Fade Rift Mods (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
faderifting) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
faderift2017-02-02 12:46 am
faderifting) wrote in faderift2017-02-02 12:46 am
OPEN ↠ FALSE GODS, GREAT DEMONS (PART I)
WHO: Time Travelers & Future Kirkwall Residents
WHAT: Time travel, captures, escapes, explosions.
WHEN: ALTERNATE FUTURE, Early Cloudreach 9:48
WHERE: Kirkwall
NOTES:.This is the first plot log for False Gods, Great Demons, specifically for the time travel team and adjacent plot efforts. An open post for general Darkest Timeline adventures will be posted separately! A plotting post specifically for the escape from Kirkwall can be found here.
WHAT: Time travel, captures, escapes, explosions.
WHEN: ALTERNATE FUTURE, Early Cloudreach 9:48
WHERE: Kirkwall
NOTES:.This is the first plot log for False Gods, Great Demons, specifically for the time travel team and adjacent plot efforts. An open post for general Darkest Timeline adventures will be posted separately! A plotting post specifically for the escape from Kirkwall can be found here.
It's been over a year since the village of Haven was burned, ransacked, and buried beneath snow and ice--a year for the snow to melt and leave behind blackened, rotting wood for a new year's snow to fall over. The stone walls and Chantry stand, but the rest of the village is a jagged scar, and the path up the mountain to the Temple of Sacred Ashes still shows signs of the battle against the Breach: toppled carts, abandoned crates, a broken bridge.
Given the debris, obstacles, and lingering demon-infested tears in the Veil, it takes the better part of a day for even a well-armed team of trained fighters to make the trek from Haven to the Temple. Despite that, there's been a steady stream of pilgrims to Andraste's final resting place--and now the site of the Herald's death. More still wait on the road and outside the entrance to the Temple ruins, guarded now by Inquisition soldiers until the recent deaths within the walls have been investigated.
Save the wind and quiet crunch of bones being gnawed on, the Temple itself is silent. The molten-ash corpses that were once outside the walls, contorted from their final moments of agony, have been removed and given rites--but the icy dust beneath the band's boots is still partly bone and burned flesh, and patches of red lyrium still resist efforts at removal.
The bone-crunching comes from down the main staircase and around a corner. Five corpses are slumped around a campfire, dressed for warmer weather, preserved by the cold somewhat but withered and too decayed to have died within the week, let alone overnight while no one else was looking--and with one arm currently being chewed on by a bear while two others amble nearby.
Stopping them from eating the evidence is a good idea, probably. And perhaps as the effort to chase them away from the carrion gets underway, in the midst of the chaos and roaring, someone will notice one of the bandits splayed out across the icy stone floor. She's as withered as the rest of them, save one outstretched arm that's still fleshy-plump and pink where it falls outside some invisible line.
But if anyone does notice, it's too late. There's a flare of light that shifts quickly from rift-green to a blinding white, a white-noise roar and a gust of windy force that propels everyone forward to--
Exactly where they were, except a few yards to the left, and in the last two seconds the few stubborn scraps of red lyrium on the Temple walls have crawled and expanded to form whole walls of crystal. For a moment it's silent again, save the wind. The one of the bears--the only one carried along with the group--lets out a bewildered, irritable roar. Beyond the walls there's a shout, then another, then too many for it to be only the handful of Inquisition soldiers posted outside the Temple.
Seconds later, they're surrounded.
no subject
Wren tips her head faintly in the direction of Aleron’s new chair. Getting him this far wasn’t a tea party. Getting him onto a ship is going to be —
— Well, it’ll be worth it. It’s not the kind thing to do, or the smart one. But it’s right.
No one knows how Seekers acquire their unusual gifts. Wren doesn't buy the divine intervention bit, and the Inquisition would benefit from anything they might replicate. Aleron needs a healer's eyes on him, for his own sake, and for everyone's. The chance that anything will come of it is beyond slim, but if nothing does at least,
At least he won't have to die in fucking Kirkwall.
She’s already said her piece, has put in her chips. With Alistair agreed, with Beleth's (Dalish? Huh?) demands laid out, what remains is the Doctor’s vote. The Seekers’. For… however little Aleron's counts, Wren's under no illusions that they’ll be able drag him to Orzammar without at least some intermittent cooperation.
"Do you suggest we split?"
An attempt to shift Reed's concerns into talk of tactics, a small presumption of the dicussion. Alistair can answer to the state of Orzammar’s secrecy better than the rest of them.
no subject
He turned to Beleth first. This is his vote. "I will agree to take you to Orzammar. I can't speak to whatever treatments might be available to the red lyrium, but Cade will be given the same opportunity to those treatments as anyone. As to his immunity... I am not going to promise something that is not in my power to give."
Because he has no idea why Cade would need this immunity. And he wasn't about to put the people in Orzammar into a binding agreement when they weren't here to speak to it. It's the best he's willing to do, Beleth.
Then there was Wren's suggestion that they split up. It was worth considering.
"There are pros and cons to splitting up."
He looked between Beleth and Cade. And the final idea struck him. He approached Beleth.
"There is, of course, one way to see just how serious you are. You take one group lead them the long way around. You keep them as safe, but you are the decoys. The other group will take Aleron and Cade the most direct route possible. We will meet up again at the boats."
The Doctor is curious how Beleth will react to his suggestion that she and Cade be separated. If she agrees, he might accept the fact that she's actually willing to help. If not, well...
no subject
Beleth doesn't even hesitate before refusing, frowning at the Doctor. Hesitation is unnecessary for something you would refuse, even if she didn't have reason for it. Luckily for her, she does.
"I'm an unarmed civilian who hasn't left the city in years. And Cade--" She glances at her companion. Cade can't be alone because he could burst into violent fits of anger with little warning. There's little doubt in her mind that being separated from her would only exacerbate it. But. That might make it sound like she was wrong about the whole not being mad thing. "--Cade protects me. And I help him. He wouldn't be able to lead without me." Best to leave it at that.
"I'm not saying Seeker Reed doesn't have a good point. And I'm not saying that splitting up isn't a good solution. But if you want that to succeed, we can't be separated. If that makes us untrustworthy, then I'd rather be considered untrustworthy than get everyone here killed." After all, if she were going to die either way, might as well get it done now.
no subject
When the Doctor and Beleth speak, he still hasn't made up his mind. He shakes his head at no one in particular.
"We won't split you up," he says. "Especially not here. It will be hard enough to find one ship willing to take us across the sea. Once we land we can see what the situation is."
Maybe they'll be followed by sea, maybe they'll meet resistance on the shore, maybe they'll have to cross Ferelden on the surface, maybe they'll be able to land in a cove on the Storm Coast and be able to slip straight into the Deep Roads. Too many maybes. The only sure thing is that they have to get out of Kirkwall and can't afford to go around the Waking Sea and then through Orlais and over the Frostbacks on foot.
"And you're not taking anyone to Orzammar," he adds to the Doctor. "Even if you aren't demons or some trick," which is a big if, still, and as far as Alistair is concerned will remain one until the mages in Ortan Thaig have had a look, "you don't know the secret password."