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faderift2019-07-18 10:49 pm
faderifting) wrote in faderift2019-07-18 10:49 pm
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↠ WHAT PRIDE HAD WROUGHT | OPEN LOG
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!
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.
Galadriel OTA
The ivy sways gently in the summer breeze, hotter and more oppressive than any weather she had experienced in Thedas. Even Galadriel is not immune to the warmth here, though the shade beneath the ivy cools the sweat that pools at the pit of her neck, and chills the rings of mail she has donned to travel here. She can feel something in this place, an enchantment of great age woven into the vines here. It permeates the veil in a way that she truly wishes she could, and she lingers for some time as she simply examines the feeling of it.
It is the chirping of birds--the strange calls and songs of these tropical creatures--that draws her from her distraction and sets her feet moving. The overgrowth and moss on the tiles below her feet is cool, familiar, and it is far too easy to forget that this place is not of her and she is not of it--they are both of them of an age, however, and there is some comfort to be found in that. They are two points adrift in the eddies of time.
She walks the path more slowly than she ought, wandering with the patience born of immortality. It takes a very long time for a specter to appear before her. Long enough that several of their party have walked the path and passed her. Long enough that she wonders who will pass her next.
[OOC: since it has been a hot minute since I last posted, have some open LOTR peeps. Feel free to jump into any of the following conversation tags or on the top level if you want to run through the lot or none of them. I am sorry they are wicked long, they got away from me.
This is also why there are four and not two shh. There are also a wildcard and a Temple option for anyone who isn't feelin these.]Petitioner's Path OTA - Gandalf
If she had known the purpose of this place, she would not have guessed to see his face first, not of all the faces that could have been conjured before her. He is smiling when he sees her, a broad and welcoming expression, and she feels her heart contract as she realizes just how dearly she had missed him. He is not Olorin, Thedas cannot hope to truly copy the sensation that his kind inspires in person, but he is a very close facsimile.
He sits on a low wall, crumbled and overgrown with moss. It is little more than a piece of masonry--some empty sill that has lost the wrought brass and gilded iron that the rest of the temple windows sport. His pose it ungainly but comfortable, as he was always wont, and he gestures for her to come closer. That done, he shifts his staff to his shoulder and begins to rifle through the bag at his hip.
She moves to stand by him, she cannot quite bear to sit with him, as he withdraws his pipe and his pipeweed and begins to pack them. The smell is wrong, it smells like elfroot and sage, but the motions are perfect. It would be so easy to forget it is not him...and she is sorely tempted to. There is quite a bit of appeal in living in a world with her dearest friend, if only for a few moments.
It doesn't take long for him to pack the pipe and then a swipe of his fingers over the bowl of it has it lit. That is more power than he was often wont to use, especially on such frivolous things, and the sudden spark of magical flame catches her off guard. She starts and he levels a look at her. It is a reproachful expression, and more than a little cross, and it maintains as he sucks in a deep breath and puffs out his cheeks. He exhales in a long plume and turns the pipe around to prod her with it.
"Wisest of us all, indeed," he scolds, "had a Balrog living on her doorstep for a few decades and didn't notice."
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Sorrel is the kind of person who, with a complete and utter disdain for consistency or fairness, holds family to an entirely different set of standards than those put forth for strangers. Spirits never fall within those bounds; indeed, as a mage, he is very nearly unwilling to allow them to do so. And certainly the spirits, whoever they are, can't be permitted to do to Galadriel what they had done to him, for whatever sense that made.
Or, put more simply; Sorrel can make sardonic, cutting remarks at Galadriel. But some random spirit, putting on the face of an old man, doesn't get to do so. Not unopposed, at least.
Not without some young upstart of an elf poking his nose in where it doesn't belong.
"No one can notice everything, especially small things that aren't doing much of worth."
That's you, spirit-gandalf. You are small, like a termite, and equally unwelcome here.
