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

cries into the night

[sulena]

She has always been fond of taverns and the people found there. It's different now, she can see it in the eyes of those around her and in the way they hold themselves or drink their mugs of... whatever they have managed down here. Saoirse feels at a loss, staring at her dirty hands and pondering everything that has happened since arriving in this strange timeline.

It is a surprise when the bartender appears with a drink and some words. Saoirse stares at the man before looking to Anders, blinking once before giving a strained smile before raising and approaching.

"Thank you." She says, smiling again as the bartender returns with a drink.

[justice_is_blond]

He smiles back and nods. "Of course. It's nice to see a semi-familiar face around here." They've lost so many. The Inquisition is in shambles, and while there's still fighting happening, the number of people he know is shrinking steadily.

After a sip of his own drink he frowns for a moment. "You're one of the ones who moved through time, aren't you? Forgive me, it's a little hard to keep track of who vanished due to enemy forces and who didn't."

[sulena]

"Mmm. It's always nice to share such times with familiar faces," she says quietly. "Even if it's been much harder these days."

These short few days that she has spent in this dark world that Saoirse refuses to call home. Home is five years in the past where they can change all of this and, hopefully, prevent it from ever happening.

The question forces her to look up from her drink, nodding. "Yes, that is correct. Myself and the others are hoping we can return to Haven to find a way back..."

[justice_is_blond]

She'd called his face familiar. He'd felt like he'd be assuming too much to say that much, so this is a nice surprise. His smile turns a little less tired for a brief moment.

"Harder, but not impossible. We've people here." There may be little hope, but there's still some to be found here and there. Including with the plan to try to return. "I've... I don't know if it's important, but one of the prisoners said something that I thought I'd like to pass on, if you don't mind?"

If they manage to get back. Maybe it can be important, maybe it can somehow make their losses be fewer, maybe it will be nothing. He has to try, though, if she's willing to try to memorize the info.

[sulena]

Saoirse could have never imagined missing those days sitting outside of Skyhold's healing tents of news on her companions but she yearns for them now. She even yearns for the Kirkwall of her timeline where even though things are still terrible there is at least a chance to make it better...

That chance does not exist in anyway within this dark world.

"Y-yes, of course. I would be happy to listen," she murmurs. "If you think it important then I will take it back with me."

Because they will get back. She's decided this and will see it through, she survived Kirkwall and the Gallows and the heartache of being caught in the terrible storm of blood in that city. She'll survive this too because she must.

[justice_is_blond]

It's a relief that she'll listen.

"We..." And now explaining gets a little complicated. "A prisoner was taken." They took a prisoner. He did. "On orders. A high-ranking man who had been running one of the occupied cities. And by running... That's a side detail, I suppose, but he'd been mis-running it and people were suffering. The point is, in Kingsway, 9:43, he witnessed Corypheus killed. Again. It means Corypheus is vulnerable then, but somehow we need to kill him in a way where he stays dead."

Anders shakes his head. "We thought we'd killed him too, Hawke, myself, the rest of that group, but somehow he has ways to, to bypass it? Or get around it. We need to isolate that if we're to have any hope of winning this war."