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

[rowancrowned]

At first, you could tell the Orlesians from the rest with how pale the skin would be around their eyes, the top half of their faces obscured from the sunlight so long that they were oddly pale. Well, the lines had faded, and then those on the Inquisition’s side still had gone down underground, and they all had that paleness to them. They’d come into the sun blinking like newborn calves, and it was just another thing to hate about Orzammar. A hidden fear was that it would all go up in flames.

(At least, he supposed, there was no dragon in this particular pit.)

He stands, for Romain, dips in a polite bow, takes the few steps over to him rather than ask Romain to come to him. Gwenaëlle’s grandfather has earned it, or maybe Thranduil’s gentler on his expectations, or maybe he needs a face he knows to distract him from … everything.

“Might we walk together?” To wherever Romain is delivering that paper, two old men earning the privilege of complaints. And he wishes to ask after the children, and Romain himself.

[toujoursdroit]

"Of course. It has been too long." It was strange, the motions of civility that persisted. Still, Thranduil had inarguably saved his life and the lives of his family; that earned him much more than a few minutes of conversation.

"Do you have a particular subject on your mind? I know you seldom visit underground."

[rowancrowned]

"How are your grandsons?" he murmurs, stepping in time with the older Lord. Some things cannot be stripped away-- Romain has no holdings left to him, but the way he holds himself, how he speaks-- those grandsons will be pretenders, if the titles exists at all, ever again.

He does not hesitate. He's been mulling over his words since the Outsider contacted him, and with the trouble of the Rifter who insists this cannot be undone lurking on the sidelines, he must have allies in place to shout him down.

That, and Romain is old, and tired, and might be more willing to receive this news. If the Outsider is wrong, they die, if he is right, Romain's grandchildren have grandchildren of their own.

"Yes," a clipped tone. "How do your philosophers describe time?"

[toujoursdroit]

Neither of the questions is easy, exactly, but Romain starts with the more personal one. "Raoul is well, under the circumstances. He'll be eager to see you, if you linger long enough. Thomas was alive, last I heard, but the work he does is of the kind that I don't want to assume too much without proof." He didn't attempt to prevent Thomas' activities; his grandson wanted to fight for a better world, and he'd have done the same were he, himself, still 17. But his own efforts were, he sometimes suspected, more due to stubbornness than a belief that circumstances were still salvageable.

"I've never been overly fond of philosophy," on that note, "but from what I understand, there is no overriding consensus on the point. Why?"

[rowancrowned]

"I will make time," he resolves, or admits; they're always more bearable at the ends of the spectrum of mortality, and he is fond enough of the children who had lived with him.

"Another Rifter has a different view of time, a more ... intimate understanding." That's an easy way to lean around what the Outsider is, what the Void gives him. Thranduil does not gesture with his hands, but there's a certain hesitation in his voice. He'd prefer to explain this in Sinda, but there aren't half the words for what he needs. In another world, Romain would be of the breed who would know the elven languages as a sign of culture and refinement-- but that does not strip away the fact that the elven words for time are wound up in a different understanding than the Mannish ones.

"Consider it a journal, then, that can be flipped through willingly-- and some pages torn out. The Rifters and Inquisition members that disappeared half a decade ago were pushed forward, and the same Craft that brought them here can be used to put them back." He's getting good at this. Gwen's explanation was much more fraught with emotion. "This future, these years-- they can be overwritten. None of this need happen. He has given me his word, and I have no reason to doubt him. Not with what he is capable of."

[toujoursdroit]

Romain raises his eyebrows, as if this news were merely a mild surprise. The length of the pause he takes, however, suggests he is using more care to process this news. "Of course, I assume there is no assurance that what overwrites this time would not be worse. On the other hand, if these years are unmade, who would be able to say?"

It's a bit bleak, but then ... everything is somewhat bleak.

"I take it they will need some assistance, in order to return? Otherwise, they would simply do it and we would never know." He wonders, briefly, if his world has been "overwritten" this way in the past. It would be impossible to find out, and he supposed it didn't matter in some ways, but it was unnerving all the same.

[rowancrowned]

"No one," he answers, solid if unnecessary. He will never meet Romain's grandsons, never spend months wondering over what happened to the Outsider, never flee Skyhold in the night with his lord and the Lady.

(The thought that this is just the latest in a long series of 'fixes' has not occurred to him-- that way lies madness, and he has been close to the edge before here, and he will not toe that line.)

"Yes. There is an... anticipated difficulty, with one of the group that came here. He insists that going back is impossible. That an attempt to return will cause more harm than good. I do not think that story will be prefered over the hope of not having do live with this, but..." Thranduil shrugs his shoulders. "We do not need a fissure through what remains of the Inquisition."

[toujoursdroit]

"I certainly cannot claim to be an expert on the nature of time," Romain says, "but I've seen more than enough of organizations torn apart from within. It does not sound as if you give much credence to the one arguing against an attempt, though."

He doesn't quite make it a question, but leaves a door open all the same. Romain - generally - trusts Thranduil's judgment, but he is curious as to why one theory sounds more plausible to him than another. Romain, himself, is inclined to the path that involves action rather than just passive acceptance -- but then, he always has been.

[rowancrowned]

He's willing to answer. "Duinenor is diminished, here. What he was able to do simply by virtue of birth-" ritualistic sacrifice and rebirth as an avatar of the Void, potato. "-- is something extremely similar to this. He has... manipulated time before. He is aware of the workings of it, and furthermore, I trust him absolutely." He lets it sit for a moment, and then: "Im, Thranduil, annon le nîn gwaedh."

The old rules certainly don't apply much here, if at all, but he makes the vow anyway. Romain will appreciate the gesture even if all the weight escapes him.

[toujoursdroit]

It can't be said to remind him of better days, exactly, but of former times. The time his family had spent with Thranduil had been a particular stretch of his life, distinct from the rest, and it had made an impression.

As such, he offers a muted smile. "Well, I don't care much for the chances of someone who opposes your will, when it's set." A pause, then lower, "Is there anything I can do? Or Thomas, I am sure he'd be eager to throw in if I can contact him." Technically Aurèle could also help but ... Thranduil has met Aurèle.

[rowancrowned]

"I am a reasonable man," Thranduil says, and he's either defending himself or making a mockery. He is not a man at all, and with the way Orlesians function, at least they understand one another once that shaky barrier of human-elf relations is breached.

"If this is the end," Thranduil says, having thought about it, "then it does not matter if I die. It will not be a real death. I will not spend my life without thought, but if he calls for me and it is suicide, I will not hesitate."

He is not afraid of pain. He is afraid of Romain's granddaughter in pain, of failing the Outsider. Of standing before Mandos and his wife and his hands being empty. Calenmiriel, he knows, will understand, even if it takes time. "Thomas will know the whole of it if he comes."

[toujoursdroit]

Romain's expression is set. And if time is not reset, he thinks but does not say, they're fighting a losing battle regardless. This can't last much longer, either way.

"I can't say I rejoice at the prospect of my grandson offering up his life," Romain says, quietly, "but he's a brave young man. And proud. He will do his duty."

He taps the scroll against his leg, thoughts briefly elsewhere. "I am too old to be much use on a battlefield, but I wonder if my own talents might be better used than on translation." Romain knew a great deal on many subjects. If they were reaching the endgame, perhaps it was time to re-position himself on the board.