Settle The Score | The Assassination of Fenix Down (Player Plot Open-Log)

[aelwyn_aberration]

Who: Aelwyn + Anyone Who Wants To Be Involved In This Assassination
When: April
Where: Around Gloucester, Springfield, the Circus, assorted other locations.
Summary: A murder is planned, executed, and staged. The details are yet to come.
Warnings: Discussions of murder, actual murder, blackmail, espionage, gaslighting, TBA.

[Several months ago, following the Circus' initial visit, Aelwyn was given permission to take down Fenix Down and his circus. Now, after more recent revelations about their unseen enemy, the plan has become a higher priority.

The plan is as follows. To ensure that this doesn't implicate ADI, a false cult will be created for this specific purpose. They'll keep the entity behind it vague, but one must be selected to ensure anyone paying enough attention would be able to identify it. They'll create conspiracy theories, fabricate old reports from decades ago to make it seem like this group is only recently being resurrected.

And then, with that done, they'll execute the plan itself. Staging the kidnapping and murder as if it was the act of that cult, and an extensive interrogation.

OOC Post here!]

Comments

cw for eye trauma, threatened throat trauma, threatened mind control

[aelwyn_aberration]

[That causes a reaction out of Aelwyn, a hissing of pain as the bottoms of her feet are set alight with pain. The look in her eyes turns merciless, the smile disappearing off her face.

She unlatches the container she'd been carrying, pulling out the vial of liquid nitrogen.]

There won't be a you to return to by the end of the day. Well... not true, strictly speaking. After-all, why would we kill you?

But you're never talking to anyone ever again. [She cocks her head, as if considering what to do.] Pyre's daddy, yes. That's useful. Is that all you're good for? When you're stuck in one place for months or years at a time, it helps to be able to talk, you know. They say talking to yourself is the first sign of madness, but at least you have someone to talk to.

I'm going to do horrible, horrible things to Pyre and his daddy, don't worry. I did tell him so when we first met. [She looks at the vial of liquid nitrogen, walks closer to Fenix, and starts pouring it into his right eye.] Tell me his name. Or I'll pour another vial down your throat before we subject you to a fate that will make our mutual patron blush and clap with delight.

And if you try that little pain trick again, I'll actually mentally enslave you. The materials are costly but I have the means in my spellbook.

[the_archivist]

[He truly hates that look of understanding. Because he does feel it still. And there's a scorn to it too in his mind. How can this fragile burning thing ever understand the true unrelenting glorious terror of the world that he made.

And he hates himself for feeling that way.

And then things turn so quickly, and his breath catches as Aelwyn pulls out the nitrogen and begins... oh god...]

Stop. Just- let him write a statement, or give me one... you don't need to- not yet.

[whisperedone]

[First of all, it was oddly comforting the number of people around from home, he wouldn't have guessed. Second, why were all of them from Wildemount? Even one of his own old group back home had originated there. Bizarre.

Of course, Jester seemed to know Caduceus, so perhaps Beau knew them too? He intends to ask...except the question of years, it suddenly occurs to him, is something he's never asked either of them.]

I did not know that, but I find it oddly comforting to hear, even if we're not quite from the same place. The year was 814 PD, last I knew it.

[whisperedone]

The burning sensation dies down when he hears her hit Roderick and the resulting thump of him falling. It gives him enough time to shake out that shoulder and feel how the skin is still warm and pulls, but still has motion. More than enough to start and arcing path for his glaive -one that jolts and misses for the sound of shattering glass and smell of burning.

She curses and he's instinct is to go check on her, but they can't. They're still hunting, he has to keep focus. Garner grits his teeth and takes a second swing for the man, but what solid form his blade catches -ice crackling across him in the aftermath- is nothing compared to the scream Roderick gives.

Garner shouts and jerks back to over his ears, glaive falling heavy to the ground, but for a moment, he can't hear anything but the ringing left behind. And if he can't hear, he can't see, can't even tell if Yelena was caught in the screech as well, it hadn't felt aimed at him, but his head swam too much to be sure.

[lowficharm]

I know. I'm not saying anything else. If I wanted to talk, I'd find you.

