[PLOT] That's no ordinary rabbit

[northrend]

Date & Time: All day Friday, December 14th and onward.
Location: Initiate Hold
Characters: All
Summary: The plague has taken hold and there are rampant, angry undead critters running around! Better get rid of them quick, before you attract the Scourge Horde.
Warnings: Undead attacks, localized around cute woodland critters.

[The death tolls of all the woodland animals had come around the same time. Some lasted longer than others, but for the most part, it appeared that most of the sickly animals had passed sometime in the middle of the night. The next morning, transports would awaken to find their furry friends looking...well, less than furry. Their eyes glow a sickly yellow, patches of fur fall off their body, and they continuously cry for help.

Help from whom? You?

Or the group of rampaging ghouls charging toward you?]


[ooc: Original plot post is here!. If you would like me to NPC ghoul attacks in your thread, please mark your subject line with three asterisks. (***) Otherwise, feel free to do it amongst yourselves! Please note that I won't be able to NPC threads until tomorrow afternoon.]

Comments

[ofthegrey]

Once he had enough of a lead on them, he circled around and flanked them. They were still looking for him when he cut them down with efficient brutality from behind. He made sure he wasn't followed by more on his way back. There was no sense in trying to sheath his blades. There hadn't been for a long time now. He'd only foul the sheaths and make cleaning much harder than it needed to be later.

"It's me," he called a bit before reaching the door. Better safe than sorry.

[strategic_guile]

Blaine would have admired the quiet efficiency, but he was waiting when he heard Duncan announce his presence. He stood and held the door open with his foot and gazed out until he could close it behind himself.

"Are there less out there where you were?"

[ofthegrey]

"I took care of the ones following me. I didn't see any others," he said. He squinted when he stepped into the light and made a face when he noticed what they were tracking in. There was nothing to be done for it. He wasn't about to go grab a mop to deal with it right now.

"Guess I'll take a breather or two before heading back out. What's your plan?"

[strategic_guile]

"Good." He stood in the doorway and slid the gun into his holster under his jacket. Then he took the jacket off, covered in sludge as it was, and cleaned his hands with it. "I'll rest a while, see how much ammo I have left. Then I'll decide what to do."

[ofthegrey]

He nodded. "If you go back out, I'm sure I don't need to tell you to watch yourself out there." He decided to head for one of the training rooms to clean up rather than his apartment. If the kids were there, he didn't want to alarm them, or more likely give them a reason to want to go out and hunt monsters, too. He waved one dagger in something of a sloppy salute on his way down the corridor.

[strategic_guile]

That sloppy salute gets a laugh as Blaine follows right behind him. "Trying to get rid of me?" he asked. He figures he could clean up, but mostly he needed a wide area to keep track of all the items he still had.

[ofthegrey]

"No, you're free to come if you wish." He continues down the corridor with a purposeful stride. He ducks into the first training room they come to and activates the lights. That's something he's not sure he'll ever fully get used to.

Heading past the dummies and the various stations, he doesn't stop until he reaches the locker area and a supply of clean towels. He's mostly focused on his skin and weapons. The armor will have to wait until later.

[strategic_guile]

Blaine pulled off a few more layers of clothes, shedding weapons, accessories, and ammunition along the way. Clips, a few loose shells, a sawed off shotgun, his own gun of choice, and a last box of ammo were laid out on the bench. The jacket was a mess and he lamented its death, even if it was just a spare he'd bought for the pockets. He was going to be scrubbing and washing all of this stuff for days.

He left it on the bench since it was right next to a sink and turned to scrub down his arms and hands. "Do you have much experience with zombies back in your world? Because this is all new to me." The zombies part, anyway.

[ofthegrey]

It was good to see that he had been out there prepared. It was one of the things he was still getting accustomed to with firearms, the idea of how much ammunition was needed to keep them useful and the fact that it had to be accessible enough for quick reloading but not loose because of the size.

He sat a few feet down and began rubbing down one of his daggers. "We do have animated corpses and skeletons," he said. "They're demon possessed, usually by demons of sloth or hunger who have little knowledge or understanding of the material world. When they cross over from the Fade, they can become disoriented. It's believed to be accidental when they possess the dead or trees. They would prefer stronger or more mobile hosts."

[strategic_guile]

What Blaine needed was a staff he could carry with him and extend when he needed it. One of these days he was going to be unlucky and run out of ammo, and getting up close and personal for pistol whipping was a shitty option even at the best of times. He resolved to get himself one of those, or at least a stun baton as he washed the last of the grime off his arms and put on more soap for a third and final washing.

