MOD EVENT ↠ CREEPY CRAWLERS

[faderifting]

WHO: Everybody
WHAT: Weird shit comes to Kirkwall Riftwatch earns its keep
WHEN: August 20-22
WHERE: Kirkwall
NOTES: OOC post! Random creature generator! CW: creepy crawly animals and the combating thereof.

I. KIRKWALL

The first Fade-touched creatures are small—they must be—because the first signs that something has gone wrong aren't swarms of oversized pests stomping through the streets, but a half-day of unexplained fires in Lowtown and Darktown, splotches of mysterious ice on the walls despite the heat, and the sudden simultaneous electrocution deaths of two dock workers standing knee-deep in water.

Rumors that mages must be to blame don't have an opportunity to get louder than whispers, fortunately, before the first pack of double-sized, fire spitting nugs is startled out of hiding and runs through the city, squeaking wildly and singeing walls.

By nightfall, it's become an invasion: rats, nugs, bats, deepstalkers, some oversized, some aggressive, all exhibiting unusual abilities. The City Guard—already overworked due to the traditional rash of crimes that often accompanies a heatwave combined with the caffeine-related unrest—does its best, but by morning the pests have reached Hightown and begun scorching curtains and leaving trails of poison slime through gardens and the Provisional Viscount sends a formal request for aid to the Gallows. It has a seal and everything.

II. DARKER THAN DARKTOWN

The old mines that Kirkwall was built around and on top of are only heavily populated near the surface. Beneath Darktown's shanties and encampments, the mining shafts narrow into passages too cramped to easily live in, twisting away from any natural sources of light and down into the black rock until not even dwarven and elven eyes can discern anything in the dark. At first, it seems cooler underground, as one would expect. But the air stagnates and the humidity rises and at times it seems that the deeper one gets, the hotter it is.

The tunnels aren't entirely deserted. Signs of activity litter the paths, along with skeletons—some animal, but also some human, dwarven, or elven—and detritus, discarded rags and broken pottery, and a whole collection of dolls made of bundled twigs. The smugglers and reclusive Darktown denizens who travel this deep are difficult to come across in person, and prone to attacking first if cornered by anyone too clean and official-looking, but now and then they can be seen disappearing around corners or heard whispering from side passages.

Navigating the mining shafts is fairly straightforward, most of the time. Widening passages and upward inclines are the way out; narrowing passages and downward inclines are the way in. If fire and glow stones fail, sending crystals cast a faint light that's enough to keep anyone from being completely blind in the depths. But there are still passages that turn back on themselves, downward tunnels boarded over with bridges that have begun to rot, tunnels half-flooded with Maker-knows-what, steep drops—and the occasional stampede of Fade-touched creatures, more and more frequent closer to the rift.

Close enough, the jet-black stone walls begin to reflect green light, and then the tunnels open up into a wide open space full of damp, briney cool air. And demons.

III. THE RIFT

It's just a rift: the usual split of churning green, so bright in the dark that it's nearly blinding, hanging over standing water in the center of a wide-open chamber, patrolled by the usual demons.

But once they're dispensed with, and the rift closed, the chamber is something more unusual. The standing water is salty—coming in from the sea, at least in part, never deeper than the knees (or waist, maybe, on a dwarf) but populated with a few small fish, and the stone around it is covered with deep mushroom, ghoul's beard, and a few sprigs of rare felandaris. Beneath the overgrowth, there are signs of architecture, dwarven columns and crumbling statues of dragons in the Tevinter style.

Beneath the water, the floor is carved with a design not unlike a glyph, and also not unlike the pattern of Kirkwall's streets. The Veil is so thin that a sneeze could have torn it open.

