THE FALLOW MIRE

[faderifting]

WHO: Open to all
WHAT: The Inquisition sends forces to the Fallow Mire to deal with undead, plague, and missing scouts.
WHEN: Firstfall
WHERE: The Fallow Mire: Inquisition camps, Fisher's End, The Tavern, etc.
NOTES: For more information about the setting and RP opportunities in it, check out the OOC Post.

The trip down the mountains from Skyhold is no walk in the park, and south of the Hinterlands the land turns wet and miserable, subject to seemingly endless storms. Villagers have tried to carve out a meagre existence in the Fallow Mire, but their lives are under constant threat by a tidal wave of undead rising from the murky waters flooding much of the region.

The Inquisition has sent a sizeable force, and travel back and forth between the Mire and Skyhold happens as often and as quickly as conditions allow. The camp is a neat patch of tents on the largest bit of dry land to be found. "Dry" is relative; everything's still pretty muddy. There are several clusters of tents, tucked between rock outcroppings and abandoned buildings, the least leaky of which are being used to store what supplies the Inquisition has managed to haul in over the difficult terrain. Campfires are numerous and fill the area with a constant smouldering glow and low-hanging cloud of smoke that mingles with the morning and evening fogs. It's lovely, really.

Fisher's End barely even counts as a village-- just a haphazard handful of ramshackle buildings perched on the edge of the swamp-- but it does have a single tavern. It's a dreary-looking wooden shack like every other structure in the area, distinguishable only by the lamp still lit above the door and the sign that swings creakily in the breeze. Whatever was painted on it has long since worn away and been molded over. The place is just known as "the tavern" because it is literally the only tavern for miles and miles around.

Inside is dim and smoky from peat-burning fires in the two grates. There are a half-dozen tables with benches, none of which ever seem quite level on the uneven floor. The bar is tended by Thorolf, a grizzled bearded fellow with a local accent so thick he's almost unintelligible. No matter the time of day he serves a simple fisherman's meal of hard bread, salted fish, and a hunk of strong cheese. His cellar is stocked with exactly three varieties of alcohol: one ale, one wine, and one spirit, all of which are strong and dark. There aren't many locals left, but there are usually a few hunched over a mug or huddled around the fire.

Comments

[foxsays]

"Ebeos is particular. Things are done a certain way. Zimevur is the same though they'll still say in the same breath that spying and sneaking are a 'low' form of warfare. There must be assassins in every place but it's strangely not something my people admit, this coming from the one country where pirates will display their letters of marque from the queen endorsing their activities." Maybe it's why it surprises her then, the candour when he could be her countryman, one of the few professions or vocations that no one wants to own up to even as Ebeos will proudly display the masks of noteworthy assassins after their deaths.

"But you're your own master? You decide which jobs to take and how to do it and so on? It's just...it's just so different. The way assassins are employed have such strict rules where I come from, it's hard to imagine it any other way."

[ombranera]

"The Crows are not the only guild of assassins, but they are the largest, most infamous, and the most ruthless. They've so many rules and guidelines for how business is done- and a great deal of it bows to politics. It is...not to my taste. As I am my own agent? I choose how I handle my contracts as I please and at my own discretion." How they did things- offering their loyalty to certain houses rather than simply to the highest bidder or remaining a political entity all their own? Seemed horribly complicated and from Zevran's perspective among the ranks, quite inefficient.

[foxsays]

"I learned to almost like politics, I don't really have any choice in the matter," she explains although there are times she actively does enjoy the games. "Everything in Castileos has to be about our alliances and relations with other countries because they rely on us and we on them. It trickles down from the captains and merchants, whomever happens to be in the country. You learn the steps to every dance because somehow, no matter how much 'lower' you are than them, the stakes are higher if you trip." It's hard not to sound bitter about that even when she shoots for being sarcastic because she's lived it. Yes her early life was freer of it than most but since she's become a true part of it, it's so much easier to see when things are stacked against people, walls even she doesn't know how to scale. When the grain tariffs are so high that most have to go without bread and have to mop up everything with ever older hardtack. If it were possible to do what he had without uprooting her life so completely, she would have done it but Zimevur and their war all that time ago might have shot everyone in the foot.

