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

[faderifting]

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

Comments

merrill | ortan thaig

[chainlightning]

Merrill hates caves. She forgets that, sometimes -- on the good days, the days where there is some echo of laughter around the walls, where there aren't any immediate threats pressing in on them. It's more apparent on others. Despite her research on red lyrium, she hasn't been corrupted; Audacity taught her well. Still, the red of the Blighted lyrium and the red of her own blood, the only thing keeping her safe, seem to run together; sometimes, when the light hits just right, it seems like everything is red. Where once she dressed in greens and yellows, vibrant colors of the earth, she has changed. Green is still there, but it's dark, the depths of an untouched forest. Black is there also, and not just in her hair; some of it has been shaved, the rest pulled back. Then there's the white, the griffon feathers in her hair and on her staff, and -- sometimes -- the griffon that she rides. But then, as always, there's the red. Red beads with the feathers. Red on her hands, in her mind; the blood of those she's killed, the blood of those she couldn't save, the scars that remind her of how close she's come herself.

She's not as cheerful, these days. There's still some of it -- sparks, optimism injected into plans as needed, into the days of those who are worse off than she is. Still, daisies need sunlight and room to grow. Merrill can't help but feel that they're in a tomb, trapped but not yet dead. There are darkspawn on one side, Tevinter on the other. Still, she works; for those who will allow it, she uses blood magic to try and stave off any infection from red lyrium or the Blight. She fights, either on the ground or on griffon-back, striking hard and fast.

And she is there, with a soft smile, should you approach her in the thaig. If nothing else, she can listen.

Re: merrill | ortan thaig

[sunshinethroughgrey]

Bethany isn't much like herself these days, either. The sun has been clouded with loss and heartache. She still had dimples, but they were ranged with tiredness. Her brown eyes were still bright, but sometimes they were tinged yellow. Her hair was cut short - shorter than it had been - and although she still wore the the red scarf around her throat .... she also wore the Hawke stripe of blood across her nose and cheeks.

Yet she was still Bethany Hawke - and she was still trying to work to save as many people as she could. Which was why she worked so hard with Merrill on the corruption, doing it the Warden way. Whatever way they had to. With this, it was able to give her another way to put her focus ... that was not entirely trying to find her husband, no matter what.

She was going over their latest notes, brushing her short hair out of her face, gnawing her lower lip. "Merrill ... I've been testing these red lyrium blood samples we took from the Venatori with spiritual magic. What do you make of this?"

[inagutterson]

There's a lot of swearing.

(There is always a lot of swearing. There has always been a lot of swearing. There will be a lot of swearing until he can swear no more. It's a constant same as giving Gwenaelle Vauquelin her title even now, same as how he doesn't need the Stone to navigate around but has that innate sense of those who grew up in the dark. Everyone else here who wasn't born or raised similarly merely adopted it.)

"Fuckin' fuck, you little shit." Well that's incredibly helpful Yngvi, why are you swearing today can we count the reasons? Okay yes, we can. That reason is the following: there's a rock and a hard place which is usually trying to decide who you go with on a business deal or who you leave for the long arm of the law, and then there's the predicament of getting between this void-spawned beast and dinner. "That's my nug. I know the law. I know all the laws. Get that in your feathery head."

He is flapped at, shrieked at. He flaps back, keeps Stroganugg as far behind him as he can. "Someone come collect this overgrown pigeon before I feed it your intel thanks."

[byblow]

This isn't rational. Alistair has Templar training and years of experience working with mages. He knows they can't read minds. If they could, the war would be going very differently.

But you know what else isn't rational? People who have been gone and presumably dead for five years turning back up and acting like they never left. That's irrational and also rude. So he's being irrational and rude back.

"Hey," he says to Zevran on the second day back, when Lucci is sleeping under the watchful eye of someone or other who hasn't been dead for five years—"come with me for a minute."

A minute, several minutes, whatever. He doesn't say much else while he tromps across the Thaig in search of Merrill. When he finds her, he unceremoniously points at Zevran like he's a mess someone has to take responsibility for.

"Can you figure out what he is?"