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

[nonsibi]

Bellamy nods back, a quick spare jerk of his chin. He's not sad to be missing out on hugs, and well beyond caring about Clarke and Lexa hugging. Everything is short, time and lives and how often people are around you. And there's more important things, like--

"Two of us are enough." They've survived this long. That makes them efficient. And with Lexa--even with her people dead--she's as much an asset as they are. Everything that's passed between them has happened so long ago, and between then and now stand battles, skirmishes, long days and miles. Before they thought Lexa was dead, they worked well together, against all odds.

Which means that Bellamy yanks on the strap of his scabbard, pulling it tight to his chest. Same battered leather armor and scraps of steel plate, with any sign of Templar worn off. "Sooner we get there, we can get in position well before the wagon even gets close."

[levered]

Clarke slides the staff from the loft and directly down into the sling that keeps it at her back, eliminating any possibility it might be a walking stick. There's not much reason for a mage to hide anymore. It might even keep them safer. As she turns back she looks at Lexa first, on the verge of asking if she's all right. As if she could be. As if she'd ever admit she wasn't. As if this is a world where they can still talk that way.

So she doesn't say anything; she nods at sooner and pauses to unnecessarily drag Bellamy's scabbard strap an inch to the left on his shoulder, where it's less at risk of slipping between plates and impairing movement. Not that it was much of a risk to begin with. It makes her feel that much better.

"Lead the way," she says, and she tries to let that be all, but they're not more than a few yards out the front door before she asks, "Was it anyone we knew? The mage and..." Two others. Plus the blacksmith. She's too numb to feel deaths anymore, really, but she's trying not to be.

[heda]

"No." Lexa's curt reply doesn't seem like it's going to have a follow-up, but a after a yard or two she remembers who she's talking to. If there is anyone left in the world that she trusts, it might be them. (But it's a pretty big if.) "Ryder. I don't think you worked with Tellas or Jean. Helene was new."

She doesn't sound like she cares, and in some ways it's true. In some ways it's always been true. But however necessary it was and is to sacrifice the few for the good of all, she was always taught--and made--to feel every blow against her people as if she'd borne the brunt of it herself. She may be mostly scar tissue and dead nerves now, but each cut still bleeds and drains her whether she can feel it as urgently as she once did or not.

She doesn't seem to have taken any non-metaphorical injuries in the battle, at least nothing that slows her down as she leads them into the woods, navigating as easily as if she were following a trail though there's no sign of one. (You can wipe the Avvar out, but you can't wipe the Avvar out of the girl, or something like that.) Being out of the village and back in the cover of the trees eases her tension very slightly, as does Clarke and Bellamy's continued presence. They worked well together once, and there's a measure of relief in at least being able to trust in their competence.

After another minute she asks, "How is Orzammar? Is that a dwarven sword, Bellamy?" Small talk has never really been her strong suit.

[nonsibi]

Bellamy, with scabbard strap helpfully and unprotestedly adjusted, lets Clarke take the middle of their short column. He keeps to the back--sword sheathed, arm tense, ready to bare steel at hint of threat. And that's what he's watching for, with the occasional glance to the back of Clarke's head, like he has to make sure she's still there.

"Yeah. Picked it up, figured I was due for a trade." An upgrade. No questions on how or where he picked it up; could have been found in a chest somewhere or on a body, skeletal or otherwise. "It's good steel. Cuts through anything."

Spare, brief conversation. He's listening to make sure they're not about to get ambushed. Where he would once suspect Lexa of leading them into a trap, now he's following behind her. Watching out for her nearly as much as he is for Clarke.

"Good eye," he congratulates Lexa. More with a kind of amusement than his usual gruffness.

[levered]

The one familiar name in Lexa's list makes Clarke's head dip as she walks, gaze fixated on Lexa's heels, but she doesn't say anything. One more name for the list. All right. And it's selfish to be glad that it wasn't Lexa, maybe, but she is, and she isn't sorry. It's not that selfish. Lexa is worth more, to more than just Clarke.

Her head stays down for the entirety of the exchange about Bellamy's sword, but at the last bit she raises her chin and looks back over her shoulder to smile, quick and strained, at his—lack of hostility. Friendliness, even. It's not new, but she still appreciates it.

