faderift | OPEN ↠ FALSE GODS, GREAT DEMONS (OPEN LOG 1)

OPEN ↠ FALSE GODS, GREAT DEMONS (OPEN LOG 1)

WHO: Living Residents of the Horrible Future
WHAT: Ah ha ha ha stayin' alive, stayin' alive.
WHEN: ALTERNATE FUTURE, 1-15 Cloudreach 9:48
WHERE: Anywhere, but especially Orzammar
NOTES: This is the first open log for False Gods, Great Demons. Anything that happened prior to Cloudreach 9:48 should go on the flashback meme. Most members of the TTT and their friends in Kirkwall will be arriving in Orzammar on approximately Cloudreach 7. In the meantime, feel free to make your own adventures. If you want to blow up an bridge, assassinate an NPC of your own invention, steal supplies, or anything else--it's all yours, go for it!

SOUTHERN THEDAS is a wasteland. The Blight crawling across the Orleian countryside and into Ferelden leaves nothing alive in its wake, scarring the land like an insatiable fire until no birds sing and the only things that grows is the Red Lyrium that speckles cliff sides and crawls up dying trees until they look like rows of jagged bloody teeth. And where it's still green, where people can still survive, the atmosphere is nearly as stifling. Every city and settlement is watched over by a Venatori or trustworthy collaborator. Those who don't keep their heads down and their dissent a whisper may vanish without warning. They may take their whole families with them. There are flashes of hope--an assassinated lordling here, a village rousing itself to brief and doomed rebellion there--but for every man the Imperium loses, they seem to find two to take his place.

NORTHERN THEDAS is at war. The worst of it doesn't reach west into Tevinter or the Anderfels; the line between the Qunari and the Imperium is drawn straight through Antiva, with Nevarra and Rivain on either side quiet and calm as only lands under martial law can be. The Free Marches vary between complacency and rebellion, but the rebellious ones risk ruin--there are murmurs it won't be long before a whole city is made an example. A steady stream of desperate refugees is fleeing north to the Qun, but plenty are picked off and punished as traitors before they can cross into Qunari-controlled territory. Your best best for a clean escape are the pirates who still hold Llomerynn free from both sides of the conflict.

ORZAMMAR is the only kingdom in Thedas that looks much the same--and Kal-Sharok, but they're not accepting outsiders. The heavy doors at Orzammar's entrance are sealed and guarded, as much against the steady flow of refugees asking for help as against the Venatori. The refugees are turned away. There's no way to know who can be trusted, and even if there were, there's not food enough for people who can't fight. Orzammar Thaig is still the dwarves' home--though with stealing shrinking numbers and poor prospects, King Bhelen has been amenable to allowing casteless surfacers some leeway--but the once-abandoned Ortan Thaig is the Inquisition's. Quietly. The only things stopping a full assault on Orzammar is the Venatori's need for dwarf-mined lyrium and the plausible deniability that the Inquisition's remaining rebel bands are using the Deep Roads with Bhelen's consent.

An hour's walk through caves and deepstalker swarms, Ortan is a city in its own right. A crammed city, one where cots and bunk beds crammed into shared housing are the norm no matter how important someone is and you occasionally have to protect your dinner from a restless, swooping griffon, but one where you can still find a pint of ale or a game of cards if you've time to waste on them. It's just that not many people do. There's the watch to keep; the tunnels that creep further into the deep teem with darkspawn who are held back at barricades, while the hidden, narrow tunnels that lead to the surface are watched at all hours so anyone coming or going can be identified. There are weapons to forge and sharpen. Plans to make. Bands to lead. Maybe you weren't a leader five years ago, but these days, there aren't that many people with more than five years' experience still alive to give orders. Fewer every week.

And so we burned. We raised nations, we waged wars,
We dreamed up false gods, great demons
Who could cross the Veil into the waking world,
Turned our devotion upon them, and forgot you.
Threnodies 1:8

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When it's a good day, Yngvi will still say that he clearly predicted they'd be requiring as many nugs as they do by gesturing to his brood with a crooked smile. But the good days are few and far-between when the Boneflayers have been made to live up to their name so literally by the world, and so most days he just makes sure that his nugs are not the ones being eaten.

