[CLOSED] DON'T DUMAT OPEN INSIDE

[katabasis]

WHO: Adrasteia, Laura, Ellis, Tony, Val & Holden
WHAT: Exploration of the Temple of Dumat
WHEN: Drakonis
WHERE: Northern Orlais, Ghislain, ...The Temple of Dumat
NOTES: Mild horror; content warn as necessary; OOC Plot Information; Original Investigation Report

Though the end of winter is hardly the most pleasant time to go trekking through old ruins, returning to the excavated Shrine of Dumat in the heart of the Ghislain region of Orlais is simple enough. Thanks to the collapse of the Venatori-Ander force's hold on the region, they face no opposition and will easily find their way there. While a small contingent of Exalter Marchers has been tasked with keeping tabs on the ruin to make sure no enemy return to it, they've been wary of digging too deep into the sanctum's lowest levels. So congrats: you all get to pick up right where the last group of Riftwatchers left off (or finish what you started in the first place, Tony).

The team has been tasked with two primary objectives:

• Follow up on the first team's work. Explore the ritual chamber of the shrine where the rumored "gate" is located; recover any artifacts or clues therein and retrieve as much data about the rift as possible. If anything isn't safe to bring back to the Gallows (like, say, a certain blighted Venatori mage's corpse), conduct a thorough study and then destroy whatever can't be recovered lest it fall into enemy hands. If you can figure out how to close the gate, then all the better.
  
  
• Thoroughly explore the remainder of the ruin. Verify that there are no ancillary shenanigans on site beyond those found in the ritual chamber. Collect any additional information or traces of Venatori activity on site.

How This Works:
Objective One, which features the exploration of the ritual chamber with its tainted rift and the miscellaneous clues which can be found there are a free-for-all mingle zone. The whole group can interact with that area.

Objective Two, the detailed exploration of the additional chambers, will consist of two branching paths. Look for the header with your character's name in it. These sections will consist of a series of dungeon rooms featuring good old fashioned traps, puzzles, with general exploration hi-jinks encouraged.

Each chamber will be described upon entry and have its own conditions for solving the area and allowing characters to progress through the dungeon, but don't worry if you're not big on puzzles. The ruins have seen better days and what may have once been problems with definitive solutions may now be a little less rigid.

As your characters explore and attempt to solve the puzzles they come across or wander across taps, I will interject here and there with relevant updates. If at any point you get stuck, you can attempt a Perception Check by bolding the relevant section of your tag (i.e. 'She studies the runes on the doors and [blah blah blah insert the rest of the tag here.]') and putting CHECK in the subject line of your comment. I will then roll to see how much information your character manages to glean in order to provide additional hints and clues.

These clues will be oocly visible to everyone, but icly known only to the character who made the check.

If the group as a whole at any point decides they're done playing with puzzles and want the cheat codes for the current room, have the next player put SKELETON KEY in the subject line of their comment and I'll provide you with the solution. I'd much rather we have a satisfying narrative adventure than trap anyone in rooms just because folks aren't feeling a particular puzzle.

If you have any questions, ASK ME HERE.

Comments

Perception check

[justashotaway]

Laura watches Ellis' dragon move with ease, frowns at her own. They're identical in every way, except --

She shoves one sleeve up and slices open her forearm with one claw and a long-familiar lack of hesitation and lets the blood drip onto the statue. Then she tries to move it again, pushing it to face Holden's.

[katabasis]

Though there's no obvious mechanism visible which is stopping the rings and no amount of force seems to encourage them to move more than a fraction in either direction, each disk has a faint sense of give distinct from its neighbor. They must move independently from one another.

[kantikoy]

"Probably theirs," Adrasteia replies, pointing in the direction of the bodies slowly mummifying and stacked along the wall. "The ones in black were cut to bleed." And it doesn't seem, upon first look, that they struggled much in the bleeding so she presumes they did it to themselves, or willingly at the very least.

Not the most pleasant of thoughts, really.

"Don't remove your gloves before we leave this place."

[katabasis]

And thus, with a faint rasp that is felt under the hand rather than heard, the column pivots from facing the center of the room to face its neighbor.

Dragon one faces two, two faces three, and three faces—the center of the room where the faint tinge of fresher (or at least different) air is strongest—one.

