faderift | ↠ WHAT PRIDE HAD WROUGHT

WHO: Everyone (except those who remain behind to keep an eye on the Gallows)
WHAT: Just some ruins, nothing special
WHEN: Solace 17-20
WHERE: The Arbor Wilds, Southern Orlais
NOTES: OOC post! Second log post for NPC threads! Image source!

For most, the journey through the Crossroads is miserable: the world is grey and lifeless, the light twists disorientingly like the world is being viewed through a water droplet, an incessant sound is always just beyond the edge of hearing, and walking anywhere feels like walking uphill.

For elves, it's a world in bloom with a stained-glass sky. La di da.

But everyone does eventually arrive, together, at the site of a large eluvian. There are signs of recent activity; a long-dead guard previously discovered by the Riftwatch team that traveled there before has been moved, and a spear left leant against the side of the eluvian where a new elf may have more recently temporarily taken his place. There's no guard there now.

When the team passes through the eluvian and into the verdant temple grounds beyond it, the reason quickly becomes apparent. They're met not with a volley of arrows from an army of guards, but the warily trained weapons of the small handful that remain after days of repelling an invasion from beyond the temple walls. It's a fight they're losing—one they thought already lost, given their casualties and the fires now burning outside the walls—and their exhausted, bruised leader only needs a little prodding, and only seems a little suspicious, before he orders his people to stand down and accepts an offer of help.

I. REPELLING CORYPHEUS' FORCES

The Temple's Sentinels have been reduced to a handful of wary elves, most of whom don't speak Trade very well, but they manage to give enough direction to get those who will be fighting outside of the quiet Inner Sanctum to the outer gardens. The Temple's outer defenses—powerful enough magic to kill an aspiring god, if it's run into blindly—have finally fallen, but what remains of the Red Templars and Venatori mounting the assault have been slowed by the overgrown labyrinth of gardens, then the arguments and preparations needed to blast a magical hole in the floor to expose the crypts below.

They're taken off guard by the sudden, non-Sentinel reinforcements. But they're still a powerful mix of Tevinter-trained mages and amplified Templars, and—if anyone cares—the longer the fight drags on, the more damage is done to the Temple's gardens. It's not a good time to dally or pull punches. Not even when a familiar face is found among the enemy.

II. THE PETITIONER'S PATH

When the last of the Red Templars and Venatori have been killed or chased into the jungle, the Sentinels—perfectly happy to have most of these interlopers locked outside a little longer—will be quick to disappear, save one, who will direct their attempts to get through the doors again with bored, skeptical broken Trade. The most direct route back inside requires walking the Petitioner's Path, a mazelike path through the gardens, weaving around corners and through tunnels of ivy, in places obscured entirely by the overgrowth.

There's no trick to the floor tiles, here. Only a trick of the mind. Clarity, supplication, a request for justice, and then at points along the path spirits will begin to appear. Some will wear the faces of those who have wronged you—offering excuses, begging for mercy, or refusing to be sorry, and in all cases wanting to know what you think they deserve. Others will wear the faces of those who you've wronged—wanting to know your excuse, asking if you think you deserve forgiveness.

Mercy isn't required, to pass Mythal's test. Only an even hand. The same justice for one as for the other. Succeed, and the spirits will lead you to pass freely through the doors.

III. THE CRYPTS

—or fail, or refuse to participate in a heathen ritual, or see the folly in risking that sort of exposure in less than total privacy, and your option for rejoining the rest of Riftwatch is a labyrinth of a different kind. Corypheus' allies were interrupted before they blew the floor wide open, but there is an opening large enough to pass through single-file into the ancient crypts below. The path through is dark, wet, and winding; now and then one of the dead rattles and threatens to rise; and the Sentinel babysitter, apparently disgusted by the fact that anyone might refuse or fail the test and still enter the Temple, refuses to serve as a guide or provide a map.

But it could probably be worse. Somehow. There could be less historical value in the moldering ruins, for example, or fewer pieces of gold and scraps of ancient jewelry lying around for the taking.

IV. THE TEMPLE OF MYTHAL

Back within the quiet of the Inner Sanctum, Riftwatch's envoy is permitted to rest—with varying degrees of individual acceptance, depending on whether or not they successfully walked the Path to enter, and all of them watched as closely as the small handful of remaining Sentinels can manage. Their leader, Abelas, doesn't shy away from the dire facts. Not enough of them remain to protect the Temple and the Well of Sorrows. Corypheus will likely be back. Convincing him not to destroy it, and finding a viable alternative, will be a task.

In the meantime, those who have better things to do in Kirkwall can return at any time, and anyone ill-suited for a fight but well-suited to assisting in the discussion with Abelas or the efforts to clean up the damage and tend to the fallen—either out of genuine interest in preserving the Temple or in an effort to butter up its guardians a little—can safely cross through the eluvian to help.

