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( closed ) PLAYER PLOT: STILL WATERS
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.
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. |
PROMPTO
It would seem familiar, because that is almost exactly what is happening. They stand in the dark, and beyond a screen, beyond some barrier, there lies a city at night. It is like no city any of the others will have seen before. The buildings are sprawling, the road smooth and hard, with lines of white paint on it. There is bright, unnatural light breaking up the darkness, and strange metal and glass vaults line the road.
Lupeo clicks the device in her hand, an the angle shifts slightly, and then slightly more, until the fourth frame has a collection of people that may only be recognisable to Prompto.
"Insomnia. What an interesting name for home." Another click. The pictures are strange, seem to reach out, as though one could just step into them. "What do you call it, when you all take a photograph together, but one of you is holding the camera?"
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Then his friends look back at him from the screen, and his heart leaps into his throat. Noctis... Gladio... Iggy, before he lost his eyesight. Before the awful events of Altissia and everything that followed. He swallows thickly, finally glancing at Lupeo when she asks her question.
"It's... it's called a selfie." But wait- "How do you know what a photo is? Or that that city's Insomnia? How do you know any of this?"
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"I know because you know. I feel because you feel. I grieve with your grief."
She approaches the frame, though her body does not seem to move the same way that others do. "Even those who are with you are not the same as you wish them to be. Is that correct?"
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"And... how can you do that, exactly?" So many alarm bells going off right now. Especially since something about her - all of her - just feels completely off. He can't quite put his finger on it, though.
"I mean, I wish Ignis had his eyesight back. Of course. I'm sure he does, too." Where is she going with this?
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Leaning into the frame, she picks up one of the traffic cones, curious and amused, before gently smoothing a crease in Noctis' clothes, and leaning back out again.
"Ignis could have his sight again. You could have your world again."
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A very great distance. As impossible to move through as that false window, shimmering on its cloth screen. Shadow puppets flushed into colour and life.
Certainly, she's herself unseen.
The buildings are bizarre. Ought to be no more than blocky lines of ink, impossible little curiousities gifted by a face long-vanished. Instead vast, imposing; a veritable fortress of glass and light. Far away.
Prompto isn't — is — it gets complicated, this business of being gone. Enough so that it takes her a time to realize what he's said. What their host (guest? jailor?) has. Wren presses a hand to the veil, not a painting or a door, crooks fingers for the fabric.
They can't reach. Hook instead into something of the space between. A ripple distorts their surroundings brief, artificial. Still once more.
They’re not alone.
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"You can't fix my world, and I doubt you can get me back." And there's the complicated issue of whether or not he really wants to go back, especially after what he's learned is going to happen.
But Iggy's eyesight? Oh, that pulls at him a bit. He wants to ask, he's tempted, but he heard so many warnings...
oh nooooo sorry for my slowness, I lost the notif
She trails off, and her tone is a little amused. "You seem to know a lot about what I can't do."
The dawn is coming. The skyline begins to bleed threads of deep purple and red, and though it is still far off the colours coming through present a sharp contrast with the large buildings. "What do you think losing his eyesight has done to Ignis?"
no worries!
No, no.
"I know it hurts. I've been there to help him walk. I know he'd want it back." He watches the skyline light up. A sight his world would not see for... who knows. Months? Years? His chest feels like it's in a vice, his heart aching at the thought of it all, of what's to come. "But it wasn't an ordinary injury. If you can see Insomnia like in my memory, see my photos like in my memory, then you know what caused that injury. No one's got the ability to undo it." Not in his world, anyway. Except maybe Luna, but at the same time Iggy got that injury, Luna received one that took her life. "And you definitely can't save Eos. There's only one who can."
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She laughs a little, quiet and sad. "It is your own resignation that condemns your friend and your world. Not the reality of all the worlds."
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Maybe...
"Okay. Let's say you could help Ignis. He's not even here." Let's get the obvious out of the way, first.
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Her voice is soothing. "Geography is no great challenge to overcome. If you were to take me with you, though, perhaps that would be swiftest."
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Then it strikes him, what she means. Really means. "...you're a spirit. Spirits possess people. That's what you mean, isn't it?"
