Log:Knights of Ren: Man on the Muun (3)
A treasure is found. The Knights face the darkness. A choice is made.
OOC Date: january 20, 2021
Location: Muunilinst
Participants: Errod Zand, Malik Ren, Sebek, Tamsin Cas as Self/GM, Knights of Ren
[Tamsin Cas]
Previously on Muunilinst...
The abandoned, but still defended Damask estate had been breeched by the Knights, its secrets revealed. A hidden chamber. Four statues, four locks, a door. Four questions had been asked, and between them, four answers had been given. The way had been shut, but no longer, as the Knights had descended into the labyrinth of caves that lay hidden within the bowels of that island, long left to wrack and ruin out across the Western Sea.
Whatever had dwelled within those caves had long ago fallen into darkness. Broken stone, the remains of broken bodies, and the remnants of a science more foul than fair. That Dark Beast which had awoken with their arrival had called to the Ren, and he and his Knights had braved the dark depths, and at the end of their journey, it had been one of their youngest who had secured their prize, a holocron brought down from on high.
A prize had been found, and given into the hands of the Ren. A decision would have to be made. To delve deeper, or to eschew the lair of the Beast.
[Malik Ren]
A holocron. A dangerous and powerful thing, and owing to its unfettered access to Force history and secrets... one of the only types of Sith artifacts Malik Ren suffers to remain intact.
He has the holocron in hand now, or... floating telekinetically above his hands a bit, turning it this way and that as he inspects it. "So here is the reason for all the drama," Malik thoughtfully notes. "Locked to us yet, owner unknown. Some of these part with their mysteries far more easily than do others, and it seems this one would rather play hard-to-get."
[Sebek]
"A foolish tactic of a foolish man." That was Sebek of the Desert, who was somewhere between 'antsy' and 'twichy' seeing as he hadn't killed anyone or anything for the past... how long have they been down here now? Not since he cut down some security droids topside. He wasn't looking at He Who Leads, instead throwing his eyes and senses out towards the surrounding tunnels (metaphorically, omg) looking for whatever glorious prey awaited. "Such things, smug in their superiority, oft break under force. It is to be reminded that the power is held not by it."
[Tamsin Cas]
Tamsin, who had been one of the last of the fair party to enter the chamber, had left the holocron to the Ren, and to those who knew more of such things. She had turned her attention to these empty cells, looking back at Malik from where she had been inspecting some of the residue which still lingered on the inside of the glass. But it was to Sebek that she looked, "How did you come into the tunnel behind me? I was sure you were leading the way."
[Errod Zand]
"The power that binds us to these relics of a bygone religion is a force for evil, make no mistake," Errod grates from behind his plain metal mask, his eyes wide and visible through the slits. "Lift a serpent from the earth. For a moment, its writhing coils intrigue with their mysterious twists and turns, but when the head turns back on you the wonder turns to regret. These are no different. The wickedness rolls off it in waves. Can you feel it? That prickling up the back of your neck? The aroma of bones and decay." His helmet wobbles from side to side. "Before my time is finished, I would crush the heads of these vipers. There is no charming them."
[Tamsin Cas]
The chamber, with its prize now claimed, had fallen into Darkness, both figurative and literal, with the light which had encased the holocron dimmed, and there was only the light of their lightsabers to show them the way. They could feel the Dark, like a predatory thing. It writhed, it pulsed, it tugged at their senses. There were no more secrets to be found here. Even the dead had fled. Tamsin, who moved away from that empty, mechanical cocoon, made her way back to the group, her eyes focusing on each face in turn, before she settled on Malik, "What now?"
[Malik Ren]
"We attempt to access it," Malik decides, and arcs the holocron toward Sebek. Here, catch. "It may require further study, but I don't want to take it all the way across the galaxy only to discover that we left some sort of necessary clue or key back here. Do as you like with it, Sebek."
[Sebek]
"Do /not/ ask," seethed Sebek in She Who Rages' general direction, unhappily stewing in his own juices. Either Sebek had taken a wrong turn or the underground broke the laws of physics, and since Sebek was chronically incapable of seeing any wrongdoing in his own actions, this place must be some sort of eldritch nightmare. Manageable, as long as there's no necroflesh hordes to deal with.
