faderift | OPEN: The Nightmare's Domain

OPEN: The Nightmare's Domain

WHO: Everybody present for the effort to draw out the Nightmare.
WHAT: Oh no.
WHEN: 28-30 Bloomingtide
WHERE: THE FADE as it exists, approximately, in an incomprehensible nongeographical way, alongside the Western Approach.
NOTES: You can only participate in this plot if you signed up in advance. (Not really, this is a joke.) For driveby GM taunting or to have the debris of personal nightmares appear in the Fade sign up here. Check here for notes on crystal functionality, which will not be normal. (GIF source.)

The plan is simple enough, on paper.

Lord Livius Erimond, locked in Skyhold's dungeon since his capture, finally cracks when he learns that the Grey Wardens have moved on and no one is coming to negotiate for his release. There's no mind-control driving the sacrifices, he says, only fear. Corypheus has an arrangement with a demon to amplify it and extend the reach of the song that's driving the Wardens to desperation. Handle it, and maybe they'll see that they're being manipulated.

In practice, it's a little fuzzier. Some guesswork. Some optimism. Approximating the demon's location takes time and effort from the Fade-fluent. There's a rift nearby, but it's small, nondescript. Making it bigger, drawing attention and drawing the demon out onto solid ground where it can be fought, calls for every anchor shard on hand, mages and Templars to assist, archers and swordsmen at the ready. The Herald did it before, at the Temple of Sacred Ashes. It's feasible. Just wiggle your fingers, and--

--and the sky opens up wide, then wider, too wide, green light flooding out like water finally cresting over a bank, and the ground beneath your feet turns from sand to stone. In some places it becomes vertical. In others it stops existing at all. The rift sprawls and spiders out with almost sentient aim, encompassing everyone it can reach. It takes two seconds, maybe three.

Then it closes.

I. THE NIGHTMARE

The good news is: the Inquisition pinpointed the Nightmare's location correctly. The bad news is: the Inquisition pinpointed the Nightmare's location correctly.

So if you find a second to to wonder where you are, there are two possible answers. The first is the raw Fade, where few have trod since the ancient magisters entered the Golden City and began the Blight. The City is Black now and it hangs in the distance, always on the horizon, always visible, but never within reach. The light is sickly green and seems to come from everywhere and nowhere, creating shadows from any and all directions. What direction is up and what direction is sideways is open for debate anyway. The ground--if it can be called that when it is only sometimes below you--is dark and rough, all crags and cliffs and spires. It's wet, too, with puddles and stagnant streams wound through the rock.

The second possible answer to the question of where, and the one that might warrant even more attention than the first, is right on top of a damn demon.

The Nightmare is massive, as large as a small fort. It has a dozen legs and at least twice as many eyes; a warm, civilly sinister voice that knows your deepest and darkest fears; and a seemingly endless supply of minions. Terror demons spring out of the ground around you with creaking screams. Fearlings take the shape of your simpler phobias: here a spider, there a snake, or roaring flames, a lyrium-encrusted Templar. Fighting through the flood of demons and bringing down the Nightmare will take every sword, every staff, and several hours. Pick a leg.

And when it's over--when the Nightmare is dead and only straggling Fearlings and occasional Terrors present an immediate threat--try to figure out what's next.

II. SEARCHING

Attempts to tear a new hole in the Veil from the inside will produce no results. But those sensitive to the Fade may be able to feel something--not quite like a draft guiding you out of a cave, but there's no closer analogy in the common tongue. A faint whiff of reality, somewhere in the distance, straight away from the distant Black City. There's no sunrise or sunset, and an hour can feel like a day or feel like a minute, but time is passing, and the walk is long by any measure.

While it's in your best interest to stay with the rest of the Inquisition's forces, this region of the Fade is a twisty, treacherous thing that seems to actively conspire to separate and mislead its visitors. More Fearlings slither out of crevices to menace anyone who lingers alone or tries to sleep. There's a marshy expanse that does its best to trap feet, and a field of memorial stones with the names of visitors etched into their surfaces, each with a cause of death marked below. Everywhere you step the ground is littered with evidence of terrible dreams, worked into the landscape like they were there first and it has grown up around them. There are skeletons in the stone, rock formations that twist into the shape of gallows, lost toys underfoot, an entire home tucked down a winding path, achingly empty.

