#Ignis Prunae

[namelessmoons-corner]

☆.｡.:° Session II | The Uncharted Continent °:.｡.☆

(Drawing I made picturing our group. From left to right: Ignis, Trevon, Octave, Evelyn and Same)

Ignis uses both they/them and he/him pronouns interchangeably, I try to use the same ones during paragraph to simplify the narration, but some slip through the cracks, sorry

[TW: mention of torture, bad parenting, description of a panic attack, stick figure drawing of a child being dismembered]

-> Where Ignis is still awkward and their friend is a cryptic. <-

Our session begins when Ignis goes back home after their night escapade at the haunted house. When they go home, there is no one to welcome them, but it seems they're used to it.

Getting the note out of their bag, they begin searching for answers in their family library, but either there's nothing to find, or they don't know how to look for things.

(player moon here: Ignis just don't know how to look for things)

After accepting that he wouldn't find anything here, he decides that it's the right time to go to bed, knowing sleep won't come easy but hoping they'll manage to catch some for a few hours.

While he does sleep, his dreams are not what he signed up for. He dreams of his mother and his uncle tying him up to a chair, and he cannot feel his prosthesis. He can feel the rope digging into the soft sin of his upper arms, and his ribs are squeezed tight, his breathes coming out short and leaving his lungs without the much needed air.

Ignis logically knows they're dreaming. Their mother wouldn't stoop so low as to kidnap her own child to remove them from the succession when she could simply asphyxiate them with a pillow while they were sleeping with no way to defend themselves.

This doesn't stop the panic from rising like a tidal wave within his chest, drowning his hearing and forcing its way out in the form of slated tears, the taste on his tongue and their tracks on his cheeks. The world in front of his eyes gets more blurry as each second pass.

A rumbling sound gets him back. His uncle is holding a chainsaw and his mother puts a living hand on his shoulder. "You've always been useless, Ignis. A stain on the name Pruinae. Your limbs are useless, even as you're already missing some of them. A curse to bring me down."

The chainsaw is quickly approaching his legs. "You don't deserve to walk, curse. It would be better for everyone to remove your legs." As the saw touches his right thigh, Ignis passes out.

And wakes up.

Their legs are hurting. This is good. It means they're here, they still have them. Their prosthesis are on the chair near their bed, on their allocated place.

And now he needs coffee; figures the only time he manages to fall asleep, he's plagued with terrible lucid dreams.

Well, they can't do anything about that. Maybe see a therapist, but with their mother breathing down their neck, it's going to be complicated.

Classes are a pain. And Sam, the girl they met yesterday, isn't even here. Strange, because she said she was in a science/lit bachelor and this should mean they have some classes together. Ignis has never heard of this kind of double bachelor, but to each their own. This is one of the reason they're so suspicious, they think.

After class, Ignis decides to head towards the library, in hopes to get some answers about the note he got yesterday at the haunted house. And about the eclipse.

They see Octave at the library and decide to say hello. While Octave isn't the nicest guy to be around, they should stick together if they want a shot at resolving this strange thing. Ignis can't find anything on the shelves of the library about arcanic writings and scriptures, Octave pull through and manages to find one and only one book talking about it.

Seeing as Octave doesn't want to share the book and to read it together, Ignis seats at the table and listens back to the recording of their classes of the day sped up.

When Octave leaves the desk not bothering to put back the book in a huff, Ignis gets curious. What would bother the guy? The answer is easily found: all the linguists agree that every one who tries to understand the language further becomes mad. This is a dead end.

As they're putting the book back in its rightful place, Evelyn, the friend they made yesterday, calls to them and Ignis goes to sit beside her. Apparently, Sam wasn't here at all today, which confirms Ignis's suspicions, and one of their teacher asked her to give Sam the notes of the classes she missed. Evelyn plans on going to her flat at seven so she can give them to her and Ignis offers to come with her.

Ignis is a bit scared of Sam, mostly because she's an unknown. Besides inviting him to meet yesterday, he hasn't talked a lot with her; mostly with Trevon and Evelyn. And so he wonders if they shouldn't ask Trevon or Octave to come with them. Octave is discarded quickly, but they can't find Trevor so in the end they decide to go alone.

