( closed ) player plot: the stars go waltzing

[eviscerates]

WHO: Adelaide, Araceli, Avery, Bellamy, Bruce, Ciri, Cosima, Daenerys, Jamie, Korrin, Lexa, Martel, Merrill, Ruby, Sabine, Teren.
WHAT: catch all log; the capture of shardbearers, their rescue, and related shenanigans.
WHEN: Gently timey wimey for flexibility, Team Rescue arrives at the outpost on the 10th.
WHERE: Orlais/Nevarra borders (roughly halfway between the Fields of Ghislain and Trevis), and then a Creepy Place.
NOTES: Log for the missing shardbearers player plot; ooc here & here. Only the travel threads for teams one and two are going up for now, the rest will go up on Friday :]b And to clarify - when I say party style, what I mean is subthread to your hearts content!
WARNINGS: HORROR THEMES. Abduction, experimentation/torture, forced ingestion of lyrium, implied past deaths/murder, violence.

SPEEDY LINKS

• TEAM ONE: travel to Craintellier
• TEAM ONE: rift two attempt & Venatori attack
• TEAM ONE: dungeons
• TEAM ONE: escape attempt — Cosima, Jamie & Lexa only
• TEAM TWO: travel to Craintellier
• TEAM TWO: post rift investigation — Adelaide, Bellamy & Sabine, Bruce, Korrin & Teren, Ciri & Merrill
• TEAM TWO: take the outpost — Attack & Distract & Stealthy & Stealy
• TEAM TWO: regroup & into the dungeons — plus a Lexa-shaped guest star
• ALL: finding your shardbearers
• ALL: boss fight
• ALL: epilogue & return to Skyhold — tba

click for bigger version. full map of Thedas here.

East of Perendale and south of Trevis, next to a river's winding course, there lies the bones of a fortress. It is an old and almost forgotten place, a dramatic, clawed seeming thing reaching up into the sky, harsh against the the rolling hills.

It is an ancient place, dating back to 660TE, a testament to an Empire suffering after civil war and grasping to restore its wealth and influence after it had been so shaken. It stands as a memory of grandeur, rather than an icon of it, and bears the marks of devastation and scarring that so much of the land suffered during the First Blight. It was all but abandoned thereafter, host only to the desperate and the greedy, and never for long. Once ornate mosaics now only hold flecks of gold, flakes that stubbornly resisted the hands of looters trying to pry them away. Other colours, reds, whites, greys and blacks, they all remain.

The site was chosen for its riches, sitting atop a mine that once held immense wealth, seams of gold that would bring wealth back into the Empire and help restore stability. Opulence, the central Tevinter staple (aside from slavery and blood magic, some might say).

But they dug too deep, and when the First Blight came so too did the darkspawn.

It has a new master, now, and he serves the Elder One. Parts of this stronghold may be in ruins now, but remember: it is not what lies on the surface that counts, but what lurks beneath it.


AD VICTORIAM, AD GLORIA.

Comments

( closed ) COSIMA, JAMIE & LEXA: escape attempt.

[eviscerates]

They are all together in a room, with higher ceilings than the dungeon that they have spent most of their time in thus far. It is not so deep into the ground, and better lit. It is more for convenience than out of any kind of consideration; these subjects will need to be examined soon.

Who knows how long they are there; one of the torches begins to burn too low, hissing and protesting.

Initially there are two venatori guarding the room; they talk nonsense, or they are silent. One is a mage, the other a rogue, and both watch closely and tell the subjects to be quiet if they speak too much.

Eventually there is a third venatori, speaking in hushed whispers to the others, and the mage leave with him, leaving one lone venatori, who from his posture might just be sulking at being left behind.

( OOC: One thread, no strict tagging order, I will GM Venatori and such. REMEMBER THIS IS AN EXTREMELY SERIOUS PLOT we take everything seriously here. )

[wontforgetyou]

The journey here hasn't been an easy one - at least for Jamie. His brief rise into consciousness may have given him enough time to work his watch free and stick it on a tree branch, but it's earned him a blow to the head and a headache that still seems to be lingering even after he's spent some time cooling his heels in the dungeon.

