player plot: who's a heretic now?

[thunderproof]

WHO: Adalia (thunderproof), Gwenaëlle (elegiaque), Iorveth (aensidhe), Kostos (exequy or exsecutus why do you and cee hate me, mj), Nari (nadasharillen), Solas (dirth)
WHAT: Temple of Falon'din
WHEN: Now
WHERE: Northern Orlais
NOTES: CW suicidal ideation, blood, general creepiness. If anything else comes up I'll edit, and if there's a CW you can think of while reading that I didn't include, lmk and I'll add it!

PLAYER PLOT: WHO'S A HERETIC NOW?

The ruins look, on the surface, much like any other Elven ruins might — crumbling stone structures overrun by plant life, chipped mosaics and tiled floors almost entirely hidden by centuries of overgrown underbrush. A quick investigation reveals nothing of note; this temple, it seems, had been picked over many times throughout the centuries, and anything of note has already been taken. The venture seems to have been pointless, at least for a few minutes.

Until someone stumbles upon a hidden stairwell, camouflaged in the underbrush and a secret to the original temple besides. It's a long journey down, lit only by magelight and the torches of the Inquisition, but as soon as the first foot steps down onto even ground, the Fade-green flickering of veilfire lights up a massive antechamber. The veil pricks at the skin, here, warping perception and sensation for those sensitive to its fluctuations, and embuing the whole room with a sense of foreboding solemnity for those who aren't. An eerie silence broken only by the sound of flowing water, and the musty scent of stale air make it clear: this place, whatever it is, hasn't been seen in centuries, if not millennia.

At the foot of the stairs is a landing butting up to a moat of dark liquid, fed by a pool set into a dais in the middle of the chamber. The pool itself burbles quietly, a waterfall spilling into it from the two cupped hands of a massive elven statue. The only way to reach the dais is to ford the river, but as soon as the party approaches, it becomes clear — the dark liquid within is not water, but blood, still fresh despite the millennia of abandonment.

On the journey to the temple, Solas told a story of Falon'Din, and the words seem more apt than they perhaps had at the time, given the weight of myth rather than truth:

It is said Falon'Din's appetite for adulation was so great, he began wars to amass more worshippers. The blood of those who wouldn't bow low filled lakes as wide as oceans.

Comments

THE ROAD AND THE RUINS.

[thunderproof]

❰ this toplevel is for any threads set before entering the temple, including the trip to the site and the search for anything of worth in the aboveground ruins. ❱

[elegiaque]

( an unexpected last minute addition to the party setting out, somewhat inexplicably (still not a member of the inquisition, rather well known for not having the remotest interest in elven ruins), gwenaëlle has been ... reserved. or reserved is a word for it, anyway; polite enough but short in conversation, moody in a distant, distracted way. rather less complaining than might have been expected of her,

in that there's none,

but there's no evident enthusiasm for a trip she's obviously not obliged to be on, briskly businesslike but evincing little to no real interest in their destination. the journey, a little more - quietly attentive to the things she learns about traveling in this way and to this purpose, taking to it in a way that suggests she'd do all the better if that lingering tension weren't quite so pronounced.

but it lingers. she volunteers no particular explanation for being along; perhaps it's the notes she's taking, writing studiously at every opportunity. )

[thunderproof]

❰ for her part, adalia is possibly the most excited she has ever been in thedas. she's aware that that is, in some ways, deeply disrespectful, and she isn't oblivious to the upset of gwenaëlle and solas, so she's been trying not to be quite as obvious about it as she'd like to be, but it's hard not to notice her energy as they travel. she spends a few hours each day making alchemical preparations in the back of the cart they were granted for transporting artifacts, and she hums and smiles as she does, unconsciously displaying her excitement.

it's after one such period of crafting that she approaches gwenaëlle, a corked glass pot held gingerly in her hand. a good segue, she thinks, into maybe discussing what's bothering her. ❱

Gwenaëlle, I made something for you!

[elegiaque]

( gwenaëlle looks up -

pauses, as she folds her notes away, one eyebrow rising. )

I'm not sure how to feel about that, ( slightly dryly, ) considering the way you're holding it.

[thunderproof]

Hm? — oh!

❰ adalia laughs and closes her hand more firmly around the pot — it doesn't do anything alarming, even when she tosses it back and forth between her hands in demonstration. ❱

Sorry, it's fine, I was just thinking of the thing with Beleth. But this is really fine! It's not an experiment, it's... This isn't helping.

❰ another laugh, rolling her eyes at herself. ❱

It's a healing grenade. Throw it at your feet, or the feet of someone else, and inhaling the gas it creates will help seal up some wounds. I got the recipe from Korrin and I followed it to the letter. No surprises in this one.

[elegiaque]

Ah.

