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

[murderbaby]

"You wouldn't be able to see it," Medrod hisses. "Only we can. Only we ever can. You're just a cog in the grand work."

While the man raves, Mhavos slowly moves himself forward, trying to get closer for reasons he doesn't quite understand. He can't close his eyes. If he keeps moving... that becomes less tempting.

[sarcophage]

This poor, pathetic scarecrow of an old man, so tangled up in himself. So small. Leander crouches before him, lowers his voice against the elf's shuffling. His eyes are keen as ice, his stare relentless.

"But I have seen it," comes smooth as a lungful of smoke. "The work that we few are born to create. I know how beautiful it is—and how great a burden it can be."

[murderbaby]

"You have?" Medrod replies, somehow mixing defiance with wonder. "A sword to pierce the sun... You can see it, can't you? The chaos? Th-thank the Maker for the rain, to wash the filth from these streets..."

Mhavos slumps himself next to the leg of a table, listening with glossy-eyed fascination.

[sarcophage]

"You, who made worlds out of nothing.
We are alike in sorrow,"

and he sounds so gentle as he says it. The pass of a razorblade. A knife's whisper. (The power still alive in his fingertips, electric, waiting.)

"The rain has come, Medrod. Your work is nearly complete. To consummate its glory, you must commit yourself to it. With your whole heart. Do you see now?"

[murderbaby]

Medrod tries to reach out, but the magic won't let him. An almost conspicuously clean man, the lack of power clearly upsets him. But he continues, "Victoria knew it, but they hid her away. These things can never reach the light. Did you find that, too? In the bones? The marrow?"

Mhavos opens his mouth to comment, this man is insane, but finds too late he lacks the energy for it. He sighs instead, pallid expression one of disapproval.

[sarcophage]

Mhavos may judge Medrod to the back of Leander's head all he likes; he won't mind.

"That and more," nearly a whisper. He scarcely blinks. "I'd like to release you now. If I do, you must commit yourself. You know what will happen if you try to hurt us again. Do you see? Can you promise me you'll do it?"

[murderbaby]

Medrod's expression reconfigures itself into one of resolute confidence. He tries to sit as straight-backed as the bonds of blood will allow, less defiant than committed. "I have always been committed. Your lot have always been hurt. That is the world."

Somehow, Mhavos retains the ability to roll his eyes.

[sarcophage]

What this gets from the mage, rather than some grim appeasement, is a sigh, soft through his nose.

"No. He even sent me to your side, and still you refuse to see." A pause, a calm and dreadful silence—somewhere else, a clatter, the sound of voices—as Leander lowers his gaze, considers the knife in Medrod's hand. "Well. We'll have to find some other way to open your eyes."

And by power of blood, he compels Medrod to raise the knife, the point aimed at his own eye socket. Not to puncture it—not yet.

[murderbaby]

Medrod's arm raises, but he doesn't take his gaze from Leander. "Better to be blind than see the world as you."

ROLL

[sarcophage]

The moment stretches taut, suspended, peeling at its edges—

At length, Leander whispers, "A sword to pierce the sun."

And he directs Medrod's hand to push the blade's tip into the outer corner of his eye, seeking a precision entry into membranous flesh between the eyeball and its lids.

ROLL: MEDIUM FAILURE.

[murderbaby]

"How highly you regard me, as the cleansing sun."

OUTCOME: The knife moves forward, but blood magic is a potent and unstable thing. Medrod wrestles his control back at the worst time-- his hand shifts, and his eye rips open into wet redness.

Medrod makes for the door.

[sarcophage]

Surprised by the gory scramble of Medrod's flight, Leander stands abruptly, but he does not give chase, only stares into the gloom beyond the doorway. Perhaps his heart wasn't in it, after all. Using the man's script against him, nudging up against his own beliefs, even then it did ring a bit hollow... ah, well.

"It would seem our host is stronger than I'd thought," he says to the open door, and at last turns back to Mhavos. "Well, you don't look so bad." For a given value thereof. "How do you feel?"

