peckenpaugh | THE SORTING PATH

the sorting path

you have found him A burst of hot steam stymies any immediate charge down the stairs into the Sorting Path, but with each second that ticks by, the white cloud thins and the temperature drops. Unbearable becomes nearly tolerable, and so long as you can stand it, you must press forward.

The Sorting Path is not silent. Hot, wet air moves in and out like the wheezing breaths of some wounded creature. Water evaporated when the Path's falls were boiled away by the nightmare tree's birth now drips from ceiling to floor where it pools in two inch deep puddles, making the trek somewhat more precarious than usual.

You have arrived in the belly of the beast. Keep pushing, keep fighting, no matter how hard it gets.

he is everywhere Here, the walls are overgrown with vines, purple flowers bloom mere inches from your face, ready to shake their sickening pollen with the merest brush. The chirping of birds and the buzzing of strange bugs makes talking at anything quieter than a yell almost pointless.

You've only been here once, but even so it's unrecognizable. Murals destroyed, magic gone, replaced with something deeply sinister. The last time you walked this path, it was to find your place within Peckenpaugh. This time, you walk it to make sure Peckenpaugh is still a place once you leave.

Chin up. Be brave. Let's get this sorted.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Tybalt is legitimately concerned about one of his good friends and chaos mother for a few seconds. But she leaps back into the action, and that Patronus from Felicity was amazing and it’s hard to know if the loud Woo! he lets out is for that or the cultist’s disappearing. Regardless, he drops his fire equipment for now, and makes to jump on the cultist’s ghost-y back, pounding its sort-of head with his fists, schoolyard brawl style. This is the fighting he knows.

Tybalt knows where it's at. Those cards are really cool, but Wyatt's more used to throwing hands. That's what he does now, using Tybalt's leap as a distraction to get in there and punch the cultist in the center mass.

(ROLLED 8, ROLLED 6, ROLLED 10) Claudia and Tybalt and Wyatt throw themselves on the remaining cultist and it squashes flat under their weight. The black mist of its form shocks and burns bare skin, but that doesn't stop them from pummeling the creature (although Tybalt (ROLLED 1) does sock Wyatt in the nose accidentally).

Pressed to the bottom of the quodpot dogpile, the second Cultist's already cracked mask smashes. The face beneath chokes and gasps as flowers fall away, and all three teens are thrown back by the sudden burst of sunlight.

THE SECOND CULTIST WAS DEFEATED! Find the linchpin and get going!

Edited 2020-06-10 18:56 (UTC)

Stinging from the cut on her arm and the brush with the ray, Fiona needs a break. She stumbles over to the group of people and sinks into a chair, grabbing a chip and a baby carrot. Hey, one of these could be the linchpin. She's not being completely useless.

Claudia lays flat on her back, teeth gritted, panting. Parts of her skin feels like it's on fire, others tingle and buzz like there's something under it.

But suffering is what Claudia lives for. She doesn't need a break, she needs to keep going.

"Do we have to beat up the other guys?" she asks, hauling herself up to a sitting position. There's at least a dozen more masked people in this room. "Or can we just take down that guy?" Claudia raises a hand and points it directly at Burton Bland standing at the back of the auditorium.

"Oh, and there's snacks??" Hell yes. Claudia ruins her own badass moment by scrambling to her feet to follow Fiona for some baby carrots and dip.

“Sorry! Shit! Sorry” Tybalt pats out at Wyatt’s face as though to take back the punch. But it’s over, then. They’re done. Blinking, he picks himself off the floor and retrieves all the items he’s thrown. Normally, he’d be stuffing handfuls of ill-begotten chips into his mouth, but this environment makes him wrinkle his nose. “That’s cult food.”

"I got apples," Felicity chimes in, "y'know, if we're worried about cult food." She'll toss you one if you raise your hand.

She's still in a bit of a daze. Doug, cultists with flower faces, her Patronus!!!! Damn, that was a good ol' fashioned Quodbrawl.

Claudia asks about the man at the back of the auditorium, and Felicity turns to look his way. "Ninety-nine percent sure that's weird nipple guy," Felicity says helpfully. "Ain't that right, Wy?" To confirm, she walks over to him and tries to pull off the cowled mask. And peep them nips.

The mask comes free of Burton Bland's grip, glowing gold once it's in Felicity's hands. That's the linchpin alright! But before she can get a good look at the goods, the memory changes. Not movement, but absolute stillness. Everything feels taut, the very air thin, breath held around the room until one of the cultists takes a step toward El Qualls.

This is no monster, it's just a man and L.Q. moves in response. Quick as a whip, El's got his wand out. He flings a concussive blast that scatters a few of the plainclothes cultists. Food and chairs go flying in all directions, from silence to a raucous cacophony. In the moment of chaos, El turns and flees, throwing open the metal double doors and escaping through a passage that looks here like it leads back out to the Sorting Path.

"Get him," commands Burton Bland, and his twelve robed cultists give chase.

[MEMORY COMPLETE! Linchpin found! You may continue to thread here or leave through the door.]

Edited 2020-06-10 20:11 (UTC)

The way the memory continues ramps up the tension, and Claudia loudly crunches the baby carrots between her teeth as she watches. She wants to save El Qualls. She wants to follow after him and defeat the guys in masks again and again until, finally, things go his way. Until he escapes, goes home, enjoys his life and comes back for birthdays and Leap Days.

But she can't. They can't.

All because he'd done something no less stupid than what they were doing right now, and the wrong group of people took advantage of that.

"I guess that was it," Claudia says quietly, stepping toward the metal double doors.

Tybalt takes a few sprinting steps toward the retreating cultists, hand on his lighter, but everything stops, and he remembers, too, that he can't do anything to save Lionel Qualls now. Not knowing what else to do, he again resorts to following at Claudia's ankles, very lost-puppy. "...Did we save him?"

That's what happens, right? They go into memories, they pluck the golden shit out , the person got freed. That's how it's worked all night.
But what is there to free, now?

"Uhhh... I hope so?"

Felicity adds the cowled mask to her growing bag of goodies. She makes her way toward the door with the others, but bends down at Doug Bobson CEO's dust and scoops it into her Big Gulp. No chance she's leaving him behind.

Claudia, Felicity, Fiona, Tybalt and Wyatt completed the memory "Neoprene Robes"!

The portal disperses as the last of them leaves the memory. While it's unclear who or what was freed, the nightmare tree roars, protesting what you've done. The ground rumbles, the walls shake, and then everything is still.

It's afraid. It knows that you know you can beat it.

THE SORTING PATH

MEMORY: Neoprene Robes

Re: MEMORY: Neoprene Robes

MEMORY: Neoprene Robes

MEMORY: Neoprene Robes

MEMORY: Neoprene Robes

MEMORY: Neoprene Robes

MEMORY: Neoprene Robes

MEMORY: Neoprene Robes

MEMORY: Neoprene Robes

MEMORY: Neoprene Robes

MEMORY: Neoprene Robes

MEMORY: Neoprene Robes - COMPLETE!