faderift | THE SEAS SHALL RISE & DEVOUR, Part I

THE SEAS SHALL RISE & DEVOUR, Part I

WHO: Any Inquisition members + all rifters
WHAT: A semi-involuntary tropical island vacation
WHEN: Kingsway 20 onward
WHERE: The sea and an island east of Rivain
NOTES: OOC post.

I. THE JOURNEY

Two ships depart from Kirkwall on the morning tide, sturdy vessels crewed by veteran sailors--but a mere skeleton crew, as it turns out, or so a few of them would have you believe. They're prone to assigning tasks to anyone who happens not to look busy, shoving ropes into hands without a care for station or experience, barking out instructions and expecting to be obeyed. With plenty of work to do the journey seems quick, and besides the unexpected chores it's otherwise smooth sailing through the Waking Sea. Some claim to've spotted the Windline Marcher one night, but it could just as easily have been clouds on the horizon, and that's it for excitement until the ships round the island of Brandel's Reach and out into open ocean, the ever-present coastline finally falling away behind.

The sky is bigger out there and the waves are too, especially when a storm strikes a few days out, dark clouds and driving rain sending any inexperienced sailors below decks to wait it out. The worst of it being the pitch of the ship rolling up and crashing down the massive waves, and the way the hold fills with the stench of people being sick. But the next morning dawns calm and clear and with no lasting damage done.

The group is bound for a desert island, drawn on maps with a big deep cove like a bite chomped out the side it, and a narrow channel through the surrounding reefs to reach it. That's the only moment of true tension on the voyage: as soundings are taken every few feet and the helmsmen adjust and readjust in response, carefully threading the needle to avoid running aground on ship-killing banks of sharp coral.

Both ships make it, and anchor offshore in the bay in the sheltering lee of a cliff, safe from future storms. The first party ashore reports back that Qunari are present in the area, but while they've displayed a palpable wariness, hostility does not seem their aim today, and they retreat back up to the hills above the beach as Inquisition forces arrive. Anyone able-bodied is tasked with assisting in unloading, and those less hale with helping the quartermaster's assistants track the process to make sure nothing goes astray between hold and shore.

Camp is to be a collection of tents: large ones beneath which makeshift facilities for cooking, eating, and working are set up, and many small ones designed to hold 2-4 Inquisition agents. They're still hammering stakes into the sand and tying off ropes to the sturdier palms when a shout goes up, though anyone present who possesses an anchor shard will not need to be told: a rift has opened nearby, a couple hundred yards out into the bay, a knot of shapes splashing about it. Better hope the rifters can swim.

II. ARRIVAL

Rifters

You were asleep--deeply or fitfully, for the last time or just resting your eyes for a moment-- and then you were not. And wherever you were was not, anymore, replaced by nothing but the sensation of falling, tumbling into endless, bottomless nothing. If this were still a dream, you would wake before you hit the ground. You can't die in a dream, they say. In some worlds.

In this world, when the afterimage left by a flare of too-bright, greenish light fades, you will find yourself at sea. Not metaphorically (though perhaps that too) but literally: dropped into what is unmistakably the ocean, from the salt in your mouth and the incessant slosh of waves into your face, the squawk of gulls circling overhead. You had better start treading water.

Thankfully, if you can keep your head above the waves long enough to make a quick inspection, it turns out that land is in sight, only a few hundred yards off. Unfortunately, between you and it is a strange slash of greenish light. It sticks up out of the water but seems to continue beneath as well, turning the otherwise-turquoise waters the same pale greenish shade of a man gone seasick. The cluster of demons emerging from the rift are tall, spindly stick-things with too many eyes who flail about like stickbugs dropped in pond, but use the long reach of their arms to attack. Some are hunched and hooded with no eyes at all, their shrouds sodden and draped in seaweed. Others are mere wisps of greenish light that float easily over the surface. While you might get the impression they are as surprised as you to find themselves in the drink, any humor that might bring is probably outweighed by how angry it seems to make them.

If that were not enough to contend with, there is also the narrow splinter of light the same sickly green as whatever brought you here that now glows out of the palm of your left hand. It aches, a bone-deep pain that gnaws even through all the distractions. But there is some good news: from the beach over yonder boats are launching. Perhaps they'll save you.

