"Eh, seems worth it to give it a go. What d'ya want me to do? Like I said, I'm pretty sure I can cotton on to this ritual stuff fairly quickly."
Mostly you would need to destroy living things upon that slab over yonder, the shirtless man indicates with his hand. Decisively, quickly, absolutely. Leave no room for doubt. Use your hands as much as possible - maybe utilize a rock for the tougher bits.
As for more specifics, well, there's more finesse involved than you would expect. Reducing a rat to a thin red paste is not an easy task at the best of times. Or your average bird, for that matter. He spends a few minutes going over the more practical ways of making things quick, yet interesting to watch. It is important to engage the public in particular - you being largely naked ought to help with that, in fact - if the public is not engaged, they may start to chat to one another, which can ruin the mood if it gets out of hand. You want to usually do things that produce a respectful, intimidated silence. You've got the build for it, so you would be well-served by practicing some grim expressions beforehand. Or perhaps not - one of the best sessions he's had was when he broke down laughing in the middle of smashing a rat to pieces. Fell off the slab accidentally when he couldn't stop it, actually. A few people had to pick him up and carry him home that evening. They looked at him oddly for a week afterward.
In any case, make sure to be as violently, yet respectably off-putting as possible. Also cultivate an air of mystery. That's about the gist of things, really... although you could try speaking as well, if you want. It will make the whole business a little more formal, having a guest speaker. Feel free to improvise - you no doubt have some life experience to draw upon here, as you appear to be familiar with the idea of a world devoid of meaning or spirit.
He is about to go into more detail, but the sound of a man hollering as he runs out of the nearby chapel cuts him off. He looks for the source, and spots a man of poor habits running around hollering something about suns and moons and children. The man with no shirt looks intrigued. The priest is not usually this agitated, he says. He is even more surprised when Mr. Codeburn follows after the priest, looking a bit doofy in a weird homemade mirror-sequined robe.
"Minders? What? My name is Thomas, and I need to get to work. Mr. Munderly would not like it if I am late. I haven't worked under him for fifteen years with perfect attendance to start being late now. Where in town am I, anyway?"
Ask confused questions. Try to get home.
You're in the castle, the shrouded individual says. Not in the town- wait, this sounds familiar. You're one of them
demonfolk, aren't you? You show the classical signs - naked, clueless, mysteriously manifested from hellish planes beyond mortal ken. You beg his pardon on all that, but he seems convinced all the same.
Right, starting over, you are in Benzerwald. Anglefork Castle. It is not a place you are familiar with, says the man, but that's all right. Minders are, er, wizards. Or priests? Something like that. And your job is to kill all the stoats before they kill you. They've been sieging the place for a while now. There's a couple of you demonfolk around that they called to help with that, actually. Six, was it? It's getting a bit hard to count them. It's also a little frustrating, he mentions. He's been helping you bloody demons for the better part of the afternoon, and he's got nary a rat to show for it. Ten more days like this and he might get behind on his rat acquisitions. And then what will he do? It'll be an economic disaster.
While this sounds like a legitimate concern for a lunatic to have and you truly sympathize, you ask if you could be let out now, you kind of need to get home. The man politely acquiesces and momentarily untraps and unlocks his door, letting you out of his mad-cave and into a stairwell, which leads up to an empty storehouse in a seemingly advanced stage of disrepair. It is dark, old and smells mustier than even the basement you were just in, and seems to mostly have stored a bunch of firewood once upon a time, the only remnants of which are a few damp pieces of lumber that nobody has bothered to steal. Aside from that, you also pass by a single sandbag, propped up in the middle of the room with no place else to be. It looks lonely.
Since there's nothing here you care about, you take a look outside, and note that this definitely does not look like anywhere in town you've ever been to. Might be upstate, one of those places where people gather for weekends to do their lair-ping or whatever it is they're into these days. On the bright side, the castle does look very authentic. Not a bad place to stop and take some pictures on a road trip, as it were. Probably not a great place to awaken in at dusk naked and without any possessions, however. It smells like the countryside here. Air's too fresh. And there's probably no phones about. For maximum authenticity and inconvenience, you'd expect.
