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Entry tags:
war table mission: project haven
WHO: Petrana, Marcus, Edgard, Silver, Athessa, Isaac, Leander
WHAT: A Summer's End festival weekend
WHEN: Kingsway
WHERE: Cubentquium, an isolated mountain village outside Perivantium
NOTES: The plan is 3 top-levels, one for each section of the plot, RP however you like and I'll chime in with any additional info as needed. Will update warnings as we go. So far: cults, hair, blood.
WHAT: A Summer's End festival weekend
WHEN: Kingsway
WHERE: Cubentquium, an isolated mountain village outside Perivantium
NOTES: The plan is 3 top-levels, one for each section of the plot, RP however you like and I'll chime in with any additional info as needed. Will update warnings as we go. So far: cults, hair, blood.
The Riftwatch agents meet their guides outside a run-down little Chantry in Perivantium. Donata, a wide-smiling and plain-speaking human woman of middling age, is accompanied by two gangly youths to help her corral the assembled few dozen devotees. It's not quite the kind of group they'd been prepared to blend in with — the assembled faithful certainly seem pious enough, but where most pilgrims are the sort who've enough spending money to afford the travel, threadbare clothes and near-empty rucksacks are more the norm here. A pair of siblings are just in from Trevis, is easy enough to overhear; another family from Nessum, but they're the skittish, quiet sort and seem to expect the same from everyone else.
Not among them: the man with the red scarf and sunburst pin the team was told to look for. But then, they're hardly at the rendezvous point yet.
Honored to receive you, is the greeting that goes round with a tin of simple oat cakes from their guides; Blessed are those who give, before the group sets off into the mountains.
For a stretch of space that is, as the crow flies, not so terribly far, the path to Cubentquium is a difficult and winding one. Sharp columns of stone rise pale into paler fog, echoes of their hundred cousins to the north, and between those tight walls twists a labyrinthine path that is in places more rocky crag than walkway. Soft sand gives way to sudden drops; byways that might look a little easier to trod are, on confident assurance from their guides, decidedly not. Moving forward seems to mean doubling back as often as pushing ahead, and none of them would be blamed for forgetting which direction is which — not to worry, their guides know the way.
But when the sky cracks opens above them midway into the afternoon, pissing rain turns their precarious footholds to rushing streams, and Donata calls the group to a halt in the shelter of an outcropping until the storm passes. It's a full night and morning of waiting, wet-shoed and crowded close, before they're able to travel safely again. Thankfully, the last leg of the journey seems to be a straighter shot, and as their shadows begin to get long, the group finally reaches their destination: a deep black lake rimmed in white cliffs and tall, thin trees.
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"I don't think they'll find that convincing."
John had intended to say more, but abandons the train of thought as he becomes aware that the lump in the coverlets isn't just sloppily folded sheets. He shifts his weight further up the bed, abandoning the flow of conversation to draw back the sheets.
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(This might say a little of his familiarity with knives, and knife safety standards.)
"No," He agrees with John. It's unconvincing, but at least they'd have the knife. Only half-serious: "Suppose we might skim the other jars —"
That seems like it would last precisely until any intended spell took effect. Silver shifts away from something, and he cuts himself short, draws no closer to squint across the short distance to the bed.
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“What is it?”
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An empty jar and a clean knife, then. He wonders a little if that is in itself an act of aggression, the cold refusal, but he supposes it depends on the culture of these people, of which they know nothing. In spite of brewing tension, there is half a flash of humour in his glance to Isaac and his remark about skimming.
But he feels focus pull, and silently looks to Silver as well.
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However, when John draws back the downy-soft fabric and sheet, it's not to reveal a foot warmer or bolster. It's a doll, slightly damp to the touch. John lifts it with a slight grimace.
"A doll," John says, before his frown deepens. "Made of..."
He looks up to Isaac, doll raised slightly, as if inviting him closer for confirmation.
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...Does so, anyway. Wouldn't it be worse not to know?
"Well," Reluctantly, Isaac reaches for it, rolls the damp fibers between finger and thumb. They come away a muddy black, clotted by dark streaks. "That's disgusting."
The younger apprentices will make toys of anything, and an indulgent mage — perhaps a very bored one with an excess of time — might lend his hand to it. These have been woven under less attentive eyes.
"Hair and blood. Mme. Cedoux?"
Is he asking the only girl present about a doll? Maybe. But Julius trucks in glyphs, in impressions of greater permanence; Isaac owns only the haziest sense of those things.
(It sounds better than asking, has anyone present done blood magic? when Leander's just down the hall.)
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“A ward,” she says, finally, “Did you not look at it, it might make you feel more at ease here. Safe.”
