Simple Gifts [Closed]

[laurenande]

WHO: Galadriel, Thranduil, Solas, Myrobalan, Merrill, Kitty, Lakshmi, Teren, Marcoulf, Jang, Obi-Wan, and Anders
WHAT: A trip to a perfectly normal Chantry in the middle of nowhere.
WHEN: Current.
WHERE: The Island of Alamar, Ferelden.
NOTES: Current warnings, to be updated: Graphic Descriptions of Gore

The Abbey on the White Cliff

Travel to the Abbey on the White Cliff is no easy matter. While it stands not far from Amaranthine, the waters between the mainland and the island shores are a wicked confluence of eddies and razor sharp rock. The rain is ever-present here and the wind moves unpredictably at the best of times. Ships of size cannot travel easily to the island of Alamar and small boats are rarely steady through the choppy water. Fortunately, as the Inquisition approaches, the world takes some pity on them and the waters seem to still and calm. The clouds linger but, at the very least, they don't open above them until they have reached the land.

The island is a grey affair, all rocks and scrub and damp. The village, an austere looking outcropping of buildings, is entirely made from the local stone and, were it not for the red clay roofing, would blend into the landscape seamlessly. Very few people have strayed into the rain to greet the Inquisition and, without the voices to echo off the stone, most sound is drowned in the lapping of waves and the heavy fall of rain. As a result of the weather and the lack of citizens, the town has the general quality of a graveyard.

The merchants who work the docks are affable enough and, after unloading their haul and securing it somewhere a bit drier, offer to take the Inquisition up to the Abbey proper. The rain slows before long and the merchants lead the Inquisition to the main roads and, let them on their way. Fortunately, the Island is not terribly large and, even walking, it will take only a few hours to arrive at the far side of it.

As the party leaves the village and the shore, the island landscape opens before them. Sloping moors give way to periodic outcroppings of rock and, against the horizon and the far end of the island, there rests a dark forest of pines. The Abbey on the White Cliff stands at the far side, at the top of the hill and overlooking the waves. The road they travel is an easy one, well worn, and the buildings come into view long before they reach them--they stand several stories tall, made of the same stone as the village. They are moss-covered and have the look of an old building that has been questionably kept--at least, from a distance.

The closer one gets to the buildings, the more obvious the additions and repairs become. Windows that have no business holding glass have had colorful windows inset to them. The doors are heavy, wooden, and new. The ironwork on the walls is polished and unworn by the rain. There are no torches lit but, once the Inquisition members have reached the doors, they open promptly.

They are greeted by a Chantry Sister with a bright smile and rosy cheeks and, without hesitation, the lot of them are welcomed into the Abbey.


OOC:

Hey guys! So I plan on aggressively GMing this one. Basically I want to run this like D&D, or as near as I can manage.

The location threads below are available for single player/two player exploration, I will be tagging you with information based on where you go or what you do, but if you want to do a bigger thread please just use the team threads at the bottom. That way if you all decide you want to check out the [INSERT LOCATION HERE] and it leads you to [DIFFERENT LOCATION] I can move you along without changing threads.

Because of your proficiencies, different characters will have advantages in different areas/while talking to different people, so groups are best. I will also be PMing your character journal periodically with any information that your character may have picked up on that nobody else would.

The NPCs are available for talking to or questioning by any number of people. Their general locations are in their thread headers so you can travel there as a crew or ask me to send them at you, if you so desire.

Feel free to do new top-levels if you guys really want, I am just here to try and make this fun.

Comments

Brother Morely - Found In The Main Hall and Various Other Buildings

[laurenande]

There is a Brother who wanders the Main Hall at odd hours. His comings and goings are only remarkable in that he carries with him a lit lamp and a long stick. He travels through the Main Hall and, in fact, most rooms in the Abbey and lights each of the candles. They are often extinguished long before he has finished but, for a brief period, there is a glow of candlelight through the Chantry.