But aching head or no, he's not one to give up easily. There's no guarantee that that anyone from the Inquisition would find the watch, or even know who it belongs to. They still need to figure out some sort of way to get out of here, and the sooner the better. He's had enough experience with dungeons and being locked up in general that he's always looking for that way out - and he knows a chance when he sees it. When most of the guards wind up taking off, leaving only the sulky one behind, he shifts as best he can so he's within hearing distance of both the girls, making sure to keep his voice as low as possible so it doesn't carry and wreck what might be their best shot at getting out here.

"Right. Now's our chance."

[youwonscience]

Cosima's been coughing on and off since they arrived, and it's always been an thick, wet, uncomfortable sound. But perhaps it's something they can use, now. Cosima doesn't have much else, at any rate. She squints toward the door, mostly a blur of light in a wall of black.

Very low: "You think if he thinks I'm actually going to stop breathing, he'll come check on me?" She's not entirely sure, herself - she isn't sure if they particularly need any of them alive. But it's worth a shot, maybe, unless either of the others have a better plan.

[wontforgetyou]

He's heard that cough of hers a time or two since they've been down here, and it doesn't sound good. So far it he can't tell if the guards have noticed - or even care - but if she can make it seem like she's actually going to cough to death, that might be another matter.

"Aye, maybe so. If they wanted us dead, we wouldn't be here now."

He's convinced of that much. Given the sheer numbers at the rift, once the rifters and shardbearers had fallen it would've been easy enough to take all of them out for good, and not just Avery - although he hopes he's wrong in what's happened to her, and she managed to escape in the end. He doesn't know, though, and the fact that they're all here and they all have shards makes him think that they're wanted alive - for now.

"If we can get yon guard in here to check on that," he adds, voice still quiet, "he'll be distracted. One of us can take him out, then."

[heda]

Lexa scoots closer across the floor, as far as her chains will stretch. She's been drifting in and out and doing her best to keep an eye on the guards when she can, but it's a struggle. It takes the jumpstart of actual planning to give her the energy to blink herself truly awake and push toward them, speaking quietly as she looks between the pair of rifters.

"If you two lure him in, I can wait here behind the door just out of sight. I'll grab the guard, and you kill him." She's looking at Jamie at the end there, obviously, and though it's not phrased as a question, one brow is lifted with it anyway. It's not meant to be insulting, it's just that none of them are at their best right now, the rifters even worse off, and if he can't take the guard out, well. Then they need a different plan.

[youwonscience]

Cosima is way, way out of her depth here. On a variety of levels. She's pretty sure she's never been involved in killing a human before, but she shuts that out. Survival first. Everything else later.

Instead, she gives a nod. If Jaime's going to object to the plan, now's the time, because Cosima clears her throat and then starts coughing. It's voluntary enough, at first, but her lungs really are a problem. Soon the sound is uncomfortable, wrenching and wet and truly alarming.

She hopes she'll have time to stop coughing while the other two take out the guard. It would be a bit humiliating otherwise.

[eviscerates]

The guard ignores the coughing, at first. He has better things to be doing. After thirty seconds or so, he scowls and bangs on the door. "Hey. Quiet."

His patience is limited and there are orders to keep them alive, and so the impatient young recruit pushes the door open, a cup of water from the barrel outside the door in hand. His arm is half raised to toss it at Cosima, rather than offer it to her.

"Be quiet."

( closed ) LEXA: after the attempt.

[eviscerates]

"It's a terribly ugly business," Maris starts, upon noticing the Avvar woman stir. It had not been so difficult a deduction. Oh, there was the rifter girl who spoke a language like Antivan, but it was a language like Antivan, not a pure strain. It was helpful, having so many fine researchers amongst his time; identifying the Avvar tongue had not been easy, but it had been done and confirmed.

