the only one falling, he was surrounded by falling bodies, grey, distorted, broken bodies. He struggled to get up, slipping on the blood underfoot. As he gave up and sat back down, he began to wonder, "Who am I?"

...can you hear me? Va....lo...r...I don...out you...

Va..lo..r...

He supposed then his name was Valor, but it was made up of bits and pieces of half-forgotten memories. His only memory aside from what he'd just experienced. He ran his hands through his hair, trying to shake the delerium off, but unable to completely.

He then stood, looking around, and saw two other people. "Maybe they're like me, maybe they're lost too," he thought, "Lost? how do I even know I'm lost when I can't remember a damned thing?"

He called out to them, "Hey there! Hey! Over here!"

She was dead. Lying on an angled plane, on her front, motionless... a woman, wearing the tattered remnants of some archaic dress, with short, bright red hair. Her face was angular, perhaps even foxlike... if one remembered what a fox was... No, not dead... she moved her fingers, her right hand feeling against something rough, yet feeling something slick, something sticky, something not altogether pleasant. Although, perhaps even more unpleasant, she knew what that something was...

Blood.

She felt weak, but since when did she trust her senses? Not since the darkness at least. Tentatively, she allowed her awareness to blossom, despite whatever sense her mind had, telling her not to. Then she realized, and half remembered... she still had it in her left hand... wait... had what?

Why not just see? She opened her eyes, but immediately closed them, stung by the peculiar sight, if one could call it that. For years, or maybe minutes, she just lay there, opening and closing her eyes, waiting for them to stop hurting.

Then she finally became aware of the rest of her senses. She felt the tattered dress she wore, blood red in colour, or was it red from the blood staining it? She didn't know; she didn't remember. She just knew it was red. The stench that filled her nostrils was revolting, yet one she somehow knew from somewhere... the scent of decaying bodies, mixed with blood. She could hear words, other people, but it felt distant, indistinct, unknown...

Finally, she uses her right arm, propping herself up slightly, as she looks at whatever it is in her left hand. A flute. A metal flute, probably silver at one point, but difficult to tell under the blood that coated it. It was out of tune, and couldn't be put in tune. Wait... was it?

All this thought of things around her, but then she realized... what did she know of herself? She closed her eyes, looking inside, trying to find something, anything, that may give her a clue. However, there was nothing. Nothing... just the same darkness as the darkness that one sees with their eyes closed.

She opens her eyes, and looks at the flute. There was a small glimmer; a section of the flute that hadn't been coated. Turning it over, she reads what is engraved there.

Cindi
Cindi? Who was that? Well, if the flute was hers, then maybe the name on it was hers too... so she decided her name was Cindi.

She then turned, seeing others not far from where she was. She couldn't quite hear them... so she leaned forward...

Alas, that was too far, and something else slid and bumped into her from behind... something limp, like a body... like the others falling from the sky...

The feeling of being unbalanced came first, but before she could react, it had already changed to a feeling of nothing beneath her. She didn't even have time to scream as she crashed into the balcony below, before being taken by the flow of blood down to the ground, cushioned by the bodies there. She groans, before struggling to her feet...

So far, this really wasn't her day...

He ran toward the figures and saw them burst into flames...

It was just an illusion, some strange, twisted place he was in. Startled by the sudden spontaneous combustion of the two figures before him, he didn't notice the body underfoot, and he tripped, and fell into another pool of blood.

Blood everywhere. Blood and bodies. Damn, this place is depressing... he thought, at least it would be if I could remember anything else.
He stood up, trying to dust himself off, but the blood had already stained his jacket. The man who called himself Valor checked his pockets for anything that might remind him of anything that had happened before. He checked his left pocket. Nothing. Checked his right pocket. Ahh! A...pocket watch? Maybe it has a name inscribed inside, he thought. He pushed the button to open the case, and was surprised. There was something inside. He wiped the dust off the face of the watch, and off the opposite side...

Veritas et Aequitas

Latin? How did he even know Latin? How did he even know it WAS Latin?

He didn't care at this point. Truth and Justice? Oh well, it worked out just as well that he believed his name was Valor. It fit with everything else, apparently.

He began walking down what vaguely resembled a street, a twisting affair lined by dilapidated houses that were past their prime. That is, if they ever HAD a prime. Then he saw something decidedly strange, even in his previous condition.

A woman, dressed in red...maybe it was blood? Who knew around here...fell from the balcony above onto a pile of bodies. She struggled to get up, groaning, and, thinking this might actually be a real person this time, he decided to try to help her up.

He got her righted up, though she still looked a bit cranky, and introduced himself, "My name is Valor. Are you alright? What is this place?"

There wasn’t much Herman could do but hope. He was mentally grasping for control over his body, but whenever he thought he remembered how to order his legs to move, the notion bled through his fingers like jelly. Only his eyes seemed to respond, and they were frantically searching the skies above to see if none of the corpses would fall on him. For minutes he stood there like a scared rabbit, as bodies were strewn over the streets. He witnessed it all in horror: limbs breaking from the impact, skulls shattering and blood splattering in fountains where a body would crash on the flooded pavement. But though the sights were sickening and gruesome, he could keep them away by closing his eyes. It were the sounds that terrified him most. With every crack or low thud he flinched, an involuntary shiver of short muscle contractions rippled from his shoulders to his legs, spreading as the cacophony of death rose like a demonic persiflage of a spring rain.

