Fade Rift Mods (
faderifting) wrote in
faderift2017-11-19 11:21 pm
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Entry tags:
- ! open,
- gwenaëlle baudin,
- julius,
- kostos averesch,
- nell voss,
- petrana de cedoux,
- { alistair },
- { anders },
- { audra hawthorne },
- { bethany hawke },
- { bronach },
- { ciri },
- { ellana ashara },
- { fingon },
- { geneviève de la fontaine },
- { herian amsel },
- { inessa serra },
- { james norrington },
- { jehan mercier },
- { morrigan },
- { myrobalan shivana },
- { nathaniel howe },
- { prompto argentum },
- { samouel gareth },
- { saoirse ceallach },
- { simon ashlock },
- { skadi iceblade },
- { thranduil },
- { vandelin elris }
A SEA OF DEATH
WHO: Anyone/Everyone
WHAT: A trip to sunny Nevarra
WHEN: Mid-Firstfall
WHERE: Nevarra City
NOTES: Undead cw. OOC post. We highly encourage using the OOC post for plotting and especially for coordinating strategy among characters participating in Part III.
WHAT: A trip to sunny Nevarra
WHEN: Mid-Firstfall
WHERE: Nevarra City
NOTES: Undead cw. OOC post. We highly encourage using the OOC post for plotting and especially for coordinating strategy among characters participating in Part III.

Following the successful defense of Perendale, the Nevarran crown has extended an invitation to the Inquisition to send representatives to Nevarra City to enjoy its hospitality and gratitude. Most signs point toward an uneventful, perhaps even pleasant, stay, one that could foster a closer relationship between the Inquisition and the Northeast's premier military power. Other signs, however, point toward trouble. The Inquisition has previously addressed early Venatori attempts to influence the king, but reports from agents embedded in Nevarra City indicate that these attempts have resumed. While no immediate danger is expected, everyone will be advised to be on their guard during the visit and keep an eye out for potential enemy activity.
I. TRAVEL & TAVERN
The swiftest route to Nevarra City is to first travel by sea to Cumberland, an uneventful voyage followed by half a day to rest and eat before heading up the Imperial Highway toward the capital. It isn't a large group, consisting only of staff from Kirkwall's outpost who volunteered or were ordered to make the journey, so once on land they're able to move swiftly with horses and carts and spend only one night sleeping aside the road in tents. If there are bandits along the highway, the sight of a uniformed, armed, and relatively organized force on the horizon makes them disappear long before they're reached, and the Inquisition is troubled by nothing but bad weather along the way. The paved highway makes for quick travel despite the rain, except for those who are tasked with detouring off the main road to collect a new party of rifters.
Still, the Inquisition reaches the Nevarra City well after nightfall on the second day, with no time to explore before heading straight to the tavern and inn where they'll be residing during the visit. The Crooked Bone is a large establishment near the center of the city and built for crowds, though it is clearly unprepared for quite this large a number of overnight guests, and the staff may be heard debating the wisdom of taking such a contract, having to cancel and refuse other guests to fit the whole Inquisition contingent, but apparently making a pretty penny and earning favor with some unnamed royal courtier in exchange. Even though the Inquisition has been granted exclusive use of the inn for its stay, it fills up the available rooms without anyone, no matter how high-ranking, permitted a room of their own.
But it isn't an altogether uncomfortable arrangement, and definitely preferable to sleeping in tents. There's hot food downstairs at nearly any hour, not to mention ale and wine, served at long tables in a large room with space at the center for dancing—when there's music, which there won't be now unless someone among the Inquisition wishes to provide it—and a cheery sort of atmosphere lingers despite the decor, which tends toward dark wood and skeleton motifs. It's warmed by the proliferation of lanterns of all shapes and sizes, and the fire burning merrily in every grate, which combined with the full house lends the place a surprisingly cozy feel. Plus, the Inquisition's takeover of the inn means it can maintain its own security and thus genuinely relax indoors, something that won't be so true upon venturing out into the city.