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Gently, she lays a hand on Prompto's shoulder. "You have encountered Spirit Healers in your time in this world, yes?"
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"Prompto!" There are many dangers here, more than she can explain but the easiest is what is currently resting its hand on his shoulder. She can't even begin to speak, hurriedly reaching for his elbow to drag him back and to her-- away from the creature.
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Her focus then shifts, narrowed on Lupeo and her usual soft features darken slightly. "And whatever this thing is cannot help. It is not a spirit of love nor compassion or even wisdom. It seeks to dominate, not coexist-- the sort of spirit that would turn a mage into an abomination and wreck misery on whomever it came across."
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She shakes her head, holding her hand out in offering, an appeal to return to her, after being pulled away.
"Even your beloved wants to bring an end to the possibility. Even her."
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Not in the Fade, at least; here he’s whole and as he was before the fall of Hasmal’s tower, hazel eyes flickering curiously over the mess of scenery assembled—lingering on Prompto and Saoirse. (Always good, to see friends, however dire the circumstances. And how suited they are for each other!)
“Saoirse is right—the demon’s offering what can’t be done.”
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He doesn't know. He just doesn't know. What does he do? He clutches his head, fingers digging into his scalp. What he wouldn't give to have Iggy himself here, or Aranea, or someone to-
“They might not. But they’d try for one of their own.”
Prompto's head snaps up, surprised to see... is that Myr? Astrals, he almost didn't recognize him without the blindfold.
“If It were possible, d’you think I’d go about as I do?”
No, no he wouldn't. And if anyone can speak to that, it's Myr. Still, it's hard, having that last bit of hope crushed; his shoulders sag with the feeling. There's no helping Ignis. But at least he has an answer, because Myr and Saoirse both wouldn't lie to him.
"...thank you." He smiles at Myr. "I just hoped - well, even if there was a way, that's Iggy's choice, not mine." His hand reaches over to give Saoirse's hand a squeeze before he turns to Lupeo. "Sorry. I might be a rifter, but that doesn't mean they don't care about me."
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There is a momentary beeping sound, a flicker of light. Something distinctly unnatural, and less in the manner of magic and more the unhealthy greenish white of fluorescents. Lupeo begins to twist, body falling away as though charred, black ashes peeling off like burned paper carried on the breeze, blue coals and black smoke coming up in the spaces where Lupeo's skin had once been.
They are viewing Insomnia through a window no longer, and are instead in the cold metal of a laboratory. Modern, though, utterly alien to the likes to Myr and Saoirse and even Lupeo, but that just makes it all the more exciting.
"Unit zero-five-nine-five-three-two-three-four confirmed.
Warning: this unit has been compromised. Initiating retrieval of compromised unit."
Retrieval. Compromised.
Her voice is so different; mechanical, detached, the words shaped unnaturally, without the natural flow of speech. There is a sound like air being released, pressure relieved, and Saoirse and Myr are contained in glass tubes, touched with a strange green light. (They are not the only capsules. They are not the only figures encased.)
"They did care. But your old friends used to, as well. You held on so desperately."
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Prompto sucks in a breath, body rigid in fear and shock as the scene unfurls around him. The rows of tubes, the noises, the lights - it's all the same. He's back in that awful place, the place of his "birth". Short of Verstael or Ardyn showing up, it's a scene straight from his memory. What little stability and confidence he got from Saoirse and Myr quickly evaporates as panic sets in.
"What did you do to Saoirse and Myr?!" he demands as he searches the glass tubes, heart slamming against his chest with each one he passes. "None of my friends are 'old', they're all still my friends!"
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The voice twists, distorts. Echoes now, along the rows, an oddly polished, posh element to it.
There's no solid form, or at least, not one easily visible amongst the glass tubes of clones. So similar to Prompto, if Prompto had not yet acquired his spark. They are just bodies, suspended, left without personhood.
"You were made to bring their destruction."
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The clones of him - his brothers in a twisted way - make him recoil. He hates looking in the tubes, and yet he keeps trying. He has to find Myr and Saoirse.
"But that's not what I am. I'm their friend. Ignis said I told them and they accepted me." He tries to find the source of the voice, too, but he can't see anyone else outside the rows and rows of clones around them. "Now tell me where Saoirse and Myr are!"