Event Log: April, Tangled Terrors Part 1

[faileas]

Event Log: April, Tangled Terrors Part One

I. A Spreading Problem The request for help from the nameless city Underground comes at the beginning of the month through intermediaries - characters who have maintained good relationships with the city and its leader, or Wilders posted at the Northern Outpost. They have good reason to speak up. It starts within the herds of velvet wormipedes, horse-sized or larger worms that serve as food, pets, and mounts, making them an important part of survival underground. It was the farmers who first noticed it, and they theorized that it was caught and started to spread when they took the worm herds out to graze in an outer cavern. What seemed to be a new disease causing oily blackened skin and various mutations has been confirmed to be Cwyld, but the veil of protective moss that surrounds and protects the city did not react the way it normally does to the infected (by gobbling them up upon entry), letting them pass with little more than a shudder of recoiling movement. By now, they’ve isolated any infected members of the herd to the grazing cavern outside the city or put them down outright and burned the bodies, but as the days pass, the phenomenon grows only more worrying. Some proactive Mirrorbound who answered the initial call to investigate will have a head-start on the information, but the Arachne leader of the Underground, the Matriarch, is upfront about what they know so far. She holds a small meeting with would-be helpers where she lets them know that her Witches from the Academy were out in the tunnels branching off the grazing cavern within the last couple of weeks, practicing the method of leyline clearing that the Mirrorbound taught them some time ago to try and drive the Cwyld back. Their efforts were abandoned when the Witches’ magic malfunctioned and caused backlash, and their Monster guards with keener hearing started to pick up on a peculiar throbbing or pulsing sound from distantly within the walls. Any who are willing to lend a hand and investigate are offered whatever supplies they request, shelter within the City when they need to return to rest, and the assistance of any of their Witches and warriors as needed. The Matriarch thinks that whatever they find out there may be useful - or dreadful - knowledge for both their peoples. They want to know what was preventing the leyline from being cleared, and what this infection or disease is that is affecting wildlife and their own herds - curing it will eventually be a priority, but fact-finding has to come first.

