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)
faderift2020-05-03 11:05 pm
faderifting) wrote in faderift2020-05-03 11:05 pm
Entry tags:
- ! mod plot,
- ! open,
- bastien,
- byerly rutyer,
- darras rivain,
- james flint,
- john silver,
- kostos averesch,
- lazar,
- nell voss,
- obeisance barrow,
- val de foncé,
- wysteria de foncé,
- yseult,
- { athessa },
- { colin },
- { herschel rustin },
- { ilias fabria },
- { ket perrino },
- { laura kint },
- { leander },
- { lucien },
- { marcoulf de ricart },
- { octavian sokolov },
- { richard dickerson },
- { sister sara sawbones },
- { sonia barra }
MOD PLOT ↠ SECRET STEEP'D ROOTS
WHO: Open
WHAT: Trapped! Trapped in a jungle!
WHEN: Bloomingtide 9:46
WHERE: Unknown
NOTES: OOC post! The three starters in the comments can have multiple threads, and feel free to ask us on the OOC post if you have any "what will happen if I x" questions.
WHAT: Trapped! Trapped in a jungle!
WHEN: Bloomingtide 9:46
WHERE: Unknown
NOTES: OOC post! The three starters in the comments can have multiple threads, and feel free to ask us on the OOC post if you have any "what will happen if I x" questions.
When the eluvian shatters, there's a stutter in the flow of the fight. The eight Venatori nearly all freeze in place for a moment when the glass cracks, watching their way out and their plan crumble, and afterwards they never quite manage to get their rhythm back. But they don't quit, either. In the end, they all go down fighting.
Riftwatch takes no casualties, and the four members of Riftwatch who were taken captive are all alive, accounted for, and mostly unharmed.
That's the end of the good news.
The massive, shattered eluvian was set within a ruin carved and built out of a steep embankment, now almost entirely reclaimed by the jungle. All that's left are the remains of walls—some full height, others crumbling where vines have pushed between the stones or spreading tree roots have disrupted the ground. But with daylight fading and several injuries that need attending to before anyone can move, the surviving walls and thick plant growth form the best shelter anyone can hope to find before nightfall.
When the sun rises and better stock can be taken of their position, the jungle in which everyone finds themselves is still not immediately recognizable. It's hot compared to Kirkwall at this time of year, with temperatures hovering around 75-80F and kept relatively consistent between day and night by the high humidity and non-existent breeze. It rains with some frequency—light showers that are little more than mist by the time they reach ground-level or torrential downpours that start with little warning and drop several inches of rain in an hour before disappearing as abruptly as they'd arrived.
Most of the ruins extending up or out from the embankment are little more than chunks of moss-covered stone buried in the undergrowth. Searching around them will find them a stream running through the remains of a carved stone channel, fast enough to be safe to drink, and they can follow that a short ways out of the ruins to where it joins a much larger river. They won't see any traffic along it except for a variety of river creatures that would be happy to eat them. Judging by the position of the sun and moons, the river leads south.
There is one half-sunken portion of the ruin complex that's more intact, but after exploring it confirms there is no back-up eluvian on offer, there's little choice but to set out into the dense growth of the jungle. Huge trees create a canopy far overhead, and the floor is soft and springy with dead matter. Giant ferns, vines of every variety, and flowers of every conceivable color crowd them at every turn, making travel slow and damp. Overhead, and all around, are the sounds of other creatures moving through the same space. Birdsong, monkey screeches, the constant buzz and chitter of insects. The fauna in the jungle is a mix of the usual sorts of beasts one would expect in such a climate: parrots, monkeys, snakes, absurdly large insects, the rare big cat, whatever other weird animals walk around a jungle.
The walk south along the river will be a long and difficult slog through dense jungle with no real respite from the environment along the way—and no real certainty about their destination. They'll have to make a new camp each night as best they can and push on the next morning, hiking through seemingly-endless forest. At first, they will have the benefit of a path, a trail south alongside the river that appears to have been cut less than a month ago. It will lead to a second set of ruins where signs of Venatori presence will be obvious. They will make camp here for a couple days while they explore more thoroughly for clues about where they are and what the Venatori were up to.
Beyond that point it will be necessary to cut their own trail, an exhausting process that means even slower going and tired arms for everyone who takes a shift at the front of the line. The only break will come when the jungle abruptly gives way to a deep gorge, the river taking a hard west-ward turn and dropping down a series of magnificent waterfalls to what looks like a very large lake at the bottom. They can either find a way down the falls and hike west around the lake, or cross the river via a narrow rock bridge over the falls and continue south back into the jungle. They'll stop here and make camp among the rocks for another couple days to try to identify the lake or the falls before they go any further and risk walking miles in the wrong direction.
The journey will take a few weeks in total, with plenty of time and opportunity for a few people scouting ahead or foraging for food to find trouble (or fun) on their own. But the entire group will also encounter a few hazards together, including, in chronological order:
- Shortly after leaving the elven ruins where they came through the eluvian, a flash flood will catch the camp one evening, despite its position on the best available high ground, sweeping away some supplies and ruining others. People outside of the camp, for whatever reason, will lack the high ground and might experience a more dangerous rush of water, and everyone will have to go to sleep damp and hungry.
- A day after the group leaves the dwarven ruins, a swarm of dragonlings and several drakes will emerge from a mountain cave when the group passes too close, breathing fire and intent on chasing them away. Their high dragon won't appear for the fight, but several days later she will fly overhead, barely visible through the canopy but obviously very, very large.
- A few days later, they'll come upon a hot spring that appears crystal-clear and fine for drinking and bathing, but will result in people developing minor, mostly auditory hallucinatory effects an hour or two after their exposure to it. The plants growing nearby will show to have an even stronger effect, if anyone is foolish enough to eat them to find out.
- In a few areas, the river will cut gorges through the mountainous terrain, and following it will require either walking along narrow traversable paths on the cliffsides or holding supplies overhead and fording through the water. Watch out for dickfish.
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So what do you want?
"I can't forgive you," he says. And, because this is what he cannot get past - "If another had turned their hand against you like that, I'd never have forgiven them. I can't forgive you." And it is unfair; he knows it's unfair. He knows that Colin is victim as well as perpetrator. But he cannot forgive it.
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"Makes two of us," he says hoarsely. "Just...I'll leave you alone, like I've been. But..." He changes how he's been saying it, to reflect what's really true at heart. "I owe you an evil man. Let me do that for you. You never have to forgive me. I won't ever expect that, or anything else. But I want to do this for you. Let me make a little of this up to you. Please."
tw rape and animal cruelty
A moment of silence. He's not sure what he's going to say until he says it. "He tried to rape my cousin when she was a girl. When she fought him off, he drowned her dog to punish her. And then he convinced everyone that she'd done it. They treated her like a hysteric for years after." He sets his jaw. "This may not be the evil man you should be fighting." A little too close to home, perhaps.
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"That's exactly the kind of evil man I should be fighting," he says steadily. "If I don't owe it to you, I owe it to myself, and to her."
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"I'm sorry," he whispers after a moment. "For...everything. But especially for cornering you tonight. You don't owe me anything. Least of all for Sonia, by the way. I shouldn't get credit for doing the bare minimum of human decency."
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A gleam of humor comes to his eye.
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"I'm working with Barrow on the...problem I came to you about a few months ago. And it's actually working." His smile grows. "I mean, being Silenced is never going to be my favorite thing, but it doesn't have to put lives in danger on the battlefield."
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