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His eyebrows, wide and bushy, rise up toeard the brim of his broad hat as his attention snaps from Galadriel to the shorter elf at her side. He points, with the end of his long pipe and blusters a second before turning it back around to clutch the end with his teeth just so.
"A Balrog, Master Sorrel," he says around the end of his pipe, his tone invoking the oldest and most grandfatherly of all grandfathers as he speaks. Had Arda lawns, he would certainly demand Sorrel stay off his.
"Is a creature of shadow and flame, tall as a full grown pine and nearly thrice as likely to set you aflame if so inclined." He puffs on his pipe and exhales a perfect circle with hardly any effort.
"It is an old and terrible evil and, apparently, surprisingly easy to miss if one is not looking directly at it." His gaze drifts back to Galadriel, scolding in earnest then, and her expression softens with sorrow for it.
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"My name is Sorrelean, to you," He replies promptly, with all the waspish arrogance his Dalish heritage can lend him— it is a significant amount, "And if you know so much about it, and it's so obvious, then maybe you ought to have figured it out on your own instead of depending on other people to do your work for you."
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"But I did, young man," he objects, eschewing Sorrel's corrected name in preference for being a bristly old man. "Unfortunately for the lot of us, I had only a few minutes and a few hundred feet to do so before the beast was upon us."
He takes another puff of his pipe and, when he exhales, the smoke creates a grotesque face, a horned beast with flaming eyes and a peal of wings behind it. The summer breeze takes the minature before it fully forms and Galadriel watches it curl away.
"And of the Lady and I, I am most assuredly not the one with far-sight or a terrible fondness for the hospitality of dwarves."
Galadriel glances to Sorrel at her side, so eager to tear down the spirit shaped like her friend, so ready to defend her from events that had been shaped by her negligence, and there is a fondness in her face as she reaches and sets a hand on his shoulder. There is no point in arguing with the dead, even if Sorrel doesn't know that is what he is doing.
"He slew the beast, but at great cost. Greater than I might've paid had I known and acted sooner."
"Greater indeed," Olorin huffs and shifts where he sits. His staff creaks as he grips it and leans his weight on it.
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Someone old, and crotchety, and very clearly not a child. Nothing about Gandalf indicates that he is small or powerless, to Sorrel. If anything, he looks as if he could walk the world's length if only to complain of the quality of the water.
"Even if he's your friend, he's still responsible for his own life, and his own choice of what to do with it. And his own Balrogs."
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"Now you listen here Sorrellean of Clan Ashara, I am not simply some fool come knocking to have words with a recalcitrant neighbor who'd cut the hedge too short," Gandalf chides, his expression drawn into a familiar shape that pulls Galadriel's heart again.
"I'll not be lectured by the likes of you on how and when to perish for the sake of my compatriots and the world," Gandalf finishes and huffs, overturning his spent pipe and tapping it against his staff to empty the ashes. A moment of silence passes and Galadriel squeezes Sorrel's shoulder gently.
"Thank you, Sorrel," Galadriel says. "Were I anyone else, you would be right. It was his choice to fight so that others could flee, and I could no more have made it for him than convinced him to do otherwise...."
She looks back at the huffy old wizard and her face nearly crumbles with longing and sorrow. Her expression is of deep apology but not guilt.
"But I was the ruler of those lands and the Naith, unto the very doors of Moria, was mine to guard and keep. I did not pay it attention, for I did not dream of what could be sleeping in the mountains, and for that you paid with your life.
"Thank you, mellon nin. I miss you terribly, especially here."
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Well, at least Galadriel likes him. That must count for something.
"If you're going to go on being responsible and reasonable, I can't be bothered," He mumbles, rebelliously, and folds his arms. How dare you.
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Once her hand passes through him, all the force that holds his shape in place bursts apart and, in a flurry of pale wisps, he is gone. Her hand is left hanging, stretched and reaching for someone who was never there, and she cannot quite bring herself to reclaim it. Not for a long moment. When she finally does, her fingers curl and slowly she stands upright again--if she leans on Sorrel, then, she cannot help it.
