November 4th, 1888

[aungier_mods]

Date: November 4th, 1888
Time: 12:00am - 6:30am
Location: All over the manor
Characters: Everyone [OPEN/CLOSED]

Summary: The inhabitants of Aungier awaken to find the manor taken over by a horrifying, unnatural fungi. This post is for those looking to find its source and destroy it.
Warnings: Will add as needed.

Behind the face of the grandfather clock in the main stairwell, full-blossomed mushrooms glow with a new ferocity, illuminating the numbers and showing the stopped time to be midnight exactly. With the predatory way that this new guest reacts to its humanoid bedfellows, it is all too easy to imagine that it consciously stopped the clocks at this precise time. But then again, those are the ravings of madmen and as the atmosphere begins to oppress and thoughts start to slip into feverish, imagined places, perhaps it would be wise to try and seize what little sense one has left.

Those with the least dulled minds might find themselves wondering, what of the Lord and Lady of the manor? Surely, the steely Lady Valdemar would not have succumbed to such lunacy? Others still might have retaliation blooming in their minds with a speed rivaling the spread of the mushrooms themselves. It is a weed and, like any weed, must be uprooted at its very source.

The hour hand of the clock twitches, desperate to move forwards, and then falls still again. The pendulum stops swinging and the illusion is fixed into place.

Comments

Throughout the whole house

[aungier_mods]

[ooc: Characters will find that the majority of first and the hallways of the second and third floors have been taken over but the ground floor is the worst hit. The main rooms that characters will want to pass through to get to the source (which is the ground floor library) are:

- The Stairwell
- The Great Hall
- The Ante Room and;
- The South Stairs

Bear in mind that the closer they get to the library, the more densely the fungi will have grown and the more aggressively it will react to their presence.]

Stairwell | OPEN

[dracobin]

He wakes to the sound of shattering bone echoing in his ears.

For a moment Temeraire lies there, winded, his heart thudding painfully loud in his chest, the ceiling still spinning in patches of farmland green. He winces and closes his eyes, but that is no good, that is worse: when he closes his eyes he can see the grey creature shiver once, abruptly, and go silent under the weight of its opponent.

Shuddering, he claws his way into a vaguely upright position, having only the presence of mind to throw on a dressing-gown before stumbling outside, eyes only half-seeing. This is not right. This house--this house is too small, too cold, and he should not be here, and his balance feels wrong, walking feels wrong--

The stairwell looms ahead, and Temeraire lurches toward it like a drunkard, curiously intent. That seems right. There is more open air there. Room to breathe. To fly.

[gentlemanliest]

By the time that Robin has calmed Warsman down enough to cut off his assault, he's exhausted. In fact, he nearly misses Temeraire's shadow as it slips, swaying as if cast by a flickering candle, past the wing's entrance, only looking up as he sees Warsman stiffen. But rather than setting his already burnt-out nerves on fire, it has the opposite effect- it's a reminder of his duty. There are others here he needs to protect; he is a soldier... no, he is a guardian of the vulnerable. A protector. What is he doing cowering and shaking in this dark hallway when the others here- his family- might be injured or trapped? His heart is still beating fast and the sound of it still makes his head pulse with pain but he knows what he must do now.

More confidently than before, he turns back to Warsman. Russian seems to sink in more than English- maybe his circuitry has been damaged. "I'm investigating that movement, I'll be right back.."

With that, he heads through the doorway and into the stairwell, just catching Temeraire as he staggers towards the banister. But he's so lost in his daydream that he almost appears to be sleepwalking and, as Robin draws closer, a new fear strikes him; that he might not stop and tumble right over the edge and into the darkness below. He can already hear the dull thud, the minute cracking of skull on hard wood, see the shape of his body beneath them with arms bent strangely and jaw hanging like a puppet's.

So strong is this premonition that the words leave his mouth in a panicked rush before he can compose himself. "For God's sake, stop!"

[dracobin]

Temeraire does begin to topple at the sound of a new voice, albeit thankfully in the wrong direction: he jerks back, startled, and the movement upsets his already precarious balance.

Any other human would fling out an arm in a vain attempt to stay upright, futile though the attempt might be. Temeraire does not. Instead he falls with a curious expression on his face, as if he is struggling to move appendages that are not entirely there, and when he hits the ground--more or less at Robin's feet--he lies there, a little dazed, and not entirely convinced that gravity has taken hold.

It is a moment before he can muster up the energy to look up, and when he does, his eyes are unfocused, his eyebrows drawn together in confusion.

"Laurence," he murmurs. "Whatever are you doing up there?"

