[CLOSED] PLAYER PLOT: The Ashes Underneath His Nails

[amygdalae]

WHO: Jim Kirk, Hermione Granger, Adelaide Leblanc, Herian Amsel, Anders, Inessa Serra, Raylan Gibbs, Ciri
WHAT: The Inquisition sends a group of agents to uncover the truth behind a string of mysterious disappearances.
WHEN: Kingsway 1st - 8th
WHERE: Emprise du Lion
NOTES: Plotting post is here - feel free to post in there still for queries and concerns and further stuff where needed. Warnings for blood, violence, talks about death, experimentation horror, abomination-related stuff etc and eventual on-screen child death. ALSO no tag order - just respond when you feel like you should and I'll try to hit it back if it feels appropriate!!

QUICK JUMP LINKS TRAVELLING TO FROMAGE & FROMAGE GENERAL THREAD ROUTE INVESTIGATION SEEKRIT CAVE ENTRANCE INTO THE SEEKRIT CAVE CAVE INVESTIGATION - LEFT TEAM CAVE INVESTIGATION - RIGHT TEAM KID ABOMINATION THREAD BACK TO SKYHOLD

(—he remembers the chill of the frost and snow biting at bare skin, its usual pure white now tinged a horrid pink from the blood on his hands. He's far away from them now, the danger and the pain and everything else, but the blood will forever be on his hands no matter how much he tries to wash it away. His father had been right all along. He truly was a monster of the greatest kind.)

QUEST: THE ASHES UNDERNEATH HIS NAILS (PART I) The message had come swiftly, the letter itself hastily written with a shaky hand. The request itself was simple; a plea for help from a village at the outskirts of Emprise du Lion, whose people have been mysteriously disappearing over the last few weeks. Considering the ongoing civil unrest that's still transpiring in Orlais the Inquisition made its decision to send out a team of agents to look into this message and see exactly what was going on. The eight agents tasked with the mission were given enough time to prepare for the trip ahead. They would all meet up first at the Inquisition camp set within the Emprise and from there travel for about a day until they reached where their destination was - Fromage, a quaint little village that rested at the outskirts of the area. From that point on, it was up to the agents of the Inquisition to solve this ongoing mystery. The mission: to discover the truth behind these disappearances - and to stop it, if possible.

Comments

CAVE INVESTIGATION - RIGHT TEAM

[amygdalae]

[OOC Note: To make it easier I'll put sub threads in here for the different rooms; have your character comment into them and I will respond as needed. Multiple characters are fine for each room!]

SUPPLIES

[amygdalae]

Stepping in, its clear that this room feels more like a treasure horde of stolen items than an actual supply room. Littered across the place are nothing but belongings and items that most likely belonged to the people that have disappeared - crops that were for sale now left in a corner to rot; jars stacked at the side, some of them broken and ruined. Amazingly there's also what seems like the remains of a broken wagon that had somehow managed to be brought in and left in here as well.

A lot of the items here simply seems to be nothing but items that had been stashed here and left to rot, but there are still a few that are of note: a collection of broken jars, a chest and several crates. The wagon itself might have something to be found as well, if one decides to look there. Or maybe not. Only one way to find out.

[justice_is_blond]

He's not sure there's anything important here. It may be a waste of time. Then again, Hawke and Jonas both had habits of rooting through everything. Sometimes it had paid off. Sometimes they'd all had to carry torn trousers in their packs so Hawke could, well, hawk them to someone who just needed the material.

It's with this thought that Anders begins a general search of the room, starting with climbing into the wagon carefully, weighing each step so that he doesn't plunge his foot through the boards.

[universal_charm]

"Check for hidden compartments," Kirk suggested, coming with Anders, but instead of getting up into the wagon he went down to his belly to look beneath. "They seem like the type of group to do something like that."

He took out a small knife he had on him, reaching up to tap at the bottom of the wagon, listening for a more hollow sound.

[justice_is_blond]

He looks back at Kirk with a thoughtful frown. "The wagon seems a little obvious for that, doesn't it? I'd look behind the rotting crops first. But it's worth a try." His motions are similar to Kirk's, staff now carefully thudding on the floorboards of the wagon as he carefully makes his way deeper in.

[universal_charm]

"Sometimes the most obvious place is the last place people look precisely because it's obvious," he pointed out. "And if it's something delicate, leaving it among something rotting could damage it."

Kirk grunted as he wiggled further beneath, turning on his back and doing a sort of reverse army crawl.

[amygdalae]

The wagon fortunately (or unfortunately?) doesn't contain any secret compartments of any sort - for all intents and purposes it just seems like a normal, albeit broken, wagon.

What is of interest is something that's at the end of the wagon; its a large, rectangular shape, covered up with a faded Templar tapestry. Near the bottom there seems to be a small lump that sticks out a little too much to be natural.

[justice_is_blond]

After a fair bit of thunking, Anders shrugs.

"I'm not sure that there's any compartments. You can climb in if you--" He nearly trips over something as he tries to step out, catching himself on an old wagon edge. It's a Templar tapestry, and he's not sure he wants to touch it as a mage.

"Would you pick this up? Carefully. I'd not be surprised if it's rigged to harm a mage, or sense magic, so use the hand that's furthest from your shard."

[universal_charm]

Kirk rolls out from beneath the wagon, popping his head up, frowning at the noise and tone. Slowly he worked his way to his feet, putting his knife in his shard hand and coming to where Anders indicated.

"Know that if something happens to my hand, you have to explain to my cat while I can only pet him half as much," he warned, licking his lips and taking a quick breath before snatching the tapestry away.

[amygdalae]

The tapestry is pulled away without anything happening, but it does reveal what had been underneath it--a cage. A rather large one, actually, big enough to hold some sort of decently-sized animal.

