[mission: hyrypia] and when our bottles and all we are fill’d with immortality

[onemind]

CHARACTERS: The Barithian Hunters (and anyone sneaking along)
WHERE: Hyrypia - The Finger Maze
WHEN: DAY :018
SUMMARY: The barithian hunt leads into the depths of the Finger Maze.
WARNINGS: Violence. Animal slaughter. Character death. Need a warning added? PM this account please!

THE FINGER MAZE
DAY :018
IN MORNING'S PRE-DAWN GRAY the camp is far more subdued than on preceding days. There's no music, breakfast is a quiet and simple affair, and the servants are hushed as they go about their duties. Before the sun has even fully risen, the members of the Envoys participating in the hunt make their way to their mounts. When they arrive they are given a speech that seems practiced - likely only a slight modification of something that the Elinmaster has said many times before. The group - just under forty hunters kitted out with all of the weapons and traps they have had time to learn in their days on the graze - is brought to the fenceline running parallel to the technomagical barrier which guards the mouth of the Finger Maze proper. In the fence is a plain gate. Once the hunting party is gathered there, it opens. A slash in the technomagical barrier disintegrates before them and the smell of ozone evaporates or is carried into the twisting depths of the Maze by the wind howling mournfully inward from off the Graze. The Elinmaster leads the hunting party through the gap.

Once on the other side, the party draws pauses until the technomagical barrier rises once more behind them. No crowds today. No onlookers (unless they're being especially industrious). Then the Elinmaster brings a familiar sounding horn to their lips. It's long, low wailing note echoes down into the maze and splinters down the endless twisting pathways. With that, the hunt begins.

INTO THE LABYRINTH
I. THE STAGING GROUND
HERE IS HOW YOU HUNT A BARITHIAN, explains the Elinmaster. First, a field of battle needs to be chosen - and it's always better to know the ground you're fighting on than to be caught unawares in unfamiliar territory. The hunting party will need to establish a fall back position inside the canyon that's advantageous to them, at which point it will be lain with all manner of traps. Memorize it. You'll want to know every nook and cranny when you return here under duress.

Plan your routes and lay your traps. You do remember how to set them, don't you?


II. BY THE TAIL
WITH THE STAGE SET, only the star is lacking - or the villain is. But the Finger Maze is a vast labyrinthine space that stretches on for miles. Finding the Barithian, even as large as it is, presents a challenge - perhaps the second greatest challenge of the hunt. It is time for the hunters to separate. Some go off alone, some travel in small groups. Each is equipped with a small version of the horn that had summoned them to this work in the first place. Their task is simple and herculean: to search the maze for signs of the beast and locate it, then to draw its attention and lure it back into the staging ground. Lastly, they must send out the call to summon the rest of the party to rendezvous meet them where the chase will end. However, only one route leads to the barithian. Perhaps--

a) There were signs - a bone, a tell-tale scrape on the canyon walls, a corridor of felled coral. It was difficult to tell from the back of the Elin, so it made sense in the moment to dismount and check more closely. --At least, it made sense right up until now when you suddenly hear something. Something-- big. Its footfalls shake the floor under your feet; its heavy breath snorts out of its multiple sets of nostrils with a wet visceral sound. You can’t go back the way you came - the trembling footfalls seem to come from that direction. Luckily, there's a narrow cave opening in the canyon wall right there.

Inside is dark. The cave goes very deep indeed - so deep that after a time you can smell the promise of fresh air again. Maybe there's another exit? Which is good, since the way you entered is no longer an option: the beast is there, it's massive forepaws clawing into the stone on either side of the cave entrance and its huge mutli-nostriled nose sucking in big, gulping breaths.

b) ((OOC NOTE: first come first serve)) You find the Barithian. Even with its great hulking back turned to you, it's awe-inspiring. Terrifying. The Elinmaster's assistants had described it on the way in, but their words failed to convey the details. It's disturbingly massive - mammothian, even -, its six legs coiled tight with muscle, and strong, sharp claws on each of the massive paws. You have to get it’s attention. How you do it is up to you, but you know that the moment it turns its massive head toward you with its beady eyes hidden behind a broad, triangular face plate and its multinostrils flaring with a horrible groaning noise that it's time to get a move on.

c) Your search has turned up nothing - but that's not surprising is it? The maze is huge. Not everyone could strike gold. Hell, not everyone would even want to. It’s almost a relief until you hear it: the low, moan of the signal horn echoing through the maze-like canyon. You need to get back to the staging ground and you need to go fast - or risk leaving the other hosts to face the beast alone.

