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

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Alistair nods. His smile is only a spasm. So is, "I've always sort of wanted to kill you." A defensive reflex that's about as helpful as putting up a bare arm to block mages' fire.

He doesn't trust Nathaniel enough to sit down. Not like this. But he kneels on one knee, closer. He should ask. Can you last? Anders is going to kill him, and he might deserve it. But Nathaniel doesn't deserve this.

There's a knife in his boot, and there's a vial in the pouch on his belt—a painless merciful thing meant to be used in the event of his own hopeless situation, not someone else's, but it's just as well. He gets the vial out first and rolls it between his fingers.

"Can you swallow?"

A gurgle and a grimace turns out to be the closest he can come to laughing. A gleam of memory returns to his eyes. That's right. He and this man hated each other.

He swallows and coughs. With effort, he rasp, "You. Did not kill me. The Blight killed me. Months ago. After this, I will...be Nathaniel again. My friend."

He holds out his hand to take the vial.

"Tell Anders...it was the Blight. Tell him I love him. And I will see him...at the Maker's side."

That is as much as he has, one last muster of strength and sanity before he goes.

"I will. I'll tell him." He uncorks the vial and presses it into Nathaniel's waiting hand.

He doesn't try to hold it, but his hand does hover in case of a tremble or a slip. There's more where it came from, but not much, and if he has to leave to get it he might lose his nerve. He's already barely holding onto it, casting around helplessly for something he can say, something right, that won't also make him crumble and choke when the only kind thing left to do is stay steady.

"I'll be right here. I'll—I remember you," he says, hoarse and hollow. He can't say it all, you died with your blood joined with mine, ¹ but maybe Nathaniel still remembers how it goes.

The words bring a ray of light into his memory. They sing along with the somg he hears, and for once, the music is not his enemy.

"One day," he chokes, "you will join me."

Nathaniel drinks.

The poison is bitter, but quick. The pain eases as warmth spreads through him. Slowly, he pulls himself up, hands tearing on the bedpost like elfroot leaves. He lies on the bed and thinks of Anders--the smell of his hair, golden as the song that sings to him. The warm weight of him in his arms. And as the song crescendos, his memory wakens one more time, he can believe he is holding him one more time before he moves on to see Delilah and her family, all taken from him in the war. His sister and brother, Adria, his nephew, everyone he loved and lost will be returnee to him. Perhaps he will not have to miss Anders for long.

He falls asleep, breath rattling, and that sound means there is no turning back. A few minutes later, warm and with Anders in his arms, he is gone.

It takes Alistair some time to emerge from Nathaniel and Anders' shared house, but when he does his eyes are dry and hollow and it would take particular attention to detail to notice the occasional shakiness of his hands. He's fine. This isn't his tragedy. It's Nathaniel's, and Anders', and there are things that need to be done.

Teren isn't the first person he sees, but she is the first person he stops for, halting suddenly. He's been avoiding her—all of them, keeping his gaze averted like someone with a weaker stomach avoiding the sight of an open wound—and for a moment he almost looks like he doesn't recognize her or has forgotten that she was there.

He rubs his mouth. Looks her head to toe. He's thirty-seven now, but he still manages to look a little bit like a sullen and distrustful child.

Still: "Nathaniel is dead. I need a hand."

It's amazing the difference only five years has made in Alistair's bearing, the wrinkles it's put into his brow, the confidence it's sucked from his posture. Teren finds it almost too difficult to witness, and has been avoiding him as much as he has been her. But now they have undeniably seen one another, and she's certainly not going to walk away after that little revelation.

"What?" she starts, alarmed by the cavalier nature of the announcement. "How?" She's had no opportunity to encounter either Nathaniel or Anders yet, and hadn't even realized they were here.

"Poison." He feels like he's listening to himself talk from a distance. "I helped him, I..."

That is probably not what she means. It is also only barely her business. He straightens up, eyes refocusing, and looks a bit more like a man who now has five years' seniority over her instead of only a few months.

"We need to move him so I can clean the house." His skin on the bedposts. On the floor. It might spread. No one who isn't a Warden is going in there with him. "We can take him to the barricade. One of the mages can keep him cold until Anders comes back."

