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

Entry tags:

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

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Dick shrinks in his chains, tension shrill in the look he cranes around to the Iron Maiden.

He is still as the corpse next to him for a long moment, and it takes him the entirety of that time to recognize the Maiden for what it is.

What he doesn’t recognize is the voice.

“...Ellis?” he guesses at a whisper, elevated to a truly historic level of optimism by dread, and -- whatever else. His brow furrows immediately for the ridiculousness of it, taking the opportunity to self-judge while he’s still relatively alone. Helpfully, the little black snout of a grass snake has nudged up out of his collar at the sound of his voice, and surveys the scene beside him with her tongue, mlem mlem mlem.

"Holden," he corrects, a little hoarse.

It takes a little careful movement, a lot of blinking against the relative brightness, but he can see through the gaping mouth of his prison. He doesn't immediately clock the little snake or her adorable mlemming, but Dick's situation — not to mention the corpse, Jesus — are hard to miss.

"Are you hurt?"

As he waits for an answer, he takes in a breath, expecting the spikes this time, and experimentally tries to shove the iron maiden's door open with his shoulder.

OUTCOME: While Holden isn't able to open the iron maiden entirely, he gets it to budge a little, though it hurts rather intensely. It's probably easy to deduce that he's not locked in there, but it's pretty fucking heavy.

Holden injures himself in his confusion. It's up to you how much.

Holden. Of course, Holden.

Richard blinks hard, only briefly preoccupied with his own stupidity -- he’s back to examining his wrist and the cuff locked fast around it through the hair hanging in his eyes when he catches movement at the Maiden’s seam. Limited movement.

“Not yet.” Are you? He doesn’t ask, instead offering: “Maximizing points of contact will distribute the pressure between the spikes more evenly and reduce penetration,” as he sweeps the room for keys, tools, his own belongings. Anything he could jimmy a lock with.

His voice is quiet, and strangely steady in its condescension.

Edited (CLARIFYING) 2020-10-30 22:24 (UTC)

OUTCOME: Richard is able to silently look around and see some tools lying on the other side of the dead body next to him. Maybe his snake can help him reach them, or he'll slither into another way. Feel free to get as creative as you like.

Pick two taxidermy tools: 1 2 3 4 5.

The door budges, at least, and that makes the momentarily blinding pain worth it — even when he slips and bangs his back on...more spikes! God, he fucking hates this thing.

"Thanks for the tip."

He's not, actually, sarcastic as he says that. Somehow. I'll try to get stabbed more carefully does not make it out of his mouth, so.

Anyway, he'll be shoving the door harder as soon as he catches his breath.

OUTCOME: While pushing, Holden feels something pierce his skin, and keep on piercing it until he stops. He's unable to move away from it, and the Iron Maiden barely budges an inch.

A long hidden spike is stabbing Holden in the gut. How deep and serious this injury is... is up to you.

Richard seizes upon the appearance of a few oblong tools opposite the corpse, but none of them are especially slender, or pointed. They’re tools meant for scooping, and scraping; his eyeline falls to the torso preserved between here and there.

He closes his eyes.

“Of course. Take your time.” Dry, but not impatient.

What he mutters next is near inaudible -- probably for the best, as he directs the little snake to retrieve the calipers as best she can in a language only he and she can understand. Easy as that, she spills oily black out of his collar, and ribbons busily away around the ex-elf at his side. A labored metallic scrape announces her first attempt. It stops short, while Dick counts the seconds between his own breaths.

The next scrape is slightly less noisome.

Carefully at first, and with steadily increasing tension and torsion, he pulls his shard hand against the cuff collared at his wrist, as if maybe, if he could just dislocate a joint, or pop a few bones out of alignment -- he could slither that hand free.

OUTCOME: Richard is able to dislocate his thumb and slide out of the manacle. However, it's a messy business, and leaves his hand injured.

