WHO: Adalia, Alistair, Freddie, Herian, Loghain, Medicine Seller, Melys, Nathaniel, Notas, Teren. WHAT: Rescuing a king, maybe. WHEN: Early Wintermarch WHERE: An island off Seheron, the Fade NOTES: Violence, disturbing imagery.
The Tevinter patrollers are complicit by association in keeping Maric in chains, and are therefore most assuredly dead where Loghain leaves them. He has the decency to ensure they die quickly and quietly, at least, their bodies hidden. No sense in prolonging their suffering, or drawing undue attention.
Yet at Alistair's words, he stops short and turns to give him a look that might be incensed, were he looking at anyone else. (If he'd known that, maybe he'd've held off stabbing the last guard in the back--until after he'd been interrogated, anyway.)
The spike of his temper is short-lived. He takes a breath, masters himself, and nods in somewhat reluctant agreement with the Orlesian scholar. "I suspect that we will know we are headed in the right direction, once we are met with heavier resistance."
For a man in wooden sandals and carrying at least an extra forty pounds, the Medicine Seller moved with almost unsettling quiet.
He seemed perfectly inclined to ignore the bickering, his head tilt upwards and expression focused like an animal trying to catch a scent.
It was like trying to discern what the hottest part of a bonfire was while standing in the middle of the blaze. It was, for lack of a better word, overwhelming to every sense he had.
Alistair endures the what and Maker's Breath and incensed looks with relative good cheer, holding up both hands in mock surrender—his fault, very sorry, left the secret fortress map back home in his secret fortress map cabinet, you know how it goes—and then turns one of those hands to snap and point approvingly at Freddie.
"Knew we brought an Orlesian for a reason," he whispers back.
The Medicine Seller he claps on the shoulder, as if they're friends. He manages not to say yes you are. This is serious.
"Anyway, no real direction to go right now except up and inward," he goes on, gesturing ahead.
Ahead is a staircase only wide enough to allow walking up two by two. At the top—currently unseen—there's another set of guards in the corridor, posted outside of opposing doorways and whispering back and forth about what's for dinner. (Chowder, they hope.)
While Alistair's easygoing manner might not alleviate her concerns on its own, the sense offered by others is reassuring. Granted an Orlesian noble and a man whose honour was set permanently in question during the Fifth Blight, but now is not the time to begin a debate on such things.
Herian starts moving with the rest, starting to quietly cast barriers over whoever is leading the group, and trying to gradually keep casting over each of them. (Unless, of course, they've previously expressed that they don't want any of that gross mage stuff near them, in which case she will spare them.)
Teren, as usual in these situations, is silent and everywhere, often appearing at the last and most opportune moment to deliver the killing blow to any more difficult combatants. She walks along the walls as well, carefully, ball-of-foot first, testing for pressure plates and tripwires ahead of the others. When they reach the stairs, she holds out a hand and tilts her head, listening. Then, glancing around to all the mages, she nudges her head upward. They can do some kind of area effect, right? Without anyone having to aim? Magic???
Loghain stops short at Teren's gesture, follows her glance to the mages, and parses her meaning neatly. He sends a similarly questioning look from Herian to the Medicine Seller.
(someone knock the guards out before Loghain kills them.)
Adalia has been keeping to the back of the group, aware of both her ineffectual nature when it comes to sneaking and the noise inherent in her chosen field — it's impossible to get off a quiet Thunderwave, and she has no desire to be the one who fucks things up here. Now, rather than move forward herself, she chooses two out of the eight of them — Herian and the Medicine Seller, based on Loghain's look — and casts Haste.
Fly, pretties, fly, you have a minute to be whirlwinds of terror.
It's been a tie, looking back and forth between Alistair and Nate like each might've just said the stupidest thing she's ever heard (and she hears herself speak every day) — but the Orlesian's got the right of it. This whole place is like one of those Tethras things, down to all four dark-and-broodings in present company.
But they're staring now, and there's whispers up ahead, and the elf in back's doing something weird with the air, and not for all the void is Melys going to stand around to see what that's about.