Second Floor Hallway, eventually, and elsewhere on the first floor | OPEN

[ryuuzaki]

It was unusual for L to go to bed early, but as the evening had progressed, a drowsy fatigue had settled on him, and ten o'clock had found him quite asleep, quite in his own bed, quite alone. It might mean one of two things: he could be coming down with a cold, or the next day could begin early and be full of activity.

His sleep turned out to be fitful, and there were dreams: he was in a vast, cold, almost completely empty room, half-dressed or perhaps clad like a laborer. He looked down at his feet and saw that they were bare. He looked up, and what he saw was profoundly unsettling: a skeletal thing, white and animate, standing before him. Its head was like a deaths-head and also unlike it; it had a single yellow eye with a slit pupil like a cat or perhaps a snake, tendrils that were tipped in violet and looked like they were serving it for hair, a nose that was also serpentine, a wide dark mouth with sharp fangs for teeth, stitches in its neck, the suggestion of wings. What was worst, in the dream, was how it stared at him with detached interest, the same kind of interest he would have focused on it in turn.

He felt certain that he wanted to talk to an old man, maybe Lord Valdemar, and then--

He woke with a start in the velvety darkness of his bedroom, coughing and disoriented. The dream had seemed so real, in spite of its inherent absurdity, that it took a moment to remember who and where he was. The air had a thickness to it, and a fetid smell, and all the bedclothes were clinging to his body in a way that was unusual for Yorkshire in general and November in particular--more typical of a hot summer in a wet climate. He had experienced days like that, but never as far north as this.

The first thing to do was to light the bedside lamp. The next was to try to find the source of the smell and the bad air. It didn't seem to be the fireplace, although it was stronger there, and stronger in the sitting room, and stronger still near the door to the hall.

In the corridor, the walls were encrusted here and there with some kind of material--greyish in some places, glowing in others. He fetched a poker from the sitting room and prodded them; the texture was spongy. Bioluminescent mushrooms of a special virulence? He had turned in only hours earlier, and there had been nothing like this, nor was he aware of anything that could spread this quickly. Still, fungal spores could have an insalubrious effect on the lungs, and whatever this was, there was a great deal of it. It looked like it was worse down the halls, and near the stairs. It looked much like what he and Temeraire had found in the automaton, but there was no possibility that that had spread so quickly from a distant part of the house, and there was little to indicate that the spores had traveled on their clothes. Still, the source itself could be common... how had the mushrooms gotten into the automaton to begin with?

He went back to the sitting room and made several hard, aggressive tugs at the bell pull; it would be jangling nearby. That should rouse Lyall, if he wasn't up already... either way, Lyall would be needed to wake and direct the staff.

Then, he went back to his bedroom and produced a handkerchief from a drawer, which he tied around the back of his head. It wasn't as efficacious as he would have hoped, but it did offer at least a small improvement in his breathing. He pulled on his shirt and trousers and dressing gown and slipped his feet into a pair of shoes and pocketed several more handkerchiefs. He retrieved the poker and a fireplace shovel next.

His mood drifted somewhere between a hazy twilight state and deep annoyance. Depending on how widely the fungi had spread, the place might be uninhabitable for some time. That would mean relocating the family and the staff for an indeterminate period, which would be a practical challenge. The house would have to be thoroughly washed with vinegar-water once the solid material had been removed, and the wainscoting and any soft furnishings might have to be replaced. At worst, it could turn out to be inordinately expensive and a thoroughgoing inconvenience.

For now, the human side of the equation was the most important. There was Lord and Lady Valdemar to attend to--if they were experiencing difficulties similar to his own, their age and relative fragility might mean that they would need assistance. Misaya might also need it. The fact that none of the other children was in residence was cause for relief, and his wife's absence from the house also meant one less thing on his mind. The situation as it stood presented quite enough to be getting on with.

He sorted through the tasks which would have to be delegated. The two people who seemed most likely to be useful were Lyall, whose job it was, and Robin, who would probably be unable to stop himself from helping.

He closed the door to the bedroom, then the door to the sitting room, then made for the stairs to check the conditions downstairs. It was all he could do not to sit on the top stair and lean against the wall and go back to sleep.

[Due to the nature of his role, he's available pretty much all over the place, attempting to order NPCs around: any servant he encounters will be given orders to cover their nose and mouth and then assist in getting everyone out. It will be easiest to catch him somewhere on the first floor, or in the corridor marked "39" on the second floor map, or on the stairs nearest 41/42 on the second floor. Please note that he has a handkerchief tied around his head, covering his nose and mouth.]