II. Danger in the Deep (Underground) Branching out from the place that the worm herd were grazing when the infection set in, it becomes more clear that the situation is dire. This is not a normal, relatively slow-moving Cwyld infection, but something stronger and more sinister that has sunk its claws deep into the branching leylines. An oily black substance runs through the stone walls and floor of the tunnels in thick veins, dripping slowly in dark streaks, and the air in the tunnels feels heavier than usual. Far from showing any signs of the Matriarch’s people trying to clear the leyline, it feels even worse, more severely tainted. This only seems more likely when you start to encounter wildlife bearing the same kind of infection as the worms, oily black patches on their skin, aggression that exceeds the norm for their species. Bats and blind, white wasps and huge, glittering beetles have grown even bigger, and begun to mutate in unusual, grotesque ways. They’ll need to be put down - there is no getting past them peacefully, and no saving these creatures. Even if you don’t kill them, the infection will, as you’ll find - farther along, you start to find mutated, infected corpses as well, like oily smears on the stone and barely recognizable. And then there’s the sound, discordant in the quiet of the Underground. It’s difficult to hear at first, faint, but farther along when you get close to the walls, a distant, steady pulsing sound seems to chill you right down to your bones, as if the walls have a heartbeat of their own. None of the natives have ever heard it before, and if you have any citizens of the Underground in your search party, many of them with stronger senses are visibly scared, growing paranoid and agitated as time passes. Tracking the leylines, or the sound of the pulsing in the walls, will take several days of exploration, deeper into the tunnels than the natives remember venturing before, and those days will be plagued with danger and unrest. Keep in touch with your fellows in town as well, though Watch reception will be spotty - it will become clear that this is no longer just an Underground problem. a. Leyline Clearing It seems like a good idea at first to try and clear some part of the infected leylines, if only to cut the infection off from traveling further, as it uses the pathways of natural magic that cut through the earth like a highway to cover more ground quicker. It seems to move with each pulse in the walls, creeping a little farther along. The leyline in the Silent Forest outside the Northern Outpost, set on a path to healing last year, seems like child’s play in comparison to this herculean effort, though. Be careful, Witches. Even just one push of your magic into this infected leyline triggers a backlash that rings in your ears and wracks your body with soul-deep pain. Those who are un-Bonded, who have no Monster partner to help cushion the impact, feel it worse than those who are Bonded. But those who are Bonded, their partners can feel the pain too - lessened, more spread out over the two or three or four of you, but still intense. Even without touching the walls or the floor, the infection can spread through your magic, into you, your Bonded, and those around you if you cast the spell as a group. b. Infection Rather than settling into the body at first, this Cwyld settles into your magic, your soul, your innate connection with the world, whether you’re Witch or Monster. It’s harder to guard against it, even by taking the usual precautions. The side-effects are terrible; while the Mirrorbound in Aefenglom feel it too, all those symptoms are much stronger down here closer to the source. Trying to use your magic as a Witch (and sometimes your less physical abilities as a Monster) results in backlash, misfiring, or even a dangerous drain in energy. Reaching for one’s magic might be as natural as breathing for most Witches, but now it feels like trying to reach through a thick fog, sticky and cloying. Spells go awry, coming out as the opposite effect from the caster’s intention, or a completely different, unforeseen result (think: Wild Magic in D&D). Sometimes you can’t pull on your magic or abilities at all, and sometimes you wildly misjudge how much force to use, resulting in danger for those around you, especially in these tight, underground spaces. Interacting too much or too often with the tainted magic causes pain and fatigue at the very least, and for some even more uncomfortable effects, such as numbness of the extremities, temporary blindness, nausea or full unconsciousness. These effects are much more prominent in Witches, especially those un-Bonded, though some Monsters may feel similar, lesser effects on some of their abilities. Monsters are not immune, especially growing closer to the sinister source. Those who are Bonded to Witches can feel the strain the tainted magic puts on them, and those who aren’t, or whose Bonds aren’t strong, find that they feel the tainted pulse of the heartbeat in the walls acutely, driving them to paranoia, fear, rage, or even ferality. All Monsters on this mission will find that they’re prone to nightmares when they do try to catch some rest - the content of the nightmares varies depending on the person, but they’re all unsettling, and they all feature prominently the image of a blackened tree, the trunk bearing faces frozen in masks of horror, and the picture of gnarled roots reaching down, down, down. c. Tangled Ties As the Cwyld in the walls grows more prominent, taking on an appearance like thick, oily, veiny roots, tangled and twisted, so too does the Cwyld work to tangle the ties that bind you. Those who don’t, or can’t, keep their Bonded in close physical proximity may find that their Bond feels weaker, or perhaps it begins to only transmit negative emotions like pain or fear. They may find their Bonds shifting, or even snapping, tangling or twisting in ways they shouldn’t. All of a sudden, you might even find yourself with a completely different Bond, being drawn to a stranger or an acquaintance you certainly weren’t Bonded to before. If you didn’t have a Bond already, you might find yourself with one (or more) now - or a twisted approximation of one, as anyone who experiences this will soon find out that the magic isn’t quite what it’s supposed to be. It can’t be nullified as usual, broken off or switched back intentionally (though some days it might end up snapping to someone else instead), and down here, you only have each other, your Underground hosts, and a spotty Watch connection for help. All the infected wildlife seems to die out, as days later, your parties find their way close to the source of the pulsing in the walls. An entrance hewn out of the stone opens into what feels like a truly massive cavern, judging from the change in the airflow. The Cwyld is thick here, concentrated in what seem to be rough, blackened roots all in a tangle like a thick curtain. You can hear the heartbeat-like sound louder now, a steady thump-thump, thump-thump. Whatever lies in wait past that curtain of roots, you know in your gut that once you enter, you won’t be able to leave until the problem is dealt with. Resupply, recruit help, try to sort the snarled threads of your Bonds - it’s going to be rough from here.

