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Entry tags:
- ! open,
- abby,
- alexandrie d'asgard,
- bastien,
- benedict quintus artemaeus,
- byerly rutyer,
- derrica,
- ellie,
- gwenaëlle baudin,
- james flint,
- john silver,
- julius,
- loki,
- matthias,
- obeisance barrow,
- petrana de cedoux,
- tiffany hart,
- { astarion },
- { dante sparda },
- { emet-selch },
- { james holden },
- { jone },
- { sidony veranas },
- { sylvie },
- { tony stark }
open | holiday spirits
WHO: Whoever, plus some spirits.
WHAT: Everyone spends an evening regretting the past. So basically a normal night.
WHEN: Wintermarch 5-6
WHERE: A castle in the mountains north of Kirkwall
NOTES: OOC post including less vague/pretentious haunting mechanic descriptions. Fantasy violence and swearing and so on are assumed, but please use content warnings in your subject lines for things like explicit gore or sex, slavery content, body horror, etc., if you go any of those routes.
WHAT: Everyone spends an evening regretting the past. So basically a normal night.
WHEN: Wintermarch 5-6
WHERE: A castle in the mountains north of Kirkwall
NOTES: OOC post including less vague/pretentious haunting mechanic descriptions. Fantasy violence and swearing and so on are assumed, but please use content warnings in your subject lines for things like explicit gore or sex, slavery content, body horror, etc., if you go any of those routes.
THE CASTLE
Their convenient shelter from the unexpected blizzard that whips up around them in the mountain pass isn't too convenient. Anyone with a reasonable detailed map will find it marked there; reaching its clifftop location requires a slight detour. When they approach, it has no warm ethereal glow or suspiciously welcoming lit torches. The windows stay dark. The portcullis is raised just high enough to be ducked under, but the heavy doors of the keep don't swing open to welcome them.
The only immediate sign that something is amiss is the thorough, all-encompassing emptiness of the place, and it might take some investigation before that begins to feel strange. The fortress' abandonment seems recent and abrupt: ample firewood has been cut and stacked for the winter, nothing has been done to protect the furniture or strip the beds, the kitchen is fully stocked and even has some perishables that do not seem close to perishing, the stables are equipped to comfortably keep any animals along for the journey, and a chess board before the hearth in the (humble) grand hall seems to have been left mid-game. But there are no messages, no bodies, no footsteps dimpling the crunchy layer of old snow accumulated in the bailey beneath the fresh snowfall.
As they search, the castle's visitors may begin to find signs that the castle hasn't been entirely abandoned. It begins with whispers emanating from the dark ends of corridors, voices they recognize and others they don't, or faces both familiar and unfamiliar flashing in still water or window panes when firelight hits right, or forms moving on the edge of vision but vanishing before they can be looked at directly.
By the time this becomes worrisome enough to drive anyone back out of the castle, the portcullis has fallen shut and won't budge. Neither will any other doors to the outside. The windows won't break; doors won't give way even to makeshift battering rams. The only walls that can be climbed or reached by stairs face out over a deep ravine. It might be a survivable climb, if the wind and weather allowed, but it would not be a survivable fall.
THE SPIRITS
--so back inside, then.
The keep is built like the Gallows' towers, square and tall, and it won't take long for Riftwatch to notice that whatever is wrong is more wrong the higher they climb. The whispers and glimpses on the lowest floor become voices and lingering shadowy figures on the second. Someone might turn and find their hand briefly held by an unfamiliar man's, warm and real for the moment it takes him to say, "Come with me." Or behind them, a woman's shocked and seething voice says, "What are you doing?" Or maybe it's a hand they do know and a voice saying something they've heard before.
As people venture to the higher floors--whether intrepidly seeking the source or involuntarily herded onward by spirits--these moments will begin to last and linger and repeat. And those who don't dare venture higher won't be exempt, confronted by stronger spirits that emerge like ants from a kicked hive as the upper floors are disturbed.
As they approach the uppermost floor, reality will begin to slip away from them. They may find themselves lost in a maze of rooms, even though that shouldn't be possible in so few square feet, and ultimately enveloped in comforting worlds where they didn't do that thing they regret and that, like dreams, feel real until they suddenly don't--until something is too unbelievable, until someone interrupts, or until a demon is holding them under the water of the warm bath they were tempted into, shoving them off a balcony, or whispering into their ears and minds, let me in and you can keep it.
