faderift | [CLOSED] DON'T DUMAT OPEN INSIDE

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[CLOSED] DON'T DUMAT OPEN INSIDE

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

The judder of the platform settling had jolted Val forward, face too close to the basin of blood. As he now pushes back, he sees Tony's work result in a genuine development and makes a noise of excitement. Given the muffling effects on the chamber, this comes out to no more than a ">!!" before he shoves back and clambers to the third disk, and begins shoving at the third disk.

Blood loss and one blood slippery hand makes this a slow process. He works to move that disk so that the large partial notch on disk three batches up with the small partial notch on disk two.

As its closest sibling had done, the third disk too skates into place with a low humming sensation that is felt through the floor rather than heard.

The moment it latches into place, there is a palpable shift in all three rotating sections of the floor. With Tony, Adrasteia, and Val scattered over top of them, the disks abruptly begin a patient descent down around the central column upon which the pedestal rests.

When the disks finally come to a halt, they have formed a series of large steps--something like a miniature inverse amphitheater with the pedestal column high at its center. And while it wouldn't be impossible to climb back up to the pedestal, the gap between it at the edge of the upper chamber's remaining floor would make for a daunting leap.

Luckily, a comparatively appealing route has opened before them. Located in the curving wall of this lower chamber is a distinctly bell-shaped doorway which leads onward into the darkness.

Maker's breath.

This whole puzzle room is making Adrasteia's head spin, or is that the blood loss? Either way, with a wave of her staff the scratches on their arms heal up smoothly, and she puts it away while taking in a deep breath.

"Onward?" She asks, but there's not really any question, is there? They're going to check out this bell-shaped doorway, without a doubt.

She does wish that they'd all been able to stick together instead of separating into two different rooms, but that's not anything she can do something about right now, so there's little point in focusing on it.

"Behind me," Tony says. A little gurgly, having stopped to take a deep, deep drink of water from his canteen or whatever the medievals call them. It does a little something to ease the fact he feels like he's been karaoke-ing some screamo for the past three hours.

The cap is twisted back into place, and he nods to the Warden, a thanks for the healing.

Of course, 'behind me' means he has to get down there, and he's currently king of the hill. Ably enough, maybe surprisingly so for being King Nerd and pushing fifty, he clambers down, sits and jumps, until he lands amongst them at the lower level.

Both gloves have been stowed into a pocket, and the shard in his left hand crackles fitfully when he shakes it out some, heading into the doorway. Hopefully first. If not, he'll make a face, and go in whenever.

With the grace of someone who takes unannounced magical healing very much for granted--not because he's been subjected to it with any regularity, but because good things just happen to Val de Foncé--and because he is so glutted with things to look at and think about and consider--Val has already scrambled to look at the door, touch its edges, search for impressions or reliefs or friezes that might be admired--and, while he is there, peer into its darkness, listen to its depths.

It should therefore be appreciated, that he has not gone running off on his own. As his companions approach, he looks around--remembers they are there--ah!, too quiet to be heard--and steps extravagantly to one side.

"Monsieur Lumière!"

Of course the light--however spooky and spectral and green--should be first. Ostensibly it can also act as defense. Good. This will leave more time for Val to look at things. And if he can't lead, he'll be second.

Ah, canteens. A good idea, actually, and for once Adrasteia doesn't mind taking up the rear. She's not a glass cannon by any respect but getting knocked in the solar plexus would effectively stop any casting she'd managed, so.

She gives Tony and Val a salute and keeps her stave in hand.

What she does, as she drinks her water and tries not to empty the canteen she's carrying in one go, is try to get a sense of the dimensions of where they're headed, be it to a room or just another hallway, plus reaching with her Warden senses to try and tell if anything dangerous and Blighted is waiting for them ahead.

As they move through the bell-shaped doorway into the passage beyond, it becomes immediately clear that this portion of the temple hasn't been nearly as well preserved as other sections. Thick cobwebs lace the walls; the once-polished floor is dusty; a brackish tang lingers heavy in the musty air.

Yes, there is likely something out there waiting in the dark.

Green light plays off the curved walls in fitful sparks and snaps of electrical charge, Tony almost negligently holding up his hand to see by it. He goes carefully, each step considered and tested, but not slow by any means. Ready to hit the brakes if someone awful happens, or hit something awful with blasting Fade energy.

He wrinkles his nose at the smell of this place. "If we need to get all Crawling In My Skin on another weird blood lock, we should probably wipe it down first," is his suggestion, which barely echoes back to them in the oppressive silence.

No pausing to say so, though. Now and then, the fact he can't hear their footsteps compels him to glance backwards more often than he normally might, but otherwise, onwards.

Val keeps very close behind, largely so that he can use the uncertain shard light to try and the walls that they are walking past. He leaves his book and pencil tucked away--not that he is unpracticed with writing or sketching while walking--but it would not do, to find one's self suddenly faced with some danger and have only a pencil for defense.

Then again, would he notice any danger? For he is too occupied with scouring the walls for any new markings or drawings. He sticks out his hand frequently as they walk, entirely without any fear, to brush away the thick soapy strands of cobwebs. If there was a constellation before, and then moons, what might he find here?

Under the shroud of the cobwebs, the walls of the passage here are marked with an undulating, wave-like texture. Here and there along the corridor, the current is broken up by instances of swirling eddies and the rudimentary figures being tossed in them. Luckily, though they've clearly been carefully etched, the grime and age have reduced any cutting capacity the dark waves might originally have had.

