RP 46 - A Grim Discovery

RP Date: 2026-10-13

Location: Lake of Life

Participants: Morgane, Rory

Summary

When a chance meeting turns into a classic whodunnit discussion--or does Morgane already know?!

This archive was published after approval by all listed participants.

Roleplay

Rory is standing at the edge of the shallow grave. This wasn't part of his look-for-Morgane plan initially, but the smell of the person down there is almost overwhelming, and he can't help but be drawn to look at them. Now pale-faced and a little sick-looking, he kicks some loose dirt into the grave over it.

Morgane looks at Corpse.

Morgane is headed to the Lake to take up her usual duties here. She has found a fresh gown to wear these days, a brocade emerald fabric with golden embroidery, but her elegant appearance doesn't mean that she isn't working. After all, Morgane loves her charity. (That's because she's a faerie and enjoys watching people spawn traumatically at the Lake, it thrills her, but she is also technically helping, her motivations for doing so are simply quite private.) She is carrying a wicker basket filled with towels to the table and chair she has set up to 'welcome' new arrivals. Seeing Rory a ways away, she decides to make a small detour in his direction, her step growing hurried - she even poses the basket on the ground to sprint - as she catches sight of his expression. "What is going on?" she demands, her voice quite shrill as she draws close. The sight of the body causes her to grow wild-eyed, and she claps a hand to her mouth to stifle a scream, likewise growing ashen beside Rory. Her gaze swings between him, the body, the lake, and then back to him again. She has done the mental calculus as to how she thinks this development happened, but for now, she must play her part. She flinches a few steps back. A silence unspools. "I am very frightened," she says, and she means of him.

Rory continues to kick loose dirt over the body. It patters down like rainfall down on the corpse. Only the approach of Morgane seems to deter him, and he watches her silently for a heartbeat or two. She looks like one of those old-timey noblewomen from the paintings in Hallow Manor, the ones that would move and occasionally speak. He scratches at the side of his neck. "Don't be. I didn't do it." He shoves his hands into the pockets of his coat. Who could have? Axe-girl? No, the body was whole. Ordinarily he might consider that the guy had just washed up, had a heart attack and keeled over, but someone had thrown him in here, and this shallow grave looked more like a halfhearted attempt at concealment than any kind of funeral arrangement. Unlike her, Rory is wearing the same clothes he came in on, well, mostly, but they are clean, and looks slightly hungover. He peers at her with dark eyes. "I meant to ask you about something though, if you aren't already too traumatised."

Morgane does indeed look exactly like one of those old timey noblewomen. She is doesn't think that Rory did it, either. First of all, he voted anti human sacrifice. Second of all, she is fairly certain ... that Hela Emma did it, but this being an Among Us situation Morgane believes the move is to slowly act less fearful, even if he plainly isn't acting dangerous toward her. She stays where she is, but she observes: "Admittedly it smells very bad over where you are, I suppose it would be odd for you to return to the scene of the crime so long after it." Her gaze flicks to the corpse once more, barely visible in its shallow grave. "I don't really know what to do," she admits. "This is very traumatic, but our lives are very traumatic and I'm afraid I'm having a hard time processing what has happened." Her heart is doing little excited somersaults. Emma killed someone! And nobody knows that she did it except her! How exciting! "We should tell everyone immediately," she suggests. "I'm sorry, you had a question?"

Rory returns to kicking loose dirt over the body, compelled by some unknown or unnamed instinct to do so. "Yeah," he agrees. "Yeah, they are. I suppose we could always check him for identification--" Or drugs. "But I'm not climbing down in there." He scratches at his neck some more. "Or you could go find a shovel and help finish burying him before something out of those trees decides its hungry." Something compels him to look at her, perhaps that excitement that he mistakes for apprehension. "Why? They're scared enough already. What's the point of winding them up?" More scratching. Itch itch itch. Those old scars are starting to redden from the continued contact.

Morgane looks at Corpse.

Morgane cranes her neck to peer a bit at the body, as if doing so might further allow her to provide some insight. She does not, in fact, provide further insight. Indeed, her excitement should easily be mistaken for apprehension, or just general froth at the situation, which is out of the ordinary. (Though again, their lives are, by definition at this point, out of the ordinary. They just had a town hall about whether to human sacrifice someone, such are the topics of the day out here in Grimwych.) It's a pity that Rory doesn't want to stoke mass panic by announcing to everyone that they've found a body by the Lake. Well, honestly who could blame him. It doesn't bother Morgane all that much. She rather likes the idea of being in a little conspiracy with him. "You think we should try to cover it up and solve the murder ourselves?" she asks him. "Wait - I suppose ..." She covers her mouth and approaches him, eyeing the body. Her voice comes out muffled when she speaks next, "Can you see any signs of impact, like an attack, or do you think perhaps this person merely drowned?" she glances up at him. "Am I making any sense, I feel the fact of the shallow grave is notable."