Part of him isn't surprised at how quickly he got used to living in the dark again. You can't just toss a childhood in Darktown aside so easily especially not when they did manage to get so much of the family out (but oh at what cost, he doesn't ever want to talk about that one) because some of it was just business as usual. Sure, profit margins were down but hey, what can you do.

Well, you can glare at the Deep Roads and realise that you really do not have any sort of feel for the Stone at all but Yngvi is pretty much everywhere at once it seems, though he's carved out a decent space for himself with a chunk of the Carta by now. Holding court as it were and doesn't that just tickle him, getting to do that right where he'd be hated by pretty much everyone. Still, same old Yngvi, ready to gossip and catch up if you've got five minutes, or someone who knows where you can get your intel, some trap parts, or maybe a brace of nugs if you're peckish.

[[ooc; prose/action spam welcome, will follow along. Catch me on plurk or discord if you'd like a different starter]]

No need for a nug, or at least, not another one: Gwenaëlle comes bearing Nug Wellington under her arm, Hardie an ever-present shadow at her heels managing to somehow convey stately disapproval as the self-appointed guardian of every small thing nearby his mistress.

"Merrill's griffon is going to eat him," she says, in lieu of an actual greeting, "if he doesn't mind himself. Hardie rescued him." Is it a him? Maker knows, she isn't checking.

She deposits nug upon dwarf, leaning down - Yngvi is the only person she regularly speaks to she has to bend for - and belatedly providing that greeting in the form of a swift and chaste kiss pressed to his cheekbone. She never corrects him, when he uses her title, but every day the people who matter to her dwindle to a smaller and smaller number, and she won't have it said later those that lasted didn't know it.

How a dog turned out to be bigger than him even in the dark is honestly a question for the ages that Yngvi fortunately no longer has the time to ponder with so many irons in his fires. At least Hardie isn't a mabari. Given the state of the everything it'd be too much to deal with and he'd have done something drastic years ago, declared himself for Bhelen or something mad like that, tried to marry into nobility to say he'd give some lucky woman many daughters.

There's still time for that but first: "You little shit, you've worried the others, you're going to go putting grey in my hair" when in fact an absence had gone unnoticed by everyone save him. Also behold, dog, even his dirty face gets a kiss before he drops into a bow with an actual honest-to-whatever-he-believes-in-smile just for her.

"M'lady, cheers for bringing the wayward scamp back home. Why did anyone let them bring overgrown pigeons down here? Got enough riffraff already." Meaning the Orzammar nobles. Basically any of the Dalish. Orlesian nobility. Any nobility. Basically any sort of person he doesn't like. "And how is the fairest and fiercest of all ladies in my life that isn't part-bear?"

"Still breathing," she says, wryly, "against all sense and logic."

All of those warriors dead, and yet Gwenaëlle persists. She supposes that she's always been bloody-minded and stubborn, so of course, presented with the worst of all things she will continue to spit in the eye of caution. How could she do otherwise, and still look at herself in the mirror?

Theoretically.

She hasn't looked in a mirror in some time, really.

"Have you heard we've some people swimming against time's current?"

"That's life though, innit? Must be some dwarf kicking about in there somewhere, keeps you going along. And who needs either of those things? Do they put food on the table these days?"

Maybe some folk do but Aura Hardie is alive. Melisende is still somehow clinging to the fraying edges of life. His brother is probably dragging her through that. One day he'll get all three of them down here and probably rest easier knowing that pretty much everyone he can possibly account for is accounted for within walking distance and just make his peace with it.

He takes a moment to really hear her words. To digest them. The reaction is a deep groan that comes from his smallest toes all the way up, free hand dragging through his hair until it gets tangled because he-- he hasn't brushed it. Apparently has some sort of mechanism caught in it. He hopes. Might be anything really, it's not like Yngvi's got eyes back there despite some choice threats to the underlings.

"Don't tell we've got walking corpses to deal with as well?" It's the first thought he jumps to as a legacy from too many battlefields and living in Kirkwall, as well as Asher's tendency to get them roped into all sorts of outright weird jobs. "How did that even happen? No, that's not-- nevermind, that's not the main bit. Grease. Lots of grease, I'm not wasting a trap when they'll just keep trying to go and drag themselves along with a leg left behind that someone'll have to clear up."

