CLOSED | if i cut off your arms and cut off your legs,

[murderbaby]

WHO: Mhavos, Barrow, Sawbones, Ellis, Vanadi, Edgard, Athessa, Leander, Dick, & Holden.
WHAT: Slasher Plot / Murderhaus / I should really have come up with a set name for this thing.
WHEN: Late Harvestmere / Early Kingsway.
WHERE: Ostwick.
NOTES: This plot is based on the idea of slasher movies, so there will be blood, violence, torture, cannibalism & NPC death.

YOU MAY REMEMBER going to Ostwick on a Riftwatch mission, closing a rift on the property of the noble Pickney house, and being accosted by the Lady Elsed Pickney. Her (adult) son is missing! Terrible things are afoot!

But that's easy to ignore; Gawen Pickney rather publicly announced his intention to elope with a Dalish elf a few weeks ago. Assurances are made, yes, we'll let you know if we see him, and what can you do but that?

It's time to move on. Traveling back to Kirkwall, a storm breaks out, and everyone decides it's better to find a place to stay for the night than push forward. The Silver Lamp is a cozy Inn on the roadside, and the proprietor, an elderly man named Medrod, is very kind. It's not tourism season in these parts, so he's happy to give everyone a discount for the night, and the meal is on the house. Everyone eats well, has a pleasant enough time, and wanders off to bed for the night.

(The food your characters ate was not people and did not taste strange in any way.)

And then Medrod will let the sleeping gas seep through the Inn, laced with Magebane just in case, and everyone will wake up a few hours later, dizzy and, in many cases, in pain.

(Look for a toplevel with your character's name below.)

HOW WILL THIS WORK? Well, I'll be NPCing Medrod the Murderer. Medrod will be showing up in each thread eventually, after a number of tags I RNG'd. It's entirely possible to escape before he shows up! And don't worry, if you guys get in a rut, I'll make him show up early to spice things up ;)

I'll also be doing dicerolls!

If you have a situation where you feel your character will need to roll (I'm going to let you decide this!) put ROLL in the subject line, and bold what you need me to roll for.

(For example, you can have a whole tag like normal, and then Bob tries to pick the lock. Then I'll roll for success or failure, as well as other factors, and reply to that thread with the results. But if you don't want to rely on dicerolls, for whatever reason, don't worry about it. The dicerolls are an opt-in feature. Use it as much or as little as you want.)

I'll also be rolling for discovery, which will work the same way: if your character is looking for something, put ROLL in the subject line and bold what they're looking for (normal tag normal tag then Alice looked for a lockpick) and I'll reply with results after rolling. But if you just want your character to find the thing without dicerolls, go for it.

IN SHORT, I'm only making this as hard as you want it to be. Your characters are already waking up to torture. If you want them to find the special key and escape in two comments, it's totally fine. (Just respect other people's difficulty levels, if they want to give their characters a harder time.)

The only thing that has to rely on rolls is killing, apprehending or injuring the Murderer, but since I'll be NPCing him, those rolls are automatic and will be baked into his reply comments.

IF YOUR CHARACTERS GET FREE, let me know what they'd want to do next oocly (options below), and I'll set that up for you!

Other potential goals to keep in mind besides escaping:

- Finding / saving others.
- Killing / apprehending Medrod the Murderer.
- Getting evidence of Gawen & his Dalish wife's murder to eventually send to Lady Elsed.
- Getting your stuff back (all obviously visible weapons / staves have been taken away).

You got questions? Lemme know!

DETAILS:

- While in the torture room, your character is free to hear (or not hear) distant screaming. It's muffled enough that you can't identify the source (it's Edgard). The screaming has stopped.

- The hallways between the rooms are pitch-dark, and even those who can see in the dark will find it difficult to navigate, as the walls and ceilings are mirrored, distorting the size, shape, and direction of the hallways.

Comments

ROLL: MEDIUM FAILURE.

[murderbaby]

OUTCOME: Athessa is not able to relieve the pressure on her arm, and the movement agitates her injury.

This hurts a lot. It could also damage her arm further, if you like.

ROLL

[thereneverwas]

"Sorry, sorry, sorry," Barrow hisses through his teeth, immediately setting to work on the other arm, the blood from that side of his body dripping all over her in the process.

ROLL: MAJOR FAILURE.

[murderbaby]

OUTCOME: Barrow makes a wrong move, and slips in his own blood and general dizziness from the sleeping gas and, you know, blood loss.

You fall the fuck over and potentially injure yourself worse.

ROLL!

[sulahnan]

"Barrow!"

There's nothing she can do but watch him fall, and try to get control of her breathing. The pain in her arm is enough to make her hyperventilate and pass out, which would be bad. Very bad. She doesn't want to wake up freed only because her arm's been torn off.

So once she gets over a wave of nausea and dizziness, she looks around, trying to see what they can possibly use to escape.

ROLL: NARROW SUCCESS. oh thank god.

[murderbaby]

OUTCOME: Athessa may notice the rack she's been tied to is rather rickety. If she works for it, she can wrench a rusty nail free from the uneven wood, and take a few stabs at the rope.

You can give yourself more slack by beginning to stab at the rope and letting it fray. How much damage you do to the rope is up to you.

ROLL

[thereneverwas]

After slipping, banging his head on the rack, and absolutely eating shit on the ground in a pool of his own blood while shouting expletives, Barrow is somehow still in service. One meaty arm reappears to drag him back up into view, now with a brand new scalp wound dripping blood down the opposite side of his face from where he'd been leaning into the spikes.

It's all superficial, it's fine, he's only slightly concussed. Maybe.

"Athessa," he says again, a bit brokenly but more simply dazed, and he tries again to untie her wrist.