Comments

wysteria, otaish;

[heirring]

for aziraphale;

Grotesque, slimy, stinking of decomposition and the distinct impression of matted hair and grime beneath all the shadow. No, this is not a description if the latest geyser of fade touched spider to come boiling up out of a Hightown drainpipe, but rather the words that first occur to Wysteria as they make their tentative way down into the fetid, humidity slick abyss of Darktown. She is not, for the record, clinging to the man beside her. For one, he doesn't give the impression of a particularly well suited candidate for the job of staunch protector, and for two--

Well, they've rather an interesting job to hand and the novelty of it is a happy diversion from the environment. Even now, paused at a mucky Darktown crossroads to take advantage of the grudging relief from the merciless chokedamp provided by one of a very intermittent series of steel braziers pouring equal amounts of smoke and light, Wysteria is turning the map about in her hands. She holds it first this way, then that, doing her best to catch the light.

"Well, if you ask me that squiggly bit looks rather like the a hand pointing left. Wouldn't you agree?"

Here, she tips the map to Aziraphale. Here, a hand looms out through the smoke, snatches the roughly folded parchment from her, and then is sucked back to the sound of running footsteps.

For a split second, Wysteria stares at her empty hands. "Were we just-- Stop! Thief!"

Which inspires roughly as much action from the denizens of Darktown as one might imagine.

the rift, aftermath - ota

She has her skirts tucked comically up, its ends jammed unceremoniously into the lacing of her bodies. It had allow Wysteria to slosh through the knee deep water without worrying about more than her shoes and stockings, but now it cuts a somewhat hilarious figure where she stands quite high up on the lichen encrusted bases of one of the crumbling statues.

Given the evidence of the a small booklet and pen in hand and with the way she keeps squinting at the floor from her elevated vantage point, she must be doing her best to record the state of the glyph carved there.

[aziraphlail]

It's rather dingy down here. Grimy, dark, rather reminiscent of hell, or the parts of hell he'd seen. This time, though, he has company.

...and now no map or guide.

"Excuse you!" Aziraphale yells after the fleeing thief. "We are attempting to help you!" The ingratitude of the thief, really. There may be a rift down here! With the weird, twisted sort of demons! He takes a breath and straightens his vest, looking back at his company. There are others looking at him and Wysteria, and none of them look especially friendly. This feels even more reminiscent of hell, and there's not even a chance of being smug at someone.

"Do we need to pursue that fellow? Or can you remember what was on the right-hand side of the hand-shape thing? I can recall some of the left-hand side." He doesn't want to chase the form into the darkness. Yes, he's got a sword. But it's not like he's got any real practice with it.

[heirring]

"Can I remember--" The girl makes a sharp, affronted noise. Can she remember it!? "Of course we must pursue him!"

And then she is off, a flash of skirts and the clack-clack of sensibly heeled shoes swallowed up by the shadow and stench and swirling miasma of faintly poisonous humidity. No, she doesn't quite have that much faith in herself, thank you very much.

[aziraphlail]

Oh dear. It's a chase, then. His shoes are not made for running but that doesn't really matter as he takes off after her. Should he draw his sword now? Is it more convenient to run with it out or in? It really should have come with a manual.

No one seems interested in helping them, or even really watching with more than casual disinterest, but at least that means the fleeing man stands out relatively well. Until he doesn't. Aziraphale scrambles to a stop at a turn that has three separate branches.

"Left, right, or middle?" he asks, as he's already heading toward the right-hand one. 'Right' is in the name, so he can hope he's made the right choice.

[heirring]

Aziraphale zags right and Wysteria, who is in possession of very little common sense when you get right down to it, zags opposite.

"Meet me back at that brazier in ten minutes time!" This, half muted as she descends down the left-hand passage. In a moment or two, when she finds herself running alone through some dank corner of Darktown, she will probably regret this moment. But for now it seems imperative - absolutely vital to secure the map.

[aziraphlail]

"Of course!" he calls back, and gets a good 30 meters down the path before it hits him that splitting up down here might not be the best idea either of them has ever had. It's dark, there are people who might want to rob them, there are rumors of creatures attacking people, and there's a thief.

Aziraphale turns and runs back to the brazier and then tries to follow Wysteria.

"Madame Poppell?" he calls, praying that the shapes that look like overlarge spiders are just a trick of the light. He pulls his sword out and ignites it to see that today the answer to his prayers is a distinct "no." "Madame Poppell?" There's a little fear in his voice now. "This is not a good place!"

