come_sailaway | In her sepulchre there by the sea

Entry tags:

In her sepulchre there by the sea

Who: Palamedes Sextus and his cavalier, Camilla Hect, the rest of the House Heirs, a gaggle of spooky monks, some skeletons, a murderer, and you!
What: Memshare adventures! All memories are open to all.
When: Anytime in March
Where: Canaan House, Earth!
Warnings: Canon-typical blood, violence, and mild body horror
Notes: Below the cut you will find some scene-setting and descriptions/notes for each of the prompts. Prompts themselves are in the comments!

In general, characters will assume that you arrived with the other visitors to Canaan House a few weeks before any of the events described below, but they will have no idea who you are and why you’re there, and will be extremely suspicious of your presence.

Canaan House rises out of the sea like a castle, a tower, a crumbling mausoleum. Outside the small island on which it stands, the ocean stretches as far as the eye can see, sparkling under the bright rays of Dominicus. The building itself is clearly old, crumbling in places, windows cracked and bricks pitted; even on a thanergenic planet, where life must fight for its existence, nature is slowly overtaking one of the last symbols of humanity on the planet all people once called home.

Inside, the sense of grand decay continues. If you squint, you might notice the way it resembles a university building, some wings made up with wood floors and elaborate bannisters, fading paintings and rotting tapestries on the walls, while others are full of large, light-filled spaces, all glass, and steel, and concrete. There is a large courtyard with a dry fountain, broken elevators and flights of stairs that end halfway up, and dozens of doors with numbers above the threshold, each with its own unique lock, each requiring a key to open. Listen closely and you might hear an ambient hum of electricity, or the quiet clatter of bone from the dozens of otherwise-silent skeleton constructs that clean, and cook, and gather food for the planet’s first guests in nearly ten thousand years.

Welcome to the First House. Don’t stay any longer than you have to.

The Wind Came Out of the Cloud By Night
Investigate a murder scene! This is the best chance of meeting lots of other characters or exploring Canaan House more broadly.

The Demons Down Under the Sea
Solve a puzzle, fight a skeleton monster, hang out with Palamedes and Camilla

We Loved With a Love That Was More than Love
Experience Palamedes death! Please note that unless previously discussed, characters will not be able to interact with this memory, only observe.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Both Palamedes and Camilla hurry back to the first room, only to find the door open and the monstrous construct gone. “I took my hand off the panel,” Palamedes says. “Of course. Naturally, if the dermal contact sets the trial in motion, then removing it will cause the trial to abort. Quick thinking, Cam. That was quite the beast in there.” Turning to Wayne he adds, “I am very sorry to have put you in danger, friend.”

Cam has gone still. “Warden?”

“…Yes?”

“How do you know what was in the chamber?”

Palamedes blinks and locks eyes with Wayne, realization dawning. Everything had happened so fast, he had barely had time to comprehend that he had been looking through Wayne's eyes. “I saw it.”

Looking between the two of them as they discuss, Wayne's brow furrows, then smooths as he starts connecting dots himself.

"But why? To separate your crew? If you have to fight this thing on your own, but...you saw it too... Did you see anything else?" he asks, looking from Cam to Palamedes. There has to be a reason that a mechanic like that was implemented into this trial, right? Nothing like that was ever accidental.

“That is the question.” Palamedes presses his hands together and begins to pace. “Necromancer and cavalier are forced to split up. They cannot combine forces in the chamber…” Suddenly he stops, eyes going wide. “Or can they? Sir—I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name—I did see something else. But I can’t be sure what.”

He frowns faintly. “I don’t want to put you in a dangerous situation, but I would be grateful for another look, if you don’t mind returning to the chamber.”

"Wayne," he replies, looking back toward the chamber again, putting together what he's pretty sure they might have to do as soon as Palamedes starts to walk himself through it in kind. That's...huh. That's clever, if this is supposed to be a test of bonds. One person outside, and a talented fighter in would give them a better chance at solving this.

