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Entry tags:
- ! open,
- abby,
- alexandrie d'asgard,
- bastien,
- benedict quintus artemaeus,
- byerly rutyer,
- derrica,
- ellie,
- gwenaëlle baudin,
- james flint,
- john silver,
- julius,
- loki,
- matthias,
- obeisance barrow,
- petrana de cedoux,
- tiffany hart,
- { astarion },
- { dante sparda },
- { emet-selch },
- { james holden },
- { jone },
- { sidony veranas },
- { sylvie },
- { tony stark }
open | holiday spirits
WHO: Whoever, plus some spirits.
WHAT: Everyone spends an evening regretting the past. So basically a normal night.
WHEN: Wintermarch 5-6
WHERE: A castle in the mountains north of Kirkwall
NOTES: OOC post including less vague/pretentious haunting mechanic descriptions. Fantasy violence and swearing and so on are assumed, but please use content warnings in your subject lines for things like explicit gore or sex, slavery content, body horror, etc., if you go any of those routes.
WHAT: Everyone spends an evening regretting the past. So basically a normal night.
WHEN: Wintermarch 5-6
WHERE: A castle in the mountains north of Kirkwall
NOTES: OOC post including less vague/pretentious haunting mechanic descriptions. Fantasy violence and swearing and so on are assumed, but please use content warnings in your subject lines for things like explicit gore or sex, slavery content, body horror, etc., if you go any of those routes.
THE CASTLE
Their convenient shelter from the unexpected blizzard that whips up around them in the mountain pass isn't too convenient. Anyone with a reasonable detailed map will find it marked there; reaching its clifftop location requires a slight detour. When they approach, it has no warm ethereal glow or suspiciously welcoming lit torches. The windows stay dark. The portcullis is raised just high enough to be ducked under, but the heavy doors of the keep don't swing open to welcome them.
The only immediate sign that something is amiss is the thorough, all-encompassing emptiness of the place, and it might take some investigation before that begins to feel strange. The fortress' abandonment seems recent and abrupt: ample firewood has been cut and stacked for the winter, nothing has been done to protect the furniture or strip the beds, the kitchen is fully stocked and even has some perishables that do not seem close to perishing, the stables are equipped to comfortably keep any animals along for the journey, and a chess board before the hearth in the (humble) grand hall seems to have been left mid-game. But there are no messages, no bodies, no footsteps dimpling the crunchy layer of old snow accumulated in the bailey beneath the fresh snowfall.
As they search, the castle's visitors may begin to find signs that the castle hasn't been entirely abandoned. It begins with whispers emanating from the dark ends of corridors, voices they recognize and others they don't, or faces both familiar and unfamiliar flashing in still water or window panes when firelight hits right, or forms moving on the edge of vision but vanishing before they can be looked at directly.
By the time this becomes worrisome enough to drive anyone back out of the castle, the portcullis has fallen shut and won't budge. Neither will any other doors to the outside. The windows won't break; doors won't give way even to makeshift battering rams. The only walls that can be climbed or reached by stairs face out over a deep ravine. It might be a survivable climb, if the wind and weather allowed, but it would not be a survivable fall.
THE SPIRITS
--so back inside, then.
The keep is built like the Gallows' towers, square and tall, and it won't take long for Riftwatch to notice that whatever is wrong is more wrong the higher they climb. The whispers and glimpses on the lowest floor become voices and lingering shadowy figures on the second. Someone might turn and find their hand briefly held by an unfamiliar man's, warm and real for the moment it takes him to say, "Come with me." Or behind them, a woman's shocked and seething voice says, "What are you doing?" Or maybe it's a hand they do know and a voice saying something they've heard before.
As people venture to the higher floors--whether intrepidly seeking the source or involuntarily herded onward by spirits--these moments will begin to last and linger and repeat. And those who don't dare venture higher won't be exempt, confronted by stronger spirits that emerge like ants from a kicked hive as the upper floors are disturbed.
As they approach the uppermost floor, reality will begin to slip away from them. They may find themselves lost in a maze of rooms, even though that shouldn't be possible in so few square feet, and ultimately enveloped in comforting worlds where they didn't do that thing they regret and that, like dreams, feel real until they suddenly don't--until something is too unbelievable, until someone interrupts, or until a demon is holding them under the water of the warm bath they were tempted into, shoving them off a balcony, or whispering into their ears and minds, let me in and you can keep it.
