[OPEN]

[nonvenomous]

WHO: Dick Dickerson and you
WHAT: Prompts built around a Research-led investigation of territory in the Planasene Forest as delegated by Dick. Additional OOC info here.
WHEN: Justinian
WHERE: Kirkwall, the Vinmark foothills
NOTES: Kirkwall prompts OTA, Vinmark prompts open to martial or research types likely to participate in Rift analysis and closure. CW dead bodies, a little bit of corpse mutilation/desecration.


KIRKWALL STABLES or INN

The idea was to work with others.

A lone horse clatters into the stables on another rider’s tail late one stormy night, host to a grey-faced Rifter soaked foamy and raw through to the saddle. Richard Dickerson trips in his sodden cloak on the dismount -- wrestles it off heavy into a heap on the ground as he sets to working wet straps and buckles off the still-panting horse, both of their breaths steaming in the damp. He favors his left hand, and has not said good evening or sorry or thank you to the rider he rode in after, singularly focused.

He’s been gone for a week and a half.

Afterwards he retreats to an inn, the ferryman long asleep. He’s stinking and wet, hauling an armload of saddlebags with the bulge of his satchel, the weight of his dirt and hay-sticky cloak slung over his shoulder.

There’s some debate with the innkeeper -- no room he says, over the steady drip of Dick’s bags between them.

Richard narrows his eyes, seethes in on himself, looks -- for an instant -- as if he might lunge --

VINMARK FOOTHILLS BOG (rift aftermath, 1 thread please)

With the rift fresh closed and the morning sun warming off the last dregs of (a previously quite sinister) fog, Richard is wading in black mud up to his waist towards a humanoid corpse mired face down in the muck. The figure is long dead -- cold as the ground he was interred in, with traces of bone showing here and there through rotten cloth.

Spattered dark with bogwater and demon ichor himself, Dick twists a dagger from the back of his belt as he approaches.

He has a hunch.

A scrape of his blade across the corpse’s left palm reveals nothing, but at the right: a fast-fading glimmer of acid green peeks through the decay.

VINMARK FOOTHILLS CAMP

Later, at camp, a pair of disembodied arms have been dissected from their respective corpses at the elbow, and lay drying out on a log in the sun. There’s a creek nearby to rinse off the mud and blood and bog and ichor -- a tent to change clothes in, for the modest.

Notes must be updated, strange, fast-decaying plant life sketched and mushrooms sampled.

Firewood needs to be cut and stacked for the pyres, makeshift as they are. The stink of rot lingers on the wind until the sun sinks and the pyres for two unknown Rifters are set alight. Anyone who wishes to say a few words is welcome. Dickerson does not, although he does stand by to watch them burn, the end of his joint touched discreetly to a stick he’s roasted at the fire’s edge when he thinks no one (who would care) is watching.

WILDCARD

[ trust fall ]