[closed] the turn of the screw

[doneisdone]

WHO: Teren, Alistair, Anders, Benevenuta, Bethany, Kaisa
WHAT: Senior Warden von Skraedder brings a small gaggle of fools Wardens (and a Mortalitasi for some reason) along to investigate a sighting of the Architect in southern Nevarra. Mischief is afoot!
WHEN: Timey wimey, Haring-ish
WHERE: around and about Perendale
NOTES: there is no Architect but at least the cake is real

[OOC notes first: every round or so, feel free to do a coin-flip "idea" roll, then either send me a screencap of your diceroller or do it on Discord so I can see. If you get heads, proceed to roll a 1d5 and I will PM you a bit of insight for your character to have gleaned based on the circumstances.
For all anyone currently knows (with the exception of Teren and Benevenuta), the Architect is their prime directive and there is no reason to suspect otherwise.

I will be adding new legs to the journey once we've reached a reasonable transition, so the threads and available information will be limited to what's currently visible.

Also, if you could try to keep fewer than two days between each tag, that would be amazing!]

The journey is a long one, and it's in the dead of winter, which means it isn't a lot of fun. They at least have horses, on loan from the Inquisition save for those who have their own, and Teren leads the expedition on the rangy and agreeable black gelding she tends to borrow.

She's her usual self, curt and withdrawn and pensive, though she takes care of hers and is vigilant about ensuring everyone stays together, especially in the brutal snows that blow relentlessly over Orlais' northern plains.
She had approached each Warden initially, explaining that she had received news from Weisshaupt and wanted to take a small delegation to address its concerns: the Architect has been sighted in the north, not far from the border between Nevarra and Tevinter. Teren's old stomping grounds.

Summoned for her familiarity with the region, Teren has grudgingly accepted the call, but knows it would be suicide to make it a solo recon mission. Anders and Bethany are brought for their healing and warding talents, Alistair and Kaisa for their fighting prowess, and the non-Warden Benevenuta.. for... some reason, that isn't entirely clear to anyone else.

Their mission is to find the Architect, and if unable to apprehend him, to gather as much information on the situation as possible before returning to Skyhold.

Comments

[ungovernable]

It's apparent when she leans more heavily on him than she intended to do just how bloody-minded she must be to have maintained a semblance of steadiness from the burned out chantry to here - but 'quiet, methodical and accomplished' is Benevenuta all over, so why would this be any different?

She knows enough of what Teren might say that her anger, while not blunted, is not for her, truly -

though Teren may not enjoy the alternative any better when she's steady enough to give her thoughts.

[doneisdone]

"When I have ever given you reason to look up to me," Teren snaps at Bethany, but quickly reins herself back in with a scowl, withdrawing her hand from Alistair's head and folding it with the other in her lap. She's not looking at anyone, including her mother, though Radegund does glance over her shoulder at the sound of terse voices. She scowls at the guests, as if to say 'behave', before going back to what she's doing.

"I'd intended to leave you at the manor," she mutters, "you'd faff about looking for the Architect, find nothing, and return home. I see now I should have accounted for Raelle, though why she thought it appropriate to get the lot of you involved, I couldn't begin to tell you." Her words are bitter, and quiet, and she tears at a small shred of her ruined gown as she speaks.

"Why would I have told you. I needed a reason to leave Skyhold, and by the time the cat was out of the bag," she looks pointedly, but not angrily, at Benevenuta, "you'd all been dragged into it already." She purses her lips and shakes her head, briefly squeezing her eyes closed, silently disgusted.
"...I'd never have brought you into it at all, had I known," she says, a little more quietly, and rests her bony hand on Alistair's head again. She looks desolate in this moment, still processing the total betrayal to which she's just been subjected. Lies all around.

"It was a stupid plan," she mutters, "concocted by a stupid person who should have bloody known better."

[byblow]

Alistair briefly forces his eyes open when Teren's hand withdraws, but only briefly. He is very tired. But not in an alarming get-Anders-immediately way, probably, just your usual walked-crosscountry-after-having-one's-spine-severed, not-currently-dying-but-tuckered-out-from-avoiding-death sort of way. He can hear everyone talking, but the effort required to move his face and participate seems excessive--until Teren says she's stupid.

Maybe that isn't as serious a statement to her as it would be to him. Touchy, you know. But either way, he opens his eyes again and lifts one shoulder, like he's thinking about sitting up but can't make it any further than that. (He could if he needed to. Again: effort seems excessive.)

"If you'd told us," he says, slurring a little as he warms up, "I'd've been expecting it even less. Maybe even tried to shake the stabby one's stupid murdery hand before she got murdery." Zerique's. If he was ever told her name, in all of this mess, he's forgotten it anyway. "And if you hadn't brought us you'd be dead. Now you're not, and we're not, either. So--"

So. He lifts his forearm at the elbow to make a wavy moving on gesture that manages to be imperious despite the fact that he's laid out on the floor and covered in dried blood. Then he ruins it thunking back down flat onto the floor and adding, "Ow."

[unbrokenoath]

Kaisa isn't as mad as some--most--of the others. Maybe she should be. Maybe she will be, once she's had time to sort through everything and come to a conclusion. But Kaisa is also used to secrets, to not being told the full plan. It's just sort of something that happens with the Wardens, and it's one that she's never questioned. Maybe it's just because she accepted a long time ago she wasn't a very smart woman and there are probably perfectly good reasons that she just doesn't understand.

And maybe it has to do with the strange, old comfort of a ramshackle house with an elf trying to parents a bunch of humans twice her size, and maybe it's just because she is very tired from carrying large men around and then walking long distances.

But she really is quite tired. She's already lowered herself onto the floor, and when Alistair keeps moving around and hurting himself, she just rolls over, and throws an arm and leg carelessly over his limbs, like how Puppy occasionally piled on her when she kept trashing around at night.

"Shhhh." Is the only noise she makes, though if anyone listens as time goes on, they might hear what suspiciously sounds like quiet snoring.