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

[filthydipper]

"I think all of my fathers, and mothers, and right fine everyone you meet down here who you might even think, in passing, could possibly be related to me? I think they'd go back to Orzammar's tender mercies than rationing." Said as if it's a dirty word.

Because it is. And these are the ones who might take over all Thedas one day? Yngvi better be dead first.

"So, what d'you want to see down here? What's the essential Darktown experience for you because we can't take it all in on a oner." That'd just be bad business, obviously.

[saam]

"No family in the Qun, neither," Eshal says, voice grim. She knows it'll just open another can of worms. She just can't help herself.

She looks down at Yngvi and pokes him with the blunt end of her spear.

"C'mon, I'm not a tourist." What an insult. "There's shit down here that needs its arse kicked. At least."

[filthydipper]

"I could get behind that, I mean, you saw them just there. S'more trouble than it's worth nearly all the time unless you get one who does have your back solid." And where is that one? Not down here and in the midden that's for sure.

Sunning himself in Antiva from the last letter, the git.

"Actually, keep an eye for deepstalkers, they've had whole packs of the buggers all of over and they'll jump, all at once. Some of them spit." Which is about when something goes lurching ahead, an unsteady gait about it because it's front-heavy.

On closer - enhance his eyes - inspection that's actually a sideways scuttle.

"Why's there a crab down here?" He asks, turning to Eshal to gesture frantically with a great flapping of sleeves because look, are you in fact seeing what he is seeing. Crabs. In Darktown.

[saam]

"Those're the ones who squeak like kitt- what?"

Things where things should be. Bad sign. Magic sign. Same thing... Almost. Almost. Don't be so stupidly Qunari.

So she reaches with her spear to stab the crab. "Vashedan little-" Wrenching the creature into the light, yes, a crab. She's grateful Yngvi said its name aloud; she wouldn't remember the word in Trade.

She smiles. "You hungry?"

The thing is twitching and dripping mud, glowing faintly. Hopefully there aren't more (there probably are).

[filthydipper]

Note to self: check to see if Saucisse is defective because Saucisse has never sounded like a deepstalker. Surely a hairless cat should sound even more deepstalker-y?

"Kirkwall crab is the tastiest crab." Probably not, who knows what it ate. Or who. More likely a who down here what wildlife is there when everyone is eating the wildlife?

(He would know.)

"Wonder if some of the trap stuff could cook that thing up--" One way to find it is, of course, to have to just lob one, in the direction of eyestalks poking round the corner, a warm friendly glow that erupts violently, his ears ringing for a moment.

returns from the dead.

[saam]

To be fair, Eshal's experience with kittens is severely limited; she was told by a sailor once that they sounded alike, and took him on his word. She's never longed to sneak into the deep, dark underground.

She can't help smiling at Yngvi's little joke, though. A huff of laughter escapes her before she's distracted from amusement rather directly. A swarm of crabs. Just brilliant.

"I'm taking it this isn't normal Kirkwall crab." She shifts her stance, so she's standing a little in front of Yngvi, her spear extended defensively. The crab is still hanging off it, dripping mud and crab goo.

[filthydipper]

"Oh you need to go out to the Wounded Coast when the tide is--" Yngvi retches because oh that is a combination of smells right there and you know, sometimes you just have to get closer to it.

Smells like dwarven children stacked in a room together at the height of summer when they were too tired for a wash.

"Just right. Butter gets involved. Singing the song what a crab would be singing." He hurls another trap, digging through his pockets for the caltrops and the crabs absolutely do not sing in the moment, they're-- well now he knows what the fancy foods do at the fancy parties he went to, could've lived without knowing they scream in tones that'd shatter opera glasses if he had any. "Could pincer you clean in half!"

[saam]

This is looking bad, and is there really anything they need in the direction they're going? Any reason to hold their ground? She used to be a commander, for fuck's sake, she's not going down from a swarm of crabs. Eshal makes an executive decision.

"Tactical retreat!" In one smooth motion, she reaches down to grab Yngvi and heft him over her shoulder before turning tail in the other direction.

Yes, that one crab is still on her spear, what of it.

creeps back in late

[filthydipper]

One minute Yngvi's on the ground and now he's up in the air, caltrops trailing out his hand like so much Darktown confetti--

"I've never been this high before."

He has but it's been with his own two feet. On mountains. In buildings. Not carted like a sack of potatoes by someone he barely knows because this is very forward, the crabs are clacking in whatever language they have as he hurls one last trap (the smell, and he does love a good bad smell but that's unholy.)

"They'll eat well tonight. Unless--" Is it back to eat these mystery crabs? Also this is very awkward to try to talk while being carted this way, craning his neck this way but honestly his legs would never have made it otherwise, he'd be eaten alive with others to tell his story and this is not how Yngvi Congealedinagutterson goes down.