Galadriel (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
laurenande) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
faderift2018-09-06 11:34 pm
laurenande) wrote in faderift2018-09-06 11:34 pm
Simple Gifts [Closed]
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
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.
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The contact is welcome, for how little words suffice, and she does not pull away from him.
When she can speak again, it is many minutes later. There is still a hollowness to her tone, one that is revealed when her resignation and determination are stripped away.
"Alvar has survived longest of any since the very first," she says and draws a deep steadying breath. "I will do what I can, but I expect Brigette will follow after me in a day or less."
She has been to the Infirmary Hall, she has seen those she will spend her life to heal, and none of them shall be simple. But what can she do, if not use this gift? Return what she was given ten-fold or more.
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Had Myr eyes still he'd close them at that, tipping his head back and swallowing a noise of despair. There isn't any arguing with the logic of the exchange: Thirty women and men rescued from death, from blindness, from incurable lungwrack or maiming or burns. (Thirty-one, he reminds himself, the fact of that trembling and wondrous and so, so cold knowing that it may spell Alvar's end and Luca's ascension.
What does he say to that. What words are there?)
"Brigette after you--Maker," he finishes in an oath or a prayer. Certain things begin to click into place; the Revered Mother, of course, must be a woman; and if that "thirty" is an answer to how many there were... in an Abbey this size there can't have been very many sisters to begin with. The first lasted ... longer than the others, and Alvar a week, but if the ordinary tenure was a day...
They'd vanished in the span of two months. Or three.
His fingers curl against her wrist, something protective in the gesture. "How long ago did it begin? Are there any sisters still here--from the time of that first?"
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She heaves a breath and pulls herself up to find Myr in a state beside her. His sympathy is encouraging, more than his fellows' suspicion had been, and she turns her hand to take his. Her own grip is very gentle and the gesture idle. She does not have a wondrous comforting manner about her...but, in all honesty, one is not required.
"The last of the original Sisters of the Abbey gave me my life. I never met her, restoring me cost Reverend Mother Faraday all that she had, she was gone before I awoke. I have been here since then and there have been no ordained Sisters after her, we try, we believe, but we are Sisters in name only.
"Apart from Brother Morely and some of the pilgrims, I am among those who have been here longest."
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All of that in less than a year, in a tiny provincial Chantry on an island in backwater Ferelden, with no more ordained Sisters left to keep the flame alive. Maker, no wonder things were in such a disarray--they're children, with the Brothers men who scarcely could've held such positions before. It still doesn't give him the least idea what might be after them, but it puts certain other things in perspective.
Myr tightens his fingers on hers, thumb drawing small unconscious circles on the side of her hand. "Then it doesn't always pass to someone they've healed--but often enough," he muses, quietly, as he assembles the pieces in his head. "--I think intent and strength of heart matter much more to the Maker than ordination, myself, which makes you Sisters in truth. Though I'd not write back to the Grand Clerics to tell them that."
It's the gentlest of jokes at his own expense. They've created something incredible here and he believes with all his heart the Maker would think so, too.
"Do you remember a time when there wasn't this gloom about the place? Candles and fire stayed lit, and so on?"
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"Most who join have been healed--how can you refrain? To feel such light within you and to come back from the very brink of death--to see--to stand--to breathe again. How can you not feel the Maker in such things and wish to aid in them?
"I have never seen this place without a pall about it. The weather on this island has never been kind but it howls around this Abbey, the sea rages against the cliffs. It is a miserable place, haunted by the living as much as the dead, but it is safe here.
"I must believe that," she adds before he can say a word to the otherwise, before he can speak as ill of this place as she does. She cannot go to her death with that weight on her, that this place, that this act is not wholly good.
"I was nearly dead when they brought me to Reverend Mother Faraday," she says after a beat. "I had been cut apart, split from neck to navel on the sword that killed my family, left flayed for the birds, and they saved me. She saved me, a woman I will never know, the last of an Order I played at joining.
"Every breath I take is because of this place, this gift, and I can fear it, I can lament it, but it is true. I will not leave it, no weather or wandering cold will drive me out."
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It hadn't even taken that brush with the Maker's glory to bring Myr into the abbey's fold; all he's heard from them, all he's felt, has spoken of their Creator's presence. Perhaps it's meet that light shines the brightest here, in a place so plagued with malevolent darkness not even fires can burn. It speaks to the truth of what she says that these people know how terrible they have it and yet remain; they are not blind to how things might be better but remain and struggle on for the sake of that light.
If the Inquisition hadn't a claim on him--if he didn't have a love and family and friends back in Kirkwall--he knows he'd be tempted sore to stay. Truly is, even despite all that, for the companionship of the faithful, for all that needed to be done, for the debt he'd owe them--
(Who's to say he hadn't been sent because Maker knows, they need someone on the outside?)
