[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

[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.

[apostafuckyou]

Raylan spent probably longer than he should have squinting at this one paper, but eventually he gave up with a frustrated sigh and moved to the nearest (non shadowy) shelf, looking for anything different.

[amygdalae]

This other particular shelf that isn't cleared out contains... more books, it seems. Unlike the Circle books that Inessa found elsewhere, these books are more of journals, actually. The covers don't show any real indication as to who might have written them, but they certainly look like they don't belong in a Circle, this time.

[apostafuckyou]

Raylan made a noise of interest and flipped one open, reading it carefully. He knew they probably didn't have a lot of time, but he would probably get more out of carefully taking in a piece of the puzzle than trying to skim all of it, probably understanding nothing.

whoops (cw: icky stuff)

[amygdalae]

How interesting the contents of the journals are is dependent on how squeamish Raylan feels about autopsy reports. Not that're called as such here, of course - but the pages are filled with notes about the dead being cut up and examined. They're rather clinically detailed, in the total interest of somebody who's making notes of the weather.

There are a few points of interest should Raylan want to read further, but the most apparent thing that can be seen right now is the fact that the some of the names of the examined ones should look familiar. And they should, because those names match the list of names Raylan had just been looking through previously.

[apostafuckyou]

Raylan glanced at the list again, confirming what he thought, and dread filled the pit of his stomach again. "Someone was studyin' dead bodies," he reports, loud enough so everyone else can hear. "I don't think they died of natural causes, either."

[bookish_lioness]

Hermione had sat herself down by the shelf, trying to make sense of the writing and not liking what she was able to make out. Raylan's confirmation didn't do much to help settle her gorge.

"I don't know that there would be enough benefit in studying the bodies of those who just happened to have died of unnatural causes," she murmurs. "Something had clearly been done to them while they were still alive, and the deaths had just been... a matter of circumstance."

image in this tag

[amygdalae]

Reading these records further will shed a bit more light on what these reports are about - there's definitely a lot of mentions of lyrium, for one. Most of these reports will have a format such as this:



The notes themselves has references to how people react to lyrium, how they are each day, how they respond to 'the study' and some random musings by whoever writes these reports (on some there is, for some reason, doodles of a cartoony heart). The circled portions on the human outlines tend to be on areas where the major organs are - something that Hermione may be able to pick up on since she's actually from a time where modern medicine is around.

The most important thing however is that at the end of each report, there's a final word tacked: either 'SUCCESS' or 'FAILURE'.

[justice_is_blond]

Very carefully he's picked up a few shards of red lyrium with some scattered sheets of paper, bringing them over and joining the others at the table.

"I'll give you three guesses as to what they're experimenting with, and the first two don't... Oh Maker." He's caught sight of the notes now, and they're not good. At all. Not like he expected them to be, with the word 'experimenting' and all of the red lyrium creatures outside, but somehow seeing notes makes it worse.

[bookish_lioness]

As much as Hermione tries not to, she can't help wondering just how it is that, without the benefit of widespread in-depth medical and anatomical knowledge, the person who took these notes seemed to know where all the major organs were. If she were more naive, she would have assumed that the circles simply pointed out places where the victims had experienced pain or visible physical abnormalities, but not only is that not cheerier, but she's not nearly that naive.

"They're forcing red lyrium on people," she murmurs, remembering all those creatures who seemed to have the bright red rock growing right out of them. "Planting it in them and watching it grow, like some sort of weed."

Even the Death Eaters hadn't done anything so awful. If one didn't willingly follow along with their ideals, they were merely tortured and/or killed. That seems like a kindness, now.

[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.]

[amygdalae]

The books definitely aren't pleasant reading material, for one.

As for the secret compartment, there's nothing within it, but should he look down he can probably see something glinting back at him, just visible enough from the firelight around the room.

[justice_is_blond]

"Tell me about the books, I'm checking something over here."

Anders holds up a fireball and steps forward, now curious, before bending down to see what's sparkling at him.

[bookish_lioness]

Well that's... cheery.

Raylan answers in her stead, and it's unlikely her murmured response can be heard from where Anders is.

[amygdalae]

What Anders might find is something he's probably rather familiar with - remnants of what once seem to be a vial of sorts, along with very tiny shards of red lyrium scattered about. Nowhere near big enough to cause any sort of effect on anybody, but its still very much there.