There is no discernable effect save for having unlocked the second pillar. It's possible it's only a matter of 'unlocking' the third. But more likely, the orientation isn't yet quite right.

[kantikoy]

"They'll move on their own, not together, but I don't know how," Adrasteia puffs out her cheeks and makes a face at the entire room. "This is at the center, and I feel like that must be important."

She wonders if blood is the key here, but she's not about to bleed tainted Warden's blood into the bowl at the center of the room to find out.

CHECK

[acreage]

Christ, goes unheard, as Laura cuts her arm open. But there's some sense to it all, if he thinks about it — he's heard, seen, enough about blood sacrifices and this place.

Despite Adrasteia's earlier warning, he pulls off a glove, reaches out slowly and lets his hand catch on the sharp edges of the column. This time, he tries to move his dragon to face Laura's column, and gestures with his free hand to suggest they try switching orientation (three, to two, to one).

CHECK

[degenere]

Val, back on his feet, climbs to look at the pedestal. He feels at the pedestal's surface, trying to push at it, to rotate it, to see if it, too, has any suggestion of a give, without touching the crescent-shaped depression or that etched bar.

"Silentir loves," does he remember, is it in his notes somewhere, "winter? Game is lean--thus, the horn, the wand. I think that to be correct at least."

[katabasis]

With the touch of blood, the pillar is induced to turn. As the line re-orients into the opposite direction—

Nothing happens.

But equally true: all this time, they've been pivoting the dragons along angles which face into the room. Each column has an away facing arc which has yet to be explored.

[katabasis]

Unlike the disks surrounding it, the pedestal doesn't show any sign of give. It's locked into place, a robust point of orientation around which the disks must rotate.

Upon close inspection however, there is the finest crack at the base of that razor sharp crescent which divides the bowl. The crack is on the narrow side—the sliver of a waxing moon's disk which should be dark and very lean indeed.

PERCEPTION CHECK

[heorte]

Across the room, Ellis' wince is still easily seen. But he can't exactly argue with the results. (Somewhere, Vance is angry and isn't sure why.)

For lack of better option, Ellis spins his dragon in the opposite direction, as far as the track will allow.

[justashotaway]

Laura watches, and she waits, looking for...something. Anything that might say that they managed to change the dark, empty room.

When it comes, though, it's invisible. She sniffs, and her brow furrows.

"Holden - " She's already turning her own dragon, careful not to cut her palms on its sharp edges. "It smells like lyrium."

PERCEPTION? CHECK

[propulsion]

"We're probably supposed to pee in it."

Definitely something worth wrecking his throat to say.

Tony is wearing gloves, the kind he uses to handle dangerous things in a workshop. Not quite proof against razor edges but certainly sturdier than naked human flesh. He peels one of 'em off now, pressing a thin smile at the others.

"If this doesn't work, don't tell anyone 'bout this next thing," he says, before reaching in to nick the back of his knuckles, shallowly, against the sharp edge of the crescent.

[degenere]

"Burnt? But the cuts," still in Orlesian, and he gestures to his own neck, here and here, "you note these, yes? Which has been burnt? Turn his face this way."

He turns a page, ready to draw what she reveals to him.

[katabasis]

Age apparently has done nothing blunt the crescent's edge. Even that shallow contact cuts just deeply enough to induce a few droplets of blood to slither down each side of the blade.

The two droplets which fall to the larger side of the waxing moon image roll off the blade and slip so smoothly into the deepest portion of the basin that the blood might be oil in a warm pan. And there the two droplets remain.

The droplet which falls to the narrow side of the bowl slips down the blade's side and promptly drains into that hairline crack lurking at the crescent's base.

Good news: this all seems to be according to design. Bad news: There's no click or wobble or exciting lyrium glow in answer. The waiting disks show no sign of unlocking

Yet.

Feed me, Seymour.

[degenere]

"We are on a mission, monsieur."

