player plot: the horror of sarrux's pass

[aberratic]

WHO: Caius, Gwen, Hermione, Jayce, Ness, Siorus, Stephen, Vanya (sumptus, elegiaque, reparo, pathlit, aberratic, wildered, portalling, wearyallalone)
WHAT: The Horrors Cometh
WHEN: Beginning of Harvestmere (October)
WHERE: Sarrux's Pass, outside Wycome
NOTES: OOC post here. TWs for body horror, NPC death, ghost town/apocalypse vibes, children in upsetting situations, and general horror stuff.

Characters

CAIUS

GWENAËLLE

HERMIONE

JAYCE

NESS

SIORUS

STEPHEN

VANYA

The residents of Sarrux's Pass, a small village tucked into the mountains of the Free Marches, have long held that their settlement used to be a bustling trade city where dwarves were as plentiful as humans and they had constant contact between the surface and the Deep Roads. These were assumed by the surrounding cities to be nothing more than fanciful legends for decades, but any long-time resident swore it was the truth, lost to time and "monsters in the deep."

Residents were finally vindicated a few months ago when an earthquake caused a landslide in the surrounding mountains, revealing a long-lost outlet from the Deep Roads. At first, residents of the pass were apprehensive, all too aware of the dangers posed by such an opening, but the longer they went without Darkspawn spilling from the entrance, the more eager they became to investigate.

Eventually, the bravest among them began to enter the Roads, in search of ore and artifacts. They were vindicated again, finding both, and Sarrux's Pass quickly became a magnet for treasure hunters, Lords of Fortune, historians, archaeologists, and anyone in search of a quick buck. Even in the face of the Venatori invasion of the Marches, the promise of fame and riches drew handfuls of people seeking their fortunes to the Pass. News from the area was steady, and filled with discoveries and success stories—as well as the brawls, backstabbing, and even the occasional murder that comes with any good gold rush town.

It's been a few months since the reveal of the Deep Roads entrance. News from Sarrux's Pass has slowed to a trickle, then a drip, and now, in the past weeks, nothing. The last message to make it out of the village three weeks ago said simply: "We weren't just right about the dwarves." The parchment was stained with an unidentifiable liquid—not water, not blood—which smelled of the sea.

Riftwatch has been tasked with investigating the village, with three goals: find out what happened to the residents, recover whatever valuables they can from the Deep Roads, and, if necessary, close the entrance again. There may be Venatori in the area, or Darkspawn, or territorial prospectors—without contact with the village, there's no way of knowing what Riftwatch may discover. © tessisamess

Comments

the pyre.

[elegiaque]

Gwenaëlle knows what burned flesh smells like.

Even before it had been her own sizzling horrifically under the claws of a rage demon newly corporeal, she won't soon forget the smoke that rose over Halamshiral; the terrible knowledge of Magalie's end, choking on smoke within a burning building that Alix hadn't made it inside of. She has been on too many battlefields, and set too many fires of her own since—

probably anyone would have followed a stench like this one, though, with the size of the pyre in front of them. How many of the village had burned in it? How many had survived to do the burning? The quiet around them tells its own story. Not enough. The fact they're following rumours tells it, too; no one to ask, no one to give answers. The brothers Chapman aren't exactly primary sources.

She glances sidelong at Caius. “I can't tell if the brine smell is coming from the pyre as well or not,” is just a statement, more than a question. Seems unlikely he can tell any easier.

[sumptus]

It's not uncommon to dream of fire. Rage takes the shape of it, the heat licking through one's veins, the imagined sear of it escaping the body, but the real thing, blistering old skin and charring bones, that's more often the domain of grief. Hardwood smoke, a day's rot beneath the acrid burning of flesh while the fire takes the last of one well loved. Hardly anyone dreams in scents, but that one sticks.

Brine, though -- the flick an eye to her betrays his surprise, and at the word, not the smell. He cannot, in fact, tell shit. "Gotta be miles from the sea."

And that's not water. Circling a puddle on the edge of the pyre, he pulls a kerchief from his pocket and crouches down to scoop the edge of the grey liquid.

"Salt deposit, maybe?" Bringing the cloth near his mouth like he's about to take a taste, but— "The taint is black, right?"

[elegiaque]

“I don't know that salt alone would do it,” she says, doubtfully, thinking: surely that isn't all that makes the sea smell the way the sea smells, what about all the strange life under its surface?

It doesn't seem like there's any life beneath the surface, here, but then again: it is vanishingly unlikely that this just happened without some manner of encounter with something. Villages don't become ghost stories that strange old men warn passing travellers against because of salt deposits,

she's still pondering this when she looks back at his question and balks, immediately: “Don't put that in your fucking mouth,” really seems more pressing a concern than what colour the taint is.

[sumptus]

"Small amounts of caustic substances almost never cause permanent damage," says man about to melt his own face off. Don't be such a baby.

But he does close his mouth, frowning, squishing it between two handkerchief'd fingers instead. Texture alone doesn't tell him much; he'll have to bottle it for proper study.

"Whatever this stuff is, it doesn't seem dangerous enough to do all this. Not so fast you'd need to put half the town to the torch at once."

So what did? (And where's the other half?)

[elegiaque]

The fixed, severe look she gives him is unwavering and unmoved through his argument in favour of taking an irresponsibly geological approach to a clearly fucking horrifying scenario—

but since he takes her point enough not to actually put it in his fucking mouth, “Fast and slow,” she says, instead of research can definitely figure that out with some method other than licking, “fast enough to wipe them out, slow enough they were able to build the pyre. Maybe some funerary rites.”

Did they all die at once? Did the bodies pile up until it made more sense to wait for the dying? Were there funerary rites, or was this a desperate act?

[sumptus]

He nods, considering her point. Not a single Venatori attack, then, or the survivors who built the pyres would be here to answer their questions. He pulls a vial from his pouch, scooping the liquid carefully into it.

"A plague could move like that. Some fast, some slow, but almost everybody in the end. But even that, you'd think would give them time to send for a healer." Or at least a clearer message than something about dwarves. He stands again, continuing in an arc to survey the area.

"Plagues don't dig holes though." A beat. "You faced darkspawn before?"

hashtag foreshadowing

[elegiaque]

“Only the kind infested with red lyrium,” she says, “and from as much a distance as I could manage.”

Bands of them scattered about, after Ghislain, and how much of her life nowadays is defined by that first battlefield? The things that happened before and after Ghislain. Maybe it hadn't really changed anything except for her, she thinks; maybe she had just understood something different, after that.

None of that is useful here. She frowns at the pyre, and says, “In a little cluster like this,” the village, she means, “close quarters would be almost unavoidable.”