(no subject)

[seesobserves]

WHO: Korrin, Araceli, Sherlock
WHAT: QUEST! Searching for the missing team of agents
WHEN: Firstfall
WHERE: Fallow Mire
NOTES: Summary and plotting thread are here

The Mire, it seems, is in a perpetual state of drizzly twilight, but Sherlock has seen enough Ferelden winters that the cold doesn't particularly bother him. The damp is what does it, really, the swamp water and rain that turns the ground soggy in most places. It makes the ground pliable, quite easy to mark - which could be bad news, considering how long it's been since those scouts disappeared. If any walking corpses made their way through the campsite, dragging their sword...

Well, they'll just have to see.

"Step lightly. Or not at all." His own footfalls are cautious he moves forward from the edge of the abandoned camp, his eyes already scanning the ground and surrounding brush.

Comments

[foxsays]

All things considered, she hates this less than she hated climbing up to Skyhold which might say an awful lot about her that she doesn't want to think about. Then again, she hasn't fallen in any of the stinking water and she's been at sea so cold and damp? Cold and damp practically raised her for long weeks and months once she was old enough to head out. With the rolling gait of a sailor she slides her feet rather than lifting them, making sure to stick to where the mud is less likely to drag her down, listening for any disturbance to the water.

With as delicate a touch as possible, she rattles her rapiers so they'll be ready when she needs them. It ceased to be a matter of 'if' the moment they all arrived here.

"At least it's cold, this much damp and this heat and things rot instantly," she murmurs, her accent thicker than usual. "If you can manage it, just slide, no ripples, then slide a foot up on something solid if you stop." Does that sound like something she's already said a hundred times since she got here? Probably because she has. Or she's thought about it. The boundary is a little blurry right now. "Borrow my hand if you need a light."

Said hand is currently stuffed in her coat, she's wary about it drawing the corpses like moths to a flame.

[seesobserves]

That comment about rotting gets an eyebrow twitch from Sherlock, while his eyes continue to scan the ground. If the scouts truly are dead, the stage of decay in which they're found should prove illuminating. For now, he moves with a light step to the center of the camp, and the doused campfire. There, he turns on the ball of his foot, confident that he won't be erasing any evidence on that particular spot.

After a beat, he extends an arm, indicating with two fingers toward a thin furrow in the ground.

"One of the undead passed through here, but that was no more than a day ago. Our scouts were long gone..." He pivots again, slower this time, then takes a step outward, leaning down. He could borrow Araceli's hand, as offered, but he shares the same concerns as her. The light of the mark shouldn't be used unless absolutely necessary.

His searching leads him in a northward direction, toward a path that lies in the shadow of the rocks. It's then that he beckons Araceli over. He'll need no more than a few seconds.

[gatheringstorm]

The cold doesn't bother Korrin at all, no more than it usually does. After trekking to Haven and back and then down to the Mire, her dislike of it is mostly restricted to the Frostbacks and its endless amount of snow. Still, that snow would be far more preferable to...this, and it takes all her effort to refrain from saying so.

Listening to Araceli's advice about movement, Korrin does her best to follow it. She's seen how well the woman maintains her balance, so anything to echo that can only help this situation. Following Sherlocks's gaze she nods and frowns, hoping to find more signs than passing undead. But she follows along, perking up at the beckoning.

"What is it?"

[foxsays]

Useless though it may be thanks to the damp and the humidity doubling the volume of her hair, she nonetheless wrings it out with an almost brutal hand as she looks around, speculatively eyeing anywhere that's higher ground to scramble up. Looking from Korrin to Sherlock, she slides out of the water completely, grimacing at her first solid steps on the ground as the water sloshes out of her boots.

She's been through worse on ships but a storm is a storm and a storm passes. This is just rude.

"Anything that disturbs the water seems to draw them out, if they were gone then it could have been one of those weird fat pig things." She doesn't know what they are, they just smell about as bad as the corpses and somehow manage to be twice as ugly. Keeping to the balls of her feet, she steps lightly, feeling the ground just to be sure nothing is going to disappear as she slips her hand from her pocket, flexing it. "Right, one, two, three-"

On three she holds out her hand, fingers spread, counting her own heartbeats as she waits for direction, happy to follow but with her other hand wrapping around the hilt of rapier, ready for action.

[seesobserves]

If it weren't for the fact that her hand held a piece of actual Fade magic, he might have taken hold of her wrist to hold the light closer. As it was, Sherlock put a couple of fingers to the back of her hand, more of a suggestion to move than an imperative.

