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

[portalling]

Strange spares a quick glance behind them, Ness trying to shake Caius into motion, and the boy has frozen.

No amount of tame practice on the training ground will get you properly accustomed to the split-second decisions, to the raw violence of seeing Vanya Orlov’s sword driven through a skull, spilling bone and brain matter and unsettling black ichor on the ground. But. No time like the present for the youths to learn.

Strange doesn’t fight with a templar’s shield, but as a genlock leaps over its now-dead comrade and tries to stab at their party —

A shimmering golden shield flares into view in front of Caius and Ness, blocking the blow, sending it skittering off an ethereal intangible wall of protection. The light glimmers, and the Fade hums even louder as it dissolves in favour of a blast of energy sending the genlock flying back into the rubble, a single sharp crack as its head collides with rock. These enemies have the advantage of numbers, but the smaller ones are also relatively weak.

“Get moving,” the sorcerer snaps, to-the-point.

[sumptus]

Caius flinches from the touch, looking sharp toward Ness but not at her, seeing through to some older and more deeply ingrained instinct that says his own six feet of height is too small, too weak to fight. You'll only make it worse if you run. Doesn't she know that?

But the hurlock turns, and Vanya's sword squelches through its knees, through its skull. Men don't bleed black. Men don't launch themselves with a simian swing over their fellows' corpses, and the sizzle of golden shield, the hum of the Fade in front of him pulls him back to the reality where he, too, can feel those threads singing between his fingers.

Get moving. Ness pulls him back and he finally takes stock of the situation, the chaos, the number of them who aren't wielding swords of flame or otherwise. Backing toward the nearest cover, he raises a hand out into the air, and a circle of symbols alight on the stone floor out in front of where the others are fighting.

"Don't step on it." The glyph. The first genlock that does drops like a sack of potatoes the moment his foot touches the ground — eyes wide open, breathing, alive, but a pitifully easy target.

[aberratic]

Part of not being useless while everyone else does the fighting is knowing where she's most useful, and in that regard, Ness is under no illusions: she does not belong in the middle of a battlefield. Caius back to himself, Stephen snapping at them to Get moving, she spins on her heel and begins to dart away from the fray.

It's harder to hug the edges of a fight when you've been identified as A Problem, though, and she only gets a few feet before a hurlock takes notice of her and launches itself in her direction with an inhuman snarl. Ness yelps, high and terrified, backpedaling quickly to avoid the 'spawn—too quickly.

She trips, and lands on her ass, with a hurlock standing over her and her mind blank from shock.

[reparo]

It's not that she's a fearsome, violent soldier - this is nothing like the fight atop the falling city of Alem, harpies and dragons sweeping down to kill, but it is also everything like that fight; a switch is flipped in Hermione's mind, from hesitation to survival.

Facts first: the hurlocks, the darkspawn - they are not good. They may be humanoid, but there is nothing humane left in them, and they always, always strike to kill. Thedas is a place where she could die, and she knows that she doesn't want to, doesn't plan to, doesn't take it lightly.

This contingent of Darkspawn is not hard to dispatch, but it feels like a bottleneck - the lot of them are the ones trickling into the chamber one at a time, as they can.

Wherever she was previously, on the outskirts of the melee battle, flinging incendio after incendio, it all comes to a grinding halt when she sees Ness fall -

- and springs into action, her regular Apparition manifesting her between Ennaris' fallen form and the hurlock as the monster raises a claw to strike, her wand slashing an arc in the air to say: "Protego!" It creates enough of a shield that the claw bounces off it - striking neither Hermione nor Ness, a lucky break. There's little time for triumph, and even littler time for tempering herself, so she follows it with "Incendio," the way someone less tempered would shout you fucking bastard - and fire bursts from the tip of her wand into the hurlock's face, making it reel backwards with a screech of pain.

"Ennaris - get up."

[wearyallalone]

Vanya is already moving for Caius's glyph; he recognizes what it is, knows how it can be useful even before the genlock goes over. He can make the most of that, with years of drills in his brain, but Ness's yelp catches his attention.

It's all too fast, and his brain does the math before he can consciously catch up: She's too far, the Darkspawn is right over her, even if he changes course he won't make it, and then — someone else has it.

It's all done in a split second, but it's enough time for him to lose the opening and he's fighting off a genlock that hasn't fallen prey to a well-placed glyph. It's fast, brutish work, the way Vanya fights; no flash, all utility. Still, it's going to take another few moments to get over to the advantage he'd been handed (if he can make it there before it fades).

[portalling]

Strange has been working with glyphs lately, learning the shape and feel of them from the local mages and watching how they’re made, so he, too, recognises that glow in the floor. It’s a lot to follow, but even in all this chaos and hubbub, it’s a smaller field than previous wars he’d fought. There are only eight of them, against this tidal wave. He can count the number of their party on his hands.

(Are they too few? Don’t think about it.)

Vanya’s carving his way across the chamber, trying to get to the glyph, and so Strange automatically, implicitly repositions himself: there’s the precise, minuscule movement of his fingers, redirecting the energy through his staff, and a wave of flame roils forward to keep their left flank clear. It distracts the enemies and prevents them from getting closer on that side, helping clear the space toward that trapped, glyphed spot on the right.