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

[el_tybs]

Even if he's offered the chair, Sam remains standing, mostly since he doesn't think he can sit still with the current situation - being closed in a smallish room while still not knowing what is going on. He's already been threatened and shot at in the open, so this isn't exactly helping his nerves, especially since Bruce seems a lot different then himself five years ago - and he's not just implying the arm.

"I'm good," he says, holding a hand up in an indication of 'no' to go along with his words. "Why am I here?" Might as well get to the point.

[amygdalae]

Well if he doesn't want to sit down, then its certainly none of his business. Bruce mostly did it out of common courtesy. And since Samouel is so politely wanting him to get straight to the point...

"I want to hear the story about your arrival here." A pause, and then he elaborates further. "To this time from yours. From the beginning to how you arrived here in Orzammar."

[el_tybs]

How many times has he already told this story? He's honestly surprised it isn't already known with how many of them probably telling it. Course the only difference here is that he doesn't have to go through proving he isn't dead, a demon, or something else before someone will listen.

A pause as he considers Bruce.

"Do you remember that mission my group had been sent on five years ago?"

[amygdalae]

Bruce takes a moment to recall the mission in question before he nods. "Briefly. I didn't pay much attention then, and by the time it should too much had already happened." And the last thing he had on his mind by then was the unknown fate of some ten odd people who never returned.

Funny how things like that happen.

[el_tybs]

Sam raises a brow at that, assuming Bruce is referring to the events everyone else has mentioned but not elaborated on.

"Well when we got to the temple we decided to look around. I'm not sure exactly how or what happened, but when we went to inspect a curious campfire things changed around us. The landscape not so much, but we were suddenly ambushed by Venatori. The details at that point are a little hazy for me since they used a fair amount of magebane on some of us, but when I woke up we were in the Gallows in Kirkwall."

[amygdalae]

A campfire? Bruce frowns again, mulling over that. It's probably nothing, but... years of paranoia makes him latch on to even the more insignificant things. Maybe he'll prod on that later.

"I suppose by the time of the ambush all of you were... here?" Here as in now, in this time where everything is pretty much gone and they're all struggling with whatever last bit of anything they could have.

[el_tybs]

"I would say it's safe to say that was the situation. There was no one in the area that we knew when we got there. Also from what I've heard, the people who went looking for us five years back after we disappeared didn't find any traces of a struggle, so it wasn't like we were ambushed in our time then frozen just to wake up at the temple later on to be dragged off." So far there were only suspicions on how this all had happened, but no hard evidence. Least none that he knew of yet.

[amygdalae]

Bruce nods somewhat slowly. That all lined up with what he knew thus far as well. And if that was the case...

"Then you were brought to Kirkwall." Obviously. "What happened after that?" How was it possible for them to escape? That was probably the biggest question of all.

[el_tybs]

"For a while they kept a number of us drugged with magebane. Before someone could come to administer another dose after a few days we broke out. Someone had... gotten hold of a key somehow and quietly unlocked us all from our cells. At first we were quiet in our escape, but reaching the end there were a number of guards and a fight broke out. A number of us managed to get transport across the sea while some of the others broke off to find someone. And... now we're here."

It wasn't a super detailed description he knows, but a lot of it he didn't remember, his mind being foggy and confused at the time. It was the gist of it though.