[murderbaby]

Mhavos leans against the table leg, pale and panting slightly. He looks up to Leander like some singular figure from fable. Power and terror and how much of that was hallucinations? How much was blood loss? The thought that everything that just happened really did happen worms itself through Mhavos' mind, bringing with it a cold fear.

"Quoi- khh-..." deep breath. Try again: "What just happened?"

[sarcophage]

"Even when prevailed upon with his own language, he said he'd sooner be blind than change his views. I thought he'd be much easier to manipulate."

—is not technically a lie.

Leander leapt back when the man gouged himself, stood prey-frozen and let him run off, as anyone would have—and at once ceased his reserve hold on Mhavos's blood. Sweating in the strangeness of this place, bruised about the forearms, the legs, as any human being ought to be. No trace of pleasure in his mien. On his way back to the elf's side, he rubs at each of his wrists, works his fists open and shut.

"There was magebane in the dose he gave us, so I may yet be unable to heal you, but it won't hurt to try—with your permission, of course."

[murderbaby]

Something happened. Mhavos can't let go of that. Leander mentions magebane, but he used magic. He's missing something.

But what choice does he have?

Mhavos nods. "I'd prefer neither of us dead," he says, voice shallow, out of breath.

[sarcophage]

With a cant of agreement, the kind that comes with a brief flick of the eyebrows—that makes one of us—Leander takes a knee by his side.

"Now, I'll need to move a bit of your clothing aside, unless you'd prefer to be interwoven with it." Less of a request than a warning, he begins to pluck at necessary buttons and move fabric with nimble efficiency (lately much improved by frequent shifts in the infirmary), taking care to cause no excessive discomfort, nor to bare more flesh than is called for.

The revelation of the wounds in their entirety, whenever it comes—if Mhavos allows it—will be reflected on his face as pure assessment: dispassionate gaze, little flicks of his eyes.

[murderbaby]

Mhavos' mind isn't clear enough to pick up minor details of expression. It's not clear enough to analyze what just happened, either, but he can't stop thinking about it. Three facts: his pain, magebane, magic. What does this mean?

He can't make any sense of it.

Mhavos lets Leander do whatever he likes. If he's killed, some part of his mind things, at least it will be over. "Merci."

ROLL

[sarcophage]

Were he doing whatever he likes, Leander would let this bizarre old man kill the rest of them, just to see how he does it... but alas, that he wishes to survive means he rarely gets his way.

As he prepares to make the attempt, setting his hands where they ought to be—not quite touching, but nearly, ghosting the contours of the body—Leander speaks, in that calming low tone, "What he did was a grotesque act of defiance, and that's all that it was. Yes?" This is the sum of those three facts, neatly analyzed for an elf's convenience.

He presses his lips taut, then, and attempts to channel the Fade into healing. Blood magic has a way of atrophying a mage's connection to the Fade—less so in the short term, but combined with the waning effects of magebane, this calls for a tremendous amount of effort. He expects he'll end up bleeding from the nose even if the magic withers in his hands.

ROLL: MEDIUM FAILURE.

[murderbaby]

OUTCOME: Leander does not bleed from the face. The Fade does not come back to him. Mhavos does not heal.

Mhavos knows better to argue with a mage. He nods, and attempts slowly to stand.

[sarcophage]

That little crease has arrived between Leander's eyebrows. Exhaustion for his own body's struggle to recover, displeasure for the way things have gone so far—his relentless composure taking a slightly more human shape, if only for a short time.

"Here," he says in a hush, and unwinds the greenish linen scarf from his neck, folds it into a more useful wad, presses it between Mhavos's hand and the worst of his lacerations. Thin smears of red going dull, gathering in the creases of both their skins.

"I suppose this makes us even."

[murderbaby]

For what, Mhavos isn't sure. He nods, and attempts, slowly, to make it to his feet.

"We- we should find the others."