faderift | Carta's Cut

[A straight shot from Kirkwall to Jader then to Orzammar since he screwed up his courage to ask and the right permissions came through so they're going in the front door. Yngvi's never been in the front door of Orzammar before.

Bhelen's king now. Lower castes in the military, more rights, bit better for them so some of the guards - not the fancy ones greeting them, all hail the Inquisition - but a few milling around have brands if their helms don't cover them up. The lava still flows, the wares are still sold, they're on their way to Dusttown but that's not quite the official story. Just Inquisition business, looking into a few leads regarding a Carta mess they'd like to deal with.

Easy to spin a lie.

Easy to see that the guards still don't want to look too close at anyone coming or going from Dusttown when Yngvi leads the way down there because that's where the Carta are, where the entrances no one's meant to know about are, where needy hungry faces live; it's there that information is going to be because where else would it be. The guards? The nobles? The traditionalists stewing worse than ever before? No, it's here in the filth and misery same as it's ever been.

Strangers rolling in? There's a murmur of who's next and that's a bad sign already.]

[[ooc: endgame of this thread is finding out we need to head into a section of the Deep Roads for finding out where our missing contacts are and to get info from people on Casteless disappearances but if you want to create you own adventures under this thread or thread out the travel to Orzammar, please feel free.]]

It's been decades since his boots last scuffed the dirt in Dust Town. Stepping into it again settles old guilt, old shame around his shoulders, a stiflingly hot cloak that he can't shrug free of no matter how he struggles. He doesn't bother--not anymore.

Nothing has changed here; King Bhelen's reforms may have whittled away some of the restrictions around where the casteless can go, and what work they can do, but there are no faces looking back at him from dark alleys, crumbling stoops, or shadowed corners that aren't stricken with hunger, avarice borne of never having enough, bitterness from knowing that life is short and painful, whether you're kind or not. Here, his brand and his Legion's tattoos only mark him as one of their own miserable enough to have gotten out. That earns him no favours.

He ghosts along behind Yngvi in silence for a time; they have a task to complete here, but he's requiring more time than he thought he would to summon up the courage to even speak.

Orzammar's better unbesieged.

Not by a lot. Eyes follow them, and perhaps that's a blessing, that there are a few stranger figures here to grab them: Any glances that might linger on two humans, upon an elf, they'll spread themselves thinner upon Yngvi's narrow shoulders, Gandir's marks. She's under no illusions it will be enough.

Comparisons to the Alienage seem less out of place with every glint of need between the dust; Val Royeaux's builds upon itself, becomes a labyrinth of thin walls and rooms without sky. There are places one might wander there, and never know the traffic of clouds overhead. But this,

She settles for settling in like a shadow behind them, and keeps her attention to those that track with their own motley party. Who's next, and it's not a surprise that the people here know to be wary. But is it worth clamming up over, even with surfacer money on the table?

(Surfacers will mean money, even the wardens. They go to Orzammar to trade or to die, and both leave charity behind.)

"Your contacts," She murmurs low. "How much of their time is spent here?"

Permanent residents, or go-betweens?

Orzammar, as it turns out, presses down on Ciri not all that differently from her trips into the Deep Road.

That ink-like feeling, her connection to the Darkspawn grips at the edges of her mind and threatens to throw her off balance at any moment even here in Orzammar. It makes her peek over her shoulder more than once, eyes narrowed and trying to shake the feeling hanging over her besides the stone hanging high above them. It was like whispers just out of earshot, figures out of the corner of her eyes...

There was always a lot to get used to as a Warden, and this was one thing that never quite settled neatly into the package of her new life.

She doesn't let it show. Instead, she rolls her shoulders and keeps a quiet look out on what passes for movement around them. There's a lot to take in, a lot to see of the people that lived in Dust Town. So there is some quiet appreciation when Wren speaks, breaks the harsh silence of the group and allows Ciri the chance to focus on something else. Something besides the people or the darkspawn lingering in the walls, digging through the rock and through her head.

In the years Seoraj has spent on the march- he's spent that march above ground and under sky, but some things look the same no matter what does or doesn't shine around them. The push and pull of never quite having enough; suspicion because suspicion is kinder than the knife palmed inward that hope too often proves to be. Suspicion that's all an outsider needs to see, when anything else might be a weakness to exploit.

