RP:Hunters and the Hunted

From HollowWiki

Part of the Venturil's Bane Arc


Part of the The Most Dangerous Game Arc

This is a Necromancer's Guild RP.


Background

The human thief Kyperion has tracked down the abomination known as Maladroit, as per the bounty for its capture placed on the creature’s head by Valentin of the Necromancer's Guild. He finds Maladroit at the bottom of a decrepit well in Venturil…


Decrepit Well, Venturil

Kyperion watched the creature from the edge of the stone well, and then put his plan-like thing into motion. Reaching into his satchel, he pulled out the minute Ice Wyvern Hatchling he'd brought along for the purpose, and snapped its neck. Being from a death cult, he assumed that the dark creature would respond to the aura of death.


Maladroit was at the bottom of the well, groping in the sticky murk that passed for water. It had no particular interest in either death or cults, unless either would provide it with a chance to refuel. Dangerously low on salts and fluids, the gaunt nevertheless must grope about in the well before seeking sustenance, for the matter was urgent and much was at stake. It did, though, briefly cant its blank head up at the well's lip, high above. It had no nose to smell with, but it somehow sensed Kyperion's presence, and wondered whether the thief was going to eat that wyvern..


Kyperion frowned. Another stupid death cult notion, he thought, tossing the body away. He approached the well and watched the creature a while longer, before pulling out his leather waterbag, and a handful of salted kippers. He didn't know if the creature would like the salt, but something about the way it pawed at the walls seemed to suggest appetite.


Maladroit was most pleased when that haplessly-tossed wyvern carcass fell down the well. Having a meal delivered to it was an unexpected bonus, and the creature swiftly snatched the body up, the infant saurian soon wrapped in a welter of toothy eel-like pseudopods. Soon after, the wyvern's mummified husk would be ejected from the deep and decrepit pit.


Kyperion dropped a kipper down the well, and waited at the top.


Maladroit was then hit by a falling kipper.


Kyperion watched, somewhat shocked, as the creature inhaled essences from the wyvern's body. He cautiously waited to see what would happed with regards to the kipper. Too salty? Not fresh enough? Or not moist enough...


Maladroit reached one rubbery-skinned hand into the greasy liquid it stood in, and fished the kipper out. The gaunt tilted it head - for it was curious as to why anybody would be throwing salted fish down a well. Shrugging bony shoulders, it extruded a feeder-tentacle and gave the kipper a prod.


Kyperion watched the creature move its head in a curious fashion as it tasted...or..whatever it was doing...the fish. Shrugging, he pulled out the second of only five wyvern hatchlings he had, and tentatively waved it.


Maladroit pondered the kipper for a while. Dead fish it had experienced, but this was a whole new kettle of... other stuff. The salt was pleasing, in a way, though the unappetising lack of freshness excluded the kipper from being on the menu. Thus, the wyvern-waving Kyperion may well find himself hit with the fish when Maladroit threw it back. The gaunt briefly returned to sloshing in the muck, which stirred the rot below so much as to cause a foul miasma of pungency to rise up the well's moldering shaft. Sometimes, not having a nose was only a good thing..


Kyperion was hit with the ballistic kipper and blinked. Somehow, the description had made this job seem easier than killing people. As a fresh wave of fumes rose up, he wiggled the still living wyvern over the edge, tantalizingly. If the kipper experiment had gone well, he would have stuffed one in the creature's mouth to make it more appealing, but that seemed out of the question now.


Maladroit found what it had been seeking. The lever was ancient, thick and crumbly with rust. A blend of force of caution, therefore, had to be employed in turning the.... Maladroit stopped. Was that wyvern-waving kipper-thrower still there? It offered Kyperion brief, expressionless perusal then wibbled its fingers at the thief. Which wasn't a greeting, though it sure looked like one.


Kyperion peered into the malodorous well and groaned. Of course it found something down there. Of course. It wasn't just hungry, it seemed to be on a mission. Choosing an area of the well, he leapt down, then extended his body to brace against the wall. The putrid, slimy walls caused him to slide down, and he ignobly fell, only just managing to land on his feet and NOT on the creature. As it looked at him, he proffered the now frantic wyvern.

Kyperion said, "Snack?"


