The Shattered City: Chapter Three

[NeoTiamat]

Troischamps; Morning of April 22nd, 770
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"If you two would forgive my lack of manners, I need a private word with Thierri. Got knocked on the head a few times last night, and I fear I may have said something all together out of character." Tomas has the decency to look a bit ashamed of himself.

"Ah, a private affair, unfit for the eyes of strangers," Thierri replied, with a humorous smile. "But certainly, no one here could accuse a lack of manners. Forthrightness is to be commended, is it not, mademoiselle? We shall trust our companions not to find adventure while we are elsewhere - when I return, I shall show Dr. Linden to my family's abode, as promised."

"Ah, you have been commissioned by the good lady, then? Or do you come of your own accord?"

"Neither," Dr. Linden admitted. "Madame Loiseau's son was the one who insisted on it. I was unfortunate enough to owe the man a very large favor." The sharp-faced man sighed and pinched the brow of his nose. "The work is certainly cut out for me. I can only consider it lucky she's starting her grand tour close by, and hasn't tried to shove her way into any of the quarantine zones yet. Though if cases of the plague have indeed shown in Troischamps, I can't consider it a good omen for things to come."

"Perhaps the government will quarantine Troischamps and trap her inside," the doctor hoped gloomily.

Boucher Farmhouse; Morning of April 22nd, 770
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"If you think it will be useful," Cyrus said to Christophe, "then let us pursue that lead."

"Will do." Christophe said cheerfully, downing his own breakfast with the speed of someone who was afraid he would never see food again. Then again, with Christophe's physique, that was perhaps understandable. "Hopefully cousin Bertriz won't mind too much."


Cemetery on the outskirts of Troischamps, Midday of April 21st, 770
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Troischamps was not a very large village, and while it had as solid a history as any other township in Dementlieu, it was also not a particularly old village either. Thus its graveyard, containing generations of farmers, was a small and unobtrusive affair. Many of the graves were marked only by a large stone on which had been chiseled names and dates and a symbol of Ezra, worn away by time. All of this was surrounded by a rusted iron fence, the door not so much locked as latched.

Graveyards were always fenced. Even if it's just a pile of stones, always where the dead are buried the living put up a wall. The Pere Villon cemetery in downtown Dementlieu was surrounded by an elegant brick wall seven feet high, surmounted by another three feet worth of iron fence that culminated in spikes. Though they lacked the resources of Port-a-Lucine, the farmers of Troischamps had done the same.

There is something in the human mind that wants to fence away the dead. Perhaps it was to protect their dead from those would break in and disturb them. Perhaps it was to keep what was inside from getting out.

"This place is quiet." Katja said softly, looking about the surroundings. She drew her crossbow and checked that it was loaded. "I do not sense any hounds."

[Nerit]

Nerit returned to the Boucher house looking slightly pallid and drained.
Oh, it might be noteworthy that the nun had left breakfast five minutes previous, excusing herself for a "walk."

Her countenance continued to the graveyard, though it had shifted to contemplative from "out to lunch."

She glanced vaguely in Katja's direction, but made no move to ready for an attack.

"Messieurs, mesdames...I have a thought," Nerit finally said to the group at large, her brows furrowed. "I believe we are going about this the wrong way. There is something at work larger than...le culte, if you will." She folded her hands behind her back.
"Remember what M. Mauganson said earlier? Death is dead but our lives may be destroyed. I do not think this cult is capable of erasing the fundamentals of existence. They are trying, rather, to restore the death we once had."

[Cronax]

"Good" Mr. Agale acknowledged Katja's reassurance. He pulls out a
handkerchief to avoid direct contact and with a modicum of effort, drags the gate open. A rusty creak broke the relative silence before the entryway swung free.

"We should take this opportunity to learn as much as we can about the Weird's animation if indeed this is where it took place." he said, then headed inside.