Spent too much time in Orlais, he reflects, dulling the edge of it. It should cut. He lets it, keeping his hands away from the heavy hammer at his belt.

(Hell, but he feels tall down here.)

When Wren speaks, his gaze tracks sideways to her, then to Yngvi with concern that under the circumstances he measures carefully, contains.

Even if he hadn't shown up with the sort of company that he has, dwarves have an eye for anyone spending too long on the surface, and when so much of what he's done was always to avoid letting this sort see him, Yngvi takes too long to answer Wren's question, head jerking round. (Making a bit of a spectacle of yourself is an entirely different sort of thing to this. It's a kind of strategy. Avoiding curious hungry glances that harden speculatively isn't. Feels cowardly. But he can't meet them when he tries.)

"Couple of weeks at most, no one lives here." Not quite disgusted but there's just that detached horror, muted from coming in the front door since he's never seen the supposed splendour he missed out on all his life until now. "Usually up to a week."

A lot of maps had been spread out for Yngvi's viewing that had tracked the real routes and the dummy routes, the times for certain goods depending on the season and it wasn't time to go trying their luck with the Avvar. Not so close to Orzammar's nose. Trade happens which means moving parts, which means avoiding guards.

He looks over to Kit since-- well Yngvi might get some hassle but less than him. "Sure you're good mate? And none of you should try the ale here, you'll be sick as a dog and we can't be havin' that. Don't know how friendly they'll stay either, Bhelen's march onwards or not. You," a nod to Ciri, "might be fine, Wardens always get a pass."

(Hopefully they still do after the stories going about, maybe Bhelen keeps some old traditions going and ignores other surface news as just that.)

"Sure you're good mate?"

"Yeah," Kit answers a touch too quickly, "yeah, I'm all right." He doesn't bother putting on his mask of a grin--here that would just draw too much attention. Instead he leaves his grimace as is, makes his eyes focus, wrests his melancholy back under control.

(He can feel the weight of eyes on him as they move through the shambles of the central thoroughfare, and wonders absently if any of the eyes he does not meet might belong to dusters he once ran with down these streets.)

There's a cluster of young toughs lurking around the spitting remains of a fire pit, and Kit recognizes the look in their hooded, deeply set eyes; sizing up the newcomers, trying to determine whether it'd be better to rip them off or rip them apart. Kit pointedly directs his attention elsewhere when he falls into step beside Yngvi and suggests, "The dusters working that corner--think they might know something?"

A few weeks. It speaks to a frequency to be known; plenty can keep a calendar, whether or not they see the coin.

A nod back to Yngvi is all to be done, this isn't a moment for moral support.

She draws back, closer to Ciri; a middle distance. Two dwarves might have more luck at it without a tail, but they're none of them on a social call. A certain proximity seems wise until bidden.

"Do you know what they call the throne of Orzammar?"

As shitty jokes go, it's quietly-asked. The girl looks as though she could use a distraction, and perhaps they could both stand to look as though they're not paying such close attention.

Edited (Accidentally hit post!!) 2017-10-11 15:41 (UTC)

In response, Ciri simply snorts. "Lucky me."

That itself depended on how things still remained considering the response that the rest of their Order was taking on the Anderfels. She has to wonder how much time they spared to come down to the Deep Roads and fight darkspawn. Not much, probably considering they seemed to be of the opinion that infecting them with red lyrium was a better road to travel.

She focuses on Wren as the woman moves closer, raising a brow as she speaks and then frowning.

"Is this a question," she begins with a tilt of her head. "Or a joke? I'm up for the latter but a damn disappointment with answering the former."

Strangers don't mean a lot of good when you're the down on your luck sort which until ten years ago - not long for anyone really, certainly not long down here in the dark - it might've meant something better. Then usually meant better.

One of the dusters speaks before Yngvi can say anything, like knows like but hell people can be generous enough to the poor and downtrod, even their damn own these days. "Atrast vala salroka, you and your friends get lost? Throne's back thataways," a careless thumb is tossed back the way they think the strangers ought to be going, "might have some tall ones but you still fall the same."