"Fuck it," She hefts her crowbar and steps up into the hallway, light-footed and terribly exposed. Cheerfully: "Howdy."
Iron smashes it into one guard's face. This does nothing about the other, who's armed at close range and far from pleased.
Edited (DOUBLE EDITS SORRY i misread things like a chump) 2018-01-15 09:46 (UTC)
The downside of all this build up is that, for Herian's part, her magical specialisations are not those best suited to tact. Entropy is beyond her, and though lightning and fire willcertainly incapacitate, they will not necessarily do it quietly. One because people on fire are rarely quiet, and two because lightning has a certain ambience. Spirit blades are not designed with incapacitation in mind.
So, in a way, Melys deciding to be aggressively Melys is something of a relief, because Herian's best option was to mind blast them and hope that their being thrown backwards against a wall wasn't too obvious, and she was really hoping that the Medicine Seller might have something a little more subtle at his disposal.
Instinctively following after that crowbar manoeuvre, not eager to let the spell cast on her go to waste or allow a party member to be injured, she fade steps forward and smacks the remaining guard's head into the wall to render him unconscious, before (very thoughtfully) catching his slumping body to quietly set it down on the floor.
Nathaniel appears behind the first guard, the one Melys smashed in the face, taking advantage of his imbalance and covering his face with a drugged cloth. Nate is usually a bit too tall to be stealthy and has to time things just so to pull it off. In a few seconds, the guard is limp in his arms. He lets him slump to the floor.
Pinching her brow, Teren endures this mess without shouting at anyone, but definitely has the look as though she'd very much have done it differently. Stepping up after the others, with both guards unconscious, she casually rifles through their pockets and pouches. Keys, potions, whatever they have that the party might need, nothing is safe. They should've thought of that before taking a post here.
Herian is dutifully aware of Teren's suffering, without feeling the need to comment on it. If it were a stealthy mage they were in need of, she could make far better recommendations than herself.
"Do you wish us to separate to cover more ground, or stay together?"
Quietly, to Alistair (and his cluster of Wardens) as she keeps a watchful eye cast further along the corridor. Separating was risky, but it was not as though staying grouped together was without dangers.
Well, that's a high energy spell she's not getting back anytime soon. Adalia sighs, but groups up closer to Loghain and nods emphatically.
"I agree. There's a cardinal rule among adventurers where I'm from: Don't split the party. We shouldn't separate, for any reason. It sounds like a good idea but it is always, always a bad one."
Alistair would be perfectly willing to go first, what with the shield and the armor, but it usually isn't the best idea. It usually means he finds traps—or enemy combatants—with his face. And the lighter-footed and magically-inclined ahead obviously don't need him. It still sits wrong, though, letting anyone else here except Loghain take the bigger risk, so he tries to comfort himself by taking up the rear instead, serving as a large barrier between the group and anyone who might try to come up on them from behind.
He alternates between looking back down the stairs and at Teren as she rifles through the pockets of the felled guards. She's not without luck: in addition to some coins and miscellaneous personal possessions, there's a ring of keys. To what? Who knows.
"We can split the rooms," he says without looking up, half to spite Loghain, with a wavy gesture to the doors lining the corridor ahead, "but no one wander off."
It isn’t a large corridor. No one will be out of earshot if anyone else.
“They’re holding him for his blood,” he explains—new information, maybe, for some—“so if you find. You know. Blood. Or anything about dragons, because are so interesting and I love them.”
He’s told more convincing lies in his life. But he isn’t going to announce even to this well-vetted and extremely trustworthy group that the Theirin dynasty was potentially built on freaky reaver bullshit.
However they progress, together or in one massive pack, the rooms will bear fruit. The ones on the right are mainly storage for armor, weapons, and weird artifacts both identifiable and not. The couple of doors on the left all lead to the same long chamber housing a shelf of books, a giant map not unlike the one in Skyhold’s war room, and a single snoring figure slumped over onto the map table.
She’ll lift her head when someone enters, but only to squint, clearly baffled.