Maladroit was, conveniently enough, NOT underneath Kyperion... That rust-coated lever had opened a secret stone doorway at the bottom of the well, so rather than facing the gaunt, Kyperion would find himself facing that opening into ongoing gloom and the gaunt's winged back as the creature moved into it. Of course, all that mucky water sluiced down the tunnel, leaving the thief standing amid the remnants of a hundred tragic and sometimes accidental drownings, bones, sodden leaf litter, and several rather nasty members of the local wildlife who'd found the well a cosy home. Meanwhile, Maladroit trod stoically deeper into the murky passage.


Kyperion stared after the creature. It was doing...something here. Being compelled? Curious? Something. Sighing, and stuffing the hatchling into his sack, he set off after it. Maybe it needed help or just to complete the task at hand before it could be coaxed back.


Having no eyes was also a boon, at times. For instance, in a subterranean passage leading off from a deep well, there isn't a lot of light. Perhaps a few faintly luminous fungi may have sprung up to festoon the tunnel's sweaty walls, but that was neither here nor there to the gaunt. In that shadowy recess, it moved lizard-like on its four sets of knuckles, wings furled tight around its midriff to prevent them catching on the roughly-constructed stone walls. Behind it trailed its spike-ended, venomously barbed tail, which now and then caused a splash in the spill of old well-water. Maladroit indeed was on a mission, of a most important nature, and so the wyvern-waver was left to follow it through a maze of twisty little passages, all alike, if Kyperion was up for such a task.


Kyperion moved where he felt the air displaced and fresher stench, a trick he'd been taught for not relying on eyesight in passages. There were indeed luminous fungi, but they did little more than highlight the darkness. Tapping with the hilt of his knife, he produced some helpful echoes and continued to follow, hoping there wasn't a sudden pitfall. For some reason, he wanted a kipper.


There was no pitfall, only seemingly endless variations of the same long and convoluted passage that wound its way deeper still below Venturil's blighted earth. The water spilled from the well soon dribbled off, swallowed by the tunnel’s thirsty dust. Occasional evidence of other travellers, however, might present Kyperion with the danger of tripping over, with partial skeletons and their long-abandoned weapons littering the way at irregular intervals. Maladroit itself ignored all such potential treasures, its spongy mind bent on its singular task and the problem of how it might survive being successful in its mission..


Kyperion glanced down at the rattling noises in hopes of better weapons. His sabre was nice but didn't fit his tastes. Shrugging, he continued to follow. Here and there, set in the walls were metal fixtures, which seemed designed to receive complex keys or hold odd shapes. One way or another, it was all the same. Find out what compelled the creature, get it, get out.


It was at one of those peculiar slots in the wall that Maladroit finally paused, tucking its barbed tail around it legs as it sat to face the aperture. Set in a metal plate at the back of a small recess in the stone face was an oddly configured keyhole. One for which the gaunt had... no key. It necessarily betrayed no chagrin at this fact, but its tail did twitch a bit.


Kyperion stumbled and swore. Feeling what he fell on, he swore again, happily. The blade was of jagged and of surpassing quality. Snagging it, he stuffed it into his belt, along with something that felt like a pauldron (or something), and continued. He was really, really beginning to wish for a light. Just as he did, a metallic click stopped him short. A soft glow began at the tip of a rod, and grew into a gentle light. Starting at the sight of the gaunt, Kyperion squinted at the keyhole it seemed to be examining and then at the bottom of the torch.


Maladroit shuffled back from the metal plate a bit, perhaps to allow Kyperion a better chance to study the complicated set of holes in it, which probably required an equally complicated key. Or a really good lock-pick, as it were.


Kyperion studied the lock, and examined the end of the cold torch. It had prongs and teeth to it, like a key, but an incomplete one. Shrugging, he stabbed it in, heard a click, and then tried again in another hole. After a few tries, he smiled, having stumbled upon the combination that produced a clang and shifting sound.


Perhaps another companion might have clapped, or spoken some form of enthusiastic approval to the thief regarding his ingenuity in opening the lock. Maladroit offered nothing but a shove of shoulder, placing itself between Kyperion and the potential danger that lay beyond the stone edifice just now opened in the wall. Indeed, the gaunt’s act might have seemed.. altruistic. Though it wasn't - Maladroit simply wanted to make sure that it got what it came for, rather than Kyperion getting it first. Unless the human really insisted on making a struggle out of it, Maladroit would be the first to enter the chamber beyond. Which was .. oddly... filled with light.


