Player Plot: The Big One?

[gatheringstorm]

WHO: Korrin, Araceli, Samouel, Kirk, Christine, Tim Gutterson, The Outsider, Iskandar, Kain (the last thread is open to anyone)
WHAT: Nuggalope shenanigans
WHEN: Any time in the latter portion of Harvestmere
WHERE: In the northern Frostbacks, near Honey Badger Hold.
NOTES: As mentioned here in the OOC comm.

 

Comments

[aceso]

[ Christine is far less interested in capturing nuggalopes than she is in seeing the Avvar hold and its people again. When she arrives, she finds herself staring up at the spot where Asher's soul flew up to the Lady of the Skies. She's always liked the imagery of birds, because she long thought herself to be a caged one when she wanted to be one flying free. But since Asher's death, she's come to enjoy watching birds fly even more.

Eventually, she stops watching and tries to be a good guest, accepting drink that is far too strong and enjoying hearing stories. She's smiling more this time around too. And if a certain augur just so happens to be around, she might make her presence known. For, uh, politeness's sake. ]

[universal_charm]

_{[ Kirk comes up to Christine during one of her bird watching moments. He hadn't thought to come back here, and it was not quite so spiritual or meaningful a place as it obviously was for some others. He had not been quite so close to Asher, after all, but he did like this place. ]}

Do you know what kind they are? The birds, I mean.

[aceso]

Oh, well. [ She lets out an awkward laugh. ] Some sort of carrion bird, I would think. That spot is where the hold leave out their dead.

[ But it sounds less spiritual and meaningful when she puts it like that. ]

But I watch them because of what they represent. They are the ones who carried Asher's soul to his Lady of the Skies.

[universal_charm]

_{[ He glanced at the birds again, and could indeed see the way they bore resemblance to carrion birds in his world. ]}

Sympathetic magic. They need a piece of him to carry to the Lady.

_{[ That was how it sounded to him, but he honestly knew precisely zero about the Honey Badgers' culture beyond the bare introduction he had gotten when first coming here. ]}

I think it would be a nice way to ascend to the after life - on the wings of a bird. Freeing, you know?

[aceso]

I was thinking it was more symbolic than magic. But every culture deals with death in a different way. I think I like the Avvar way best. Andrastians burn you so there is nothing left for spirits to possess. Except for the Nevarrans, who preserve bodies on purpose to put spirits in them to do their bidding. Dalish bury their dead. I hear they plant a tree over the mound. But your soul being carried by a bird is... it sounds lovely, does it not? I used to feel as though I was a caged bird, just waiting for someone to forget to lock the door so I could escape.

[ It's why she'll always be drawn to birds, but now she has a second reason; knowing how they helped Asher pass on. ]

[universal_charm]

It's a term where I come from - sympathetic magic. It means to have two related pieces that have, ah, similar energy? One effects the other, or becomes part of the other, I suppose. It was an ancient custom, in my world.

But yeah, it does sound nice. I would like that, I think, being carried high beyond the clouds. It's the view I like best, personally.

_{[ He looked to her curiously at that last statement. ]}

And now?

[aceso]

Oh. But it is merely a turn of phrase? You do not have magic in your world, correct?

[ A small smile appears on her face before she lifts her head up towards the sky. ]

Now I am free of the Circle and its locked doors.

[universal_charm]

_{[ He nodded his head. ]}

That's right. But people used to believe in it, so we have the concept of it - just not as it appears in this world, not quite. Ancient peoples believed strongly in it, and we still have some of their texts and artworks to help us understand how they lived.

_{[ He'll leave out some of the nastier parts of that though. ]}

Hmm, good. Such a lovely bird should be able to spread her wings as far as she likes and fly as far and high as she wants. Beautiful things aren't meant to be caged.

[aceso]

[ She looks back at him with an indulgent smile. ]

Such a charmer. I do hope if I were an ugly mage that you would not feel differently.

[universal_charm]

But of course. If something is meant to fly, why not let it?

[aceso]

Ah, that is the question, is it not? Talk to many and they will have a million excuses to give you as to why mages should be locked away.

[ She sweeps out a hand to indicate their surroundings. ]

But look here. Here among the Avvar, they value their mages and they contribute to the hold. They are not seen as a constant threat. It is so refreshing.

[universal_charm]

Believe me, I've heard them. I think they're a bunch of bull, personally.

_{[ He glanced around and back to Christine. ]}

Have you considered staying here? Or some other place not wasn't under Chantry influence instead?