Just be careful. For all of our sakes.

[aelwyn_aberration]

[Behind her phone, she laughs. So now he's concerned for all their sakes. She wonders if he even believes his own bullshit.]

Of course. Our safety is a priority of mine.

[lesbeau]

Finally, finally, something gives. He speaks, he acknowledges, and something surges into Beau that makes her feel better than she's felt in months. Finally, she's got him. Finally, she knows something.

The pain he's sending into her hurts, and her teeth are gritted as she begs herself not to give until she's done with him. As soon as he stops talking, she grabs his jaw, dragging it to look up towards her.

"No. We won't. Because you did survive for nothing. All of those terrible things you've done to people, the ones you've killed, abandoned, all of them? It ends now. And nothing you've done will have mattered. No more outrunning death. Today, you fucking lose."

[lesbeau]

[Ding ding ding, you'd be right buddy. Amazing how much of a D&D party you can put together with some entity bullshit and getting unlucky. Anyway, the year takes her off balance, and she looks at him with a little bit of awe.]

Dude. I left in 836. You're from like, twenty years ago.

[She was barely alive in 814. Still a baby. That's fucked up.]

You have so much shit ahead of you. This is crazy.

probs wrapped unless you have more!

[lowficharm]

[Does he have to, really? Just needs to make him look like a concerned, well-meaning guy to anyone else looking at this. He knows Aelwyn has to know more if she got Jon onto this, so these words are far past being for them.]

Sure. No other reason to be doing this, after all.

See you then.

[whisperedone]

[His eyes widen momentarily for the news. That...was quite the time difference.]

Twenty years...

[He's sorely tempted to ask if she knew the name Vecna or if his old master remained the stuff of dark, muttered, conversations. Was his release from behind the Divine Gate the shit she alluded to or some other world-shattering event? If it was the latter, then it was very likely he wouldn't actually be around to know it.]

Well, I admit I don't hold much hope of ever returning, so you're welcome to tell me whatever you'd like, I doubt there will be little I can do with the information either way, I'm of no importance to history, of that I am sure.

[He smiles lightly.] I assume Exandria is whole and the gods don't walk among us once more...unless that's why you were needing to fight one?

[Oh...now he needed to reframe their conversation into context hold on-]

[musicdied]

The shriek is almost more a physical blow than a sound. It's like an icepick through her temples, all sharp pain and radiating numbness, and pressure like she's dived too far, too fast into deep water.

Her vision greys out, shadows flooding inward from around the edges. One moment, she's fighting with the clip holding the burning canisters, and the next she's curled half-fetal on the ground, the hands she'd clapped over her ears without any conscious direction damp and faintly sticky.

She struggles to orient herself in a world gone strangely silent, vision dimming again as she turns her head, turning both friend and foe into a nauseating blur.

[whisperedone]

Everything's muffled but he can smell burning and scent like candles and if he moves quick, maybe he can still catch where Roderick is.

And hope he doesn't hit his partner, assuming she's not down already.

His glaive is lost to him for now, but there's a hunting knife at his hip that he draws and swipes where he last knew their target to be. The first swipe misses, but the next seems to cut through something and that's enough. He brings the blade quickly back to himself to slide it over the throbbing wound he'd left before, ice coating where the blood sits once more.

That burning sensation from before drives bright across his hip, but it gives him renewed direction to lunge, blade burying deep into something solid. It isn't too hard to twist and rip from there as the sound of male shouts becomes the first thing to come back to his hearing.

cw: eye trauma

[apocalypsehownpcs]

[Fenix convulses when the nitrogen is poured into his eye, but Aelwyn will find herself subjected to the same. It's a vivid, excruciating agony that will leave her temporarily blind in that eye. She asks for answers, but Fenix is clearly in too much pain to provide them, his vocabulary culled to pained, nonsense words.]

[apocalypsehownpcs]

"I've never even killed anyone!" Fenix snaps. "I can't even do real fire. It's all just wax and pain. Smoke and fucking mirrors!" And then it feels like someone has kicked in Beau's teeth while simultaneously setting her tongue on fire. She's clearly struck a nerve... but at what cost?"