Perception of 10 to have a look around

[Rock of the Fraternity]

Lia clicks her tongue, and Grimmric erupts from under her veil. "Look ahead of us, my brave one," Lia says to him in their shared language. "Be cautious, be vigilant. Come back as soon as you perceive danger or see anything... interesting." The little bat zips forward and out of sight. "Let my companion scout ahead a little, first," the Mage suggests, holding her position.

[Nathan of the FoS]

Darius, sword in hand, sweat on his brow and a sour expression on his face, chews over the nun's words for a while as he stares out across the graveyard. Finally, he decides to ask what he usually wants to ask after she says...almost anything, really.

"What do you mean by that?"

22 Perception

[yalenusveler]

"I don't think they're capable of doing it intentionally" Kerrian said, hoping the unpleasant feeling he had was illness, and not forewarning of something even worse. "But accidentally? Accidentally a lot of things are possible."

His commentary was unfortunatly, the sort of someone half paying attention, instead he was content to wander about and look for signs that something was out of place. Splitting one's attention between two worlds made things rather difficult at the best of times though, let alone while a person was ill.

OOC:Nature 29, Perception 13. Normal graveyard wiggins, or "something is seriously wrong?" wiggins.

[The Whistler]

Celeste had approached the cemetery in an incrementally more somber state of mind than she normally did: that is to say, she was appropriately reverent, but not visibly anxious. After all, this was currently a peaceful cemetery. One could appreciate it for being quiet, picturesque, and a touching symbol of the provincial church. At least, Celeste could.

"Remember what M. Mauganson said earlier? Death is dead but our lives may be destroyed. I do not think this cult is capable of erasing the fundamentals of existence. They are trying, rather, to restore the death we once had."

“What a curious thesis, Sister Doherty!” Celeste had been out of the farmhouse when the theorizing had been at its thickest, but nothing had ever stopped her from jumping into a conversation that she knew nothing about. “And justly charitable to Dr. Poincare and her disciples…after all, though they may be dreadfully misguided in their methods, it would be rather comforting to surmise that they only seek to restore the status quo!”

[Rock of the Fraternity]

"Comforting, but a little hard to believe," Lia says. Her eyes remain fixed on the graveyard. "If someone tries to create an entity of metaphysical power, the temptation is always great to benefit from it in some way. And even if that temptation is overcome, there is the little problem that the one creating the entity may well be getting it utterly wrong."

[DocBeard]

"I still don't quite get how you go about killing 'death', even if it is metaphorically. Wouldn't that effect more than one country?" Tomas wonders, kneeling down to take a sample of the soil and scowling at the placidity of it all.

11+12: 23 insight, 6+6: 12 perception.

[Kaitou Kage]

"Yes," Cyrus said, "What exactly are you talking about, restore death we once had?"

Perception and so on will come later when I'm back home.

[NeoTiamat]

Cemetery on the outskirts of Troischamps, Midday of April 21st, 770
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Katja scuffled her boots against the dirt pathway, still keeping her wary eye on the ground. "Perhaps we are letting ourselves be led astray by other people's words," she suggested. "I cannot argue with the claim something happened on March 11th. But all we can trust is that which we saw happen ourselves - and that was strange enough. Perhaps we should be asking ourselves what we know we saw that night, and ask ourselves what we think happened?"

There was little to see in the graveyard. Dead people lay buried under plots of earth, dead plants lay withered on top of them. There was no sign of anything unusual. Grimmric reported nothing within, Katja noticed nothing underneath. Eventually, if you wished to search further, you were forced to walk inside. Even then, you found little - this place was as quiet as graves it contained.

"Death is the fundamental truth of this world. Life ends, the body rots, the mind is thrown beyond the veil, and even the undead do not know what it finds there - if anything." Thierri leaned back against a headstone, as he lit a cigarette. You could read part of the name carved behind him: Boucher. "Angels, the gods of death, even the callous grim reaper, they are... constructs. Comforts. Vanities, that anything beyond ourselves cares about our mortal lives ending. That is what you refer to, yes, bonne soeur? The death we once had."

[yalenusveler]

"It was the death of a symbol. A way of looking at something." Kerrian said, looking at an area of blighted plant life, running fingers slick with fever sweat over a blade of grass that had seen its last moments. "Is that what you're trying to suggest, Theirri?"

