( closed ) player plot: the stars go waltzing

[eviscerates]

WHO: Adelaide, Araceli, Avery, Bellamy, Bruce, Ciri, Cosima, Daenerys, Jamie, Korrin, Lexa, Martel, Merrill, Ruby, Sabine, Teren.
WHAT: catch all log; the capture of shardbearers, their rescue, and related shenanigans.
WHEN: Gently timey wimey for flexibility, Team Rescue arrives at the outpost on the 10th.
WHERE: Orlais/Nevarra borders (roughly halfway between the Fields of Ghislain and Trevis), and then a Creepy Place.
NOTES: Log for the missing shardbearers player plot; ooc here & here. Only the travel threads for teams one and two are going up for now, the rest will go up on Friday :]b And to clarify - when I say party style, what I mean is subthread to your hearts content!
WARNINGS: HORROR THEMES. Abduction, experimentation/torture, forced ingestion of lyrium, implied past deaths/murder, violence.

SPEEDY LINKS

• TEAM ONE: travel to Craintellier
• TEAM ONE: rift two attempt & Venatori attack
• TEAM ONE: dungeons
• TEAM ONE: escape attempt — Cosima, Jamie & Lexa only
• TEAM TWO: travel to Craintellier
• TEAM TWO: post rift investigation — Adelaide, Bellamy & Sabine, Bruce, Korrin & Teren, Ciri & Merrill
• TEAM TWO: take the outpost — Attack & Distract & Stealthy & Stealy
• TEAM TWO: regroup & into the dungeons — plus a Lexa-shaped guest star
• ALL: finding your shardbearers
• ALL: boss fight
• ALL: epilogue & return to Skyhold — tba

click for bigger version. full map of Thedas here.

East of Perendale and south of Trevis, next to a river's winding course, there lies the bones of a fortress. It is an old and almost forgotten place, a dramatic, clawed seeming thing reaching up into the sky, harsh against the the rolling hills.

It is an ancient place, dating back to 660TE, a testament to an Empire suffering after civil war and grasping to restore its wealth and influence after it had been so shaken. It stands as a memory of grandeur, rather than an icon of it, and bears the marks of devastation and scarring that so much of the land suffered during the First Blight. It was all but abandoned thereafter, host only to the desperate and the greedy, and never for long. Once ornate mosaics now only hold flecks of gold, flakes that stubbornly resisted the hands of looters trying to pry them away. Other colours, reds, whites, greys and blacks, they all remain.

The site was chosen for its riches, sitting atop a mine that once held immense wealth, seams of gold that would bring wealth back into the Empire and help restore stability. Opulence, the central Tevinter staple (aside from slavery and blood magic, some might say).

But they dug too deep, and when the First Blight came so too did the darkspawn.

It has a new master, now, and he serves the Elder One. Parts of this stronghold may be in ruins now, but remember: it is not what lies on the surface that counts, but what lurks beneath it.


AD VICTORIAM, AD GLORIA.

Comments

[nonsibi]

Bellamy, having stepped closer, freezes momentarily. The look he shoots Adelaide is wary, easily dismissed as a Templar's brand of caution and nothing more. His hand tightens on the hilt of his sword, a brief squeeze.

Then he lets go. His tight jaw suggests at some remaining tension, but he's spotted the chain and he crouches beside the puddle.

"Look."

[glandival]

Sabine watches mage and Templar circle and study and make pithy observations, content to watch their perimeter, as much as most of it is shrouded in fog. But when someone says look, she looks.

"It would look charming on you," she says, thickly Orlesian and very dry. She chin ups at the other woman in their little makeshift party. "What is the word, for the ones who use that magic? Maleficar?"

[fleurdesel]

"Most keep to themselves and wish to be left to their own devices. A single blood mage could not overwhelm them." And those that knew and used blood magic that woke in packs? Nothing more to be gleaned from the blood, Adelaide reached out to pull the chain from the puddle- perhaps it will offer some answers. "The Venatori have wandered about rifts in the past. Studied them- and have no qualms about blood magic."

[eviscerates]

Pulling on the chain it sticks for a moment, and then comes from from the mud and ichor layered beneath the blood.

It is Martel's medallion, which I would describe to you except Libby is full of pain about it never being described in canon so too bad, it's a medallion. It should be resting upon his manly chest, probably.

Onto more serious tagging: there is a break in the chain, a clean slice, probably done by a blade.

