multiversallogs | the little one stops to shut the gate

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the little one stops to shut the gate :: [OPEN]

Who: A whole lot of ants and YOU!
What: Exploring houses overrun by giant ants! Interacting with ants!
Where: Three specific ant hive houses have cropped up in Baedal.
When: The ants become visible late Sukkardi, so any time after Shundi will do.
Notes: To organize expeditions into the ant hives and to see what your characters will find there, please see the OOC post. NPCs, general GMing, and mod guidance are all available upon request.
Warnings: Bugs! Possible horror. Will update as needed.

When the ants come out of the ground it happens very quietly and it happens at night. Baedal wakes up to chitinous sound of insect labour. At first there is some panic - memories of strange creatures emerging from below to attack the city fresh in everyone's mind - but it is soon evident that the ants, while curious, pose no immediate threat to the City. They seem content to work and live inside the houses they have occupied; houses no one has noticed or cared about for years.

Soon, the ant-occupied houses begin to change. The ants are building something on the rooftops, something like towers, stretching towards the heavens. Birds that fly too close to the buildings quickly disappear.

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Appearances are good enough for now. This is all way too much fun. Eddie lets the pocket knife he's been holding onto fall back into his pocket, and fishes around for a little box of matches, instead.

He produces this about at the same time Mike does. That's amusing. "Want to let me know what else you're carrying around, or are you content to be mysterious and useful?" He lifts a shoulder to rustle his backpack, which produces a faint sloshing sound from bottles in there. "I brought vinegar, in case I needed to throw off any ants. Not quite as useful for urban exploration. However..." He strikes one of his matches and lights the candle he picked.

And then pauses a moment, because suddenly, there is a door. "My my," he says. "Someone invested in a little light security."

"The usual soldier and medic stuff--" He frowns and tries to follow Eddie's gaze, but all he sees is wall. His flashlight, played over that spot, reveals nothing. "Pun intended?"

He sets the flashlight to the side and lights himself a candle of his own.

"...Oh. Damn, I can think of a lot of people who'd pay big bucks for that trick back home."

"It's all pun and games," Eddie says idly, as Mike lights another candle. He steps forward and examines the newly appeared door, giving it a good look-over before rapping on it, then rattling the handle, tentatively. Once he's satisfied, he stands beside the door and not in front of it, and pulls it open a crack.

"Mm. We'll want to find out how much people pay for this, here. I'd like to know how often I can expect to encounter it."

"Often enough that people can leave boxfuls of them lying around in abandoned houses..." Mike's switched off his flashlight for now and holstered it again, and now he joins Eddie by the door, standing on the other side from him. Which makes them almost look like they're in a cop show, albeit a really really weird one.

As a matter of fact, just in case, Mike pulls his gun and holds it loosely at his side. Not threateningly, but just in case some of the monkeys from the last invasion have been hanging out behind the door.

"Rarely enough that people who hang out in abandoned houses can leave them lying around and call that hidden?" Eddie smirks, but stays up against the wall, waiting for Mike and his gun to decide things are All Clear on the random-things-jumping-out-to-attack front. "I'm going in."

"I get the feeling they left in a hurry when the ladies arrived."

Well, shoot. He wanted to go in first. Ya snooze, ya lose, Mikey!

"Got you covered."

He can't see much into the rooms beyond yet, but he's not picking up any movement. It's a shame he doesn't have the suppressor and laser sighting kit on his handgun right now, but that would give rise to way too many difficult questions.

"The ants aren't giving us any trouble," he says, and slips past the doorway. "So that would have some interesting implications about the ants. Makes it all festive, doesn't it?" His voice becomes singsong and giddy. "Wonder what we'll find!"

"It's certainly unusual. I'm not sure what a shop for sewing machines would need to hide under that kind of protection..."

She sweeps a glance across the counter for anything else of interest; she doesn't see much, other than invoices.

They say curiosity killed that cat. Hopefully, if death can be reversed in strange places such as these, then satisfaction will bring it back. She carefully dodges the ants' constructions (which are, really, not bad for not having opposable thumbs), and turns the handle on the door.

So they were venturing through, then? Well, all right. Cassandra propped the plank of wood on her shoulder and moved to stand behind Jones' shoulder. Perhaps, she mused, Jones would prefer to go it alone. Certainly, Cassandra had nothing useful to contribute to this little venture. But she wouldn't even entertain the notion of being left behind.

"I suppose the most obvious answer is that the shop was part of some act," she said. "One that wasn't important enough to keep up, perhaps."

She frowned. Oh, it was obvious, all right. But Cassandra didn't like obvious answers. They were too easy. The Pythia of Delphi never gave straightforward answers. She made pilgrims work for it. And Cassandra was working to find something now.

Something occurs to Jones: "Say, you'd been here before, hadn't you? Or maybe I'm just assuming so, but still—did you know the people who worked here? Did you notice anything suspicious?" She shrugs. "I mean, I know next to nothing about most of the city, so..."

She opens the door.

Cassandra shrugged slightly. "I've visited once or twice. I work for a tailor shop down the road. They've sent me here once or twice to repair the equipment, but I haven't had much interaction with these people beyond that." She paused. "Frankly, I never paid much attention to their work. I prefer sewing with my hands."