As they travel further, they'll slowly become aware of a faint sound: their own footsteps. It grows more definitive with each step they take as if whatever has broached this chamber to open it to wear has also weakened the muffling pall cast over the rest of the temple. Even the light of Tony's anchor extends nominally better here.

Eventually, the passage opens up into a large chamber. A great stationary figure waits at its center for them with a further shadowy shape arcing over it. But before they can get a good look at the architectural elements of the room, a distinctly unpleasant skittering pierces the quiet.

Adrasteia takes in the cobwebs, the skittering noises, and sighs, which can't be heard at this point at all. Her voice is going to be shot after this, she knows now; her earlier idea of singing into the night sky will probably not be in the cards.

She taps Val on the shoulder and makes a wiggly gesture with one hand above the other, meant to indicate spiders; she figures that Tony will have reached the same conclusion already, but she does make the same gesture in his direction the next time he glances back her way. a

Spiders. There are definitely going to be spiders. She casts a barrier on everyone as they enter the room because this is going to go bad quickly as far as she can tell.

Tony whistles, long and slow, testing the noise negation. The sound carries further than it has in prior attempts, enough that it could almost echo with a little more effort, but then again, maybe not. Getting a sense of progress is in itself a disorienting activity, and immediately backburnered when that skittering sound snags his focus off the shapes of the room.

Cool. Cool cool cool. He reaches into his pocket to snag out his left glove, and tug that on quietly, standing in place as the others filter in behind him. The green glow diminishes for a second, and then almost brightens as its directed through the lens set into his glove, lamp-like.

He clocks: staircase leading into water, waterline, dragon construction.

"Stay close," he says. Still shouting, but his voice is less muted than before, enough that after those two words, he eases up on the gas, there. "Think we need to fill that to drain it. Take a look around, I'll watch out for creepy crawlies."

When Val was very small, he was once gifted a copy of the seventeenth Orlesian translation of Our Dangerous World, which he poured over so often the bindings fell apart and had to be restitched with an alarming (and to anyone not named Foncé, cost-prohibitive) frequency, until it was forever lost when he dropped it into a defunct well in the southern garden of Falaise sur la Mont. This means that Andrasteia's gesture for spiders is met with rounded eyes glimmering with excitement--spiders!, for Val, as a naturalist and a lover of even the worst and most dangerous of the Maker's creations--and, so, such a glimmer contains an equal level of respect. A creation of the Maker is yet dangerous.

His second love, architecture, has its heartstring plucked at the sight of the rest of the chamber before them. Its thickness, its functionality, its apparent wickedness, make this no sight of traditional beauty. But an interesting sight--a gigantic carving, underground?--yes, it is this.

Staircase into water, rusty waterline, puzzle, large dragon, mysterious shapes and valves. Stay close? How can he! Already he is moving toward the basin, the arch, studying its shape and the clues contained in their surroundings. Staircase into water, door, the rusty mark of old water, the cracks in the ceiling. Someone else will worry about the spiders. Val is looking for any mechanism that might influence the valves. Or is it the runes themselves? If only there were time to sketch it.

There seems to be no visible mechanism, leading one to believe that it must be a matter of charging the runes to operate the valves themselves. Whether they will still be functional given the great split in the ceiling is uncertain. However, if the amount of moisture (and fungus and green moss and other gently phosphorescent growing things blanketing the arch and its hanging vessels) is any indication, it's likely that whatever cistern waits above has been leaking down into this place because of it.

A further skittering in the darkness and a tremble of the webs strung about the cavern is the last warning. With a spitting, venomous hiss, a number of giant spiders come clambering out of the darkness toward the sound of Tony's raised voice.

Of course Val does not seem to keep in mind that splitting up in this room means he is allowing for venom-spitting, skittering, angry spiders to stand in the spaces between them. She doesn't sigh, this time; instead her nostrils flare, and she looks up, half expecting to see the great bulbous body of a giant spider lying in wait.

She doesn't. Instead she sees a great crack and runes in the ceiling. She peers at them in the dark, trying to see if she can discern any recognizable... anything from the runes. If they're all fire based, they may well be fucked.

A spider appears between herself and Val in the next instant and Adrasteia doesn't give Tony much chance to respond to the new threat before she's raising her staff over her head and bringing it down on the ground in front of her, striking the spider with lightning and stunning it for a moment.

Though it's difficult to parse at a distance and while on the move in the dark, there are distantly recognizable shapes among the more archaic rune forms which do suggest fire and heat. That said, while dominant features of the etchings, it's impossible to tell whether the arcane element is a product of the valves or used in their activation. Futher, the damage from the crack is extensive enough to cause problems, though the extent—whether the seals have simply been rendered nonfunctional or id their reaction has merely been made unpredictable—remains a mystery.

Edited 2021-03-23 22:00 (UTC)

The chamber flashes with green light when another spider comes skittering down, and out of the corner of Adrasteia's eye is a mushrooming blast of Fade energy that throws up a wall for the spider to bounce off. It drops on its back, before a leg or two along with a spatter of black gore goes flying as a more direct punch of energy slices through it.

"Any ideas?" he says, glancing at them, at the leaking ceiling, at the twitchy shapes of giant arachnids crawling down walls and descending on thick ropes of silken web. "'Cause I got, uh. One."

It's a bad idea, so, he's open to suggestions.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[CLOSED] DON'T DUMAT OPEN INSIDE

CHECK which hopefully makes sense

almost like I cruelly gave you all a visual puzzle and forced you to write words about it instead

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PERCEPTION CHECK

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CHECK

imagine as many spiders as your heart desires; not gonna make y'all keep tabs on enemies

PERCEPTION CHECK

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