The Krivbeknih

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

The door opens onto a long, narrow spit of rock. Brackish water rises on both sides. "Sorry about this," Ellen says, "but this was the easiest door for me to bring you through without either trying to navigate the swamps alone or taking the chance of running into the other two Paladins. We're at the entrance to a lighthouse off the southern shoreline of the swamp area right now. I'll show you my Pip-Boy map as soon as we're on proper ground."

Comments

[boston_bruiser]

Voodoo glances over from his place at the door. "Go ahead," he says. "All's quiet up above, from what I can see."

(Admittedly, not much.)

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

Ellen nods and crouches down beside the safe as best her armor will allow. This close up, the light from her helmet reveals more than she'd seen before.

"Huh. Someone's painted... this design actually looks familiar," she says as she eyes the pattern of lines and crudely scrawled letters. "I'm almost positive I've seen these markings before. Not that they make any sense, but they really do look familiar."

Not that she's going to let it stop her. She's got a moderately rusty lock to pick, and whoever killed that poor tribal could come back at any time.

"Anybody coming?"

She really hopes not, because the lock just made a very audible click under her fingers.

[boston_bruiser]

Voodoo takes his eyes from behind the sights and blinks. Nothing moves.

"You're in the green, kiddo."

Voodoo's finger taps on the magazine well, once, twice, thrice.

(The sooner he can take this gas mask off, the happier he will be. It's starting to get...moist - in here.)

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"Great."

Ellen eases the safe open carefully- with her luck it'll be boobytrapped, or screech on its hinges or something... but no, no. Nothing of the kind. There's a foof! of swirling pollen of some sort that makes her very glad to be in her armor, though. Inside the safe there's a thick-walled earthen jug, which she sets aside untouched, and-

"I think we have our book," she announces. "Let's get up to the surface. I'd be happier checking this out anywhere that wasn't here."

[boston_bruiser]

"That makes two of us. Moving out."

Voodoo flips the goggles off his face and jogs up the steps to fresh air, taking a knee once he's out. The carbine's stock rests on a thigh, and he turns his head this way and that, checking the wastes.

"Still nothing up here. Secure a place as any."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"Good," says Ellen, who's tucked the book under one arm while she carefully removes her gauntlets. "This thing looks like somebody bound it by hand or something- I've seen a lot of restored books since Moira started her print house, and this sure as heck didn't come from a factory."

It's an almost solid black cover, leathery-looking, but oddly slick under the fingers. Someone attempted to hand-emboss designs on the front and didn't do very well. They did manage to mark out the word KRIVBEKNIH across the top, though, so that's at least something. Ellen glances around a moment, but there's nothing to be seen; she flips the book open and eyes the first page.

It's a pity she's got that helmet on. It's a little hard to read expressions through that much metal. She does make a faint "Huh" sound, and then a slightly louder one, as she flips a few of the pages.

[boston_bruiser]

It's enough to pique Voodoo's curiosity, and he stands up, backtracking to Ellen to read over her shoulder.

And then he's gotta take a closer look, because...he just wants to be sure the mask's not distorting his vision.

"'Nay, by Aklav,'" he reads aloud, "'am I the man or is he? Which of us is the ghost of the other? Mayhap these mirrors are but windows through which we look into another-' okay, I don't know about you? But this don't read like no...'evil tome of cursed ancient lore' to me. Just...some guy havin' an existential crisis thanks to quantum mechanics."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"It's worse than that, Voodoo," says Ellen as she runs a finger down the page.

“See and believe,” droned the wizard. “Man must believe to accomplish. Form is shadow, substance is illusion, materiality is dream; man is because he believes he is; what is man but a dream of the gods? Yet man can be that which he wishes to be; form and substance, they are but shadows-"

"I've read this before. Only last time, it had pictures." She turns to look up at him, the effect a bit spoiled by, well, helmet. "This is a Grognak the Barbarian story. As in, the comic book. Either it's a novelization of the comics or somebody based the comics on these stories, but either way, it's not evil lore, it's fiction."

On a hunch, she hurriedly flips to the back and starts turning through the last few pages. Several of them are stuck together. Very, very carefully, she slides one of her lockpicks between them and pries the sticky parts apart with minimal paper damage.

"Oh, for Pete's sake.... Looks like Mr. Blackhall was right. The book was his family's responsibility... assuming he's related to 'Dark Heart of Blackhall Publishers, Inc.'. Am I allowed to hit him over the head with it when we get back to his house, Voodoo?"

[boston_bruiser]

"Mmmmmmmhm. Hope you don't mind if I join in."

He sighs, letting the M4 rest by its sling. "Well - mission accomplished, at any rate. Where's Blackhall?"

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"West-southwest of here." Ellen closes the book and reaches up to rub at her face with both hands, then stops; the helmet's in the way. "Catfish country. And the iambic-"

Dogmeat's growl isn't particularly loud, but it's low and it carries.

"I think we have company."

[boston_bruiser]

Indeed they do.

Voodoo looks over and reacts instantly, raising his weapon at a man coming out of the treeline, holding the gunsight over his chest. He hasn't come close enough to make his intent clear, but the odds of him just stumbling on this place are way too fucking low.

"You with the facepaint! On the ground, shithead! Now!"

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

It would be great, it would be really great, if the man complied. It would be so much neater and easier if that were the case.

Unfortunately... well, he was coming here for a reason, and there are people in his way, and they are disrupting all his preparations (assuming they haven't already). And so he puts up his hands and yells, "You trespasser! A vast mistake you've made! The Shadow Powers expect my sacrifice-"

He jerks one raised hand in the direction of the tree line.