Rory stares down at the body some more and then forces himself to be still; scratching hand and dirt-kicking foot alike. The apprehension coming from Morgane puts him a little more at ease; it's the first normal-esque vibe he's gotten from the woman whose theatrics put his nervs on edge. "He looks pretty whole. I'd have thought he just washed up this way if not for the grave." His face is drawn, and he studies the corpse a little longer. "I think it's unusual that nothing has tried to eat it, and the lack of impact. I'd be more worried if he'd been hit upside the head, or axed." Or shot. "But fi he just washed up, why go through the trouble of trying to bury him? The grave is more evidence that someone did kill him than anything." Someone too weak or in too much of a hurry to go find a shovel and do the job properly, or without the magical resources to do so, or without the magical resources to dismember the body and turn one several-foot hole into several small and unnoticeable holes. "There's no blood at all."

Morgane nods, breathing out of her mouth. The body does smell rather rank. She crouches carefully in her gown and studies it at closer range. She is curious to find out how Hela feeds, but it doesn't seem immediately apparent. "I don't really see what happened to him," she says, and then accidentally inhales some of the stench, and gags. She abruptly stands up, giving her some distance from the smell once more. Rory is talking about how the body should have been dismembered. He is not wrong. And whatever Hela had done, it doesn't leave a perceptible trace. How fascinating. "Indeed," says Morgane in response to all of Rory's observations. "It seems we likely have a killer in our midst. Although curious they wouldn't have at least tried to open the portal. Grim of me to say, I know." She backs away. "I will get a shovel." Little does she know that burying the body further is ineffectual, for whatever reason at this time. It will simply unbury itself when they leave.

Rory can't contain himself anymore and kicks another heap of topsoil over the torso of the corpse. Despite his efforts, it doesn't seem to get too covered. He scratches his neck again. Maybe it's Lucian's mala cosa, some unseen thing that feeds on fear. If the guy just sits out here, someone is going to find it. Word is going to get around. "Provably several," he replies gloomily to her assessment of killers. "Some worlds are harder places than others, and I've seen plenty of people out and about with swords and axes."

Morgane says nothing to the fact that they are possibly sharing a little village with a whole host of murderers. (She hopes it is the case, honestly. How fun.) "I will be right back," she announces, and with a, "Good luck keeping watch," she then she lightly jogs in the direction from which she arrived, grabbing her basket of towels on the way. There would be no Grimwych welcoming station today. She disappears for a time, leaving Rory at the mercy of being discovered a second time chilling with a corpse. But, presumably he isn't, and eventually she comes jogging back, looking lightly luminous from the exertion but still elegant, a shovel in her hand. She hands it to him immediately and fans herself with that hand. "No one came?" she queries, glancing around them.

Rory spends the time Morgane is gone with his wand out, attempting to carve a grave-sized hole out of the lakeshore with it. He does all the proper waving and spellcraft, but only a couple of handfuls of earth rise. The place appears resistant to any kind of true tampering, and by the time Morgane returns with her shovel he is looking a little perturbed. He puts the wand away and accepts the shovel. "Not yet. Maybe they're all having a day in." Siince the earth he'd been trying to magic is already a little disturbed, he plunges the blade of the spade into the earth, grips it properly, and lifts the first shovelful of earth out of the ground. This is going better than sorcery, and the adrenalin of physical labor clears out some of the lingering hangover misery. "So about that journal," he continues, speaking alongside his second shovelful of dirt. "Where exactly did you find it?"

Morgane snorts in response to the concept of a 'day in' in a place such as Grimwych, and then inadvertently inhales the smell of dead body in doing so and gags again. She clears her throat noticeably to try to cover it up, determined to be ladylike even in gagging around the stench of a corpse. Rory beside her begins digging. "The journal," she explains, in response to his question, "I found it inside the shrine on the top of the hill. It was tucked away and somehow not rained upon." She fluffs her skirts around her, an act which creates a little waft of fresh air. It helps the situation. She feels less sweaty. "I'm afraid to say that I've been just nosily going through all the things I encounter here without regard for whom they once belonged to." She glances around them. "I'm a little nervous somebody is going to come up on us burying this body." She offers Rory a sheepish smile. "I suppose I have been one to stoke mass panic in the past but I see your wisdom in this instance. It helps nothing."