Even if she were to return to Arda this very moment, she would not see him again. Not unless the world took a very strange path from what she had last seen.
"Thank you for being bothered, Sorrelean," she says and lets out a long, heavy sigh and she reclaims her composure. "You are, as always, a great help."
Whether she has passed this part of the test or not, even she cannot say.
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"In Sindarin his name is Mithrandir, but he prefers Gandalf in mixed company," she says. "He preferred Gandalf, at any rate."
Her hand rests on his shoulder still and, after a moment of thought she removes it. It is not that she finds the gesture distasteful but she would not impose and speaking like this is already imposition enough.
"I knew him for two Ages of the earth," she explains. "He is my eldest and dearest friend, or he was. He was a kind soul, despite the accuracy of the phantom you beheld, and was very fond of fireworks and fine foods.
"I learned of his death years ago, it happened beyond my sight and after my memory, and I have grieved already...but even a year or two is not so very long. It is hard to accept."
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Petitioner's Path OTA - Celebrimbor (Body Horror/Gore Warning)
The second spirit she finds on the path is not a live man. She does not approach a shady alcove and find him seated, nor does he walk up to her and strike up conversation. She rounds a bend and it is there, before her, with no preamble. She is shocked to stillness, then, and it takes all her will to keep looking forward.
It is a sight that is terrible and deeply incongruous with this place. It is a relic from a battle much bloodier than the one waged outside these walls, on a field much less lush and welcoming. A great, tall banner rises up on a black pike before her. The weapon is massive, built for Orcish hands, and is driven haphazardly into the stones of the garden path. The black cloth of the banner, motheaten and rotten, stirs stiffly in the summer breeze, dripping ichor onto the path around it. It flaps quietly, wetly, and the sound of it nearly drowns out the whispering of the ivy.
Strung up on the pike, all but wrapped in the blackened banner, is an elf. The marks of torture on him are graphic and fresh--parts of him have been flayed clean, the bolts of arrows jut from his ribs and his chest, and his right hand is gnarled and broken, burned mostly away by the cold silver that still clings to the flesh. In the end, he had been disemboweled and his innards used to strap him and the banner onto the pike. His arms are held straight by a rod driven through the both of them, a rod that has twisted his posture in an unnatural, terrible way.
In life his face had been gentle and friendly, his smile had been familiar and his voice a welcome boon. She has always cherished his memory and has, for two thousand years, avoided dwelling on this sight. She cannot avoid looking upon him now.
She understands, after speaking with Olorin, what this place needs of her. It seeks to find guilt and mete out justice and, truly, justice had not been served here. He doesn't need to speak for her to understand, but conjuring the words for him will take time.
Petitioner's Path OTA - Arwen
Galadriel finds herself very tired after the last spirit she has spoken with and, despite the middling distance left on the garden path, she must sit. She takes up a space in the shade of a great wall, beneath the swaying vines and the overhanging trees that grow through the architecture here. The reclining wolf statue at her back is so worn from rain and the roots of plants that she barely recognizes it.
The weight of the enchantment in this place has not yet eased. It trickles down, falling like the dappled sunlight through the leaves--she has a shady reprieve, a few moments to think of nothing and attempt to banish the horrors of the past where they belong, but all too soon the breeze blows through and the sun falls across her shoulders again.
The warmth of the sun comes with a sound she does not expect to hear. Gentle laughter and a lilting song, lyrical and sweet as the birds of Lorien. A figure drops down beside her, sits with enthusiasm that eclipses all grace, and Galadriel only catches the moment out of the corner of her eye. When she turns she is greeted by a smiling face she had not hoped to see again.
