deercountry | Otherworld Log

Entry tags:

Otherworld Log

Who: Anyone & Everyone
What: Open Log for those who want to participate in the Otherworld Player Plot (though you're free to use the player plot in your own logs)
When: December's Log
Where: All over Trench (and ever a ways outside of it)

It doesn't matter where you are or what you're doing, whether or not you're among friends or strangers, it comes for you: the fog. It rolls in so thick it muffles every sound and obscures your vision until you can see nothing but white. And then the siren begins to sound, a split-second of warning before darkness begins to descend upon you and swallow the world. You can feel the change in the air, the hairs on the back of your neck raising up, and can taste it on your lips. It tastes like rust and rot and ash.

Should you be lucky enough to have a light upon you, or see in the dark, you get to witness the world shift and corrupt right before your very eyes. Everything you see begins to fall apart. The paint on the walls chips and cracks and yellows. The wallpaper peels up, floating upward before it dissolves into nothing, revealing the bones of buildings. The carpet or the wood beneath your feet rots away and it doesn't matter what once was hidden beneath those layers, what lies beneath now is grated flooring, old tiles, battered cement, or just sheets or rusted metal. It's over in seconds and the darkness lifts and you're confronted with a Trench you've never seen before. A Trench that's been devoured and tainted.

Some may open their eyes to this place alone, others with friends or strangers by their side, but it doesn't matter who you're with, what matters is how you're going to find your way back to the Trench you know.

Exploration will prove dangerous and difficult. This Other Trench has fallen apart. The streets you're familiar with may have collapsed, forcing you to find another way around, and the buildings and shops and homes you're used to may prove impassable, doors locked or jammed or somehow blocked. Home won't be home now and might not be safe. It's the monsters, though, that make this world dangerous. They roam the streets and haunt the buildings and are drawn to every little sound you might make.

Walk fast, move quietly, and you may very well get through this.

Welcome to your Otherworld.

[ ooc: Feel free to hit up the Otherworld Plotting for more information, plotting, monsters, and more! Or DM here or add me on plurk

lobselvith ]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Luz had thought she was done with this place. She'd had to face her own insecurities as well as finding out what had actually caused the world to look like this. She had been certain she would not be pulled back into this version of Trench again, but here she was.

She had managed to dart into a room in abandoned clearing, having already encountered that lightning storm, and now, seeing Maul, she could figure out why it was pretty much undefeatable. It had to be that Master of his, the one responsible for warping and twisting Maul's perspective so he faced hardships all his life.

And clearly, that affected her friend.

"Maul." She said his name softly, looking concerned. "That's...him, isn't it?"

Maul shivered slightly as if he was cold as he quietly said his mantras to himself to help himself stay in the present moment, trying not to slip away into the past where he was a scared child who just didn't want his abusive father not to hurt him anymore. He was only partially successful.

He finally looked up when he heard someone call his name, someone who was definitely not Darth Sidious. He blinked in surprise at seeing Luz there. He was still shaking a little without even realizing his body was doing it. He didn't try to leave the corner of the room from where he was curled up. ".....Yes. That's him," Maul said quietly. He didn't need to elaborate further. Luz had seen his memories before and knew what kind of monster had raised Maul to be the way he was as an adult.

Luz shivered a little.

"I barely got away from him. No real way of fighting him either: can't even see his face, and that's something, with all the monsters around here."

She sighed. "Do you know where we are? I mean, why this is happening?"

"He....is everywhere," Maul said, his eyes darting around the room like that of a scared rabbit caught in a snare trap. It was clear now how this monster had come about, given the way Maul viewed his adoptive father, the power he wielded and the near-omniscient way he seemed able to predict the moves of everyone around him.

Luz's question made Maul finally stop hiding in the corner of the room. "I don't know precisely but I have my suspicions." There was only a handful of people strong enough to have done this. Even Pthumerians couldn't warp the world into a different reality just at their whim in such a concrete fashion. That left either an immensely powerful half-Pthumerian or a Sleeper.

"It sure feels like that, doesn't it?" Luz sympathized with Darth Maul immediately. "His booming voice pierces the sky, and he's as scary as any of the monsters I ran into when I got here. I don't even know how we would fight him."