So Wayne props his axe against his shoulder, shifting his weight and assessing himself briefly, before reaching into his pocket and pulling out an anomalous juice box that seems to be a much lower graphical fidelity than the rest of the surrounding space, sucking it dry then crushing it to put back into his pocket. If he's going to be in a fight, he needs to be able to perform accordingly.

"Let's do this."

“Wayne,” says Camilla, her expression implying that this is not the sort of name she expected a Canaan House-dwelling monster to have.

“An absolute pleasure, Wayne,” says Palamedes with, as usual, much more good cheer. He claps his hands together. “Excellent. Cam, you stand watch as before.” To Wayne he adds, “We’re pulling you out the moment things get dire. Now, let’s take our places.”

Pal returns to the smaller room, leaving Camilla watching Wayne. She looks…just a bit impressed. Before long, the door to the chamber slides open once again.

She wouldn't be the first person to be surprised by his name being decidedly human. At least Palamedes seems to be in much better spirits than his companion.

Knowing that others are at his back again is comforting, and Wayne moves as soon as the door opens again. He looks back at the man with his hand on the podium and offers an easy thumbs-up. To Camilla he adds, "We got this." He's confident in his ability to fight with this extra bit of guidance after all.

The moment the door slides closed behind them again, Wayne's hand is out, and he curls his fingers in such a way that the air before Camilla warps, and a protective barrier wraps around her. A simple precautionary measure that would blunt the first blow that she might take. Best to make sure that the other walked away unscathed one way or another.

Camilla draws her sword as the air shimmers around her. For a moment, she’s wary—Cam is familiar with thanergenic barriers, but they are usually stationary. As she shifts from foot-to-foot, though, she realizes that the protective bubble moves with her.

“That was unnecessary,” she tells Wayne. “But…thanks.”

They don’t have much more time to chat, though; once again, the strange milky mist surrounds them, and then forms itself into a great, monstrous creature. This time, though, a speak crackles to life, and then Palamedes voice can be heard.

“Oh! Oh goodness, this is awfully strange with two of you. I have a sort of double vision! Well, they say two heads are better than one, so why not three?”

With a barely suppressed roll of her eyes, Camilla takes a swing at the charging skeleton, striking one of its scythe-like arms. It only takes a few moments for the arm to grow back.

While Camilla goes one way, Wayne moves the opposite, giving her a thumbs-up in reply to her thanks. He makes a move similar to hers and swings his axe up to defend himself while at the same time whipping his hand out, snapping his fingers, and in the same instant one of its joints seems to explode without anything having made physical contact with it. Unfortunately, any victorious feeling is short-lived as the limb comes right back again.

"Not great," he murmurs, brow furrowing. If it regenerates, it might also be capable of duplicating as well, at least if it works anything like things that he's fought in the past and that is absolutely not something that he wants to deal with in the here and now. So instead he backs up several steps, and calls for Camilla to do the same, just for the moment.

Then he lifts the same hand that had Snapped, and instead points his fingers outward almost as in admonishment, then spreads them as his hand pulls back. It's as if a string soaked in gasoline and lit on fire wraps around that same limb that had just regenerated, leaving it to continuously burn. Hopefully it would be enough to make a dent.

Just in case, he calls back toward the door, while keeping his eyes on the monster. "Warden?"

After a moment of stunned silence, during which even Camilla Hect lifts her brows in surprise, Palamedes voice again crackles over the loudspeaker.

“Wow. Wow! That was—Emperor’s bones, how did you do that? No, of course, that’s for later. Cam, to your left!” The cavalier returns to life, beating back the construct with dodges and swings, her strikes keeping it at bay, but doing nothing to truly conquer it. Meanwhile, the creature’s arm continues to burn, but beneath the fire, the limb is slowly growing.

When Palamedes speaks again, he sounds almost breathless. “Wayne, can you see the fourth thoracic vertebrae? Strike it there!”

“That’s the one in the middle of the back,” offers Cam, who understands that not everyone has Palamedes’ anatomical knowledge. “He’s asking you to run it through.”

