EVENT | LANDFALL | VALISHAERA | MISSIONS

[ironwood]

Characters: As listed below
Date: JULY 13-26
Location: Valishaera, various
Situation: Tu Vishan has made landfall on Siaxhi, to explore the Dreaming Watch City of Valishaera. July's missions are part of the landfall, as noted below.
Warnings/Rating: Please indicate content warnings in subject headers as applicable.

→ DREAMSCAPE (INFORMATION)
→ NIGHT'S WOOD (EXPLORATION)
→ INAN (RETRIEVAL)

OOC INFORMATION
Landfall Questions | Approved Item Requests | Pocket Dreaming Signups

CITY OF VALISHAERA
Exploring the Coast | The Arybar | A Ruined City

WITHIN THE TEMPLE
The Monks' Domain | The Labs & Library | Gathering Rooms & Garden | The Pocket Dreaming Realms

LANDFALL MISSIONS
Dreamscape | Night's Wood | Inan | OOC Organization

Comments

NIGHT'S WOOD (EXPLORATION)

[ironwood]

Mission Duration: 2-7 days
Mission Difficulty: ★★★☆☆
Mission Type: Exploration
Projected Plot Impact: The Dan’effrei will gain a great deal of knowledge about the Night’s Wood and Death magic in general based on what the characters find. It may also affect what kind of magic travels back to the Life Realm with the characters..
Proposed Worldbuilding Changes: Nothing noticeable at this time, though the type of magic they bring back may influence future changes.
Mission Restrictions: None.

Characters:
Garrett Hawke (iwannabeadragon)
Hellboy (histruename)
Kaine (unobtainableredemption)
Skulduggery Pleasant (skeletonenigma)
Wan (raavashing)

While in the Night’s Wood, characters may explore to their heart’s content. The place seems to be a normal forest with a light fog covering the ground and an eerie sense of quiet emanating from the stillness. Characters may also encounter (at player discretion) any/all of the three following strange creatures:

Puffs: These little floating clouds, about the size of a watermelon (they, too, vary in size), represent different magics based on their color - which are hard to differentiate in the dark. Though not aggressive, the Lightning Puff will shock characters who might prod it while the Life Puff may soothe troubled wounds. Players are welcome to imagine their own Puffs, within reason (no one should be seriously wounded or die from a Puff and likewise will not suddenly gain powers).

Grymms: These guys, which look a bit like anorexic and misshapen naked mole rats with fly’s wings, also have four long, spindly arms stretching out of their back with sharp stingers. Their legs and main arms have barbs along the sides and equally sharp claws on the ends. Fortunately, they’re no larger than a cat. Unfortunately, they fly.

Lumps: Imagine a tribble/ball of fur with roughly a dozen tentacle-like legs that it uses to barrel at impressive speeds across the forest floor, beady black eyes, and a mouth which takes up a third of its body. When it opens its mouth, the rows of teeth become visible, as do its three monstrous tongues, which can extend up to ten feet and whose saliva causes burning and stinging. Did I mention they’re the size of a warthog? It’s best to avoid them. They’re fast, they use their tongues to wrap their prey, and they bite hard and fast with no desire to let go.

If characters choose to follow the map, they will find the Elder Tree. This tree is an enormous yet thin and spindly aspen tree, nearly glowing with how starkly white it looks in the moonlight. A black, humanoid heart floats, suspended, in golden sap in the center of the tree at roughly eye level; a hole from front to back, now filled with the same sap, makes the heart plain to see. Any character attempting to retrieve or study the heart will find the golden substance easy to pass through and the heart easily removed.

If they disregard the map and decide to explore instead, they may run across the legendary Rhefti. The Rhefti is said to be an old monk who tired of Watching and instead moved to the forest to be alone. What characters find is a small, fairy-like creature who rudely shoves pixie dust at them and then disappears.

Characters may find the Rhefti or the Elder Tree, but not both.

[iwannabeadragon]

Now this is something Hawke loves doing. Exploring something new just to see what he finds. Right now he doesn't have to worry about someone trying to kill him, well, except for what beasts might be lurking somewhere within the forest. Again, that's just all part of the fun!

