[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]

As Holden inadvertently yanks the clapper from his bell, Laura's getting knocked back, clinging to hers with the energy of a hissing cat after the shade gets a bruising hit on one of her legs. One shoulder connects painfully with the inside of the bell in an attempt to keep it from ringing, and she's swinging forward again.

It's more than an ancient bell can take. The clapper doesn't quite make its full arc forward before something snaps--but Laura's going forward still, about to smack face-first into the inside of the bell. All instinct, she lets go of the clapper and grabs wildly at the lip of the bell, straining up until her legs can wrap around the bell from the outside. It's only then, when she can see the shade reach for her and miss, that she realizes the bell she clings to is rising. Laura glares up into the darkness, trying to figure out what it might be disappearing into.

[katabasis]

With a muted crack—the sound of its impact against the floor muffled by the ancient enchantment which seems to have effected everything but the bells—the brass tongue falls away.

The gutted bell rises very (very, thanks to Laura's weight) slowly but steadily toward the cavernous ceiling. Luckily, the darkness doesn't quite manage to completely cloak the fact that Laura is currently taking a one way ticket toward an unappealingly narrow chain sized hole.

[justashotaway]

One look at the ceiling, and she's certain she doesn't want to end up there. Scrambling to reorient herself, Laura leaps from her bell to the chain of Holden's and clings to it a moment before carefully sliding down.

for posterity

[katabasis]

The bell makes up for the complete lack of weight by rising at an accelerated clip and is promptly swallowed by the darkness.

bless

[acreage]

He's moved away from his bell while Laura dealt with hers — not unaware of her situation but, in the chaos of the room, only peripherally so. As she moves her way to safety down the non-moving bell, he deals with a shade that's attacked him in the meantime. With his hands full, he'd struck out on instinct with the great bell clapper. Which has proven to be a convenient new weapon, so don't mind him whaling on a shade with it over here.

jk sorry dove/all, i can't read. Elbows in here for a clumsy retcon

[katabasis]

Laura's weight on the bell and subsequent dismount seems to yank something loose that may have been stuck because the temple is so old and DEFINITELY not because the person running this show missed Holden turning his bell's clapper into a battle axe. With a shudder, that bell too begins to rise.

And from the direction of the great old god Dumat, there is a great tremor in the room.

PERCEPTION CHECK

[heorte]

In the midst of the chaos of shades, disappearing bells and nearly losing Laura to the ceiling, Ellis' attention is fairly dialed in on the shades. Or it is, right up until the tremor.

Straightening from the shade he'd reduced more or less to a pulpy mass, Ellis immediately narrows his focus, seeking any shift in the atmosphere or beat of the calling ringing in his ears as he turns towards the mural, eyes wide.

[katabasis]

While there's no atmospheric shift, no intensification of the Calling, there is a palpable and indeed a far more literal shift:

The stone figure at the base of the statue has turned away from the city. The denizens of the streets have rotated to quail under the shadow of the stooping god. And with a great silent shudder, the peak of the brass city begins to rise.

Built on a tilting table, the great city rolls forward on its axis. If allowed to proceed, it will eventually turn fully over and complete the broken walkway.

—But right this second a huge, seemingly bottomless chasm opens beneath the table as it turns. And there, at the place where the peak of the city once sat flush with Dumat's mural, a doorway leading deeper into the temple is slowly being revealed.

As the ancient table reaches its vertical zenith, something shudders ominously.

[heorte]

The shudder raises the hairs on the nape of Ellis' neck. The unease remains, even through the struggle to dispatch the last of the shades. It's short work between the three of them, but when the last shade is reduced to a smear across the stone, the matter at hand still remains—

There is a lower level. Something within it had vibrated, and Ellis can't quite discern whether it was solely against his consciousness or if that unsettling tremor had been noticeable by all.

"I'll go down first," he shouts, more or less resigned to their course of action. Two chambers down has tipped them beyond the point of abandoning their exploration, whatever else Ellis might want.

But still, a pause before he steps cautiously towards the doorway, as he says, "Remember what I said, about this place."

