i: MODIFY MEMORY. [Fjord's D&D-character getup may not be outlandish enough for him to stick out in the crowd, but the rest of him just may be. At least, compared to the humans who live here in the settlement—and some of the monsters, for that matter. Humanoid, but green skinned, gold-eyed, a pair of smallish tusks just visible curving over his lips. He's slim for a half-orc, if still tallish and broadish by human standards (just not remarkably so, in either case.) Dark haired, with a shock of white running through the forelock, scarred across his face in a few places, wearing a long coat and scuffed leather armor, a tricorn hat set aside against his knee.
And presently, he appears to be deep in conversation with one of the human locals over some fancy fey drinks of some sort.
Whatever they're talking about, it seems a bit hush-hush. And it seems to interest him intensely. ...but then a Fey floats on by and the human scatters before they can get caught gossiping. Gets up in a hurry and leaves, nearly knocking the table over with them when they go. And Fjord is left where he was sitting as the Fey leans down behind him and briefly whispers something in his ear. He goes rigid for a moment—(long enough for the Fey to look satisfied and pat him on the cheek and wander off)—before startling back to awareness and looking suddenly...very lost. Like he's not at all sure where he is, how he got here in the first place.
Realizing he's not exactly alone, here, he covers the confusion up so rapidly that the shift in gears is visible. His unease shutters suddenly behind a mild, pleasant look, the ramrod tension in his spine relaxing back into deliberate ease. He clears his throat a bit, as if to reorient himself. (It doesn't really help.)]
My apologies, I'm afraid my attention must have wandered for a moment. [Maybe a bit more than that, but he's working with what he's got, here. It comes out a whole lot more smoothly than his poor disoriented wits should allow, but it lets him stall for a second while he tries to catch up. There's a heartbeat of hesitation, afterward, like he's weighing his options before going out on a limb. Then a sheepish, apologetic tilt to his expression and his intonation as he lifts his chin and gestures to the human's now-abandoned drink in front of him. With just a hair more audible uncertainty—] If you'd just refresh my memory, real quick. Was this one...yours?
[It is now, if you want it. Do you like newbies and/or free fairy cocktails, yes or no.]
The Emergence
ii: LAY ON HANDS. (obligatory paladin first aid prompt, just let me know if you want to assume a cwyld infection or a more mundane injury on your character's end to get things rolling and we can run from there!)
[Now this...this is more like it. As soon as things start to take a nightmarish turn—the eerie unfamiliarity taking a nosedive into a cold and bone-deep sense of wrongness, of creeping darkness, of vague and uneasy threat—this weird fuckin' dream starts to feel a lot more familiar. It's just that he's always been (mostly) alone in his visions, before. The good ones and the awful ones alike. If it's supposed to mean something beyond giving him the creeps, he can't put a finger on what. But once things really start going to hell, he tables the trying-to-understand-it in favor of trying to stay in once piece—dream or not. The black goo that's spewing from ground pings as slick and profane enough that even his curiosity-killed-the-cat impulses don't want to touch it.
And given the chaos breaking out, it only takes a matter of time for him to stumble across someone looking hurt. Said someone might just feel a firm hand on the shoulder, to steady them, pull them over into what seems like a relatively quiet pocket of safety in the rubble of a collapsed house. (Quiet, at least, for now.) ]
Oh-kay, hold up, just a moment. [He has very little fucking clue what's going on right now, but to his credit you'd be hard pressed to realize that, right away. His voice is deep and even, and it stays low, urgent, but carefully steady. Convincing in how level it is, amongst the chaos still breaking out in the village. His expression is a match for it—kept meticulously calm, if concerned—his attention focused mostly down on the problem at hand. (Be it a bleeding wound or a spreading infection.) The only immediate tell of his skillfully hidden alarm would be the fingers of his free hand wrapped white knuckled and anxious around the holy symbol of Melora pinned to the lapel of his long coat—a spiraling crystal spoked through with an anchor, framed by a verdigris wreath of copper fronds.]