And so when the time comes, the two of them heads towards the students lodgings. They are joined in their endeavour by Trevon, freshly showered after training, who seems happy to see them, at least until Evelyn says something about his smell.

They finally get to the building where Sam lives, and Trevon is surprised because he lives in the same one, and he tells Ignis and Evelyn that he has never seen Sam around. They see that the door to her flat is open and it seems that there's nobody there.

As the group waits for Sam, they decide to snoop a bit. Trevon manages to throw a 0 in Religion and he thus firmly believes that Sam is a demonspawn. Sam eventually comes back to her flat, telling us that she was outside running errands.

Ignis and their comrades did sort of create an ambush, and they want answers.

(Here comes long minutes of lore dumping that i don't completely remember, but i'm not the only notetaker in our campaign so that's ok)

When the group leaves her house, they see a flock of police cars going towards the haunted house and the group follows; a friend of Evelyn, named Eleanor, tells her that a child was found dead and dismembered in the house.

(here is the child; we only found out later that his name was Charles, but it's not that important)

Ignis isn't worried about fingerprints, but the fact that the group was there yesterday, before any type of murder occurred, is bad. really bad. Sam said that there should be about 5 murders and that the group needs to prevent them in order to stop the end of the world.

Of course, because it would make it too easy, Sam doesn't know where the next murder is going to be. Ignis says the church. Everybody knows that the end of horror movies with sacrifices is in a church.

(Map of the city; the red line is what Ignis thought would happen in order; little spoiler, the cross and 2 later proved that it wasn't)

So Ignis, Trevon and Evelyn camp out at the church, but no murder happens. They do see a person in a black cape watching them, but they don't manage to catch them. In the end, Ignis quite tired, so they all head home. Before going to sleep, Ignis receives a strange message from Trevon and Evelyn, asking them what Sam's last name is on their group chat. It's Eda. Or Edda, Ignis isn't quite sure about the specifics.

☆: .｡.o.｡.:☆

I'm so late and I'm sorry ;-; we've finished our sixth session now, but I should post the summaries later this week :) Hope you enjoyed and have some theories hehe

[lexiconlatinum]

Prūnae | Fōns - CC BY 2.0

prūna, prūnae - (f.)

carbō flāgrāns

[namelessmoons-corner]

☆.｡.:° Session I | The Uncharted Continent °:.｡.☆

Welcome welcome to the first session note of the new dnd campaign I'm in! This time no DMing for me, only playing a character aha, so most of my session notes will naturally be biased because i do not have all the information our dm keeps close to his chest. If you speak french, our dm is going to record our sessions and make compilations of our bullshit, so once it's out i'll give you a link so you can give it a listen :)

I commissioned the wonderful @bottleofguts to draw Ignis, and so here you have a little preview of what they look like !

-> Where Ignis is awkward and they go visit a haunted house. <-

Our story begins in the University of Anffawd, during one of our character's core class. Ignis is sitting in the front of the class, their recorder in plain sight to have what the teacher says on tape.

They're trying to pay attention, but slowly falling asleep, the soothing voice of the teacher creating a lullaby perfect to fall asleep. But the door opening manages to wake him up. The newcomer is a young woman around his age, and she goes to stand near the dais.

Her name is Sam, she says and she's a new student. She hopes she'll be able to make friends, and Ignis can feel her insistent stare through their whole body.

After the class finished, Sam comes find Ignis talking about finding new friends and discovering the city of Anffawd. Ignis doesn't have many friends, not by choice, but because people usually stare at him when they first meet. Sam does not stare at all, which means that Ignis welcomes her friendliness, and when she asks him to meet her at the library later in the day so she'll have time to gather other people to visit the city, they say yes without thinking much about it.

With this in mind, they go along their day when their meeting time nears, he goes to the library. People he's seen in some of his core class are here, but none from his specialised science ones. From what they see, there are two jocks, one seemingly nicer than the other, and an albino goth studying literature. She's really nice but a bit intimidating at first sight.

Ignis doesn't dare ask what major the jocks are in, but then Sam comes back and asks the group what they think is the best place to sightsee first in the city.

Naturally, there's a haunted house in the city, which makes it one of the main attraction and a place where people like to meet, and so the group decides to head over to the house.