You notice an unkempt man in a bloodstained, torn robe running through the courtyard, hollering something incoherent. Another lunatic, probably dangerous. He is followed by a strange robed individual who reminds you of a humanoid disco ball, reflecting the sunset irritatingly in your eyes as he completes the impression by starting to spin around.
"Wait how the hell does this help with that army ousiiiiand he's gone."
Welp. Time to put on my game face. CHAAAARGE!
Everyone: Behold robes.
I had expected magical powers to fight an army with. This is not that.
As the priest executes his plan, you break into a run with arms outstretched (the holiest of arm positions, or so you have been told) after him. As he hollers holy-sounding phrases of prophecy to herald your arrival, you follow in his wake, staring at the heavens gravely and making a conscious effort to appear as auspicious as possible. It has all the charm of a prophetic high school production in its delightful spontaneity, eliciting equal parts confusion and surprise from the people who already seem to have begun gathering in the courtyard for some reason. No doubt the priest would credit the prophecy here, too.
You come to a stop in a particular spot, noticing the priest starting to run in circles around the area, trying to rouse the others, get them to look your way. You think this position is a pretty great one - there is the sun, starting to disappear over the edge of the wall, clouds flowing along it, altering its light pleasingly. And slightly behind you - there is the moon, pale in the slowly darkening sky. You stand to catch the light of both, and as the people gather, you start to turn about to take maximum advantage of your robe's properties, reflected rays moving around the entire courtyard.
As you turn, you behold the Moon. It watches, shapes of faces on its surface growing more convincing the longer you look. It is pale in the darkening sky, but very much visible. Very close to fullness, perhaps even completely full. It looms large, its albedo almost producing its own lovely reflection on you. No doubt it will grow brighter still with time. And the Sun, waning as it starts to disappear behind the parapets, but still amazingly bright. It sees, its radiance drowning out everything else in its vicinity, only scarcely held back by clouds flowing to slightly obscure, the variations in brightness creating delicate interplays.
It seems both of your would-be parents are observing your antics. As you turn, you see them both for short periods. The ancient, timeless rulers of the natural cycles, moving in the sky in ways that can be described, but perhaps impossible to truly comprehend by the folk of this world. By their motions the world was created and shaped in the past, is guided and shaped in the present, and as the Moon flies free and the Sun explodes to devour and burn the world in the distant future, so too will all things come to an eventual end.
You contemplate their power as you catch the light in your whirling. And as you cavort in the light of immense, mindless things of unimaginable power, the oldest gods that mankind has ever known, the words come to you easily. It is simple. There is the sun, and there is the moon. The sun, the moon. You behold them in succession, one and the other.
At the back of your eyes, a vision starts to burn. It crosses from one eye to the other, taking ineffable shape, traveling along your nerves, nestling in the back of your throat, yearning for release, burning like the purest essence of thirst. You involuntarily shape the word it craves, but do not give it your voice.
SUN
At the front of your mind, a silvery shadow forms. You breathe it out, then breathe it in. It is dust, metal, lightness. The unknown. It builds in your lungs, and you feel the need to consciously cough, to cleanse yourself. As you consider the itch, you mouth a second soundless word.
MOON
Oh man that felt good.
"By Loki, ain't he fast with that lockpick thing." Back into the cell. "Now that he's gone I can probably return back to the first cell, it's bigger after all. But yeah, let us proceed with proper procedure."
"By the way, does numbers mean anything to you? Six four three? Or six three four? Or was it four six three? He said it was important number."
They certainly sound like numbers, your cellmate guesses. Who really knows with stoats, anyway. Maybe they meant something to it and nobody else. An anniversary of some Great Leader or another in the stoat calendar they invented last year, or maybe the one they invented the year before that. The things are crazy, as she is sure you well know. This is partly the reason why she's rather concerned about one making its way out, actually.
Also, she does not get to complete that thought because the turnkey and the guard arrive momentarily, looking rather displeased at the sorry open state of the dungeon. They would like very much to know more about what just happened here. Your cellmate proves forthcoming as before, explaining that the filthy stoatman escaped by using that odd thingamajig you told her about, then defeated the dungeon door without so much as breaking a sweat - clearly a dangerous criminal, that one. They should really be quite careful with it.