“Thank you, Camilla!”

There's a moment of surprise when they both pause to boggle at his Gestures. There's not actually any time to explain just now though, as the thing rallies and turns its focus to Camilla.

The guidance catches his attention and directs it toward the creature's spine, even if he doesn't know exactly what part of its spine they're referring to. He's not unintelligent, just new to dealing with human worlds. He calls back a "got it" before ducking low and rounding to the back of the construct to perform a similar Gesture to the one that had protected Camilla, only this one wraps the spine of the creature in a corrosive layer that starts to eat away at its vertebrae. It would reduce the amount of power that the thing could put into its strikes, albeit temporarily, and give him the chance to strike at that weakened place with his axe. It does a fairly substantial amount of damage, but likely not enough to destroy it outright.

Would he even gain any flesh from this thing when it fell? Would that matter here? Hm. Probably not.

“Brilliant!” Pal says over the speaker. “This is—this is remarkable. By striking at the regeneration theorems, you should be able to disable the creature. Cam, third left-hand tibia; Wayne, lower right rib. On my mark—“

The monster may not have been destroyed by Wayne’s earlier blow, but it has clearly been affected. Its movements are slower now, and its burning limb has begun to be consumed. Still, he has plenty of strength left, and it lunges for Camilla.

“Mark!”

The upside of having used Dissolution on it is that the damage is continuous just as the fire had been, meaning that the construct is going to be slowly falling apart while they hack at it.

While both the burning and dissolving are active, he can manifest other abilities, but at a greater cost to his personal energy reserves. He'd have to wait until the next shift in the thing's weak points to be able to reactivate either one and so for the time being, the best he can do is strike out at the rib where he was directed, circling back around while it lunges and launching a ranged Snap that would chip off part of the bone and further cripple it. The next one would be more effective at least as he was able to light a new fire.

"Camilla?" he calls to check in on her. If she takes that hit, her defenses would no longer be fortified. He needs to know that she can fend for herself until he can re-up it.

Cam strikes where Pal directs and dances away—but not quite fast enough. The creature slices downward with one of its swordlike arms, and she braces for the blow. But when it comes, the impact on her arm is strangely softened, as though she’d been blocked by an invisible shield. She’ll have a nasty bruise later, but nothing worse.

The shimmer around her dissipates, but that doesn’t seem to trouble her. “All right!” she calls, emboldened enough to strike at the construct and slice off one of its arms. Even though it begins to grow back immediately, it’s still a satisfying hit.

Pal can feel Wayne’s focus shift to Camilla, and though he knows they should stay with the construct, he can’t help but follow those thoughts. “Wayne, can you give her the same protection again?” 

Cam huffs. “Warden!”

“I’m going to need both of you to hit dead center next. You need all the help you can get!”

In the same moment that Camilla is settling back down before another hit, Wayne is already moving to replace the Ablative shield around her, fingers curling into that fist then giving her a thumbs-up to let her know that she would be safe once more if she needed to take another hit. "You're better if you're not leaking," he explains shortly, though he doesn't stop to explain what that means.

The guidance turns Wayne's attention back to the construct, and he calls a "got it!" back, then rushes to flank around the thing to the opposite side so that no matter what direction they struck from, they would meet in the middle and potentially cut it right in two. He leads it with another burning Gesture, that gas-soaked string igniting and coiling around the center and marking the place that they would both need to strike out at while keeping it from regenerating the area.

Then Wayne runs at a dead sprint toward the nearest wall. A foot is planted on the rough stone, and he lifts himself up, then with a sound like a harsh expulsion of jet fuel, he jumps higher, then launches himself at the construct in a spiraling motion that puts enough momentum behind the axe that he swings that he would deal, if not a killing blow, at least a crippling one. Combined with Camilla's attack, it might be enough to sever the thing's core.

