faderift | player plot: thorns of the rose (2)

Nothing says welcome like a spooky forest full of gnarled trees so ancient that they look like they might just come close to buckling under their own weight. It smells like pine needles and a pervasive, clinging damp. Ferns and moss gross in abundance, creeks flow and bubble, and sometimes there is a tremendous sense of quiet.

Other times, the trees come alive. NBD.

The list of plants characters are looking for is relatively short, but challenging all the same. Some are difficult only because they are so vaguely described, others because they are simply challenging to locate. The first, for example, is only described as a blue power with white stamen that smells of rancid meat and honey. It may grow in bushes, or in vines, or only in the shady parts of riverbanks - accounts vary. The second is called stellae atra, which roughly translates to “poison stars” but doesn’t seem to have a name outside Tevene. The "star" blends into surrounding foliage annoying easily, looks like ivy through the day but at night little red flowers bloom amongst them. The last has something to do with minstrel leaf, and remains a bit puzzling. Who knows what that could be?

Whatever they are, best to grab as much of them as possible - it'd be terribly inconvenient to head back this way.

( OOC; this will be one thread that is GMed! Tagging order isn't strict, but please don't boomerang a bunch so anyone gets left behind. )

Edited 2016-06-23 10:50 (UTC)

While Christine isn't looking forward to smelling the flower that is said to be reminiscent of rotting meat, at least the odor will easily lead them to it. She may be a mage healer, but in her time with the Inquisition, she's slowly been familiarizing herself with herb lore as well. It's good to be well-rounded, especially when a patient requests no magic be used. Therefore, while this mission is about saving the spymaster, it's also a learning experience for Christine. If only these necessary herbs weren't in Ferelden. She's quite all right with the country as a whole, but she's Orlesian and therefore has to pretend she isn't.

"Only in Ferelden would a flower that smells of rotting meat grow." She clicks her tongue and examines the leaves of a nearby bush, because they need three kinds of herbs, and she doesn't want to miss one of the others while waiting for the smell to hit her nose.

"And if we needed something nice-smelling and useless we'd go to Orlais," Alistair says.

It's quiet, musing but not particularly cheerful. He's not in a good mood. But he is trying, for everyone else's sake, not to be a furious storm cloud hanging over an already gloomy setting. Being home--in Ferelden, not for the first time but certainly further east than he's dared since he left--helps, a little. At the moment he's crouched beside a tree, examining a plant he doesn't recognize but that looks odd enough that it ought to have a name. Probably not minstrel leaf, though. It isn't very leafy.

"Maybe they sing," he says, half to himself. "Singing plants wouldn't be the weirdest thing here."

She shoots him a withering look before informing him in a prim manner: "Orlais has an abundance of useful plants. Amrita vein, rashvine nettle, vandal aria, dragonthorn. I could go on, but that is not why we are here." So there.

This journey has yet to show her anything truly weird, but she doesn't know anything about this forest. Tales of the Hero of Ferelden leave much to be desired in Orlais. But this is the least she can do to help Sister Leliana after all the support she's given Christine's research.

"Perhaps the leaf resembles a lute in shape?" she suggests. It's all she can think of at the moment.

"And Fereldan has elfroot, embrium, prophet's laurel, dawn lotus, black lotus ... " Bethany murmured under her breath, as she carefully edged herself around another tree, using her staff as a balance.

She arched an eyebrow over at Christine, before looking over at Alistair, "I thought there was a singing tree here. Or at least a rhyming one." She angled towards him, to peer at the other plant. "Or if it is minstrel, it could look more like a pipe."

"It could just be that it's favoured by minstrels for its effect." Perhaps it amplified the voice if prepared in a certain way, as well as the healing properties they needed it for. Eirlys hopes not, as it will make it even more difficult to find if it looks similar to the other leaves surrounding them. "It's probably wise to take at least one sample of everything, just in case."

