Entry tags:

Simple Gifts [Closed]

WHO: Galadriel, Thranduil, Solas, Myrobalan, Merrill, Kitty, Lakshmi, Teren, Marcoulf, Jang, Obi-Wan, and Anders
WHAT: A trip to a perfectly normal Chantry in the middle of nowhere.
WHEN: Current.
WHERE: The Island of Alamar, Ferelden.
NOTES: Current warnings, to be updated: Graphic Descriptions of Gore

The Abbey on the White Cliff

Travel to the Abbey on the White Cliff is no easy matter. While it stands not far from Amaranthine, the waters between the mainland and the island shores are a wicked confluence of eddies and razor sharp rock. The rain is ever-present here and the wind moves unpredictably at the best of times. Ships of size cannot travel easily to the island of Alamar and small boats are rarely steady through the choppy water. Fortunately, as the Inquisition approaches, the world takes some pity on them and the waters seem to still and calm. The clouds linger but, at the very least, they don't open above them until they have reached the land.

The island is a grey affair, all rocks and scrub and damp. The village, an austere looking outcropping of buildings, is entirely made from the local stone and, were it not for the red clay roofing, would blend into the landscape seamlessly. Very few people have strayed into the rain to greet the Inquisition and, without the voices to echo off the stone, most sound is drowned in the lapping of waves and the heavy fall of rain. As a result of the weather and the lack of citizens, the town has the general quality of a graveyard.

The merchants who work the docks are affable enough and, after unloading their haul and securing it somewhere a bit drier, offer to take the Inquisition up to the Abbey proper. The rain slows before long and the merchants lead the Inquisition to the main roads and, let them on their way. Fortunately, the Island is not terribly large and, even walking, it will take only a few hours to arrive at the far side of it.

As the party leaves the village and the shore, the island landscape opens before them. Sloping moors give way to periodic outcroppings of rock and, against the horizon and the far end of the island, there rests a dark forest of pines. The Abbey on the White Cliff stands at the far side, at the top of the hill and overlooking the waves. The road they travel is an easy one, well worn, and the buildings come into view long before they reach them--they stand several stories tall, made of the same stone as the village. They are moss-covered and have the look of an old building that has been questionably kept--at least, from a distance.

The closer one gets to the buildings, the more obvious the additions and repairs become. Windows that have no business holding glass have had colorful windows inset to them. The doors are heavy, wooden, and new. The ironwork on the walls is polished and unworn by the rain. There are no torches lit but, once the Inquisition members have reached the doors, they open promptly.

They are greeted by a Chantry Sister with a bright smile and rosy cheeks and, without hesitation, the lot of them are welcomed into the Abbey.

OOC:

Hey guys! So I plan on aggressively GMing this one. Basically I want to run this like D&D, or as near as I can manage.

The location threads below are available for single player/two player exploration, I will be tagging you with information based on where you go or what you do, but if you want to do a bigger thread please just use the team threads at the bottom. That way if you all decide you want to check out the [INSERT LOCATION HERE] and it leads you to [DIFFERENT LOCATION] I can move you along without changing threads.

Because of your proficiencies, different characters will have advantages in different areas/while talking to different people, so groups are best. I will also be PMing your character journal periodically with any information that your character may have picked up on that nobody else would.

The NPCs are available for talking to or questioning by any number of people. Their general locations are in their thread headers so you can travel there as a crew or ask me to send them at you, if you so desire.

Feel free to do new top-levels if you guys really want, I am just here to try and make this fun.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Right," Teren mutters, and steps away from the bloodstains, shaking out her feet like a disgruntled cat as she does so. It's not that she's oblivious: it's just that, as with most people, Anders is annoyed often and she doesn't care. What she does care about is not disrupting the crime scene, hence her easy cooperation and the way she now scans the room, looking for anything Anders might have missed.

Teren's arrival has dragged in a reasonable amount of water--the blood behind the desk thins and pools with it, making a relatively small pool seem massive and dramatic by comparison. The water creeps under the desk and toward the window. The floorboards creak as the two of them walk around the puddle and move out of the way, attempting to keep from disrupting things more than they have already.

The chair lies broken on the floor before the desk, shards of a broken glass pepper the floorboards around it. The matching decanter is overturned on the floor, contents soaking into the cracks of the wood. There is a single sliding hand-print on the desk, it is wrought in blood and trails toward the ground by the window. The glass on the desk is filled with drink but remains full.

