THE SEAS SHALL RISE & DEVOUR, Part I

[faderifting]

WHO: Any Inquisition members + all rifters
WHAT: A semi-involuntary tropical island vacation
WHEN: Kingsway 20 onward
WHERE: The sea and an island east of Rivain
NOTES: OOC post.

I. THE JOURNEY

Two ships depart from Kirkwall on the morning tide, sturdy vessels crewed by veteran sailors--but a mere skeleton crew, as it turns out, or so a few of them would have you believe. They're prone to assigning tasks to anyone who happens not to look busy, shoving ropes into hands without a care for station or experience, barking out instructions and expecting to be obeyed. With plenty of work to do the journey seems quick, and besides the unexpected chores it's otherwise smooth sailing through the Waking Sea. Some claim to've spotted the Windline Marcher one night, but it could just as easily have been clouds on the horizon, and that's it for excitement until the ships round the island of Brandel's Reach and out into open ocean, the ever-present coastline finally falling away behind.

The sky is bigger out there and the waves are too, especially when a storm strikes a few days out, dark clouds and driving rain sending any inexperienced sailors below decks to wait it out. The worst of it being the pitch of the ship rolling up and crashing down the massive waves, and the way the hold fills with the stench of people being sick. But the next morning dawns calm and clear and with no lasting damage done.

The group is bound for a desert island, drawn on maps with a big deep cove like a bite chomped out the side it, and a narrow channel through the surrounding reefs to reach it. That's the only moment of true tension on the voyage: as soundings are taken every few feet and the helmsmen adjust and readjust in response, carefully threading the needle to avoid running aground on ship-killing banks of sharp coral.

Both ships make it, and anchor offshore in the bay in the sheltering lee of a cliff, safe from future storms. The first party ashore reports back that Qunari are present in the area, but while they've displayed a palpable wariness, hostility does not seem their aim today, and they retreat back up to the hills above the beach as Inquisition forces arrive. Anyone able-bodied is tasked with assisting in unloading, and those less hale with helping the quartermaster's assistants track the process to make sure nothing goes astray between hold and shore.

Camp is to be a collection of tents: large ones beneath which makeshift facilities for cooking, eating, and working are set up, and many small ones designed to hold 2-4 Inquisition agents. They're still hammering stakes into the sand and tying off ropes to the sturdier palms when a shout goes up, though anyone present who possesses an anchor shard will not need to be told: a rift has opened nearby, a couple hundred yards out into the bay, a knot of shapes splashing about it. Better hope the rifters can swim.

II. ARRIVAL

Rifters

You were asleep--deeply or fitfully, for the last time or just resting your eyes for a moment-- and then you were not. And wherever you were was not, anymore, replaced by nothing but the sensation of falling, tumbling into endless, bottomless nothing. If this were still a dream, you would wake before you hit the ground. You can't die in a dream, they say. In some worlds.

In this world, when the afterimage left by a flare of too-bright, greenish light fades, you will find yourself at sea. Not metaphorically (though perhaps that too) but literally: dropped into what is unmistakably the ocean, from the salt in your mouth and the incessant slosh of waves into your face, the squawk of gulls circling overhead. You had better start treading water.

Thankfully, if you can keep your head above the waves long enough to make a quick inspection, it turns out that land is in sight, only a few hundred yards off. Unfortunately, between you and it is a strange slash of greenish light. It sticks up out of the water but seems to continue beneath as well, turning the otherwise-turquoise waters the same pale greenish shade of a man gone seasick. The cluster of demons emerging from the rift are tall, spindly stick-things with too many eyes who flail about like stickbugs dropped in pond, but use the long reach of their arms to attack. Some are hunched and hooded with no eyes at all, their shrouds sodden and draped in seaweed. Others are mere wisps of greenish light that float easily over the surface. While you might get the impression they are as surprised as you to find themselves in the drink, any humor that might bring is probably outweighed by how angry it seems to make them.