He's injured his hand, you can decide the severity, what with ripped tendons and fragile bones in the mix.

There are some scuffling sounds from inside the iron maiden, as he starts trying to get that door open again, but that gives way to a scream pretty quickly.

JUST GIVE HIM A SECOND, that just. Caught him off-guard.

Dick has his own problems: a wet, bony pop, like a jaw cracking through bone, a held beat, and a muffled yowl torn gurgling through his teeth. Pain splinters through his wrist and knifes acrid up the back of his arm, followed by a flush of endorphin heat.

Ribbon has returned, caliperless, to wriggle ineffectually up his chest and under his chin. She probes through the drool in his whiskers, tests the sleepy stink of his breath for blood.

“Get the fucking calipers,” he spits at her, and she drops away again.

His left hand is free; he lifts it to examine the damage, displeasure still rough in his throat. His thumb is a crooked shamble, but he has four other fingers, and soon enough his snake rounding the butt of the torso at his side with calipers in tow. It’s slow, noisy going, until he stretches to retrieve them the rest of the way himself (managing to grunt a thank you in the process).

Immediately, he weedles one of the claws through the cuff around his right wrist, pushing it through and ratcheting up to lever its thicker base against the metal with his own wrist as the fulcrum, testing the bolt at the clamp.

“Holden?” his voice has more of a waver to it than it did before. You ok, bud?

Edited (SORRY) 2020-10-31 19:36 (UTC)

OUTCOME: The calipers can be used to clamp the bolt, and while it takes significant effort, it is possible slowly use the leverage to pull the harness open. It just hurts a lot with a fucked up thumb.

Have fun with that.

Edited 2020-10-31 22:06 (UTC)

"Slight complication," he answers, strained.

Moving carefully, he drops a hand down until it comes in contact with the previously hidden spike, mutters a curse.

One problem at a time.

He refocuses his attention through the screaming mouth of the Maiden, glad to see Richard's freed one hand already.

"The others can't be far."

Aren't in this room, obviously, but how many secret torture chambers can this man possibly have?

Okay, he's going to try, carefully, to pull away from that spike a little.

OUTCOME: Holden slips on his own blood, slicing open his hand in the process.

The stab wound in his gut may become deeper, it's up to you.

Slight complication.

Dick makes a sound of affirmation (?) that is really more of a labored grunt as he leans his weight directly into the heel of his hand, where snapped ligaments scream against cracked bone. But the harness parts -- slowly, painfully -- enough for him to twist his right hand free, and now he’s in business, confidence restored in spite of the raw shivers of adrenaline rattling through his core and chattering at his teeth.

He moves directly into attempting a repeat performance to break the bindings around his ankles.

“I was going to assure you that not everything in this world is a nightmare, but then I remembered,” he leans into the calipers, straining with effort, “fighting demons in an ice cave within the first few months of my arrival.”

OUTCOME: As Richard sits up to fix his legs, a mechanism in the table moves to bring the Dalish corpse sitting up next to him. It's surprisingly lifelike, as are her dead glossy eyes, staring directly at Richard.

Richard drops the calipers, either from pain, shock, or a fun mix of the two. He can pick them up again, but the corpse will move with him until he's off the table entirely.

His hands are slick with blood, the spike in his gut going further in rather than out, so — at this point, he's just going to stop moving.

But the other man's progress is heartening, and Holden breathes out a laugh at the not-quite-reassurance.

"You're going to have to tell me that story sometime."

It's probably a good thing that the Iron Maiden is so cramped, so he doesn't have much room to startle in there when the fucking corpse starts moving.

"What the fuck!"

Edited (i'M DONE i swear) 2020-11-01 01:09 (UTC)

“I’m not much of a storyteller. Loxley, however --”

He sits up. The corpse sits up.

