Player Plot: The Arlathvhen

[writteninblood]

WHO: A big pack of elfs
WHAT: The Arlathvhen
WHEN: Vaguely Solace
WHERE: A Secret Elven Location
NOTES: OOC Plotting post here, and a special thanks to Ema for the header image

In the ordinary course of life, Dalish clans rarely encounter each other. This isolation is a protection; their diaspora is as much of a blessing as is a curse. Only once every decade or so do the Dalish clans all meet together, and their Keepers, the elders and leaders of the People, who are responsible in keeping elven lore and magic alive, will meet together and exchange knowledge in a meeting called the Arlathvhen. During such a time, the clans will recall and record any lore they have relearned since the past meeting, they will exchange goods, people, knowledge, news, and culture, along with reiterating what lore they know already to keep their traditions as accurate and alive as possible.


Today is the day.

Comments

Traveling

[writteninblood]

The Inquisition’s elven attendees travel mostly on foot. It’s a long, often-unpleasant trek, but anyone who complains is encouraged well to simply turn around and go home. This isn’t an Inquisition mission, after all, you chose this. Each night as they travel towards their eventual goal, a location only one among their number actually knows, they camp under the stars, or in the dubious protection of what forests provide, dodging human habitations and any other potential hostilities they might encounter. It’s a wonderful time to grow steadily more anxious as time feeds the nerves, or to ask questions and discuss what’s upcoming, or just to get to know your fellow travelers.

After all, we have to depend on each other, out here. There’s nothing else to have.

[nadasharillen]

Nahariel bounces back and forth between walking with the Inquisition's party and rejoining the fires of her clan, staying with them in the evenings. Being a woman completely unable to dissemble, her mood is fairly obviously ambivalent; she is in turns withdrawn, taciturn, and pensive and open and affable, welcoming any conversation with an easy smile and good humour.

Re: Traveling

[gottakeeponejumpahead]

.... Honestly? Adasse thought it would be a harder journey than this. It's mostly just walking, and walking, and then doing a bit more walking. They aren't running from bears or Venatori or anything like it. Kind of peaceful, a little boring. Coco is riding on his shoulder and he spends his time making sure his small pet is doing all right, but his gaze keeps moving to all the sights around him.

For a city boy from the great city of Kirkwall, the outside is pretty damned interesting. For example, the abundance of Trees.

Iorveth | OTA

[aenseidhe]

[ The journey to Arlathvhen feels like a vacation to Iorveth, and he looks unusually happy for someone going on a long, unpleasant trek, riding along on the freaky chicken-horse half the time, and walking next to it the other.

the nights they stop to make camp under the stars is perhaps his favorite. in Kirkwall, you only ever here the rest of the city around you at night, and it leaves him uneasy. it's a blessed thing to be out in the forests again, with fresh air and the creak of branches in the wind, and roaming nocturnal creatures around him. he's only just laid back after the group made food for the night and set out tents, arms folded behind his head and gaze on the night sky. ]

It's been a long while since I lived this. It's refreshing.

The Camp

[writteninblood]

The Dalish are arrayed around the site of the Arlathvhen in poses of uncommon relaxation. The border-guards are far-ranging and sharp-eyed, and the location is as remote as it is protected;for once, they can afford to relax. We’re all among family here, and it’s safe to let the Halla graze, the aravels sit in casual clusters around the relevant clan-fires and to mingle.

Except, of course, for those who have traveled here from the Inquisition’s stronghold in Kirkwall, who have brought no Halla, no clan, and no Aravels. But the campfire will do for warmth, and a tent is good enough shelter, if not so elegant. Set slightly apart from the rest, this is the common place, the hearth of the unaffiliated. This is to where those from the Inquisition may retreat, in order to discuss amongst themselves the goings-on of the Arlathvhen, and its stratagems, to find relief from scrutiny, or to receive curious visitors, if they have any.

Not that they have many, or so it seems. In the meantime, it represents only a very leaky breed of privacy, but all anyone is likely to get.

[nadasharillen]

It's her birthday. Sort of. At the very least it's the anniversary of her being found by the Arlathvhen's ranging border-guards near the gathering place of the Dalish thirty years ago, a carefully swaddled infant left nestled and sheltered among the roots of an old tree, nearly missed, being weak and quiet with hunger.