"A good old fashioned treasure hunt," Hawke says to no one in particular. "Maker I've missed doing this."

Then, without any real sign, Hawke begins blazing a trail forward without even glancing at the map. They can look at that later. At the moment Hawke is more concerned with exploring. Beside him Notch sniffs the ground, eagerly searching for new scents.

[raavashing]

Wan follows for a few steps, trying to catch up with the dog before he realizes that the Hawke fellow wasn't doing what they'd been asked to do. He straightened up and called after him, "That's the wrong way! The map says we should go to the right, not the left!"

[iwannabeadragon]

Hawke stops and turns toward Wan. As he does, Notch stops as well looking back towards Hawke. After calmly strolling back towards the man that called to him, Hawke looks at the map, studies it for a moment, and then nods his head. "Look at that. So it does."

Then, with a smirk, Hawke promptly head to the left. Seeing Hawke on the move again, Notch follows with his mouth open in a doggy grin.

[raavashing]

Wan rolled his eyes and headed to the right. The human looked like he could handle himself, and he had that fine dog-something with him.

He stopped and put a hand on his waist, then called out again, "Hey. Wait. We were asked to follow the map and see if it would work for us. I'm going to do that, but," Wan undid the arm wrap on his left arm, then rolled it up neatly and held it out, "If you get lost while you're out there or want to meet up again, your animal friend should be able to find me by tracking my scent with this."

[iwannabeadragon]

Hawke stops again, turning to face Wan. He almost expects the man to try and call him back again. Then he notices the offering of the man's wrap. "Of course he can. Maker I probably could. It's not like we'll be a hard bunch to find." Seriously, Wan is the only normal looking one among them.

With a subtle nod of his head, Hawke motions Notch towards Wan. The hound trots over and takes several deep sniffs of his wrapping. He then promptly sneezes a few times. Hawke laughs. "I think he might be trying to tell you something."

[raavashing]

Wan's free hand automatically went to Notch's ears to start scratching at them, "He probably smells the birds and rodents that like to hang out in my room. That much feather and fur would send anyone into a sneezing fit."

His eyes turned downward to the dog-something, "Sorry about that. But I'm sure it's a strong enough scent to find me later if you need it. Thank you for putting up with it."

He absolutely was treating Notch like he was another person worthy of respect and politeness. Not that he had experience with Mabaris before, he just treated most animals that way.

[iwannabeadragon]

Notch's tail starts to wag immediately. Oh he likes this. Anyone who starts scratching him and pays attention to him is okay in his book. Unless Hawke gives the command to attack anyway. Then all bets are off. Right now he appears to be perfectly content.

Wan's comment causes Hawke's brow to arch just slightly. "You might want to seriously consider having your room cleaned." Dogs and cats Hawke understands but since when did vermin start becoming pets?

[histruename]

The jungle was rife with animal noises as Wlodzislaw guided him through the dirt-beaten path. Colorful birds chittered in the dense canopy. Smaller creatures scampered through the underbrush as they made their pass, winding through the ancient trees.

The air was thick and humid and not much to Hellboy's liking, but he'd taken the guy up on the offer anyway. Poking around a forest full of superstitions sounded like interesting work.

As they walk, the old monke tells him the old tales surrounding the place, and newer stories of his own travels. Hellboy doesn't say much, but listens intently, trying not to stumble over tangles of tree roots.

At the end of the trail sits an odd stand of trees. A circle of pines, strangely amiss in the leafy landscape. This is as far as Wlodzislaw will go, pressing a map into the hands of the most eager Foreigner, a scruffy-looking kid whose name he didn't catch.

Hellboy thanks the old man, turns, and shoulders his way through the branches.

Immediately the air shifts, and all the jungle noises deaden. Everything is still.

Hellboy squints up at the canopy, where the now-night sky shines darkly between the leaves.

"Nice," he says. He doesn't really mean it.

