THE SEAS SHALL RISE & DEVOUR, Part I

[faderifting]

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.

Comments

[foxsays]

"See we have giant squid and kraken. Our kraken look something like if a squid and octopi had babies. And they were enormous." Still, at least she knows now. Listening to Waver, Araceli nods along with some of what he says because it's true. How many of them was it true for? Enough that once her and Marcel had tried to have some idea of solidarity for them all, to gather information, to make it work. Then Marcel had disappeared and her priorities had changed. "It's only humans too unless it's what comes from the sea or things my friends would tell of their homes better than I ever could. Korrin was the first person I met when I arrived and then there was the magic being very real and not just a thing in a book that goes on the shelf or something a performer does." Performers are all sleight of hand, deception, if you watch them carefully from the right place with a little knowledge of your own? You know how the trick is done and it's not really so magical anymore compared to when you were five and a coin was plucked from behind your ear by a man on a barge.

Knowing the sort of luck there tends to be in Thedas, chances to swim with the sharks are likely to be thin. Or have at least one person yell at her and demand to know what she thinks she's doing. Imagining ships that don't have sails is such a foreign idea that she can't bring herself to do it but while steam is all well and good, she makes a little face. "There's so much smoke with coal, how do people not choke?"

[kartereo]

"Huh. And our understanding of mermaids has become either stuff sailors claimed to see, or creatures like manatees that just had the same general shape as merfolk." Well, rounder, softer versions, but still, the concept held.

"It is funny that you cite magic as you do though. For us, those kinds of illusions are absolutely called magic, but then there's what we do that's closer to what's done here." Although illusions were far more entertaing to watch and had about two hundred percent less arcane ritual to them. Also, no demons, like Thedas had.

"There's smoke stacks that, hm, roughly take the place of the masts, really. They move the smoke up and away, like chimneys." Water chimneys, and that was probably a gross oversimplification of the whole system. Alas, greater expertise was not at Waver's command.

[foxsays]

For about a second she tries to hold in the laugh but it comes out as a snorting giggle. "Your sailors must've had more generous rum rations than ours, getting those mixed up." It leaves her with more questions but those aren't really the questions you ever actually ask people, you just ponder quietly. Maybe wake your girlfriend up with them at three in the morning because you've thought about it again.

"For us it's-- well we have duels. A lot of duels are for your honour, to settle something, for coin or goods but there are duels for show and it's about the performance, about the flair and how skillfully you can sell what you do," she explains with a wave of her hands and digs a coin from her pockets to spin it high, passing it between her hands. "It's to entertain. Some of them are making money especially if it's a card or a dice in cups trick but they might be with other performers and it's for fun. To make people gasp and enjoy themselves. Everyone can go. That's why I liked it; it wasn't just for the nobles or rich, anyone on the islands could go and watch."

Waver. Waver you're breaking her heart. What would she climb and where's the beauty, the drama? "The smoke goes up then, into the air...that still sounds-- It just sounds very dangerous to have more fire than you need on a ship out at sea. If something bad happened to those ships and then people had to cling-- the metal doesn't float same as wood. Or repairing it. Metal is expensive."

[kartereo]

Waver grins, a little chuffed noise escaping him. "I imagine that that might be the case for a lot of them. But for a time, they hadn't seen manatees before, so they didn't know what they were loking at." Besides, manatees were pretty darn endearing, being as round and floating as they are.

"Huh. That last part is an interesting way to approach duels." Waver then shushes himself, watching the movement of the coin, and clearly enjoying the word he knows that is required to make that kind of slight of hand seem absolutely effortless. "But I follow. There's been a bit of revived interest, depending on the act. You lot haven't had escape artist magicans, have you?"

But. Boats. "Metal isn't as expensive anymore. Engines are now often electric anyway, there was an evolution in movement. Some boats still do use traditional sails though, it isn't as if the old technology is completely forgotten."

[foxsays]

"Had they not seen seals? Or walruses? They look a little more like them but I suppose since I grew up with the mermaids as well as the manatees then I knew the difference." What a thing to write in the next set of letters she won't get to send home. Dear all, did you know there's a place where they confused manatees for mermaids? I'm as tickled as you are! It'll be one of the more light-hearted letters stacked beneath the floorboards of her shared home.

Araceli's not good enough to get the coin to go up her sleeve the way an artist is but she can catch it neatly from a very high spin and pocket it again with a pleased little smile. "We all make our living how we will - I was a thief after all. My kind of thieving made me an escape artist I think but you're talking about something very different." She thinks. Unless people watch thieves doing their work? Spyglasses perhaps? What an intriguing idea.

What a world with less expensive metal, she can picture the faces of so many merchants she's known over the years. "All our metals come from one place where the veins and seams run deep through their lands and they find more and more, it sets the price how we all set prices for some things and when travels to us by sea? Expensive. An electric engine is such a strange idea. Lights and some other things but we power ours with wind or water. If you don't have the sea like us you have rivers and even if you don't? There's still the wind." Turning to face Waver more, she tips her head to the side slightly, weighing up if she wants to say what she's thinking of or not. "So much of it for us is the journey for the sake of the journey. This sounds very - I don't know if purposeful is the right word? It's the only one I can think of."

[kartereo]

"Yes to both, but these were men encountering new continents. They...were a little bit more fanciful with sealife that they hadn't encountered before. Manatees were new." The question of how continents had been fairly ignorant of each other was hopefully a question Waver wouldn't have to explain. Hopefully.

"Probably. These were magicians who would bind themselves up, suspend themselves in water, or other such situations, and escape from these bonds. It was a massive thing for a while, and some magicians still follow in that particular tradition."

