Fade Rift Mods (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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faderift2021-11-05 06:58 pm
faderifting) wrote in faderift2021-11-05 06:58 pm
Entry tags:
- ! mod plot,
- ! open,
- abby,
- benedict quintus artemaeus,
- byerly rutyer,
- derrica,
- gwenaëlle strange,
- john silver,
- kostos averesch,
- obeisance barrow,
- tsenka abendroth,
- val de foncé,
- { diabhall minett },
- { emet-selch },
- { gabranth },
- { james holden },
- { jone },
- { mado },
- { margaery tyrell },
- { richard dickerson },
- { thranduil }
In the Armor of the Dead
WHO: Anyone in the Gallows
WHAT: An(other) attack on the Gallows
WHEN: The next night after Satinalia. Enjoy dealing with two weird attacks back to back, now while hungover! Sorry.
WHERE: The Gallows
NOTES: This is the somewhat belated October mod event, as the theme may indicate. In addition to this open post there are also several open top-levels below with specific tasks PCs can help accomplish. There's also an open crystal catch-all post for event-related chatter. If you have questions, hit us on the Mod Question channel on discord.
WHAT: An(other) attack on the Gallows
WHEN: The next night after Satinalia. Enjoy dealing with two weird attacks back to back, now while hungover! Sorry.
WHERE: The Gallows
NOTES: This is the somewhat belated October mod event, as the theme may indicate. In addition to this open post there are also several open top-levels below with specific tasks PCs can help accomplish. There's also an open crystal catch-all post for event-related chatter. If you have questions, hit us on the Mod Question channel on discord.
Just after dusk, those standing guard duty on the walls will hear an odd rattle and clatter, like debris knocked by waves against the rocks below. Except it grows closer, scraping up the side of the fortress. Rats, maybe? Things do echo oddly here in this tall stone fortress with the sea crashing at its base on all sides, especially on evenings like this where the fog has rolled in across the harbor, catching some sounds and carrying others. By the time this noise is enough for someone to look down over the parapet, it's already too late. A host of dripping corpses has already clawed its way up the walls and now they come over it, pouring up and over the eastern battlements first but the others only moments behind. They come in numbers uncountable, crawling over each other, enveloping the Gallows in a wave of the dead.
Many are skeletal, the rest with the shrunken shrivelled flesh of a mummy still clinging to their bones. A few are dressed in the tattered rags of the long-dead, but many are in armor or finery from ages past or the blood-spattered outfits of everyday Nevarrans. It won't take long to figure out Nevarrans is what they are--surely the still-possessed dead of Nevarra City, old and new, somehow transported from that abandoned capitol to Kirkwall. A year out in the elements instead of in the protection of the Necropolis has not been kind, but the weather is not the only thing that has been working on them. Each and every corpse has red lyrium growing within it, crystals jutting out from bones or erupting through leathery skin, crusting stripes across skulls or adding vicious spikes to limbs.
They tumble down the stairs into the courtyards and flood through the fortress until they meet resistance or doors too heavy to batter down (there are some benefits to living in a prison). The spirits possessing the dead hum with the aggressive intensity that lyrium inspires. They fight viciously, without magic or any great intelligence but a primitive instinct for destruction of any life they encounter and an inhuman lack of fear. Some are armed, with weapons running the gamut from ceremonial swords and halberds to tools and household implements. They will all continue to attack as long as they are mobile, or until the demon within is destroyed. Their rage is indiscriminate but not undirected: anyone caught in the city when it happens can attest that the swarm is confined--for now--to the Gallows only, and any dead driven into the sea at the ferry launch will seek to climb back up rather than turn for other shores. No attempt is made to hold any particular position; they ebb and flow through the complex in constant pursuit of the living.