The Falleen snatched the holocron out of the air and stared at it, surprised at how much it looked like a Cardooine FrelFruit. He hadn't had one of those in almost two decades, and it was perhaps this that caused the audible growl from his stomach. Which is funny, because She Who Slaughters' snack bag had been positively demolished. "It must be taught fear. Through fear, respect. In these caves lurks beasts. They demand their own slaughter." There was a horrible snap-hiss as Tei Tenga burst into life, blueballed by the fact that it hadn't killed anything in the past however-long. "Of bloodshed we rend, and thus this toy will crack for us."
[Errod Zand]
Errod steps back slightly as Sebek takes the holocron and activates Tei Tenga, the red light casting him in... red. "I don't know how these devices work. It shouldn't be, the things you do, the things they can teach. This one is worse. Can't you smell it? Sulfur and formaldehyde. It is a corpse in the palm of your hand, and it should be interred without ceremony." He pauses, shaking his head again. "What is and what should be seldom overlap. Open it, if you can."
[Tamsin Cas]
There were caves, yes, and there might be more within them than these empty chambers, but they were still, now, in that far room, off along a tunnel that had led them away from the beginning of the labyrinth and the stone-carved steps upon which they had descended into darkness. Perhaps, in other times, they might have considered it an impossible thing. But perhaps, in those times they had not been in a place of impossible things. The sounds of movement came to them along the passage they had traversed. Whispers...whispers in the dark.
Tamsin, who had only her stunsaber, which she used as Tarq had, as a flashlight, and had no great knowledge of these old artifacts, turned towards the tunnel mouth, moving to stand well, let's just say generally, mostly behind the rest of the group. "There is only one way out."
[Malik Ren]
The moment he's parted with the holocron, Malik's face twists into something ugly just for a moment -- regret at having let it go, greed, a violent urge to take it back! The moment passes, but it seized him nonetheless, and he draws a breath to steady himself. A slow exhale, and then advice to Sebek. "Crack the toy all you want, Sebek, but try not to destroy it completely. We've come a long way."
[Sebek]
"I will bathe it in the blood of its protectors so it knows when it is bested." There was Sebek, stomach twisting in frustration, and somehow not opting to just cut the damn thing in half. The half-neuron that existed somewhere in the ridged skull told him that he'd be In Trouble if he did that. "Defeat of the body is pittance in comparison to defeat of the mind. Thus was the fate of The Cometburn, thus will be the fate of this trinket." And, with a twirl of Tei Tenga, Sebek turned and stormed off back into the caverns, looking for something, anything, to satiate his bloodlust. And metaphorical hunger. And literal hunger.
[Errod Zand]
With no protectors in sight, Sebek appears to be off to find some, and Errod voices no particular concerns with this approach; just the opposite, he follows along, with his chain-whip in hand. "The unease in this place must be driven by some sort of chemical," he rationalizes, "An aerosol pumped into the air, or the remains of whatever experiments were done here released by their long atrophy in the dark. If we follow that to its highest concentration, would we find answers? Or at least the center of the madness that was perpetrated by these Muun lunatics, whatever that may have been."
[Tamsin Cas]
As the Knights made their way back along the tunnel which had led them to the chamber in which the holocron had rested, the sound of movement, the whispers only grew in number and volume. But what they saw, when they came to what had been the anteroom of the labyrinth was nothing at all what they had left behind. They had stepped out of darkness into darkness. Gone were the caverns, gone were the fallen rocks and broken bones, the traces of old blood and the remnants of the lost. There was only darkness, as though a veil had been thrown over the world. A fog that hid from them all vestiges of the place that had been, that feed on the light from their weapons, so that the world narrowed to only a small circle around them. But in that darkness, the faint outlines of bodies, of hands clawing as if to escape the birthing caul and avail themselves of the Knights who trespassed upon their lair.
Tamsin, for many reasons, but perhaps most of all because she would not be left behind, followed in the wake of the group, finding herself now shielded, as much as one could be shielded, by Errod's slim form and bright blade.
The caul breaks, and a creature lurches out of that dark womb. It is a thing of nightmares, half metallic, half organic, as though some mad scientist, but were not all dark scientists somehow mad, had tried to merge the living and the never alive.
[Sebek]
The Force screamed and Sebek moved.
"Necroflesh beast!" erupted the Falleen, swinging Tei Tenga one-handed into the gloom from which the mechanoid abomination had lurched. "Of not droid and man!" It had become Yet Another Sebek Fight Scene, of misses and a lot of bombastic shouting that meant absolutely nothing in particular. A second swing of Tei Tenga bit deep into mechanical connections, spraying sparks and oil across the gloom. VWOOOOM, the third swing was a miss! "Behold your protector, trinket of the dead! Behold its doom!"