"Arnaneth," Arwen greets. She is a sweet girl, her face is younger than she ought to be, only a few hundred years old, but it wavers and notes of age dance in the corners of her smile, in the set of her shoulders and the movement of her hair. Her grin is bright and familiar, a shade of Galadriel's own, and she holds her cupped hands out for Galadriel to see.
"I have something wonderful to show you," she says excitedly and leans in, clearly waiting for a prompt, for a question.
This will become terrible somehow, of that Galadriel is certain, but she waits, then. She savors the moment, the shape of this spirit and the bright reflection of her granddaughter's face.
Petitioner's Path OTA - Sauron
Galadriel is weary and the kinship she feels with this place is becoming too close, too near for her comfort. She can see the walls beyond the creeping ivy more clearly now, she can see the way the temple crumbles and falls to ruin, the way it erodes with the currents of time, and how it is held together by little more than ancient spellcraft. The comparison is a cutting one and she is less fond of it the more apparent it becomes.
When she comes to the end of the path she is greeted by another spirit. It is not a shadow of the past, but a real and present fear.
A dark figure stands at the end of the path, before the temple doors, and the weight of it clashes with Thedas but matches this place too perfectly for comfort. It stands tall, too tall for any living man or elf, in armor that is both exquisite and wreathed in living shadow. It breathes, pulsing with the ebb and flow of the summer breeze, and the shadow stretches around it, curves around the shape of him like mist stirring over water. If she stares long enough, and she does, she can feel the terrible weight of the flames. The sun feels mere inches from her neck and it is not the sun, then, but an eye that stares, unblinking, with a hateful and absolute focus.
He breathes out and in, sucking the shadows, the creeping tendrils of darkness back into himself and then is still. He waits, his hand gripping a mace that stands so high it would be to her shoulder and more than twice of her around. He looms, the blades of his helm pricking at the sky, and the darkness behind the mask stares at her.
On his hand he wears the ring. It burns brightly, gilt and aflame, whispering words.
She beholds him and she is so very tired.
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Galadriel is a face of bones.
Without thought, Sorrel crosses to her. At first, she doesn't seem to notice him, too busy with that private pain, the grief that stains her newness grey, as if she were a sail left in the sun, fading, fading. It hardens his resolve to see it; not today. Not ever. She isn't supposed to be old, only because she's old, and Sorrel steps up and takes her hand.
He tilts his head back and looks up into the face of evil, the heat of its flames on his face like a sunburn yet unborn. Calmly, he regards the visage of Sauron, the black hand, the deep and creeping darkness of an age and a world beyond his ken. And he does not blink. Instead, Sorrel simply takes a breath and says:
"Fuck off."
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"Tell me, Sorrel, of your gods," she asks softly, kindly, in a tone that is entirely incongruous with the silent figure watching the elf at her side.
"Mythal's Justice is not so fickle as to change with a whim, is it? It is a long tally or a swift reprisal, yes?"
She has come to understand the woman this temple was erected to as she faced these spirits. There is a cruelty to it, but a necessary one, and though severe each trial she has met has been largely of her own making. This one is, of course, the last and most terrible and as she stares at the armored monster before her she can see herself reflected in the metal.
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Justice. A thing not a toy to be called upon frivolously. A power attributed to a Goddess who walked among you, and meted it out on her own judgement. Mythal's Mercy was a thing you swore with, and by, such was her power even ten thousand years since last she had been seen and recognized in her own name, in the world.
"Keepers most often bear her Vallaslin, in the hope of an even hand, to be fair with those under their power, because where we cannot always hope for kindess, or vengeance, we can always hope, for Justice."
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To whom should she grant mercy, in the end?
"That, Sorrel, is the face of the shadow," she explains and does not gesture. The weight of that gaze drifts back to her and the whispers of the Ring are audible, as though he speaks them aloud. The black speech seems smaller here, it does not consume as it does in Arda, and for that she is glad.
