( closed ) PLAYER PLOT: STILL WATERS

[dashing]

WHO: Alistair, Herian, Myr, Nell, Prompto, Saoirse, Wren.
WHAT: ( Plot post ) Shady rumours concerning the Tranquil lead to a remote Circle in the Northern Anderfels. Its relative isolation from the rest of Thedas has prevented news from reaching the Inquisition sooner. Our crack team investigates.
WHEN: forward dated, around 21st-ish Cloudreach
WHERE: Salzklippe, the Anderfels.
NOTES: Content Warning for violence, murder, and other grim Dragon Age things. The grief demon threads in particular include themes of death, suicide, and gore. Please add additional warnings to subject lines where necessary.

— Making the approach (group thread) — Into the catacombs (individual starters) — Discovering the lake (group thread) — Into the tower (individual starters) — Bossfight (multiple group-ish) — Later Stuff (individual starters) FOR GROUP THREADS: in order to keep threads moving, I will be aiming to do a GM tag once every 24 hours. Don't worry about a strict tagging order, but please don't tag more than three times every 24 hours, just to make sure no one gets left behind.

Comments

NELL

[dashing]

The town they are walking through - because they are walking, now - is beautiful. Houses stand each side of the cobblestone walkway, the exterior walls rendered in a range of colours from delicate cream to a summery yellow, to warm, vibrant reds, and every tone and variation between. There is a fountain in town, a vast one, with three tiers and stone horses standing to mark north, south, east and west. Children clamber over the stone, two of them doing their utmost to get onto one of the horse's backs. Another sits reading at the edge with her feet in the water. The fourth and fifth stand in the water, one of them guiding the water into icy shapes with her hands, tongue poked between her lips in concentration, as the other watches in a sort of enthralled silence, trying to follow suit and only managing to make little misshapen blobs of ice that fall into the water with little dignity or ceremony.

The town moves about them, as though it is no concern. A baker's assistant looks harried as he scurries past with trays of bread for delivery, and a woman with knitting in her lap looks at the children fondly, before calling out to one of them in Ander to make sure he doesn't tear his shirt, because it would be the second one this week.

Lupeó picks up an apple from a merchant's cart and bites into it, so the sweet scent of it carries on the air. "What comes next, Nell?"

[galvanising]

It is a beautiful town, a picture-book vision of village life. Seductive, certainly, but there's no escaping the incongruities. Nell trails her fingers along the corner of the cart, searching for a splinter in the wood, waiting for her skin to catch on an imperfection, pressing down in search of that pricking pain. It doesn't come.

She picks up an apple and tosses it from hand to hand, the fruit making a hollowish thwock as it's thumped into her palm with force. "Probably a sandstorm," she replies, shrugging, "How the fuck should I know?"

[dashing]

Lupeó chuckles a little. The more perceptive ones are more difficult, and yet so often so much more rewarding. Their sharpness, that caution, can be rooted in terribly injuries.

"This is the future you're fighting for. A future where... magic can exist in the streets without mages suffering, and without others living in fear."

With a little shrug, Lupeó snatches up the apple, and takes a bite from it. "Your presence here does not mean a storm has to follow. You can simply... be."

[galvanising]

Nell frowns as the apple is plucked from her grasp, taken and devoured, just like that. She claps her hands together, twice as loud as the sound of the apple out of spite, but then keeps them clasped, looking around again at the town around them. The children at the fountain, the bits of ice catching the light before they meet the water. A mother's voice hanging on Ander's long vowels, lilting through the cadence that still lingers in Nell's own accent when she isn't careful. She wonders if that voice is meant to recall her mother, if it's been plucked from some inaccessible depth of her own memory.

Whatever.

She shakes her head, and keeps shaking it. "In the Anderfels? I'm not delusional; no mage would ever be safe here even if we win. No great loss, since it's a Blighted shithole. I wouldn't want to be here if I could." That she can't is implied, but then a demon hardly requires implication, does it?