MOD PLOT ↠ SECRET STEEP'D ROOTS

[faderifting]

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.

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.

Comments

[inkindled]

"I saw these before--" Matthias is facing away from Laura, some distance back, scrabbling in the dirt with his fingernails. They're foraging and not hunting so he's free to talk as much as he likes, which is of course a lot.

These are yellowish roots, as thick as your wrist and tufted with green at their tops. It takes a great deal of digging, but Matthias does it happily. He's sweaty and he hasn't had a proper wash since yesterday and they are, as a group, lost, but he remains happy, somehow. Something to do with camp life and living outdoors and everything at last coming easy to him. And a great deal to do with Laura, and getting to go about with her on missions like this. All that alone time.

"They're sort of like carrots, I reckon. I haven't actually eaten one but we might try them, and I saw those little squirrel thingers gnawing on one earlier so we likely won't be killed--and I like carrots--or perhaps they're like turnips, I like turnips as well--mashed and with butter--only we haven't got any butter, I s'ppose--what d'you think," now that he's got the root free, he holds it up for Laura to see, "would you eat this?"

No answer. He looks around. No Laura.

"Laura?"

And then the squelch, and Matthias, wary, shifts to stand, and follow off the way that he had seen her go. She can't have gotten too far ahead.

[justashotaway]

She hears him, someplace behind her--close enough to recognize his voice and her name, if not quite the details--but doesn't see him. Straightening up properly, she takes a step away from the brambles.

Or tries to, at least. Her foot doesn't move enough to come free of the quicksand, the same way it didn't move enough a moment before. Laura wobbles again, staring down at her legs where they disappear into the mud and pulls hard. All it does is make the mud creep further, up to her knees.

Again, and then again, and she calls, "Matthias!" It will scare away any game, but so will the way she's starting to struggle, reaching out for anything that might help her yank herself out of this.

[inkindled]

Oh, shit.

Matthias breaks into a run at that, the yellow root still clutched in his hand. His other hand is going for his staff, and as he comes around the bend in the path that Laura had cut for them--her claws having proved as great an asset as they always are, despite their fraught nature--but if she's shouted for him, what's wrong, she's got those claws, always armed--

It's unreal, seeing her knee-deep in mud. Like she's stepped through a hole in the forest floor. Matthias has seen mudslides, even before the rainstorm that had wrecked havoc on this camp he'd seen mudslides. He doesn't think twice. Stops going for the staff and charges after her, throwing out his free hand so he can grab hold of hers.

"Here!"

[justashotaway]

"No--" Laura starts, but Matthias has already started in, and the mud is creeping up her thighs. She tries to move toward him, but every attempt to wade forward through the earth ends with her feet somplace deeper and damper.

What she can do is reach out to his hand, in hopes that he might still be on solid ground. Perhaps he can reach, perhaps he can pull her free. Blood and berry juice meet the dirt on his hand as she grips it, pain zinging through her palm. (There had been nothing to grab but thorns, and she had reached back for them anyway. Better punctures than drowning, had been her theory.)

"Matthias," she says again, quieter in her concern this time. "I am stuck."

She suspects they both are.

[inkindled]

Her hand is sticky, but Matthias doesn't flinch. First off, grubbiness, stickiness, none of it bothers him. More important than that is the fact that Laura needs help. That is all that he cares about.

Too late does he feel the suck of the mud on his boots. Well, that's all right. He's climbed out of mud puddles before. Mud slicks as well. But then it's rising higher, and as his fingers curl around hers, he can feel the pull like a weight. His hand clasped to hers, he stretches out one leg, pushing deeper in the mud to try and touch the bottom.

There's nothing.

Well. Shit.

"It's all right," he says, far more steadily than he feels. Shit. "We'll, er... We'll work this out."

[justashotaway]

"Yes." They will have to, or they will drown in mud someplace no one else will find them. Laura dislikes the idea of it, especially the idea of drowning beside someone else; if she must suffer this indignity, she would rather Matthias lived (and wasn't present to see her go under).

She squeezes his hand, thinking, and brings out the claws with the other. Her first swipes are directed to the mud near her thighs, trying to cut away the earth from around her. The claws make marks, but they fill back in before she can do more than wiggle her leg a little. Then, letting go of Matthias, she stretches forward as far as she can and stabs both hands into the muck. It goes no better--the claws go in without finding purchase, her hands sinking in after.

Straightening back up, she makes the claws disappear and starts wiping the worst of the mud from her hands. Her brows have drawn down, her mouth flat. Belatedly, she recognizes a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach as dread. "You have not sunk as far. You might still be able to escape."

[inkindled]

Matthias has been in tight spots, and knows this feeling in his chest as fear. You don't give in to it, is the thing. You fight against it, like you fight everything, and turn the tide to your favor so that you survive. Already he's looking around, sorting out their options. So is Laura, for a moment, at least--she pulls her hand free after she gives his a little squeeze, and all right, they're one on this, they will do this.

Magic and good fortune have alway saved him. The former is constant; the latter is capricious. But this isn't it. That conclusion is why he does not, at first, comprehend what Laura is saying to him. He looks around at her, determination stamped across his features. Then his eyes round, as comprehension dawns on him--and then he snaps down on that, and thrashes out to grab at her hand again.

"Don't," he says, firmly. "We're escaping. The two of us. C'mon. It's mud, isn't it." Mud that is pulling them, inexorably, down, down and there is no bottom. "I've been in worse. So have you, I reckon. So let's-- sort this. Together."

[justashotaway]

"I cannot kill mud," she points out, her hand squelching in his. And some part of her mind wonders if lyrium makes her bones heavier. There isn't enough of it to matter, most likely, but the mud is at her hips, and it is cold. Surprisingly so, considering the muggy heat of the jungle.

This isn't panic, precisely; it's too calm for that. It's a sort of reckoning, an awareness that one life is easier to save than two, a consideration of the merits of a plan like I will dive under the mud and force Matthias out. (Dangerous, she thinks, even as it's tempting. If her strength isn't enough, then she will die without purpose.)

That stricken look Matthias gives her puts an end to that thought, at least for the moment. Maybe there's a way to sort this, before they're doomed to unsettlingly cool graves in a forest no one knows or cares about. She thinks, poking at the mud with her free hand. "Fire would dry it, but only the surface. What other magic do you know?"

[inkindled]

"Erm," Matthias says, to buy himself time and to, hopefully, disguise how he's deflated slightly at that question.

He doesn't want to confess to Laura--or to anyone, really, but especially not to Laura--how little he really knows. What he knows, he knows well, right? And he's proud of it. Only the trouble is, it's not a particularly diverse catalog to rilfe through, especially when asked to vary from his go-to fire.

"A bit of force magic," he says, trying to think around the slop of the mud pulling down on his legs. "It might be enough to knock us loose. Normally sends people flying, but I dunno if... Here, did you notice we're not sinking so much?"

He gestures, broadly; he sinks a little more, the mud just below his armpits. Oh.

"Well, we weren't. I wasn't."

[justashotaway]

It sounds good--one of those rare occasions when magic is useful--until she has to ask the inevitable question. "Would it force us up or down?"

Either they will be saved, or Matthias' magic will sink them both. Speaking of which, he isn't wrong. Laura frowns at the way he goes down a little further with his gesture, sunk down even further than she (though not by too much).

"It became worse when you moved." She's starting to get genuinely cold, gooseflesh rising on her arms. It's contrary to every instinct not to fight her way out of the mud, but it hasn't worked yet. "If we remain still--and call for help--"