One of them had been a young hunter with a charming spread of freckles, brilliant copper hair, and four children already, one of them quite recently. Being both a fierce mother and insistent that she had enough milk for two she'd adopted the babe instantly, a lone dark spot amidst the pale and eminently ginger brood. She had been loved as ardently as the others, praised and scolded and embraced the same, but all the same it had been impossible for even a young Nari to not understand that she had come from somewhere else.

As soon as she'd asked she'd been told, of course. Reassured that they were her family, and they were. But there was always the ghost of some other. Some dark haired woman with dark skinned hands that had held her once, and then let her go for some reason she would never know.

Every ten years, when the clans gathered, she asked. Every ten years, there was nothing. No one had seen anything, had heard anything, but she asked all the same. The older men and women who came every Arlathvhen remembered her, their answers a little more gentle, a little sadder every time, and every time she would smile and thank them, and then in the evening sit and look into the fire for an hour or so and then disappear to find a tree to climb, a branches close enough to lie in and to stare up at the stars through the canopy until she slept.

She's at the fire now.

[writteninblood]

Sorrel plopped down next to Nari with neither ceremony, nor warning. And there he sat, legs straight and bare feet, as always, leaned back on the heels of his hands. He let the quiet come in between them like a gentle wind, sweet and slightly cool.

"Happy birthday, Nari," He said, finally, "I wanted to get you a gift. But I don't know what you'd want. Except the obvious."

The answer no one had, the gift no one could give.

"So, consider yourself owed one favor. From me. If that's worth anything as a gift."

[dirth]

Solas stands out, perhaps more than anyone else at the gathering.

He has no vallaslin, does not dress like any Dalish, looks at the people gathered with a tilt of his head and something like a sneer, though he manages to restrain most of his distaste. He's come mostly because he seeks to see what the Dalish know, if there are any whispers of Fen'Harel amongst their ranks, to see what myths and falsehoods are being passed from clan to clan in the wake of the changes in Thedas. Solas is not here to make peace with the Dalish no more than they are here to make peace with him - it is a foolish endeavour.

There's nothing in him that wants to spend a great deal of time mixing with the Dalish, but he understands that they are here to prove the worth of the Inquisition as much as anything else. He has made some friendships with the Dalish that rest in the Inquisition, but he knows he likely has done little to endear himself to others; the unfortunate events surrounding the death, recent when he first arrived at Kirkwall proper, was enough to turn others against him. It's not something he minds terribly: the opinions of the Dales does not weigh heavy on his shoulders.

He sits by himself for the most part, determinedly away from other people, settling by the fire. He people watches, letting his eyes drink in the campsite, the people, the whispered stories. Eventually he might get up and walk around, but Solas knows he has the appearance of a hahren, of an elder, and he clings to that. If anyone wishes to hear the true history of the People he will offer it, but he is not here to be damned by people who are foolish and ignorant.

Solas looks... Lost, he thinks. But he does not care; he is here to observe, to recruit, perhaps, to gather forces and spies. Not to be friendly, not to be welcomed. Not to be happy.

[gottakeeponejumpahead]

Adasse for one is sure that Solas is some sort of dream-walking hahren, like the stories of old. You know, the ones that the Dalish tell and then go about and treat anyone who doesn't have ink tattoo'd all over their faces like they're idiot children.

So when Solas answers some questions for another Dalish, Adasse comes over and listens. What Solas says is not the crazy rhetoric of the Dalish, and seems clearer and more ... he's not sure, real? Than anything else he's heard.

When the Dalish has wandered off, he lingers, arms folded over his chest. "So ... you've really gone to all those old places?"

[laurenande]

That he has traveled so far when his feelings are so clear, so negative, is a testament to his resolve. Galadriel understands his distaste, at least in part, and has not remarked upon it during their journey. She does not intend to remark upon it now, not unless the conversation winds toward such things.

The gathering is all that she could have ever wanted. The elves that have met here are unfamiliar and many, their numbers greater than she would have hoped. She looks out at them and sees a reflection of Arda in eons to come, in what could become of all the greatness of her people--the very lowest they could fall is here. She does not say as much, they would not appreciate the judgment or the gravity in that statement, but it calms her heart--to see that they are still elves, even in the end, is to see that her people...their people persist.

