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

[provenforce]

Rey had liked Yngvi just about from the moment she'd met him. He reminded her of the scavengers that she did get along with back on Jakku, few and far between as they were. It was a shame they were both such busy people, because it'd be easier to just spend the days tinkering, rather than trying to think up new ways to keep people alive.

"Well, you could just hide down here and we could pretend like we've no idea where you are when the Carta comes looking," Rey replies to his musing with a slight smile, glancing down at the toolbelt he's sliding her way and holding out a hand to lift a wrench with the Force, grabbing the tool effortlessly from the air to tighten the bolt she's currently working with. "Though that might make them upset with us."

[inagutterson]

Think of what great things could be done if ingenious minds weren't forced to worry about keeping old weapons in some semblance of working order just in case the Darkspawn break through to add a new challenger to the field. (Is it really the end of the world without the Darkspawn, eight out of ten hurlocks would disagree.)

"They'd be eating their own beards or worse, they'd eat my nugs if I tried that," he replies with a jerk of the head to where a couple of them are flopped over in his coat, harmless and asleep. More used to people doing interesting things, he's stopped fumbling and missing these days. "Might try setting deepstalkers on us. We're trying something out with all that but you'd defend me, yeah? I'm a handy lad." He is forever a lad shut up.

[provenforce]

She lets out a huff of breath that passes as a laugh at his question, shaking her head.

"Sure, why not? We've got darkspawn, red templars, and evil mages trying to kill us, may as well add deepstalker hoards to the list," she spares him a brief glance, though there's a sparkle there. She doesn't get to joke often with most of the other people she interacts with, it's nice to have Yngvi around for that.

[inagutterson]

"If we could use them though--" Stopping himself short, he disappears into his work, coaxing an old rusted (oh he really hopes that's rust because he's not squeamish but blood here is blood of unknown origin, his hands are generally a cracked open mess and Christine Delacroix was once worried about as to the state of them) fitting to come loose. "There we are. Anyway, as I was saying, you've been ambushed by them at least once haven't you? Everyone has. It's probably the most pleasant ambush you're ever going to have these days."

What a world. A pack of rabid weird things that look kind of like certain parts of the anatomy made sentient nipping at you in the dark and that's just 'oh, deepstalkers again, how quaint'.

"We could add other things if you have suggestions, reckon you go up top more than I do so you know what sorts of weird shit is going on around there. Things with two heads, three arses, farting rainbows or gold. So Big Jim says."

[provenforce]

"Deepstalkers are the most pleasant of our assailants, yes," Rey admits, frowning a little at the splintering happening around the edges of the metal fitting the bolt she's just tightened is attached to. She reaches for something to temporarily bind it with to keep it from getting worse, though she knows the entire piece will need to be replaced soon.

She shakes her head as Yngvi talks, shifting things around in her own supply bag. "I don't get up top as much as I used to. Too much to do down here, plus there's that bounty on my head. I have yet to see anything with three arses when I do go up, though."

[inagutterson]

"Come round for dinner any night of the week. Or what I think is night? How does anyone tell here, this is why any dwarf that liked living down here with the blessed stone and the spangled paragons is off their tits, completely lost it." Yngvi you talk a good game when you had ten years of nothing but Darktown but there were moments of light not this. This dark that almost seems to swallow him whole sometimes because lava does not have that same warm friendly glow that a good old sunset does. "Them with the trees better bring us some more," he mutters when he watches her, chewing his lip.

Everything's running low. Why would anyone need the quantities of lumber they might need to stockpile in Orzammar when the Venatori or Red Templars could come sniffing about, might spot it being brought in. Can't hide that up your shirt since there aren't any Avvar here and Qunari folks don't wear shirts most days. And Korrin, well, he hasn't seen her in months, maybe even years.

"Have you considered a beard? I really think you could pull it off and they won't be looking for anyone that looks like you with a beard." He's joking, it's easier to joke about that than consider just how bad it is when people are being sold out so simply to folk with nothing good in mind for them.

[provenforce]

"I keep checking off days, I'm reasonably certain I know what time of day it is," she replies a little off-hand, smiling slightly as he rants. It's not only him that hates the dark. Rey grew up eating dinner under an open sky, only needing to seek shelter during the hottest parts of the day and the coldest parts of the night. Jakku may have been restrictive in it's own way, but it had been so much freer than this. She had never realized how trapped she could feel, until now.

Letting out half a laugh at his suggestion of a beard, she shakes her head. "You don't think that would make me stand out even more?"

[inagutterson]

"If you piss on barley and it sprouts it's Saturday or Sunday. Might need to sweet talk an elf for barley, they always have barley. You can take that wisdom to the bank with you when such things open again. D'you know that dwarves really did think they'd fall into the sky? Tits." Sometimes he wonders though if that's maybe so mad because the longer he gets stuck down here, the longer he spends outside, rushing off on some errand or just taking some fresh air because he's not them, he's not like them, he's surface born and bred but it's rattling him. The fact that it's rattling him is rattling him.

Leaning back on his hands doesn't really work so he shimmies out from under the ballista to properly appraise her like he would anything else. "Reckon you could pull it off, you're a striking lass. And you can-- do that thing that you do that isn't the glowing hand thing. Just with something big. To the face. Then you kick them and say you've never been so insulted in your life, don't they know you're a paragon of Kal-Sharok, the glowing one, that you b ring light from the darkness with your deft and talented hands." Yngvi puts on his very best old man voice as if reciting from the Shaperate or some dusty old tome, fighting to keep himself from grinning until he can't help it. Then he shrugs. "If that goes to shit then you go for the old-fashioned method with your whole lifting things without touching them thing."