Though he wears the robes of a lay brother, he is not precisely a friendly fellow. His dark hair rests long, nearly to his shoulders, and his expression is rarely welcoming. It is, perhaps, the frustration of his task...or perhaps it is his personality, but he will help when he can and it is possible he will answer questions if asked politely.

Found on the fringes of the hall with the serfs lighting candles, also outside the meditation basement.

[doneisdone]

A notoriously bad sleeper, odd hours are Teren's bread and butter. Back in Kirkwall, and in the Warden camp before it, she would pace the halls or rows of tents at night, looking in on the sleeping Wardens and staying awake with her thoughts until she'd doze off in the grey of early morning. Changing location doesn't put a stop to the behavior, and seeing no reason not to be up and about, Teren makes her rounds.

They bring her to encounter this unfriendly-looking man with his lamp and his stick, and at the sight of him Teren feels an immediate kinship. Resting against one of the walls, she waits for him to pass before addressing him: "why not wait until the room isn't empty? Seems a waste."

[laurenande]

Brother Morely, at first, does not bother looking up from his task. He regards the candles and the small, guttering flame at the end of his stick in the same way most people regard an infestation of snails. His frown is open but well worn and shifts only slightly as he answers her question and assertion.

"This room is never actually empty," he corrects but, at the same time, inclines his head to acknowledge that she has a point. It is emptier than usual. "And if I did wait I'd just have to go around people and they'd all go out faster."

As he speaks he continues lighting candles. They stay lit, though the fire seems very thin. there is a faint smell of tallow and ash, but in a room this large it is barely a hint of what it should be. The candles on the table to his right rise high with an unseen draft and then, as though someone is sweeping their hand over them, twist and extinguish.

He pauses only to glower at that table before he returns to his work and turns his attention to Teren. He glances at her hands, hums noncommittally, and then looks back up at her face.

"Why'd you come? You don't look like you're dying and this isn't exactly a scenic spot."

[doneisdone]

"Please, we're all dying," Teren snorts with a little smirk, no doubt thinking herself clever, but at least not too clever. "But apart from that, call it interest in a foreign Chantry. Your lot made quite the friendly overture on mine, wouldn't do to turn up our noses at it." She watches him carefully after saying so, hoping for some recognition, some knowledge of what it was about.

[laurenande]

"Hmh," he replies, half a laugh and half a sort of audible shrug. It's a friendly noise, for all that Brother Morely is capable of being friendly, and he turns his bored gaze back to the candles. A sudden updraft puts out half of the ones on the table and he lets out an audible sigh.

After a pause, he relights his stick and starts from the beginning of the set. The first candle lights with a small crackle then thins to a razor-fine bit of flame. The second follows suit, as does the one after, and the one after that.

"I guess they are my lot, now," Morely bemoans mildly after a pause and shakes his head. "Never figured I'd be relighting fires in a Chantry all day, but here we are."

He glances back at Teren, his gaze a little curious, but this time he doesn't stop lighting candles.

"You...all?" He starts and gestures with the lamp at her. "They tell you all anything sensible about this place before you get here? Tell you to bring coats at least?"

[doneisdone]

"Maker," Teren mutters under her breath, watching the display with the candles, "why even bother?" Especially, as it turns out, if he's not singularly devoted to the cause. What a life.

"Sensible is a stretch," she replies, strolling behind him and offering the small mercy of cupping her hand around each candle as he lights it, so it at least won't blow out immediately, "but we all managed to wear clothes, which is frankly a miracle considering this bunch." They're friends now.

"Not a brother of the Chantry, then? What brought you here?"

[laurenande]

"Mother," Brother Morely admits with a sniff, his answer artificially manly to cover the fact that it was his mother who dragged him to the Chantry. He bends to light the candle and, for a time, it works.

"She heard about this place, had to come see, knew a guy who got blessed here," he explains as he moves down the line of candles. He even seems the tiniest bit hopeful that, with her assistance, they might not go out immediately. It is an odd and tentative look, especially on a face as grim as his, but he doesn't bother to hide it.

"Saw herself a miracle and she stayed, so I stayed. Been here a few months already."

