( 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

[youwonscience]

"Like someone beat me up and threw me in a fucking dungeon, dude," she says, her voice a bit raw. Before the escape attempt, she hadn't been in pristine shape, but consciousness of all that has faded. Now the world has mainly narrowed down tot the sharp, nauseating pain in her left arm. "I don't suppose you're going to bother to splint that arm, either."

[eviscerates]

"Now, now." He does not sound so very different from a grandfather chiding a child caught with the hand in the cookie jar. Except, in this instance, the child might find their hand separated from them and kept in a cookie jar, who knows. "It was you who tried to escape. That young man you and your fellows killed had a name, you know. A family."

A little shake of his head.

"No need to splint." He draws a knife from his belt, idly resting the tip against his palm. "Blood magic is a terribly effective thing, you know?"

[youwonscience]

Cosima tenses, but manages not to actually cower. "Yeah, well, maybe you people should go abducting people if you don't want them to fight back now and then."

They both know she's in no position to fight him now, magic and restraints notwithstanding. "You people think you're doing some sort of messed up science, don't you? I've seen that condescending bullshit routine before."

They both know she's scared, too, but more than anything else in Thedas, this feels sickeningly familiar. It hadn't come to this at Dyad yet, but that was probably a matter of time. (She's already had a lyrium flash, some days ago; her ex, drawing blood while she thought Cosima was sleeping. She thinks it was a memory, though the lyrium makes it hard to tell.)

[eviscerates]

"A systematic study of numerous subjects to try and reach a better understanding... yes. I do think that's sufficiently scientific. Do you object to the assessment?" Although, he muses: "I suppose you are not in a position to assess it very objectively."

He can hardly hold that against her. "I want to learn. I want to understand why Fade travellers such as yourselves, are gifted this pieces of our world and our magic, regardless of whether you have any talent for it. You are interfering in matters that do not concern you. These are the consequences of placing your trust in the Inquisition."

[youwonscience]

"Yeah, I should definitely place my trust in the people who perform experiments on sentient, unwilling subjects instead," she says. She wishes she could focus well enough to properly glare at him. "You're really selling this whole setup."

"What's next," she adds, "a speech about how this is for the greater good? The state of knowledge? Heard it before."

[eviscerates]

A quiet chuckle, at that, and the point of the knife bites into the palm of his hand. If Cosima weren't without her glasses, she might be able to see the knots of scarring there, the result of years of blood magic. He lets it well in his palm and then roll over his skin, blood peeling over the curl of his hand, and then his wrist.

"I am a son of Tevinter, sworn to the glory of our Elder One. I care not a whit for your greater good. I serve, and I learn. You will not benefit from what we do, and you've no right to it. You are worldless, without magic, below even the most base of slaves. This is the blood of ages, of a noble line ever dedicated to the greatness of our Imperium."

His other hand hovers over her injured arm, healing magics enough to stop the bleeding and knit together her flesh, but stopping short of healing the fractures. "You may have the luxury of a swift death if you do not test me, child."

[youwonscience]

This is scary in a way that is really outside of Cosima's wheelhouse. She's been experimented on without her consent, but more in the way of painless blood tests and covert monitoring. She's met fanatics before, yes, but the only death she's faced is the disorder built into her genes, not a dude threatening her while magically stitching her skin together.

A not-insignificant part of her definitely wants to pick the "swift death" option over the alternative. But there's two things stopping her. One, he's a bully, probably a liar, and he doesn't get her cooperation, even if she knows she can't win. And two, Ruby said the Inquisition was coming. Maybe she doesn't have to hold out forever. Maybe she just has to hold out long enough.

(What would Beth do? What would Sarah do? ...Sarah would spit on him, probably, which is maybe a little more extreme than necessary.)

"Wow, what a great offer," she says, instead. "Let me think it over."

[eviscerates]

He chuckles, at that. The people of the Inquisition are children in so many ways, lashing out even when it might condemn them.

"Subject Twenty-Four." Maris moves, and returns with a stool to perch on and a notebook and pen, pulling the seat up so he can look down at her as he sits. "From what I gather from the observations my research assistants have made, you fancy yourself something of a scientist as well. Let us compare the working practices of our worlds."

Looking over his notes, he spies a name. "Cosima. Is that correct?"

[youwonscience]

"I don't fancy myself anything," is a yes. "I'm a geneticist, not that you probably know a peptide chain from a protease inhibitor." She's quiet, and a bit less harshly sarcastic, but she finds condescension from him sort of bleakly funny, under the circumstances.

Now the question is which buys her more time - indulging his science talk idea or resisting?

[eviscerates]

He judges (not assesses, judges) Subject Twenty-Four, head canted to the side. "You could very well have made both of those up," Maris finally says, though there is a curiosity mixed in with his hesitation. Helpfully, he reaches out, and presses down hard on her fractured arm with the tips of his fingers, watching her intently.

"What is a peptide chain?" So calm, and so casual, as he continues to press down for a few moments longer.

[youwonscience]

She cries out in pain at the pressure on the fracture. Cosima's not stoic, and never has been. "Shit, shit, it's a short chain of amino acid monomers tied together with petide bonds, you ignorant asshole," she says, the debate as to whether to be honest or not driven out of her head by the pain. "Too small to be a protein but built of the same materials."

[eviscerates]

"Fascinating." He sounds delighted. "I think I may have a new use for you, Subject Twenty-Four. We will have to pick every part of that brain of yours, for every piece of knowledge you have. Advance our cause as much through science as through magic. Increase our understanding, let us unravel the differences between man and elf and dwarf and qunari, between those gifted and those lacking."

Maris straightens up, withdrawing his hand from her arm. "You will be very useful."

[youwonscience]

In the broader scheme, this can't be good. She doesn't want to help Maris or those he works for in any way, and while she's skeptical he could recreate her world's level of scientific understanding... she can't promise nothing she tells them will be useful.

On the other hand, if she can convince herself she's stalling for time, being useful is better than a painful death, quick or slow.

She blinks away the tears that the pain triggered, trying without success to focus on anything. "If it's like every place else I've been here, we're going to have to start really basic."

Maybe Maris will talk about how much better their knowledge is than the Inquisition's for a while. She can hope.

[eviscerates]

"Is that so? "

Pulling up a seat, taking up a pen and paper, he seems prepared to make himself quite comfortable. "Have you found the Inquisition unwilling to take on the knowledge you have?" He scrutinises her for a moment, a focused sort of pensiveness - she isn't wrong about his pride in his work.

"If there is anything I have learned through my studies," Maris muses, "it is that practice and careful, methodical study to refine one's skills is necessary to master any knowledge or technique. Trial and error, one might suppose. The Inquisition, to me, has an abominable sort of arrogance. Flawed study, really, to neglect any avenue of possibility set before them."

Ah, and then he stops. "Where do you see yourself fitting into the Inquisition, Subject Twenty-Four? Do you feel your knowledge is valued?"

[youwonscience]

Cosima laughs, weakly. "Dude, if this is a recruitment pitch, intense physical pain is really not the best way to lead off."

Maris sitting, at least, means he's unlikely to lean on her fractured arm until he stands up again, so that's... a very small something.

"It doesn't have anything to do with one organization or another. It has to do with fundamentals worked out centuries before I was born in the world I'm from. People get sick for reasons besides, I don't know, curses. Do you guys have the faintest clue why?"