Hello welcome to Orzammar: the part the brochure didn't cover, Yngvi perhaps glossed over this bit on purpose perhaps.

Kit glances from Yngvi to the young tough who's come swaggering over to them looking full of piss and vinegar; he can't be older than fifteen or sixteen, though life in Dust Town ages most of its inhabitants prematurely. Kit glances Yngvi's way in a roll with me on this one kind of way, then reaches into his pocket to fetch out a couple of pre-rolled cigarettes.

(It's decent quality tobacco, too; if Kit's going to blow his salary on something, it's going to be this.)

"Could be we're lost," he tells the kid, "but I don't think so." He gives the other dwarf and his set a smile that's a shade too confident to be truly friendly, but at the same time, he offers the cigarette out to him. Not a tool for bartering, but a gesture of good faith made while one is armed (as indicated by Kit's hand resting on the haft of his Legionnaire's war axe) goes a fair distance down here.

"What do you say, salroka?" He glances from the kid to his companions. "Got a minute to talk?"

Looking again between the assembled company - not all the way at that tall woman, honestly what happens to humans, unnatural is what it is and why does that elf have a beard - he carefully takes the cigarette from Kit. As if it might bite. Not everyone gets surface goods like this even if there's more than there used to be for all with the coin for them.

Nudging his friend for the tinderbox with a hushed mutter of yes, nughumper I'll pass it to you, relax, he takes a puff. Holds. And starts spluttering ruining his whole image because this is better than smoking whatever you can find that smokes without offending the nostrils of everyone around you.

"Right, make it quick we're off soon and I don't want chat from talking to any of you lot." It comes out strained but he powers through, hands off the cigarette to his mate. (Yeah, you tell him Big Sild.)

When he sputters, Kit doesn't laugh, but brings up a hand to chafe his fingers against his short beard. If it makes a smile, it's done well. Little nugs; he remembers that age--

"You got good eyes, I figure," he begins, already fishing out another cigarette to light and smoke himself. He takes a drag off it and then exhales it off to the side, letting his gaze wander around the periphery of the dilapidated plaza with its crumbling buildings and slumped shoulders. "The way I see it, when stuff starts to go amiss down here, you're the ones seeing it first."

He lets his voice drop a fraction; he scratches absently at his face near where his brand is still visible underneath his Legionnaire's tattoos. "What do you know," he asks, "about folks going missing down here?"

Quietly, Ciri listens to the conversation going on between their group and the young ones. Little shits, really but she remembers being that age. At least she was able to get out of her home, travel and be done with it all but down here it seems things are more... enclosed. Her stance shifts, relaxed but always lingering on the faint sensation of her connection to the Darkspawn drawing her toward the Deep Roads.

Glancing downwards, she frowns and resists the urge to push deeper into the countless numbers burrowing around them searching for the Old Gods or ask if any Wardens had been present in these days. After all, she can only guess what the rest of the Order is planning out in the Anderfels and more sacrifice sounds right on course for them.

"Better eyes than sun-scorched eyes," he fires back but there's no heat in it that someone else might get because well that's a brand there on Kit's face at the end of the day, people take their choices where they find them don't they.

They confer. Confer in the way of hushed without any sort of real knack for it, sneaking glances at the rest of them.

The second one speaks up, taking the cigarette from his friend, beckoning everyone to lean in because that's how you do things, right? "Well...you didn't hear it from us but might've been some extra heads meant to come in and go back out again." It's said with a pointed look at Yngvi (studiously looking at everything but them right now thanks) before they look around too. "Some of us. Well, not us us but people that should be around? They aren't."

"Deep Roads talk," the first one interrupts. "You're fine with going down there yeah? Because our people shouldn't be down there but who's going to go looking for someone with a brand?" (Who's bitter? Not him. Life's better now isn't it?)

"You're fine with going down there yeah? Because our people shouldn't be down there but who's going to go looking for someone with a brand?"

The pang of bitterness in that young voice gets him in a place that hasn't ached in decades. But the old wound is still there, waiting to be eased open again, if he lets it. He doesn't--this time.

He takes a drag off the cigarette and blows the smoke off to the side, and when the looks to the dusters again, there's a fierce intensity in his eyes. "Someone's looking for 'em today, salroka." He'll die looking for them, before he lets the boys think for a moment that everyone believes they're worth forgetting.

