war table: strangers in the mirror.

[propulsion]

WHO: Closed to the gang
WHAT: Delving into the temple of Dirthamen in search of artifacts, Riftwatch finds that the temple demands more than they seek. But what else is new?
WHEN: Cloudreach
WHERE: Arlathan Forest, within the temple of Dirthamen, Elven God of Secrets and Knowledge
NOTES: OOC post.

You stand before it, a glow emanating from its smooth surface, a perfectly round sphere whose warmth bathes your face and hands in light. Around you are veiled faces in hoods, heads bowed in reverence, and a murmur of chanting echoes, overlapping, like the clashing of tides. Your hovered hands drift apart in a slow and elegant motion, and you can only faintly see it, the lines of magic you draw between your fingers, like faint golden cobwebs of shivering power.

They tremble between your fingers, they shiver, and they bend towards the orb. You must master it so it does not, in its wisdom and hunger, take from you what you're not willing to give, but you are well trained, you are beyond compare, and you will give only what you will.

The chanting rises, and the orb pulses with light. You focus, and the magic drawn between your fingers pulls away from it, arcs around in loops. It feels akin to reining a wild horse or mastering the lines affixed to the sails of a ship in a storm or pulling taut a bowstring.

And your control slips. Or you set something free. Either way, your hands come down on the surface of the orb, and it burns you alive.

...

The fading impression of this memory glimmers in your mind.

And nothing else. Where are you? What are you doing? Why do you wield this blade in your hand, or lay here with your bare throat offered to another's? You don't so much awake; you become aware of yourself, cold and aching and tired, and as you try to assess the situation and evaluate the motivations of the weary, filthy strangers that surround you, you wait for context to return, but it never does. You reach backwards for memory, for anything, encountering only the image of the glowing orb before you, and the way it had burned you with the things it knows when you touch it.

But there are more pressing matters to resolve.

After the initial confusion and chaos, all that is left to do is assess the place you are in, and decide what next to do. To escape, perhaps, or, some niggling part of you wonders, find the location of the glowing orb, which you know, deep down, is somewhere in this place.

The Temple of Dirthamen

Not that you know its name.

This place feels like an underground palace, sunken deep inside the earth, grand chambers that connect to one another with various passageways, tunnels, and staircases. Light sources come from your flaming torches or travel-sized lanterns hanging off your belt, or the occasional luminescence from green-glowing runic engravings on tiled walls, or the faint glow of a green miasma that lingers in hallways and chambers. There are walls set with elaborate mosaics, and great statues depicting twin figures, one of them cloaked in shadow and the other more detailed, and creatures such as ravens, always a pair, or the arching legs of a giant spider.

As intentionally built as it is, it is also half-wild. There are chambers that seemed carved directly into rock, and floors of rough natural stone. It is not, however, all intentional. You will find the frames of stone archways set directly into rough rock, or stairwells that lead nowhere but directly into cave wall, as if the earth had grown around it.

Despite this oddity, it is a beautiful and grand place, but clearly one steeped in ancient neglect, with flooded chambers, moss-riddled stairwells, crumbled stone, and the smell of rot and dust.

Traversing this place, however, is a challenge in and of itself, hostile to the strangers that crawl through its catacombs. Not only will you find whole pathways blocked with crumbled stone, or rooms that require you to swim through them to get to the other side, or a strangely angled corridor that forces you to climb up its craggy surface, the building itself is intentionally guarded against intruders in a myriad of passive ways. Traps trigger when a previously unnoticed puzzle is left ignored or incomplete, or doors refuse to open without the presence of a key in spite of there being no discernible lock. Some of these you may be able to solve, some will force you to double back.

You are also not alone. Out the corner of your eye, the presence of spirits dart in and out of the catacombs, and occasionally, you hear the ominous chittering sound of many-legged beasts that put you to mind of all those giant spider statues.

Some places you may encounter in your blind journey forwards:

THE QUEEN'S LAIR: You don't know how it happened, but the ground gives beneath you and whoever you are with, sliding without dignity down the abruptly steep angle of not-quite-smooth-enough rock. You land with a violent tumble upon surprisingly soft, spongy ground—fungus, moss, mud, deep puddles. As you look around, you see the large stone chamber you are in is lit with a sort of ambient bioluminescence of green miasma, showing up the sight of thick patches of cobweb strung between pillars, statues, hanging from loops from the ceiling. You see bundles blanketed in web, tellingly humanoid in size and general shape and, thankfully, perfectly still. The smell of dust and old decay in the air makes you hopeful that perhaps this place is more tomb than nest, until you see the way the giant cobwebs around you begin to sway. Looking up, through the miasma, the shadowy shapes of dog-sized spiders begin to pluck their way down. And you think you see, far above, the unmoving shape of a truly colossal spider resting high above. At least, you hope it's unmoving. You have two choices: take your chance in trying to scramble back up the steep incline you fell down, despite slippery rock, or brave the chamber and try to make your way in deeper in search of the gated archway on the other side that you will only know is there when you find it. Or the secret third choice of being eaten by spiders.

THE RED REVELRY: You and your companions, such as they are, find yourselves at the entryway of a great chamber. The walls glow with a faint blue-green light, only barely illuminating the wide open space. The open tiled ground is littered in debris, some of it crumbled rock, and some of it, ancient shattered skeleton, scraps of cloth, the evidence of many corpses that have long since decomposed to nothing but dry bone, dull jewelry, and the rotted remains of their clothing. Unpleasant, but unless you wish to yet again double back, the only way forward is through, and you do see another archway towards the back. However, the moment you step into the room, your mind fogs over. The room fills with golden light, laughter, music, and a swirling crowd of elven folk. You are in the midst of a revelry, and your heart feels light and joyous. One offers you a goblet of wine, another bids you to dance with them, another offers to share from a platter of fruit. The room is also surrounded by tall men and women of more serious demeanor, dressed in rich ornamental armor, dark cloaks, armed with curved blades, and you barely notice the sound of metal on leather as they all at once draw them. You do notice, however, as the screams begin, as blood begins to spatter, as the ring of guards begin to systematically cut down each reveler in arms reach. Now would be a good time to remember that none of this is real, but as you can't quite shake the immersive experience of a panicked grip to your arm or the visceral sensation of wet arterial spray spattering against your armor, it might be best to run for the next door before you find out otherwise.

Optional dice roll: A d20 roll of 16 or higher has you break the illusion, safely restoring the chamber around you to the dark dusty tomb full of unmoving skeletons. A result between 10 and 15 means you are still immersed in the illusion but you have your wits, and, with focus, are able to move through the figures as though they aren't there, but may still struggle. A result between 5 and 9 means you are too immersed, and the crush of the crowd is preventing you from running, and if a guard with a blade strikes you, you will be injured. You may need help. A result between 1 and 4: oh my god all of this is real and you're going to die unless someone drags you out of here. Otherwise, choose your own result, no dice no masters.