( this is probably not the enthusiasm - or gratitude - that adalia was hoping for. gwenaëlle takes it, opening the pack beside her to add it, out of habit, to the bag that contains everything she's accumulated for the sake of the sort of practical medicine to which she's accustomed. it's the same bag as was in thranduil's chamber, that she disappeared from the office to find salve in -

it's presumably very comforting to him that his wife is missing and so are the most alarming possessions that might leave with her. )

Thank you, ( belatedly, since she isn't a total savage. ) I'm sure it'll be useful.

[thunderproof]

❰ well, to be fair, adalia never knows what to expect from gwen, so she's stopped seriously trying to anticipate her reactions to anything. while it was quite a bit of work to put into a gift only to have it be received so... lukewarmly is a small annoyance, but not one adalia takes too seriously. ❱

Well, really, we should hope that it won't have to be! I'd rather you not have to use it at all.

❰ because that would mean things are going kind of poorly, and gwen's somewhere she really shouldn't be. the grenade was only part of adalia's plan in approaching gwen, though, and she clasps her hands behind her back, rocking forward onto the balls of her feet. ❱

It was also sort of a ruse because you're being very quiet and I wanted to have a reason to come talk to you about it because you're worrying me.

[elegiaque]

You seemed very excited about—wherever it is that we're going.

( gwenaëlle briefly considered trying to pretend she'd remembered what the temple is called, but

it definitely wouldn't have been convincing and would probably have fallen apart quickly, so better not to even make the attempt. )

It's not a subject I've much to say about.

[nadasharillen]

[ The woman looks familiar, and it's been itching at the edge of Nari's mind for the majority of the overland trip. It isn't due to simply frequenting the same spaces. In fact, she isn't sure she's ever seen Gwenaëlle... but that's just it, she isn't sure.

As Gwen isn't overly interested in conversation, and Nari not the type to engage in an excess of speech herself, the mystery goes staunchly unsolved until Gwen briefly sits up from her writing and turns to look a certain way, and then suddenly there it is. She's that Gwenaëlle Baudin. From the slim anthology of poems Nari had happened upon in her only slightly fevered search through the Inquisition library of poem, play, song, story, for what the name of the monster was that sometimes woke so brightly in her. The work had been thoroughly horrifying in the way that it can only be if one sees some unwanted fragment of oneself in it. Nari had wanted to demand explanation from the poet, had been unable.

Was now suddenly able.

But not really. Nothing about the impetus behind that demand was something the Dalish woman wanted anyone to know. Perhaps something that would hopefully go uncaught, like casually guiding her mount within the range of low conversation and asking, of the studious writing, ]

Poetry?

[elegiaque]

( despite so long now spent in the inquisition—in skyhold and in kirkwall, where dalish elves have been unusually plentiful—gwenaëlle's direct exposure to the dalish has been little. the interactions have been brief and few, and in large part has not significantly added to her limited knowledge of them as a people.

so her first thought is mostly just a dim surprise at the implication this one can read. )

No, ( after a moment's pause, swallowing that before it comes rudely out of her mouth in a situation where they may at some point be obliged to rely on one another to live. ) Not today, at any rate, I've been making notes on our travels.

( thranduil had suggested it, once. a long time ago. she had refused, then, and she is relatively certain he's since changed his mind. still: it wasn't a terrible idea. the opportunity is before her, now, and she might as well make the most of it. get something out of this endeavor other than his ire. )

You're familiar with my work?

[nadasharillen]

[ she is such that responding to that question requires her looking off somewhere. Along the path towards their destination, the area surrounding them. Anywhere but Gwenaëlle. ]

Not with the whole of your work, but... enough. It is...

[ beat ]

unique. Among what I've found in the Inquisition's library. And Kirkwall's. Your...

[ how do you start conversations with poets about their poetry? Perhaps the same way one might begin with a storyteller. ]

You have a strong voice. It's told well.

[elegiaque]

Confronting, ( she offers, because it's not accidentally that way. it is in fact very deliberately so, the authorial equivalent of extended, uncomfortable eye contact. artfully done, prettily put together, but not intended to gentle the words or their meaning. ) I republished it recently, under my mother's surname.

( unlikely to mean anything to nari, she imagines, but - ) It was all under a pseudonym, when my name meant anything.

( harder to connect to the face on the front of those pamphlets on the inquisition's hard work. )

[nadasharillen]

Confronting.

[ Absolutely right. Not telling Gwen about how it had been received was Nari's first instinct, but this is reconsidered. After all, who better to know that an artist wants to know? ]

I'm not given to throwing books, but it... hit the floor several times.

[ She pauses, huffs a humorless laugh through her nose. ]

I always picked it up again.

