( 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

[unsullies]

"Oh - " Dany hesitates, then offers an almost sheepish smile (almost). "I... met her, actually, in Halamshiral. She told me about the elves..."

Dany hadn't been particularly polite, given her relative indignation about the alienage, but Seeker Pentaghast had been... informative. Level-headed.

"I haven't heard much," she admits, "but if the dwarves are fighting to keep the... darkspawn from reaching the surface, then I am grateful."

They have enough problems without more monsters, don't they?

[thecookery]

"She's good people," Avery says simply and leaves it at that. She doesn't know much about Cassandra personally, but she has a lot of respect and gratitude for her.

"And I think helping us is a nice little extra, but mostly the dwarves are just fighting for their homes. They don't like the surface for weird, dwarfy religion reasons I don't really get, but it's the only place they have left to go if they can't hold their ground where they are. So that's what they've done."

She runs a hand through her hair as she pushes down some unpleasant memories that threaten to surface and says, "If you really want to know more, I'd ask a Grey Warden. Dealing with darkspawn is their whole thing."

[unsullies]

Darkspawn. Grey Wardens. Dany nods, making mental notes of the advice.

"I can understand their keeping to themselves," Dany remarks of the dwarves, looking out at the horizon. "It isn't easy to abandon the old ways, or to leave home."

If they've lived underground nearly forever, for religious reasons or otherwise, then it can't be easy or appealing to come to the surface where they are likely not treated with the same regard as humans.