As Satina rises the temperature drops and the sky clears, the light of the full moon highlighting a merchant ship at anchor not far to the east of Gallows Island, though not so close as to have inspired suspicion. It has been there for at least a day, its position unremarkable in a harbor crowded by traffic too frightened to travel the Waking Sea further. But now a dark mass of lurching movement scrambles over its side into the water and on its deck are two spots of glowing red. A spyglass will make clear the details: a mage on the quarterdeck crowned with a strange helmet of red lyrium, chains of the crystal strung like armor down chest and arms, crusting his staff. On the fo'c'sle a Templar in an identical lyrium helm, armor studded with lyrium and cut to accommodate the crystals that grow out of her arms and shoulders. Their eyes glow red and lips seem to move in unison.
By dawn, the the eluvian the dead arrived through will have been destroyed and their flow halted, and the bomb they delivered into the Gallows disarmed or otherwise neutralized. There will need to be a thorough sweep of the fortress to ensure that all are located and re-killed, and the dead-again will need to be disposed of. The presence of red lyrium in the corpses may require some additional Cleansing of the fortress as well. The morning will also bring news from agents elsewhere in Thedas that Kirkwall was not the only target. A similar attack struck Cumberland, and another was intended for Val Royeaux, but the ship carrying the eluvian was intercepted before entering the harbor by the heavy Orlesian navy presence guarding the capital and instead the dead swarmed over several naval ships before they were destroyed.
surely they'll do 100% fine
And as that blade lays low the one clawing right for him, one he can't quite reach in time... he's half-turned that way when it falls, but after a brief pause, he extends a hand in Gabranth's direction, purple-black magic sparking to life once more.
It streaks over his shoulder, squarely striking another corpse that was raising a mace behind him.
They've reached the area of the crate by now, and Emet-Selch's gaze shifts to the side, landing upon it.]
-keep them away from it, whatsoever it may prove to be.
no subject
Leaving Emet-Selch to tend to whatever might be inside. A show of trust, perhaps. Albeit tentative.
He pictures a relic within that sealed container. Perhaps something to sustain the enemy forces. Perhaps weaponry to bolster the blinding glow of scattered lyrium, red as uncooled embers in the moonlight. Later, should they survive, he'll ask after it.]
and i'm here.
[ Maybe just audible beneath the clamour of skelly bones, shouting in the distance, the scrape of rusty weapons, comes a series of apologies that are probably insincere, given they are preamble to sudden explosions of Fade energy, of the desiccated remains of Nevarran ancestors blowing apart like dry leaves. Tony is clearing a path for himself, dressed in a sort of ramshackle collection of just the ordinary clothing he was in and whatever pieces of armor he could attach to himself in time.
Which isn't much. A breastplate secured over shirt, a pair of gauntlets, one of them shining bright green in the centre of his palm. Sunglasses have also been slapped over his face, dark lenses that are enchanted to show up the chaos around him in bright daylight.
Seeing two figures, not really clocking much else beyond their being allies, he shouts out as he moves on over; ]
Is that it?
[ 'It' being the box, his intelligence a little out of date by minutes, some fragment of information over the crystals about a skeletal squadron bringing in a crate. That had set off enough alarm bells in his head to redirect his focus. ]
yes hello
It is.
[His tone is short with distraction, eyeing the crate over as he arrives where it's been left. A brief glance around confirms they won't be swarmed, for the moment, and so he turns his attention back to it.]
Its contents are uncertain, but I've little doubt that this particular gift will be an unwelcome one. [With a gesture to it:] If you do not care to do the honors, mayhap the Judge Magister will.
no subject
Which, fair. ]
Mayhap Judge Magister can keep the skeletons off our ass. [ Tony moves in closer to the crate, checking it over to see how its sealed. A latch keeps the lid in place, and a crossways chain with a lock joined at the top looks like it'll make their lives harder.
That is, if they were interested in picking it, but it's thriller, thriller night, and no one's 'bout to save you from the etc etc. He negotiates his gauntlet up under the lock, the back of his hands against the lid of the crate and the gleaming green crystal-embedded palm presses against the lock itself. ]
Get behind, [ and then, only barely waiting for Emet-Selch to do as suggested, Tony triggers—something, a Fade-green blast of energy from the centre of his palm that sees one of the chain links snap with a godawful shriek and blast of metal, and the lock implodes. Tony's expression relaxes from reflective wince, and he goes to shove the chains aside, keeping careful not to flip open the lid just yet. ]
If it's just another skeleton I'm gonna lose it.
no subject
...As am I, frankly, but if that proves to be the case-- then there will be a convenient target on which to vent those frustrations.
