MOD PLOT ↠ BLAZING LIKE STAR-SHINE

[faderifting]

WHO: All characters signed up to participate in the Battle of Ghislain
WHAT: The Inquisition faces off against the armies of Corypheus
WHEN: Covers most of the day on 11.28 (forward-dated)
WHERE: The Fields of Ghislain, Orlais
NOTES: This is Post #1, covering the battle itself and the retreat. It contains top-levels for each of the teams and an open prompt for the retreat. The OOC post with more information/explanation is HERE. If you're not sure which team your character is on, there's a LIST. POST #2 covers the aftermath of the battle.

Scouts accurately report the enemy's movements: after a slight slow-down believed to indicate that word reached the of the Allies' sudden appearance in their path, they have elected to remain on-course, and arrive almost precisely when and where they were expected. By sunset the night before they are making camp just over the rise to the northeast, easily visible from the hill, and as night falls their fires can be seen winking along the horizon, a close-packed glow.

The mood in the camp is tense, openly jittery rather than the tightly-wound nerves of the past month, but with a sense almost of relief that after so much preparation and so many weeks of anticipation, the day has finally arrived. Some corners of the camp, particularly the greener recruits and the Antivan veterans, are raucous around their campfires, singing and drinking, playful brawls breaking out, but commanders are strict about the wine rations, and even those who choose to take the edge of this way make an early night of it. A scattered handful of men attempt to quietly slip away during the night, mostly Orlesian conscripts, but a few Inquisition agents as well. Some succeed, but others are caught and imprisoned--the Inquisition's few held to be returned to Skyhold where it can be determined if they are traitors or merely cowards, the Orlesians only as long as it takes to find a tree and an audience to watch them hang and spread the cautionary tale.

It is expected that the enemy, hoping to make up for its surprise at finding the Allies prepared for their arrival, will attempt to catch them off-guard by attacking before dawn instead of waiting, as is traditional, for first light. They are all roused from their beds to form up in the dim grey as quietly as possible, moving into formation in the wet grass, a heavy morning fog lingering on the field ahead. It's cool and raw, the air still. But the ground moves: the shudder and rumble of hooves striking earth, felt before it is heard. The Orlesians raise their pikes, the front line braces, and it begins.

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TEAMS 1 • 2 • 3 • 4 • 5 • 6 • 7 • 8 • 9 • RETREAT
Team members can break off into smaller groups within their top-level prompts—it doesn’t need to be one 13-character thread—and the retreat is an open free-for-all.

Comments

[wythersake]

His first thought is: Thank the Maker, that wasn’t me —

No. That’s not the first (falling), or the second (impact), even the third or fourth (screams, crashing bodies; a knight thrown but breathing). It isn’t the Maker who’s sent him scrambling up again, past Thranduil and this time with knife to hand.

The celeres moves like a man with crushed ribs. He’s still moving, though, fumbling at his side for a flask Isaac isn’t eager to investigate. Stomped digits, then a helmet maneuvered up, enough to find one long-lashed eye. The plunge of steel is sickeningly familiar.

There's no time for nostalgia. (He caught a lance?) There's no time for that. (Spinning like a,)

"Stay with me," Breathless. Tugging a two thousand pound animal isn’t a task for one man, and he hardly dares set his staff down for it. "We'll free the head."

Then drag him from place. Worse for the hip, but help's too far to shift the beast alone. They don't have an alternative. First, teeth. Isaac drops low to pry at the thing’s jaws, work it loose. Won’t be long until the pikemen return.

[rowancrowned]

He's bleeding. This is a novel experience. He dislikes it.

Thranduil nods in response to Isaac's direction, waiting, stuck standing with the dracolisk's teeth keeping him upright. It will hurt more when he saws through the muscle holding the dracolisk's jaws closed or outright breaks them to free Thranduil, and all the blood rushes back in alongside the pain. If he loses himself, it will be then. But for now, he can obey Isaac, and will do him one better.

"Stay close," he says. "And low."

The glamour settles over them like a shift in the wind, a notice-me-not to friend or foe as Thranduil wipes them from the view of the field and diverts the attention of anyone who would want to look at the felled dracolisk for too long. They will be bought time, the soldiers avoiding them like the river parting for a rock.

When the pressure eases, the pain comes back, like he expected. He can feel the teeth leaving his skin, and pulls himself out, staggering back the last few inches. He has to dig his own sword into the mud to keep himself upright, and his jaw is tight to keep from crying out. When it passes:

"Have we lost?"

Isaac can run. Thranduil can't.

four hundred years later, feel free to drop or not

[wythersake]

Isaac can run. Has considered doing so several times already —

It isn’t gratitude that stays him, but the sudden calculus that Thranduil has just done something impossible, and impossibly useful; Thranduil, whose death others will question. (Who he may need something from.)

"No," He decides, and that means little. It all looks like lost from here. "They'll push it back."

He unpries the jaws (leaves a loose canine buried within), heaves the neck off him, the body collapsing in a heave of meat. An arm — more of a lunge, really, forward beneath a shoulder. He can't offer much support, but it's something.

"You aren't moving that." Catches the curse behind his own teeth. The ambulance is nowhere in sight; it's a ways to push. "Not far."

Deliberation:

"How long can you hold them off?"

Must be him doing it. Isaac's not blind.

[rowancrowned]

Thranduil considers, weighs his exhaustion against what used to be child’s play to him, no effort at all required.

“If I do not lose consciousness?” From bloodloss, from pain, from any number of things. “An hour, perhaps less. It depends upon—how many need witness it.” Hiding his own face is one thing. This is too similar to the traps once used around his kingdom to be used with careless abandon. Now, it takes effort. He has never had to hold it for long in Thedas.

He looks at the tooth caught in his armor, and exhales, sharp. “We are not protected from stray arrows, from the—the oliphaunts,” the Westron coming easier than Trade, now, “if they walk this way.”

But they have more options than they did before. Issac can be the clever one, the strategic one. Thranduil wants no glory, only to return to Kirkwall.