5516/Layers

Layers
Date of Scene:	13 October 2017
Location:	Lumiere
Synopsis:	Carna has been tracked down to a place tied to the myth of Atlantis... In an area once sealed off by an ugly black mold and deep, black waters.
Cast of Characters:	974, Priscilla, Count Kord, Kushiko, Tomoe, Staren, 513

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Carna (974) has posed:
    The watery depths were observed previously while exploring the Vanquisher's Nest in search of the Marble Guardian that once dwelled here, tormenting Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table with whispers of despair for thousands of years or longer. A creeping black mold-like substance or organism was observed covering the walls, toxic in the extreme by Kushiko's analysis. But down in those dark waters, a towering statue much like the one found in the Grand Gallery within the Library of Murdered Knowledge, assumed to have been a reproduction of the statues of Priscilla's mother, but now found here, outside of that environment, was seen.

    There were subtle differences in both cases, but the ones here are more pronounced. Less of the face is visible, more of the head shrouded in a hood. The figures are similar in proportions, but with less of the face to compare against, it's hard to say who she is supposed to be.

    But what is clear is that there is a lot of water, and that isn't an environment they want to go swimming in. Even from up here, the murky depths look chilling and likely to conceal all manner of horrors.

    Somehow, they need to drain the temple enough to enter. Having made their way here through the dungeon, beneath the Stone Devils' headquarters, Enark suggested they first inspect the chamber where the Chains of the Dusk Sun once resided, in case it might yield any clues. Slaying the Marble Guardian resulted in the reservoirs of blood filling in the God Forge. Maybe there are other connections as yet unseen.

    Crow stays close to everyone, not going off to explore as might be more common. The Shadow also continues to be much quieter than usual. At present, unless someone has a better idea, the crew should be on their way down stairs that once led to a creature that radiated despair, but is now simply a large empty chamber with grates in the floor that no longer serve a purpose without a ball of chains bleeding into them.

Priscilla has posed:
    Priscilla remembers this place. After all, she had been here when the Marble Guardian had perished. She had hacked through it with her scythe, all the way through its iron shell and down to its hateful, beating heart, and she had claimed its soul. She had forged it alongside Kord into the sword Carna now wields as her primary blade, and taken some solemn pleasure in seeing it beaten into the hot metal of the godforge, never to trouble another again.

    What's actually left in this room, though, is kind of up for debate. At the time, she'd been knee deep in boiling supernatural blood while stuck navigating a jungle of giant chains, so she hadn't gotten a good look around. That said, showing up at the empty boss room, it doesn't look like there was too terribly much to get a look at in the first place. She'll want to give it one look around, peering down grates, pushing on suspect-looking stones, and yanking on any remaining chains, but Priscilla doesn't have her hopes up. There were tons of doors and weird noises they had passed on the way here.

    The only thing that particularly stands out about her search right now, is that she carries it out with identically matching golden eyes.

Count Kord has posed:
    Kord does something unusual. He reaches down to physically pick Crow up in his arms. He does this with no prompting, and maintains the shadow's physical form the whole way down the stairs to the area the first Marble Guardian was held at. He does not do this out of affection, or concern, but out of a strange protective instinct. This is His shadow, and he has grown attached to its presence in a way that he would never admit is something more than a pragmatic way. Its godly traits might prove useful, etc.

    He carries Crow the way one might carry a child. This can be easily misconstrued.

    "It can't be a lever, could it?" he asks, sounding rhetorical. "... what machine is used to drain water?"

    He actively searches for anything obvious on their way down.

Kushiko has posed:
Interestingly enough, should the need to traverse water by one of them come up, Kushiko has the means. How the Archwing unit gets to her is something no one here should question, but it's an available. <"That's almost as toxic Infested can be,"> she muses aloud with regards to the mold and the system analysis of it by her Warframe's systems.

The Warframe in this case, being Mesa, the gunslinger. The sense of deja vu not withstanding when it came to certain things as they related to the Library besides, she regards the stairs for a few moments, addings, <"If it's necessary I can augment and go into the water, though I'm not sure even my systems and Transference will let me see down there, to say nothing of how inhospitable it is. And that's with my Archwing which is designed for space and other really bad places."> Which irritates her a little, by the way of her tone. She remembered it well enough, so hopefully they could find something down here.