"Perhaps something to sooth the throat?" Christine guesses. It seems why a minstrel would take it, at any rate. She gestures for Eirlys to go ahead. "A good idea. It will be easier to compare notes back at Skyhold. There may be books with diagrams of these leaves."

Alistair nods at Bethany--rhyming, no singing, thank the Maker, the rhyming was bad enough--and at Eirlys, who is obviously the brains of this operation. He pulls the plant he's examining up by the roots, just in case, and brings it to her for inspection.

"Dragonthorn," he says, belatedly echoing Christine, as if he's never heard the word before. As if he hasn't lived in Orlais for ten years. He knows what dragonthorn is. But after a moment of consideration, his verdict is, "Sounds made up."

Bethany moved further up the way, kneeling to look at some other bracken on the side of the road. Eirlys had the right idea, so she carefully snipped off what she could find with her blade.

She paused for a moment to glance over at Alistair, before she let out a choked noise. Sure, you might have thought it was a laugh but clearly it was simply Bethany pressing her bandages again. One hand went to her chest, and she cleared her throat.

"...So, what does it look like? Will it help? We might find some here as well."

"Thou dost seem lost, small living things,"
a voice booms, wood creaking and bark rasping as the source of it lumbers closer, sending small shudders through the ground.

"But--" The Elder Tree looms, then, through some branches it has to push apart, very gentle and mindful of its less lively kin, "Learning is a gift wand'ring brings."

It is a tree. A very large, somewhat demonic looking tree, but with very nice foliage. Only slightly skeletal and creepy.

Edited 2016-06-27 03:36 (UTC)

Sina appears like a tiny, green-glowing, dirt-smudged specter, emerging suddenly from a thick bramble patch in the midst of the chattering humans with fistfuls of potentially useful herbs clasped in her filthy gardening gloves. She is staring at the tree, her face alight like a human child's on Feastday, her already large eyes impossibly wide as it speaks to them.
"Andaran atish'an, ha'adahl," she pipes in sweetly, and would sound a lot more mature and Keeper-ly if this clearly weren't the single most exciting moment of her comparatively short life.

Christine has no words for this moment. Not in the common tongue, not in Orlesian; nothing. Is it possible she's hallucinating? Do one of these plants put out a pollen that causes her to see things?

If that's so, and she's also hallucinating Sina speaking to it, she's going to be so embarrassed.

But she's not taking any chances either. She quickly casts a barrier over as many of the group as she can, before looking at the others for help. She has no idea what to do right now.

...a talking tree.

A talking tree.

Even for Bruce that was pretty high on his scale of strange things, and that was saying something.

He supposes he should say something, but his own confusion matches Christine's own in this scenario. He glances towards her and feels the barrier that she casts, taking her cue and doing the same for the rest that she can't reach. After talking trees, its much better to be safe that to be sorry.

"...Non questa merda di nuovo." Zevran murmurs, head tipping back to peer up at that same blasted tree. He'd told Jonas that they should have killed it, but no. Now it lives to rhyme another day, a decade after the fact.

"Stand down. It is friendly." A beat. "Relatively speaking."

Annoying, but friendly. Exhausting, but friendly. Frustrating- but friendly.

In truth the Elder Tree is quite delighted
To see such a mix of small ones to be counted.
He suspects that not since the land was Blighted
And quests to save the land were mounted--

"Wait," he starts, "can it be?
Thou hast met before this Elder Tree?"

He peers, then, and hands held wide
(more branches hanging by his side),

"Some of thee art well remembered, here.
Thou helped clear my oaken heart of fear
For an acorn lost, soul in seed form,
A grief that left me most forlorn.

Welcome then, elves and humans and those of stone,
Thou need not search all alone."

And to Sina he turns,
(The favourite, now, not to be spurned,)

"Youngling, thine love for this forest is strong,
It lives within thee, as a song.
For that these ancient trees are grateful.
-- Perhaps our meeting here is fateful?"
Before our ways part I shall gift thee a song."