Rachette had made friends in the Carta when she'd left for the surface, though never family. Still, she recognizes their worth, especially in times like these. Sometimes thugs are what you need, and she doesn't mind associating with them. She's done good in the Inquisition, though--better than she ever could have done with the Carta.

Being back in Orzammar does not sit well with her. Being tied to the Stone again is nice, don't get her wrong, but she left these people for a reason. It absolutely amazes her that they even bother pretending to give a shit. "Need a couple springs," she says matter-of-factly to Yngvi, leaning on the table. "Just a couple. I keep telling people, there's nothing wrong with a well-concealed bear trap. The classics are classics for a reason."

"Mind the nugs," an absent remark since he'd rather not have someone faceplant. The letter to Big Jim will have to do, is about as savage as Yngvi can get unless someone on the other end of an operation pulls through and actually gets him some teeth to stick in and send. They're parked next to the Deep Roads, how difficult is it to get him a few teeth when he got them out of Kirkwall? Trap components, that's the matter at hand now that sees him sweeping a stack of letters into pockets (there are so many pockets, the coat is all pockets, there is no coat, there was never a coat) so he doesn't lose anything.

Are there even any bears left up there, he wonders, probably shouldn't, Asher's last few pieces went for a merry song. "Just a couple? Where are you going these days that only needs 'just a couple' of bear traps. Thought everywhere needed at least a solid baker's dozen."

"Nugs should mind me." She's the one with the fucked up depth perception and blindness on the one side.

He's always got letters and pockets and items and doodads and nugs everywhere. They could be good eating, damn it, but hey, they need to keep a population, right? "I've got more than a couple traps anyway. But some of them need fixing, with springs. I scrounged some old ones, too, and they've gotten all rusty. I'll take a string of metal and wind it around myself if I have to." Improvisation!

Those nugs are the closest thing he'll have to children, good spirited nugs that knew the surface and the sweet green grasses of freedom and a life without castes and horrors and everything going to hell. A good way to stave off the rumblings of 'Yngvi you should get married' too since look at all these mouths he must provide for, how can he provide for another on top of all that at a time like this he asks.

Loudly. Sunday dinners are a fun night at the uprooted Kirkwall Carta end of Orzammar.

"Got something that might've been steel wool for getting the worst of the rust out, there's something that might've been ale that we found is more useful as oil if you can heat it just right." What he offers is a small sealed flask with some sort of unidentifiable black goo leaking out of the top. Even sealed it's pungent. "Got a real kick to it. No need to go launching yourself, we're not that desperate when we've got big folk left."

She's smelled worse, but that still gets her nose wrinkling as she grabs the flask by anywhere but the top. "If this was ale, it was shit ale to start with." Despite her nose, she gives it another whiff. "Or really, really good ale. If what you're looking for is to die slowly on the inside."

It's the heating just right part that will be tricky, but she's willing to give it a go. There'll be some kind of use for it somehow even if not as oil. If only it was darkspawn repellent. "Promise I won't use up all the steel wool. They don't have to be shiny new, they just have to snap." She punctuates the word with a slap of her hand on the table.

"You're the one that came from Orzammar to start with so this is the fruit of your empire right here. They've got their oysters in Antiva, actual hair of the dog in Ferelden, who can even say just how many Orzammar babies were made with the aid of this beauty?" Because isn't that what having kids does to you at the end of the day?

"Some of this came from Kirkwall with the folk we got out." Nothing about the people that didn't since that doesn't do anyone any good, sitting around thinking about it, getting distracted at the worst sorts of moments. He jumps. Jumps like he wouldn't before. Can't really cover it either when his eyes go wide for a split-second before he hides it with tired irritation. "If you've woken up the old folks you're singing them back to sleep because I've told them tales of the honeyed voices of casteless lasses I know. What'll they be snapping this time. And where. Since it makes a difference and I might have things lying about from last time the Boneflayers were about."

(He always has things 'lying about'.)

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OPEN ↠ FALSE GODS, GREAT DEMONS (OPEN LOG 1)

Yngvi ; Orzammar ; ota;

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