As he tells her that, a sensation of distinct and sharp cold passes through Morely and Teren's arms. The draft that follows it is strong enough to put out his lantern. He isn't startled, not exactly, but he does shiver abruptly and then regards the lantern with open disgust.

"That's just dandy," he bitches. "Can't keep a damn thing lit in this place, it's an uphill battle--constant mud-climbing bullshit, this! But this is how we pray, so this is how we pray."

[doneisdone]

Being the child of the world's most intimidating mother means Teren isn't about to judge someone for listening to his. She nods quietly, making a face that's almost sympathetic. Ah, miracles and all that.

"What was the--" she begins to ask, but pauses to shudder, the wind seeming to pierce right to her bones. She hugs herself, shoulders hunched, eyes narrowed at whatever dared make her so cold. "No one's thought to block the windows?" Surely that's the reason.

[laurenande]

"Don't work," Morely replies as he sets the lantern on the table an reaches into his robes to find the matches he carries. He strikes one and it fails, he pairs the failure with two good ones on the second try and it manages to flare up.

"None of the new ones even open, anyway," he adds and gestures with his elbow as he lights the lantern again and quickly slams the glass cover shut to keep out the drafts. Once it's relit he holds it aloft, higher than it has been this whole time, and illuminates the alcove above the candles. In the watery daylight they had been a side-note, now, with a full lamplight on them in the dark, it is impossible to miss how well sealed they are.

In fact, the nearest window that opens is half the building away.

"Besides, it's all the fire here," he continues and stares balefully at the candles. He decides, after a beat, that he has done enough of them for now and gestures for Teren to follow him as he heads toward the cloister.

"Can't keep a damn thing lit for more than five minutes. Everyone figures it's the holy spirits putting out the flames, something symbolic about the burnin' of Andraste I guess. It's damn annoying but you get used to the chill. C'mon, lets see if we can light a stove long enough to get tea."

[doneisdone]

Having encountered an actual literal spirit haunting a dead child's body not so very long ago, Teren is beginning to get a terrible sinking feeling. But it'll be fine.
"Tea," she repeats, neither a question nor an affirmation, mostly just a sound she can make to disrupt her thoughts. Spirits don't fuck around, one doesn't have to be a mage to know that.
"Has anything, ah... I don't supposed you'd know." It's a wild shot in the quite real dark, but Teren remembers Morely has only been here a few months.

[laurenande]

"Nobody tells me nothin'," Morely confirms as they move out of the chill of the main hall into the covered cloister. His lamp casts strange shadows over the archways and the carpentry tools. Golden light paints the statue of Andraste from beneath as they pass.

"But it doesn't really matter," he adds and, in a rare bout of thoughtfulness, lowers the volume of his voice as they approach the lower level of the dormitories. He turns off before he reaches the stairwell and takes a different entry into the building. It opens directly into the kitchens.

The kitchens are large, designed to keep this whole facility in order, but they are overcrowded with goods. Vegetables, fruits, bread, butter, containers of milk and cream. Nothing in the building appears to require cooking, even if quite a lot of it could spoil very easily. It is very cold here, just as it is in every part of the Abbey, so it is, perhaps, not surprising that nothing has turned.

Morely moves into the room and sets his lantern on the table. He roots through the cabinets that line the walls and, eventually, comes away with a kettle and a box. He dumps the box into the kettle without ceremony and gestures idly at Teren as he moves toward the north door to fetch water.

"Be right back--light the stove if you can."

[doneisdone]

Teren grunts her agreement, slightly put off by just how much tea he threw into the pot, but... well, he's leaving her to light the stove, she can sneak some back out while he's distracted. This is what the real rogue skills are for.
She's in the process of scooping out some of the excess leaves with her hand (who cares, it's going to be boiled anyway) when it occurs to Teren just how much food is here, and how fresh all of it is. She looks around at it with a furrowed brow, still holding the kettle in one hand and doing absolutely no stove lighting.

"Got a big delivery today," she observes, hoping Morely is still within earshot to confirm.

