[CLOSED] PLAYER PLOT: The Ashes Underneath His Nails

[amygdalae]

WHO: Jim Kirk, Hermione Granger, Adelaide Leblanc, Herian Amsel, Anders, Inessa Serra, Raylan Gibbs, Ciri
WHAT: The Inquisition sends a group of agents to uncover the truth behind a string of mysterious disappearances.
WHEN: Kingsway 1st - 8th
WHERE: Emprise du Lion
NOTES: Plotting post is here - feel free to post in there still for queries and concerns and further stuff where needed. Warnings for blood, violence, talks about death, experimentation horror, abomination-related stuff etc and eventual on-screen child death. ALSO no tag order - just respond when you feel like you should and I'll try to hit it back if it feels appropriate!!

QUICK JUMP LINKS TRAVELLING TO FROMAGE & FROMAGE GENERAL THREAD ROUTE INVESTIGATION SEEKRIT CAVE ENTRANCE INTO THE SEEKRIT CAVE CAVE INVESTIGATION - LEFT TEAM CAVE INVESTIGATION - RIGHT TEAM KID ABOMINATION THREAD BACK TO SKYHOLD

(—he remembers the chill of the frost and snow biting at bare skin, its usual pure white now tinged a horrid pink from the blood on his hands. He's far away from them now, the danger and the pain and everything else, but the blood will forever be on his hands no matter how much he tries to wash it away. His father had been right all along. He truly was a monster of the greatest kind.)

QUEST: THE ASHES UNDERNEATH HIS NAILS (PART I) The message had come swiftly, the letter itself hastily written with a shaky hand. The request itself was simple; a plea for help from a village at the outskirts of Emprise du Lion, whose people have been mysteriously disappearing over the last few weeks. Considering the ongoing civil unrest that's still transpiring in Orlais the Inquisition made its decision to send out a team of agents to look into this message and see exactly what was going on. The eight agents tasked with the mission were given enough time to prepare for the trip ahead. They would all meet up first at the Inquisition camp set within the Emprise and from there travel for about a day until they reached where their destination was - Fromage, a quaint little village that rested at the outskirts of the area. From that point on, it was up to the agents of the Inquisition to solve this ongoing mystery. The mission: to discover the truth behind these disappearances - and to stop it, if possible.

Comments

[universal_charm]

To say the road was tense might be an understatement. To Kirk it felt like snakes walked the road with them, silent and menacing, any word spoken their fangs striking. Quietly he watched everyone as they trudged on through the cold, especially those who seemed to stand apart. Perhaps especially Herian, whom he had snapped at during the confrontation with the child.

Slowly he angled himself in her direction, closing the distance in minute steps, not wanting himself to turn into the snake. He pulled a skin from his pack.

"Thirsty?" he asked as his opening salvo. Not his smoothest moment, but he wasn't sure where he stood with her.

[dashing]

"You are very gracious," she replies, and though she does not smile (she rarely does, cannot even slightly in the wake of all that has transpired) Herian does tilt her jaw in a slight nod. "I should be glad of water, if you have it."

Wine, liquors in various forms, she cannot partake of. The strictest interpretation of the Knight's Code is her own, and it demands temperance.

She continues walking, maintains a steady pace, and glancing back to the path before them. "I owe you thanks for aiding in taking those people to a pyre."

[universal_charm]

"Water I have," he held out the skin. He has wine, but that was to warm at night by fires if they had to camp outside rather than in a village. He considered traveling as "on duty" and didn't partake. "Sorry if it tastes a bit like the bottle."

He was quiet a moment at that, letting her take and use the bottle or merely hold it. He wasn't paying all that much attention to it anymore.

"I though it was the least I could do," he finally acknowledged. "You and the others did most of the fighting. Seemed to me someone else should handle the smaller burdens."

[dashing]

"You have my thanks." Quiet, even, as she is always quiet and even, out of a constant sense of control rather than any kind of self-consciousness. As they walk Herian uncorks the skin, and tips her head back so that the relief of water can flow past her parched throat. It is a relief, and she savours it for a moment before carefully passing the still-unstoppered bottle back to its owner.

A long, slow breath. "These are not the burdens of your own world. We do not expect you to know the complexities of them, nor would we lay the weight of resolving them upon your shoulders. That you go where the Inquisition would send you and willingly partake means much." But they need not torment themselves. They need not put themselves through the act of killing demons that wear the faces of children.

Her expression tenses, very subtly. "Doubly cruel to expect one that begged for his life to strike blows to end it, I think."

[universal_charm]

He took his own draw as she spoke, listening quietly and not interrupting. Part of what she said was true, and he was sure quite a few Rifters might feel that way. But he couldn't. He wasn't a man to let horrible things go on and pretend like they were not his concern. Looking away was, in and of itself, an injustice. And while he did not know what it might be right to do, he knew what he could do, and wasn't that all any of them should be expected to give?

"You're right, this isn't my world," he said, twisting the strap of the bottle around his hand. "But it is the world I find myself, and I might be here for another day or another decade. Either way, I'm not the sort to just sit by and let others solve a problem when I could help. I have always simply tried to do what I feel is right, no matter where I am, and this place is no exception."

He took a breath, sighing softly and his shoulders sagging the tiniest bit.

"And sometimes there isn't really a right, only the best choice out of a bunch of crap ones. But that's the nature of any world, Thedas or otherwise."

ugh sorry for my extreme slow!!!

[dashing]

"Doing what is right is not always a task easily accomplished," she replies, though not unkindly. She speaks with a practised, balanced kind of calm, an eternal kind of steadiness. "We are rarely faced with good choices in war."

It's not exactly reassuring or a pat on the back, but she does glance to him, and the look holds more empathy than anything else, even if her manner is very controlled. "You sound an honourable man. I hope that next we work together it goes more happily than this."

Re: ugh sorry for my extreme slow!!!

[universal_charm]

"Believe me, I know. You just have to make the best choice you can. It's all anyone can ever ask of anyone else, I feel." It came down to, in the end, if you could live with the choice you made. Sometimes it came with a lifelong guilt, but there were just times when the "right" decision was not necessarily just. Life and circumstance were rarely so kind.

He hardly expected reassurance, but he accepted it graciously. If anything, he had thought she would need it. After all, she had been more in the thick of it than himself.

"Same," he nodded. "It'd feel nice to have something to raise a glass to."