[aceso]

[ Her lips twitch with a smile. ]

I think if I did, my mother would die of shock. And Sam would never stop teasing me.

[ But then she sighs and meets his eyes. ]

I confess I... wonder what it might be like to be a part of all this. To be useful, and valued, and treated well by everyone around me. But right now I have things to do in the Inquisition.

[universal_charm]

Neither of which sounds like it would bother you all that much.

_{[ He smirked at her a little before his face became more pensive, listening. ]}

I'm sure once you've completed what you need to do, you'll find a happier place.

[aceso]

[ Well, he has a point there. But only because she knows her mother wouldn't really die of shock. She would get very theatrical, though. Of that, Christine has no doubt. ]

I must borrow some of this positivity of yours.

[ Her smile is weak, but this is something she's long considered. What place will mages have in the world after the war and after a new Divine is chosen? She now feels the spirit of Faith as a gentle presence in her mind, not pressing her, but reminding her to believe in something better. Christine sighs softly. ]

Perhaps. If not somewhere in the lowlands, I think the hold might accept me. They like spirits and here I have one close to me.

hay gurl hay

[boneflayer]

[The hunters had spoken of the new arrivals coming up the mountain, Torbjorn shaking his head most of the way but saying that he would keep an eye on them. A less formal greeting this time. A happier circumstance, different faces but some familiar now.

He has duties to attend to but there are duties he has passed into the hands of another belonging down in the lowlands, and when time allows him, Gjurd seeks out Christine before she might catch him in the midst of a lesson with his apprentice.]

The spirits spoke of your coming. How fare you? [Aura's words had been for Lady Vauquelin when Yngvi's scrawled letter finally made it to them but there is grief everywhere throughout the land these days, it grows fat with it. Still his smile comes easily this time, lights up his whole face. Unfair isn't it, an augur being this handsome.]

oo, mr gjurd, oo

[aceso]

[ His voice shouldn't be familiar to her -- not after one previous meeting -- but she recognizes it as she's looking down into her cup, wondering just what it is she's drinking. Her head snaps up and she grins wide on seeing him again. There's something about this man that puts her at ease. Perhaps it's the way he speaks, or his calm demeanor. She's had no occasion to see him in any other state. ]

Gjurd! Hello!

[ She realizes she sounds as though she's already drunk, but it's really just her excitement in seeing him again. He's someone to speak of spirits with. And more that simply that, of course. Her smile turns slightly embarrassed and she lowers her eyes. ]

I wish I could say quite well, but it would be a lie. There has been more death in my life since I last saw you. I hope it will be the last for some time. But what of yourself?

[boneflayer]

[A presence that brings comfort in grief is as welcome as a shelter free of wild things in a sudden winter storm, or so Gjurd and many an Avvar have found in life. Or perhaps it's the air of mentor and one that knows spirits well. He settles next to her easily, younger without fresh grief to cast a shadow over him.]

Aura Hardie chose to remain with us after her brother's passing, it does all well to have her here, none more than Aura herself. [A few more months, he thinks, and she won't be able to resist the lure of becoming a spirit warrior. Already she trains long hours with the rest when she isn't off on hunts or doing what needs to be done to keep the hold alive and the body busy, something about her that draws spirits, dreams that she remembers vividly enough that she comes to him with questions.] I am sorry that death visits you again but they are with the gods where their suffering is ended. It may seem winter will never end but a time will come when the snows will pass, the ice will melt, out will come the sun and with it the bloom of new life, the world reborn again.

[Words an augur must say all too often, but that never makes it easier to say them, and he sets a hand on her arm for a moment as he does so, inclining his head to keep the words between just them. Very few dare to intrude when the augur speaks.]

[aceso]

Oh, good!

[ Christine only saw Aura from afar at the funeral, often in teary conversation with someone she probably knew, and Christine didn't think it the right time to introduce herself. But she knows a little of her from Asher. That's not saying much, since she knows very little of his family in general, but coming to the hold is like entering a different world. Aura must be learning so much, and perhaps she feels a certain energy surround her in this place, like Asher is looking down on her.

Her smile turns tight as he offers his sympathies and her eyes lower to stare at the ground. Only those who journeyed with her to the Orlesian civil war front know that her father was killed. She's told no one back at Skyhold because there's no reason to. It's her grief to carry, and as she looks out over the ramparts at the collection of tents below or the barracks off to the side on the cleared land, she wonders how many have lost a father, a mother, a sibling, a child.