ROLL: 🎉 GREAT SUCCESS. 🎉

[murderbaby]

Somehow you managed to roll even which genuinely is so unlikely I'm gonna say you win this one. Good job.

OUTCOME: Not only does Barrow manage to maneuver his leaking body successfully, but he unties Athessa's wrist so quickly and smoothly that he's able to cushion the impact, causing Athessa an absolute minimum of pain.

Athessa is only bound by her feet and experiences no new pain. Just, you know, the old pain.

[sulahnan]

Getting her arm from above her head to a resting position a bit closer to normal is not a fun process, but with Barrow's help she manages not to make anything worse for herself.

"Fuck," she breathes, sitting upright on the table. Well, one arm is definitely longer than the other, as if that wasn't expected. "Yeah that's...that's dislocated."

Athessa looks at Barrow, winces (both about her shoulder and his own injuries) and huffs out a soft laugh. She holds up her good hand.

"How many fingers?"

[thereneverwas]

"I'm sorry," Barrow whispers, and it's a pitiable sound-- it's his fault, isn't it? She's so small and he's so big and stupid and--

"four?"

He smiles faintly back, which looks a bit deranged on someone whose face is covered in blood. Then--

"but let's get you off this fucking thing."

[sulahnan]

"Yeah, please."

It was four, luckily, so his concussion is likely minor. The bleeding, though, they'll have to address that. Athessa starts to lean down to untie her ankles, but it's too much too soon and the edges of her vision go dark and she sees stars. Maybe she'll just...lay back down for a sec.

"D'you think you can pop my arm back into its socket?"

[thereneverwas]

Gripping her above the shoulder to steady her, Barrow is concerned, but knows the feeling-- he also ran the risk of just falling forward when his feet were still secured, and can tell Athessa's in a similar state.

"I'm afraid I'd hurt you worse," he admits, bending to begin (CAREFULLY) unfastening one foot, "but with luck we'll find Sawbones, she'll know what to do."

He pauses, straightening at the sound of screaming from somewhere else in the building.

[sulahnan]

Athessa hears it, too. She doesn't look wholly concerned, however, because:

"That's Edgard. Doesn't mean much, he yells about fucking anything."

With Barrow seeing to the ropes at her ankles, and refusing to fix her arm, she grips her right wrist with her left hand and holds her arm out straight in front of her, takes a few steeling breaths, and starts to pull her arm forward.

[thereneverwas]

"We should find him anyway," Barrow murmurs, and winces, holding up his hands when he sees what Athessa's doing.

"Wait," he says quickly, "--tell me what to do."

[sulahnan]

She grunts, though whether it's from the effort of trying to reset her arm or a disgusted noise at the idea of finding Edgard is hard to tell. She nods at her wrist.

"Grab hold of my forearm and pull," she says, adding quickly: "Slowly. And make sure you do it straight forward. If nothing other than the ligament is broken it should pop back into place."

Not trusting her own ability to hold her arm up, she keeps holding it with her good hand until he makes a move.

[thereneverwas]

Though he's getting blood all over her by doing so (he'd wipe his hands on his shirt but it's also drenched), Barrow very carefully does as Athessa says, watching her eyes for signs that something is going wrong.

[sulahnan]

Luckily with Barrow being so much bigger than herself, he's able to pull with more strength than she could, even on somebody else. When it gets hard to not be pulled forward along with her arm, she starts to lean away from him, nodding slightly to show that it's good, it's fine, this is what's supposed to happen, until—

Pop.

Athessa stops leaning, lets out the breath she was holding, and squeezes her eyes shut against the dizzying pain of bone thonking against bone.

"Okay," she says, and pats his hand. "That's that."

ROLL

[thereneverwas]

Exhaling with relief, Barrow nods, even smiles a bit, and then hurries over to the door to try and open it.

ROLL: 🎉 GREAT SUCCESS. 🎉

[murderbaby]

Guys, what the fuck.

OUTCOME: Barrow rips the door completely off its hinges.

To be fair, it's a pretty creaky door and the wood was maybe rotting a little bit.

ROLL

[thereneverwas]

Looking back at Athessa like 'whoops', he winces and then peers out to try and get his bearings.

ROLL: MEDIUM FAILURE.

[murderbaby]

OUTCOME: Barrow steps out the doorway without falling and killing himself. It's shadowy and dark, nearly impossible for human eyes to see any distance. The screaming has stopped, but you can hear somebody shuffling around in the darkness.

A knife glints in the shadows.

[thereneverwas]

Ducking back in, Barrow beckons Athessa over and mouths 'there's someone there'.

ROLL!

[sulahnan]

Athessa, having gotten off the table and currently holding her arm folded against her chest, steps quietly toward the door and gestures to her eyes. She can see in the dark.

Keeping close to the doorframe, She leans out to glance down the hallway in the direction Barrow saw "someone."

ROLL: NARROW FAILURE.

[murderbaby]

OUTCOME: Athessa, what do your elf eyes see... not much. It's a hallway, nobody's in it, but-- from the scuffling sound nearby-- somebody just was.

There's a strange quality to the walls, and Athessa's elven eyes are capable of noting their reflective surface. A hall of mirrors, it's hard to tell where you're going even if you're able to see in darkness. Only someone who has the pathways perfectly memorized could navigate it perfectly, knowing how to see and not be seen.

Someone is watching you.

ROLL but not really

[sulahnan]

Athessa extends her middle finger. Watch this, asshole.

ROLL: MAJOR SUCCESS.

[murderbaby]

OUTCOME: You extend your middle finger without injuring yourself or anyone around you.

You cast the bird at the darkness.