Simple Gifts [Closed]

[laurenande]

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.

Comments

[whiskeyandbrimstone]

Jang looks around the flooded basement, the green light from her spell mixing with the blue from Obi-wan's saber. "What in the hell...This is some kinda basement, how could it flood like this? Are we...I don't know, below an aquafier? We're not below sea level, I know that much."

Jang carefully wades through the water, her legs already starting to go numb from the cold. She looks through a doorway, trying to pick out any sign of how long this has been going on. "I've seen this before, but like...in New Orleans, houses built on riverbanks, not on top of cliffs."

[hello_there]

"Better not to ask what exactly we're wading through," Obi-Wan opines, grimly. Water, or worse, there's no telling in this darkness. And anything could be in it; he focuses, opening himself to the Force. This would be a fine time to be dragged underwater by a suspiciously-timed aquatic predator, "You might not like the answer."

Still, Obi-Wan wades gamely onwards. Disgusting, creepy, or otherwise, he's certainly not going to abandon them now. Not when he's already gotten his pants wet.

"I have a—"

He stops, head tilting at the too-quiet echo, I have a bad feeling about this every sense sharpening with the burst of adrenaline that comes with the realization that they're not alone.

"There's something else here. Can you hear it?"

[esquive]

The water is bitter cold, hip high and black in the darkness. He doesn't want to think about what this is doing to his clothes or how long it'll take to dry by the abbey's failing fires. Instead he hitches his sword higher, keeps his dagger hefted out of the water and--

Pauses. Listens. Waits.

"I don't hear anything."

[laurenande]

Time moves strangely in the dark places of the world...here it moves more strangely than most. Once they have stepped from the ladder, through the first stone archway, there is a pervasive sense of wrongness that comes over the lot of them. The whispering ceases, becomes the trickling sound of water and the quiet rush of the ocean far below the Abbey.

Obi-Wan and Jang

[laurenande]

The hall stretches ahead into the darkness and, at once, it seems much longer than it had before. The distance is abruptly far too great to be contained within a building. The black goes on forever, both below and around them, and the only beacon in the darkness is the glow of the saber Obi-Wan holds aloft. The cold has dissipated, if only just, but it has been replaced with a queerness that is difficult to quantify. There is a quality to this place now that, just a moment before, it had been lacking. The ground is unsteady, not unlike walking on stretched fabric, and everything seems to shift toward and away from them as they move ahead into the dark.

Behind them both Anders and Marcoulf have vanished and, beyond their missing comrades, so too has the ladder.

Re: Obi-Wan and Jang

[whiskeyandbrimstone]

"Oh pissing HELL." Jang swears as the hallway seems to stretch outwards. She looks behind her and seeing no one, turns back to Obi-Wan. "Shit...We lost the others. And the ladder."

She reaches behind her and pulls out her rifle, the green light still dancing above her head. "And yes, I did hear something before everything went nuts. Any thoughts? I'm a bit out of my depth here. Normally the things I fight are a lot more violent." She pauses for a moment, thinking. "Mostly."

[hello_there]

"I'm not convinced we're fighting at all, just yet," Obi-Wan replies, standing very still, lifting his lightsaber warily against the encroaching black, turning to "It must be... some kind of an illusion. Or a trap."

Or something else. If he doesn't sound confident, it's because he isn't.

"It's some kind of presence. Perhaps a spirit, or a demon. But we won't find any answers just standing around— Let's go."

[whiskeyandbrimstone]

"Lead the way. But it's no spirit, trust me on that. This place is...the opposite of haunted. The fade is completely empty. Like, worryingly so. I've never seen it like that before."

"Could be a trap though...I mean, if it wants to keep us down here, this works. Not all traps are deadly after all."

[laurenande]

They walk forward slowly, the whispers here are louder than before, layered and complex, in voices a hundred strong. They echo with the sloshing of the water and ultimately they sound like the crashing waves outside. It is a dull roar, muted in the hall, but a roar nonetheless.
"There, and be quick about it--"
In the distance there is a hall to the left, it is the first door for quite some time and the only one for a long ways afterward. The voices in that room are hushed but clearer, as if they were whispering intentionally.
"Clean up the mess before you leave, I cannot abide a lack of tidiness."
The saber and the card light the world around the two with ease, but there are few obstacles beyond the stretch of grey walls and the deep water. Though, as they walk, it does begin rising. It moves at a trickle and eventually settles about their waists.

[hello_there]

Obi-Wan stops, hesitates as they move, cocking his head slightly as if listening before continuing on. After a few minutes of moving together through the numbing cold, struggling against the weight of water, he speaks.

"You're right, these aren't spirits. They're echoes," He says it wish more confidence, even distracted as he is, than he'd proclaimed them to be spirits, "Or, perhaps memories. The question is, are we hearing what has happened, or that will happen?"

