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closed: dead end.
WHO: Adasse, Byerly, Inessa, Isaac, Kostos, Matthias, Nathaniel, Six
WHAT: A for Effort.
WHEN: Bloomingtide 21-24.
WHERE: Orlais, Tevinter.
NOTES: There's an OOC post with additional info over here!
WHAT: A for Effort.
WHEN: Bloomingtide 21-24.
WHERE: Orlais, Tevinter.
NOTES: There's an OOC post with additional info over here!
I. ORLAIS. The site of the abduction (as it's told to them) is the camp near the ruins, and it certainly looks like something happened there. The ground has been stamped to bits, with horse tracks and footprints both visible; several tents are collapsed or askew; and the supplies and some of the missing party's personal belongings are scattered in the mud. The Baron and his staff saw nothing, heard nothing, from his estate several miles away. They had everyone for dinner and saw them off in the evening, and in the morning, they were gone.
But there is a trail to follow—one that changes, after a few miles, in the number and size of the horses involved, the type of cart wheel, merging with an entirely different trail that came to that point from another direction. Mysterious. But regardless of the cause of that, the trail proceeds northwest around the worst of the front and highest concentration of Orlesian and Inquisition soldiers, then northeast into Tevinter.
II. TEVINTER. Tevinter requires some improvisation, both to cross the border and intermittently along the road that winds through the Silent Plains, when traveling traders bringing supplies to and from the front join them for stretches of the road or to set up camp at night. Neutral Antivan merchants, Free Marcher mercenaries, slaves and the assholes looking to sell them—the story can change, between encounters, but those with anchors need to keep their hands hidden, and the elves probably shouldn't give anyone too much lip.
The good news is that everything requires less in the way of tracking skills. The specific signs of the group they're following disappear under the plains' shifting sands and the heavy traffic along the road, but it isn't a place anyone voluntarily takes the long way through, and along the shortest path to civilization, they'll receive information from the Inquisition instructing them to meet one of its contacts in a trading village just north of the desert.
III. DESPAIR. The contact, Livia, is a slave from Minrathous, trusted both by her Venatori master and by the Nightingale, who she's been feeding information to for years. She meets them in an abandoned farmhouse with a bag of ashes, bones, and belongings, some terrible news, and her genuine regrets—and then she's gone, quickly, before her absence from Minrathous becomes so prolonged she can't explain it away.
It is not what anyone was hoping to bring back, but it's all they have.
But there is a trail to follow—one that changes, after a few miles, in the number and size of the horses involved, the type of cart wheel, merging with an entirely different trail that came to that point from another direction. Mysterious. But regardless of the cause of that, the trail proceeds northwest around the worst of the front and highest concentration of Orlesian and Inquisition soldiers, then northeast into Tevinter.
II. TEVINTER. Tevinter requires some improvisation, both to cross the border and intermittently along the road that winds through the Silent Plains, when traveling traders bringing supplies to and from the front join them for stretches of the road or to set up camp at night. Neutral Antivan merchants, Free Marcher mercenaries, slaves and the assholes looking to sell them—the story can change, between encounters, but those with anchors need to keep their hands hidden, and the elves probably shouldn't give anyone too much lip.
The good news is that everything requires less in the way of tracking skills. The specific signs of the group they're following disappear under the plains' shifting sands and the heavy traffic along the road, but it isn't a place anyone voluntarily takes the long way through, and along the shortest path to civilization, they'll receive information from the Inquisition instructing them to meet one of its contacts in a trading village just north of the desert.
III. DESPAIR. The contact, Livia, is a slave from Minrathous, trusted both by her Venatori master and by the Nightingale, who she's been feeding information to for years. She meets them in an abandoned farmhouse with a bag of ashes, bones, and belongings, some terrible news, and her genuine regrets—and then she's gone, quickly, before her absence from Minrathous becomes so prolonged she can't explain it away.
It is not what anyone was hoping to bring back, but it's all they have.
III
...and she is the last one, the last Warden. Everyone else? Departed or dead. Once they had been a sizable group among the Inquisition, and now...now it's only herself. Nathaniel has the experience, but his cure means that he isn't a Warden anymore, not in any way that counts. She has never felt so alone.
