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

[okayimin]

She doesn't move when the knife slices through her shoulder. Too risky, too many things that could go from bad to worse with one sudden movement. And then they're back in the room, in the corner and the smell of blood is overwhelming, but it's fresh and somehow that is slightly less worse.

The pain settles something in her. There's still the terror, but it's banked now. A sensation felt from far away that has nothing to do with what she's about to do. She lets Edgard pull of her wimple and press it to the wound, vaguely aware that she winces and lets out a slow hiss when he does. She holds up the calipers.

"Use this. Get the fabric away from the wound," she says, her voice calm and authoritative, hand steady, "Rip the seam along my shoulder, we can use the sleeve as a bandage."

[muckspout]

Edgard sees Sawbones flinch in pain and he feels like a monster. He shouldn't have let her look around that door. He nods and takes the calipers from her, holding them delicately in his hand and pausing a moment.

"You're alright." He lies to her. "We will get out of here."

He pries away her shirt closes to the knife and then rips along the seam getting the sleeve off completely as his hands become completely drenched in her blood. Edgard looks at the fabric and the wound.

"H-how should I bandage?" He looks helplessly, but knows Sawbones will know the best way if she can stay with him.

[okayimin]

Sawbones ignores the comforting lie. Because it is a lie and hardly any comfort. They'll die or they won't. That's how it is.

"Wrap it under my armpit and tie it at the top," she tells him briskly. She's light headed and her vision tunnels, but neither are new sensations. She sets them aside to focus on the task at hand. "Tie it tightly. Then we'll need to make a fire."

She hasn't a clue what shape the others might be in or what luck they might have trying to find supplies, but fire is always a good starting point for post battle stitching.

ROLL

[muckspout]

Edgard does as Sawbones says and ties the bandage as tight as he can. It's not as good a job as she would have done, but it's not half bad. His stomach lurches at the sight of her, but she seems lucid enough.

"I don't know if we should stay in here." He says.

Despite this, he gathers the wood from the broken door and piles it near them. He takes three pieces and places them angled. He rips a clean part of his shirt, places it in the middle, and attempts to light a fire.

ROLL: MEDIUM SUCCESS.

[murderbaby]

OUTCOME: You light a fire! It's a fire! This is kind of a binary option!

You singe your fingers slightly.

[okayimin]

"It's a defensible enough position and now we have a way to light the entrance so no one can sneak in," Sawbones says briskly, her voice getting only a little weak towards the end, "And if they do, we have the fire."

The implication being, of course, that they might as well set their captor on fire.

"Now, take this," she hands him the little bone saw, "And heat it over the flames til it's hot. Then remove the bandages and press it to the wound."

[muckspout]

Edgard's hands are starting to hurt quite a bit, first bloodied and now burned. He can't focus on that though with Sawbones' injury. He holds the bone saw over the fire until it gets red hot. He breathes in deeply.

"Alright. On the count of three, one, two, THREE!" and on three, he holds the saw to her wound. He raises his head looking at the ceiling in a grimace. Maker, he hates hurting people. He breathes in and breathes out staying focused, forcing his hand to stay steady.

[okayimin]

The pain, new and white hot and searing, is almost enough to knock a scream out of her. She grits her teeth and focuses on the fire, snarling through it. Better to be quiet, always safer to be quiet. She pushes his hand away when the work is done, shaking a little now with the wall doing most of the supporting.

"Good," she says, short and to the point, because he did do good. "Now then." She starts rooting through the pocket of her habit with her working hand. She comes up with one of the bandage pouches she carries and hands it to Edgard. "Wrap it with this, use another on your hands. Then we can build up the fire to burn the body."

That was the next work, of course. You couldn't let the taint sit, couldn't risk it.

[muckspout]

Edgard wraps her wound and bandages up his hands. He hesitates on the body though.

"I don't think we should touch that." He really doesn't want to touch that. He glances toward the door. "I want to go take out the enfoiré that did this."

[okayimin]

The Orlesian makes her blink, the sound discordant with what's happening. Or... perhaps not. Edgard isn't one of the Legion. She blinks at him, eyes focused a little bit more.

"All right," she says, pushing herself away from the wall, "We need to find the others anyway. See if you can use the rags-" She means her bloody sleeve and wimple- "To make a torch. I'd rather not go running into anymore knives."

ROLL

[muckspout]

Edgard nods with grim determination. He uses the rags and creates a flimsy, but workable torch and lights it. He puts out the fire and motions Sawbones follow him to the door.

They can see what's directly in front outside, but Edgard isn't taking any chances. He swipes the axe just to the left of the doorway. He hopes it won't hit anything, but if it does they're going down.

ROLL: NARROW FAILURE.

[murderbaby]

OUTCOME: You cast axe at the darkness. Luckily, this is pretty low stakes, so you just crack some mirrors instead.

You aren't a danger to yourself or others, somehow.

[okayimin]

Sawbones is going to stand well back while he does that and also wait to see if he gets stabbed before she pops her own head out the door.

"Mirrors? Who covers a dark hall in mirrors?"

[muckspout]

"Someone with a lot of money they do not know what to do with." He mutters.

Edgard moves out of the room, one hand holding the torch and the other holding the axe high. He sees their reflection in the mirrors and shudders involuntarily. He motions left.

"Let's kill him."

[okayimin]

She nods, easy enough to see with the repeating pattern of mirrors. She isn't sure if the light makes it more or less disorienting.

"We'd better look for the others, too. Hope they're not in any worse shape than us." The murdering fuck is entierly too creative for Sawbones' piece of mind. She wants to see all of her crew, wants to know who's dead and who isn't.

[murderbaby]

As they wander through the darkness, they hear the sounds of people near by, soft words and careful whispers. Friend or foe?