"They possess trees? What do they do then? Shake their branches at you?" he asked, rinsing off a final time before shaking his hands free of water and drying off what moisture was left. He went in search of a gun cleaning kit and was back in a minute or two with a case he set on the table. He took his own gun apart first, laying out the pieces and looking them over to remove any grime and dirt before taking a brush to the inside of the barrel.

[ofthegrey]

"They bash you with the thickest part of the branch and stab you and crush you from the earth beneath your feet with their roots." As silly as he knew it had to sound on the surface, it was a terrifying sort of encounter where lack of decent armor and quick reflexes usually meant a swift, painful, nasty death.

"Fortunately, they burn as readily as any normal tree. A bottle of incendiary oil with a good throwing arm is one quick way out of an attack."

[strategic_guile]

"Not nearly as harmless as I'd been hoping," the blonde said flatly. He looked through the barrel to make sure it was finished before moving on to all the other, smaller parts. "You've told me about the Fade before, but what exactly is it again? Like a spirit world inhabited by demons and spirits?"

[ofthegrey]

"Demons and harmless don't really go together, no," he said. One side of his blade gleamed in the light. He looked down the edge before turning it to give the other side similar thorough treatment.

"I'm no expert, mind you, but yes. It's a spirit realm. There is much debate on the nature of the inhabitants. Some in our world make no distinction between spirits and demons. Others insist they're quite different. What we do know of them is that they are simpler than we in some ways. They tend to embody singular concepts: rage, lust, hunger, or more desirable sorts of concepts such as compassion or kindness. Simple is not to be mistaken for stupid. All but the lowest of them are cunning and capable of deception."

He continued to wipe the blade in a slow rhythm while speaking. "When they cross into our world, they seek something physical to anchor them. They don't understand physicality the same way that we do, for everything in the Fade shifts according to thought and emotion. It can be very disorienting for them. Some don't seem to realize they are no longer in the Fade. Others go insane. They become very dangerous when they possess a corpse and attempt to devour anything living."

[strategic_guile]

Blaine listened and continued to clean his own weapon. "Do you consider spirits and demons separate things?" Blaine was interested in a vague sense. He liked learning about other things, but he hoped he wouldn't have a practical reason to know aside from knowing about Duncan's world. There seemed to be a few of his own in the hold. The blonde could only wonder why so many came from Duncan's but it seemed like it was only him from his own time, if not the only one from his version of earth.

"And what happens if they're in a dead body and eat something living? I assume you mean animals or people and not just plants."

[ofthegrey]

"I don't know what to think of it," he said honestly. "I've been to the Fade before. It was confusing and frightening." Despite that, given what he was offered he likely would have stayed if he could. That was part of what made it as frightening as it was. A world created of emotion inhabited by creatures that could read one's deepest needs and desires was beyond compelling.

His gaze was thoughtful and a tad distant before he returned to the conversation. "I encountered a demon there. Who's to say that they aren't essentially the same as good or bad people? We focus on the good attributes and call those spirits and the bad and call those demons, when the natures could be one and the same, only differentiated by actions and focus. If those with more experience and greater proclivity for philosophical questions cannot agree, I feel unqualified to make a determination."

That latter question was much easier to answer. "They kill and consume it. It's a gruesome death, torn apart by powerful jaws and sharp teeth. Their hunger knows no sating and no end. Small groups of possessed corpses have been known to eat their way through entire villages, leaving nothing but blood and offal in their wake. Worse, such atrocities can thin the Veil, allowing yet more demons through to the physical world. Thus the cycle perpetuates. Have you nothing like this in your world?"

[strategic_guile]

"Is that all it was?" Blaine asked quietly. He scanned that far away look on Duncan's face. Confusing and frightening, but not necessarily bad. It may have illuminated some things...

"So spirit and demon are just the labels they were given to make people feel better about it." People liked labels. They liked the idea of black and white even though it was rare life just fell so neatly into those categories.

It sounded like a pack of piranha. Or maybe sharks. One drop of blood in the water and more showed up. The more they ate, the more blood, the more predators came swimming up to try and get a piece of the action. He finished cleaning and inspecting the last piece and then assembled the gun with practiced ease. "We have animals like that, yes, but nothing that crosses over from another world to possess things. If we have it, it's a very well kept secret."