He frowns at the very short trail.

"Did you see anything outside? A body, I mean. There's nothing in the hallway, and there would be if they went through there; there's too much dust for a cleaning not to be noticeable. So it's window or a secret passage."

The latter is certainly possible in an older place like this. Anders starts rapping on the walls lightly, listening for hollow places, while waiting for her answer. Frankly, it's dark and wet out there. He doesn't expect anyone would have seen anything.

"Nothing outside, that I saw--" Teren begins, but her eyes catch on the floor near the desk. Wrapping her braid up behind her head again, she pins at loosely and stoops to squint at a mark in the wood. "A blade," she muses, and scans around again, searching for-- yes, there. Pointing at the doorframe, she stands to run her fingers along the indent of another weapon, likely something swung. "Both were armed."
After contemplating the mark a moment, Teren turns to look at Anders. "Do we know anyone who wields an axe?" Almost everyone has a dagger.

An axe. Anders frowns.

"No. I think Marcoulf could, but I don't think he brought one. We're a lot of mages, you, Kitty, Marcoulf, and then Obi-wan with his flashy glowy sword."

There is a strange moment, then, as they speak and stand within the walls of the library. The air shifts--it does not become unwelcoming, not precisely, but something within the bounds of it moves aside. It changes goes from an embracing sort of warmth to a dead heat and begins to chill. The glow of the candle, perpetual and even, flickers and seems to withdraw toward the wick. That it burned strangely at all was hardly apparent until, at once, it ceased in its extraordinary nature.

The window Teren had entered through rattles and there is a sound outside of it, a furious, impossible sound both gutteral and grinding, immediate and distant. It passes with a hiss and a slide of rain against the windows. The rain is suddenly so much louder and the protection of the walls seems so much less.

Cold creeps in in a distracted way and the candle flame begins to thin, rising high toward the ceiling, stretching out. It will not be long before it snaps and extinguishes itself.

The dead girl in the chest. Ghosts are real. Teren has met one.
By the time the moment is over, she's pressed back against the doorframe, staring at the open window through which That Sound was unmistakeable despite the accompanying rain.

"Anders, what was that," she asks in a soft voice, almost gentle with fear. He'd better know.

"Um." His voice is hushed, as if talking any louder will get them murdered, and he's back against the wall as well. He stares at it, trying to put anything together and coming up with nothing.

"I don't know, Teren. I've no idea what's going on," he finally admits. "People are dying, people are getting miracles, fire doesn't work right, wisps don't, magic doesn't, what even does that to a candle?" It's a whole list and it doesn't add up. "If it was just magic having issues that would be one thing, but fire..."

Darkness, cold, silence. He associates that most with Templars and Circles, but that's not relevant here.

"Some sort of Despair demon, maybe? I really don't have what I need to guess well. I've not heard of this before."

There are some things you don't fuck with. Not when there are two of you, and the thing can't be stabbed, and is clearly, ever-presently fucking supernatural.

"...perhaps.... we should go," Teren murmurs, glancing meaningfully back toward the window. The woman who will launch herself at a Harvester and cut it to ribbons while a mage-made blizzard rages around her really, really does not want to tangle with an invisible predator.

The candle on the table goes dark, extinguished by nothing more than a stray breeze from the window, and they are left in the cold, quiet library. There is a stillness here that is unnatural, that hearkens to a tomb, and before either of them move into the room and away from the walls, there is a soft sound that echoes down the hallway.
"When I forgot you...were you sad? Mad?"
It is nonverbal, but not metallic, not grinding as the sound outside the window was. It is a quiet sound, not unlike a sob or the muffled notes of a voice through a doorway. There is a breath, deep and gasping, and then the sound of something very heavy, quite probably metallic hitting the ground and being dragged over the wood.
"...most are forgotten after their deaths--it felt like dying?"
Whatever it is at the end of the hall, it's coming.

"Why? Maker's sake, why?" The window is very tempting, but at the same time whatever's being dragged might be the ax that killed someone and might help them finally figure out even a fraction of this.

He glances between Teren and the door and the window, trying to decide. Fear suggests he just run for it. But there are people dying here, and maybe they can stop it.

"Maybe if you get by the door you can slit its throat. If it has a throat."

For all her courage, Teren is ready to book it. But perhaps it's Anders' stubbornness that inspires hers, and, not about to run if he isn't, Teren nods.
Knives out, she slips over to the doorway, watching it closely, hands shaking in spite of herself as she listens to the approach of... whatever it is. Occasionally she glances back to Anders. If this is it, if they die here, Nate's going to blame her.