He walks over to the woman, laying both of his hands on her forearm. Shackles clamp over her wrists and her ankles, and a paralysis weakens limbs almost to the point of complete immobility— only almost. She might, for example, be able to turn her head, to shift slight, to grasp her hands into very loose fists. Fascinating to observe, he thinks.

"I have brought in the guards who were so heavy handed with you and your colleagues. You deserve an apology, my dear." Maris looks at the trio, the most vicious offenders, and they keep their gazes trained ahead of them. Before he addresses them further, however, he looks to Lexa again. "All that can wait a moment. How are you feeling?"

The room is well lit, immaculately clean. There are three tables, one occupied by Lexa, the middle empty, the third inhabited by a form that's not easily visible.

[heda]

Lexa's instinct is to flinch away from his touch as Maris's hands land on her arm. She'd had a plan, for how she was going to snatch his wrist and the chain at his neck, twist both and snap one and have him in her power in the space of a heartbeat. But the paralysis sets in so quickly and she knows even flinching away would be futile. His touch doesn't hurt, not yet, even with her myriad bruises and worse, but it makes her skin prickle and crawl and dread is a chill sweat down her spine. She's too weakened by his magic to even momentarily shake him off, and in the end she'd just look afraid. She refuses to look afraid.

Instead, her fingers curl into a fist, as tight as she can manage, and her expression remains as determined as ever, as it has been in every moment of consciousness and even some without: nose wrinkled, brows furrowed, jaw tight. So often the stony cast of her face is designed to give nothing away but now she does nothing to disguise her disgust or temper her murderous rage.

His apology gets no change or reply. She's seen the men on the wall, and any spiteful joy she might have taken in their suffering for what they did to her is stolen by the fact that it is this man causing their pain. (Not that it makes her feel bad for them; it just makes it impossible to appreciate.) His question draws Lexa's eyes back to Maris, and for a long moment she stares him down. She can't move much, but she has enough control of her face that she can gather up the blood in her mouth and spit it in his face in answer.

[eviscerates]

They are quite an impressive spectacle, he thinks, hands above their heads and hanging from the ceiling, backs against the wall. They are still, silent, and that is the result of his magic more than their own resolve. Moving away from Subject Twenty-One, Maris draws a knife from his belt, looking over to her as he approaches the men on the wall. Very calmly, he begins an incision that starts at the ankle and slices upwards towards the inside of the knee, on each leg of each of the once-glorious Venatori. The blood runs down their legs, flowing into a great trough running along the length of the floor beneath them.

"I did not want to commence this step until you were wakened. It seemed inappropriate that their penance should be enacted without you able to see it."

With that done, he picks up a cloth, wiping the blood from his hands.

"Now. How do you feel?"

[heda]

Lexa doesn't say anything. It shouldn't come as a surprise. She has yet to say a word except when under the influence of lyrium, and even then she remains more tight-lipped than most. Sometimes it's clearly the result of effort: that sharp jawline tense, bulging at the hinge with the exertion necessary to hold back a shout of pain or an angry curse.

Now it just seems like she doesn't have anything to say. She's put boredom into her gaze as it drags lazily across the wounds, the blood dripping down legs. And truthfully the sight doesn't inspire any particular feeling. She's watched enemies bleed before. She's strung them up for interrogation or punishment and done worse than this with her own hands. And this time there's no reason to doubt or feel pity or guilt.

So she watches, and then looks up at Maris, still with the steadily simmering anger in her eyes but nothing more, and then turns her gaze to the ceiling. How does she feel? She doesn't. (It's a lie, of course. She feels plenty of things but none of them are about the guards strung up across the room.)

[eviscerates]

"Still determined not to speak, hm?" His tone is faintly tired and amused, all at once. "As you wish. I feel, however, that given you determination to break from this place it is only fair to debrief you on how matters will be progressing from here. That determination is, in part, why I believe you will make an excellent subject for this project. Some of our other native subjects had far less... resilience, let us say. Less spirit."

