The #Broken_Dagger Forum

For years the presence of a deep connection to the underworld was something that the people of Myrken Wood had assumed to be a solid truth. Why else would such plagues and trouble continue to find its way within her borders if it weren’t for some sort of deep link to the most unnatural aspects of the world? But Myrken Wood had been quiet for years and whispers of things that went bump in the night had subsided and the people of the township had forgotten some of the many traumas that had haunted them through the years of their lives. This night, like most others of 211 was met with the merriment of the towns people who shared excitement over the events of the town, the joy of a successful harvest and the celebration of life that had continued to thrive in the past year. Life, love and happiness were hot in the thick summer night’s air, something so palpable that the revelers only barely noticed the presence of a cool night breeze that crept along them and throughout the town. They were not the only ones in Myrken celebrating the gifts of life tonight.

The spirits of Myrkenwood stirred with the cool breeze that ran through the town, a slow awakening that left them with a very strange sensation that they were somehow more connected with the living world than they had been before. They had always been there of course, lingering amongst the living as they watched over those they loved, or those that they had yet to resolve their business with. These were the spirits who had refused to leave, to move on to the afterlife and instead had remained as these invisible souls caught amongst those that they had watched for all these endless years. For years their presence had been harmless and benign, never able to touch or to speak to the Myrken folk who their spirits were so entwined with. But something tonight was different and the spirits could feel it. There were some who were hesitant to push their boundaries, fearful of disappointment at yet another failed attempt to contact the living world, but there were those who had begun to touch the very edge of life. It was those spirits that began to touch on the dreams of the living, who could not yet be seen or heard but whose mere presence was felt amongst those that they haunted. This was a start, a connection to the world that they so longed for.

The stories in Myrken started slowly, starting first with those poor people in the Rememdium with the weaker minds who swore that they were being “watched” and refused to leave the safety of those clean white halls least they were captured up by something lurking in the night. And then there were the sad stories between widows who cried over the memories of husbands that they had seen in their dreams. And still these little occurrences were no where near an epidemic. Widows cried and mad men would ramble, these things were constants in Myrken.

((As spirits in Myrkenwood awaken any person who spends time in the town or the dagger may be subject to some of the experiences that will follow in this thread. At the most any character will experience right now would be the sensation of being watched, or some unusual dreams about someone who has passed who might be “attached” to them. Some spirits that might be lingering around a character may be a loved one, or perhaps someone who has died as a result of violence caused by the character, or anyone else who might for any other reason have unresolved business with your character.
You are welcome to use this thread to post anything about what your characters are experiencing, or you can use it for how your character interacts IC. I’ll be updating periodically with changes to the spirits demeanors and abilities. It’s your choice what, if any spirits you want to bring into your play and how you play them. You’ll have ultimate control over the ghosts “attached” to your character and you’re welcome to use them as NPCs on the forums or in the channel. Enjoy!))

The light faded outside, bringing with it the summer-time calling of bug-hoppers and, here and there, the first, faint beginnings of flickers from early fireflies, practicing their lights. And for all his excitement about the Ball, Catch felt a certain regret as he looked out at it, mournfully, from the Broken Dagger's second story, the buttons of his fancy shirt as if yet undone, his hats, a vest, and boots piled on the chair beside him. He had not been allowed to change in his own room, because then his clothes would smell, so he had overheard, like 'cat-piss', spoken with a dismissive sniff by the maids, and bustled in here after he had been properly washed and combed, with some sweet-smelling stuff instead of his usual, utilitarian soap.

He must hurry, the voice on the other side of the door said, and Catch still dragged his feet, pulling away from the window with a sigh and fumbling with the ties of his shirt, the lace sleeve-hems tangling his fingers like spider's webs. The cakes. He must remember the cakes, the candies, and after he takes a moment to excite himself, to think of the treats that await him, the pretty dresses and the dancing and the music, he puts the rest of his clothing on with a little more enthusiasm. It's not as if he didn't want to go, after all. He just had the strongest desire to go running with the Dreamlady, or just go alone and see what he could call up with his footsteps.

At first, he thought he had taken too much time with his pie-thinking and unexpected, powerful wanderlust. The sobbing came from far away, from behind the door, muffled and dense. But why would the maid who helped him be sad? Catch felt a pang of guilt, wondering if he should have invited her, and jammed his hats over his still-damp curls. But as he turned around, he saw a huddled figure in a pretty vanity-chair, set far in the corner, and Catch froze, uncertain of what to do. Somewhere more distant now was a knocking at the door, the querulous question coming if he was ready, and that he was going to be late.

"What's the matter?" he asks the female figure, for female it was, with long hair done up in a simple ponytail, and a tattered dress, and even as he asked Catch felt nauseated by some smell, clear as water, that he couldn't catch, and a familiar, faint sound in his ear. Even as he asked, he felt as if he shouldn't. That he should turn away, right now, and go to his pretty Ball. But either way, the figure did not answer; she continued sobbing, as if heart-broken, as if nothing in the world would ever be cheerful for her again.

