[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

[justashotaway]

Ellis' moment of surprise is just as she's letting go of the hilt and shifting so she can slide off his back. Overbalanced, Laura falls over into Holden with a growl that gets swallowed up by the air around them. Her first instinct is to grab at whatever she can reach--fistfuls of Holden's shirt, one leg around Ellis' neck like she means to choke him with it.

[acreage]

Distracted as he is by the flash of red light, by the appearance of the stairs, he doesn't immediately clock the motion happening next to him. At least, not until Laura falls directly into him and grabs hold, upsetting his balance and sending the lot of them tumbling down the stairs.

"Motherf — " gets swallowed by the muffling enchantments.

[heorte]

If Ellis had any prayer of recovering from being garroted by Laura's leg, it's gone the minute Holden tips.

It's a short, painful descent. Groaning, Ellis tries to lift himself out of the tangle of limbs and only manages to half-flop backwards onto the bottom step.

PERCEPTION CHECK

[justashotaway]

As soon as they've come to a stop, Laura sits up. (She might have the easiest time of it. After all, she's clinging to everyone else, and everyone else is simply stuck.) Nothing is broken, and anything that's bruised will heal quickly enough--for her, anyway.

She'll try to shake off the daze of going head over feet down a flight of stairs once she's gotten to her feet, a hand against the wall to keep her balance. This is what she's trained for, what instincts have been built into her: mission first, self second. As her sense of place returns to her, she looks into the room they've fallen into and sniffs again at the air.

[katabasis]

At the bottom of their graceless (and soundless) descent, they find themselves on the landing between two sets of stairs. The first set is the one down which they recently tumbled. The second set leads a further ten feet down to the sunken floor and a walkway which cuts toward the far side of the cavernous chamber through what might have once been a shallow reflection pool. From the comparatively dark stain of the basins to that of the walkway's stones, it's highly doubtful that water was what was doing the reflecting.

It's dark. It's quiet. It smells very old.

The far side of the room is dominated by a fantastic brass city in miniature. It rises from out of where the walkway suddenly ends to form an untraversable ramp (unless someone feels like trampling over miniature rooftops and the miniscule population of figures in residence). The ramp slopes up to an impressive height of around ten feet and leads to where it ends flush to an unsettlingly lifelike depiction of Dumat. The figure is half mural and half artistically rendered column, effectively making it appear as if the great dragon is emerging from the chamber's rear wall to meet the city's pinnacle. At the lower end of the brass city, a gate is set into its miniature wall. The twin watchtowers are empty.

Flanking either side of the walkway is a slightly raised platform. Above each hangs a large black bell with a brass tongue. The chains from which they're suspended stretch up into the darkness toward a matching black city which hangs down from the ceiling far above their heads.

PERCEPTION CHECK

[heorte]

Whatever Ellis says, half-risen on the landing and looking down at the dragon, the brass city, the watchtowers, is not loud enough to carry. It's swallowed up by the spell that holds this temple. His face is very grave.

Instinctively, he focuses in on the endless, looping flow of whispers that's nipped and pulled at the edges of his awareness since their descent into the main chamber. Is that ancient, crushing attention present in this room too?

[katabasis]

The magnetic hum of the Calling lingers low in the air, but it doesn't seem to have intensified here. If there happens to be an especially keen sense of being watched, it likely has something to do with the chamber's high ceiling and how the reflective polished stone and metal of the chamber occassionally reflects light back at them through the otherwise syrupy darkness.

No eye of sauron here.

[heorte]

Rising fully, Ellis' hand drifts to the hilt of his mace then away. There's nothing here to wield it against. (Yet?)

"We need to be very careful here," Ellis shouts. The muffling quality of the spell might rob some of the urgency from his warning. He points grimly down at the mural. "That is Dumat, and nothing that's been done here in his name can be good."

They should leave. Adrasteia's proposal to reduce the entire temple to rubble is becoming more and more appealing, even if Ellis has no idea whether or not it's the right approach. But the margin for error, what they could possibly do if they aren't careful, has expanded alarmingly in the space of one fall down a set of stairs.