Her lips part to tell him that her father was Andrastian and his body was burned as was their custom, but she stops herself and lifts her head to meet his eyes. ]

Do you really think so? What is life after death with the gods like?

[ His hand on her arm plus his kind words cause tears to sting her eyes and she presses a knuckle to the outer corner of one. ]

It sounds like you must say this often to people.

[boneflayer]

The dead are reunited with their kin, and the Lady of the Skies has dominion over such things but I have not come so close as to glimpse the face of my Lady beyond my dreams or the messages she would leave for me. A chance to be with those sundered from us in this life? [Tipping his head up to let the wind tug at his hair still makes him think of Asher, that he might turn to find him looming over him, fingers tugging at his hair even now when Aura came and said a raven had woken her in the night with grief heavy in her heart.

Hulda's duty is death but Gjurd has ever tried to lift some of the burden from her shoulders out of fondness and friendship, same as they all do the same little things for one another.]

A hazard of being an augur, or so I've been told many times by Asher and others. Give guidance to the thane, your apprentices, the hold? You must know the same as a healer or perhaps recite some verse of your Chant that might mean the same. Our lives are hard up here, we live to survive, not so easily as those in the towns and cities of the lowlands might. A hard life breeds hard people, but a hard life takes same as a hungry wolf.

[aceso]

[ Their kin. Christine knows nothing of her father's family, but she'll write to her mother and ask. She suddenly wants to know who was waiting for him when he entered the next life.

She spares a quick look around before slipping her hand into her pocket and drawing out a miniature portrait -- oval in shape and easily fitting in her hand. She lifts it to show Gjurd who she's thinking of. ]

My père -- my father. [ The painting shows a man with gentle, laughing eyes and graying temples. ] I was still I child the last time I saw him. I was hoping to see him again but... war changes things.

[ Her thumb brushes against the decorated frame and she releases a sigh. ]

Yes, I am sometimes asked to recite parts of the Chant for patients to bring them comfort. But... it has been some time since the words have brought me comfort. [ The fall of the Circles and her treatment outside of them has caused her to revisit that line about magic again and again: Magic was made to serve man; never to rule over him. It seems many are deaf for the first part. How can she serve as a healer if so many are against her?

But she should shake herself from this mood. So she does what she always does. She bottles up her feelings and pushes them aside. ]

A hazard perhaps, but I am sure you enjoy your role here, yes?

[boneflayer]

[Unlike the hunters who go off to trade, Gjurd doesn't leave unless he visits another hold and her translation is as welcome as it is necessary.]

To lose a father isn't easy, but I imagine he would always have it this way than have it so he be the one to see you given to the pyre. [Torbjorn and Adalind aren't Asher's parents but to see your grandchild go before you? A harsh blow, and a cruel one. It's easy to forget up here in the mountains that mages are a burden, a shame, a thing to be locked away and not simply members of the hold with strengths and weaknesses same as any other man or woman. They wouldn't even send theirs away as he's heard the Dalish elves do, not unless someone is stolen or does some stealing.] War and winter are the things that define us most, more than any other. They are to be respected as much as to be feared for how they can cleave us to the bone, leaving us with nothing in our hands. Yet we survive. Each time you smile, you'll smile for him.

[Maybe he says that to Aura, to Brynjar but losing someone so vital to you has a way of making you young again in how vulnerable you are without it, losing a limb of your life.]

Words only comfort you when they come from the heart, when they mean something. I have purpose here. I serve the thane, I guide our hold, I listen to the spirits and I am honoured to hear their words though I am careful never to let them take hold of me longer than I must. The hold is my family and all of us live together, sharing joy and sorrow and all that comes between alike. [Looking up from the picture she shows to her, he favours her with a smile that's concerned enough when it's the two of them, when he remembers her in her grief over Asher and when death has come on dark wings into her life so soon.] Do you have that? A place, a purpose?

[aceso]

I am certain of that too. I only wish he could have known I was still alive. [ Her biggest regret is not writing to her parents sooner; right after the Circles fell. For close to a year after, she told herself that her parents probably never thought of her, and that a letter would only throw their lives into an uproar. An eight year old Christine wasn't observant enough to know what her parents felt about magic, after all. They could have wanted nothing to do with her.

But after becoming a part of the Inquisition and seeing the found families that formed, she wondered. And she'd gathered her courage and written only to discover her father had already been drafted into the war. He died never knowing if she died in the Circle, or in the rebellion, or yet lived.

