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

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.

He notes the lapse — can hardly blame Richard for it, under the circumstances — but doesn't draw attention to it. He has a brief flash of memory to Shed on the Knight, hyperventilating and panicking, nothing like this.

"Yeah, I'd prefer to avoid that."

Looking down; bleeding out too fast. He almost laughs at the question, but that would sound, probably, a little hysterical. Which is something else he'd prefer to avoid.

"I could say the same for you." And then, as Richard starts in on that seam, "Look, if this doesn't work — "

But he was, clearly, wrong to doubt those calipers. The door starts to creak open, cutting him off as the spike starts to pull free. Mostly, he tries not to pass the fuck out as the pain mounts and the wound really starts to bleed, but once it's as open as it's going to get, he shakily starts to pull himself out.

OUTCOME: Holden stumbles ungracefully out of the iron maiden.

Better catch him before he falls on his face, Dick.

A more sentimental soul might vest some significance in the role these calipers have played, and take them along as a momento.

Dick drops them in the hard-packed dirt to catch(?) Holden as he pushes free, one lean, slippery scarecrow struggling to find purchase on another. He’s unduly comfortable in the bloodslick, the butt of his broken hand pressed quickly into the pulse of blood at Holden’s middle. A stiff splay of his bony fingers gives him some insight into exactly how terrible it is before he closes them again, and cranes back to check how conscious Holden is and is likely to stay.

“I have been tortured before.”

He claps his good hand over Jim’s shoulder, and mugs into a reassuring crook at the corner of his mouth. His certainty that this is a survivable situation reads genuine, and only about 20% manic with adrenaline.

ELSEWHERE, Ribbon races towards hushed voices and heavy footsteps, gold lines and pale belly muted in the dark.

ELSEWHERE, Athessa tilts her head toward the sound of voices, and sees on the ground something moving.

The elf blinks. Is she seeing things?

"Ribbon?" She questions, quietly. Yes, that's definitely Ribbon. Athessa rushes forward and gracelessly kneels (falls) down, reaching for the snake to...well, snake up her good arm, past the chain in her hand. To Barrow: "This way, I think I see—"

Snake in tow, Athessa clamors to her feet again and forges on, foregoing her prior diligent smashing of mirrors in favor of reaching the light coming from that door. It's unlocked, but she still puts some shoulder into opening it, staggering squinting into the full light of the room.

Barrow is close behind, chainhand and heavy book at the ready.

It's maybe just as well that Richard's comment goes lost on him because, wow, that's worrying!

He tries to stumble more than fall onto the other man wholesale, but it's not entirely effective; he's dizzy from blood loss and the gut's the worst of it, but not the whole of it. His consciousness blurs in and out, but he does have the presence of mind to also try to staunch the flow of blood at his midsection. And, when the door opens, to look up with alarm —

"Who's there?"

Dick is keeping Holden up like one lightning-struck tree barely withstanding the weight of another. He’s trembling in his vest, dirt-streaked and doused with blood heavy and cool enough to go black where it’s layered thick over his left hand and up his sleeve to the shoulder. At a glance, it looks like he’s holding Holden’s guts in.

His look to the door is bright with panic -- for a split second, he stiffens his grip. Cornered animal fear shines in his eyes and bares his teeth at a sliver, only to boil off in flash of invisible steam.

“Athessa.”

He hasn’t seen Barrow, yet.

“I can’t heal him.”

Edited (SORRY HI SORRY) 2020-11-01 22:01 (UTC)

Athessa's still holding her right arm folded, hand resting against her collarbone. A sling-less sling. But she can still use her left. After depositing her chain-flail on the table beside the dead elf that she purposely ignores, she tears the sleeve off of her right arm with a wince and gestures with the cloth to Richard.

"Here, we can at least try to staunch the bleeding," she says, then asks: "How bad is it?"

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