[heirring]

Wysteria has apparently suffered no such hesitation. The burst of flame illuminates only spiders and similarly morbid and creeping things, burning away the chokedamp and dark but catching no trace of the young woman in her bright blue and cream skirts. The twisting passageway before him is not still or quiet - Darktown seems averse to both descriptions, and rather more keen on ones like moldering and creeping and dreadfully uneasy -, but it shows no immediate resolution to his search.

Which is either a good sign, or a very bad one.

hi.

[saam]

Well. Time to get in her way, then.

There's a weird human with weird clothes just sitting there. Parts of the city are literally on fire. Eshal needs... she needs a second before she can deal with that shit. Better focus on the human.

She's tall enough that, even from the other human's vantage, Eshal can stand in front of her (on the glyph) and be heard. Her voice is loud and deep.

"The hell're you doing?"

why hello

[heirring]

There's something to be said for running around Darktown, slogging through a series of downright ancient tunnels, wading through knee deep water, and finally assisting (using the term very, very loosely) in the closure of a Rift for what it does to one's overall ability to concentrate. Which is to say that Wysteria is zoned out enough and her hand moving fairly automatically that for a solid five to ten seconds she doesn't--

She blinks. She pauses. She focuses on the woman there, then does a small half turn to look behind her. Which: don't be an imbecile, girl, of course she's talking to you.

"Pardon?" No, she doesn't need to be asked again. After a microscopic beat, Wysteria follows up without further prompting. "I'm recording the mark there on the floor. The one you're standing on."

[saam]

The cute ones are always going to get to her. Eshal watches the way the other one wrinkles her nose.

Who cares about glyphs.

"I'm Eshal." Her smile is sharp and confident.

[heirring]

It is, Wysteria thinks, an odd sort of introduction. But it is not the oddest and it is certainly not the most inconsiderate, all of which seem like attributes which warrant encouragement. So she flashes the woman the brief, bright smile of a person who isn't quite sure what she's smiling for but feels it's the right thing to do regardless.

"It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Madame Eshal. I'm Miss Poppell. Or Wysteria, if you care be familiar." Punctuated with a sidelong look for the sake of comedy: Ha ha, yes it's a very witty little joke, isn't it? No one seems very fond of their family names here. "I don't suppose I might tempt you into taking two steps in that direction, could I?"

[saam]

"Eshal Fazon, then." She can sort of see Poppell's implication. People here like to have two names. She has two. She picked them both, because she wanted one from each side of life. The luxury of choice; she could have given herself three, if she'd wanted.

She moves, rather than aside, forward. Eshal climbs on Poppell's perch to look down at the glyph. "Why do you care for it?"

[heirring]

Wysteria, accommodating soul that she is (ha ha), shifts sideways to make space for the significantly larger-in-every-direction woman on the base of the crumbling statue. Her hand hurriedly resumes its task and her eyeballs their study, but neither seem to get in the way of her prattling on:

"Why, because it is an object of power of course. Well-- 'object' is perhaps now quite the correct word, seeing as it's the symbol itself that holds the power more so than the rock it's carved into but you wouldn't really have one without the other. And because it is historically significant. If the dragon statues are anything to go by, this place must be a remnant of Kirkwall was part of the Tevinter Imperium. The fact that a rift formed here of all places would suggest that this space might have once been used to do all sorts of nasty things, and I suspect that mark there has something to do with it. Maybe if we copy it down, we can find out what it does and somehow use it to our advantage. Leave no stone remain unturned for the war effort, eh?"

She laughs at her own joke, then shoots Eshal a sidelong glance to make sure it lands. Get it? Because it's carved into the rock.

[saam]

If Eshal squints, she imagines she can actually see the words as they softly fly over her head. She lets out a confused laugh in return. "Sorry, love. Don't know shite about magic."

[heirring]

Now that gets her attention.

"Really? Nothing at all?"

[saam]

She shakes her head, lips pursed. Nope. Nothing.

after

[notched]

She does not currently have a torch in hand, although they were often a central means of defense to Hunters. All beasts feared fire, a good torch could catch their oil-coated flesh in the dank sewers, or could be used to heard them into an unfavorable position-- cowering back and back-- where they could more easily be dispatched of.