Solas...he, perhaps, cannot see it that way. Their decline is before him while Galadriel can only imagine the ultimate fate of the quendi. He is frustrated by them, almost as much as they are frustrated by him, and it is such a shame. What could be shared between them, if only their hearts could speak? It is a mystery.

She comes to sit beside him, near the fire but apart from it, and leans just close enough that only he can hear her. She speaks in Quenya, because she is not without sympathy, but she cannot help but rile him. He seems so serious and out of place:

"I thought the tradition was for you to face away from camp, to ward off evil spirits? Or perhaps that is only the stone versions?"

[writteninblood]

Happiness is the last thing anyone would accuse Solas of being, at the moment, last of all Sorrel. The way he moves, and talks, and is hardly inspires most to try and give him any, either; not with how he looks. Bald head, stiff back, too high-nosed and haughty to belong here where his snowfall gaze could fall on everyone from the hunters to the children to the mages and find them wanting. All that spoke of age, and magic, and respect to be given— not that he ever gave any in trade.

But the face.

To Solas perhaps the faces of the Dalish remind him of very old things, but to them the clean skin of his face makes him look incongruously young, marks him as an outsider. What might otherwise have been dignity turns to mockery when it comes from the outside in, and therefore he may find himself studiously, even rudely, ignored.

So, of course he's unhappy. Who wouldn't be, even if they weren't an old sourpuss?

"Here," Sorrel finds him in the camp and heaves a sigh. Someone's got to do something here, and certainly he isn't going to foist it off on Beleth, much as he'd like to. And look, he's come with food! It's a lovely rabbit pie, small enough to sit warm in the palm of one hand, courtesy of one of the numerous campfires scattered around the Arlathvhen, "It's a peace offering. Take it, I know you haven't eaten."

[writteninblood]

Which, is of course, when the Arlathvhen sees fit to make its own time, in his brooding.

There, across the clearing from the little campfire, in easy and obvious view, comes a rustling in the foliage. And out of a bush, there comes a small girl, no older than eight or nine, bare-faced, but dressed all in a slightly scuffed green coat, in a style the miniature of many Dalish that walk the camps. She has dark hair and a sharp look that only turns to sudden and startled horror when she realizes that the clearing where the Inquisition visitors have been set up.... is not unoccupied. And that she's been caught.

"Ah.... Aneth ara?" She says, hopefully, as if this greeting will somehow convince Solas not to notice, "I'm not sneaking. I'm only going for a walk. Right?"

[arlathvhen]

At some point, Beleth approaches him, but she is not alone. With her is another elf, one wearing the robes of a Keeper. Even if Solas didn't know that Beleth's mother was the Keeper to her clan, there is a clear resemblance between them--the older woman's red hair, mixed into Beleth's copper hair. The nose and browline that she shares with her brother--and those bright eyes, more similar to Sorrel than Beleth.

She carries herself with pride and deliberation, her gaze sharp and intense. Still, she seems polite enough, as she pulls up to Solas, Beleth standing off to the side, body language deferential to this woman.

"Solas, if you wouldn't mind, I mentioned you to my Keeper--nothing bad, just, um. You know a great deal about many things. That you've seen things in the Fade. She wanted to meet you." And then, to her mother: "This is Solas, he's the one I spoke to you about."

Deheune gives a short nod to Beleth, and turns to face Solas. "I apologize if I am unwanted, of course, but I could not deny my curiosity. It's been...a very long time since the People have had access to the words of a Dreamer." Her words are precise, but polite in tone, her expression calm. Despite this, Beleth flinches all the same, glancing off to the side. She's so glad to be back home!!

[arlathvhen]

Beleth flits in and out of the camp, in a variety of moods, to suit however progress is going with what she's trying to do. Sometimes she looks cheerful, or fired up, one time she comes back looking smug and suspiciously muddy. This is just as much her element as any of the noble parties she has attended--moreso, because here, she is at home. This is her wheelhouse, and there are no nobles treating her like a dancing bear--though she does get her share of suspicious looks. The Dalish who gallivants in shemlen politics. Who became a leader for a shemlen organization. It's as much a curse here as it is a point of interest.