From inside Wayne’s mind, Palamedes feels the rush of adrenaline as he dashes towards the wall, leaping off of it with a move that surely impresses even Camilla, and flies at the construct to deal a final blow. He sees Cam come from the other direction, leaping almost simultaneously with both of her short swords drawn, and he swears he feels the ricochet as Wayne’s axe hits bone.

As both fighters land their blows, the construct explodes into a thousand shards. Each one flies high, and falls, and seems to dissolve as they touch the floor.

The speaker crackles and Pal speaks. “Excellent work.”

In that moment, Wayne is on top of the world. He pulled off something awesome, and managed to keep someone else from potentially being injured. He is, in the words of one of his closest friends, unimaginably stoked.

Turning in place he examines the evaporating bits of the construct, moving back to Camilla to look her over and hanging his axe on his back again to have his hands free.

"That was awesome. You good?" he asks her, hoping that it was nothing more than the bruising from the hit she'd taken. Now that they're outside of the fight the barrier he'd put around her dissipates.

Camilla isn’t quite beaming in the same way that Wayne is, but there’s a satisfaction in her movements, even the tug of a smile at her lips, as she returns her swords to their sheaths and offers her fighting partner a nod. She is breathing hard, sweat glistening on her brow, but largely unharmed.

“You were good,” she says, which is high praise coming from Camilla Hect. “Thanks for the help.”

The speaker ceases to hum and the door to the chamber slides open, indicating that Pal has stepped away from the pedestal. Cam cocks her head at Wayne, and after a moment’s hesitation, asks carefully, “What was it like? Having him…” a pause, “in your head like that?”

Wayne nods at Camilla, then turns back to Palamedes when he moves away from the pedestal and the door opens again. He rubs a hand across the back of his head and thinks a moment, then just shrugs a shoulder.

"It doesn't really feel like much, just like...someone talking right behind me. Think like a conscience but with someone else's voice?" Is he describing that well? Probably not. "It was kind of nice having someone else call the shots though. I didn't have to think about what move to make as much. The last time I ran into something that could regrow bits like that it had this duplicating ability that made them so much harder to fight so I'm glad we killed it fast."

Camilla nods. Is that a touch of wistfulness in her expression? She seems to smile gently, her brows knitting together slightly. “The Warden’s good at calling the shots,” she says. “You just can’t let him get too cocky.”

By now, the entire skeleton has melted away, save for the creature’s pelvis, which sits at the middle of the room, slowly revealing a a small black box with a grey screen hidden within it. Crouching down beside it, she says, “You have? You’ll have to tell me about it, in case we run into something similar down here. Do you always wield an axe?”

On the mysterious box’s screen, a green status bar rises slowly: 15 percent, 26 percent, 83 percent. Then, with a click, it pops open.

There’s nothing inside.

"I think he can afford to be a little cocky," Wayne replies with a soft smirk. He pulls his gloves snug, just in case, hoping that they wouldn't end up getting jumped by some surprise fight they weren't expecting.

"Not always, it's just what I had with me when I came. Last time I went somewhere that turned dangerous I didn't have anything but the Gestures and that didn't exactly go well. I'm just glad it seems like this place isn't hospitable to things like poolmen. I don't know what the allotropes would do to people like you guys."

Wayne moves back toward the dissolving skeleton and crouching to see what it had left behind. He reaches to touch it, but thinks better of it when the status bar appears, then grows, then...

"Huh. Is it supposed to do that?"

“We don’t know what this place is hospitable to,” Camilla says, sitting on her haunches as the pelvis dissolves and the box appears. When he talks about Gestures, though, she looks up at him, eyes flickering with with interest. This strange, polite monster is like a necromancer and a cavalier rolled into one, and she has about a dozen questions, even if she isn’t as quick to voice them as Palamedes would be.

She doesn’t have the opportunity, anyway. The box snaps open, revealing its empty interior. “Warden!” Cam calls. “We were right. There’s only one key.” Cam rises to her feet and explains for Wayne’s sake, “Someone else completed the trial first. They got the key. Come on.”

As Wayne steps out of the chamber, the memory will fade.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

In her sepulchre there by the sea

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject