[Closed] Peeking at the Peak

[justice_is_blond]

WHO: Alistair, Anders, Carver, Loghain, Nate, Teren
WHAT: A happy little field trip out to a happy little place, all in hopes of continuing with a Blight cure.
WHEN: Drakonis 5
WHERE: Soldier's Peak
NOTES: Summarized here.

The Fortress looms before them, cold stone walls protecting cold stone towers, rimmed by cold snowy hills.

It's cold, basically, and somehow manages to look even colder than it feels. The stairs upward are no longer even, crooked and bent as if some giant decided he wanted to romp his way through, and the gates are askew and slightly open.

On the approach there's little noise beyond wind whistling through, until the gate is touched and a flock of ravens bursts upward in a cackling cacophony. Beyond that it's still. Too still, perhaps.

Comments

Courtyard

[justice_is_blond]

Stepping through the gate reveals a large grid of blue-grey squares, surrounded by thorny vines. The trees have been cut down and all is smooth, aside from two columns standing on the floor itself... or more like one and a half standing. The one on the right is intact and topped with a griffon, while the other has been struck by something and crumbled in on itself. On the other side of the courtyard is another set of uneven stairs, this time blocked off by a sealed gate.

The floor hums quietly.

[unshadowing]

Floor shouldn't make that kind of noise. Then again, a lot of things in this world do shit they shouldn't. Really, why is he surprised anymore?

Carver approaches the squares, brow furrowed. "What's it making that humming for? Is there magic in the floor or something?" He looks around; this place has seen better days. A pity, really. This old fortress could be useful. "And who sealed this up? I thought this place was opened."

[mactears]

It was probably too much to hope for an easy entry and exit into this place. Loghain comes to stand behind Carver, grimacing. "Evidently someone has been back and sealed it off," he says, nodding to the sealed gate.

He turns his attention back to the grid in front of them and scrutinizes it, folding his arms over his chest. He scowls. "A puzzle, I suspect."

[justice_is_blond]

"It's just too easy if it's all open," Anders says, peering at the ground. After frowning at it for a few moments he walks back several steps to find a stone. It gets lobbed onto one of the squares and the square turns blue. Nothing else seems to happen.

"Always a good sign when nothing zaps you." He sounds vaguely cheerful; this doesn't seem to be the worst thing to encounter just yet.

[mactears]

"Anders, don't--" But he's already tossed the rock onto the grid, which lands with a harmless clink and tumbles a few more inches before falling still.

Well. At least that particular gamble hadn't resulted in catastrophe. Nevertheless, he gives the mage a moderately annoyed look, before he ventures nearer to inspect the vines. After a moment, he steps over them and onto one of the squares. (Now look who's taking chances?)

[justice_is_blond]

The square under Loghain's feet turns blue as well, and there don't seem to be any other changes.

"Don't?" Anders asks. "I only risked a rock. ... And possibly a horde of demons swarming out, I'll allow for that. But I didn't step on it."

He's mildly amused, stepping out himself noe, onto the square his rock hit. Both his and Loghain's squares go back to dull grey - blue. Anders steps back off; that hadn't seemed to help.

[unshadowing]

Carver watches this impassively, not really expecting or not expecting anything. This is how his life is, who knows what shit will happen? He's long since accepted it, even if he'll still bitch about it.

Luckily nothing explodes or leaps out at them. As Anders and Loghain step around on the squares, Carver notes, "So stepping on them a second time shuts them all off. Do we need to light all of them up?"

[justice_is_blond]

"It's as good a guess as any?" He's fairly content to stay off it now and see what comes of other people stepping on it. It could always be his weight, or something. Anders doesn't really know.

[doneisdone]

Having hung back for a bit, Teren steps onto the squares with the others and, treading with the air of someone waiting for the floor to give way at any moment, she makes her way to the ruined statue and squints at it.

[justice_is_blond]

Each square she steps on lights up underneath her, and there's no change in the humming.

The statue itself looks rough, like it crumbled due to the inexperience of its maker, rather than the years taking too much of a toll on it. There's debris near the bottom, pretty crumbled, but one can make out what might be a stone paw of some sort. Comparison between it and the intact pillar will say that the crumbled one was probably a bit shorter than the whole one.

[byblow]

“Maybe we ought to all lie down on them,” Alistair says. “Roll around a bit. We could shout come get us, demons for good measure.”

He isn’t serious. Neither does he step onto the tiles, though. In his experience, magical items are only so patient and only give you so many chances before they get fed up and try to kill you.

[justice_is_blond]

"I did warn everyone there might be demons," Anders says, giving Alistair an amused look. "...Or I believe I did. I hope I did, but there are always demons. It's basically a given when waking up in the morning."

He hasn't stepped back out yet either. Too many people on it will only cause problems, he feels.

"Maybe we try what Carver said? And we can safely pass on Alistair's, I think." His tone is lightly teasing.

[unshadowing]

"Go ahead, fearless leader," he quips to Alistair. "Do the rolling and tell us how it goes."

Fairly convinced Alistair doesn't intend to do that, Carver steps onto the tile next to his. To test his theory, he then puts his foot down on the one he was just on to see if it does shut off or not.

[justice_is_blond]

The first tile Carver steps onto lights up, but as soon as he steps on the other one again, all lit-up tiles go out, returned to simple grey-blue.

[doneisdone]

With a scoff, Teren rolls her eyes away from Alistair-- then notices all the tiles have gone out. "Carver!" she exclaims, in a tone that sounds accusatory, though she has no idea of what she's accusing him.

Distracted by that only for a moment, she bends to pick up the chunk of sculpture that resembles a paw, and fits it experimentally against the crumbled remains.

[justice_is_blond]

It looks like the paw went with the sculpture, but it's been so long since the thing started to crumble it's not a 100% match.

[unshadowing]

"What? I was testing my theory, and it worked." Why does his ear suddenly ache? "So, best guess is we light up all these tiles and see what happens? Just can't step on the same one twice."

[byblow]

“Or roll,” Alistair says. “Can’t roll on the same one twice.”

Helping. So much helping.

“You’re the clever one, Carver. Why don’t you give it a go? If lighting them all up makes a revenant try to eat you, we’ll be here.”

[justice_is_blond]

"Why don't most of us step on them, while Alistair rolls?" Anders suggests, taking the leftmost row and slowly starting to walk straight forward, one square at a time. The panels light up under his feet. Much to his relief, no demons are popping into existence just yet.

[doneisdone]

"The statues mean something," Teren grumbles, hitting the paw against its crumbled counterpart again without any regard for whether or not it will actually fit (it probably doesn't).
"One's broken but the intact one might give us an idea of what it should look like. Or be doing." She purses her lips and tosses the broken paw uselessly. "People love shit like this."

[unshadowing]

He shoots Alistair A Look. "Why thank you, fearless leader. What ever would we do without your extremely intelligent contributions." Said dryly but without any real venom.

At least Anders is trying to do something. He leaves Teren to ramble about the statues, instead going to the row furthest to the right and starting to walk across. Walk, not roll.

[justice_is_blond]

The forlorn form of the paw flies fruitlessly when flung and facilitates nothing, while the floor flares fluidly to light, flourishing with each footstep.

[byblow]

Alistair meets Carver's look with an unbothered smile. Tone aside, he was serious: he leaves the walking to him and to Anders, or whoever else joins in, because of everyone here he's certainly the one most likely to misstep and ruin everyone else's work, and he listens—for one of those noises that means you've fucked up and are about to die, you know the ones. Loud creaks. Rasping screams. He keeps his hand on the hilt of his sword, casually.