World Tree MUSH

    The cities huddled around the San Francisco Bay never truly sleep, but there is an eerie sort of pall that hangs over them when the fog blankets them. Sounds falling off quickly, light becoming bright glares in the vision, smells dampened by the wet air. Shadows of people walking through the fog here and there. Even though it is the onset of summer in California, the fog keeps the streets cool and moist, tinging everything with dirty gray. 
    As is usual with ghostly matters, the investigation group finds themselves in a graveyard that settled into several hills, terraced steps punctuated at regular intervals by worn headstones and grim monuments to lives past. Aurelia leads them into the dreary place, not in her transformed state but wearing a light jacket, jeans, and a long-sleeved shirt. She scratches her almost-white hair, trying to make sense of what might be in the fog. "This is the place Dorothy said would have the most ghosts." She turns to her companions. "Can anyone here see them?"

     Drogo, it should be said, is not technically part of this group. He just wandered up with a couple of his goons, mumbled about how he's totally here to investigate ghosts and definitely not to go graverobbing, and awkwardly tagged along. He recognizes Aurelia, he thinks, but no other familiar faces around here.

"It's not the ghosts I'm worried about, it's anyone else out here who might catch us, uh... investigating." the bear says in his rumbling voice, checking each tombstone they pass for anything valuable left as a memorial. Sometimes people leave jewels and stuff! Besides, it's not like any of these graves belong to /his/ people.

Speaking of, Drogo's minions, all three of them that followed him here, are visibly quaking in their boots, keeping close to their boss and warily watching the spirits flitting through the fog. None of them dares make a peep.

    Serrah stares blearily at the surrounding graves, and yawns. "Need to figure out how I'm gonna deal with this sleep shit," she mutters to herself. She's visible tense, however, given what happened the last time there was an unusual fog in this particular Blossom ...

    She smirks faintly at Aurelia. "Only Holly's, so far," she says dryly. "Uh, wait, I think I can see ..." Her voice trails off, and she furrows her brow and points. "Yeah, over there!"

    ... Her hand is shaking slightly.

    The last time several people here saw Tirsiak, she was eating candy.

    Today, she is definitely not eating candy.

    Spiritual senses detect a definite presence in the graveyard - specifically, over by a tree surrounded by bushes. It's not the presence of a ghost, but something both spirit and very much alive. There's a rustle, a shake of the tree, and - to very keen ears - a squeak of rodenty terror that is swiftly cut off with a crunch.

    The spiritual pressure seems to recede a little bit... and Tirsiak hovers up out of the bush, holding what used to be a squirrel.

"Yes, there's ghosts all over the place! I mean besides Servis and Lavaux! You can't see them?" Holly was trying to hide what had happened to her underneath a cheerful facade. The witch was a ghost magnet after all.

 "It would be best not to disturb the dead with all the ghosts present," Holly hasn't caught Drogo's comment but Servis had.

"Is Dorothy a spiritualist? I would love to meet her!" Holly's always glad to meet others that share the same interests as her. "A nice padded coffin and a good book?" Hearing the crunching sound, she looks up a bit and sees Tirsiak, "Oh it's just the girl from the mall...maybe you should cook that before eating it?"

    Those who can sense ghosts sense a number of ghosts approaching that seem... off. They're sensed before they would be visible, and they seem to be converging on Drogo and his minions, possibly sensing the big black bear's intentions. The sight that greets anyone who moves to intercept is a horror show, the ghosts' humanish forms appearing to lack any parts but skin and skeletons, a sort of hollow body. The sound of them moving is a sort of scuffling slap at each step.
    Aurelia looks where Holly gestures. "Oh, she's a spirit mage, yeah. Maybe you'll get to meet her when she's home from college... What's that noise?"

     Drogo has no spiritual senses, but anyone can feel that chill up their spine when danger is drawing near. Just as he's about to pluck a pearl necklace from one grave, he suddenly freezes in place, sweat beading on his brow as he glances up toward those ghostly hollow figures. With a sheepish grin, he slowly tugs the upper edge of the necklace donward, making it form a little heart.

"Haha, there, see? Just... just sprucing it up a little. Adding some extra love to the gesture." he says with a nervous chuckle, standing up and showing his paws to demonstrate the lack of stolen goods. This same grin is then flashed toward Servis, before Tirsiak makes her entrance. To try and lighten things up, he comments, "Well, at least some of the ghosts here are easy on the eyes."

