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.

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B is for Barrow, bothered by spikes.

A is for Athessa, who'd like to say, "yikes!"

Edited 2020-10-29 13:06 (UTC)

E is for Ellis, who's in a tight spot.

V is for Vanadi, stuck with the wrong lot.

S is for Sawbones, who'd like to be somewhere else instead.

E is for Edgard, who'd better keep his head.

L is for Leander, who has a strange goal.

M is for Mhavos, an unfortunate soul.

R is for Richard, who's made a new friend.

H is for Holden, who thinks, "not this again."

Edited 2020-10-29 13:15 (UTC)

[Watch this space.]

The Murderer has a significantly bruised face.
The Murderer has an injury to his scalp, bleeding.
The Murderer is missing an eye.

Edited 2020-11-05 18:19 (UTC)

Maybe it's the swinging of the saw that wakes Leander, or the unsteady breathing of the elf tied down in the corner, or something else entirely. But the room is not quiet, and as the sleeping draught wears off, that becomes more and more apparent.

Mhavos is chained to a table, sleeping fretfully, but clearly not awake. Whatever dose of sleep they were both given, it was a little much for one of the smallest elves in Riftwatch. As he sleeps, a pendulum saw descends above his torso.

Body parts sit half-butchered on a nearby table, close enough for Leander to reach, if he's willing to risk the movement. Mhavos is farther away, of course, but his light sleep could be broken by a word, and the chains poorly fitting for an elf of his side may be broken out of, with an effort.

What will Leander do?

When he starts awake, it takes Barrow a moment to fully realize what he's experiencing.
For starters, he's standing, and quite uncomfortably at that. Beyond that, there's an awful piercing ache in the right side of his body, which, it slowly dawns on him, is because he is fully sagging onto a row of spikes in a very small (compared to him) container.

This starts him awake entirely, jostling the whole contraption and, of course, spiking him in new places, considering he has very little room to move around. A strangled "fuck!" escapes him, but he is able to stave off abject panic long enough to realize that the vertical sliver of light he's seeing in front of him is not a window in the contraption, but a crack in the doors. Feeling carefully around in front of him, he's able to grip the bases of two spikes and wrench the doors open, spilling himself onto the floor, hands slick with his own blood.

Athessa, meanwhile, doesn't so much start awake as drag slowly to consciousness. Her mouth tastes weird. Her eyes are uncomfortably dry and blinking doesn't seem to be helping. And worst of all, she's on a rack.

"You can say that again," she grumbles when someone swears, and she cranes her neck to look at her wrists and how they're bound. Then, at her ankles. She doesn't struggle, already feeling that if she tried too hard to free herself, she'd simply dislocate her limbs without having anyone tighten the contraption.

After he's freed himself, Athessa let's her head fall back to rest against the rack.

"Barrow, I think we might be in a bit of a bind."

Edgard wakes up with a start. He attempts to sit up and feels great weights on his body. He can't move! He wiggles a little and glances down. He's chained to a table.

As he's craning his neck to look around, he notices a large axe looming above him. He is for a moment transfixed by the gleam of the metal. With a clank, it moves downward an inch. Edgard responds with a horrified scream.

Once he realizes his head is still on his shoulders, he continues wiggling attempting to move somehow. The loud clacking noises are mixed with a litany of screamed curses, trade and orlesian alike.

If someone else is in there, they will have to be pretty loud.

Sawbones is not loud. Sawbones thinks she will never speak again, because that's safer, that's practical, there's screaming and the smell of rotted flesh and old blood and- Dwarves don't dream, but they do remember and Sawbones shudders when she comes out of a memory to find a reality not entierly different.

"Stone," she says in a hoarse whisper. There's chains around her, loose and heavy and she's never been more happy to be as small as she is. Small and quick and quiet even for a dwarf, so she starts to wiggle and squirm, trying to work her way out of the chains. Edgard will just have to keep screaming.

A sharp intake of breath leads Richard Dickerson’s return to the waking world; heavy chain slithers link over link when he shifts to lift an arm, and finds it anchored to the cot -- no. Table. This is definitely a table.

He lifts his head, brow furrowed, and looks down to find that he is bound quite securely. More chain.

Bleary, put out, he looks right, and then left, to frown at the anchor in his palm -- this is still Thedas. Late, he registers the shape of a preserved corpse occupying the space next to him. Some of a corpse, anyway -- the bottom third or half or three quarters is missing. Female. Elvish. Dalish, most likely.

He tries to scoff. The sound falters over a shudder; he has to catch it behind his teeth.

This is fine.

OUTCOME: Sawbones gets both arms free of the chains, however this causes a few heavy chains to rattle very loudly. There's a scraping sound along one of the walls.

The time until the Murderer arrives has been reduced.

