Fade Rift Mods (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
faderifting) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
faderift2019-08-20 11:18 pm
faderifting) wrote in faderift2019-08-20 11:18 pm
MOD EVENT ↠ CREEPY CRAWLERS
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.
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.
no subject
Bait tossed, Tavin dusts off his hands and looks back. "Magic might disturb it more: not one part of this is natural in any sense, it's like some of the stories I've heard since these rifts began to appear? Migration patterns have changed, behaviours have changed in both predator and prey animals. It could be a fox. Some foxes are capable of climbing."
On an island. That Tavin had little business being on. And the chances of one just showing up here and now are slim to neglible.
"I'll go around there to flush it out, go knock things, see how skittish our friend is." So. You know please don't catch him with a spell is what he's trying to say without saying it in so many words as he sets off, peeking around and light on his feet because he doesn't want to give himself away as much as startle it in the right direction. Or that's the plan but none of the animals thus far have wanted to co-operate.
no subject
"I haven't seen any climbing foxes yet myself, but there's a first time for everything, I suppose," he says, absently, as Tavin makes his approach. "Do you see anything over there?"
If he doesn't yet, he's about to -- the invisibility is only intermittent, but the racoon being trapped in a place it does not care, and thus out of temper, for is constant.
no subject
"I don't," Tavin says as something hurtles itself into the window - from the outside - hard enough to make it rattle in the frame as he jerks his head that way, mouth twisting. A shame, even if they're a nuisance as they are he doesn't like to think of them being hurt. This gives the raccoon a window of opportunity to scurry over, black eyes darting back and forth between the two men as two little grabby hands slap-slap-slap at Tavin's leg. "There! There you are!"
He lunges. Now. Tavin is fairly tall. Fairly lanky. That sort of lithe build that some might think would lend itself to athletic feats. Not so. At least not without warning as he twists to grab air as a paw grabs something else.
"Oh you little thief! Do you see it?"
no subject
"It just disappeared," Julius said, mildly bewildered. "I'm not a naturalist, but I'm fairly certain it would be a raccoon, except raccoons don't disappear."
He's less worried than annoyed. Raccoons do not belong in libraries, and they certainly do not have any business becoming invisible. But before he can further voice his opinion on the subject, the interloper in question knocks over a chair, several feet away.
no subject
That being said, Tavin knows raccoons. He knows them well enough from their ransacking camps brazenly as you please but normally there's noise. Angry chattering. Little feet pitter-pattering. It's why he doesn't even bother with that.
It's why he doesn't jump either, only sighing, wishing he'd had the foresight to bring his field kit though usually that's not required in the library. "Come on, my small friend, we mean you know harm," he sing-songs, keeping low to the ground to head towards the chair hoping to keep it in sight, another treat offered. "Please don't be a problem today of all days."