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

[poleaxed]

Jone watches, waits, sees nothing, hears less. She's tempted to throw a torch at the center of this waiting dark, only to get on with it.

But if somebody dies today, it won't be her fault. Caution gets her where, normally, a mercenary's pay would. It's all the same in the end.

Before her thoughts turn any more toward smug nihilism, she gestures to the nearest light source-- the fuckers by the campfire. In her absolutely quietest voice, a whisper that cuts through silence like a scythe through wheat, she asks, "sooooooo?"

[katabasis]

Thunk, thunk, CRACK! There's a strange muted quality as the first two arrows find that quavering shape, eclipsed by the sharper snap and clatter as the third find a more solid point of impact and rebounds... elsewhere.

As if on cue to Jone's question or in reply to the assault, that white shape rises. The dark, misshapen body - visible only because of how it interrupts other shapes - expands unnaturally upward with it. It sways more like some bizarre uncoiling snake than what is innate to any animal which might own the heavy ungulate skull and the great sprawl of antlers which now rattles in the lowest tree branches. Half visible between the trees and tangle of murky underbrush, it sways weightlessly. What must be a huge fist-sized eye left in its bare skull catches the lamp light in fits and starts, reflecting the flame back at them.

Pop, scrape. It makes the sound of some rasping, sawing thing. The antlers bash forward, clattering threateningly against the screen of trees.

[wythersake]

Jone leans in, and Isaac starts — reluctantly — forward. Stops as abruptly as the towering shape unfurls.

It cuts a terrifying silhouette: Massive, alien. His first thought is fuck that. His second is that it doesn't move like a beast. (And spirits don't linger for snares. Do they?)

"Duck,"

He doesn't pause to check who's clear as he brings the staff around, a heavy wave of sleep smothering the Fade about the rattling mess of bone. A little overkill never hurt anyone. Where anyone is him, specifically, Isaac. The others are sturdy, or clever enough to listen.

Or they're Edgard. Edgard is also there.

[heorte]

Duck is sufficient warning for Ellis, used to fighting with a mage on hand. He'd been eyeing Jone, considering how soon the pair of them will need to simply go out and get whatever misshapen thing is thrashing between the trees.

A brief, quick glance back towards Richard, assessing his position in the same moment he gets the hell out of Isaac's way.

Again, a quick, assessing look to Jone, as he waits to see if Isaac's spellwork took hold. His eyebrows raise. Unspoken: Now?

[nonvenomous]

Dick stands with lantern outstretched, filing through his encyclopedic knowledge of otherworldly arcane abominations at breakneck pace. He flinches at the clatter and bash, but more akin to a cat flinching from another with a window between them. He is surrounded by fighters.

Duck. He swivels into a crouch, putting his back to a stump at the campfire, and the lantern light swings with him, wobbling strange shadows through the branches and behind trunks. When Ellis looks, it’ll be to find him craning back to see that everyone survived the spell.

“Is this ringing any storybook bells?”

He rarely shouts, but gosh can he speak clearly and directly through imminent chaos.

[poleaxed]

When someone says duck, you either quack or get down, and Jone's good with context. The darkness moves, sound speaks, and magic... happens. That's about the only thing magic does, really.

She shoots the ginger mage a look. "What kind of nan did you have, mate?"

[katabasis]

Duck.

The great thing in the dark doesn't. It's massive head sways on its matted neck, brief and bizzarely serpentine in the clutch of the Fade, and then with a great crash of bone its face bashes forward into the screen of trees.

It stills. That bizzare rasp quiets. The pop snap of the undergrowth falls mute.

When the swing of the lantern sways round again, it catches that huge eye gazing back at them between the trees like a child pressed against and peering through a keyhole.

[muckspout]

Edgard crouched on the ground (He did duck when told to, thank you), but doesn't miss the giant eye looking at them. Target, he thinks.

He looses another arrow straight for the eye.

[katabasis]

Crack!

The light goes out. The shape doesn't stir.

[wythersake]

Edgard's shot cracks out, and Isaac turns about belatedly, pleased to find everyone still conscious. To Jone and Ellis —

"I don't know how long that will last,"

The spell. So just in case, maybe go hit it with a stick.

[heorte]

Well, that Ellis can do.

"Let's go," he says quickly to Jone before making a beeline towards the massive, still shape in the dark. If he can discern a head, he'll take a swing at that first, but there's only so much human eyes can pick up.

[nonvenomous]

What kind of nan --

Richard hoods his brow, equal parts defensive and unsure what his nan being a massive leathery snake abomination has to do with anything. He’s caught looking past Jone to that great, glowing eye before he can answer.

An arrow snaps it dark, and he closes his mouth entirely.

Seconds later, he’s a few long steps behind the frontline pushing in, the lantern’s axle squeaking in time with the wobble of the light as he hustles just shy of a jog.

“It hasn’t attacked us yet,” his voice pipes up behind them -- a helpful reminder.

[katabasis]

And it makes no move to attack them now, though whether that is best attributed to the sleep spell or to the arrow it recently caught with its eye is impossible to say. That sprawling crown of antlers tangled in the trees remains locked where it is; the large body is still in its soggy copse.

Something is wrong.

