The Fifteen Strangers Mods (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
strangerpeople) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
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!))
no subject
Huh? Sure, shoot.
no subject
[He goes through his notes and offers the image he meticulously copied]
no subject
no subject
What do you know about Witches?
Essay Warning, I MEAN it
The Umbra Witches are an ancient and noble clan, alongside the Lumen Sages, that dates back to the earliest days of humanity. Aesir, the god of the human world, saw the young humans blindly following their fated paths, incapable of true free will, and so He took pity on them and divided Himself. He granted them His Eyes, the ability to see through the world and oversee the threads of fate, splitting them between two major clans of spiritually powerful humans. The woman who received the Left Eye of Darkness became the first Umbra Witch, and the man who received the Right Eye of Light became the first Lumen Sage.
The Umbra clan spread all over the world, adopting in women who had powerful spiritual energy and taught them the secrets of Witchcraft. They made pacts with devils of the underworld for secrets and greater power, while the Lumen made pacts with angels for the same. The price for such dark power was that no matter their actions, their souls would be irrevocably tainted by Darkness, and they would be claimed by Inferno at the exact moment of their deaths. Some Witches were able to adapt to the underworld and become powerful devils themselves, but since their pacts had no influence on where they landed...most just ended up devoured by opportunistic devils looking for the power boost such a magically dense soul provided.
Most modern media depicts Witches as evil servants of rapacious devils, but that's a fairly recent depiction. The truth is, Witches and Sages originally operated in a tense alliance and protected the balance of the human world. They paid their contracted devils in blood, sure, but anything like sacrifice of innocents was the result of cultures completely under the sway of particularly nasty devils. For the most part, we took payment in the blood of those who threatened the Witches or their homes, including other demons that preyed on humans rather than coexisting with them.
The Eyes of the World were passed down through the two clans for millennia, overseeing the passage of time and keeping reckless usages of Time magic from damaging the world. Maybe as a consequence, both clans developed their own take on a minor Time spell that allowed them to move impossibly fast compared to everything else. Some were more talented in that regard than others, like Cleopatra, or... [He hesitates, tail flicking awkwardly.] Or Dante and Vergil's mother, Eva. But for most, turning the adrenaline of a close dodge into a few precious moments of slowing time for everything around them was the most they could muster.
That symbol you found was a major part of another spell that the Umbra and Lumen each had their own version of. It formed the center of a temporary gateway providing access to the realm of Purgatorio, where the mortal world, Hell, and Heaven all overlapped. From there, you're invisible to those without the magical capacity to see into it, but also can't interact with most living things that only exist on one of the other planes. If you see objects moving on their own or spontaneously breaking, it's a sign that someone is present on Purgatorio.
...The reason most stories of Witches these days paint them in a negative light is because of the Witch Hunts. I don't know why, I was...incapacitated at the time, but about five-hundred years ago? The Lumen decided to declare war on the Umbra. Though history books on the subject say the Lumen clan perished first, they'd already turned the rest of the world against the Umbra, and the Witches were hunted down by the same people they'd once protected, their souls consigned to Hell. Maybe some of them managed to become devils in their own right, but the only survivor I've heard evidence of was Eva...and she died twenty years before I met Dante.
no subject
That sure is Roland coming up, kissing the devil on the cheek and carefully wrapping his arms around his waist while resting his head on his boyfriend's shoulder.
Just quietly listening. Don't mind him. ]