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childrenofbahamutlogs2025-02-01 12:10 pm
diceofthegods) wrote in childrenofbahamutlogs2025-02-01 12:10 pm
EVENT #2: BRAIN BOGGLING
A CRASH IN THE NIGHT
In the dark hours of a snowy early morning, a sudden BOOM can be heard all across Town. It is swiftly followed by sounds of warping metal and then a screeching crash. Curious, albeit groggy, residents emerge only to find a smoking wreck just a mile outside of Town.
The strange craft appears to be almost nautiloid in shape with wrenched, broken tendrils streaming out the opening.
Much of it is metal although some of it almost seems... organic.
Those who with to get a closer look will be met by Charlie and Dimitri who are already on the job. They request curious onlookers keep their distance since this craft is, without a doubt, tremendously dangerous.
Later in the day, there appears to be an outfit of officials coming from the west to investigate and clean up the wreckage. Thankfully(?), you will all find out soon enough what's going on.
The strange craft appears to be almost nautiloid in shape with wrenched, broken tendrils streaming out the opening.
Much of it is metal although some of it almost seems... organic.
Those who with to get a closer look will be met by Charlie and Dimitri who are already on the job. They request curious onlookers keep their distance since this craft is, without a doubt, tremendously dangerous.
Later in the day, there appears to be an outfit of officials coming from the west to investigate and clean up the wreckage. Thankfully(?), you will all find out soon enough what's going on.
INVESTIGATION & PROTECTION
Deathcard Cabin by Jonah Senzel
4:07 / 13:06
▶︎
From the Inscryption OST: A unique and haunting sound paired with a unique and haunting game.
Charlie reports to the citizens of Town that an Illithid cargo transport. The pilot did not survive the crash, but they appeared to be transporting some kind of new breed of Intellect Devourers.
"We do not yet know what this new breed is capable of, but..."
Charlie does give everyone a rundown of what an Illithid and what an Intellect Devourer is, what they are capable of, and a keen warning to tread lightly. Many dead ones were discovered in the cargo but several of the enclosures were damaged in the crash and the likelihood of escapees is high.
Charlie reiterates: These creatures are to be killed on sight, or contained until someone can kill it. If you are not confident in your combat abilities, please remain in your homes as much as possible and seal all openings to your dwelling. Those who are capable though are urged to begin patrols of Town alongside Slayd, Dimitri and himself to ensure that Town and the surrounding areas are safe.
Please travel in pairs or groups, do not be alone! Attack from a distance when possible. Hoshiko will offer her assistance as a markswoman as well by picking off any Intellect Devourers from a distance that she can for those that are forced to travel alone. (Don't worry about any jokes she makes of her service not being cheap though. Charlie wouldn't actually let her charge you anything.)
Unfortunately, not even they can predict the blizzard that rolls through Town in the midst of all this. If you happen to see anything skittering through the snow, don't panic too much. It could just be a tiny woodland creature looking for a warm burrow to hide away in!
At least you hope it is.
"We do not yet know what this new breed is capable of, but..."
Charlie does give everyone a rundown of what an Illithid and what an Intellect Devourer is, what they are capable of, and a keen warning to tread lightly. Many dead ones were discovered in the cargo but several of the enclosures were damaged in the crash and the likelihood of escapees is high.
Charlie reiterates: These creatures are to be killed on sight, or contained until someone can kill it. If you are not confident in your combat abilities, please remain in your homes as much as possible and seal all openings to your dwelling. Those who are capable though are urged to begin patrols of Town alongside Slayd, Dimitri and himself to ensure that Town and the surrounding areas are safe.
Please travel in pairs or groups, do not be alone! Attack from a distance when possible. Hoshiko will offer her assistance as a markswoman as well by picking off any Intellect Devourers from a distance that she can for those that are forced to travel alone. (Don't worry about any jokes she makes of her service not being cheap though. Charlie wouldn't actually let her charge you anything.)
Unfortunately, not even they can predict the blizzard that rolls through Town in the midst of all this. If you happen to see anything skittering through the snow, don't panic too much. It could just be a tiny woodland creature looking for a warm burrow to hide away in!
At least you hope it is.
PROMPT #3
Hybrid intellect devourers are unique from the regular ones in that the goal is not to kill their target, but to gather intelligence and act as a kind of spy network.
They will flee when confronted directly by greater numbers, but will attack a lone target. They do this by jumping at the target's head and wrapping a wet tendril around their neck. They will choke who they've wrapped around if anyone tries to remove it. They are also far more likely to try and attack sleeping target (hence the advice to keep your homes closed!).
These hybrids emit spores that will keep the target asleep during feeding. Their primary goal appears to be infiltrating the targets' minds and absorbing some of their memories. The target will have their mind left mostly intact... though they may suffer short term memory loss, confusion, distress, fatigue and head pain.
Here's where the fun starts!
Once one of these critters has fed on someone, they are onto their next target. When a fed Intellect Devourer feeds from another target, that target may absorb some of the previous target's memories. This can span across multiple victims and be erratic in whose memories taint whose mind. The memories will cross-pollinate in the form of dreams or waking visions and hallucinations.
