( 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

[sulena]

Throughout all her traveling after the fall of the Circles, the Anderfels was not a location she had visited often or ventured into beyond the main capital city and for good reason. The harsh cracked and arid landscape was always the biggest concern especially when traveling by herself with the heat a close second.

But how could Saoirse forget the sand storms? She admiring the sight of the salt cliffs before them one moment, eyes fixated on the Circle when a whistle of wind and sudden swell gets her attention behind them. With the Circle still a dangerous hike up a the cliffside there were not many choices left to them.

"We can't risk trying to get to the Circle," she says. Already she has to raise her voice above the whistling wind growing around them. "We might find a cave to take shelter in for the meantime."

[dashing]

Herian nods her agreement, squinting a little against the lash of how air and dirt over her skin.

"Enchanter Ceallach is correct." The shadow of the rocks ahead of them have some promise, even if they are not particularly reassuring. She shoulders the pack she's carrying, and extends her hand to help steady the person behind her up a steep and slippery stretch of rocks. Well, equal parts steady, and just outright pull them up if necessary.

"We must move quickly."

[byblow]

Steady. Mostly steady. Thanks. He'd like to see Herian pull him up anything.

Actually, he would really like that, it'd be something to see—

"Are you sure?" he says, as he turns around to offer the same hand to whoever is behind him. Alistair has never really liked the Anderfels. There was something to be said for feeling necessary, with the constant threat of darkspawn here, and revered, with the Wardens protecting every village because the king wouldn't, but those things were drowned out by all the things to be said about sand. And horrible death. Surrounded by sand. But he's making the best of it now! "I was planning on a mosey. Maybe a saunter."

Maybe his goal is to make Herian regret giving him a hand. Maybe that.

[faithlikeaseed]

"Take it all the way down to an amble on a lark?" Myr quips, not shy about clutching at Alistair's forearm to steady himself as he finds his footing on the slope. Windblown sand--and wind, and gravity--makes it all a mite bit perilous for a long teetering moment--but he makes it, and bestows a grateful pat on his impromptu support.

"Tell me you've got something in sight up there." He's got to raise his voice to a near-shout as he turns back into the wind, hand stretched out for the next in the line to take. (No stranger to sandstorms, he, though they'd had the luxury in Hasmal's Circle of riding them out behind solid walls. Could they button down among the surrounding rocks if there wasn't a cave? Maybe, with two and a half knight-enchanters between them, they could keep barriers going long enough...)

[crowncitizen]

Seeing Myr sway a little, Prompto reaches out for him, but Alistair beats him to it. Once he's sure Myr's steady, he leans around and shouts, "There're rocks up that way. Can we hurry/mosey/amble/skip over to those? They look big enough to work until this passes." Insomnia saw its share of sandstorms, though the barrier kept them at bay. Still, looking at them from inside the city - and having almost been caught in one once way back - he knows they need to get to shelter now. "I don't think we're gonna have time to find someplace else."

[limier]

"Fucksakes,"

Wren mutters from the back, foot skittering on a rock with a wince. The sandstorm's a rising drone. She opens her mouth to shout something, cut off abruptly by a choked smother of grit.

A head thrown behind an arm, and anyone still behind her will be shoved unceremoniously ahead and down. The sky darkens above them, billows with dirt that to Alistair might prickle uncomfortably of Blight. Not enough to taint blood —

Well, unless they keep breathing it. Eyes begin to sting. Soft tissue might scratch or bleed, and what words they’ve just said will have to do; they'll be the last audible a while. The desert roars.

The boulders grant some shelter, not enough. Still, pressing onwards will reveal a depression in the rocks ahead, swollen with greater shade. The air about it feels somehow different. Cooler, even as the temperature drops about them, sky blotted out almost whole. Something in it calls.

The entrance to the cave is blocked by scree, shale, and the broken head of an enormous statue (A stag? Too eroded to tell).

Weight beyond that which hands might move. Greater force will be required.

[dashing]

Once Herian is satisfied Alistair is steadied, she looks to Wren and to the storm beyond her. She jumps back down the rocks, dislodging pebbles as she goes. They don't have time for Wren to hobbles, and she wraps an arm around Wren's waist without pausing for permission.

"We stay together, Knight-Lieutenant."

[faithlikeaseed]

Myr’s at less of a disadvantage in the choking murk, without eyes to shield from the dust or need for sight. The slot between the rocks is easy enough to follow—in, out of the wind, in toward the cold—until he fetches up against the broken rock stacked in their way. Dead end? Or—a thump with his staff yields evidence there’s something behind all that rock, faintest shivering intimations of hollow.

We have a problem, he wants to yell back to the others, and, Get Knight-Enchanter Voss! but opening his mouth to do so leaves him sputtering and spitting grit.

Well, so. Best to deal with that, first.

He sketches a glyph at the boulder’s foot in careful urgency—repulsion, thorned here and there with odd signs—and a bubble of relative calm pops into life. It won’t last long in the grinding, howling storm—but it should give the others the breathing room to do something about the blockage.

[galvanising]

Nell has come prepared--her last visit to the Anderfels only some weeks past, no need to go digging up deeper memories even if this wind has suddenly uncovered long-lost traces--and as the storm howled nearer has wound her scarf around her head, covering nose and mouth and providing at least some shield for her eyes.

She's avoided Wren's grab and shove and moved up the hill past the Templar on her own, leading with a shoulder and a hand cupped over her eyes, none spared to help. Herian's coming anyway. Nell passes her as well on the way, and lingers only a moment behind the boulders before making for the cave mouth. She steps into Myr's bubble of calm, and requires only a moment to squint at the rubble blocking their path.

This brief respite from the sand provides none from the noise, so it's with a hand on Myr's shoulder that she directs him to back up. Even over the wind, they'll hear the crash that follows, as Nell lifts that stag's head (or whatever) into the air and, with a thrust of her staff, sends it crashing through the barrier, no concern spared for whatever might be behind it.

gently GMs

[dashing]

The sound of the sculpture, whatever it might have been, ripping away from the mountainside is almost swallowed by the oncoming storm. The wind seems to become more ferocious, more frenzied, with each moment, sheets of sand being whipped from the terrain to render any exposed skin raw. Those inside the barrier fare a little better, but the storm's fury is escalating quickly.

As Nell drives her staff forward, the rocks, held stubbornly in place for many years, long enough for this entranceway to be forgotten, crash inward. Not all are cleared - one particularly stubborn, giant boulder (more like a slice of mountainside than a boulder, truthfully) remains closer to the cave mouth - but Nell has successfully cleared away most of them, allowing more than enough space for three or so people at a time to move through the cave's mouth.