WAR TABLE MISSION: Mushroom for Interpretation

[katabasis]

WHO: Edgard, Jone, Ellis, Richard & Isaac
WHAT: Riftwatch has been tasked with investigating strange phenomena in an Orlesian marsh currently scaring nearby residents off from their livelihoods.
WHEN: Firstfall
WHERE: Orlais, the Nahashin Marshes
NOTES: OOC Information; warnings: spooOOooky content. The plan is two have three headers with successive reveals as characters progress farther into the marsh.

It's possible that the cluster of villages which border the northern edge of the Nahashin Marshes would seem less grim and drab during some other season. But here, in the desaturated depths of autumn and populated by extraordinarily common people who have seen a great deal of their industry (and strapping local lads) sucked away in order to support Orlais' many war efforts, there is really no other apt description.

A few days spent collecting information from the locals regarding the strange happenings in the marshes will yield a number of accounts which vary in detail but are consistent in tone. Theories abound - there is a great rift at the marsh's center, someone argues (Has anyone actually seen this rift? No; not since the one in the hills to the north was closed a few years back). There is a horrible Fade-touched beast which roams in the dark. Witches of the Korcari Wilds have grown tired of eating Fereldan children and have come here to try their teeth on more delicate meat. Cateline's sister's husband's youngest brother, Fernand (who had always been such a brave, bright boy, and who might have been troubled since his brother died in the war but who would never be one to be lost or drown), had disappeared into the marsh and all that the search parties had found before they were driven back again was one of the boy's empty shoes.

And so on. While the accounts may not be crystal clear, what is abundantly evident is that without access to the marsh's resources it will be difficult for the villages to make enough of a living to support themselves through the approaching winter.

Comments

day one;

[katabasis]

Inhuman screaming, warning signs made by demonic hands, and a great lumbering Fade-touched beast. For the first day of travel, none of these things present themselves to the intrepid party that have come to investigate them.

The first day is miserable. The skies are heavy with clouds, and although rain has been very light, it has also been persistent. The roads normally used by the villages that fringe these marshlands are slowly becoming unstable in the wet weather, mud slipping beneath careful boots, or gripping onto them insistently. It is a relief to find stretches of land reinforced with stone, wooden blankets, squat bridges where the waters run deep.

Into the Nahashin Marshes proper, more wetland trees grow from the earth in denser clusters, reducing line of sight. And here, the party will see the resource in dispute: the blessed morel mushrooms that grow in fingery clusters off the bases of these trees, off-puttingly flesh coloured, with knobbles that even resemble knuckles, ending in a honeycomb-like bloom at the tip. There are places where these have been freshly hacked, and places where they have grown back with speed, and they become more and more common the deeper the party travels.

Under advice from the villagers, the party will locate a camping spot of higher ground, with a line of trees to protect them from the worst of the winds. Beyond the chirping of frogs and calls of long-legged water birds, there's been nothing to report.

But whoever is on watch in the darkest hour of the first evening's watch will hear something strange: a distant high-pitched wail that sounds, at first, wolfish and hollow, and then becomes piercing and high, and tapers off ragged, like a scream. This sound repeats a few hours later. Closer. But should intrepid explorers attempt to find the source, you'd be stumbling through dark marshlands, to the tune of perfect silence.

first day, spam only;

[wythersake]

"How do Ferelden witches cook a child?" Squelch, etcetera. "Is a stew traditional?"

[poleaxed]

"Yes," Jone says, not batting an eyelash, "but only for the mouthy ones, like."

[muckspout]

"What do they do with the others?"

[poleaxed]

She gestures to herself. "I wouldn't know, luv."

first night watch, come thru.

[heorte]

Time had passed without anything other than a few bird calls. Not noteworthy, but mildly ominous in the dark.

Then the shriek—

"Who heard that?" Ellis says aloud, before he considers he is possibly the only person awake at the present moment.

Or that the noise is in his head. That's a different kind of concern, however unlikely it feels.

[muckspout]

Edgard starts awake to Ellis' voice and peeks out his tent into the darkness. He blinks a moment, bringing him into focus.

"Hear what? Is there something out there?"

[wythersake]

Isaac — blankets pulled quite manfully up over his head —

"Sounded like a bloody varghest,"

It's far too wet here for varghests. Isn't it? Alas.

day two;

[katabasis]

The second day of travel resembles the first, until it doesn't.