    Serrah's eyes flit sideways. She certainly knows that life-y sensation. Aaaand, yep, there's Tirsiak. (She's considerably less ... dead than the last time the two met. Still got red eyes, though, and her fangs are there albeit smaller. And dressed like a scraggly mall goth instead of Girl Dracula.)

    She does a sort of double-take at Holly. "Hey, uh ... you okay?" she says uncertainly. "It's kinda ... whoa."

    She frowns as the ghosts start converging on Drogo. She has her sports bag, of course, just in case there's anyone need of a good baseballin' behind this incident, but if the ghosts are insubstantial ...

    Eh, what the heck. She's sleep-deprived enough that she's even less prone to thinking things through than usual.

    Suddenly, she's standing in next to Drogo, glaring with her hands on her hips. She's just abruptly there. She was part of Aurelia's group one proverbial frame of animation, and in front of Drogo the next, like a video that just skipped ahead.

    "Y'know what, I was gonna try to intervene," she says flatly, "but when I saw what you were doing, I decided it's better to ask: what the fuck, dude." (She doesn't seem remotely surprised or bothered by the fact that he's a bear.) "Do you want curses? Cuz that's how you get curses."

>> SUMMARY[Serrah Delany] >> "Can you tell me where the nearest Hot Topic is!? ZA WARUDO!"

    Tirsiak stares at Holly for a moment, then takes a very deliberate bite out of her... snack, before just dropping it to the floor.

    It's not wasteful. Nature will reclaim it.

    She glances at the ghost for a moment, but doesn't pay them any mind - although a sharp eye will notice the fur on her tail frizzing up a bit. "Why are you here? Why is a bear robbing the dead?" She glowers at Serrah. "Why are you alive again?"

"It's kind of complicated, like explaining to the floating girl what's going on." Lavaux answers to Serrah for Holly.

 "Yes, she's pretty cute, but so Servis and Lavaux! College? I don't think I've seen her around there before..." The witch has a bit of an odd meaning of cute.

 "I think she goes to a different school, Holly." Servis clairifes for her.

 "Oh!" Her attention then turns towards towards Drogo after Tirsiak points out what's he doing. "Stop that, you're upsetting them. Are you the one that's been disturbing the dead?!" Holly's voice quickly turns towards anger as she points her candy shaped staff towards Drogo. It would explain the strange activity that Dorothy pointed out.

    The hollow men are advancing, zombie-like towards the living people in the area. Their mouth-holes seem to be saying things, but no words are coming out, only something akin to disgusting lip-smacking. The air is unnaturally cold around them, making the ambient moisture have a biting quality.
    Aurelia approaches Drogo, but she is cut-off by the intervention of the hollow men, who loom out of the fog like ghastly shadows. She shrieks, startled as she ducks under the swipes of their clumsy claws.

     Drogo's thick fur and natural fat reserves normally keep him quite toasty even on nights like this, but there's something about the cold emanating from these guys that sets a chill even in his bones. Backing away from the hollow men, the bear looks around for his cohorts, only to find them already booking it out of the cemetery. "Hey! Get back here, you bozos! Safety in numbers, we talked about this!"

It seems like the ghosts aren't the only ones he has to worry about though, as he finds himself under scrutiny by the others present as well. "N-no, I just got here! I haven't taken anything! Yet!" he hurriedly explains, paws still raised as he tries to put some more distance between him and the encroaching crowd.

    Serrah smirks faintly at Tirsiak. "Because I like it better this way," she says, almost drunkenly. And then she realizes that this isn't how Tirsiak actually meant the question, and just, uh, leaves it as a deliberate comedic misinterpretation. "Sorry if I didn't, uh, sacrifice a goat for ... myself."

    She nods at Lavaux, makes a mental note to follow up on this which she will undoubtedly forget, then turns back to Drogo. "Okay, listen here, you -- whoa, what."

    The ghosts are starting to advance. Serrah glides backwards several inches above the ground, and reaches for her baseball bag. "Uh ... anyone know if these assholes are solid enough to, uh, to hit?" she says uneasily. "Actually, uh. Sacrificing one baseball to test!"

    She then hurls a baseball at the nearest spirit at approximately three-quarters of the speed of a major league pitcher.

    Tirsiak slowly floats to the ground, not taking her eyes of Serrah for a worrying length of time, before she turns her attention to the 'hollow men'. "...Dead things should not harass the living," she says in a firm, commanding tone.

    When that obviously doesn't work, she sighs. "...I can't eat shades," she complains.

    And then there's a blur of speed as Tirsiak rushes right up to one of the ghosts and aims to take its head off with a roundhouse kick. "Cease," she commands. It probably still fails to work. She only has authority over shades of things she killed herself.

