( 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

TEAM TWO: take the outpost.

[eviscerates]

The team was selected from all the Inquisition for their tactical prowess.

This isn’t a proper log starter, those will be in the subthreads, just humour me.

With Avery having rejoined the party, there are now nine of them ready to take the fortress. The thing is that there are quite a lot of Venatori, and quite a lot of mages, and the fortress is solid.
Thanks to clues and being a giant nerd, CIRI* is able to lead the group to the exact location of the fortress.
Based on the attack at the second rift, AVERY* is able to provide a bit of information about the enemies.
BELLAMY* is able to assess the fortress from a glance, suggests a dual approach of stealth and force.
Everyone else is there to look pretty and brooding and concerned.

*if you guys would like more info on anything for Thread Purposes I will gleefully provide :]b


The basic rundown is that there will be two threads, one for STEALTH & SEARCH and one for DISTRACT & ATTACK.

STEALTH & SEARCH: BELLAMY, BRUCE, CIRI, SABINE

ATTACK & DISTRACT: ADELAIDE, AVERY, KORRIN, MERRILL, TEREN.

STEALTH team will infiltrate: scale the wall with grappling hooks, get in through some windows, pick locks and take down bad guys. This will be a combination of me GMing, but don’t feel limited if you want to PROGRESS things or do something random. Embrace it. The STEALTH team will also interrogate a dude and find some clues, before they go and open the main gates to the ATTACK team.

The ATTACK team is going to send Avery in looking weak and useless, and like the poor helpless bunny she is, she is going to draw some Venatori out. to a convenient nearby treelike. Once they are drawn out, ATTACK team can destroy them, and then majestically charge in to attack some more Venatori. Likewise, I will be GMing but if you want to DO A THING then let’s go with it.

There is an OOC comment for plotting and chatting for this here.

( OOC: JUST TO BE CLEAR two separate threads each no tagging order, I will GM Venatori/traps/clues and such. )

STEALTH & SEARCH: BRUCE, BELLAMY, SABINE, CIRI.

[eviscerates]

Team Attack and Distract is both very attack-y, and very distract-y. All in all A+ job. With the Venatori attention sufficiently drawn, it is safe for the smaller team to move into action. There is a tower with massive cracks and breaks in the wall - tricky to get a grabbling hook into, perhaps, but big enough that they can climb through them and into the tower. From there they must go quickly and effectively, pick off stragglers and let in the rest of their party.

I mean, there’s some blood mages and trauma probably awaiting them, but it’s fine.


( OOC: One thread, no tagging order, I will GM Venatori/traps/clues and such. )

[glandival]

If Sabine is first, it's by virtue of being rude, and because her player tagged the quickest.

But at least there is a modicum of competence to back it up; gloved hands seek sure handholds when they don't rely on the dangling rope, and her feet are quiet. Her usual cascade of ginger curls have all been tamed into a tight braid, and she wears two knives visibly. The location of more weaponry will have to be guessed at, but are hidden in boots, and up sleeves.

She pauses at the largest break in the tower wall where the grappling hook had stuck, and slowly does it, peers through. Her confirmation that the coast is clear merely comes in the form of her abruptly yanking herself bodily up and inside, swift as a blade, disappearing into the dark.

A moment later, her pale face appears again, and she extends a gloved hand out to the next intrepid adventurer.

[amygdalae]

Bruce mostly trails behind the party, since he is kind of the odd one out here, what with being a mage and all. But at least right now he doesn't exactly look like the part - there's no staff on him now, just a dagger should he need to protect himself. Can't exactly be sneaky if he had a staff strapped to his back, after all. Those things just attract far too much attention.

With all of that said, it has been a while since he's actually had to do anything like this. The fact that he's not entirely recovered from the battle with Highwind isn't of much help, either.

So he takes the help where its offered; he hates to impose but his pride (or what little is there of it left) is irrelevant to their mission right now. When Sabine pops back over to offer him her aid he reaches for her hand and uses it as leverage to haul himself up to the top too, dropping inside with minimal noise.