He draws back after that, motioning Yngvi after him; nothing more to be said, and reassuring words don't amount to much if they aren't backed up by deeds. "You got a good way for us to get into the Deep Roads?" he asks him, assessing him in a glance, too, to make sure he's still holding up all right.

The lads look to one another, pass the cigarette back and forth, then nod down in the direction of Dust Town proper. "There's a way. Someone'll know what you're looking for."

"Don't worry, everyone fits just might need to mind your heads gettin' in." No skin off their noses if there's a few bumps to the head on the way through the door or if they've maybe got to grease a palm or two working it out. Plenty of folk could still use the coin.

Yngvi, trying to work it out, nods his thanks, looks like he's tripping into them on the way past but well they're being rewarded for their trouble (don't tell the Inquisition, this isn't strictly Inquisition he's not bribing anyone) and makes for the right way.

"Warden? Probably gonna need you sharpish."

[[ooc: and this is where we go to the Deep Roads]]

[Down in the dark where the walls press in, hollowed out by who knows lit only by small pools of lava, the few fungi that produce their own light that cling here and there and whatever the group bring themselves, the Deep Roads are miserable.

The Darkspawn stink is fetid, putrid, it lingers thick and heavy in the air and in the back of the throat. Was that one of your companions who tripped over what are bones (you can tell yourself that they aren't but they are, there are always expeditions or exiles or missions so there are bones upon bones upon bones down here) or is it something else in the dark. Waiting for you?

This is why there's a Warden required after all. This is why there's one of the Legion too. But the dark is tricky, that terrible press of all the world above and around and the knowing.

That's when the glint of red appears. Bright red. Almost blinding after this dark. Impossible to mistake for what it is when it juts from a passageway: red lyrium.]

Kit consistently puts himself to Yngvi's right as they move through the oppressive dark of the Deep Roads. It's an old habit, minor enough that it might not be noticed, and one that he wouldn't think to explain; his brothers and sisters in the Legion had adapted to his deafness in his left ear in the same way he'd adapted to their needs.

He spots the faint glow of red cast by the lyrium well before the strange, sickness-inducing veins come into view around the corner ahead of them. "Heads up," he bids them all, "and watch your step."

They need her sharpish, was it? Unfortunately, Ciri is currently as sharp as the blade held by the belt against her back.

It's like a game almost where she pushes and pulls against the darkspawn influence that lingers through the Deep Roads. Rogue groupings could always be found throughout these tunnels but she worried for the main group of darkspawn that lingered somewhere down here, constantly digging and searching for the next Old God to awaken. She doubts they'll come across it but there is always a small pang of... worry? Worry, perhaps, lingering in the background of her mind.

Truly, they are more likely to come across the skeleton of some poor sod of a Warden that came down here to die than an Old God. Better or worse, who knows? Still, she glances upwards and noticeably ducks slightly as instructed.

"Lovely, just wonderful." She murmurs tiredly. "We're at least making good time against the darkspawn."

She's been canting her head the better part of their journey, sticking close to Ciri, shoulders low. Hard to slam your face into a stalactite that someone else met first,

(Harder to avoid crunching what was once someone's fingers,)

But the angle of her neck creaks sharp aside at the wash of red heat.

"The rocking chair," To Ciri, "That's what the call the throne of Orzammar."

It's sharper now than any joke ought to be. Missing casteless, and a song underground. It's too easy to leap to first conclusions; her second thoughts don't lend kind alternatives. She slips past towards the dwarves, hand ready at her side.

A muttered, “Decorating leaves something wanting, a bit,” is Seoraj's response to the red lyrium, the hint of humor in his smile that's more a short baring of teeth will come familiar to Kit as well as Yngvi, harkening back to other roads walked, other stupid things said through gritted teeth in the hopes of living long enough to get punched in the arm for them, later. An after you ladies that's more gesture than anything verbal-

But they're all tight together. The problem isn't so much not knowing what they might be walking into, but rather having a pretty good fucking idea. Something crunches underneath his boot, and he doesn't think about what - who - it was, doesn't need to when the sound will linger with him, later.

