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

[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.

[elegiaque]

( some people might not take kindly to hearing that their work had been flung across a room—and if it hadn't been followed up with picked it up again then she might well have been one of them—but gwenaëlle has always had very strong feelings that the response art evokes in a person cannot be in itself right or wrong. if you feel something, then you felt something.

her head tilts. )

Why?

( why did she throw it; why did she pick it up again. she could specify, but either would be interesting, and—she's interested in which question nari chooses to answer. )

[nadasharillen]

[ it's a decent amount of time before Nari answers, although it's plainly obvious on her face that this time is entirely spent in consideration of the many facets of that one word question. ]

Because... [ Because it had been in part a dark mirror. Had exactingly and mercilessly named her fears, and even though that was in part what she'd been searching for she'd raged to hear them the way any animal rages when hurt. Because it had been compelling. Been repulsive. She answers both: ] Because we like to know ourselves and we don't.

[elegiaque]

( gwenaëlle's smile is small and humorless; the grimness of recognition. )

Art is a conversation, ( is what she says. ) A mirror that we hold up, to see parts of ourselves we otherwise might not have seen. Because we didn't want to look or because we didn't know to—

( a tilt of her hand. six of one and half a dozen of the other. how it is. her art is in its most significant part thoroughly unlovely, a frank and unflinching unraveling of things that she could not have expressed any other way; a conversation she could only have with a page, and not a person.

beautiful, and ugly, and violent, and delicate. it is poetry that wants for kindness, which makes sense, because she's a woman who does. it is poetry that's hard to stomach, sometimes, and that tracks, too. )

[nadasharillen]

[ that want for kindness had been what had needled her. Cyril had been so convincing, that it was care. that she could be caring. would be. even so. the bright intensity of it, this dance of power, that had come through. there were steps in the dance chart of Gwen's words that she'd recognized. there had been the word: love. but it hadn't been a love as Nari knew it.

There had been too many new questions. Ones, as Gwen had just said, she hadn't known to ask.

It's a mess.

Ask something. ]

Is it...

Does it... matter? [ her voice is low, quiet, thoughtful as she asks, in media res, unable to find the beginning of the thought or its end. ] Cuts made with love and hate open the same. Bleed the same. Heal the same. Scar the same. [ are they then the same? ]

Can a wolf be kind? Can anything that hunts?

[ and if not, if it is always always always destruction, is the peace that comes from it tainted as well? or is it blameless, like a storm. or something else; a fire that rages in the grass to stop the fields from choking themselves. ]

[elegiaque]

By that logic, ( after a slight pause, where her face briefly suggested the bristling answer coming was going to be a less patient one, ) if I punched you in the stomach right now because I'm human and I can, you'd be equally in the wrong to fight back. That logic strips context and purpose and agency and feeling.

I mean, your question is "are people complicated". Yes. Obviously. Something someone does with me because I want them to is different to something done to me to make me afraid. The difference is if I don't like it any more, my husband will stop and care for me.

( or they'll stalk off in different directions and then have an unrelated row and she'll leave, that's not the point. )

I had a lover who I'd let choke me, ( so casually, ) and I have been- threatened that way. I know perfectly well the difference.

[nadasharillen]

[ Nari's reaction to being so scolded is perhaps a little odd. It begins more predictably: a small startle, actually turning to look at the other woman, but then, overwhelmingly, relief. A relaxing of the stiffness that had locked her shoulders since she'd managed to recognize Gwen. A little half smile, even. ]

Thank you.

[ It's genuine. ]

I... wanted very much to be wrong, [ a small huff of air through her nose, humored this time. It was even nicer to be so wrong that someone would be impatient. ] but... it's hard to believe yourself in silence without the nagging feeling that you're just excusing yourself.

[elegiaque]

( it's a better reaction than she might have imagined, but maybe not entirely shocking, given the context—given what they're discussing, and probable reasons why. gwenaëlle shrugs— )

Sex is a conversation, too; if you're only thinking about yourself, then you're doing it wrong, and thinking 'oh no, I'm so terrible' isn't inherently better than just being selfish if the end result is still, you know, that you're not considering the other person involved.

Nothing we do with other people cuts black and white with one answer to fit all situations, every person. It's a careful navigation. Negotiation.

[nadasharillen]

[ slow nodding. she'd not considered that it was as selfish to cut someone out of decision making in an effort to be good to them as it is to cut someone out of decision making while being not so good to them.

she has no real response besides that move of her head, and it's enough for her to chew on quietly for a good long stretch of road, so in the end she nods again with more purpose. ]

I appreciate your candor. I'll leave you to your work.