RP:The Stars are going out

From HollowWiki

Part of the Unforeseen Consequences Arc


Additionally, all NPCing done by Ranok.

Necropolis Foyer

Inside this ancient looking tomb are large stone sarcophagi, each sealed and oddly locked. You see several necromancers standing by one of the massive graves, locking it just seconds before you can see what's inside. They turn to you with a cold gaze, and stare through your soul before walking out, almost ignoring you completely. Finding no way to get into the graves here you finally give up on trying to figure out what lays within them. You may go to your east, south, west, north and recently somebody has removed a panel in the floor that leads down.




Redhale stood near the entrance to the library, speaking with several of those risen from nearby during the war who had chosen to remain above ground after the conflict. Heavily attuned to the spiritual and magical energies of the land, they had come to discuss the lasting damage that had been done with Redhale. Unfortunately the masked man was going through a spell of more severe derangement; he had spent days flipping between understanding the situation but not knowing what to do about it and thinking of solutions but being unable to remember why they were needed. His kin were growing restless now and the group seemed to be in the grips of an argument ready to turn violent, spitting and growling across their forum.


|| Overhead, the stars were going out. Not in a dramatic fashion, but in a quiet sort of way. The rends in the sky burned still, smoldering at the edges. The engine of destruction that had laid waste to the city before its own power and the combined efforts of a few extinguished was still pulling its power, in a ways. Lines of flame that defied conventional magic, supercharged by emotion, the power of unchained necromancy, and the combined might of a drow and a dragon had originally drawn lines across the sky, no more. But they kept burning. At the edges, like paper slowly being consumed. Silently, steadily, it consumed more and more of the sky. As a result, the effects were beginning to outpace the damage itself. No light shone, first, through the rends. Then beside them. And now it was spreading serenly across the sky. Its pace was not a hurried one. It almost seemed patient. Deliberate, to use a word. As if some being was carefully wearing away at the edges like a craftsmen laboring constantly. Almost loving. And more then a little malignant. To the citizens of Vailkrin, what had originally provided a source of gossip and remarks swiftly turned to one of something to worry about. The sky was was served as the representation of what kept Vailkrin half a step out of sync with the rest of Hollow and in eternal darkness. Something that could damage it was cause to worry. The fact that it was not only still damaged, but slowly, patiently, getting *worse* held predictable results in the less long lived of Vailkrin's residents. From the time of the incident to present, only two finger's worth of sky was dark, to use a ground perspective. The moon had not yet been touched, but a line of the burn was creeping towards the serene arcs of the heavenly bodies. It was but a matter of time before they intersected.


Redhale swung back slightly as one of the other undead took a swipe at him, the attack missing his mask by a hair's breadth and hitting heavy into the face of another nearby zombie. A sound of dry twigs snapping accompanied the impact and the receiver of the blow staggered backwards a few steps, head twisted almost completely backwards and hanging at an unfortunate angle. The grunts of dissatisfaction roared into howls of fury as a scuffle broke out, the injured one mostly hitting everybody but the one who had hit him. Apparently the end of civil conflict had only been the start of unrest here. Redhale watched the fight curiously for perhaps a moment too long before breaking it up, seizing the two involved with twisting tendrils of his cloak and binding its shade around their limbs. Even then, with the weight of his strength and his magic bearing down on them the ancient dead made a fair struggle, but with a short exchange of hairy voices they were calmed down. That creatures as powerful as these were being turned on each other due to the failing magics around the city made one shudder to think what the general populace would resort to should their land fall into the chaos that loomed on, or rather above, the horizon.


|| There was something pushing behind that veil. The crumbling, the damage...Vailkrin's sky has been around presumably as long as the city has been itself. Such things of magic must have their ways of repairing themselves or restoring itself. Especially in this city of little kings and endless squabbles. Those ancient fellows bickering like school children and being broken up by teacher simply demonstrated it. The Ueoud's rampage was surely not the first incident that scoured the sky in some way. Especially given the nature of Hollow, where superpowered mages and men alike flung their power around at a whim. This damage couldn't be coincidence, couldn't be the malign influence of the creature that wrought it. That power had burned itself out, completely and totally. A flame that hot could do nothing but consume itself. Fire knew nothing else. That discounted the revenge of some sort, at least from that particular source. But, of course, Vailkrin's residents knew better then most. There were things that slumbered, things that were best kept that way. It took only the right approach to disturb that...