"Orzammar's leavings meets Darkspawn's finest meets Aunt Meredith's stunning baubles, sorry you're slummin' it down here." Not the best Yngvi's ever come up with but he's still managed to crack something that sounds like a joke slogging through this.

Yngvi's probably the least accomplished at this bit. Not a lot of call for Deep Roads when you're a mercenary after all, too young to be wasted poking about down here. He fights with himself for a bit about saying what he wants to say but when has he ever won those battles so, "There should be Darkspawn, right?" Look he's young, this is terrible, but they're in the Deep Roads so where are the Darkspawn?

And is that-- clinking? Maybe. Could be something striking a thing like stone but down here all sounds echo strangely, who knows what they're rounding passageways into in the gloom. (There's definitely a rhythm to it. A pattern. Striking sounds. Vaguely ahead.)

A beat passes and then Ciri chuckles, tiredly but unable to help it because she'd never deny herself a good pun. Never mind she was the only person to laugh, she usually is but it definitely helped her mood considering she was once again down here in the Deep Roads.

"There's always Darkspawn. In the walls, on the roads but definitely digging around wherever they can get their shitty claws which is everywhere." She says, verging on gritting her teeth. "For now we're just doing a good job not grabbing their attention."

For now. If she could sense them then they could sense her, it was only a matter of time before attention might turn their way. Still, she notes the clinking with a hard frown and tightens the grip on her sword. Water dripping? No, it's sharper than that. Metal of some kind then?

It's the clink of a miner's pickaxe striking against stone. Kit isn't the first to hear it, but even the casteless dwarves could recognize that sound back in Orzammar. He glances at the red lyrium veins and protrusions extending out of the cavernous walls around them, then grimaces.

"I'll scout ahead," he suggests quietly to the others and, unless there are any objections, slips ahead of them through the bending and twisting passageways to ascertain just what lies ahead of them down the path.

The further Kit gets, the more red lyrium there is growing, a deliberateness to it. It points inward, around a bend into a cavern that'd be easily missed even with the glow; this dark everywhere else it burns the eyes, with darkspawn usually present, or roving packs of deepstalkers, perhaps spiders, there's more to be wary of that don't beg looking into every dark space.

But there's a hand outstretched.

Lyrium grows from it, nothing else left.

Louder the closer he gets, groans of effort. Laughter from a few others. Commands-- still no Darkspawn.

The cavern might be easily missed by another set of eyes, but Kit's had decades to grow accustomed to the tricks of the shadows; the cavern's entrance catches his attention, and draws him closer, mindful with each step of the red lyrium that grows and reaches from the stone--

--he pulls up short at the sight of the hand, lyrium protruding from the flesh, and stares at it with dull horror wrought on his face.

It takes a few moments for him to get his legs to move, past the sudden, roiling nausea in his gut, but he manages. Keeping to the shadows and moving with practiced silence, he slips further into the cavern, just enough to get a glimpse of what lies ahead. Just a glimpse, enough to ascertain the number of bodies, of enemies and prisoners alike, and then he'll return back.

[The fight ends but it isn't quiet. How can it be quiet when there are the contacts in chains asking to be let out - too tired, too shocked to have it in them to beg - and the keys are there or well, maybe just break the damn locks.

It'd feel good.

The stories spill out of them in bits once they're staggering out, flinching from the red, from the bodies of their captors but then it's the missing. The exhaused. Utterly spent and past the point of being able to help them.

Not even dwarves are entirely immune to lyrium and the red stuff? It's a particularly evil poison. (It's mercy. But it never feels like it, does it?)]

[Before the report to the Inquisition, there's getting the rescued contacts back to Kirkwall and back to Darktown, to the bosom of the Carta. Einar, head of this branch, Yngvi's branch, patriarch of all things in his life awaits expectantly. An air that could be fatherly as his weary people are returned to him then sent off out of sight by more of them for food and healing and rest, for drink strong enough to forget for a night at least.

Then he sits, waves a hand.]

I'll want an accounting.

[Yngvi is a short dwarf. He looks shorter when Einar's gaze lingers and doesn't seem like he's in a great hurry to speak up.]

Edited 2017-10-07 06:07 (UTC)

Carta's Cut

Investigating Dusttown

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Deep Roads

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Post-fight

Back to the Carta