Kord's remark gets a comment, <"Could be, or could be that even if there is a lever or mechanism, it might be damaged or jammed.">

Tomoe has posed:
Tomoe also recalled this place and the fight that was had here, she also recalls Seifer and everyone else who went there. She didn't wnat to come back, but they had little choice. Her memories of the place where not good ones. Still they had work to do and she notices how tense Crow is as well. She keeps a bit of an eye on him and conjurs a small sphere of light to flot by her head as she moved forward.

"Didn't think I'd have to come back here. So lets see what we can find down here. If it is damaged or jammed we should be able to do something about something like that hopefully Kushiko. Trust me Staren's plan is the last resort as far as I'm concerned."

Staren has posed:
    Staren could survive underwater inside his armor, but he's not so good at maneuvering and fighting, so draining the area is the superior option if at all plausible.

    While others look around, he sprays nanomachines on every surface in the room, letting them find even the tiniest cracks that might lead to mechanisms or passageways behind the walls. Given their size they're a bit slow, though, so he's left to wait for them to do their thing.

Finna (513) has posed:
"Machines that drain water. Uhhhh.... I've seen big screws powered by windmills." Finna offers vaguely to Kord as she hops back and forth from one perch to another amongst the group.

    Probably just to annoy the shit out of Kushiko and Priscilla, because one could swear at times that the fox is rather Cheshire Cat-like, seeming to vanish when one's attention wanes and popping up somewhere else with no idea how she crossed the intervening space.

    It causes the mind to do plenty of double-takes and doubt the eyes.

    But she settles down to plodding alongside Staren for some reason or another.

    "Might be a wall or a gate or something we can open. Floodgates... what was the word for it... a dam?"

Carna (974) has posed:
    Enark pauses, hands on his hips. "Peacemaker Longita did not inform us of what the method for draining the temple was. It might be a hidden lever of some kind, yes. Sir Staren, do let us know if your hairspray reveals anything. Infrared lasers or something."

    Crow, held by Kord and linked to his shadow in order to retain contact with another source of such, practically drips and flows down to the ground from its position, such is the looseness with which it holds itself. "Are lasers likely in an ancient dungeon?"

    Enark shrugs self-consciously. "I have no idea. We have computers in Final Destination. Why not lasers here? I do not feel it is untoward to suggest that Lumiere is a very strange place." He waves a hand to dismiss the matter and says, "I agree, Lady Kushiko. Diving into the temple, given the warning we were given, and your prior analysis, does seem dangerous even for you. Whatever that mold is., I do not wish to determine through experimentation whether it can affect one of your frames."

    As Priscilla pokes and prods at things, Crow peers around, and then asks, "Hey, Miss Priscilla, can you stand in the center of the dungeon? Yeah, right there." A limp shadowy appendage gestures at the spot directly below where the giant ball of chains used to be. Then the appendage divides into dozens of other tendrils that go to the walls, merging into the stone, seeping into the cracks, and carrying Staren's nano machines deeper into the structure.

    A golden light, pale and bright at the same time, flows throughout the suddenly pure-black chamber, tracing a circuit-like pattern over everything that gathers together in the middle, reflecting the light that Tomoe provides, and a concealed panel in the floor. The intricate hidden pattern is not dissimilar from the one that covered the platform at the God Forge. "This probably isn't how it was supposed to be done, but I want to find Miss Carna soon. I don't want anyone else to get hurt."

    Enark frowns, not in disapproval, but in thought. Then he looks to Priscilla, to see if standing in the center of the room does anything (it will make the panel in the floor flip over to reveal a large lever, the pulling of which will result in rumbling and the thunderous sound of huge volumes of water flowing. Perhaps Finna's guess was accurate!). "...Were both of your eyes always gold, Lady Priscilla?"

Priscilla has posed:
    Priscilla aborts taking 20 on her search check. Taking 20 sucks and takes forever, and Crow apparently has a better idea. Her abilities are suited to searching without being found, rather than searching expediently and efficiently, such as in the case of some of the others.

    Of course, this is Lumiere. No matter how pretty and blatantly significant the activation mechanism is, she's not standing on a highlighted panel unarmed. Priscilla has the Lifehunt Scythe rested in the crook of her arm and braced over her shoulder before she even puts her toes on it, and hesitantly at that, taking a good while to look straight upwards, as if expecting the Marble Guardian to suddenly reappear. When it's only a lever, she makes double sure to check for apertures darts or arrows (or lasers) could fire out of before pulling it with all necessary strength. Being invisible doesn't really help when a trap is just rigged to dumb-fire on a certain location.