Rescue

As if rescuing rifters from drowning and demons weren't hard enough work, all the commotion in the water inevitably draws the attention of the local predators. But what arrives isn't the usual eel or ray or even a shark: it's something much bigger and much...redder?

Slinking through the water comes the flash of a fin and the glint of a scaly back, so quick and sinuous it's hard to say how many of the sea serpents there are. As wide around as the circle of a man's arms, with snapping jaws lined with an unnatural number of curving teeth, but what should be smooth snakey curves are instead jagged with the jut of brilliant red crystals that catch the light and make the sea seem to be already splattered with blood. They're studded all over its body, making any even glancing blow carry twice the danger: there's not just the stunning force of the strike to worry about or the possibility of being coiled in a crushing grip, but also being sliced and gored by red lyrium.

And the serpents aren't alone. While all eyes are on the churning water and the incredible sight of demons battling it out with sea monsters (because everything in that water is fair game to the beasts, not just the Inquisition), one sailor is suddenly plucked out his boat and carried screaming down into the depths by a great, crystal-encrusted tentacle. Cleansing runes are effective, but the monsters are canny enough to avoid capture, falling back into deeper water before attacking again. The arrival of a red lyrium-tainted kraken is just about the final straw for the ship's crew, and after seeing the monsters come dangerously close to cleverly flipping one of the longboats, they insist that the Inquisition row back for shore.

If flight is hard to stomach, consider it a tactical retreat: in shallower water the great bulks of the monsters become a liability, thrashing about among the rocks as they try to give chase. Escape back to the beach is possible, and surely the safer course, but it may be possible to lure one of the sea serpents into a tide pool or to beach itself up on the sands. The rest continue to prowl the bay, visible circling the ships at anchor and making any return impossible for the time being.

III. STRANDED

Once everyone is safely on land and out of the monsters' reach—after any wounds have been seen to, with particular attention given to any that may have been exposed to red lyrium—it's obvious that there's no way to leave for the time being. There isn't much to do but to try to make the most of things and try to accomplish what you came here for.

Some of the team will be tasked with continuing to set up camp. Now that the stay might be longer than a single night, it needs to be a little sturdier. The beach and cove are protected from harsh winds and exposure by a half-circle of rocky cliffs, and the Qunari communicate in grunts and one-word answers that large predators make sleeping in the jungle itself a bad idea. They've only been here a few days (that much can be gleaned despite their reticence), but some of the untamed jungle has been cut through to make clear paths to fresh water and fruit sources.

Penetrating the rest of the island is slow, difficult work—though magic may make it easier. The goal is near the top of the formerly volcanic peak in the island's center, but hacking through the growth to create a path may abruptly become a waste of time when it gives way to a steep drop-off or an equally steep incline and forces everyone to double back and try another route. If there was ever a clear road to the top, it's gone now, grown over during centuries of abandonment. But there are signs of past habitation: the lower portions of the island are spotted with crumbling ruins, chunks of moss-coated wall rising out of the forest floor, the occasional pillar looming up amongst the trees. Some have architecture and faded murals that are distinctly elven. Others, more recent, are clearly human, including a statue of Andraste in the center of a clearing. Others are harder to identify.

The predators the Qunari were trying to warn everyone about turn out to be real--they're large, jet-black cats about the size of a height of a mabari but longer, with short manes, near-scaley skin, and horns almost like the Qunari's. And before anyone gets any ideas about keeping one, they're fiercely territorial—always likely to try to eat your face, but doubly so if you come near their adorable kittens. Feeding them may buy a moment or two for escape, but nothing is going to win them over.

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He didn't blame Kattrin for being wary. Mages may have been enjoying unprecedented freedoms, but only by toeing very particular lines. A templar overhearing their hushed conversation about spirits being anything besides pure, unbridled evil could make her life very difficult very quickly.

That, he decided, would be intolerable. Not when he'd met probably one of the maybe four or five people here who had something resembling a nuanced opinion when it came to the Fade's inhabitants.

"You said earlier that you were exiled - may I ask why?"

"I exiled myself."

She was wearing a very loose top with no sleeves. It was easy enough to turn and shift the fabric to the side to expose terrible burn scars on her shoulder. They seemed like they probably went all over her back. Based on the coloration and such they were only a few months old, maybe a year at most.