His words draw her back from the moment and she smiles faintly: an action strictly on her lips and not reaching her eyes, unlike in her father's portrait. ]

War and winter. No wonder Hakkon is so revered. [ She hasn't forgotten all he said to her last time when he placed Hakkon's Wisdom in her hands. ] It sounds so... worth it. [ She shakes her head. ] That is not the word I wish to use, but your lives are not easy here in the mountains, and you know it. Yet you face these challenges and thrive. And can take pride in that. The hardships are worth it because your people show you are all stronger.

[ Christine tips her head to one side in thought, eyes scanning his face as if she expects him to elaborate. Then she slowly answers. ]

I suppose... the Inquisition provides that, to some degree. But you are far more unified here than the Inquisition. Some hate mages, or Orlesians, or Qunari, or elves, or whoever else. Some days the tension feels as tight as a bowstring. I have a place in the Inquisition. There are people I care for and trust. But I cannot say how long this will all last. If all we wish to achieve succeeds, then what? I doubt the Inquisition will last my lifetime, and I do not know what comes after.

[boneflayer]

Best not to linger on the regrets, the things that might have been. They eat you from the inside out and when we are mages? When we work with spirits? [Does Gjurd need to finish that? No. Likely she's heard much more dire warnings in the Circle than from him and he gives those lessons when the children first show their magic, when the rogues are too quick with their tricks, when the warriors gnash their teeth and rage.

One day the grief will be less near at hand, the way Aura's retreats slowly but surely, same as that of the hold, that of the Boneflayers.]

We lived as we always have. I know that there are folk who say we were forced into the mountains long ago but we had no desire to be elsewhere. Why would we when all we ever want and need is here without the hurts that ravage elsewhere? [When did the Avvar last have wars the way the lowlanders did after all; it hurts enough in a raid to lose someone and to lose a person in a war that seems so senseless as the one Christine has lost her father to pains him. It won't be difficult to say a prayer to the Lady for this man, that his spirit finds rest, that the hardships are over and that she perhaps looks upon Christine kindly.

There is testing and then there is this. Capricious but never unkind - what are you trying to teach her, he wonders, but there are many gods who could be at work, should he ask them all how long it might take.

Or is this Asher's doing. And that stray thought makes him rub his beard to hid the smile.]

Most here live each day as it comes and by the season. Many of the hold think of the larder and how full it must be, how much we must make for ourselves, how much to trade. Others must think far ahead like myself, the Thane, Torbjorn, Hulda, Sigrid in guiding the young and guarding the histories but you know that you have walked through the fire of one war already. You are not untried, not untested. You have seen battle. You have seen death. If you ever have doubt in your heart, know that you will always have a place by the fire.

[aceso]

[ Christine has always striven to be strong willed, but to never let on how deep it ran. In her eyes, the Templars would use any excuse to make someone Tranquil. If they were a weak willed mage they wouldn't pass their Harrowing. Better make them Tranquil. If they were too strong willed, they would be rebellious and everyone saw how that turned out with the Circle in Ferelden. Better make them Tranquil. Christine has always walked along a tightrope, and Gjurd's words are another reminder of how she must keep her balance as she walks it. ]

I have seen more than I ever realized I would.

[ Her life was meant to be the Circle. If she rose through the ranks and became a trusted Enchanter, maybe one day she would have been allowed to travel for meetings, but that was really her only prospect. The world may be a scary, uncertain place for a mage, but she'd rather have the open air around her than four walls.

Reaching out, she takes Gjurd's hand between both of hers. She's beginning to feel guilty. This is only the second time she's seen him and both times she's dumped her emotional weight onto him. He's carried such a burden brilliantly, but it makes it seem like she's just using him for his advice. ]

I have doubts, but that is why I have Faith. She was drawn to me because of them, and I believe she can help me work through them. It will take time, but I do not doubt her. And I would like to spend more time here. Knowing I have the option is such a relief.

[ Christine has always wanted security; a chance to not constantly be looking over her shoulder. This offer feels like a very big deal. The Avvar seem like a closed group to lowlanders, but Asher's hold has been so welcoming and kind. If she had a place among them, she would do everything in her power to see the hold continue to thrive.

Her head lowers to look over their hands. ]

I am sorry our meetings have been filled with talk of sorrowful things. You are very good to me. I confess; most of the reason I am here is not to chase nuggalopes, but to see the hold and especially you again.