>> SUMMARY[Tirsiak] >> Tirsiak tries divine authority, then immediately resorts to violence instead.

If Drogo wasn't the one causing this, then who was? That was now what Holly was wondering. She rather not harm the ghosts directly if it possible though. She points her staff away from the bear and instead at the ground. A lit jack-o-lantern poofs into existance with a cloud of orange smoke. She was hoping that the fire would scare the undead away from them without incidient.

    Those the hollow men touch feel a chill that goes to the bone, and feel the despair of the ghosts, their hate of the living. Envy. And other dark emotions. Flashes of regrets and things left undone. The physical attacks cause holes in their sagging skin and the snap of bones inside, and but for causing pause as they recover from the inpacts, seem undeterred by these attacks.
    Finally able to roll out from the awful things that've clustered around her. She draws her sword, which only glows dimly in the foggy light of day, though anyone with a nose for magic knows that the sword seems to have anti-magic properties. At this, the hollow men shy away from Aurelia.

     Drogo doesn't bother responding to Serrah, nor does he attack any of the spirits. He's shivering, whether from the cold or from fright is unclear, but he's continuing to back away... until he bumps into a small Asian-style shrine, and nearly jumps a full three feet in the air with a yelp. Whirling around, his good eye immediately locks onto a small jade figurine inside the shrine, and he swipes it without even thinking before stuffing it into a pouch and taking off on all fours into the fog.

"Sorry, this is more than I bargained for! See you all again never, hopefully!" he calls out over his shoulder, his voice fading quickly.

    Tirsiak crosses her arms in an oddly human manner. "...Didn't work. Not surprised." She does not appear to be scared at all. These things... probably are not a threat to her, or at least she doesn't think they are. "Normal shade emotions. Nothing strange. Why are they active?"

    She glances over to Aurelia, then edges away a little. That sword is giving her the wibblies.

Holly cringes a bit at the negative emotion, she's not in-touch with the undead as her mother but she knows they're not in a good mood. Servis and Lavux float next to her doing their best they can do to protect the witch from the ghosts, "I hate to admit it, but the bear might have the right idea. It seems like retreating might be the best idea for now." Servis can't help but to note they're getting overwhelmed.

"Yeah, I wouldn't want one of them to possess Holly." Lavaux has to agree wondering if one of them should climb inside of her before the others have a chance to.

She doesn't really have any way of fighting them off after all. "I could try taking control of them, but it's a long shot..." She did it before with Salome, but she had been quite upset at the time as well. Then again the anti-magic sword isn't helping her mood as she begins to feel a bit wary.

    Huh. O ... kay ...

    Serrah backs away and moves closer to Aurelia. Adrenaline is starting to pierce through the sleep-fog, and she frowns. "Okay, that didn't do much," she says, too busy worrying about the hollow men to concern herself with Drogo fleeing the scene. "Any ideas? I don't have any objections to that plan, Holly, given how well it worked out for me ..."

    She floats several centimeters off the ground, another baseball in hand, but she tries not to move too far away from Aurelia.

    The hollow men are staying away from Aurelia as she waves around her mageblade like one might wave a torch at a bug swarm. "If I knew why they were active, I'd be doing something else!" she says to Tirsiak. To Holly: "I don't care, they need to be put down." There's increasingly more of the hollow men emerging from the fog within the cemetary.

"They might have unfinished business! How would like it if someone put you down before you could finish your dreams!" Holly's starting to get upset, "Or someone could be forcing them to do this against their will!" She begins to focus on the hollow men hoping they can resolve this without hurting them. "I'm sorry you have to go through this, but I'll try to make sure that everything's okay!" There's an orange surge of magic around Holly as she pushes her staff into the ground.

>> GAME >> Holly Winn spends an Edge for: Trying to put the dead at peace!

    Serrah frowns, watching the undead to see what kind of effect Holly has, if any. "Hey, if things go south, I can get us outta dodge like the bear-guy with my time-stop," she says. "... Probably not as far as we could if I was alone, but, uh. Yeah. Need to be touching me the whole time, though," she adds for Tirsiak's benefit.

    Tirsiak keeps her arms crossed. She glances at Holly's spell with interest for a moment, then just floats deeper into the graveyard. Maybe she can find out where they're coming from. "Run if you want," she says, in a dismissive tone. "I don't run."

