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

[aos fandom flashbacks]

[saam]

"I've seen it," she says. "You pour the gaat in, and then you put the ball in, and then you light a match on the back. Oh, and they gotta be tied down, 'cause otherwise the explosion will just-"

She makes a zipping motion with her hands, like something flat flying backward.

"Right off the deck."

youre welcome

[heirring]

"So you do not carry them under the arm or anything similar? They are not hand held?"

She has a very particular axe to grind with a very particular Orlesian over this very point, you see--

[saam]

"Fuck, no." Eshal shakes her head. "Gaatlok is too volatile. You don't want it that close to you. Enough people get their shit blown to pieces just by using an adaar the right way."

[heirring]

Wysteria laughs. Or cackles. It's a very self satisfied sort of noise regardless of what the exact description might be.

"I knew it. De Foncé is an imbecile. Thank you, Miss Fazon. You have put my heart at fairly indescribable ease. I am entirely in your debt."

[saam]

It's cute how her nose wrinkles. It's sweet. Weird, but sweet. And the sweetest things in life are weird, anyway.

Weirder still: Eshal's never heard anyone talk that way before. She can do a pretty good show of Trade if she sticks to basic words, and muddle around the rest of the meanings, but this is getting a little odd around the edges. She knows the words. She grew up with Trade at the edge of her periphery. But she's never heard those words used exactly like that, and she feels like she might be missing some nuance.

The Qunari are famously perfectionists. It rankles not to do things perfectly, even if she's better at Trade than most who grew up like she did.

The Qunari are also famously prideful about their perfectionism. She doesn't let her annoyance or confusion show. "Huh. Keep that in mind." Whatever that means. "Y'know, most people asking about the Qun go for the hard questions. Kinda fucking refreshing you only care about the damn cannons."

[heirring]

Well, now you've gone and done it. "The hard questions?"

[saam]

Eshal sure feels like she done did. "Is it a religion, can I join up, are you trying to convert me, that rot."

[heirring]

"Oh that." Which is more dismissive than she means to be, really. "--Not that it isn't interesting. I'm certain it is. But if I asked questions about every little thing that was interesting, we might be here all day. No, best to keep it to the topics which might be immediately applicable, don't you think? If the Qun ever comes to Kirkwall again, or the Watch ever to the Qun then you might tell me all about it then."

This, as she dusts her hands and begins to survey the statue's crumbling base for an appropriate avenue of descent.

[saam]

"Well, thank fuck for that." Eshal jumps down, not giving a shit about the mud, and reaches back to easily pick Poppell up, hands around her hips, and place her on the ground in one smooth motion. She's not really thinking about it.

[heirring]

"Oh that's quite--" Alright, is how that sentence is meant to go in response to an offered hand, but then she is being swept down from the crumbling ledge of the old Tevinter statue and deposited in the calf deep water at is base as easily as if she were little pet bird being transferred from the perch to the finger. It's a remarkably graceful sort of motion, in its way.

"Oh," she says again. And then "Well," and then "Thank you."

And then she recalls how squishy the ground is and how rank the water, so she gathers her skirts a little higher from both. "Was it my turn to ask a question or yours?" This as she turns to slog back toward higher ground and, presumably, the way out.

[saam]

Eshal lets out a small laugh, amused by Poppell's surprise. So many people outside the Qun are like that. It's as though they don't know what she was made for, but then again, they don't.

She picks her spear back up, leaning on it.

"I think we're even," because who really cares, and Eshal is curious. "Your go, if you got something in mind."