[ichaer]

Despite her preference to swing around a sword like any other warrior, years of breaking into the fancy mansions and winter retreats of Orlais has allowed Ciri a little flexibility. Climbing an old tower was much easier than those smooth marble walls and she pulls herself up and over, landing inside not long after Bruce.

Unfortunately, Weisshaupt's maps had been rather sparse when it came to the inner workings of most of the marked locations but old towers like this are not complex. Truly, the only thing to worry about is the sort of information that would not have been on those old maps.

And no doubt that they had outfitted this old tower with traps and other such to try slowing them down.

[eviscerates]

When the party alights on the inside of the tower, they are faced with a large room, roughly hexagonal in shape, lit mostly by the daylight that the break in the wall allows in. Supplies one one side of the room suggest that building repairs are slowly being made, but that the state of the room does not spare it from being used.

On the far side of the room there is a table, with a lap map stretched over it, and a few other items that might be of interest.

Behind the heavy wooden door there is no sound, other than the footsteps moving away from the room. The door is locked from the outside.

[nonsibi]

Bellamy, the last to make it into the tower thanks to the bulkiness of armor, still manages to land lightly. He's quick to take stock of their surroundings, and quick to pick out and eliminate the suggestion of threats, shadows without the requisite density for concealing foes.

Far more immediate a threat are the footsteps, and he goes right to the door, dagger already in hand for what could end up being a close-quarters fight but for virtue of the fact that the footsteps--whoever they belong to--are moving away from the door. This is still no time to relax: Bellamy listens a moment longer, tracking the path and distance of the footsteps. Then he carefully tries the handle.

It's locked. He doesn't have to say it; the dull and cut-off clack that the handle gives confirms it.

[glandival]

Behind the young Templar, Sabine listens, alert, feeling a prickle of quick tension when Bellamy tries the door handle, careful or no. When it doesn't give, she makes a quiet instructional sound meant to indicate that he can ~step aside~, accompanied with a more eloquent tap of her knuckles to his arm.

From there, she can apply Sufficient Skill to the lock using two fine, silvery tools she has ferreted up her sleeve, ducking down to carefully -- quietly -- shift lock into looseness.

She pinches the end of her tongue with canine tooth in concentration.

[amygdalae]

While the... very sneaky people deal with the door Bruce turns his attention over to the rest of the room, seeing if there might be anything around that could be of particular use to them. From the supplies lying around this seems to be a storage area of sorts, and it would be worth going through them to see if there's anything in there that they could make use of.

The map is what gets his attention first however, and he quietly goes over to the table, squinting as he looks over the map to see if it'll be of any use to them. Maybe it could be a map of the area around here, or this structure itself. That would be incredibly helpful.

[eviscerates]

It would be very useful indeed if there was a map of the fortress

but there is not, because designing a fortress map was too much for my commitment issues.

Instead, Bruce finds a map of Orlais and Nevarra with about sixteen different sites marked. Perhaps a third of them correlate with sites where the Inquisition has dispatched agents to close rifts. There are simple numbers marked next to them; 1 by most, 2 by two, and 7 by one close to the village of Craintellier. Furthermore, on the north-eastern corner of the map lies eight Inquisition sending crystals. What a coinkydink.

[amygdalae]

...well this was certainly interesting.

Bruce frowns as he studies the map, noticing the marked sites and correlating some of them to the stuff that he's heard. He doesn't really keep track so much about the rift closures since he tends to avoid doing that if possible (considering his condition and everything) but considering the notes he found in his search with Ataash earlier, and this '7' near the village...

It's something to think about later. Right now though getting to the others was more important, and after a moment Bruce takes the map and pockets that, swiping the sending crytals while at it. He brings those over to the rest of the party and passes them around. "Here. This should be of some use."

[nonsibi]

Bellamy, having stood aside to give Sabine room to work (with a wave of his hand that was only a little sarcastic, go ahead; the situation is too tense for much more than that), glances around when Bruce comes over with the sending crystals.

