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

[bookish_lioness]

Hermione has come across enough people that she'd once known that she's become too scared to go out and look for any more familiar faces. She isn't sure she can bear seeing what had become of Harry, or of Anders, or of anyone that she'd considered a close friend. Too many of the others had lost something vital to them, if not in the physical sense then in spirit. It's hard to take all at once.

So when she hears someone call her name, she automatically flinches, trying to stifle the tears in the event that it will be yet someone else telling her that crying is stupid and that she's just being a naive little girl by hoping to beat this. It takes her a moment to get herself to look up, and when she does, she finds it takes her another moment to recognize the person approaching her, and once she does she can't help feeling a little anxious over learning what may or may not have changed.

"R- Rey?" she asks softly, voice tentative. "Is that you?"

[provenforce]

Physically, Rey has changed. Her face is scarred, her hair is longer and worn down more often than not. She carries herself like someone who has somewhere to be, someone important. But while she has her own measured way of looking at things that she didn't used to now, she is still in essence Rey.

"By the Force," she mutters when Hermione recognizes her, lets out a breath she hadn't known she'd been holding and closes the distance to hug her fiercely. She'd gotten used to people leaving and never returning again, it was overwhelming for one of them to suddenly be back. "I never thought I'd see you again."

[bookish_lioness]

It's not the physical changes that most worry Hermione. While scars and a shift in one's bearing can always indicate just how things have gone, it's really a matter of personality changes that show more about what a person has gone through. Given the bristly response she's gotten from people that she'd once considered friends, Hermione can't help but hold her breath until she knows just where she stands with Rey.

And while the hug surprises her, it at least allows her to let out that breath and show a bit of weakness again, without worrying about being told that she was being childish. Wrapping her arms around Rey, she allows herself to cry against her rather than feel obligated to stifle the tears, though at least now she's crying partially out of gratitude because she feels just a little bit less alone here.

"I'm so glad you're still alive."