His fingers tighten on Luca's as she tells him of her near-death; his breath catches in his throat for the vividness of her wounds--and the cruelty that would inflict them on an innocent. "Maker's love," an oath scarcely voiced and apt, so apt, to what had saved her.
And for that love, all her loyalty and eventually her life, given in free exchange to save others. She won't leave--none of them who've stuck it out this far could be expected to--but surely duty demands the Inquisition not let things continue as they'd found them.
"Nor could anyone ask you to, in good faith." Quiet as the words are they're given a certain heft by his understanding of the situation. He knows what calls someone to a life like that. "But if there's aught I can do--" A pause, a breath.
"You sent the Inquisition a gift you'd sore need of here at home, all for the sake of the rifters. What more can we do to repay that?"
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"We ask for nothing in exchange, your presence here is gift enough," she repeats and it is a rote answer if ever there was one. "The Reverend Mother wished to see you all, wished to meet them before her...passing. It is all we can do to give her what she wishes."
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"I understand," he replies, quietly, gently, to both what's said and what's not. You learn, in a Circle, when you've pushed far enough. "I'm glad we were here in time to meet her." Very glad, in his case, and not all for purely abstract reasons.
"Though I fear--as you've seen--we'll try helping all the same even if it's not what you'd wish of us. And I am sorry for that." That it worries him--frustrates him--sore is clear from his tones, one revelation that shouldn't have been made in turn for hers.
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At length: "We're used to going places where things aren't quite all they seem, and the people might be hiding things from us. Where something's gone wrong," or something isn't to the Inquisition's liking, for whatever reasons they've got, "and we've got to right it.
"The abbey's--as you say it is, and the miracles--the people you've got here, the faith and love you have--are hard for the doubting to accept for being just what they seem." Upset as it makes him there's no scorn in his tone for that; it is as it is, and it's better to his mind all could come to the Maker on their own agency or not at all. Even if that meant the Void for some of them.
"It seems too good to be true. And for some that's reason to suspect."
Maker, don't let him have made such a hash of this he imperils their chances at untangling what stalks these people.
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Her voice rises as she speaks, reaching a crescendo that is as frantic as it is offended. She is flushed and her expression a myriad of hurt and anger. She had been in a rage when she stalked away from those two, when she had refused them their answers and left, and this has dragged her so much farther into it.
"We sent all our earthly money? We--we invited you--" she continues, hurt creeping back into her voice. She realizes Myr is only the messenger, here, that he has been nothing but respectful, but to hear about such opinions is too much for her.
She rises from her chair and paces, her footfalls heavy on the carpet before the desk.
"And they are here to pick us apart, then? To prod our wounds until we bleed to prove we suffered them?"
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Something curdles in Myr's gut to hear that; he knew Anders to be intensely tactless most of the time but that seems cruelty beyond the ordinary for the other mage. (Though not, he thinks, when there were suspected Loyalists or other Chantryfolk involved--and there had been the other woman present. The Nevarran, he thinks.) He hates that it happened--and hates more his questioning and hinting has only upset her further over it. Maker, why did things have to be this way.
Because, of course, not everyone trusted so completely as he did. Not everyone could. (Even he shouldn't.)
He's respectful of her anger--would be even if it weren't as justified as it is--and doesn't break in, letting her pace, letting her question. It gives him space to think of answers of his own, well aware that anything he gives her amounts to a promise on his end to act. It doesn't do anything to simply name the problem, throw up his hands, and walk away; to do as much is a betrayal of people he's already come to love.
"Sister--" he begins--stops, checks himself before he can launch into some convoluted explanation of what they'd done. That doesn't serve. "--Yes. Some of them are. The two who questioned you are," Wardens, he doesn't say, but only just, "soldiers; they live or die by their suspicions. They don't trust easy or often, and they don't trust anyone to just tell them the truth of a situation."
None of them bad traits in isolation. Especially not the latter, when people often didn't know the truth themselves, or knew it only halfway. But now's not the time to argue that. "They keep us safe and they can only see the gloom here--the hurt and heartbreak, not the miracles, not the Maker's grace or how truly you live the Chant. And,"
A considering breath, before he continues, a little heavily: "I don't know there's anything you could have done to escape their suspicion. And I am sorry--truly sorry--that it came to that. You invited us as guests. You deserve far better treatment than you've been shown."
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Her shout is unintentional, that much is obvious by the quickly drawn breath that follows and the sound of her pressing her hand over her mouth. Her pacing halts and and draws a shaky breath through her nose.
"I am sorry," Luca says but it is with some note of haste to it. Her steps shift as she moves to the doorway. "Stay if you like--I--I cannot continue speaking of this."
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He bites his tongue on the protest, realizing now isn't the time to make it. "No--forgive me, sister, for troubling you with this. Especially now, when you've a weight of other cares on your shoulders." When she faced a certain death sentence in two days, or three, or--who knew how long Revered Mother Arval might last.
"Let me go instead--you'd work to do here." He starts back toward the door himself.
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