( 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

[dashing]

There are others her mind might drift to. Inevitably, perhaps even predictably her mind goes to Cosima. Even against her will her mind would go to her, and there has never been a time she did not wish to think of Cosima, except for when the demon claimed her shape. Even now, the memory of her lying there, so stiff and so cold, sends a shudder down her spine.

"Do not," she grinds out, "use Cosima against me. You have never approved of us. You believed me a danger to her from the very beginning." She tries to speak, and her breath catches painfully, and her mouth twists before she is able to command herself to speak further. "This would see her safe from me. It would see all the people I love safe from me. This is the best thing I could do for them, when an abomination could devastate them, even if they survived me."

[limier]

It's not that she couldn't have guessed where Herian's thoughts would turn. It's only,

Spoken without thought, on wounded reflex. The ones you matter to. She didn't approve, she doesn't still: They'd come nearest to ruin only when the demon had plucked that face from the Fade.

"It was not," She manages at last. Feels winded. Out of place, "It is not only Cosima I worry for."

[dashing]

"Does that worry outweigh the reality of what I came close to becoming?"

Herian shakes her head. "A Knight-Enchanter turned abomination would not be an easy adversary. You think me proud, too much lacking in humility and obedience."

Her jaw flexes, recalling that conversation; perhaps I am mistaken — but is not humility a knightly virtue?

"That pride is not misplaced. I am more a more than capable mage. I would be a horror as an abomination. Saoirse will understand." And who else is there, beyond Saoirse and Cosima? Really, who else is there that would feel the blow of her rendered Tranquil so easily? Sabine, perhaps, but Sabine might be pragmatic enough to understand the decision, to grasp the very real danger that mages represented, and perhaps there'd never be cause for her to know.

[limier]

She can feel her grip tense, resists the urge to shove back, as though impact might force understanding. Her eyes seem a moment too wide.

No. That isn't — necessary. That isn't who she'll be.

Slowly, her hand uncurls. Palm falls away. She turns aside that Herian can't see it ball again into fist. The ring bites against dirt-stained skin, still wearing into its own strange callouses.

"You are not thinking clearly," There's a bit fucking irony. "You are not considering the situation."

Empty words.

"You know that there are other options."

What? What options do any of them have, but to live? She stares into the crate. Preparing the skulls must have been a long process, ritual. Need to deflesh them to hasten it: sun stripped away, eyes plucked free and replaced with glimmering rock. It isn't Shivana she thinks of now, nor Averie, Werner.

It isn't them she pictures with sockets black.

[dashing]

She is silent for long moments, looking to see if they are in danger of the others returning. Not yet, it seems. "You served as Knight-Lieutenant. Retrieved those that fled the Circle, and those who would conceal themselves from it. You fought apostates and abominations, both. The Tranquil serve. They can craft enchantments, carry out tasks. They are not without purpose, only without hurt."

That was what Casimir said. He did not remember what hurt meant. Life was rewritten in a new language with new shapes. Recognisable, but not necessarily understood. "The Tranquil think clearly."

Perhaps they think more clearly than anyone else. "I am not without my faults, and my temper, and my bias. I doubt there is a single word we've exchanged since meeting hence where you have not scorned me as some... naive idealist. I could be more useful as Tranquil than as bare bones."

[limier]

Her knuckles slam into the wall.

The wagon creaks on its wheels, resettles; she shakes loose torn skin, splinters. Stupid. This whole affair, her handling of it — to rush in so soon after, as though they might claim some small, uncomplicated victory —

"Are you to speak as a demon, now?" Listless. Bitter. Bare bones, as though she intends one or the other, "To tempt others toward this?"

She stoops up to stand, forces herself to face her again.

[dashing]

Control yourself, Commander. It flares, and she resists the speaking of it.

“I would never force another to such a conclusion, not encourage it.”

That, she knows, would be terrible. This is something she has come to of her own accord, her own inquiries.

“Why are you so concerned with this? Why are you so outraged by it?”

[limier]

"Yet you would press my own hand."

Her fists shut again and stay. She makes no effort now to moderate the loom of her shoulders, the weight of herself in the doorway. A thoughtless breed of threat, unintended; bred in some thirty years and more commonly covered by consciousness. By conscience.

"You would have me wound you, or stand aside that you might do it yourself." How heavy the weight of hot iron. "You speak of this as though it is selflessness — as though that same spirit would not spred, not fucking spawn itself from the act. Leap between those who love you. Sicken us for it."

She's far too deep into it to notice the slip, to grant it any ground.

cw: suicide stuff

[dashing]

Herian stares, wordlessly. First it's a defiant, stubborn silence, and then more of a slack-jawed, shocked one. She's shakes her head a little, as though trying to dismiss some relentless ringing, and her arms cross. Or, they cross, but her hands grip into her upper arms painfully hard.

"That—" An uncomfortable exhale. "Sickness can be recovered from. It would be better than seeing— any of you scorched by my hand."

There are other ways to ensure she is not a thread, but she will not given them voice, not lay that weight on Wren's shoulders. It would be a sickening tactic to push Wren if it were not a possibility she would truly consider, and she would truly, if she did not consider duty and service so essential. That it might be redeeming, in some fashion. She does not speak it because she truly doesn't know, and because she's not sure it would be anything side from cruel.