faderift | OPEN ↠ HARING EVENT

WHO: All
WHAT: WINTER IS HERE
WHEN: Haring 15-Wintermarch 1
WHERE: The Gallows, Kirkwall
NOTES: You can use this post as an event-style mingle log, or just use it as background information for your RP elsewhere!

It's been a chilly month already, but in mid-Haring the temperature suddenly plummets. One day it's merely cold, and the next morning the Inquisition wakes to frost on the inside of the window panes and an icy draft whistling through every crack in the tower's masonry. Downstairs, the pipes that feed the bathing chambers and the kitchens creak in the walls, loud enough to be heard even out in the courtyard, where they run beneath the stones, and around midday, when the sun has failed to raise the temperature above freezing, a blocked pipe finally gives, cracking open to spill water across the central court and send it running down side passages. The whole area floods several inches deep and almost immediately begins to freeze, presenting at first a gigantic, treacherous slush puddle and, after a few hours, a sheet of sheer ice.

Melting a safe path from door to door and laying down sand or wood to keep it from becoming slick again is a simple enough undertaking, but before the entire courtyard can be thawed, someone appears with ice skates—and that’s a better idea, surely, for at least a few days. Anyone who complains about the frivolity can be assured it’s good exercise, not to mention good training for a force that may have to travel or fight on ice in the future.

Temperatures remain cold enough that even some parts of the harbor begin to freeze, first just at the calmest edges of the shoreline, and then the more protected nooks and crannies of the bay, inlets and the spaces between piers and beneath docks. It snows most days--not real storms, just a couple inches here and there--little enough for the window to blow most of it off the icy plain of the courtyard and other wide open, paved spaces, accumulating on branches and in alleyways, and creating growing drifts in corners and against walls.

After a week or so actual chunks of floating ice begin to fill the narrow channels of the harbor, threatening smaller and less-sturdy vessels, and the situation in the poorer parts of the city begins to grow dire. With the Viscount's blessing, Inquisition teams (particularly mages) are called in to help. Some are assigned to the docks, to clear ice that makes landing and unloading treacherous, others to help escort ships into harbor by melting a path ahead. Others are sent into Lowtown to clear ice and snow and to provide warmth and medical attention where needed. At least one mage is sent with each team, and while many neighborhoods are pleasantly surprised and grateful for the quick work fire glyphs make of cold hearths and frozen streets, a few are unable to overcome their distrust, and refuse the teams entry, determined to take care of their own without the help of dangerous outsiders.

In the last week of the year, a true blizzard strikes, snow falling steadily for more than a day, blanketing the city at least three feet deep. Digging out the Gallows will be a group effort, and most non-essential trips outside the base will be cancelled for a few days until travel is less difficult, while those who reside in the city or elsewhere may be encouraged to stay a night or two in the fortress so they might continue to work without traveling through the storm. But on the first day of Wintermarch the First Day feast goes on as planned, with modest but plentiful food and ale served in the Gallows' dining hall for anyone who wishes to celebrate the new year.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Potato just plops down where she is with a huff, leveling a stare back at Buttons though she obeys Inessa, who just lets that go as long as it doesn't escalate. She looks over Myr, expression softening. She would leave him to his own thoughts, but either way he seems to be struggling. The least she can do is offer a sympathetic ear, he if can manage to say what's plaguing him.

"Hm...think of it like freeform writing? Don't worry about how you phrase it. What's important is putting it down on paper, or just saying it aloud, in this case. I promise, whatever you have to say will not face judgment from me. And it will never go beyond us, unless you wish it."

The suggestion's good for a humorless bark of laughter out of Myr (as Buttons lays his nearer ear back at the noise). She's trying, he knows, and he's in no position to scorn any offer of a solution to what's been eating away at him since the Blackmarsh-- But it seems so facile and his mood is so black that it's easier to transmute the fear to anger, to offense that someone might try and help him in a less-than-perfect fashion.

That someone might be concerned enough to come after him, when he'd tried his best to hide his struggles behind a brave face.

He tucks his chin against his chest as if staring down at Buttons' feathers, draws in a breath to temper the flash of anger and the misery with it. Maybe if he pretends he's still only speaking to the griffon, it might be bearable. "In--the Necropolis, in Nevarra--we encountered that, that thing that was stronger than the other corpses."

That humorless laughter provokes no response; Inessa can ignore her pride to focus on what's bothering Myr so deeply, or at least she'll try. Stroking Potato with one hand, she listens and nods, eyes darkening as she recalls that unholy creature. She had been trying had to forget its intense gaze, its relentless pace.

"It was...formidable, akin to a revenant." That they had escaped had all had been a welcome surprise.

As before, Myr considers briefly how easy it would be--not to lie to her, but mislead to something that didn't cause him panic just to think about. There were good reasons for people to be fearful of possessed corpses, understandable reasons. And it wouldn't be lying to say he had been afraid of it, truly--what with all of Uncle Vardren's vituperations against the Nevarran invaders and their plan to purge the alienage and raise its residents as an army, all his vivid descriptions of their unholy necromantic magic.

Easy to blame that for his fear--except she'd see right through it. There had been no revenant in the Blackmarsh.

"Right. It--it was, and it's by the Maker's grace we--that we got away at all." He hadn't been much help, already half-disabled by terror. At least he could keep a barrier and an aura going without thinking about it, even as the panic closed over him. (It's getting harder to breathe; his pulse sings in his ears as if the undead might have followed them back, might be on the stairs of the griffon roosts even now, waiting to ambush them. And then--)

"You and Vandelin--you d, did most of the work with-- You're both--" entropy mages, clever with hexes and terror, and from the start they'd both darkened and twisted the Fade into devouring the corpses around them, like oil on his skin... "--talented in--you know."

The words are drawn out and anguished and he stops the rest of them with the back of his hand, stops the frightened sob that might follow. Not again, not again.

"...in entropy magic." Inessa says slowly, connecting the dots to his behavior in the Blackmarsh months ago. There's a sudden stab of guilt, realizing that she's been quite liberal with hexes and death magic, having long-ago overcome her hesitation about that particular school when it got results. The Wardens had encouraged any method that aided their cause, after all.

Her tone softens, wanting to close in but uncertain he can take that right now. So, she'll just talk to him. "Myrobalan...I am sorry. I didn't realize that particular magic had an effect on you. Talent or not, I have other magic at my disposal. If working with you on the field means putting hexes and such aside, I'm willing to do that. Your comfort matters to me."

"I can't ask that."

His reply is slow in coming, forced out through a throat half-closed, a jaw clenched tight against a scream. (Buttons has tucked his head beneath his remaining wing and scarcely seems to mind Myr's hands digging into his feathers.) "My c, comfort isn't worth someone's death." Nor can he summarily demanding all of the Inquisition's entropy mages avoid their chosen school--but that's a further elaboration he can't force into words, try as he might.

Instead: "And you can't--you can't spare me from a Venatori mage." Or a terror demon. Or anything else hostile they might come across that could bend entropy to its command.

Inessa's response is quiet but firm. "No, I can't. But you're my friend, Myrobalan, and I have other magic at my disposal. It's not the hardship you think it is, for me to use another kind while in your presence. Rift magic, ice magic...I'll be fine, trust me."

Potato makes herself known again with a low rumble, and Inessa pats her. "Yes, I know I have you, too."

OPEN ↠ HARING EVENT

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