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!

Calamity is an Intermediate Intellectual and Intermediate 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]
  

She'd tailed Toxicity here, lagging behind like a bad shadow. Even that she couldn't get right. Calamity was still feeling the scorching shame from being brought to heel by her sisters. While she was glad to be welcomed back into the fold, she couldn't ignore the frustrating fact: that she'd ever left in the first place. Determined to prove herself, she'd hung close to the pack's central grounds and made herself busy while keeping half an eye on Tox. Her sister had become the most priestly of them all and she was desperate to learn her secrets, even as the world of the afterlife and god seemed to slip further and further from her grasp. It felt like she was destined to live a grubby mortal life. No wonder, then, that when she saw the building leaning queerly to one side like a monstrous predator resting its bad leg that she was dead set on entering it. Well, that and Toxicity's scent led right inside the front door. Calamity steeled herself and approached the mansion with her antlers ready and her teeth gritted.

Success

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, however you stick to the left side of the stairs and 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.

Calamity 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]
  

Ugh. It was disgusting in here. Calamity hated muck. Deathbelle had always taught themselves to clean their fur and remain presentable at all times - they were princesses, after all. The dust that coated her paws so thoroughly until there was a palpable layer of grime was loathesome. The antlered girl wrinkled her nose in distaste but couldn't deny that her curiosity was piqued. She ascended the stairs carefully and obeyed her instincts as they drew her onward. A noise caught her attention - had Toxicity taken the same route? Try as she might, she could barely pick her sister's scent out apart from the dank smells of rotting wood and aged air. Even though the night sky was visible from the inside it felt as if the air in here hadn't circulated in months. Strange. Calamity approached the door as she did most things: head lowered, antlers forward, ready for a fight. There was no guarantee that noise was made Toxicity. Creatures made homes in places like these.

Failure

As you approach the door, the sounds get louder. For a moment your courage flags. You decide you're just going to face whatever it is on the other side and push the door open, antlers at the ready and- Bam! Pain blossoms in the bridge of your nose. You reel back, eyes screwing shut. Shit. You lift a paw to your nose and feel it come away wet. Your nose is bleeding from whatever it is that hit you. You stubbornly wipe away the blood, test your nose again and find it’s at least not actively bleeding. You’ll live, unwounded aside from your pride. You glance down at your paws and wince as you see what hit you in the face, a cracked glass orb. You can’t help but feel you should have listened to your instincts, and feel a little less confident in yourself.

Calamity has lost 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]
  

Here we go… she pressed her antlers into the doorway. It creaked open only to leave her reeling backwards in pain, blood dribbling from her nose. She sneezed, spattering the stuff everywhere. Screwing up her eyes in pain, Cala wiped the remaining blood from her nose and carefully entered the room. Her eyes roved around for any suspects but found nothing except eerie forms dangling from the ceiling and all around. Although the voice beckoned her towards the center of the room, as she stepped forward to inspect the pile one of the strings caught around the tip of her antler. Calamity inhaled sharply and tried to extricate herself but the more she gently tugged, the tighter the string wrapped around her shorter and sharper tines. There wasn’t any getting out of this one. Nervously she licked her lips and stepped forward, bringing at least one puppet down from the ceiling as she felt the threads sever

Success

You carefully try to remove one of the puppets from your antlers, something telling you to be cautious about not letting it fall. You manage to detangle it and gently place it on the ground. The puppet's strange wooden eyes look up at you and you blink, sure for a moment that you saw them... Glow? You hear a click from deeper in the room and notice a wall panel sliding open. You cautiously pick your way over to it and peer in, spotting a dull glow in the pile of items. As soon as you touch the pile the puppets hanging above your head begin to swing wildly, their limbs clanking ominously and you suddenly feel the need to flee. Scooping up the items you found you flee from the room, getting out of there as fast as you can! 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 but otherwise no worse for wear. You quickly sort through the items you found, stashing a dully glinting object and are about to leave the rest when something makes you grab a seemingly innocuous femur bone and stash it too.

Calamity has found [Redacted] and and old femur... cool?

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]
  

Calamity's eyes widened as she saw a panel slide open. There were more tricks to this place than she'd originally anticipated. Everything was so woefully unnatural about this place. Wasting no time, Calamity skittered down the stairs and into another room with her prize in her grasp. There were strange cabinets and hidey-holes around the place, but her eyes were naturally drawn to the dark platform in the center of the room. It was ornate and sturdy - clearly having withstood the test of time whereas the rest of the room had not. Calamity tilted her head to the side, then wrinkled her nose at the overwhelming smell of decay. Find me... Gulping, she leaped on to the table and leaned down to give it a cursory sniff. Oh. Oh no. It was putrid. The princess within her recoiled violently. Find me! Where would she hide in this place? She stepped around the corpse and leaped down, intent on searching the room again.