For those who are willing to sleep on the ground in a jungle Temple for a night or two instead, while the matter of the Well is resolved, it may be possible to slip away unnoticed to explore the Temple in the dark, at least until caught and escorted back to Riftwatch's makeshift camp, or for someone who's been appropriate respectful to convince one of the Temple guardians to show them some of the murals and statues. But venturing outside of the inner temple walls will require either traversing the crypts or walking the Path to get back inside. Every single time.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

i. Forces
It's a point of pride, for Barty, that he's always been a neat and deft hand, at killing. You have to be a good killer, to be a good farmer, after all; not merely able to spill blood and life, nor to stand the sight and smell, the warmth of it. You have to be a good killer. Good at it. Good at deciding when it should happen. And what good meant, here as in most cases, was quick.

"Now, I don't suppose we can haves a civilized conversations about this, then?" The thing, once a templar, roared like a bear or the way a bear would be if it could really know what rage was, instead of only feeling it, and charged "...Well, that's a shame."

He fought like an old man walks; carefully, each movement economic, purposeful, and aforethought. It was a very dwarven way to fight, with nothing of flourishes, as square and practical as clean-cut stone, and about as forgiving. In sharp contrast to the unassuming arc of each arm as he threw were the axes themselves; a shining flash of polished steel and leather handle, flitting through the air like a kingfisher. It necessitated that he follow the path of his destruction of course; one could carry only so many throwing weapons, when they were the size of an axe, however small and tidy an axe they might be.

But that was alright: no sense in keeping them waiting, after all. And he'd a Warden's stamina and an officer's experience; Barty could keep this up, practically all day.

ii. Path
Barty was a big believer in respecting people's beliefs and trying to be kind where one could, or at least polite, and if it weren't possible to be any of those things, he could settle for simply not taking up more of their time than was strictly necessary. But there was one place and type of person for whom none of that applied: family.

Which is why it was, in the end, truly unfortunate that one of the Spirits had decided to take the form of one Larimar Bjurnsen, the brother of a Warden by the same name.

"...Why you see fit to comes round and plow up old sod like—"

"Oh sod, is it! Sod. I'll sod you, you hopped up duster!"

"That's Warden-Constable Duster to you, y'piss poor excuse of a tart!"

"Tart! At least I can bake one!"

"Hope it was worth betrayin' your own blood for half a nug farm and another thing at least I dids more for myself than go lay down for Daryl Dales, as if thats were somes kinds of catch!"

"How dare you talks about my Darry that way! I oughts to have kicked you outs sooner if I knowed you were such a nug-humping, dust-sucking, sandy-arsed..."

"You insultin' my baking now? MY BAKING, WOMAN?!"

"TOO RIGHT, YOU HEARDS ME, BARTOLOMEO BJURNSEN. YOUR TARTS TASTE LIKE CHEESE!"

"THEY'RE MEANTS TO, THEY ARE CHEESE TARTS."

It goes on like that for a while. Whatever the Spirit had intended, or thought it had gotten itself into, it's now trapped in a generations-deep dwarven feud, steeped in inheritance law and personal grudges. Barty does not, for a significant time, seem at all likely to finish the petition with any success, beyond that of venting what seems to be some fairly deep-rooted issues with the shade of what is, with increasing clarity, his sister.

But eventually, something changes, or perhaps some turn of the argument reaches an invisible seed of judgement. Maybe someone wins; stranger things have happened in the throes of sibling rivalry. In any case, the spirit, satisfied, or at least browbeaten into a semblance of satisfaction, ceases to bar his way, and Barty stomps past it to find a bench, and sit down sharply.

He's not done being mad yet. But give him a minute, and it'll all be fine.

Edited 2019-07-22 00:21 (UTC)

Standing there with him and double his height is one very tired-looking Teren von Skraedder, who prefers to stay out of the dramatics, rubbing her temple.
It's once the arguing seems to have died down somewhat that she cuts in slowly, with a hopeful "to the crypts then?"

For just a moment, Barty looks at Teren with a look that is less one of a father, but more one of all fathers everywhere. It is a gimlet stare, a glance of atavastic patriarchy, summoned down the male line from the days when the primitive ur-dwarf from which all dwarves eventually descended bared his primitive fangs and kicked his offspring into line.

It is not a threat. A threat would be more specific, and actionable. It is, in fact, the thing which a threat might offer as incentive: is an outcome all unto itself. He is quiet for a short breath, and then, without shouting, says calmly: "I am gonna pretends I did not hear that."

And it is not a good or reassuring calm.

He gets a withering look right back: Teren has never had anyone in her life even resembling a father, and she's not about to start, least of all with someone a good decade her junior.

"Go on and pretend your way out of this then," she says with a weary flip of her hand, "I'll be below when you've got a moment."

↠ WHAT PRIDE HAD WROUGHT | OPEN LOG

Bartolomeo "Barty" Bjurnsen | OTA

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