If that were not enough to contend with, there is also the narrow splinter of light the same sickly green as whatever brought you here that now glows out of the palm of your left hand. It aches, a bone-deep pain that gnaws even through all the distractions. But there is some good news: from the beach over yonder boats are launching. Perhaps they'll save you.

Rescue

As if rescuing rifters from drowning and demons weren't hard enough work, all the commotion in the water inevitably draws the attention of the local predators. But what arrives isn't the usual eel or ray or even a shark: it's something much bigger and much...redder?

Slinking through the water comes the flash of a fin and the glint of a scaly back, so quick and sinuous it's hard to say how many of the sea serpents there are. As wide around as the circle of a man's arms, with snapping jaws lined with an unnatural number of curving teeth, but what should be smooth snakey curves are instead jagged with the jut of brilliant red crystals that catch the light and make the sea seem to be already splattered with blood. They're studded all over its body, making any even glancing blow carry twice the danger: there's not just the stunning force of the strike to worry about or the possibility of being coiled in a crushing grip, but also being sliced and gored by red lyrium.

And the serpents aren't alone. While all eyes are on the churning water and the incredible sight of demons battling it out with sea monsters (because everything in that water is fair game to the beasts, not just the Inquisition), one sailor is suddenly plucked out his boat and carried screaming down into the depths by a great, crystal-encrusted tentacle. Cleansing runes are effective, but the monsters are canny enough to avoid capture, falling back into deeper water before attacking again. The arrival of a red lyrium-tainted kraken is just about the final straw for the ship's crew, and after seeing the monsters come dangerously close to cleverly flipping one of the longboats, they insist that the Inquisition row back for shore.

If flight is hard to stomach, consider it a tactical retreat: in shallower water the great bulks of the monsters become a liability, thrashing about among the rocks as they try to give chase. Escape back to the beach is possible, and surely the safer course, but it may be possible to lure one of the sea serpents into a tide pool or to beach itself up on the sands. The rest continue to prowl the bay, visible circling the ships at anchor and making any return impossible for the time being.

III. STRANDED

Once everyone is safely on land and out of the monsters' reach—after any wounds have been seen to, with particular attention given to any that may have been exposed to red lyrium—it's obvious that there's no way to leave for the time being. There isn't much to do but to try to make the most of things and try to accomplish what you came here for.

Some of the team will be tasked with continuing to set up camp. Now that the stay might be longer than a single night, it needs to be a little sturdier. The beach and cove are protected from harsh winds and exposure by a half-circle of rocky cliffs, and the Qunari communicate in grunts and one-word answers that large predators make sleeping in the jungle itself a bad idea. They've only been here a few days (that much can be gleaned despite their reticence), but some of the untamed jungle has been cut through to make clear paths to fresh water and fruit sources.

Penetrating the rest of the island is slow, difficult work—though magic may make it easier. The goal is near the top of the formerly volcanic peak in the island's center, but hacking through the growth to create a path may abruptly become a waste of time when it gives way to a steep drop-off or an equally steep incline and forces everyone to double back and try another route. If there was ever a clear road to the top, it's gone now, grown over during centuries of abandonment. But there are signs of past habitation: the lower portions of the island are spotted with crumbling ruins, chunks of moss-coated wall rising out of the forest floor, the occasional pillar looming up amongst the trees. Some have architecture and faded murals that are distinctly elven. Others, more recent, are clearly human, including a statue of Andraste in the center of a clearing. Others are harder to identify.

The predators the Qunari were trying to warn everyone about turn out to be real--they're large, jet-black cats about the size of a height of a mabari but longer, with short manes, near-scaley skin, and horns almost like the Qunari's. And before anyone gets any ideas about keeping one, they're fiercely territorial—always likely to try to eat your face, but doubly so if you come near their adorable kittens. Feeding them may buy a moment or two for escape, but nothing is going to win them over.