"Orzammar is dark," she says, to answer Lexa's first question, "and hot." A beat. "You should visit."

[heda]

Lexa nods at Bellamy's praise for his sword with knowing agreement. "We traded with the dwarves," she says, that tell-tale grim note in her tone that says she's talking about her people, not her current group. The nameless organization she now commands is important to her and to Thedas, but they will never be her people. Those thousands are with the Lady now, along with most of Lexa's heart.

"They make fine blades. Lowlanders were always surprised at the quality of our steel." Not that it saved them.

Anyway.... Lexa turns toward Clarke instead, just in time for the quick flash of surprise on her face at the offer to be seen. She considers for a beat of her own. "I might." And she means it; she doesn't bother with polite lies as much as she used to. "I'll need to recruit." Not the only reason she'd go, but one that's been a point of contention with the remains of the Inquisition in the past. During the pause that follows she flicks another glance between the pair of them. But she long ago gave up asking Clarke to join her and isn't going to begin again now, instead just turning back to the invisible trail ahead.

[nonsibi]

Bellamy doesn't smile back at Clarke. He does meet her gaze, brief though it is. There's no point in verbalizing or acknowledging how much her smile feels like a reward. It isn't quite as pathetic as it would sound. There's been so little to smile about that any chance at seeing Clarke's smile would feel hard-earned.

The fact that her smile is over his decency to carry on a conversation with Lexa means even less. He doesn't even get particularly guarded when Clarke suggests Lexa come to Orzammar. She'd be an asset if she came. And he's not worried about Clarke disappearing on him. Not anymore. Whatever Lexa is to Clarke, Bellamy is something to her too, deeply bonded, wounds knitted together. All that tender map of scarring and shared pain.

They walk on in Lexa's footsteps, passing into the wild tangle of land that surrounds the hut. Silence falls between them--for Bellamy, it's a silence taut with apprehension, waiting for something terrible to happen, because it inevitably will, because it always does. The times that it doesn't are few enough to be counted on one hand. Anticipating the worst is better.

And sure enough: it's not been a mile before Bellamy stiffens, glaring around with sharpend gaze.

"Hey," in a low tone, is his warning. Maybe unnecessary. Clarke and Lexa have no doubt heard it too: the snap of a branch. He's already got his hand on his sword, ready to draw.

[levered]

On one level Clarke had heard it, but she'd been thinking—turning recruit over in her head, wondering mostly if it could happen in reverse—and it isn't until Bellamy's hey that she bends an arm back toward the grip on her staff. She doesn't close her hand around in quiet yet, because pulling it out will make noise and, like all mages, she doesn't need a staff to be dangerous.

"Animal," she says under her breath, which is perhaps too optimistic, and even if she's right is not all that great of an outcome. This is lion country.

[heda]

Lexa heard too and is already stopping when Bellamy's soft confirmation comes. It re-sets her grip on her sword, and has her quickly checking back on the pair of them as she steps carefully, silently forward. Another crack follows the first, and then a rushing rustle of underbrush as a lion bursts out of the bushes, launching itself toward them faster than Lexa can spit out a warning.

It's a big, rangy beast, lean and hungry-looking with paws the size of their heads. It vaults over a rock in its approach, springing at Bellamy with a snarl, teeth-bared and claws extended, slender points barely visible in the dim.

Lexa, forced off-balance by the need to step out of its path, rights herself, manages not to fall back over a log, and takes a stab at the lion's hind legs as they sail past.

[nonsibi]

Bellamy gets animal right before the blur of color, fur and flesh, a rushed onslaught. He has time enough to switch tack, grabs for his knife instead. This is going to be close quarters. He's got the knife in hand when the lion slams into him--first with a swipe across the face, and then its weight follows, with force enough to knock him down to the ground.

Hot blood, hot breath--the rangy bulk of the beast and the impact both wind him, but he won't need thought or breath to stab, that will be nearly instinctual. His knife is in his right hand, and he can just see Clarke, stars that burst over his vision clear long enough to find her in the scene. Safe for now, good--

The lion twists around with a roar as Lexa's raking strike registers. The shifted weight digs its claws into Bellamy's left shoulder, holding him pinned to the ground. He registers that with a grunt, but the moment of distraction is one he's going to take, and he twists to drive his knife into the lion's side, a wild strike that sinks home.