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

[armd]

She tenses a little under the contact, but that's not because of Derrica specifically. She's wound tight, and all of this happening has only brought that even tighter, has her jaw set and teeth aching, worrying old hurts.

"Okay." That's good to know. She has to remember that Isaac isn't really here. It's something wearing his face and his disappointment, and anger. A tool, with which to hurt her.

Abby breathes in, the pull unsteady. It leaves her again in a little rush.

"What do we do?" She wrings her hands. "How do we stop it?"

If these spirits want to hurt her, there are far more effective ways of doing it. Surely they know that. Is this a warm up?

[tender]

"We might need to leave it, rather than fight it."

This is Derrica's real preference: leave and come back with a group properly equipped for the business of dispelling spirits.

But recognizing it might not be as simple as leaving—

"Something's drawn them here. We might be able to find and destroy that. It must be here, though the search would be..."

Trailing into silence, Derrica's hand settles at Abby's back between her shoulder blades. There's nothing to be done to protect her from all of it. A barrier can keep out any attacks, but it won't dispel a spirit wearing the face of someone she might recognize.

[armd]

"We can't leave," she counters, tight, "The portcullis is shut. The doors don't open."

Trapped in here with all of her clawing regret, a scary thought that makes her next breath in sharper, exhale faster. The other option is actually the only option.

"Is there a way to find it?" She has no idea what she's looking for. Is it an object, or somebody casting a spell, or a spirit that is worse and more spiteful than any Abby has seen thus far? Surely the threat of something dogging Derrica is very real too, and she has stakes in this. Maybe she'll help.

[tender]

There could be another way is the kind of optimism that Derrica knows will sound foolish.

So she doesn't say it. Her hand soothes at Abby's back, holding space for Derrica while she assembles her answer.

She knows more than most about spirits. But it's still tricky to translate that knowledge into something Abby might understand, nevermind trying to pin down an accurate guess when she knows so little about this place.

"One of them might help us, but that seems unlikely," she assesses. "So we have to search. Work our way towards the source of it, wherever it is."

Smart money says basement. Almost everything terrible lives in the basement, doesn't it?

[armd]

She pulls in a breath, and bites the inside of her lip, her gaze falling to Derrica properly for the first time since entering the room. We have to search.

Abby knows it would be stupid to tell her she's going to go it alone. If something does attack her down here, she'll need help. If something comes for Derrica, and she finds herself lost to a spirit taking the shape of somebody she knows, she'll need another person to ground her, coax her through. It makes sense to group up, but Abby's nervous.

She should at least give Derrica the option to go while she can.

"Mine could get worse." Surely she doesn't have to elaborate. Derrica knows something significant about her past. Abby is refusing to think about Joel showing up, because it feels like jinxing it, "A lot worse.

If you want to go, I won't be offended or anything."

put a bow on this y/n

[tender]

The warning is understood, but the thing is, any member of Riftwatch would be able to say the same as far as Derrica knows. Yes, there are exceptions, but isn't there always something worse nipping at their heels? They are all of them carrying some kind of burden. How it manifests may be just as ugly as whatever Abby imagines.

And Derrica can imagine some part of it.

"I don't," Derrica tells her. "I'm not afraid, and I don't want you to be on your own here. Not unless you want me to go."

Some minor concession, though Derrica still actively disapproves of anyone on their own in this place. It's a recipe for trouble.

y!

[armd]

She weighs it for a moment, chewing on her cheek, then concedes.

"No." Abby can't think of many people she'd rather do this with. Maybe Derrica is perfect, actually. She isn't too close, and isn't too far. "I don't want you to go."

And it could always be fine...

Hilarious.

"Let's– find another way," she suggests, preferring to keep the door she's leaning against shut. Maybe into another room and out, before down, and down and down.