[exequy]

[ It takes some time for Kostos to realize what he doesn't have in common with everyone else here, primarily because it takes him time to match Baudin's face and name to gossip he'd barely noted in the first place. About halfway there—this time delayed because the Circles, if they did little else right, did a decent job removing racial inequality from the equation—it also occurs to him that he might be crashing some sort of exclusive party, or perhaps he's been invited because someone's superior said he had to be. And once they've arrived and are combing over the outer ruins, Kostos with three wisps wandering loosely and curiously in his vicinity, looking beneath the stones and drifting over the surface of murals, he says, to whomever is around, (or just to himself, that's fine,) ]

What is the elven phrase for human sacrifice?

[ Because if he hears it, he's leaving—

and that's a joke, for the record, but there's nothing in his tone or expression that says so. ]

[aenseidhe]

[ flat, deadpan humor that doesn't sound like humor at all is not only a preferred state of being for iorveth, but something he's used to, after wandering around with geralt of rivia, the emotionless wonder grandpa. enough so that there's a smirk on iorveth's lips, if anyone happens to glance to him at the right time to spot it, though no sound accompanies it to mark it. for anyone else, this might sound troubling, but iorveth answers kostos from the other side of the mural they're inspecting, with the same lack of humorous inflection. ]

'D'hoine abethau.'

[ a beat, and he raises his head, seeming to ponder something. ]

You wouldn't happen to be a virgin as well, would you?

[ har har har, he thinks he's hilarious. ]

[exequy]

[ Kostos' eyes slide sideways first, then his head to catch up with them, eyebrows raised in silent skepticism at the question—because he's not vain enough to say have you seen me? out loud, but he is vain enough to think it. And thirsty enough for that skepticism to shift into appraisal. For a moment. In case he needs to indisputably establish his lack of virginity on the record to avoid being killed. You know how it is.

He doesn't say that out loud, either. ]

I assumed it would involve shemlen.

[aenseidhe]

[ you're very pretty, booboo (and that may have been discussed with beleth in game canon), but he's too racist for you. he'll take his incredulous eyebrows to mean he'd make a terribly poor virgin sacrifice and move on. to answer, iorveth gives an indifferent shrug. ]

Same difference.

[ dh'oine, shemlen, both mean 'those stupid ass round eared ninnies'. ]

The Thedosian elves only retain bits and pieces of their mother tongue, besides. I'm lending them some. [ It's still elven, okay, just different elven. you didn't specify. ]

[exequy]

[ DAMN RIGHT HE'S VERY PRETTY and also primarily, when it comes to that sort of thing, more of a venus fly trap than a predator, so even though Iorveth's face is perfectly adequate verging on admirable from this angle, he's safe from anything more than that silent evaluation. ]

You should lend them the words they do not already have.

[ Reclaiming lost languages via loan words from probably nonexistent other worlds. Someone can write a book about it someday. ]

Which means sacrifice, doin or abathow?

[ His pronunciation wouldn't have been great before the Nevarran-Orlesian muddle of his accent got ahold of it, anyway, but with that added in it's a particular mess. ]

[aenseidhe]

I've been told shemlen translates to 'quick children', and I don't find it terribly accurate for your people. It's a loan and a revision.

[ which is a joke. he would not ever seriously try to replace someone's heritage (at least, not elven heritage, hurr hurr). but also, your people are slow and too rude to be children.

And there is a visible flinch for that pronunciation. my dude, stop trying. ]

The second one. No need to repeat it.

closed to iorveth + adalia.

[elegiaque]

( gwenaëlle and iorveth share a tent. much like her presence on this mission at all, it doesn't merit discussion, but simply happens: the first night they make camp, in a most matter of fact fashion, they arrange themselves in a pair and continue to do so, each subsequent night. nothing terribly exciting is happening behind canvas, in this most unromantic scenario, but it's comforting to be near and gwenaëlle prefers it—attempts, somewhat clumsily in the bleak mood she's been carrying around with her, to express in small ways how she appreciates it.

by being near, mostly. returning the favor of her braids, and setting iorveth's to rights underneath his bandana. and unbending, a little, enough, to speak on what she hadn't spoken of at all, low-voiced, quietly furious still— )

—and he just had one. In his hand. He'd had the fucking thing made.

( this is easier to say to the back of his head than it would have been to the front of it. )

'I knew you were going to be angry so I did it behind your back and now I'm telling you I've already done it now it's too late for you to do anything about it', and if I didn't leave I was going to choke him with his own hair.

