CLOSED | i'm not one to ever pray for mercy

[aestivation]

WHO: Gwen, Adalia + Guilfoyle & Mystery Guest
WHAT: Gathering a rare herb.
WHEN: Some time this month, handwavily.
WHERE: The Nadashin Marshes.
NOTES: n/a

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INTRODUCTIONS | single thread pls

[aestivation]

Blackbirds follow them from Val Royeaux.

Ravens on messengers’ wings, crows to the gibbets that warn these roads — and small, piping things, that twitter and pluck squirming life from the earth. Wings follow them, out past seeds, and shit, and the vast spreading sky.

But it’s a while before any land.

They've rested by a broken crossroads (the arranged meeting point). There's no one, until there is: A ripple of feathers and Fade that leaves a skinny young man before them, peering down to scratch his bare, scabbed chest.

Bare feet, too, bare hands. Small blessings: He’s trousers.

"Kirkwall," He looks up, smiles — and it’s the sort a dog might wear, coincidental in its curve. Dirty nails stop digging to press up over his heart. "Alan."

Their guide.

WYVERNS | single threeeeaad

[aestivation]

They paddle the better part of an hour before it strikes something angry.

Black water roils, flesh surges upward in furious symmetry. Claws the size of sabers smash the prow and drag the little canoe under.

Yellow stripes flash a warning too late — for all the fog it’s easy to see the teeth that precede the scream. Breath bursts hot and rank from jaws almost wide enough to walk through, as the beast pulls back to spit.

VILLAGERS | single or multiple i'm not your boss

[aestivation]

It’s slow going.

Through the muck and patches of trees, patches of fog, past stilted shacks and wary eyes.

Elves are rare, regarded with caution (even unmarked Dalish sometimes range west). Open spellcraft draws open hostility; one woman makes a sign across her chest to see Alan pass.

The Chantry sister who tends these scattered villages is away several days’ journey, and the world has gone with her. Those with enough Trade to be understood — or enough patience to try their peculiar dialect of Orlesian on foreign ears — ask of the cities, the war. This, they insist, is not the Empire.

(A deserter or two have ventured this far to vanish again. Strangers are only welcome so long.)

The Inquisition brings confusion, and talk of the Herald, of her worship as a god. Is it truth? Heresy? Theirs is a devotion made fierce for its isolation, but it strays, warps.

The herb brings — eventually — an old man with an axe. His accent's difficult to place: Uses the clear, unhurried speech of someone who expects to be heard. Possibly that’s the axe. His face is a vicious ribbon of scars, thin as the point of a very fine knife.

He doesn’t require an introduction. He doesn’t want trouble. And if they agree to leave quietly, he’ll show them how to wring something useful from these roots.