Why don't we just have us a sit-down. Take a breath.
[On an ordinary wound, he ought to be able to stitch you back up a little bit with some of the familiar-unfamiliar healing magic he's still got in him... if you slow down enough to let him. If you're already corrupted by the Cwyld, well. It won't help, not really, but he sure as hell doesn't know that. (And what the hell, he might as well try.)]
Light it up.
iii: MAJOR IMAGE. [He had, of course, tried to talk to the newcomers, at some point. Tried to understand their purpose here, maybe lower the tensions a little. Hands held up in a gesture of peace as they surrounded him with torches and weapons and bared teeth and watched him suspiciously for signs of infection. But it became clear rather quickly after the first few terse exchanges that they weren't very interested in talking. After some of those blades pointed his way get a little close for comfort, he takes the hint and backs off. (They let him, but just barely.)
Spotting another Mirrorbound cornered by a similarly suspicious-looking hunting party, he takes a different approach.
Most of the farthest-gone infected have been driven back, slain, or burned, by now. But as the hunters close in on the Mirrorbound with questions, a full-formed shade comes tearing out from the nearby shadows all of a sudden. (Or at least, the illusion of a shade, as close as Fjord's fleeting first-impressions and the off-feel to his usual magical fallbacks can imitate. It's convincing enough to pass...from a distance.) The hunters startle and spin toward the more pressing threat as it rampages by, which gives Fjord a chance to sidle up and tap the cornered Mirrorbound on the shoulder to grab their attention. He'll give them a significant look and jerk his head back the way he came. Away from the burning of the wood, while the hunting party thinks it has bigger fish to fry. Lets get while the getting's good, bud, that illusion won't necessarily hold up for long.]
((or vi: surprise me! Y'all know the setting best, so I can roll with the punches if you have another idea. A dm is the best place to reach me if you need to! & If you're spoiler-adverse wrt CR at all fair warning that I'm pulling from fairly recent episodes, feel free to give me a head's up if you want me to be careful.))
fjord. | critical role. | witch.
i: MODIFY MEMORY.
[Fjord's D&D-character getup may not be outlandish enough for him to stick out in the crowd, but the rest of him just may be. At least, compared to the humans who live here in the settlement—and some of the monsters, for that matter. Humanoid, but green skinned, gold-eyed, a pair of smallish tusks just visible curving over his lips. He's slim for a half-orc, if still tallish and broadish by human standards (just not remarkably so, in either case.) Dark haired, with a shock of white running through the forelock, scarred across his face in a few places, wearing a long coat and scuffed leather armor, a tricorn hat set aside against his knee.
And presently, he appears to be deep in conversation with one of the human locals over some fancy fey drinks of some sort.
Whatever they're talking about, it seems a bit hush-hush. And it seems to interest him intensely. ...but then a Fey floats on by and the human scatters before they can get caught gossiping. Gets up in a hurry and leaves, nearly knocking the table over with them when they go. And Fjord is left where he was sitting as the Fey leans down behind him and briefly whispers something in his ear. He goes rigid for a moment—(long enough for the Fey to look satisfied and pat him on the cheek and wander off)—before startling back to awareness and looking suddenly...very lost. Like he's not at all sure where he is, how he got here in the first place.
Realizing he's not exactly alone, here, he covers the confusion up so rapidly that the shift in gears is visible. His unease shutters suddenly behind a mild, pleasant look, the ramrod tension in his spine relaxing back into deliberate ease. He clears his throat a bit, as if to reorient himself. (It doesn't really help.)]
My apologies, I'm afraid my attention must have wandered for a moment. [Maybe a bit more than that, but he's working with what he's got, here. It comes out a whole lot more smoothly than his poor disoriented wits should allow, but it lets him stall for a second while he tries to catch up. There's a heartbeat of hesitation, afterward, like he's weighing his options before going out on a limb. Then a sheepish, apologetic tilt to his expression and his intonation as he lifts his chin and gestures to the human's now-abandoned drink in front of him. With just a hair more audible uncertainty—] If you'd just refresh my memory, real quick. Was this one...yours?