He accepts the crystal without really thinking about it, hyper focused on wariness and their immediate situation. After a second, he makes sense of what he's holding, and looks up at Bruce.

"This was on that table?" No way to tell who it belongs to, beyond the general. "At least we know we're in the right place. Take 'em with and we'll return 'em."

Optimistic. There's no point in being anything but, not when they're about to head out. Bellamy slips the crystal into the pouch at his belt with his own as he turns back to Sabine.

"You almost got that or what."

[ichaer]

There is silence as Ciri watches Sabine work to open the door though most of her focus is on listening for any signs of approaching footsteps. It is only when Bruce approaches does she break her attention from the door and looks over the sending crystal for a moment before pocketing it for now as her focus returns to the door.

After the disaster that was her visit Emprise du Lion there is worry that they might just find a similar sight on the other side of this door. The boy's cracked and warped face is still vividly clear in her mind and she hates it all the more.

The sooner they could leave this place the better.

ATTACK: ADELAIDE, AVERY, KORRIN, MERRILL, TEREN.

[eviscerates]

The fortress is dramatic in the way of all Tevinter buildings, sharp angles and sweeping pillars and columns. Even in its ruined state, it is a formidable place, a harsh, grasping figure against the skyline.

While one team, the stealth one, waits for the attack team to create a sufficient distraction and gets into position, it falls to Avery, the recognisable prey, to wander across the stone bridge that spans the ravine, and the distant roar of waterfall and river below. The bridge is far from perfect, with some great holes and crumbling stones in the pathway.

Earlier there were guards sighted, though they are not so readily visible, now.


( OOC: One thread, no tagging order, I will GM Venatori/traps/clues and such.

This first little bit will be a bit of boomeranging between NPCs and Avery as she draws them out for the rest of the team to attack, and then everyone can jump in. )

[thecookery]

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!!

--and so on and so forth. Everyone gets the idea, yeah? Just imagine that as the ongoing mental mantra throughout this entire course of events, because this is just about the stupidest thing Avery has ever done, but boy howdy is she about to do it anyway. It's really their best chance to get the drop on these assholes and get through this situation with as few casualties as possible, and well... apparently she cares about that.

Leading to this current awful moment where she stumbles her way across this small stretch of questionable stone over a deep pit of death and straight towards more, slightly different death. Her wounds have mostly been healed, but she still looks as terrible as she did when they were fresh, so the addition of a small false limp should be enough to play her part convincingly enough, right?

"Is- Is anyone there?!" she calls in a halting, slightly breathless voice as she draws close. "Please! I need help! I..." Her voice trails off for a moment.

"Please."

[eviscerates]

Meanwhile, the Venatori are having a totally chill good time.

It's an archer that spots Avery first, making some inaudible but jeering comment to the other on watch with him. Maybe their words are indistinct, but the tone carries mockery.

Rather than say anything, he idly tossed loose pebble at Avery, clattering near her feet.

Its a second later when there's an audible-- "The girl from the rift! The Inquisition can't find us!"

The pebble is followed by a poorly loosed arrow, rushed, and there is a rush of bodies visible in the windows, before the outer set of great wooden doors begins to groan open.

[thecookery]

Wow, dude. Maybe the definitions are different out here in Asshole Land, but that was all pretty distinctively un-chill.

"Wh--?!" And to think, she was going to try again at playing like she didn't know who was in the fort, but the moment the shout goes out and the arrow comes flying, Avery is ducking and scrambling backward, despite it not actually coming anywhere near her. At the very least she tries for a shocked expression as she looks in the direction it came from?

Then her eyes go legitimately wider at the sight of the doors opening, and she groans, "Oh, fuck me," and turns to limp quickly (but not so quickly that they lose sight of her) back the way she came.

[eviscerates]

The doors are hefty - require a man hauling at chains to work the mechanism that opens each one, definitely only possible to open from the inside - and slow. It's possible for Avery to get a bit of distance before the first of the Venatori starts to run out after her.