"D. D-do you want to g-go to the B-ball with me?" But the question, stuttered and hesitant, only made the weeping girl shake her head, and cry all the harder.

Catch did not know what he could do. The thumping on the door came louder, and that faint sound that was so familiar suddenly came to him. It was the buzzing of flies, and he could feel the hair on his neck rising as he crept to the door, feeling as if every limb were heavy and thick, only to be stopped dead in his tracks as she finally spoke, her voice husky with crying.

"Why did you come to me now?" she asked him, and the broken voice was that of an old woman, much older than the girl who sat in the chair. Catch tried to answer, tried to tell her that he didn't know what she was speaking of, what she meant, and found that all the words had been stolen from him. He smelled, briefly, a summer night much like this one. A little cottage in the woods. A crooked cat, perched on an overflowing table.

"Why did you come to me now?" the girl asked again, and slowly lifted her head from her palms. That clear sort of smell hit Catch's nostrils like a punch to his gut, and he staggered back as she got to her feet, came at him, her blood-streaked hands reaching out to him, dripping from her fingers. her face was old-young, wreathed with age lines, but she had no eyes, and blood streaked down her cheeks like tears. Her voice roared in his ears, accusing him, until all he could do was huddle like a hare before the hawk, hands clapped over his ears as the clotted mass of flies, her voice, grew unbearable.

"Why didn't you come when I was beautiful!"


"Catch!"

The exasperated voice cut through him like thousands of glass knives, and he dared to tilt his head only a little to see the maid scowling down at him.

"What on earth are you on about in here? You're going to be late, and Dame Dulcie will have my hide, so she will." Bitter words spoken, and a mumbled aside of 'wasting pearls on swine'. She did not dare grab him, but had a broom at the ready, expert as she was in Catch's physical care. At the broom's prodding, Catch had to scramble to his feet, and the maid tut-tutted at the wrinkle of his clothes, and muttered something else about Dulcie's propensity to caring for these sorts.

"Come on, then," she said sharply to him, and Catch was only able to get one, frightened glance back into the room. There was no blood, no young-old woman, no accusing voice. No smell. But he walked away with the serving-woman in a daze of flies.

The blond haired woman stirred in the bed beside her husband, a tiny whimper caught in her throat as she tried to shake off yet another bad dream. The evenings had been plaguing her with the memory of a dead lover lost to the bloody flux a number of years ago now. She couldn't figure out why she was having all these dreams now. She had mourned her lover's death and she had wasted so many years crying over the gifts he had given her and the memories that they had shared that it had only felt right that she had finally buried all of those feelings and found a way to let another person into her life. As she awoke from her dream she shifted the position in her bed to look over at her husband, a soft smile resting there on her lips as she thought about how peaceful and gentle he looked as he slept. She would have to remember to tell him about her dreams when he woke up, he was always so understanding about what she had been through when she had lost her former love.

Still, it was difficult to just recover from those kinds of dreams and the woman drew herself out of bed. She took a few moments and straightened her night gown and carefully tucked her blanket up back on the bed before she began her short walk down the hallway to the kitchen, her hand rubbing at her eyes as she went. It was as she cleared her eyes that she gasped, taking a step back as there before her was her lover, just as she had remembered him pale and feverish in the rememdium, though this time hovered before her with an ethereal presence that sent a chill straight up her spine.

"You said you'd never love anyone else... you promised." The ghostly man spoke to her, his tone as immature and soft as it had been when they had been teenagers, promised to one another and lost in the passion of youthful adoration. "What are you doing here with him?"

The woman paused her mouth turned down into a frown as she considered what the ghost was saying. "You aren't here. This is just another dream and I don't have to explain anything to my own head. I let you go, I healed. I need to start getting more rest." She rambled, speaking her words as if they were thoughts in her own head, though she couldn't shake the feeling that something about this didn't feel like a dream at all.

"I loved you. I've watched over you all these years. Doesn't that mean anything to you?" He droned, his eyes welling up with tears that never really seemed to form or to fall. He drifted towards her then and for a moment the woman thought that he seemed to be more vibrant, more real than he had been a moment or two ago. "I'm coming back for you. You'll see." He promised and just then he grabbed for her, his icy fingers catching hold of her skin for a moment, gaining more strength it seemed with each passing second until the woman finally screamed. The shrill noise seemed to pierce the ghostly figure and those fingers sunk straight through her, no longer having that chilling hold on her skin but it left her with a distinctly frigid feeling in her bones as he seemed to disapate into nothingness.

For a moment the woman thought she could see the hurt in her lover's eyes, though she knew one thing for certain. She wasn't sleeping.

The next morning when the woman was telling her tale to her husband she found that there were many other neighbors knocking on her door with tales of experiences with those who should have crossed over, though it was most unsettling to discover that the blond haired woman hadn't been the only one who had felt the icy chill of fingertips on her skin that night. There were many others, and some had been far less pleasant than her own experience had been.

