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

[aberratic]

Ness is, admittedly, not quite as systemic in her approach to the work—she very clearly wants to be, and starts out intending to be, but quite often she ends up getting diverted in the middle of one task because there was something ever more curious over there. It's not the fastest approach to searching the building, but she can hardly be blamed for wanting to make sure they find everything even remotely of interest here, can she? Anyway, that "method" leads to her discovery of the inn's guest book, which got picked up immediately as Ness realized what it was, and has been carted all over the building since.

When Vanya offers her the journal, she hands off the guest book in trade, and tries not to look too giddy.

"This is exactly the kind of thing that Candlekeep exists for," she says, but if Vanya has any questions she doesn't notice, too immediately caught up in reading.

"The first entry's dated 28 Bloomingtide. That's pretty early, isn't it? The entrance would have just opened up, then... Arrived in the Pass with Merv and Quinn today," she narrates,

"The rumours were true. The whole town's a funny mix of smug and terrified about it, and of course not one of them has gone in the damn hole yet. A couple people want to plug it back up and pretend nothing happened. Say their ancestors must have closed it off for a reason, that there are "monsters" down there.

Fools. Monsters means Darkspawn, and I ain't afraid of no Darkspawn. They can be killed, just like anything else—especially if they're between the Lords and our treasure.

Lords," Ness looks to Vanya, eyebrows drawn in confusion, "Lords like... nobility? There wasn't any mention of a missing noble in the briefing."

[wearyallalone]

He wishes, not for the first time, that Ellis was with them. Darkspawn are well outside Vanya's wheelhouse, his limited experience all from Riftwatch itself. (And if he wishes Ellis was here for personal reasons too, well, there's no harm in an unspoken wish.)

"Usually, in my experience, a missing aristocrat would be noted. Perhaps it's not that literal. There were a group of actors in Ferelden who called themselves lords of story, so it could be something like that." Probably not that actual group of actors, but he trusts her to take his point.

He opens the guest book, moving it a bit closer until he can read the writing, and flips back to Bloomingtide. Merv and Quinn aren't such common names, and he expects them to be easy enough to find with a date of arrival.

[aberratic]

Not Literally Lords, got it. Ness nods, accepting this answer, and looks back to the journal, reading under her breath while Vanya looks through the guest book.

Merv and Quinn are in the book, right where they should be, arrived 28 Bloomingtide with another name, "Wendyll". They paid for a single room with two straw beds—not people with money, then, or at least not people willing to pay top dollar at an inn for a nicer bed, or a room each. They don't sign out the next night, nor the next, but the day after, they leave the inn, all paid up.

So why is Wendyll's journal still here?

"Oh—Messere Orlov, listen to this:

10 Solace. The Farenti crew's gone missing. They were acting all squirrely the other day, snickering at each other and then going all quiet when anyone looked at them funny about it. They've got a secret, plain as, but no one'd decided what to do about it—heard Cathy Gold-Eye muttering about beating it out of them, but she never had the chance. They disappeared a week ago this morning, and no one's seen hide nor hair of any of them since.

We all know the risks, and the rules. Whatever you find, it ain't worth your life. Not much fortune to find if you're dead, is there?

More for us who's smart enough to come back to civilization once in a while, anyway.

That's the first mention of a disappearance," Ness says, looking up at Vanya. She has a glint in her eye, like this is all a very interesting puzzle she gets to put together. "10 Solace, that's... two and a half months ago."

Which isn't a lot of time for a whole town to become deserted like this, but maybe that's scarier than if it'd happened slow.

[wearyallalone]

He keeps his place marked with his thumb, ready to show it to her, but the excerpt gives him pause. When she stops, he shakes his head, clearly not to correct her math but in frustration at the journal's vagueness.

"It makes sense that treasure hunters would be competitive, but I fear it's going to make our job more difficult. If none of them were sharing information with one another, we're likely to only get a partial picture from any given source. It's also..." He comes to show her what he'd been looking at. "They were only here for a few days in Bloomingtide. Why the journal entry from more than a month later? Did they go and come back? Was that what he meant by coming back to civilization, maybe?"

He flips forward toward Solace once he's sure she's had a chance to see what he saw.

[aberratic]

"I'm not sure," Ness chews a bit on her bottom lip while she thinks, looking between the journal and the guest book. Wendyll's name doesn't come up again between Bloomingtide and Solace, but plenty of others do. This inn was booming in between Wendyll's first entry and the one from Solace. Lots of entries, not a lot of exits—except...