III. ESCAPE

The Nightmare is dead, but its absence creates new reasons to fear. It begins slowly, things crumbling: the edge of a stair giving way unexpectedly, a towering hunk of rock a ways off collapsing upward into the open air and reforming there. The path rearranges as it's walked and takes wanderers in different directions, leaving them to fight their ways back to the main group. It was the concentration of fear and willpower embodied in the Nightmare that held this domain of the Fade intact, and without it, there's a power vacuum to fill. The spirits drawn here are drawn by lingering fear, and warped by it.

The forms they take may not be those you're familiar with from outside the Fade--less deformed, more malleable, more insidious, the things you most or least want to see. Those who long for safety may find a gentle Desire demon willing to offer it. Those whose fears stem from insecurities may hear the whispers of lurking Envy, mimicking their voices from its hiding place, cautiously testing for a foothold. If fear only pisses you off, be prepared to face your Rage. And if you refuse to be afraid--if you have this under control, if you know you'll be all right--a smiling embodiment of Pride may appear to praise your prowess and ask you to put those skills to other uses.

Whatever form your demons take, they are distractions from the larger issue: this part of the Fade is collapsing, unstable, and not meant for creatures like you to survive in. As important as it is to face your fears, it may in the end be more important to run from them. Regroup, keep moving, take head counts. There's a rift ahead, small enough to slip through one at a time, out into the desert, with its bright sun and relatively solid ground--and however long it feels like you've been walking, days or weeks, Adamant Fortress is visible across the sand.

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For some reason he'll have to take out and examine later, that hurts. He's always done his best to do what was right, to be honest, or at least honorable, to answer for himself and his Order with as much of himself as he could give.

He hadn't even realized that she was, truly, coming around to him. And here she was claiming disappointment, as if he owed her any such guilt. It should have been ridiculous, unimportant, easily dismissed as the ravings of a zealot. But as devout and passionate as Cassandra was, he knows she isn't that kind of person. And it stung.

"I don't believe I could possibly explain anything so nuanced, not to someone who refuses to believe the truth when it's given to her," He replied, taking a step back, "I'm sure if I turned right around and began insisting that I was a mage after all, you'd be happy to swallow that!"

Edited 2016-06-15 17:14 (UTC)

So there is something he hasn't told her. Satisfaction flares briefly in her eyes before being extinguished just as quickly, replaced by something else. There's hurt. Vulnerability, just briefly. She tries, always tries, to do the right thing, to find the truth, but more often than not her efforts seem to go so badly...

And then it's gone, replaced by the old, familiar standby. Anger.

"You have not even tried," she hisses, voice shaking. "If you have not lied, you certainly have not told me everything. You use my...my ignorance as an excuse, and then insult me when I try to understand! Why do you - "

Her voice grows louder as she speaks, more anguished and filled with restrained fury until she's nearly shouting, advancing on him as he backs away. But they are in the Fade, and though they may be small and inconsequential to the spirits and demons inhabiting it, they cannot hope to go entirely unnoticed. Even - perhaps especially - in the Fade, raised voices attract attention.

There's a horrible screech, and suddenly Cassandra finds herself flat on her back, the spindly shape of a terror demon holding her down. Her skull hits hard rock with a sharp crack, and she cries out, face twisting in pain even as she reaches for her sword.

And now, every word she shouted rang true. This was what comes of losing your temper, he thinks to himself, and then is startled by the clarity of the thought. He's touched a nerve, and she struck back in kind. Anger begets anger. Impatience only makes yet further impatience inevitable. Fool of a Jedi, what are you doing? You're smarter than this!

Apparently not.

He opens his mouth to temporize, to offer some protest, or the promise of an explanation, when everything changes. That seems to be a permanent feature of the Fade, where no other persists: everything changes. Even the exceptions have exceptions, it seems.

The demon, whatever it's name, is not facing him, bent over Cassandra's supine form, a thorn-barbed tail on an impossibly elongated humanoid form. Obi-Wan's reaction is instinctual and immediate. He flings out a hand, Force answering him even here, and shoves the demon, flinging it head over taloned feet. Without thinking, without questioning the instinct, he takes up his lightsaber and moves the distance it takes to put himself at best advantage to guard her. Were he alone, he might simply pursue the creature, but there's no sane plan that involves abandoning an ally on the ground, leaving her vulnerable for the sake of an expedient kill.

