GAMBIT BRIAR and THE HAUNTED HOUSE

Your fate in this route may be affected only by your current skills. They will be recorded as they appear the moment this thread is published so as to avoid discrepancies between skill level ups and your character's fate.

Most rewards gained in your adventure will be account bound and therefore not tradeable. A handful of the benefits will be for the character you bring only.

There will be fewer choices on this route, except for at a critical juncture. Your story will unfold based on the whims of the universe and your skills.

As the story progresses, encounters will become riskier though you can choose to abandon the adventure at any time. If you choose to remain, you do so understanding the risks!

Acciona is a Beginner Hunter and Beginner Navigator
Lets begin!

GAMBIT BRIAR - THE HOUSE

You emerge from an unfamiliar part of the forest into a clearing, blinking slowly as your eyes adjust to the sudden deepening of the gloom that surrounded you your whole walk. As the dim light slowly becomes more and more comfortable you start making out a hulking shape on the other side of the clearing. Old and creaking woodenly in a wind you can't feel you lay eyes on a dilapidated mansion. The whole building skews to one side, and even in the gloom you can make out that parts of it appear to jut out unnaturally as if grafted onto its massive shape after the fact. Something about it seems wrong, though you are not sure why.

---

• Approach the mansion
  
• Flee with your tail between your legs [Leave]
  

The building looked like a death trap, though in all fairness, just about everything looked like a death trap to Acciona. A small, but persistent voice in the back of her mind told her she shouldn’t be here, that she should turn around and go back, forget that she ever stumbled into this clearing, forget she ever saw that foreboding structure. She a moment she was rooted to the spot, debating. Cation warred against curiosity, but even more than that, there was a desire she hadn’t realized laid within. A desire to be something more than the frightened little girl she’d always felt like. She wanted to be bold, to be brave, and so, against her better judgement, she approached. Her steps were careful and slow, wondering if this was actually a first step towards bravery, or if it was just plain stupidity. There was only one sure way to find out though. Afraid or not, she was doing this.

Success

You take a few shaky steps up the wooden stairs, as you move your history of exploration makes your senses for unstable ground keener, and you can sense that the right side of the stairs is too weak to support your weight. You make it safe and sound to the landing and push your way into the foyer. As you pass through the doors you spot something shiny, you grab it and stash it for later.

Acciona has found 100 Gems

GAMBIT BRIAR - HALLWAY

The space before you is wide and open. The air is musty and through the gloom you can see motes of dust. Wherever you are it’s not seen life in a long time. In the center of the foyer is a massive carpeted staircase. You can see doors on either side of the ground floor, but you feel something drawing you up the stairs. Your paws move before you have time to process this fact, puffs of dust rising with each paw step and you quickly feel your paws become covered. This time your trek up the stairs is a safe one, though the place has clearly been abandoned the steps are sturdy and carry your weight. Still you press yourself to the heavy wooden banister until the moment you reach the top floor. You peer into the dark and notice there is a hallway off to the left. On the right is a door, you try it first but the room beyond is covered in debris so you can’t enter, the furthest wall is all but collapsed, the night sky visible through it’s crumbling structure. So you start down the hallway, losing count of the doors you’ve passed as you feel yourself once more drawn towards the middle of the hallway. You pause, even a few feet from the door your being drawn to you can hear something making noise from the room behind.

---

• Approach the door
  
• 2 Spoopy 5 me [Leave]
  

She had half expected something more to happen when she entered, but her short trip up the front steps and into the building was, blessedly, uneventful. Still, as she entered and looked around, she felt uneasy. Not enough to abandon her little adventure so soon, why would she, when things seemed to be going well enough so far? As she moved deeper into the belly of the metaphorical beast, she was more assured that the outcome she most feared was an unlikely one. No living thing could be in here aside from herself. She doubted her own demons would have done anything more than give this place a passing glance, so she felt at least a tiny bit more confident as she moved down the hallway. The sound coming from behind one of the doors was unexpected, and enough to rattle her fragile confidence, but not enough to scare her off yet. She approached, holding her breath. Maybe a bird had flown in and made a nest in there? That was a much easier thought to accept than the more ominous suggestions looming in the back of her mind.

Success

As you approach the door, the sounds get louder. For a moment your courage flags. You press your ear to the door, jumping as something smashes into the wood on the other side. You freeze, listening intently, after what feels like a lifetime the sounds end and you finally summon the courage to open the door, something scrapes across the floor as you do so and as you look down you see what must have been flung at the door, a cracked glass orb. You silently thank the universe you listened to your instincts, getting hit by that would have hurt a lot. You can’t help but feel a bit more confident in yourself.