Luz looked around. "Oh, I know where this is. I didn't think I'd see it in Trench, like, in the flesh. But with all the rotting and the decay, and then the monsters? I've seen this before.

This is Silent Hill."

"I honestly don't know if there is a way to fight him like this," Maul said honestly. At least in the real world Sidious had a physical form for him to try and hurt. As a nebulous monster that came in the form of a force of nature, Maul knew there was no real way to harm him or get him to leave until he found another target to torment.

Upon hearing where they were, Maul became more attentive, some of his PTSD symptoms began to abate. "Is it?" That was a good distraction for Maul to think about, something to chew on and mull over rather than keep freaking out over the monstrous storm outside that represented his master.

"I wouldn't even know how to BEGIN to fight him," Luz confessed. Sure, he was obviously going to be one of the biggest bads since he came straight out of Darth Maul's memory, but he also didn't seem to have a body. That made their situation even worse.

"Yeah," Luz said. "I thought it looked a bit familiar, with the way everything looked, and then I remembered some of the memories I shared with Rose De La Silva and Sharon. I'm pretty sure Sharon's somehow able to conjure it up here. The question now is how do we get out?"

"There is no way," Maul said in a decidedly fatalistic fashion. Not that he could be blamed. He'd had to deal with Sidious a lot the past couple of months and it was starting to wear on his mind.

"Yes, she did tell me something similar," Maul noted. "I've been training her in how to better control her powers, though I've never seen her do anything quite like this." He hadn't realized just how vast a space her powers could reach out and warp into a nightmare.

"I'll take your word for it," Luz said. If Darth Maul believed that, Luz wasn't about to argue. More importantly, if they were in Silent Hill, they were being influenced by Darth Maul's monsters. If HE believed that, then it would be true.

"So you've been training her?" She was pretty sure that was news to her. "I didn't know that. I DID know about this though. She...manifested it, when she was younger."

The lightning storm still raged outside but it looked like it was starting to move a little further away. Staying inside was the wisest course of action until someone else caught Sidious' attention and he wanted to torment them.

"I train a number of people here in weaponry, meditation, and their unique powers," Maul explained. "Sharon's powers aren't something a regular human could handle but I have a better understanding of what can make them activate and how to let her control them instead of the other way around." He nodded. "I was told a little bit of it from both her and Rose when she was still here. I just didn't realize this was precisely what would happen when it appeared."

Luz was not going to complain about that. Frankly, she was a little scared of that storm thing outside too, and wasn't eager to go out and meet it again.

"I had my suspicions. I first learned about Sharon through Rose's eyes, but I saw Alessa first. She's sort of the catalyst to this whole thing, only now I think it's all Sharon's power now. I think...Sharon is starting to get stronger though. If she can stay her without channeling Alessa, maybe this whole thing can work."

"I'm certain as well. When she first arrived, she couldn't even control her powers or summon them at will. This is a huge step for her." He sounded both proud and impressed at the same time of how far his pupil had progressed. Maul couldn't take all the credit, of course, but he was so pleased that Sharon had gotten to the point where she could warp the world around her in such a fashion.

"I'm glad," Luz confessed. "I've seen what Alessa can do and...well, I'm sure you'd probably approve, considering the circumstances, but it's a pretty intense thing for a kid to watch."

Luz might have been an outsider, but that didn't mean she didn't feel the crushing of bones and the squelching of blood when Alessa really let loose in the memory.

"At least now, if she needs to, she can defend herself, and maybe more."

"After hearing about all that was done to her, I cannot condone her for anything she ever did. Even my master never indulged in such cruelty as she was forced to experience." Even Sidious had found Maul useful, and if his treatment had been wicked and sadistic, he'd never set out to specifically kill Maul with his treatment.

Alessa's tormentors had sought burn an innocent child alive and for that Maul knew they all justly deserved what they got. You could only hurt a child so much before they lashed out at those who had hurt them. While in most cases that came to nothing, when it was done to a child with extraordinary powers, a great reckoning came upon people.

Luz was quiet for a moment before she finally replied.

"Me neither."

Because it was all well and good to not want to kill people. Luz DIDN'T. She hated the idea of ending a life because she could, that whole idea scared her into wondering if she would only go for that option every time.

But the other side was very simple: there were people who would kill, who liked it. There were people who harmed others and didn't let that bother them all the time. They would continue to hurt people as long as you let them, and in that instance? Luz knew that letting them do that was the worst option.