    "For a very long time, yes." Priscilla says to Enark, genuinely a little surprised that anyone had noticed, and suddenly wondering how off-putting the mismatch secretly was. "Consider it a return to form. A conscious choice that thou needn't be worried of."

Staren has posed:
    Staren blinks. Woah, when did Enark become Snark? Though uncalled for, he's kind of impressed all the same. "I'm deploying machines too small to see -- they're checking for any little cracks that might lead to hidden passages or mechanisms."

    And then Crow Does Something. And when they flip the revealed lever, they hear water moving. "Sheesh... I really didn't think there'd just be a convenient 'drain the water' lever in a room we'd already been to..."

Kushiko has posed:
If Finna really wants to play the game of 'fucking with the senses', the Tenno could genuinely and probably would make the Exalt regret it. That said, she doesn't seem in any sense of being perturbed by Finna's little antics. As if to make a point, there's an instance where she herself seems to not really come off as 'there', before resuming a normal path, though her attention is somewhat lightly painted towards Priscilla as well. Gold was something that's been gradually more associated with the Halfbreed, but now... hrm. Still, it didn't seem particularly polite to ask here and now, though the phantom 'eye' of Kushiko's seems to fall briefly on her with the others asking.

But that's brief, and in passing: what needs doing is finding and simply searching for something that looks like it's part of a mechanism maybe--at least, she was looking. When things get completely lit up like they do, she starts inspecting things a bit more directly until that lever shows up for pulling.

<"We noticed ourselves, but did not feel it necessary to draw attention, at least not here while we search."> Kushiko admits when it comes to Priscilla's answer. Mesa unholsters a pair of sleek-looking sidearms, like elegant submachine guns of some kind as she gives both of them a light twirl as she stalks around the area a little bit, half-expecting some trouble to emerge, and preferring to be ready.

Tomoe has posed:
Tomoe enter sthe chamber with everyone else she's been keeping an eye on Enark and nods.

"You make a good point given even ideas seem to go here when they die." She looks back to Priscilla dfor a moment thand then to Kushiko. Before she takes a look again to the patterns her light spell ios kept up as she seems to be of aid.

"I"m worried too about her, if she's lost her journal too ... it could be really bad."

At the mention of Priscilla's eyes she pauses and take sa look she can't find herself recalling it one way or another which does bother her.

"I'm not going to look a gift horse in the mouth, Staren."

Finna (513) has posed:
Finna's had enough of a helping of Priscilla's weird eyes to not want to ask. Instead the fox noses all around the room, sniffing for anything weird or out of place.

    She isn't the first to find the oddity though! Crow suddenly getting decisive draws her eyes to watch what's going on and...

    A lever...

    "Too easy! Suspiciously easy!" The fox is skeptical of this!

Carna (974) has posed:
    Enark raises his hands in surrender to Priscilla and Kushiko. "My apologies for mentioning. You are right. There are more pressing matters to attend to." He focuses on Staren's explanation. "Ah! Ah-hah! It has been so long since I've dealt with such technology I forgot it existed. Yes, good idea. And with Crow using them to analyze the room just now..." He nods to himself sagely as he watches the room turn into a giant puzzle box. He likes solving puzzles, but not in this kind of situation. He'lls accept a cheat if it means getting out of here that much sooner.

    Following the successful pulling of the lever without incident aside from the apparent draining of the temple, the crew is able to make their way back up to the stairs and to where they found the entrance originally. Stairs lead down from the hall within the dungeon. Marble steps, still damp with the fetid waters that have engulfed them for ages. The mold-like substance still coats the walls but the water it floated in is now at a much reduced level.

    Descending takes some time, and they pass by archways and other stairs leading other places. Darkened passages, abrupt ledges, with the pattern of water reflected on the walls when light happens to shine upon it.

    The statue of the woman who is not-quite-Gwynevere looks even less like her from down here, where they can look up into her face beneath the hood.

    The large worship chamber the statue stands on one side of seems free of enemies or traps, always a reason to worry in Lumiere, but as of yet, nothing has leapt out of them or attacked them. But over one of the ledges, one of the staircases leading 'outside' into an empty space as vast as a drained ocean, reveals there is a LOT more to explore and many more chances to run into trouble.

    Also, there are piles and piles and piles and piles of drowned bodies, that have spent so long in the water that the pale-fleshed shapes have actually collapsed and merged into each other.