Redhale let the two aggravators cool down before releasing them, the injured one teetering and stumbling before falling outright, and moving towards the entrance to the necropolis. He didn't need to look up to feel what was happening there, it wouldn't have helped, but being beneath the sky told him more than being beneath stone did. For all his arcane knowledge he didn't know if he could reverse this damage, and he wasn't even sure he knew what started it. Even with the power that was unleashed on that day the kind of travesty that was tearing through the air now was just not accountable for. He knew too that he should be doing something; he had promised his land order and now it looked to be rapidly fading, but he could only stand being under that sky for so long. His people, his newest family that is, had never been one to stare at the sky anyway; they were a race of the earth and stone, and so he turned back to that musty tomb, first wrapping himself in the stone of the necropolis, then the earth of the graveyard and finally the dust of his books. Even if they didn't hold the answer to this problem they would give his mind a safe haven.


Marin wanders along the streets of the city of Vampires, taking in the signs of recent war. Frustrated that none have stepped forward to volunteer information about what had happened here, she pauses, silvery-blue eyes gazing upwards. "What the....?", she says with a start, sentence fading out before completion. The sky! She had to find out what was going on!


|| Uncaring, unseeing, something stirred in that abyss. The things that lurked, those that slumbered, they stirred. To be fair, to call it 'stirring' was a poor description. As was any mortal understanding that could be applied to such things. They lived in such abstracts, such alien dimensions, that they were wholly incompatible with how the other Universe worked. What they did translated to as closely to stirring as one could sanely (literally) label them. But what does a man do when he is presented with a problem that he could not touch, but wished to alter? The answer: use a tool. To that end, something slithers out of a crack. While the scar was wide on the ground, on the other end, but a hairline fissure. It would take time, and work, to widen it. For now, though, an ill defined creature of wriggles its way into this world. Its purpose: to scout. To learn. Alone, it was no match for fairly anyone, and was the lowest creature of ill defined angles and limbs, but it was the start. Onto a rooftop it plops without ceremony, limbs all wrong and grasping for purchase. It was doubtful that its passage could be seen in the darkness of Vailkrin. Wasting no time, it crawls towards the street flings itself over the edge, right onto the head of a passing woman. The resulting commotion as she screamed, as even the most stalwart of vampires would probably freak the hell out if you stuck something that wrong suddenly on their head, and flung it against a wall. The creature was tougher then to be splatted by the blow, and it was scuttling away, leaving passerby staring.


Redhale 's kind were hardly well known to be fleet of foot, but at that scream just as many undead rushed to the scene as vampires. The odd situation had everyone on edge, and it would have took less than a horrified shriek to set the city guards into motion. Even the twisted frame of Redhale, just about as alien a shape as one could get without the extra dimensions afforded to those beyond the tear, lumbered onto the streets to witness the events, although he didn't move to attack the creature. It was instead another undead, a twisted, leathery thing garbed in minimal strips of cloth, likely some religious attire, that leapt down from another rooftop upon the scout. Its gnarled fingers clawed into whatever flesh it could find before the ancient being reared its head back to prepare a vicious bite, delivered by an all-too-wide mouth full of shattered, jagged teeth. The illusionist watched patiently, rather impressed that it had been an independent undead rather than one of his own men to attack the thing, although he feared it might have been better if he had been in control due to the creature's odd nature.


Marin stood staring, jaw dropped, yet an uncontrollable shiver wracked her lithe form. "That was just... ", her voice halts as another violent shiver rends through her spine. "What -was- that?", she says aloud, hoping someone responds. Eyes glued to where the thing that globbed down upon her is now, she watches as it's attacked, and with no show of emotion, awaits its demise.


|| The thing that had dropped was primordial, incomplete. To speak of functionality: it had nearly none. It could crawl, it could scuttle, but it could not fight. It did not even have the life to really give up. When it 'died', it simply stopped moving. A machine without power would be a good analog, were it not for the horrorific number of legs and joints it seemed to have. Its outer surface, now that it could be accessed, was a mixture of hard and soft. Chitin on some legs and segments of its 'body', made of a black material that had no name, and soft, pliable tissue on other parts. Some of the legs were like noodles. It was likely there that the chomp went through the thing. Ichor that would surely be deadly to any creature that yet still lived bursts forth in a fetid splume. High above, there was silence. The tear was somewhat like a faucet who's nozzle was slowly being turned. This scout was a single drop. More would come, but slowly. Perhaps the next would not arouse such unsubtle alarm.


