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: NARROW FAILURE.

[murderbaby]

OUTCOME: No one seems to be in the hallway, but as Edgard steps out, he hears a click, and is just quick enough to step back before a trap can engulf is shoe in a saw-like apparatus.

Some of his toes feel the breeze, but he's otherwise unharmed.

[okayimin]

If there was anyone who could convince Sawbones there isn't darkspawn, it is actually Ellis. She takes a breath to respond, but then in the next moment there's the chunk of the trap.

"Sand and shale," she yelps, jumping, turning to check on Edgard, "Suppose at least 'spawn don't fuck around with this shit."

roll for traps

[sulahnan]

Somewhere further down the hall, in the darkness, glass shatters and two pinpricks of light appear, flickering with the movement of the torch in Edgard's hand.

From the opposite perspective, Athessa sees their companions (The Blue Barracudas) and utters a hushed word of haste to the others on team Silver Snakes.

"You're alive," she breathes a sigh of relief once they're close enough to be visible to those without dark vision, and steps closer. Except--

"Mhavos and Leander aren't with you?"

ROLL: MAJOR SUCCESS.

[murderbaby]

OUTCOME: There is a trap, but Athessa is too light to activate it, being weighted for humans as it is. An axe wiggles in the air, dislodged but not willing to fall, while the place to step, a tiny square of metal previously covered by packed dirt, is easy to see by torchlight.

Don't step on the square.

[sulahnan]

"Watch it--" She holds out an arm to potentially soccer-mom-block the next person from nearly stepping on that metal plate.

[thereneverwas]

The person behind her is Barrow, who gives a start and comes up short because, although he felt the impact, it was through Jim, the person Athessa actually whacked.

"What? What is it?"

[muckspout]

Having leapt backwards in reaction to the saw, Edgard is standing on one foot unable to speak for a moment.

Once he sees Team Silver Snakes he lets out a curse in Orlesian.

"Be careful, I just nearly lost my feet. No Mhavos and Leander, but the rest of us are here."

they're gonna leave such a scathing review on Ye Olde Yelpe

[acreage]

It works out well that Athessa grabs his arm, truthfully; startled him back into alertness where he'd been starting to drift.

(All too easy in the dark hallways, mirrored walls glinting as they pass, occasionally reflecting back a dim blue glow when his torn sleeve moves just so, not unlike the memory of blue fireflies.)

But: focus.

"So, still two unaccounted for. And, apparently," resignedly, mainly going off Edgard's comment, "we need to step lightly." Because, of course. Fuck this inn?? Specifically to the Barracuda crew: "Any sign of our host?"

Not unsurprisingly, there's a bitter twist to host. Also he says all this while being carried by Barrow but like, that's fine, we can talk about that in a minute.

[nonvenomous]

Richard is a pale, blood-saturated scarecrow in Barrow’s shadow, just present enough to stop short of bumping into his back. He looks preoccupied, possibly busy drafting a one star review while Athessa and Barrow forge more dutifully ahead.

His mood is hard to read, tamped down the way it is, but a sigh spells out private relief once he’s registered familiar silhouettes and familiar heard voices.

“Pressure plate,” he supplies dryly from behind, in the wake of Holden taking inventory: “Please don’t step on it.”

[thereneverwas]

"Edgard!" Barrow breathes, with some relief, then similarly: "Sawbones! Who's that with you?" The other two silhouettes are a little less distinctive.

"Point it out to me, mate, I can't see my feet," Barrow replies uneasily, glancing back to Richard. He has a whole-ass man in his arms, watching his footing is more difficult than usual.

[highborn]

Can't help with the pressure plate from over here, but he can at least helpfully fill in as he edges nearer to them, "Ellis and Vanadi. We ran into the man briefly, not long ago, but he's fled."

And as he's got no idea where, he's just spotted how very blood-soaked half of them look, and he'd really like to assure himself the missing two are still alive, the chase is feeling less and less important.

"I'd like to see us out of here, before anything else. No one's any sense of the exit, have they?" That sounds like it would be too easy, but their odds fumbling around while they find it (and Leander and Mhavos, hopefully) are feeling a bit better with more of them.

[okayimin]

Ignoring the various questions entierly, Sawbones heads towards the new arrivals, stepping light and careful as she does. Her eyes sweep over the lot of them and she frowns deeply.

"Right. We need to find somewhere we can set down. This haring off after killers in the dark is too dangerous," she says, all business, "One room, one entrance. Light a fire and take stock of supplies and injuries."

[sulahnan]

"Supplies?" Athessa scoffs, pained and incredulous and tired. "Chains, rusty nails, an axe, a table leg, and a couple of knives by the looks of it. There, that's the list of supplies. We need to get out of here as soon as possible, not have a campfire in a mirror maze!"

She takes a deep breath and leans against the wall, trying not to simply rush off to find the way out alone. With a light clatter of chain links, she uses her left hand to lift her right arm again, folding it the way she had before, held against her chest. Letting it hang free puts too much pressure on the torn ligaments in her shoulder.

[acreage]

"Athessa," said gently, softly, "she has a point. I don't think anyone's going to disagree with you about getting out of here, but we need a defensible position until we have a better idea of how to do that. And we need to be as prepared as we possibly can be. This guy's gotten the better of us once already; let's make sure it doesn't happen again."

[heorte]

"And we're still missing two."

Presumably two that they don't intend to leave behind.

[okayimin]

"We'll find them," Sawbones says, because that isn't up for debate, but: "A room, a fire and one of those knives. We ain't movin' out til I know you Dusters aren't being stupid and bleeding out on me."

[nonvenomous]

“It’s here.”

Richard is accommodating in the background, touching light at Barrow’s side to direct him around.

“The longer we remain here,” he addresses the group, but Sara in particular, “the more at risk we are of being barricaded in and burned alive, or succumbing again to whatever overcame us in the first place.” Still steering, he ensures Barrow and Holden miss the target step by a wide margin. And back to the others:

“If you’re going to go and kill him while the rest of us wait, be quick about it.”