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

"Are you allowed to say that about skeletons?" Yngvi's got a torch because someone caught him filling his pockets and oh Maker forbid he go sifting through ruins for something good on this field trip. Not that it's useful for the dwarf to have the torch since it's too low for most and probably liable to set a face on fire if they lean down to look at what he's looking at.

"Least these ones got the decency not to shoot us in the arse. You at least get to appreciate the lack of anything to look at, right?"

Big improvement on the majority of skeletons in Thedas. Especially in a weird place of weird things.

“I don’t hear it complaining, probably because i’m right and it does look like the last one. Maybe they were related.” Normally she would launch into a made up backstory, complete with a nemesis and a twist ending, but her mood is sour. Her delivery, uncharacteristically deadpan. Thanks, snooty sentinelf.

“I dunno. I could fight a skeleton right now honestly.”

"Maybe it can't even begin to imagine what it's hearing, first folks to have stumbled - well not us, we're not," he uses the whole torch to gesture any humans who might be about because they're only good for making a point. "Anyway can't believe we're down here slandering them. Their siblings. Instant we're gone they'll be gossiping about you. Better hope they don't have lawyers."

Ancient elf court. If they had some petitioner's path then imagine the horror that awaits. Probably drinking out of upside down jugs balanced on one leg, hand clapped over your eye, humming.

"I mean you could do that anyway, don't think anyone'll object. You could roast one if you want the torch. I've got traps and everything. Test the structural integrity of this place." You know. Just in case. Or because this place is terrible and they'd do well to be rid of it and blowing chunks of it up sounds grand.

“Pretty sure the Sentinels will object,” she starts, letting the sentence hang unfinished in the air. The Sentinels will object, period. But...

Athessa takes a step to stand over the skeleton and with both hands wrests the skull free from its bony neck. Then, it’s hurled across the passage behind them and splinters like brittle dried wood against the moss-slick stone wall.

“There. Now I feel a bit better.”

"Who cares, they're not Division Heads cutting our wages are they?"

Some of the Division Heads might not care if they were all down here, in the dark, they don't even had a full number of them right now so he makes that decision-- wait what was he meant to be thinking about at the moment?

Ah, the polite Orlesian clap just to be on the safe side should that and the noise of a skull joining the rest of the dust give any skeletons ideas.

"Right?" He pauses for a moment, weighing up his ability to shut up versus an uncomfortable trip in the dark. "Were they shits to you?"

"We have wages?" She says, deadpan, and runs her finger across the ribs of the now headless skeleton like a xylophone.

She steps back, brushing bone dust from her hands with a soft clap, clap and sighs. "No. Yes. I dunno."

Further down the path, just barely visible from where they stand, seems to be an inlet with some tombs cut into the wall, marked with grim likenesses in stone. "They didn't like me skipping out on the pilgrimage much, I guess. Me," she presses a hand to her chest in mock scandal and outrage. "An elf, eschewing the sacred practices of...whatever. It's stupid."

"Allegedly." There's a lot of eyebrow action, some might say too much but they've had to tighten their belts since the grand rebrand haven't they?

With a soft mutter of something that's maybe along Avvar lines because they're probably the only chill lot of folk out there that Yngvi's run into even if this an elf place, Yngvi nods his head at the skeleton. Not that they've birds in here with them. Or flesh for them to take off to the Lady.

"I mean how dare you not care about you not being exactly the sort of elf they think you should be when they've done bugger all for you, for shame. I mean, what next? Disowning you oh wait that's dwarves." I was right, is not the thing you say. That's for Thranduil. Later. Maybe his lady. "They were here. All this time. Sat in a stupid old temple instead of, oh I don't know, doing anything useful? Got no right to be pissy about a damn thing."

She laughs. Yeah, Yngvi's probably someone who knows exactly how she feels right now. She's in good company.

"Right? I'm here to help and they're just--" She makes a face, some rude parody of Solas's disdain and Thranduil's height on this short girl. "This child is practically a shem, that's gratitude for ya. Dunno what I expected."

↠ WHAT PRIDE HAD WROUGHT | OPEN LOG

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