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

[arlathvhen]

The switch in situations is not an irony lost on Beleth. She's much luckily than Alistair, of course--she has no real prison forced around her, no small, cold cell. Her interrogations are done willingly (so far) and she's not been beaten in them (so far). But here's Alistair, being annoying and unwelcome, and Beleth, restless as a caged animal and rather irritated.

Nevertheless, the bow is accepted, but left to rest at her side, as Beleth eyes him warily. "I thought that not dying was one of my greater failures. You should be happy it'll be so easy to correct." She inspects the bow, but it's more out of a need to do something with her hands and eyes, rather than any real care. She's no longer the woman that wielded one of these. "I'm sure the Inquisition has already gotten enough information out of me already. No one will even bat an eye."

[byblow]

If the situation were drastically different Alistair would probably want to talk about why she feels that way, and assure her it isn't true, and so on. And if the situation were slightly different, he would probably agree with her and leave her to wallow. But in this particular situation—with this particular mix of old affection and current anger, pragmatism and exhaustion—he says, "We spared you, so can you please spare me," and steps aside to pick up a second practice bow and quiver full of damaged arrows. *

He isn't very good, but he lands one on one of the outer rings of a target.

"If you can't outdo me, that's really sad," he says.

[*] He's an Origins warrior. He's allowed.

[arlathvhen]

She stares at him for a few moments, contemplating whether this was really worth it or not. She didn't even have to be mean, she could simply be boring. Make the other person want to stop engaging with you.

But the truth, that she would be extremely reluctant to admit, is that she is lonely--even with Cade, who is not exactly the best company these days. However many days he has left. And she did miss him, it wasn't for his stunning wordplay that she continued to visit him in Kirkwall. He may hate her now, but he's willing to tolerate her, and taking what she can get is Beleth's chosen lifestyle. So she takes the stupid practice bow, and takes the stupid practice arrows, and notches another one.

"I have found, personally, that everything about this situation," She draws the arrow back, face bland. "is pretty sad." And she lets the arrow fly again. There's improvement--it actually makes it to the target this time, hitting on the edge and bouncing away. The look she shoots him is exacerbated, as if it were his fault, personally. "I'd hate to stick out."

[byblow]

Alistair watches the skitter away, shakes his head, and says, "The First Blight lasted two hundred years, you know," with a little bit of a defensive edge. It is sad—their dwindling numbers, their dark cave—but it's theirs. She's now allowed to say anything. "Even after the Grey Wardens formed, it took another hundred years to stop it. The people who first figured out how to stand against the darkspawn didn't live to see the end."

It's possible he means that to be comforting.

"Keep going." —with the arrows, he means, and he sounds more like someone who's used to having his directions followed than last time he saw her.

[arlathvhen]

We don't have 200 years. We'll be lucky if we have twenty years.

That's just the tip of the 'everything is horrible and we're all going to die' diatribe she's been slipping more and more into as time passes. It's a tempting response, but Alistair is trying to--comfort? Calm her concerns? Just be a know-it-all jerk? She used to be good at reading him. He used to have an easily read face. Once again, she votes for the tentative peace.

...Trying to think of anything that isn't pessimistic is tricky. She fiddles with another arrow in the meantime.

"I suppose it's possible, that in 200 years everything will be calm again. That this entire period of time will just be a particularly grim chapter in the history books. Some day children will get bored in class, as their teacher tries to tell them about how the Inquisition fought a hopeless fight." She nocks the arrow, and takes more time preparing this time. Old, forgotten memories of a scrawny teenager who was more limb than elf, holding a bow that wasn't much better than this one.

"The deep dark before dawn's first light seems eternal," She readies the bow, and takes a deep breath. "But know that the sun always rises." Then the arrow is released, and Beleth can only stare in astonishment as it lands nearly dead center. Slowly, she turns to look at the bow, still held in the firing position, with an expression as if she expected it to come alive in her hands. "...Goddamn."

[byblow]

Alistair looks about as smug as if the arrow had been his. Who's sad now, Beleth? Who?

—still them.

"Quite," he says, a little entertained. The sun always rises. But Beleth quotes the Chant now, so maybe it truly is the end of the world. He shakes his head a little. "We're not going to see it, but someone else will. Maybe Sina and Lucci, maybe someone we've never heard of, five hundred years from now—if it buys them some time, or leaves them something that helps in the end, then they can have my life. And if you're going to sulk about giving them yours, you should have stayed in Kirkwall."

[arlathvhen]

"Did I say that I was going to sulk about it? All I said is that if I die--which I probably will--no one will care." That is a BIG DIFFERENCE, Alistair.

Now she's fussing with the arrows of her own accord, checking them over to make sure they're flight-worthy. It's something to keep her hands busy. "As you said, I would have stayed in Kirkwall if the idea of dying was overly concerning." Because, as she had told them all when she volunteered to come back, she was pretty sure they were all going to die.

And now that includes her.

"I didn't come here to be safe. I came here because--it was the right thing to do. Before it was too late." A final repentance. For...someone. For the Maker? For her old friends? Maybe, for herself.