    Sightlessly, the water-logged corpses lay in enormous heaps, still slick, and likely to remain so, in this damp atmosphere.

    Going down there and exploring the enormous cityscape of Greek-looking ruins is not going to be fun.

    Crow, still hanging on Kord, asks, "What are we looking for again?"

    Enark, clearly spooked by all this, says almost too quietly to be heard, perhaps afraid to alert anything that might hear his voice, "We are looking for a 'Chime'. I am not certain where to begin looking, or what to do other than ring it. But that will supposedly allow Lady Carna to appear again--"

    Crow buts in, without the cautionary volume Enark is using. "A chime? Like the Three Chmimes? R'lyeh, Phlegethon, and Cyaegha? Those ones?"

    Enark says, "Err... Names weren't specified but probabl--What the devil!?" Enark rocks on his feet as the ground shifts and grinds beneath them. A sigil seemingly made of water, with something dark flowing within it, appears in the middle of the room. Unlike when the water drained, there is no corresponding noise to accompany the tremors. It all occurs silently. Until the glyph shatters, the dark things flow out into the air like snakes in the water, and vanish into this drowned underground temple city, for unknown purposes.

    And lying in a heap before them, looking little better than the lumps of broken-down flesh amassed outside, is the Lantern they sought.

    Right next to her is a Shrine of Light, apparently deposited by the broken glyph at the same time it dropped off Carna.

    Whispers begin to audibly fill the area, though they remain distant presently, and will randomly stop as suddenly as they start. Sometimes a few voices, sometimes a great many. Always without warning, always back into silence.

    And accompanying them is a sense of... Lingering sadness. Without any apparent cause. It is a small thing. Easily overlooked. But it is everywhere. An aura of melancholy that will not abate.

Kushiko has posed:
Whispering voices. Wonderful. That's totally not something that's kind of disorienting, though at the very least it's not the other kinds of whispers Kushiko's heard. No, these are technically worse, but at least they're not from her own head!

As much as she had been surveying, leveling her guns cautiously--just because they're dead doesn't mean they're no longer a threat. While she does this, her frame's sensors continue to catalogue images of the place, from the statue, to the bodies, to more of well, everything. <"Carna!"> she actually shouts out in surprise, hustling in a surprisingly fast way, launching herself through the air and coming to a stop--though she's more on the line of 'keep the place safe' near the Shrine of Light that they are.

It's the damn whispers. The sense of sadness. It resonates with her in an odd fashion, and Mesa's head continues to 'look' left and right and around before she gestures with a hand. A fine, hazy mist emanates from her hand. It's an attempt, as it were, to possibly invest Carna with some of her odd, Void energy in a way to bring her out of being an unconscious wreck, the mist flowing down like a shower. Which is physically very weird.

Tomoe has posed:
Tomoe will likely not bring up the eyes again unless it becomes actually imporant. She moves ahead as they go deeper into the temple as they arrive in the worship chamber. She takes a moment to look around, as her eyes dart about looking for issues of hostiles, traps or just about anything else. She sees nothing is trying to kill them and the bodiues? She teis to not gags t the smell she also is creeped the hell out about it.

Still she presses ona nd it's not long before the glyph shatters and she takes a tep back then she hears the whispers. She is more focused on Carna however.

"Carna!?!"

Tomoe is about to race to the fallen Lantern when Kushiko acts quicker and she isn't botherd with that she looks to Kushiko.

"You got her? We shouldn't delay long we may have to haul her out of here. I'll help if we have to carry her."

She goes into a kind of overwatch for Kushiko as she works...

Priscilla has posed:
    "There is no need for apology, Sir Enark." Priscilla says a little drily, but honestly enough. "It is simply not a matter I had planned to suddenly discuss in preemptive detail whilst there art more important things to do." Like pulling a lever. Thankfully, the lever doesn't kill anyone. That still doesn't stop Priscilla from hesitating for a good, long while on those slick stairs down that utterly rank tunnel. These are always Priscilla's least favourite places. No amount of blood and corpses ever seems to get to her, but piled up natural filth always seems to make her consider 'why me?'

    Regardless, she makes sure to get a good, long look at the statue. It bothers her for excruciatingly obvious reasons, and it seems she only steps away after she has convinced herself of a reasonably high chance of its likeness being sheerly coincidental. Its placement would be almost as offensive as its implication were that not the case.