The figure slumped and snoring over the map table will awaken to the sight of Loghain staring down at her coldly, his gaze clearly trying to assess whether she's a risk or simply a liability. "You'd do well to keep quiet," he tells her coldly--and, if she does, he'll take a look at that giant map.
Nathaniel leaves Loghain to study the map and nocks an arrow just in case the woman gets any ideas. He peers over the books in the shelf, curious as to what the magister studied in this room.
The map is all of Thedas, scattered with white stones—and two, emitting gentle like, like the lyrium glowstones in Orlais. The books are primarily draconology and old legends. And the woman is an elf, once she turns her head and her hair shifts to show her ears, and older, though not quite old.
She shakes her head at Loghain, but that seems to be instinct rather than disagreement, because her eyes go wide and her mouth stays shut. She looks from him, to the head of Nathaniel's arrow to anyone else in the room, and whispers—keeping quiet, doing well—"Are you here for Titus?"
"Yes," Alistair says from the doorway. It's not quite true; they're here for Maric. But Titus is going to die before they leave, too.
The woman exhales, then says, "Can I go with you when you leave?"
"Yes," Alistair says again. Anyone who disagrees with him can fight him. Or use logic. Whichever. But he doesn't anticipate this lot arguing with him about taking someone who wants to leave off the island, not when their hearts bleed enough to get them here in search of a dead king in the first place.
He doesn't leave the doorway, busy keeping half an eye on the end of the corridor in case someone else comes looking, but he glances in and raises his eyebrows questioningly at Nathaniel. What, as they say in the Marches, is up?
Herian arrives with a sword hanging at her side - a new sword, rather, with a strange translucent quality to it.
"We should take the map, mark the stones locations," more to herself than any of the others in particular, looking for a quill, something she can use to mark the map. She's not sure of the significance, but it could be something useful, even if she has exactly no idea what the map might mean just yet. A quick glance to the woman, after Alistair confirms that she will be coming with them. She has no protest to make; she's not about to deny someone freedom. After just a moment of hesitation, she asks the woman, "Do you know what the map is for?"
Maybe it won't be relevant for anything, but it could be.
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Yet at Alistair's words, he stops short and turns to give him a look that might be incensed, were he looking at anyone else. (If he'd known that, maybe he'd've held off stabbing the last guard in the back--until after he'd been interrogated, anyway.)
The spike of his temper is short-lived. He takes a breath, masters himself, and nods in somewhat reluctant agreement with the Orlesian scholar. "I suspect that we will know we are headed in the right direction, once we are met with heavier resistance."
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He seemed perfectly inclined to ignore the bickering, his head tilt upwards and expression focused like an animal trying to catch a scent.
It was like trying to discern what the hottest part of a bonfire was while standing in the middle of the blaze. It was, for lack of a better word, overwhelming to every sense he had.
"...Strange," he remarked, astute as ever.
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"Knew we brought an Orlesian for a reason," he whispers back.
The Medicine Seller he claps on the shoulder, as if they're friends. He manages not to say yes you are. This is serious.
"Anyway, no real direction to go right now except up and inward," he goes on, gesturing ahead.
Ahead is a staircase only wide enough to allow walking up two by two. At the top—currently unseen—there's another set of guards in the corridor, posted outside of opposing doorways and whispering back and forth about what's for dinner. (Chowder, they hope.)
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Herian starts moving with the rest, starting to quietly cast barriers over whoever is leading the group, and trying to gradually keep casting over each of them. (Unless, of course, they've previously expressed that they don't want any of that gross mage stuff near them, in which case she will spare them.)
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When they reach the stairs, she holds out a hand and tilts her head, listening. Then, glancing around to all the mages, she nudges her head upward. They can do some kind of area effect, right? Without anyone having to aim? Magic???
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(someone knock the guards out before Loghain kills them.)
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Fly, pretties, fly, you have a minute to be whirlwinds of terror.
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But they're staring now, and there's whispers up ahead, and the elf in back's doing something weird with the air, and not for all the void is Melys going to stand around to see what that's about.