Dick lurches to twist away from it like he would a -- well. A snake. Elbows out, hands up -- the calipers clip the table edge and clatter to the floor, leaving him empty-handed and panting in a cold sweat. Quickly, logically, upon clocking the mechanics of it, he reaches his near hand to feel over her neck, down to the sternum -- reassuring himself that she is dead, dead, definitely dead, all the way dead.

“It’s ok,” he says, breathless, reassuring. Himself. The elf. Maybe Holden. “It’s ok.”

He peers darkly into her false eyes.

“Find the others,” can’t possibly be to Holden, and it isn’t. If the angles are right, he might see the little slip of a black snake plopping off the side of the table to squiggle for the door, and hopefully, a crack beneath it. Dick has calipers to lean and retrieve, and a marionette corpse to ignore while he does it.

Edited (when u failed to c/p the dialogued) 2020-11-01 02:39 (UTC)

OUTCOME: Dick gets the calipers back, just barely. They're pretty big and by the time they reach Dick's hand, slippery from the grime of the packed earth floor. Be careful not to drop them again.

The corpse moves with your every movement. It becomes increasingly apparent that until you're totally free, the table is balanced and chained for a complete puppet show.

He sees something anyway, long and narrow, move in answer to find the others. She isn't always in his line of sight, but he can tell she's headed for the door.

There's a few questions he can ask about that, but decides: not right now. He doesn't have a lot of options for making himself useful, but there is at least one thing.

"Is Loxley a friend of yours?"

He's breathing hard, his voice more gravelly with pain, but he'd like to keep Richard talking. Don't think about the corpse, tell him about your buddy instead.

“We arrived together,” Richard answers without thought, only to adjust a moment later with: “Yes, we are friends.” Almost certainly. By definition.

He has the calipers back, and is back to levering at the remaining manacles that have him locked to the table with one and a half shaking hands, laboring to crack them open. The corpse next to him bobs in awkward time with his efforts. Sweat drips to the table between his knees; he sweeps his hair back out of his eyes and starts again.

With no adjustment in tone for content, he prompts: “How badly are you injured?”

OUTCOME: It's slow (and painful) going, but Richard manages to free one leg completely. The other won't pry all the way open, so Richard will have to wrench his leg out, and may get some scratches or bruises on his ankle for his efforts.

Please untangle yourself from the corpse. Or keep her with you, I'm not your boss.

"From the same world," he supplies, or assumes. "A friend and I arrived the same way."

That's something of a silver lining: that Amos, at least, is still safe in Kirkwall. Out of reach of this fucking place.

"Well," he sighs, but keeps his tone light, "I can't say I took your advice." But that's too much of a non-answer for the situation even for him, so he continues with, "There's some kind of a spike in the door, bigger than the others. When I tried to get out, it got jammed pretty well in my abdomen. I can't get it out on my own."

Slight complication. Goes without saying that he can't try the door without potentially making it worse, or that he's going to be bleeding a whole lot more once they actually can get him out.

Halfway through a failed effort on the last manacle, Richard Dickerson has all systems flooded by the blinding instinct to thrash his way out and has to stop his work cold under the watchful eye of the former elf at his side. The break is short-lived but distinct, marked by the absence of any clicking or scraping or creaking. He breathes.

What was Jim saying?

The calipers rattle; he wipes them across his shirt. Work is resumed.

“Try not to look down, once we have you out.” One last pained grunt, and he forces his way free from the table, and his corpse bride. “You’ll bleed out more quickly if you panic.”

He vanishes from view, hobbling, only to reappear up close, keen blue eyes at the mouth and then the seam at the side, assessing the damage.

Yikes.

“Your calm so far has been admirable.” He wedges the flat hinge of the calipers into the seam, and takes a step back to grip the claws, already leaning in to begin the process of levering that seam into a wider crack. These calipers are all purpose. “Have you been tortured before?”

OUTCOME: Richard manages to wedge the iron maiden open just barely enough for get Holden out, though it's a slow and rather painful process for both of them.

Have fun with all that blood.

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