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

[keenly]

“Um.” Colin has no idea what he’s meant to have up his sleeve that John doesn’t. He also has very reasonable and natural fears when it comes to violent mobs, to go with the deep-seated and unnatural fear of crowds in general. And noise, and people, and speaking in public.

“I’ve got...three escape routes,” he suggests, looking rather more relaxed than he feels.

[hornswoggle]

"Promising!"

There's some nostalgia to this moment. It's been a long time since John's been in a situation he could simply walk away from once it becomes untenable. The pitch of the shouting is rising; the ire of the crowd is splitting between the pair of them and amongst those gathered as the ill temper turns towards destruction and fighting. John's free hand grasps Colin's forearm as he stumbles back a step, the table in front of them breaking beneath the weight of two men.

"Any desire to try to shout them down, or should we make for the door?"

Maybe John could, were he loud enough. He is at least committed enough to the notion to scan the room for an elevated position, find nothing but the press of bodies and give over to good sense. Better to flee, before they're swallowed up in this.

[keenly]

Colin jumps a mile when John grabs his arm, already on guard with the way the crowd is acting. Two rapid heartbeats later, though, he grips that arm right back and yanks him toward one of the two exits they have left. If they aren't decisive about this, Colin will have to use magic, and nobody wants that mess.

They're nearly to a door when they are blocked by a bent old woman with a scarf tied over her head and under her chin, feet planted apart, swinging the chair she was sitting on a second ago. Maybe John is a veteran pirate and con man, and Colin a mage. This woman lived in Lowtown her entire life, through the tyranny of Viscount Chivalry Threnhold, the qunari invasion, the mage rebellion, and the slow and painful dissolving of her spine within her own body, and she wants her goddamn coffee.

[hornswoggle]

"This is your escape route?" is John's first, strangled question before he holds up one hand towards the most immediate threat.

(A stool breaks against the wall just over their heads. Bad.)

"Grandmother, please. If you'll give us just a moment, I promise we can come up with some agreeable way to resolve this."

As long as she hits Colin and not John, he's considering this a win. Though they don't have much time to find out what would have come of this, because a cluster of men who had been furiously punching each other topple into the three of them from the side. John at least is knocked off balance.

They probably can't kill anyone. He's thinking seriously about it now, though.

[keenly]

This new black eye will be named Thanks for nothing, John. But only privately, to himself, because doing it aloud would just be mean, somehow.

Colin didn't erect a barrier (given that an old lady's chair breaking on thin air might scare some people) but he did raise an elbow, thereby lessening the blow against the ridge of one eye. He wrests the chair from her grip and casts it behind them, tripping someone who was following after them. He nearly gains control of the situation enough to keep dragging John to the door when suddenly he's flat on the floor with a couple of men fighting on top of him. Which hurts even more than the chair. At this point, he's just going to protect his head and make himself a small target.

[hornswoggle]

That didn't go as planned.

John's options are limited in this moment. He's very aware of their disadvantage; it would be a lie to pretend he doesn't consider leaving Colin there and trying to make his own way out. But where does that leave him in the long run?

Lying flat on his back, he grips his crutch and then swings it with all his might at the head of the two combatants. Colin is somewhere in there, and hopefully paying enough attention to take advantage of John's generously-given distraction.