PERCEPTION CHECK

[acreage]

He pulls himself to his feet as they untangle themselves, blinking as he takes in the vastness of this new chamber. He thinks of Wysteria's bright voice over the crystals, The usual gamut of horrors in a shrine to an ancient god known for its—his?—proficiency with blood magic, I should think.

Nodding in acknowledgement to Ellis's warning, he takes the walkway slowly, and approaches the two black bells, looking for any kind of designs or inscriptions.

[katabasis]

The two bells are identical and hang high enough that Holden can comfortably duck down into it to get an inspection of the inside as well as the outside.

Roughly three feet in diameter, the bell's exterior is a smooth and featureless black. However it's interior features a series of elaborate Ancient Tevene brass inlays. The inlays are patterned in such a way that the negative space creates a dragon-like shape which twists up to the peak of the bell. It terminates in a set of black jaws into which the bell's brass tongue is hooked.

The tongue itself is also etched. While to a cursory inspection it might merely appear patterned, a close study reveals that the etchings are of a multitude of human figures with their arms stretched imploringly upward towards the dragon.

[acreage]

He starts with the exterior of the first bell, then ducks inside of it — carefully, avoiding making any noise. Though whether the bells' ringing would even be audible down here is another question. He takes his time, looking first at the design of the dragon, following its shape to the bell's tongue, then looking at the etchings until he's clear on what they are.

(What they are being: creepy as fuck.)

He emerges with a frown, then moves to examine the other bell, inside and out. He misses hand terminals, the ability to take photos of what he's seeing. There isn't enough light to try drawing the carvings even if he could, had paper or a pen on hand.

Both bells inspected, he cautiously moves away from them, and shouts a quick description of what he found to Ellis and Laura.

PERCEPTION CHECK

[justashotaway]

Laura, meanwhile, walks off the little walkway once she's reached it, tromping unconcernedly over ages-old bloodstains over to the tiny golden city. This, she's learned from library books, is what people believe in when they say that the Maker is real. Not this particular city, tiny and eye-height if she walks just a little way beyond the bells Holden has disappeared into, but the much larger place it represents.

She examines it up close, touching one of the little buildings carefully to see if it, too, is designed to make people bleed.

[katabasis]

Happily, there are no unnecessarily sharp edges here among the brass city. It is a meticulous but not inherently dangerous rendering of city walls, carefully ordered markets, trading houses and residential boroughs. The tiered city, each section thoughtfully laid out around a square containing a delicately rendered fountain, leads to a depiction of a domed palatial estate trapped in Dumat's shadow. It might be a singularly lovely piece of craftsmanship if it weren't for the stooping old god ruining the mood.

Strangely, all of the city's minuscule inhabitants seem to be facing away from the dragon. The only obvious exception is a single robed figure locked outside the city's entrance. It's notable both for the fact that it faces the depiction of Dumat and because it's the only piece in the diorama cut from black stone.

[heorte]

"Don't either of you bleed on anything here," Ellis calls, urgency translating somehow, possibly simply through the effort expended to make sure those words carry.

Is there a chance it's necessary? Yes.

Is there a risk they bring down something very nasty onto their heads? Also yes.

"If we have to feed blood into anything in this room, it should be me while you two stand up on the second landing," follows after, as Ellis draws up alongside Holden and Laura.

[acreage]

To Ellis —

"What do you think might happen that standing a couple of feet away is going to help?"

He probably shouldn't waste his voice on being a smartass, but here we are.

[heorte]

"I don't know."

Admittedly, Ellis has never received any particular training about blood-powered shrines. However—

"But I do know if something happens, it's likely to be blighted." punctuated with a sharp, uncharacteristically agitated movement of Ellis' hand. "As long as you're nearer the stairs than to me, you'll have a better chance at getting Adrasteia here to help me with it."

This is a very inopportune time for a training session on Blight, tainted foes and otherwise, and yet.

[justashotaway]

"Bleeding doesn't bother me," is Laura's contribution, while she reaches for the little black carved figure and attempts to pick it up. No luck, despite some little cracks at the base of it. She doesn't succeed in lifting up any of the others, either, and turns her attention back to the gentlemen she arrived with. "We should ring the bells."

