usir | Event #2: The Long Night

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🜙 Event Post #2: The Long Night, December 28th to January 5th Warning: Death and violence

	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

	The creatures that emerge during the Long Night are nearly all horrors rarely or never seen beyond this week of frozen darkness. The only exceptions to this are the Tundra Manticore and the Greater Bearbat which can be rarely found living in the highest points of the mountain caves and peaks where the weather remains icy year-long. 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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Ellie isn't someone who really knows how to deal with magical creatures--however, she is determined. She's never stopped fighting and refuses to now. Every time she sees movement, she swings the torch towards the creatures.

This is--so much worse than anything she's lived through before.

When the two come at her, Ellie picks the one closest to the torch, actually jumping towards the hunter to try and hit it, a strange instinct driving her.

None of them catch her, and then there's chaos, and she almost sets the man who touches her on fire with her torch as she swings it towards whatever's touching her. She manages to check it down into the blade instead, and it shaves off half of the torch instead. There's still burning resin, but with less to burn, it goes weaker, flickering strangely.

With the adrenaline (terror hunted prey) it takes Ellie a heartbeat too long to understand, and then she's even more scared.

"No!" It's been a long time since Ellie's screamed like that, frayed and high pitched as she clutches the wolf closer, as if to keep it from him. Theseus--Theseus is the only living thing she has left she can't leave her alone to be torn apart. Can't.

Ellie moves like she's going to pull away, terror in her eyes, and another shadow dives in from above, swiping at the highest torch it can see.

That torch happens to be Daud's, but as the shadow descends, another swoops to intercept it, not hard enough to knock it to the ground, but enough to veer it off course. The man curses, reassesses the situation, then comes to a swift decision.

"Then give it to me and take the torch," he snaps, harshly. "I can cover more ground." He sheathes his sword with a hard thunk and is already reaching out, offering her the torch in exchange for the wolf in her arms.

The bird is still circling overhead, somewhere, and calls out an urgent warning -- she isn't alone up there, and without the benefit of torches, well, the shadow's begun to go after her in earnest.

In the space of a breath, Ellie has to make a choice--trust this man with her and Theseus's life, or not. She's been offered safety and protection on this night before, only to have it blow up in her face. She's terrified that this man will take Theseus just to throw her to the side and spirit Ellie away. You can want someone alive to harm them.

But survival lies with him.

"If you have to, get her to safety." Ellie takes the torch and transfers the wolf to Daud. Theseus whines as the wound on her leg is jostled, but is able to shift into Daud's grasp easily, even hooking her front legs around him--there's something in the way her paws are almost able to grasp that suggests she's not all wolf, but there's no time to worry about it.

Ellie hefts the torches and gets as close as she dares to Daud without burning him. Damn, but did she make the wrong choice with her boots--she sacrificed the ability to move quickly over the snow for warmth. Damn her idiot self.

Without the wolf, Ellie can easily keep up with Daud. When another shadow goes for Daud's feet, Ellie strikes at it with the torch and makes contact. It--shrieks isn't the right word. That would imply it made a comprehensible noise. Instead, it sounds like metal and bubbling mud, as it retreats into the dark.

She may be prey, but she won't make it easy for them.

It's a tempting thing, for certain, to leave the wolf behind and just grab the girl, but Daud's certain that would land him a torch to the face for his troubles, and besides -- he has a job to do. He handles Theseus's weight easily, gathering the weight of her hindquarters on one arm and letting her hook over her forelimbs over the other, effectively leaving him unable to fight short of deciding to throw the wolf at something's head. It's a gamble, trusting he can make it there in time, trying to ignore the distant awareness of half of him in the skies overhead.

"Move," he orders, gruffly, not answering the question. He sets a pace as fast as he dares, gritting his teeth as they draw closer to the flames of the outpost and the promise of heat and a fire that can't be easily snuffed. A body leaps and goes for them, only to be rebuffed, and Daud grunts approval.

"Good," he tells her, "Keep it up." But Ellie won't have an easy time as their enemies grow bolder. Their bodies shapeshift and change, taking on new forms that might offer a better chance of bringing down their targets, and Daud finally breaks out into a run, shouting for Ellie to follow.

Time. They need more time. Mercy barrels out of the sky once more to scratch her claws over the face of an imp that nearly succeeds as snatching at Ellie's legs, shrieking in fury; a wide-swinging shadow limb catches her right on the side, slamming her out of the air and onto the ground. Daud feels the impact like a kick to his own ribs, but right now, he can't afford to stop and second-guess himself. More shadows are already moving to try and get ahead of them, close the gap between them and the doorway.

He can't teleport more than one living being effectively, but what he can do is tug on his magic to send him and Theseus hurtling forward through space, teleporting the short distance to the door and landing with a jolt; Daud pivots as soon as his feet hit the ground, throwing out a hand and using his will to cast another spell -- this one, to catch Ellie up and yank him to his side. The blunt impact against his side becomes something that feels like a tearing burn as the shadow sinks its claws into Mercy, wings beating frantically in a futile attempt to get free. The struggle can hardly even be seen, only the osprey's agonized cries echoing in the dark.