The persistent misting of rain opens up, forcing the party to seek higher ground. It's a miserable, wet slog and by the time they find their way to a comparatively sturdier tree studded hillock it will have taken real luck not to have gotten completely drenched or plastered in mud.

Unfortunately, the relief of firm ground underfoot and the shelter of closely grown tree canopy is short lived as the party will notice signs that someone or something has been to this particular patch of land before them. Though there are now tell-tale signs of places where the blessed morel mushroom were once growing, the mossy undergrowth has been systematically cleared of the fungus leaving only their broken stalks behind. A further examination of the area is rewarded with the discovery of unnatural arrangements of bent branches pointed toward the what must be the hill's center and strange sigils carved into the tree trunks, the density of which increases to an unsettling degree until they reach a clearing.

A broken stone archway stands alone at its center. It's overgrown with moss, green and black with age; if any symbols were once carved into the stonework, they have long since been stripped by the elements. The visible portions of its foundation are broken, and through its cracks reach long stalks of recently harvested mushrooms. Straddling the space beneath the arch is the alabaster white ribcage of some great animal laid on its spine. Inside it, resting on their vertebrae bed, are exactly five roughly human shaped figures made from bent bullrushes.

By the time the weather breaks and the party can locate a place to camp out through their second evening, it is already dark. Tents are pitched quickly, watches established, and it is as early as the first watch that night that those strange sounds reported prior make a return.

Then, in the darkness, a light. A red light, too red to be flame. It is extremely difficult to gauge its distance, let alone its source, but it winks in and out, perhaps like fire, perhaps like something else entirely. When it winks into nothingness, left behind is a more diffused green glow, faint enough and vague enough that it could be almost a trick of the eye, but blink harder, and it's still there. You gauge from your location and the reflection of your own light sources that these lights are coming from across a wide marshy lake, and maybe even further beyond.

And then one last piercing howl, close enough and loud enough to start everyone from their sleep.

ota, threadjacking welcome.

[poleaxed]

a. DAY TWO.

This is the sort of mission Jone is accustomed to, in her way. It's merc work, even under a different name. You go to the place no one wants to go, and you strangle the problem until it's dead. The rib bones jutting out from the earth are to her mind a good omen. Dead dragons (draconids? What else could it be?) are the sign of their age, and the strength of her blood. All good portents, especially for Fereldans.

She picks up one of the bullrush dollies and kisses its head. "Used to make these when I was little. Mine were dead creepier."

b. SECOND EVENING.

A horrible sound in the darkness, angry and feral. Does that rouse you for your sleep, or does the answering call? Jone was on watch, and seeing the light, hearing the sound, the only logical thing to do is answer in kind.

Her howl is well-practiced, but recognizably human. She holds her poleaxe at the ready.

b

[muckspout]

Arguably equally as startling as the noise is Edgard rolling out of a tent immediately after it happens.

He jumps quickly to his feet, bow drawn.

"What the fuck was that?"

[poleaxed]

He's just in time to see Jone answer with a long, lupine howl into the red darkness. She looks over at him with an invigorated grin.

"Whatever we're here to kill."

[muckspout]

Edgard's grin matches Jone's and he laughs at her howl. But, quickly, his eyes flick to the trees.

He blinks at it a moment.

"There's some sort of light out there. Should I shoot it?"

A

[nonvenomous]

Some feet away, Dick looks up from his notebook mid-sketch at the rustle of bullrush, and requires a solid beat to make sense of what he’s seeing before he can say, “I wouldn’t -- “

She’s kissed it.

He watches her as if he expects she might at any second grow horns, burst into flames, etc, stock still in his furry hat and the rain-heavy bristle of his even shaggier cloak.

[poleaxed]

She watches him, watching her, and when you've an audience, well. She is getting paid for this. (There's a desire to lower expectations as much as possible, always, she's the wretch, the Monster-)

Eyes still on him, expression unchanged, she sticks her tongue out, inching it closer to the doll.

a.

[heorte]

Why.

Though Ellis' misgivings don't make it all the way to his face. He'd been running two fingers along one strip of bone, apprehensively trying to discern something from the leavings, when Jone had made her declaration.