"Are you hurt?" The question is urgent. There's no quarrel about facts nearly half so important as this moment, and the next, and surviving it. Everything else can be put aside, and wait, "Cassandra!"

She gropes blindly for her sword for a moment before giving up. The demon is gone, somehow, and Obi-Wan is there, shouting at her. Her head is throbbing.

There's a too-long silence while her head swims and she tries to sort out what had happened and remember how to speak. Finally, she sighs, hand fluttering up to press against her forehead. "Do not be so loud."

The demon is not gone, and now Obi-Wan has to split his attention between the mass of bones and screeching and Cassandra, who is passing judgement on his tone from her lofty position of concussed on the floor. This really is just not his day.

"Stay there," He says, more quietly, and steps over her towards it, careful, blade upraised.

As if in answer to her request, the terror demon screeches, a high, piercing challenge, back arched like an angry cat. But it's only the one, and it seems to be alone. It screams again, and melts away into the ground. The silence and sudden stillness are unnerving, their surroundings suddenly redoubled in menace for the lack of obvious threat. He steps back, cautious of the unseen pounce, but nothing comes. Not yet at least.

"Are you alright?" He asks, kneeling beside her, trying to evaluate the extent of the injury, then remembers himself and goes into the pockets on his belt searching for the last healing potion, a little vial with a few fingers of red still sloshing around inside, "Don't try to sit up, just-- here. It isn't much, but it's all we have."

She makes a disgusted noise that, to her horror, comes out as more of a whimper. Luckily, Obi-Wan has already stepped away - hopefully he won't have heard.

By the time he gets back and admonishes her not to try to sit up, she's already doing just that, bracing her hands against the hard ground to lever herself up. Her vision swims as she raises her head, badly enough that she has to stop where she is rather than risk losing her balance. Badly enough that, when the vertigo doesn't dissipate, she gives in and carefully lowers herself back down with a harsh breath of frustration.

Not badly enough to keep her from glaring at Obi-Wan like the idiot he is. "I can hardly drink that lying down."

She's getting a look for that. He may not deploy stern looks with the same prolific fierceness that she does, but he's got a good one all the same-- and perhaps all the more potent for being deployed infrequently. Well, he's giving it to her now.

"I'm going to help you sit up," He replies, with the evenness of tone that suggests a brimming frustration, firmly tamped down, "Don't fuss."

Sit down and drink your medicine.

Oh, this is terrible. Cassandra presses her lips together stubbornly, glaring daggers at him, but she doesn't protest as he wraps an arm around her shoulders and eases her up to a sitting position.

It still hurts. She has to lean heavily against his arm, depending on him for support more than she'd like, and she closes her eyes briefly against a wave of dizziness. Only once she feels certain that she won't tip over does she dare to open her eyes and reach for the bottle.

It's disconcerting how small she seems, just for that moment. She is not, after all, much shorter than he, and certainly not what one might call unresisting. Obi-Wan does his best to be a good support, saying nothing, pretending...

Well, pretending there's any dignity at all to be had, here.

"We should stay where we are, rest awhile," He say, quietly, once she seems to have mastered the difficult art of swallowing, "At least until the bleeding stops."

If nothing else, the potion, once she manages to down it, seems to help. The dizziness fades, and finally she can sit up properly without swaying dangerously or feeling sick. And Obi-Wan has the good sense not to comment. Not to tease. There are many, she knows, who would be only too happy to see the great Cassandra Pentaghast so vulnerable - so helpless.

But he is all business, even if she grimaces at the idea of rest, of staying here any longer than absolutely necessary. The bleeding. She reaches a hand back to prod gingerly at the back of her head, wincing at the pain. When she pulls her hand forward again, the fingertips are red and wet with blood.

"Oh." She stares, then drops her hand, cautiously looking around. "The demon - " Had he killed it? Surely not, not so quickly nor so easily, before she could even recover.

"It ran off-- that way," He indicated the direction without looking, too focused on the task at hand, "I wasn't about to be lured away, so I had to let it go."

It might be back, he carefully did not say. Anything might happen. The rest of the Inquisition forces might be just over the next ridge, or another enormous spider might appear; the ground beneath their feet might turn into pudding for all he knew.

R-r-riip!

"Here," He offered her the strip of fabric, roughspun and ragged along one edge, torn from the hem of his inner tunic, still clean enough even after all this, "Better to keep pressure on it, if you can."