    Oddly, waterlogged and partially melted piles of Cronenberged cadavers are what draw the least of her attention. Already very familiar with the subject, Priscilla's eyes basically gloss over them, visibly skipping those sections of the landscape to look for anything more important. Of course, Carna pretty obviously counts, whom the others have well in hand. She takes the opportunity instead of ask a question of Enark. "I hath seen thee before, draw upon the properties of water and poison and the combined mixture of both. I had even guessed such a domain to be thine primary method of sorcery. Tell me, hath this place any particular meaning to thee?"

Carna (974) has posed:
    The energies pumped into Carna seem to amount to making her start vomitting some vile black substance that fills her face mask quickly, forcing her to awaken, pull it down, and get up onto hands and knees to finish emptying the pitch-black, reflectionless substance from her lungs. She hacks and coughs, tentacles coated in the blackness squirming and flopping in the growing puddle. Face half-eaten away by whatever tendril-creatures they are, struggles to her feet with strength that would be absent in a living person so recently drowned and full of parasite worms and alien fluids, scanning those around her seemingly without recognition initially, but apparently enough memory surfaces to realize these are allies, because she does not make any hostile or cautious movements. She just accepts they are probably the ones who rescued her.

    Her throat is so destroyed she doesn't have much to say at the moment though.

    Enark seems aghast by this display. "Yes, Lady Tomoe. Please assist Lady Carna in evacuating. We will be right behind you, I am certain." He feels... Somber for reasons he isn't sure of. The air weighs on him. Crow slumps over Kord's body even more heavily (figuratively speaking, since it's weightless) under the aura's influence.

    The Blue Scholar turns to Priscilla to try to answer her questions. "I believe this temple was constructed by the most recent Lord of Silence, the Seer of Styx, but is tied heavily to the element of Water, yes. It links us to the underworld called Hades, or a part of it. And likely to Atlantis as well, if Longita's story was anything to go by. While Lord Tharmas must have dwelled here in this area at some point, he was a lover of art, and of life. Something as gloomy as this would not have appealed to him. Though... Perhaps his Emanation would have felt otherwise. As Lord Tharmas was the Zoas of Water, so she would be as well, though a different aspect of it. But..." He looks around, still appalled by the ruins around him.

    "For this place to be twisted like this... Something terrible must have happened here. To her, or wrought by her. Enion was, when separate from Tharmas, she possesses the image of the Earth Mother." He looks up at the statue, as if searching for a memory he can not quite place. "...That is either meant to be the Seer emulating Enion, or Enion herself. But I do not believe that this place was always like this. There must have been many worshippers here once. While I know some lore about Lady Enion, my devotion was to Lord Tharmas. If we wish to know more about this place, we would be better served either finding one of Enion's or the Seer's worshippers... Or searching for information in the Library."

    As the whispers rise again, distantly (or are they closer?), he shudders and says, "Both of which can be pursued when we are free of this place."

    And unless there are objections, the Shrine can be activated to whisk them anywhere but here.

Staren has posed:
    "Carna! Where have you been? Do you remember us, do you have your journal?" Staren's glad to see they've activated the chime without even having to fight a bunch of monsters. To Enark, he comments, "'For this place to be twisted like this' could kind of be said of all of Lumiere..."

Kushiko has posed:
Well that is a special kind of horror. Kushiko stands mute to it, though as Mesa might be somewhat not showing the signs of it, there's a grimace, faintly audible all the same. Reminds her somewhat of the Infested, yet not. Mesa holsters a weapon long enough to actually help her up, to help her up.

No way would one of her healing items actually do anything other than bolster; and once she's somewhat assured that Carna can keep moving, well, all they can do is get the hell out of here, get somewhere that Carna can truly be recuperated at.

So once she makes sure that Carna's belongings and other partgs of her are fully attached--as much as she might be listening to Enark recall the story, she'll move to activate the Shrine. <"She can't speak right now, least not yet. Throat's gone, most of her face too."> She could tell. She's done that to people, albeit not with parasites or other bizarre things. Well OTHER bizarre things, but not this explicitly.

Not yet, at least.

She'll outright carry Carna if required. At least someone to learn onto before sending herself and Carna to the safest Shrine there is.

Tomoe has posed:
Tomoe is going to help with Carna where it's needed she will end up helping Carna if she needs it on the way out. She will look to the shrine for a moment. She will not stay long she will make sure that Carna and everyone else gets out. She does not want to say here a moment longer.

"I agree and I'd suggest if we must come back we do so when we are in better form."

With that she will port out with everyone else.