Comments

Ellana Ashara | Open

[serannas]

{ II. ARRIVAL }
rescue
Ellana volunteers to be in one of the boats that head out, her staff angled to sit in the boat against her shoulder. The demons and rift are old news to her now, but the location is a bit of a change. As they get near, she calls out, "We'll cover you! Get aboard!" to the rifters before raising her staff in the air and firing a spell at the nearest demon. However, when a red lyrium encrusted tentacle slithers up out of the water, she realizes this isn't going to be as routine as she thought.

"Uhh... fight or retreat?"

{ III. STRANDED }
Volunteering herself to hack through the jungle gives Ellana an opportunity to explore. She's already visited the elven ruins and copied the murals down in her journal, but for now she contributes by trying to get to the top of the island. The cats don't scare her -- she can turn into a big cat too -- but the constant dead ends are frustrating. At one point she stops when she reaches yet another drop off and sighs, shoulders sagging.

"Dead end," she tells her exploration partner. "Time to backtrack and try again."

II (this is a terrible idea, make her stop)

[iceblade]

"Oh, Lady...." Skadi stares at the red lyrium tentacle in fascinated horror, taking her greatsword from her back. When her nearest companion asks that question, she knows her answer. Imagine tales she could bring to her hold, if she fought and defeated it in combat! Perhaps she'd even gain a new legend mark.

"Fight, of course! If we can't beat it, we can still buy the rifters some time, right?" Besides, she'd much rather kill something than acknowledge the shard in her palm. The more she can put that off, the better. Cloaking herself in Fade-energies, she lets out a battle-cry and swinging her blade the moment there's a chance for it to connect with that tentacle.

but action poses are fun!

[serannas]

"Oh, of course! I wasn't suggesting we leave before they're on the boat!" Ellana says, eyes wide as she watches Skadi look like a child left alone in a room full of sweets. The battle cry makes her wince and then Skadi is swinging away and Ellana does her best to assist. Swinging her staff the normal way isn't possible with such limited space but she'll do what she can since the staff is just focusing the spell. She shoots a fire spell at a tentacle and just manages to connect, causing the beast to whip it around in pain. Ellana has the feeling that most of her fire spells are going to miss completely or go out with a splash of water, so this is a minor victory for her.

"Ugh, where is its body?" she asks, trying to see through the spray the tentacle has kicked up.

[iceblade]

"Eh--over there! Fuck, I can't swim." The Avvar woman grumbles, as though this were a minor inconvenience akin to a papercut. She's here, and she's not about to leave until they've helped all they can, though. That writhing tentacle distracts her for a moment, and instead of ducking, she leaps up to slice at it, building on what Ellana just did.

[serannas]

"Uh oh," Ellana says, because if Skadi goes into the water, that will be another person they'll have to fish out. Despite that, the Avvar woman is really throwing her all into this fight and Ellana wonders if she's strong enough to hold Skadi back if she starts to teeter over the edge of the boat.

"Okay, I'll shoot at its body! You keep working on its tentacles." With Ellana's longer range, she can hit the body, which is a much bigger target than these tentacles are. However, the body keeps ducking back underwater, making it harder to hit consistently.

[iceblade]

"On it! If you've got that shielding magic, now's the time!" Defensive tactics aren't really Skadi's style, but she's thinking more in terms of Ellana's own safety. Having some kind of buffer might prove vital against that exposure to that red lyrium substance, anyway. Giving as much room as she can get away with while they're both on a boat, she enthusiastically swings at the next tentacle, the frost rune on her blade giving her a little more of an edge. Hakkon's Valor is certainly getting good use today, and then some.

While she cleaves part of that tentacle clean off, its wild thrashing afterward nearly knocks her right off the boat. Only getting her footing at the last moment prevents a disaster. "Lady's bits, you'll pay for that!"

[serannas]

Ellana doesn't need to be told twice. She lays a barrier down over them and continues the fight, though her heart leaps into her throat when Skadi nearly goes over.

