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

[lifeofendurance]

Ah how he's tried to hold on for just such a reason. Even when pain would have driven him to end his life for relief alone, he's refrained from retreating into the safe recesses of his mind to extend what time he has left with his wife. But his control is gone. He's not dead, but that release would be the greater mercy. Still some fragment of him holds on tightly to Bethany, unwilling to let her go, though he truly should.

It's the dream again, where she is in his arms and there was never any red lyrium. Just the promises of their country estate and their children playing in the shade of a flowering almond tree. He won't let go this time, won't let her fade away and vanish into nothing but memories of loving smiles.

He's clinging to Bethany in reality just as firmly as he is in the fantasy, unaware he is doing so, beyond a mumbled, "Forgive me, I tarried too long." Alas her pleas to stay with her now fall on deaf ears, seeing how his obedience only extends so far as to not pass on to the Maker's side.

[sunshinethroughgrey]

Strangely enough, the memory that comes to her then is that of Aveline, leaning over her husband Wesley, as he lay there dying of the Blight. Marian, whispering to her, telling that it was her choice and she could not make it for her. Bethany remembered holding one arm around Connor's waist, as she sent bouts of healing magic through him even as he grumbled, Mother's concerned and strained look.

She had prayed then, Please, Maker, never put me in that position.

Yet here she was. The Maker truly had abandoned them - abandoned them all.

"... Hush love. There is nothing to forgive." She pulled back enough, to grab one of the pillows from the bed. "We'll be together, forever, soon enough. I love you. Always."

Then she pressed the pillow over his mouth and nose, pushing it down with her own Force magic to smother him. Tears ran down her face, mixing with the blood that was splashed across her nose, and falling on the blanket as she kept Aleron down with every ounce of pure magic she had in her. To take away his pain. To put him at the Maker's side.

Her words were choked as she whispered.

"The Light shall lead her safely
Through the paths of this world, and into the next.
For she who trusts in the Maker, fire is her water.
As the moth sees light and goes toward flame,
She should see fire and go towards Light.
The Veil holds no uncertainty for her,
And she will know no fear of death, for the Maker
Shall be her beacon and her shield, her foundation and her sword..."