The hauntings will continue until
THE END
When it ends, it ends abruptly. Weaker spirits vanish; stronger ones retreat into the dark. The lesser demons on the upper floors linger, and some may put up a last-ditch physical fight, but without their superior, they've lost most of their mental pull and emotional sway. The castle has changed, too. Its abandonment no longer looks so recent. The food and firewood is gone, along with any sense of warmth or satiety anyone used them to acquire earlier. There is dust where none was before, mildew and rot, and a few scattered, unfortunate skeletons.
The sun is not quite up, the sky a faintly luminescent grey. But the weather is survivable, though it will be slower travel than it would have been without the fresh snow. The doors will open, and the portcullis will raise. Everyone can set off on their cold, hours-long journey back to the city. Talking about their feelings or avoiding eye contact the entire time: the choice is theirs.
OTA - embrace the darkness that's within me
It began with Dante bursting through a set of large, heavy doors, into a cavernous room, moody, dank, and almost hellish. In the room there were two women, one to his immediate left and one to his immediate right passed out having been thwarted in battle. In front of him there sat a horrifying sight, one that could rival the twisted and grotesque appearance of Corypheus himself...a tangled mass of tentacles, vines, it was hard to tell, but distinctly humanoid in a demonic sort of way.
The creature was immense in size and say on a crude throne hewn from the earth and appeared to be unable to move held in place by the tentacle vines that fed into everything around him. They appeared to be feeding him, but what it wasn't something pleasant to dwell on, but given that his throne was surrounded by a pool of what could only be blood it wasn't that difficult to arrive to a conclusion.
Dante took in the scene around him, trying to hide his concern, but giving himself away in a fraction of a second. The only way he knew how to recenter and compose himself was to approach the threat with bold self-assurance, demons could always smell fear after all and if there's one demon he wouldn't give the satisfaction it was this one. His reason.
"Well, well...Oh king of stench and filth, I'm impressed!" Dante waved a hand as if trying to dismiss a foul odor, "those are two of the most badass women in the world and I only know one other guy who can defeat 'em..."
He approached the throne and the usurper king sitting upon it, his voice lower and menacing, not realizing that he's done this before, that this is just deja-vu and not reality. Regret.
"Jackpot."
The word brought forth some recognition in the beast who finally deigned to respond to the intruder.
"Dante."
Not waiting for an invitation Dante openly attacked the demonic creature, dodging blasts of fire, performing gravity defying aerial tricks to dodge and run along vines as they whipped in his direction and as he prepared to shoot the creature pointblank he was thrown back, hitting the ground with enough force to knock the wind out of him.
Before blacking out a young man with an appearance not too dissimilar from Dante's own burst into the room.
--
The memory picks up with Dante waking from his loss of consciousness in time to save the young man from being struck down by a blast of energy, firing a few bullets at the enthroned creature to capture his attention. While he was unconscious another man also entered the fray, a dark, frail creature hanging back behind the lines of battle and accompanied by a large bird, he was observing and uncertain of how to proceed it seemed. Dante's revival, however, brought on a certain measure of respite.
"Round two," Dante growled shifting seamlessly from human to something less human, not as horrific as the creature in the chair, but a recognizably demonic creature with wings, a black armored body, an appearance that was almost reptilian. This demon shaped figure launched itself at his demonic opposition, forgoing guns and bullets for a sword instead. As he struck Dante was held at bay by a field of energy that he couldn't penetrate, but it was hardly his intention to break through.
He was merely buying some time.
Whipping his head in the direction of the younger man with eyes as blue as Dante's own and hair that was just as silver and his companion with the dark countenance he shouted:
"V get Nero out of here! This was a bad move!" Dante's voice was somewhere in between Dante's own colorful tones and something less human, almost robotic.
"Nnnn...I can still fight!" the younger man that resembled Dante, Nero, pulled himself off of the floor, insisting he could still fight, but had been severely put down moments before Dante woke to save him.
"Nero go! You're just dead weight!" There was a finality in Dante's tone that would broker no further argument and while he was harsh he seemed to be desperately holding up to save the younger man's life. It was a life more important than his own.
