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ph_logs2024-06-20 07:14 pm
cult_classic) wrote in ph_logs2024-06-20 07:14 pm
[Plot Open] Seeing Red
Who: The Cult of Nyarlathotep and YOU????????? (Intended for a somewhat small group.)
What: Weird magic
When: It's complicated
Where: The cabins in the woods
Warning(s): Cult activity, religious ecstasy, ritual sacrifice, blood, unhealthy and probably uncomfortable opinions about madness. Your character will also die by going on this quest, but you will receive unique plot information. And who knows, maybe you can have like a ghost party or whatever.
-I don't need your roses, I like men on their knees.-
It's not long after Tarantulas and Valdis find Linette and her body is laid to rest that further investigation begins. The information forwarded to them about the cult is, of course, useful. But with the knowledge that a strange cult was performing monstrous rituals is deeply alarming.
Information is spread like wildfire, the paper running an article describing the grisly scene of Linette Brenning, a woman who went missing years ago, turning up at the bottom of the Fall's Promise well. The cult involvement and the ties it must surely have to the barrier and to the cursed book retrieved by River and Angel some months prior. The constables fan out across the island, investigating the cabins in the woods and the well in which Linette was found.
But even so, nothing of note turns up.
Until one day, an assortment of offworlders seemingly chosen at random receive a note in their mailboxes. It's written in a tight, curling hand that is unfamiliar.
Perhaps not everyone who receives this letter attends, but if you wish to see more, you must be one of them. And so you go. You gather among friends, or perhaps strangers, but ultimately those like you. And from there you proceed into the woods, following first the trails, then the desire path leading to the sodden and rotting old cabins where Linette's locket was first found nearly a year ago. Per the letter's instructions, you go to the furthest cabin from the road, and you enter.
-Praying up to their god, seeing visions of me.-
After much clearing away of natures attempts at reclamation of the building, the words are visible on the wall, etched in a thick white paint that almost glows in the lantern light. Do you raise your voices in unison to speak the incantation, or is it left to just one brave soul? Regardless, the words are spoken:
We are the seekers of forbidden knowledge. We are the witnesses of the vile divine. We are the wanderers of the black dream desert, navigators of starless skies. We beseech you, O Chaos; we stand in your circle and ask in reverence to behold your revelations of bygone days. Grant us your unholy nightmare that we may see. Ia! Nyarlathotep! Eater of Souls! Let your truth be thusly seen!
And once the words are spoken, the world begins to change.
The sensation, for those who can recall, is not unlike wandering the collective dream of Pumpkin Hollow in years gone by, but this time you have arrived here by choice rather than by sleep. The cabin around you dissolves like sand, falling away in particles to reveal... something else.
You find yourselves back outside, still under the cover of night. Each of you is now garbed in a red robe and a black mask, and you are surrounded by others wearing similar garb. The world around you is nearly silent. You are standing just inside what is a manor house, elegantly decorated, somberly making your way into the depths of the house with the rest of the group. You are led into what is apparently some sort of meeting space with a large, round table with a tasteful assortment of charcuterie foods laid out. No one says a word as you enter, but some members of the group seem confident as they file into place around the table and take a seat. You should probably do the same.
Far off in the distance, you hear the clock strike 2AM. One of the members of the group, apparently the de facto leader, speaks as soon as the third chime silences. Based on the voice, you presume this person to likely be a woman.
"Bare now your true faces and forfeit your names to your brethren and to our Dark King."
And so they do. Each of them doffs their mask and lowers their hood, revealing their faces. All ages and all sorts, it seems. They go around the circle, speaking their names, starting with the woman in charge.
"Chloe Albright."
"Ingmar Strömberg."
"Nora Winterbottom."
"Christopher Larkin."
"Archie Brenning."
"Maude Brenning."
"Brahm Aberdeen.
"Richard Pirnach."
"Lucy Calloway."
Before you have time to take in these names, it is clear from the expectant glances that all of you are meant to introduce yourselves as well. But once this is done, the woman whose name is Chloe speaks once more.
"Thank you all for your offering of identity. And thank you, Christopher, for once again allowing us to take our meeting within your lovely home. And of course, we thank all of our intrepid new inductees for joining us tonight. We appreciate that the lateness of the hour will take some... adjustment. As we await the blessing of our Master in his hour of greatest strength, that we might perform our ritual to bear witness to the vile divine, let us take a simple meal together in fellowship. Both to know each other and to speak of more mundane business, as well as to educate our new siblings. Shall we, brothers and sisters?"
All at once, your true mission becomes clear. Speak to the members of this cult, learn more about their identities, rituals, and crimes, and bear witness to this so-called "vile divine", then return to your own time with the information you receive. It's unclear how you'll get back, at the moment... but surely it will make itself apparent when the time comes. Hopefully.
-Say I'm your favorite preacher.-
[The thrilling conclusion to the cult gathering will appear in the comments over the weekend! For now, focus on talking to the cult members, or to each other. Maybe you can even sneak away to look through the house!]