THE PATH OF THE SIGHTLESS: The broad hallway you approach is tiled with jade, with an atmospheric light coming down from the tall arched ceiling. Up ahead, the road is strange. The tiles are grey stone and then foot-square tiles of dull gold or similar metal. Upon stepping into the corridor, you will find that your vision is gone, cloaking you in darkness. To anyone else, standing outside of the corridor, they can see within it and you perfectly fine. What's more, any step you take that is not on one of the shining tiles, comes with a consequence: a psychic kind of torment that feels like a swarm of ravens invading your mind. They tear and claw, a physical sort of headache-like pain that becomes quickly overwhelming and paralysing, leaving you cold and shaking. What's more, this assault has things to say. Although you do not remember anything of yourself, these ravens seem to know. However, if you make it back onto a shining tile, or are close enough to one of the ends of the corridor to leave it, the torment will stop.

The idea here is that those with you will need to verbally guide your way through the corridor. If you are subjected to punishment for mis-stepping, the 'ravens' that flood your mind will pluck and claw at all the insecurities and fears you would have had if you remembered them. This is one way to get information about yourself, but as delivered through the bitchiest and harshest of critics. Your character will not be able to withstand it for long but will have difficulty hearing or moving, so feel free to assume they need extra assistance or manage to help themselves.

In general, feel free to find the kind of obstacles you might anticipate, such as ancient elven magic hopscotch, doors that only open if you pierce your hand on the knife-like protrusion where a handle should be, rooms full of wisps that taunt and mislead, platforms that require Big Jumps to get across or else you'll find yourself wet or on fire, Veilfire puzzle with tiles that ripple and shift, and so on.

There are also places of respite, ancient prayer rooms or barracks-like quarters, where you may discover the rations you have on you and get to know people who do not know themselves.

Strangers in the Mirror

Here is what you must bear in mind.

MEMORIES OF THE LIVING: Although you have no recollection of yourselves, recollection is not forever withheld. At any time, your mind may jerk towards an impression of something, clear as day. You may whole heartedly believe that you are recalling something of your own past, or it may be so incorrect that you are certain that this memory doesn't belong to you. These flashes come in moments of quiet, in looking upon the face of an ancient statue, or catching your reflection in a shining surface of water or metal or polished tile, or seeing the light in another's eyes.

If you happen to meet the person for whom these memories belong, you will know like a hook in your heart that this memory belongs to them. There is no way for you to give it the way you got it, for only the gods can parcel out memory and knowledge without the tools of language and writing, and so what you choose to do is yours to decide.

MEMORIES OF THE DEAD: There will be moments, likewise, when the memory of those long gone from this place invades your mind. However, they are not for you to know. At any point, you will find that you lose time, that a great stretch of blankness takes hold of your mind, and you come back to your own forgetful self in some other place, perhaps with entirely new company, performing some task you did not mean to begin: sweeping the floor, or kneeling before an altar, or sitting at a table prepared to eat a meal that is not there, or even once again about to slit the throat of a willing supplicant.

Use this mechanic to free up your character to pursue threads with others rather than only your home team. If you can also play out encountering someone in this fugue state or vice versa, in which they will be largely unresponsive, but seem to know their way around, completing their tasks, until they snap out of it.

And some general advice on your current affliction:

This is a fictional form of amnesia, so don't overthink it. Broadly, your character should instinctively know standard facts like what colour the sky is, even if they can't see any sky currently, or they may have an instinct towards certain skills they have practiced every day since childhood, like the yo-yo. However, knowledge of who they are, what their name is, where they've come from is completely lost on them.

More specific world facts like what the Chantry is, what a mage is, what a Ferelden is, you can be fast and loose with. If your character is deeply intimate with something like the Circle, they may roughly know of it in vague terms. Alternatively, if it's more fun if your mage doesn't even know that magic exists, then go with it.

Rifters from profoundly different worlds, like modern earth, can absolutely have a sense that they are in some kind of weird ancient world surrounded by old timey people. This is left to your discretion.

As far as what your character is like without their memories, again, this is up to you. They can be cluelessly the same, or exhibit hidden personality traits they ordinarily keep suppressed (or suppress ordinarily prominant instincts), or simply be fundamentally different without the burdens or highlights of their own lives to inform them. Are they friendlier? More vicious? Braver than usual? Less selfless, more? Whatever you like!

A Gift of Revelation

And then it ends.

Seemingly without ceremony, if you are far away from the thing that ends it. You feel a lurch and then it all comes flooding back: your name, your life, the mission, the people around you, the forward camp merely a few hours of travel outside the bounds of the temple you are in. You may be close enough to where you'd already started scouting before it all went foggy to make your way out easily, or you may be so immersed in the depths of the temple that your mission of trying to escape hasn't really changed, despite this context.

And yes, your sending crystal is still not working. Figures.

You still harbour the memories that you were given unbidden, even if they've lost their bright shine in the void, and you will still feel that sense of knowledge for whom they belong when you meet them next, if you are unable to work it out on your own.

Once out, the warmth of the Arlathan Forest greets you, and your crystal begins to flicker back to life once more. Truly, they don't pay you enough for this.

Comments

TEAM A: Tony, Ellis, Wysteria, Richard, Victor, Gwen, Fivera, Gela, Jude

[propulsion]

You all come to yourselves in a large, decadent chamber, the high domed ceilings above faintly glowing in green miasma, with multiple shadowed archways leading out of this space. The air smells of dust and some ancient organic coppery scent, and you, a stranger to yourself, find yourself surrounded by other strangers.

Fivera lays on her back on the raised altar, her ankles and wrists secured to metal hoops with (tattered, ancient) rope. Standing over her on opposite sides, Richard and Tony wield (rusted, chipped, even broken) ceremonial blades, raised over her body and ready to plunge downwards into her chest. Nearby, Gela finds herself similarly secured upon an altar, with Victor and Gwen looming over her with their own blades, and lastly, identically, Jude is likewise secured upon an altar, while Wysteria and Ellis make ready his sacrifice with raised blades.

There is no lingering urge to make any deadly mistakes, everyone becoming aware of themselves peacefully, finding themselves posed but very much in control of their own will. And of course, with no memory as to how they got there.

[foolsmakeitcolder]

Stretched out on his back and restrained on the altar, he contemplates the blades raised over him rather more calmly than the norm. Raised brows, parted lips, a glance down at himself.

Seeing that nobody appears to be immediately attempting to stab him, despite the unfortunate positioning, he attempts to tug at his restraints.

They're surprisingly flimsy -- one good tug is all it takes to break them from his wrists and ankles, and he sits up to turn his head curiously from one person to the next.

"Awkward."

TEAM B: Petrana, Redvers, Clarisse, Ellie, Viktor, Jayce, Vanya, Marcus

[propulsion]

As you blink yourself into a void-like awareness of your very being, you find yourself in a cold, dark room, water soaking up through your boots. The chamber is small, dark, lit with burning orange torchlight with smoke that funnels out of dripping grates. It is half-flooded, six inches of murky water dark and inky, with the sound of running water filling their ears. One door leads out, a metal gate that has been chained closed.

You and the strangers around you all come to in a circle configuration, facing one another, with four on their knees, and four others standing behind them, in the following configurations:

Viktor is on his knees, with Jayce behind him, an old, chipped dagger held to his throat. Marcus is also kneeling in the water, offering his throat to Ellie behind him, who holds the ceremonial blade in place. Opposite them, kneeling, is Petrana, who wakes to the sensation of rusted blade held to her throat by Vanya, standing behind her. Lastly, to finish the circle, Redvers kneels in wait to make his sacrifice to the blade being held by Clarisse, standing behind him.