If one of these creatures is killed, it will explode, releasing a powerful psionic wave and the memories it had absorbed from any recent targets. Anyone within ten (10) yards of the dying creature will be afflicted with extreme head pain in the short term and also witness the memories of it's previous victims.
Enjoy your muddled memories and leggy brain-hunting!
The outfit of people who have come to investigate are from New Svihelen's disaster containment squad and are investigating the hybrid creatures and the possible reason for an Illithid ship to crash here of all places. Right now, the running theory is that interference from the selfsame summoning circle that brought you all here could have caused the interplanar navigation systems of the ship to malfunction but nothing has been determined yet.
Eventually, these creatures will all be rounded up and taken care of. They are persistent and stealthy though in their efforts to survive above all else. Charlie assures that they're doing all they can to make Town safe once and for all but it will take some time.
They will flee when confronted directly by greater numbers, but will attack a lone target. They do this by jumping at the target's head and wrapping a wet tendril around their neck. They will choke who they've wrapped around if anyone tries to remove it. They are also far more likely to try and attack sleeping target (hence the advice to keep your homes closed!).
These hybrids emit spores that will keep the target asleep during feeding. Their primary goal appears to be infiltrating the targets' minds and absorbing some of their memories. The target will have their mind left mostly intact... though they may suffer short term memory loss, confusion, distress, fatigue and head pain.
Here's where the fun starts!
Once one of these critters has fed on someone, they are onto their next target. When a fed Intellect Devourer feeds from another target, that target may absorb some of the previous target's memories. This can span across multiple victims and be erratic in whose memories taint whose mind. The memories will cross-pollinate in the form of dreams or waking visions and hallucinations.
If one of these creatures is killed, it will explode, releasing a powerful psionic wave and the memories it had absorbed from any recent targets. Anyone within ten (10) yards of the dying creature will be afflicted with extreme head pain in the short term and also witness the memories of it's previous victims.
Enjoy your muddled memories and leggy brain-hunting!
The outfit of people who have come to investigate are from New Svihelen's disaster containment squad and are investigating the hybrid creatures and the possible reason for an Illithid ship to crash here of all places. Right now, the running theory is that interference from the selfsame summoning circle that brought you all here could have caused the interplanar navigation systems of the ship to malfunction but nothing has been determined yet.
Eventually, these creatures will all be rounded up and taken care of. They are persistent and stealthy though in their efforts to survive above all else. Charlie assures that they're doing all they can to make Town safe once and for all but it will take some time.
Notes
⁂ The partner plotting post for this event/quarter is also up!
⁂ Additionally, we have a state of the game post available for people to read about updates, clarifications, and housekeeping items!
⁂ If you have any further questions or feedback about this event specifically, please comment here!
⁂ For even more ambient event music, you can check out this this playlist!
⁂ Full Navigation ⁂
⁂ Additionally, we have a state of the game post available for people to read about updates, clarifications, and housekeeping items!
⁂ If you have any further questions or feedback about this event specifically, please comment here!
⁂ For even more ambient event music, you can check out this this playlist!
no subject
Ravus has found himself nearly back-to-back with the viera, Obsidian, in this hunt. The man claims to know him in periphery. They shared another, distant world once, however briefly. Ravus had found him honest and brave, and so believed him despite the strangeness of the claim. It's not the weirdest thing to happen to him, after all.
They've been hunting these things for quite some time now, and it's inevitable that with their disturbing speed, one manages to get close enough that Ravus instinctively swings with his sword to dispatch it. He sends it splattering away, split betwixt the hemispheres that cradle a dorsal of slimy spikes, but the distance just isn't enough. The psionic shockwave from its death hits him with all the grace and blunt pain of a brick to the temples. Then, the aftershock of memories to rattle his skull. Memories, or a lifetime, it's hard to gauge - but there is an endless sea of despair that wells out from the images that flash before him.
Adventures and friendships, politics and betrayal, a war to end all wars, the screaming, writhing calls of the dead and dying. There's a familiarity to so much of it. He remembers the bodies of his family, his friends, smeared with ash and blood as the metallic gleam of imperial soldiers crushes underfoot all that he holds dear. Never did he carry the dead to rest though. They were forgotten to lies. He does not envy Obsidian's burden, either. Is it worse to remember or to pretend to forget?
Within his own heart, agony and outrage, to have every choice taken, to be forced to carry on despite the injustice. The wrath of gods, and Ravus bears his teeth specifically against the image of Leviathan, though the psionic image leaves him aboard a ship that rocks and reels with her wrath, and not the broken city of Altissia, of his sister's grave.
Every loss compounds the next, every failure to save beloved friends drives the blade a little deeper. Until he can feel his own heart ripping at the seams with it. Peeling apart desires for revenge, for justice in an unkind world, to make meaning of it all. To shed the shield that hides the bearer, and take up a blade so grand it cannot be mistaken for anything but a weapon of deliverance. It's oft a thankless thing, isn't it? To protect what is right, to do whatever is necessary. Forward, forward, always forward.
