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Event #2: The Long Night
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| Nervous, frightened whispers spread across Idan. By word of mouth and courier, warnings that the Long Night has nearly arrived are sent out. Anasta's Shadow, the planet whose orbit lies between this one and its sun, will share a path with this planet for one week before they go their separate ways once more. During that time the far larger planet obscures the light and warmth the sun provides this world. This is nothing new to you. It has happened every year at this time since your birth and although the cold is treacherous and the dark inconvenient, in your time those were likely the only major threats you faced during the Long Night. The great dragon bonfires had always been kept lit by the trio of dragon guardians, their light and warmth keeping away the deadly freeze and the other horrors rumored to come with the darkness.
Perhaps you remember the tales from your childhood, stories meant to scare children away from venturing too far on their own in the treacherous heart of winter. The long, cold week of darkness was likely filled with stories of people whisked away in the black cold, either never to be seen again or to be found mangled and frozen with looks of terror and agony forever etched on their lifeless faces. With the dragons ever present in your lifetime, you had never experienced the true horrors of the Long Night for yourself, even if you had witnessed a taste out in the world beyond the safety of the kingdom cities and villages. The true terror of the Long Night had not been experienced in full since the formation of the Elf-Dragon Alliance, many generations before your birth. The massive bonfires kept ever burning by the guardian dragons kept the towns and cities across all three kingdoms protected from the sheer dark and the deadly deep freeze of the week-long total eclipse. Now that the dragons are gone there is simply not enough magic to create the powerful, lasting bonfires that once sheltered the three kingdoms and kept out the dark and the worst of the cold. From the warmth and safety of a hearth, it is easy to dismiss the frightened whispers of Idan's current population as superstition, at least until the sun 'sets' on the night of the 27th, swallowed behind the looming shadow of the larger planet. As night approaches on the 27th, the world goes red. Only slivers of sunlight escape around the far edge of Anasta's Shadow, bathing the world in an eerie crimson until the planet's massive shape in the sky blocks out the sun entirely, plunging Idan into near complete shadow. With the light consumed, the shrieks and howls begin. Starting up like the roar of an angry wind, they grow louder and more twisted the closer they come. Within hours the howls and shrieks are mixed with a sound like metal grinding across glass. Windows are covered in sheets of cracked and spidered ice. Chimneys without lit fires begin to fill with screeching, clawing noises and an unsettling and unfamiliar clicking noise that rises and falls like an unknown language. The sounds outside begin to shift and change, as more human shrieks join the unsettlingly monstrous ones, and the crying sob of a young child, hiccuping in fear, breaks up the brief moments of silence. It's just beyond the door, or just out of sight beside the window, then silence, and the howling and scraping start anew. Now and then an eerie red glow shines through ever more solid ice caking the windows, and they briefly steam up as something living exhales a heated breath against the pane. Citizens within earshot or courier distance warn those who seek answers to stay away and avoid seeking out the source of the sounds. They caution that the answers are not worth the risks and warn that anyone outside cannot be saved. If they're out there, they're already dead. If you insist on going, they'll tell you not to leave the safety of hearth and fire without a torch in hand or your chances of surviving will drop from slim to none. Pay heed to the cautions of those more experienced than you in this new horror or you will not survive the long, harsh night and the ever more unsettling noises it brings. | |
| 🜙 Weather | |
| The cold fluctuates between -18 to -32C (0 to -25F) during the Long Night. At these temperatures, the risk of frostbite and hypothermia are greatly increased and without proper precautions, a person could experience frostbite in 10-30 minutes when exposed to the elements. In addition to this, wind, sleet, and snow periodically drop the temperatures further. The weather may be the least of your worries, however, as the cold is far from the most dangerous threat the Long Night brings with it. | |
| 🜙 Creatures | |
 Tundra Manticore: They share little in common with their lower mountain counterparts beyond their violent disposition. Their bodies glow from within due to the venom stored in their abdomen. They can secrete this deadly venom from their mouths or their barbed tails. The venom is said to burn like liquid fire and causes severe burns on contact. They live only in the coldest parts of Idan due to the significant heat generated by their venom that would cook them from the inside out in warmer climates. They consume ice and snow to maintain an internal temperature balance and if that balance is thrown off the combustible venom within them causes them to burst into flames. As a result, they are terrified of fire. They are silent stalkers and lone hunters. Greater Bearbat: Greater Bearbats are sound-based hunters that descend from their mountain homes, attracted by the shrieks of the shade imps. They are indiscriminate hunters, content to eat wayward travelers or other monsters without concern for what prey they catch in their long claws. They run on four limbs while hunting and will rarely take to the skies unless in pursuit of flying prey. Sound and heat deter them and light will blind them. Shade Imps: Seekers and servants of the Darkener, these monstrous shade imps can take a multitude of forms (Crawlers, Scouts, & Hounds) and shift between them at will. They are completely blind and travel as silent as the shadows they melt in and out of. They hunt through scent, sound, and taste, searching for traces of blood and fear on the air. When they aren't hunting, they communicate with other imps via ear-piercing shrieks or gut-churning howls, going silent only when they locate their prey. Their silence is more dangerous than the sounds they make. They recoil from fire but grow increasingly more determined the longer they are kept at bay, eventually overcoming their fear and attacking the source of the fire to attempt to extinguish it at the cost of their own lives. When fire touches them they go up in a puff of black smoke and a scream. Darkling: No one knows what darklings look like. They are the lost spirits of elementals consumed and controlled by the Darkener. They have no physical form and can control and manipulate shadows and sound. They mimic sounds to trick people into opening their homes or venturing out of safety and can perfectly replicate any sound they have heard, even capturing the voices of people speaking on the other side of walls. Their goal is to lure or force people out into the darkness where the Darkener can find them. They can be disrupted with light. Bayobat: Swarms of flying bat-like insects summoned by the Darkener. They have sharp, metal proboscises they use to pierce victims before consuming their blood. They are blind and seek out warm-blooded bodies to launch themselves at. Their screeches are metallic and mixed with insectoid clicking. Their bodies are sharp and metallic but their mouths are vulnerable. Their tails are lined with tiny, sharp spikes similar to barbed wire. They fear fire. The Darkener: An ancient being that is thought to come from the Outer Realm. The Darkener consumes flames with a touch, transforming them into shadow flames that burn black, giving off no heat or warmth. It possesses long-forgotten magic. Few have seen more than a glimpse. It causes temporary blindness in all who witness it, their eyes turning black with trapped shadows. Its image lingers in the mind, causing hallucinations. Those who witness it are often driven mad, growing increasingly certain the Darkener is watching them from the corner of their vision. It can be struck but doing so only causes darkness to erupt from the wound, consuming the Darkener and everything around it. There is only one Darkener. | |
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no subject
[There will be foundations. Ruins if he's lucky. His father's choice for a homestead was in the mountains. It will be looted for all finery and the weather will have done it's work, but there shall be foundations.