[ombranera]

"That sounds less like Antiva and more like Orlais or the Imperium, to be honest. Antiva is a city of gamblers and nobles, merchants and brigands. Our Army is the Crows. Our navy? The pirates and privateers. We are rulebreaking adventurers, all. While there are expectations and rules any may climb their way up with determination and enough gold- and any noble house may fall if cut off. I would know. I have done a great deal of the cutting." From opposing noble houses. The Merchant Princes know well what it is they lose if they fail to find the favor of a Crow House.

[foxsays]

"It's like this: there's very little we can grow that would sustain so many people so we have to import from Ebeos and Estene, but of course there are tariffs to be paid and Zimevur has things we need too, and Corundus and Albas. But we would beggar ourselves to pay for them. Our pirates are the army just the same, the Sons are the most respected, I suppose in war they would command all the rest into battle, they are the best defenders we could have. So our royalty has always given letters of marque to the Sons and to other pirates they can vouch for, of course such a thing is disavowed but they have a system of doing it so no one has more taken from them than they can afford and violence is avoided in such things. Our queen's father came from Estene where the great forests are so we get our wood and she married a prince from Corundus for metals and precious gems. We're so far from anyone else and you can't always live from the sea." If there's a frown, it's the mention of Tevinter because enough has been told to her that she's wary of such a nation, more willing to trust in individuals rather than the place as a whole. Equally, she doesn't want her home to sound less than it is, because Zimevur is so fervent in their hatred, their anger still a dangerous thing from the councils she stands guard at.

She loves her home but a moment like this and she realises how different it is, all the balancing acts to keep their position, to be safe and strong.

"We gamble because we know how easily our lives might change with the winds and tides. There are rules we can break with others but there's a loyalty we must have to one another, though the nobility has their own ideas about that; the current queen is setting about reforms to give 'peasants'," her lip curls at the word, it's been spat at her more than once and she continues quickly, "more say in what goes on, to make sure that no one goes to bed hungry, that they have a standard of living. I don't know if I can explain how we see some of our royalty, even people from my world laugh when we say it."

[ombranera]

"...Your queen is quite the idealist if she thinks she'll get any manner of backing from the other nobility. However are they to know they are better than the rest of us if we aren't as miserable as they are wealthy?" A tiny kernal of cynicism and bitterness, that, but he's long since past such things. He has carved out his own space in the world and holds fast to it with blood and brilliant smiles.

[foxsays]

"I've known some nobles who care, they're few and increasingly rare but so much of it is 'this is the way it's been since records began'. Who cares about the records? Usually they're the younger ones, I suppose it changes when they come into their inheritance and the ones that bought their titles are some of the worst, forgetting where they come from. I believe in her." The last words are soft and quiet, her hand closing on air when there would be a soft one clutching it tightly. She knows, or at least she can guess, how it must sound, how she could be mistaken for an apologist but it's more complicated than that and there's never going to be a good time or way to say it but it's certainly not before delving into the unknown.

[ombranera]

"Then you are either terribly optimistic or know her personally." He waves a hand vaguely. "It matters not which it is. If the Queen is determined to try? More power to her. Perhaps it may even change provided she gets enough backers- or kills enough of those that do not agree. That tends to be the way of Politics in Antiva."

To great effect- up until they actually need to run something. He strongly suspects one of the Houses of the First Talon actually runs the country but- he will worry over this later.

[foxsays]

"I'm a thief, I need to hope for the best and prepare for the worst. There are very good forgeries that rich people are too stupid to know about but you take it to a fence and you might have almost been shot and chased halfway across a city for something that wasn't even worth the lockpicks I used getting in." And there are people like me, she almost wants to say, but there are some things that need to be held close still and besides, going somewhere new? Bad time to bring up home truths that make the knot in her stomach pull painfully tight.

Still, she can't quite stop her face from falling, or the flinch because she does know her personally. Very personally. And not being able to speak as hotly in defence of a woman she loves cuts deeper than she thought it would.

[ombranera]

"Assassins tend to not be quite so optimistic." Death being as it is and being their business, optimism did not serve them well. Prepare for the worst, expect the worst, and be surprised happily when all goes well. "But more power to you for it."