[laurenande]

"Carpenters were here all day banging away," Morely calls from outside, the sounds of a pump punctuate his speech. Water sloshes into a container on his side and, after a minute or two, he hauls in a bucket. Only about half of him is soaking wet. If he is more chagrined than before it is very difficult to tell.

"They got the cart...unless that baker from the village came up, didn't smell any fresh bread though and they know I called first in line," he adds and some of his nonsense answer begins to make sense. "Rest of it, not fish, meat, or bread, comes from the garden. And butter. Don't grow any butter here."

Early day 2-ish. Like real early.

[faithlikeaseed]

The Inquisition's sent a bunch of insomniacs on this mission.

Or so might someone conclude if he's seen not one but two or three of them wandering the halls at odd hours, out of their quarters. For Myr, though, this disconnection from the rhythms of the waking world's perfectly ordinary since he'd been blinded: With no light to guide him in sleeping or waking, his schedule simply drifted like an unmoored boat.

So: It's early the morning after the Inquisition's arrival that he's lurking around the halls, setting the glyphs he'd won permission to set. (Glyphs he wouldn't need in a few days' time, mirabile dictu. He's yet to wrap his mind entirely around it.) At the tread of someone approaching from down the hall--and quiet hsst of a flame lighting--he lifts his attention from scribing magic on the wall, head turned toward the noises of another presence. "H'lo," he calls cheerily enough. "And good morning, if it's morning yet."

[laurenande]

Morely works quietly, avoiding conversation at the best of times, but with the hall quiet and the rains pounding against the windows, he can do nothing about his mounting boredom. When Myr greets him, abruptly and out of the silence, Morely jumps as if caught out.

"I wasn't starin'," he says, in place of a greeting and, realizing how guilty that sounded in the calm of the very early morning, he clears his throat and attempts again.

"'Mornin'," he says in a friendly but tight sort of grumble. He is not far from Myr and moves to a closer table to begin his task anew. There is a soft creak as he opens his lantern, a thin flare of wood smoke as he lights his stick, and a quiet sound as he lights the candle in turn. It continues for a minute before Morely speaks again.

"You up early or late?"

[faithlikeaseed]

Myr catches his breath on a laugh at Morely's startlement, swallowing back an innocent mirth that would nevertheless be read wrong--given the situation. Instead: "Sorry--didn't mean to startle you there."

It sounds like the man's busy, and given that, Myr's as content to return to his own work and let Morley be about his-- Though he's quick enough to respond when the brother asks his question. "It's early if you've slept, right?"

And he had--sort of--snatched an hour or two of sleep during the darkest hours, when the turmoil in his head and heart had relented a little to exhaustion. But it had begun immediately again on waking--and here he is, rather than abed.

"And you--early or late?"

[laurenande]

"Late," he laments in a deeply resigned way. It didn't much make a difference when sunrise happened above the Abbey, the weather was too poor to let them enjoy it, but it was the principle of the thing. Clearly staying up all night grates on him but he sounds awake enough; he has grown used to his ridiculous schedule.

"And aye, though if you've got to ask its probably Late anyway," he says and continues working. Eventually a draft sneaks past them, moving up and against the windows, and there is a fluttering as the majority of the candles on the table are snuffed out. Morely ignores them and keeps working his way down the hall.

[faithlikeaseed]

That resignation is something Myr well-recognizes, and his smile softens with a measure of empathy. "Truly said, brother." He shivers as the draft sneaks through, insinuating chilly fingers beneath his robes--and breathes an oath under his breath as he feels one of his glyphs destabilize and pop out of existence elsewhere in the Abbey. Well, he had been warned...

Maybe it's not worth sinking the effort or mana into it. He dismisses his current effort with a wave of his hand, takes down his staff from off his back, and makes his careful way down the hall after Morley. "Can I help--so's late doesn't become much later?" he asks.

It occurs to him as he does he doesn't entirely know what the brother's up to, though he's got guesses from the sound of things. Not that there's much Morley could be doing he'd mind helping on.