Until recently Kals had been doing his best to cut down on his moments of significant alcohol consumption. He'd not taken himself into a stupor in nearly a year before tonight, but that was quickly changing.

His dreams had become... unpleasant since his recent visit to Myrken. Tormented, twisted venues of shadows, shapes, and faces he didn't recognize. He didn't talk about them, he wasn't sure it would do any good and he had a sneaking suspicion he may be losing control of his own abilities. He'd heard stories of people having such dreams before. Reyn and Malta had such dreams, from what he'd heard. But they'd also seen ghosts in the city, wandering the halls. Most others who'd had seen such had gone crazy or killed themselves.

He'd tried not to worry about it so much, but tonight he'd woken up in a disheveled bed soaked in sweat from yet another nightmare. His rarely exposed face was wide with confusion as reality came back to him, his skill tugging his mind in eight directions. With a groan he'd forced himself to sit up in his bed and nearly fell out of it when he saw the shapes scattered about his room. Ghosts, spirits, SOMETHING. Maybe remnants of the minds of people who once lived here, and they were all staring at him.

It had been all Kals could do to not scream, but he didn't want to startle anyone or anything. His heart had slowly settled as he remained where he was upon the floor, and his hand had instinctively reached under the bed for the bottle of whiskey he'd left there. A long drought did him well as the dozen half-formed faces continued to stare at him. It looked like several were trying to speak, but all he could make out were muffled sounds, muted words as if through a thick wall.

He wouldn't risk moving, this was all too disconcerting for the man and despite what he'd heard from the others back home about the images being merely reflections of the past, he didn't want to risk it. So Kals would spend his night with his back propped against the side of his bad, bottle of alcohol slowly disappearing, and his faintly glowing bronze eyes adding the only light to the room as he met the gazes of what he hoped were only memories.

Some would have called it a relief. For weeks now the spirits had only been pressing further and further at their boundaries, screaming to the people that could hear them and reaching out to those that were living that they so clung to for their reasons of love or vengence. The very presence of the ghostly beings had put such strain on the people of the town that people perhaps hadn't realized how on edge they were. At least until the night that suddenly, abruptly, it all seemed to go away. Many speculated that this strange occurance was over, that there were would be no more contact from the other side, but the truth was that something much darker was lurking about Myrken.

That same night that the spirits seemed to disappear from their existance was the very same evening that a pair of men on horses found the local madman leaning over a pile of chopped bits of a body with his axe. It hadn't taken long for the story to spread across the town and the rumours had begun now. It was a tale of the undead and one that many Myrkenites were far too familiar with. There were reasons that they burned the bodies of their dead family members and yet somehow there seemed to have been one that had missed the usual funeral pyre. Speculation was rampant amidst the town, but even greater was the fear that He had returned.

A week, one so very short week of respite for the people of Myrken. For seven days there had been no ghostly images, no lingering dreams and nothing moved about in the homes of those who had been visited by ghostly hands. While rumours of the undead seemed to quiet and settle upon the fact that the strange attack at the Broken Dagger was an isolated event the townspeople were almost able to go back to life as usual. After a few good nights of sleep it would seem that perhaps this was just another strange and passing event that Myrken had become so accustomed to.

A week ago all the energy that had been leaching through the veil to the spirits who tried to pass through had been harshly pulled back away and directed elsewhere, leaving spirits like Horace to once again be resigned back to the netherworld where they had been for so long. Some, discouraged by the shock had moved on and found their way to where they needed to be, though others like Horace continued to linger in Myrken, to look for a way that they could break through again.

There was no way that Horace was going to move towards what waited for him in the next life, he hadn't when he had been put to death for murder and he certainly wouldn't now. There was no way to tell what was waiting for him on the other side, but he knew that there was no way that he would let himself find out. Besides that, Horace had been learning and watching for these past few months. While he hadn't pressed through the veil yet had had been watching those who had and how they had managed it, and while the other souls were still gathering up their energies and making their decisions Horace had moved on to the Broken Dagger, moving about the guests in their unaware state of being. There were benefits to being in the spirit world of course, the way that the serving girls slept in their beds so unaware of his presence and the ghostly fingertips that he traced over their soft skin. But he wasn't here merely to look at the delicious morsels set out before him, no, he was going to find a way to come back for not even death had quelled the thirst he had for blood.

He had spent his week waiting, and watching, looking for the source that the others had claimed had been here until finally he had found it. A girl who radiated the dark energy that the other spirits had described and though the pulsing, oozing darkness was much smaller now than he had assumed it to be it was here all the same. Horace followed her, watched where she went and where she slept and when finally the girl stopped moving he'd take his place beside her and start breathing in that dark energy, focusing on letting it fill the very essence of his being. Horace was no mage, but a creature of energy could certainly tell what the dark tendrils that came from the girl could do for him and he was going to find his way to come back, to return to the living again.