What: Weird magic
When: It's complicated
Where: The cabins in the woods
Warning(s): Cult activity, religious ecstasy, ritual sacrifice, blood, unhealthy and probably uncomfortable opinions about madness. Your character will also die by going on this quest, but you will receive unique plot information. And who knows, maybe you can have like a ghost party or whatever.
-I don't need your roses, I like men on their knees.-
It's not long after Tarantulas and Valdis find Linette and her body is laid to rest that further investigation begins. The information forwarded to them about the cult is, of course, useful. But with the knowledge that a strange cult was performing monstrous rituals is deeply alarming.
Information is spread like wildfire, the paper running an article describing the grisly scene of Linette Brenning, a woman who went missing years ago, turning up at the bottom of the Fall's Promise well. The cult involvement and the ties it must surely have to the barrier and to the cursed book retrieved by River and Angel some months prior. The constables fan out across the island, investigating the cabins in the woods and the well in which Linette was found.
But even so, nothing of note turns up.
Until one day, an assortment of offworlders seemingly chosen at random receive a note in their mailboxes. It's written in a tight, curling hand that is unfamiliar.
Gather in the square tonight at midnight. More friends will be there. But bring a lantern anyway, and do not be late. Once midnight strikes, go to the cabins off the path in Lockwood Forest and speak the words upon the wall of the furthest. If you can be brave, you will see the unobstructed truth.
Perhaps not everyone who receives this letter attends, but if you wish to see more, you must be one of them. And so you go. You gather among friends, or perhaps strangers, but ultimately those like you. And from there you proceed into the woods, following first the trails, then the desire path leading to the sodden and rotting old cabins where Linette's locket was first found nearly a year ago. Per the letter's instructions, you go to the furthest cabin from the road, and you enter.
-Praying up to their god, seeing visions of me.-
After much clearing away of natures attempts at reclamation of the building, the words are visible on the wall, etched in a thick white paint that almost glows in the lantern light. Do you raise your voices in unison to speak the incantation, or is it left to just one brave soul? Regardless, the words are spoken:
And once the words are spoken, the world begins to change.
The sensation, for those who can recall, is not unlike wandering the collective dream of Pumpkin Hollow in years gone by, but this time you have arrived here by choice rather than by sleep. The cabin around you dissolves like sand, falling away in particles to reveal... something else.
You find yourselves back outside, still under the cover of night. Each of you is now garbed in a red robe and a black mask, and you are surrounded by others wearing similar garb. The world around you is nearly silent. You are standing just inside what is a manor house, elegantly decorated, somberly making your way into the depths of the house with the rest of the group. You are led into what is apparently some sort of meeting space with a large, round table with a tasteful assortment of charcuterie foods laid out. No one says a word as you enter, but some members of the group seem confident as they file into place around the table and take a seat. You should probably do the same.
Far off in the distance, you hear the clock strike 2AM. One of the members of the group, apparently the de facto leader, speaks as soon as the third chime silences. Based on the voice, you presume this person to likely be a woman.
"Bare now your true faces and forfeit your names to your brethren and to our Dark King."
And so they do. Each of them doffs their mask and lowers their hood, revealing their faces. All ages and all sorts, it seems. They go around the circle, speaking their names, starting with the woman in charge.
"Chloe Albright."
"Ingmar Strömberg."
"Nora Winterbottom."
"Christopher Larkin."
"Archie Brenning."
"Maude Brenning."
"Brahm Aberdeen.
"Richard Pirnach."
"Lucy Calloway."
Before you have time to take in these names, it is clear from the expectant glances that all of you are meant to introduce yourselves as well. But once this is done, the woman whose name is Chloe speaks once more.
"Thank you all for your offering of identity. And thank you, Christopher, for once again allowing us to take our meeting within your lovely home. And of course, we thank all of our intrepid new inductees for joining us tonight. We appreciate that the lateness of the hour will take some... adjustment. As we await the blessing of our Master in his hour of greatest strength, that we might perform our ritual to bear witness to the vile divine, let us take a simple meal together in fellowship. Both to know each other and to speak of more mundane business, as well as to educate our new siblings. Shall we, brothers and sisters?"
All at once, your true mission becomes clear. Speak to the members of this cult, learn more about their identities, rituals, and crimes, and bear witness to this so-called "vile divine", then return to your own time with the information you receive. It's unclear how you'll get back, at the moment... but surely it will make itself apparent when the time comes. Hopefully.
-Say I'm your favorite preacher.-
[The thrilling conclusion to the cult gathering will appear in the comments over the weekend! For now, focus on talking to the cult members, or to each other. Maybe you can even sneak away to look through the house!]
Drelasa Veloth | Morrowind OC | OTA
Perhaps her travels in Morrowind and her confrontation with the Sharmat's worshippers have made diving into matters like this second-nature. When she arrives at the cabin, waiting until she can approach alone, she does so without her mask- she knows that the face she wears is far more recognizable than the one she has been given formed of flesh and blood. The only people who would know her identity with that countenance showing are people she would trust to keep her deepest secrets. Even those who might have seen her aboard the Stag Beetle likely did not understand what they saw, in the utter chaos and confusion that unfolded that day.