It's hard not to be affronted by that look, especially coming from him. Not that he doesn't have the right to give it, but it immediately calls to mind the way Nate spoke to her only days before, and--
Nate.

Who is dead.

Squinting cautiously, Teren nods, and declines to make a fuss of being bossed around. Now is not the time. Perhaps the time has gone for good.
"Anders is here," she more exhales than asks, now looking forward to that encounter less than she ever thought possible. Among all this, a part of her had hoped he'd died. She's not sure it would be unkind to wish that on all her Wardens, based on how this day is going.

Physically, Rey has changed. Her face is scarred, her hair is longer and worn down more often than not. She carries herself like someone who has somewhere to be, someone important. But while she has her own measured way of looking at things that she didn't used to now, she is still in essence Rey.

"By the Force," she mutters when Hermione recognizes her, lets out a breath she hadn't known she'd been holding and closes the distance to hug her fiercely. She'd gotten used to people leaving and never returning again, it was overwhelming for one of them to suddenly be back. "I never thought I'd see you again."

"Not at the moment," Alistair says.

Her nod is agreement enough for him to turn and walk back toward the house. Eyes ahead. Breathing even. This isn't the first brother he's burned, or the last, but he hopes he's created the peak by now, and there are fewer pyres to build in the future than he's built in the past. He can't have that much time left.

"He'll be back in a few days," he goes on. "He won't... He's been holding onto him like a sick dog. We've fought about it. He might try to kill me."

The moment they step inside, Teren is compelled to throw her hand over her nose and mouth, overwhelmed by the stench of... it's not death, not quite, but that sick and primal odor they've come to know by virtue of what they are. Darkspawn, but not.
"Maker," she weakly intones, looking down at the ruined thing that used to be Nate. She's seen people go off to the Deep Roads, but never what becomes of them there, should they live long enough.

Anders has been keeping him like this. Her first impulse is to be angry, but she quiets it; she knows Anders, how deeply he feels, how stubborn he can be, how much this situation must be ruining him. Have ruined him.
"I won't let him kill you," she says, strained, to Alistair. What she will do, she has no idea.

1. Closed to the first Warden who takes it

He's tired after his mission with Jamie. It had been needed, been important, and Jamie had been just as helpful and trustworthy as expected, but he's tired anyway and filled with the quiet dread that always comes with returning home. Nate will be there, he tells himself like he does every time his feet are on this path, Nate will let Anders hold him and it will be all right for a little bit longer. He pays little heed to the way some people aren't looking at him; that's usual. All he has time for is focusing on the house he shares with Nate.

--

2. Closed to Saoirse

He's not drunk, though a part of him wishes he was. He's not heading down to the Deep Roads, though a part of him wishes he was doing that too. He's even not out trying to pick a fight to get his anger and fury out, though almost all of him wishes he was doing that.

Instead, he's sitting in a corner of the excuse for a tavern Ortan Thaig has, keeping an eye out for any familiar face who won't know what's happened, who won't sit down and tell him how sorry they are because he'd like to go just a few minutes without crying. Which is why, when he sees Saoirse, he sends the nearby bartender over to offer her a drink if she comes to join Anders.

---

3. Open

He's not doing well. Whether he's distractedly healing, or sitting at a fire staring into space, or dozing off in the chair in his house because he can't stand to use their bed, Anders is lost and it's obvious. Alone isn't something he's been able to deal with since his year in a cell in Kinloch Hold, and for close to two decades it isn't something he's even had to deal with at all.

This makes him fairly easy to find, though. It's even easy enough to find him when he's furiously pouring over maps spread on a table in the room he heals at, muttering about personally ending the life of every agent of Corypheus that still wanders about and draws breath. ...And the ones that don't. Corypheus is the reason his research into dealing with the blight had been broken off, and while no one is truly to blame for the end of Nate's life, Corypheus is the clearest target and Maker how he wants a target.

He supposed this was that 'poker face' Kirk had told him a while back - a while while back now if he really thinks about it.

"I never died, so, no, I didn't resurrect. If I had been, I doubt I'd look this... normal. We think a rift or some sort of magic did this when we got to the temple; misplaced us in time or other."