They wear the typical garb of Venatori gladiators - bare chest and legs, but with a heavy collar that latches their helmet on. There's a good ten of them, or so, moving without any great rush to get to her. It's inevitable that they'll catch her, and a quartet of mages follow up the procession as the doors slowly grind shut. This is a march they've done before.

"Get the girl," one of the mages calls from the back. "Maris might have a use for her."

[thecookery]

Maker's breath, they're really pulling out all the stops for one possibly useless person, aren't they? But that was the idea behind this whole plan, huh?

As she leads the Venatori toward the ambush point, occasionally casting hurried looks over her shoulder to the approaching crowd, Avery briefly considers playing into the trope a bit harder. You know, shouting uselessly for help or begging the enemy for mercy or some such? But whether it's a conscious decision or just terrified instinct, what ends up coming out instead is that internal monologue from before, in a moderately loud string of panicked curses.

For one especially horrifying moment, she even thinks she's gotten mixed up and isn't heading the right way anymore, before realizing her destination is right in front of her. She tries to mask her relief though as she stumbles to her hands and knees, then slowly stands and drags herself forward to lean against the nearest tree, breathing heavily.

"Please," Avery feebly says again as the Venatori begin catch up. "Don't."

[eviscerates]

They learned about how hubris is bad and wanted to make sure they were super prepared, okay. Being cocky never goes well for villains!
As it turns out, being overly prepared also doesn't go terribly well. They should probably contact their union.

"Bring her in. Unharmed," the lead mage says, a wry kind of mockery on the last word, that suggests perhaps he does not mind too much either way how harmed she is, given the state of her. "Go."

With a strange, precise shift, all blades raise at once, points aimed at Avery and shields high, as the gladiators begin to encircle Avery.

Mage B looks at Mage C. Why are we even here, bro? Idk bro, maybe it's for some inexplicable plot reason.

[thecookery]

"Alright, fine," Avery sighs, reaching down with a wince and pulling a small knife from boot. She's got this, you guys, don't even worry about it.

"If that's the way it's to be." Her voice raises as her fingers flex around the handle of the blade and she looks to each of the warriors in front of her. "Bring it on then! Right now!"

[gatheringstorm]

Excellent, it's time to act. Korrin steps into view, putting up a Barrier spell around Avery first. She wastes no time after that, summoning flaming meteors to rain fire down upon all enemies in the area for the next several seconds. Whatever destructive force doesn't bring down will have to contend with her as soon as soon as the meteors cease. Her expression is hardened, utterly focused. Absolutely nothing is going to stop her from reaching Araceli, just fucking try.

[eviscerates]

There's a startled yell from one of the mages, and it makes the mage with authority - Timmy, let's call him Timmy - startle before he's calling orders in Tevene to his fellow mages (Steve and Gus, for the sake of ease.)

The three of them draw together, and the slave warriors raise their shields to protect themselves from the meteors, although one is not quite quick enough, and staggers from his injuries, even as Steve and Gus cast barriers over their warriors.

Timmy, meanwhile, is displeased by this sudden turn of events; he casts despair, and follows with a vicious spray of ice attacks.

[fleurdesel]

Lovely barriers Steve and Gus have. It'd be a terrible thing if they were dispelled. It's a pointed, precise attack all cold fury and focused will, Adelaide snapping out to cut off their magic and drain their mana, bounding each to wisps summoned for Korrin and herself.

She cannot harm them with magic, but she can stall them. Paralyze them.

[chainlightning]

Avery needs to be out of the way -- she was wonderfully brave, offering to draw the Venatori out, but now the time has come for her to draw back. Merrill will help; Wrath of the Elvhen sends roots and brambles bursting from the ground to attack their foes, the trees themselves almost seeming to sway their branches like flailed weapons. Stepping out from behind one, there's a little nod to herself and then Merrill activates Stone's Throw.

She vanishes, appearing a moment later next to Avery; the earth let her move through it, but it likely won't do the same for the other woman. Still, Merrill extends the hand not holding her staff. "Come on, let's move!"