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

[notched]

"Yes," she answers without a tinge of sarcasm or impatience. She understands the basic confusion, that someone would take the time and the burden. She would have said the same, confused thing in his place. She reaches out to scoop him up over her shoulder. "We'll go quickly."

It will be bumpy but the sooner someone can tend to the spider bite, the more likely he is to survive. She's not going to waste time trying to wrap it up. He can bleed all over her if he likes.

[murderbaby]

"I can-" And then he's being carried- "walk..."

He feels woozy. Every sound echoes. But Anna is warm, and possibly saving his life, and he doesn't know why. The thought continues to bounce in her mind. "Thank you," he croaks.

[notched]

She's not one of the heavier-armored Hunters, and the extra weight is difficult to manage but it isn't the first time. Although it may be the first time the person she's carrying survives. Her Hunter companions had not been so lucky, in the darkest days of their service.

The most difficult part of all is climbing up the wooden minding scaffolding to get back up to the surface paths. Hard to haul them both up while using one arm to keep him steady on her shoulder, and only the other to pull herself along.

Her breathing is heavy in her chest, straining.

"Almost there, now," she mutters, maybe to him, and maybe just to herself.

[murderbaby]

Mhavos bobs along, fighting sleep. He can't let himself, but he dearly wants to, and that's never a good sign. Maybe he has been bitten. He's been poisoned before, and is just self-aware enough to know the signs. You always want to sleep. You can't, not now.

"Where?" Keep talking, keep yourself awake.

[notched]

The groan of strain is deep in the hollow of her throat as she drags them up to the platform. She pushes him off her shoulder first, to assure he's stable before following up onto the rotted wood. It groans under them as well, a different tone from a different material. She pants heavily for a moment before crouching over him to gently pat his face again.

"Can you still see me?" she asks, gestures with a finger, then two, to see how far this has gone, "How many fingers?"

[murderbaby]

Mhavos blinks groggily, and concentrates a little too long before murmuring, "Two."

[notched]

"Good, good," as though he's done something particularly clever. She spends another moment panting with her hands on her knees, but her stamina returns quicker than most. The rune emblazoned on her mind pulses: Hunter. Hunter. Metamorphosis. She can see them as clear as if they were made of flame when she closes her eyes tightly.

She grabs him by the wrist and hauls him back up.

"We're almost there, let them know on the crystal that we are coming."