Kerrian stood up and looked around "There's a lot of blight here. And the spiritscape is thinned out a lot, but I don't believe they've been using this as their lair . With what we saw last night, things would be a lot worse. Not saying it isn't bad, but it could be worse."

Kerrian paced a bit "Katja is right. What do we know for a fact happened, and what do we just theorize?"

[DocBeard]

"Tell that to the Akari." Tomas commented, looking around as though trying to find something. "Hmm. If I had to guess, I'd say that the monsters got what they could take from here already. Remember how they were after the girl? They might feed on the spiritual energy of the unquiet dead."

"Where are they getting all of those bodies from, though?" Tomas scowls a bit at how inconclusive his search of the grave's earth is. Well, okay, at how wrong his initial theory was. "This place seems way too peaceful to have suffered that way. Those...things were all grave-dirt and corpses, and there were too many corpses to have just been a local problem..and frankly, Troischamps isn't big enough to make one of those things, let alone three. Half the cemetery would have to be used, and the bodies would be much more decomposed. So why haven't the attacks been more widespread?"

Tomas blinks, and makes a clumsy symbol of Ezra in the air as he stands up, a bit mortified that he got that technical in a sacred place.

Rolled an 18 on my int check to make a few conclusions. If anyone's interested in that sort of thing, a pretty basic religion roll would show that Tomas's blessing was fairly obviously influenced by the Mordentish sect of the Church of Ezra.

[lostboy]

They are trying, rather, to restore the death we once had."

"I do applaud your optimism ma soeur, unfortunatley the dark pull of melancholy and cycnicsm that runs in my veins suspects you may be mistaken. Still Id be happy to be proved wrong" he adds with a wink whilst perching himself against a nearby wall and pulling an elongated lute from his stachel. Settling himself he begins strumming a faintly dischordant dirge, nothing too obtrusive, almost a background soundtrack to the conversation, yet in itself it seems almsot fitting.

and frankly, Troischamps isn't big enough to make one of those things...

"We are but a few miles from the Leon Cemetery mon ami" Nicholas responds absently looking up whislt still plucking ominious chords from the instrument. "And there's enough dead there to make hundreds or at the very least scores of those things, which is a cheery thought nonetheless no?"

Reaching the end of his piece or perhaps his boredom threshold, Nicholas moves from his perch, circling vaguely before plucking the last notes right in Tomas' ear. He offers the Lamordian a watery smile , then reliveing Therri of his cigarette with a similar smile wanders aimlessly back to his seat, comforting his feverish brain with a good old fashioned hit of tobacco.

OOC:
I am assuming this counts as a short rest so, anyone who needs to spend a healing surge gets +4 hp back on top. In addtion by using the lovely Fochlucan Bandore's daily power Tomas gains a +1 power bonus to weapon damage until end of next short rest. (I'll switch this up between people in future)

[Cronax]

I believe we are going about this the wrong way. There is something at work larger than...le culte, if you will."

Mr. Agale had been pondering the nun's hypothesis to himself up to this point. "I take it you hypothesize that Dr. Poincare's cult was not the force responsible for Chastel's death. Now, based upon evidence thus far, I find it likely that the cult was responsible for the initial theft we witnessed. For the sake of argument, let us assume that the nullification of 'Death' corresponded to M. Chastel's murder. Chronologically, Poincare's plan was in motion prior to the spiritual vacancy. Until now, I had thought her cult were responsible for said vacancy. If this is not the care, then either a fortunate piece of opportunism on Poincare's part occurred, or some other force with unique motivations is at work."

There was little to see in the graveyard.

"Odd," Agale remarked "I would expect upset graves and some overturned headstones if not a full fledged summoning circle. Are we certain this is the most probable location that could have been used to conjure the Weirds?"

Whoops, I tend to read up to a certain point, compose a post over several hours (on and off) then submit it, if we can assume Lostboy's answers come after Agale's questions, this makes more sense.