NationStates Jolt Archive

OOC: Warning: This thread contains violence, cult-involvement, and drug use, which may be disturbing to some readers.

Characters:

- Victor Ciorbea (Leader and founder of the Black Star)
- Traian Vuia (Victim)
- Lastar Ciargiu (Second-in-Command of the Black Star)
- Detective Kulov
- Michael Voronet (Member of the Black Star)

More characters to come as the story progresses.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Brasov, Romania
Transylvanian Alps
10:22 PM...

Traian Vuia was walking home from a long day's work at a meat-packing plant. A heavy fog covered the city of Brasov, making it impossible for Traian to see more than three meters in front of him. There was an eerie silence, as the city basically shut down after 9 PM, except for the occasional couple of Austrian K-9 Police.

Suddenly, Vuia heard footsteps behind him. He turned around and spoke.

[Translated from Romanian]

Vuia: "Hello? ...Is-is someone there?"

Silence. Vuia blew it off and continued to walk towards his home in the center portion of Brasov. The footsteps behind him could again be heard.

Vuia: "Come out, I've had enough of these games!"

There was a loud thud and Vuia felt a heavy, dull pain on the back of his head before he lost consciousness and hit the brick street...

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Somewhere outside of Brasov, Romania...

Vuia woke up to find himself tied to a chair and seven men wearing cloaks, their faces hidden by their hoods.

[Translated from Romanian]

Vuia: "Where am I?"

Victor Ciorbea: "Vos es in nostrum templum. [You are in our sanctuary.]"

Vuia: "What? I-"

His sentence was cut short as a knife was thrown from across the room and stuck in his bare stomach. Vuia screamed out in pain as the large knife moved slightly in and out of his gut everytime he breathed. Victor Ciorbea walked up to the man and carved the symbol of the Niger Astrum Cult on Vuia's chest, then twisted the long, hooked knife and pulled. Out came was a string of intestine and blood.

Vuia was screaming in agony, but suddenly Victor Ciorbea stopped. A hookah was brought in the candle-lit room and set on the floor. The seven began to smoke an unknown substance to Vuia, but the smokers knew very well what it was -- pure opium lightly dusted with 95% pure heroin.

The men smoked for roughly ten minutes non-stop before standing up. One of the men stood up and revealed a long, shining Bastard Sword. He pressed the side of it against Vuia's neck and pulled the sword to the side, ready to swing.

[Translated from Romanian]

Vuia: "Wait! Don't! I can pay-"

The sword chopped into Vuia's neck. It didn't quite remove the head, but made it almost look like a Pez Dispenser. Vuia gurgled and blood splattered out of his throat and neck and hit the cold concrete floor, which was already blood-stained from previous victims of the Niger Astrum.

Victor took another hit off of the hookah and spoke.

[Translated from Romanian]

Victor: "Vuia, now you are on our dimension as we are. You too are dead as we are. Compello nos, nex."

The dead body of Traian Vuia did nothing, but the members of Niger Astrum hallucinated him speaking to them, giving them invaluable knowledge into the world of the dead.

Soon afterwards, Vuia's body was carried to a pit filled with over a dozen dead bodies. He was tossed inside and then lye was dumped on the bodies to eliminate the stench of death and decay. A light snow began to fall and the Niger Astrum Cult had just begun...

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Brasov, Romania
Transylvanian Alps
8:09 AM...

Detective Rozi Kulov was investigating a series of murders that had been linked to the Niger Astrum Cult. Followed by a seven Romanian Police, the men entered an ancient, abandoned monestary where they found a man in a brown robe, asleep on the cold cobblestone floor, a hookah, a small baggie of opium, a small baggie of heroin, a syringe, a spoon, and a candle next to him.

Detective Rozi Kulov: "Tu acolo! A face nu a mişca! [You there! Don't move!]"

The man was unresponsive. Kulov motioned for two of his men to pick him up. They had drug him about two meters before the man awoke, revealed a long blade from inside his robe and slashed upwards towards one of the policeman's throats, entering below the jaw and making it's way into the policeman's brain.

Kulov and the rest of the policemen rushed the man and knocked the blade out of his hand. Under normal circumstances, they would have shot and killed him, but these were not normal circumstances. There were killers out there who had to be stopped and they needed all the information they could get, as of now, they had none. The man was dragged down to Police Station #7 and locked behind bars, awaiting interrogation. He had been charged with three counts of possession of drug paraphenalia, two counts of possession of an illegal substance, and murder of a government official -- more than enough to have him executed via firing squad.

The air inside the interrogation room was stuffy, cold, and one could smell how ancient it was and how many criminals had sat where Michael Voronet - the man the police had arrested - himself was sitting.

[Translated from Romanian]

Detective Kulov: "Why the drugs? And why murder my officer?"

Michael Voronet: "To bring us closer to the dimension where the secrets of death and life exist."

Detective Kulov: "And where is that dimension?"

Michael Voronet: "Somewhere I could easily take you."

Detective Kulov: "And how would you take me there?"

Michael Voronet: "By destroying your Earthly body and grasping your soul in my hands."

Detective Kulov: "Get this psychopath out of my interrogation room."

Michael Voronet: "You will see the dimension sooner or later, Detective."

Without warning, six soldiers of the OS burst into the room.

OS Soldier: "We have orders to execute this man."

Michael Voronet: "You would be wise to ignore them.

OS Soldier: "Quiet!"

The six soldiers took Voronet by the arms and took him outside into the freezing air. A light snow was falling, indicating change.