Of the few who come to visit the camp, a decent portion come to visit Beleth. She had been well-known and well-liked by her clan, and old friends stop by to make sure that she's doing well, that the shemlen haven't changed her too much. Beleth laughs and trades stories with them, assures them she's fine, fits in with her chameleon skin, just like she does everywhere else.

Close to the last day, and the meeting of the Dalish leadership, she comes back to camp with a stricken look on her face. The first thing she does is find her brother. After they speak, she sits at the campfire, and doesn't engage with anyone. Anyone who'd been particularly attentive might know she'd been speaking to the Keeper of the Ashara Clan just a little bit ago, though she doesn't look like a woman who just reunited with her mother after a long separation. Instead, as she stares into the fire and fidgets with something around a finger, she looks like someone who was just told she has months to live.

[writteninblood]

Sorrel loves his sister more than life itself. But sometimes, almost for lack of anything else to do, he'd like to strangle that life right out of her.

"You didn't have to do that," Is all he says, pressing himself up against her side as comfort, and a mark of obvious solidarity, "I could have..."

No he couldn't. Sorrel won't lie, not to her, just now. Not like this. He sighs and lets it lapse into silence for long minutes, lets her have the moment her own way, until it seems some break, deliberate or otherwise.

"...I saw what you did to Tobrevas."

Re: The Camp

[gottakeeponejumpahead]

These aren't Adasse's people.

Well, yeah, all right they are The People but honestly the name is something of a thing. They're the People of the People and if that isn't pretensions as all get out, he'll eat one of his daggers. Either way though, he's here to make friends and influence people, so he'll sit and talk while he mans the fire and sews his fine shirts and tunics, as well as trousers with intricate designs.

[writteninblood]

It's a relatively quiet night, for a giant elf party in a remote woodland recluse, really. Well...just this part of it is quiet enough. Or maybe it was, but now it's got a strange elven woman with wild, pale hair. She's easily recognizable in brilliant red vallaslin and dyed leathers to match, and comes as escort of none less than the Inquisition's own Sorrelean Ashara.

He has a bloody nose, and is fending off her helpful support with an air of half-annoyed, half-laughing irrelevance. She seats him firmly, right next to Adasse and his work, pats him on the head, and then backs off with a grin and a spatter of rapid-fire elven. Sorrel's response is rude enough not to require translation, but she only laughs.

"Take care of this one will you, flat-ear?" The woman calls out, even as she turns to go, laughter still coloring her accent, "He's had just about enough, for now."

"Tell him I hope it leaves a mark!" Sorrel informs her, at no small volume, but then settles down enough to dab at his nose and actually look at who he's been given for a safekeeper, "...'Lo, 'Dasse. You aright?"

The Market

[writteninblood]

Though not a formal market as such, the more densely-populated ring of encampments and hearthfires is nothing less than the heart and soul of a great Dalish swap-meet. Elders and youngsters and everyone not a mage or a person of import walks here and there among the makeshift blanket displays and the friendly faces at open-sided Aravels. Little money changes hands, instead they trade good for good, and more. Here and there, children take the hand of another at the urging of a parent, or blushing couples meet for the first time. A man laughs as he proclaims his protege skill, and both student and new master as satisfied at the exchange of labor.

The meetings of the Keepers and Hahrens is the soul of the Arlathvhen, but this exchange of material goods, the furiously-paced commerce of the People, is the gathering’s body, and many informal alliances are built here, strong foundations for the higher halls being wrought in somewhat loftier circles.

[laurenande]

There is nowhere in this event that Galadriel loves more than the Market. It is loosely arranged but full of life and light and the song of hearts. She does not try to overhear them, but it is impossible to rein in the ability now that she is finally surrounded by elves again. She is too tall, she draws far too much attention, she glows even in daylight, but she feels infinitely more aligned with these people than those in Kirkwall. This is not Lorien, it is not Imladris, or even Mirkwood, but this is something not entirely unlike home.