There's someone else in here, and when Barrow looks up from the floor, he sees not only that it's Athessa, but that Athessa is on a rack.

An uncharacteristic, almost sob-like sound escapes him as he lurches to his feet and goes to her.
"Oh no... oh no," seems like all he can say at first, propping himself on her table, "are you all right, love? How long have you been awake?"
He glances around quickly before he feverishly begins working at her bindings to free her.

OUTCOME: Barrow manages to free one arm, but he's not fast enough to do both at once; that puts extra pressure on the other.

This is very painful. If you like, the arm can be dislocated, twisted, or otherwise damaged.

In the moments before he frees her left arm, she manages to say "been better," and "not long," but anything else she might've said gets obscured by a sharp, pained gasp when suddenly more pressure is exerted on her right arm.

The gasp is followed by a dull pop and Athessa clamps her teeth down around what wants to become a howl of pain but only manages to become a quiet whimper.

"Fucking hell—" She reaches up to grab at the edge of the table, trying to pull herself up a little to ease some of the pressure on her now-dislocated arm.

"Did they take our stuff? Is there anything in here we can use?" She can't check her own pockets very easily, but she doesn't feel the familiar weight of the Qunari dagger she's had strapped to her hip for months.

It's partially the clinking of chains that wakes Holden, partially the waning effects of the sleep gas. He stirs, awareness filtering in slowly — there's light that wasn't there before, though at least below eye level, there's a pounding to his head, a grogginess that doesn't make immediate sense — and moves to lift a hand to his face.

There seems to be a skip in his perception, like a poorly edited video. He moves, and suddenly there's a bloom of pain across his arm, the wetness of blood, and that wakes him up pretty goddamn quickly.

Richard can probably hear the pained noise he makes before he can stop himself, the rustling around in that iron maiden over there.

OUTCOME: Athessa is not able to relieve the pressure on her arm, and the movement agitates her injury.

This hurts a lot. It could also damage her arm further, if you like.

"Sorry, sorry, sorry," Barrow hisses through his teeth, immediately setting to work on the other arm, the blood from that side of his body dripping all over her in the process.

OUTCOME: Barrow makes a wrong move, and slips in his own blood and general dizziness from the sleeping gas and, you know, blood loss.

You fall the fuck over and potentially injure yourself worse.

"Barrow!"

There's nothing she can do but watch him fall, and try to get control of her breathing. The pain in her arm is enough to make her hyperventilate and pass out, which would be bad. Very bad. She doesn't want to wake up freed only because her arm's been torn off.

So once she gets over a wave of nausea and dizziness, she looks around, trying to see what they can possibly use to escape.

OUTCOME: Athessa may notice the rack she's been tied to is rather rickety. If she works for it, she can wrench a rusty nail free from the uneven wood, and take a few stabs at the rope.

You can give yourself more slack by beginning to stab at the rope and letting it fray. How much damage you do to the rope is up to you.

After slipping, banging his head on the rack, and absolutely eating shit on the ground in a pool of his own blood while shouting expletives, Barrow is somehow still in service. One meaty arm reappears to drag him back up into view, now with a brand new scalp wound dripping blood down the opposite side of his face from where he'd been leaning into the spikes.

It's all superficial, it's fine, he's only slightly concussed. Maybe.

"Athessa," he says again, a bit brokenly but more simply dazed, and he tries again to untie her wrist.

Somehow you managed to roll even which genuinely is so unlikely I'm gonna say you win this one. Good job.

OUTCOME: Not only does Barrow manage to maneuver his leaking body successfully, but he unties Athessa's wrist so quickly and smoothly that he's able to cushion the impact, causing Athessa an absolute minimum of pain.

Athessa is only bound by her feet and experiences no new pain. Just, you know, the old pain.

Edited (stop hitting enter before youre finished gdi.) 2020-10-30 00:34 (UTC)

Continue screaming is exactly what Edgard does. The noise reverberates around the walls as Edgard becomes more and more panicked at his inability to move.

For a moment, out of breath and hoarse, he pauses and lies still. The axe thunks down an inch again and Edgard's horrified screeching continues.

I believe in you, Sawbones.

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

ATHESSA & BARROW.

ELLIS & VANADI.

SAWBONES & EDGARD.

LEANDER & MHAVOS.

DICK & JIM.

POST-ESCAPE.

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we already rolled for this but I'm including it anyway for the sake of transparency

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no subject

ROLL

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ROLL: NARROW SUCCESS.

ROLL

ROLL: MEDIUM SUCCESS.

ROLL

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ROLL: MEDIUM FAILURE.

ROLL

ROLL: MAJOR FAILURE.

ROLL!

ROLL: NARROW SUCCESS. oh thank god.

ROLL

ROLL: 🎉 GREAT SUCCESS. 🎉

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