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faderift2018-09-01 08:02 pm
faderifting) wrote in faderift2018-09-01 08:02 pm
CLOSED | Minrathous Rescue Operation
WHO: Team 1 (Coupe, Benedict, Colin, Malcolm, Nikos, Six, Yseult), Team 2 (Anders, Arohaerd, Marcoulf, Myr) and Captives (Adalia, Gareth, Inessa, Kain, Max)
WHAT: Rescuing the captives
WHEN: Nowish
WHERE: Minrathous, Tevinter
NOTES: Probably violence? It is what it says on the tin idk
WHAT: Rescuing the captives
WHEN: Nowish
WHERE: Minrathous, Tevinter
NOTES: Probably violence? It is what it says on the tin idk
Below is an OOC overview of the entire plan as a whole, including both the parts that Team 1 planned in their discussion, and an explanation of a couple unexpected obstacles the teams will encounter along the way. We're providing this rundown to help make sure everyone's on the same page OOC about what the plan is, who's been assigned to do what, what order things are happening in, and the big picture of how it goes, while hopefully still leaving plenty of room for people to decide in RP the details of how specific tasks are accomplished. We have again provided a question comment at the top for any OOC questions related to this post.
Preliminary orders from Coupe:
- Team 1 is led by Coupe, Team 2 is led by Anders
- To minimize the risk of crystals falling into enemy hands, only a few will be brought. On Team 1, Wren will have one, along with Nikos and Malcolm. They can be passed between characters IC if needed. Team 2 will have a single crystal. Everyone will have strict orders to destroy the crystals if there seems to be a chance it might be captured.
- All members of Team 1 would be issued a vial with a very small amount of the Archon's blood, to be used to enter and exit the secret passages. Because the amount is very limited, they each must be careful to limit their comings and goings, and may have to share vials if someone runs out.
- Malcolm, Nikos, and Yseult would have received orders from Coupe to kill the Inquisition captives if they cannot be extracted. The others would not be informed of this.
- In general, the teams will have been reminded that the one and only goal of this mission is to get the captives out. They're not here to carve a path of wholesale slaughter but they're also not here to worry about the lives of those who get in the way of that mission. Do what needs to be done, no more and no less.
Members of both Team 1 and Team 2 will be smuggled into Tevinter by sea, and dropped off on the peninsula north of Minrathous. They'll have to sneakily hike to the catacomb entrance in the High Reaches and then travel underground into the city. This will require clearing an intentionally blocked passage between the natural caves and the city catacombs, and being very careful once beneath the city to identify and avoid magical alarm spells.
Once beneath the palace, the teams will split up. Team 2 will continue on to the point beneath the tower they intend to collapse, and will remain underground making preparations to blow the underground supports beneath the tower as soon as word comes. Their job will involve waiting a while and hiding from the occasional patrol, the last of which will arrive at an unfortunate moment and need to be taken captive or killed. They'll also be spied upon by a couple young catacomb-dwelling urchins, who seem too shifty to be trusted to keep their mouths shut even if paid. They'll likewise need to be captured or killed.
Team 1 will sneak up into the palace, emerging in a rarely-used back storeroom. Some will be disguised as servants, others as party goers, but they will discover on arrival (via overhearing a convenient conversation between passing kitchen staff) that the new Archon has issued an eccentric last-minute decree: all guests at his event will wear his two favorite colors: orange and green. This will require the team to get their hands on new disguises ASAP, most likely by bribing servants to steal their masters' clothing for them or to give up their own, or by choosing soft targets among those in attendance who can be quickly lured away from the group and robbed of their clothes.
Once the team is properly (if unflatteringly) outfitted, they'll join the party. Malcolm and Yseult will identify and target the two Head Guards, with Malcolm handling the one with the lyrium tattooed hand (who proves to be a mage), and Yseult acquiring the enchanted key. Colin, Benedict, and Wren will mingle among those in attendance in their roles either as servers or guests and gather information while keeping an eye out for unexpected threats. Six and Nikos will test whether the archon's blood can open the secret passage doors. It can, and Nikos will head into the passages to pursue his secret assassination mission.