"The man I was married to had an argument with me. I ended up in a fire. As I was burned I saw a vision that told me to leave the hold. That night I left, breaking my oaths to become augur and to remain with him to the end of the marriage."

"Aye, of course." No hesitation there. She's not about to have Kattrin wander off alone in hostile territory, nor does she know anyone else here well enough to entrust them with that. "If there's anything worth hunting, I'll find it and haul it back. We'll check it all carefully before we use it, just in case that red lyrium isn't just limited to the sea around here."

A horrible thought, but Skadi would rather be paranoid than die through those means.

"You were not wrong to leave him," he said. Despite his slow, soft, even tone, there was an edge to his voice. He couldn't count the number of Mononoke who had become such because they were the victims of a husband's vile temper.

"I do not doubt he would have given you more scars had you remained."

Petty, violent people more often than not struck again.

"It could not have been an easy decision, however."

It was already difficult for women to leave their husbands with a full network of support. Venturing out into the wilds in a hostile world would probably seem mad to most.

"Agreed. I have no desire to feed such beasts to the people here. Or anyone." She hardly feared them but there was no denying that those creatures were created from a terrible distortion that shouldn't be. Kattrin wouldn't wish such a fate on those in the Inquisition.

"I hope to gather supplies to make traps to catch food we can gather later as well."

She looked down at her hands. For a change, the guilt showed on her face.

"Among the Avvar, an oath is a great power. To break it is looked on in terrible light. What has been difficult is to know I am an oathbreaker even if the spirits guided me on this path."

She took in a deep breath then looked up at him again.

"I can never go back. My only place now is here."

A place where she was treated with suspicion and caution for being born an Avvar mage. As if she would summon a demon hoard upon the city for simply breathing the same air.

She goes still at the steadying touch of his hand on her wrist, looking up at him with wide, afraid eyes. The ship still pitches and yaws, the waves still crash around them, there's something dark and monstrous lurking beneath the churning sea--but she believes him, against all logic and the rushing of her pulse in her ears.

As ordered, she swallows, takes a deep breath, then lets it out again. She's no less afraid, having done that, but the fear doesn't hold the same sway over her, as it did before. "Okay," she says, and while her voice still wavers a little, her grip on the pot does not. "What--um," she starts, looks down at the figurine, and then up at the strange elf again. "What do you need me to do?"

"If you're pressed for time, focus on the healing and I'll see what I can do there. I'll bring you whatever I find, eh?" Trap-making isn't too difficult, at least the basic stuff, and Kattrin doesn't need to do it all. Skadi makes a mental note to keep in mind good places to set them, as well.

"I thought the Maker left us because of our sins," Fern replies, sounding puzzled in the way of a young person who hasn't seriously considered their faith before. She looks up to the murals again, eyes drawn to the artistry, the beauty, the attention to detail. Looking up at it causes her some frustration, too, like there's something being dangled in front of her that she can't quite understand, though she longs to.

"I don't know anything about the Creators," she admits after a pause, though surely that should be patently obvious to Ellana by this point. Looking back to the older woman, there's a flicker of uncertainty across her face, as though she expects to be treated with some censure because of this revelation. Her father had warned her, though she'd almost forgotten his words until now, that the Dalish don't view the city elves as being true elvhen. Fern seems to brace herself for that condemnation now.

"There seems to be a great deal of loose definitions of animals around here these days." James stated, whistling to Interceptor to his side, as they moved deeper into the woods. "You know, I have to wonder if these are animals that in fact, came through the rifts. After all, we had to go all the way out here for this one - who knows what else might have come out first?"

Or gotten corrupted by red lyrium, come to think of it.

"Well, at least we have gotten to the point that everyone in the Inquisition knows you are not demons. It will take awhile to get the rest of the world on that -- but I have a feeling we have time." He stated wryly.

James looked sideways at her, a glint in his green eyes that was definitely humor as he stated drolly, "Yes, I do seem to have those every once and awhile."

Interceptor woofed softly and panted happily, licking Beleth's hands and face if she gets close enough. His stubby little tail wiggles with great enthusiasm - he is after all, still rather a puppy.