"Careful!" she exclaims, though it's really just a natural reaction and Ellana knows there's only so much a person can do to be careful when battling a sea monster on a boat.

"Argh, this thing! I can't tell if it's all one creature or not." Still, she fires at it whenever she sees the large mass that makes up its body lift up out of the water.

[iceblade]

"Nor can I, dammit!" They'd need to back up in order to have a chance to seeing more without risking themselves and their boat, but Skadi's loathe to suggest that when she's hoping a few more strikes of her blade will cleave enough tentacles to stop slapping them around with.

Although that's not all she can do. "Duck!" She doesn't explain why, but it becomes obvious in a moment. The fade energies she's gathered around her surge and then are expelled in a purple-hued blast. The nearest tentacles writhe in pain.

[serannas]

It's not much warning, but Ellana ducks forward in the boat, staff pressed to the floor of it. And a good thing she does, because she feels a rush of air blow out past her that's strong enough it makes her gasp in surprise.

"What was that?" she asks, craning her head to see if it's all right to get back up again.

III

[wheretheferngrows]

Fern doesn't quite stumble into Ellana's back, but she does make herself stop just short of doing so, edging a couple steps backward so it won't be quite so obvious she was looking down at her shoes rather than at whatever it is that passes for a trail up here. "Time to backtrack and try again," the more seasoned of the two adventurers says.

It's difficult for Fern not to regard her with something approaching wide-eyed awe; prior to joining the Inquisition, she'd never seen a Dalish elf before, and still feels quite unsure around them.

Still, she tries to square her shoulders and lift her chin, and not be as incompetent as she feels. "Right," she agrees (no way to hide that Fereldan accent), looks momentarily unsure, then says, "I think I saw something like ruins, a little way's back down the trail. We could go that way--if you think it's a good idea."

[serannas]

"Did you?" Ellana asks, her former disappointment at their slow progress all but gone now. "That would be worth checking out. Even if it's all overgrown, the fact that there used to be something there means there has to be a path to and from it, right?" And that's a decent starting point. Or at least better than they've had.

"Lead the way," she says, since she missed seeing the ruins as they came through. Granted, she was really focused on hacking through and not cutting off a limb in the process.

[wheretheferngrows]

"Lead the--" Oh. Oh. Fern nods quickly, tightening her grip on her staff, and turns to look back down the treacherous slope that they'd been hiking up to get them to this point. She swallows, gathering her courage, and starts to make her way back down again, doing her best not to shuffle, wobble, and trip over the uneven ground.

The slope gradually gives way to firmer, steadier ground, and through the dense underbrush Fern catches a glimpse of a few fallen stones she'd noticed on their ascent. She points to them, looking over her shoulder to make sure Ellana is still following. "There," she says, "it looked like an old rock wall to me, not just some bits of boulder." Inquisitive, she walks over to it and reaches out to touch the evidence of masonry along its weathered edges.

[serannas]

As Fern turns around, she'll see Ellana bent low, sliding down the last few meters of slope in her boots with one arm outstretched for balance and her other holding her staff up off the ground. When she reaches level ground, she jerks upright, her momentum sending her a few extra feet forward until she reaches out to brace herself against a nearby tree to stop, letting out a short laugh.

"I wasn't brave enough to try that from the top," she says, before focusing on the sight before them. "Oh yes, definitely part of a structure." Ellana follows and also runs a hand over the stone. "Hmm, wonder if they quarried stone somewhere on the island. Otherwise someone had to bring it by ship and wouldn't that be a trek to drag it here?"

[wheretheferngrows]

The display of agility from Ellana elicits a tiny, admiring smile from Fern. "I'd've broken a leg for sure," she says; that slope was tough enough to wobble down on foot, let alone doing anything more daring.

"Hmm, wonder if they quarried stone somewhere on the island. Otherwise someone had to bring it by ship and wouldn't that be a trek to drag it here?"