There is no lingering urge to make any deadly mistakes, everyone becoming aware of themselves peacefully, finding themselves posed but very much in control of their own will. And of course, with no memory as to how they got there.

[ipseite]

Petrana de Cedoux would handle this moment a particular way.

Maybe not intentionally, but moulded by experience and long habit — she would hesitate, she would hold. She would focus herself upon de-escalation, acutely aware of her own limitations and the unknown quality of threat. She would be cautious, first, not unfamiliar with the sensation of a weapon so close to her own bared throat; she would think several steps ahead, think of preparing herself for them, think of what needs must follow.

She would be afraid, and she would swallow it.

The woman who wakes, a blade in a stranger's hand pressed to her throat, knows none of what would lead her absent self to those urgent conclusions, remembers none of the swift, urgent calculations that have become second nature. The blade is at her throat and panic rises underneath it and she throws her elbow, narrow and sharp and with all the force she's able to summon, directly behind her into Vanya's groin, using him for momentum to dip her head beneath the blade and scramble away from him through dirty water on the floor, a sudden riot of wet sounds.

[pathlit]

Golden threads whipping wild and free, an orb offering a give for a take. It takes and takes and--

--oh.

Like the bleary haze of waking from an unintended nap, he blinks several times, rolling his neck and shoulders as his peripheral nerves remind their brain of their position. His feet are cold. Why--? Because his boots are wet, is the deduction when he wiggles his toes. Gross.

Looking down, he finds not the cause of his wet boots first but a figure kneeled in front of him, chin held up by the fingers of his own left hand. Their skin feels terribly cool against his. Furthermore, he finds his other hand to be holding a dagger, its blunted, chipped edge whispering against their throat.

Oh. Oh, he is awake now.

"Oh, shit, I don't--" falls hastily from his lips as he withdraws a half-step backward, the sound of water rippling as his motion disturbs the surface. His right arm is held close, instinctively keeping the weapon close to his body to discourage the possibility of unintentionally harming another.

This is also the reason he doesn't automatically drop it.

"--are you okay?" he asks, honestly concerned enough to drop into a kneel beside them, water rippling further with the added mass. Unthinkingly, he places his hand on their bony shoulder.

[luaithre]

Cold water up to his thighs, knees aching from resting on them. Darkness, flames, faces. And then the cool metal edge of something up under his chin and when he swallows he can feel the way it is sharp.

The first thing he sees is that the looming figures that wield knives over those kneeling in front of them are considerable-ish figures and so he can imagine the person behind him being of probable greater height and strength than he—maybe?—and when that first chaotic splashing occurs directly before him as the woman he'd laid eyes on kicks into motion. So does he, in short order.

More out of fear than anything else. His hand goes to the arm holding the knife to him, a harsh clasp that yanks. Something he learns quickly about his own instincts is that fear doesn't mean retreat, but attack, and so that clasp doesn't loosen, aims to twist them around and perhaps drive that person down, clumsily and splashily.

hey hey clarisse

[atonally]

The first sign of awareness is Redvers' backward shift, one inch of extra space between him and the edge of the blade at his throat. The second sign—

is interrupted by the two firecracker bursts of violence elsewhere in the circle, and discarded in favor of a more panicked response than Redvers might otherwise have come up with. He lifts his arm into the gap between his shoulder and the arm of his personal knife-wielder, slides across and in to get the blade away from his neck. If it cuts into the meaty back of his forearm in the process, that's fine, that's better than some alternatives. He is taking his bloody arm and rolling away from the knife and whoever is holding it.

TEAM C: Byerly, Bastien, Abby, Barrow, Val, Constantine, Mobius, Loxley, Stephen

[propulsion]

You draw in breath to the scent of blood in the air and the sound of liquid dripping. This room is not very large, decorated in opulent tiled walls with an archway leading out somewhere shadowed behind you. Ahead is a kneeling cloaked figure, a statue, holding out a great metal bowl, shallow and engraved in ancient runes. As you try to remember what it was you were doing (and failing to), you realise you were in the middle of something.

Barrow is standing stiff, his arm held out, palm open for the ceiling. His sleeve has been shucked back to the elbow, wrist held in Abby's grip as she hovers her ceremonial blade at a hard diagonal over exposed flesh. On the opposite side stands Constantine, dutifully holding a shallow bowl beneath it to catch the sacrifice.

Likewise, Mobius stands dutifully, arm out under Bastien's knife, over Byerly's bowl, and in the middle of both groups stands Stephen, holding his own sleeve out of the way in offering to the blade held by Loxley, overtop of the bowl held by Val.

There is no lingering urge to make any deadly mistakes, everyone becoming aware of themselves peacefully, finding themselves posed but very much in control of their own will. And of course, with no memory as to how they got there.

sorry I have to

[thereneverwas]

A blink, a glance around, a breath: Barrow's heart skips a beat at the sight of his own positioning, and he looks to the person holding the knife with an unsettled smile.

"Hello," he says mildly, like he's coaxing a panicking horse down from stomping him to death, "please don't."

The Queen's Lair

[thereneverwas]

It's hardly surprising that the cave-in is caused by someone with a tread as heavy as this, already walking stiffly in an achy shuffle and not paying nearly as much attention as he should to weak spots in the floor.

The ground gives way, he and those nearby are slipping downwards, scrabbling for purchase where there's none to be found, releasing breath only under the realization that they have reached the end of the fall and haven't died.

"Fuck," he wheezes-- and woe betide anyone who managed to land under him-- "hello? Anyone up there?" Perhaps someone has... a very long rope. And isn't also down here.

[favoriteanalyst]

He hates that he can't feel his hands, but it's something he's kind of getting used to, ish. Holding the sword he's got with him seems like a dangerous prospect at the moment, but he holds a shield in front of him. Just in case someone decides to get knife-happy.

The large, visually imposing but verbally calm and quiet man shuffles on ahead until he simply disappears. Not for long, given the floor keeps collapsing, taking his feet out from under him. Even if the landing is rough, and it is, he's thankful he landed a lot of that right on the shield with a scraping clanging noise. It doesn't echo like he feels it should, in these cavernous mostly stone halls and rooms.

That alarms him, though he doesn't know why just yet.

"Trap?" He tries to pick himself up but apparently needs a moment to catch his breath before he can do so. "Was that a booby trap? Or just shoddy workmanship? Any--damn it. Anyone hurt? Too badly?"

red revelry

[pathlit]

Here is one participant amongst the many, swept away by the notes of joyful, careless indulgence. In seamless transition, another takes his place as he breaks away from the waltz, not a speck of wine on his formal wear, clad in white with red and gold accents -- so goes the enchantment.

No sacrifice, no blood magic, no pain shooting up his left forearm. Just the simplicity of raw merriment.

Unbeknownst to him, the next person he approaches is not unlike himself: not an elf. Not of this memory. Enchanted or not, he cannot know, fully enthralled as he is, and so as the orchestra plays on, he offers them a warm smile and his hand in invitation.

[ open to a group thread of up to three or so if desired! if you wanna say they all piled into the room as the same group or separately, whatever works. ]

[favoriteanalyst]

It doesn't seem right, in the same manner that finding himself with an arm outstretched to bloodlet hadn't seemed quite right, and yet he finds himself at a loss for exactly why.