III. THE BATTLE
THE HORN DOES ITS JOB. By the time the hosts unlucky enough to have the tiger by its tail come riding back into the staging ground, many members of the hunting party have already returned and are armed, if not ready, for when the creature comes barreling in behind them. It shakes the brittle bone coral with the weight of its galloping footfalls and makes a deep, low sonorous noises that echoes down the stone walls. With its ire raised, the barithian is even more fearsome than it had seemed from a distance. It’s size and strength are undeniable up close. The creature tears great mounds of earth up under its clawed feet and there's a mesmerizing, horrific quality to the flash of filtered canyon light off its sharp teeth.

The riders are now tasked with the last phase of the challenge - kill or be killed, using the weapons and techniques they have learned in their time here. And hey, maybe you have a few non-Hyrypian tricks up your sleeves you can play with some subtlety. Fighting fair seems less than ideal when one of those huge paws comes swiping right at you.


IV. THE FRUIT OF DIPLOMACY
'DON'T GET CLOSE TO THE HEAD,' had seemed like an easy to follow rule back on the Graze, but the reality of facing down with the barithian is far more complicated. And despite being slowed by the environment, the traps laid for it, countless spears jutting from its dense marbled hide, here in its last moments the great beast is at its most dangerous. Maybe someone gets over confidant. Maybe it's just general exhaustion. Maybe it seems like the barithian is staggering when really it's turning for one final, deadly snap of its ferocious jaws.

It bowls three riders from their Elin with one swipe from its massive paw - mechanics twisting and bursting with brilliant flares of released technomagical energy - then lunges for the felled hunters left in the wake of their ruined mounts. A Descendant throws up both arms in some lunatic, useless defense mechanism. Beside her, Lavellan drives the blunt end of his spear into the ground and braces the shaft across his knee. The Barithian drives itself down on the point of the spear, snaps down on his arm by reflex and then recoils - tossing him clear like a horrifying rag doll as the great animal thrashes.

There's an immediate, palpable, indescribable POP! A ship being hulled and all the air sucked out of into into the vacuum of space. A glass bauble splitting into a hundred thousand pieces on some distant stone floor. A seam splitting. A branch snapped across the knee. And then there's nothing left at all except the frothing barithian snapping out those nearest i to it.


V. THE RETURN
THE RIDE BACK TO THE CAMP seems to take twice as long as the one they took to the Finger Maze - though it hardly seems long enough, knowing what lies at the end. Certainly the other Hosts will have felt Lavellan's death, but you know what they say. Seeing is believing.

It doesn’t matter. The camp awaits their return regardless. As they ride through the gate again one of the massive technomagically driven wagons passes them, headed into the maze to retrieve their kill. Once they reach the edges of the encampment, the atmosphere there remains subdied. While the other Envoys and Hyrypian hosts might not know the nitty gritty details, the certainly seem to have considered the possibility of things going badly. There is food, drink, and eventually even some gentle, sober music, however the evening is quiet and many of the envoys retreat to their own tents rather than remain in the public spaces.

Some victories are not celebrated.

---

((OOC Notes: This log covers the barithian hunt and any relating events that take place on DAY :018. You can find information about the hunt and ask event specific questions HERE.

Have more generalized questions? Drop them on the MISSION: HYRYPIA OOC POST or get in touch with us on the Mod Contact page.))

NAVIGATION • GAME CALENDAR • MISSION: HYRYPIA • FAQ
• MOD CONTACT • GLOSSARY

( CODE BY WHAMBAM )

Comments

[wille]

[ The extent to which the human body can be extended beyond its capacity in times of need is nothing short of remarkable. There are many stories about it of course, a victory of mind over body. It is her mind, narrowed to a sliver of focus on the most singular task of bringing Lavellan back, winning over whatever complaint her body raises against the ignominious task. The elf's body feels disjointed to the touch, as if his limbs stripped of purpose have become no longer arms and legs but bags of flesh and bones, and it is this hint of disintegration that makes it all the more difficult to maneuver him off the Elin and to walk with him back toward the tent to help seat him on the floor.

She withdraws a few steps from him (him, she says still, not yet his remains), methodically stripping off the outermost layer of her robes to be rid of the scent of blood. Mind over body, and yet the body holds power over the mind too, and when she turns her attention to unfastening her clothes it is to keep the grief at bay. Then, spoken to any who might be in the tent, and spoken to Annie, to Seviilia, and to herself, for the sake of her sanity: ]

It doesn't mean he's not dead.

[miscreant]

[She blinks past the various thoughts coming to her, most of which she is sure are not her own. It is easy to turn to Misato once she lays her minion down, though the choice she settles on confuses her just a touch. One ear flicks, before both curl slightly downward with some distaste.]

It would be difficult to imagine otherwise, given our connection.