There is no time to grieve.
The world continues to turn, and there is ever more bloodshed. These lands he sees are foreign to him, but their fate is familiar. If he could stare down these Garlean monsters, he would see the same cold, dead-eyed faces of Niflheim. Again and again, cruelty and conquest like no other. The insatiable desire for more. To purge savages, beasts, the barely-human. Resistance is futile, but how can brave hearts lay down to die when there is hope yet still? Wherever they find that hope, Obsidian seems to lead the wake. Is it what he wants, though? Is it his choice?
Ravus doesn't get his answer before the next memory burns behind his eyes, and the light remains blinding. A cold, thoughtless expanse of stillness. A wave that crashes through, unfeeling of all that it sweeps away in a terrible maelstrom of white. A storm does not pity the drowned. And like his unseamed heart, one day, too, does that light split away to reveal a sky of brilliant stars laid upon a dark pall. It's a beautiful thing, he thinks briefly, before the pain returns. Blinding with more everlasting light. There's an incandescent fervor he cannot fathom, but doesn't need to. The memory fades again, the final hope of a dying star resting squarely on the shoulders of those left alive to inherit it.
Then suddenly there is the well itself, the very thing that the memories pool from. Dark pitch, as endless as the spaces between stars. And yet, there is something there, at the center. Ravus reaches for it, or rather, he feels Obsidian reach for it within the memory. Because at the bottom of the well, its endless despair, there is something else. And it shines so brightly it can be seen beneath those dark waters.
Hope. The light of belief, in the unfailing will of those so loved. The End isn’t truly the end. And so the memory goes on. Forward, ever forward. Exhausting as it is necessary. And only a brief reprieve from cataclysm.
It seems almost trivial in its wake, but there’s something about the next flash of a life he has not lived that leaves him snarling in pure rage. There is a family, and a contest, and there is an elder brother so blinded by his own self-pitying anger that he forsakes his own. Worse. Worse and worse still, the cost of life so great, and the heartbreak of a little sister. How could any older brother be so cruel? Perhaps to the world, Ravus might understand, but his own kin? Forsaking the bond Ravus’ entire life has revolved around, the gravity that has made his orbit around Lunafreya all he could ever know.
Once and forever, he’d been willing to burn down the whole world for his little sister. But to forsake her? To let his heart weigh heavier than hers? That is a crime he cannot forgive, and if he could have spit on Zoraal Ja’s corpse, he would have. But the memory is beginning to fade, and even while he glares death, time marches forward, ever forward.
Perhaps there is more, glimpses of a beautiful kingdom, and the digital recreation of its happiest memories, but his anger seems to finally quell the psionic storm in his mind. The memory fades into distortion, and finally, he’s back in his own mind.
For all that he saw, it’s only been a few seconds. Yet he’s been knocked down to one knee, his magitek arm bracing him up as he breathes hard through the anger. His jaw is so tense that it feels like he threatens to shatter his own molars, but as he inhales deep... the anger is replaced by concern.
He glances back over his shoulder, and lays eyes on the bearer of all those memories. The danger may have passed from the intellect devourers, that last one Ravus struck down among the fleeing scouts, but that’s not his concern. As the words form in his throat, one particular face from those memories comes to mind, and he feels himself echo her words in the same disbelief and anger.
“Obsidian,” he says, voice low with horror, with hurt, but never something has undignified as pity. “Those memories... what they did to you: the lies, the betrayal, the endless fighting...” Ravus shudders an exhalation, and shakes his head. No, Fordola had the answer already, and so does Ravus now, by proxy. For those we have lost. For those we can yet save. It’s a sentiment Ravus, too, has tried to live by. Misplaced in his anger, perhaps, but always held fast within his heart. No matter how it has fallen apart.
It almost feels stupid to ask, as he wobbles back onto his feet, sword hung limply in his hand.
“Are you all right?”
no subject
If he could undo it, he'd take it all back from Ravus. Hells, he'd have taken it from Fordola too if he could; neither of them should have to experience what he has. All that power. All that pain. She wasn't wrong, still isn't. Either way, there's no undoing it now.
A faint smile forms on his face, and he gives Ravus a friendly smack on his normal arm.
"Not always," Obsidian answers honestly. "Some days are better than others. You take the good with the bad, even if it seems like it goes more one way than the other."
It's dramatically simplifying it, but for all of the joys he has experienced, Obsidian wouldn't exchange it for anything.
"Are you all right?"
no subject
"At least you are more honest than most. There are too many that would deny their hardships in favor of a brave, but false front." After witnessing what he has, the over simplification still plagues Ravus somewhat, but who is he to reprimand for boiling down the complex pains of life? Especially the life of a protector, someone made a weapon time and again. It's a grossly complicated thing to pick apart.
"I will be," Ravus says, and rubs his real hand at his temples, where the aching migraine still throbs in his skull. "The headache aside, I am no stranger to life's harsh realities, though I fear I do not face them with nearly the same grace."