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

[inagutterson]

How a dog turned out to be bigger than him even in the dark is honestly a question for the ages that Yngvi fortunately no longer has the time to ponder with so many irons in his fires. At least Hardie isn't a mabari. Given the state of the everything it'd be too much to deal with and he'd have done something drastic years ago, declared himself for Bhelen or something mad like that, tried to marry into nobility to say he'd give some lucky woman many daughters.

There's still time for that but first: "You little shit, you've worried the others, you're going to go putting grey in my hair" when in fact an absence had gone unnoticed by everyone save him. Also behold, dog, even his dirty face gets a kiss before he drops into a bow with an actual honest-to-whatever-he-believes-in-smile just for her.

"M'lady, cheers for bringing the wayward scamp back home. Why did anyone let them bring overgrown pigeons down here? Got enough riffraff already." Meaning the Orzammar nobles. Basically any of the Dalish. Orlesian nobility. Any nobility. Basically any sort of person he doesn't like. "And how is the fairest and fiercest of all ladies in my life that isn't part-bear?"

[elegiaque]

"Still breathing," she says, wryly, "against all sense and logic."

All of those warriors dead, and yet Gwenaëlle persists. She supposes that she's always been bloody-minded and stubborn, so of course, presented with the worst of all things she will continue to spit in the eye of caution. How could she do otherwise, and still look at herself in the mirror?

Theoretically.

She hasn't looked in a mirror in some time, really.

"Have you heard we've some people swimming against time's current?"

[inagutterson]

"That's life though, innit? Must be some dwarf kicking about in there somewhere, keeps you going along. And who needs either of those things? Do they put food on the table these days?"

Maybe some folk do but Aura Hardie is alive. Melisende is still somehow clinging to the fraying edges of life. His brother is probably dragging her through that. One day he'll get all three of them down here and probably rest easier knowing that pretty much everyone he can possibly account for is accounted for within walking distance and just make his peace with it.

He takes a moment to really hear her words. To digest them. The reaction is a deep groan that comes from his smallest toes all the way up, free hand dragging through his hair until it gets tangled because he-- he hasn't brushed it. Apparently has some sort of mechanism caught in it. He hopes. Might be anything really, it's not like Yngvi's got eyes back there despite some choice threats to the underlings.

"Don't tell we've got walking corpses to deal with as well?" It's the first thought he jumps to as a legacy from too many battlefields and living in Kirkwall, as well as Asher's tendency to get them roped into all sorts of outright weird jobs. "How did that even happen? No, that's not-- nevermind, that's not the main bit. Grease. Lots of grease, I'm not wasting a trap when they'll just keep trying to go and drag themselves along with a leg left behind that someone'll have to clear up."