Rory shrugs his shoulders and shovels out a few more heaps of soil. "I've spent a lot of time up there. It's an interesting place. Can you read French naturally or did you find some way to Translate it?" Rory is not lady like; he is a man at work and it is clear by how efficiently he moves dirt even with his average physical shape that he has done this kind of work before.

Morgane continues to keep an eye on their surroundings, alert to movements that might tip them off they're being observed. "I could read the French naturally. Lucian pointed out that this may be a clue as to my home world," she admits. A particularly rancid waft of stench comes their way and she gags into the shoulder of her gown. "I'm afraid the wet lake bank did this body no preservation favors."
!

Rory inhales a fresh waft of corpse stench and without ceremony leans over and vomits over the handle of the shovel and onto the grass. What comes up is mostly old rum and maybe a little bit of sausage roll. This doesn't appear to shame him any, but he waits until the nausea has passed to stand up and start digging again, slower this time. "You might be from the same world we're from. I can't speak a bit of French, but never tried reading any. I was about to ask to borrow that to see if I could find a way to translate it literally? that's literally as it can be translated just so we're sure human sacrifice was what she meant."

Morgane averts her eyes when Rory vomits. "Yes, I am thinking it is possible, perhaps even likely, unless languages are standardized across worlds," she admits, about being from the same world as Lucian and Rory. It must be said that at this point in her life Morgane has had this conversation a few times, across a few Grimwych cycles. (Perhaps even with Estelle, the author of the journal herself. Unless, of course, there was never an Estelle. To be honest, her writer hasn't decided, and it also doesn't matter.) Of Morgane, it must be said that while she has pretended to spawn in Grimwych more than once now, that really is the only safe way to deal with her situation and new arrivals. For she hasn't been pretending when she has said that she truly doesn't remember a time before Grimwych. She is a faerie and therefore an enjoyer of mischief and mostly only capable of feigning empathy, not truly feeling it, but she is a living creature who enjoys the company of others rather than solitude and she has her own curiosities which is to say she too has recently pondered the mystery of why she knows French. Could it be? She existed before Grimwych? "I can leave it for you at the post office," she tells Rory. "I would rather you not be in my space, if that's alright." She glances around them once more. "How long do you think you have left until it is done?"

Rory feels slightly better after vomiting and continues with his work. "It shouldn't take me more than a day to look at the Journal.  Unless you mean this." As he waves his hand towards the hole, one of the sides collapses, and it starts refilling with dirt again. Rory curses quietly. "? the digging might take a little longer.  This place is fighting me about it."

Morgane is observing the same thing.  A silence unspools between them as they watch together.  For her part, Morgane doesn't look surprised, but at this point that isn't in and of itself surprising.  They have all been here in Grimwych for long enough to expect the unexpected.  She has drawn the same conclusion Rory has.  "It seems so," she concludes, glancing at him.  "I think we had better leave in that case."  Waiting around in the company of a dead body could lead people to draw the wrong conclusions.  "Should we tell the others or let someone else?  If this place is going to insist, it is inevitable that everyone knows soon."  A beat.  "Unless something at night comes out and scavenges, I suppose.  Either way.  We should go."

Rory stops digging; the smell of upturned earth is starting to bother him almost as much as the stink of the corpse, and passes the shovel back to Morgane. "Yeah, let's get out of here. If something else is supposed to happen to it then who were we to get in the way?" He shrugs a bit. "I'm not saying shit. you can be the bearer of bad news if you like, just be careful, you don't get axed for it."

Morgane cuts quite a figure in her brocade evening gown and shovel.  "I think I'll let others discover it for themselves too," she says, thinking of Hela and idly looking forward to their next encounter.  "I'm not the most popular person in this place of late, I've learned, not surprising, considering."  She gathers her skirts in her hand.  "Best if we not walk together.  I'll go first.  I'll post you the journal," she says, before heading off, toward town.

Rory now that he's through vomiting and digging and absorbing secrets and trauma takes a look at the figure Morgane cuts in that gown.  Not bad.  Not bad at all.  Potentially out of his league, but she wouldn't be the first fancy lady he's set his sights on.  He nods a little, and then watches her depart.