Success

You poke around the kitchen again, really making sure to peek into every nook and cranny. You practically jam your nose into each dark corner to make sure you don't forget something. All the while the voice hums in the back of your head. You open a large door, a puff of cool air pushing against your face, you looked in here earlier, the only thing you saw at that earlier point was rotting vegetables. But as you search it again this time you spot something you're not sure how you missed it earlier. A large round object, covered in coarse brown fur. As you nose it the voice in your head suddenly goes quiet. Taking that as a sign you decide this is what the voice was looking for and pull it out. It's a coconut, with what appears to be a face carved into it, though how you don't know. Shrugging you stash it and head back out into the foyer.

Calamity gained 10 fighting skill points, and got a coconut with a face in it... Nice!

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]
  

Aha! Finally, the voice in her head stopped. Good. The only thing that should be in there is her. Life was stressful enough right now without worrying about stray occupants in your mind. Calamity carefully picked up the coconut by balancing it between the tines of her antlers and grabbed the strange bone that she'd found earlier. Things weren't piecing themselves together in her mind, but the house had seemed to... "produce" these objects, so intuition told her it might be best tote them along. She located the exit and left the room, giving the desiccated corpse on the table a final wrinkled nose of disdain. Naturally, her eyes went to the last explored door. Cala paused, steeled herself, and then began her descent. All the while she balanced the coconut carefully on her head between her antlers, trying hard not to think about how ridiculous she looked. Maybe it was a good thing Tox wasn't here. As she made her way through the darkness the air grew still and stifling. Finally she reached the bottom. Try as she might, her eyes seemed resistant to adjusting to this impenetrable darkness. Just as she was about to step forward a thing brushed past her. Calamity's ears pinned as she was again assaulted by a mysterious voice. She grimaced around the femur before carefully placing it on the ground in front of her, then stepping back and dipping her head to allow the coconut to roll gently to the ground. "Here! Take it! D-does this help?" Get out of my head! Get out, get out, get out!

Failure

The thing in the shadows is clearly a threat, but you know that sometimes it's better to try and seek out peace instead of combat, so you slide the femur forward, the coconut rolling until you hear it hitting the femur. There is a growling sound, and heavy breathing. You hear the bone being dragged across the concrete and for a moment you breathe a sigh of relief. Then a roar echoes in the close quarters, you hear the crunch of bone and a deep laughter. A deep feeling of dread rolls over you and you shake your head as the laughing seems to surround you, you spin wildly, trying to place where the laughter is coming from, it seems at once both right beside you and deep in the dark corners of the unseen room. The sound is interrupted by a loud crunch, and your own yelp of pain, spreading up from your tail. The laugh cuts off as with an electric hum and a click a single lightbulb above your head turns on, bathing you and the room in light. You blink, wincing, your wound throbbing.

Calamity has gained a minor maim, her tail now has a bend to it.

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 attacker 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… The only sign it was ever there is the crushed femur only a few feet in front of you. 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's the same laugh that you heard while in the dark! 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 no coward. That was what she was dying to prove to Toxicity, Venom, and herself. Although her sense told her to get the hell out of there, something beyond her comprehension pushed her forward. It was as if the dice of fate had been cast and they instructed her to release the sorry skeleton. Everything about it was unnatural. She had spent so long half immersed in the spirit realm, longing for an answer from beyond. Perhaps this was fate's way of answering that question. Calamity gritted her teeth and approached the cage slowly, nosing it open centimeter by centimeter. Maybe if she obeyed this request the laughter and the voices would finally cease.

Failure

The laughter 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're pretty sure the voice is taunting you, logically doing what it wants is a bad idea, but sometime you just have to lay in the hole you've dug. 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.

Calamity left everything but the 100 gems behind.

THANKS FOR PLAYING!

Calamity received a total of 3 punishments and 1 reward:

1 Reward is 100 gems [Added! - nyx]
1 punishment is -5 fighting skill points [Complete! - nyx]
1 punishment is a minor maim (permanently bent tail)
1 punishment is a Losing all but one reward (Removed: +10 fighting skill points and Redacted)

Calmity has no hidden punishments or rewards!

Thank you for your participation!
- Lolaf