II. NEVARRA CITY
Nevarra's capital city sits on the banks of the Minanter, where the river winds down through the hills that mark the border between Nevarra and its rival Orlais. The city is tucked into a high valley, surrounded by sharp cliffs and studded with rocky spires. The few tributaries of the Minanter that once flowed through have been rerouted into a central channel that tumbles down a fake falls into a large reflecting pool in the city's main park, feeding a fountain in the shape of a trio of water-spewing dragons. The City is renowned for its art and culture, grand buildings and meticulously manicured landscaping, unusually clean cobbled streets and soaring halls carved with intricate adornment. Though no longer as large or as busy as Cumberland, it is a wealthy city, and the immaculately dressed majority will not hesitate to stare at the Inquisition interlopers in their midst. They are frank about their curiosity and also about their suspicions: Nevarra has no love for Orlais, and the Inquisition has far more close ties to the southern Empire than anyone here is comfortable with.
Originally a Tevinter stronghold, the oldest parts of the city are distinctly Imperial in style, all polished, seamless black marble, like the columns that line the boulevard leading from the heart of the city up to the Castrum Draconis, where King Markus holds court. The way to the royal fortress is lined with statues, the finest examples of the hundreds of figures that exist throughout the city, likenesses of every hero and dragon-slayer, kings and generals. At this time of year, each noble family honors its famous ancestors with processions, marching through the city to drape their family's statues in the house colors.
These parades take many forms, from the loud and gaudy to the solemn and torchlit, attended by thousands or just a handful. The richest houses hire troupes of actors to man the streets beside the statues of their predecessors, costumed and acting out the most famous triumphs of their subject's life. This year, as the king's health declines, the competing efforts of the Pentaghasts and Van Markhams and their respective supporters take on a new urgency. Every theater in Nevarra has been emptied and some further afield too, to fill the long, black marble boulevard before the castle with players staging elaborate recreations of dragon hunts and historic battles. Accusations of sabotage, petty turf wars, or players making impromptu cameos in their rivals' shows raise tempers ever higher and the unlucky or unwary may be caught in the midst of a street brawl as tensions threaten to spill over.
The situation in the court itself is no less fraught, though the simmering anxiety is more successfully kept behind closed doors. The King is old, and that he is failing is no longer a secret. His mind has not gone, but his strength has, and he is only capable of brief spates of sharp attention before the effort exhausts his resources and he begins to drift or doze. He is constantly attended by a rotating trio of Mortalitasi, his most trusted companions. He holds court for roughly an hour a day, perhaps two if he is feeling especially hale, and courtiers are in constant competition to be among the few blessed with the king's personal attention. All other business is handled by a handful of advisors, most of long standing. While the Inquisition's representatives are welcomed, and official gratitude expressed for the assistance at Perendale, they may find the reception rather cool overall. The nobility is particularly wary, of Orlesian influence, foreign or Chantry factions meddling in the succession, of the potential threat to Nevarra if the sleeping dragon of the Imperium is poked too hard. It will take careful and strategic mingling indeed to begin to truly win anyone here over.
III. THE NECROPOLIS
Toward the end of the Inquisition's stay, a rare invitation will be extended to its members: an opportunity to tour the Grand Necropolis outside of Nevarra City, proffered out of awareness that its customs are seen as barbaric to outsiders and in hopes that a better understanding of Nevarra's customs will facilitate a better working relationship. The Inquisition will not require any particular person to attend the tour. It is a delicate subject, and one that may rightly make many people squeamish or afraid. But it would be rude not to send representatives, so those who are willing and curious enough to agree will be sent to meet Tivadar Nancollas, one of the Mortalitasi, at the entrance.
Within the walls, the Necropolis is nearly large enough to be a city of its own, were any of its population alive. It is divided into a warren of countless crypts, wound through with passageways. Those maintained by Nevarra's ancient families are enormous and ornate, paths as wide as real streets leading through a maze of oversized statuary and gilded rooms fit for living nobility. Others are smaller and simpler. Some belong to families that have since died out entirely and have fallen into disrepair, though the Mortalitasi see still to the remains within. There are vast public crypts as well, where the inexpertly mummified bodies of Nevarra's poor and nameless are housed en masse if delivered to the Necropolis from outlying communities. The one constant is the smell: the pervasive spicy-sweet aroma of the incense burned in censers throughout the Necropolis, heavy enough to cling to clothes and hair for hours afterwards, and give headaches to those unused to the scent.