As V, the raven-haired man, attempted to pull Nero back, Nero threw him off.
"Back off!"
Nero was determined to continue the fight but the battle taking place between Dante and the enthroned titan was tearing down the very foundation.
"Come on!" V once again corralled the boy away from the battle in spite of his protests, "we must leave here. He's far stronger than we ever could have imagined."
The last thing Dante heard before Nero and V were completely walled off from him:
"That bastard called me dead weight! I didn't come all this way for nothin'!"
Better to be deadweight than dead, and while it stung that those were the last words spoken between himself and the boy he was right. Not moments after the walls collapsed saving Nero and V from certain death did Dante's power fail him, his sword shattered under the strength of this goliath as though it were made of little more than glass and he was thrown back his demonic form shattering along with it. Human again.
--
Hitting the floor of the cavern with enough force that would have been traumatic, Dante still struggled to catch his third wind, his injuries preventing him from catching his breath and regaining his footing as the demon, clearly victorious, taunted him from its seat.
"This...is power."
Reaching out for Dante with it's tentacled-vines it cocooned Dante, crushing him, smothering him.
It isn't real, none of it is, but the regret has so much influence that the memory of it unravels the reality. The regret that he'd allowed this creature to become what he became, that it had killed so much, destroyed so much, and there wasn't a damn thing he could do to stop it. Something in him felt that this was deserved.
[another tl;dr. The order of events is incredibly disjointed and it goes back and forth, but essentially it's: 7:07-8:18, 1:54-3:31, 9:00-9:20. Feel free to just slap him out of it, he'll understand.]
no subject
Jone would hesitate before she said she liked demons, but she certainly prefers them-- the easily recognizable kind, at least-- to the vagaries of memory, emotion, fate. This horror is something she can deal with, something she'd previously staked her life on dealing with.
Thank the Maker for war-- it puts coin in our pockets.
Jone, an armored behemoth standing a few inches taller than the pale-haired man, smiles. Why is there blood on her face? Because it's got to be there. The freshness of battle pales in comparison to the joy of its ugly middle, muscles burning from effort, bones broken, promises hollow. She will die in a fight like this, she's sure of it. Just not today.
Her poleaxe finds purchase in one reaching tentacled arm. "C'mon!" Her voice is thunderous. "Help or leave off!"
no subject
Whoever this woman was, she had not been there at the time and while it took a moment to clear the cobwebs from his mind they eventually cleared untangling this false world from wat his current reality really was.
After coming to the realization he disengaged himself from the vines and pulled himself onto his feet until he'd climbed to his full height. He surveyed the stranger, arguably impressed by her stature, but also by her nerve.
"Sorry, but the only word I know is go," Dante now held in his hand a different sword, a peculiar, organic, cumbersome looking thing that didn't resemble the one that had shattered. This sword manifested from reality, "and retreat is not in my vocabulary."
no subject
(It will one day, whispers a pernicious doubt in her ear.)
Her grin is challenging. She likes a good banter alright, especially in a fight. "Fancy words, aye," she croons. "Let's see if you live up to 'em."
And she strides forward with a reaver's confidence, intending to fight the monstrosity alone if she has to. She pours pure strength into her salvos, but she's only human, however well-trained.
no subject
"I'd be hard pressed to turn down a challenge," Dante said bowing with a bit of flourish noting that the attacks being leveled at them by Urizen currently were not the level of strength he remembered. What happened had been a memory, this was an echo of that memory and nothing more, fueled by something dark.
It had to be.
The beast, the monstrosity, the creature currently lashing out at them now was being pushed back by their attacks currently, even though it was still fierce. The vines lashing out at them were quick, but it was easy enough to swipe through them with a sword or to block.
The energy being leveled at them was also different, not the kind of demonic energy from his world, but something more akin to this world. The monster looked like Urizen, but it was now fighting like something else.
"We might not be up shit's creek after all."
no subject
"And here I am, without my bloody scissors."
That's an invitation, Dante.
no subject
"I think you're going to need more than scissors to take care of this pissed off houseplant. Secateurs, big ass secateurs."
Though Dante isn't above pruning this tree and this demon with a sword.
"But with my sword and your poleaxe I think we can take this overgrown weed in a little."