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

[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."

[doneisdone]

If nothing else, Teren is a quartermaster herself, and she knows how things look when they're fresh off the farm. And that's... how they look. She gives Morely a strange expression, but decides not to make anything of it at present, bending instead to light the stove.
Interesting. iiiinterestinggg

[laurenande]

Morely was not exaggerating when he complained that fire doesn't light well within the Abbey. The stove is dry and stocked well enough with kindling, tinder, and wood. There's even a container of oil in the cabinet nearby, just to assist in the lighting of a flame. It takes more than a few tries and more than a few failed matches before any of the sawdust in the belly of the stove lights and, when it does, it is a fairly weak flame.

Morely, to his credit, seems absolutely alright with allowing someone else to attempt to light a fire in his stead. He busies himself by filling the kettle and takes his time accomplishing it. Once he is done, Teren has only just managed to get the fire lit and he bends to help blow on it and feed the little sheltered flame.

It picks up and lights after a few moments of fussing, and while it doesn't go out with quite the speed of the candles in the main hall, it does struggle far more than any such fire has the right to.

Morely sets the kettle on and pulls his stick off the table. He closes the door to the belly of the stove and uses the thin strip of wood to prod the shielded fire inside it and keep the flame from lingering too long without moving.

"I'll keep an eye on it--there's a stool around here somewhere if you want to sit. You can use the table if you want, I don't really care."

[doneisdone]

Morely is a more patient soul than Teren. She's about ready to learn magic just to cast fireball before the stove finally lights, and even then she steps back and glowers at it with a look that would douse an inferno (fortunately, it doesn't).

Rather than hunt around for a stool in this weird place she just leans back against the table, arms folded, not quite resting all her weight on the surface.
"What was the miracle?" she asks after a time, "that your mother witnessed."

[laurenande]

Morely settles for watching the fire and waiting on the kettle in silence. He would have been perfectly content to let that linger, but then Teren speaks to him again and draws his attention. He glances at her and then catches himself, turning back to face the fire as though it were ready to betray him.

"Saw the Reverend Mother bring a gel back from the dead, or near enough to it to qualify as such," Morely tells her as though he is recou ting the weather.

"Gel had been bleeding for days, paler than anything had the right to be. Could see her guts even as they brought her up to the whatchacallit, stage? Podium? Whatever fancy folk call that talking stand."

The kettle interrupts his story and he shifts so he can wrap his sleeve around the handle and haul it off the fire. He goes in search of cups as he speaks.

"Old Reverend Mother took her by the hands and--" he makes a strange and incomprehensible gesture with one hand before occupying both hands with pouring tea. The steam nearly distracts him. "She got right up, right as rain, healthy as anybody--probably more than most. See her every couple of days now, dashin' around the place."

[doneisdone]

It takes Teren a moment to properly digest what she's just been told, and even then she really can't. She narrows her eyes at Morely, certain he's trying to pull one over on her.
"...with her guts still out?" she asks, openly incredulous, "and you've spoken to her?"

[laurenande]

"Well they got closed up again," he corrects, almost defensively, and picks up his tea. He sets hers on the table beside her as he backs toward the stove and the ambient heat still coming off of it. The flame inside is already flickering out.

"But, yeah," he adds and nods his head. He jerks his hand over his shoulder, pointing back at the main building with his thumb.

"You can ask her about it yourself, Sister Luca. She doesn't talk about it much, not really good dinner conversation, but she's worn her guts on the outside."

[doneisdone]

"Sister Luca," Teren repeats, committing it to memory. "I shall."
After a moment, realizing just exactly how suspicious that sounds, she clears her throat and adds, "I'm-- intrigued by the miraculous." It's not a lie, per se, but if anything she tends to avoid the miraculous and allow it to befall people who don't want to live quite as long as she has.

[laurenande]

Morely shrugs, it is a motion that absorbs the better half of him, and takes a long slurp of his tea. It is scalding hot and he seems to savor that feature.

He clearly doesn't care what her tone implies, that she plans on grilling Sister Luca is hardly any of his business. The fire behind him goes out and the stove is already cool enough to rest against, and so he does, soaking up the last of the warmth as it fades.

"Then you're in some luck," Morely replies, his tone nearly bored. "We got no end of that here."

He throws back the rest of his tea and, sets his cup aside. He inclines his head to Teren, clearly uninterested in talking down this train of conversation any longer, retrieves his lamp and stick, and leaves. He has candles to light again, ere the rising sun.

[doneisdone]

"Goodnight to you too," Teren grumbles under her breath, watching the doorway through which he left. She takes some time to finish her tea, then pokes her way back to her assigned dormitory to make another pathetic attempt at sleeping.