[ofthegrey]

"No. It was also very dangerous." He said it in a way that indicated there'd be no more elaboration.

"Possibly. Or they are possibly different types of spirits altogether. The brightest thinkers of the Chantry seem to think so. Some mages agree with them." He had never spoken to any spirits or demons on the topic. In fact he wasn't sure he had ever spoken to a spirit at all and would never believe anything a known demon told him.

"There are animals of our world that present their own dangers." None of them would ever compare to things on the level of which he spoke, however. "It must all sound rather strange to you."

[strategic_guile]

Duncan had this way of cutting off the most interesting topics of conversation. Blaine didn't bother to try and pursue it though. He was at least partially familiar with the type, and once they decided there was nothing else to be said, it was a waste of time to try for more. Instead he focused on the spirits. "The same mages who put themselves in circles? I forget, who was the one behind that idea? The mages themselves, the Chantry, or the Templars? We talked about it once and it's kind of fuzzy now. Though to be honest this sounds like something out of a game or a book. So not strange, but unreal."

[ofthegrey]

"The Chantry started it. Some mages go voluntarily. Many don't." Many never made it that far, cut down for resisting or worse becoming abominations in their fear. "The Templars came later, Chantry watchdogs."

He sheathed his clean weapon and started on the other. "You're not the first to make that comparison to me, a work of fiction. It makes me wonder if there hasn't been travel between some of our worlds in a distant past, although we have no tales of technology to compare."

[strategic_guile]

The shotgun was open and getting a cleaning by this time. There was gunk on it, just like everything else, but perhaps more so since he had knocked off a zombie head or two with the butt of it when quarters got way too close for comfort. He got a towel to get the worst of it off but saved anything more thorough for later, unlike the care he took with his own gun from home. The enforcers always seem to come later. Not too much later, but always later.

"We'd call them enforcers. They don't so much watch as loom as a not-so-invisible threat." There's a half smile on his face, a rueful shadow of his normal grin. "If there was travel between our worlds, the ideas of spirits and possession and demons might have had an influence on our own church. We had Templars, too. As for people being possessed, it's usually a hoax or just someone mentally unstable."

[ofthegrey]

"That sounds about right." He knew he wasn't being entirely fair. Not all Templars were cut of the same cloth. Enough were that he felt more comfortable making the assumption and allowing himself to be proven wrong later. "Maker help all of you if that's the case." It was terrible to think of people not actually possessed being accused of such or misunderstood to be.

"There's rarely any mistaking it in our world. Once the demon chooses to manifest there are physical changes that would be impossible to mistake for anything else. Not to mention it starts killing everything in sight and usually summons more of its kind for support."

[strategic_guile]

"Superstition and misunderstandings led to a lot of death back then. If people couldn't explain it, something otherworldly must've be at fault. Not true on our world, but they didn't know that a thousand years ago."

The final brushes on the shotgun and it was also put aside. Blaine arched his back and gave a small noise of relief when his back cracked. "Burnings, dunking people in water, all sorts of methods they used to try and figure out of someone was a 'witch'."

The holster was undone and slid from his arm and out of belt loops to be set on the table. The towel once again came into play as he set to getting the small, random splatters of goop off of it.

[ofthegrey]

"It's easy to tell if someone is a witch in my world. They set you on fire first." He squinted down his blade and wiped congealed blood from the inscription with small, circling motions of the rag.

"It's difficult for me to imagine a world without anything like that. I'm not sure if it sounds easier or harder to me. I suppose everything has a trade off." It felt good to have a bit of a break from the horrors outside, something to take his mind off of the events of the night thus far.

[strategic_guile]

That got a snort out of Blaine as he slid his gun into the cleaned holster and put it back on the table. He took off the belt and laid it on the table, opening up the pouches and taking out the shells and magazines inside of it. Yeah, he had even more ammo besides what he'd taken out of the jacket pockets.

"We don't have witches or magic. No spirit world that I know of, but we have these." He held up a shell, looking at Duncan over it. "Lots and lots of these. No magic required."

[ofthegrey]

Given his choice, he'd take a mage. That was a depressing thought, touching on things from earlier he didn't want to think about right now. Instead he stayed with the topic of the guns. "Gordon has been helping me practice with a .45. I don't hate it." It was faster and more efficient than a bow, easier to attain accuracy, too.

"It makes sense to have long and short range weapons here. The challenges we face vary so." It made sense at home, too, but that was also why so few people fought alone. Loners with very rare exceptions didn't do well in Thedas.