Kyperion swore at the sudden abundance of light, and blinked. The antechamber ahead was much cleaner, at the very least, and the fixtures here gleamed with the same soft light of the cold torch.


Long ago, in a time lost to Venturil's mists, a faction of goblins had tromped and tunnelled their way across the mountains and plains, in search of a legendary source of power reputed to exist somewhere below the Badlands of the West. Leader among them was Hykthros the Maggot, a self-taught artificer and wizard of ill repute. The tale of their various, gloomy adventures on this quest is a long one, but the upshot was that soon more than half of his troop were dead and Hykthros himself was missing his left leg by the time he'd managed to find a safe spot here, in what was then a natural cavern. It took them months to recover from the horrors they'd endured, which Hykthros spent making this hole in the ground a bit more homely. Employing his fell magics and the knowledge of gemcraft many of his kind attempted to master, he at least made the place a little brighter for his efforts.

Meanwhile, the remnants of the goblin troop slowly starved, and were reduced to eating each other in the end. Not to mention that the -thing- they'd looked for had instead found them, and was bent on consuming them, every one. Only here, in this particular pocket of earth, did the monstrosity that seeped through the fissures below Venturil, poisoning all in its wake, seem reluctant to go. And that was good enough for Hykthros, who eventually, when he'd gnawed upon the last bone of the last of his unfortunate companions, contained in a single gem the essence of whatever had repelled the creature. With this about his neck, he's effected his escape from the tunnels, only losing an eye and a bit of his right ear in the process. Hobbling home on a false leg made of carven bone, he would regale the goblin hordes with stories of his bravery and skill. And that gem... well, it was now in a box that Maladroit had recently bestowed on a certain troblin - perhaps a little prematurely.


The gaunt wandered about the lit-up cave, touching bone fragments and desiccated bits of well-gnawed leathern armours, before once more sitting down on its haunches. This time, it was facing Kyperion. Its fingers were wibbling, furiously.


Kyperion looked at the frantic gaunt, and the horrors of the room. Bones arranged to allow walking, fixtures, all shone coldly under the lamp. It had the feel of a corrupted haven. Ischebod, thought Kyperion. The glory has departed. And if what passed for glory in such a place was gone, what was there to gain here?


Safety, apparently. Well, it would become apparent, soon enough - in the maze of tunnels beyond the space, something very large and very horrible -moved- with a slimy sort of rustling and the occasional guttural gurgle. Seemingly nonplussed by this hint toward narrowly avoided doom, the gaunt pressed one oddly articulated finger to its lack of lips, a signal for the human to be quiet until the tunnel had once more lapsed into silence. Then it resumed its strange wibbling of fingers, as it wove stray dimensional threads between them, reading in those shreds of the past and the future, both. Thus armed, it set about creating an illusion. A very convincing one, for anyone who wasn't able to resist it. And Kyperion might find himself abruptly surrounded by the walls of a richly-decorated castle that did not actually, in this particular reality, exist.


Kyperion swore under his breath as the illusion gripped him. The sumptuous decor had nothing in common with the cavern he was in, save a certain similarity in the fixtures. Less rugged and more refined, it was clear that this was a world apart.


And it was a world Kyperion would not be able to interact with, aside from in the role of passive observer. Maladroit beckoned, leading the human into a chamber beyond the room that had sprung up around them initially. In that room which held a peculiar, peppery odour and other, more unpleasant ones, was a series of large vats. In each vat was a creature, in liquid stasis, resembling the larva of some incredible, horrendous cross between insect, man and beast. Maladroit pointed at one, larger than the others. Perhaps it was trying to warn Kyperion about something, though it kept up its cryptic and necessary silence. The illusion crumbled away, then, and the human would find his strange quarry 'peering' at him closely, its head tilted, as if the abomination was asking what Kyperion wanted with it, anyway.


Kyperion looked at the expectant gaunt, and tried, through gestures, to convey an amount of money sufficient to buy a mountain of kippers, and his imminent ownership. Then, hearing the terrible something in the tunnel outside, he cocked his head, and with a series of quick gestures, asked about a link between the creature gestating in the vision and the thing outside the room.