Hands wiped clean, he carefully folds the bloodied cloth, and sets it down on the central table.

"I must confess it is curious that you stayed with the two Fade travellers. The woman, in particular, could have been deemed a dead weight. Unless she was the brains behind the operation?"

Ah, well. He doesn't expect a reply, just yet.

[heda]

Good, he's learning. Lexa of course doesn't reply, forcing him to continue monologuing like a Bond villain. Maybe she ought to ask questions, try to draw out details of his plan so that she can find an angle, or at least something to report to the others later. If there is a later for her.

She considers the pros and cons as best she can, wary of the effects of pain and head injury and especially lyrium on her ability to think through her choices. It's the 'ah, well' in his manner that ultimately makes up her mind, the desire to be unpredictable surmounting her determination to remain silent. Her voice scrapes hoarse out of a raw throat.

"Are you meant to be the brains behind this operation?" She sounds skeptical.

( closed ) COSIMA: after the attempt.

[eviscerates]

Maris is a patient man. It is impossible to be a man dedicated to scholarly pursuits and not be patient, in his experience. He sits beside the table where Subject Twenty-Four is lying, her wrists and ankles shackled to the table, no steps yet taken to see to the injuries suffered during the escape attempt. Fractures to the left forearm, so far as he can gauge it, perhaps not surprising given how weak she appears to be compared to the rest of the party.

Once there are signs of the Subject stirring, he begins to speak. His voice is very calm, almost— kind.

"My dear," he starts, not glancing up from his book, "take care not to move. The pain in your wrist is doubtless considerable, but we can see to that, soon enough."

Finally, he does look at her. His eyes are a very bright, warm copper-brown, and his eyes crinkle when he smiles. "How are you feeling?"

[youwonscience]

"Like someone beat me up and threw me in a fucking dungeon, dude," she says, her voice a bit raw. Before the escape attempt, she hadn't been in pristine shape, but consciousness of all that has faded. Now the world has mainly narrowed down tot the sharp, nauseating pain in her left arm. "I don't suppose you're going to bother to splint that arm, either."

[eviscerates]

"Now, now." He does not sound so very different from a grandfather chiding a child caught with the hand in the cookie jar. Except, in this instance, the child might find their hand separated from them and kept in a cookie jar, who knows. "It was you who tried to escape. That young man you and your fellows killed had a name, you know. A family."

A little shake of his head.

"No need to splint." He draws a knife from his belt, idly resting the tip against his palm. "Blood magic is a terribly effective thing, you know?"

[youwonscience]

Cosima tenses, but manages not to actually cower. "Yeah, well, maybe you people should go abducting people if you don't want them to fight back now and then."

They both know she's in no position to fight him now, magic and restraints notwithstanding. "You people think you're doing some sort of messed up science, don't you? I've seen that condescending bullshit routine before."

They both know she's scared, too, but more than anything else in Thedas, this feels sickeningly familiar. It hadn't come to this at Dyad yet, but that was probably a matter of time. (She's already had a lyrium flash, some days ago; her ex, drawing blood while she thought Cosima was sleeping. She thinks it was a memory, though the lyrium makes it hard to tell.)

[eviscerates]

"A systematic study of numerous subjects to try and reach a better understanding... yes. I do think that's sufficiently scientific. Do you object to the assessment?" Although, he muses: "I suppose you are not in a position to assess it very objectively."

He can hardly hold that against her. "I want to learn. I want to understand why Fade travellers such as yourselves, are gifted this pieces of our world and our magic, regardless of whether you have any talent for it. You are interfering in matters that do not concern you. These are the consequences of placing your trust in the Inquisition."

[youwonscience]

"Yeah, I should definitely place my trust in the people who perform experiments on sentient, unwilling subjects instead," she says. She wishes she could focus well enough to properly glare at him. "You're really selling this whole setup."

