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

[faderifting]

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

Comments

ortan thaig; closed.

[byblow]

When Anders is gone they check on Nathaniel at intervals. At first, months ago, there was some pretense involved: making up questions they needed him to answer, dropping off food or ale or something Anders wanted to see when he gets back. Now everyone has largely given up on excuses. Alistair has, anyway. He's done pretending nothing is wrong.

Today, when he passes by the little house the two men share, he raps his knuckles on the door before opening it uninvited.

"Nathaaaniel," he says through the crack. "Are you a ghoul yet?"

—a question he's asked before, because done pretending nothing is wrong doesn't mean now handling the man with kid gloves. He thinks whatever parts of Nathaniel are left in his decaying corpse of a body would appreciate that.

He pushes the door open further with his shoulder, because regardless of the answer, he'll need to see for himself.

[pinprick]

For the first time, there is silence. Stepping inside, Alistair will see the once-proud man crumpled on the floor, hands wrapped around a bedpost, head bowed. After a few seconds, he makes a low, wordless wail, a keening noise humans only make when they are in utmost anguish. It's pinched off with a sob, and his forehead drops to the mattress.

Nathaniel is his name. When he forgets that, someone says it to him and reminds him. Nathaniel, son of someone, a Grey Warden, in love with someone, brother of someone--there was a time when all those someones had names. He doesn't know if the pain is worse from the full-body rot or from his loss of everything that makes him--what was his name, again?

One hand is curled, clawing at his own palm. When he opens his hand, dead flesh has been peeled away like wet paper.

[byblow]

Alistair freezes in the middle of the room, breath held while his stomach turns. He thinks: someone will come. Someone who knows what to do, someone who knows what has to be done, who knows how to do it, who em>can do it, because he can't—

and there's only silence and Nathaniel's pained breathing, and Alistair exhales. He can't do it, but no one else is coming, no one older or wiser he can leave this to. He'll do it. He can't, it's impossible, but if someone has to do it, he will.

"Nathaniel." He steps closer, close enough to put a light hand on his shoulder. All his senses, and especially the one without a name, the one that makes him a Warden, say darkspawn, darkspawn, but there's still something else left. "Howe, look at me."

[pinprick]

Howe. Why, who, what. With great difficulty, Nathaniel raises his head. Though clouded still, his eyes do not have the emptiness Alistair saw in them. Everything that was emptied has been replaced with pain, a deathly scream on his lips that he cannot voice. His mouth moves, but only hitched breaths come out.

At last, his head bobs and ducks toward Alistair's ear, and if he leans in to listen, he will hear the barest whisper:

"Please."

The truth is that he never wanted to die. He never had the choice to become a Grey Warden. And he wants to see Anders one last time. But if he does not die now, the pain will get worse. If he does not die now, he will start killing, probably starting with Anders. Now, while Anders is gone and the pain is like nothing imaginable, he can find peace and comfort. Now, he can protect Anders one last time.

[byblow]

Alistair nods. His smile is only a spasm. So is, "I've always sort of wanted to kill you." A defensive reflex that's about as helpful as putting up a bare arm to block mages' fire.

He doesn't trust Nathaniel enough to sit down. Not like this. But he kneels on one knee, closer. He should ask. Can you last? Anders is going to kill him, and he might deserve it. But Nathaniel doesn't deserve this.

There's a knife in his boot, and there's a vial in the pouch on his belt—a painless merciful thing meant to be used in the event of his own hopeless situation, not someone else's, but it's just as well. He gets the vial out first and rolls it between his fingers.

"Can you swallow?"

[pinprick]

A gurgle and a grimace turns out to be the closest he can come to laughing. A gleam of memory returns to his eyes. That's right. He and this man hated each other.

He swallows and coughs. With effort, he rasp, "You. Did not kill me. The Blight killed me. Months ago. After this, I will...be Nathaniel again. My friend."

He holds out his hand to take the vial.

"Tell Anders...it was the Blight. Tell him I love him. And I will see him...at the Maker's side."

That is as much as he has, one last muster of strength and sanity before he goes.

[byblow]

"I will. I'll tell him." He uncorks the vial and presses it into Nathaniel's waiting hand.

He doesn't try to hold it, but his hand does hover in case of a tremble or a slip. There's more where it came from, but not much, and if he has to leave to get it he might lose his nerve. He's already barely holding onto it, casting around helplessly for something he can say, something right, that won't also make him crumble and choke when the only kind thing left to do is stay steady.

"I'll be right here. I'll—I remember you," he says, hoarse and hollow. He can't say it all, you died with your blood joined with mine, ¹ but maybe Nathaniel still remembers how it goes.

[pinprick]

The words bring a ray of light into his memory. They sing along with the somg he hears, and for once, the music is not his enemy.

"One day," he chokes, "you will join me."

Nathaniel drinks.

The poison is bitter, but quick. The pain eases as warmth spreads through him. Slowly, he pulls himself up, hands tearing on the bedpost like elfroot leaves. He lies on the bed and thinks of Anders--the smell of his hair, golden as the song that sings to him. The warm weight of him in his arms. And as the song crescendos, his memory wakens one more time, he can believe he is holding him one more time before he moves on to see Delilah and her family, all taken from him in the war. His sister and brother, Adria, his nephew, everyone he loved and lost will be returnee to him. Perhaps he will not have to miss Anders for long.

He falls asleep, breath rattling, and that sound means there is no turning back. A few minutes later, warm and with Anders in his arms, he is gone.