( disclaimer: there is no way she could do that.

she starts unwinding and loosening the braid she's been working on, or he's going to have a headache from how tightly she's pulled it—and then her fingers pause. she's going to guess she doesn't need to ask if iorveth heard the footsteps before she did, and instead holds the braid against his head and offers him his bandana back. )

[thunderproof]

❰ it's not that adalia isn't curious as fuck why married gwenaëlle is sharing a tent with iorveth, it's just that with gwen there are some things you ask and some things you don't and adalia is reasonably certain that this is one of the things you don't ask about. at least not when you've already pissed her off by talking about what a piece of shit her husband is.

all that to say, when she approaches the tent and hears gwen's voice, low and furious and indistinct, and sees what appears to be the silhouette of her — braiding iorveth's hair? — she doesn't say anything. she doesn't even attempt to enter the tent, conscious of how both the people inside it value their space, and that gwenaëlle in particular would probably prefer the opportunity to tell her to fuck off before she had to deal with her again. ❱

Gwenaëlle, I've come to apologize, can I come in?

[aenseidhe]

[ gwenaelle is absolutely right to be furious, iorveth feeling his own blood boil as he listens to her account of what had happened between them. after all the talk of protecting them from this thing, he'd submit to it himself, and call that some kind of diplomatic move. thranduil, who's thus far been the one iorveth's back when everyone asked him what must happen next to keep them safe from this.

he proved to them it could be done. he showed them their most prominent defender would bend to their will. ]

Thranduil is a fucking idiot. [ Iorveth seethes between clenched teeth, hands curling into fists where his wrists rest on the tops of his knees. gwenaelle may not have been able to throttle him, but iorveth would've had a difficult time restraining himself from it. it's well he's hearing of this here, miles from Thranduil, and coming from gwenaelle. ]

He doesn't just betray you or I with this. He's let down all of the Rifters that took a step of faith to cooperate with his requests for calm. I can't imagine he's so bloody dense he doesn't see what this will do for their morale. [ Iorveth's stopped to look over his shoulder at gwen, brows knit in disbelief. he'd thought thranduil knew he wasn't king here, but perhaps he was wrong. either way, he's interrupted by the sound of adalia outside before more can be said. it's well enough - he needs time to consider this. ]

Come in. [ he calls to her, because he needs a break from what the actual fuck, thranduil. ]

[elegiaque]

The commitment to the research was the Inquisition's and his division would have to do it, but— ( she understands that even as she hates it; the commitment had been made in the previous negotiations, the fact of the new ones that adalia will soon be setting out on hinged upon it, there was no getting out from under the fact someone would have to try. therefore keeping it quiet had to be done, as far as that went, because iorveth is right too—if everyone had known it had been done already, what chaos.

but not telling her, first.

but making it his own. they couldn't have tried it on a rifted animal? they wanted to know whether it would even work on someone through a rift not a mage, after all, animals aren't mages—

not telling her. iorveth is right to worry about the rifters, but gwenaëlle can't help but look to her own future, and past the phylacteries; is this what her marriage will look like? is this what her life is going to be, having to hope that her husband will deign to inform her the direction that he's chosen for their lives after he's already done it? the phylactery is not insurmountable, but that might be, and that had been what had weighed heaviest when adalia had shouted her own demands—it's no better to respond with the same behaviour. there's no path forward from that that they can walk together, if she starts undermining him, too.

but she's always known of these elves. she will always matter less than their plans. she'd only thought not to feel it so acutely, and so soon.

she swallows the rest of what she might have said as he bids adalia join them, though considering what she imagines she must be coming to apologize for, it may not be the breather he's hoping for—she lets her hands fall from his hair, fingers curling around her comb, neither hiding the casual intimacy of the moment nor offering any new explanation for it. she is disinclined, presently, to explain herself in much of anything.

she could offer some sort of greeting, at least, but she doesn't. she looks up, steady, not expectant. )

[thunderproof]

❰ adalia enters the tent and manages, just barely, not to look between iorveth and gwenaëlle as though they've both grown an extra head. she acknowledges iorveth with a tight smile and a little wave, but her focus is on gwenaëlle, trying not to look like... like she's trying to figure out how to manage her, or like she's still angry, or like any of the things she's really feeling.

it's getting really tiring, this having to apologize all the time thing.

deep breath. keep it simple. ❱

I'm sorry. Your husband, your business.

❰ other than the fact that thranduil making the phylactery affects so many more people than just him and gwen... in the end, gwenaëlle was angry at her husband, and adalia nudged her into revealing why. she should have at least held onto her anger long enough to vent it at iorveth or solas instead, someone who could actually do something about it without betraying their spouse, rather than try to tell gwen what to do.

not all of which, perhaps, will be conveyed in four words. but she can expand if she needs to. ❱

[aenseidhe]

[ Ah. So we are continuing the theme of Thranduil being an idiot. Unfortunately, Iorveth has nothing nice to say on the topic at the moment, and he'd rather not be a poor example for Adalia.

That, and, this apology is for Gwenaelle. it isn't his to comment on, thus Iorveth keeps his mouth shut and his thoughts to himself, casting a look back over his shoulder at Gwen, making it clear he's keeping his peace for the time being. ]