germany ♔ and despite everything i'm still human

[behindcloseddoors]

♬ human - daughter

WHO || Gold, Faye, Emma, Astrid, Mars [closed]
WHAT || The Knights investigate a mysterious town with no magic
WHERE || Heimbach, Germany
WHEN || May 31st, 2014 [forward dated]
HOW || Actionspam

[The Knights have been tasked by Sir Hasmed to investigate accounts of a strange village in Germany where magic is rumored not to function whatsoever.  The town of Heimbach is located in the hills, close to a river, and is watched over by a castle on a rocky outcrop in the center of the town.  The village is peaceful and quiet, the weather serene, and nothing sinister whatsoever about the idyllic view as they pull up their car on the main street, in front of several small shops.]

Comments

[undealt]

[Thanks to small town Germany being full of dumbfucks, Team American Tourist arrive at the bar Astrid and Mars are currently staked out in with some information to share. Gold glances at the place in distaste.]

Let's hope the locals were forthcoming. [Not that they don't have plenty to go on now, but it would be nice to have an in-depth local perspective too. Something paperwork might have glossed over or outright omitted.

That whole "don't use magic thing" is getting under his skin as much as it is Faye's and he's determined to figure out why even more now.]

[pathology]

[astrid just … reiterates what she told mars.] I talked to a couple different people. The first guy said magic stopped working when a construction crew came in to fix the quarry. He made it sound like it didn't seem to need fixing to begin with? He told me that sometimes magic works, but weird stuff happens, like plants dying or the sky changing colors. He mentioned this guy named Franz going crazy, so I looked into that. And … ran into his dad, because there are only five people in the entire freaking town, I guess. Whatever. His dad told me that Franz has his little accident a few days ago when he was by the quarry with some friends trying out a levitation spell or something I guess? And now he talks nonsense and freaks out over everything. Which is why I'm imposing a magic embargo on all of you. We don't need Franz the sequel.

[uncurse]

Construction for a quarry. [ she looks over at faye, then pulls the folder out of wherever she's been hiding it—probably in the back of her pants tbh under her shirt like she wanted to get that shit out of the town hall and it's not jacket weather idk what you want from her—and hands it over to astrid. ] They outsourced construction on it. Faye found excavation orders. I'm thinking we should head down to the quarry and take a look for ourselves.

[reallywicked]

[Look at Faye and Astrid finding out all this shit. Go team. Faye still hates this magic ban. Ugh.]

Yeah they busted the arcane water main or something.

[undealt]

[bitterly] They most certainly busted something.

[and then, in his team leader voice:]

Once we've confirmed that the source of the problem is in the quarry, we'll send word back to the castle for further instructions.

[charismapotion]

Then we had better head off then.

[ Mars finally spoke hands in his pockets now standing not to far from Astrid.]

[uncurse]

[ sounds legit. she starts for the door, turning to look at gold. for once, she finds herself wishing rumplestiltskin were in there somewhere. ]

You ever heard of something like this? Not just an anti-magic zone, but one that causes magic to backfire?

[pathology]

[while everyone else talks, astrid looks over all the papers emma gave her to see if there's anything special for her elf german eyes to see.]

[undealt]

Not backfire, no. Up until that, I assumed we might have been dealing with something heralding the Eldritch Tide. [He gives Faye a sympathetic look.] But this is something else- something decidedly more dangerous.

[charismapotion]

It has got to be something big to do this. I mean there are different kinds of magic and for all the magic to be void here and fry Franz's brain. It's clearly bad.

[uncurse]

Yeah, well, we're not here to stop it. [ she wants that clear right now, since they're making moral judgments on it already. ] We're here to figure out a way to use it to stop a curse.

[behindcloseddoors]

[ astrid would note that the paperwork seems to have been passed through rather quickly, indicating perhaps that the town was in need of money, since there were rather large sums offered in exchange for the rights to the quarry. the reasons offered up for excavating the area involved looking for a precious mineral of some kind believed to be found under the town. only trace amounts had ever even been found, but the person who put in the request seemed confident that if they dug down deep enough, they would hit quite a bit. to that end, a large amount of construction seems to have been done creating a system of tunnels below the 'quarry'. ]

[undealt]

Don't forget you're dealing with a woman whose magic is her entire being, Ms. Swan. What they're describing isn't a fate I would wish on a homo magi.

[uncurse]

And being tricked by a curse into loving somebody is better? I don't think so. At least she'd have her mind.

[pathology]

Uh, until she tries to use magic and Franzes out? [she stares up from the papers at both of them with a deadpan expression.] The excavating was for some kind of precious mineral. These people, uh, Luckman Industries, seem really thirsty for it. They installed all these tunnels underneath the quarry trying to get to it.

[uncurse]

[ moving on from the amara argument and onto what's relevant— ]

Great. [ :| ] We'll need to grab supplies before we go, then—flashlights, climbing gear, food in case it's a long hike. We should probably get some of whatever this mineral is to send back to Hasmed. This quarry's definitely our source: they might have unearthed something.

[pathology]

[she makes a face like a skunk crawled in the middle of their football huddle and shit itself and died. SHE DOESN'T WANT TO GO ON A FUCKING UNGERGROUND NATURE HIKE.]

[undealt]

[what astrid's brackets said.]

And here I thought we were through with adventures underground.

[uncurse]

Apparently not.

[ she shrugs, unbothered, then turns to astrid. ]

We're gonna need directions to—I don't know, a walmart or something. Multipurpose equipment. [ she looks at faye, mars, and astrid. ] Last time we looked into this, we wound up in tunnels too. It gets close, and dark, and hard to orient yourself down there, so if anybody's got issues with those things, now's a good time to speak up so it's not an unhappy surprise halfway down.

[pathology]

[she looks at emma like wow bitch you done lost your damn mind. WALMART??? SERIOUSLY????] You know we're in Europe, right? Not Alabama or wherever the fuck you're from? [WALMART????] We'd have better luck stealing gear from the locals. [and, just to be a showoff snootypants:] Faye and I fought dinosaurs in a sewer in our last mission. [see she even included u faye. hashtag thoughtful.]

[undealt]

I'll let Ms. Swan tell you about the dragon in Scotland. [THE DRAGON THAT WAS THE SIZE OF A CAT.] At least there's not likely to be goblins on this trek.

[Basically he's 100% on Team Let's Steal Shit From the Locals, but he wants to get Emma's goat.]

[pathology]

Snowflake? [SHE FUCKING KNOWS, GOLD. she knows. at least she knows about the dragon. idr if she knows about the goblins but her and lila have definitely talked about the logistics of keeping an adorable cat-sized scottish dragon as a pet.]

[uncurse]

Can we stop comparing tunnel missions and focus? We are not robbing anyone! Just ask the bartender if there's a hardware store in town somewhere. [ that'll get them flashlights and climbing equipment, at least. they'll worry about food later ... ]

[pathology]

Ugh, but stealing's so much more fun. [she makes a ~put upon~ face as she swivels away and goes to ask the bartender where the nearest hardware store is.]

[charismapotion]

I think Astrid's right, we'd likely have better luck just taking what we need and if the Quarry is already build there is likely things already laying around.

[ He doesn't look as optimistic as normal mostly because the fact he cant use his magic is annoying at the moment. He could make enough light for them normally.]