faderift | OPEN ↠ FALSE GODS, GREAT DEMONS (OPEN LOG 1)

OPEN ↠ FALSE GODS, GREAT DEMONS (OPEN LOG 1)

WHO: Living Residents of the Horrible Future
WHAT: Ah ha ha ha stayin' alive, stayin' alive.
WHEN: ALTERNATE FUTURE, 1-15 Cloudreach 9:48
WHERE: Anywhere, but especially Orzammar
NOTES: This is the first open log for False Gods, Great Demons. Anything that happened prior to Cloudreach 9:48 should go on the flashback meme. Most members of the TTT and their friends in Kirkwall will be arriving in Orzammar on approximately Cloudreach 7. In the meantime, feel free to make your own adventures. If you want to blow up an bridge, assassinate an NPC of your own invention, steal supplies, or anything else--it's all yours, go for it!

SOUTHERN THEDAS is a wasteland. The Blight crawling across the Orleian countryside and into Ferelden leaves nothing alive in its wake, scarring the land like an insatiable fire until no birds sing and the only things that grows is the Red Lyrium that speckles cliff sides and crawls up dying trees until they look like rows of jagged bloody teeth. And where it's still green, where people can still survive, the atmosphere is nearly as stifling. Every city and settlement is watched over by a Venatori or trustworthy collaborator. Those who don't keep their heads down and their dissent a whisper may vanish without warning. They may take their whole families with them. There are flashes of hope--an assassinated lordling here, a village rousing itself to brief and doomed rebellion there--but for every man the Imperium loses, they seem to find two to take his place.

NORTHERN THEDAS is at war. The worst of it doesn't reach west into Tevinter or the Anderfels; the line between the Qunari and the Imperium is drawn straight through Antiva, with Nevarra and Rivain on either side quiet and calm as only lands under martial law can be. The Free Marches vary between complacency and rebellion, but the rebellious ones risk ruin--there are murmurs it won't be long before a whole city is made an example. A steady stream of desperate refugees is fleeing north to the Qun, but plenty are picked off and punished as traitors before they can cross into Qunari-controlled territory. Your best best for a clean escape are the pirates who still hold Llomerynn free from both sides of the conflict.

ORZAMMAR is the only kingdom in Thedas that looks much the same--and Kal-Sharok, but they're not accepting outsiders. The heavy doors at Orzammar's entrance are sealed and guarded, as much against the steady flow of refugees asking for help as against the Venatori. The refugees are turned away. There's no way to know who can be trusted, and even if there were, there's not food enough for people who can't fight. Orzammar Thaig is still the dwarves' home--though with stealing shrinking numbers and poor prospects, King Bhelen has been amenable to allowing casteless surfacers some leeway--but the once-abandoned Ortan Thaig is the Inquisition's. Quietly. The only things stopping a full assault on Orzammar is the Venatori's need for dwarf-mined lyrium and the plausible deniability that the Inquisition's remaining rebel bands are using the Deep Roads with Bhelen's consent.

An hour's walk through caves and deepstalker swarms, Ortan is a city in its own right. A crammed city, one where cots and bunk beds crammed into shared housing are the norm no matter how important someone is and you occasionally have to protect your dinner from a restless, swooping griffon, but one where you can still find a pint of ale or a game of cards if you've time to waste on them. It's just that not many people do. There's the watch to keep; the tunnels that creep further into the deep teem with darkspawn who are held back at barricades, while the hidden, narrow tunnels that lead to the surface are watched at all hours so anyone coming or going can be identified. There are weapons to forge and sharpen. Plans to make. Bands to lead. Maybe you weren't a leader five years ago, but these days, there aren't that many people with more than five years' experience still alive to give orders. Fewer every week.

And so we burned. We raised nations, we waged wars,
We dreamed up false gods, great demons
Who could cross the Veil into the waking world,
Turned our devotion upon them, and forgot you.
Threnodies 1:8

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

That actually manages to make Cyril smile a bit. The corner of his lips lift slightly. It isn't the grins of his youth, but it's something.

"I think he was one of the most beautiful people I've ever met," he replies and there is a bit of warmth there. It's strange how he can access that emotion even when talking about Taas. It helps that Zevran isn't blaming him or making him feel as if all of this is his fault. He comforted instead, offered support and understanding. "Though I'm terribly biased."

"It was never going to be right. That isn't what we are."

They're wrong. They all feel it. It's the price they pay. In death—

He doesn't say that. It would be trite.

