faderift | the days that bind us

A. DIVERSION

It has been a long day of waiting, and the stress has only increased since the infiltration team left to get into position. Finally there's a signal from the team, a brief flare of flame, waved back and forth three times: the sign that indicates that they are in position. It's time to create a diversion to draw out the forces in the fortress, ensuring they don't get a chance to run to the aid of their mages before the infiltrators can neutralize them, and clearing a path for the team to get back out.

So go on. Divert.

B. BATTLE

It's pitch black outside except for the torches borne by the fighters who come streaming out of the fortress to see what's happening, and the occasional glimpse of moonlight finally sneaking through the persistent cloud-cover. Few of those present are competent enough to fight with one hand while holding a torch with the other, and the majority of them end up on the ground within moments after the battle is joined, dropped in favor of swords, axes, clubs, even a couple polearms. Of course once they're left on the damp ground to be rained on, the torches go out in moments, leaving the battlefield extraordinarily dark, lit only provided by the fire and flashes of lightning the Inquisition's mages provide themselves. It makes distinguishing friend from foe difficult, so it's helpful that so many of the enemy seems to enjoy spouting verses from the Chant or shouting insults at the mages.

The mob consists primarily of a half-trained civilian militia in homemade armor, as well as a few of their dogs. Many of their swords are edged with magebane. It's not enough to incapacitate anyone for more than a few second, but enough to cause problems if you're caught by a blade. And among them, too, are people wielding the same abilities as Templars, albeit with little of the discipline or finesse one might expect from the Order. They're all impassioned—one might even say fanatical—and won't go down without being forced to.

[ ooc | you can make your own adventures fighting the general mob as new replies to this comment, and/or tag into the specific named enemies in the comments below. the fortress and its occupants can both be wrecked without repercussions, as they're isolated and there aren't any innocent bystanders present, so have at 'em. ]

Commands for the mob are shouted into the dark by a Fereldan voice, one attached to a middle-aged man in stripped-down Templar armor. He’s no one anyone would recognize, however, from any Circle or post. He wields a Templar’s abilities to silence magic and lash out at those using it, as well as two magebane-dipped knives deployed in a quick, backstabbing style that’s more often learned in alleys than abbeys.

Whatever else he is or isn’t, however, he’s certainly in charge of the fight, marshaling the militiamen into something that resembles order. Finding him in the frenzy and silencing his orders, one way or another, will leave the rest in chaos.

[ ooc | this fight won't be gmed; use the info provided to control the npc yourselves, and let us know if you have questions! it's up to you whether the npc is killed or spared at the end. ]

The armor says everything Anders feels he needs to know. This is yet another who misses being able to hurt mages, and it is time to hurt him in return since nothing else will serve as a teacher. It's... a little disquieting to wonder briefly if that's something he would have thought before Justice, but he pushes that away. He is who he is due to everything in the past, not possession alone.

Anders shoots lightning at a tree behind the man who seems to be in charge. It falls, but doesn't hit the Templar. That's fine. A tree killing the man would be far too merciful. It does, however, have the Templar glancing behind himself for a brief enough second that Anders feels safe enough to reveal his location a second time with a second lightning bolt that streaks brightly forward to strike the man's armor and stagger him back some.

Edited 2018-02-26 01:17 (UTC)

Norrington takes this moment to press through from the side, putting up his shield to slam his way to the man wearing Templar armor. Templar armor. Armor he's not fit to spit upon, as far as James is concerned.

As the lightening strikes, James uses that advantage to slam a miltiaman into the false Templar's back, hoping to come at the man from both sides of the equation, and distract him from attacking Anders directly. His Knight-Commander armor gleams green, and the dents will be proof to this man that's he's earned his title.

It's nice to not be hit by Silence or Smite for a change, Anders reflects as Norrington swoops in to be a distraction.

