( 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

[eviscerates]

Waking up in the dungeon, her head feels heavy and aching and too hot, and when she tries to move she can feel heigh tugging at her wrists and the hear the grate of metal against metal. Her side is cold, and is sore and aching from pressure. Ruby blinks in the poor light, lifts her head, and it feels like she is inhaling rot from the smell of this place. No.

All she remembers is fog and fire and burning up her back and blood on her tongue, and Ruby groans as she tries to push herself up.

“Hey.” She crawls over to the person nearest her, mercifully within reach, and very gently rests her hands on their shoulders. “Hey, come on. Wake up.”

Please be okay. Please be alive. A glance around the room, and she doesn’t know if she’s relieved or horrified - so many of them are here, which means at least they are alive, but Avery is gone. It’s hard to figure out if it’s worse not knowing how Avery is, or knowing that so many are irrefutably alive and in the hands of Venatori.



After a while in the dungeon, she attempts different tactics, gives her food to the younger or the more injured or the less resilient members of the party, which as far as she’s concerned? Is everyone. She is the Wolf, she is stronger.

At one point she tries to take advantage of the guard not paying attention and braces her feet against the wall, hands wrapped around the chain and pulled it hard and tight in a bid to pull the bolts right out of the wall; it doesn’t work, and gets her a kick in the ribs for her trouble.



When others return she tries to comfort them, bunching together the scraps of straw or trying to pull closer so they have someone to lean against rather than just the floor.



Coming and going makes keeping track of time even harder than it might have been. Her heart feels like it’s going too fast and she’s doubled over on the floor, skin clammy (too hot and too cold on a loop), eyes clasped tight as too many images press through her head, memories that feel strange and mismatched with everything else but she can’t pin down why.
At one point, she is no longer the woman they know here, she’s Red, and she doesn’t recognise any of them. "Who are you? I don't— where's Snow?"


Eventually, Ruby just doesn’t come back.

[youwonscience]

When Ruby shakes Cosima, she comes to only fuzzily at first. "...'m alive" she mutters, though, reaching up to touch her face. (Her glasses, of course, of course now she's also half blind. That's just perfect.)

Gingerly, she moves to sit up, which triggers a wet cough that is not this place's fault, but can hardly have been helped by the dank conditions. "Holy shit," she wheezes when she can, "this is bad, right? This feels like it's real bad."

[eviscerates]

"It's not great," she agrees, just relieved that Cosima is conscious even if the circumstances are still pretty terrible. "We'll figure it out and we'll get out of here. Okay?"

She inhales deeply - blood and damp and straw - and exhales heavily. "Anything hurting?"

[youwonscience]

She takes stock, trying to let her head clear. "Nothing specific enough to worry about, I think I'm just bruised up." For the time being, at least, but saying that aloud isn't going to do anyone any good. "You?"

[eviscerates]

"Good." Ruby's voice is hushed, still a little strained, but the relief is audible. "I'm fine. I'll deal with the incapacitating guilt complex about recruiting my friends into an abduction once we get out of here." There is a gash across her brow, sticky with blood. Honestly, she'd rather ignore it.

She blinks at the room around them, murmuring to herself, and inhaling again, as if her nose might tell her more than her eyes. "There's only seven of us here."

[youwonscience]

"Hey, I am almost sure this falls solidly into 'not your fault' land," Cosima protests, quietly. Her head aches some, but also this does not seem like the sort of place it's wise to draw attention.

"...who'd we lose?"

[eviscerates]

Cosima's wrong, she's sure. She's the Wolf, she should be able to detect when people are close, to fight, but—

Now isn't the time to indulge her guilty conscience, and Ruby just swallows the protest, tries to ignore the anxious twist of her gut.

"Avery." She smells like herbs, oils caught on her skin or her clothes. It's definitely Avery that's gone. "Maybe she got away." Her voice sounds flat, uncertain. Please let her have gotten away.

[youwonscience]

"Oh shit," Cosima says, quiet and feeling, but then immediately: "She really thinks on her feet - I bet she got away. Bet she took off running for civilization. For help, maybe."

She can't know, of course, but Ruby clearly doesn't need to feel any worse. And Cosima doesn't want to think about any other possibilities for a woman she's coming to think of as a friend.

"You think this is someone has it in for the Inquisition?" Or were they just really, really unlucky?

[eviscerates]

"Yeah." Her voice stays low, careful. "The requisition officer in Craintellier will contact the Inquisition when we don't get back. It's just a matter of time until the Inquisition comes for us." Her voice is a little lower than normal, rather than just quieter. "They'll be coming for us. Okay?"

