( 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]

"Absolutely. Maybe we can find or invent popcorn for the readings. They've got corn in Thedas, right?" The hug is comforting, even in the state they're both in, and Cosima's in no rush to break away.

"I promise not to start 99 Bottles of Beer on the wall until we get really desperate," she adds.

[eviscerates]

"We should make a list of all the things we need to invent. I mean, we've got the time to work out the logistics right now, at least."

What a silver lining. What a relief. She stays with the hug, and the hitched temperature of her skin, the constant warmth of the Wolf, feels like about the only thing she can offer Cosima right now. It's not enough. As it is, she's got a black shawl that she had under her cloak, even if that's gone, and she pulls it away with one hand, bringing it to rest around Cosima's shoulders.

"You are going to need this more than me. And, hey. Why start small? Nine hundred and ninety-nine."

[youwonscience]

"Maybe we'll annoy the guards into releasing us," Cosima suggests with a shaky smile. "More trouble than we're worth."

She takes the shawl - normally she'd be inclined to argue, but she can feel how warm Ruby is compared to her own cool skin. "What else do you do on long road trips? I'd kind of suck at I Spy right now."

[eviscerates]

"See, you've a plan all figured out. We're unstoppable."
Very gently, Ruby nudges Cosima's jaw with her knuckles, a light, playful kind of gesture slowed down to make it more careful, more comforting.

"I've never actually been on a road trip. I mean, I had an amazing red Camaro before Ashley wrote it off, but it never got to head out of Storybrooke." An amused little huff of breath. "There's always rock, paper, scissors, if we get really stuck."

[youwonscience]

"Oh, right." She's briefly embarrassed she forgot, though under the circumstances. "You can't really play the license plate game in Thedas anyway, so rock, paper, scissors is probably your best bet." Carefully, as both of them are likely sore, she leans against Ruby a little.

"Hey, if we're trying to annoy them into releasing us, I could see how many of those children's playground clapping games I remember. You ever do those? Miss Mary Mack and that kind of thing."

Distraction. Distraction is great.

[eviscerates]

"Come on," Ruby says quietly, easing Cosima back with her a little to she can rest against the wall with Ruby, if she wants. And regardless, her arm wraps around Cosima's shoulders, a careful maneuvering of chains. For now Ruby just feels bruised and her worry about what she has condemned her friends to and what she somehow overlooked is raking over her mind.

It won't do them any good, right now.

"You, Cosima, are a sadist." Her mouth flickers with a little smile. "Maybe we can try to remember all the words to Bohemian Rhapsody and teach the others. Off-key."

[youwonscience]

"I bet I could come up with them," Cosima says, with a muted smile of her own. "I did a bit of karaoke in my day. And the let me go parts would be pretty appropriate."

[eviscerates]

"Uh oh, karaoke?"

She laughs very quietly, shaking her head. "How do you think the rest of Skyhold will feel about ABBA's greatest hits? Elvis? Radiohead? The Herald's Rest might not be ready for a group singalong to 'Creep'."

[youwonscience]

"Oh my god, I bet I can totally get someone hooked on Karma Police, that shit is catchy." She laughs, quietly, but still... a laugh.

"I mean, Johnny B. Goode would be traditional, but I do a really bad Michael J. Fox."