[laurenande]

"Help?" he says the word ad though it embodies an entirely foreign concept and, despite his better judgment, turns from his task to look at Myr. There is silence while he debates whether the offer is genuine or not and, while he dithers, the candles he has just lit are extinguished once more. He regards them sadly and then shakes his head.

"No I don't imagine you can, but can't say as I didn't try." Morely's defense is halfhearted but so is his defeated tone. This is his job, it is not undertaken because they pay him, it is done out of faith. He will begin again tomorrow night and then the night after as well.

"I light the candles, all the prayers that go out when the fires are snuffed," Morely explains and shifts to blow out the little flame in his lantern.

"Doesn't ever stick, but seeing a lit candle if you wake up at night is comforting, even if it does go out."

[faithlikeaseed]

It's in earnest, from Myr's almost-hopeful expression; he doesn't do earnestness by half-measures. But he's also accustomed to taking a no for no, and does not argue when the brother says he might not.

Well--almost. He can still feel the least residual heat from one of those candles snuffed out nearby and reaches, curious, to snap the wick back to light with a spark of flame from the Fade. It's an apprentice's trick: Deceptively simple but meant to shape control when most young mages dealt in gouts and torrents of fire.

He doesn't expect it will last any longer than Morley's efforts, but it's worth seeing. He curls fingers against his palm to count his own heartbeats, timing.

"And they're blown out like this every night for you to light anew the next? That goes well beyond trying, I think; that's a lot of comfort when people need it."

[laurenande]

The fire lingers a while in Myr's grip and, focused on it as he is, the flame stays strong for a minute, maybe two, before a strange draft moves past him, through him. The flame twists with it, follows in the wake of it, and then is stretched too thin and extinguishes an instant later. Morely watches it, as he lowers his lantern, and there is a hum as the bit of hope he'd held out is dashed.

"Worse now then when I arrived here, honestly," Morely explains, as if that is any explanation at all and lowers his lantern as he fastens it to his belt. "Used to stay lit for an hour or two, could almost finish the hall. Looked like a regular building with regular folk back then."

[faithlikeaseed]

He shudders in a spasmodic jerk, yanking his hand back to fold his arm about himself. That wasn't the wind.

He's not sure he wants to know what it was.

He also knows he hasn't the leisure not to.

"How long ago was that?" Myr asks, once the creeping feeling between his shoulder blades has passed. "That you came?"

[laurenande]

"Round three months ago, maybe?" Morely answers, his hand waving in the air between them in a gesture that Myr cannot see. He hums again and scrubs his hand across his face.

"Maybe less, I suppose, hard to tell when there's no sunshine."

Morely taps him on the shoulder, then, trying to get him out of his recoil, and gestures again in the direction of the kitchens. The motion is useless, but he speaks again.

"Gonna get some food, you want anything?"

[faithlikeaseed]

That's--

Slower than Myr would expect things to decay, if there was something malevolent beyond the Veil involved. He hasn't the most experience with hauntings but from what he has heard--and experienced--things went to hell and stayed that way fairly quickly.

Though he's put in mind of Pel's demon and its long patient stalk before circumstances had forced its hand. The thought makes him shiver again--

And nearly start out of his skin when Morley taps him. He winces to realize just how jumpy he's being and gives Morley's approximate direction an apologetic look. "Sorry--and breakfast wouldn't go amiss. So it's been like this for a while but gotten worse--"

A thought occurs to him, as he sidles a little closer to the other man with the intent of following him to the kitchens. "--D'you know if any other mages have visited the abbey? Either in your three months or before that."

[laurenande]

"Mages?" Morely repeats as he starts walking toward the kitchen, Myr in tow. His steps are lively, the promise of food has him excited, but he refrains from walking too quickly and risking losing Myr.

"Not that I can say. Then again, I ain't exactly asked each of them whether they were mages or not, so could be," he answers as there is a gust of fresh, damp air as he opens the door to the cloister. The carpenters have not begun again today, the area is quiet with only the sounds of the drizzling rain to fill it.

"Don't really get exotic types way out here, you know. Templars, mages, rift folk, that's all just stories for us, least they became that once we got here."