He does say, "He deserves better than dying a monster," calmly, evenly, the very picture of reason and maturity in the face of Anders' fuck yous, like maybe he's possibly not going to stupidly rankle over the entirely understandable and sympathetic anger of a man who just gave him fruit and jerky—until he adds, just as evenly, "you selfish prick."

"Someone can be beautiful without being pretty. I will not deny- he was beautiful. Massive, marvelous- and kind." Fond remembrance does much for old wounds, this he knows. Speaking of Rinna soothed his heart when he could bear to do it.

Perhaps the same might ease Cyril's grief.

Cyril nods at that and looks down at his feet for a moment. Then, after a moment, he takes another deep breath and looks up at Zevran.

"You're beautiful too," he points out. "I wish he had been able to see you again."

The Doctor looked down at the hand on his arm. Twenty-four years ago, it might have been with derision. But not now. Now it was more in confusion as to why anyone would want to touch him. Confusion that someone who wasn't her would touch him like this.

"When did you get so smart?"

It was a rhetorical question. But had to be asked. He sighed heavily.

"Of course. Of course I will see if there's anything else we can do. I don't like happened here any more than you do. But, Jamie, I can't do something that would make all this worse either."

He just needs Jamie to understand that. The Doctor isn't a god. He can't fix everything.

It's been a long time since anybody has really asked him about the arm. His arm, the outward sign of when he had made his decision to fight, to be more than what he had been then, to actually do something that mattered instead of fleeing like a coward with his tail between his legs. The moment when he decided that he needed to change if he wanted to survive.

"No." The answer is short and curt, and Bruce proceeds to close the door. The room is sparse with little in the way of comfort - there's a table with one end broken accompanied by rickety stools, and nearby is a sheet thrown onto the ground as a makeshift bed. His staff is propped up at a corner, singed in areas and tattered in others.

He gestures for Zevran to sit, then goes to get him a glass of water, since he still has some semblance of manners.

"Of course I am." Content preening, tossing his head as his hand slips up to comb through his hair. Scar and milky eye and all, he knows his flaws, knows his merits.

Can measure them down to the last inch of skin.

"If I had any say in the matter? I would not have left."

"Husband," Wren agrees, easily enough, though watchful from the corners of her eyes. A husband. And evidently still one of some contention, if Gervais' phrasing was any indication, if the sound is. It can hardly be the scandal of the thing now, can it? There's no public alive left unscandalized. "My congratulations."

Genuine, even if internally she boggles. An elf, a Rifted elf, marrying the daughter of a Comte. Comtesse now — an echo of Gwen’s previous correction —

Perhaps not the time to throw stones. She sketches a few short motions through an empty page. If it looks a lot like three underlined question marks, that's her own business.

"I am previously acquainted with the Outsider." That’s one way of putting it. "He is... singular."

As is that. Of their party, she most trusts him with this. Just not with anything else. Wren looks up again, more properly now, reaches down to collect the teacup. Do copies of the Litany even still exist? How might one pass them on politely? Here, a wedding gift, in case your husband's friends come knocking.

"How long has it been? The marriage?"

She looks bad. In a way, that's a relief. No one on this side looks good.

"We always do." He rocks back down to sit himself in place, traces a hand over the shallow indentation he's made. "From the bones of old rancor, comes new."

You cast your enemy's weapons into the earth. You draw upon the dead, stirred by an angry ground. And the violence doesn't stop.

"What do you think that I have, Beleth?"

It's not a kind question. But it's not anything that he's asked her before. He knows what she thinks the Inquisition owns — does she even understand what he does?

They sew flowers from cloth, sometimes. The real kind are too precious to spend on funerals. What do you think I have to give?

Edited 2017-03-01 06:12 (UTC)

He knows that tone. He's heard it plenty of times because when Iskandar planned to do something and was already tuning them out, despite the logic of their arguments. He gave a flat, unimpressed look at his lover. Please don't make this harder than it had to be, Iskandar.

"Waver's right," Kirk once again backed him. "You're an excellent fighter, Iskandar, but we have no idea how many there are or what weapons and magic they have. It would be wiser to scout and come up with a fresh plan of attack from there." His tone suggested that Iskandar, being a strategical genius, should know better.

"We need to understand what we are up against and where the victims are. Running in blind puts them in more danger than not."

"Don't mind him."

Norrien's an old Duster; the pressure of a life under rock was ground into his bones long ago. That kind of thing, you vent it outward, or it just builds in you. Alan knows — he doesn't vent.