III. Reaching Tendrils (Aefenglom, Northern Outpost) The Matriarch’s briefing is, soon after it’s given, relayed to the Coven and then to the rest of the Mirrorbound, through some of the Wilders or perhaps through other characters themselves. That, at least, is a good thing, to provide some kind of warning for what happens next. In far worse news, the effects of the malaffected leylines are not limited to the tunnels of the Underground, or even the nearby Northern Outpost. Somehow, just a few days after things take a worse turn down below and surrounding the Outpost, they reach as far as the city. The effects of the infected leyline overflow like a burst dam, tainted magic spilling out from the Cwyld-strangled Underground caverns and through their connected, invisible tributaries beneath the earth, stretching miles outward with each passing day. The Northern Outpost and the Wilde around it, being closest, are affected first, and it hits the northernmost parts of Aefenglom by the 10th of the month - proving just how interconnected completely unrelated places can be on Geardagas. a. Snarled Magics Wilder, Coven, and Mirrorbound Witches alike, anyone who needs to draw on the power of the world’s magic, find it feeling increasingly resistant and… unpleasant. Here too, Witches find that reaching for their magic is like battling through sticky, dark fog. It becomes more and more difficult to gauge how much magic is needed even for the simplest of spells: sometimes, you might try to cast only to have nothing at all happen, and other times, the magic bursts forth many times more powerful than intended, causing a dangerous drain on the caster and all sorts of hazards for people and property caught in the unpredictable outburst. Spells go awry, coming out as the opposite effect from the caster’s intention, or a completely different, unforeseen result (think: Wild Magic in D&D). Those with more experience or inordinate willpower may be able to push through, especially if they work together to cast group spells instead, but not without consequence; interacting too much or too often with the tainted magic causes pain and fatigue at the very least, and for some even more uncomfortable effects, such as numbness of the extremities, temporary blindness, nausea or full unconsciousness. Of course, one could simply choose not to use any magic, but how long can a Witch last without casting even a little bit? For those with Bonds, matters are even worse; a Witch is always expending some minor magical power toward their Bonded, after all. In some cases, the connection doesn’t respond well, causing paranoid and unhappy feelings, vivid shared nightmares or increased agitation, among other similar emotional side effects. b. Twisted Bonds Bonded pairs from the Underground all the way to Aefenglom will also feel the instability in their Bond increasing over the next couple of weeks, making it difficult to feel one another’s presence as normal. If the Bond isn’t treated with care and partners aren’t in close physical proximity often enough, the strain is even greater. In some rare cases, it might even… snap and shift, suddenly getting tangled up or twisted, your strings all snarled in the wrong ways. All of a sudden, you might even find yourself with a completely different Bond, being drawn to a stranger or an acquaintance you certainly weren’t Bonded to before. If you didn’t have a Bond already, you might find yourself with one (or more) now - or a twisted approximation of one, as anyone who experiences this will soon find out that the magic isn’t quite what it’s supposed to be. It can’t be nullified as usual, broken off or switched back intentionally (though some days it might end up snapping to someone else instead), and even the Coven’s most experienced Witches have no answers as to why. While use of magic is unpredictable for most, if not all, Witches, the Bond problems, however, seem to be affecting only the Mirrorbound. Seek out your new Bonded and make the best of it for now: you’re going to need each other’s support, especially if you’re a Witch unable to cast normally while the groups of volunteers in the Underground work tirelessly to make things right. Despite the onslaught of unstable magic and unstable Bonds, of unsettling feeling and a pervasive sense of wrongness, it's up to you to hold down the home front, helping where you can as the magical mishaps rack up and raiding the libraries of the Coven and Undermael College for research, no matter how it all starts to wear on you.

Welcome to Tangled Terrors, Part One! Proving that the settlements of Geardagas are a little more connected than they seem on the surface... This is just the first half of the event, but the negative effects on using magic and on Bonds will be present until after Part Two, when the problem is dealt with. These are optional, opt-in effects except for the difficulty in using magic if you're a Witch - and you can go more mild with that if you'd like, but it will be part of life for most of the month.

If you'd like to find some tainted Bonds to tangle with, we've provided a plotting header here! You can change up Bonds as often and as unexpectedly as you'd like. As always, direct your event-related questions here! And finally, the event plotting post is over here!

Part Two of this event will go up on the 17th, and will be an Underground locale-only event (meaning there will not be an Aef-focused prompt), dealing with the root of the newly-woken issue that plagues the leyline running between the Underground and Aefenglom.

Comments

[themogget]

I can walk.

[He will have to admit fairly soon that he can't walk. In fact he can barely stand up. If he's going to keep walking he's going to have to let go of maintaining this form and he's not ready to do that just yet.

