MOD EVENT: WINTERMARCH WINTER MARCH

[faderifting]

WHO: Anyone & Everyone
WHAT: Winter adventures as Riftwatch heads up into the Vinmark Mountains to do some work for (Provisional) Viscount Bran of Kirkwall
WHEN: Throughout Wintermarch and early Guardian
WHERE: Vinmark Mountains
NOTES: OOC post

Still-Provisional Viscount Bran has received a number of requests for aid from communities in the Vinmark mountains outside Kirkwall. He wants to keep them happy so that they continue to pay taxes to Kirkwall and don't become problematically independent or allied with some other state. But he also doesn't want to deal with this shit, and the City Guard isn't really equipped to go tromp around the mountains in the winter. So he has asked Riftwatch to deal with this, casting it as a shared danger (if any communities were to break away, they'd be more vulnerable to enemy collaboration, or hampering travel through the passes, and things like that) but if necessary will imply that Riftwatch's refusal would weigh unfavorably against the decision to allow them to remain in the Gallows for free.

This work isn't done at the exclusion of all else--other normal (and especially high-priority) work continues. Any work that isn't especially time-sensitive may be postponed, and otherwise agents will simply have to forfeit their free time and fit this work in on top of their other responsibilities. Something for people to complain about while they're tromping through the snow.

It's not a long trip back and forth to the Gallows, so people can come and go if they want, but Bran has also agreed to allow Riftwatch the use of the Viscount's hunting lodge, a rustic mountain retreat traditionally used for hunting parties, which happens to be in a roughly central location. As Viscount Bran is both Provisional and profoundly not the sort of man who holds hunting parties, the lodge has gone unused for some years now, and Riftwatch is bringing in its own supplies and a skeleton support staff to man the place for the duration. Those traveling up in the first group will have to help escort supply wagons through snowy, muddy mountain roads, unloading casks and crates into the cellar, and pitch in cleaning, making minor repairs, and generally getting the building set up after a decade of neglect.

The lodge is organized around a central hall with a massive fireplace, and a small library and study that will be used as offices shared between those visiting. Up the grand wood stair is a mezzanine level that looks down on the hall and leads to three corridors, each with a couple rooms. Rooms will be shared by groups of 2-4 people, the exception being the two suites generally reserved for the viscount and his wife, which will now be assigned to whichever of the Division Heads are in residence (and if there are more than two at a time, then to whichever Division Heads win a coin toss or something). Each room has basic furnishings, heavy and rustic, and its own fireplace. Bathing facilities are communal, provided by natural hot springs pools. While these are outdoors, there is a roof, and there is also a small springhouse alongside for changing, as well as a separate sauna.

The stables contain a number of sleighs in varying states of repair, which can be signed out for use. They're often the best way to get around this area in winter, and can be pulled by a team of Vinmark Goats, a big-horned shaggy breed of unusually massive mountain goats that are often used in place of ponies in this part of the world. The Viscount had a herd of them, which has since run more or less wild on his land and will need to be rounded back up for use.

There are a few communities with different problems, spread out some ways apart through the mountains:

• ICE RIFT: The village of Erith has been plagued by shades and despair demons, which can be traced to a rift that has opened under the thick mid-winter ice of the frozen lake just outside town. Trying to get at it from above would mean cutting into the ice and fighting off demons while underwater and very likely freezing to death in minutes. So instead they'll need to traverse the ice caves beneath the lake to reach it, which will be complicated by the nature of shades, which leech off the energy of the livings' psyche, causing confusion, fatigue, and fear.
  
  
• SNOWMONSTERS: Cragfield has been cut off by an infestation of what's only been described as "snowmonsters," that have been harrying travelers around the village or anyone who strays too far from the edge of town. They will prove to be some unknown variation of giant, even more aggressive, though a bit smaller and nearly covered in white hair. They have some resistance to magic, especially ice magic, and one seems capable of using ice magic, if crudely. They can be tracked through the forest and picked off a few at a time, or traced back to one of their lairs, usually in a cave or tucked into a rock formation.
  
  
• THE GRIPPE: Galssop has sent an urgent request for healers to help combat a particularly virulent strain of the illness many in Kirkwall are suffering. Most of the town has fallen victim to it, including their only healer, leaving the rest without care. Complicating matters, reaching the town in winter (especially while transporting supplies) requires traveling up the frozen Wye river, using skates and iceboats. The villagers there will be wary of magical healing, and Bran as urged trying to use non-magical means of healing first if possible, though he and the sick will ultimately come round to the necessity of using some magic rather than see dozens die.
  
  
• THE GRINCH: Lerwick's trouble is a young man who recently inherited Touraigle, the fortress above the village, and who firmly believes that Lerwick is also his inheritance. When the Mayor of Lerwick refused to enforce Lord Bertrand's taxes, the lord's guards ransacked the town, helping themselves to most of its winter stores, among other things. Riftwatch diplomats have been asked to help entreat the lord to be reasonable and return what he took. But the road up to the castle has been blocked by a combination of overzealous defenses and weather, forcing all visitors to climb a treacherous hill of downed trees covered in ice and the occasional, possibly-frozen (if they're lucky), booby trap.

