faderift | Closed | You Move Sixteen Tons and What Do You Get

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Closed | You Move Sixteen Tons and What Do You Get

WHO: Alexandrie, Yngvi, Lakshmi
WHAT: We're taking the tour of Orzammar (mar, ma-ma-ma mar, mar); mine collapse and worker rescue
WHEN: Late Justinian, Early Solace
WHERE: Orzammar
NOTES: It's this! cw: maybe some dissolved or partially dissolved people.

The trip had been largely unremarkable, their reception lovely, the tour of the city a success, and the tour of the new mines likely to be one as well. At least, it began that way.

About a third of the way through their tour, Lady Henda Wemot expounding on the richness and success of the expansion and pointing out some of the improvements that had been made on this particular section, there is an ominous rumble. One which grows, and grows, until the ground is shaking under their feet and the immense elemental thunder of rock crashing into rock fills their ears to the exclusion of all else, the air choked with dust and earth and fragments thrown from the walls, the ceiling, the landslide.

When the air clears, finally, the aftermath of the cave-in: the passage they'd come down has sealed behind them with tons and tons of rock.

Whelp.

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[ for all our non-rescue blabbing CR needs ]

[ let's do this thing ]

If Yngvi has been anxious about Orzammar (he has) then he's tried not to show it as the person who's been to Orzammar one time officially and other times absolutely never officially but there for the asking in the secret entrances and backhand bribe look the other way strolls the Carta greases. Inquisition backing doesn't change the habits of a lifetime, nor the one young guard he'd seemed friendly with prior to this.

This being it all going spectacularly tits up.

(Yngvi is more than accustomed to that one too.)

Small as he is, the shaking is less alarming or bothers him less since he's close to the ground, gets out a thieves lantern to better light the way or get a look at what in the name of the Lady just happened.

"You two good?" They're fancy seeming ladies, have either of them ever been this far beneath the whole of the world before or felt it start wanting them out? Probably not, he'd stake a wager on that one. "There's...there's people. Stuck. They've got a Caste but two steps above servant..." He aims for chatty, for conversational, falls a country mile short of that with the look of a man who would very much like to be gnawing his thumbnail if not for holding a lantern and starting the inspection of what's between them and everything else right about now to keep him from chewing himself bloody.

"Fine." Is the call back as the dust settles. A few cuts, a few scraps, nothing too problematic. Not this time, at least. Not really her problem anyway. With her back turned to them, she reaches for her phial, thumbing open the cap and knocking back a mouthful for her blackwater. Shaking her head the once as it burned in that cruel, whole way. Now, no more than dirty from the dust and rubble that had fallen about.

Sorted, she turns back, and - it isn't a question. "We're getting them out." It isn't a question, doesn't give a damn if she does it by herself, but it is the only option. Not just because of diplomacy. But because the other option would always be unacceptable. "Do you know their names?"

Alexandrie, being both slight and not a fighter, was less successful at keeping her feet. The settling of the particles in the air finds her gingerly pushing herself off the ground and dusting off her hands, eyeing the wear on her gloves with both irritation and some relief that the cloth hadn't given way to allow for any injury save an ache in her wrists from catching herself.

Noting the flicker of relief across Lady Wemot's expression of shocked horror at this development— the just recently completed new shaft! while showing it off!— when Lakshmi's immediate response to Yngvi's observation is to assert that they will be attempting to rescue any trapped miners that they are able to, Alexandrie nods her agreement and smiles reassuringly at their guide.

Lady Wemot is gathering herself impressively and beginning to list the names of the miners who had been in the adjacent passageway when there is an odd flicker of slick shining blue among the rocks that emits its own light outside of the radius of Yngvi's lantern. Alexandrie frowns slightly, her eyes darting to it over Lakshmi's shoulder.

"...I beg pardon for interrupting, but—" she gestures to it, looking first curious, and then quickly more distressed as whatever it is begins to ooze slowly out from the spaces in between the fallen boulders "—what is that?"

Turning his lantern slowly - they're down in the dark, half the things don't even have eyes to begin with - Yngvi swallows. Tries to. It gets stuck on the way down as his hand finds an axe which is going to be a fat lot of good against--

"Has the lyrium gone wrong?" Again. Since they've already got the red stuff going on, and they had it down here already as he plants one heavy boot in front of the other to get closer to it, dropping lower with the lantern. He keeps his balance well, axe near enough to the ground to serve as an anchor point when there's a shift in movement.

Not merely by chance, any of this, but between the lantern or Yngvi, the direction pulls towards him but he stays still to see what happens. "Just for the sake of things, what've we all got on us? M'ladies?" He's polite if y'know, hoping there's a spread between them since there are two actual ladies down here and that might reflect badly if they get oozed on or something, he doesn't know what's going to happen as he stares into the slime and watches it reach out his way.

