open | holiday spirits

[cozen]

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.

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 morale improves the eldest, most powerful demon has been dealt with.

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.

Comments

[bouchonne]

Of all the people he anticipated...How strange, the bedfellows made by these curses, by the twisted magic they're caught up in. How strange, to have a teenaged girl step up against his childhood tormentor. An odd little bit of parallelism - though, of course, Ellie is as far from his sister as a girl could be.

No. His lips twitch slightly, and his stance eases. Just a touch. "If all this is the doing of a desire demon," he says, "then it would likely open us to possession if we were to kill him. Because I desired his death more fervently than anything else."

And Byerly turns his back. The spirit is weakened by this motion, it seems, perhaps - it flickers back to its place in the window, like a flipbook suddenly returned to its first page, and instead watches them, waiting for some new opportunity.

[notathreat]

Byerly's stance eases, though Ellie's doesn't. It feels wrong to turn her back on this thing -- spirit, or demon, or nightmare -- whatever it is.

"... if," she answers, keeping her eyes on the thing, like she's trying to burn a hole into the form it's taken.

"It might be something else."

Maybe even something worse. She can't sense magic like a mage can, but something about this place has the fine hairs on the back of her neck standing on end.

[bouchonne]

It's a tempting thought. Byerly looks over his shoulder at the creature. Perhaps it would be something good to eliminate it. Perhaps it would do something good for the world. No decent creature could take the form of Richars Rutyer, after all. But perhaps it's chosen something foolish in taking on a human form. After all, a human form is vulnerable. Easy to kill. (He was trained in the art of it, wasn't he? Where to cut, how deep...)

"Something else like what?" he asks, his voice a little too distant, his eyes a little too fixed. He wants something evil. Wants something dangerous.

[notathreat]

"I dunno," Ellie says, frowning to herself. She could be talking out of her ass, for all she knows. She doesn't know if she's dead wrong, but she's been right enough times, or at least on the right track, not to keep silent for fear of being off-base.

"A spell, maybe. An enchantment?"

Ellie draws closer to the apparition, not-so-subtly between the two of them. Even if she's not out to fight Byerly's battles, that doesn't mean she'll let him take the brunt of it if the thing decides to attack more directly.

[bouchonne]

He sees how she's positioning herself. "Don't," he says, holding out a hand in supplication. "Get behind me. Please."

"Why? Am I scary?" the ghost asks, voice taunting. Its eyes are fixed on Ellie now, and they look - merry. Dancing with delight. "I suppose you aren't the sort of person anyone would miss, are you?"

[notathreat]

A part of her twinges, wanting to do as he asks. Mostly, it's the please. But it's hard to back off when she knows that if it comes to an attack, she's more than likely better able to hold her own. More than that, she's likely to be able to take more damage.

Still, she moves back, into the reach of Byerly's outstretched hand. Best case scenario, she can shunt them both out of the room.

The ghost picks a taunt, though, and Ellie snorts back. Whatever insecurities it's preying on, they're not hers. If anything, it's the opposite -- caring about her has been the downfall of far, far too many.

"Oh boy, are you wrong there, buddy," she mutters, and presses on Byerly's forearm.

"Door," she murmurs. Like they might be able to get out of range.