The loathsome Templar is staggered again by the slam, turning to face the decent Templar, and Anders smiles coldly. With no hesitation he runs forward. Norrington being there means Anders can't safely keep simply flinging spells, but that's fine. All it takes is a hand on the enemy's armor to send more lightning into it, painfully partially cooking the man inside the metal shell and making him shout in pain, swinging around with his blade out. It catches Anders in the arm; he's being stupid and taking dumb risks because he's angry and the anger is cover for fear.

"I hear you like hurting people," he says with hatred in his voice, stepping back to be at least out of sword distance, hand on the slice in his arm.

Edited 2018-02-27 22:55 (UTC)

Norrington turned his head and the upper part of his body to bring his sword around, moving to slice open - or off - the blade arm of the false Templar. He doesn't say anything. All he needs to say is with his weapon, his shield, and his cold, cold green gaze as he turns to slam the false Templar with his shied again.

The Templar smirks briefly at Anders, or the question, or both, but Anders doesn't have time to follow up on it before he's being hit by a wave of nausea... and he feels his magic fade. Magebane.

"Maker's bloody everything," he spits, glaring at the Templar who is engaged with Norrington at the moment. He knows better than closing the distance. He knows better than to charge off. But he's gotten sloppy and now he has to not just survive being in the middle of a battlefield without magic, he needs to keep helping. Staff, then, with the attached blade as he fights a battle against losing the last meal he'd eaten. There's a splitting headache building in the back of his head too, but he's not ready to surrender.

"Norrington! Watch your flank!" There are militiamen closing in around the Templar pair and Anders has a strong preference about which one he'd care to see survive today. Back in he goes, swinging his staff as he looks for a gap in the already-wounded Templar's armor and finds one - slashing at the back of a knee and getting a decent cut in. He won't be moving much longer if he and Norrington have anything to say about it.

Norrington twisted his body around at Anders's warning, sword coming up to block an oncoming attack towards his face by mere inches. His shield, in the other hand, clipped the Templar bastard by the thigh to take him down to his knees. He twisted again, to bring the shield around into the face of the next militia man coming in for him, weapon raised.

Norrington is paying attention to the militiamen around them, the Templar whose name Anders doesn't care to find out is on his knees, and the action is spread around to the point that he's fairly sure no one is exactly watching him. In this moment of right-here stillness, Anders brings the point of his staff's blade to the Templar's throat.

The man tries to lunge forward on his sliced and bashed legs and fails, hate in his eyes that Anders thinks likely mirrors his own. For so long Anders has worked to be better, but right now the high road is one he absolutely does not want to take. Maybe at the end of the day he's simply not a good person. All that's certain is that when realization enters the Templar's eyes and he sputters something, possibly a plea for his life, possibly insults, Anders hears nothing but a buzz. How many would this man have tortured if they hadn't caught him? How many would have died as the attacks continued to escalate? And how many would have been innocent?

"You will never change," he says, braced to be judge, jury, and executioner... and he hesitates. The Templar starts to laugh as Anders has his own realization - he's not as strong as he thought he was. There's a surge of light before he's hit with the all-too-familiar Smite, burning at him, but he's been burned very recently, hit by lightning very recently, hit by so many things that he's not as shaken as he would have been without the phylactery attacks. As the Templar flips one of his daggers to a throwing position rather than a stabbing one, time seems to slow and Anders drives his staff forward at last, blade through the man's throat before sinking to his knees from the pain.

He loses his grip on his staff but manages to blindly fumble his way to his little belt knife while he rides out the Smite for the over-long few moments it tears at him. There's far more attention now directed his way than he'd like now that their commander's fallen, but at least some of them are breaking and running and it may just buy him enough time to get back to his feet.

Maker be damned! Norrington could hear the man cursing Anders behind him, spitting out Knight Commander ... the rest was lost in the rising rage in Norrington's blood. The Smite trembled through all of them, but unlike Anders, it invigorated him. The militia men in front of him were slammed, and then slashed at the ankles and arms to disable them, caught in chinks of the armor to finish them off.

He heard the gurgle of the Knight Commander's death behind him, saw the men in front of him get that panic, when leadership starts to fall. He held off his assault, shield up, to guard Anders while he recovered.