And just like a seasonal shower it stopped suddenly. A last few tricklets echoed in the distance, and then the sound was gone.
Herman dared open one eye, and heaved in a full tug of air, holding it in his lungs in an effort to somehow calm his body and take control over what he was witnessing. When he had first woken up in this street he had taken no real notice of the blood on the streets and the piles of bodies. He had assumed it was a normal state of being, and only when his conscious slowly returned to him he had realized that none of his surroundings were as they should be. But still, it had been a vague, superficial realization that now surfaced.
The horror of it all; the broken, grey bodies; the constant flow of blood, the deteriorating buildings and the disappearing vortex in the sky above; it was all diminished by a single thought. Had he fallen from the sky as well? Was that how he had come to be in this place? But if that were true, then where did he fall from? What had happened to him before he was dropped to meet his death? Why hadn’t he died from the fall… or was he dead and this only a last effort of his mind to remain a hold on life? He had to find a way out.

He looked for the man named Cathedral, but was interrupted in his search by a sound coming from behind. He looked around to find movement in one of the gutters on the side of the street. The washing blood bubbled and split open as a thin leg came floating to the surface. It had hairs, sticking up like those of an insect, and its skin was black like coal, with patches of mould on it. Another one just like it erupted from the gutter, and soon four more followed. They appeared to be attached to each other, with no body or head to make it a complete creature, and came as high as Herman’s waist. He didn’t take any more time to wallow in shock, but darted behind the first obstacle he could find; a wooden stairway leading up to one of the buildings.
From there, he regarded the creature formed of legs as it made its way to one of the broken bodies and squatted on it. Two jaws opened on its underside and bit into the head of a bald man. It maintained its hold, and started dragging the limb corpse to one of the stacks.

Herman looked around again to see if he could find Cathedral anywhere.

Cindi staggered to her feet, only to find herself helped by unseen hands. She nearly winced and recoiled from the unexpected touch. Nearly lashed out with the metal flute in hand... but she didn't. Where did she get to be so aggressive?

Carefully, she regarded the man in front of her, her green eyes piercing, yet distant, as she thought to herself.

"I'm Cindi." She said, her voice holding a forced calm about it, "I would say I'm alright, but I can't be sure... as for where... I have no idea..."

As well, she voiced the question in her mind aloud, "Are you real? Is this real?"

Yet, even as she asked aloud, she realized how irrelevant it was; it didn't matter what was real or not right now, because anything she could perceive could very well still hurt her. She backed away from the man slightly, unconsciously, yet movement caught her eye, and she turned to look. Her eyes widened as she saw the six-legged nothingness walk up to a stack of bodies nearby, corpse in disembodied mouth. At that point, her intuition screamed at her to get away from there.

She ran. Going down the road, or whatever it was, opposite in the direction the anti-spider, as she named in her mind, went. However, as she weaved around a stairway, she nearly ran into another man. Instead, she skidded to a stop, using the railing of the stairwell to help, and froze, fear visible under attempts to keep her face passive.

"Who are you?" She asked, her voice still holding a forced calm about it.

“I haven’t seen any other people… alive anyway. But I’m sure there must be more.”

Then the sky changed suddenly, as soon as he had finished that last sentence. A rolling sound of anger crawled its way through the clouds at lightning speed. What had been calmed sunset sky changed into a grey, swirling maelstrom that bathed the streets in shadows. As the eye of the storm widened, Cathedral felt his body fade away back to… . he wasn’t sure to what be he’d done this before. When he wanted to leave the …

Suddenly Cathedral opened his eyes and gasped for air. Artificial lights burned his eyes, he struggles to move but his body didn’t respond. People – doctors were running towards him.

“Got a pulse! “

“Cat! Can you hear me?”

“ECG is spiking.”

“Cat! She’s dead. Pull out! Pull out”

In a span of a few seconds Cathdreal found himself back in the blood filled streets. What the hell?” he said outloud. Where did Herman go? There were grey bodies everywhere now - like they rained down from the sky.

Cat! She’s Dead. Pull out!
Without knowing why, Cathedral drew his arm together and focused his mind on a doorway. “A doorway out of here” He mused as a song ran over and over in his head *Back to life, back to reality*.

He gestures and pushed out with his mind, an action that felt second nature to him. When he did, the serpents tattoo on his arms writhed frantically as if alive with power. As he expected, a doorway appeared before him, out of nothing. This was his way home.

But as he stepped toward it, it broke into a thousand shards like an image on a mirror as it is shattered. The pieces fell to the ground and became drops of blood, mingling with the gray bodies and the blood on the streets. Somewhere, a voice whispered in his mind’s eye, “we lost him again.”

He looked around, feeling the despair and depression seeping into him. He fought against it and looked for something to hold onto – anything. He noticed movement and looked towards it, only to see the multi-legged spidery things that were attacking the grey bodies.

"Herman!” he shouted, “Herman! We’ve got to get the hell outta here!”

The girl ran away, and he turned to look...that was a mistake. He saw something...something horrible devouring corpse after corpse.

Abbaddon...devourer of souls...
Something ran through his mind, was this creature called an Abbaddon? He didn't care, he just knew he needed to get away from it. Fleeing as fast as he could, he ran through the twisted streets out of someone's, maybe his own, nightmare.

He sought shelter in a decrepit-looking house. Well, decrepit here was clearly subjective, as everything was falling apart, it seemed. This one just looked sturdier than the others. He opened the door to the house, trying to escape the monster coming for him, and was greeted by a screaming skeleton, tissue falling off the bones.

HELP ME! HELP MEEEE! it screamed at him.

He slammed the door shut, turned around and vomited. What was this place? All of a sudden, he felt like he was falling again, this time up, into the red sky.

Dearly beloved...we are gathered here today...
and then he was falling back to earth again, landing squarely in another pile of corpses.

He got up, brushed himself off, shaken up yet again. Where the hell...he stopped, and suddenly came to a realization. "Hell. I'm in Hell."