She has shopped often in the stores of Kirkwall, walking from booth to booth acquiring materials. She weaves and works and dyes and whiles her time with the manufacture of cloth for herself, for Thranduil and his wife, for no reason other than the love of working with the threads. Shopping here is different, no only because the money she has brought is of little use, but because she is even less welcome. They are kinder than the humans, to be certain, but their stores are limited and they are unwilling to give her what she wishes to acquire.

She had brought something to trade, a bold of fabric bound in rough broadcloth, but she cannot find someone who carries similar wares and ends up wandering lost but not unhappy through the market.

[writteninblood]

The Dalish are a people of the world. They live down among the trees in homes built of natural materials and bent along lines and curves formed in service to the nature of wind and water, wood and force. The whole of the camp is only a little removed from the forest it inhabits, living trees overhead that bear no greater weight than their own branches, and perhaps a scout, lookout, or adventurous child.

There are indeed many children. They are the friendliest of the lot; where adults turn away or openly warn Galadriel off, the children peek around corners or charge right up to her to get a closer look, or to try and jump to tug at the trailing end of her hair. They're mischief itself, the only bare faces in the Arlathvhen that did not travel here with Sorrel's party, and reverence is a notion none of them seem to possess.

Or perhaps, they just don't associate a bare face with authority, or pointed ears with any danger. Ah, youth!

Galadriel has likely been wandering thuslywise, being well-observed and remarked-upon while simultaneously ignored by all she meets, when Sorrel happens upon her. He blends well with the elves here, a sparrow among finches, but like everyone else, he looks up at her approach. Unlike everyone else, he doesn't turn away, only concludes his business with a formal clasping of arms. The woman he'd been speaking to stares openly at Galadriel for a moment or two, eyes like chips of ice in a face nearly black with ink, then she picks up her bundle and vanishes into the nearest Aravel. Sorrel goes to Galadriel.

"Andaran atish’an, Galadriel. I see you've been ah..." Busy doesn't seem the word for it. None of them had much in the way of baggage, but in particular Galadriel's burden had remained remarkably unchanged, for someone walking the exchange all morning, "...Seeing the sights. Any trouble?"

Iorveth | OTA

[aenseidhe]

[ someone who only knows Iorveth from the Inquisition might consider him an anti-social person, but consider that he's stuck in an environment he loathes, constantly reminded of the prejudice to all that he is. here, in the markets, while many are wary of him simply for being a rifter, he makes conversation with anyone willing to chat with him.

his bow, and it's bizarre design, does help with the bowyers, and he spends a good amount of time at their tents and stalls going over it with them, letting other try it out, demonstrating the range of it as well when they're able to find an open range. archery will always be a point he can bond with others on, and he's surprisingly capable of charisma when around people he genuinely cares to know.

At the other Aravels, with the other shop keepers and master craftsmen, he's polite, unassuming, and asks questions about their customs and culture. there's a deep respect he shows, and any who've come with him from Kirkwall can likely tell that this is the best mood he's possibly ever been in. Many Dalish still want nothing to do with him, which Iorveth considers their right (funny how that's okay here, but not with the Inquistion har har har), but he does manage to make several friends regardless. Come find him while he's hanging around a stall, or swapping stories of customs from his own home, or talking over his weapons.

If he gets into a discussion about culturally significant tattoos, like the vallaslin, You might even catch him stripping off half his shirt to show the extensive tattoo that typically only peeks out of his collar - it's only a small part of something much larger that weaves down his chest, over his shoulder and arm, and around his rips. Iorveth, keep your clothes on. ]

The Meeting Place

[writteninblood]

The mood in the great open ring at the center of the Arlathvhen is festive, full of song, food, and laughter. If the rest of the place is overtaken by material trade, the so-called “Shiralan” is a bustling center for the trade of culture. Everyone is sharing news and celebrating the start of new lives, or mourning together for the lives lost in the past decade. Here and there, among the shifting crowd, there are small weddings being formalized, impromptu bouts of music and dance, and little self-contained circles with stories and legends being related to studious adults and awestruck children in equal measure. Everywhere, everywhere there are elves, of all ages and appearances, wearing every variety of elven-made finery and armor, and every possible variation on the ever-present vallaslin. What the Dalish Court lacks in breadth of session, it makes up for in depth, variety, and intensity.

