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

The blunt hanging loose over his knee is hard-packed and scorched black where it’s been carefully stubbed out and re-lit multiple times over the past however-long. Much-loved, for a temporary thing. He hooks it back for a hit, and shakes his head through a short hold, dismissive on the cusp of unspoken apology for having complained at all.

Forget he mentioned it.

“Still premature for an amputation.”

He banishes the thought with a glimmer of wry humor, and looks briefly away, watchful for tell-tale twitches of wakeful movement in the rest of camp, or anyone too still.

“Did I wake you?”

A slight shrug in response, Ellis shaking his head once in answer as he watches the smoke drift upwards from Richard's exhale.

"I wasn't asleep."

There's a few beats of silence afterwards as he casts about for something to say. He can't do anything for Richard's pain. Richard had sat with him in Ghislain, listened to Ellis spin out guilt and uncertainty. Ellis would return the favor, though Richard seems less inclined to embarrass himself than Ellis had been.

"So we find ourselves short of amputation," Ellis says quietly. "Would conversation help?"

Not necessarily an unburdening. But a meandering discussion of something trivial had been a good distraction in the past, and Ellis thinks he is capable enough to be the one guiding it rather than the recipient.

Why weren’t you asleep, is the obvious question, but there are less direct angles of approach. While Richard is considering his options, Ellis volunteers his services instead.

Having witnessed before what an Ellis-the-Warden-helmed conversation looks like, Richard Dickerson flicks a spit of ash off the end of his blunt, and says, very politely, “Please.”

They can come back to the subject of sleep later.

Having offered, Ellis is now meant to deliver something. The beat of hesitation is potentially not a promising start.

"Do you like stories?" he asks after a few beats. "When I was thinking what to get you for Satinalia I realized I didn't know if you cared for books or not."

The question is a little abrupt, but it's far removed from the events of the present moment. Ellis might have asked this differently, eventually, though for the moment it's going to have to do as a starting point.

Richard pinches the blunt up; the ember at its end chews orange through charred paper, while Ellis’ evocation of Satinalia finds purchase. Trace evidence of something akin to self-admonishment loosens up the python squeeze of his study in the firelight. It’s subtle.

Particularly with a fresh furl of smoke scrolling away on the wind. The fire flutters and snaps.

“I do like stories.”

But even in this sincere exchange, it's to say if he likes them more than he likes updating his loadout with fancy new serpent-themed clothes and weapons. Maybe if it's an incredible story. Maybe if there are centaurs.

"There is a book I had thought to give you," Ellis says slowly. He has shifted, as if settling in as he speaks, one leg draw up, heel braced in the packed earth as he leans back against someone's pack. The newly blooming bruises at his throat and along his chest do not bother him. The cold makes his hand ache though, and he has his left hand held in his right, fingers absently working at the ache there.

"A collection of stories about a man lost in the Frostbacks and all the things and people he met on his way home to Ferelden."

A pause, then a self-conscious shrug of one shoulder. He still cannot tell if it would have been a good selection.

"It was not small enough to fit in the pocket of the coat," he clarifies, as if this had been some tipping point.

Is the story here that Ellis was going to give him a book full of interesting stories and ultimately did not? Is this Warden unwittingly the most penetrating and persistent cocktease Richard has ever had to grapple with in his life?

He limits his exasperation to the feathered-edge of a sigh. Tension trying to bind itself up behind his breastbone can’t find purchase there. Default patience thickens in the space instead, and keeps him focused.

He is too high. Ellis is doing his best.

“Is it a true account?”

"Partly. There was a man lost, but he likely didn't serenade a dragon or wrestle demons."

The sigh is noted. Ellis can't guess at everything, but he can assume that he's falling short of his goal. His thumb presses hard against the center of his palm, easing some minor ache. He doesn't say that he'd wondered if Richard would find some common ground with the wandering traveler.

There is some true thing going unsaid, weighing at the edges of his thoughts. Ellis thinking of the bakery kitchen, the weight of what still feels like a misstep. The urge to apologize and unsure how without some broader explanations that he doesn't feel capable of tackling.

"It is my instinct to find something else to talk about that isn't the house we just escaped," Ellis says, clarification on one front. "Is that a help to you?"

