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

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

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!]

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Kinda both? I mean, eventually both. For the frog guy it was just to prove we got 'em. You met Caduceus yet? He's wild.

[Helps to have a grave cleric to talk to dead people about questions or things they need. That was usually the reason for Heads.]

Did a stint in a swamp once. Wasn't great. Kind of adopted a kenku? Stuff happens. What'd you have to do, uhh, stop someone from drowning?

I have, actually. He helped me not long ago. He's very kind.

[You didn't become a bloodhunter and not be able to clean your own wounds, but stitches were undeniably easier with another set of hands.]

I've never met a kenku before, but...ah, no. Missing shipment intended for the city in the swamp. We got the shipment back, though not the people bringing it...and we were interrogated and judged by spectral hellhounds. [At least, he was told they were hellhounds.]

Were you able to help the girl at the circus?

[Thaaaat's Caduceus. He's good for that sort of thing. Actually, he's good for a lot of sorts of things, but that's beside the point.]

Hellhounds? That's rad. Did you get to fight 'em at some point?

[This is, obviously, what she's interested in. Sure.]

Oh, yeah, she was fine. Kinda fucked up in the head about the fact that the frog guy was eating her life or whatever, but. She was better after all that. Circus took care of her. And she didn't see the, uh, the frog head.

[She might have seen the frog head. Beau doesn't remember.]

I can imagine that would be...upsetting. At least she was alive.

[The rest could be figured out, usually.]

No, I'm...pretty sure they would have killed us. All three of the people I was travelling with were not so used to combat and ghosts don't make a lot of noise for me to be able to find them, it would have been a quick fight.

[Luckily, despite some of their number's best efforts, they hadn't done anything to upset the spirits too much.]

So...is now a good time to ask about fighting a god?

Oh, that's your deal. Is it like super hearing or just regular hearing and you're making it work either way? Hell of a job to work with.

[The only blind guy she knew had a familiar that was basically his eyes. He was also the coolest guy on the planet, so like, she just sort of assumes people figure it out. Bringing up the god bit makes her grin though, obviously a little proud of that whole shebang.]

Well, technically it happened twice. Once was a real god and once was a thing that was basically an entire plane? We killed that one. Bunch of mages that decided to go totally crazy over millions of years when they shot their entire city into the astral plane. Weird stuff, but still makes more sense then whatever these Entities are supposed to be. At least with them we could go into the other plane and light 'em up.

[He smiles but lets the question go unanswered in favor of her story. His hearing was sharp and trained, but ultimately no different than anyone else's, if she wanted to assume super hearing that was fine too.]

You killed the fake god in the Astral Plane? That must have been a difficult fight.

[Crazy wizards and the Astral Sea and some god-like entity? He could only imagine how much of an understatement 'difficult fight' was. It mad him curious about the actual god.]

I think of the entities as like...lesser Betrayer Gods, it feels similar. Like a less organized and younger cult? They're powerful and messy and make mistakes as well as cause devastation, but they hold appeal to the right sorts of people.

For example, I don't know if you know anyone who might have made....deals with things stronger than an average being but less powerful than gods, but it seems like that. Like the power granted in a pact made.

It really sucked, yeah. Wouldn't want to do it again. And oh yeah, yeah, got a friend who was on that for a while until it tried to kill him. They do kinda sound a lot like this whole thing.

[And the rest of them, frankly. Fucking Uk'otoa. Maybe one day they'll have to go back and deal with that.]

Problem is, usually you can just kind of... avoid those guys? Or at least they're, I dunno, sealed somewhere or locked off. Seems like you can't swing a fist without hitting another one of these goddamn fear things, and they're all trying to get you to swear to them to be the next creepy dude.

[She huffs a little annoyed sigh.]

It just pisses me off that we can't go deal with these guys where they are. We're never gonna win just fending off places like... this.

[Despite knowing he cannot see, she still gestures to the air and circus as if he could.]

[She has a very good point. Certainly there were plenty of people back home who went their whole lives without running into a single thing like a god or a creature aiming to be like one. Here it did seem more...inevitable. Like how they couldn't even use their abilities without feeding something. None of them seemed to have made any pacts and yet here they all were.

She makes her gesture and he knows what she's likely waving at: the circus, even if a larger one in nature, was still small pickings in the grander scheme.]

It does feel a lot like putting out small fires in the interest of them simply not joining the larger one we can only smell burning but can't see.

[He thinks a moment, weighs his words, but presses on. Beau seemed a good sort, righteous and well-meaning at least.]

That is why I am partly hoping the more avatars we remove, the more likely it is we might get a direct reaction; something measurable we could track and follow to the source.

[They were all kind of forced into it, having to make other worlds' magic work on this one's schedule. It bit, frankly. It bit real bad.]

You think they might take notice if we keep knocking around their servants? Provided they don't send just, I dunno, something big enough to crush us.

[But it is kind of all they have to go on right now, huh. Besides, she's done stuff like that before. Might as well.]

Pretty much all we've got, though. Wish Caleb was here. He knows a lot about magic and planar theory.

[Really, she just wishes her whole team was here. Then they could fix this and go home.]

At least they're stuck wherever they are as long as we take out avatars. Gives us time.

[He shrugs, pauses briefly as someone feels like they come near his space as they pass, but then presses on with her again.]

I do not think something that picks out it's chosen takes so kindly to those chosen being picked off. [A pause.] I was doing something similar back home, in Tal'dorei. Hunting chosen for the aim of the thorn it would put in their master's side.

That said...it's entirely possible they could send something bigger to stop us, but that in and of itself might prove useful. We shall see.

[He smiles a bit.]

Well, you and others shall, at least.

[He's funny, right? Laughing is nicer than the pang of missing friends, anyway.]

[Hey, wait a fucking second--]

Wait, you're frpm Tal'dorei? Shit. Dude, I'm from Wildemount. I was in Tal'dorei for like, twenty minutes once.

[Just to pick up some cool weapons before they went on what they thought was a death mission, it's nbd, you know how it is.]

Are we both from the same like-- place, or time, or-- fuck, what year was it for you?

[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.

[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.

[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-]

[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.

[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?

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.

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...]

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.

[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?

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.]

[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.

'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.

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

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