( 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

[glandival]

Sabine has seen battles, a little. Perhaps more than the average elf. It isn't exactly her natural habitat, but nor is it terribly unfamiliar, anymore.

That said, this one is-- special.

She keeps to the shadows, laddering her way off the floor, quick-footed and sure and avoidant of thorny roses that try to find snags in her leathers, the whip of her braid. By the time she is in position, setting arrow in place, eyes reflecting as dim twin points in her corner, she spies the Venatori mage at the centre of it all. And she spies a rifter hauling off and punching him in the face, which is inspiration enough for everyone.

By now, she's witnessed enough mages to know when their barriers are down so as not to waste her arrows, and she lets her first one fly towards where Maris' back is turned to her. It may hit him in the ass. I'm just saying.

A second one is coming, something designed to see if Tevinters really do have hearts.

[eviscerates]

Maris is assessing his assailants and assumes his ass is safe.
What a fool.

In an moment deserving of the most comedic of sound effects, Maris could well have gotten whiplash from the punch Jamie lands on him, a split-second blackout that's enough to disrupt the rift dragging at Bellamy and Lexa. His return to consciousness may be spurred on by the shaft (don't) that has impaled (don't) him, standing proud and erect from its place.

Perhaps understandably, he staggers, and spies the archer only just in time to intercept her second arrow with his staff, arrow biting into the wood (I've ruined this tag, there's no coming back from it). It splinters, but the fact remains that his head is foggy and he can't move near so well, as he tries to focus to muster magic, lightning beginning to crackle around his fingertips.

[nonsibi]

The very physical force of Maris' spell is blessedly cut short by the sudden attacks he suffers. The way Bellamy knows this is: he's not being dragged across the floor any longer, crushed flat and helpless by the force of the magic. One minute there, the next gone; good, and he shoves himself at least to his knees, just in time to see the recently-punched Maris stagger back, right into Sabine's arrow.

Maris blocks the second arrow, but Bellamy is ready. His hand, pressed flat to the floor, is within easy reach of a large rock. And since this fight has turned rudimentary and simple, he grabs the rock and throws it, to draw Maris' concentration from Sabine, and Jamie, draw it back over to him--a volley he follows with that good old Templar trick again, digs down below the leftover ache from the spell to blast Maris' connection to the Fade with another mute--more forceful than before; he's tapped in to stubborn anger now, renewed a little of his conviction.

Which means that lightning buzzing at the mage's fingers will fizzle out, at least for the moment, which means that Maris is useless for another second, two, susceptible to another punch to the face, to disarming--or dehanding--

[heda]

The lightning fizzles and Lexa darts forward to press the momentary advantage--or tries to. Far from at her best, the sole of her boot slips in the blood puddling from the dead mage's head and she can barely manage to keep her feet. It makes a true strike at Maris like she'd envisioned impossible, no chance to step up to the side where Jamie's not punching and drive her blade through Maris's ribs like she'd meant to all along.

But she does still manage to lash out with the sword as she gets her balance again. It's from greater distance than she'd planned, a slice and not a stab, but it's aimed at the mage's wrists in hope of lopping off at least one of his hands before more lightning can shoot from his fingertips.

[eviscerates]

Control is fast slipping away from him. He is being taken apart by whelps, by children with not even a spark of magic between them, by people who bear a mark of the Fade that is undeserved, a corruption of something precious with their base, feral—

The line of thought, stumbling and shambolic as it is clatters as haphazardly as the rock that pulls his attention, his desperate attempt to grasp at his reflexes betraying him. Maris realises it a moment to late, the taste of blood hot and unpleasant, nose bleeding a little from Jamie's punch.

The Templar raises his hand, and Maris raises his own in turn. Perhaps a simple reflexive protest, perhaps a desperate chance to let lightning burn a path through the air and strike messy wounds into the skin of the Avvar and the Templar. His hand strains, a light shudder of muscle spasming, his magic smothered before it has a chance to unfurl past his skin.

He means to swing the staff about, catch the Avvar's ankles and strike them from under her, and break her neck with his foot. Simple, final. Instead of being able to surge forward with a push of energy, Sabine's arrow has left his leg weak and useless feeling. There is no speed and no power to push him into the dance, and he realises all too late the cost.

His right hand is cleaved from his wrist, not quite cleanly; it spins in a strange, slow rotation as his heart seems to thud slow and heavy in his ears, held on by a thread of skin and sinew as Maris doubles over with the pain. Truthfully, he does not know if he yells or screams or if his voice is so raw as to be rendered silent.

[wontforgetyou]

Give Maris a hand, ladies and gentlemen. He'll be here for...well, with any luck, not too much longer.

Lexa's attack might not have been quite as effective as she would have liked, but it does provide Jamie an opening. Rather than try and punch Maris again (although it's tempting), while the mage is doubled over in pain, Jamie opts to make a grab for the staff. He doesn't know if Maris can use it one handed and doesn't mean to give him a chance to try, especially since he doesn't know if he can pull any healing magic out to try and undo what they've done so far.

Disarming him seems like a much better idea in the short term, and if he's successful in grabbing the staff away he'll also yank it upward as hard as he can, using the momentum to smash it into Maris's face at the same time. If he can get the angle right, maybe he can finish the job on the man's nose - or at least get him to reel back a bit and provide an opening for one of the others to get a more telling sort of blow in, since they're all better armed than he is at the moment.

He's still pretty good with trying to cave the man's sinuses in as best he can, either way. It'll just remain to see what comes after that.