"What's next," she adds, "a speech about how this is for the greater good? The state of knowledge? Heard it before."

( closed ) JAMIE: after the attempt.

[eviscerates]

Unlike Lexa and Cosima, Jamie is afforded rather less civility. He is strung up, hands over his hand and tethered to the ceiling by a chain, feet barely touching the ground, and before him sits Maria on a seat, watching him rather pensively.

"What did you hope to achieve?"

His patience wears, but it is not run out just yet. He simply—

Well. This might be more interesting than the other approach.

[wontforgetyou]

A faint groan comes from Jamie as he rolls his head from side to side to loosen up his neck. It's pounding, the headache from before not having gone away. There's more pain now as well, a fire in his shoulders from the strain of being dangled like some side of meat, blending into the ache that's come from when he'd finally been taken down by the guards, every bit of bruising from their blows all too noticeable. His chest aches in a way that makes him think that a kick or two's found his way to his ribs, although he doesn't remember when that happened. It wouldn't surprise him if they'd decided to get that in after he'd been taken down, though. Revenge for their friend, perhaps.

But now isn't the time to try and sort through all of that, and when he lifts his head, it's only to fix Maris with a narrow-eyed, defiant expression.

"You'll get nothing from me."

The mark in his hand sparks slightly at the same time, flaring brighter for just a moment or two, although nothing more seems to happen other than that. It's not for a lack of wanting to see something happen, because if he can manage to get that other ability of his to work reliably, he's more than willing to risk shooting Maris with the shard and see what happens. However, what little control he has over it seems to not be there, for whatever reason, and all Maris gets is that brief little light show.

[eviscerates]

Maris beholds that sad sputter of light, and his gaze drops down to Jamie.

"Inspiring," he says, with the faintest of amused smiles, before glancing up to the shard again. "Has it been able to do that long?"

He cannot recall particular mention of it from from observers and researchers, and it could be interesting to know if it's a result of the lyrium, or something else. Loosening the chains to examine is not a priority, for now. He is rather certain he has ways of persuading others to comply and cooperate, but there is no need to rush, not yet.

"Subject Twenty-Two. You know, your Avvar friend said some very interesting things about you Fade travellers."

[wontforgetyou]

Jamie ignores the question, his lips settling into a thin, but determined line. As far as he's concerned, Maris can keep right on going on not knowing what his shard can do - or for how long it's been able to do things other than just close rifts, for that matter.

His lips press together just a touch more as he's addressed like he's some sort of experiment. He has a name, and the temptation's there to say as much, but he's met the type before. It won't do him any good to try to say as much. It never does, and he decides not to bother to waste his breath on the attempt.

"Oh aye, has she now." He's skeptical, to say the least, and his tone winds up almost - but not quite - bordering on outright derision at the word 'has'. "And what exactly she's been saying, then?"

[eviscerates]

"She has been saying that the reason the Inquisition allows your ilk to retain their shards is due to extraordinary powers your kind possess. That, rather than transferring them to the more worthy of this world, your Inquisition would rather see them left quite literally in the hands of strangers." A disgusted note as he adds, "reckless."

Magic crackles over his fingertips, lightning dancing in the air for a moment. "You do not need to be so antagonistic, young man."

[wontforgetyou]

The lightning makes the hairs on the back of his neck stand on edge, but Jamie's determined not to let that show - and for a few moments, he doesn't even have to try to. Instead, he gives Maris a look of sheer disbelief. If the man thinks that the shards can just be popped out like you could pop something out of a tin, he's mad.

"Retain? You've got eyes, man. Have you not noticed they're stuck in there?"

He doesn't comment on part about it being reckless, because as far as he's concerned, it's not exactly reckless when there's nothing to be done about it. Instead, his mouth quite firmly - and quite visibly - tugs off to one side as he shakes his wrists.

"And if you think stringing me up like this is going to get me to play nice, you're dafter than I thought. For all the answers you're going to get you might have well have not bothered."