Be careful swimming these waters; outside of the center, darker deals are made. Promises of violence traded for violence. News of the worst of things, of betrayals, of theft. To be safe, it’s wisest to stick to the center, and don’t test the People’s patience. After all, some of you are outsiders, here.

Clans

[writteninblood]

Here is where one may visit a specific clan encampment. Feel free to pot to this describing your own NPC clan so that others may approach them, and be judged, or make new friends. Please be prepared to play your own NPCs for one another, but other than that, have a fun time!

[aenseidhe]

[ did you know Iorveth dances? not well, and not sober, but with some of the new friends he's made, and after a few drinks, he does it, laughter ringing out loud in the ring. here, he has the chance to really sit down and have deep conversations about culture, history, and share some of his own when some care to ask. the consequence of sitting and talking for a while is sitting and drinking for a while, so the more the night goes on, the more Iorveth talks.

some of the older Dalish look on with scorn, with perhaps a hint of curiosity, as he befriends the younger, less stiff of their People. at one point, he's starting to teach them some pieces of Hen Llinge, in exchange for phrases and words in their own ancient tongue. ]

Geim y badraigh mal an cuach. [ Iorveth tells one of them slowly, and grins when he translates: ] It means 'get off my lands, you inbred goat-fucker.'

[ later in the evening, once it's quieter, the conversations lower and the fires blazing bright with moths buzzing around the wafting smoke, less pleasant topics come up. they talk of the history of the People - some legacy he's heard pieces of, but with so much more detail. some he'd never heard before, and the empathy is clear as he questions quietly, and speaks of respect and honor for the dead.

these stories they exchange as well - and iorveth tells them the horrors still plaguing the Continent. the atrocities of the war, and all that humanity stole from them. his tone is muted and somber, but if you come close enough, you can catch the end of one tale. ]

We took the heads of every leader of their special forces units, their non-human hunters, save for the last one. Aen Seidhe never kill the last of a dying breed. [ a small, sad smile quirks the corner of Iorveth's lips, as he watches the drink in his wooden mug swirl. ] It won't equalize the fifty-three they slaughtered at the Ravine. Those they tortured in the camps, the women and children they ravaged and killed. There is no penance grave enough for all they've wrought.

Dalish Leadership

[writteninblood]

Though the purpose of the Arlathvhen to be uniting of the spirit of the People, it’s gears turn most acutely in the convention of those who lead them. To each clan, a Keeper, and to each Keeper a the council of their clan, the wisest and most experienced of which lead alongside them, each in their own way. And here, in the ruins of an ancient elven palace, stands the gathered wisdom and leadership of the many clans of the Arlathvhen.

There are more than a hundred mages, both very young and old, all easily distinguished by their staves and robes, gathering here and there or sitting among the crumpled columns and ivy. Twice as many others talk amongst them, often bent with age and mostly silver-haired, where they have hair at all. Elves usually age gracefully, but life is hard and a long life gathers pain as well as knowledge; like the stones under their feet, there aren’t many unmarked, among the hahren. These are the leaders of the many gathered clans, and the representatives of those who could not trek in bulk to be here. They are Keepers, Firsts, Seconds, and the many solemn-faced mage children seeking new clans, new alliances, new homes. What is exchanged in this place is not merely knowledge or goods, but blood, and the lifeblood of the Dalish people at that: magic.

It’s a beautiful, spacious clearing, overshadowed by cliffs and rubble, set in perpetual sunset by the shadow of sunlight through the overgrowth and ivy. Light reaches down with dusty fingers during the day, and glows cheerfully from mage-lights at night. It was once a fine and glittering hall, but has long since become little more than wood and wild veneered over the steadily-vanishing bones of Arlathan stonework, once white, now grey with lichen, and soot. Anyone can enter, if they have business, for the lore, the artifacts, and the magic of the People is meant to be for all among the people, no matter how low their means. But if you’re coming in here to make yourself known and petition to the gathered leaders on some purpose they might share, you’d damn well better have a good presentation. The Arlathvhen is a time of furious work, it comes but once every ten years, and no one, no one has even a moment to waste on pointless interruptions.