There's a point where Ellie stops thinking as she runs. There's only her heartbeat and the freezing breaths she pulls. Something catches her arm and one torch goes flying, but she doesn't feel pain.

Something twists, and Ellie stumbles as the figure in front of her disappears.

"Joel--" And then Ellie's flying and she can't move, can't move...

Then she's by the fire next to the man, with a couple of other beings around. Ellie gasps, hearing the crackling fire and high pitched scream and something dying in the darkness.

One of the beings, a centaur, lights an arrow with the fire and sends it hurtling towards the screaming. It lights the area briefly, and Ellie sees something that scatters apart, but the flame goes out.

The screaming stops, and there's an eerie silence around the fire. Ellie takes a deep breath.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck!" Ellie wants to scream or hit something, anything to relieve the adrenaline, but she can't without risking the fire. Instead, she swears roughly, an edge of panic under the aggression.

Her arm is bleeding, but she doesn't seem to notice as she swears and then puts the torch out in the snow.

Theseus is trembling, and despite the relative safety, she stays in Daud's arms, tucking her head under his chin.

For a moment, there's a wrenching pain, and Daud doubles over silently, teeth grinding together. Helping hands try to pull him and the girl in closer to the outpost, and the safety of the brightly-burning fire outside it.

And then ... he doesn't feel anything at all. The centaur speaks again, calling his name for his attention, and Daud rouses, straightening. The heightened emotion of the past few minutes is still there in his memory, but any adrenaline left now is only what's left after the scuffle.

"I'm fine," he says. His tongue feels thick in his mouth, but his voice is steady. "Open up the place and get us in."

It'll take a minute or two to unbar the outpost doors enough to open them and usher Daud and Ellie back inside, out of the cold. This particular bunch of volunteers rotate their shifts like this every half or so, taking turns out in the dark, until the Defenders come by with another batch of bodies. Once they're inside, it's even warmer, but Daud doesn't reach up to tug down his scarf yet.

"You're injured," he tells Ellie, matter of fact, like they haven't just been out there running for their lives -- like he hasn't just felt a part of him die out there, in the cold. "So is your beast. You should get that seen to."

Ellie manages to stop swearing after a few moments to follow everyone inside. Theseus lets herself be carried into the building before wiggling down from Daud's grasp and yelping as she puts weight on her back leg. There's a deep score through her thigh, and from what Ellie can see, it looks like it's at least punctured the muscle, if not the tendon. It's more seeping than actively bleeding, which is good for the moment.

She shudders a little, but nods at Daud's words. Ellie can feel the sting of her injury seeping through her adrenaline.

Looking up at him, Ellie's a little surprised to discover he's a tiefling. She hadn't registered much beyond his height.

"I--yeah." The words feel heavy in her mouth. "Thank you. I'm...I'm sorry." She didn't know if that bird was his like Theseus is hers, but--it has to hurt, no matter what, right?

"It's..." It's not fine, exactly. No one could claim that. But although Daud knows he should be angry, or upset, or something, he just isn't. There isn't anything there.

"It's done," is what he'll settle on, finally. If there's anything to mourn, he won't be doing it here, with too many curious eyes and ears. Instead, with the threat of immediate danger passed, and no longer carrying Theseus, he unwinds the scarf from his face, shedding frost that melts as soon as it comes into contact with the ground. It exposes more of his horns and his dark purple skin to the light. He frowns, assessing their injuries. Not pleasant, but ultimately nothing life-threatening, either.

"Sit down. We'll send a message to the Defenders to send a healer along. For now, we can slow the bleeding." It isn't much, but there are rudimentary medical supplies provided to them -- mainly for bandages and binding broken limbs rather than anything that needs stitching. He's never been one to sound overly compassionate, and his voice is brisk as he gathers supplies.

"Have you treated injuries like this before?"

For a moment, Ellie wonders if he's in shock. He doesn't seem pale--not that Ellie can tell through his purple skin. He's also not shivering much, and he seems more put together than she is right now. Ellie swallows and sits, realizing she's still shaking.

The good news is, she doesn't need a lecture from him to know she's a fucking idiot.

Shrugging her pack off and taking care to slide her good arm out of the strap, Ellie sets it by her feet. She doesn't have much, but she does have a spool of catgut and a bone needle tucked in a boot. She sets to the side and works on taking off some of the layers of clothing, so she can get at her own arm. Under the layers, she has her Atrómitos tunic on, though the sleeve is torn.

"Yeah. This isn't--I just need gauze," Ellie mumbles. The bleeding is substantial, but now with the skin exposed, she can see why--it nicked the vein trailing up her arm, curving to cut into the tattoo she has on her right arm. She'll need to put pressure on it, but the bleeding is cleansing in its own way. "I think the coat got most of it." She reaches out for a clean cloth to press against the wound, and catches sight of her hand, bloody crackled and shaking, stretched out in the firelight.