"So, time travel bullshit?" Waver filled in neatly, wanting to be certain before slamming into theorizing. His eyebrows gave away his interest though. Finally, something interesting that required all thought and no physical activity. He had missed those opportunities.

"Darkspawn don't come through rifts, just up from underground."

It's said absently, as most of his attention seems to be fixed on the tankard. The fact his brows are furrowed as deeply as they are at the moment, however, means he's not really looking at that either, even if he is frowning at the thing. Mostly, he's just trying to think that through.

"Could be that they wanted to do something with the red lyrium that's in the temple, although there's enough of that around that they'd not necessarily need what's there now. So why stay there for so long, then?"

Could be it was something about that particular red lyrium that they were interested in, but what that might be, he had no idea. After a moment, he shook his head.

"There's got to be some reason for that. Don't suppose anyone came by after you woke up again and said anything odd, did they?"

"Everything here is odd to me."

It was said absently. Almost sadly. He doesn't like all this not-knowing that he has going on these days. But he closed his eyes and tried to piece together anything that was said. Give him a minute, Jamie, he's an old man now. There's a lot to sort through.

"We were in Kirkwall. The Gallows. Covered in Red Lyrium. A Red Templar took two people for questioning, but he was actually helping us escape. Someone called Magister Russo."

He shook his head. "I doubt that's anything useful, though."

That sounded accurate; there one moment and gone the next. Nothing about them was left behind so of course the lot of them would be thought dead.

As Iskandar tells the story, Sam finds himself eventually looking down at the bowl of food in front of him, frowning. The Inquisition had been dealt a heavy blow and a lot scattered or killed, especially those who carried the mark. That meant that Iskandar, Waver and Jim were all staying here because they were being hunted.

His lips thin when he hears about Pel, didn't know that Cyril was taking care of her daughter. Honestly Cyril hadn't talked to him much, their meeting brief, and even if he had the mage wasn't sure he would've brought that up.

What eventually draws his eyes up though is Iskandar talking about Kirk. That... he's not sure how to respond to that, mostly since he still feels involved, but also extremely removed from the matter. It makes sense though, having five years together. It's an important fact since Iskandar makes it known, but at the same time it probably isn't something he should concentrate on at the moment.

Sam notices the pause though, tilting his head slightly. "There's more isn't there?"

What Hermione manages is still enough of a smile that Jamie doesn't pick up on the fact that it's maybe not quite coming as naturally as it had earlier. For his part, he's more relieved that she doesn't seem to want him to actually cook. While he's willing to do so in order to spend a little extra time with her, he's well aware that his skills there tend to lean more towards simple fare - with maybe the exception of haggis, something that his family's been making nearly as long as they've been piping. And he really wasn't kidding about there being the right sort of things for haggis, unless he wanted to try and make it out of nugs.

Letting her know that she might be stuck eating that and deep mushrooms as a large part of her diet for the foreseeable future isn't something he quite has the heart to tell her, just yet - at least, not until he's had a chance to check out what's been brought in recently, and the only real way to do that is to go check. The only problem is that he has to stop holding her to do so, and even though he does do that, only a few seconds pass between that and his offering out his hand for her to take - or his arm, if she'd rather. As long as he can still keep in contact in some way, he'll be content.

"Now, I'll admit as I'd not mind a bite to eat myself," he admits, with a faintly wry expression. Some things, it seems, never change. But there's some that have, and the thought of that actually gets him to stop mid-turn, the wry expression turning into something closer to a grimace, albeit one that's directed at himself and not anyone else.

"I, ah, do have to let you know something, though. If people start calling me Donald, there's a reason for it. I'm not...using my name out in public so much, anymore."

Was it rude to laugh hysterically? He thought it was, but he couldn't stop it, clapping a hand to his mouth to try and muffle the sound. Such a silly joke, such a silly call back to their life five years ago, and the laughter came because against everything that had happened it was just that ridiculous.

He stopped when breathing became hard, face flushed and tears tracking down his cheeks. "Sorry, I just... I hadn't thought about the loft in years. And yes, we have a door. Several, even." They needed something for Waver's sanity when Kirk and Iskandar became amorous (which was quite a bit).

