Absit Omen RPG
Role-Play Boards => Third Floor => Hogwarts Castle => Hogwarts => Old Salem Dormitories => Topic started by: Taryn Dickenson on May 02, 2012, 06:52:01 PM
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Friday, October 2nd - Sometime after dinner
They'd been at it three hours before Taryn finally lost her cool. Her frustrated scream made it through the semi-sound-proofed tapestry over the entrance to Salem's dorm and was quickly followed by a loud THUNK! as she flung Notable Deaths of English Wizards, Vol. 73 across the common room and into the door.
"This is impossible!" she declared, rattling her hands furiously through her own hair. "How many frickin' people died on October 1st?! E.B. White! John Alcock! Alwin the Asinine! We've got three hundred names on this list --" She gestured furiously with the two-foot roll of parchment, looking ready to shred the damn thing and all their hours of work. "-- and that's just the folks who spoke English!"
She flung the parchment into the air and deflated, sinking low over the coffee table that she, Vex, and Tracy had appropriated for their research. It and the surrounding area was piled high with books with names like Graves of the Great - Where Are They Now? and Death-Dates of the Deadly and Dangerous. In the table's center sat the three boxes they'd retrieved from the first task, arranged in a rough triangle so that their three matching Thestral carvings faced out.
Taryn scowled at them in annoyance. Thestrals could only been seen after one saw death, and all these had shown up the same day, so looking up the deaths of October 1st made some sense. But after all this work.... "Ah think we're hittin' this the wrong way. There's gotta be something else to it."
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Vex hadn't said anything in a while, simply slumped forward his face was laying flat on the table in front of him. He had to agree that this was seemingly impossible. But then again, it's not like they were given much to go with. Yesterday he noticed an image of a thestral on the box, checking with the others, theirs all had it too. And they all assumed that it meant it was a clue on how to open it.
"What else is there, though?" Vex asked, still face down. "Thestrals can only be seen by someone who's witnessed death. Everything about them has to do with death." Death, death, death. That's all they had to go on. A damned thestral. He let out a sigh and rolled over, causing his body to slip from his seat onto the ground where he now lay on his back, arms out stretched.
"I give up for now." He finally said, still laying on the ground. "I still say it has something to do with October," if only it was November. Then he could scream 'remember remember the fifth of November. "If you guys come up with some new idea let me know and I'll get to pondering."
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October meant something vitally important: there were only twenty-nine days left until Halloween. So Mace walked through the common room with one of his infamous cardboard boxes filled with who knows what, plus one black and one orange Pygmy Puff riding on his hat.
That brought him upon the cluster of Salem's champions. The details of this clue solving were all foggy. Though these three had been the ones to fish these boxes out from the webs of giant spiders they may not be the ones competing in the second task. Suppose that made this a team effort until new champions were announced.
"So," Mace began as he slid up next to their table, propping his box of cloth scraps on two stacks of rejected books, "word on the line is that you have Thestral horses as your only clue to open these things." He bent down and feigned intense scrutiny of one of the chests (not actually looking at a side with the Thestral marking) "Remind me what the plan was hoping to accomplish by checking the death days of several hundred people? Looking for a ghost?"
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At the sound of approaching footsteps, Taryn turned her head. With half her face still pressed into the table, she could only see the newcomer from the waist up, but she'd recognize the distant cooing of Pygmy Puffs anywhere.
"Hey Mace," she muttered, and sat up, rubbing her face in her hands. She knew better than to ask what was in the box. Chances were, she didn't want to know. "Thestral's the word of the day, all right. See for yourself."
She turned her box so the thestral marking was clear, not caring whether or not they were 'supposed' to have help with this. It wasn't like the clue would be much help to the second-round Champions if the first-rounders kept it all to themselves. Besides, as she'd pointed out repeatedly over the course of the task, Salem was a team.
"Pretty things, ain't they? Only showed up yesterday. Since you can't see 'em 'til you've seen death, we figured people who died on the first might be a clue. A password or a location or something. But we got nothing." Taryn frowned again and leaned down to stare the carving in the eye. "I don't know guys, maybe it's something about how it's shaped? Where it's looking? But it's not looking at anything, it's just there. Where are we supposed to go from this?"
The last question was delivered to the box itself but, as always, it remained quiet.