"Sewing's what we need." In the moment at least. The Doctor will doubtless be pulled off onto half a dozen different odd jobs before the next patrol comes back, signals that somewhere out there it's dawn. "Some of the kids help rip bandages. They'll be excited for a new face."

Kids love nonsense words, and they're used to being talked down to. But Alan keeps a distance from children, these days. So he peels back, tries to catch the Doctor's eye as he points to a small cluster of buildings ahead.

"It's the left one. Just introduce yourself." A hand to the hook. "I need to go see if they missed any eggs."

Spiders might be meat, but they're also a quick end to the unwary. Best to handle it now.

Says Alistair. Says the person who had all the choices, who could have been a Templar but instead went to be a Warden because he had options. Anders has never resented that, never cared about it, until this very moment when it burns white hot in his mind.

"What we are? People only care what I am when they're about to condemn me and they've no ground to stand on. We are forgotten, on the losing side of a war, and I'm already damned. There is nothing more I can lose, nothing more I can have taken away, except him, so yes, I'll be selfish."

Nate deserves better, Nate's always deserved so much better, but he can't give Nate what he deserves. He's never been strong enough for that. No, the best he can manage is anger and destruction, the former of which burns all the more for Alistair's calmness.

"You're a sanctimonious asshole, and you can fuck off. Like you'd do differently in my shoes." Anders closes his food pouch roughly, wishing it was instead something he could slam. At least he can get to his feet and slam his staff into the ground. That's minutely satisfying.

"We are all of us fucked, and all we can do is fight on to give those we care about one more day. Thank you for making that list one person shorter; it was getting overly long."

"A few years," follows the face she pulls at singular, which Wren can take for the agreement it is; she remembers the Outsider only a little, but vividly. Of the group, he and Wren are the only ones to whom she might put name to face, or...even reliably recall the face, offhand. It'd have been less than that in the time passed if not for Thranduil's attachment, or the stark way a handful of careless words had undone her uncle.

She bites off the end of her thread and sets the shirt aside, moves onto the next thing in her mending pile; threads her needle anew and takes a drink of her tea. It must be familiar-- she doesn't blink at the awful taste.

"In the fashion of his people," a bit more drolly. "Whoever they are."

Yes, this is probably about how people might've envisioned Gwenaëlle as a wife.

A beat, then;

"My uncle seems in better spirits." Eyyyyyy.

The only thing keeping Aleron from resisting being held down at the shoulders by his wife is a complete inability to do so. He's too weak and in too much agony to fight it. But frustration is rapidly building, though not with her. With his failing faculties. He can feel himself slipping again and he needs to get through to her before it's too late. Because she is not safe and it is his fault. "Bethany, my beloved light..."

He dallies studying her face, as if memorizing every detail anew, with a growing realization that it likely is his last chance to do so. But not for nearly long enough to sate his yearning to dote on Bethany, because he's desperate to convey something to her, even though putting two words together at a time takes effort. His speech is broken as he fumbles and trips over his words. The song and the pain are forcing their way in through the cracks.

"I would... I would lay down my life... to save yours. But Anders... Anders told me... to live, for you. I swear I have done." Even at the precipice of madness, he remembers the injunction to live because Bethany had lost enough. That's what's truly kept him from succumbing some time ago. Unfortunately, sheer stubborn will alone is rapidly proving not enough. "They... wanted you. '...last Hawke.' I would not... You must live." His lip quivers while he teeters on the edge of tears; he's quite lost control as the sound is drowning his clarity out. "I've failed you. You must live."

She's terribly correct, unfortunately. He should not have been allowed to get worked up because it's proving detrimental to his already deteriorating condition. Whatever he was trying to convey is now lost to the fog of the red lyrium's silent internal torture. The song is all that's left to him and Aleron clearly can no longer recognize where he is or with who. The only solid thought left to him is that he wishes he could die and bring the pain to an end.

Very composed, dignified women in their forties don’t choke on their tea. They just make the very composed, dignified decision to cough down their sleeves around the leaf they’ve just inhaled.

"He is —" Hopefully not taken with the same fashion as Gwen’s elf. "— That is to say, I find I am as well. The value of an overdue discussion."

"I hope it will not impose if I stay a short while longer." Another sip of tea. Another leaf. This one she spits discreetly back into the cup. Yeah, Gervais really picked a winner. "There has been little time for such — conversations — of late."

