The Fifteen Strangers Mods (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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15strangers2023-07-20 09:54 am
strangerpeople) wrote in 15strangers2023-07-20 09:54 am
FINAL INVESTIGATION
[Fifteen X-Passes. Six weeks. Freedom at last.
But it's not the end. Of course it's not. There are questions to answer, and souls to save. And now that the group is outside, they can see where they are.
They are inside a massive cavern, illuminated in an eerie green light, standing on a stone path. On one side is the ship-or rather, a massive, ship-shaped tangle of bloody branches, the trunk-like roots snaking out and into the river its buoyed on, as well as into the ceiling of stalactites. Said river is wine dark, but it's clearly not water. No-it is blood.
And on the other side of their little pathway? A root-encrusted palace. It sits over a labyrinthine city, bathed in emerald, and all is eerily silent save for some sounds coming from within the castle. It's clear the infestation somehow started here. And it is here that answers are likely to be found.
The doors are right in front of the group-and they are already open, covered in branches. From the outside, it seems little more than a ruin. Once everyone goes in, though?
It's even worse. The tree has taken over. Whatever lives here is no longer in charge. There's no easy way to disentangle the Qilphoth from this place. But there is life here, somehow. You can see figures entangled within the roots as you explore. And-they are still, somehow, alive. More than alive. They are beings that bleed ichor instead of blood-beings of incredible divinity and power. They are gods. And they are hostage to the tree, forever and ever, trapped in induced ennui, unless something is done.
[Once you enter, the investigation shall begin.
Good luck.]
((OoC: And here are team assignments!))
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I see...Well, I assume, then, that yours is not like most infections, given as you are able to keep calm, and no one else among the living shows signs of the contagion.
[And that's...that. He remains completely calm about the whole thing.]
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[Crap, right, not a good time to joke about it.]
I meant...Blast it, my apologies. I only meant to lighten the mood, not make you feel worse.
[HIM AND HIS BAD SENSE OF HUMOR...]
Regardless, I feel everything will be alright, Hermes. There was quite the contagious, terrible disease back in my day, too - but we didn't make lepers out of the sufferers.
[IT just spread like wildfire due to ABSOUTELY HORRIBLE HYGENE PRACTICES but]
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[Hermes sighs and nods. Apology accepted.]
It... it usually takes two weeks for any symptoms to show, and there's many types of clockwork. I... I think I'm a non-infectious strain.
...But I've been having... moments of aggression.