The hauntings will continue until
THE END
When it ends, it ends abruptly. Weaker spirits vanish; stronger ones retreat into the dark. The lesser demons on the upper floors linger, and some may put up a last-ditch physical fight, but without their superior, they've lost most of their mental pull and emotional sway. The castle has changed, too. Its abandonment no longer looks so recent. The food and firewood is gone, along with any sense of warmth or satiety anyone used them to acquire earlier. There is dust where none was before, mildew and rot, and a few scattered, unfortunate skeletons.
The sun is not quite up, the sky a faintly luminescent grey. But the weather is survivable, though it will be slower travel than it would have been without the fresh snow. The doors will open, and the portcullis will raise. Everyone can set off on their cold, hours-long journey back to the city. Talking about their feelings or avoiding eye contact the entire time: the choice is theirs.
later.
"Are you here to kill me?"
Then, the correct answer would have been I already have. She hadn't quite felt it working yet; she would soon. That's not what he said, though. He kept lying to the end.
Now he doesn't say anything. Whatever this is, he doesn't want to give it the satisfaction. His mouth is fixed and still. But so are his feet.
"Are you here to kill me?" she asks again, and he wonders what will happen if he steps right through her. Maybe she'll cling, like cobwebs.
In the silence he refuses to fill, there's a dull thud to the left. The sound of a body hitting stone from five floors above. There's nothing above but a stone ceiling, but the splayed form of Duke de Freyen--the old one--stares up at a high window that isn't actually there, jaw slack and pale fingers twitching.
Bastien takes a step back from both of them, deeper into the room.
later.
Through the apparition of the lady, he sees Bastien stepping away and strides towards him trying not to look at the couple. Halfway there, he feels a cold hand grasp his and he looks wide eyed into a young soldier's face. He gapes.
"Rayan." Edgard whispers, his tone astonished and fear forgotten.
"Are you here to kill me?" The Lady asks Bastien again, jolting Edgard's attention back.
Rayan's face turns into a menacing grimace as he slowly and delicately pulls off his own head.
"He'll kill you." Rayan's head says to the Lady pointing at Edgard. "So long as someone tells him to."
Edgard backs away directly into Bastien, startled by his solidity.
"You're real, right?" He asks him just to check.
no subject
He'd brought his arms up to catch Edgard by the shoulders, when the man backed into him, and he keeps hold of his arm. Having hold of someone solid and familiar—it helps. Even with the addition of the unfamiliar headless man to the growing menagerie of the dead, it helps.
Behind them, the old Duke takes a wet, gurgling breath. Not quite dead. He will be before anyone finds him— he was before anyone found him—
Bastien flexes his fingers against Edgard's arm. He says, "I don't know how to make them go away."
"Come sit over here with me, boys," adds a fourth man. Bastien doesn't turn to look. He can still see him in his head: a chevalier, stripped out of his armor, looking boyish and shy despite his advancing age and sagging bulk, fidgeting by pulling the feathers on his helmet silkily through his fist. "I don't bite. You can tell me about it. Tell me how Rayan lost his head."
no subject
"Think they want us to talk to them." He nods his head towards the Chevalier. "Not certain if we should listen to them."
"Not certain?" Rayan's head laughs bitterly. "Too late to not be certain."
The body gurgles again and then for just a moment the floor is riddled with dead bodies and Edgard heaves a breath in and sweat trickles down his brow. They vanish except for the Duke.
Did Bastien see? He isn't certain and Rayan's earlier comment echoes at this thought.
After a moment, he's caught his breath. "Don't want to talk to them." He says to Bastien quietly.
no subject
He doesn't look at the chevalier. He'd been fifteen for that one, and terrified out of his mind—terrified he'd fail, terrified he'd succeed.
But even if every life he's ever taken comes to haunt him here, it won't hold a candle to the number of bodies that had spread across the floor for that instant. Soldiers? Or— He won't look at the chevalier, but he looks at Edgard, a furrow between his eyebrows. It's not out of the question that he's clinging to the arm of a sadist with good acting skills.
"Edgard," he says. "Did you cut that man's head off?"
no subject
He tries to look at Rayan, but it blurs and he turns to Bastien his eyes filling and his hand shakes against Bastien’s as he tries to gain control. He gasps a breath in and nods tersely.
“Yes,” He responds with an uncontrolled sob and he expects Bastien to release him and he expects the ghosts to take him and it would be what he deserves.
“Coward.” Rayan’s voice whispers. Suddenly, the Chevalier laughs and joins in. “Coward!” He crows.