WE'RE THE BADDIES | Log

[extortionate]

WHO: Riftwatch + Venatori Guest Stars
WHAT: Riftwatch goes to Ferelden, and stumbles on a Venatori plot. We're also the Venatori.
WHEN: Some time!
WHERE: The island of Alamar
NOTES: Feel free to join this even if you didn't sign up, just throw a bio for your character on the OOC post.

POSTS:

— CRYSTAL POST
— ALAMAR TOWN
— FORT
— SEA CAVES
— HARP
— AFTERMATH


CAST:

— Alais Amphion, Site Coordinator (K2)
— Gregorius Leto, Blight Researcher (Hope)
— Julian Agnelli, Old God Historian (Green Rivers)
— Callinicus Lusko, Gate Researcher (Cass)

— Aurelius Hathaca, Spy (Libby)
— Spuria Tapsenna, Scout (mj)
— Prisca Salvito, Scout (Lor)

— Inpia Agger, Mercenary (Cami)
— Sergius Dalca, Combat Mage (Ammmy)

Comments

SEA CAVES

[extortionate]

The steps down are claustrophobic. Tight quarters for a skirmish: At any time you could be caught by the bloom of a spell.

Venatori paths mark by lyrium gleam — well-maintained, and as likely to be trapped. Safer to step off them, even when murky water floods a chamber to the chest. Stealth could ask you to swim, or crawl, or stumble up crag.

Urthemiel was sacred to musicians, poets, artists; a history that spiderwebs this place. The walls carve in ropy coils of scale (intestine?), break from Old Imperium to Alamarri style, and back again around a corner. A winged shape blurs between dragon, eagle, dragon,

In the warren of tunnels you might find:

A smooth, dark room, iron cages bolted into rock. Holding cells for former cargo, or future sacrifice. The altar blades along a table are old, ornate, and very sharp.

A screaming statue, wrought in the old Alamarri style. In archaic Trade, the walls write of a terrible, Northern poison. The constellation Bellitanus marks the high ceiling above in magelight. Research equipment stands abandoned, halfway to some obscure reading.

A stinking pool of sulfur, difficult to breathe - and crawling with the corpses of smugglers. The clothes drip off them in yellow rags, bloated by spirits of Rage.

An escape from cave-mouth, with a small boat tied ready in the surf. With the tide this high it's risky. It's a way out.

Sooner or later the fortress above begins to burn, a fire started in the stores. Act fast to salvage research - or to barter for your survival.

THE HARP / ABOMINATION FIGHT | one thread, pls

[extortionate]

There are reinforcements. Locks, and traps, and hasty glyphs smeared in blood. At the end of them all, only a wide chamber, a woman; eyes wild with fear.

Urthemiel's Harp suspends behind her, floating crooked in columned light. A barrier. Runes score a deep circle into stone around it, cleansing the air in rhymthic pulses of white. Each wave ripples the strings, plucking forth a shivering discordance. Mages will find it sharper still - a needle into the eye of their magic. Holding your focus of a spell is,

Punishing. Easier to time the spaces between, the silence that comes after chord.

"Stay back," That staff is only threatening if you've never seen a mage fight; from her stance, Alais hasn't either. Heat shimmers pull at her free hand, "You don’t know what you’re dealing with."

There’s a crack in her voice. Somewhere inside it: A decision.

[thereneverwas]

It's a stance, and a look in the eye, that Barrow has seen more times than he'd like to confront. He holds but doesn't raise his hammer, doesn't move at all, really, because as long as the mage is still herself, there's time to stall.

"You don't have to do this," he calls, coaxing and avuncular. Maker, what is she, twenty? What a kick in the gut.

[exequy]

Behind Barrow, Kostos casts a skeptical glance at the back of his head. For the fact it seems—to him, perhaps incorrectly—a bit late for that kind of conversation. For the way he'd have responded to that tone when he was twenty. The glance is brief. Most of his attention is on the woman, most of the rest on his wisps. Four or them, disoriented by the harp. Pained, maybe, if a wisp can be pained. The smallest of them pulls back to Kostos' chest in alarm, and that one he waves back into the Fade during one of the lulls between the waves.

"Just knock her out," is under his breath. Too quiet for the enemy mage to hear, though his expression is plenty eloquent. Maybe too quiet for Barrow to hear, too. Kostos doesn't expect to be listened to regardless. He's only registering his opinion with the universe at large.

cw body horror

[extortionate]

"I do,"

There's nothing left – the others are dead as whatever they meant to her. Months of work burn above. In Minrathous, her mother waits for a death notice or a knock from the guard. She’s never going to see civilization again, the barbarians are at the gates, and everything here’s been taken, except: "You can’t have it."

Alais drops, hand drawn sharp across a ring in the floor. Runestones snap from place. The harp shrieks in answer, the ceiling rumbling dust from above. Unstable. Her fingers lift, trailing molten silver from some glove-tight barrier,

And she opens a door.

Her eyes lock on Barrow when it happens. Black dribbles from the crown of her head, down, and her breath catches; gaze cast briefly up. Alais falters, mouth pressing into a little no –

Split for a scream, as skin peels, skull cracks. Hatching. A bony distortion presses from within, gore slithering over rowed incisors. The demon chews itself free. It gurgles, choking on blood; terribly human. Unshakeably else.

The Abomination snatches at a stray wisp, pulls it struggling into new jaws. Joints snap for the meal, a dozen new fingers unspindling from knuckle as the room washes into a terrible grey. Heavy on the air, sluggish to push against. Sorrow,

And the harp strums. Weight lifts in temporary reprieve. Alais reels, then plunges to meet them.

[thereneverwas]

"No, NO!"

It's the very beginning of the thing, her posture, the blood, and Barrow surges forward-- he can stop it, he can Silence it-- and then his face is flecked with red and he can smell the ozone coming off the creature. He's too late.

The bitch of demons is how they get into one's head; Barrow's hammer is raised, lowered again in the wake of crippling despair, which he knows is just Fade bullshit but is also all too real. He failed, and now another mage is a thing that he has to kill.

Before it can kill him.

His response is delayed, his hammer hefted once more as he gathers his wits back to himself, not in time to avoid a first blow unless Kostos is able to intercede.