Maladroit picked the most expedient of explanations. It pointed in the creature’s direction, then back to itself again. Wibbling those flexible fingers once more, it showed a brief flash of those terrible vats from another reality. The monster outside the cavern, the ones in the vats and Maladroit were all in some way akin, was the gist of it. However, the dank pall of sickly dread the one outside left behind in its wake might hint too, that Maladroit was by far the lesser of two evils. The gaunt then glanced up, to the rough, gem-studded ceiling of the cavern, and back to Kyperion. It has sensed something.. someone.. moving about beyond the apprent tons of rock and earth above. For all the good it did them, trapped down here while Venturil's Bane crawled the only passage to exit beyond.


Kyperion nodded grimly, understanding. The gaunt: bad. Thing outside: worse. And bigger by the sound of it. Patting himself down, he felt his various weapons and devices. All secure. Kyperion then jerked his head towards the tunnel, asking if they should make an attempt.


Maladroit lifted and dropped its shoulders, as though gathering its patience, and jabbed a forefinger toward the ceiling again. If Kyperion squinted, he might glimpse a little moonlight peeking through miniscule chinks in the stone. The gaunt snapped open its batlike wings and in a few flaps had ascended to the cavern roof. There, it proceeded to punch at the ceiling, sending rubble tumbling down into the cave. After some further struggle, it broke through to the surface and disappeared. And was gone for quite some time...


East of the Causeway, Venturil

A rough mound of rocky rubble, slightly east of the causeway, would suddenly become remarkable for the way it bulged outward, sending bits of stone and withered evidence of plant life tumbling down its slope. Again, it shook, and again -- until finally, one rubbery arm protruded from its apex to scrabble with manyjointed fingers for firmer purchase. Gaining that, a blank, horned head would next break free from whatever recess below had contained it.


Selian has always been a poacher. And now the seasons are changing, the darkness of winter approaches; gone is the bright sun shining light on deeds best left to shadows; guards begin to care less about vigilance and more about sitting close to a glowing brazier to ensure they are warm in the freezing desert nights. This time more than any other suited his profession. Already he had gathered a hefty reward recently for aiding in the capture of a beast and so he had been sent to Venturil to see whether more bounties were being offered. It was his lucky week, for there was indeed another bounty on a creature most strange. On his way back, and mulling over the details of the contract, he spies a strange sight coming from the west of him. So quiet as an assassin he begins to make his way closer, curiosity pushing him on even though he's not sure he believes what his eyes had seen.


Maladroit shook its wings to dislodge remnant rock dust and lingering mold from their leathery surfaces. It would spare only brief consideration to the pit where Kyperion probably still was evading the horror that lurked in the caverns below - and shrugged, glad of the good fortune to be in possession of the means to fly. No further thought given to the thief, for now, the gaunt wandered westward, having achieved its mission, by and large. Until it sensed another's presence, the man’s aura as redolent with greed as the other's had been. Selian would find himself facing a faceless creature when he was close enough to make it out, one with a barbed tail and four limbs, knuckle-walking in his direction almost casually..


Selian kneels down low as he spies the creature clawing its way to apparent freedom. It was close to the description he had read and the cunning poacher knew it was nigh on impossible for two such creatures to ever exist. No Gods were cruel enough to allow two of these things life. He barely draws breath as his hand snakes behind him. He had a crude hook attached to a rope tucked into his tool laden belt. In silence does it come around and with a speed he hopes will confuse the faceless abomination - if only he knew what it was he faced - he spins the hook once around his head before hurling it forward right at the creature's legs; hoping the rope wraps around his legs and trips him long enough for the poacher to leap on his back and begin hog-tying him.


Maladroit could not sigh, for it had no lungs nor breath to draw, so when it found itself neatly hobbled by a flying hook and its appended rope, it just fell over, sideways. Manic fingers worked at the bindings, to no avail yet the creature itself exhibited little in the way of panic. Perhaps because it had no means of expression, but perhaps, too, because .. it wasn't panicking.


Selian was the one they had sent to Venturil for a reason. He wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer and thus he was the least valuable in their eyes. There was little he wouldn't do for the right price. His attempt at catching Maladroit perhaps personifies this aspect of him better than anything. He paid the tail no mind, and hardly even noticed the long familiar's abhorrent hands, instead he simply leaps forward and tries to jump on the creature. Hoping to use his weight to pin him down while his hands seek another of his many ropes to begin the process of trying to hog tie such a hideous creation.