And the place is hopping, after all, with a wonderful party. There's wine offered to him, that he politely declines. Surely he wants a clear head. Why does he want a clear head? Well, with it muddled by all else...

Is it muddled? By what? The warm glow and press of joyful bodies? A fellow reveler approaches and offers a hand, and he takes it with a light smile and a lighter white gloved touch. "Charmed." He doesn't know this man, but that's not exactly a cause for concern. He can't say he knows any of these faces. And yet, even with the easy urge to dance, his eyes are scanning around. Is it the guards that worry at him? Surely they should be facing out to keep people from ruining the good time.

"What's the occasion?"

...Because he doesn't know. Should he?

memories of the living (and dead) - for viktor

[pathlit]

This room is not terribly dissimilar to the first in which they awoke, albeit drier. Stark shadows gently waver against the damp, stone walls that intermittently pulse with faint, green lines. Somewhere beyond the alcove comes the thin sound of trickling water. Moss obscures the architectural details, though one might guess the vague shape of a bird atop the pillar at each end of the slab upon which he awakens. The moss is soft beneath his back, against his fingertips, and above--

Above, well. There is a gaunt, shadowed face looming, for one, and as his eyes travel down its owner's neck and arm, the futility in trying to follow the latter is brushed aside with an uneasy swallow, Adam's apple kissing a dull blade.

The unease grows, pulling the corner of his mouth into a crooked smile and quickening his pulse.

"We, uh." His tongue dips out, a nervous lick of his lips as his eyes seek the thinner man to whom he'd previously held the knife. There is a conscious effort to remain still while preparing to act upon the worst.

"We really need to stop meeting like this."

TEAM X: Yseult, Xio, Darras, Julius, Benedict, Lalla

[propulsion]

As the vision of golden magical thread and glowing orb fades against the backs of your eyelids, more sensory input feeds back to you. The cool grip of a hilt, or the rough edge of metal biting your wrists, the cold stone at your back.

A large, broad pillar of stone is centred in the ornate chamber, black tile decorating curved walls, with one archway heading into darkness. Braziers are full of flame, casting shifting orange light around the space, and slowly, all of you become aware of more than just your physical selves.

Yseult, Julius, and Lalla are standing in a circle around the pillar facing outwards, their backs pressed against the stone. They are chained together at the wrists in this order, arms pulled tightly. Although the manacles and chains that bind them are rusted and frail, they won't be immediately easy to break at this angle.

In front of them, also in order, is Xio, Benedict, and Darras, all holding an ornate tilt with a long blade positioned close to the throats of those chained, as if ready to do some slitting in unison.

There is some flooding in this chamber, a few inches of murky water soaking their boots.

There is no lingering urge to make any deadly mistakes, everyone becoming aware of themselves peacefully, finding themselves posed but very much in control of their own will. And of course, with no memory as to how they got there.

[hassaran]

That easy slide back into awareness and some apparently-innate tendency to stillness combine to prevent Yseult flinching when she finds a knife at her throat or making some instinctive heave against the shackles at her wrists. For a moment she just stares at the woman on the other end of that blade and then--carefully shifting eyes only--at the others within her view, at the shadowy suggestion of walls just beyond the circle of firelight in which they're all located, at its reflection in the water at their feet. None of this provides much clue.

Back to Xiomara and her dagger. First things first. "Wait. Why are you doing this?" comes out as more question than plea, but it's not without a note of suggestion. Maybe she should consider not doing it?

"lanier" (bastien) | ota

[cozen]

Whoever Lanier—as he's decided he's called—might be, he's apparently not someone given to panic or despair. As he makes his way through the temple, stepping around puddles or contemplating impassable obstacles, he sometimes finds himself whistling something jaunty.

Exactly what the jaunty thing is, he couldn't say. As soon as he tries to focus on the tune it slips away from him, leaving him to more uncertain-feeling improvisation that stops and starts and, seeing as it is being shaped in the awareness of a great absence, comes out sounding a bit more uneasy. But it's still whistling, still an exercise in keeping his own spirits up, until something interrupts it.

i. Sometimes that interruption comes in the form of a sudden new void in his memory. He emerges from the blackness on his hands and knees in several inches of water, perhaps, holding the remnants of a half-rotted scrub brush that's fallen apart as he's tried to use it to clean the floor beneath the flooding. In his confusion he stands up with a hands-free fluidity he wouldn't have expected of himself, and then he stands there sopping wet. Alongside him someone else is just as wet, and he's well past trying to ask anyone who they are. Instead he says, "Could we be possessed? Are there spirits of—tasks?"

As if they would know.

ii. Or sometimes the interruption is merely the sight of someone else, after he's managed to lose the last people he eagerly jogged up to. This new (or old-new, if he's encountered them before) person gets the same jogging approach, the same wide relieved grin. (Any self-consciousness about his enormous teeth has evaporated along with the memory of what his own face looks like.)

"Any luck?" Finding a way out; he assumes, now, that this is everyone's goal. "I suppose if you'd had much luck you wouldn't still be here, but—" Any luck? At all?

iii. Or, just once, the interruption is the Path of the Sightless. Lanier wanders into it alone—and of course the thoughts that claw at his mind land differently, without memory and context to give them weight, but it hurts, and it's cold, and the best he can manage in the end is to stumble backwards and sink down to sit against a wall and wait to stop trembling.

He's still sitting there when someone else approaches. From the other side, or from his. Either way he says, "Be careful," small and distant and perhaps not as vehement as he should be. As he would have been if he weren't willing to entertain the possibility that the corridor only hates him, or curious to see and find out.

i

[altusimperius]

The person next to him is curled up in a seated position with his knees drawn to his chest, and by the sound of his erratic breathing is crying quietly, but his despair is interrupted when he's addressed.

When he takes his hands away from his face he's still a wreck, but it's clear from the way he styles his hair and the state of his pre-soaked clothes that this is a person who takes some pride in his appearance, looking at Lanier with a mix of confusion, terror, and perhaps even slight affront. Why is this servant speaking to him?

"What," he asks breathlessly, "what the fuck are you talking about."

clarisse | ota

[laruetheday]

Something about this place is instinctively revolting to her. Everything about it is giving Clarisse a weird feeling, a sort of low level anxiety, but especially the way the rooms and corridors seem to shift without reason from structures purposefully built to simple carved stone, as if someone, or many people, had been doing their best to tunnel away from some enemy. And the way it seems as if some of them didn't succeed.

Sometimes she seems to be with people, and sometimes she's alone, and she isn't sure exactly when she's finding them or losing track of them. Seems like she's losing track of everything, blanking out whole minutes or hours and coming back to herself (whoever that is) later in a completely different place. It only makes her move faster, more desperate to find an exit.

( i. ota )
She descends a set of crumbling steps and finds at the bottom nothing but a room flooded with water she's not sure the depth of. Large, slick sections of pillars rise out of the still surface at odd angles.

She's just gonna sit a few steps above the waterline and put her head in her hands for a while. Shut up, she's thinking.

( ii. the queen's lair | ota )
One second the stone floor they're standing on is there, and the next it isn't. Before Clarisse has time to gasp in a breath, she's landing at the bottom—a surprisingly soft landing, despite the way her teeth feel like they're rattling in her head from the sudden slide down the rocks.

She coughs dust out of her lungs and rolls onto her back, staring up at the spot she should've come through the floor, but the soft green glow of the chamber they're in and the white silk bundles hanging from the ceiling and the nearby pillars catch her attention and hold it.

