faderift | OPEN ↠ FALSE GODS, GREAT DEMONS (OPEN LOG 1)

OPEN ↠ FALSE GODS, GREAT DEMONS (OPEN LOG 1)

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

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It takes Alistair some time to emerge from Nathaniel and Anders' shared house, but when he does his eyes are dry and hollow and it would take particular attention to detail to notice the occasional shakiness of his hands. He's fine. This isn't his tragedy. It's Nathaniel's, and Anders', and there are things that need to be done.

Teren isn't the first person he sees, but she is the first person he stops for, halting suddenly. He's been avoiding her—all of them, keeping his gaze averted like someone with a weaker stomach avoiding the sight of an open wound—and for a moment he almost looks like he doesn't recognize her or has forgotten that she was there.

He rubs his mouth. Looks her head to toe. He's thirty-seven now, but he still manages to look a little bit like a sullen and distrustful child.

Still: "Nathaniel is dead. I need a hand."

It's amazing the difference only five years has made in Alistair's bearing, the wrinkles it's put into his brow, the confidence it's sucked from his posture. Teren finds it almost too difficult to witness, and has been avoiding him as much as he has been her. But now they have undeniably seen one another, and she's certainly not going to walk away after that little revelation.

"What?" she starts, alarmed by the cavalier nature of the announcement. "How?" She's had no opportunity to encounter either Nathaniel or Anders yet, and hadn't even realized they were here.

"Poison." He feels like he's listening to himself talk from a distance. "I helped him, I..."

That is probably not what she means. It is also only barely her business. He straightens up, eyes refocusing, and looks a bit more like a man who now has five years' seniority over her instead of only a few months.

"We need to move him so I can clean the house." His skin on the bedposts. On the floor. It might spread. No one who isn't a Warden is going in there with him. "We can take him to the barricade. One of the mages can keep him cold until Anders comes back."

It's hard not to be affronted by that look, especially coming from him. Not that he doesn't have the right to give it, but it immediately calls to mind the way Nate spoke to her only days before, and--
Nate.

Who is dead.

Squinting cautiously, Teren nods, and declines to make a fuss of being bossed around. Now is not the time. Perhaps the time has gone for good.
"Anders is here," she more exhales than asks, now looking forward to that encounter less than she ever thought possible. Among all this, a part of her had hoped he'd died. She's not sure it would be unkind to wish that on all her Wardens, based on how this day is going.

"Not at the moment," Alistair says.

Her nod is agreement enough for him to turn and walk back toward the house. Eyes ahead. Breathing even. This isn't the first brother he's burned, or the last, but he hopes he's created the peak by now, and there are fewer pyres to build in the future than he's built in the past. He can't have that much time left.

"He'll be back in a few days," he goes on. "He won't... He's been holding onto him like a sick dog. We've fought about it. He might try to kill me."

The moment they step inside, Teren is compelled to throw her hand over her nose and mouth, overwhelmed by the stench of... it's not death, not quite, but that sick and primal odor they've come to know by virtue of what they are. Darkspawn, but not.
"Maker," she weakly intones, looking down at the ruined thing that used to be Nate. She's seen people go off to the Deep Roads, but never what becomes of them there, should they live long enough.

Anders has been keeping him like this. Her first impulse is to be angry, but she quiets it; she knows Anders, how deeply he feels, how stubborn he can be, how much this situation must be ruining him. Have ruined him.
"I won't let him kill you," she says, strained, to Alistair. What she will do, she has no idea.

Alistair is looking at Nathaniel. It doesn't look like him anymore. There had been something of him left—there had to have been, for him to want to die, for him to refuse to give in—but with it gone now, he's hardly recognizable. If this body shambled toward Alistair in the dark he wouldn't hesitate.

I won't let him, he hears Teren say. It takes him a moment to look up, and when he does his brow is knitted. A little like he doesn't understand. A little like he doesn't believe her.

"We can wrap him in the blanket," he says after a pause where he's clearly decided not to argue with her about whether or not he needs protection and whether or not she has any right to offer it, now, after all this time. "He's was—he's been—"

Falling apart.

Checking on Nate is one of Kaisa's worst duties. Not because she doesn't like Nate--rather, she did like him, had been fond of the man he had been. And that man, who carried himself like the nobility he had once been, was not the same man as the half-ghoul who stubbornly clung to life. It scared her. She had sworn to herself she would die before succumbing to the Calling, and yet, here she was, and if Nate was already going--

But it was a duty, and Kaisa wouldn't shirk it because of her own fears.

Her dour thoughts are pushed aside--Nate doesn't need to see another upset face. So it's with the same enthusiastic cheer that she stubbornly clings to that she strolls on into the small house, not bothering to knock. "Nathaniel! Nate, my man, you are not going to believe who--"

That's as far as she gets before she wheels around to see Alistair and Teren and Nathaniel's corpse, crumpled on the ground and looking worse than ever. Slowly, dazedly, glowing red eyes switch to each of the two living, then finally, the dead Warden. A few more seconds are required to fully comprehend the scene, before she can manage any words.

"What the fuck."

Edited 2017-03-08 04:31 (UTC)

Teren... has... some experience dealing with bodies, even if they're not quite falling apart the way Nate is. She's on the floor and has him mostly wrapped up when Kaisa comes barging in, and Teren stops with an entirely uncharacteristic deer-in-headlights look. She glances quickly at Alistair, then exclaims "wefoundhimlikethis" back at Kaisa before any conclusion can be drawn.

The good news is that Alistair will soon have no memory of this, and in fact will never actually exist in this form. The bad news is that Teren will have to remember what it's like to have Alistair, Alistair, look at her like she's a misbehaving child. When he's done with that look, he stands up from where they'd been maneuvering Nathaniel's body and wipes his hands on his thighs. They're still shaking a little. "He wanted to die," he says. "He asked."

Teren winces, that pang of anxiety-irritation hitting her again when Alistair looks at her like that. Maker, when will it end?
Then she simply nods to Kaisa, conceding that Alistair's version is the true one.

Kaisa is uncharacteristically silent, but her expression says plenty as she keeps glancing from Alistair to Teren, looking utterly bewildered. Then at the corpse again. She'd expected that. They all had. This is...not expected. Finally, she manages to breathe out, "You found him like that, but he asked." She glances at Teren, raising an eyebrow skeptically. Really, Teren. Really.

Then, glancing worriedly at the body: "I guess we could tell Anders that Nathaniel went off to a nug farm." Her face is solemn, despite her words, and Kaisa steps forward to gingerly toe an errant arm back towards the blanket, then reaches to grip Alistair's arm. "We knew it was coming. He knew it was coming."

Teren sighs, rolling her eyes, but without the usual sense of superiority that accompanies it. She just wants this over with, she wants this whole awful mess to be gone and done and she never wants to think about it again.
...or see any of the other Wardens like this again, but she can't focus too hard on that at the moment, since she has to survive long enough to see their old selves. ...current selves. Whatever.

She remains on the ground with the wrapped body, letting the other two discuss it. The circumstances have made Teren very much an outsider, and she can hardly blame them for treating her as such.

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OPEN ↠ FALSE GODS, GREAT DEMONS (OPEN LOG 1)

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