As the group passes each crypt, Tivadar names its owner and perhaps some of the better-known figures residing within. The Pentaghast crypt is particularly enormous, and he guides the group inside, past the crowd of still and staring dead, for a brief glimpse at King Caspar still and silent on his throne, crown atop the wispy remains of his hair, finery conspicuously new yet crafted in the style of ages past, the blade of the sword laid across his lap still razor-sharp.
In contrast to the enraged corpses that may have climbed out of bogs or emerged from caves to attack Inquisition agents in their past travels, these possessed corpses are remarkably sedate. They do move: they may blink or turn their heads to watch someone pass, eyes (or eye sockets, depending on the age and wealth of the deceased) glowing with the presence of something otherworldly. But they seem content with watching, until—
(There's always an until.)
—deep in center of the Necropolis, where some of the oldest crypts are falling into ruin and even the Mortalitasi's careful work can't keep all the skin on the corpses' bones, Tivadar disappears—magic, perhaps, or a trick door, or some combination of the two—and the sealed door to a nearby crypt creaks open.
The corpses that lurch out of it are not sedate. They're rabid and grasping, red-eyed, and ready to claw and bite and pursue the Inquisition through the Necropolis' streets. These first enraged mummies count among the poor and poorly kept—they're numerous, but unarmed, brittle. As they push the Inquisition back through the streets, however, their presence seems to awaken the mummies that had previously sat or stood calmly elsewhere. Some of them retreat deeper into their crypts as if frightened. Others do not retreat, but join the swarm in attack. And the further the fighting progresses toward the doors, with the red-eyed corpses stirring each crypt they pass too close to to action, the better preserved and better armed the dead become, until they are wielding swords with names and clad in the dragon-scale armor of the royal houses themselves.
ii.
She doesn't mean to greet him with a frown, it's only that it's jarring not looking so far up and immediately, she doesn't like it.
“Spend your afternoon how you please, Yva,” she says, still studying him. “I'll find you at the inn.” Tonight; whenever.
(If Yva has any reservations, she has the sense the Maker gave a turnip not to voice them, murmuring assent and excusing herself.)
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(He spares a thought for the long-suffering Yva, reminds himself again to somehow finagle her a bonus of some sort.)
He is enjoying her hand on his arm, the hems of her skirts brushing his boots as they walk- that is how close this allows them to be, for once. The sort of courting they ought to have been able to do months, weeks ago.
"I do not suppose you brought the tea with you," he says, conversationally.
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'Unnecessarily tall' has always been a euphemistic sort of a phrase.
In any case: that question is a telling one. She briefly entertains what his expression might do if she were to answer no, but-
“I've already had it for the month, but I brought it in case this doesn't all conclude in as timely a fashion as planned.” Her sidelong glance, one eyebrow raised, isn't quite a question that doesn't exactly need an answer.
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He has a whole day planned- this is, by his own estimation, far better an idea than the previous 'hide in the Gallows' for a day plan. Here, his absence would not be noted, no meetings until the day following, enough time allotted to allow everyone to get tourism out of their thoughts-
- and, he knew, for the Inquisition to spend their coin freely, to charm as much as they were able to manage.
"I have found somewhere no more than an hour away," he says. "Just far enough to get us past the stink of the city."
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probably he'll understand the gesture when she makes it.
Assuming she can get the damn thing on with Yva having already disappeared into the market crowd. It is simpler than much of what she wears, so there's that.
“Are you surprising me, is that what this is?”
Some surprises are all right. This one is promising, and she's more than inclined to follow his lead.
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She's clever enough, and while he could play a secret foreign lover, he's-- impatient, despite himself, even when made to wait mere weeks.
That the truth of what he could be digs at him like a thorn buried in flesh could also explain away the energy under his skin is ignored.
They reach the inn fast enough, and he climbs the stairs behind her, following her to her room, waiting for her to unlock it before he glides in beside her, guessing which bed is hers from the trunks surrounding it.
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Nevarra's autumn is warmer than what she's accustomed to, and velvet is hardly ideal to take out into a surprise venture into the outdoors, but nevermind that: she decided weeks ago to save it for this, and she's not going to be put off by mere unsuitability. Undressing herself has always been a bit easier than getting laced back up, and she's already got her bodice half-undone, a hitherto unworn gown spread out on the bed in a shade of chocolate brown velvet that looks plain, upon first glance.
