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ph_logs2024-07-07 02:14 pm
[Cult Follow-Up] Well, That Was Weird
Violence with religious overtones, cult activities, gore featuring eye trauma and glass shards.
Well, That Was Weird
Once the chaos of combat ends, the members of the Cult of Nyarlathotep stand tense for a long moment before letting out sighs of relief. The dead are dragged aside and piled against the wall while Chloe sits on the stairs and picks glass out of her wounded face with her bare fingers. Nora Winterbottom brings her a few towels from Larkin's bathroom, much to the mayor's dismay.
"What a waste of blood," Lucy muses, tutting.
Pirnach moves toward the center of the room, rubbing his hands together, eyebrows raised, releasing a stressed breath loosely. "What a way to end a party, huh? Well, it's a shame our initiation ceremony went that way, but we appreciate the patience for the rest of you. Now that we're done dealing with those interlopers, let's say we get this show on the road for real, eh?"
Looking back to Chloe, Pirnach arches a brow and gestures vaguely and broadly at the room. She waves him off.
"Yes, fine, you do it." Another chunk of crystal glass hits the floor with a clink.
Ingmar brings Pirnach the book from the altar. The thinner, paler man is now shirtless, revealing a massive web of tattoos forming a collar around his neck and extending down over his shoulders, back and chest. He is covered in ceremonial designs, runes and sigils. He wears the locket brought here by Archie and Maude Brenning, the wedding locket which belongs to Linette, and stands in the center of the circle while the rest of the cultists go around to the new initiates. Pirnach speaks once more, clearly able to translate the alien text on the page with little trouble.
"O Bloody Tongue and Caliban Storm, we summon you. Up from the ageless depths of the starless void, we call upon you. We speak the words with blood on our tongues, O Soul and Messenger, that you might bear your Message unto these bodies yet uncorrupted by the vile divine. As they offer their minds and their flesh to you, Dark King, may your greatness unfurl within them, crawling up their veins like venom and spilling forth from their mouths as black bile and red death, as foul as your creeping mist upon the minds of the unworthy. Welcome them into your many obsidian and splendid arms, let their bones decorate your wicked teeth, their meat hot on your fetid breath, and let us be venerated one and all for this feast which shall empower you to wrap your broken lips around this blighted land."
As the words carry on, the final confirmation that this was never an initiation clicks into place. But there is nowhere to run now. Your body feels frozen, your feet rooted to the spot. You feel as stiff as a body in a casket, and can almost feel invisible vines coiling around you from below, immobilizing you in their embrace. Against your will, your eyes train on the circle below as one by one the cultists come around the room with blades and slice the throats of everyone who remains.
As you bleed out, you manage to have enough awareness about you to witness the last bit of the ritual. Sacrifices exsanguinating, blood flows to the center of the room in uncanny little rivers not guided by gravity and soak into the stone circle like a sponge, flowing through its carvings and up around Ingmar's bare feet. He is breathing heavily, almost panicking, as the blood climbs up his chest and neck and into his mouth. By the time he feels the desire to scream, he no longer can.
"Father of Bats, let the blood of these sacrifices serve as a vehicle for your corruption as we create an anchor with which to prepare your greatest sacrifice," Pirnach continues reading. "Once your venom permeates her pitiable flesh, her tears and her screams will stain the ground and claim this rock in your name! We name her conduit, we name her Linette! Ia, Nyarlathotep!"
Your vision swims as your own choked gurgles drown out any further words. You are left with a blurry vision of the stone hoop in the center of the room filling with black pooling liquid from which dark tendrils reach out for Ingmar... before everything fades away.
When you come to, you are back in the forest where the cabins are now dilapidated once more. You are a ghost now, with a day to discuss with your companions what you just witnessed. Once dawn comes the following morning, you will wake in the woods, strewn about the perimeter of the cabins, and you will be able to return home with a vision of the strange and morbid events which helped to put the barrier into place.
no subject
"This place is nice and all but I've already got a new home to get back to. Just be glad that this time around there actually is a chance to get back. Try having a little patience, Squidward."
(The audacity of John-Fucking-Crichton telling someone else to have some patience...)
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He's debating if he wants to relive that experience without a cleric around to heal him.
"You're one to talk of patience when you've tried to start fights approximately every hour."
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"Only with people who deserve it," Crichton pouts.
"But, since you were being so observant, go ahead and tell me what you learned from watching?"
cw: child sacrifice mention
"Many things. We know that Linette is their conduit, but that her death needs to take some amount of preparation. Meaning she's not just a simple sacrifice like we were. We're clearly the power source that started things, our energies to empower Nyarlathotep in order to start the process and claim the island and raise the barrier. But I think this was also to give him a human host body to use in order to infect Linette with... something. When your venom permeates her flesh.... So perhaps she's the kind of sacrifice that needs to be inducted and trained, like cultures that raise children to be sacrificed at a certain age." He drifts off in thought about that for a moment, then seems to come back to the present. "In any case, a human host, which I think is Ingmar so he's likely lost forever."
Alas. At least they both had a good time before dying.
Re: cw: child sacrifice mention
"If you're right about that, then is there a chance that one of the people walking around in this village right now could still be Old Gnarly himself in the flesh?"
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"Depends on how long ago that was. Avatars of gods tend to not last long, their bodies fall apart as mortals aren't made for that. And I haven't seen anyone looking like a lich lately. But he could have taken a new host, maybe each member of the cult one by one and that's why there's none of them left."