[Errod Zand]
The pricking of Errod's thumb intensifies, and shambling nightmare creatures appear from the shroud of darkness, reaching towards them with grasping fingers. Already armed, he twists and strikes with the rigid blade of the chain-whip, smashing and slicing and burning in the same movement, and the figure crumbles, the top half sagging away unnaturally but still connected to the bottom. There is another, and he runs it through, pulling the blade back, but the creature, or being, whichever it is, remains standing, keeps coming, and another appears behind it. "The hallucinations are becoming more potent, or we're about to be ripped apart," he rasps to the other two. "I do not know which I would prefer to be true."
[Tamsin Cas]
For every horror that fell, another took its place. They were birthed from a seemingly endless darkness, and bent on only one thing, and that was to avail themselves of the blood and flesh that had entered their domain. They came now from all sides, encroaching on that small bubble the Knights were now fighting to keep. A seemingly endless stream of twisted forms and grasping hands.
Tamsin, who, once again, forgot what a stunsaber was actually for, held it high, offering its meager light to the group, her free hand rising, twisting into a fist as a wall of force pushed the closest horror back away from her. And still...the came.
[Malik Ren]
Horrors! Horrors from the dark! Standard stuff for the Knights of Ren, right? How many times have they stepped boldly into that darkness that runs through their power, and met the nightmares that linger there? Over and over and over.
And yet, there's something twisted and awful about it every time. These things are not right, this is a corruption, and even the Knights know it. But it takes a monster to kill a monster, maybe.
"They're not real. They're not alive," Malik's voice states, sounding certain of it. Rather than swing the saber, he reaches a hand out toward a beast and poof, it disappears! "This is a fabrication of this /place/, nightmares of invention, not of reality. I imagine they still can hurt us, however, and possibly even worse than if they were real."
A pause lingers, and this time Malik's gaze snaps over to the holocron itself. "It has a will of its own, somehow. It didn't like me dismissing its servant. But more than this, it's calling to mind over and over, what shall it take from us? That which we cherish most?"
[Sebek]
"If they are endless in number, then we shall SLAUGHTER ENDLESSLY!"
If there's one thing anyone can appreciate about Sebek, it's that he's at least predictable.
The Falleen was too far driven into his blood-rage to even think that maybe He Who Cares was wrong, or that he was right and that all of this was pointless. Totally deaf to the wisdom of He Who Leads. The idea of beating up a potentially infinite number of monsters, all with whirring claws and spinning blades and screeching faces, was absolutely his idea of a good time. There was of course a good explanation for all of this but that would involve Sebek weighing up fighting an infinite number of enemies and fighting nothing and, well.
The visions were potent, each one cut down by Sebek spurted blood and machinery and oil. It was Doom '95 real! "Yes! YES! Die, cretinous INSECTS! Behold, trinket! Your defenses fail you!" exclaimed the one who was literally suffering the defeat of the mind against them. Maybe later they'd look back at this and laugh over some deep fried Quarren or something.
[Errod Zand]
"They're not real," Errod whispers to himself about the same time Malik comes to that conclusion, the concept of a bad trip far from foreign to the oldest Knight. He stands, with his chain-whip held out in a defensive posture, pointed towards the eyes of the nearest horror, indecision splitting him through the core of his being. "If I give myself over to them, this could all be over. Either way, it would be for me. One of us would cease to exist: the monster or these nightmares." In the moment that drags by, he mulls the choice over, but in the end, he bows his head for a moment. "A curse on this weak flesh, that binds me here, and this weak soul too afraid to be free of it."
The blade snaps out, punching through a head, sparks and ichor mingling together as he rips the spearpoint tip free and it hurtles with dizzying speed into the side of the next creature, stoving in the amalgamation of tissues and machinery as he readies himself for the next, with more appearing just where the others fell.
[Tamsin Cas]
The Knights swung their weapons, those of the hand and of the mind, and still, the horrors, birthed from the darkness came on, until all of the world seemed reduced to this place, this battle, this endless horror. Whether it was born of the mind, as Malik and Errod claimed, or of the darkness itself, as Sebek, well, Sebek did not care from whence they came. But they came, one upon the other, upon the other. Tamsin, who was still attempting to stay as close to the Knights as she could, continued to fight, using not her blade, but her will, as she sought to keep the creatures at bay.
