A SEA OF DEATH

[faderifting]

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.

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.

Comments

[rowancrowned]

The room still smells faintly of the thick, heady incense that they’d burned during their little revelry the night before, but the bottles are all gone from the floor and the mattresses returned to the bedframes. Thranduil sat on his, a writing desk in his lap. He stands. The inkwell hits the floor first, the rest of it tumbling after—

He never thought to see her like this.

“Who?” he says, dismissing pleasantries faster than she did, crossing the room to close the door, a hand around her waist to take some of her weight with an intimacy he would never risk without her wounded. Who had been able to land a blow on her?

“I did not think to see you for a decade at least—” Because she hadn’t been gone. Not in the way Legolas was, or the Outsider. It was like her to disappear without a word, to turn up years later with no explanation or apology. He sits her down on the bed, stands beside her, looking down. “This is no mere wound." Despite the blood on her. "No healer could assist you.”

[laurenande]

She glances at the door, but it is habit. There are few in these lands who would even understand what she would speak with him about, let alone any who could use it to their advantage.

"The ring is lost," she says, without preamble, and she expects it will tell him much about how diminished she has become. "I awoke with the Elessar in its place; a bauble returned to placate me."

She glances down at her destroyed gown. How long had it been since she last wore crimson? Had it actually been in Doraith? It is novel, but the bandages beneath the cloth are largely for show. She has already restored herself.

"The demons caught me unaware, but I will live. My strength however...I know not if it will return to me."

[rowancrowned]

He doesn’t pale, exactly—they are not predisposed to that sort of physical reaction, but the room chills, all sound sucked from it. Sindarin, then, because to grasp the words in Trade seems too difficult a task at the moment.

“You—lost the ring,” because it is unbelievable. He had her at his borders, he doubted her motivations, had the paranoia of his father at times, but she was Calaquendi and far from weak. Galadriel did not lose things in the same way a tree did not bark like a hound.

He stares, because he does not know what to do, and then dismisses it in a flurry of sudden movement, making for his own trunk, unlocking it, and thrusting one of his robes and trousers into her hands. They are grey, not white, but if any see blood on her, they will assume she’s murdered one of the shemlen, or opened a rift.

“You depended upon it,” he says. “Need I fear you fading?”

[laurenande]

"No, the Elessar will maintain; it too was a gift from Celebrimbor, though it be of far less...import." Galadriel regarded the garments in hand and set them aside on the bed. She undid the clasp on Haldir's cloak and let it fall on the bed behind her. She had always been more radiant than most of the Eldar, it was part and parcel of being Caliquendi but retaining it here was suddenly strange. The emerald glimmered in the light of the room and, at once, it drained her strength and renewed her.

"My power has waned, and will remain thus," she explains and unfolds the robes before her. "What concerns me is the ring.

"If it remains in Thedas--even I cannot foresee what it shall wreak."

[rowancrowned]

"I assume Celebrimbor made certain it could not be used by the unclean; I am displeased by the idea that Corpheyus would find it, or one of his ilk."

He turns, and pours water from the pitcher by the bed into the bowl, takes up a washcloth and wets it. She will need a proper bath, but first a meal and sleep. They are now bound by more mortal requirements, and for all that she is healed, the rest and food will do her good. He waits until she is stripped of the ruins of her dress, and bids her turn so that he can wipe the dried blood off her.

He scoffs. "It will be found. Whomever finds it will hardly possess the intelligence not to wave it about at the first opportunity. And we will have little trouble reclaiming it."

Though it will be a pain to find. They have the Inquisition, already paying careful heed to rumor. The problem will be finding it before the Inquisition gets curious about what, exactly, the ring happens to do.

Galadriel, he knows, is hardly better than he at sharing.

[laurenande]

"I do not know; none have ever worn that ring but I, and the others have changed between precious few hands. If my will has settled into it, it will tolerate no taint, but it is not the unclean who concern me now," Galadriel explained as she began removing what remained of her dress. The bandages around her midsection are soaked through in places, despite their changing and how the Elessar had restored her. She will not scar, not as long as that brooch remains with her, but it is no wonder where her body's strength has gone.

"I am uncertain if reclaiming it will be simple, even if they are fools." She unwinds the dressing around her waist and the remains of her injury gape across her back and side. The terror had cut deep furrows into her flesh--now they are shallow as a scrape, but still they are raw and the worst of them, below her ribs, still weep as she moves. She spares him the difficulty of them and presses the old bandages to her side with a grimace as she presents her back to him.

"We cannot use their power as freely as they can and Nenya is not a tool, it is a forge. If one of their mages finds it, it may consume them, or they will use it to do great harm before they know what they hold."

She could not abide Nenya becoming common knowledge, being linked to a disaster, being feared and--worse still--hidden away in some vault. It was not theirs to defend, not theirs to use, it was hers--her own, a treasure most precious. She draws a tight breath and tries to calm her panic and anger.

"It will be found," she agrees, ultimately, and stares down at the Elessar on the bed beside her, still pinned to her gown and glittering up at her.

[rowancrowned]

That he was never given the opportunity to protect his people with Celebrimbor’s gifts irritates him—impotently, nothing to be done about it, a thorn in his side in the way he collects them, the little slights that he holds in reserve, remembers, against himself, his father, his people. He scoffs softly at her refuse of the bandages, goes back to his trunk, pulls out a plain cotton tunic and sets his teeth to it, tearing it into a single winding strip.

Thranduil steps around her—no concept of modesty in a race so old—a fistful of newly-made bandage, and gestures for her to remove her hand so that he might replace them with something cleaner. They’ve never been prey to festering wounds, but this is an easy comfort to offer, and the sight of elven blood is disquieting.

“So we will look. Surely Celebrimbor was crafty enough to plan for eventualities, even if he did not have full foresight. I have become accustomed to limitations here—forgive me my sloth, if it seems such,” he says, leaning over her to better bind her wounds.

He helps her with the tunic, unpins the Elessar and attaches it to her new garments, and kneels without thought or reflection on the floor to help her with the pants as well.

[laurenande]

Thranduil is thinking far more clearly than she; the lingering slowness in her limbs galls her but it will pass, of that much she is certain. His help is more than appreciated, especially the calm efficiency with which he creates new bandages and sets about wrapping her wounds. The pain of the gouges in her side is sharp but while neither of them are healers, Thranduil is not unkind in his haste.

"Limitations?" She asks and considers what he might mean. He is moving quickly--ah, but perhaps not when it comes to finding the ring. That it takes her a few moments to catch up is worrisome.

"I prefer silence to speed, especially in this particular matter," she replies as she steps into the pants and hikes them around her hips. She cannot bend far but his help is enough. She ties them off loosely and is thankful that he had bothered to affix the Elessar back to her.

With him still close, it is easier to say what she must, what she is compelled to. She takes him by the arm, her grip as weak as a child's but she speaks with uncommon gravity.

"I cannot surrender it; it must be returned."