faderift | 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

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Cade." The awkward moment while imprisoned notwithstanding- whatever this thing with Beleth will inevitably become (with or without the disaster that is their future, strains of how they were before remain constant)- If anyone would give him something of an insider's perspective on what has happened and how, perhaps, to prevent it? Cade would be that person.

Perhaps it is also some manner of self flagellation for not caring enough or not trying hard enough to work with the man in the past. Who can say?

Cade is standing at the edge of the path in the Commons, looking down at Dust Town and into the chasms beyond. He's doing his best to stay out of the way-- a remarkably familiar way for him to behave-- and, more than ever, is given a wide berth by most. He wouldn't want them to touch him anyway, he doesn't want to cause any further pain.
He looks over his shoulder at Zevran, at a somewhat awkward angle, since he has to ensure the good eye and the less disturbing half of his face is visible.

A respectable distance is required for many reasons, least of all the thing slowly carving it's way out of Cade. To see it on a foe readily slaughtered is familiar enough. TO see it on the face of someone that he is-

Something.

To? Someone he has felt the barest twinges of empathy for in the past? "...Offering to end your suffering seems both gauche and condescending."

Not things he worries about seeming under normal circumstances but this- this is not normal.

Rather than respond to Zevran's quip, which is perhaps telling in itself, Cade's face twinges in something that almost resembles a smirk. He's never smiled much, but it never used to hurt him like it does now.

"We thought you were dead," he says, his voice more gravelly than before, his delivery duller. Everyone might as well be dead.

"You weren't wrong." To have been gone and then suddenly here? HE didn't exist for five years.

That was as good as death. "You did the best you could considering the world was falling down around your ears, yes? That is what I hear most often."

Cade considers it, then shakes his head. He didn't do the best he could-- in fact, he's always seemed to excel at doing the worst he could.

"I lied to Alistair, and led him to capture," he says quietly, fixing his gaze directly onto Zevran's in a cold departure from his familiar shuffling guilt. "And assisted in the captures of Seeker Aleron. And Malcolm." He winces, but holds fast. "I guarded Beleth as a prisoner and attacked her friends when they tried to save her."
Idly, he looks back out over the ledge again, his face completely devoid of emotion. This isn't a confession that begs understanding, clarity, or forgiveness: on the contrary, it's just something he hasn't told anyone yet. And if Zevran really is here from another plane of existence, maybe he'll have the common sense to go back to where he came from and kill the Cade that lives there.

"...Allow me to clarify. You did the best you could for yourself while the world was falling down around your ears. Whether or not that was the best for everyone else or not? Matters little." It matters a great deal but- to be in a helpless situation. For orders and falling in line to be the closest thing to safety one has?

He had not lied when he expressed some pride at how far Beleth had gone to make herself invaluable. It was clever. Cade doing the same on his own or with guidance is equally so. "How long have you been-"

Zev flicks his fingers to the crystalline outcroppings.

As Zevran clarifies, Cade gives a small nod in the affirmative. Yes. For himself. And look at what's happened anyway.
When the crystals are brought up, he looks wearily at Zevran, his gaze almost accusatory: you can say what it is, there's no hiding it. That ship sailed long ago.

"A year or so," he murmurs. That's when it started to show, at least. He's been forcefed it far longer than that.

"How long have you been made to take it?" Regular lyrium has, supposedly, its own issues but this? He does not know enough of how it warps and kills for all that he's cut down his fair share of Red Templars.

It is a mercy, he thought, he thinks. For all that some might have volunteered.

Time passes differently for him now, in and out of lucidity. Exact numbers of years aren't easily given, especially when he's not around Beleth's charts and calendars.
"....years," he guesses, sighing quietly, the briefest flicker of his old self. Resignation.

"Before or after we went missing?" After most likely but-

A desire for control or sanity or pain can lead a man to terrifying extremes. If this is something he could prevent-

As though he would be fortunate enough to go back. To live that long. To remember.

"After. A while after."
It hurts to speak, and Cade's tolerance for it is waning. He looks down and away from Zevran, clearing his throat with a wince. Though he's never excelled at communication, he has always, at least, been able to make it clear when he wants to be left alone, and this is one of those times: back in the dungeon, he was surprised to see Zevran, perhaps even a little afraid.
Now he's just reminded tenfold of all the ways he went wrong, of all the chances he had that he never took, choosing to stay down at heel instead. Zevran's opinion mattered to him, once. Now it's just one among many elements of trying to better himself that Cade underwent when the choice was still his, before backsliding deeper into the hole where he'd started. It's too late for hope, and it probably doesn't matter anyway.

"Beleth can tell you better," he dully suggests.

Speaking isn't normally so difficult outside of illness or, perhaps a garrote. Emotion can strangle a man but- what is Cade if not violently, incessantly ill? The red carves it's way through him with little regard and it is a wonder he has not yet gone mad. The man has ever done things on his own time- whether or not he wished to have it done. "Quite likely."

What more is there to say? Part of him wishes to make that condescending offer. The rest means to ask if he'll end it on his own. Offer aide by way of poison.

The rest is aware he long since lost that right simply by not caring enough before and by then vanishing. "...You are not the worst man I have met, Cade."

If that is of any comfort to him to hear.

The look Cade gives him in return is silent, most conveys much: most of all, loathing for the man who has the audacity to show up after years of abandonment and condescend to him.
His eyes meet Zevran's squarely for several seconds before he clears his throat again, blinking hard. "Goodbye, Zevran," he mumbles, and turns away, back to where he was looking before. The elf is free to remain, but the conversation is over.

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

5ever late w/tim hortons

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