Val generally does not bother to learn anyone's name until it interests him to do so. Rifthwatch, therefore, is made up of a great many people who he knows without knowing. One does not make camp without learning by what they are called, but when there are two Wardens who might both be called Warden (Apparently Possibly Human Warden, Elf Warden; Beardier Warden, Not-At-All-Beardy Warden; Rugged Warden, Pretty Warden; et ainsi de suite), and when one is otherwise engaged with notes and study and various activities far more interesting than socializing with Wardens--well, one might be forgiven for not yet learning the name of the man that has trod backwards and practically pushed into one's chest with an elbow.

Thus does Val not realize he is giving a genial and bracing slap on the back to his great rival.

"It is overwhelming, yes? This place? Such a," he waves a hand in the air, then grimaces a little and touches a hand to his throat. "Am I shouting? I feel as if I am shouting."

[justashotaway]

It's careful work, moving the body she wants: the claws of one hand disappearing, the other held close in order to light what looks to her like the aftermath of some kind of explosion. The body itself is firm, but not like the stiffening that happens soon after death; this is something else, something that feels almost lighter than it should.

"They feel wrong," she shouts, and that, too, feels wrong. Marks on this one's hands are visible now, though, her clothing discoloured at the chest as well. "Not like corpses."

[kantikoy]

The look Adrasteia gives Tony is entirely 'what in the everloving fuck do you think you're doing sirrah' and not an ounce of anything else, much less any sense of being impressed by the fact that the moon, the floor, and nothing else in the room moves as a result. She's not sure that he was wrong, exactly, but she has to set a standard before one of them bleeds out on the floor trying to figure this out.

She waves a hand. The slit on Tony's knuckle heals up and she takes a deep breath.

"If you don't mind... I would appreciate it if you would stop bleeding on things of unknown origins in this place. As both the spirit healer and the Warden in the room, I suggest that I be the one doing the bleeding, and that the both of you stand back."

Even at the fiercest whisper she can manage, she does sound a little put out.

[acreage]

He pauses from going to move his own dragon, straightening.

"It what?"

[justashotaway]

"Turn your dragon."

CHECK

[acreage]

Honestly it's so goddamn hard to hear that maybe that was what she said before!! But no, he just frowns, makes a note of what he needs to ask agAIN, and turns the last dragon to face away from the room.

[acreage]

He nods in acknowledgment of the bodies, of Adrasteia's answer (and suggestion). It'd make sense, answer the question of what happened to those people and where the blood here came from. Blood sacrifice, he's heard, about this place. And he's heard, too, in Isaac's story of Corypheus and the breach.

He looks from the bodies, down to the floor glyphs, and up to the dark rift.

"Think they had something to do the gate up there?"

Either opening, or corrupting it. Or, hell, maybe both.

[katabasis]

The moment all three statues are turned away into their respective corners, they're rewarded a flare of reddish light sparking with shocking brightness up from the floor at the center of the room. It comes with the raw ozone tang of lyrium as some old enchantment triggers, though any noise which might accompany the flash is swallowed by the muffled effect which blankets the whole of the temple.

The flash of light immediately subsides to a dull glow. Upon inspection, the glow is being emitted from a band of ancient runes which circle the mouth of an extraordinarily dark hole which has opened in the floor. From above, there's no telling how deep it is or what might be lurking in that ominous dark. Unpleasantly, the opening is distinctly 'reach in and touch something' in dimension.

It's probably fine. Nothing bad ever came from a gross dark hole in a cursed temple.

CHECK

[heorte]

Great.

Immediately, instinctively, Ellis begins moving around the edges of the room towards Holden and Laura and he stretches his focus outward, trying to sense the familiar rot of darkspawn, or the searing spear of attention he'd felt in the main ritual chamber.

[propulsion]

Tony says 'ow, sunuvabitch', but he doesn't shout it, and so words get absorbed into the silence.

And then that little touch of healing light, and he inspects the back of his hand. Before he has time to be grateful (or make some attempt at giving that a try), he's being shout-whispered at, and casts her a skeptical look as he flexes his healed up fingers.

"You being the only healer is a good reason to keep most of your blood in you, don't you think?" he shouts back, but without heat. It's just impossible to sound chill when you're trying to talk through this dampening magic. "But as long as you're in a giving type of mood, we should probably all chip in."

[katabasis]

Good news, everybody: neither of those things are present. —Or rather, the lingering sensation of the Taint isn't intensified by the opening of the spooky hand hole.