[She keeps her voice as low as her echo will allow, exchanging a simultaneous glance with her simulacrum beside her. She had realized that there were a handful in the Nest incapable of rationalizing life after death -- especially in the form that she took. But she can't help the small bristle of irritation that runs down her spine anyway.]

But as we tell the others, we brought him back alive...and he perished before we could offer him treatment. We may have the body, but there will be questions if anyone spotted his departure.

[She has an idea of how to dispose of the body, but she does not imagine many will approve of it. The idea sits in the back of her mind, closed off.]

I am open to suggestions.

[deployed]

We can't take him with us.

[ Him meaning what's left of Lavellan. Meaning his corpse, once Seviilia has cut the strings. Beneath the aches and pains he'd walked out of the canyon with, Bellamy's mind is flickering with historic burial rites, which give way to a much more vivid, real set of funeral rites. Two bodies wrapped in linen, set upon a pyre rise to the forefront of his thoughts. ]

We can burn the body. [ Bellamy proposes from just within the tent entryway. ] It's safer than burying him.

[ Eighteen graves sit in the back of Bellamy's mind, indistinct and hazy in an unconscious attempt to mask them. Pyres and flame wasn't his tradition, but it's near at hand. And part of him wants to be finished with what's been done to Lavellan. Puppeteering him out of the canyon had been necessary, but it's unsettling. Bellamy doesn't want to prolong it. ]

[earthborn]

[They troop into the tent Shepard has shared. Shepard does not look, not beyond the once, at the moving corpse of Lavellan. It was too much like a husk, and ever motion it made, every moment it sat there, pulled new tension into her back. Wrong wrong wrong.]

We have to burn it.

[It, and not him. Shepard is as terse as she's ever been, shut down and cold, projecting nothing more through the mental link than stone and steel armor, matte-black and uninviting. She is grieving, but she will never admit it, not where anyone can hear or see. Not even in thought--and so, this. She has no taste for smugness.]

No evidence.

[sizeofyourbaggage]

[ Sam's mind is distant as he looks over the walking corpse and then looks away, turning his attention towards those gathered around it instead. It's not quite dissociation, not really, but -

It is, a little, so he doesn't have to deal with grief right now. He'll process it later. ]

A pyre. We'll have a funeral for him.

[ He doesn't know what Lavallen's beliefs were, not more than glimpses picked up when their minds were pushed together too close, when Lavallen's ability made him a broodmate or Sam was pulled into his nightmares - but funerals are more for the living than the dead, though people don't always like to see it like that.

His mind is already working a little, a half formed plan that he'll need a little bit of time to pin down - and to talk to Annie. ]

We can keep his body hidden for a day or so, give people time if they want it. Come up with a reason for the other envoys.

[sistershoggoth]

Didn't you fuckers get brutal off of a sudden.

[ A lazy drawl. She doesn't care. It wouldn't be the first time she's made someone disappear so that her hide wouldn't have to suffer. That reality swims around in the pit of her stomach, nauseating. She ignores it. ]

That's the easiest, most straight forward solution.

[ Thus it's the one she favors. ]

[redheadcarrier]

[ A distant, tiny part of Asuka had dared to hope when Lavellan had started moving again. Maybe it was a mistake. Maybe he'd be right back in her head again after a few minutes. But it had been too final for that and by the time they're all back in camp, she knows with certainty that he's gone, gone, gone, and she'll never hear him - in her head or in her ears - again. She's been a coiled spring, tense and ready to snap, but she still forces herself to the tent where they've gathered, feeling small and unimportant as everyone starts to talks about what they're going to do with the body. The mission. Burn it. She doesn't quite understand why he's a walking corpse, but it unnerves her. And she breaks in with a voice that's edging toward being cracked and brittle. ]

Just cut him loose already.

[ She doesn't want to look at the moving pile of robes and brightly colored clothing and keep thinking that there's a possibility. ]

He's not - he's not a doll or some kind of puppet. He's gone.

[ She shouldn't care what he is, right? But it bothers her. ]

[miscreant]

A pyre? Something so public? Would it not be better to avoid attention?

[The elf sitting on the ground beside her echoes the displeasure in her tone with an audible, nonsensical grumble. She could not argue that fire was the best course of action -- there could be no chance left to recover the symbiotic, should the enemy still be lurking as the others had assured them. But the spectacle of it could just as easily attract attention.

The various unease and tone of disgust doesn't irritate her until Asuka appears. A doll. A puppet. As if such actions could be called a crime, given what necromancer were capable of. She earns herself a direct glance of something that might have passed for disapproval were it not for the fact that she was raising her hand to do as bidded.]

Do not insult me, Asuka.