Once the key and the dude with the hand have been obtained, Malcolm, Yseult, Six, and Colin will head down into the dungeons, handle the guards there, and open the door to the Special Prisoners section. Because of earlier delays in the catacombs, the passage out of the dungeon will by now be starting to fill with seawater. They'll find the Inquisition prisoners (Inessa and Max held separately from the rest) along with a handful of other prisoners. They'll get their own people free and decide whether to free the others or not. Benedict and Wren will either join them or remain at the party as lookouts.
Nikos, in his exploration, will have discovered two things: first, that the secret passages are not unused as Radonis had expected, which he'll discover when he encounters someone exiting the new Archon's bedroom into the passages. Second, the archon's bedroom is roomy and now empty and likely to remain that way since the Archon is off giving a speech, so it provides a good spot for the team to regroup and prepare for the escape.
The dungeon team and the rescued captives will be forced to swim through the last two chambers on their way out of the dungeon, with the final chamber entirely filled by the time they get to it, and extremely dark. Anyone who can't swim well will have to be ferried through by those who can. The nearest exit from the submerged room is the gate into the secret passages, which will need to be unlocked with both the Archon's blood and a normal key or lockpick before anyone can get out.
Once they've all made their soggy way into the passages, everyone will meet in the Archon's apartment, where they'll have to regroup and figure out how to either look less soaking wet or explain why they are + disguise the prisoners. Everyone will then head back into the secret passages and exit at various points throughout the palace in twos and threes to avoid drawing attention by traveling as a big group. At this point, Team 2 will be ordered via crystal to trigger the explosion.
When the ground shakes and the tower suddenly begins to collapse, the party crowd will, as predicted, freak the hell out and run for the exits, forcing their way past the confused guard. The team will blend in with the fleeing guests and slip out, hijack a noble's big fancy gondola, and make their escape.
Team 2 will have to book it through the catacombs as that section collapses, and make their way to a cliffside exit along the coast identified by the Archon, where the gondola will pick them up. They'll then all sail this boat further across open water and carrying a much heavier load than it's really built for to the smuggler's cove where they were dropped off, where they'll scuttle the gondola, get picked up, and sail back to Kirkwall. Mission accomplished, good job team, etc.
no subject
She knows she stands out, but it's not the first time she's been looked at during the hours of this party. People will remember her for her lies, she thinks; she is the daughter of a merchant family, that is what she had spread, and she had used what Benedict had told her to support it. They will remember her face but know nothing of her name, of who she truly is. Even if they did, she is a Rifter; she has very little power here, truly.
At least she has learned to hide her discomfort a touch better, holding her back straighter, head tilted up higher. She cannot slip now, not so close to the end, not so close to Adalia.
"I have never encountered a place like it. Not on a scale like this." Six frowns, looking intense, intent. "They are proud of what they are doing to people, to those they think of as less than themselves. I could not live here." But she imagines she knows how the people who do survive. If it is all you have known, if you have the strength and the power to prosper here... Why would you want anything else? Why would you ask for anything else?
Lifting her head, she stares at the crown. Closer and closer, and she cherishes it.
"I will not ignore anything. I want to help people, as much as I can. Not just my sister, but anyone who needs it." Even if she might be single-minded when she gets to Adalia, she will help all the others.
no subject
"I look forward to seeing if you really mean that."
It's meant as a sort of compliment, even if it comes off as nothing of the sort. Few people even go that far, or even articulate as much, he might add, to soften it. Few people even give a shit, if taking action might inconvenience them in any way. And of those few people, maybe twenty percent turn out to be true to their word and their convictions. If Rifters are worth his time, given their tendency to disappear, maybe Six will be one of them.
They turn the last corner, and there at the end is the statue Radonis described to them. Tall, with a low burnished gleam even in the low light. A man in long robes and armor, and the crown they'd spotted from across the gardens. He stands with one hand held aloft, and--just as Radonis had said--around his feet and ankles there coils a nest of snakes. Even in the frozen form of a statue, they look as if they are writhing.
Nikos picks up the pace a little, now that they are close to their goal. He does not yet loose himself from Six, in case an unexpected contingent from the party turns the next corner of the path and finds them here.
"The snake with the opal eyes," he says, in a low voice. "Would you like to pour the blood in its mouth, or will I get that honor."
no subject
"I always mean what I say."