Fighting over whether or not they should follow a map that might not even lead anywhere doesn't interest him much, so Hellboy scans the woods around them, searching for any sign of movement in the fog. This is about when some talking animal would pop out and start leading him down the rabbit hole, but he figures he wouldn't have that kind of luck this time.

Everyone else seems like they can handle themselves, and at least the kid's got a map. So he just chooses a direction and starts walking. They were asked to explore this place, and that's what he's gonna do.

[unobtainableredemption]

Kaine wasn't interested in this little field trip. Unluckily for him, the old guy didn't seem to take "no" for an answer, and after several small arguments with the man, he found himself with four random people (well three random people and Hawke) in the middle of a goddamn forest in heat that gave Houston a run for its money.

He thought about shrugging off his regular clothes and disappearing back to civilization as the Scarlet Spider, but frankly he liked these clothes and wasn't about to lose them to some godforsaken forest in the middle of nowhere. So he continued forward and prayed that this would be a quick trip.

The entire time the old man was talking everyone's ear off, but Kaine didn't hear a word of it. Okay, maybe that wasn't entirely true, he got the gist, but let's just say he wouldn't pass a pop quiz, either. If the man said anything that sounded like it would remotely get them out of the forest quicker, or if it was something that sounded important in terms of survival, he listened with one ear, but that was about it. Mostly he zoned out by staring at the overgrown plant life. He guessed it was supposed to be beautiful. It just reminded him of how much he preferred the city.

And then it was as though someone turned the lights off.

"They don't call this the Night Forest for nothing...." He muttered as he took a good look around. He was familiar enough with the story of Hansel and Gretel that he figured he should remember what the entrance--and more importantly, the exit--looked like.

Satisfied that he could recognize this place when he saw it again, he looked up in time to see the giant red guy lumber off confidently in some direction. He seemed like as good as anyone to follow--he seemed to know where he was going. Kaine took several large strides to catch up to the... whatever he was, then stayed a few steps behind him as he walked in silence.

Sorry Hellboy, he's not exactly one for conversation.

[histruename]

Mindful of his newfound shadow, Hellboy stalks into the fog, keeping his senses sharp. A twig snaps underfoot, echoing hollowly through the trees along with the fading sounds of chatter behind them.

Up ahead, a steep hill slopes up to what could be a good vantage point, so that's where he's headed.

They climb in silence, the fog thinning with the change in altitude, stopping only when the trail deadends at the cliff's edge of a plunging gully. From what he can see, the forest stretches on for miles in all directions, and so does the fog.

Undeterred, Hellboy fishes out a cigarette from his belt along with a match. He pops the cigarette in his mouth, and drags the match along the stone surface of his massive right hand. It lights with a hiss and the stink of sulfur.

"See anything?" He asks, puffing smoke.

[unobtainableredemption]

"Other than the cancer I'm going to get in ten years?" Kaine quips. Despite his words, he doesn't seem to care that the guy lit up. If anything, he was more concerned about the fact the guy's right arm was apparently made of stone. What the hell was this guy supposed to be, anyway?

Kaine crouches low to the ground and leans over the cliff as he peers at the landscape below them. He isn't too worried about placing himself in such a precarious position--thanks to being a clone of Parker, his balance was second to none, and on the offhanded chance he actually happens to lose his balance, he can easily cling to the surface of the cliff and crawl back up.

"Fog. Fog fog and more fog. Oh wait. And trees. Can't forget the trees."

The idea to get up high for a vantage point was a good one, but with all the fog settling in the gully, it seemed like it's for nothing. There's no way he could see anything through that...

And then he has an idea. Still leaning precariously over the edge, he lifts his hands off the ground and reaches up to hold his temples, as if he had been struck by a sudden migraine. He screws his eyes shut, and reaches out, hoping that they're actually--aha! Spiders. He sees through their eyes, feels what they feel, and just like that, the fog is gone in his minds eye.

Just as he begins to get a good idea of what's beneath the fog, something rushes towards one of the spiders he's reaching out to. The thin hairless... thing rushes towards something just beyond the spider's sight, crushing it underfoot without ever seeing it. The shock (and transmitted fear shot back at him by the spider in question) causes him to fall backwards (luckily away from the cliff) and he loses his connection with all of the others.