Acciona has gained 5 Hunting Skill points

GAMBIT BRIAR - Fix Me!

You lift your gaze to a truly horrific site, the room you’ve entered is illuminated by the moon visible beyond the window in the opposite wall. Swinging ominously in that pale light are countless shapes that hang from the roof. You cast your gaze about, all around you on shelves, the floor and any other surface in the room are what feels like hundreds and hundreds of small figures. You freeze, waiting for the tiny creatures to jump you and rip you to shreds. But nothing else seems to move beyond the figures hanging from the roof, pushed by the still unfelt breeze. Taking a breath you peer closer at the closest figure and fight back the urge to recoil. It’s a strange thing, a soft body that seemed to be filled with something, and hard solid limbs… but it doesn’t resemble anything you’ve ever seen, the head is a sphere, molded fur of some kind on its head and forward facing eyes. The limbs are mismatched, different in tone and shape, one of them appears to be the leg of a deer, and you recognize a plush lupine tail poking from the back of the body. A doll, and the figures hanging from the roof are marionettes. The sphere at your paws appears to have been another strange head and as you look around all the figures are mismatched in a similar manner, limbs and heads of animals you recognize grafted onto bodies that have limbs and heads you don't. Something about it is all very wrong. In the center of the room lays a pile of limbs and heads, a single cloth body piece in front of the pile. You take a step towards it, and somewhere in the back of your mind comes a voice: Fix me.

---

• Fix them!
  
• Take a Puppet down from the roof
  
• Nope out of there! [Leave]
  

As she entered the room, she couldn’t help but wonder what on earth might have caused that orb to hit the door. Surely a bird couldn’t have done that, so what had? She frowned, stepping in slowly, taking in every detail of the room around her. The small bodies with mismatched limbs made her deeply, deeply uncomfortable, but still it wasn’t enough to make her turn around. The voice in the back of her mind seemed to come from somewhere else, it seemed a strange thought to have. What exactly was she meant to fix? Did something here want her to put together a little doll of her own? No thanks. The thought of rummaging through the pile of limbs made her stomach twist, but she was curious about the puppets. What were they, and why were they here? She reached up and pulled the nearest puppet down, wanting to get a closer look.

Failure

You carefully try to remove one of the puppets from the rafters, something telling you to be cautious about not letting it fall. You rise up onto your hind paws and gently try to hook one of the puppets with your paws, it takes a few tries and one of them is just barely dangling off the edge. Just one more- You swing with more force than you mean too, knocking the puppet off the rafter and it clatters to the ground loudly. For a moment you stare at it's twisted mangled form and then the puppets hanging above your head begin to swing wildly, their limbs clanking ominously and you suddenly feel the need to flee. It takes a moment to make your limbs listen to your brain, but the sudden pain as a puppet hits you sends you pounding out of the room. You peel down the hallway, then race down a smaller staircase and stop only once you're at the bottom. You skid to a halt, panting and sore. You quickly take stock of your wounds and notice pain in you rump, that one's likely gonna hurt for a while after you get out of here.

Acciona has become injured

GAMBIT BRIAR - F̸̢̀I̷͍̽N̷̟͑D̵̢͗ ̸̠̅M̷̭͒E̵̪͒!̵̧̉

The room before you is a kitchen, oddly the centerpiece of the room is a magnificent dark wooden table, it’s covered with tarnished aged silverware and plates and grotesquely a carcass of some kind, right in the middle of the table. The corpse is old and mutilated beyond recognition, you’re not even sure what it was anymore, somehow so old it’s stopped smelling of anything and yet remarkably pristine despite it’s otherwise gory appearance. The voice from earlier whispers in the back of your mind: find me. You cast about the room, toss open cabinets and search under everything you can. Still the voice returns: Find me. You jump up onto the table, hoping it’ll offer you a better vantage point… still nothing… You step closer to the mangled thing on the table and the voice cries out once more, stronger this time. Find me! You look down at the corpse and feel a familiar pull… With a dawning horror you realize what the voice wants from you and glance up, through the door opposite you you can see the front foyer, offering a tantalizing escape…

---

• Find them! In the Corpse
  
• Find them! By searching the room again.
  