"And don't worry. We always have something cooking," he assured him, turning them down through alleyways, those little short cuts learned from years walking the dim paths.

Sam blinks at the sudden bout of laughter, watching curiously as Kirk became red in the face - were those tears? There's only been a few times he's seen Kirk laugh like this, and it came as a shock to see it now, considering how grim things were and being threatened not too long ago.

"Several doors," he says, sounding impressed. "Working on up it sounds." A pause as he looks up and frowns. "Or technically I suppose down." After all they were underground at this point. He makes sure to keep up, though stumbles from time to time since he isn't as familiar with these streets as Jim.

"He made the choice to die, and when."

A moment, torn between guilt and relief. "I hate that he's gone, but. I'm glad that it was his choice, in the end. I'm glad that it happened under his own agency." Agency was something that he'd had very little of, even before everything got ugly. His absence was gutting, but at least he'd gotten that little sliver of free will, in the end.

"...Am I really worth it?" The question is genuine, and she stares at him intently as she asks. "No one else seems to think so. I don't blame them. I'm no use to anyone, any more." And use is directly correlated to how much someone will care about you. She'd always been sure to be useful, before. Now, things were different.

A soft laugh. "Are you trying to make me start caring about being alive, after leading me here? I'm going to die here, Alan." Her tone is painfully blunt. "One way or another, everyone here will die. Isn't it better if it doesn't bother you?"

"That's true." She pauses for a moment, studying the Thaig. "Even if you did manage to go back, who's to say you could change how things unfold? It's not like there's any one or two events that you can point at and say, 'that's when everything turned to shit'." A lot of it had been battles, and who can change the flow of a battle? Unless they brought back the complicated maps of how everything went down, maybe. But even then.

"It's exactly as terrible as I'd expected." She'd told Alan, not so long ago, that she would hate it. The ever present ceiling, the lack of fresh air, wind, flowers. The knowledge that eventually, even squatting here in the darkness, they would all die. "Maybe worse, I forgot how weird nugs looked. With their little hands." She lapses into silence briefly, as she remembers something, from long ago. "For writing to their mothers, and tying shoe laces." Hah. Ha ha.

Even if he's offered the chair, Sam remains standing, mostly since he doesn't think he can sit still with the current situation - being closed in a smallish room while still not knowing what is going on. He's already been threatened and shot at in the open, so this isn't exactly helping his nerves, especially since Bruce seems a lot different then himself five years ago - and he's not just implying the arm.

"I'm good," he says, holding a hand up in an indication of 'no' to go along with his words. "Why am I here?" Might as well get to the point.

Edited 2017-03-07 07:01 (UTC)

The whole debacle over Nate's situation, and waiting for Anders to get back, is actually not immediately on Teren's mind as she makes her way through the market in search of some decent thread. She's still dealing with some of the emotional fallout from it, of course, but Anders is the last person she expects to see on her errand.
And yet, there he is.
She stops dead, staring at him with a very uncharacteristic air of nervousness. Should she blend back into the crowd, make him believe he's seeing things? No... as surely as she can recognize him, she's certain he'll recognize her. Teren, after all, looks exactly as she did the last time any of them saw her.

She does, at least, go stock still. If he notices her, fine, she'll deal with it. If not... no harm done. Or perhaps lots, but later.

It's the stock-stillness that really catches his attention. People moving around is usual. Someone freezing? Anders looks over and blinks, surprised, before glancing back toward the direction he'd been heading in. He needs to go check on Nate, but at the same time it's literally been years since he's seen Teren. Of course, maybe she doesn't want to talk with him. Things had been a little awkward before the vanishing, and all he knows is that several who had vanished have returned.

Anders frowns in the direction of his house before heading over to Teren. He'll be there shortly. She's freezing, which means if he doesn't say hi now she'll probably bolt and he'll not see her again for five more years.

"Teren." A beat. "I'd say you're back but that's... rather obvious. Hello. You're... Are you doing all right?"

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

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dun nun. dun nun. dun nun dun nun dun nun.

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Orzammar, mostly open

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1. DIVES IN AND TAKES IT

YAY