"It is. Greatly." He smoothes himself down, before he looks over at her with faint surprise. Then a half smile touches his face, before he bows from his waist. "Many thanks, Madam Beleth."

"Doing that doesn't help someone learn." Or it never helped Araceli learn if she'd been made to feel worse about a thing than she needed to for the lesson to sink in. If it had been done with more blatant disregard, if other people had maybe been about to get hurt...but even then, she shakes her head, starting the climb. "Better to lay it out flat on the table and see what went wrong but until we get you down? Easier said than done. That's how you'll learn to master the ropes and the rigging."

Watching to see if he sways when she moves because the last thing she wants to do is accidentally send him flying side to side or tumbling because Araceli wouldn't be able to catch him in time. "I think...there? A line's come loose here, is that doing anything?" Just a little slack of a few inches to see if that moves Waver at all so she can either move on and find the problem or sort it.

Giving her whole name as the introduction is a new old thing for her instead, not accustomed to any sort of title anyway but settled as she is in Thedas with a real job more than just being a bard and one of the Nightingale's students, picking the whole thing back up to give to people? It feels right. Not the frightened girl making herself small enough to fit in Thedas. Thedas will give her space enough for her whole name and all that she does with it.

"Most of what I've heard of the Circles haven't painted the picture of a life of travelling to far-flung locales unless it's the first trip you take," she says since it tends to be among the first things people learn about Circles after all. "This is the first place the Inquisition has taken us as a whole where I feel useful for a change."

Apart from Kirkwall although she doubts everyone in Kirkwall agrees that politics is a useful way to spend your time when you're poking your nose into their business and making a face when you think they're doing things that might hamper the efforts to settle things with the locals.

"I've been with a vashoth woman for almost two years, the Inquisition had a few who were or weren't part of the Qun. Three of the chefs are Tal-Vashoth." Kas, Taashath, Lena - she still misses them though that has to be a shadow compared to how Korrin feels when she thinks about them. She doesn't say that Skadi's likely to have better luck than her with them when she does have plans to get speak with them. No sense in putting herself at even more if a disadvantage with bad thoughts.

Nodding, Araceli passes over the rod and the bait dug up on the beach, lugworms or something like them still as vicious to look at dead as alive. Sat on one of the rocks she takes the partly completed net into her lap to finish weaving it together. "I'm hoping it's something as simple as the kraken devouring a ship of red Templars and feasting on them and not that it runs into the waters from other places."

"That's not your fault, it's fine." Not wanting to upset him or seem as if she's ignoring it, Araceli's not sure what way to go with the apology. It doesn't sound bad but it could sound better.

She pauses, thinks about it more and pops her left thumb in the dark quiet of the hold. "Emprise du Lion and everyone locked in cages. Dairsmuid where they made a last stand and tried to keep their ways and died for it. Halamshiral where they were burned inside their own homes or were cut down all for the sake of a throne. Knowing that people need to take lyrium after I was made to take it knowing what it did to me and what it's done and what it still does and will do. And those are bigger things. Not what each person lives with when they carry it all with them, all the time, all the hurt and the pain because it's just expected of them, because the world said once 'this is your lot, this is what you do'." How unfair all of it is and it hurts, lodges somewhere bright and sharp as the shard in her palm when she thinks about it too long and maybe Cade didn't expect this answer, maybe it isn't helpful to him or to her but here it is: it isn't fair for anyone to live their lives the way most people have no choice but to.

Ellana has no idea, but that answer sounds puzzling itself. "If he left you because you sinned, why does anybody still bother praying to him?" Because it's not like he's doing anything for them. Is he really not listening or watching? If he isn't, then how would praying bring him back? Andrastianism is confusing.

Leaning on her staff with both hands, she takes in Fern's uncertain expression. It's not like Ellana expected her to know anything to begin with, since outside the clan only scholars or people who really take an interest tend to know anything about the Creators at all.

"Would you like to?"

"Inconvenient all around," Ellana agrees. "But we'll make do." And she'll make do in the aftermath of this breakup. More than anything, she just needed to tell someone she'd been through it. That way if someone asks after Felix, she can reveal what's happened and not fall apart.

[ ooc: good wrap up spot? ]

This is the part that sends Ellana's heart racing. For some reason, she always wonders if this time the rift won't close, but will expand further. Maybe it will be like that time they all fell into the Fade. But she sets down a barrier over Skadi and works on hitting the demons making their way for the boat.