In addition to these specific issues, Rift Watchers can expect to encounter the usual Vinmark winter hazards: unpredictable weather, hungry animals, bad roads, scarcities, and so forth. Once news of their presence in the mountains gets around, they may be asked to take on similar small problems for others, like dealing with wildlife issues, helping search for a missing child, rescuing a hunting party trapped by a minor avalanche, etc. There are also basic chores to keep the lodge running that will always need extra hands, like chopping firewood, hunting down dinner, safeguarding supplies on their way to and from Kirkwall, and so on.

Comments

[sulahnan]

Athessa gets into the open cavern just after Loxley, and doesn't waste time engaging the same demon as he in a pincer attack. Even as four more demons crop up closer to the rift, she affords them only enough attention to assess the imminent threat, count their number, and return focus.

Once the bickering stops, they do work like a well oiled machine. Loxley's blade flashes here, Athessa's own glints there, parry, thrust, riposte--at one point as the demon is beaten back with steel and flame, Athessa dodges aside to get a clear shot at the short-arse attacking Matthias. Her throwing knife does little damage, but it staggers the slumping figure long enough that Matty doesn't need to dodge an attack while casting, and she can shift focus to a new target.

The closest of the new four is a rage demon, hunched and pulsing, hardened bits of its lava-like substance cracking and sloughing off as it moves. Athessa steps out of the way of a clumsy swipe from its claw-like hand and hacks the limb off. Of course, in the nature of rage demons that pisses it off and it swipes again, with the other arm, which it then loses. They'll regrow before too long, but Athessa is quick; she spins around the demon as it charges her, easily placing herself behind it and slashing both daggers down its back.

[charmoffensive]

From somewhere in its blindspot -- a guess based off its attacking movements, given how this thing of lava and smoke barely has a face -- Loxley strikes with a blade that is no longer wreathed in green flame. Stands to reason that something made up of pure heat wouldn't take much offense to a lick of fire.

No, instead, in the strange half-light of volcanic glow, the air around his blade seems to tremble like watery surface tension, and as the blade plunges deep into shifting fiery mass, that same unstable, invisible energy ripples across the rage demon's flank.

He ducks as the creature twists with strange preternatural flexibility and slashes a clawed hand, and he twists the blade out with the intent to do damage as he does. Staying in melee, Loxley shouts;

"Will closing the rift hurt these things?"

[nonvenomous]

The crackle and spit of the largest demon’s lightning whip splits the party as it lumbers into the mix, sending a stiff shock up through boots and into spines. Pressed back against the chamber wall, Richard reflects violet light as well as the ice, saturated with offal as he is.

Later someone will have to scrub him off like a tar-soaked loon.

He waits for this latest contingent of demons to fan out into the fracas, barely breathing, and by the flash of the next whip he’s slipped well behind their ranks, right hand raised open to the rift. If closing it doesn’t hurt them, it should -- at the very least -- stop more from crawling through.

[inkindled]

"You're the Rifters," Matthias shouts back, "why would we know if closing the-- shit--"

The ungainly end to this sentence is because the lightning whip has crackled in his direction, lashing out in such a way that Matthias has to throw himself to one side to avoid it. He manages to get out of the way of the worst of it--a slap on the arm that sizzles, and he bites at his lower lip to avoid shouting out from the pain.

In the moment, Richard has looped around behind, his green-glowing hand raised like a pathetically small talisman, held up toward the rift. The demons have not seen him yet but they will, in a moment. The rift has begun to make a horrible denting noise as Richard gets closer to it. Its form refracts and contracts wildly as if it is trying to disguise itself from this new threat.

Matthias shoves down the pain in his arm and raises it above his head, his staff clutched in his other hand. A barrier lifts around Richard just before he moves out of Matthias' range, a surprising shock of shimmering blue in the sickly greenish light of the cavern. That brutish rage demon is still with Loxley and Athessa, but they will kill it soon. This barrier is for the hulking spiney demon that has, at last, noticed Richard. It grumbles a roar as it turns to stump after him.

Enter: An Ash Wraith

[sulahnan]

Whatever Loxley just did kills the rage demon so quickly that Athessa barely has time to divert her next attack towards the next closest--which is a kind of shade she's never seen before. The silhouette is the same hunched form as the others, but the core of it is gnarled like an old oak, and along one of the ridges of its de facto bark, it splits. Raw, meaty flesh is exposed in that split, and lined with teeth as if its whole body is a mouth and its skeletal mask of a face is only there to distract until it can bite.

The sight of it stops her in her tracks for one baffled moment.

"Well I don't like that," she decides, and skirts around the beasty to slice one dagger upwards along the opposite side of its...toothy gash, while striking down the length of its back with the other. The shade screeches and flails blindly, mouth gnashing. Yep. It's a mouth.

"Wow, I hate it!"