She doesn't need to be warned. The demon might return, or another one, more of a threat than a simple terror demon. Something as awful as the Nightmare might find them, and without the rest of the Inquisition to help them fight it. The path might disappear from beneath them, sending them spiraling into the void.

But for now, the ground is solid, the demon nowhere to be seen. They must contend with what is before them. Cassandra takes the fabric with a carefully neutral expression, tying it somewhat awkwardly around her head.

"That should stop the blood," she says with a confidence she shouldn't rightly be expressing. She's no healer, after all, but she also isn't content to sit here and convalesce indefinitely. "We should move on. A sitting target will only attract something else."

"Very well," His tone is so Reasonable, patience almost a coat of paint, "If you can stand unaided, we'll go on."

Then he folds his arms into his long desert-colored sleeves and steps back to allow her room to make the attempt. If she is well enough to walk, then all the better-- if she is not, then carrying her will do neither of them any good. To say that the Fade is hostile would be to categorize the obvious; he is not gloating.

She glares at him, both for the test he demands and for his tone when he speaks to her. As if she is a child, foolishly insisting that she can go on without a nap. As if he expects her to fail.

But the test is a necessary one, if obviously set. She gives herself only a moment to gather her strength (and wouldn't it be nice just to sit here a moment longer, just to rest and let the pain ebb away - ) before pushing herself stubbornly to her feet, wobbling only a little before regaining her balance. Her head throbs, but it is a dull ache now, and not the screaming, dizzying pain of before.

She refuses to look at him in triumph. Instead, she affords him the barest glance before looking back to the path ahead. If she focuses on the next step, if she remembers that each step brings her closer to escaping the Fade, to returning to Skyhold, it will not be so bad. "We should try to find the others."

Obi-Wan takes a moment to regard the burning, streaky sky in a mute entreaty for patience. He ought to have known she'd do that-- what else would he expect? So he follows, only a half-step behind, and if she stumbles after all, he'll catch her. It's not as if he has any other choice, really.

"Easier said than done. It may be more expedient to simply try and find a way out on our own and--" He stops, and sighs, scowling briefly at the path ahead of them. How many times had the Force led him to where he needed to be? But there would be no explaining it as anything less than... than an exceptional ability. She wasn't going to like it.

"...I do owe you an apology."

Edited 2016-06-21 06:16 (UTC)

It surprises her, that he offers. She would have expected him to take full advantage of the distraction that had so conveniently interrupted their conversation. That he does not...that says something.

But not enough that she graciously accepts the apology. She grunts, instead, whether in answer or in effort as she follows the path up a short set of stone steps. And she doesn't attempt answering until she reaches the top.

"An apology, and an explanation," she says firmly once she's back on level ground. "But we will discuss both later. First we must focus on getting out." Trying to discuss anything but certainly hadn't ended well for her last time.

"I agree. Wait a moment," Though she seemed disinclined to do anything else, even as he crested the orphaned stairway behind her. If it had been anyone else, he might have patted their shoulder as he passed, comforting and companionable, but the peace between them was yet fragile.

He kept his face carefully bland, and his hands to himself.

It really did take just a moment, this trick. Close your eyes and let your mind expand, reaching out not like seeking hands, but like something under pressure finally being permitted to relax. Search your feelings, for that one niggling impulse, the instinctive trend towards one direction or another, like the subtle twitch of a dowsing rod. He felt it, like a thin thread, a wisp of fog caught in a current, scent on the air.

"Let's try that way."

She watches, of course, with keen interest and not a little suspicion. If this isn't magic, it is something very, very close. He will be explaining it all to her, she vows.

If they ever manage to get out of the Fade at all.

That has to be their priority for the moment, even if everything in her is screaming at her to demand an explanation now, to get to the bottom of it and find out just what he can do and why he had hidden it in the first place. She pushes all that back, instead nodding cautiously.

There is nothing to do but follow, and hope that whatever he's doing will lead them to safety. It's not as if she has any better ideas, after all. Still, she offers a short, silent prayer up to the Maker as she takes a deep breath and follows staunchly after him. Her head still hurts; her whole body does now, the aches from her unceremonious crash to the hard ground beginning to make themselves known. She ignores them, pushing on. Wallowing in the pain will only delay their eventual return home.

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OPEN: The Nightmare's Domain

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