Very little about looking at a rough-hewn doll made of some unknown person's off-cuts makes her feel safer here. She adds, “I couldn't say if the ward is meant to offer protection or only impart its feeling.”
The two possibilities suggest different things.
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With his own bed playing host to the tray, he steps towards the next, and flips aside the exceedingly soft sheets to find another of these dolls. He isn't moved to pick it up, expecting the sound of fluttering wool to net the attention of the others.
"A few of our hosts were wearing tokens," he offers, instead, filling in a blank as he sees it. "Meant for minor enchantments. I've seen free mages do similar."
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He doesn't bother asking if it's human hair. It seems irrelevant next to the bigger question.
"I'd put it into the fire," John advises. "If it's as Mme. Cedoux says, it's not worth the risk of a false impression working on us while we're here."
But then they end up in the same position: how soon will their hosts notice?
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To Marcus. Will that do anything at all? Can't say. But if it was before a poor idea to come in staves blazing, it strikes poorer with perhaps multiple mages among their hosts.
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Whether or not she even can quell a native enchantment is a question she's not before had cause to try to answer.
“If it means only to impart the sensation of safety, then that it isn't a priority to do so for very long raises further questions.”
Several. Pressing.
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But Marcus pauses, attentive all at once to the creaking of foot steps outside, restlessly on his way over there even before knuckles bounce light off the other side. He at least waits until that happens before he opens the door. That he was slightly tense prior to seeing familiar faces on the other side is perhaps only noticeable when it unwinds.
Good, then. He steps back and widens the door. "Quickly," is quiet.
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Her nod at the tray on the bed is relieved, in whatever way a nod can be. Confirmation, perhaps. Ah, good, they didn't bleed themselves either.
And then there's another one of those dolls.
"I'm not the only one put off by those things, am I?"
She keeps her voice low, to keep from being overheard by anyone not within the room.
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To Athessa, "Are you still on about the dolls? I thought we agreed they were gifts. Protection tokens." He looks to Leander for confirmation.
He will be leaving out the fact he he just got a little spooked by one.
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"I suppose you've noted the blood by now."
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"We've been discussing our options for donation," John answers, before nodding at the doll in Petrana's hand, "and the purpose of the enchantment on those."
The assertion that they're harmless strikes John as so preposterous that he doesn't bother responding to it.
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“In the fuller context of our contact's likely fate, enchantments designed to instill a short-lived sense of safety would raise concerns were they only cloth.”
But the blood isn't comforting.
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Isaac repeats, with an answering lift of his brows, as if briefly daring John to bring up the choice of rooms —
But he shifts in place to make space for Athessa, and if it draws him implicitly away from Edgard's scent, well. Men in glass cologne bottles shouldn't throw stones. His eyes flick only briefly to Leander, and away. The flesh of the dolls seems unlike to have disturbed him.
(The choice of rooms?)
"The watchman suggests we might disturb matters outside." In answer to Petrana, to the enchantment's ticking clock. "Whether imminently, or further in rest."
"Defang them or not, and we'll need a watch on the door."
In shifts, probably. Marcus.
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Edgard looks from one serious face to another and yawns hugely. He's not trying to be rude, he's still very sleepy.
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"That we don't know the purpose of the dolls," he says, with plodding patience, "and that the contact we came to meet has been here, is here no longer, and his presence lied about. That we're maintaining civility and will ask our questions on the morrow. That we should establish watches for the evening in case we're in danger. And likely, too, that we ought not to bleed into those jars."
Now he glances to Edgard, as if to say: does that cover it?
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—Might be a sardonic question, made difficult to confirm by Leander's deadpan delivery. We needn't all bleed into them is a suggestion he wouldn't mind speaking aloud, ether, perhaps with a glance to the filthiest one among them, but a glance to the most nervous among them (somewhat less brief) is reminder enough to behave. Even in jest, that's unlikely to be taken well.
(And he wouldn't be joking, besides.)
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The dolls are a little trickier to explain away with the ignorant outsiders shtick.
"I don't think hurting someone's feelings is gonna matter much if we find out that these dolls are all that's left of our contact."
That, she says while sending a pointed look in Edgard's direction. Is the implication clear enough?
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“Already they've chosen to lie to us,” she says, simply. “And to what end we don't know. It is natural to exercise caution in an unfamiliar environment; we are merely, as you say, unfamiliar with their ways. It is cautious not to indulge in foreign enchantments.”
It's apparent that she's workshopping it out loud, but it's not a bad start on explaining away dealing with the dolls as long as their method of dealing with them isn't a fire.
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"So, what you're saying is that we don't get to sleep."
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