Less so, when the pleats spread as she finds her way into it and the silk embroidered panels - gold thread over green silk - flare, making immediately apparent why it was Gwenaëlle had been so ready with the design for the tapestry. She'd already spent weeks working on these, presumably, when the thought entered her head: different enough for plausible deniability, or simply the entitlement of Orlesian nobility to take whatever they see for their own, but a clear mimicry of his finest clothes from home. Even the silhouette is more Mirkwood than Orlais, the skirt heavier than elven-make but the line of the gown slimmer to her body, not puffed out like an Orlesian pastry, the cuffs coming in points to her knuckles.
“What do you think? I can ride in it.”
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Two strides eat up the distance between them, and he settles his hands at her hips, gazing down at her. Devotion is too simple a word for it. One hand climbs up her spine, settles at the base of skull, holds her steady as he dips his head to kiss her, deep and thorough.
(The glamour is very good. There is even a hint of scratchy beard.)
He breaks it, draws his head back. "Beautiful," Thranduil insists. He drops his hold on her, catches her hands in his own.
"You are sure, Gwenaëlle? There is no unmaking this for me."
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“I don't want it unmade,” she says, very simply. “Not ever, not for anything.” Or anyone-
Her thumb finds the edge of his jaw and the strangeness of imaginary edges; she allows herself this, a moment in time where the thing she most wants to reach for feels within her grasp. All she has to do is step forward, and there: for once, she won't fall.
(She tries to think of something stupid to make herself stop beaming up at him like an idiot, and her mind disobligingly blanks.)
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"Come along," he says, and releases her, one hand still on the small of her back as he makes for the door and the stairs down in the tavern proper. There are faces here, people who would know him if he had not disguised himself. This sort of joy is meant to be shared, but for both their sakes, he cannot, and so they are passed by.
The horses are waiting in the stables, Inquisition mounts both of them. One sports saddlebags, the other a sidesaddle, and Thranduil walks Gwenaëlle over to the latter, and offers her a step up to mount.
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Well-
he does. Not that it'd help.
When they're far enough from the tavern; “No,” very decisively, “I like you better the other way. This is still strange.”
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If she’d actually found this better, this aged face, these dull eyes, the flawed skin, he might have been… disquieted. No, her noted and clear choice makes him joyful. It is a well-crafted form, to be sure, he’s worn it before, by no means ugly (for a man) but—
She prefers him as he is.
He coaxes the horse into a trot once they’re clear of the bustle of the people making for the parade, sure she’s a good enough rider to keep up.
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She wouldn't care for it if he were the right height, either, but she'd have a harder time putting her finger on why.
Drawing up alongside, “Where are we going?”
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She comes closer to join him, and he indicates something to the southeast, something beyond even his sight. “There is a grove,” Thranduil says. “A bed of soft moss—flowers. Crystal grace. It is quiet, and remote enough that we will not be interrupted for the several hours I intend to keep you there.”
He would wrap a girdle around it, just to be safe. He will not risk the library incident occurring a second time.
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“I could get used to being surprised by you,” she says, speculative, imagining it - she needn't, when she'll see it soon enough, but she does all the same. “If the surprises are like this one.”
Nevarra is-
difficult. She'd grown used to Thranduil's companionship, steady breathing beside her lulling an unfamiliar ease into her; to return so abruptly to nights spent wakeful and distracted has been challenging enough, without adding to it the stresses of travel and of being forced to share her space with as good as strangers. Yva is no comfort to her, only another interloper in her privacy that she's accustomed to being able to dismiss and now cannot - she sleeps poorly, rises weary and irritable, misses her house and her dog and Kieran and quiet, most of all.
Complaining would help nothing and only make her feel worse, so she doesn't. She doesn't ask for anything she wishes for, either, a habit she's never quite got into - demanding the things she knows can't be denied her, certainly, but admitting the small vulnerability of needing anything?
No.
She will go without, rather than admit the wants that don't fit the picture of her others have painted; she never told Asher she wouldn't have minded if he'd lifted her and spun her about like a peasant girl, and she'd never have asked Thranduil for what he's arranged, but it is a particular gift for it to be so specifically what she would wish, if she were of a mind to do the asking.
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“It pleases me to please you,” he says, and perhaps it does not sound so foolishly sentimental coming from him, even in the body of a man with the sort of face that suggests pride and confidence over sincerity in romantic matters.
