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!

Toxicity is an Advanced Intellectual and Expert Fighter
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]
  

Toxicity needed time to clear her head- away from the pack, away from the shrine, all of it. She just wanted a moment to be a nobody. She didn't want to be a god or a priestess, she just wanted to be in her mortal shell for a while. Maybe that was a sin, or a mistake, but she would figure that out later. As she came through the woods, a curious clearing opened up before her. On the far end, a strange and enchanting building of which Tox has never seen the likes of before. Pulled by curiosity, Toxicity attempted to approach the building a little closer.

Failure

You take a few shaky steps up the wooden stairs, fighting what feels like a much heavier keel to one side than you'd expect. You decide it'll be much more effort to fight the slant and walk up the right side of the stairs, suddenly a board gives out under your weight and you plunge leg first into the hole, your ankle smacking painfully on the interior structure of the stairs as you do so. You’re too focused on your pain to notice anything out of the ordinary as you push through the door.

Toxicty has sprained her ankle

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]
  

The creaky mansion invited her in, but when she approached, it was a lot less a kindly host than she had anticipated. A board gave out under her, her paw twisting painfully as she tried to catch herself. Still, she continued, light limp at hand, she could just walk it off. A sprain wasn't a huge deal- she could manage. The dark and dank room filled out with dust as Toxicity entered, she couldn't find her way around easily and after trying many routes, she found that each was blocked in one way or another. The only place left was the door at the end of the hall. There was... a noise behind it. A rat, perhaps? Maybe even another wolf wandered in before her. Toxicity decided to approach the door and try to see what was behind.

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.

Toxicity has gained 5 Fighting 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]
  

The room illuminated by the room casts many shadows and at first Toxicity isn't sure if her mind is playing tricks on her or not. After she takes a moment to assess the situation, she realizes that many of the figures and their shadows cast are actually dolls. It's curious and wonderful in a terrible feeling way. All the parts are wrong, they're disorganized, they're dirty and old. There's one in the center that speaks to her, asking her to fix it. Is it the gods? Something else. Always one to take advice from disembodied voices, Toxicity sets about fixing the doll.

Failure

You sort through the piles and try to pick out pieces you think match, your unsure exactly what your supposed to be looking for, but finally you manage to get a set of limbs you're pretty sure match, you carefully rearrange the pieces a few times, finally settling on an arrangement you're pretty sure looks right, then step back- a harsh ringing starts in your ears and you flinch, eyes screwing shut. You are frozen there for a few minutes and then an ominous rattling sound breaks through the high pitched whine and you open your eyes to see dolls launching themselves off their perches at you. You scramble to flee from the room trying to dodge the projectiles hurled your way, but don't manage to get out of the room unscathed. You keep pelting down the hallway, you 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 along your rump, that one's likely gonna hurt for a while after you get out of here.

Toxicity 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]
  

Well, as much as she tried, the voice did not seem pleased. The dolls launched at her and she scurried away. By the time she came to her senses, she was in a old and tarnished room. On the table an old, weathered carcass sat. The voice filled her mind once more, asking for her to find it. Was it... playing with her? She searched everywhere in the room before, upon the table, she realized that it was pulling her towards the corpse. As gruesome as the scene was, Toxicity wasn't particularly steered away by the idea of a corpse. She was a wolf, after all. With a deep breath, Toxicity started to search the corpse.

Failure

You swallow the lump forming in your throat and tear your gaze from the temptation of escape. Taking a moment to berate yourself for your cowardice. 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.

Toxicity has lost 10 Fighting skill points.

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]
  

This was not turning out as she had hoped. The corpse was older and more wrenched than Tox had imagined. Eventually, her wits gave out and she vomited across the room. She decided enough of that room and left, finding herself tumbling into another room, down some stairs. The darkness was consuming, suffocating. Toxicity tried to throw off the feeling, but it sunk into her coat, sticky and thick as if someone had poured the very atmosphere over herself. The voice came back. It was stronger now. She could do this, she thought. Maybe... She hadn't been very successful so far, but with one last hurrah, Toxicity set about trying to save them.

Success

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’ve fought through worse before though and you can feel your enemy slowing while you show no signs of stopping, you prevail and as you lick the blood from your lips, tense and waiting for the next attack in the pitch darkness 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, and as you slowly open your eyes you notice something glinting, you quickly snatch it up before turning to inspect your surroundings.  

Toxicity has found a [Redacted]

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]
  

The fight was fast and fueled by instinct. Toxicity quickly tried to rid of the thing before it slid and slithered away. Light filled her vision as she found she was in a strange room, equally as dusty as the first. The offender was nowhere to be found, and Tox's mind reeled as she tried to figure it out. There's a skeleton, and a feeling of laughter. It asks to be released. Tox took pause to wonder what kind of thing she would just be releasing. Was it friend or foe? Was it trapped, or just playing so? But, again, the pull of the supernatural and her obedience to disembodied voices led her to go and attempt to release the thing calling to her.

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 falter for a moment, wondering if it really was laughter you heard… but you shake it off, logically it was probably just the house settling. 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.

Toxicity left everything but the 5 skill points behind.

THANKS FOR PLAYING!

Toxicity received a total of 4 punishments and 1 reward:

1 Reward is +5 Fighting Skill points [Complete! - nyx]
1 Punishment is a sprained ankle (Affects only rolls, does not need to played outside of event)
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 fighting skill points [Complete! - nyx]
1 punishment is a Losing all but one reward (Removed: Redacted, +5 Fighting Skill points)

Toxicity has no hidden punishments or rewards!

Thank you for your participation!
- Lolaf