— villainy wears many masks

[somatosensory]

WHO: aristaeus & others
WHERE: around the netherworld
WHEN: month of october
WHAT: catch-all
WARNINGS: will update as needed!

NOTES: Starters will be in the comments. Feel free to hit me up at resurrectionist or at the event planning comment for plotting.

LINKS

• CR MEME
• OOC PLOTTING
• PERMISSIONS
• OPT-IN/OUT
• IC INBOX

WILDCARD OPTIONS

CR: OPEN TO ALL; GEN-FAVOURED OFFERING:

• KNOCK ON WOOD - General woodland encounters; he'll be escorting/teaming up with Johanna (exilire) but the woods are tricksy so it'll be easy to run into people. BONUS: Monster encounters
• GO BIG OR GOURD HOME - Feast and Harvest Hunt meet-cutes. For the Feast, I'm interested in: grablenuts, will-o-the-whiskey and elysium particularly. For the Hunt, he'll probably be the hunter.
• PARADE - No solid plans. He'd be really pressed about body-swapping.
• WAYWARD SUN - Quite probably going to try to fight the Horseman to be honest.

© tessisamess

Comments

[somatosensory]

( striking a match, aristaeus bends his cigarette toward the flame, grateful that for all the weather is just this side of glacial there hasn't been an excess of wind to worry about yet. )

Is there a hard cap on something like that?

( idly curious. surprisingly, the inefficiency of human sacrifice seemed to be one of the few things that the empire and the unconquered territories could agree on — the former thinking them pointlessly barbaric while the latter didn't have the bodies to spare.

evidently the netherworld either didn't have those particular concerns, but then they'd just gotten a fresh batch of imports, hadn't they? by all accounts just brimming with power and potential. )

[exilire]

In my experience, yes, actually. Both humans and the demonic tend to be very exacting and precise, where their spells are concerned.

[ she turns her head to smirk at him, as they pick their way carefully through the dense trees and mist. ]

Unfortunately we don't know whether that cap here, in this land errs more on the side of five drops or five tons, do we.

[somatosensory]

( johanna flashes a smirk at him, and he wonders if she might not be fucking with him — his barometer for bullshit has expanded considerably since waking here, but demons might be pushing it.

still — ) Five tons feels like it'd be overkill. ( he says, the world's most unlikely optimist. )

Not that I wouldn't like a better look at that Lantern.

[exilire]

[ it doesn't occur to her to hold back with regard to what she dabbles in, any longer. she's had an extended conversation with him, and from the sound of it they come from an entirely different timepoint with regard to societies — if he comes from earth at all, and there's a definitive possibility that he doesn't, although she hasn't clarified that just yet.

hell is just another dimension, after all, compared to the waking world and the dreaming, and even the silver city — so there could very well be some quantum bullshit going on with respect to where they drag people into this place, from.

he brings up the lantern, and she nods at him. ]

Same here, actually...if it's crafted from the blood and bones from someone previous, and has usefulness beyond just a source of light, even mystical properties perhaps, it might be helpful to learn what sort of magic they might be dealing with further in this place.

[ and the more they know, and more artifacts they obtain, the better off here they might very well be. ]

[somatosensory]

( bless her. he's going to have a lot of questions, he can already tell. )

This is starting to sound like the beginning of a bad joke.

( "when is a lamp not a lamp?" when some old lady of dubious morals sends you into a (clearly) haunted forest to retrieve it. )

Could be the person that made the initial blood sacrifice.

[exilire]

Exactly my thoughts.

[ that last part, anyway — although she won't deny that ending up here in some sort of strange purgatory isn't a joke in itself, already. ]

Most rituals demand sacrifice, of some sort. If the lantern's made from the bones and blood of the one who initially spilled it, like our friend Myrtille was suggesting, and we can't find it to end what's going on, then likely one of us is going to have to spill our own in contrition.

[ she looks at him, smirking, making light of what's otherwise an unpleasant scenario. ] And I don't know about you, but even in the realm of the undead, I'd like to hold onto my blood.

[somatosensory]

( he nods. the logic makes sense — nature prefers balance, generally, and while there are those rare gifted few that can squeeze the maximum amount of juice out of a moment while offering as little of themselves in turn, it's usually a matter of when when not if karma will come calling eventually.

aristaeus takes another drag on his cigarette, a line forming between his brows. )

Contrition costs extra. ( blandly.

as it stands, he's already considering how much he will squeeze the old woman for when they return.

possibly literally. )

[exilire]

[ that bland comment — especially delivered so deadpan, just as she likes them — earns him an appreciative glance, the smirk still firmly entrenched on her lips. the sardonic humor is more than relatable.

she's about to comment further on it, but ahead of them through the fog she can hear something like the hissing of some sort of creature, and the dark, beating sound of what might possibly be flapping wings.

johanna stops in her tracks, eyes searching the dark mist-covered trees ahead of them. someone — or something — is snickering up in the withered, rotted-out old boughs, and the words she can make out between bouts of inhuman cackling sound like ...dead...dead. dead!

up in the branches, when the fog clears enough and the sliver of moonlight shows through the trees, are what look like monstrous bird-like creatures, with talons and enormous wingspans and something vaguely resembling female shapes.

never taking her eyes off of them: ]

...The fuck is that.

[somatosensory]

Just what passes for wildlife out here. Forest's probably chock full of them.

( if he sounds unconcerned, it's because this isn't the first time he's encountered a harpy — although these are in much better shape than the one he'd run across during his early days in stygia.

so, while he'd come prepared, aristaeus makes no move to draw a weapon. no need to borrow trouble this early into their journey. )