Maladroit offered the man surprisingly little resistance - at least for a time. Indeed, it seemed a little stunned in the way it just lay there on the gravelly ground while Selian lowered his weight upon it and fiddled about the ropes. Thought that barbed tail contained enough venom to paralyse a small village, it lay lank behind the gaunt. In truth, Maladroit was a little stunned, mainly by the way it had neatly avoided having to hunt its next meal - since the meal insisted on hunting Maladroit instead. So passive it lay, until it was sure the man was secure in this apparently easy victory, even so far as allowing its forelimbs to be bound. Then its midriff split like a hideous, misplaced mouth, just a crack, and out slithered its array of feeder-pseudopods, most bearing hagfish-like suckering mouths, a few with clutching barbs and pincers, and several with sharp-tipped siphons that would, once the man was secure in its tentacled grasp, puncture Selian's flesh to speed the drainage of his bodily fluids.


Selian can already feel the gold falling through his fingers as he ties the creation. He would take it in himself and swear he never saw it. All the gold would be his, and the others can be damned! It was time for Selian to enjoy some of the wealth, instead of what the others didn't want. So it is with great confidence he ties Maladroit, not even wondering how he will drag him away, before he feels a pinch on his arm. He slaps at it like he would a bug but it persists. His gaze is just shifting to it when another such bite lands on his other hand. He tries to pull it free, but with a hideous cry - one that starts with shock, is sustained for a while by outrage, but which ends in a whimpering moan of agony - he cannot free himself from the insidious grasp. He feels his blood being sucked away, feels his life being drained by the grotesque creation of Tenebrae, but he cannot escape... the gold... the gold... if only he could free his hand and reach out to grasp his prize...


Once upon a time, the creature whom the gaunt had originally been might have taken perverse pleasure in Selian's suffering, as the man's life slowly travelled along its siphoneer tubes, pooling in interior cavities where the salts would be extracted for fuel, and separated from the fats. But as the poacher gradually desiccated, Maladroit felt only a lack of hunger, its eldred mind drifting to matters of import, to possible futures pending - none of which particularly pleased it.

Maladroit left Selain's husk to fall, and then ponder, among many other things, the best way to free itself from those damnable ropes..


Still Down That Hole, Venturil

... and then, almost as if the abomination owned some sort of kindness, a long rope fell down into the goblin-refuge, its end dangling only a couple of feet above Kyperion's head. Assuming he'd not been squashed by any of those falling rocks, that is.


Kyperion snagged the end of the line (which seemed disturbingly like an extension of the gaunt) and tied it to his harness while cursing. Damn, damn damn damn DAMN. How the hell had he expected to be able to take this creature anywhere it didn't want to go? Caught by the upward swoop, he used his hands and feet to manuvere through the narrow gap, being pelted by small rubble.


Kyperion cleared the gap, and was pulled a few feet above the ground before he pulled the knot loose and landed on his feet. A shrieking rumble let him know that the abomination below wasn't escaped, just postponed.


Maladroit may have incidentally aided the man's ascension it its struggle to free itself from the rest of the ropes. It would nearly have succeeded, too, by the time Kyperion burst through that hole in the top of the cave. And when he did, the thief would be met a most grisly sight... for the various muffled noises he may have heard while still down that hole had their source in Maladroit's last meal. Which would be that fellow, over there, on the ground, entirely sucked dry of all fluids, his desiccated corpse still bearing a smile at the thought of the bounty gold he'd hoped to earn..


Maladroit was staring at Kyperion. Which was really much more disturbing than it might have been, if the gaunt had eyes to stare with.


Kyperion stared at the corpse and swore again, viciously. Better him than me, he told himself, and began to smear the blades of his weapons with blessed oils, poisons for the powers of darkness. The advantage to being a Heretic-- you were already bad, any further heresy you committed was sort of moot. Just before he treated his sabre, he slashed at the last of the ropes on the gaunt.


Kyperion then treated his sabre. He needed this creature with all its capabilities should he be able to survive this.


Maladroit had just refuelled. So when the final rope was cut away, it was half a second before the creature was airborne and winging its way over Venturil, off to somewhere hopefully more squid-filled and less inclined to lead to its imminent demise. So Kyperion would be left bounty-less but richer in armours and weaponry, and perhaps a little wisdom, by the by.


Kyperion stared after the gaunt. Discretion is the better part of valor, he told himself, and ran over to his horse, only to find that it had been stolen while he was down in the pit. Continuing to swear, he set off into a jog. As long as I survive, he told himself. As long as I survive.