"Hang on." Ness lays her hand gently over Vanya's before he can turn the page again, pausing him on 3rd Solace. "That's dozens of people checking out. What happened that day?"

It can't be whatever caused the whole town to be deserted, no one would bother to check out of the local inn in a calamity. Whatever it was, people thought the Pass could be salvaged, still.

[wearyallalone]

"You're right; it's a remarkably orderly exit. And not all of these people checked in the same day, I assume, so it's not just one large group departing together." He looks thoughtful. "Not a particular holiday, that I know of, or ... and it was before our journal-writer came back."

A frustrating hole in the narrative. The exodus feels significant, but he's not sure what might have prompted it.

[aberratic]

Ness stares at the guestbook, eyes narrowed and lip between her teeth, but despite the scrutiny, no answers jump off of the pages. She huffs, and turns her attention back to the journal.

"I don't think he meant returning to the inn, he's mentioned 'returning to civilization' in a few entries already, but there are no indications of him in the guest book... Perhaps somewhere in the Deep Roads? Some communal space, to make sure everyone's still alive, or something..."

There must be answers in these books. She looks back to the journal, ready to skim and jump to the next week, but the next entry is so short—

"Oh," she says, voice low, dropped with her stomach into the floor.

"11 Solace. Quinn is dead. We're going back to town. Fuck this place.

"Same day, probably. Idiot should have known better. You hear funny things down here, you ignore them. You don't follow them, not even if they sound like people. Especially not if they sound like people you know. Farenti's team's dead, or as good as down here. They wouldn't be calling for help, leastwise from down some fucking spawn hole.

"13 Solace. Back in the Pass. They say the well's no good, but they'll find new water soon. I asked what "no good" meant and they showed me—whatever that liquid is, it ain't water: grey and foul and stinks of the sea. We're far enough inland I'd thought we'd be well clear of the stench, but Quinn smelled it in the Roads, too. I told him he was full of it."

[wearyallalone]

His expression is grim, which can hardly be a surprise, given the pair of entries she's just highlighted. "Well, I suppose we knew it wasn't going to end well, given the state of the town. And, probably, that the journal was left behind; it suggests a rush to leave."

Or, perhaps, a desire not to remember the details of what took place.

"I've heard of wells going bad, but grey feels unusual. More often orange or brown, from iron or decaying plants. But don't take my word, I'm no expert." It feels odd, more than that he can swear it definitely is.

[aberratic]

"You think it was left behind?"

Because Ness is starting to have the unnerving feeling that she's holding a dead man's final words. The excitement of uncovering a puzzle has left her eyes, replaced with a dreadful sort of apprehension, worrying what she'll find next with each turn of the page. Rather than read each entry out loud now, she speed reads in silence, hovering closer to Vanya with each page and each new unsettling discovery.

The final pages stick together, and Ness can't unstick them with one hand without ripping them. Her hands are shaking, anyway—she sets the book down and presses her palms together to steady them.

"Something happened here," which she immediately shakes her own head at, because obviously, "I mean, something beyond the well going bad, and everyone just leaving. He wrote of some kind of vomiting illness taking everyone, and there were attacks—monsters, he said, but not Darkspawn. Homes destroyed, families disappeared... I think they started burning people who got sick without waiting for them to die first."

[wearyallalone]

He certainly hadn't suggested the journal had been left out of optimism for its author's fate. But it doesn't seem likely to him the writer died in the inn itself, either, so it was left at some point. Perhaps she's right, though; perhaps it was intended for retrieval and those intentions were circumvented.

"Monsters but not Darkspawn is ... unexpected," finally, after a pause. "When something has gone so wrong this close to the Deep Roads, well, there is usually a grisly but obvious explanation for it." This is horrific in a human way he wasn't quite braced for. That said, she's clearly more shaken than he is. (He wonders if that's temperament or if he's just seen too much. A question for later, or not.)

"Come on," a bit more gently. "If you've finished with the journal, we should meet up with the others, tell them what we learned." Even if being in a larger group won't necessarily be any more cheerful, it will perhaps feel less like a ghost is reading over their shoulders. And everyone could stand to know the complications that they might be up against, at least as much as Ness and Vanya do.

🎀!

[aberratic]

"Yes," she agrees softly, giving her shoulders a subtle shake to rid herself of the dread that's fallen over her. There's still more homes to search and answers to uncover; she can't waste everyone's time cowering in a corner.

One deep breath, and she picks up the journal again, then lifts the guestbook, not unkindly, from Vanya's hands.

As they leave the inn, she mutters, more to herself than him, "There may be a census somewhere, we should know who lived here, let their family know what happened if they have any..."