Who knows what kind of effect it would have if he released that much magic at once?

He grimaces, drawing in a hissing breath through his teeth.]

Ah... no I can't.

[towards_okeanos]

My offer stands.

[As soon as he says that it sounds hopelessly condescending in his ears. So he corrects himself before the other has the chance to respond.]

I'm a warrior, my friend. I've been on both sides enough times to know there's no shame in being wounded. Or asking for help if one is.

[To be fair, he probably was the one being carried on the stretchers more often than doing the carrying. He always found it almost impossible not to get carried away in battle, and has many scars to prove it. After this is all over, he'll have a few more.]

[themogget]

[He doesn't answer one way or the other at first, though it's not for lack of wanting to but more that he's almost sure that if he opens his mouth he's not going to be able to. He grimaces again, and is forced to admit to himself that the two of them aren't going to get anywhere if he doesn't accept the offer.

Right now, he doesn't trust his own magic enough to shift back into his usual form, which would undoubtedly make it easier.]

Fine.

[He sighs.]

I accept your offer.

[towards_okeanos]

[There's one thing Iskandar can count on even when both his magic and his sense of direction has failed him, his strength. This rarely falters.

Still, when Mogget finds himself lifted from the ground almost effortlessly, Iskandar does not pick him as one would pick up a child. Instead, he flings him over his shoulders, so he's still facing forward but doesn't need to use any force of his own to hold in place.]

Point me in the right direction, and I'll get us out of here.

[Or at least the tunnels. The Underground city seems to be marginally more bearable. Though he truly doesn't know what is the situation there now.]

[themogget]

[Despite Mogget's tendency to jump up on people's shoulders uninvited while he's a cat, this is not a position that he finds any dignity in.

Still, he doesn't utter much more than a grumble of complaint at it before he extends one slim white finger and points down the tunnel in front of them.]

That way. [He sighs.] What should I call you, since we seem to be getting so closely acquainted.

[towards_okeanos]

[When his eyes follow the direction pointed by the other man's finger - is he truly that pale or is this too the effect of the underground magic playing tricks on him - Iskandar tries not to think how much the tunnel seems to possess a life of its own winding and swerving; the very walls of it pulsating with distance echo of monstrous heartbeat.

Instead, he just starts walking. One step at a time. This single strategy has never failed him. It will not fail him now.]

I'm Iskandar.

[Basileus of Macedon, Hegemon of Panhellenic League, Shahanshah of Persia, Pharaoh of Egypt, Lord of Asia... none of it matters now...and he doesn't even know where the urge to add all those long obsolete titles to his name came from.]

[themogget]

[On the surface, under the sunlight, Mogget's skin almost glows white while he's in this shape. Down here, it has the effect of looking slightly sickly, but still certainly 'that pale' - paper white.]

Iskandar. I'd say it was a pleasure, but given the circumstances I think I'll decline for the moment. You can call me Mogget.

[Once many things himself, though now only several. Or perhaps only one in this strange place where he can no longer access the power that would give him another shape... and another name, were he willing to tell it.

So far, no one knows him as anything but simply 'Mogget'.]

This is the last time I make the mistake of trying to do anything to help the Coven.

[towards_okeanos]

Then so I shall call you.

[A man has the right to use whatever name he feels suits his person best. Maybe that's why he doesn't use his name in its original, Greek form, but prefers the Persian one instead? There were many Alexanders, at least one of them was a king as well, but only one Iskandar.

Iskandar laughs. Down here, in the sickly air of the tunnels, it sounds closer to a dry cough, but it's a laughter still.]

It is not Coven that we are helping, but the queen of the Underground city. The Matriarch as they call her here. I had little love for the Underground though, and came mostly out of curiosity. This whole mess will hardly make me change my mind.

[themogget]

[He has to wonder just what could prompt the man to want to laugh under these circumstances, but then humans could often act strangely under stress and it wouldn't be the first time he'd seen one of them have a somewhat inappropriate reaction.

His small hand digs slightly into Iskandar's shoulder as he tries to arrange himself a little more comfortably (needing to breathe and all - annoying), and he can feel the hum of the man's voice through his body while he speaks.]

I have heard some other worlds have a saying about curiosity and how it might be harmful for your health. I doubt they know just how right they are.