The cult surrounding Alessa wanted to kill her and had tortured her and intended to do that. They sought to kill, and that in turn invited Alessa's wrath.

"I saw how it happened in Rose's memory a while back. It was pretty gruesome, but they deserved it. Anyone who takes joy in causing innocent people to suffer need to be stopped, sometimes in the worst way possible."

Much as Luz was a good, sweet teenage girl, Maul was glad she had her limits when it came to something this horrendous. Those people didn't deserve compassion and understanding. They deserved what was coming to them in the form of the powers that came from the person they'd hurt.

"Rose was the first one to tell me a bit about it too. Then I learned more of it from Sharon herself. I think she meant to shock me with the details but instead I told her that I understood." And he had. Maul knew better than anyone what it was like to be hurt and scared until you lashed out at the world. They had done the worst to her and so Sharon had returned the favor by doing the worst to them as well.

Luz absolutely did. If there was something that she had come to understand, hesitation of someone to do good led to people taking advantage with doing much worst. So you had to react just as quickly when you saw that the lack of compassion was there.

It wasn't a happy fact, but it was truth.

"I saw it in Rose's memories." Luz shook her head. "Being told what happened is bad enough, but seeing it was something else. I could smell the fire, feel the heat, the blood in the air. Alessa was thorough with her punishment."

Luz decided to leave that in the air because of the thing she wasn't saying: that they had deserved it for all they had done to that poor girl. She would believe it even more when she actually met younger Sharon in the next two months.

"I never had the pleasure of seeing that," Maul commented softly. He would have greatly enjoyed it, seeing the satisfaction of the plan she'd long thought up put into action. But he was a bit odd that way given his own pleasure at seeing brutal acts committed.

He was now feeling much more put-together than when he first come into the room. His fear had begun to tamp back down to a manageable level.

Luz gave Darth Maul a look. "You would? I don't know: seeing someone get split apart seems like something I could have just seen implied instead of in person. But I'm sure Alessa was satisfied finally bringing her plan to a head."

Luz was not so hot on having to deal with something like that, even when it was absolutely necessary.

"Feeling better?"

"I've got a brutal vengeance streak in me." One that still relished in the pain of others no matter how much his other sharp edges had been a bit softened. He understood all too well the satisfaction of revenge.

He ran a hand reassuringly over his face in a self-soothing manner and took in a deep breath. "Yes, I am. I think I will be alright to leave this room now."

"I know. You're not the first person I've seen who has that."

Granted, Luz had seen, up close and personal, exactly how dangerous Darth Maul was. That didn't mean she didn't believe that he was capable of change.

As for vengeance, well. Luz knew all too well what that could lead to.

"I'm glad. Don't worry, I won't tell anybody about this."

Maul was calm enough now to know he could get through more of Silent Hill without breaking down again. He was strong enough to survive this place. It wasn’t any worse than the hell which had been his life under Sidious.

“Thank you, Luz. I trust you.” That more than anything else showed how strong their relationship was. Maul trusted the people around him but rarely. But Luz had seen much of his past and hadn’t used it against him, so he knew she wouldn’t betray him.

Luz was still digesting Silent Hill. It had a bit of Deerington madness to it, but it was also rare in how it seemed to break you down. It was complicated, and mostly very scary.

"Thank you," Luz said, holding onto her staff to steady herself. "If I ever get, I don't know, possessed, if you need to, uh, 'take me down,' do so as quick as you can. I wouldn't want to make things worse for Lexi. Besides, if I got that way and know how to cast, it's going to cause some problems."

"Duly noted," Maul said in a serious fashion. He would have liked to think that such a thing would never happen but given Trench's nature, there was always a distinct possibility that someday he'd have to take down Luz. It'd break his hearts but he'd do it if that's what was necessary.

Luz, for her part, wasn't going to be an idealist. Much as she liked living and all, possession was a thing that happened, and something she knew Darth Maul would power through. She knew he had done this before, and if it spared Lexi pain seeing her dark and evil, she was glad Maul could make that stop.

"Thank you," she said, and gave him a hopeful smile. "Let's hope that doesn't happen though! I'm pretty happy not dying anytime soon!"

Otherworld Log

Safety

cw: physical child abuse mention

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