For anyone, seemingly. It hasn’t exactly escaped her attention that Thranduil is nowhere in sight.

Gwenaëlle glances up at her when she says discussion, eyebrows raising - which is the extent of her colour commentary on that. There doesn't need to be more, when her expression is so- expressive.

"Conversations," she repeats, dry. "That's the truth. Thranduil won't come down here for anything short of the lot of you." And what they represent, and what might be done - and undone. Five years of undoing; Gwenaëlle is resolute in the face of what it would mean giving up. She hadn't even to weigh it against what they'd gain - there is no question of it being the right thing to do.

But it crosses her mind. And this, now; she might never know her uncle. He might never hold his Templar.

They won't die in the dark while Corypheus makes a plaything of Thedas, though.

He does not visit? There’s truth in that hurt, but it’s not the whole of it. You do not go with him?

Wren knows little of the person that Gwen has become, but she knows a deal of being an angry young woman with a cause. Of all the things that one trades for it — and gladly. How bitter it is, when the rock falls for the hard place.

Thranduil will not bend for his love, not for anything short of the lot of you. They aren't a passel of old friends, but a sign: The dead walk. Time snarls. One way or the other, the game is changing, draws close to a close.

And there it is, she thinks. The wound.

"In the Gallows," She draws a slow breath, fishes to the back of the little book. The stack of letters is thin, worn with time and the efforts taken to conceal them. Wren still doesn’t know how Inessa managed it. "A warden gave me these. Bade that I deliver them."

She’s read them, of course. Anything that might help must be documented. But they held only the same old refrain that everything here sings: absence, silence, regret.

"I do not make the offer lightly," Were the positions reversed, would Wren try to send word? No, she thinks. She barely listens to herself as it is. The question still bears asking. "But if there is anything that you would have said, I will do all that I can to see the message preserved."

Edited 2017-03-01 10:22 (UTC)

It's not something to be taken any more lightly than it's offered, and Gwenaëlle slows herself, stops before she can decline without considering. Is there anything...? To the ghosts who'll live all of their lives, what would she say?

Five years ago, the prospect of being Comtesse Vauquelin meant something very different. If she and Thranduil drag painfully at one another now, she isn't sure they were even speaking when Coupe and the others were lost. Her secrets had mattered more, meant different things; his presence in her life had a different weight, and she had not been swift to forgive him for it. Unstoppable force and immovable object -

A Comtesse with a price on her head can become all sorts of things to survive, can take what's hers where she finds it; the only heiress of a Comte in the dangerous waters of Orlais-as-was cannot. What is there to say, of what can't be? It was. But it won't be, she thinks.

"Someone should remember that my father was brave," she says, instead of any of that, and if it's quiet it isn't gentle. Gwenaëlle, perhaps, has never been.

"Damn right." Her eyes shut briefly, the book snaps closed. "He raised you."

How many candles is she going to need to light, before this is over? How many brave, and convinced, and clever people are they going to have to kill? She will not flinch. But someone will remember. Someone has to.

You corner the rabbit, and you begin to see its character. If there is comfort to be had it is in this: The courage, the convictions, they don’t appear from ether. Drawn out, encouraged, shaped by circumstance — but there is yet some nature in them.

— This Gwenaëlle will not be. But someone like her could, as yet.

"He failed me every single day of his life but the last one."

It is an unflinching bit of character assassination. It is said with as much conviction as her assertion that his bravery must not be forgotten; it is, perhaps, why. To be Emeric's daughter has been a thankless task for so many years, and in his death she doesn't pretend that his life was other than it was -

but he loved her, and he loved her as thanklessly as she had always, in spite of herself, loved him. When it mattered, it mattered most. Her gaze drops to her sewing, and if her eyes are wet then Wren seems like the sort of person not rude or awkward enough to notice.

"So it should be remembered," after a slight pause. "What he did. What he was willing to do."

They’d had a conversation, once. A long time ago, and not so very long at all. The Herald. Trevelyan. Two faces within one. She had surely seen ugly moments. Small ones. Selfish. A collection of flaws, occluded by sacrifice.

A peculiar inversion now. Living, Emeric is in no danger of finding his faults obscured. His virtues?

She watches the wall, grants Gwen what little space may be afforded.

"It shall," If only in a burning wick, a snatched line of ink. Emeric Vauquelin, she can imagine it beginning, has ideals. No more insane a suggestion than anything else she need write. "I swear it."