[For now, he is staying a comfortable distance away, just in case.]
no subject
[ Tap tap. Tony knocks a metal fist against the sides of the crate, a little tentative, mostly testing. Ducks his head enough to listen, but whatever is inside either doesn't make noise, or are too quiet to pick up in the surrounding chaos. 'Damnit' is muttered, and with the instincts of a natural born scavenger, Tony glances around the immediate area.
What he picks up is a whole corpse arm. Mostly bone with enough beef jerky parts affixing humerus to ulna to the mass of delicate bits of a hand, a couple fingers missing.
Great news for Emet-Selch: in any high energy dangerous situation in which Tony is present, staying out of the way is the best way to ensure he will keep doing things. Currently, he is testing the reach and flex and sturdiness of his new corpse arm, and carefully hooking a fingerbone up under the latch. ]
Wanna count me down?
no subject
He watches Tony test that corpse arm, observing with at least some approval-- not a bad move, honestly, when it comes to opening strange boxes-- but he furrows his brow at that prompt.]
Not particularly, no.
[And he gives a couple short waves of a hand, a clear gesture of just get on with it.]
No one else is going to hear, and we haven't the time to waste.
no subject
[ dry, but not biting, barely heard with 1% of his cognitive function dedicated to sass and 99% of his focus keyed into trying to ensure skeletal fingers doesn't slip loose from where he's secured one under the latch. He backs up, extending the desiccated limb as far as is sturdy.
Tony, instead, will do a quiet one, two, three—and then closes his gauntlet, emanating a flash of green light around himself in a glimmering barrier, of sorts, before he flips the latch, and,
the length of skeleton arm and his own arm do not reach beyond two meters, and the summoned field of Fadeiation around him protects him from damage more than magical effect. Paralytic energy hits him squarely as the lip flips backwards, and he buckles backwards, landing in an unmoving heap on his back, starfish splayed.
Not dead, anyway, if urgent eyeballs and a straining vein pressing against the skin at his temple are a sign of life. ]
no subject
[He does hurry over, to his credit... after waiting just a moment or two to ensure that whatever just caused that has passed. It does no one any good if the same thing happens to both of them, after all, it's only rational. His eyes flick only briefly to the crate before he looks back to Tony, checking him visually for any sort of damage or, you know, death; it doesn't immediately seem as if he's been horribly wounded, and those small signs are enough to confirm he is in fact still alive.
On attempting to move one of his limbs and finding resistance, Emet-Selch exhales a breath.]
-well, we're simply going to have to hope that does not last too long. We will move you if we have a need to escape.
[Better to stay here, he reasons, than to abandon this effort just to fight through the dead and try to get Tony somewhere else. They'll cross that bridge if they come to it, but there's the matter of investigating the newly-opened container--
-and he inhales a sharp breath as he peers over and gets a good look at what, exactly, is inside it.]
Damn it all, [he mutters, immediately abandoning Tony to get a better view, holding back from touching its inner workings until he can observe it further. He sounds distracted as he says,] I was under the impression this world's technology did not lend itself to creating explosives. What in the world...
[...at which point he trails off, but assuming Tony can probably still hear him, he does at least think out loud for his benefit.]
Some manner of clockwork mechanism. Chunks of red lyrium, vials with some form of liquid, no doubt just as volatile... and inscribed with glyphs, intended to be struck. 'Tis no simple device, either, this is-- certainly more than I would have been led to expect.
[...and, in the interests of not making you tag with an unresponsive pc, you can absolutely just assume he's outlining the apparent workings of this thing aloud for him in the period where Tony remains paralyzed-- working intently through how the mechanisms seem to be arranged, largely, searching for the right points at which to start trying to disrupt it before it goes off.]