( 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.

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[sulena]

For a moment, Saoirse is stood frozen in place at the sight that has appeared before them. A monstrosity to the memory she has of Hefin from her youth when he and her father would stand about and chat at dusk as her and Herian played in alienage of Starkhaven's muddy streets. It has been so long that she has long forgotten his voice but everything seemingly slams into place once he speaks, she feels nauseated.

"Herian," she mutters through clenched teeth. Once Hefin, or this monster pretending to be him rather, steps forward and touches her friend she is pushing forward with her staff drawn. It is clenched tightly in her fist as she reaches out with her other hand, supporting it around Herian's to gently lead her back and setting the staff between them and whatever he was.

After a careful moment, she steps forward to further put herself between the two. A barrier. Damn this demon for trying to twist the images of her students to use against her but this? No, she wouldn't allow it.

[dashing]

A wide, alarming smile splits Hafin's mouth, draws his mouth in an unnatural line.

The demon's gaze flickers briefly to Wren, to the templar, and then to Saoirse. She transforms and she is— beautiful. Her features seem as though they should be cast in marble, rather than bone and flesh, a statue of a knight. Elodie, Herian thinks, and that thought resonates as a wave, flowing over all present.

"Saoirse," she says, with a smile. "Herian used to speak of you. Her dearest friend. Her dearest love, I thought, for a time. I way almost jealous." A look to Herian, and a smile. "You let me be jealous. You thought it was absurd, and yet— you let it be so. But that was not why I acted as I did. That was duty, my dearest. That was honourable, all that I did, and you cut me down."

Elodie shakes her head. "You are am affront to all that is honourable. That is knighthood. You abandon all that is duty in the name of gratifying your own whims, and you feel no shame for it. Do you, Herian Amsel? Knight Enchanter."

Her tone is derisive and scornful and somehow pleading at the same time, as if she were begging Herian to listen to reason.

"You harp on the value of honour, but have you ever truly considered how selfish you are? How absorbed in your own objectives? The tragedy of the elves, of your family, while you favour that over all the other tragedy that unfolds about us?"

Herian feels frozen, as she lays her hand on top of Saoirse's arm. "You cannot fight this battle for me, mo charaid."

[byblow]

Herian's words aren't meant for him, but they slow him down anyway, more than he was already slowed by finding his way through a shifting haze in search of something solid to hold onto. They slow him, and stop him from trying. Something. Something stupid and Templary. There's Coupe, a few feet or miles away, and she hasn't—

He has his sword in hand, but he doesn't come closer.

[limier]

Alistair — 

Her palm uncurls, presses in his direction (for all that direction has meaning here): hold. It's not the demon she's watching now, or the familiarity it abruptly wears. Her eyes stay fixed on the mages between, the other doesn't move from her blade.

There's more than one danger here.

cw: gore/trauma/death Herian's life is garbage

[dashing]

She draws away from Saoirse, and the others fade from her awareness. It is a demon, she knows it to be, even as it wears Elodie’s face. The Heart of Rage flares in her grip, and for a moment, Elodie looks like something far more terrible. Bones decay, flesh falls away, abscesses drain. Her body contorts.

Anger burns within Herian, fury and grief tangling together almost inextricably. It feels as though her whole body might be set alight. Elodie’s jaw comes apart from her body on one side, her eyes edged with lightning, and then she’s whole again. Another heart beats over her own.
(To the others, the demon is simply a templar, whole and defiant.)

“Do not speak to them.” Not Saoirse, not any of the others. This is my battle. This is my burden. “You acted on your orders, Ser, but where was the duty in them? Annulment is called for only when all mages are beyond hope. Annulment is justified only when a Circle is beyond redemption.”

The demon wearing Elodie’s face ripples with her laughter, before the distorted skin settles. Herian has to shake her head to focus, and for a moment the demon looks intrigued. There’s a whispering in her mind that she can’t make out; Herian grits her teeth against it.

“Herian,” She replies, as though through water. Herian angles her head to dismiss the rush of noise (waves? flames?). “My duty was to follow orders issued by the Chantry, as was yours. To follow orders issued by the Chantry, but you fought against the Annulment. To follow orders issued by the Chantry, but you joined the Inquisition. And when you joined the Inquisition, you promised yourself that you would serve all, but when the chance came to see that your fellow mages attained justice, you claimed duty to turn away. Are you a Knight who believes in protecting the downtrodden, or one who picks and chooses her orders as it suits? Do you only follow whatever whims best serve you?”