The turnkey nods, and the elderly guard says he'll take that into account. Having no time to waste, they decide not to bother questioning you and instead bugger off immediately after making sure all doors, yours included, are shut immediately, this latest jailbreak having introduced a slight shift of priorities.
Well, says your cellmate. They know what they're doing, she vaguely suspects. No doubt they'll catch that stoat in no time at all.
"I can't believe you're doing this." I sigh, then stand around and wait for the ritual to start. If I can't stop it, I might as well at least see what's going on. Maybe there is something to learn here. Still, I'm getting some bad vibes, so I make sure to stay on the edge of the crowd in case I need to leave quickly.
You can't say it's much of a crowd yet, but it is starting to grow. A few rather nasty-looking residents of varying ages and genders emerge from the keep, coming together near you while they keep a respectable distance from the others. The less photogenic of the castle's serving staff. Probably kept in a basement someplace normally. A large, dull-faced man slinks out from the shadows, looking a little unsteady in his gait. He smiles the same way as the shirtless man - vaguely unnervingly - and he gives you an off-puttingly affable look as he stands next to you, occasionally shooting you a glance. He asks if you've got anything on you for tonight, patting a small satchel on his belt as he smirks. The satchel twitches ever-so-slightly.
Mr. Daniels and the man with no shirt continue to converse about the finer points of ritual sacrifice, working out which sort of barbarism would suit either of them best. The shirtless man occasionally glances about, doing a headcount. Seems like not everyone's here yet. He looks momentarily hopeful as you see him look at an elderly guard and a man with an eye carved into his forehead run along the side of the courtyard, but as they run along on what looks like important business he seems disappointed again.
That is, until Mr. Codeburn, seemingly quite all right after you so generously told on him to the angry woman, trails a bloody, unkempt individual out of the nearby chapel. The bloody fellow shouts and hollers like a madman, trying to grab as much attention as you are willing to give, and beseeches you to devote it all to the approaching Mr. Codeburn, who seems to have obtained a robe covered in shards of mirror, looking very luminous and perhaps impressive to less worldly eyes as he twirls around the courtyard looking like a bit of a twit.
Needless to say, most of the people in the shirtless man's gathering crowd seem suitably impressed by the hollering and the shiny objects. A few shier residents lean out of doorframes to take a look. Probably the shiniest thing they've seen in weeks. Perhaps months.
While you may have two or more words, only a single one can be used per turn. Choose wisely.
Eric Codeburn, COMPUTISTICS SPECIALIST
- Wounds: 2 (alleviated)
- A Word: SUN
- A Word: MOON
- Perforated Burlap Sack
- Inscribed Brick ('Water')
- Anglefork Castle: Minister of Moronic Affairs
- The Impromptu Prophecy: the Prophecy Fulfilled
- Robe of Mirrors
- Adherents of the Great House: Enemy of Memory
- Well and Truly Narked Upon: 1
- Friends in Low Places: a Successful Transaction
Leif Erikson, Miner
- Reappropriated, Clean Skirt
- 1 gp
- Anglefork Castle: A Different Sort of Confinement
- The Box: Left To One's Own Devices
- The Prison Stone
- Elongated Affairs: Beneath Contempt
- Elongated Affairs: A Noble Task
- Elongated Affairs: The Numbers of the Stoat
Eileen Minett, Vinyl Collector
- Queenly Garments: the Humble Dress
- Sticks: 0.95 (total)
- Rat Pantheon: Disliked
- Traces of Mischief: Mouthful of Blackness
- Anglefork Castle: the New Queen's Confidant
- Doomstones: An Interest
- Origins: Witness to Dissolution
- Tower of the Mind: Confusion
Jack Daniels, Karate Man
- Gravel-Ridden
- The Winding Path of Inspiration: the Sword of Destiny
- The Winding Path of Inspiration: Something Profane?
- The Winding Path of Inspiration: Something Priceless?
- The Winding Path of Inspiration: Something Purple?
- The Apron of Mediocrity
- The Man With No Shirt: an Asset
- Doomstones: an Offer
- 2 rats, crushed
- 1 rat, strangled
- 1 rat, live
Thomas Minstep, Insurance Agent
- Naked
- Anglefork Castle: Dude, Where's My Car?
Author
Topic: Our Salvation: It Is Written (Read 264731 times)