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

[elegiaque]

A fade shield bursts from her hand to surround them, a green-gold shimmer in the air, buying elbow-room and enough room to say, “That's what Grey Wardens are for,” with a jut of her chin toward Siorus, “ordinarily.”

(What's ordinary? Grown adults fighting these battles now who barely remember the status quo that was when they were children; maybe Vanya's right, maybe the revolution will be boring and inevitable, the result of no one in their prime remembering the world that got broken in half exactly the way it was before the break—)

Since they've only the one Warden and everyone is going to have to pull their own weight, Gwenaëlle pivots when a genlock gets a little too close for comfort, kicking into the back of its knee and bouncing one foot up the thigh of the thing to launch herself onto its shoulders, flipping her blades in her hands to bring them down into the softest, most convenient route into the skull.

vignette 🎀

[portalling]

Oh, she has been paying attention to the medical textbooks.

Stephen can’t help the proud grin that spreads across his face as he spares a single indulgent moment to watch her, admiring. Gwenaëlle’s blades stab into the genlock’s head and she drives it to the ground, smoothly leaping off again like the gymnast she is. He can trust Gwenaëlle to take his eyes off her, however, to know she knows what the hell she’s doing and she can handle herself. So he lets his attention deviate, ducking low for his flaming spectral sword to cut through a hurlock’s ankle, crucial muscle-tissue severed. The hulking beast’s leg can’t hold it anymore and it goes stumbling, crashing into the wall of the cavern; there’s the rumbling shake of the ceiling, some earth and small rocks pattering loose, ricocheting off some of their party.

Stephen glances over just as Gwenaëlle carves through another and he calls out with a jolt of concern, “Mind the blood—”. His own fade-crafted shield springs into view between her and the enemy, glimmering and golden. Black ichor from another injured genlock splatters across that invisible barrier, dripping black droplets hanging in midair.

She’s good at dodging arterial spray; he knows this already. But it can’t hurt to be too careful here: not when the risk of a drop of ichor in your eye is the blight, the taint, a slow rotting death from the inside.

They continue to move in unison as they help to hold the line: a finely-tuned instrument, carefully-synchronised like they are in the infirmary or on the sparring range (and elsewhere—). By the end, with the latest wave of darkspawn broken on Riftwatch’s shores, he pauses only long enough to wait for Gwenaëlle to wipe the sweat and worse off her face, and then presses a quick kiss to her forehead before he moves on.