• The door is right there! [Leave]
  

She nearly screamed when the puppet hit her, but the sound got caught in her throat and she was flying from the room before she could think about what was going on. When she stopped in the kitchen, her mind momentarily drifted back to whatever had happened upstairs. It had been strange… Too strange. She must have bumped into the other puppets. One must have fallen and that’s what hit her… Right? That was what she told herself, at least, but this time when she heard the voice demand to be found, she was far more hesitant to disobey. Last time she decided to ignore it, things got weird, and she wasn’t about to make the same mistake twice. That was why, she she eventually found herself standing over the disgusting, unidentifiable corpse, she had a feeling she knew what she needed to do. She glanced to the door, wondering if she should just cut her losses and go, but something in her felt a need to see this through. She wanted to know just what was going on here. Holding her breath, she began to carefully dig through the corpse, searching for whatever it was that wanted to be found.

Failure

You swallow the lump forming in your throat and tear your gaze from the temptation of escape. You history as a hunter helps to calm you, you’ve dealt with your fair share of old corpses. You close your eyes and then- plunge your muzzle into the corpse! It is uncomfortably and inexplicably soft and wet for how old it must be and there is little resistance as you fish around for something, you’re not sure what, in the old gore. You feel like you’ve had your face in this corpse for who knows how long and suddenly a wave of nausea hits you, you pull yourself free and immediately turn, emptying the contents of your stomach over the edge of the table. Clearly you were insane to try this in the first place, you jump off the table and head back into the Foyer, feeling quite the fool.

Acciona has lost 10 points in Navigation

GAMBIT BRIAR - Ș̵̨̦̫̗̤̻̝͌̊̌͗̌̚à̶͙̗̭̜̈́͆͊͂̿̉́̔v̸̢͇͇̹̘͒̈͐ͅe̴̖͖̺͍̼̦̬̩̻͗̄̈́͛̄̚͘ ̷͙̩̣͔̣̖͖̤̞̃͜M̵̬̩̟͉̯͑͆̈́e̴̮̪̻͉̔!̸̹͙̹̮̙͇́͗͑̿̈́͗

The door you’ve just exited was the one you saw earlier off to the left of the stairs… all that remains is the door on the right. You cautiously pad towards it, noticing it’s less a door and more an open frame, stairs leading down into darkness not even your eyes can see through. You hesitate for a moment, then something wills your legs to start moving and you cautiously descend into the darkness. Your movements are slow, now even in the thick of if you can hardly see the end of your nose, let alone the end of the stairs. The darkness feels thick, like it’s pressed down on you. You take a step forward and realize you’ve hit the ground floor, you glance over your shoulder, the door way you’d stepped in through is a tiny pin prick up much higher than you thought you’d descended. Something moves in the dark, you can hear it and you jump when something brushes past you, ruffling your fur. The voice returns, stronger than ever: Save me!

---

• Save them!
  
• Locked
  
• Locked
  
• Locked
  
• Alright that’s enough adventure for one day! [Leave]
  

Damn! She didn’t know why she’d been so confident that would work, but she was glad no one else was around to see the magnitude of her failure- or the amount of vomit that she expelled from her body. Gods, she must look stupid, her skin prickled with as she wondered just what this place was doing to her. Was she going insane? The idea seemed not entirely unlikely, but she decided to continue exploring anyways. As she moved down the stairs, her anxiety and fear began to grow, and her skin felt hot. At the bottom, the feeling of something brushing past her just about pushed her over the edge. Her body shifted, prepared to flee, but the voice stopped her. She felt a tug at something within her, wondering if maybe someone was trapped here in this terrible place. She couldn’t just walk away from that. Despite every instinct within her screaming to get the hell out of there, her resolve was strong in this decision. If someone needed saving, she was going to save them.

Failure

The fur along your spine begins to rise and you feel a growl bubbling in your throat, you’re just about at your wits end in the place and you aren’t eager to be toyed with by whatever it is that’s lurking in here. You hear a tail scraping against the floor and leap into action. You’re really only aware of snippets of the fight. Your fangs meeting fur, the feelings of a wing hitting your face. Something squishy and leathery wrapping around your legs. The crunch of an exoskeleton beneath your paws. You remain tense as you strain to hear your opponent, all is silent and then - Rip! You reel back, feeling pain blossom on your left eye and roar in pain. You thrash about wildly and it seems whatever was fighting had decided you weren’t worth the effort you hear whatever it is retreating, sliding further and further away from you. You remain tense for a moment longer and then suddenly an electric hum starts and you are thrown into light. You blink against the sudden light, wincing as the adrenaline starts to fade and your wound started throbbing, you curse your luck and turn to check your surroundings, though it's hard through the blood blocking your view, though luckily it appears you've retained your vision.