The sound approaches--there are footsteps but they are strange. They are hollow, too light to be bare footfalls but metallic and with heft behind them. They sound far off, almost, insubstantial in a curious way. The metal that drags against the floorboards, however, that does not sound insubstantial--the weight of it is much larger than an axe, much larger than it should be, and the sound fills the hallway. It nearly drowns out the pounding rain.

For just a moment, just outside the doorway, the footfalls halt and the dragging slows. There is stillness for just a second before whatever lingers there turns and moves into the room nearest the Library.
"...it is the deepest shadow, the oldest fear--"
If they should lean to check, they will see the barest hints of it as it passes into the next room, a dark and ragged shape with limbs long and gnarled, trailing as it vanishes into the open doorway. Behind it, it drags a long bar of twisted metal that glimmers just barely in the darkness. It scrapes the floor terribly but, somehow, fails to leave a mark.

He slips to the doorway when it doesn't come in, catching a glance of something that looks like a tree. Jonas' stories come back to him about demons in the trees, and he looks back at Teren, trying to do the mental math. There's no mark left, but the mark on the desk was solid; they'd hate fire but surely one sylvan couldn't take out all of the fire.

"It doesn't have a throat," he finally says weakly. "It looks like a sylvan. But one sylvan can't do this. I don't think. And I'm... I'm not sure it's actually here. It might be some sort of memory. I've seen it in the Deep Roads."

She probably has too, for that matter. Sounds and visions that weren't really happening now, but had happened before.

"Teren? I think it's time to do something very stupid."

She has, but that doesn't mean she likes them. A fucking sylvan??
"Anders," Teren hisses, turning wild-eyed to face him, "you'd-- I'd--" It's rare that she's at a loss for words, but Anders seems calm enough to keep her from launching straight out the window.
"...if this goes wrong I'll gut you," she growls, and creeps out the door after the thing, stepping soundlessly toward the room into which it disappeared.

The hallway is loud for the sound of the rain out the open door and colder now that there is no candle light to draw any part of it out of the pitch darkness. They move forward, Teren ahead and Anders behind, and the sound of rain all but covers the sound of their travels.

The room is has entered is not unknown to Anders, he has already searched it and its contents. As they approach, however, there is a resounding crash and that same gutteral grinding sound as something is flung into the far wall. The growl shifts and twists until it is a shriek, too high pitched to be anything living, and then fades into a gasping, rasping breath.

As they move closer, the temperature plummets. The water on Teren and in her clothing begins to freeze.

There is no part of Anders that wants to be here. This is The Worst in so many ways, and the shriek doesn't help matters.

"Somehow it's not you that I'm scared of," he mutters. Despite the alarming amount of injuries that seem to happen around her, he's certain she's not going to hurt him. The other thing, though...

"There are a lot of hurt people here," he finally says. "If that thing gets to them, they don't have a chance."

Feeling the abrupt sensation of the rain in her hair and clothing freezing to her skin, Teren backs up rapidly, almost falling over herself and Anders' words falling on deaf ears in her haste to get away from the thing.
"Demon," she says weakly, stumbling stiffly back out into the hall, rapidly bending her elbows and knees to ensure they don't get stuck straight out, shivering from the cold, "it's a demon, Anders we're not going to fight a demon the two of us, not a despair demon. Those sons of bitches fly." And fuck that, frankly.
"We'll come back--" she decides, and, grabbing Anders by the arm, tries to haul him back in the direction from whence they came. nopenopenopenopenopenope

The two of them dart back into the library and go entirely unnoticed by whatever it was that just vanished into the room next door. The dash across the room is silent with Teren leading the way and, outside, there is only the sound of the pouring rain to greet them. The way is clear if this is where they desire to go.

He has a feeling that what they're running from is important... but he has a feeling that looking alone would be fatal. And finding out only to die would be a waste, so he lets Teren pull him. Running is rarely a solution, but often it's the only way to survive.

"I don't feel good about this," he whispers as he waits for her to get out the window first. "People might pay for us running." But they're just two. If it is a demon, they need more people, more support.

"Nothing about this is good," Teren hisses back over the rain-- "if we're coming back, we need more." She'll keep telling herself that as long as she has to.

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Simple Gifts [Closed]

The Abbey on the White Cliff

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