Clueless, Fern nevertheless finds herself nodding and saying, "Oh, yes," to avoid looking like she has no idea what she's talking about--but truthfully, all of this is quite beyond her experience. Already she'd feeling a deep, gnawing dread in her gut over her haphazard choice to join the Inquisition on this mission; what skills can she possibly offer to Ellana to make their trek through the wilderness anything other than extremely dangerous?

There's a little trail leading through the undergrowth, and the shorter elf starts down it, taking cautious steps to avoid tripping. As they walk together, she glances Ellana's way again and asks, a bit shyly, "So if you're out here with the Inquisition, who's with your clan? As a mage, I mean."

[serannas]

"Oh, Sorrel is First now," Ellana says, ducking beneath a low hanging branch. "There were three of us and the Keeper, which shouldn't have been allowed. I should have been given to another clan as I came into my magic last. But she felt sorry for me because my parents had died and so she kept me hidden. It meant I couldn't go to the meeting of the clans, because I was a secret, meant to be hidden away." She can talk about it without as much bitterness as she once held, because Ellana walks her own path now, but it will always be a sore spot that she was never taught Keeper magic.

"I have mixed feelings about that, but eh, you don't want to hear all that. Besides, I've left the clan anyway. For good."

[wheretheferngrows]

Fern listens to the explanation in rapt fascination, even though the names go sailing quite over her head; she doesn't know who Sorrel is, but assumes he must be someone close to Ellana if they were raised together. ...Were they raised together? It sounds like it.

She frowns all the same as they walk along side by side. "Sounds a bit like being a regular apostate," she says, and tries not to sound too glum, though it's difficult. She uses her staff to thwack aside a bit of brush, perhaps venting some of her pent-up frustration into the gesture. "My folks didn't hide me away or anything, but they wouldn't let me do anything either, 'specially since we were so close to Ansburg. There's a Circle there," she adds, since it occurs to her Ellana might not know that, being Dalish born and all. She sighs. "Dunno if it would have been better moving around a lot, but I hope no one ever asks me to herd sheep again." Ugh, sheep.

She spots the end of the path up ahead of them, and pauses with widening eyes at the sight of the moss-covered ruins unfurling before them in the fading afternoon light. "Oh, Maker--look at that!"

[serannas]

"Oh, the Keeper never let me do anything either!" Ellana says, glad to be talking to someone who knows what it feels like. "I was made hearthkeeper since she told me I would never be a Keeper of the clan someday, and the most I could do outside the camp was gather firewood. The hunters could go out and trade, explore, all kinds of things. But I was stuck. Safe, I suppose, but stuck." But that's all in the past now. Both she and Fern are out here exploring without anyone or anything holding them back.

Her attention is drawn to her companion and her amazed expression before she looks out before them and grins. "Well, we have to get a closer look. Let's use a bit of caution, okay? If it's elven, sometimes there are traps to deter people from coming around."


[ ooc: so sorry for the delay! i lost internet for 3 days and just got it back, and typing tags on a mobile phone did not appeal, lol. ]

iii; stranded

[foxsays]

Unsure what's going to be of interest to the new boss, getting a little bit of everything seems like a good bet. Araceli and Ellana went to Rivain before but at least the voyages didn't involve anything like this so she tags along since she knows islands but Ellana knows wilds.

"I'm trying to sketch some sort of map," she turns her notebook Ellana's way to show the rough path from where they set off, "I'll cross this one off."

With a small sigh she wipes sweat from the back of her neck with her free hand.

"Is there anything here you recognise at all?" Araceli tagged along to meet the Rivaini Dalish that time, she doesn't know what to look for but Ellana would.

[serannas]

"That's just what we need to bring back to the others," Ellana says with a nod. "It won't do any good to have them follow our dead end paths."

The temperature is a problem for Ellana too, even with her hair braided in a crown around her head. Sweat has plastered the baby hairs to her face and neck. "Here? The vegetation is familiar to me, but not this island at all."