"What the fuck was that?!"

[histruename]

Hellboy only spares him a deadpan gaze at the quip, his yellow eyes glowing faintly like the end of his cigarette.

"Gee, thanks," he barks dryly. "And to think I almost forgot about the trees. Smart ass."

Then the kid's grabbing his head like it's about to explode, which is pretty worrying when you're perched dangerously close to a very steep drop, and you've left the rest of the guys back in the woods somewhere.

"...Kid?" He asks hesitantly, reaching out to touch his shoulder to make sure he's okay.

A second before the touch connects, it's like an invisible lance of energy comes out of nowhere, pitching the kid backward into the underbrush.

"Jeez!" Hellboy yells, lunging forward to try to stop the guy from taking a nasty tumble down the hill. He crouches, bracing that giant stone hand against his back. "Don't tell me you're a God damn psychic."

[unobtainableredemption]

Kaine recoils at the sudden feeling of stone against his back, a stinger popping out from beneath his wrist in reflex, receding back when he realizes that it was just the red guy's freaky arm. He forces his breathing to become steady again.

"No. Not exactly. I can... talk to spiders." This guy's older. Hopefully he's not going to assume he's some sort of Disney princess like Aracely did. Hopefully. "One of them just got crushed by some sort of anorexic flying rat."

[raavashing]

Wan was actually pretty interested in exploring the woods as a whole. There was obviously something spiritual and supernatural about the woods even if he didn't know anything about spirits or the supernatural. The immediate turn to night after crossing the threshold of the pines was more than enough to give him a quick shiver of excitement.

However, they'd been given a map and asked to see if following it would prove more fruitful for them than it had been for Wlodzislaw. They'd been entrusted with it. And Wan had been allowed to carry it. It was his very first time holding a map. Even the hunters of the Lion Turtle City hadn't used one when venturing outside the city. They kept any maps very carefully guarded and updated them from memory. That way no spirit could get their hands on them. Not that the spirits cared about maps, but the humans of the city didn't know that.

Though, Wan was just a little more excited about following the map than he probably should have been. And as far as Wan was concerned they could explore after they tried following it to it's end. So after Hawke split off and the red guy started walking wherever, Wan held the map up and to double check their position and headed off into the woods. For a little while it even paralleled Hellboy's path.

The fog parted in front of and around Wan in a not at all odd or suspicious manner. Not. At. All.

[skeletonenigma]

Skulduggery had abandoned his magical disguise the moment he stepped off the turtle's back and onto the continent. Not because he thought it might make anything easier, but because breathing was a habit he'd long since forgotten, and trying to maintain it without constant vigilance was more exhausting than it sounded.

It meant the group targeted for this task happened to include a skeleton in a suit, but since it also happened to include a man who looked as though he'd been carved from red stone, Skulduggery felt absolutely no inclination to pull the disguise back up.

When the group split up past the circle of pines, he found himself following Wan. It had less to do with the map, he suspected, and more to do with keeping their groups as small and unobtrusive as possible. It probably also had something to do with the way the mist was passing Wan by, but Skulduggery had never been one to count curiosity as a reason for doing things. Curiosity, for him, was a static mode of existence. He was more surprised when he wasn't curious about something.

"Is the map confusing you yet?" he asked after a few moments of walking silently through the woods.

[raavashing]

Wan glanced back at Skullduggery and could not hide his very visible and exaggerated minor freak-out about it being the walking skeleton that had chosen to follow him. Whatever else this world threw at him, that was the one thing that he could just not get over. Dead things should stay dead. Skeletons should not be up and walking around wearing well-tailored clothes and talking to other people.

Wan had done his best to ignore the fact that the skeleton had been pulled into the whole affair by Wlodzislaw and focus on the task. He'd even forgotten for a moment that there was a walking, talking, skeleton. That was no longer an option.