[It is now, if you want it. Do you like newbies and/or free fairy cocktails, yes or no.]
The Emergence
ii: LAY ON HANDS. (obligatory paladin first aid prompt, just let me know if you want to assume a cwyld infection or a more mundane injury on your character's end to get things rolling and we can run from there!)
[Now this...this is more like it. As soon as things start to take a nightmarish turn—the eerie unfamiliarity taking a nosedive into a cold and bone-deep sense of wrongness, of creeping darkness, of vague and uneasy threat—this weird fuckin' dream starts to feel a lot more familiar. It's just that he's always been (mostly) alone in his visions, before. The good ones and the awful ones alike. If it's supposed to mean something beyond giving him the creeps, he can't put a finger on what. But once things really start going to hell, he tables the trying-to-understand-it in favor of trying to stay in once piece—dream or not. The black goo that's spewing from ground pings as slick and profane enough that even his curiosity-killed-the-cat impulses don't want to touch it.
And given the chaos breaking out, it only takes a matter of time for him to stumble across someone looking hurt. Said someone might just feel a firm hand on the shoulder, to steady them, pull them over into what seems like a relatively quiet pocket of safety in the rubble of a collapsed house. (Quiet, at least, for now.) ]
Oh-kay, hold up, just a moment. [He has very little fucking clue what's going on right now, but to his credit you'd be hard pressed to realize that, right away. His voice is deep and even, and it stays low, urgent, but carefully steady. Convincing in how level it is, amongst the chaos still breaking out in the village. His expression is a match for it—kept meticulously calm, if concerned—his attention focused mostly down on the problem at hand. (Be it a bleeding wound or a spreading infection.) The only immediate tell of his skillfully hidden alarm would be the fingers of his free hand wrapped white knuckled and anxious around the holy symbol of Melora pinned to the lapel of his long coat—a spiraling crystal spoked through with an anchor, framed by a verdigris wreath of copper fronds.]
Why don't we just have us a sit-down. Take a breath.
[On an ordinary wound, he ought to be able to stitch you back up a little bit with some of the familiar-unfamiliar healing magic he's still got in him... if you slow down enough to let him. If you're already corrupted by the Cwyld, well. It won't help, not really, but he sure as hell doesn't know that. (And what the hell, he might as well try.)]
Light it up.
iii: MAJOR IMAGE.
[He had, of course, tried to talk to the newcomers, at some point. Tried to understand their purpose here, maybe lower the tensions a little. Hands held up in a gesture of peace as they surrounded him with torches and weapons and bared teeth and watched him suspiciously for signs of infection. But it became clear rather quickly after the first few terse exchanges that they weren't very interested in talking. After some of those blades pointed his way get a little close for comfort, he takes the hint and backs off. (They let him, but just barely.)
Spotting another Mirrorbound cornered by a similarly suspicious-looking hunting party, he takes a different approach.
Most of the farthest-gone infected have been driven back, slain, or burned, by now. But as the hunters close in on the Mirrorbound with questions, a full-formed shade comes tearing out from the nearby shadows all of a sudden. (Or at least, the illusion of a shade, as close as Fjord's fleeting first-impressions and the off-feel to his usual magical fallbacks can imitate. It's convincing enough to pass...from a distance.) The hunters startle and spin toward the more pressing threat as it rampages by, which gives Fjord a chance to sidle up and tap the cornered Mirrorbound on the shoulder to grab their attention. He'll give them a significant look and jerk his head back the way he came. Away from the burning of the wood, while the hunting party thinks it has bigger fish to fry. Lets get while the getting's good, bud, that illusion won't necessarily hold up for long.]
((or vi: surprise me! Y'all know the setting best, so I can roll with the punches if you have another idea. A dm is the best place to reach me if you need to! & If you're spoiler-adverse wrt CR at all fair warning that I'm pulling from fairly recent episodes, feel free to give me a head's up if you want me to be careful.))