[whiskeyandbrimstone]

"There's a very old story from my world, Oedipus. About a guy who hears a prophecy, and does everything in his power to avoid it. But it turns out that in trying to avoiding it, he caused it. Bit of a mind twister that one, once you start getting into seeing the future." Jang sighs, keeping an eye on their rear, listening to the whispers in the dark.

"I don't know if this is prophecy or something messing with our heads, but my general rule when dealing with someone who can read the future is just ignore it. Or roll dice. Can't predict what you're gonna do if it's random, right?" She gives another forced laugh, trying to keep her breathing slow as she wades through this cold dark water.

Anders

[laurenande]

As Anders crosses the threshold into the basement, his is a terrifying disconnect. Both Jang and Obi-Wan step down before him and vanish into the darkness. They are enveloped as they move, as if they have stepped through a veil of shadow and crossed into another place entirely. The light from the saber remains, casting a blue glow down the length of the hallway, but the saber itself is missing, gone away with the man wielding it.

The distance ahead is great and looming and lonely.

No one has followed alongside him.

[justice_is_blond]

"Of course." It's dark and he's now alone, except for a creepy blue glow where Obi-Wan's light sword thing had been. This is of course how things would go. It's him. He never gets nice sunshine and daisy-picking trips. That the Inquisition and the Wardens and Hawke never had any nice sunshine and daisy-picking trips to send him on is beyond the point.

With a heavy sigh he starts stepping forward into the water, sending up another pair of wisps to help out. It's always religious buildings that are creepy, too. Circles and Abbies and Chantries and old, run-down temples.

"Hello?" he calls. "If something is about to jump out and eat my face, at least do me the decency of introducing yourself first."

[laurenande]

The hall does not call back to him as he moves forward. His wisps curl into the air ahead and cast quiet, dull light over the walls. They behave differently here, moving in bursts and gradually slowing beside him, but the sense of foreboding that had settled over him in the library is absent...mostly.
"It's so close and so far."
Ahead the path branches out, voids open in the walls, gaping in the darkness, and remain blackened as the wisps travel by and reveal the stone architecture on either side of the doorways. One, two to the right, one and then two to the left. It was a storehouse, perhaps, but now the only constant is water.
"I would give anything to be there, but I dare not cross, not for fear of what will come of it."
The whispering returns, soft and nonsensical. it seems to come from two places at once, a macabre stereo. It pours from the walls beside him, a man's voice speaking a language he does not know. The other is softer and more distant, far ahead and to the right.

[justice_is_blond]

At least the wisps didn't go out this time. It's a small comfort, but it's there at least.

He looks around, contemplating his options. Something quieter seems a little more promising than the voice all around, male and not quite threatening but definitely not promising.

"Thanks. That's really comforting," he mutters. Choice made, Anders starts strolling forward with a little more determination.

[laurenande]

It is a very long walk through the hip high water before Anders reaches the doorway that houses the source of the whispering. In that time, his wisps blink out and back again multiple times jumping and circling seemingly at random. They stabilize as he reaches the doorway, but they linger outside of it. Whether they can enter or not, or whether they refuse or not, it is impossible to say.

Through the door, the room sounds very large--without the wisps he must depend on his eyes adjusting to the darkness and whatever bits of their glow follow through the doorway. Water drips in droplets from the ceiling, or do they drip upward to meet it? The strangeness of this place is multiplied here and this space feels foggy and vague, like a memory imposed upon the world.

Someone stands in the corner of the room, their outline just barely brighter than the world around them. They wear all white, a gown that is soaking wet, and stand facing the join between two walls.
"Ai! I have found you at last, or you ----me--"
They are whispering.

[justice_is_blond]

At least it's not a tree. It could still be a demon, though, because it's always demons or Templars or both, really. Except when it's dragons, but there's no way this is a dragon.

"Hello?" he says quietly. Probably a little too quietly, really, but he's nervous. Anders loosens his staff from his back and takes it in hand before repeating himself louder. "Hello?"

[laurenande]

Anders's voice bounces back at him, accompanied by the sounds of water trickling in the distance. The person in the corner doesn't move as he draws his staff, not at first, but after a moment their head tilts to the side. It is not a slight gesture, it is like the lolling of a head atop a broken neck, like a marionette with one string clipped. What had seemed to be a gown is hair, long and pale and drifting in the water.

When they speak, it is a whisper without voice behind it, but it sounds loud, harsh in this place:
There are no voices here, just the rushing of water.
"A long walk for simple herbs."
This is a facade, nothing more.
There is a pause, almost contemplative, as their head rights itself.
This is a riptide, one that will pull everyone under if they are not mindful.
"Do you require assistance?"