Spinning her own thread too, for that matter. Cassandra did not care for the pre-fabricated silks and threads that they used in the shop. Something about it was just too...uniform. It didn't look like the clothing was made by people at all.

"What do you see?" she asked.

It's a medium-sized room, although there are doors on the opposite wall and the one to the left, which suggest that there's more to this. In the room is a desk and a table, both strewn with papers, some of which have fallen to the floor. On a chair lies an open book. There are no sewing machines in sight—or ants, actually.

"Nothing particularly strange," says Jones, slowly. "I'm not sure I like this. Although it's nice not having to step over ants in here. I've been hearing they get a bit nasty if you step on them."

"Legend tells of a great warrior named Achilles," she said. "He had a great army of men, so fiercely devoted to one another that if you harmed one of them, you harmed them all. The stories say that they were all once ants, that the gods turned them into men in order to serve Achilles' father, Peleus." She glanced back at the ants. "I have no doubt that if you upset one of them, you upset them all."

She turned to examine the room. "You're right. There's nothing particularly strange. Which, I suppose, makes it stranger." Cassandra looked at Jones. "So what happens next?"

Jones is already shuffling through some of the papers on the table—they have words on them, how could she not. Something—looks like a fairy tale, the way it's written; something about a baker. Normally, she'd not take much notice of it, but her recent dealings with things out of fairy stories makes her more than a little suspicious of the stories themselves. Particularly in locations that are already suspicious. She hands the paper to Cassandra. "Can you make any sense of this? It's not a story I'm familiar with..."

Something else, though, has already caught her eye—a list of names and very familiar-looking numbers. CiD numbers, judging by the format. Oddly, some of them look familiar, although she doesn't know any of the names...

Cassandra took the paper, eying Jones as she flitted from place to place like a mayfly. The woman did not have the most firm of attention spans, but Cassandra supposed, if she knew anything about any of this, perhaps she'd be just as eager and curious.

She felt so useless!

Sighing softly, she looked down at the paper.

[What am I seeing here?]

[It tells the story of the local urban legend, the Baker. I understand it's a bit like Jack the Ripper sort of thing.]

Jones, meanwhile, sets down in one of the chairs to read through some of the things she's collected. This just gets stranger and stranger.

Quietly, Cassandra read the story. A slight man who stole children away? There was one of those in almost every civilization she had known of. The Greeks alone had several.

"It seems common enough," Cassandra muttered. "Like flood stories or legends about people who are one way by day and another by night." She frowned slightly. "I haven't seen many children around Baedal, have you?"

Seeing as the ants appeared overnight, they're not such a morning-shock to Integra (... as she is largely nocturnal). Still, even exceptionally large ants at home do not begin building spires up to the sky, and so that's something... different.

She's not working, just out running an errands, but even so isn't terribly surprised to see someone from her organization already wandering after the trail. "Captain," she greets, almost absent, while still staring upwards. What on earth.

"Sir Integra," he says, breaking out of his thoughts and away from the sight before him to acknowledge her. "It appears we have some new neighbours." And just when he was getting used to a Mordor free life.

"So I see." She keeps her footsteps careful, as she recalls that nagging thought about ants - that in death they release a chemical that attracts their sisters. Wouldn't do to start a commotion without knowing what's going on.

"Does it look like they're trying to get somewhere, to you?"

"It would seem as though the only way is up." He's actually sort of impressed by their efficiency. Dwarves have nothing on these creatures (not that he would openly admit that around any Dwarven company).

"I think it would be impertinent not to knock and see if everything's all right. Offer them a cup of honey. What do you reckon?" Behind the stern facade lurks a case of mild gallows humour, apparently.

"I reckon you might have a thing for bugs." She sounds amused, in a faint way; it's difficult to tell with her if she feels anything particular, rarely emoting anything beyond her flat professional manner other than anger. ...But surely cracks about Boromir digging ants are meant humorously.

Integra sets her shopping bag down on a crumbling stone wall at the outskirts of the property (it could be anything!), and then heads towards the house, walking alongside the trail of hardworking creatures.

Boromir chuckles, regardless. "Only the giant ones. We had spiders bigger than horses in my world. And as much as I would like to keep an open mind about these fellows, I'd prefer to err on the side of caution."

Once they get to the doorway, Boromir peers in. "Seems clear, other than the ants."

She wants to wrinkle her nose at that thought, doesn't, steps into the reclaimed building, taking in the eclectic, aged decor. Integra moves with a deliberateness that, to some eyes, may seem reckless, but there's an awareness to her that meets against her lack of caution. (Or maybe she just thinks Boromir will sacrifice himself nobly if the ants turn out to be face-eating, who knows.)

In the center of the main room, she stands apart from the ant trails, though every so often one of their number breaks formation to twirl antennae at their visitors; when one meanders near enough to her foot, she looks down. "Hello."

Presumably this garners no response.

(Let's face it; he probably would).

Boromir enters the building quietly and determined, one hand casually rested on the hilt of his sword, his eyes darting between dark corners and the creatures they're intruding upon. Nothing more obviously out of the ordinary so far, although that doesn't exactly put him at ease.

He observes the interaction between Integra and the ant, slightly bemused. Tentatively, he begins to make his way around the room, although there doesn't appear to be much else other than a few forgotten smatterings of junk.

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the little one stops to shut the gate :: [OPEN]

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/slides over ages later

it's all good B)

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