Ellis' dramatics are ignored though, because what's going on with Kira is far more alarming. He frowns, tone no longer grave but concerned.]
...Your soup is a birdbath, it seems.
no subject
Hey! [ She scoops the bird out, which makes a dissatisfied almost squawk as if to point out that it had not intended to bathe but instead drink, and yet here it is. Covered in soup. Rey huffs out a disgruntled breath. It's not like either of them will be washing until the worst of the cold passes. That's a recipe for disaster.
So she just grabs a towel and tries to clean off Kira's feathers as best she can.
Anyway, she got her answers. And Alucard, she thinks, makes more sense to her now. Foundations are the stuff of large homes, solid ones, old ones. He doesn't just have a family. He has a Family. He's someone important. Of course he's used to telling other people what to do. ]
no subject
Here. No one will notice, or begrudge the clean bowl.
[That's an all too daring bird to be certain.]
Does she attempt that often?
no subject
[ Rey presses her lips together and grabs for the soup bowl and says, ] Don't say it.
[ They have a lot in common, Rey and Kira. Kira's just more honest about it. ]
no subject
[He'll take satisfaction in going back to the door, which should give Rey about ten seconds to figure out a better way to cover her own ass on this particular topic. The door is a friend, even if it is also the coldest part of the kitchen. Better him who can endure it.]
no subject
Where do you come from? [ She pushes some of her soup around in the bowl. ]
no subject
Krimnos, some days into the mountains. My father...was private, such as it was.
[Dad was super into blood magic and a vampir.]
no subject
[ Not from a fancy private house in the mountains. That goes without staying, she figures. In fact, she probably stole from the likes of his family, if anything. She leaves that out too. ]
no subject
Do you intend to return, once the ships are viable?
no subject
[ Oh.
Oh no.
She hasn't had to have this conversation yet. She shakes her head faintly, but the words aren't coming properly. She doesn't know how to give it a voice, this grief that she feels about the opportunity to find them. ]
They'd left. [ And they were nothing. But she can't confront that. She wants to believe they had gone on to do important things in Thalassa. She wants to believe that they had good reason to leave her behind, that it will all make sense. But there's a bone-deep ache that comes with knowing her chances of ever discovering it now are likely gone. ] Whatever's left of them, it's not likely to be there. [ Then, quieter. ] I wouldn't know where to start looking if I went.
no subject
[There's a gentleness in the practicality, because Alucard realizes he has just slammed into a whole host of emotion that's barely processed. That's understandable, and moreover, extremely familiar given his own circumstances. (Patricide has such an effect.)
He knows about finding things though. The way he worked in life, researching objects and manuscripts, curating them, that applies here.]
I can't say that there would be good records from the war. I can't say you'd like what you find. But it is possible that there are traces of property ownership after everything settled, or something else of the sort.
no subject
Yeah. Maybe.
[ She would need to know their names. Gods, she doesn't even know their names. Even she can feel how futile and absurd it is, how blind and silly her hope. But she grinds her teeth down rather than give it voice. Another spoonful of soup. ]
I'll go with you, at least. [ She puts that out there. It'll get him to stop asking for now, she thinks, and he might be right. If there's anything to find, she could find it. That's hope of a sort. She'll deal with the problem of how to keep him from seeing her futile search later. ] When you go. I used to know my way through those mountains.
no subject
Who for his own part, takes the offer with as much grace as he can.]
The airship, I would not object. But beyond that it...is something I'd prefer some privacy for.
[Foundations are complicated.]
no subject
It doesn't sound like the kind of thing you should be alone for.
[ Emotional support is important, says the person who buries literally every painful thing she's ever experienced and puts it in a compartmentalized box. ]
no subject
As I said. It is a very private matter.
[If his tone is anything to go by at least, he isn't changing his mind.]
But thank you.
no subject
She studies him a moment, skeptical and uneasy, but she's also not his mother. It's not her job to protect his emotional wellbeing. If he wants to be alone with the ruins of his dead family, he can be alone with the ruins of his dead family. ]
... If you change your mind. [ The offer stands. ]
no subject
But drama is for later. For now, there is only a soft nod of Alucard's head in acknowledgement of the gesture's kindness.]
I shall let you know.
[Because there's another reason to say no as well. From what little hints Rey has given, it's easy to expect she did not have the easiest life. Alucard knows he did, and to show that off, even if it's just ruins, that feels...wrong.]