faderift | Player Plot: The Arlathvhen

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Player Plot: The Arlathvhen

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.

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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.

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.

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.

Edited 2018-08-02 03:56 (UTC)

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.

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!

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.

Clan Dahlasanor

Territory: The deep Planasene Forest, west of Kirkwall in the Free Marches
Reputation:

Was accepting of trade and contact with other races until a brutal raid two decades ago in which two thirds of the clan was murdered.

Insular since then, only rarely has any contact with other clans.

Particularly brutal in the dispatch of any humans who happen through the territory.

Very accepting of City Elf converts, partially due to their small size, partially in remembrance of their previous and particularly egalitarian Keeper, Dhavihal.
Notes: Currently ostensibly joined with Clan Ashara by the bonding of Siuona and Sorrel, an alliance which has maintained after Siuona's death. While still a sort of separate entity (think vassal state), technically being under the leadership of Deheune chafes terribly at Thalia, although she won't outright express it.

Keeper: Thalia
First: Technically Sorrel?

Notable present members: (This said, the entire clan is here, since it only numbers 25 or so)
Thalia
Ladanelan (clan craftsman; her legs are crippled, but she can move herself about)
Nahariel [PC]
[Her adoptive family, the Dalish Weaselys:]
Ilriane
Lethanavir
Halesta (currently very pregnant)
Isen
Ghestlin

Edited 2018-08-07 06:59 (UTC)

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.

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.

Edited 2018-08-02 17:31 (UTC)

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.

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.

Edited 2018-08-02 20:33 (UTC)

.... 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.

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.

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?"

Adasse looks up from where he's sewing a light green tunic with patterns of wolves all over it (inspired by the stories he's been hearing about the Trickster God, Fen'harel). His mouth drops open, and he's standing as the elven woman laughingly drops off Sorrel and then heads off on her way.

He gapes at her back, then at Sorrel, then back at the other woman before he yells out after her, "It's Adasse, not .... flat ear." He waves it off, before he falls in his knees in front of Sorrel, concern filling his gaze. "Sorrel, what in the name of the Maker's BALLS happened?"

Hanky out, he presses it to Sorrel's bleeding nose immediately.

Edited 2018-08-04 02:46 (UTC)

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?"

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."

"God inna fight," Sorrel replies, and though he winces at the pressure on his nose, he makes no move to resist Adasse's doctoring, "He was beind an ass, so I hid him. He hid me back. Id was sdupid."

This said with no apparent worry, despite Adasse's concern. Even though he's clogging his nose with blood, Sorrel seems to think none of this is much out of the ordinary.

"Welcome to de Arlathvhen, yeah?"

"Yeah I can see you got in a fight - who did you get into a fight with?" Adasse grumbled, as he went to the bucket of water and got a clean, cool cloth for Sorrel to put to his face to help with the swelling.

"Thought you guys were a little more elegant than street brawls, but yeah, I gues."

"Clan Tillahdend's Firds," He tries, then tries again to pronounce it better before bending his head away from Adasse to sneeze redly into the dirt, "His name is Bellanar, because his whole family is stupid. Except maybe Alliara, but she's only a half-sister, so maybe we can blame the other side for all the idiot in the line. Technically we're cousins, sort of."

Don't make him recite the geneology chart. Please. He'll do it, of course, but hasn't he been punished enough?

"Nobody is elegant when you punch him in his stupid face."

Edited 2018-08-04 03:56 (UTC)

Adasse shook his head before he lets out a snort, "I don't know what he did to you, love, but clearly Bellanar deserved it. If you need me to go back and give him another slap about, you let me know."

Anyone who can get Sorrel upset enough to take a swing at him is clearly some kind of ass.

He gets another rag so Sorrel can clear his nose. "Is it tender? Do you think he broke it?"

Sorrel takes a minute to imagine how that would go, and makes a face. No, he does not want to send his city-elf boyfriend to go have a fight with an experienced Dalish mage with an axe to grind— better to let the blows exhcanged put the issue to bed, for now. Or for the next ten years, at least.

"Oh, well. No, I think... He's probably had enough," now Sorrel finds himself unable to make eye contact. Oh hey, look at you there, ground, "If you cand-- can find me a mirror, I can. Heal it."

Lest Adasse forget, magic exists.

"I think it's not broken. Probably. Did I thank you yet?" Sorrel holds the cool cloth to his face when offered it, but his smile is evident, "Thank you, ma'nehn. You're always there when I need a hand."

Hey, his city elf boyfriend would not be playing fair -- but Adasse supposes that starting a brawl with some clan person when he's a lowly 'flat-ear' won't help anyone.

...and he will not nick any of their belongings either.

He squints at Sorrel, before he rolls his eyes and goes to find a mirror that he had stuffed in his belongings. Small, but it helps with seeing around corners and the like.

"No, but heal your nose first before you try."

"Don't make that face," He sighed, because Adasse had one thing in common with Beleth and that was the absolutely alarming range between their ordinary mode of being, and the way they could be when killing was on the plan, "There's no way to win a fight like that. Even if you lost, it'd be... Politics, you know?"

He waves both hands, a gesture of clear disgust, but forgets to hold the rag on when he talks, then has to hurriedly catch the blood before it drips. By some miracle his robes are still clean of anything but mud, despite the mess of his face. He takes the mirror sheepishly, when it's offered.

"Thank you," And it is small, but enough to see the nose on his face. Shortly, there is a blue-green glow, the blood stops flowing, and Sorrel's face is restored to its usual state, "And.... Sorry."

"I'll stop making that face when you stop running into arseholes who need to be taught some manners." Adasse stated firmly, before he sighed and waved his hand. "Yeah, yeah, I know ... class struggles all over the place."

He nods, then goes to get Sorrel something to eat, and another clean cloth to wipe his face down, "You're welcome." One corner of his mouth twists. "I guess this is what I get for letting you wander off on your own."

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Player Plot: The Arlathvhen

Traveling

The Camp

The Market

The Meeting Place

Clans

Dalish Leadership

Clan Dahlasanor

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Re: Traveling

Re: The Camp

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