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

[byblow]

Alistair steps back with pliable grace and a sheepish smile. "Well, we invited some, but you know how demons are," he says. "Always refusing to... Ah."

That's the sound of him shutting himself up before anyone else has to. He rubs his mouth like the muscles there require manual readjustment to stop smiling, and when he drops it he's relatively straight faced, save the enduring smirky pinch at the corners of his eyes that comes from still being terribly pleased to see her face.

"We couldn't leave them. It might be true. And I'm sure they'll be watched."

[glandival]

Sabine takes in a breath that is clearly meant to be spent towards a you know what I mean, probably in Orlesian, but Alistair shuts himself up instead. She moves aside to collect up her bow and set it down properly rather than leave it on the floor, casting a look towards the filtering in of faces, old and new, familiar and unfamiliar, before turning her shoulder to them again.

"There was talking," she says, after a moment of studying him, his suppressed smirk and knowing why its there, "as you know, how it goes. Something happens, the talking begins," and she does a talky-mime with her hand, before it drops, "and we choose waiting. Hiding in the dark."

She looks him up and down. All limbs attached, all fingers. Can't speak for his toes, but she imagines those remain too. Hopefully other critical appendages.

"You are alright? No need of Wardenish silences when they torture you for secrets?"

[byblow]

"No, no. Nothing I didn't earn," he says, which might not actually inspire much confidence about the safety of his critical appendages. Alistair's mouth is capable of earning him quite a lot. But look, he's fine, arms spread in a quick display. Even his black eye is already so faint now that it could just be slightly uneven evidence of sleeplessness.

She was probably in more danger than he was, all told, even hiding here in the dark. But she's fine, too—subject to more thorough inspection later, of course, but there aren't any holes in her that he can see. No dampening of spirits, beyond the general dampening that's become the new normal. Still the brightest spot in the Thaig. Ask him, he's not biased.

He should go. He doesn't want to. One foot slides back an inch toward the increasingly distant pack of new arrivals, but at the same time he dips to catch her hand. He's pulled it all the way to his mouth before a thought occurs and he stops short, looking down at her over her knuckles.

"You haven't moved on, have you?" He can't manage to sound worried. "Do I need to duel anyone?"

[glandival]

Her grin is broad, nose wrinkling, what usually happens when he says something funny before she has time to cultivate a smirk.

"I spied a particularly handsome darkspawn just last week," she 'confesses'. She drags her hand back, Alistair's along with it, down and across her shoulders so that they fit together side along, backs turned to the excitement. Nudging him to walk with her like so. "He had almost all of his parts, you know, and was very forceful. Moments before I put an arrow through his skull, I thought to myself, what if I am slaying the last man who takes interest in me and Alistair never returns from Kirkwall?"

She offers her other hand for kissing, fingers wiggling. "But I remain true. And you? You have not fallen in love with any pretty jailbirds?"

That she does not add 'or traitorous Dalish bitches' is only in the interests of maintaining a sweet(ish) moment. There is enough bitterness to go around.

[byblow]

Sometimes, plenty of times, the gravitational pull of responsibility is a match for Sabine. When the responsibility is big enough. When someone else can't handle it, probably, even if they've all been away longer than he has. When she isn't smiling like that. His eyes slide sideways but his head doesn't actually turn enough for him to see the crowd before the cause is lost and he's busy with an exaggerated tongue-out grimace at the thought of a particularly handsome darkspawn. Ugh.

He starts to turn the arm around her shoulder into a gentle jostling chokehold—revenge for that mental image—but cuts short to nab her wiggling hand. A smacking kiss to the back, then a more somber and prolonged press of his mouth and nose, so when he shakes his head in answer (no one, never) it can be felt if not seen.

"I—" There's no topping handsome darkspawn. He isn't planning to try. He's planning to say something serious, I thought I was going to die or I should have said a better good-bye. Fortunately they're saved by the fact that he chokes up a bit and only shakes his head again instead before letting her hand loose.