[One hand falls to Lavellan's head, combs through hair to find skin, and she gives a sharp twist to cut the last thread. There is a brief flicker of yellow light in his eyes before the body falls to the side as if it had never been moving at all. Seviilia, for her part, appears unmoved, but slightly more alert than she had been a moment ago.]

[redheadcarrier]

I'm not-!

[ Asuka shoots back and her voice does crack, the strain finally getting to her. She runs a hand over her face and then tries to settle, arms akimbo. ]

I understand, OK?

[ She doesn't want to argue with Sevilla right now. Even if there's anger and frustration crackling under the service, she knows that she did what they had to do. That doesn't make her any more fond of it. ]

[sizeofyourbaggage]

[ His eyes meet Shepard's for a moment, mind curling around hers in a half formed question - he knows how close she is with Asuka, and she and Seviilia are probably the best to try to help her through this - before his attention is pulled away by Lavellan's body falling to the floor.

There's a part of him that's aware that his mental link probably feels more like Bucky's than it ever has before, a quiet rush of cold wind and a hint of static, but, well. They're doing what they gotta do.

He stares at Lavellan's body, a faint hint of grief rising up before he pushes it back down. ]

Every culture has some kind of funeral or mourning rites, right? No reason this can't be ours. [ It just has to be the kind of attention they can use, really. ]

[deployed]

[ It's very final, but seeing Seviilia's influence severed is a relief. The unsettled pulse of disapproval and distaste ebbs slightly, though that makes way for the inevitable awareness of what has been lost to take it's place. ]

We don't have to invite the whole caravan to watch us burn it. We can do it at night, and leave a few of us hang back to keep any audience at a safe distance.

[ But even as he speaks, part of his mind is nudging gently at Asuka in silent entreaty. This loss has happened. Bellamy cannot change it, just as he could not give Maya back to Jasper, or Lincoln back to Octavia. He is powerless here. But he knows the break in Asuka's voice. Maybe she'll accept comfort if it is quiet and unseen by the rest of their party. ]

They don't need to know anything other than we're honoring him the way our culture demands.

[ Lucky for them, that way can be whatever they make of it. ]

[earthborn]

[Shepard's answering touch is curt, but honest, already easier in the air when the corpse goes back to being no more than just a corpse. Shepard can cope with bodies, has been coping with them all her life. Her reply lie more in the sensation of a nod than any kind of words. Leave it with Seviilia, with Shepard, and Asuka will be looked-after: I'm on it.]

Agreed. It'll be more noticeable if we don't have protocol for this kind of thing. We're supposedly a religious sect aren't we?

[A religious sect that wears full-body veils and makes out in strange places, and gives strange gifts. That's not suspicious at all. Shepard thinks for a moment: there's no room for sentiment, here.]

...And, if we're just going to make shit up, might as well make it useful while we're at it. I've got a few ideas, if no one else does.

[sizeofyourbaggage]

Exactly. All they know is what we tell them.

[ He hums in agreement with Bellamy's suggestion - make it private, give Lavellan a send off. It's not... well, Sam doesn't know what'd be considered proper for him, but it feels better than what might be an alternative.

Something that's for them, not for the other envoys.

Especially with the kind of plans he's already been thinking of for the mourning rites themselves. And it seems like him and Shepard are on the same page - he's not sure if that's bleedover from being in each other's heads too much, or just that ultimately they're both the same kind of practical, especially with the way Sam's coping by dissociation - but it doesn't really matter. ]

Hey, Annie? You think you'd be up for using more of that jello stuff?

[sistershoggoth]

[ She glances at them both, avoiding all this fucking mind touching and rubbing like she's sorry for herself. She is, she did plenty of that the other day and now she's quiet in the midst of all this turmoil. A low thrum of existence that gives away nothing. ]

The fuck do I have to do with any of this.

[ A long exhale. She wants a cigarette more than she wants to pow-wow. ]

[wille]

[ Misato feels as if she is sinking into mud, the surface rising to swallow her ankles and creeping higher, higher. This lingering on things past and over with, when one must keep moving or risk being swallowed, and she despises it. She crouches by the body that is finally still, unmoving, just an object. It's fitting that they talk of it as something to be dealt with, discarded. And she never knew him well enough besides, so it shouldn't matter.

She looks up toward Shepard first, eyes dry, then pointedly to Asuka. ]

Asuka knows best what he would've wanted done. The rest is just clean-up, anything will do as long as it leaves no trace.

[ Her voice is cold. She doesn't waver when rising to her feet and stepping out of the group, steps as sure as ever. ]

I'm gonna go wash up.

[redheadcarrier]

Burn him.

[ She says it quietly. It's the only real way forward they have, right? Even she can see that trying to bury him would bring questions. They have a mission. Even if she feels absolutely miserable. ]

It'll be better that way.