Which is true. Six is as stubborn as she is kind, even if her kindness might be hidden behind her awkward edges and the intimidating presence that she carries. She knows well enough that people find her... Unfortunate at times, but she has learned to accept that with as much good grace as she can manage. Her elven blood might have softened her features, but her human parts are far more prominent and they always have been - her ears, her stature, her height, her voice.
The statue, at least, distracts her from her thoughts and she stares up at it with wide eyes. Walking as quickly as Nikos allows, Six shifts and moves to examine it, drinking it in. The next step to Adalia, the next step to freeing the prisoners, the next step to making sure that all these people make it back to Kirkwall without any damage or fear. It makes her heart pick up, but she keeps herself stern an dsure.
Her grip doesn't loosen from Nikos, but she breathes out sharply, lifting herself up. She must look like an enchanted foreigner, surely, but her excitement is not awe from the depths of the splendour but from how much she wants to tear this statue into pieces and leave the wreckage for someone else to deal with.
"You. Please. I would not want to do it wrong." She shifts, her hand relaxing just a little. "I will make sure that no one sees what you are doing."
no subject
It would take a blind man not to mark Six's interest in the statue. Nikos doesn't like small talk even in the most necessary of circumstances. Opening a secret passage in the Imperium while wearing stolen costumes and accompanied by a Rifter is about as far from the category of necessary as one might get.
"Make sure you do. Which means stop staring at the statue. They'll approach from the other direction."
Still. As he steps closer, in the shadow of the statue, examining snake after carved snake, looking for the eyes--
"What do you think of it?"
no subject
Nose wrinkling, she shifts, adjusting her stance and making herself appear a little less like a tourist and more like the woman she has been pretending to be this entire time. It's not a comfortable thing to do, but she tries. It means keeping an eye out for anyone coming close and playing guard, which she is more than capable of doing.
"Apologies."
At least she means it, and she tilts, standing taller, looking here and there before she leans closer to Nikos, letting herself continue to play the role of devoted... Something. Not lover, because the idea makes her uncomfortable, but... Paramour. A falsehood to cling to.
"It's everything I imagined this place to create. I dislike it."
no subject
Kidding. Mostly. He doesn't have any love for Radonis. The fact that he isn't Corypheus' puppet buys him only a few additional points of favor with Nikos, not near enough to matter. He goes back to looking for the opal-eyed snake.
"As long as you keep watch, I don't care how you look at the statue. Tevinter has no sense of art. Not that I fucking care about art. There--"
And that last word is under his breath, as he finds the snake he's looking for. He twists the cork out of the vial of blood and tips it into the snake's open mouth. The glass makes a faint tink as its lip kisses stone. The snake's tongue has a rivulet in the center, just as Radonis had said. And the blood flows down that rivulet, just as Radonis had said, and--for five whole seconds--nothing happens. Nikos shoots Six another look, but it is just then that there comes the dull scraping sound of stone on stone, as immediately to his left, the dais upon which the statue is mounted suddenly begins to open.
It isn't an easy movement. A curved slab of stone, retreating into stone. Slow, ponderous, with a little bit of a jerk to it. When at last the slab scrapes to a stop, the opening is perhaps three feet wide at best. And dark. The dim light from the gardens does nothing to give extra illumination within the passage. Nikos sits back on his heels.
"He didn't lie." The Archon, that is. "Wonder of wonders."
no subject
Nikos isn't the only one who can make jokes, it seems, even if Six is saying it with the steeliest of expressions, betraying nothing of her attempt at humour. Eventually, her eyes dart over back to him and her lips twitch a little but, just enough to give it away.
The clink of the glass on metal is enough to draw Six's attention back and she shifts, turning to look back over, eyes drinking in the hideousness of the statue once more. It makes her feel uncomfortable, makes something knot in her stomach, and she shakes her head as she moves closer. There's a moment of tension that bleeds out as thick as the blood they've been using and, for a brief second, Six thinks that perhaps they might have to break their way in, but then, there -
Some of the tension bleeds out of her shoulders just a little and she nods, moving forward. It's not a particularly wide or welcoming entrance, to say the least, but she supposes she's not the person who is meant to be trying to sneak in. Her job was to help Nikos get here and then make her way to the dungeons, and she knows that, but she turns to look at him. She was backup blood, and she knows as well as he does that she's hardly anything like the stealthiest of people.
"It can happen, on occasion. Will it close behind?"