She's not entirely sure she's trying to assure Cosima and not herself.

"There's a lot of different people the Inquisition is at odds with. Some people in the Chantry, political rivals." A pause, and she swallows. "Red Templars. Venatori."

[youwonscience]

Cosima touches Ruby's arm, unsure which of them she's comforting. "Alright, so. It's just endurance, then. We just have to hold out until they get here." She manages a shaky smile. "Piece of cake."

She doesn't flinch as something darts in the corner of her peripheral vision. Between the dark and her eyesight, she definitely can't tell that it's a rat, so. Ignoring that thing that moved in a suspiciously rat-like way.

[eviscerates]

Ruby huffs out a little laugh. "Exactly. Think of it..." Oh God, like what? "Like a really long, boring car trip."

She desperately wishes that she had something better to say, but she settles for looping her arms around Cosima and easing her into a loose hug. "We'll get out of here, and we're going to have the most spectacular girls night when we do. Wine. Cheese. Dramatic readings of novels in lieu of movies. It'll be great."

They will survive to that. They will. Hopefully without getting their toes gnawed by rats. She hates rats.

[youwonscience]

"Absolutely. Maybe we can find or invent popcorn for the readings. They've got corn in Thedas, right?" The hug is comforting, even in the state they're both in, and Cosima's in no rush to break away.

"I promise not to start 99 Bottles of Beer on the wall until we get really desperate," she adds.

[eviscerates]

"We should make a list of all the things we need to invent. I mean, we've got the time to work out the logistics right now, at least."

What a silver lining. What a relief. She stays with the hug, and the hitched temperature of her skin, the constant warmth of the Wolf, feels like about the only thing she can offer Cosima right now. It's not enough. As it is, she's got a black shawl that she had under her cloak, even if that's gone, and she pulls it away with one hand, bringing it to rest around Cosima's shoulders.

"You are going to need this more than me. And, hey. Why start small? Nine hundred and ninety-nine."

[youwonscience]

"Maybe we'll annoy the guards into releasing us," Cosima suggests with a shaky smile. "More trouble than we're worth."

She takes the shawl - normally she'd be inclined to argue, but she can feel how warm Ruby is compared to her own cool skin. "What else do you do on long road trips? I'd kind of suck at I Spy right now."

[eviscerates]

"See, you've a plan all figured out. We're unstoppable."
Very gently, Ruby nudges Cosima's jaw with her knuckles, a light, playful kind of gesture slowed down to make it more careful, more comforting.

"I've never actually been on a road trip. I mean, I had an amazing red Camaro before Ashley wrote it off, but it never got to head out of Storybrooke." An amused little huff of breath. "There's always rock, paper, scissors, if we get really stuck."

[youwonscience]

"Oh, right." She's briefly embarrassed she forgot, though under the circumstances. "You can't really play the license plate game in Thedas anyway, so rock, paper, scissors is probably your best bet." Carefully, as both of them are likely sore, she leans against Ruby a little.

"Hey, if we're trying to annoy them into releasing us, I could see how many of those children's playground clapping games I remember. You ever do those? Miss Mary Mack and that kind of thing."

Distraction. Distraction is great.

[eviscerates]

"Come on," Ruby says quietly, easing Cosima back with her a little to she can rest against the wall with Ruby, if she wants. And regardless, her arm wraps around Cosima's shoulders, a careful maneuvering of chains. For now Ruby just feels bruised and her worry about what she has condemned her friends to and what she somehow overlooked is raking over her mind.

It won't do them any good, right now.

"You, Cosima, are a sadist." Her mouth flickers with a little smile. "Maybe we can try to remember all the words to Bohemian Rhapsody and teach the others. Off-key."

[youwonscience]

"I bet I could come up with them," Cosima says, with a muted smile of her own. "I did a bit of karaoke in my day. And the let me go parts would be pretty appropriate."

[eviscerates]

"Uh oh, karaoke?"

She laughs very quietly, shaking her head. "How do you think the rest of Skyhold will feel about ABBA's greatest hits? Elvis? Radiohead? The Herald's Rest might not be ready for a group singalong to 'Creep'."

[youwonscience]

"Oh my god, I bet I can totally get someone hooked on Karma Police, that shit is catchy." She laughs, quietly, but still... a laugh.

"I mean, Johnny B. Goode would be traditional, but I do a really bad Michael J. Fox."