[glandival]

Sabine recognises the trinket immediately enough that her expression changes, grows stormier, but also keener eyed. She sees that it is broken, but not the nature of her break, from where she is -- instead, there's a glance up and around as if she might expect Martel to come wandering on over and demanding back his effects, and maybe some of his blood, all over the ground.

[nonsibi]

Because he's just looked around to give Sabine an unimpressed look--thanks so much, he is not a medallion guy, but thanks--Bellamy gets a full look at her face and the shift of her expression. He knows its look. Not on her, but on other faces, a recognition that leads right into anger.

"Whose is it?" He doesn't bother to ask if she knows it, because she does, and she's already looking around. Bellamy stands, having crouched to examine the chain. Without knowing what he's looking for, he, too, looks around, and his hand goes warily to his sword again, even though immediate attack is unlikely.

[fleurdesel]

"My brother's." Martel. Always worn, often hidden by his shirt but the last time she had seen it so touched with blood? The day they'd met. Then reaching for it had earned her a hand about her throat and now-

Now she feels the urge to throttle whomever took this from him. With great care she draws to her feet, thumb sweeping over the cut in the chain. "They were attacked, it is not something he would lose so easily."

The medallion is wiped down with a kerchief, heedless of the blood. She'll hold onto it until they find him.

[eviscerates]

So far as clues go, there's not a lot more around the blood pool. However, one of them might notice a bit of red over by some rocks on the hills slope, or something white caught near the tree roots.

[glandival]

The reaction Adelaide gets is-- not her fault, specifically, but her claiming Martel as her brother evokes a vague wrankle-nosed look of offense out of Sabine, terminated in an eyeroll. How dare Martel become an Orlesian noble when she wasn't looking. If he's not dead, she's gonna kick him.

"Martel, a rifter. He was with the party."

Short, succinct. She stands. "And if there has been a fight, he has escaped it." But it's the glimmer of white at the foot of the tree that has her attention, and she drifts on over.

[eviscerates]

What catches Sabine's attention is a scrap of torn material, much of it still crisp and white despite mud smears over part of it. On the fabric are two twined serpents.

[nonsibi]

Okay, thinks Bellamy, because he can read the weird look--not well enough to know what it means, but enough to note it, and decide that he's not sure he wants to get involved in other people's family drama. He has his own family to worry about.

But he does appreciate the urgency, whatever bonds are at play here. He follows after Sabine when she goes for the fabric and makes quick note of its design.

"You got a sister who likes snakes?" he calls back to Adelaide.

[fleurdesel]

"If he escaped it, we would not be hunting for him." Capable as he is- and how well she is aware of that- this blood, this cut? It may not speak of a man taken unawares but it did speak of a man wounded. She is uncertain if his sorcery lends itself well to healing and that does not sit well with her either- he is injured, lost, and they've only the vaguest sketch of who might've attacked them.

Finished with the blood, Adelaide heads up to check the red by the hill's slope. "Are they entwined? If so, then this was an attack by Venatori blood mages."

[eviscerates]

The red is material - familiar material, perhaps. Ruby's cloak which was at one point loosely rolled up and set behind the rocks has become unravelled with the breeze, so the red brocade ripples in the tug of the breeze. There is no blood on it, or tears, just a bit of dirt and damp from being left on the ground.

[nonsibi]

Entwined. He steps to the side to get a better angle on the cloth. "They sure are. Great."

Blood mages, and not the friendly kind. Bellamy lifts his gaze to scan their surroundings again, like maybe they're being watched. Which, maybe they are. Under the leather of his armor and the cool cotton of his shirt, his neck prickles. The longer he stands in this scene, the more it feels familiar, like walking through the empty village among the corpses, the smell of blood high in the air.

His hand tightens on his sword. "Veil's too thin," he announces, voicing the obvious as he glances over at Adelaide. "Between the Rift and this--" This, the blood, the torn fabric and the layer of creeping unease that covers the whole scene-- "You need it like this to do anything or am I good to strengthen it?"

Such a team player.

[glandival]

There's a moment there when Sabine-- doesn't suppress a grin at all, but does at least squash the impulse to laugh at the jab about Adelaide having a snake-loving sister. It would have come out ugly, maybe falsely forced, and instead she focuses on folding the scrap of fabric up in her hand.

She glances over at the news of the Veil being too thing, glancing upwards at the air as if she would be able to tell by sight.

"How many would they have needed?" she says, directly her question past the Templar, at the mage. "To overcome the group? If there were many, perhaps there's a trail."