Redhale approached the corpse and looked down upon it blankly. A stony grumble thanked the undead who was presently wiping thick goop from its maw before the illusionist drew a long dark spear from somewhere in that mass of cloth that made up the majority of his form to skewer the lifeless hunk of confusion. The dead thing was held up for closer inspection before the spear was pulled back into Redhale's robes, along with its bloody burden. Since it seemed no one else was going to answer the woman on the streets, and since she seemed to need some form of comfort, the dark man approached her and spoke in his gravelly tones, "It was nothing. A fleshy accident formed by broken magic and an unfortunate surge of power. But it still shouldn't have been here…" He looked up to the tear in the Vailkrin sky, "I give it a few days before something more than nothing begins to peek its nose in."


Marin watches as someone fully cloaked spears the now dead multi-appendaged glob and is slightly amused when the spear, complete with the dead whatever it was, disappears back into the folds of inky robes. When the robed one approaches her, she takes note of the mask worn. She knows of this man, somewhat, from her "past life". Best be careful not to let on. Hearing his words, Marin trembles. Not out of fear, but with anger that burns to her core. She looks around her, seeing all those that heard her scream. The scars of war. Her eyes close briefly as she forces herself to calm down some before speaking. After a moment, she looks at Redhale, "Tell me what has happened here. There's been war. When? Why?" Her jaw clenches, teeth gnashed together to silence herself before she yells at him, demanding his knowledge of what has occurred.


Redhale looked pointedly towards the freakish distraction ripping through the dark land and back to Marin before answering her question, "The war? That's what you're worried about? It doesn't do to think about the war any more, it's over." He began to tread back down the street, expecting the woman to follow, "After the demise of our old ruler, Ginger con Snapdragon, there was a little… Upset. People thought some things belonged to them. They were wrong." The pale mask Redhale wore turned symbolically up towards the ruined castle as they moved onwards, though his true focus was still on that wound in space, "Some sought power through sheer strength, but the power of the land and its people won out in the end. Now the vampires have their council, while the undead have their land. Everyone is happy. Those who are left behind, anyway."


Marin follows behind Redhale, keeping pace with ease. "And what of this eve? How long has the sky looked like this? Is that the first -thing- that has shown itself?" Speeding her steps, she passes Redhale only to whirl about, stopping suddenly in front of him. "How do we stop this? We must -do- something!" Yes, it appears she has lost her calm veneer. Clearing her throat, she forces the corners of her lips to curl up in a slight smile. "Sorry. I didn't mean to raise my voice, but... There must be something that can be done." Silvery-blues stare at where Redhale's eyes would be, had he any, imploringly. "We can't just do nothing."


Redhale simply turned to one side to walk around Marin, it wasn't exactly a narrow path they were on, "Sky's been doing this… For a while now. Things got out of hand towards the end… As far as I know that's the only thing to have come out of it, but I could be wrong. People have claimed to see things, but hearsay doesn't really convince me of much." Not as much as the dead thing did, anyway, "If you're so eager to do something, feel free to rush on in there. I, on the other hand, will do my part in keeping the city safe without throwing caution to the wind."

Marin turns and hurries to catch up to Redhale. "Look... I'm not about to rush into anything blind, either. I just want to know what happened. From the beginning. Maybe, just maybe, that contributed to what's going on now. I don't know. Do you? Can you say for sure?" She sighs heavily. "Maybe if enough of us put our heads together on this we can stop it. It's worth that much effort, no?" The Vampiress stops walking. Her next words are in a softer tone. "Redhale, I just want to keep others safe, too. No different from you. Help me... "


|| One would hope that Redhale had the good sense to utterly destroy the body in flame or acid. These things had a habit of suddenly reanimating. And growing. Over the next week, as the tear dripped more and more, Vailkrin's vermin population would suddenly take a sharp downturn. Nothing bigger then rats, not yet. The scouts purpose was to learn, and then report. To do that, they needed to get the intelligence to realize that the tear needed to be flown to, as that was the only way in and out.