Fuck. Fuck, it's been--been a long time since she felt like that. So hunted. She hates it, hates feeling like a rabbit set upon by hounds--

Ellie leans over, bandage forgotten as a wave of nausea hits her. She manages not to vomit, but it's a close thing as terror makes her stomach seize. For a moment, she thinks she can smell viscera.

The moment passes as quickly as it came, but Theseus--sitting carefully on the other side of Ellie's feet, bad leg canted to avoid pressure--pins her ears back and whimpers as Ellie doubles.

When she comes back up, Ellie tries to pretend nothing happened, instead pressing the cloth to the deepest part of her scratch, which is still oozing blood in time to her heartbeat. Absurdly, she hopes her tattoo won't be ruined.

Luckily for Ellie, it doesn't seem a lecture is forthcoming. She'll have a few moments to continue pretending that nothing's happening -- Daud isn't the type to offer comfort, either -- and merely standing patiently with gauze and disinfectant in hand while he patiently waits out her brief bout of nausea. Then, while she attends to her own wound, the tiefling's going to carefully crouch down, gauze in his hands. He won't reach out to Theseus, however, not yet. Instead, he's going to quietly ask her a very simple question.

"You were on the courier, weren't you?" It's taken him a moment or two to place where he's seen her before. "Warning others about the Long Night."

With the couriers, picking up messages from both those a hundred years dead and the very much living, it's hard to determine sometimes who's who. But her message had been different. Directed to those who knew another time.

"Can you attend to your animas, or will you let me?"

"Yeah." Ellie doesn't laugh, but there's something wry in her expression. "It wasn't this bad then."

Maybe it was the fact she was running for her life from more human dangers, but it wasn't nearly so bad. She could step outside in the bitter cold without a fire for a little while without dying. She had been able to leave Joel alone in the dark while she tried to lead the hunters away.

Ellie nods slowly, and then realizes that doesn't answer his question. "If you know how, you can. She might need stitches." Ellie's hands are still warming up, and still they quiver softly.

She's sewn people up before, and once in the bitter cold, but she knows she isn't great. Her formal training is a grand total of what she was taught in school.

As Daud crouches, Ellie takes the pressure off to carefully disinfect her wound with a small bottle. There's an interesting bubbling that takes place, and Ellie wonders if it's the solution or something in the night creature's claws reacting with one of the herbs. Back in her day, it was magic or alcohol and an herb pack. Hopefully this doesn't kill her.

Theseus eyes him, but doesn't flinch away when Daud comes close, or reaches out.

Daud glances over his shoulder to make sure there isn't anyone else in earshot -- then shakes his head as he hunkers down, to apply firm, even pressure on Theseus's wound with the gauze padding, though his gaze turns to Ellie, watching her reaction.

Quieter now, he speaks, though his words aren't really motivated out of care or compassion -- just a sense that they should be said, somehow, as it relates to his own self-preservation too.

"You should be warier of strangers. Not everyone would like to know they're beside someone who should be a hundred years dead."

"If you could see it on the courier, you know," Ellie says dully. He's right, though. She wasn't being careful of anyone around, but it doesn't matter too much at this point.

Theseus whimpers, but doesn't try to bite Daud, thankfully. At the same time, Ellie presses down on the worst part of her scratch to stem the bleeding. She sighs, daring to close her eyes for a moment.

Fuck.

"I guess they wouldn't." Ellie sighs and looks down at her arm, then continues in a lower tone. "We bleed. We talk, we think. I don't know much about... magic, but wouldn't it be more obvious if we were zombies?" That word is colloquial and specific to Atrómitos, after a serial killer named Malcolm Zombo (so the story went) animated the corpses of his victims and sent them to cause havoc. It was so long ago, however, that by the time Ellie was young it became a story to scare children into staying home after dark. A hundred years ago, the word encompassed all should-be-dead things, regardless of the various classifications mages used.

Not that Ellie knows it, but by this point, modern people don't use the word like that at all anymore.

Daud doesn't correct her on it. The general sentiment, after all, has crossed his mind more than once.

"It takes a great amount of skill and magic to bring back the dead," he says, quietly, looking down at Theseus. "... and I've never heard of a spell that could bring back the dead fully aware, and grant them an animas in the process." He examines the wound again, gauging whether it needs stitches or not. He won't do a pretty job of it, but he's had to patch himself up enough without a doctor to know his way around a needle and thread.

"We may not be zombies ... but I do not think we are truly alive, either. Something about us has been irrevocably changed."

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Event #2: The Long Night

NOPE

tfw you kinda realize you wrote your character with a third ... arm .., he has a tail CLOSE ENOUGH

lmf HEY IT WORKS.

let me know if this works!

It's good!

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I figure we can have a magical disinfectant herb mix that acts similar to H2O2

woooo alchemy

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