She hasn't even really registered who'd fallen with her, yet. She's too busy trying to figure out of those bundles are human-shaped or she's being paranoid.

"What the fuck," she breathes out, afraid that if she says anything too loudly the spell will break.

(( feel free to message me @ errorchord or lor#5438 if you want to hash out any memshare stuff! otherwise, feel free to wildcard or do whatever! ))

path of the sightless | closed to ellie

[laruetheday]

Clarisse recognizes the girl up ahead of her, as much as she can recognize anybody here. She'd been part of her group for a while at the start, and made a weird first impression on Clarisse by stabbing a guy and then turning around immediately afterwards and agreeing with something Clarisse had said.

So that's not a lot to go on, as far as vibes, but it's still better than nothing. She hustles to catch up to Stabs McGee.

They're coming up on a hallway ahead, broader than most have been, and lit up from the arched ceiling above. Clarisse is honestly just glad to be in an area that isn't pitch dark, like most have been so far. Could it be sunlight? Could this seriously be the exit?

But at the same time those thoughts cross her mind, she wonders if that can be right. If this isn't just some new trap.

"What do you think?" she asks, because saying "hi" seems stupid in this situation, and because she doesn't really care about anything other than getting out of this place.

"Tavish" (Byerly)

[bouchonne]

As you've been alongside Tavish, you might have noticed a few things about him. First is that he is a bit credulous - someone who will believe most things he's told. Second that he's impatient, unwilling to stick with anything for too long, restless and rather quick to jump to annoyance. Third is that he clearly loathes embarrassment of any sort and hates to look stupid. Fourth is that he's a brave sort, which at least does something to make up for the other deficits. Or, well - it would if it weren't for the fact that his bravery far outstrips his physical ability.

He also clearly hates to be on his own. Regardless of who it is, as soon as he spots another person he'll keep close to them, keeping pace for as long as the temple permits them to be together. And so -

i. At some point, he may come up to you and offer a nod of greeting - or, if you're on friendly terms, or if you look frightened, a subdued little smile. "I think," he says, "that we're getting close to the exit. Do you need to rest a while? I'll stand guard."

(If you have a memory enough of the world of Thedas to recollect this, you'll recognize this sturdy and honorable offer as being almost oppressively Fereldan.)

ii. Or you may be standing together before the Path of the Sightless. You may be trembling and exhausted by the attempt to cross the hallway, or you may be fresh. Regardless, there has been enough experimentation that it is clear what needs to be done.

"Would you like to make this attempt?" he asks. "Or will you guide me?"

iii. Or maybe you're just here to get a memory or to give one. In that case, write a bit of narration of what your character is doing when they get one of Byerly's memories, or just give me one of yours.

iii membry 4 u

[altusimperius]

The smell of metal and stone, a dimly-lit view-- strange in its perspective, though you can’t place how-- of a woman standing over a man who lies strapped to a table. You realize you’re looking at them through metal bars from a cage on the floor. You’re only seeing them with one eye.

“Mother, please,” you beg, and there are tears in your remaining eye, threatening to spill over; she’s taking away your last chance of living, of getting out of here.
“Don’t start whining, Benedict, you know I won’t stand for it,” comes her icy reply, and your resolve crumbles, your next words coming out as more of a sob: “you have plenty of blood. The Elder One will-- he’ll be angry you-- you took matters into his own hands!”

The Elder One has had so much use for you already. You fleetingly wonder if you’ll ever look upon him again.

“You can’t mutilate his--” property, you’re interrupted from saying, as your mother approaches the cage and wrenches it open. Your feeble protest is ignored as she locks the mask back on your face, clamping your jaw shut, cutting off a good portion of your already limited vision. Despair floods through you, manifesting as muffled sobs within the confines of the contraption, the humidity and stink of it unbearable.

“He knows the rules,” she explains to the man on the table, who is about to die for you: which is to say, for no reason at all.
“I’m flattered that he cares so much, to tell you the truth,” says the man, bluffing cheerfully, “a bit of sentimentality, eh, dear Artemaeus?”
You feel ill from the irony of it, that you once hated him so completely, would have spent the day stewing over being addressed as such, and now only want him to keep talking, keep breathing.
“He was never so sweet to me when we worked together.” He tries to smile at you, and there’s sincerity in his smile. You’re about to watch him be torn apart, and he’s greeting his fate with a grin. For you. Useless, incompetent, doomed, you.

"Fabian" (Benedict) | OTA

[altusimperius]

I. Obligatory Memory Prompt

[take a memory leave a memory]

II. Temple Time

a. Wandering
With nothing to light the way other than the mysterious green glow from his left hand, the tall and bedraggled stranger somehow always winds up drifting about alone and at the mercy of whomever he happens to run into. He vacillates wildly between desperate and arrogant, terrified and disgusted, depending on who runs into him and what they do.

b. Cowering
When not listlessly roaming the temple, which is to say every time he finds his way back down deeper, his inclination is to sit on the floor with his back to the wall and stare at nothing. Sometimes he cries a little bit. It's all very normal.

III. Aftermath

How.
Embarrassing.

Walking amongst the harried Riftwatchers on their departure from the temple, memories of the last however many hours/days/years?? filtering in little by little, Benedict seems to slow down more and more until he's eventually at the back of the group. He's not injured, but walks with the shuffling gait of someone who extremely does not want to be perceived, neither speaking to anyone nor meeting their gaze unless directly accosted.
Periodically he moves to fretfully thumb at one earlobe, which sports an empty hole where his earring used to be.

for Abby (it is so long RIP)

[altusimperius]

"Lord Artemaeus."

He towers over you, this massive fellow in his full helmeted plate, staring you down so inscrutably as you will your back to remain straight and your knees not to shake. You've wronged him, childishly so-- it has taken all of your strength of will to approach him, to stand before him for the dressing-down you know you deserve, and you're all too aware of the spectators sitting nearby.

"Some time ago I was warned you would disappoint me," the metal-clad figure continues, "I denied that prediction. I believed it misguided. Untrue."

But it wasn't, you're waiting for him to say, already hearing it so loudly in your head; that has never been true of you. You have always been disappointing.
Weakly, you lift your eyes to look into the slots where you know his to be.

"You did well in the fight," he says instead, and you almost miss it, so wrapped up in your thoughts that you're not certain you heard him correctly. You take a breath, and--

"Get on with it, Ben!" comes a rough-but-friendly female voice from behind, and you flinch, trying not to look back at her or at the person sitting with her, both bearing witness to your shame.
"I'm sorry," you mumble, lowering your head again. Direct eye contact isn't something you're capable of right now, let alone something you deserve.
"For what I did," you continue, "and... for lying about not being able to come here."

He's silent for an agonizingly long time, and you realize he hadn't known that you had lied. You think you're so slick sometimes, a step ahead of everyone else, when it's so constantly, abundantly clear that you're leagues behind them. Stupid. Coward.

"Do you understand why I asked you to leave the fete?" he asks next, seemingly stepping right over the infraction, to your simultaneous relief and horror. You're can feel your audience watching you, and grumble a "...yes," in far too deeply now to appear-- or feel-- anything but a recalcitrant child.
And true to form, he waits. It's torturous, that he doesn't accept your answer, that he expects you to drag out details when you're already so fully humiliated, but you eventually, grudgingly supply in the very quietest of tones:
"I was drinking too much."