[foxsays]

"All the other tracking and scouting we've done? I'm not good at that. The camping either but even if the main island I lived on was a busy one like a town, we have ones like these, I can do things like this for once." For a change. In almost two years. The actual practical side of being somewhere instead of doing some cooking, taking an assignment she's been given (hoping it's something she can do) and getting underfoot.

Unfortunately for them both, the only cloths on Araceli are those for cleaning her blades and with what they've had to fight in the waters, best not use them for mopping up sweat. "Any sign that the Rivaini Dalish have ever been here? I don't know anything about plants outside of cooking with them."

[serannas]

And here Ellana was starting to wonder if there was anything Araceli wasn't good at. She could scale walls and run across roofs, she could lie with a smile on her face and rob you blind, she could slice someone down with a graceful flick of the wrist. There is so much to admire about her, and Ellana has to remind herself that no one person can excel at everything. That would just be unrealistic.

"They might have been. There's an elven ruin on the island, though they wouldn't have built that. The ancient elves would have. But it's possible that the Dalish might have wished to live near it for a time." Some ruins have any eerie presence, but Ellana didn't get any sense of that from this one. "Then again, Rivain isn't like the rest of Thedas. The humans here treat the elves the same as they treat each other, so the Dalish often trade with them, and isolating themselves on an island by themselves doesn't seem like something they'd do. At least with the clan we met."

[foxsays]

For every complaint about missing her pistols, only one person saw what happened to her when she tried archery because it wasn't for her. Play to your strengths, build on them. And her Orlesian is passable on a good day, she can get away with better in a song than speaking it and there's a reason she isn't about to try to speak any elven unless she has to: the words come out wrong enough to her ear that since it's coming from a human, it's probably going to sound insulting to hear and correct. (Give her food to cook and she can cook it, can get the fish herself but she can't actually do anything more than spirited haggling.)

"Arlathan sank," and she's thinking more about speaking with Ser Coupe than she is anything she's read in a history book now. "We live on top of what was before. Our ruins. Our old empire. Things like those are what we built on and the sand and silt built up with the tides to form the islands and," a gesture as she says it for all the other things that go with it. But what Ellana tells her is written in shorthand for later when she's back at camp then back in Kirkwall. "Isn't it strange to find it just out here on an island though?"

[serannas]

"I can't really say," Ellana replies, looking thoughtful. "Arlathan Forest isn't that far from here, you know. The idea that the elves inhabited this island isn't so strange. It was an empire, after all."

She moves back down the path, redirecting them in order to try and get them somewhere useful. Out here in the jungle vegetation, sound seems dampened, so she can't hear any rivers or waterfalls just yet.

[foxsays]

"This is the part where I regret not bringing Lux. He'd have hated almost being eaten but he'd be useful for this." But she left him back in Kirkwall to let him continue settling happily into a new home, to make sure Korrin didn't come back to empty rooms and to see that the new diplomacy office didn't look so bare with that big lovely fireplace to sleep in front of.

Still, she doesn't really hear much about Arlathan that hasn't come from someone else writing about it, that someone usually being human. Because there are things that Araceli's been told or had implied beyond the shadow of a doubt that aren't for her with her friends because she's human so she doesn't push it even when she just wants to know, to understand. "All of Arlathan sank, no? That's how it's described as happening which is...well similar but different to our story but no one's been clear on what it was exactly." She offers Ellana her map in the meantime since she's been on a fishing trip or two so they might be coming close to one of those if she's been other places, keeping a watch for any of the damned cats.

[serannas]

"No, the city of Arlathan sank," Ellana clarifies. "Arlathan Forest, where it laid, is still around. And Arlathan itself was far from the only city that existed in the ancient days. So it's entirely possible there used to be a settlement here. Maybe the elves enjoyed the fishing."

Taking the map, she traces a finger along one path and starts walking back the way they came.

"What do you mean when you say it sinking is similar but different to our story?"