"Fuck it," She hefts her crowbar and steps up into the hallway, light-footed and terribly exposed. Cheerfully: "Howdy."
Iron smashes it into one guard's face. This does nothing about the other, who's armed at close range and far from pleased.
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So, in a way, Melys deciding to be aggressively Melys is something of a relief, because Herian's best option was to mind blast them and hope that their being thrown backwards against a wall wasn't too obvious, and she was really hoping that the Medicine Seller might have something a little more subtle at his disposal.
Instinctively following after that crowbar manoeuvre, not eager to let the spell cast on her go to waste or allow a party member to be injured, she fade steps forward and smacks the remaining guard's head into the wall to render him unconscious, before (very thoughtfully) catching his slumping body to quietly set it down on the floor.
That mage subtlety, guys. It's great.
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Stepping up after the others, with both guards unconscious, she casually rifles through their pockets and pouches. Keys, potions, whatever they have that the party might need, nothing is safe. They should've thought of that before taking a post here.
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"Do you wish us to separate to cover more ground, or stay together?"
Quietly, to Alistair (and his cluster of Wardens) as she keeps a watchful eye cast further along the corridor. Separating was risky, but it was not as though staying grouped together was without dangers.
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He looks to the others, gauging their opinions.
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"I agree. There's a cardinal rule among adventurers where I'm from: Don't split the party. We shouldn't separate, for any reason. It sounds like a good idea but it is always, always a bad one."
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He alternates between looking back down the stairs and at Teren as she rifles through the pockets of the felled guards. She's not without luck: in addition to some coins and miscellaneous personal possessions, there's a ring of keys. To what? Who knows.
"We can split the rooms," he says without looking up, half to spite Loghain, with a wavy gesture to the doors lining the corridor ahead, "but no one wander off."
It isn’t a large corridor. No one will be out of earshot if anyone else.
“They’re holding him for his blood,” he explains—new information, maybe, for some—“so if you find. You know. Blood. Or anything about dragons, because are so interesting and I love them.”
He’s told more convincing lies in his life. But he isn’t going to announce even to this well-vetted and extremely trustworthy group that the Theirin dynasty was potentially built on freaky reaver bullshit.
However they progress, together or in one massive pack, the rooms will bear fruit. The ones on the right are mainly storage for armor, weapons, and weird artifacts both identifiable and not. The couple of doors on the left all lead to the same long chamber housing a shelf of books, a giant map not unlike the one in Skyhold’s war room, and a single snoring figure slumped over onto the map table.
She’ll lift her head when someone enters, but only to squint, clearly baffled.
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If not, well. They'll deal with her.
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She shakes her head at Loghain, but that seems to be instinct rather than disagreement, because her eyes go wide and her mouth stays shut. She looks from him, to the head of Nathaniel's arrow to anyone else in the room, and whispers—keeping quiet, doing well—"Are you here for Titus?"
"Yes," Alistair says from the doorway. It's not quite true; they're here for Maric. But Titus is going to die before they leave, too.
The woman exhales, then says, "Can I go with you when you leave?"
"Yes," Alistair says again. Anyone who disagrees with him can fight him. Or use logic. Whichever. But he doesn't anticipate this lot arguing with him about taking someone who wants to leave off the island, not when their hearts bleed enough to get them here in search of a dead king in the first place.
He doesn't leave the doorway, busy keeping half an eye on the end of the corridor in case someone else comes looking, but he glances in and raises his eyebrows questioningly at Nathaniel. What, as they say in the Marches, is up?
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"We should take the map, mark the stones locations," more to herself than any of the others in particular, looking for a quill, something she can use to mark the map. She's not sure of the significance, but it could be something useful, even if she has exactly no idea what the map might mean just yet. A quick glance to the woman, after Alistair confirms that she will be coming with them. She has no protest to make; she's not about to deny someone freedom.
After just a moment of hesitation, she asks the woman, "Do you know what the map is for?"
Maybe it won't be relevant for anything, but it could be.