[lesbeau]

[Hahah, Vecna. Call the campaign before her, perhaps, but that's surprisingly not the bullshit she had to deal with. Funny how there's just world-ending catastrophes a couple of times a century.]

No, I mean-- yeah, no, it didn't get to that point but it got kinda close to that point. Do you know anything about Aeor? The like, the mage city that blasted themselves off into the Astral Sea like forever ago. Or the Chained Oblivion? I mean he's kind of a big one, but like, cults, cults about that guy.

[whisperedone]

[Does he know anything about cults...he chuckles.]

I know a little of cults, yes, and I am familiar with the existence of the Chained Oblivion: that it is very old and very powerful and very chaotic. Of Aeor, I have heard only the name as an ancient city and nothing else. Did you find it's ruins?

[lesbeau]

She stumbles backwards, dropping him as she does to put a hand to her face. Fuck, that hurts, but nothing's missing as she touches it, nothing is needing to be held in place. After a few seconds of examination, she drops her hand, breathing haggered from the pain.

"Well... guess you weren't even a good target, then. Scraping some shit off the world's boot." For just a moment, Beau sways, the pain hitting almost too hard, but she steadies. Just enough to keep going. Just enough. "Curtain's down on your show, Fenix. See you never."

And now she's going to make her way out and to somewhere less public before she collapses for a bit. It's fine. Never let 'em see you fall.

[lesbeau]

Practically lived in it's ruins for like two weeks. Place is fucked up. But more than that, there's a neighborhood that just kind of... blasted itself off into the Astral Sea and slowly went crazy becoming each other's minds. So we had one guy who was trying to bring those guys into the main plane, and another guy who was using the destabalization of the planes to try to summon chain asshole, like, all happening at the same time.

[They never did perfectly figure out if those two were related, but like, they really seemed to be with all the planar rifts. Anyway.]

Got the second one before the Aeor one. That was hard to figure out. Plus the ruins are stupidly magical so it kept throwing off everything inside.

[whisperedone]

As...truly horrific as the idea of that first one is, I have to admit I'm glad you caught the second one first, an actual betrayer god released back onto the material plane seems especially bad.

[Although 'stupidly magical' and the implication of this thing having survived in the Astral Sea that long seems....also very concerning, to be fair.]

I assume you were able to stop the godlike thing in the Astral Sea as well. You mentioned you fought it, not that you beat it.

[Not to split hairs, but...]

[lesbeau]

What? Oh, yeah, yeah, we got those guys and their fuckin' messenger. Called themselves the Somnovum. In case you ever end up hearing about them somewhere.

[Not that she wants to change her future, but like... less people would've died if those guys were stopped earlier. At least he can warn people in Tal'Dorei beforehand.]

Oh, and if you ever meet a guy called Obann? Kick his ass for me. He sucks. Like, we killed him already, he was the Chained Oblivion guy, but fuck him. He sucks.

[whisperedone]

[Garner pauses in their path and his thoughts on that for a moment.]

Well..but, should I? The likelihood I will run into him even two decades younger seems unlikely, but even beyond the fact he might not be the man you knew yet, wouldn't killing him in the past change your future? Or perhaps cause an...alternate scenario and neutralize my efforts anyway?

[lesbeau]

Okay, so first off, he's a demon or something so he's probably out there somewhere. And second, you don't have to like... kill him, I guess, but break his dick or something.

[And it would save Yasha a lot of grief if he wasn't around... though then maybe they wouldn't meet. Ugh, timeline bullshit.]

[whisperedone]

[He makes an 'ah' face and continues on like that was a perfectly reasonable request.]

Then you have my word that if I can get home, find him, and kick his ass for you, I will do so but perhaps not kill him so that he can still cross your path later.

[He smiles lightly.]

I'm not certain if I find this time discrepancy fascinating or unsettling, if I am honest.

[lesbeau]

'Ss kinda fucked up. I think that covers it.

[Fucked up can mean a lot of things. In this case, it's interesting but also like, bro, what is happening here.]

Now that we've done the important stuff, guess we should probably keep looking around here though.