Edited (this is my punishment for making poetry part of this mission gdi) 2016-06-27 07:51 (UTC)

Friendly, yes, the friendliest demon tree in the world, Alistair mouths to himself in silent sarcastic answer to Zevran—silent because he would like it to stay friendly and—sing.

"It sings now," he says, shaking one of his hands as if he can shake the spirits protecting him off like slime. It doesn't do anything. "That's great."

It may actually be great.

Shale has been mostly quiet this whole time, sullen and angry about this whole thing. Now they give the most exasperated sigh in histories of sighs. Maybe even an eyeroll, honestly.

Really?

"It better sing quickly. We have come for herbs."

Bethany stared up at the tree - The Singing, Rhyming Tree -- her mouth slightly agape. Sometimes, even in the life of someone who had seen as much as she had -- there was still wonder in this world. Still beauty before imagining.

She put one hand to her chest, and then curtsied low. "We would be honored, Elder Tree, to hear your song -- but my companion is correct. We seek herbs, to save another who once came to your forest. The red-haired bard, do you recall her?"

Always be polite to the demon trees unless you found out they were going to kill you.

And now it apparently rhymes and sings, too.

Bruce, at least, does drop the barriers he had put up, although the wariness is still very much there. He glances between Zevran and Alistair with an additional look in the direction of the golem before turning back to the tree.

"She's been poisoned," he adds on after Hawke. "And if we don't return soon, her life may be beyond saving."

Christine will most certainly not stand down, Zevran, and don't presume to ever tell her what to do either. Her barrier stays right where it is, protecting those who could possibly be torn apart by one swing of its branches, should it turn irritable. And she really can't believe it's singing to them either. This demon tree is not to be trusted, not even if it chooses to help.

For now, however, she will just stand guard, showing no sign she's about to attack, but not about to bow and simper to a tree either.

"You know I thought I'd had some bad mushrooms with dinner when we ran into him last or was, perhaps, drunk. Actually I think I was a little drunk. Being sober does not make this better." Leliana is dying and he has to talk to this singing, rhyming tree.

Why is this his life? Why of all the strangeness must this be the one that returns? Why not the naked Lady of the Forest? At least there would be a lovely chest to stare at while sorting out where the herbs they needed could be found. "Something that reacts poorly to magic. Attempts to heal her only cause harm."

To Christine: "Seriously. It will not hurt us as long as we remain nice and civil. Aggression will likely end with the rest of the local sylvans attempting to kill us and I do not have so much Antivan Fire on me to burn them all."

"And what," Christine responds coolly, "Makes you think I am showing aggression? I am not attacking it. I am not moving. I am quietly standing here while choosing to protect others." The "you fool" is implied by her tone. "Perhaps you should get back to why we came here, instead of accusing me of things I am not doing."

Seriously, Zevran, do not test her. She may stay nice and calm here so as not to confuse the demon tree, but she will give you such a talking to later if you keep it up. She is in no mood.

Alistair doesn't have it in him to tell people to stop bickering when there's business to attend to—if nothing else, he'd recognize the hypocrisy—but this is Leliana, so he does glance between them, more baffled than judgmental, before sidling close enough to Zevran that no one else will be caught in-range when he quietly dispels just their barriers. It's a compromise, or anti-Orlesian solidarity, or something.

"Minstrel leaf," he says, "and, uh."

A hand wave. Someone better at this can remember the other two.

"Don't waste time with arguing, or I will step on it," Shale growls at Christine and Zevran. Who cared who did what as long as they got what they came for?

Tree had nothing on stone, after all. The golem would crush this entire forest of they had to. All while wearing the red leather sandals Leliana gave them.

"Rotten meat plant and a star flower," they then add after Alistair.

Edited 2016-06-28 17:59 (UTC)

"Stella atrae, in Tevene," Eirlys adds, though she's not sure that the tree would know the names the plants had been given anywhere but here in the forest. Then again, she didn't expect to be talking to a tree today, of all things. "And the one with the rancid scent is blue with white stamen."

FOREST SEARCHING

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I hate myself a little bit

I love you a lot

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