“There isn’t anything about the house we just escaped worth talking about.” The perpetrator is dead, let the consideration of his ‘accomplishments’ die with him.

But here they are, bruised and hollow-eyed, with Richard rolling a blunt along the bone of his one functional thumb. He slips out of focus to watch the fire burn. There was certainly no clicking of pieces into place about him at the pitch of a man trying to find his way home.

“When you ask someone if they like stories, you should have one ready,” he explains, more kindly.

“Do you know any of them by heart?”

That helpful hint gets an abashed chuckle out of Ellis. How affronted can he really be? He's not managing this very well, and Richard certainly deserves better than his fumbling attempts to wind his way through a semi-comforting conversation.

"Some. Mostly the parts about the dog," Ellis says, which is something of a joke. Typical, of a Fereldan. (His father had known those best, and those were the parts he'd recited to his son often.) "And a little bit about the pirate battle, though I can't remember which part of the sea it was supposed to happen in."

A detail that doesn't matter, not really. Ellis holds out a hand in silent, uncharacteristic request for the joint.

"So, pirates, or dogs?"

Edited (tacks on one word) 2020-11-22 07:54 (UTC)

Dogs as animals are inextricably (and inexplicably) bound to humankind. Empathetic, reactive. Blindly loyal. Selfless. Ferelden aside, the connection here isn’t surprising.

And pirates --

“Let’s start with the dog.”

Broken hand turned to ease the ache mounting in his wrist, Dick offers his stogie out for Ellis to take, along with a wan crook at the corner of his mouth -- encouraging for the uptick in promise this good good very distracting conversation has taken on. The stump of the blunt is packed dense, and the smoke is thick -- plenty of material for the coal at its core to smolder at between tokes.

A pause before raising the blunt to his mouth, inhaling deeply. The smoke burns at the back of his throat. As he holds it there, he plucks at the threads of the story. (Thinks of the burr of his father's voice, the quiet delight each time he'd indulged his son's requests to hear this particular story once more.) As he begins speaking, the smoke is exhaled out, the joint offered back.

"It wasn't his dog," Ellis says. "Wallace came upon him after he'd escaped a band of ice giants and fled down, into the Hinterlands. He called the dog Pol, and gave him a bed of his own tattered coat beside his little campfire and a share of the rabbit he'd hunted. In the morning, Pol was gone."

A beat, as Ellis exhales the last of the smoke. He swallows against the prickly sensation left in the wake of it.

"Now, Wallace wasn't much for hard-living. He'd lost most of his supplies to the ice giants, his boots were falling apart, his wounds needed tending. He had no map, so he choose a direction at random and began walking. Luckily, he came upon a road, which he took as a good sign, so he kept going, even as his boots fell to pieces and he had to carry on barefoot."

It's a more direct recitation, leaving off some of the frills, the voices his father had affected.

"This is the point in the story where the teller would lay a hand over their heart, gasping about what a terrible situation it was," Ellis says in an aside, glancing at Richard self-consciously. "You get the idea, aye?"

On multiple occasions, Richard has billed himself as a poor storyteller. He is too matter-of-fact, he misses the beats for building suspense. He knows this about himself.

But he is enraptured, not only by heroic fiction, but by the tune of Ellis’ retelling under pressure. It’s fascinating in a very real way. Could be he’s detected the vulnerability woven into it. As forked tongues were built to follow trails, Richard’s stare burrows into that self-conscious glance.

Also he’s taken the blunt back at some point, without looking.

“I understand the dire implications of trekking barefoot and starving through the mountains,” he assures as he lifts it, all without a trace of irony.

Please continue, fellow human.

A slight smile, acknowledging perhaps the unnecessary nature of the question.

"Aye, so he went along for a time, determined not to lay down and die. He'd not seen anyone for miles, and had more or less forgotten about Pol, when he came along a traveler bowed beneath the weight of a great pack. Wallace was no fighter, but he was tempted to knock the old man down to have at his supplies so dire was his situation, but the traveler called out to him in welcome and bid Wallace carry his wares a little ways down the trail to where the path forks."