"Speak up," comes a fiendishly audibly smiling voice, belonging to a filthy, bearded man you wish you didn't respect so much, "not sure anyone can hear you!"

You break for a moment, hiss a desperate "shut up," back at him, only for him to sing in return, "will if you speak louder!"

"Endure it," barks the knight, and everyone falls silent, a chill moving down your spine as you snap to attention again, remembering who he is to you. You want to impress him, you want to be worthy of the esteem you've already damaged several times over today.

"I wanted you prepared. To know what might come, and to be steeled against the losses that would transpire should the unthinkable take shape. You dismissed me. You insulted me, well before we left, though I wonder if you yourself are yet aware of that fact."

You know you could walk away at any moment, that he has no true power over you other than what you're giving him. You know you could burn this all down, spit on your nearby companions, but you won't. You couldn't, not now, not after everything you've been through. You try to steel yourself, letting his words wash over you. You don't remember insulting him, but you don't doubt that you did.

“The past remains the past," he declares.

The opposite of what you expected to hear after all this, you're forced to look up again, only to find his helmeted face as impassive as ever. He's forgiving you. You don't understand.

“Consider my disappointment forestalled, for however long you choose it to last." He turns away. "I accept your apology."

He's a better man than you could ever hope to be.

frank's red hot - I mean mobius

[favoriteanalyst]

temple run (this is a catchall wildcard type option okok)
He remembers some things, now.

Things that are not his, he thinks.

Are they important? Do they matter? They probably do. They must do. But the first, the very first, was the painful orb of light. Did it burn all their memories out? It seems so important, being the last vestige of fleeting memory, and that importance even without fully understanding, that, that feels familiar enough that his job that he determines is to find it.

Also find a way out, but everyone else not too busy squinting at runes is also trying to find a way out, and if it happens, it happens.

Whatever people he runs into, whatever puzzles they might come across, his goal is clear to him because there otherwise isn't a goal, which seems even worse.

Maybe he recognizes you from somewhere. And speaks up. Or you think he is familiar in some fashion. Does that mean they ought to stick together?

path of the sightless
Given all the (worn down, old) decorative tiling in other rooms, this one doesn't strike him as odd at first. Just adjusts the grip, absent of feeling, on his torch and steps on ahead.

And then he is plunged into darkness. It's so completely sudden that he yelps, stumbles backwards. And his sight is righted again. He attempts this a few times, all with the same result. "Well." To whoever might be around. "This feels distinctly trap-like. Hold my torch."

So, forearm against wall, he tries again. It seems a straightforward enough hallway, except--

--except the moment he steps off the path he does not yet know is there, he is beset by a terrible, awful tearing at his mind as though a hundred feathered assailants all wanting a piece of him. They say things. Maker, can others hear that noise? Crazy, they say; worthless, delusional, mundane, they shriek; murderer, and unrighteous, and the terribly and deeply tremulous understanding that he is going to forget everything all over again and again and again until there will never be anything left of him but gibbering madness.

When he stumbles onto one of the more decorative tiles, unbeknownst to him, the frightful time lifts. He is gasping and shaking and still blind, but he is whole.

"I, uh." He swallows. "I don't recommend going this way, actually." His voice seems quiet in comparison to the experience.

memories of the dead
He might find you, in fact, in the midst of something mindless and far away. And is not about to abandon anyone to this mind-altering madness.

Or: he is humming a tune (someone perhaps more familiar might catch a whiff of a section of the Chant of Light as it is sung) as he sets the table for a feast. To him, it will be grand, and he knows it needs to be just right to impress, well lit, the scent of cooking food wafting through.

The table is, of course, covered in mold and dust, half the chairs missing legs--or plain missing. The plates are chipped at best or only remaining shards, the goblets dented and having long lost any luster and shine (and thus worth).

And then, the coming to. He drops something, perhaps a plate shard, perhaps rusted silverware, and a familiar horror creeps on his features.

"Maker's breath, is this going to keep happening?"

memory (ALL ALONE IN THE MOONLIGHT)
this is your leave a memory get a memory option to play with idk bruh hit me with your best shot

memories of the dead.

[cozen]

"No. Eventually we will starve."

Lanier has not dropped his handful of silverware, one rusted spoon separated from the rest in his other hand in preparation to place it on the table. He examines it in the dim light, head tilting, before he looks at—

Well. We will not call him Frank, in the narrative, out of respect.

He looks at the silver-haired man who's rejected his perfectly serviceable name, and he raises his eyebrows.

The memory does not come to him now. The memory came to him before—

"It's like this." You are young, too young, and there's some accent to your voice, and none of that matters because of the conviction in it. You hold up a belt to some bewildered adults who look very, very concerned but are clearly humoring you.

You hold the belt shut, as normal. "When it's closed, if you put an ant on the outside, it can only go around the outside without ever touching the inside." A few bemused nods. You open the belt again, give it a single twist, and hold it closed again. "If you put an ant anywhere here, it can go around," and you trace, with a finger, "the entirety of the belt. All sides open. And isn't that like the soul?"

It is apparently not like the soul; it needs more explanation. A woman trades a look with a man that is nearing something almost to panic. "The Maker," you prompt, with a childish but firm exasperation. "He can see and travel the whole of your heart and soul! It isn't closed off, or it shouldn't be. He can see all that I am and all that I am meant to be, and I can't hide anything from Him. Doesn't that make sense?"

It doesn't look like it makes sense.

The panicked woman is whispering to her husband, and you hear 'healers' and you hear 'Sisters' and- one of the other ladies in the room clears her throat over the hushed tones. "That sounds very nice," in a tone that indicates that perhaps it does not in fact sound very nice. "Perhaps you ought to take some more rest."

—and he has been carrying it around, one of his three precious gems of memory, fully aware that in all likelihood it does not belong to him but protective of it anyway, because it is nearly all he has.

It's like locating the direction of a sound, now—coincidentally something Lanier is not very good at, deaf in one ear with no instinct for how to deal with it, occasionally tugging on his ear or tilting it down to press into his shoulder like it might come unclogged if he tries one more time. But it's like locating a sound would be if he had use of both years, to know that the memory belongs to this man.

Pity it doesn't involve a name.

He's chewing on what to say about it and when. In the meantime, he finishes his earlier thought with a little less bleakness: "Or we will make our way out. One of the two."

"jack" (loxley). ota.

[charmoffensive]

MEMORIES OF THE DEAD;

There is water up to your hips. It's the first thing you will feel after you come out of your trance-state.

The second is his hands on your shoulders, firm, a pressure that feels as though you'd been leaning forwards and against it, as he is standing in front of you. He being a tall, leanly built man, with silver-grey skin and eyes that are ringed gold around the pupils, and rough-textured rams horns. Perhaps that is a sight you're prepared for; perhaps it isn't. But he is earnest, his study of you, mouth slightly parted to reveal over-sharp canine teeth. Colourful clothes, powdery purple shirt beneath rich leathers, a string of wooden beads around his neck.

Standing before you, water up to his hips as well. "Yes?" he is saying, as you are pulled from your reverie. Behind him is a large dark chamber, filled with water. You may not realise it yet, but you're both standing on a wide staircase, descending down into the murk. Who knows how deep.

