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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
He scratches at the back of his head. "The cultists are all zealots so I get their angle, some of them might be getting power or money out of it, sure. The thing they summoned, I don't know, maybe it had to come and it's got less of a choice than we think, or maybe it's what started all this and is pulling the strings. Even so...the barrier... it doesn't make sense to me. Why trap everything in? What does that accomplish? Whose plan does that serve?"
no subject
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Crichton goes very still, his mind turning what Cassandra's just said up and over, checking all the angles. His frown deepens.
"Frell, Cass that... that makes the most sense. Things have been happening in phases this whole time, right? They needed a lot of energy to pull off what they did in that chamber. Necromancy takes a lot of juice, doesn't it? And if that was just phase one... What if this profane playground is actually more like a battery on the charger?"
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She meets his eyes, not saying it aloud: the two of them -- and many others here -- know of at least one situation in which repeatedly bringing the dead back to life somehow yielded more energy than it cost.
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He knows, even before their eyes meet, that they're both thinking along the same lines. If history could stop repeating itself just this once, please?
"I think it's starting to make more sense why so many of us showed up here."
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(He knows her well enough by now to recognize that tone for what it is: an armor against panic.)
good place to start to wrap?
He reaches for her to come closer, so he can get an arm around her shoulder. "Whatever happens, I've got you. We can do this."
yep!
"I'm with you. They've not had us to deal with before."