"-unwilling though my offering may be! I haven't come here just to be denied!"

"Oh, Lord," Ellen murmurs, "he's from the other tribe, all right."

And apparently armed with pointy objects, because he found a respectable throwing knife just over his shoulder and tried hucking it in Voodoo's direction before turning and running.

[boston_bruiser]

Hoo boy.

Voodoo ducks the knife easy enough, then growls and turns to Ellen as the man rabbits.

"Get the hostage! I'll deal with this asshole!"

And then Voodoo's off like a bolt after him. Either pray for your latent super-speed to kick in, or you better have one hell of an ace up your sleeve, dude. Voodoo got his rep for a reason.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

Ellen nods and sets off at a somewhat slower run for the tree line. "Dogmeat! Come help me!" she orders; there's no way she's taking off her helmet now.

As for the tribal, he's busily chucking other knives and similar pointy objects over his shoulder and making for the muckiest, most treacherous ground he can possibly find.

[boston_bruiser]

Ah, shit. This is where the tribal has the upper hand - he knows the land; Voodoo doesn't. Still, Voodoo's agile enough to dodge most of what the tribal sends his way, and what he isn't is deflected off his vest with PLINKs and PLUNKs.

(He's quick enough to throw some of it back.)

"Drop where you are and I will not beat the living shit out of you!"

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"I fear no mortal man or mortal blade!" screams the tribal as he begins hopping from tussock to tussock and fallen log to fallen log. "Arise, o scaly ones, and grant me aid!"

Oh, look, that one particularly brown and unpleasant pool off to the right is swelling with the massive bulk of one of the catfish...

[boston_bruiser]

"OH MY GOD JUST SHUT THE FUCK UP."

Sorry, Mister Fish. You're gonna be on the wrong end of a frag grenade in a second or two.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

The catfish are huge and mutated and ugly, but they're just that- catfish. They don't talk.

Unless it's to say "Blorp?" in a confused sort of fashion right before scattering themselves over a considerable radius of surrounding swamp.

(And, if we are being honest, over a considerable amount of very surprised tribal, who looks like Gilderoy Lockhart when the wand broke in his hand. But hey, at least he's quiet.)

[boston_bruiser]

(Which Voodoo will appreciate after everything's said and done.)

Voodoo executes his very best Ray Lewis impersonation on the tribal, and it produces a CRUMP that would make any linebacker shed a tear of joy. But Voodoo doesn't offer him a moment of respite - instead, he wrenches the tribal facedown into the mud, holding his head down with one hand as he pats him down with the other.

"You know how this goes, shithead. Hands where I can see them or I hurt you like this."

Betcha didn't know your ulnar could hurt that much, didja?

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

He's wearing what amounts to a well-loved and oft-repaired ghillie suit, albeit minus the sleeves and with some rather odd bits of artificial plant life woven into it. That said, he's carrying kind of an amazing number of knives, which becomes evident during the patdown.

"This insult you'll regret- so do I swear-" he manages to get out, and then the mud up his nose is a bit too much even for him. Sullenly, he puts his hands within Voodoo's line of sight and reach.

[boston_bruiser]

"That's more like it. Now shut the fuck up."

Voodoo takes out a pair of flexicuffs, wrenches the man's arms behind his back, and threads them onto the man's wrists, tightening the straps once he's satisfied with the positioning. Then begins the process of - sweet mother of Mary, how many knives does this guy have?

Voodoo shakes his head, tossing knife after knife out of the guy's reach. "Jeezus, pal," he says, dangling two choice ones in front of the man's eyes, "I'd direct you to a steakhouse, but I get a feeling it'd just be one'a those 'day late, dollar short' things."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

The man tries to draw breath to declaim (you can't really call what he does 'speaking'), but thinks better of it. Especially since there's a clanking of Tesla armor coming from a direction he can't see.

"Found our hostage, Voodoo," Ellen's helmet-muffled voice says. "Looks like he couldn't round up another lobotomy tribal, so he went after one of his own. Ma'am, is there something you want to say to our friend here?"

The woman is a redhead somewhat taller than Ellen, dressed in a patched, faded blue dress that could have been sold at a Renaissance Faire at some point in time. At the sight of the man on the ground her eyes harden, and she nods. "To him indeed I'll speak, but not with words," she says. "His ribs, I think. I'll introduce my foot; and then a dozen times or more repeat. He never was the sort to listen well."

[boston_bruiser]

And that's pretty reasonable, as far as demands go.

So Voodoo shrugs and grabs the man by his arm. "Lady," he says, turning him over on his back, "be my guest."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

The woman hitches up her muddy skirts and stalks over to the prone fellow. "You stinking wretch! You base-born spawn of swine!" she shouts, delivering a remarkably swift kick to his midsection. "You've failed in every part before you set; in this you somehow managed to succeed? Murdering fiend! I'll have your balls for this-"

"I think you'll not! I'll call upon that Power, the one whose- aigh! Fie! Fie! Lay off my spleen!"

"You know, if he hadn't been committing human sacrifice in the name of characters created for a two hundred year old comic book, this would be kind of hilarious," Ellen murmurs.

[boston_bruiser]

"I know, right?"

Voodoo's stood back to watch the proceedings with Ellen, arms crossed over his chest. (Talk about laser-guided karma.)

"I don't see any reason to break it up just yet. You?"