She isn't, though, at least not technically. Garahel is there, the mabari not leaving her side. But despite his nuzzles and soft whining, he's unable to get through to his mistress. She just stares and stares, expression unchanging.
no subject
Matthias doesn't quite know sympathy. He knows full well what it is to feel lousy with sadness, but there's nothing that's ever come after. Maybe someone gripping your shoulder and then pulling you on your feet. Soldier on, and all.
And there's usually been something fortifying, after. Some small fill for that deep pit in the chest. Now that he's got his own money, he can keep himself supplied. That's how he's got a drink to offer her. Marcher whiskey. It smells a little like an old bandage. He doesn't like it, exactly, but he drinks it anyways, and the taste of peat is clarifying, or at least awful enough to drown out other thoughts.
He was careful to approach from the other side of Garahel. Not exactly trusting of the mabari, he keeps one eye on it, even as he stands there with his arm patiently outstretched, holding the tin cup, waiting for her to take it.
no subject
Inessa, glancing up, takes a moment to focus and process what's being said. Usually rather observant, she's been enveloped in her own mental fog ever since the news. Whiskey? Well, why not. She tends to avoid alcohol as a matter of course but right now, her reasons for that don't matter. Numbly, she reaches for the cup, her voice sounding a bit rusty as she remembers to speak.
"...thank you."
no subject
When it seems she's done with the cup, he'll hold his hand out for it once more. And if there's anything left within, he'll drain it, and suppress the face that he so badly wants to pull at the taste.
Only then does he let himself nod (with as much gruffness and dignity as possible) toward the mabari.
"What's it called?"
no subject
"Garahel, after the hero of the Fourth Blight. He won't jump on you if you don't want his attention. He's been trained to behave himself, and knows there's a time and place for playtime."
Mabari-talk is an easy subject to latch onto and while it's not her usual happy rambling on the subject, just now it's more than what she's said during the past few hours, in total.
no subject
"I've not actually seen one up close. Dogs, yeah, regular dogs--I don't like 'em much, is all, and, y'know. Even if I did, s' a bit like saying you've seen a lizard when you're looking at a dragon. Or not that dramatic, but still." Mabari are mabari. At least she's said well-trained. "You must've had him for ages if he's all trained."
no subject
"I wasn't particularly a dog-person either, growing up. Between the alienage and then the Circle, there was never any opportunity for it. I didn't think that would ever change. But...the breeder heard my Fereldan accent, and thought to persuade me. I held the pup appease him, thinking that would be it...but the little runt of the littler imprinted on me. He chose me. I...couldn't walk away from that."
Garahel, lets out a huff with an air that could be termed as smug, wagging his tail as she gave him a side hug. "It's hard to believe this wall of muscle was once such a wee thing, not thriving very well." Maybe that's why he was given to an elf, rather than a lord. Inessa didn't care if racism was a factor, he was hers now.
no subject
"He thought he was being funny, giving a Fereldan a dog, eh. But now you've got a monster, so I s'ppose you got the last laugh there." He pats, again, carefully. "I wanted to be a Grey Warden as well. For a bit. S' good stories, in being a Grey Warden. A bit iffy, everyone's always half in awe of you--not a bad way to go. S'ppose too a mabari could do worse'n being a Grey Warden's dog. You're both equal parts lucky."
no subject
She turns her gaze back to Matthias as he mentions that past interest in being a Grey Warden. "I had more than stories; they saved my Circle from destruction. After seeing them rush in heedless of the danger, without any promise that there was anyone left alive past the barrier...I was in awe, too. I didn't ever expect to be one, but when I had the chance, I had to take it." She watches Garahel's tail wag happily.
Matthias
"They were heavy," Matthias says, aloud, "the wagons."
They've come upon that convergence, where the trail changes. He points out what he means--a patch of mud, where the rut path of the wagons (more than one by now) have cut deep. With an eagerness that he is trying, desperately, to keep contained, he adds, helpfully, "See, just there, you can tell. That got to mean they've still got 'em."