    As far as Tirsiak and Holly can tell from their spirit senses, these hollow men are different from the ethereal ghosts that are hanging around in the graveyard. There's a darkness to them that is empowering them, fed by their own negative emotions and unfinished business. These ghosts were consumed by the negative emotions in life, and some kind of spiritual tether is attached to them. 
    Holly's summoning does... something. The hollow men stop in their tracks, and simply all turn to stare at Holly with their empty eyes, lips still moving wordlessly.
    Aurelia uuuuhs. "Okay, now what?"

    Nope. No apparent source. They just seemed to be spawning at random from the fog.

    Tirsiak furrows her brow with annoyed confusion. "I hate this," she grumbles to herself. "This is too much thinking."

    Growling a little, ears pointing down and forward, she tried to gauge where this 'tether' was coming from. Maybe she could follow it. Or it would prove fruitless like every other idea she had tried.

    At least they were holding still now.

"Um..." Holly hadn't expected to work as she thinks for a moment, "I guess we follow them to see why they're awake to begin with. Go back to where you came from!" She instructs them, hopefully it wasn't the fog that spawned them or this would get confusing real fast. If that's the case maybe they can find who made the fog at least?

    Serrah side-eyes Tirsiak as she announces that she doesn't run. "Just, uh, be careful, all right?" she says cautiously. She isn't sure what this girl actually is, but she doesn't want to show disrespect just in case she's some kind of Powerful Spirit. Humanoids with antlers tend not to belong to mortal species, at least in her world.

    She glances between Aurelia and Holly, and nods in approval at Holly's order, patting the witch's shoulder appreciatively.

    And then she yawns.

    The tethers lead deep into the cemetary, all in one direction. And as the hollow men ponderously follow Holly's command, they follow the direction of the tethers, something that Tirsiak and the others can follow to find out the cause of this strange happening.
    Aurelia will stalk along behind the hollow men, sword still out in case something decides to pop out. "I guess we follow them?"

    Serrah's words cause Tirsiak to pause. Be careful?

    Why is a human warning her to be careful? Why does she care?

    Tirsiak gives Serrah a curious look. She does not know what to make of this. She just floats there for a second, then turns and resumes following the weird spiritual tether. She seems far less annoyed than she was just a moment ago.

Holly follows the others as she does the best she can to keep the hollow men under her control wondering where they would head. This is taking a fair amount of effort on her part. "This is kind of confusing..." She nods in agreement with Tirsiak wondering why someone would do this.

    Serrah nods, standing staying a pace or two behind Aurelia, who clearly has the best anti-monster weapon at the moment. Briefly, she stops time to pick up the discarded baseball she threw before. "Almost lost this," she mutters under her breath.

    Still, she sticks with the group. "How're you holding up, Holly?" she asks quietly. "Or, uh, wait, I'm not distracting you from concentrating on keeping this up now, am I?" Beat. "Shutting up now."

     The hollow men seem passive as they plod back to where they came from. To Aurelia, and anyone who can't sense magic, there's nothing on the grassy knoll except a particulary ornate headstone. The name has worn away with time, the moss and time having eaten away the engraving like a hungry ghost.
    As the hollow men one by one climb back down into the dirt of the grave, those who can see the spirit world see a long dark path winding itself into the depths of some other worldly place, where the sky is midnight blue and adorned with a scattering of old red stars.

    Tirsiak once again crosses her arms once she comes to a stop and peers down into the depths. "...I swear, if this is just the work of a human shaman, I am going to eat him," she growls under her breath.

    She wanders over to a nearby tree, leaps up into it, and descends holding a branch that she's already whittling with her claws. She procures a rock from the ground, ties it to the branch with plant fibers, and then sets about sharpening it until she has a fairly sturdy-looking spear.

    Then her feet once again touch the ground, and she heads for the pathway down.

"Well, that answers that question, and opens a whole lot more." Lavaux looks down at the grave and the dark path leading into that.

 "I'm fine..." Holly breathes a sigh of relief as she no longer as to control them. "I wonder what's down there, I guess there's only one way to find out!" She does her best to avoid showing too many signs of fatigue after all they would need their strength once they go inside. "Don't get too far ahead, we need to stick together!" She could fly down but figures it would be safer to stay on the path.

    Serrah gives Tirsiak a funny look at that comment, but doesn't remark upon it. Oh yeah, definitely some kind of spirit, most likely some flavor of Ancient And Powerful, too.

    Despite being half undead, Serrah doesn't really have the vision-capability that Tirsiak and Holly have. "I ... guess we're goin' into something, then," she says wryly. Another yawn immediately escapes her.