The place is definitely creepy, Ignis can attest to it. But Sam leads on, and they're in awe at her fearless nature. Inside the house, Ignis can hear some giggles, which really doesn't help relax. Why were they here again?

Ah yes. Because they didn't want to go home and Sam was really nice. The house does seem deserted, and the group find some old newspapers dating from 25 years ago, talking about the disappearance of a resident of the city. His name was Jonathan Hapstek, and that's all Ignis can understand about his disappearance by studying the newspapers.

The group goes to investigate the rooms of the haunted house and one of the jocks named Trevon, who's apparently from the US, manages to find a trapdoor on the floor under the old TV stand. As a group, they decide to finish exploring the house before opening the trapdoor.

After more than one person hear giggles and footsteps, they stumble upon two kids trying to frighten visitors of the haunted house. Octave, the other jock, intimidate them and they leave the house running, not looking back.

On the second floor, the only interesting rooms they find are bedrooms, and Ignis finds an old diary of a twelve years old named Eleonor Lington and a small wooden bow with keys inside. The diary is dated, with the last entry on October 29th twenty-five years ago. In this last entry, she writes about the death of one of her class members named Théodor Elburn who died, you guessed it, in a fire.

This means that 25 years ago, around the same time in October, two people died. More exactly, one child died a few days after someone was reported as missing during an eclipse.

Because Ignis is a socially awkward person and they're feeling quite awkward right now, they blurt the first thing going through their mind, which is what he think is a fun fact about serial killers:

"Did you guys know that serial killers keep trophies of the people they killed? Aha imagine if the newspapers clippings we found are actually trophies? Wouldn't that be funny? *insert nervous laugh*"

As you can imagine, the other members of the groupe does not, in fact find this funny. No luck, sorry Ignis. As there is no more interesting things to look at in these parts of the house, they decide to go back to the trapdoor, with Ignis keeping the keys with him.

Evidently, to be able to access the trapdoor, they need to move the TV stand. Fortunately, having two jocks in the team comes in handy, and they manage to move the TV without breaking it, but the wire is now unplugged.

The key Ignis has ends up being the one to open the trapdoor, but fine motors skills are outside of Ignis's range of possibilities, so Evelyn (his goth comrade) is the one to open the door. Before going down, Ignis decides to send one last text to his mother, in case he never comes back.

The stairs lead down to a basement which smells like rusted iron. This makes more sense when Ignis lights up the room with his phone's flashlight, only to see a dentist's chair surrounded by drops and puddles of an old reddish brown color, which seems to be blood. Now, the light comment Ignis made earlier become way more troubling.

Sam, the one who got them here, tells everyone that this is just too much for her, and while Ignis does agree that this is quite horrible, he can't shake the feeling that he needs answers. And so the group search for anything of interest beside the bloodied chair in the basement. The only things they find are clippings from newspaper talking about the eclipse and disappearance of Jonathan Hapstek and a note written in a language none of them can understand.

Ignis has seen this language before, in their family estate. From what he knows of his family, this means the language is probably a magical one. They can't read it, unfortunately, because they've always been pants at learning magic and the clan elders have deemed him useless in all instance of arcanes, so this means he never really got to continue his education.

They decide to keep the note, and Ignis and Evelyn strike a conversation and agree that Sam seems strange, but they don't really know why. A gut feeling, you might say.

After they get out of the basement, they put the TV stand in its rightful place once again, not forgetting to plug the cable. It would seems that all they could find within the house was found, and so they decide to investigate the outside of the house. Ignis puts the key back where he found it earlier, and the group leaves the house.

The gardens and the rest of the property is gigantic, and they can see footsteps leading to the house from the river, but nothing leading back, which is quite strange, seeing as they explored the whole house and did not find anybody.

The sun is beginning to set, and Ignis realizes that the text they tried to send earlier never went through. No need for their mother to realize there was ever something wrong. They delete the unsent text; no need for their mother to wonder about the context of the message.

Before they all go home, they agree to meet the next day to continue their search and investigation of the surrounding of the strange haunted house

☆: .｡.o.｡.:☆

And here it ends! or at least our session :) We should have another one tomorrow night, so i'll try to write and post the second one by next week (if i have time)