Covered In Blood And Surrounded By Spirits is a Forum Quest run by The LD Man and hosted by Sufficient Velocity.com. The quest is set in the world of Hellsing 10 years before canon, and based on the conceit that there's a lot more supernatural action going around across the world than Britain and the Vatican fighting Nazi vampires. At the beginning of the Quest, the players voted on what country their supernatural-fighting organization would be located in.
They chose Japan, a land filled with spirits (who aren't necessarily friendly) and monsters (and you can become one if you're not careful). Which is why the Japanese government found it necessary to found an organization dedicated to appeasing and controlling the various Kami, Youkai and other spiritual entities of Japan lest they run completely rampant. And to lead this illustrious organization, a young, prodigious priestess by the name of Kochika Renko was elected, a task she took up with fervour. Now, the newly christened Kōan 9-kanote stands as Japan’s first and last line of defense against the supernatural horrors that plague the nagtion.
Like most dynasty quests, the readers decide on what actions Kōan 9-ka take each year after which the Dice decide how (un)successful those actions are, meaning that no one, not even The LD Man himself, can truly predict what will happen. Which is probably why the quest ended up becoming something like "Touhou Project with guns".
It began
on July 9th, 2015, and was ultimately abandoned two years later.
Covered In Blood And Surrounded By Spirits contains examples of:
- Badass Family: Kōan 9-ka's best combat assets are gathered in the Renko family, which consists of:
- Kochika herself, the leader of a monster-fighting organization and capable of shooting holy lasers from her arm
- her wife Nagare, a kami with power over water
- adopted daughter Akuma, the merger of an oni and a priestess some hundred and fifty years ago
- adopted daughter Miyako, a purified shikome
- biological daughter Aimi, who is currently an infant but is projected be able to use more magic than any human in Japanese history
- Crapsack World: It is Hellsing, after all. Only that the problems that plague England are found pretty much everywhere else, and each region also has their own share of supernatural horrors.
- Cute Bruiser: See Badass Family, and add in Kyong Na Rae, a ten-year-old with some vampiric attributes and a serious hate-on towards actual vampires.
- Did We Just Have Tea with Cthulhu?: Kochika has personally spoken with Izanami herself. It wasn't particularly pleasant, but at least she survived.
- Divine Date: When various supernatural organizations began offering Political Marriage Offers to Kochika, the local Kami decided to offer up Nagare Shizukana to help her socialize with humans, not caring that both participants were girls. Luckily for Nagare, Kochika happened to be a closeted homosexual herself.
- Everyone Has Standards: Kochika's perfectly happy making equipment from monster corpses, including ones that look like evil babies, but draws the line at a ritual that requires starving a dog to death.
- Heel–Face Turn: Miyako’s first appearance was as a monstrous Yomotsu-no-shikome, but Denbe as a Buddha managed to purify her. A similar event happened in Akuma's backstory, in which an oni warlord and a human priestess merged into a penitent oni monstergirl.
- Fantasy Kitchen Sink: Includes everything from Aztec gods to the Pied Piper's flute.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Denbe moves to pull this off but achieves enlightenment and becomes a Buddha instead.
- Hero of Another Story: In addition to Hellsing, and for certain values of "hero" Iscariot, the US, South America, Africa, Protestant Europe, Russia, and China are all known to have their own organizations fighting the good fight against the supernatural. The Tribe, the African group, has also managed to avert most of the Rwanda genocide, take over the Rwandan government, and unite Tutsi and Hutu in the face of disaster. Oh, and Santa Claus attacked Millennium, but was driven off.
- Power of the Sun: Kochika’s left arm is blessed by Amaterasu. It shoots lasers. This blessing is passed on to her child.
- Random Number God: As a Dynasty Quest, several aspects of this story have been decided by the throw of a die. Examples include, but are not limited to: Kochika’s Sexuality, Denbe achieving Enlightenment, if Santa Claus actually exists and if said Santa Claus is currently locked in a battle with Millenium.
- Really 700 Years Old: Both Akuma and Miyako are a lot older than their appearences suggest, with the former being born more than a century ago and the latter being an unknown (but likely more than 16) number of years old.
- Single-Target Sexuality: Nagare has this for Kochika, as kami are not concerned with unimportant things like ‘gender’.
- Transparent Closet: Kochika attributes the weird effects (like hitching of breath, lack of concentration and perverted thoughts) that being around certain female spirits has on her to a “Kami Aura”. It fools no one except herself.
- True Companions: A critical success on a diplomacy roll led to Kochika becoming this with Integra.