What could go wrong?

It's a fair question and it's followed by her secondary question, she supposes, but a fair one for newly arrived. "What is Lyrium?" She has heard of the stuff, seen it traded she thinks once or twice. But as to what it's purpose is - ? That she hadn't worked out.

The rest - if his worried about ladies present, even if it's nothing she bothers to tell anyone why she might be in the habit of carrying these things - being on the run for near forty years leaves one with habits. "My gear, some food supplies. Tinder as well, if we need it. A couple of knives." Oh, if only I still had my grenades, that would surely be more useful. "Should we be... touching that?"

Alexandrie shakes her head, having brought nothing but herself, the rest left in their rooms. The movement goes unnoticed by Lady Wemot, who has blanched and taken a step back accompanied by a reflexive Dwarven oath.

"No you should not! That's a slime mold, I'm sure it is. They attach to you and begin to dissolve you in short order; fire burns them, and we leave trails of rock salt to keep them away," she looks about quickly with another step back, as if hoping to find one conveniently nearby to deposit on the thing, which is reaching out a portion of itself towards Yngvi and his lantern, first tentatively, and then quite suddenly surging forward out of the rocks like a leak sprung from a dam towards the heat of both him and his lantern. "They seem to track and envelop heat! Fire works too!"

There is screaming, suddenly, coming from a further passageway. Evidently this is not the only such creature shaken loose by the cave-in, and it has found a miner trapped further within.

"Mineral mages and Templars use, does some Fade stuff, dangerous if you're a tit." Y'know he'll just casually back up while he explains that one because slime scratches at some horror tale of his youth. Somewhere.

Only he can't think about it much when he has to lurch into the untidiest sprawl, scuttling backwards crab-like with the lantern rolling, rolling, rolling out of his hands to cast long shadows on the walls when the face tips the right way because he can't hold it and move fast enough both, righting himself at the first opportunity. He has mines on him, inside his coat, and he could get to them--

His head snaps, eyes suddenly very wide, terrified not for himself. "We need to help them, they're not going to have fucking fire and-- everything they...they're miners!" He's upset, he doesn't want them to die engulfed by this which would be a horrible way to go, and there's more he'd be saying if Wemot weren't here.

(Orzammar, he has to remember Orzammar.)

She moves, snaps up that lantern before it could extinguish itself. This is different than Lycans. Flesh dissolving slime, minerals that glowed, dwarves and caverns, a world apart from what she knew in every significant detail.

But the screaming, the screaming she knew. The screaming after so long, the fear, that comes with it. Gives an almost second nature, cold, watching in the flickering light and the way that lets the blackwater slow the world, then speed it back up again. Processing it all in a straightforward order, as she goes to not exactly grab him - that was a short-term solution. But do what comes easily to half dozen places she has been, and the instructions that the Lady has given her with absolute trust. The fire burned them? The light them like up like Blackwall Docks.

She took out the candle from the lantern, snatched at one of her spare scarves worn against the damp of this place, a lit the damn thing. Dropping it immediately onto the slime that had gone after him. Even if it only stilled the thing for a second, it would be a second to get their heads around what they needed to do.

"We are going too." It's barked, hopes at least reassuringly firm, as removed as she could be. No panic, at least - just ordered, pushing forward because what else was there to do? "But they are miners - they know their way around the rocks, I am sure, better than any of us could ever hope too. They will have a good sense to avoid the dangers when they can while we work to free them." Or at least, they had to believe that, didn't they? "We should... kill as many of these things as we can. If they track heat then maybe we can keep them diverted on us, and then..." That was as far as she knew where to go, easily enough. But a miner, or even mechanically minded or skilled, she is not. She didn't in truth, have a lick of experience with mining except through reports from a lifetime ago.

"Then we pull from the top, do we not?" Looks between them, she'd go where they told her if they had a truer notion. ( Like the fact how on earth were they supposed to pull stones that huge pile of rubble - )

It doesn't precisely shriek when it is so enveloped by Lakshmi's scarf, the fabric of which was thin enough to set quickly and entirely aflame, but it does emit a high-pitched noise that may be part the escape of gas and part... something else which is no doubt distressing... and attempt to simultaneously both shrink away from the clinging flames and flee in every direction at once. Neither are successful, and by the time the scarf has burned away there is little left of it but a charred mark.

Alexandrie offers Lakshmi a rather shaken and wide-eyed smile, "That was... surpassingly quick of you, Bai Saheba. As far as the stones, I think perhaps we ought—" she winces as she is interrupted by a second, higher, more insistent scream from the other passageway, flicking her eyes toward it. "—ought to leave them," Alexandrie continues. "No doubt there is protocol in place for such an event, perhaps already a crew on the other side forming to deal with this," she gestures to the adjacent blockage, "but we may be the only ones able to help those trapped on this side."