It hollows at her. Her jaw clenches (again, harder), and Herian steps towards the demon with her staff raised, light flaring about her hands, and—


Elodie is gone.

Instead, Modestine stands before her, frail. Old. The Senior Enchanter makes a clucking sound, and rests a hand against her lower back, while her gut gapes open, the savage work of a blade. The wound smells of rot, entrails glistening as they catch the light of the flames. Behind her there lie a number of bodies. Young, apprentices.

“Doing whatever suits you again, Amsel? I thought you might have grown out of that, by now.”

One of the bodies moves, pushing up to look at Herian. Half its face caves in, and another reaches to Herian with an arm that ends only in gore. The whispering intensifies, and the flames of her staff burn brighter—

And they’re still once more. Once again, the demon pauses, as if curious, as something’s happened that she hasn’t quite accounted for.

Modestine bows her head. “It’s time to stop being a coward, I think.”

(She can barely make out the words. For a moment, flame races up the wall of the hallway, stone turns to branches in the track of her gaze; she can’t breathe for how hard her heart — why can she feel more than one? — is beating.)

She cannot move. The Fade is changeable, unstable, but her mind feels crowded. The heat of her staff is enough to burn, makes her breath come raw and messy.

“Modestine was a good woman.” Incredibly annoying, but good. “My father was kind. They both gave their lives to protect people they cared for. Give them up.”

The words are a hiss, her shoulders stooped to hold her head up.

(For a moment she is aware of Alistair and of Wren, acutely so. Looming figures, twisted. Alistair’s armour shines under the torch he holds up to a burning alienage, as a redheaded woman claws at windows nailed shut. Saorise on her knees, hands bound, and Wren gauging her neck with her blade, mapping out just where to swing down before one, two, three — )

“Stop!”

It’s not real. It’s not true, it’s not real. She can’t let go of her staff, she can’t move, but it’s not real.

Whatever do you have, Knight Enchanter? This is far more interesting than I would have anticipated.

Images rush. Smoke curls from the ruins of an Orlesian village. She stands in the White Spire, before a pyre of bloating bodies. The Alienage, clutching a purse of river glass, an elven boy with his knife against her throat. She kneels in the dirt, as her ear is carved away, and she can feel too many hearts beating, threatening to crack apart her chest.

Her head spins, eyes struggle to focus. Distance bleeds together, pulls back apart; she braces herself against the staff. It’s only then that she sees her: Laid upon black stone, utterly still. Her skin’s far too pale, glasses knocked askew. Something congeals at the corner of her mouth.

“No.” She moves without remembering giving the body command, dropping the staff as she hesitates to even touch Cosima’s face. “No, no.”

Felt more than spoken, a mantra that hastens as she feels for a pulse, for warmth, for anything at all. She pulls her into her lap. “Cosima, please.”

Cosima does not move.

The ground shudders, and heat begins to shape. The earth cracks; flames race across the ground from where Herian kneels, fit to bite into the flesh of those who stray too close to her, now. “Not you. Please.”

Stones begin to lift, the blaze rises with them.

“Little one,” A new voice. Her mother before her. So much like Herian, though smaller, more tired. Even as she kneels down opposite her daughter, Peigi Amsel seems to occupy her space more carefully. “Oh, my darling girl. What’s happened?”

Herian, for her part, is beyond words. Beyond telling it. Her mouth moves wordlessly for a second, before her head bows and she just shakes. She can’t. Not anymore.

Gently, Peigi brushes Herian’s hair from her face.

“You could stop all this from happening. You could protect people.” Her smile is so kind, and so hopeful. There is a brightness to her that seems almost to outshine the flames. “You could save everyone. No one ever has to feel this way again.”

Finally, silence.

“All you have to do is say ‘yes,’ Herian.” She leans forward, resting her forehead against her Cosima’s. Her eyes slip shut.

There’s a presence at her shoulder. Not the weight of a hand, now, but a closeness. A vague form cuts against the darkness, voice soft but clear: You do not belong to Rage, and you will not be the toy of Grief.

Certainty pools like steam; not pleasant, but—

Remember, Herian Amsel. Remember the meeting place.

For long moments, she stays bowed. The flames are gone, now. Cosima’s gone, and Herian stands on stiff limbs. Her eyes blaze gold. “No.”

She braces the base of her staff against the ground, and kicks against it, hard. The wood splinters as she spins the head of the Heart of Rage to drive into her mother’s (the demon’s) side.

“None of us belong to you.”


( Battle music commences, etc. )