...or maybe something else, since where the lump had been is actually a stuffed nug plush toy. Looking better at the cage reveals a few other things as well that have been placed inside the cage - a couple more children's toys and some books.

RECORDS

[amygdalae]

This room feels strangely sparser than the rest, as if it had already been half emptied or perhaps half filled. Most of the makeshift shelves here are barren save for a few, and even those do not contain many books. The place is only half lit as well, with only some of the torches lit up and all of the candles extinguished.

Still, there are still things here, and they are probably worth looking into: namely the shelves (the emptied ones and the ones that still have things in them) and the tables. Also the fact that the torches had been extinguished is certainly a strange thing too. Maybe that's something to look into.

[apostafuckyou]

"Yeah, that ain't creepy at all."

Raylan raised a hand, trying to relight one of the torches with magic, careful to choose one far away from the papers. He was itching to go investigate the records, figure out what the hell was going on here, but they would need light before he could do it.

[amygdalae]

There's the quiet fwoosh that sounds out when the torch lights up, the new flame giving more light to the room in general.

...for the most part it seems like nothing has really changed, but there is something of an unnatural shadow along the wall where the newly relit torch is propped at.

[apostafuckyou]

Raylan still didn't like it, but he wanted the records, so he carefully lit the rest of the torches, one by one, and just ignored the weird shadows. If the light wasn't enough to be able to read the papers, then he might acknowledge them.

[amygdalae]

Each of the torches gets relit with no fuss at all - I mean, what do you expect, they're not magical veilfire torches or whatever - and the room becomes properly illuminated once more now that it has sufficient light. And now that Raylan can actually see the entire room what greets him is... well.

Nothing much, really.

Majority of the shelves are indeed barren, clearly having been emptied out or perhaps never been used at all. It's a bit hard to tell at this point. There are a few shelves that do have some books and journals on them so that might be of interest. Though with the whole place lit up what is now clearly visible is a gap set between two already empty shelves. Upon closer inspection it also seems to be the source of the unnatural shadow.

[apostafuckyou]

Nope. Raylan ignored that gap as purposefully as possible, going to a table with some papers scattered and sifting through them, trying to discern what they were and if they might help them with anything that was in here.

[amygdalae]

The table that Raylan picks certainly has more than a few things that could be of interest - looking through them shows it to be apparently a list of names and basic particulars - stuff like nationality, species (mostly human, if not all), and if they're a mage or not (majority of them aren't).

In addition, there's also two dates tacked to most of the people on this list: strangely, the time between the two dates for each person don't stretch any longer than a week at most.

[apostafuckyou]

Raylan scanned one of the papers, tapping his fingers restlessly against the back of it. He had a bad feeling about those dates.

He tried to identify a pattern in all the ones that stood out for any reason -- the nonhumans, the ones without dates or with longer times between the dates, the mages.

[amygdalae]

There's no real pattern to the people that have been taken, it pretty much all seems completely random. The dates, too, though more often than not it seems like there certain dates in the first column that correspond to more people. But other than that, there's not much else to see from this list.

Still, its not like that's the only thing to find. Perhaps Raylan might want to continue to look through to see if there's anything else that may hold his interest.

[justice_is_blond]

"Something's going to come at us from there whether we look in it or not," Anders mutters. The muttering is more to keep from alerting it than anything else, though whatever's there has to know. And there has to be something there. There's always something, even if it's just a giant spider.

Just. Hah. That's hilarious.

He exhales heavily and casts a barrier around everyone before deliberately walking toward it. It's stupid. But at least they won't be ambushed. And maybe, somehow, his luck won't go as it usually does and there won't be anything there.

[amygdalae]

Contrary to what everyone seems to be assuming, the strange shadow hides... nothing disturbing, really. What is there is apparently some sort of secret compartment carved into the walls itself that was clearly made to hold something.

--but whatever that something is, its impossible to know now - its been apparently cleaned out as well, like the majority of this room.

[justice_is_blond]

He waits a few moments despite not immediately seeing anything dangerous. Better to be safe and all that stuff. Nothing comes at him, or anyone. Feeling a little silly for his worrying, Anders leans in to examine the secret compartment, looking for any markings that may give something away.

"There at least used to be something here," he calls to the group. "Is anyone else finding anything?"

[bookish_lioness]

Hermione has been hanging back in the room, still not entirely recovered from the fights leading up to all this. She's too stubborn to say as much, though, so she'll use the premise of spotting books on a shelf as an excuse to carefully walk over and set herself on the floor, masking a wince as she brings one of the books down with her. It looks like some sort of hand-written journal, and she frowns a little as she tries unsuccessfully to make herself vaguely comfortable and opens it up to a random page.

"There are some books over here," she calls when she hears Anders' voice. She'll tell him what kind of books they are once she reads enough to know for sure.


[OOC- Not being super specific with the extent of the injuries since the fighting thread is ongoing and I'm not sure if anyone would have offered/had the time to heal whatever injuries she got, but either way, she's not looking all that great. Except that she's fine. Totally fine. Hush.]

[universal_charm]

Have you ever walked into a room and thought - Something bad is going to happen in here? That was what Kirk thought when they reached the room, shivering as he stepped inside. Why were the torches out? And why were the shelves mostly empty? That spoke of pre-planning, or at least a desperate attempt to escape. It meant that someone either knew they were coming, or something else had forced them out. Probably quickly.

Making a decision, he made for the nearest shelf, shaking open an extra sack he had brought and taking what books he could see. "If no one else objects, I say we take what we can and leave. Staying here to long is probably bad for our health."

mostly an ooc notice

[amygdalae]

[Kirk is free to take whatever he wishes - the books that are left behind here will be records of a sort. Pretty much everything of interest in this room has been looked at by other characters, but feel free to continue threading IC stuff if you want to.]