And there it is.

"They went north," he says, and takes his hand away from hers, a silent signal to go on and conceal the light again. "But no word on what they found that way."

[gatheringstorm]

"They're just bogfishers. Not a threat if you leave them be." Korrin says that automatically, absently to Araceli, more focused on the situation at hand than the Mire's wildlife. Well, such as it is.

Glancing in that direction, Korrin nods. "North it is, then. We'll have to be careful, but that's nothing new. Either of you take point and I'll watch our backs."

Araceli has the shard and Sherlock seems rather perceptive, so she'll trust them on that end. And with her battle magic, she'll blast aside anything that tries to follow them.

[foxsays]

After cleaning the strangely waxy fluids of the undead off her blades, she's more than happy to tuck her hand back in her pocket again, glad they've got a direction to go in because holding position for too long away from a spot they can defend like a camp seems like they're just asking for trouble.

"I can take point? There are a few places I can climb up to get a vantage spot, it might save us from going down pointless paths, most people are just about managing the better routes." Better as in not abjectly terrible if you don't know how to move in a nasty bog. "Though if we do see signs of them suddenly deciding to go for a swim then I suppose we'll know that we'll need to risk it too."

Should we ping the mods again to see what comes of following the trail?

[seesobserves]

High ground won't tell them how deep the water is, if they come across any. Sherlock knows that well enough from wandering dingy city streets in the wake of a storm: sometimes you don't know there's an ankle-deep puddle until you've put your foot in it.

That just means he'll need to follow his own advice. He gives Araceli a silent nod, already drawing his bow as they begin to move. Better to be ready than to be caught off guard.

Yeah, good idea!

[gatheringstorm]

Araceli's suggestion gets a firm nod from Korrin, who has seen her climbing skills enough to trust in them by now. "Do it, you're far better at climbing than I'll ever be. And my sense of direction isn't what it should be in this Maker-foresaken pit." She almost says something else, then shrugs and turns her focus to being rear guard.

[foxsays]

Ah, but you have a pirate's daughter with you; when you have to make a leap from a tall building, you learn how to gauge the depth of the water, same as when you're learning just how far into the shallows you might skirt if you want to outrun pursuers without wrecking your hull or stranding yourselves. Rapiers sheathed, belt tightened, she gets moving, up on her toes, not daring to linger until she has to leap over where the waters have burst the bankings. The rocks are jagged, covered in something that feels more like seaweed than moss but she scrabbles her way up and to the top, frowning at the muck on her hands and knees.

"I know we're used to this now but the paths are going to get dicey," she calls down from up on her perch, glancing down at the others. "That means please watch your footing and if we disturb anything, we need to find enough ground to defend it easily. I think we're going to have to choose at some point if we find nothing but the mist is making it hard to tell exactly how far that'll be. I say we keep going, I'll find a better rock than this one."

[[ooc: mod details!]]

[seesobserves]

He watches her path closely, following her footsteps as precisely as possible until she starts gaining altitude. Then he pauses, scanning the mist for movement, the ground for further signs of their missing scouts' passage. Faded footprints heading off into the gloom.

A beat of silence, once Araceli finishes speaking. That shout could have attracted attention, but he hears no shambling footsteps over the lapping of water.

"This way," he nods, and steps down.

[gatheringstorm]

As much as Korrin would rather have her staff out and ready, she'll reluctantly slide it back into that back strap, for now. It's far easier to negotiate tricky passages when she has both hands available to steady herself, and if there is trouble it won't take but a moment to bring it out again. She frowns in concentration while following, but pauses briefly to follow Sherlock's example as she's wary of attracting attention from the undead.

"I'm all for continuing as long as we can, mist be damned. There has to be some indication of where they went or what happened." Hopefully there will still be people to find and not just bodies.

[foxsays]

Sliding down, she jumps the last bit to land with a grunt but at least on the path without waking anything, backing up as far as she can to make a leap to another 'island' with higher rocks. The greater the risk, the greater the reward though she doesn't want to force the others to fight just so they can try to find something a little sooner than they might.

"How long do you think the trail is going to last?" They'll still have a tide of sorts and the rain will force their hand as well as anyone walking along and flattening any barrier that's built up. There's at least one corpse floating closer to the bank than she'd like but there's no real way to mark it so someone can come along after them to burn it. Better to look for more rocks to climb instead of thinking about that.