Waver nods along with the talk of metal, but the purposeful part. That's dead on. "I think that it is the right word. Sail can be for recreation or travel, but nine times out of ten, it's only for commerce, and commerce demands faster shipping, more reliable forms of it, and all the other innovations that go with it. The journey isn't important, the end result is."

[foxsays]

"Sometimes I think about the people who got to see the world for the first time. I used to envy them when I was younger, running around with my friends or going through estates and homes to take whatever would fetch the best price. Now I'm here and to me, this is all new. I can write about it, maybe not for anyone here but if there's ever a time to go back I have my letters of this place." She hesitates, the smile faltering as what she's said catches up to her. "It's silly, I know."

Talking about something else is easier, she's eager to rush into it. "People do that? Perform it? Oh I'd love to see things like that. I've practiced getting out of shackles but that was only for practical reasons, did people go places to see it? Like plays or concerts? Was it an occasion?" She'd love it to be an occasion, it sounds like it should be the sort of thing you take someone you care about to go see when you're both on the edge of your seats, laughing and gasping. (Some shackles are hard enough when you're good at it, start putting in extra things and her mind's racing already.)

"We go where the sea guides us. Everyone has to trade, has to travel but we sail for the love of it. Reminding people where we all first came from, making sure people don't overfish the shoals or the sharks or the whales," she explains since it's that bone-deep sort of love they have for it that's pretty much unshakeable.

[kartereo]

"No, it isn't," Waver offers softly. "Those kinds of writings, they're what help other people understand and share an experience for centuries after they've been written. They're...in the end, they're not just for you, in a way."

The historial record is long, terrifying, and impossible to predict. This is easier. "It was a bit like going to a theatre to see a play, actually. You could make an evening out of it, and be entertained. It'd...be interesting if someone did it here, but you also have to have a lot of precautions in place to make sure no one gets hurt or does something stupid."

Something stupid being what gets one killed, of course.

"Some people have that still, I think. But it's a very different culture, in the end. I don't know if I'd say it's for worse, but I can claim it deeply different without hesitation."

[foxsays]

It's a comforting idea for someone who hadn't been given much to writing before Thedas had really made her turn her hand to it. Oh there had been reports but when had she ever needed to write a letter? Her father was away at sea and getting messages to him next to impossible unless she played guess the port and tried to find out what ship might take a different route. "I like that idea, thank you Waver." Who knows, maybe when this is all over people in Thedas will find be reading over all the things the strangers recorded too, picking over them to see what fresh eyes made of their world.

"When I did my first climbing lessons in Skyhold, I don't know what happened with two of the young men involved. They both knew each other, both came from the same clan and I'd been warned one was clumsy but he managed to end up inside the stables with one of the horses and almost got kicked in the head. I can only imagine how much harder it is to plan any of that. Even for one person who knows what they're doing." This is why the Kirkwall lessons follow a very different format with the more public environment; if something goes wrong, it goes wrong where people know about it quickly.

"If you can claim it, make it part of yourself? That's what counts. That's what my people are as much as my friends from home are with their lands; they have tales, traditions, stories that they hold dear and love. It makes us. Shapes us as much as we shape the world."

[kartereo]

"It's nothing. Those letters help to form histories, and those pass on and on. It's...I don't know, it's weird to think about legacies that far into the future, but it's something I've thought about a lot lately," Waver said. He closed his eyes, letting the ocean breeze ruffle at his hair. The few stray strands not pulled back blew in the wind, only to smack him in the face as the breeze shifted slightly.

"It's...it's an art, in the end. Practiced and perfected and with a high risk involved. And there's trickery involved, like swallowing keys and then throwing them up on command, but that's still a particular skillset." Waver didn't want to imagine how much time it took to gain those skills. It wasn't important. "And that's why one pays to see it done, in the end."

Waver's face goes into a soft smile at those words. They're warm, thoughtful, and sentimental without being overly saccharine. "I feel as if I need to write that down and keep it on my person."

[foxsays]

"So much of the history here are all letters written by people to other people, or something like that. Lots from Chantry scholars or people connected to it. But I had so much catching up to do when I came here maybe I noticed it more and now it's going to say even if anything happened that I wasn't just the things I did, the places I went but I was in charge of a project here. That's...that's going to be there. So many of us getting to have a say in something that isn't ours, being trusted with that. It's a lot." It's humbling, is more what she means but some things are better kept inside and safe.

Key swallowing is...well some thieves learn to pick the locks, some learn to pick the keys off people. (Some get casts of the keys but that's usually an overlap and for very specific reasons.) "Someone I know did that. Keys didn't work when she tried getting into the house she wanted to case, by the time she picked the locks three guards had come to see what the dogs were all sniffing at." Just thief things.

Hearing that, Araceli can pretend it's the wind stinging her face that makes them heat up glad that it's impossible to spot a blush on her. "I-- I don't think someone's said that about something I've said before."

[kartereo]

"It is a lot," Waver agreed quietly. "Sometimes I wonder if it's worth putting a little bit of space aside for writings written by rifters in the library, just so things get preserved. Who's to say how long this will go on for, and if there'll be rifters in a century from now. Or even if the Inquistion will be functioning in it's current capacity."

It was probably a bit pretentious, thinking that material was worth putting aside. But no matter. "...Well, I guess that's one drawback to using that method outside of a performance space."

As a man whose own ability to control blushing does not exist, Waver would have looked the other way if he saw blush on Araceli's cheeks. As it is, he just maintains the soft smile. "It's true though."