"Anders! Can you stand, man?"

"Working on it!" His voice is strained, but thankfully he has adrenaline to help combat the pain. Anders grabs for his staff again and on the second swing manages to get hold of it. Then he's using it to get back to his feet, leaning on it and trying to catch his breath.

"I've no magic," he says more quietly when he thinks he's in range for only Norrington to hear him. "I have a dagger, I can watch your back with that, but there's no healing or barriers or the like."

There's still a roll in his stomach and some fog in his head from the magebane, and that's going to last longer than the frustrating lack of ability.

Norrington nodded his head grimly in response to Anders's whispering, holding up his shield at an angle to deflect any projectiles. "Right, stay behind me. They won't be able to flank me but I want to make sure that you are out of range and out of danger."

He'll enjoy the irony later, as he considers his opponents. "There is lyrium, untouched, in my back pouch if you need it." Then he takes his defensive posture, green eyes narrowing.

In the course of the battle, under the cover of darkness, two forms try to slip away deeper into the ruin—something that would be easier if one of them weren’t slow and the other weren’t enormous.

The enormous one is Randall, a young man with hands as large as some helmets and an battle axe that might have been designed for a Vashoth. He’s Fereldan, with the rugged look of a farmer, and at the other’s beck and call. No one will reach Warrick without cutting through Randall first, and no one will cut through him without hearing that his family is dead because of mages and their rebellion and he intends to cut every spellbind down.

The slow one is an old man, making his way with Randall's protection toward one of the back chambers of the old fortress. Age has bent his shoulders and shrunken his frame, but he still holds himself as well as he can like a man more accustomed to being formidable. Once cornered he'll stand his ground, with a sword and shield and a Seeker's ability to burn the lyrium in anyone's blood.

He's Seeker Soren Warrick—former Seeker Soren Warrick, forcibly retired over ten years ago when his age and an entire career investigating apostates left him seeing blood magic in every dark corner and abominations whenever he closed his eyes. (His ire is not solely for mages. He's also likely to treat any Templar like an errant dog that can't be trusted to handle itself without a firm hand.) The Chantry has failed, he'd say, and so has the Inquisition, and if no one else remembers why magic is dangerous, he's going to see that they're reminded.

[ ooc | this fight won't be gmed; use the info provided to control the npc yourselves, and let us know if you have questions! it's up to you whether the npc is killed or spared at the end. ]

"Enough talk... I don't want to hear it anyway, because you're wrong." Kain has heard enough of that anti-mage kind of talk, and he's not going to stand for it now. He came here to fight, to finish this, and that's exactly what he's going to do. So with his sword drawn, he ensures he's got his ring of pain fired up, and charges in, whirling in an especially fierce attack, letting the small aches and pains he's gathered just before this give him strength. He's going to put his Reaver abilities to good use here and now. Swords clash as the battle gets underway.

The Chantry Sister seen before can be found on her knees in a makeshift chapel, reciting the Chant until she's interrupted. She'll make no claim of innocence, with obvious contempt for any mages present that stops just short of spitting, and she'll refuse to answer any questions unless she can do so with the Chant. But she'll cooperate with instructions for however long it takes for her captors' guard to slip—at which point she will unveil magebane-dipped daggers and stab whoever she needs to to make an attempt at escape.

[ ooc | this won't be gmed; use the info provided to control the npc yourselves, and let us know if you have questions! it's up to you whether the npc is killed or spared at the end. ]

Edited 2018-02-27 19:19 (UTC)

“I have faced armies with You as my shield, and though I bear scars beyond counting, nothing can break me except Your absence,” she’s saying when Kostos steps through the door behind her, on her knees before a statue of Andraste and candles left unlit in the chaos. She doesn’t pause. “When I have lost all else, when my eyes fail me and the taste of blood fills my mouth, then in the pounding of my heart I hear the glory of creation.”

She doesn’t pause, and Kostos doesn’t interrupt her. He stands there silently, wondering—hoping, because he’s tired and he’s angry—that his silent presence will unnerve her enough to make her acknowledge him first. If anyone else comes in, he holds up a hand to encourage them to be quiet.

