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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"If you keep looking so damn grumpy, your face is gonna stick like that."

Kaisa may be tired, true, but that's hardly going to stop her from swaggering on up to Bruce and cheerfully throwing an arm around his shoulders. Look!! Pals!!! Or. Something.

She examines Bruce critically for a moment, her gaze ever unsettling with that red, softly glowing tint to them, little tendrils of red smoke drifting away from her eyes as she moves. "Although, I think it might be to late for that." She tsks, face solemn for exactly one second, before she bursts into a grin again, giving Bruce a little shake.

"C'mon! We won today! We did great! It won't kill ya t' smile, I promise."

These days, her stupid banter and menacing of Bruce doesn't serve to fluster him, is hardly an attempt to flirt. Mostly, she's just fucking worried. People aren't meant to keep all their happiness locked up like that. So she pokes and prods, trying to get some kind of reaction from him--even anger would be preferable.

Sometimes Bruce wonders why he ever agreed to having Kaisa in his team, let alone is second-in-command. They had always been as different as night and day, even back before all of this went down. She was good with what she did, sure, but still--

No point thinking about it. The arrangement had been working well, and there was no reason to change it.

"The victory is minor, and if we don't build on it soon it will soon be insignificant." With his entire focus set on the war and their survival there is little else that Bruce really registers now, especially when coupled with everything the Venatori did to him. He grew stronger from that, though, so he supposes that's one thing he could thank them for. The him of five years ago would have never dared to do anything that he was doing today.

Maybe because Bruce needed someone on his team who isn't a nihilistic LOSER. You can't just have it be all business, all doom and gloom. And Kaisa injected the necessary emotion and optimism into the group--whether Bruce liked it, or not.

"Bruce, c'mon. C'monnn." She whines at him, giving his shoulder a little shake. "No victory is minor. And we'll keep building. But that's why the victories aren't minor. You can't build a house with half the bricks missing. Everything we do, every gain that we make, is important t' keep building." And Bruce gets a pat on the head from the taller woman.

"You gotta think of the good that it did. And you really gotta chill a little. Like, not even a lot." She holds her hand up, fingers a few inches apart. Just in case Bruce can't grasp the concept on his own. "Just a little bit. Like. Do you ever do anything for fun? Do you even have any hobbies?"

Bruce looks decisively unimpressed as Kaisa shakes his shoulder, and that same unimpressed expression only deepens when she pats his head. Really, why had he ever thought this was a good idea again?

(He knows, of course, but no point dredging up the past now. They had to keep moving forward.)

At the very least, he waits for her to finish speaking before he does respond. "My work is my hobby," he says, completely deadpan. "Crushing the Venatori is my hobby." More deadpan. "Doing my job is my hobby." So much deadpan at this point now that it's almost too much, really. "Are you satisfied?" Because he really had work to do.

"That," Kaisa says, with the most incredulous expression she can dredge up, "is not a hobby. That's, like. The opposite of a hobby. Hobbies are like..." She pauses for a bit to muse on what kind of hobbies Bruce could possibly take up in the middle of a dwarven city. "...drinking! Drawing? Writing? You could draw pictures of you beating up the Venatori."

She frowned, and turned around--walking backwards, to face him. "No, I'm not satisfied. You're still a person, Bruce. No matter what happened...back there. You're still a person, and people have to relax. If you pull a string tight enough, it'll snap." Her face is uncharacteristically serious, red smokey eyes intent. "What's going to happen when you finally snap, Bruce?"

Bruce continues to remain unimpressed at Kaisa's response, and especially at her suggestions for hobbies. He still wasn't one for drinking, he didn't do art, and there was no real point in writing right now. In a war, there was no time for things like those.

"I'll relax when I'm dead," he is all that he says in response, already starting to move, brushing past her and making his way forward. As much as he appreciates her concern, she really doesn't have to be worried. He's made it this far, and Bruce has no intention of giving up. Not until he takes his very last breath.

That's when Kaisa does something risky. She knows it's risky, but when has that stopped her before? Never, that's when. She reaches out, and grabs Bruce's arm (the normal one, mind), digging her fingers tightly into it. That red gaze only intensifies, bright and wrong and almost sinister, when Kaisa isn't her lackadaisical smiling norm.

"Is dying what you really want? 'Cause that's what you're going to get. And what then? What good are you to the Inquisition--To your team--To me when all you are is a goddamn corpse, huh? What if you don't die? What if you live and live and push everyone away, and lose everything--everyone around you. And you look around and realize that you're still alive, but you're not living."

And Kaisa leans close, up into his personal space. Not many people risk that, but once again, Kaisa is that special kind of idiot. "What's the point in anything we're doing, if we're not living? You're no use as a corpse, or as someone who just wants to act like a corpse."

His senses kick in when Kaisa grabs his arm so tightly without warning, but he's got more than enough control to not do anything stupid. Instead all he does is to turn back to look at her without even batting an eyelash at the increased intensity of her gaze and her words.

In another time, maybe, he would have taken her words to heart, would actually understand the warning for what it is. It's not like he doesn't know the consequences; on the contrary he understands it all too well. He knows what he's going towards, where he's heading for after all he's said and done in these last few years. But it doesn't matter. It never mattered. These was only ever one place for a monster like him.

"I'm not going to argue schematics with you, Daesun," he replies, his tone entirely devoid of emotion even as he stares right at her face. "You can choose to 'live' however you want. I have my own path to follow."

He pulls his arm away from her grip after saying that, giving it a cursory look for injuries before glancing at her one more time. "If you're done lecturing me, you're free to go. I'll be handling the reports."

He's infuriating, and she's infuriated. It's only a shame that she can't just wrestle him onto the ground and put him in a headlock until he stops being a fucking idiot. Not that Kaisa wouldn't be willing to try, normally--maybe back before, but she's not sure who would win, now.

Maybe one day she'll try it, anyway. There are worse ways to die. Maybe killing her will make him realize he's being a goddamn shithead.

"You're not following a path, Bruce." She doesn't pursue him, but she's not done talking. "You're stagnating in your bitterness. You're letting it consume you, more than that...thing inside you." Abomination. It burns on her tongue, but she doesn't say it. For a few moments, she just watches him walk.

"You know, Bruce." She calls out, not caring who can hear (when has she ever?). "I liked you better before you let the Venatori turn you into this. Back when you couldn't fight worth a damn, but at least you were still a person. Your own person. Now you're letting them and that fucking bitterness run your life. And you're gonna let them kill you, too."

He hears the words for what they are, but lets it wash by him as he keeps on moving until Kaisa is out of his sight. She doesn't know everything, will never know everything. The Venatori only made him finally realize what was already there all along - rage, fierce and bitter and unrelenting, ever burning until everything else is turned to ash. And even then it continues to burn.

There's no salvation for him. He's been gone a long time ago, and Bruce doesn't expect himself to survive this war. Death would be a blessing after everything, and that peace will be something he's waited for a long, long time. But until then...

He continues to walk down the road, ever moving forward.

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

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