What Anna does have is the mutated Blacksky Eye in her pocket. She takes it out and blows on it gently. It glows a faint, arcane blue. She holds it up to give Wysteria more light.

[heirring]

"Oh, thank you. That's very kind of--"

Here, the rambling little nicety pauses as Wysteria finally looks up from her task of recording to make note of who exactly she is thanking (really: to just get another look at the mark on the floor), and pauses when she instead finds herself directly regarding a disembodied glowing eyeball.

Disembodied in the sense that it lacks the body it belongs to, not that it never had one in the first place.

She yelps. It's a hilariously shrill sound which carries and echoes for quite a long time in the cavernous underground space.

[notched]

Anna's face is covered, and she's not the type to laugh anyway. Instead there's just a mild look of concern in her dark eyes eyes. She tends to make that face at Wysteria, more often than not. It should be familiar enough.

"I didn't have anything for a torch."

Which is only sort've an apology, and also, "What are you doing down here?"

It was gross. And dangerous.

[heirring]

In retaliation, Wysteria clucks her tongue and gives the woman a scolding slap on the upper arm. Don't surprise her so.

"I'm helping. Or I was helping. Mr. Fell and I were working on a map together, which helped uncover the entrance to this place. This thing isn't just for show, you know." Meaning the rift shard in the hand she is now waving in demonstration. "Now I am making a record of what we found."

[notched]

Anna supposes they did need some Rifters about to close these things-- but wouldn't it have been nicer if she'd cleared the path of monsters ahead of time before the scholars came looking? Most of the scholars in Yharnam didn't even do their own dirty work, in that regard. They had tomb prospectors, a brand of Hunter, to do it for them. Prospector garb was tough against elemental damage, to save you lest you run into so unexpected creature. Even Anna wore pieces of the set, valuable items nicked from corpses.

"You need better gear." Although Wysteria had given her the motherly tongue-click, Anna now sounds like the wearying hen.

[heirring]

"Come now. There was hardly time to row all the way back to the Gallows to change into a more likely set of skirts. I will admit that the stocking may not recover, but in every other regard I am as neat as a pin and no worse for the wear. I know how to stay behind the front line, thank you."

More or less. She has a scar from Ghislain that might suggest otherwise, but that was a very particular set of circumstances.

[notched]

"The right equipment for the right tasks," she responds blandly. This is a Hunter axiom. Every monster had its strengths and weaknesses and you prepared accordingly the give yourself the upper-hand. Her final suggestion, "Taller boots, for the sewers, at least."

But then she turns her attention to what Wysteria had been attempting to sketch out before the interruption. Anna crouches down, still holding the eye in the palm of her hand, spreading its blue glow over the water.

"We've glyphs like this, in the floors of the Chalice Dungeons."

[heirring]

Now that is helpful. As the glow of the light casts across the water, Wysteria resumes her scribbling in the notebook. Which does not, for the record, do much to slow her down on the incessant chattering front:

"Chalice Dungeons? That sounds quite mysterious indeed. Do you recall what the glyphs there did? Imagine! If they had some similar product as the ones here in Thedas, that might suggest something of a tie between this world and the one you recall. There are theories, I know, that the places we Rifters come from aren't really there at all, but rather strange representations of the Fade. That we don't really know where we come from at all, and that our consciousness is merely connecting the shapes which we recall from our time in the Fade."

She sucks down a deep breath, followed by a long pause. Then, evidently deciding she'd like to hear an answer to her question, she opts to say nothing further to make room in the conversation.

[notched]

"I came from a dream," Anna agrees faintly. "There may yet be a Yharnam in a physical world... but that is not where I was. It is the power of the Great Ones, who are... maybe not different beings than the Gods here."

She exhales heavily, it's not what she wants to talk about, so instead she focuses on the glyph in the floor.

"In the dungeons, these glyphs can summon enemies when you step on them. There are also the bellringers, who do the same. I do not know where they are summoned from, maybe some other pocket of dreaming."