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

[laurenande]

Marcoulf moves with speed through the water, his weapons out, and when he comes around that dark corner, into the hall lit by the saber and Jang's card, he comes upon something truly terrible. The shape that stands at the end of the hall is huge, the better side of ten feet high, hunched and gangly. Its hands are skeletal shadows against the blue light of the saber and the rags it wears float of their own accord beneath patchwork pieces of blackened armor.

Marcoulf cannot see its face in the shadow but, as he advances, that void of hooded blackness turns on him. It twists and something huge and metal clangs hard against the wall, echoing like a boom through all the rooms in the basement--it carries a broadsword, drags it in its wake, and the hall is too blessedly narrow for it to swing the weapon around and cleave him in two.

It is looming, great and terrible and defenseless with its arm trapped back, gripping the hilt of that blade. In a moment it will recall it has another claw and the reach to grab Marcoulf--for the moment it lets out a shriek that rends the air and thrashes to free its sword again.

[esquive]

The shape is a black monstrous cut out against the pale blue light near the stair. Even before it turns to him, Marcoulf's instincts serve to drive him backwards. Were it not for the trouble of moving through the standing water, he might retreat five or six paces or whatever the length of the hallway would allow. In the flooded basement, he manages only one sloshing step and flinches as the towering figure begins to thrash. The blue of Obi-wan's lightsaber glints against the edges of that wicked cleaver and the water that, sloshing, courses down the hallway and beats against his front as the creature struggles to free the blade--

He's moving before he can think better of it, slogging forward through the water with as much speed as he can muster. He can't fight that. Not while all but swimming. He's as certain of it and he is of the sky. But the hall dead ends behind him. There isn't an option. Six carries a greatsword, thinks some distant part of him; he has gotten in under her arm more than once in the training yard.

Somehow he covers the distance. He doesn't know how or at what rate, but his legs take him there. When the second clawed hand comes for him (as it must), Marcoulf stabs at the grasping palm with the long parrying dagger instead of the sword and thrusts wildly at the creature's twisting body with the glinting rapier. He needs only one strike and then he can fall back through the staggering water, he tells himself. He shouldn't be this close, he thinks. Maker help him, he's going to die in a fucking Ferelden turnip cellar.

[laurenande]

The beast cries as Marcoulf stabs through its hand, a short hissing sound. When he shoves his sword into its body it shrieks. The sound is sharp and violent, like the drag of steel over slate. It seems to suck up all the air in the room as it screams. Marcoulf moves back, withdraws his sword from its husk-like torso and the wound gushes a torrent of black water--it flows as freely from it as it would from a wellspring.

It twists, contorts its long limbs and arm and with a mighty heave it forces the sword it carries though the stone of the wall. It hacks through a wide chunk of rock as it brings it around in a clanging arc. It misses Marcoulf as it hits the water and, all at once, the splash has formed a violent ripple of waves through the enclosed space. Still it leaks water in an endless torrent from its side.

The water is rising.

[esquive]

He's seen his fair share of animated dead. Strange things happen in the thick woods of Orlais and war leaves corpses by the dozen for any lingering spirit to sink inside of. But this isn't that. He doesn't immediately realize why it isn't - the gout that follows in the wake of his sword is near black in the irregular light of the cellar, smelling of rot and bitter wet air and cold like everything else does. But in the closing fixed points of the moment, it seems regular. That first horrible gush could be viscera-like. That it persists though--?

The creature's greatsword comes free and all at once, he finds his way back eliminated. He had thought about goading the thing, then retreating back to one of the adjacent rooms when he was sure to be followed. It'd be easier to hack at it through a narrowed doorway. But he can't afford it now. The water, at his belt now, makes him stumbling slow. His only hope is to stay close under the great arm, too near for that long arc of its blade to be effective.

So he stabs again at the still-draining wound, this time with the dagger. It has a wider blade and the beast's spare hand is still recovering. And again in rapid succession, putting all his energy into hammering the creature's side despite the grasping spare hand and the threat of the greatsword.

Nevermind the rising water and the monster's part in it; there's nowhere to go anyway.

[laurenande]

The creature slams its sword against the wall and a thunderous bang resounds down the side. The waves shift and knock both it and Marcoulf with their force. Marcoulf digs into it, cutting open the wound at its side and tearing into the space around it, widening the space through which the water flows. its body is not terribly thick, drawn tall and thin as it is, so it does not take long before the force of water emptying from it is working in Marcoulf's favor.

It scrambles, its hand clawing down at him--the fingers are just as long and thin as the rest of it, but gauntleted in a blackened brace. The metal bites with cold that burns into his leathers and the skin beneath, that freezes the water soaked into him already into a brittle shell that breaks with every shifting movement.

The cold finds little purchase on Marcoulf, or not enough to stay the creature's execution. With a stab of his dagger, Marcoulf tips the scale and cuts away enough leathery flesh that the whole of its torso splits along the line. It shrieks and, for a moment, as it fades, it sounds like a young woman. At once the horrible beast is there, in two parts hanging at terrible angles, and then the whole mass of it is dark, frigid water--it loses its shape and splashes into the waist high water again.

Marcoulf is alone again, or as close as he can be in this wretched place.

[esquive]

He doesn't recall how many blows it takes for the spirit to shatter. One moment he's digging at its side, feeling the shadow of its arm and the horrible, crashing greatsword handing above him and the next the bitter cold seems to find it. Rends it. Breaks it into a melting wave. And then it's gone.

It takes him two tries to sheath the sword. The blade clacks loudly against the thin metal loop, ringing in the stone still cellar. He keeps the dagger in hand though, knocking the crunching frost from his shoulder and the chest of his leathers with an absent gesture. Pokes a finger through a shredded seam at his shoulder and registers some anonymous sting in the dark. No telling what that or the aching burn across his neck and chest is until he finds some light, but he isn't dead or drowned or torn to pieces.

So he wades through the place there the creature had been toward the sickly blue blue of the saber near the stairs. Fuck this, fuck that, Andraste's left tit. It's awfully pleasant to swear, even if it's just under his fogging breath.

[laurenande]

The sudden silence is ringing in its near absoluteness after the too-high brittle shrieks that had raked the air moments ago. It is only broken by the sounds of the quite literal wake of the creature's passing; frigid small waves slipping out to break against the stone of the walls, against Marcoulf's body, riding high enough now with the addition of the apparition's dark water to scratch a new thin line of biting cold above where it had settled on him before. Eddies beneath the surface tug at him like fingers trying and failing again and again to find purchase as he moves toward the others.

A deep persistent hum grows in counterpoint to the lapping of the water, quiet at first but growing louder the closer he gets to them. They are unmoving as stone, eerie sculpture painted in blue chiaroscuro by the light of the saber in Obi-Wan's too-still hands.

[esquive]

So he moves past them, slogging through the waist high water to the stairs leading up and out of the storm cellar. His foot slips on the first step, but he manages to steady himself off the wall and eventually to climb the stairs, emerging soaked and wild in the southern transept with a knife yet in hand. It's hardly warmer here than in the flooded cellar, but even the guttering light has a deceptive quality of comfort compared to the ghostly blue of the place he'd just come from.

Marcoulf touches his collar, but doesn't get as far as loosing the buckles of the leathers or checking the ache stinging under them. Instead he makes his way promptly from the hall in search of-- someone. Chantry or Inquisition, whichever he finds his way to first.