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faderift2017-04-02 10:59 pm
faderifting) wrote in faderift2017-04-02 10:59 pm
Entry tags:
- ! open,
- { alan fane },
- { alistair },
- { anders },
- { araceli bonaventura },
- { bellamy blake },
- { christine delacroix },
- { clarke griffin },
- { freddie durfort-lacapalette },
- { inessa serra },
- { james norrington },
- { jamie mccrimmon },
- { jim kirk },
- { korrin ataash },
- { leonard church },
- { luwenna coupe },
- { malcolm reed },
- { merrill },
- { prompto argentum },
- { rachette dakal },
- { samouel gareth },
- { the medicine seller },
- { twelfth doctor },
- { tyrion lannister },
- { yngvi }
OPEN LOG: Establishing a Base in Kirkwall
WHO: Many People
WHAT: Cleaning up Kirkwall
WHEN: Cloudreach 1-21
WHERE: Kirkwall
NOTES: This log post is for characters who go early to Kirkwall to assist in preparing it for the rest of those assigned there. We strongly encourage IC discussion of things left to character discretion—someone should definitely do a crystal post to discuss what to do with the personal belongings left behind in the Gallows or what new form the statues should take!
WHAT: Cleaning up Kirkwall
WHEN: Cloudreach 1-21
WHERE: Kirkwall
NOTES: This log post is for characters who go early to Kirkwall to assist in preparing it for the rest of those assigned there. We strongly encourage IC discussion of things left to character discretion—someone should definitely do a crystal post to discuss what to do with the personal belongings left behind in the Gallows or what new form the statues should take!
Kirkwall once lived on the edge of the Tevinter Imperium and was home to nearly a million slaves. Stolen from elven lands or shipped from across the sea, all slaves fed the Imperium's unquenchable thirst for expansion. They worked in massive quarries and sweltering foundries that produced stone and steel for the Empire.The city's complicated past is not easy to forget, history having earmarked many corners of the stone city. A ship approaching the harbor spots the city's namesake: an imposing black wall. It is visible for miles, and carved into the cliff side are a pantheon of vile guardians representing the Old Gods. Over the years, the Chantry has effaced many of these profane sentinels, but it will take many more years to erase them all.
Also carved into the cliff is a channel that permits ships into the city's interior. Flanking the channel are two massive bronze statues—the Twins of Kirkwall. The statues have a practical use. Kirkwall sits next to the narrowest point of the Waking Sea, and a massive chain net can be erected between the statues and the lighthouse, closing off the only narrow navigable lane. This stranglehold on sea traffic is jealously guarded by the ever-changing rulers of the city as the net trolls taxes, tolls, and extortions in from the sea.
—From In Pursuit of Knowledge: The Travels of a Chantry Scholar, by Brother Genitivi
Establishing a presence in Kirkwall is a delicate matter. First, there's Provisional Viscount Bran Cavin—a man so used to batting back friendly offers of entirely harmless occupation of the battered city-state that his first three responses to the Inquisition's leadership appeared to be slightly personalized form letters. Proving that the Inquisition is here to work and not to conquer will be a process. The first step in that process is the second reason the move is delicate: the only building the Provisional Viscount is willing to part with is the Gallows, left quarantined and unoccupied since Knight-Commander Meredith Stannard's famous crystallization into red lyrium in the courtyard. The Gallows have since overgrown with red lyrium. If anyone is going to live and work there, there's a lot of work to do.
↠ Cloudreach 1-3: The Journey There
↠ Cloudreach 3-4: Arrival
↠ Cloudreach 4-14: Haunted
↠ Cloudreach 14-21: Spring Cleaning
skeleton war
[He's stressed to nearly his limit by arriving in this city, and the skeleton he had just picked up had suddenly made a swing for his head with a bony fist. Dropping it had unfortunately not made its bits scatter. Instead, it seems to have invited the attention of a few other skeletons and Anders doesn't even know what he feels about fighting them. They may be skeletons because of him, after all.]
Can't you go? Look, there are other skeletons battling over there, go join them. Or try a Templar, I hear they're tasty, look, there's one right there.
[Despite his exhausted words, he's pulled his staff off his back. He's not actually going to let them swarm her, no matter what she'd tried to pull a couple of weeks back.]
no subject
Really — [ Wren wheezes. At least she's armed for this little venture. The run-in with the ash wraith had sold her: Unfortunate as the picture of a knight might be here, it's necessary. ] — I have heard Orlesians gamey,
[ Hilarious. She's hilarious. White light arcs off the sword as it smashes into bone, more a battering ram than a blade. Break them into enough pieces, and the damn things (these shells of people —) might stop moving. The Veil's too patchwork here for lyrium alone to lay them at rest.
