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

[elegiaque]

Leblanc, Gwenaëlle thinks, is probably dead.

Which is sort of funny, in an awful way, after all of this. (Everything is in an awful way, now, it's just the way of the world, but maybe it doesn't have to be. Maybe these ghosts can keep their promises, and maybe none of this ever happened.) Gregoire, probably, is also dead; she can't quite imagine him surviving so long. To be fair, of course, she wouldn't have pictured herself here as she is, either, so -

Who can know.

"My lord used to read me parts of the letters he wrote," she says, after a while of quiet, neat work. "I never paid much heed."

[limier]

"I would not have expected you to."

Though she can’t say whether Gervais had. She can't say how much he might have guessed of it, holding the words so precious as he did. If Emeric was a lifeline, Emeric would have known it. But Gwenaëlle? A stranger’s overbearing interest. A false familiarity, pinched cheeks by post.

"They were windows," Paintings, really. A curated view. "And you had others to look upon."

She has, at this point, filled half a page with a shoddy diagram of a river, its paths forking towards some unknown. Wren holds it from herself to regard. Yes, she’s being terribly useful today.

"He’d share stories of you," Wren is — uncomfortable, around children of a certain age, but she’d followed the small sagas with interest. A letter is safe, removed. A letter does not scream for its mother. "From time to time. Few did."

She cannot blame them, and yet.

"It made —" Them? No. She catches herself, "— Us easier around him."

[elegiaque]

"I never questioned the Circles." A neutral enough observation, her critical expression aimed at her needlework and not the woman who had been of those responsible for enforcing the strictures that defined mage lives. And yet. "When he was in one, at any rate, I didn't. Best place for them."

A little shrug.

"But Morrigan was the first mage I knew well."

And she was a woman - is, Gwenaëlle hopes, prays that no news is good news - who left an impression.

[limier]

"The Arcane Advisor?"

It’s not as though she knows of another, but it’s still the sort of news worth confirming. What circles she travels in.

Wren puts the journal down. She has questioned the Circles, still does. You can’t live in one and not. Even the coldest heart, the warmest surroundings — there are moments of doubt. You iron them down. You change what you can. You keep your thoughts to yourself.

"I have heard tales —" Exaggerated, doubtless, and yet. "— A force of personality, I am told."

And. Literal force.

[elegiaque]

"It's hard to imagine her the caged bird." Wren can take that for confirmation, since it is; some of Gwenaëlle's edges soften a little, to speak of a woman she's long admired (loved, in the desperate way of a child soaking up light that has never been turned on her before). Others turn brittle - she understands the absence. She doesn't grudge it. It was the right decision, to protect Kieran -

But it is a persistent ache, nevertheless.

"She was invaluable, when I was first in Skyhold. I owe her a great deal. At very least, enough to reconsider some of my opinions." On mages, and where they belonged.

[limier]

The caged dragon, she thinks and does not say.

It’s the way in which most morals are built, more patchwork and personal than any abstract doctrine. The small acts, debts which open one to the possibilities of their fellow man. For good and ill.

Wren knows she is not immune.

"I suppose we all do." Owe her. Morrigan's part in the Fifth Blight may be contested, but she played it. Still. The debt of a nation is — lesser, in some ways. She knows this, too.

"What is she like, beneath the reputation?"