He's not a hunter or a properly trained scout or ranger or anything of the sort. Has he got experience, trekking about in barren wilds, sleeping in tents, pissing on rocks, washing in streams? Yes--in the company of a large contingent of rebel mages, many of whom were older and had a better sense of roads and maps and, yes, tracks, and all of whom Matthias had admired, deeply, so he had come along on this mission because--
Well, safe to say he cannot lose face now. He straightens up with a great decisiveness, and looks around at whoever he's stood nearest to. They might prove impressed by a scrawny sixteen-year-old mage with a rough-hewn staff strapped to his back and Inquisition-standard leathers, who's just pointed out the obvious. "Have you got a map? There's a camp up that way, isn't there. I remember seeing it. Orlesian. But the tracks are swinging wide, so they know of it as well. I reckon that makes 'em well-informed for common bandits."
II - TEVINTER.
They'd set up camp a ways off the road, kept the fire banked low to try to avoid attention. There's nothing really in the way of naturally screening, so before dark had fallen, an Antivan merchant caravan had been coming up the road, and had detoured to join their camp. There's strength in numbers out here in the Silent Plains--or at least that's what the merchant, Volio, had announced as he'd pulled his wagon in to their circle. He's a lean smiling man, dark haired and twinkling eyes, skin weathered from the sun. The pale line of an old scar traces down the left side of his face, giving him a kind of dangerous air. Two wagons, six employees--his teenage son who is also called Volio, three mercenaries of indeterminate origin, a broad tall shop girl who looks like she could fight the mercenaries herself if she had to, and a wizened old elf smoking a pipe.
There's no way to refuse their company without coming off as weird. The elf commandeers the fire without asking, starts setting up his supplies to cook a meal, with his pipe clamped between his teeth. The mercenaries all hang around at the fringes, looking without much interest at the party they've joined. The shop girl rummages around in the back of one of the carts and produces a shaving kit, and Volio the elder sits down expectantly on a rock, waiting for his hot shave.
Volio the younger, meanwhile, proves friendly enough, as the night goes on and the sun begins to set, and seems willing to engage anyone in conversation. Matthais consequently finds himself trapped before long, pulled away from whatever camp chore he'd been busying himself with and taken over to be introduced to Volio's horses. Eventually the question comes up--"What are you doing out here, anyways?"--asked with a pleasant smile, but Matthias feels a pinch of panic, and looks around for anyone passing by, who might be flagged to rescue him.
"Oi! Uh-- you, hey-- come and, and look at this horse!" He waves, hopeful, as Volio stares expectantly at him, with a puzzled smile now on his face.
III - DESPAIR.
Livia is gone, and the bag she'd left behind is in someone's hand. Matthias hasn't been tracking its whereabouts. Perhaps he ought to have. That's all that's left of them, isn't it. So it ought to be treated with some manner of respect, maybe some reverence--that's what decorum ought to dictate--but Matthias has burned his friends in the field and gone on without them. Time and time over, he's done it. So what's a load of ash and old junk mean.
Everyone's taking their time with the news. Matthias is taking his time with it, but not very much time. How does he feel? More of the same. It's not as if this was unexpected. This sort of disaster, it's sort of always what he's expecting.
He's clear-eyed when he looks around at their group. "How do we say it? To-- everyone, I mean. The Gallows. There's got to be a report back."
iii - OTA if anyone wants to jump in & cee is chill with it
Sixteen dead isn't an inconsiderable quantity of those left in Kirkwall, and those left in Kirkwall aren't known for their cool heads and quiet tempers. Messengers get shot.
But he's not about to share that with the group.
"Carefully," The kid won't go in for running, the rest of them won't, and Isaac isn't about to light into the Imperial wilderness alone. Kirkwall's the safest choice. "We've gotten lucky before. They'll want a reason we didn't."
They'll want an enemy. His hand tightens about the beads in a pocket, and maybe it's superstition to think there is one (a reason). Gareth came back. From Ghislain, they came back.
Luck runs out.
100% chill with it and consider this a retroactive OTA everyone get in
Carefully. Matthias frowns down at his boots. He's not had to do this bit before. His dead were always known to him. At most you'd have to go back and report them, but usually someone would find you first. Usually they were all more or less together, not spread out in the field. And maybe someone might say a prayer, or something like a prayer. Then you went on.
"This can't be the first time this sort of thing has happened. Right?"
no subject
Not to the—whatever they are, now. Before now they were still separate, still small, still tangled up in one another’s lives. The Inquisition lost far more than sixteen at Ghislain, but not a fifth of its people. Not many soldiers would have known a dozen dead, all at once. And not many of the people in the Gallows are soldiers, or at least they weren’t before now.