He starts to relieve the pressure of his hands when it appears you are not moving forwards.

RED REVELRY;

Maybe the first thing you see is the very strange sight of Jack, as he's been named, alone in the large dusty chamber, the sound of his boots scuffing the dusty floor and blindly clattering aside or crunching down on powdery ancient bone as he moves in dance-like circles, hands hovered.

Perhaps you are already in it. The music, the laughter, the light. The grasp of soft hands on yours or guiding you by the arm or a touch to your back into the dance. He appears dressed not so unlike those around him, despite differences in physicality, rich orange silks and gold chain

[ ooc ; boy rolled a 9, help. ]

MEMORIES OF THE LIVING;

He had been standing at this immense wall, decorated in intricate mosaic in tiles of deep jade and mirror-like glass, when the memory had come for him.

The pressure in your chest is unbearable. Panic comes at you like a wolf, and you know you have made a terrible mistake. Your ears are full of silence and when you open your eyes, you see nothing but the dark, the dark, the dark, going on and on and on. This is death. You are dying. Your breath leaks, though your lips are clamped shut. You must save it. You must wait.

On the front of your skull, the invisible hand is a claw, fingers that are spikes, driving into your scalp. In a moment, you will need to breathe. Your lungs are aching. You feel yourself slipping under. The People were never meant to die but you are dying.

Then the pressure on your forehead is gone. You spring back, choking, chest heaving. Your lungs are burning as you gulp for air. You are in the crypt again, you are not dying. The painted ceiling, the vines that hang like limp hair, the cracked door with rain pushing in and spattering on the dirty floor. When you wipe your sleeve over your face, it trails snot, and tears, and mud, and blood. You must have bitten your lip.

Before you is Covheir. Silver light clings to the sharp bladed lines of his face. The shape of his mouth is a carved line. He is smiling. He is pleased. Light is drifting from the sockets of his eyes.

His voice is all around you, and in your head most of all. "Now we can begin."

And now he is not standing.

His shout had echoed down the corridor, angered and injured, and the sound of clattering of metal on stone. Now, he is sitting by crumbled stone pillar, back curved and knees raised, hand clutching forehead and not making any sound at all now save for thin breathing.

His leathers are streaked in temple dust, his trousers stained from muddy water. There is a torn piece of purple fabric wrapped around a hand with deep crimson soaking where it binds his palm.

At the sound of approach, he doesn't look up, not right away.

WILD CARD;

[ ooc ; invent your own run in, or if you want to do a scenario above that's already been taken, just tweak it so it's a bit different. one thread only, though, for red revelry. ]

memories of the living!

[biggame]

She doesn't know she's dressed for the forest, but she is, and her approach is quieter than it might have been if she weren't. There's no clinking. Her soft shoes (soaked and dried and soaked and dried again, in the time she's been here, likely ruined) are made for silent stalking.

However: she is running toward the source of that angry, injured shout, so it is not silent. It's leather slapping on stone, an occasional pebble of crumbled wall kicked in the process, and a, "Hey, hey," at the sight of the crumpled Qunari.

She stops and kneels in one motion. She's not much less of a mess than he is. But not bleeding from anywhere, notably.

Something deeply true about who she is as a person stops her from asking if he is hurt. Rather: "Are you dead?"

marcus rowntree. ota.

[luaithre]

MEMORIES OF THE DEAD;

You come to, feeling first the point of a knife against your sternum.

It's being held vertical, a sure fist around the hilt and the other hand resting on top palm down, ready to use force. There is no sign of tension strung through the arms of the holder, though, standing to the side of you where you lay on the altar, upright with loosely good posture, chin tipped up. A man with pale skin and a scarred face and light eyes that are hazy with unfocus, hair half undone and damp. Nearby flames leap, tossing around shadow and light.

His shoulders are given bulk by leather and fur, chest armored in off-golde metal, but there is no sign of any weapons save for the dagger held to your chest, which is mottled and brittle with age. Still, it rests there, heavy with intent.

But no movement. A long breath in, from him, and that's all, at first.

MEMORIES OF THE LIVING;

He is sitting on the ground, legs apart and knees bent so as to make an assessment of the spread of items in front of him. A cigarette case, waterlogged by now, although he has put out the three remaining brown cigarettes within in the hopes he might dry them. No firestarter that he can find. The couple of rings he was wearing are taken off and set down as well. A folded waxed cloth that he'd found food within and has since eaten. A flask with water he has drunk.

It is the errant gleam of reflection in this last thing that chimes like a bell in his mind.

This memory is cold.

You are in a forest so thick the canopy blocks out most of the light. What little rain can get through the foliage keeps the ground wet and muddy, and everything smells. You are running through the undergrowth at a steady clip, on all fours. You're not going anywhere or looking for anything; you just ate. You found a person walking along the border of the forest, where everything is thinner and hiding is difficult, and you stalked him out along the edge of the river where he went, occasionally stopping his walk to stoop and turn over rocks in the water, looking for things underneath. You killed him, ate most of him, and left the rest all over the bank.

This is not the first time you have killed a person before, but you don't make a point out of only eating them either. It's something you have to be careful about, and you've long since realised that attacking people when they're in groups is ill-advised. Lingering around towns and villages is also bad, even though something in you will recognise a particular house or path while passing it, and you feel safer being near to them. A higher form of consciousness flickers through you every so often, but never strongly enough to take control. You don't understand what it means.

You are just a wolf, loping through the Planascene Forest with your nose in the air. You are wet and full, and you have nowhere to go.

The rasp of breath from him as the memory fades fills the space, irritated and confused and a more complex churn of feeling in its wake. But not so loud that he misses the sound of footsteps or some other sign of approach, and he lifts his head.

"Hey," is still quiet, like he can't bring himself to raise his voice, even if there is the tinge of desperation in his tone. A boot heel drawing in, the urge to stand. "Who's there?"

RED REVELRY;

He is standing, but leaning heavily against the archway, weight balanced on his uninjured leg. The injured one is wrapped in torn fabric around the thigh and thick with blood where more fabric has been folded for padding. Not alone, this time, although it is difficult to gauge for how long that will be true.

Ahead is the grand ballroom that lights up with laughter and life as soon as you step inside of it. He had immediately stepped back, and now looks out at the desolate stone, crumbled bone, darkness and dust.

"We could go back," he suggests, in the tone of someone who is aware that there is nothing behind them.

[ ooc ; also a 9, i am sorry. ]

WILD CARD;

[ ooc ; invent your own run in, or if you want to do a scenario above that's already been taken, just tweak it so it's a bit different. one thread only, though, for red revelry. ]

preplanned wildcard.

[atonally]

Some dignity has survived the loss of nearly everything else. Some awareness that other people have and care about dignity. It is for this reason that Redvers has not offered to carry his injured friend anywhere. But he has thought about it. Occasionally, wading through water that dragged at their feet or picking through rubble, he has put out a hovering hand that then retracted without ever actually providing aid.

But at the moment he's tending to his own complaints. One arm bent up and over his head, the other hand pulling down on his wrist to try to stretch a point of tension that's been forming in his back through all this walking on stone.

"At what point do we give up and try to learn how to farm underground?" is making conversation. It hasn't been nearly long enough to justify giving up. "Mushrooms. Or—"

The monotony of the stone corridor they're currently walking down gives away, up ahead, to something eerily lit and more ornate. He shuts up to squint at it.

ellis / ota.