If that weren't apparent before, it's certainly clear as they approach through the dark. Between jerking lamplight and shadows stretched long: The dark shape extending from the skull appears like matted fur, incredibly coarse and falling in dense clumping grey sheets all the way to the spongy earth underneath. With its long thin neck extended before it to where the bony face is pressed to the trees, the beast's front end appears to have collapsed entirely under its own weight. Its spindly, oddly jointed and leathery forelegs are bent at bizarre angles. It's second set of forelimbs - two blackened deer legs with delicate dark hooves - are tucked high against its bony chest, bent like a fawn's might do while sleeping in sweet clover, and its long, unnaturally tented torso flows back and up into the trees as if the canopy were somehow its unbelievable point of origin.

--But that's not right either. The rope snare leads directly under the matted back end. It is not visibly affixed to any of the inert stick-like rear limbs hanging lifelessly from its tangled hindquarters. And when Ellis comes within striking distance of that horrible heavy skull, the animal's remaining eye reflects perfectly back at him.

Literally. It is his own face mirrored exactly in that dark disk. Which makes sense, really, on account of the animal's eye being a mirror fixed behind the skull's socket.

[muckspout]

Edgard lowers his bow.

He frowns at the creature.

Oh no.

[poleaxed]

Jone does not drop her weapon. Long ago, she learned: when you're afraid of something, kill it. Jone roars a cry that she hopes sounds more angry than frightened, and attempts to plunge her poleaxe into the mirrored eye.

[katabasis]

As mirrors are wont to do, this one shatters. The spike of the poleaxe drives smoothly through it and the eye socket, and whatever lies beyond with little resistance until it strikes the far side of the great ungulate skull. The force is enough to twist where the beast's head has come to rest, and the added weight is enough to shatter net of branches its antlers have tangled in. In a rain of soggy debris and small twigs, the head falls and the animal slumps still farther over.

For a moment, it's still. And then, as if the slap of bone against wet earth or the unnatural torsion of its long middle has reminded it of something, the beast's hindquarters begin to stir. It's a slow, and strangely swaying thing in the half light - seemingly unmotivated by any of its vast number of bony appendages and entirely based on the pendulum swing of the thick snare cable—

POP! The rope snaps. With a heavy fhwump and a muffled cry of alarm (from...the...butt...?), the back end falls as well.

[heorte]

"Is it dead?"

Which precedes the question: What do we do with it now?

[muckspout]

Edgard stares at the creature and then glances at Jone.

"We killed it." He says weakly. It's what he meant to do, but now that he's seen it and now that he's looked into it's eyes, he's upset.

"It's beautiful." He frowns at his bow like it is the problem.

[katabasis]

Well.

In a certain sense, yes; these things are true.

As if in reply to the compliment, the great animal's talkative back end begins to--jostle? There's a thump. A groan of protest is followed by a sudden hard lapse into pointed silence and stillness.

"Oh, fuck this," something says a thick Orlesian accent.

And then the shaggy flank quite literally unpeels upward from the ground. It's briefly nightmarish - a great gap to the animal's insides tearing open in the dark -, but the effect is ruined (or made that much more surreal) when what is produced from it is not a spill of fade-touched guts but a woman. She struggles to free herself from under the heavy cloak of knit fur, leather, and collection of limp tree branch limbs and wave her knife discouragingly while both her legs remain trapped in a remarkably heavy duty snare.

It's probably less threatening than she was hoping for, but her expression behind the dark smear of mud is fiercely frowning.

"Back. Back off, the lot of you."

[heorte]

Regrettably for this woman, Ellis' first reaction is to laugh.

Come on, this is so absurd it's funny, right?

[nonvenomous]

Dick is remarkably still through the pop, the muffled cry, and the birth of a grown woman through a rupture in the beast’s abdomen. Having muscle between here and there is a help. He raises his lantern to better monitor her twisting free, and lowers it again to assure himself of the state of her ankles once she’s stood.

Ellis laughs.

“Hello. I’m Richard.”

...will have to suffice by way of an only marginally more kind I don’t think so in the face of her demand.

“There may be others beneath the -- “ he gestures, with a look aside to his more martial compatriots, “husk.”

[poleaxed]

Jone stands with her hands on her hips, leaning forward and squinting. "'kinell, Dick, what kinda parties you used to having?"

[muckspout]

Edgard stands open mouthed at this insane turn of events. After a long pause, he raises his bow again and points it at the woman. He speaks to her in Orlesian.

"What the hell is this? Explain yourself."

[katabasis]

Her graceless hop serves to both move her marginally toward the skull end of the "beast" and to draw out the frazzled trailing end of the snare from under the shapeless cloak of its side. A knife sawing studiously away at the line would certainly explain the earlier rasping noise in any case--

Edgard's reply a gesture so rude that it is multilingual.

"I said back," she snaps, somewhat flustered on account of being laughed at not being on her nightly docket. "I will gut you if you come near. What have you done? What mage work was that?"

The knife points perceptively in Isaac's direction for a moment, but her attention shifts between the lot of them - flashing and angry, or at least embarrassed enough to seem furious.

[poleaxed]

Jone steps forward, because she figures if someone's going to get stabbed, she's the one with the most work experience.

"Believe me, luv, less you know about this magic, the better," she bluffs. "And believe me, you definitely know the least about using that knife right, out of every cunt here."

This, she believes, is the truth.