"Yes," Lady Wemot says quickly, already taking a step towards the open passage, "there's a secondary exit deeper in. It's meant only for the sending out of what we've mined, but it's big enough to get out through."

They're in the dark and he expects it to turn red, red as blood from the vein, for the screaming to fade into ragged pleas torn from broken bodies we can't, mercy, let it end that the whole world shifts and pitches for Yngvi for a terribly long moment. He can't breathe. He can't breathe, it's dark about it him until he gets his hands in his pockets because it's just a lantern, that's all, it's only a lantern nothing more.

Dwarves see well in the dark.

So a ragged breath in for him to meet Lady Wemot's. "You swear they've got a way? Swear on whatever matters most to you?" He's not so naive as to believe her, nor to believe she wouldn't know who he might be; surface dwarves attached to the Inquisition, one who came through before and someone somewhere probably knows what else comes attached to his name. That there's a cut to be had.

The mines, however, are already out of his pocket. A few moments of assembly has them ready with the familiar weight of the mechanisms primed to go off the instant they're hurled and the slime comes into contact with them, large in the hands of a dwarf. "This'll slow the slime. Not all of it is fire but they'll explode. Clears the rubble, scorches the slime."

So either they clear it with that, or they use more of what Yngvi has for his lanterns to buy them time to get back and clear. Or they detonate, run, and hope to some deity it's not going to kill people because Yngvi won't have that on his conscience but artificer is limited where you don't want spikes and explosives honestly.

She says nothing to the compliment, merely bows her head to her. Neither time nor place for it, and rather - to the task at hand, she turns, passing Nell back his lantern when she goes to speak.

"Do you need any help with it?" Seems he knew the task well enough, but she was here for that - as for the rest of the plan. "May I suggest I take front as we move. I can see fairly, and I ... know my business against any predators."

Clearly, at least. Sharp and quick and unforgiving to things in their way.

The stress of the situation and obviousness of the miners farther down the tunnel needing aid finally gets to Lady Wemot, and she turns to snap curtly at Yngvi, "On the Ancestors. Come, now, if you care so much. There are those on our side of this fall who need help, and quickly."

"Please," Alexandrie replies to Lakshmi, even as she begins to step after Lady Wemot—further waiting after that outburst would speak poorly of them. Simultaneously, she looks dubious about the application of explosives in the space that has already proven to be fragile. She weighs the thought and finally judges it worth mentioning. "I mean no slight and know so little about mining, but despite what I am sure is immense efficacy, is it wise to risk such blasts? Is there possibility of shaking loose further rockfall?"

There it is. The thing he's been waiting for ever since he came down here, surface born and without a brand, Einar's son enough that folk would know it and his whole face hardens as if Wemot slapped him (better if she had, a slap is a slap and forgotten when the sting fade, words you remember for the small hours to pick at when sleep never comes, gnawing at the roots) and Yngvi has to cough to recover himself. Embarrassed, maybe. Ashamed. Angry, certainly, but it's not for now, not for Wemot or two humans, so he hands over a couple of mines to Lakshmi.

"Throw them, make sure you get a good arc and they-- 'scuse me and they, um, they won't go off right at us. And listen for deepstalkers, they might be curled in a ball like the stone about them, small lizard things with mouth like a worm's but full of teeth, they jump and bite. In packs." He'd make the noise but who knows, it might summon them and they'll know if they hear them so better not. "They might spit something nasty so...avoid them. Or we kill those fast too if they slime and the rocks don't."

(They're deepstalkers, the chances of them dying to dangers in mines are minimal, he thinks.)

Still, he's unwilling to cause more damage if only to have this deshyr hold it over his head and he holds up a hand to Lakshmi, considering. "We use these," the mines, "for the slime we find on the way. Use another exit and leave this one? Or the oil and flame out my lantern where the rocks are too loose to risk them going off?"

Artificers being what they are, there's generally a lot of things blowing up when the mines come out but he's always got plenty to go in the lantern for all situations.

"Like grenades." Is the grunt, taking the mines from him. "I'm familiar," is what she means, and what she follows with as she takes them from him, nodding to his instructions, the form of the other dangers that they're facing.

"I suggest..." Follows briefly, her eyes between Lady Wemot, Lady Alexandrie, and back to Ygnir. What on earth politics were in play here? It wasn't her business to ask, or even look too long. Just to cut through it she supposes. "Leave. The danger here is passed and you are right, My Lady, we risk bringing it down on our heads." She wets her lips, brief. "Last man out throws just the one. Ought to cover our retreat. But after that, I suggest we get to ready to move, hard."

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Closed | You Move Sixteen Tons and What Do You Get

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