"I've got you!"

Cade doesn't seem to mind Araceli's response, his apology being compulsory; he barely registers it happening.
His face slowly turns ashen as she describes all the things she's seen, but he feels a strange kinship wash over him. Some nights he fears he'll never sleep again, and some days are just as bad for functionality. One can't just see things like that; they haunt a person forever after.

"...lyrium isn't so bad," he says, with a weak smile, as though trying to assuage Araceli's fears. "Once you build a resistance to it, I mean. It's bad the first bunch of times you take it."

It feels wrong to have a mage cover her rather than the other way around, just as it does to have the glow in her palm and the tingle up her arm. But there's no time to dwell on the wrongness of it all, rather focus on what can be fixed. So she holds her hand up to the rift again, wincing as green light arces from her palm toward it, and that hum of tension continues to build...right until there's a shattering sound accompanying it, and the rift is finally closed.

Skadi breaths hard after that, strained in a way she's never felt before. "Time to leave!"

"Really, now? Good for you." Skadi grins, briefly wondering what it'd be like to have a lover to rival her in size. The lowlanders, for the most part, don't compare but they'd be an interesting exception.

Oh, well. It's food for thought...at a later time. There's work to be done, and she's going to keep up her end of it. Sitting down, she attaches the bait, then peers around for the best spot to cast it. Getting up, she moves about a foot away, still close enough to help defend Araceli and still speak with her. "You and me both. It'll be quite the take to carry home either way, won't it? If I didn't already have a legend-mark, I'd take 'Kraken-slayer'. Has a nice ring to it, but I suppose it'd be greedy of me to claim it, considering."

"Would you like to?"

It's not the response Fern had been expecting. Blinking in surprise, she looks from Ellana to the murals again; she's clearly intimidated by the sheer enormity of her ignorance in this arena, and perhaps a little afraid of it, too. No, she'd never paid much attention in particular to the Chant or devoted much energy to contemplating the various canticles the same way her parents did, but she liked the idea of Andraste, of the Maker's Bride who respected the elves--that much, at least, she remembers from her parents. To set all that aside... but she doesn't have to set it aside, does she? She's an elf, it's natural to be a bit curious about the culture of her Dalish cousins, and that's all this is. Right?

Looking back to Ellana again, Fern nods a few times and offers her another shy smile. "That--might be nice, yeah," she says, twisting her staff in her grip.

"You'd be amazed how many professors I've encountered that thought otherwise," Waver offered with a dry tone. It was something he tried to avoid doing, even if some of his students made it a sport to test his patience. "I honestly thought that one side of the rigging would be the same as the other, I expect that is where my error was."

With the line's slack, Waver swayed slightly more, and he thrusted a little more weight.

"Maybe? I'm putting some movement into it, so there should be a tangible result. Let me know if you're getting anything."

"I'll take your word for it," Waver said, observing the process of hefting the pack up. There was no way it was that light, so it was a result of years of carrying the thing about. Well, no matter. It was likely to come into use at some point in the jungle.

"It's about half a mile from here. Not too bad of a walk."

That was the only prelude Waver offered as he began the return trip back to the jungle. He had parchment with him already, tucked under his arm, and the path had already been cleared, allowing him to carry the calligraphy set with ease.

A quarter of a mile in, the barest of ruins began to peak through the jungle floor. Stones, weathered heavily, but the footprints of something that had once stood there. Further in, low walls replaced the nearly destroyed structures, the whole path seeming to build up and up and up until structures stood with nearly in-tact walls. Some were blank, or else the murals on them had been completely erased by time, but others held the fragments of murals in long-faded colors. The elven elements announced themselves with no fanfare, the simply towered on the walls, hinting at a former glory.

It was in front of one of the more in tact murals that Waver stopped, and crouched down onto the floor.

"The whole area's like this, as far as I can tell."

She doesn't have to tell Ellana twice. With the final closing of the rift, Ellana sets down her staff and picks up an oar with both hands.

"Can you get the other one?" She is but a tiny elf, but she'll help where she can.

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Page 16 of 32

THE SEAS SHALL RISE & DEVOUR, Part I

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