"N-no," he finally managed to get out as he turned his head to face forward again, his spine very straight and shoulders hunched up as his gait stiffened. Whatever had been parting the fog seemed to have decided to stop and the light grey clouds rolled lazily back in toward the two. "Not at all."

[skeletonenigma]

Skulduggery nodded, seemingly unaware of the discomfort. But then again, he was always seemingly unaware of the discomfort. For a man as observant as he was, he had to be unnaturally oblivious wherever his own existence was concerned. "Then we're either succeeding, or we haven't reached the point where it stops working."

When the fog started acting more like natural fog again, Skulduggery took over, raising one hand to manipulate both the moisture and the air currents in front of them. It made the fog part in a very natural manner, as though the rising sun was burning it out of their path. The only problem was that there was no sun.

"Personally," he added, "I hope we're succeeding. It would be much more satisfying. Was it you doing this earlier?"

[raavashing]

Wan felt that change in the air and water as the fog 'burned' away around them and ahead of them. It was a subtle shift that only someone who was attuned to the elements would likely be able to feel. And while Wan wasn't as practiced with the four at such a fine level, he certainly could tell when the natural clouds in his immediate surroundings were being manipulated.

His steps slowed until he stopped, eyes on the fog. They remained there, forward, because looking at a walking, talking, skeleton was not something he really wanted to have to do again. But he did try to be otherwise polite when he responded, "It was, yes. You control the power of the elements, too?"

[skeletonenigma]

He'd suspected, but there was still something very satisfying about having one's suspicions confirmed. It paved the way for a conversation, and it would hopefully teach Skulduggery something new about the plethora of alternate dimensions which apparently existed. Besides, it ruled out the possibility of anything else moving around in or manipulating the mist, and in a place like a forest that was stuck in eternal darkness, being properly alone was a good thing.

"Manipulate," he corrected. Wan's phrasing was enough to tell Skulduggery that the way each of their powers worked was very different. "I can influence them, not control them. I can't, for example, summon water where there isn't any."

It was just that water existed practically everywhere in some form or other. And that was a fact which most Elementals in Skulduggery's world tended to forget.

THE HEART OF THE FOREST

[raavashing]

Wan stood staring at the tree with the heart in it for a long moment before glancing back down at the map. This was where it seemed to lead. The whole scene before him made him feel uneasy.

"We found where the map leads," he said in a slow, hesitant voice. "I think we should go back and tell Wlodzislaw where it leads and be done with this place. Leave it alone."

[skeletonenigma]

"By all accounts, we're the first to make it this far," Skulduggery said with a nod. "The map works for us. That could mean there is something we're meant to do here."

He watched the pulsating heart for a moment, and then gave another nod, followed by a step back. "It could also simply mean the map likes us, and we'd be better off doing nothing. In my experience, killing apparently sentient trees without just cause will only come back to bite you."

[raavashing]

"I don't want to kill it," Wan shook his head even as he approached the tree for a closer look, his hand reaching up to touch the trunk just under the hole with the heart. "I don't know why that's your first thought, and I don't think I want to. But I'm not entirely sure the tree is um, sentient? What does that mean anyway? Does it have to do with rocks?"

Sediment, sentient, they sounded really close, okay.

"Wlodzislaw might ask us what this looks like, though, so I want make sure I can remember this."

[skeletonenigma]

"No," Skulduggery said with a chuckle. "Sediment is the deposition of rocks and soil. Sentience has more to do with being capable of rational thought or emotion. I try to avoid breaking organic things which might be sentient - at least, not without asking first."

In light of that thought, Skulduggery stepped forward and carefully touched the bark of the tree with two fingers. "Are you alive?" he asked. "And, if so, would you have any issue with us removing what looks like your heart?"

[raavashing]

"I would have issue with you removing the heart even if it doesn't," Wan muttered not-so-quietly as he waited for an answer. When enough time had passed that he believed none would be forthcoming, he set a hand to his hip and shrugged.

"I don't think it's sentient in the way you and I are. But I also don't think taking the heart out is a good idea regardless. It's there for a reason and for all we know, it's keeping the tree and the whole forest alive and healthy."