She slams one aside, pushing closer towards Anders. Minutes ago, distance had been preferable (what idiot had assigned them to the same shift of rooms?); now it's a liability. If she drags him back bleeding, there will be questions, remorse that she isn't prepared to fake. ]
On the ground — !
[ The skeleton Anders has dropped yanks hard at his leg. Meanwhile, behind Wren, withered hands reach out to seize the knife from her side, ]
no subject
[It's not as icy as it gets for some Templars. Her attempt at him hadn't been something that would inflict pain on him or Nathaniel, at least, but he's still going to watch her warily.
Or he is when he's not being grabbed by the ankle and yanked on. Anders staggers, nearly falling over except that he catches himself with his staff. Ice sprays from his fingertips into the skeleton, followed up by a smashing swing of his staff. The skull shatters, and Anders whirls around to send a burst of wind at the one going for Wren's knife.]
Watch your back, one never knows if my staff will slip from too much lotion on my hands. But you needn't worry. It was very useful.
[The skeletons have stopped fighting each other as much and are turning to, well. Not look at them. That would require eyes. Facelessly face them. Anders takes a breath.]
After you.
no subject
Her elbow smashes back on instinct — finds only empty air, as Anders' gust batters the corpse away. Well-timed. ]
Stay behind me.
[ If they keep echoing each other's orders, that means neither of them wins, right?
As little as she wants to put her back to Anders, there's not much in the way of alternatives. She can't afford to catch him in her wake. Relations are tenuous about camp; she's done what she can to lighten the perceived public stakes (Harassment? No, they've only been joking, did you hear about the lotion?), but it's infinitely far from enough.
A silenced Anders is one that would be screaming soon.
Wren advances, lips curling back, and a smothering solidity blazes out from her, painfully-bright. The bodies stagger back from it, stupefied, long enough for her to cleave a rotten neck, to shatter bony knees, to slam another hard against the wall.
It drops, body broken, and this is what she does. This is what she was made for —
— But she still needs him. There are too many of them, too little fire left to her veins; she's cleared a path. They can finish this now, but they're only doing so together. ]
no subject
[Despite the words, despite the inneundo he thinks she wound up missing entirely, a shame, the first thing Anders casts when she turns her back on him is a barrier around them both.
A fallen Templar would invite too much scrutiny, after all.
Her attack is followed by a roll of the earth, sending the skeletons falling and breaking a few of the more brittle ones' limbs. They still crawl forward, apparently not caring that they should be crippled.]
Watch your step.
[That's the warning she gets before spikes of ice erupt from the ground, stabbing upward to hold skeletons in place and make them easier to take out.]
no subject
She's fought alongside Knight-Enchanters in the past, but she'll never really get used to it: The second's reorientation that slips a spell from threat to asset. It's always going to stutter her, no matter how she works at the instinct.
Jaw tight with discomfort (with fear shoved distant), she makes quick enough work of the pinned remnants. In the end, they're surrounded by splintered bone, by those traces of long-dried gore the rats haven't cleaned, and,
By silence, save their own breathing. This room must have once been reserved for gatherings. Classes, perhaps, or some other form of discussion — Anders will know better than she. Fragments of skull crunch lightly as Wren finds a corner to lean into. Cleaning her blade's a fine excuse not to look at him. ]
Only three floors to go. Then the next bloody building.
[ It's not the work that's the trouble, it's the place. But that's another thing Anders will know. ]
There is water in the canteen.
no subject
The next floor may be worse.
[His voice echoes in the silence, making the place feel all the more oppressive. Mages suffered here. Mages died here, simply for being born, and while he saved some, he didn't save enough.]
Harrowing chamber.
[Terror had been a constant thing there, half-awake children hauled out of bed and thrust, poorly trained, at a demon who knew freedom would come from defeating them. The memories likely had brought up more than a few demons to play with skeletons and feed off anything else they can inspire.]
I've been told they killed eleven in one night in there, and made jokes about going for a full dozen.
[Was the tale true? He doesn't know. The man he'd heard it from hadn't been prone to lying, and Anders would believe it of people who would make mages Tranquil for fun. Or it could be exaggeration. The Gallows had been a horrible place for mages, and the validity or invalidity of the story wouldn't change that.]
Ready?
[His voice is grim as he stretches and adjusts his grip on his staff. Of course a Templar would be ready for a Harrowing chamber. That was probably their favorite room in the Circle.]
no subject
[ It’s not quite a request.
