HOW: BODY HORROR CW. In late Kingsway, the Gallows was forwarded a letter originally sent to Skyhold by a craftsman in Ferelden, pleading for assistance in locating his fiancée, Jacob. According to the letter, the young woman, Elsie, was struck with an anchor near a rift approximately three months ago. He'll report that she told him she planned to go to Skyhold for help, but his letters to her there have gone unanswered, until someone finally did reply to tell him no one by that name was among the Inquisition. In his subsequent search for information about her, he visited her parents' farm outside of the village, and he believes he heard cries from inside the house, but he wasn't permitted inside by her father.
The team sent out to investigate will be met with similar resistance by the woman's parents, who will, if pressed, express hostility toward the very idea of their daughter being marked by demonic magic, and claim they sent her to the University of Markham—despite this clearly being beyond their means—to keep her from an unwise marriage to the village idiot. Said village idiot, Jacob, will be able to provide information about the family's routine trips to sell their produce and thus when the team may be able to get into the house unseen. If they do enter the house and search out the trap door to the cellar, they'll find the woman chained to the wall. Her forearm will be missing and the resultant wound infected with an entirely non-magical pathogen, but the anchor will appear to have spread up her upper arm nonetheless.
In the absence of proximity to other anchor-bearers, the magic will have begun to crystallize in tendrils reaching up her veins and arteries, turning some of them visibly green and hard beneath her skin from the edge of the stump to the shoulder and stretching toward her chest and up her neck, and also have grown outward from the stump of her arm into the air in unbreakable, spidery strands that spread out in various directions, similar to roots growing down in search of water. Healing may help stabilize her briefly, and if any in the party also have anchors it will relieve some of the pain she's experiencing, but she will only survive another three days at most, even with intervention.
A confrontation with her parents is entirely possible if they come back before the team leaves. They will be furious about the interference, but not violent—if only because they're outnumbered and unarmed farmers. Whether the team brings her body back to study, leaves it with her family, or delivers it to her fiancée will be up to them. If it is brought back for study, someone can put it in an information request including the methods they would use to examine her and we'll provide any additional information they might find.
OOC NOTES: Your characters can bring up to three additional people with them! If you'd like to add additional problems or wrinkles to this, you're welcome to do so, but make sure you check in with us about anything that would affect the nature or outcome instead of just being a bump in the road.
ASSIGNMENT DETAILS
WHO: Church, Christine, Inessa
HOW: BODY HORROR CW. In late Kingsway, the Gallows was forwarded a letter originally sent to Skyhold by a craftsman in Ferelden, pleading for assistance in locating his fiancée, Jacob. According to the letter, the young woman, Elsie, was struck with an anchor near a rift approximately three months ago. He'll report that she told him she planned to go to Skyhold for help, but his letters to her there have gone unanswered, until someone finally did reply to tell him no one by that name was among the Inquisition. In his subsequent search for information about her, he visited her parents' farm outside of the village, and he believes he heard cries from inside the house, but he wasn't permitted inside by her father.
The team sent out to investigate will be met with similar resistance by the woman's parents, who will, if pressed, express hostility toward the very idea of their daughter being marked by demonic magic, and claim they sent her to the University of Markham—despite this clearly being beyond their means—to keep her from an unwise marriage to the village idiot. Said village idiot, Jacob, will be able to provide information about the family's routine trips to sell their produce and thus when the team may be able to get into the house unseen. If they do enter the house and search out the trap door to the cellar, they'll find the woman chained to the wall. Her forearm will be missing and the resultant wound infected with an entirely non-magical pathogen, but the anchor will appear to have spread up her upper arm nonetheless.
In the absence of proximity to other anchor-bearers, the magic will have begun to crystallize in tendrils reaching up her veins and arteries, turning some of them visibly green and hard beneath her skin from the edge of the stump to the shoulder and stretching toward her chest and up her neck, and also have grown outward from the stump of her arm into the air in unbreakable, spidery strands that spread out in various directions, similar to roots growing down in search of water. Healing may help stabilize her briefly, and if any in the party also have anchors it will relieve some of the pain she's experiencing, but she will only survive another three days at most, even with intervention.
A confrontation with her parents is entirely possible if they come back before the team leaves. They will be furious about the interference, but not violent—if only because they're outnumbered and unarmed farmers. Whether the team brings her body back to study, leaves it with her family, or delivers it to her fiancée will be up to them. If it is brought back for study, someone can put it in an information request including the methods they would use to examine her and we'll provide any additional information they might find.
OOC NOTES: Your characters can bring up to three additional people with them! If you'd like to add additional problems or wrinkles to this, you're welcome to do so, but make sure you check in with us about anything that would affect the nature or outcome instead of just being a bump in the road.