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

[justice_is_blond]

He swallows, hard, seeing the other thing Alistair is doing there by looking out at the darkspawn.

"He's still there." The rest of the food gets tucked away and Anders wraps his arms around himself as if for warmth. "He's still, he's not gone." Not completely, at least. He knows some is already lost, that Nate is fading, but he can't accept it completely. The thought hurts too much.

[byblow]

"He should be," Alistair says—he should be gone. There's a reason they make that walk into the Deep Roads. Alistair isn't privy to whatever negotiations have passed between Anders and Nathaniel, who's to blame for his lingering, but either way, it shouldn't be happening. "You're keeping him away from the Thaig, at least?" Surely. "People shouldn't see him like this."

[justice_is_blond]

Alistair gets a glare. Anders knows what should be done and he knows it's weak and wrong to not do it. But the world is going to shit around them and there is one treasure left to him. He can't let go.

"Of course I am." His voice is short, just as defensive as the arms over his chest. "He stays away from the civilians, and I keep him near our house when I'm there." There's a clear problem in the times that he's not there, when he's off trying to do what he can for Thedas, but he can't be everywhere and Anders doesn't know what else to do. "Judge all you want. It's nothing new to me, and I can't, I won't..."

Anders shakes his head and cuts himself off.

[byblow]

Even if Alistair has a right to judge, even if it's fair, it isn't very kind, probably, to stand here angry with Anders when the person Alistair crawls into bed with at night is as safe and healthy as anyone can be anymore. But here he is! Angry, but not able to look at him.

"I'm not judging you," he says lightly—sarcasm more than a lie, since he doesn't expect Anders to buy it. "Do what you like. Maybe for Satinalia this year you can get him a muzzle and leash."

[justice_is_blond]

His throat tightens and there's a familiar sting in his eyes that means it's time to get angry instead of letting any other emotions have room to well up and get in the way.

"Fuck you." His voice is more shaky than he'd like, because he knows Nate's a danger, that he could bite someone, but he won't treat him like a thing. "Fuck you. You are judging, and you... Who are you even to judge?" The Chantry had taken Karl from him, and the Wardens will take Nate but not yet. "He should have had longer. You're still fine. It's not right, it's not..." Fair. But nothing's ever been fair. He looks to the side, seething and hurting.

"You were exposed to an archdemon, I've spent time around the Architect and Corypheus. Why is he hearing it before us? It's not right." He's to the point of angry where he's repeating himself, apparently.

[byblow]

"It was never going to be right. That isn't what we are."

They're wrong. They all feel it. It's the price they pay. In death—

He doesn't say that. It would be trite.

He does say, "He deserves better than dying a monster," calmly, evenly, the very picture of reason and maturity in the face of Anders' fuck yous, like maybe he's possibly not going to stupidly rankle over the entirely understandable and sympathetic anger of a man who just gave him fruit and jerky—until he adds, just as evenly, "you selfish prick."

[justice_is_blond]

Says Alistair. Says the person who had all the choices, who could have been a Templar but instead went to be a Warden because he had options. Anders has never resented that, never cared about it, until this very moment when it burns white hot in his mind.

"What we are? People only care what I am when they're about to condemn me and they've no ground to stand on. We are forgotten, on the losing side of a war, and I'm already damned. There is nothing more I can lose, nothing more I can have taken away, except him, so yes, I'll be selfish."

Nate deserves better, Nate's always deserved so much better, but he can't give Nate what he deserves. He's never been strong enough for that. No, the best he can manage is anger and destruction, the former of which burns all the more for Alistair's calmness.

"You're a sanctimonious asshole, and you can fuck off. Like you'd do differently in my shoes." Anders closes his food pouch roughly, wishing it was instead something he could slam. At least he can get to his feet and slam his staff into the ground. That's minutely satisfying.

"We are all of us fucked, and all we can do is fight on to give those we care about one more day. Thank you for making that list one person shorter; it was getting overly long."

[byblow]

Alistair is ninety-nine point nine percent sure he wouldn't do the same in Anders' shoes. The thought of Sabine's eyes going as empty as Nathaniel's makes his stomach turn. The thought of what she'd do to him in the afterlife if he made her live that way is even scarier. But he can't prove it, so he doesn't interrupt the temper tantrum to say so.

Instead, he rolls his eyes—maturely, of course, not looking at Anders when he does it—at the man's apparent willingness to write off six years of friendship, or at least friendly acquaintanceship, over being told the Maker-damned truth. He would be more distressed if he didn't think Anders would come around eventually.

"You're not giving him anything," he mutters through his teeth, sullen stare fixed on a hurlock that's prowling the perimeter. "But you're right, it shouldn't have been him. He wouldn't have done this to you."

[justice_is_blond]

He was already angry, but Alistair's words today have a way of cutting him to the quick and exposing wounds Anders thought at least scabbed over. No, Nate wouldn't have. Nate has never needed Anders as much as Anders needs Nate. Nate has always been stronger, and Anders more broken.

"Yes. He's a better person than me. Funny how it took you until he was dying to acknowledge how good he is, which means you're only acknowledging it to be an asshole. You've nothing to stand on when you've been at odds with him all along. It's worthless. Your opinion is worthless, because you don't suddenly give a damn about him. You just want to judge and he's a handy object to judge with."

He's done. He's so done. Nate is suffering because Anders is weak and that's nothing new and it isn't fair to Nate but Anders can't find the strength to change it. He's too scared to be alone, to come home to an empty house. He's not sure what he is without Nate, but he's fairly certain the shape is nothing good.

[byblow]

It takes Alistair a few sentences to turn and look at Anders, because that's how many words he needs to realize Anders might be serious. He might actually believe that Alistair thinking Nathaniel was an overly serious plank and fun to tease has ever precluded thinking he was good man. He might actually believe that Alistair would be all right with someone living this way just because of a personality clash.

For a moment he looks startled. By the time Anders stops talking, he's shifted to flat, withdrawn disappointment.

"Yes," he says, quietly tart, "I'm doing this for fun." He turns back to the barricade and says, "I have the watch, Anders."

From someone else it might mean you're dismissed, but he's still Alistair, and he still doesn't wear his rank well. His tone sounds more like you don't have to stay.

[justice_is_blond]

All he wants is to hurt; he's not too bothered by the facts right now. It feels like he's scored a blow when Alistair sounds disappointed, and while it doesn't help, there's a tiny bit of satisfaction to that knowledge.

"Yes, why don't you mind the real problems while on it instead of trying to make more." Anders straightens his robes and stalks off, feeling too angry and hurt to stay, and too guilty and weak to even go find Nate. Instead, he heads aimlessly into the camp, back stiff, trying to think of nothing at all.