[Malik Ren]
Malik Ren reaches out to dissipate another....! And nothing happens, he just looks like he's gonna high-five it. Pride goeth before a fall, right, that's what he gets for thinking his saber is too good for unreal monstrosities! "It wants something. A sacrifice, something we most cherish," he says of the holocron. Too bad Errod doesn't have any girlfriends around to sacrifice in a horrible way! That totally worked at the last sith tomb with a holocron in it. But there's always Errod himself...!
[Sebek]
It was as the power surged through him for each 'kill' he landed that Sebek realized that he was being played. This was of course a serious affront to his pride and gleeful slaughter flipped to hateful, orange-skinned fury in an instant. "Of COURSE!" he erupted, realization having slapped him in the face like a wet fish. "Fie upon you, foul trinket! Promises of hollow glory and battle! For this I damn you! I damn you! Thrice damned and DONE!"
And with that he hurled the holocron into the air, and Tei Tenga hungrily swung into its elegant form.
[Tamsin Cas]
As the holocron was sundered, so too the illusion it had conjured. The cavern returned all around then, as reality reasserted itself, dissipating that endless darkness, and the horrors which had come out of it. The caverns seemed, oddly, brighter, more alive, as though the passing of that malevolent thing had lifted some darkness that had lain across the caverns like a pall, both physical and mental. It was an ancient place, yes, and long abandoned, but it was no longer the decrepit, broken place it had been. It was possible, now, to see the systems that had been built into the walls, the lighting, the computer terminals set here and there, the monitors which fed those now empty empty chambers which they had seen arrayed all around the false holocron's chamber.
The sound of a door's locks spinning up and then slamming home came from the corridor which, they could now see, was directly ahead of them. And beyond, something which tugged and pulled at their senses. A treasure, false, but a treasure, still, had been lost, but something, something lay ahead.
[Errod Zand]
Errod pauses long enough to hear Malik's words, and they make sense. "There's always a cost. A sacrifice of power unto power." But then Tei Tenga flashes and the world dissolves away into the cold light of reality, and there's no need for a sacrifice. The man blinks, turning around in a slow circle, his weapon lowered now. A hand reaches up to pull his helmet off so that his wide, bulging eyes can stare more clearly around the room, his unkempt hair matted with sweat beneath the halo of flyaways. "And so we return to the real world, in which the monsters are all the more terrifying for their mundane qualities, simple flesh and blood. Something has lured us here. Trapped us here. Hapless insects caught in the spider's web. The more we struggle, the more we entangle ourselves, the gossamer ribbons of silk braiding together into thick chords that firmly lash our wriggling frames in place to be eviscerated. Can a fly deserve his death, I wonder? Does he feel, as the spider climbs down the cables to suck the life from him, that perhaps he should have been drained dry long ago? That the husk he will become is his true self, and the time spent living was merely a prelude to that deeper, truer state of being?"
He glances towards the others. "Deeper into the web, then."
[Malik Ren]
"Sebek, what are you --?!" OH NO, they've come all this way and Sebek is gonna BREAK IT, he's gonna chop to LITTLE TINY BITS the thing --
"That which we cherish," Malik sighs, realization dawning suddenly as he extinguishes his saber. "Of course it is. You've done well, Sebek." Probably by accident. But he still did well.
Errod gets a long look at his ramblings, but Malik actually weighs in this time. "Everything deserves death," he replies. "Bold of you to assume we're flies, though. Whatever 'spider' made this maze is not the only creature here with venom." A smile.
Malik steps boldly in the direction of that tug, that pull.
"Deeper into the web," he confirms.
[Sebek]
"What?"
Sebek didn't get it. Of /course/.
Tei Tenga hummed angrily, and yet sated, as it fed on the darkness within the trinket most foul. The whining conclusion of the blade returning to nothingness was less furious and more content. It returned to its home in the special leg-holster. His vision returning to normal, the Falleen surveyed the brighter, easier to understand surroundings now that the dead metal lay in two pieces on the ground. "Alas, for infinite battles could have been mine," he mused, almost sadly. "And yet, it insulted me. Thus its fate is deserved. Deeper into this lair of lies and darkness. I shall find that which remains and consume it. Thus is our right as victors."