Acciona has gained a minor maim, she now has a scarring over her left eye.

GAMBIT BRIAR - Ŗ̸̛̘̤̤̪͐̅̾͑̈́͗ĕ̸̫̫̘̮͖̣͓̖͆̈́̿̿͜ͅL̷̡̼̝͎̥̏̊̌͋̓́͐̚͝͠E̴̛̤͇̤̩͑͂̀ͅą̶͖̟̭͖̗̣͌̆͆̓̈s̶͇͎͎̦̮̊́͋̓̊̚e̸̡̮̠͙̥̱̖̥͆ ̵͉͚̦̱̒͆͐͛̈́͘m̴̨̺̻̗͇͚̐̈̓̆̊͗Ë̶̛̦͓̞̬͇̯͍̲̰!̶͖̰̱̬̹͓̉̋̇

You are in a concrete basement, the floor and walls around you are a dull, dirty grey, eerily red near the pipes that run along the roof. You cast about frantically, searching for your opponent but it’s disappeared… Which you realize is impossible. The basement is too small and too brightly lit for whatever you were fighting to have disappeared, you’re certain it was larger than you and you were blocking the only exit… You shiver, taking a few more moments to observe where you’ve found yourself and notice against the far wall is a small wire cage, the door was slightly open and through the gaps in the fencing you can see a skeleton laid out, it somehow resembles the doll from before and the voice returns, this time louder than it’s ever been and somehow distorted: ReLEase mE! You hear something rumbling under the hum from the lightbulb above you, it sounded almost like… laughter? You feel like whatever thing has been leading you this whole time has started to mock you. You feel like you’re being taunted, called a coward.

---

• Release them!
  
• I am a coward, and proud of it! [Leave]
  

She was beginning to feel overwhelmed. The pain from gash above her eye mingled with the frantic, overwhelming sense that she was in over her head. She had been stupid to come here, stupid to think she oculd handle this on her own. Stupid, stupid stupid! Whatever it was that was here was mocking her, it was clear it was toying with her, just playing some sick, twisted game and as usual, she was the butt of the joke. The last thing she wanted to do now, though, was prove this thing right. She was not a coward! Not anymore, not after everything she’d been through. Perhaps it was reckless, a complete mistake, but she was in too deep and she was going to see this through. She released them.

"Speech."

Failure

The rumbling echoes in your head again and you feel your paws drawing you towards the skeleton on the ground, behind it is a pile of bones and you notice there appears to be one missing from the current set up. You look through the pile and find one you think will fit. You look at the skeleton again and your eyes fall on the skull, it’s an odd shape you’ve never seen before, not as rounded as you might assume with a massive eye hole in the middle, two smaller hollow tubes on either side of it. You feel something very off about the skull but at this point you simply desire to get out of this house! So you place the other bone. A soft light emanates from the skeleton and for a moment you feel the paranoia lift.. And then the light above you blows, loudly popping as it showers glass down on you. The rumbling starts again and this time you know it’s laughter, it grows in volume and you hear the sliding from the creature from before again. Fear grips you and this time you flee, up the stairs, out the foyer and into the forest. You don’t stop until you’re fully surrounded by trees, and it’s only as you rest for a moment, hunched over and panting that you realize you were in such a hurry to leave… you only grabbed one of your items. You walk back through the forest, afraid that you’ll get lost in these unfamiliar woods once more… or worse find yourself back at the house. But finally after what feels like the longest night of your life you find yourself back on familiar territory. You practically collapse, and finally feel safe enough to take stock of all that’s happened.

Acciona left everything but the 100 gems behind.

THANKS FOR PLAYING!

Acciona received a total of 4 punishments and 1 reward:

1 Reward is 100 gems [Added! - nyx]
1 punishment is -5 fighting skill points
1 punishment is mild bruising on her rump (You may play this Icly as you wish, heals min. 1 ooc week)
1 punishment is -10 navigation points [Complete! - nyx]
1 punishment is a minor maim (Permanent Scarring over left eye)
1 punishment is a Losing all but one reward (Removed: +5 hunting skill points)

Acciona has no hidden punishments or rewards!

Thank you for your participation!
- Lolaf