— 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]

( 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. )