“Not for a lot of them.”
And not that Kostos is going to be careful, himself. He does at least currently intend to be. He’s not just telling them, for example, and his sending crystal still hidden under his shirt. He’ll be careful right up until something else feels like a good idea. And until then he’ll continue what he’s doing, on the rickety table in a nook of the dusty old house: sorting carefully though the bag, laying out rings and fingerbones in neat lines and dusting off the ash back into the bag for later transfer into something else. Whatever they can find. It isn’t Livia’s fault, given her haste, but they can’t be given back that way.
no subject
Save those for the report that a lot of them won't read. Maybe it's in poor taste, to be tailoring this now, but they won't get another chance to. Bone and metal click. Wood creaks.
The story can't be given back that way, either.
"Mercenaries. A Venatori mage. Not," A breath in. "An abomination."
However unwise that seems to sweep away.
"That's a reason they don't need."
no subject
Well now, wait. Matthias feels the flush of color in his face and tries, gamely, to fight it down. No one asked him to say anything about anything, did they. So why's he acting as if they had, halfway to volunteering himself to bear this message back to people who've had a loss, though they don't know it yet. Just as quickly as those first words had tumbled out of him, he's quick to add, "Not that it'll be me, that'll be saying it, I just think-- anyone who says it ought to keep that bit behind. For now. 'Cause he was a Venatori bastard but that doesn't mean--"
Well, now, what doesn't it mean. That Venatori bastard turned abomination, he might have been what killed Merrill, he might have been what killed the others--so by all means, he ought to be shat on. But it sticks in Matthias, somewhere. A desperate last moment, all burning hot and mad and nothing left of who you used to be. Like a line of black powder, eaten up and then gone.
He's pinker still as he stares with furious concentration at all the remnants of the people who died. Barely more than the contents of a dustpan after you'd swept clean the cookstove.
"If they're not all used to this sort of loss, all at once. Then we keep it short. Right? No more than what's needed to be known for now. 'Cause they'll be reeling from even the shortest bit of news, they'll not be used to it, and giving them more's going to-- They won't even be hearing it. Not really."
no subject
"You should do it," is all he says, without any of the reasons: that Matthias comes across as artless but kind, that he's young and probably endearing to people who are into being endeared, that it's obvious how much of a damn he gives.
The tiny piece of wood he pulls loose from the table has a frayed end that resembles a broom, and that's how he uses it.
III. dead friends comedy tour
Isaac folds cloth between his fingers. Impossible to say whether it's always been this shade of char, and nothing else lingers but smoke --
There's a joke in that. It rolls out about the white edge of a tooth (incisor). There's a joke, but it isn't very funny.
"Shame about Beaumanoir," Attacked by a dragon, sure. Isaac doesn't look up for the approach. "We could have had dentures."
It sounds very far away to his own ears.
(It sounds, more or less, unaffected.)
Adasse
There's something not right about that Baron.
Adasse has his hood pulled all the way up, and he's careful to keep to the back because let's face it, no one is going to be paying attention to the elf wearing the hood and staring away from the humans. They probably figure him for a servant or a former slave, unwilling to look humans in the eyes.
What he's doing is listening. Listening real careful like to everything the Baron and his guests are saying, and there's just ... there's something off. He doesn't know what, and he's sure as Maker's Balls not going to call the Baron out on it with nothing more than his gut feeling.
When they are moving away from the Baron's castle though, out of earshot he does mutter to the group of them, "Right, that bastard is up to something."
III
He saw the glint of the wood through one burnt hand, clutching it as if it was some sort of talisman. It was - had been - for Adasse. That some day, he'd not be the poor thief from Kirkwall. Scum of the streets, a rat with pointy ears. He'd be Sorrel's husband, and they'd live somewhere clean and beautiful because they both earned it. Simple life. Something good. Something pure.
Something that was nothing but ash, as he stared down at the ironwood ring, with the birds entwined together. He stared at it numbly, his jaw tightening as his eyes suddenly filled with tears. He pulled the hand apart, water leaking down his cheek to splash against ash and bone, claiming the ring and holding it to his chest.