[acreage]

He looks from Ellis to Laura when she speaks, weighing both suggestions in his mind. Then he glances backwards, briefly. There's nothing stopping them from going back up those stairs, finding the others, and reporting what they found down here. They don't have to figure out whatever is in this room, if it leads elsewhere, risk awakening — anything. Maybe Ellis has a point, that he and Adrasteia are better equipped to take care of things if they have to worry about the Blight.

He considers going back up the stairs and leaving this place empty-handed.

"If we do, you and I," to Laura, "should ring them at the same time. Ellis, that'd leave you free to stay close and be ready to handle whatever might happen."

[heorte]

"No bleeding," Ellis stipulates, the point truncated because his throat aches. It's not about who is or isn't squeamish. It's about who should be in this chamber on the off chance they summon something blighted and hostile.

But of course, the conclusion they all come to is the same: they have no answers, and therefore cannot yet leave. So he nods, circling around over the long-dried bloodstains of the pool to leave them both room to get at the bells and position himself between the pair of them and the mural of Dumat. Instinct says if something is coming, it'll come from where. Carefully, he steps between the bells, up to the edge of the little brass city and the singular, ominous summoner of black stone. His hand doesn't leave the handle of his mace.

PERCEPTION CHECK

[justashotaway]

Laura shrugs. Bleeding, no bleeding, it doesn't matter right now. The golden city can't be pulled apart, and presumably the black city above them can't, either. The only thing they can change, unless she climbs atop the city to investigate the dragon in greater detail, is the pair of bells.

Ellis is already coming down to meet them, so Laura decides to leave the dragon alone. She returns to the platform, taking one of the bells, while Holden takes the other. In tandem, they push the bells, trying to make them ring.

[katabasis]

For as large as they are, the black bodies of the bells shift with relative ease. In tandem, they strike against the heavy copper tongues and the silence of Dumat's chamber is shattered by sonorous twin calls.

After hours of such unrelenting quiet, the shape of the noise in the oppressive darkness is almost vulgar—reverberating off the high ceiling and walls of the room, deep and hair raising like something agonized. As the copper tongue collides with the bell's black shell, the runic shapes etched on the interior pulse once with a hot red light.

From each side of the walkway, the darkness shifts. There is the acrid stench of ozone, a sensation of thickening in the air like a pressing weight settling about the shoulders. From the empty basins of the reflecting pool, brittle flecks of long dried blood peel up from the stained floor and coalesce with the dancing shadows. The two manifested shades sweep in from both sides to make their attack.

And then the bells swing back. They strike the weighted brass tongues again. The etchings pulse. The darkness shifts. Two more demons peel themselves together out of shadow and ancient blood.

[acreage]

Well, he thinks, that got someone's attention.

He steps back from his bell, hand going to the crossbow he'd brought with him down here. Wysteria's cheerfully delivered dire warnings, and all their intel about this place, hadn't gone unheeded; and he draws it, firing off a bolt at one of the shades.

[heorte]

The momentary relief at seeing nothing oozing tainted blood rising out of the pool is almost immediately overshadowed by the realization that there are four shades close at hand to be dealt with.

"Stop the bells ringing!" Ellis shouts, moving immediately to the opposite side of the chamber towards the other pair. If the bell summoned four, would it summon four more on if it were allowed to keep ringing?

Predictably, Ellis goes directly for the head, swinging high with his mace without waiting to see what Laura and Holden choose to do.

[justashotaway]

Maybe they have to ring the bells, and keep them ringing until no more demons come. Given the choice, that's what she would do. But Ellis has said to make them stop, and the mission isn't hers alone.

So Laura ducks inside her bell so she can grab the clapper and hold it still, the bell still swinging around her. It bumps awkwardly around her body, but it doesn't chime.

She can see the bottom of a shade approaching, the formless part of it that seems to have oozed out of the ground itself. The shape of it puts a shiver down her back. Holding tight to the clapper, she lets her foot claws appear and kicks both feet out beyond the edge of the bell, slashing at the demon while she dangles there.

[acreage]

There's a logic to Ellis's idea. Maybe the noise has drawn them out, maybe something else to do with the bells. Regardless — he moves backwards to his bell, grabs the clapper two-handed. What he means to do is simply stop the ringing, but his momentum has him pulling harder than he'd intended, and the whole clapper pulls loose from the bell, into his arms.