About what may or may not be done in Dumat's name.

[acreage]

Another door. It doesn't register as surprise at this point, just, of course there's another room. Who knows how deep this temple goes, down into the earth?

Well. At the rate they're going, they might.

He keeps a hold on the bell clapper as he follows Ellis below, nodding at the Warden's warning; it's a serviceable weapon, and with the creepiness of that tremor from below, he has a feeling he's better keeping it.

PERCEPTION CHECK

[justashotaway]

It's disappointing to see the golden city disappear. Had they more time, she might have tried to break a piece off to keep--a little golden house, a little golden person or two. Matthias would have liked to see it. But now that it's hidden away, the possibility seems to have disappeared as well, so Laura follows behind, her claws lighting her hands.

Something is down there, she thinks, something sleeping that they've woken. They are in the shrine of Dumat, about whom Brother Genitivi has written, and Dumat was forced into the shape of a dragonlike Archdemon, the kind the Wardens fight. There could be a dragon beneath them. There could be a demon. Darkspawn. Or something none of them have seen before, something trapped so long that it doesn't have a name on the surface of the world.

She can't see what's ahead as easily as Jim, who has the lean height of an archway, or Ellis, who is in front. But she does her best to peer around them, in hopes of seeing what it is they're approaching. And, of course, she sniffs at the air.

[katabasis]

Ahead of them, through that doorway lodged into the great dragon, the passage slopes gently downward into pitch darkness and a deepening silence. The air is thick and heavy, stale in the way that very old things are, and somewhere waiting ahead of them is the scorched tang of arcane things: burning lyrium, or the Veil turned sheer, or old enchantments breathing unexpectedly to life. And--

They are a few steps through the doorway, not yet distant enough to have completely lost sense of the chamber with the disappearing city, when another great shudder trembles through the floor. Behind them, there is a bizarrely muffled deep impact as in the room they've just left one of the ascended bells has snapped free of its old chain hoist and come plummeting back down.

The effect is immediate; a crack spiders along the reflecting pool basin. The newly turned table lurches in its housing as some invisible mechanism supported by the counter weight system suddenly comes untethered on one side, and then the whole rotating table begins to collapse into the hollow space below it. The side of the table closest to the doorway rises--and jams there, cutting the doorway through which they'd just passed in half.

Then, with unsettling quiet, the floor behind them begins to crumble away and the featureless black passage before them likely suddenly seems far more attractive by comparison.

[acreage]

Holden's sense of smell isn't nearly as good as Laura's, but he still gets a sense of the space below them — of air that's been closed off for a very long time, probably with good reason. Who knows what they might be awakening down there? But

he looks back sharply at the sounds of crashing behind them, has maybe a second to recognize the blockage of their way out before he sees the ground begin to shatter beneath them. He pulls at Laura's arm with a free hand, then gives Ellis a push, quiet signs to hurry.

"Go!"

[justashotaway]

The disappearing floor should have a sound, and it doesn't--but it feels like something, and while that's undeniably helpful, it's worse. Laura goes when she's told, though she tries to shake Jim's grasp as she does, claws out and up in hopes of lighting their way, wherever it is they're being forced.

PERCEPTION CHECK

[heorte]

Well, there's nowhere to go but forward—

So they run. Towards what, who knows?

[katabasis]

With the urgency of the floor crumbling silently away behind them and the exact pitch of the darkness into which they descending, it's difficult to define the point at which they cross into the passage's final chamber. Did the passage widen suddenly, or was it a gradual shift? How large is the space through which they pass now--are the walls of the chamber just there beyond their reach in the dark, or has the room widened into some great hall? Once the silent rumble of the old ruin's failing mechanisms fades, they are left with just still air, entombed by pitch darkness and a pall of quiet hanging so thick that even shouting feels like physically taking a knife to something.

And then in the dark: a comforting flicker of light.

[acreage]

"Well," Holden says, as they pass into the cloister. "That was fun."

He's just relieved to see a real fucking room this time, that there don't seem to be any creepy sculptures or obvious traps — yet.