(The dimple, mostly.)
He contemplates spurring the horse to a gallop, making this all into a merry chase, and puts the idea to bed. The saddle has him concerned.
(Several millennia, and he cannot muster patience for this.)
Sentimentality: "I did not know, when I first saw you..."
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her sudden laugh, a slight derail; “I was so annoyed, I didn't want you to, and your hair touched my fingers and I couldn't stop thinking about it. Obviously I didn't think about it.”
For a great many reasons, that had not been something to dwell on; not something to be pursued, then, not something either of them would have welcomed. That said: he's extremely good-looking and she's not blind, much to her own lingering irritation.
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"I confess I took some delight in affecting you so," Thranduil admits. "Your curiosity, your manner, your dress. Your newsletter."
How far away that all seemed, their petty bickering, the one-upsmanship. The sort of games he delighted in playing.
"Do you remember," he says, "what I said about my people, and kneeling?"
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“We still have a difference of opinion,” she says, a little more neutrally, “on the definition of 'your' people.”
He'd given her a pass on it, the way she lashed out in the library, absorbed in the deaths of her sisters. The fact remains that she doesn't feel differently when the heat of the moment has cooled, that it has always been a point of contention - if her blood doesn't make them her people, who's he to claim them? It isn't fair, and she's even less inclined to budge now he understands where her antipathy to it comes from.
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He smiles, crooked, and raises a brow, begging for a challenge—if they were not mounted, he would take the chance to steal a kiss, to reendear himself to her in the wake of a misstep. How easily he yields—he learned not to make himself a wall for her to dash herself against.
Ahead of them, in the woods beyond, there is a resounding noise, deep and loud, nearly a scream. Thranduil sits up in his saddle, brightens—how easily a smile fits on this Mannish face, highlights the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, his mouth. “Ah,” he says. “We are close.”
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“What the fuck was that,” is not quite a question in that it lacks the required lilt, but certainly something that expects an answer, startled into mild affront by her own confusion. By his confidence, bemused by his reaction to what she would not have herself called a promising anything.
Gwenaëlle is not in the habit of being pleased by hearing the woods scream at her.
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The elk dwarfs those of Thedas like Thranduil to the Dalish—massive, the rack barely clearing the space between trees. It poses—one foreleg lifted, caught in the middle of a step, its head turned towards them. Gwenaëlle had lived with Bill the Pony. The fellow did not have the eyes of a normal pony, blank and interested only in hay. There was something beyond the normal depths to them—the stag has much the same look. It watches. It understands.
Thranduil dismounts easily, sheds his glamour in the same motion. He is dressed in the clothes he arrived in Thedas, clearly elven, clearly noble. He holds the reins of Gwenaëlle’s horse to allow her to dismount, offering her his arm for her ease. The elk meanders over, picking his way along the path to join them, ears pricked forward.
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(Her preferences there might warrant some self-examination, but then again, they might not.)
When she finds her voice, it's to say, “I can't believe I looked at all the men in Thedas and said, no, I'm going to marry this smug bastard from beyond the Fade-” because she loves him.
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his, now,
- setting her down and kissing her forehead, her nose, her lips, leaning to do so, his hand coming up to cup the back of her head, all taboos on touching it left by the wayside weeks ago.
He is the obviously superior choice, how could he not be, when he loves her so, caters to her desire not to be abandoned with his willingness to literally and unbreakably bind his spirit to her own, no greater commitment in the whole of the world. And for all that they vex one another, there is solid ground beneath their feet. She will die someday. He knew that from the moment he met her. But to be without her for those years will be more unbearable than her eventually demise.
"Gi melin," he says, pulling away, clasping her hands in his own, and then, "-would you like to ride him?"
(She married an elf, this is an elven wedding, what did she expect?)
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“I don't know what that means,” is not a complaint, not delivered buoyed up by her own laughter, by being so far out of reach of the grasping things that pull at her skirts and protest her happiness. They will return, of course, to complication and contradiction and every difficult, stupid thing she doesn't want to think about- but not now, no. It can wait, and for a little time, the space of an afternoon, she can have simple gladness. “Does he want to be ridden?”
By her, specifically. What an enormous thing. Is there anything in Arda that isn't monstrously oversized, that's what she'd like to know-
(no subject)