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"You sound like you're just a little bit too familiar with the whole process." Crichton's eyes narrow on Imbros, like he's trying to read his intentions. But he can't read minds so it's mostly just a dirty look for the sake of it.
"Those zealots do seem like the type. All right, fine. So we probably don't have to worry about running into a possessed body. That's good news. What else can you tell me?"
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Oh that's a good idea now that he's said it out loud; could they depower a god? That would be amazing. Imbros is more powerful than some gods, they should be made aware of that at every opportunity.
"Someone benefited from the barrier, and since those at the ritual now seem to be dead, or perhaps missing, it might have been someone else. Someone gave them the idea, and I haven't seen a lot of black tendril godly influence around so it's possible Nyarlathotep moved on from here and abandoned it." He runs his fingers through his tentacles, thinking hard about that. "Maybe there's a temple to him."
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Red flags are going up, oh yes they are. Note to self, Crichton, do not share any of the symbols you remembers seeing on the floor with this guy.
"There's always a bigger fish." At least they can agree on that. "But, maybe you're right about the temple. That chamber we were all in didn't look like it was set up overnight. It might still be here somewhere."
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Actually he has a theory about that too, "Unless they did and condoned it. The Mayor didn't seem likely to keep a secret when drunk. So either they hid this completely, or operated in the open."
Granted he's basing this off his world and that can cause some blind spots, "How would this be achieved in your realm?"
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"Blood is my guess too. Seems like they need a lot of it because that one bitch with the glass eye was complaining about the waste."
That's a good question, actually. How did they get away with it for so long? How could they kill that frequently and have no one question it? Unless...they did and the reports were quietly shuffled away in a box under the desk of some corrupt enforcer?
"In my realm? Well... that's not easy to answer because that's gonna depend on the planet. But, taking the simple route? I'd say money. Pay people enough and they can forget a lot of things."
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Surprisingly money didn't actually occur to him, having never engaged in commerce before he often forgets that's a major part of everyone else's life.
"Accepting that money puts them on the short list of those who will be sacrificed next. Surely they would know that?"
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"Would they, though? Those cultists were planning on killing us the whole time but they still expected us to think otherwise. I'm guessing that wasn't the first time. Maybe they lured people in with the promise of more, or maybe they just chose the most desperate people. Could even be both. Hell, if the barrier wasn't up yet, it wouldn't be so hard to make it seem like a few people, here and there, skipped town to the mainland."
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Crichton raises a good point, which is obnoxious to admit, "I wonder why they bothered with that ruse. It was clear from the beginning that it was going to be some sort of death ritual, but maybe the betrayal might shock newcomers into a heightened state of emotion which does make their deaths far more satisfying. But if they were willing to join a death cult they would be willing to die anyway so it seems it wouldn't make a difference."
He sighs, there's no real answers here, especially with both them and the cultists being very dead.
"I wonder if we can timeskip into the same scenario again. Relive it a second time knowing what to look for..."
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"Hold on, hold on. Time skip? Are you suggesting that as something you can do?"
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New sub-mysteries keep washing ashore the more Imbros thinks about this.
1/3
2/3
The squid can time travel? With his... cephalopoid or whatever he called it? Like... casually? Wait. Wait. Squidward can also dimension hop?
[System not responding...]
3/3
...]
"Do you have any idea how dangerous that is?!?"
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And then Crichton speaks and while the tension leaves him, he's still just as confused.
"Which part? The Planeshifting? We don't have to walk through it if it's going to drop us into the center of a volcano or somesuch." He scoffs, but the more he thinks about it, he probably should have tried this when he first showed up. "Let's see if it even works here."
Imbros turns to the side, starting to draw glowing purple sigils with a clawed finger. They hang in mid-air, crackling with raw arcane power, the more he draws the brighter they shine, connecting to each other like constellations as he works his way counter-clockwise around what would eventually be a portal to another plane.
no subject
But, as Imbros begins to draw the sigils, his jaw drops open and all he can make himself do is watch. That's... not a wormhole. But it IS doing something. Dammit if a part of him doesn't want to start taking notes.
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He finishes the outer ring, drawing a simple circle in the middle with the sharp nail at the end of his fingertip. The magical energy abruptly cuts out as he places his palm flat in the center, his muscles reacting as if there's something solid where he's touching even though it looks transparent. Nothing happens for a second and then all the light that's coalesced under his hand shoots out to spiral around the symbols and the space in the middle seems to fill with a flat sheet of shimmering mercury. He pulls his hand back and gestures again and the mirrored plane goes still then starts to flash images of other places interspersed with what seems to be static.
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As the light spirals out before his eyes, Crichton goes completely quiet, gaping in amazement. But that slowly turns to horror as the portal flashes new scenes over and over.
"Uh... is it supposed to be doing that?"
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Hmm.
"No. No it is not." It keeps cycling, showing places both familiar (is that the River Walker?) and unknown. But it never settles on any particular place. "It should open to another plane, but it... cannot seem to find one perhaps? Or there isn't a plane open to us. Then again maybe the spell doesn't recognize me as a viable target because I was killed. Do I need a special necromatic spell since I'm currently dead? Maybe..."
He will keep theorizing for the rest of their ghost time if Crichton doesn't stop him.
no subject
"You can't be the only guy here that knows a spell like this."
(no subject)
good to wrap this one
Wrap!