Michael Voronet: "Diabolus mos vigilo vos totus quod rector vos quo vos es captus mihi procul is secundus."

Moments after he spoke these words, a cold wind blew and the OS soldiers fired round after round into Voronet's body. He collapsed on the ground, melting white snow into red liquid...


The last picture of Michael Voronet. Taken at the Romanian Police Station.
http://img523.imageshack.us/img523/2757/chik1el8.jpg

Brasov, Romania
Unknown Location
Transylvanian Alps...

Seven men sat in a circle, each with a syringe full of a mixture of pure opium, pure heroin, and pure cocaine. In front of each man was a candle. In the center of the men was a naked man, his hands and feet chained to the cold stone floor. His face had been bloodied by bludgeoning from fists and dull objects.

Now the men were waiting on the Pontifex -- the High Priest of the Niger Astrum to carve the symbol of the Black Star and then execute the man. The Pontifex then entered.

"Ex inpurity adveho nostrum sanctimonia. Ex nex nos adepto vita. Per is typicus EGO thee expedio ex cohibeo de vita. Vestri vitualamen dat nos sanctimonia , vita , quod expedio. May filiolus sufficio nostrum vitualamen quod tribuo nos quis nos should exsisto , quis they volo nos futurus , quis nos cannot careo is vitualamen." [From inpurity comes our purity. From death we get life. With this symbol I thee set free from the confines of life. Your sacrifice gives us purity, life, and clarity. May the gods suffice our sacrifice and grant us what we should be, what they want us to be, what we cannot be without this sacrifice.]

The Pontifex withdrew a blade from underneath his robe and held it high, chanting verses and prayers from thousands of years earlier, when Latin was the lingua franca. He held the blade in the air, showed it to the gods above, and looked down at the man, sitting in the center of the floor. The men around him sat, patiently, waiting for the moment. They believed that, through the death of one, they could get to a different plain of existence, a plain that could give them an even greater understanding of both life and death. The Pontifex said his final words. "Vos es in nostrum templum." [You are in our sanctuary.] and thrust the knife down, into the helpless victim. A squeal of pain echoed in the concrete chamber but vibrated nowhere else. He carved the symbol of the cult, Black Sun, into the man's chest and released the men from their patience. They lifted the syringes, still warm, and thrust the needles into their veins as the Pontifex finally killed the sacrifice. The high would kick in just as the victim's life ceased, allowing them grasp his escaping soul. There, they would speak to the dead. The Ponitfex had chosen a different method most times to kill the sacrifices and end their lives. The last one had been decapitated but this one was different, he would die differently. The symbol had been carved on his chest with the center directly over the man's heart. Continuing his speech, the Pontifex dug deep with his knife and tore a hole in the man's chest, his heart beating within its cavity. The Pontifex reached in and ripped fourth the heart, it beating still in his hands. As it ceased to beat, the sacrifice was complete and the injections began...

Brasov, Romania
Transylvanian Alps
The Black Church...

Sunday...

Detective Kulov sat in the back of the ancient Church, listening to the Priest speak of a variety of things and trying to shake the frigid cold off of him.

[Translated from Romanian]

Priest: "...though the times of ritual sacrifice are now over, there is still an inherent urge within the hearts and minds of the Romanian people to take the worship of God to an extent far greater than it should be..."

Another murder had taken place in Brasov. The Detective had already caught word of it before he had decided to attend Sunday Church, but decided to listen to the thoughts of the Priest before he went to work on this one. The death of the newest victim of what the Romanian police were calling "The Black Star" had been linked to the murder of Traian Vuia and the arrest of Michael Voronet and was getting more and more complicated by the hour. Symbolism the police could not interpret was piling up on Kulov's desk and it was beginning to affect him psychologically -- pentagrams, black suns, geometric shapes: all carved into the victims' bodies.

József Koszta had his heart ripped out in the night, while Kulov was sleeping. The Detective was beginning to feel a bit sick, but was not sure why. His skin crawled, he was sweating, and his anxiety was through the roof. He wondered if the case was getting to him or if it was just some passing illness, a temporary state.

Kulov was now back at Police Station #7 where he was looking at pictures of the body. The sign of The Black Star was barely visible through all the mess and blood on Koszta's body, but was definitely still there. Now they had an official multiple-murder case -- a first-time thing for the quiet, isolated city of Brasov. This time, the murder had occured in Bran Castle, on top of the Tâmpa Hill.

The Black Church
http://i75.photobucket.com/albums/i310/underground504/Biserica_neagra_1.jpg

Now the Detective had decided to visit Bran Castle and take a look around. Predictably, a large crowd had grown outside the Church and OS-Polizei were preventing them from doing too much other than quietly and politely asking questions. That or face a charge of Contesting an Officer of the OS. Kulov snuck up the stairs into the grand building and entered the Burial Chamber, where the murder had taken place last night. His anxiety spiked the moment he spotted the naked body in the center of the Burial Chamber. He reached into his pocket and revealed a small bottle of pills. Removing one, he popped it into his mouth and dry-swallowed it. In a few minutes, the pill would take effect and Kulov would calm down greatly.

The Detective spotted something behind a tomb -- a small, white, long, round object in the shape of a pen. When Kulov came closer, he saw what it really was - a syringe. He picked it up and noticed there was still a small amount of blood inside.

[Translated from Romanian]

Detective Kulov: "Sergeant, come over here and take this syringe down to forensics. I want to know what was in it and whose blood this is. We either have a wandering junkie or a piece of the puzzle."

Oddly, Kulov had paid a visit to the Bran Castle the day before to have a look around.

[Incomplete]