The incantation turns her stomach, reminding her far too much of the Sharmat's prayer.
Here in his shrine, that they have forgotten.
Here do we toil, that we might remember.
By night we reclaim, what by day was stolen.
Far from ourselves, he grows ever near to us.
Our eyes once were blinded, now through him do we see.
And when the world shall listen, and when the world shall see, and when the world remembers, that world will cease to be.
The feeling of walking through a dream is at once unnerving and incredibly familiar to her, and she feels coldly at ease when the world settles again.
Introductions
When she's asked to unmask, she does so. Her "face" is an odd cluster of flute-like structures, not quite trunks and not quite tentacles. She could easily be mistaken for a mindflayer, or something tangentially Cthuloid.
As for an alias, well, she already has one- her name from the House of Ashes, an Ald Chimeri monniker that has clung to her heart for more than two hundred years.
"Dagoth Drelsea," she offers, confidently.
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SiebrenSigma doesn't trust himself to speak directly tohis kenaDagoth Drelsea, but he does hover (quite literally) in her vicinity, almost in her orbit a couple times during the night. Her appearance is not startling or off-putting to him, and her mind is something he'll pick, later.Still there's a little game he plays during dinner--every time she's just about to empty her plate, another cluster of grapes or handful of candied nuts or wedge of cheese floats itself over. The blind woman has an endless dinner plate, courtesy of the smiling scholar.
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She plays along, and lets it go on without giving any indication that she’s noticed.
When she made the decision to infiltrate this cult, she hadn’t been sure what to expect, but certainly, she hadn’t expected this.
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After Crichton's reaction he'll refrain from communicating via telepathy for the time being, "An interesting evening so far, isn't it?"
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She’s really working to keep cover here. There’s an odd quality to her voice from what Imbros has heard before. It’s more tranquil, dreamlike, with some reverb behind it.
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If everyone else is getting dinner, than so shall he. Hopefully the ritual is chaotic enough to allow for that if he can't get anyone alone prior. However; if it's a single sacrifice performed in solemn silence that'll be a little more complicated.
His latent psionics slide off of her, as if she's an oilskin in water. So he doesn't try to speak telepathically, but if there's one person who might understand Deep Speech, he presumes it'll be her.
" C̤̼ͪan͆ͣ yǒ̃ͪú͐ un̨̄͋d͊er͑s̳t̠ã̦̅ndͅ t̰hi̮ͥ̈s̻̉ͥ?̦̠̃ " his voice reverberates as if there's multiple people speaking at once, guttural and rough.
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He's not sure what a Daedric Watcher is, and lurkers he didn't think had a language. But maybe he never noticed, animals were so far down on the food chain he paid them little mind. "It is an extra-planar language, so it may be similar. What do they speak in your plane?"
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cw: suicide/sacrifice talk
But back to the matter at present, "This ritual later, do you suppose it's a single sacrifice? Or perhaps murder-suicide? I'm leaning towards them all trying to kill us - but some of them do seem the fanatical kind who would kill themselves to appease a deity."
cw: suicide/sacrifice talk
But she decides to stay on topic, for now.
"I think we can rule out murder-suicide, at least broadly. The leader of this group has quite a lot of interest in becoming a 'divine vessel.' She's taken a lot of interest in my state, certainly. But sacrifices seem perfectly within what this group may be willing to do, and there's not a good way of gauging how many they might want to offer up."
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"That one I like," a subtle gesture towards Ingmar with his tentacles, "a devoted fanatic. Very useful."
He'd like to keep him. And give him exactly what he wants. A shame thats not likely to be possible.
"I do hope it's not ritualistic stabbing with an ornate dagger. I've died to that twice already. With the same dagger even and I don't have it here with me for a third time." He gives a soft bark of laughter, "It would be just fitting if it was here though. That would impress even me."
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"The same dagger? Twice? Was a ritual actually involved in both instances, or was it simply a ritual dagger incidentally?"
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"The first was a ritual. The second was just being stabbed to death, though she likely would have preferred some ritual where I bled out slowly. I think that was more an opportunistic use as I wasn't currently using the dagger because I was trying to deal with a sword through my chest." He doesn't sound nearly as upset about that as he should be.
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Wrap?
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"I have walked in dreams and seen through the world's veneer. It is good to be here with others who seek the wisdom of the dreamer's waking."
Between the incantation and the praise she's now getting, she gets the feeling that if she uses vague enough terms alluding to the Sixth House, she'll sound knowing and mysterious. It's worked before.
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Every word of it is the truth, in some sense.
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cw: self-injury, blood rites, cannibalism
She holds up her hand, revealing long, sharp claws.
"If you were to know his gifts, you would see the truth. We are each a sacrament unto ourselves, and were I to take blade to hand and let the ichor to flow, his own would know and taste the finest wine. We swim in the phlogiston and grow full on a feast unending. Time and blight touch not the divine flesh he grants."
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cw: allusion to slavery
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