Marcoulf

[laurenande]

The others move ahead of him, Obi-Wan carrying his saber aloft and Jang at his side. Anders lingers behind them, but no more than half a step. As they step into the basement, away from the alcove that holds the ladder and into the flooded hallway ahead, they begin to behave strangely. Well, abnormally strangely.

Obi-Wan and Jang abruptly stop, their steps frozen mid-way, as though they with to avoid trampling over something delicate but lack the ability to back away. Anders moves past them, carried on momentum, but his steps slow before long.

Marcoulf, unlike the others, can move freely in this place. Only water hinders his progress forward.

[esquive]

It's only by Andraste's grace that he doesn't run into Obi-wan when he draws up in the dark. The cold and the dark punctuated only by the blade's blue light is disorienting - or at least enough of a distraction that he has to slosh sideways in the dark water to avoid impact. He swears softly.

"What do you see?" His eyes aren't good enough for this--

And there goes Anders, wandering past the three of them as if they aren't even there. Marcoulf shoots Jang a sidelong glance, clearing expecting to share a 'Is he serious?' look and finding absolutely nothing in return. The pair of them might as well be back outside for all they regard him.

Marcoulf snaps his fingers before them. One, twice. "And--hm. Garrett?" He can see where the mage has stalled farther forward, a dark shape just there at the edge of the pool of blue light.

[laurenande]

Anders calls out ahead of them, his tone slowed and distracted, almost like someone absently repeating the lyrics to a song they half recall or a sleepwalker mumbling conversations with themselves. Jang and Obi-Wan remain fixed and they do not share his sidelong glance, nor react to his snapping.

There are bursts of fine light ahead, echoes of wisps, but they are gone as soon as they appear. The room is quiet, apart from Anders moving and his absent muttering. Then, without preamble, something sloshes in the distance. The room at the end and the left is where the sound emanated, but it halts as soon as it begins.

[esquive]

Every child knows there are things waiting in the dark and that Fade touched fingers sometimes reach through the Veil to brush against the world. But he thinks those places are meant to feel more strange - older and altogether less ordinary than this one. Because it is just a basement, hip deep with bitter cold water and pitched with dark, but unremarkable. The abbey is just an abbey, suffering on some miserable stone in a storm tossed ocean, and the people in it are just desperate and dying and poor and broken by a world that owes them very little.

The strangest thing on the island is the rotting paranoia of the Inquisition's delegation, their insistence that something is wrong, and now here the bizarre madness in which the three of them have apparently slipped into.

Something is wrong, but blight him if he has any idea what it is.

Marcoulf stares into the dark after the ripple of that splashing sound. Anders's murmuring fills the quiet and raises the hairs on the back of his neck. After a moment's pregnant pause, he fishes the parrying dagger from his belt.

"Bring a lantern next time, you idiot," he mutters, beginning to wade out into the dark - toward Anders, closer to the sound only my circumstance. He means to fish that man and shepherd him back into the pool of light if he can.

[laurenande]

There is nothing in the way of Marcoulf's approach to Anders, the mage hasn't even made it very far from the others, but when he takes him by the shoulder to try and shepherd him back, there is a problem. Anders does not move, at least, not in the way Marcoulf would move him. Certainly, he continues walking forward, his speech doesn't slow, not farther than it already has, but Marcoulf cannot draw him back, or even halt his progression.

"...introduce yourself...first--" Anders finishes, gradually, both unaware of his comrade's efforts and entirely unaffected by them.

[esquive]

He snatches back his hand the moment he touches Anders, something strange about the feel of his shoulder under his hand. It's strange in a way he can't pinpoint, unresponsive to the touch in a way that's difficult to parse. After a moment, he tries again to redirect him. When that fails, Marcoulf utters a small oath and starts going through the pouches at Anders's belt. Something to toss toward the sound. Something that isn't the tinderbox in his own belt pouch.

He comes up empty save a few herbs, finr leaves dried and crumbling under his fingers. For Maker's sake Anders, carry more in your pockets.

Fine. Marcoulf fishes two a copper from his purse and wades farther past Anders into the flickering dark of the wisp echoes. Another pause, eyes searching the darkness for the same of that dark doorway to the lefthand side. When he's certain he has it fixed, he chucks the copper at it.

"Out here, darling," he calls softly, like coaxing a child or a skittish horse.

Come out, come out whatever you are. Please don't be eels.

[laurenande]

The coppers hit the wall and bounce with a metallic ping then drop into the water. The splash is small and the ripples reasonable for a coin of that size. Marcoulf's voice echoes back at him in the dark, resounding through the rooms, but nothing comes out of the room. Nothing moves, apart from him and Anders at his side.
"--used to their benefit--they have no reason to fear it...."
The door looms, as doors in the dark do, and after a long moment, there is a very quiet, very pained sob. It hitches halfway through and lingers but unlike his voice it does not resound.