[heorte]

MEMORIES OF THE DEAD

A moment ago, he had been standing elsewhere. Among people.

Now, he comes back to himself on his knees, hands crossed over his chest. An altar looms above him, bathed in a narrow beam of light from above. There is that rusted knife again, laid across the cracked steps ahead of them.

"Ah—" sounds loud in the silence of this place, the way the altar seems to oppress and demand.

He tips sideways, grimacing. Suddenly aware of pain spiking in his knees, a kind of agony urgently demanding a shift in position.

And in the wake of this inelegant realignment, hands bracing on stone as he levers himself onto the lowest step where he might sit, he thinks: How long has it been? swiftly followed by Were is this?

One hand lands on the hilt of the blade as he looks around, uncertain of who might be here, unsure that he has been here alone, or that there is anyone here capable of filling the great, ragged gap in his mind.

THE PATH OF THE SIGHTLESS

It is very dark, but he isn't afraid.

Even sightless, suspended in this utter absence of light, his breath remains steady. His body understands this state of being, even if he cannot get a hand around any reason why it should.

The hall is too wide to stand in the center and reach the side. For the moment, he stands there, acclimating. Breathing.

A step forward. Then another. And then another. All is well, until the fourth step.

Seizing, agony like fingers dug into his skull, words like spikes driven into his mind. If he shouts, he cannot hear it over the shrieking caw of accusation. (Murderer, murderer, blood-stained, faithless—) It roots him to the spot for a long moment, the slap of sensation overwhelming.

Two staggered steps sideways, and he collides with the wall. The pecking drill of accusation fades as he leans there, gasping. Shuddering through the aftershocks of the venom ringing in his ears.

He almost misses the sound of approach, boots soft on tile, growing louder.

"Stop," is a ragged, groan of a warning. "Don't come any closer."

WILDCARD

[ Do whatever, I'm down. ]

path of the sightless. >8U

[propulsion]

"Okay."

Normally, such a brief encounter would mean that it's not a given that Ellis would recognise a voice carrying only one word to him, echoed down the chamber and corridor, cautious. However, there are only so many points of reference he has, only so many voices he has heard, that maybe, without being able to look, he might summon up the image of that one middle-aged guy with the beard and the gauntlet from

however long its been.

A scuff of boots, hesitant. "Are you," and maybe he would just turn around and go back, not his problem, a small instinct towards the selfish thing, but it's been a whole lot of this one direction and a series of dead ends, and he would rather not, "okay?"

But maybe he would not just turn around. Maybe that's part of it too, his cautious pause at the mouth of the oddly lit corridor.

Abby, OTA

[armd]

THE TEMPLE OF DIRTHAMEN

With very little to go off of, it is all too easy to start to see patterns in anything. Case in point: the green luminescence coming from tiled walls, where runes are carved. Here, Kirta (she still doesn't think that's her name for some reason but can't think of anything better to go by) stops to compare both her palm and the wall, holding the back of her hand flush to the stone so she can squint at both. The green seems to match.

For a moment, she stares at this, feeling vaguely triumphant. Smart, perhaps. Then she flips her palm, and presses it against one of the runes, smudges her hand inexpertly there...

Waits.

When nothing seems to happen, she drops her palm with an embarrassed chuckle. Was anybody nearby enough to have seen that? Hopefully not. "Dunno what I expected."

MEMORIES OF THE DEAD

Perhaps if, by chance, you round the right corridor into a large, oval stone room you will see her: a tall, broad-shouldered woman, her hair braided tightly back from her face in a uniform plait. She has her back to you, and doesn't appear to notice you enter at all, too absorbed in her task: there is an altar in the middle of this room, beset by moss, and she is taking great care to clean all of it off.

For this task she has a rag wadded up in her fist but it has become so damp and dirty that she isn't making much difference with it; still she wipes. She does this in complete silence, save for the soft pull of her breath, an occasional mutter of something indistinct under her breath.

WILDCARD

(Choose your own adventure! Can provide memories on demand)

for Ellie

[armd]

All of her searching has brought her to several dead ends thus far and she has ignored those that would have her crawl on her belly into water because she doesn't... want to do that. Going with her gut instinct hasn't lead her astray yet; she continues to walk, keeping her hand trailing along one stone wall the entire way, looking for a better option.

Another large, open room (solely occupied by a dining table) ends in a decorative stone arch and door that doesn't have a handle. She promptly kicks one of the wooden chairs at the table and sends it crashing over, onto its side.

"Fucksake!"

Drawing closer to eyeball the door again she grimly realises that it does have a handle: a large, glittering shard of something black, and glass-like. It protrudes out from the door, wickedly curved. Like, is she supposed to grab that, or...

Ellie | OTA

[notathreat]

I. Red Revelry: (roll: 14)

This place is fucked, so fucked. Every corner she turns, she's coming together with the shadows of other people, seperated from them just as easily. She's stabbed companions, she's bolted from them, she's forged bonds of trust- but she's alone when she enters the Revelry.

The calm breaks over her, a rehearsed kind of play as she turns slowly in the spot, looking down at herself. She's dressed after the masculine fashion of those around her, hair tied back, and this feels right to her. The illusion is beautiful, shining, something that feels familiar and bittersweet. These are not her memories, this is not her life, these are not her people, but she allows it. It's good to feel something that isn't the worst depths of somebody's plunge into misery.

Though she was not with anyone when she arrived, when she meets the eyes of someone else who seems subtly out of place, she tilts her head to one side, makes her way towards them.

Maybe she recognizes them from before. Maybe they're someone new. Maybe they're just the only other person who isn't an elf. The chaos hasn't started, yet, but there is a rising press of something wrong on the back of her mind.

"We're not supposed to be here."


II. The Artifact.

Ellie, for she has her name now, is still not certain of this place or herself. But she's determined to figure out what the fuck this hellhole wants from her, because it sure as hell doesn't seem to want her to leave.

"If we can't leave, and it keeps trying to kill us if we stay, then what the fuck does it want?" she asks: and she might be talking to herself, she might be talking to a companion that she's either just connected with or spent a moment with. Either way, she wants to explain her theory:

"This place is like a puzzle. There has to be an answer somewhere. And y'know, the only thing I actually remember that I know is mine is a memory of touching some kind of... ball. Orb. Maybe if we find that, it'll give us a clue of what happened. Best case scenario, it's the key to getting us the hell out of here."


III. Wildcard.

(Grab me on Plurk unprotagonist or Disco if you'd like me to write a custom starter for you, or throw something at me!)

ii. at last;

[grindset]

Ellie, who is fortunate to have a name, might be thinking out loud to herself, but there's a figure looming nearby, listening—that is to say, the smaller figure installed on the looming figure's back is listening, while the looming figure itself idles beneath him. Both are nearby. Both are dirty and, at this point, looking a little beaten up. Only one of them has a little rock rattling somewhere within his gear system, mercifully the wrong shape to wedge itself anywhere harmful; the other one is passively considering chugging one of the phials he found in this satchel just to see what it does.

"Whatever we find, we'd better do it soon." He lets the leather flap fall shut, shelves experimental tasting as an option for later. "Or we'll be the ones haunting the next unlucky group."