Her shoulders set more tightly and she sits up straighter, maybe nervous, maybe waiting for a knife in the back and planning to accept it with dignity, like a martyr.

They might be an even match for stubbornness.

Maybe it's the Sister that's lucky that someone with more rash impatience shows up--maybe it's Kostos. It's hard to say who is better served by Gareth marching into the room. His mouth is already opened, when Kostos raises a hand. As the man is one of two people that Gareth actually listens to, his mouth shuts again, but is replaced by a grim frown.

He can only take so much of listening to her drone on about the Chant, however, before his clenched fists open and lightning sparks between his palms. "She deserves it," He hisses to Kostos, and only one twitch of a shoulder indicates that the Sister has heard. "And she doesn't seem to care. Give her what she wants, or let her poison more people with her words."

Kostos tenses. It’s subtler than the Sister’s twitching shoulder, mainly in his jaw and the way he doesn’t look at Gareth when otherwise he might have. He says, “She can’t poison anyone from a cell.”

Whether that makes her braver or more desperate to die first, he couldn’t say, but it makes her switch tack, lifting her chin and moving to another canticle entirely: “Foul and corrupt are they who have taken His gift and turned it against His children. They shall be named Maleficar, accursed ones. They shall find no—“

“That’s enough,” Kostos says, finally speaking to her directly, and steps forward. She doesn’t stop talking, doesn't take his offered hand, and when he stoops to try to lift her by the arms, her legs stay limp.

He looks back at Gareth. Beneath the general stress and sobriety in his expression, there's a hint of I cannot fucking believe we have to drag her out of here.

There's a shift in Gareth's attitude when he hears that word. Maleficar. He fully turns towards her, body tense, expression blank, save for a positively dangerous look in his eyes. On top of everything else, on top of all the bullshit these people have put him and his friends through, she dares to try to lecture him, to remind him of just what the damned Maker, the damned Chantry, and everyone else thought of him, because of the magic that he never asked for?

It's never enough for them. The misery of mages is a thirst that the Chantry can't seem to quench. What would be enough for them? When all mages lay dead at their feet?

Gareth takes a few purposeful steps towards the sister, his eyes too wide, too intent. The Sister is no idiot, and is quite aware of what that look means. There's no fear in her expression as she closes her eyes, voice rising, even as Gareth snarls, "I'll show you what a maleficar--"

He freezes midstep, midsentence, to turn to look at Kostos, as though he just remembered that the other man was there. His eyes meet Kostos', an angry fire blazing, willing to burn everything else down with him. It's a look Kostos has undoubtedly seen before, one that usually predicates a great deal of violence. But he doesn't take any more steps forward. His body is still tense, shaking with barely restrained rage. But it is being restrained, which is a fairly new concept in Garethland.

His fists clench, unclench, and finally he hisses, his tone insistent, almost pleading. "She deserves it."

But he doesn't move any further forward. And despite it all, the man who stands there, staring at Kostos, wanting but waiting, is an improvement from the one who had first showed up to this war. Would he have even hesitated? Even when he had joined Nell's cell? It's doubtful.

The waiting gives Anders time to fret, worry, stress... and work. Dragonstone is always in decent supply around the Inquisition, it had been easy to get, and for the other there's always Darktown. The mixture smells awful, but at least thankfully he's mixing and casting on his own off to the side - he's not about to teach this to anyone.

When the signal is given Anders slips from cover toward the ruin, portioning the blend quickly before getting back. It's far less than last time since he needs to destroy far less.

"Close your eyes." It's a hasty whisper to those he's rejoined and then he casts, causing the wall to glow red briefly before it explodes inward, blowing a hole into the ruins. That should absolutely serve as enough diversion to give the other team some cover.

the days that bind us

III. FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT

KNIGHT-COMMANDER BRETT

OTA come join

Re: OTA come join

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SEEKER WARRICK & RANDALL

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SISTER JOCELYN

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Diversion, ota