"Careful," is the first, mild reaction he vocalizes, before he straightens up from his inspection. "Guesses at what this was?"

Other than the site of what Ellis can only imagine is bad magic, or questionable tradition.

[poleaxed]

Jone wiggles the dolly between her fingers. "You afraid, big man?"

She's still studying the doll, wiggling it in her hand and resisting the urge to coo outright. They're cute. Crudely made, a bit creepy, but still cutesy.

"I did some jobs, back in the day," how long? Don't worry about it, "for this bloke what wanted to research dragons, right? Killed heaps of the fuckers, I did. Now every dead thing looks like a dragon to me."

day three;

[katabasis]

The third morning is an inevitability, but before you can form a plan of investigation, the mystery has instead brought itself to you. Stepping beyond the immediate bounds of the camp reveals that the surrounding trees have been transformed in the night. In an echo of the ritual ground they found the day prior, various sigils have been carved into a number of trees surrounding where the party slept last night. More worrisome still is that on a handful of trees without sigils show signs of wear and broken bark. It's almost as if some great animal had rubbed its antlers there while circling them in the dark.

CLOSED TO RICHARD & ISAAC.

[poleaxed]

As far as Jone's concerned, there are two types of people on this crew: bruisers and mages. One of the mages is likely a healer, because one ought to be, for pity's sake. Jone can't tell which of the quiet, self-serious, spindly gents is the healer, though, so she decides to include both.

One is snatched by the shoulder, the other gets his ear tugged for a half second before she settles on his shoulder as well. It's a joke; have a sense of humor.

The sigils carved into the bloody trees, that's what she's pointing at. "Mage business, innit?"

One lucky participant is released so she can point, the other stays within her vice grip.

[nonvenomous]

Cats raised in households with toddlers have a certain boneless tolerance for being hefted and hauled around like dollies, in spite of their natural poise. So it is with Richard, who protests only with a brow-knit Look when he’s plucked from warming his hands at the fire by the ear, and jostles into step when Jone’s grip shifts to his shoulder, all without a word.

He manages to snag the strap of his satchel as they go, morning breath puffed out at a steady fog until Jone drops anchor, and they’re left to survey the night work that’s gone on around them.

"I’m not not sure I would -- " he looks aside to Isaac as draws out his journal, and decides to go on ahead with, "so hastily ascribe --"

[wythersake]

Others aren't so dignified.

"Will you —"

Isaac squawks, swatting at her hand. A huff when the march finally pauses; he straightens so far as her grip allows. Squinting first between Richard, then the tree,

"There's nothing active."

Wait. Pause — the fight goes out of his posture. This time, when he taps Jone's fingers, it's light: Let go, or get closer. More thoughtfully,

"Whoever carved this never saw a Circle." Which might mean any number of things. "They're playing at magic."

Whether a mage or not.

in the dark; in the night

[katabasis]

It comes at night.

Even in the most pitch hour, the marsh is not a quiet place. Insects buzz and small animals shift in the trees and night birds call. Would it be possible to say which chittering call belongs to what resident of that place?

It comes at night, a great shape made invisible by the dark. It is drawn by the low light of the campfire, by the soft murmur of voices on watch, and by things which trespass. Where it walks, the black sodden earth hardly gives beneath its ponderous form.

Turn back, say the whispering rushes. Go home, whisks the dragonfly. Poor Fernand, the owl hoots. Don't you know what wanders here?

The crack of the snare trap snapping closed about its prey is as an instrument's popping string, a discordant chord shriek which splits the darkness.

i was tossing and turning.

[poleaxed]

Jone hears it, because she's been lying in wait. You can't sleep on something like this. Is it fear or excitement? The emotions are essentially indistinguishable.

She moves out of her tent, weapon at the ready, and lets out a low, long whistle. Everybody, get ready for it.

Whatever it is.

[heorte]

Having been sat up by the fire, Ellis is already on his feet when Jone emerges.

"Ready?" is a question posed more towards the noise of movement from their camp than to Jone, who looks extremely prepared.

It is extremely inconvenient to fight something in the dark that isn't darkspawn. That should be noted.

[nonvenomous]

Dick Dickerson, also by the fire, is slower to rise. He has his lantern with him, wick raised bright with a turn of the dial.

It’s better than nothing.

And much better than him trying to run in with a dagger in hand.