One hand has drifted to rest over his heart, even if Ellis has foregone the excessive displays of dismay, pain and celebration the story was typically accompanied by.

"But Wallace was a good sort, so even without promise of recompense, he agreed. As they walked, he had the notion the man was familiar to him, but dismissed it. At the fork in the road, the traveler gave Wallace a pair of fresh boots from his pack. And when Wallace made camp again that evening, Pol appeared from the bushes to accept a share of his supper. As Wallace ate, Pol licked at the bloody wounds on his feet and slept draped over them. When Wallace woke the next morning, Pol was gone again, and the bloody gouges in his feet were healed, so he could wear his new boots without pain."

A pause, remembering the cadence of his father's recitation more than trying to recall the tune of the story. He looks over at Richard again, holds out a hand in silent request for the blunt.

It’s still next to Richard’s mouth, cherry wedged against his writer’s callus while he listens. Standard operation would have had him blotting the ember out two rounds ago, but now Ellis is smoking also. He must gamely carry on.

Even if he only remembers to hit it at the prompt to pass it over.

It hadn’t occurred to him that this could be a story with religious implications either, and there’s a flicker of warier reserve to the furrow of his brow when he finally does hold the elfroot out. He doesn’t hold his smoke long at all after it, fleeting in and out of the burn behind his armor.

Easy to see at a glance he’s invested in where this is going.

If not the draw of a journey home in itself, maybe there are other aspects he can relate to.

Having acquired the joint, Ellis draws his feet up, heels dug in a little against the packed earth. He sets his arms on his knees, abandoning the unconscious imitation of his father's pantomime.

"You can probably guess what comes next. Wallace continues walking, because what else is there to be done? He whistles after Pol, but the dog doesn't come, so he walks alone until the the trail leads to a washed out bridge. In some tellings the river current was too strong, in others it was too deep. Either way, Wallace would have been trapped but for the woodsman who emerged from the thicket, felled a tree and between them formed a makeshift bridge for Wallace to cross. Wallace was certain he recognized the woodsman, but the traveler he'd met on the road had been old and stooped, and the woodsman was young and hale."

Ellis pauses to lift the blunt, draws in a mouthful of smoke. He turns the blunt in his fingers after, before offering it back and continuing speaking tightly around the smoke.

"After crossing the river, Wallace asked if he had a father, or elderly uncle, or some relative traversing the mountains as well, and begged his name. The man told him, why, you gave me my name, and turned into a dog. Pol."

A beat, then a little shrug. Ellis' unease is clear, even through the curls of smoke he exhales.

"It comes along better when it's told by someone who can do the voices properly."

“Are you embarrassed?” Outright nightmarish week aside, Richard’s grin comes easier than it has in the past. It’s slight, made more distinct for the long, painful lines around his face it’s framed by. Consider him charmed. “It’s a good story.

“I would applaud, but people are sleeping.”

He’s teasing, but not unkindly.

With the blunt in tow, he fits his good hand to his face to break off eye contact, pushing wrinkles in around his mouth, his brow, his collar. Consider him charmed, blazed, and exhausted. It’s easy to sit that way for a moment, with the weight of his skull sunk into his palm, until another flick of ash signals his readiness to resume conversation. Speaking of sleeping:

“What’s keeping you awake?”

Yes, there is some embarrassment. It has been a long time since Ellis told a story this way. Most things were easier written down, passed into Wysteria's hands to do with what she would. In the course of imparting this story, he's aware of the ways it could have been done better.

He is more often the one who listens quietly around a fire. The answering smile in response to Richard's teasing betrays some quiet, flustered edge alongside the pleased acknowledgement of Richard's enjoyment. It ebbs by degrees as they sit, fire crackling, Richard's face partially obscured by his hand. Maybe that is enough. He has not seen Richard smile like that in the entire course of their acquaintance, so it feels as if something has been accomplished.

But the question—

"There is no particular thing," Ellis says, which sounds like a deflection. He seems aware, which is why he continues, "It reminded me of other things I have survived when I likely shouldn't have. And it is hard to put all of it out of my mind long enough to fall asleep."

Skirting around Warden business, around the desert and Clarel and the Deep Roads, screams coming out of the dark. Half he doesn't care to speak aloud, half he feels duty-bound to withhold.