Edited 2017-03-01 11:36 (UTC)

He laughed at what they had to say. Not at them of course. He would never mock the advice of others. Even after all these years that was just another thing that had not changed about him. "You are correct that we do not know what we face. However, we have an advantage on our side you forget."

He gave a wink at them. "My army."

Now, that army was only an illusion but it was a powerful one. Not only would it allow them to burst through the front door but he'd be able to read what the enemy had without having to take guesses or hoping that there were magics that would reveal him somehow. He was resistant to magic but it was hardly his best skill. No, he knew why he wanted to do what he did and he was not doing this simply from an impatient desire.

"That buys us enough time to get into favorable spots, to read the area, and to provide us with further advantage. After all, how much time do we really have to scout when lives are on the line? If these deaths are due to them killing innocents then they will continue to do so no matter what. This one bold move is our best opportunity." He smiled brilliantly at them. "So will you really stay back here or will you charge forward with me?"

"Thank you."

And that's that - Gwenaëlle doesn't quite have it in her to linger on that any longer. Discussing it even so far is well out of her comfort, and so it's...settled. The message she would have sent will be. Delivered to who? Even if only Wren remembers, that will be - that will have to be enough.

It seems unfair. Wren is going to have to do a great deal of remembering. (Her uncle has never looked so soft around the eyes.)

"Back to the drawing board on marriage," is what she says, eventually. "Though I never planned to, anyway, so there's that."

For someone who claims not to do so well with words, Jamie has at least managed to be more up-front about his feelings than any of the other boys Hermione's known. But then, she realizes that he's older, not just that he'd been older than most of her peers but also he's now had five years added on top of that. She can't help but wonder if it still would have taken him about five years to say this to her if she hadn't fallen through time, and if it only feels so mature because the shift seems to have happened quite suddenly, through her eyes.

She almost wishes that he would stop looking at her, stop touching her, just give her a few moments to process this. She's still technically with Ron, isn't she, and so it would make all the sense in the world to keep Jamie at arm's reach and let him down gently. He might have forgotten about Ron after all these years.

All these years. It's been five years, and Jamie is still here. Iskandar, too, and Rey, and Kirk. The rifters haven't gone anywhere, and there's no sign that Ron himself has ever shown up the way Harry had. Even if she and the others do find some way back to their proper time, Ron never arrives, and the rifters don't seem to find a way back home. How stubborn would she have to be push Jamie away when all he wants is someone to reach out to?

And besides... it isn't as though she doesn't want the same, especially if this really is her life now. Ron would understand. He'll move on. Eventually. So she should, too.

All of that races through her mind in the short span of time between Jamie admitting his feelings and Hermione realizing that he's moving forward for a kiss. She has time to stop him, and she very nearly does just that, body tensing as her hand makes a move towards his shoulder, fully intending to give him pause. But at the very last minute, she decides against it, letting her hand hover just above his shoulder as his lips touch hers, holding her breath against the guilt and the conflicting feelings.

And then she lets out a breath and lets it all go, promising herself she'll overthink and fret on it later. If there's a chance that this present time is set in stone and it's all any of them have left to look forward to, then there's nothing wrong with giving Jamie something he so clearly wants. Especially not when Hermione isn't exactly unwilling, either, given that when her hand finally does fall on his shoulder, it's more as a means of encouragement rather than discouragement as she steps in closer and slowly returns the kiss.

Everything is broken and dark and wrong. But if she can fix one thing, bring a little light into one person's life and make things at least feel right, then maybe that's the reason Hermione and the others had been brought here. And really, that's reason enough.

For a beat, Waver looked to Kirk and mouthed him a silent thank you. This wasn't going to be an easy argument at all, and frankly, he didn't enjoy this reminder of what trying to get Iskandar to do things was like back when he was nineteen.

"And where will we position them?" Waver said, trying to be reasonable. If he was younger, his patience would be gone already. "I know how the Hetairoi works, but how long will it hold here? And what if it fails?"

Waver paused, then cut to the point. "If there are lives at stake, then it behooves us to do due diligence to ensure that there's no errors made in those first, crucial moments when we come through the door. Moreover, if we know who's in there, that means we can dedicate one person to rescue while the others take care of fighting if need be. It also jeopardizes our," Waver indicated himself and Kirk, "Safety. We're not you, and we don't have your abilities. So please. Humor us."

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

Page 26 of 45

OPEN ↠ FALSE GODS, GREAT DEMONS (OPEN LOG 1)

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject