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

[alankazam]

He shrugs back. The Fade, a Dimension — names are only ever aspects, mood and thought captured; immaterial, mortal. Many faces, many words, for the same thing.

"Tevinter needs lyrium that won’t send them mad." They won’t press Orzammar until forced. "But the South is starving."

Fundamental pressures, if not the only ones. The Blight is a two-edged blade for the Imperium, devastates fields they might have drawn resupply from, spreads sickness ever outward.

Tevinter could abandon the land, leave behind a little cesspit of dying revolutionaries — as irrelevant as the Anderfels. From there they might turn troops towards the Qunari threat, and push against Par Vollen in strength. But they need the dwarves. It stretches them thin, and that's perhaps the Inquisition’s only present salvation.

"It upsets you," For all that the Doctor calls it commonplace, the tension in his jaw, the way he won’t fix a stare... they aren't the standard actions of routine. Alan doesn’t understand all of what he’s saying, but he knows the bleakness of their surroundings. "Having come here."

[not_the_question]

He sighs heavily. "That's what happens in war. Some people starve. Some go mad..."

He's seen many wars. He's fought in many wars. And he's ended many wars. He's never liked it.

"Depends upon which 'here' you mean. Being brought to Thedas at all means that I was snatched from my own universe. And I have no way to return there. I have... obligations to fulfil." He pauses for a moment. "Being brought to this time zone... makes things even more complicated." He swallows thickly. "I'm used to being the man who stops this kind of thing. But I'm still trying to get my footing in this universe."

[alankazam]

Alan's always been a mismatched thing. It would be easy to say that he doesn’t belong here. But bird-thin in borrowed clothes, heavy with the staleness of cave air, he looks less than ever as though he belongs to any one place at all.

Still, he knows he owns an anchor that others don’t share; to have been born to this land, to be willing to die for it. There are always those with other lands. There are always other causes to die for.

"It sounds as it's a lot to bear."

Because it does. To lose grasp of control? He's felt some shred of it, knows the fear in a cage. Everyone alive has a weight to carry, that's just what comes of living — but they owe it to each other to seek peace. There’s little enough of it in these times.

"Why do you think you need to be that man?"

[not_the_question]

He looks up to the sky, as if seeing something that no one else could see. And in some ways, he does.

"It can seem that way..."

The question takes the Doctor off guard. Not because the Doctor doesn't have an answer to it, but because people rarely ask him.

"My race... in my universe, we were sworn to watch over the universe, but never to interfere. Standing by. Doing nothing in the face of oppression..." He swallows thickly. "That was too much to bear." He shrugs. "So I left my people and decided to do something about it."

It falls to him to do something because no one else will.

[alankazam]

Alan nods.

"There's oppression here, but there's life, too. No one here's fighting alone."

He gestures, broadly to the Thaig beyond. Dim and cramped and desperate, and every inch doing something about it.

"No one's ever alone." It's not much to offer, but it's what he has to give. "When I have lost all else, then in the pounding of my heart I hear the glory of creation."

A small, sad smile. He's paraphrasing.

"We don't need a solution. We just need people who want to solve a problem."

[not_the_question]

The Doctor offers a quiet thoughtful hum of assent.

"I hadn't been here long before I was sent on this mission. I'm not sure my desire to solve problems is enough to gain people's trust."

Not that he must have it. But he's obviously very rusty. By now, he would normally have found a way to convince everyone that this war was stupid and they would all do better against demons if they stood united. And they'd be fighting an actual enemy rather than each other.

[alankazam]

"Well," Alan considers, wiping a streak of dirt from under an eye. He inspects it disinterestedly, before glancing back up. "It helps to put in the work."

And there's always work to be done in Ortan Thaig. Small, and inglorious, and tedious — and necessary.

"What are your skills? I'll set you up with a task."

Steady hands make quick friends, keep the mind from circling itself like a buzzard.

[not_the_question]

The Doctor smirks. No time like the present. He turns and offers his hand to Alan.

"Perhaps introductions first. I'm the Doctor."

[alankazam]

"Alan,"

He watches the hand a moment before he reaches out to take it, pats it once and steps back.

"Shall we?"

[not_the_question]

The Doctor raises an eyebrow at Alan's reaction. Okay. Different kinds of humans here. He needs to remember that. But at the question, the other eyebrow joins the first.

"Sure." A small smile. "You're making presumptions about me based on my name. That's all right. I'm the original."

[alankazam]

"That's sort of presumptuous of you," To assume what I think? But there's clearly no offense in the joke; his words stay mild as he sets off down the hall, slipping with a practiced ease between passerby. "There are spiders off one of the far tunnels. We got some of the smaller ones, but the venom sacs need separating before we can cook any of it."

As they approach the little pit in the floor, the vast, hairy carapaces of giant spiders rise into view. A grim-faced dwarf's already at work, buried to his arms in a thorax. Something glistens from the tub at his feet.

"Norrien," Alan asks. The dwarf grunts back, without looking up from his rummaging. The brands on his face are common enough among the dwarves of the Thaig, a sign of the Casteless. "Got some gloves for the Doctor?"

"On the floor by the hooks."

[not_the_question]

The Doctor shrugged at the comment about his own presumption. "It happens when you live long enough..."

Meaning he doesn't know anyone who hasn't attempted to joke about his name at least once. His jaw drops a bit when he realises what Alan is suggesting.

"I... This really isn't a good idea for me."

It's not that he's squeamish about the guts. It's more everything else.

[alankazam]

"Not a good idea for us to have you lot chewing up all the damn food either is it —"

Norrien grumbles, voice rapidly fading as he pushes his face close back to the spider. Alan shrugs: Fair enough.

"How about mending, then? Can you sew?" Alan stoops to collect one of the hooks, hefts it experimentally before folding it under an elbow. He calls back, "I'm taking this, Norrien."

Another grunt from within the spider.

[not_the_question]

"I didn't say I wouldn't help at all."

But they probably don't want to deal with him should his nightmares get triggered.

"If my sonic were working, I can mend anything you like. That said, yes, I can sew. And cook. And I'm very good with technology. Not that you have any tech here."

[alankazam]

"Don't mind him."

Norrien's an old Duster; the pressure of a life under rock was ground into his bones long ago. That kind of thing, you vent it outward, or it just builds in you. Alan knows — he doesn't vent.

"Sewing's what we need." In the moment at least. The Doctor will doubtless be pulled off onto half a dozen different odd jobs before the next patrol comes back, signals that somewhere out there it's dawn. "Some of the kids help rip bandages. They'll be excited for a new face."

Kids love nonsense words, and they're used to being talked down to. But Alan keeps a distance from children, these days. So he peels back, tries to catch the Doctor's eye as he points to a small cluster of buildings ahead.

"It's the left one. Just introduce yourself." A hand to the hook. "I need to go see if they missed any eggs."

Spiders might be meat, but they're also a quick end to the unwary. Best to handle it now.

[not_the_question]

Please. The Doctor has far more respect for kids than he does for adults. Mostly because kids are honest and tell it like it is. Besides, kids see and know much more than the adults.

"Oh would they? Sounds like a good match to me."

The Doctor nodded at the directions. He looked down at the hook. And frowned. He understood the need to kill them. Doesn't mean he liked the killing.

"Well, don't be stupid about it. I'll go over there and see what I can do."

With that, he started to walk toward the aforementioned building.