"Is it pain keeping you awake, or something else?"

It does sound like a deflection, but not one that incites a flick of Dick’s whiskers, or a gleam in his eye. He has grown accustomed to a lack of elaboration from this source, and there’s no reason to lie. The buffer Ellis follows it up with is more than sufficient to pass muster. At least for tonight.

“It’s just the pain.”

There’s no reason to lie about that either; the evidence is there in his face, easily recognized for anyone familiar with the look of it.

“Some anxiety, perhaps, in defiance of reason. The human body is a wellspring of misery.” Hot take. He watches Ellis through the gaps between his fingers, another sigh steamed away thin on the wind. “This is helping.”

The human body is a wellspring of misery. That gets a warm laugh, even though maybe it shouldn't. There's some quiet element of agreement there, though Ellis doesn't say as much when he speaks again.

"The smoke?" Ellis assumes aloud. He does not reach for it back. There is some part of him eager for the buffer it provides, all the more reason to draw the line now.

“And the story.”

Don’t sell yourself short -- he tips his brows, tired. Probably about ready to give sleep a second shot. An abortive reach for the blunt with his broken hand ends with him sitting back to grind the ember out on a flat rock.

“What do you think Pol was supposed to be?” He leaves the joint to cool where it lies, and watches it there to see that it doesn’t roll, both hands withdrawn into the warmth of his cloak. “A spirit?”

Wysteria has somewhat prepared Ellis for this sort of question, but there is inevitably some twinge of alarm at being asked for the opinion on the fly.

"Aye, perhaps a spirit," Ellis says slowly. "That's the trick of the story, in some ways. It's a Fereldan story, so we argue about whether or not he was a werewolf, or a descendant of Hafter, or Hafter's spirit guiding Wallace homewards."

Ellis rests his forearms on his knees, good hand grasping the opposite wrist. In the short, contemplative pause, he hears his uncles talking over each other, palms slapping at the table to circle round and round the old theories.

"But Fereldans aren't the only one reading it, so you hear about spirits and demons and all that. Wysteria gave me an essay on it once, so I've seen the argument for it."

It's an incredible ability Ellis has, to talk his way through an answer without giving a very clear picture of his own opinion on it.

“I wasn’t aware there was such a distinct separation of mythologies.”

This is a very nice way of not acknowledging Ellis’ confounding inability to answer a direct question, with a touch of associate exasperation easily obscured by his vigilance about the blunt. A gust sets it rocking, and dusts charred flecks of paper and soot away into the night. He watches it go a moment before deeming the ember truly done, and sets about the process of packing it away into his little box.

“Ms. Poppell is very thorough.”

She is. Smash cut to him watching them dance together in matching costumes from the Satinalia shadows some days or weeks ago.

He is an expert at allowing no trace of this to brush his tone.

Edited 2020-11-23 22:34 (UTC)

A pause, watching Richard's practiced process of packing away the blunt. There's some pleasing element to the handling of the items. Ellis seems content to sit quietly, potentially letting both remarks pass, before he draws in a deep breath and looks from the fire to Richard.

"Dogs are important in Ferelden," Ellis says mildly, by way of explanation. "I don't know of that being true anywhere else."

A little admirable that Richard either hasn't heard the dog jokes or is choosing to set them aside in this moment. His eyes lift to Richard's face, some small nod of agreement. Yes, Wysteria is very thorough. She's clever and full of questions, and typically has something to say about every book she and Ellis trade.

"Wysteria's been making a study of it," he continues. "She'd share some of it with you, gladly, I think."

“Cultural admiration for an animal doesn’t necessarily lead to deification.”

Richard hears himself say this, pauses with the box mid-tuck into his armor, and resumes movement a beat later utterly unphased.

“Wysteria and I are collaborating on other projects.” Because she is clever and full of questions, particularly dangerous ones attractive to this particular snake worshiper. When he finally looks up again to meet Ellis’ regard, he reconsiders some further, pricklier elaboration, and turns it inward to say instead: “I may ask her about it.”

Somehow this makes him more tired than he already was.

“I should lie down."

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

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yyy

casting aspersions on his conversational skills

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sticks bow on this y/n