She doesn’t enjoy having to make it — the irony of asking for pause before a Harrowing chamber rankles. But he's right. It'll be worse; if any room in the place is likely to host demons, it’ll be those above them now. Her pride matters little beside practicality.
(Eleven apprentices. She’s not inclined to believe it. The logistics alone would be a nightmare.)
A swig of water, before she stows it aside and counts one-two —
(Everything about the Gallows is.) ]
This place,
[ It starts out hard, tempered abruptly by the reminder of his presence. She doesn't miss the severity of his affect. For all her loathing of the man, she can guess abstractly a little of what being here must mean. There will be enough emotion of this without adding her own untidy spill. The Fade is close here, they needn't chum the waters.
Lower, flat: ]
It is a failure unto its own.
[ A small huff of air. She has supervised Harrowings. Had wanted to at first, had thought perhaps —
She's told the jokes, too. It’s how you get by when it all goes bad. And eventually it always goes bad. One-two-three, ]
And you, are you ready?
no subject
[His voice is leaden as he nods and heads for the staircase.]
I'm as ready as I'll ever be.
[It's not much of an answer, but it's all he can give. He knows names of some of the ones who died during their Harrowing, as well as a few who chose Tranquility. They'd all been misused and betrayed by the system that claimed to be there for protection. All the same, he's working hard to not get angry, to not start ranting. The area is volatile.
They reach the door and he takes a breath, renewing their barriers as he does so.]
Kick open the door and move to the right. I'll send a wave of fire sweeping from the middle to the left. We may have a little surprise on our side and fire will extend it.
[Everything has a moment of panic when it's on fire. Even demons.]
sloth demon for a ooc heads-up
What failure is wrought in the ruins of this city? In all the bloodshed that he's bred and inspired? The Circles have done good for those within and without — he’s speaking of a wave of fire and she can already feel the rush of another, older heat.
The Circles have done good. So they have done bad, too. What in this world hasn’t? The Gallows are horror at another scale: A vivid reminder of the potential within any system to warp.
(It always has been warped. She knows. Knows that it won't be forced back into shape, will be hardened or shattered for it. But that's not a belief easily-relinquished.) ]
Very well. If there is cause, we fall back and hold the door.
[ It might buy them time to yell for reinforcements. Wren hefts the blade, breathes deep, and boots the thing in. A sharp dive aside to clear his path, but —
— Robes go up in flames over lifeless bones. Nothing shifts them, nothing shows even the slightest sign of life. Until a slight robed man edges out from the corner, where he's been sheltering behind a half-toppled column. His hands raise, empty in a gesture for peace, ]
Please stop that.
[ His voice is heavy, a lecturer's drone. His figure, recognizable vaguely as some mage within the Inquisition's ranks, no one of notable politics or personality. ]
no subject
[He's a little surprised to see the other mage here. Climbing up has been dangerous and difficult enough with a Templar along; to get here alone is impressive. But he's older. Maybe he's got more experience with fighting.
Anders doesn't put away the staff, but the flames have stopped.]
Is it clear from here? Or is this as far as you've gone?
[The lecturer gives him a slight smile, and Anders clears his throat, feeling a little embarrassed for a reason he can't put his finger on.]
I've found this to be a good place for a break. I haven't ventured further out yet.
[A break doesn't actually sound like a bad idea. They've been fighting for a time here, and Anders glances over at Wren.]
What do you think? Rest for a few moments, drink, and then move on?
no subject
It almost lets her forget where they are within the tower.
(A harrowing room. Isn't that strange? That this should be a good place for a break? The Veil must be terribly weak here — but the mages will know. She can trust them to know,)
Wren fumbles at the thought, finds it slippery. She nods in assent. Her shoulders slump with a weariness never typically expressed as she shifts to sheathe her blade. Something catches her halfway, a pause at some rough worried edge: Trust Anders? That doesn't make any sense. ]
They aren’t sending people in alone, [ Especially not mages. She puzzles at the words; they come slow, faintly concerned: ] Where’d your partner go?
He wanted to look ahead. [ Dry as bones. The lecturer looks between the two, presses his palms together as one might before a tiresome classroom. ] I don’t know what he expects to see. It would make more sense just to close this whole place off, wouldn’t it?
no subject
The Inquisition has to use it.
[Anders' words are slow.]
The Inquisition needs the space, and we have to make sure there's no red lyrium around. The red lyrium is dangerous. As are the remnants. We have to make it safe.
[He doesn't like how hard it is to come up with the points. He's tired, though. Surely it makes sense, after all the fighting? He's frowning as he moves toward a chair, not sure why he's frowning or running his hand along his staff.]
No place is completely safe in this world. You two should know that well. Is it worth all of this work and strain? All that's ever happened here is death.