"I am bound to the shadow in conflict and by need, and I cannot release myself of this binding without causing more suffering for my negligence. My reflief is the doom of Arda." She sounds weary again, but some of the thinness in her face has subsided.
"Because I must contest him, I must employ methods that are not unlike his own. Can I be pardoned for that transgression and if I can, can he not as well? Is intent more important to your gods than action?
"I know it is not so with my own."
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But when he looks up at that dark and waiting face, then at Galadriel's own, with his face still wet from confronting his own clan... He doesn't need to ask; he is enough, because she is asking. That is all that matters.
"Your gods aren't here," He says, returning again to that first impulse. It's a fine piece of childish impudence, but it has the benefit of being true, "And neither are mine. But if it counts for anything, I forgive you, falon; whatever evil came of it, you were trying to help. That's all anyone can do. Even immortal shiny princesses from beyond the Veil."
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Galadriel has lived a long life and while she is and ever shall be a force for good, the means of maintaining that power, that influence, are less than ideal. She labors under the weight of her choices, of the desires and unsavory impulses that lurk in the worn and exhausted places in her soul. To be forgiven by Sorrel should not matter overmuch...but it does.
He cannot grant her peace, he cannot return her home, and his words will not free her from judgment if judgment is to be rendered, but it is a balm. A mercy. And it is likely a gift that he knows not the weight of.
A vision of Sauron stands before her, as terrible and awesome as he had ever been at the height of his power. It is a power she despises and longs to posess for precisely the same reason--with it, she could grant such wondrous things to her people, to all people, but to take it is to become it. To have that sort of power is inherently foul, regardless of intent.
But she does not have that power, she cannot take it here, and her desire to do so is forgivable. Sorrel has forgiven it.
"The evil that comes of my actions is my own weight to bear, I suppose, and I find it suddenly bearable." She squeezes his hand and regards Sauron again.
"It is not in my power to mete out your justice, nor to claim recompense from you for the darkness in myself. Your end will not be my doing...but I shall strive toward it, all the same."
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It sounds odd in her lilting cadence, but she repeats him nonetheless. Sauron, before her, grips his mace and moves to lift it but, before he can draw it up from the ground and heft it at them, he begins to fade. Just like the others he becomes thin and, once he swings, the movement bursts the force holding him together.
The spirit that has taken his shape lingers only a moment longer, nothing but wisps of shade and heat, but that too fades before long.
"I wonder, my friend, do you think I have passed your god's test?" Galadriel asks and, despite the ambiguity, is confident. She could have answered the trials no differently, even if she had tried to.
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Oh! The sanctimonious scandal! The Horror! The grin on his face!
"Such foul language. Think of the children, won't you?"
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Temple/Wildcard OTA
The path was wearying, but in keeping with what she knew both of Mythal and of gods in general. She disliked the experience but it was merely an enchantment. She could not hate it any more than she could be angry with it--it was a lock on a door and the key it required was simply...very uncomfortable.
Still, if this place been less familiar, she might have felt differently. This temple is an oasis in the desert of this mortal world, a tiny bastion amid a world of ever flowing time, and she longs for the peace that exists here, however tainted it might be. She would have been more offput, more resistant to engage with the path, but she cannot bring herself to deny anything here. Lingering in this place, even if it is nothing like the halls that she walked in Arda, is the nearest she has been to other Eldar in several years.
She wanders, then, with idle interest and palpable longing as the Riftwatch speak with Abelas, as they debate what should be done with the relics that reside here. She is no healer, but she can heal, and does what can be done for the elves that will allow her. There are very few of them, but that surprises her less than it ought.
She does not sleep, not in this place, and not with such stars and such sights before her. She lets her wandering feet take her, steps through and around into places she should not be, but she does not argue when she is ushered back. Truly, these are not her halls and this is not her home, however comfortable she finds them.
It is not hard to find her in the dark if one has a mind to do it. She glows, as she has since she first arrived. It is a fine thing, like spirits, and casts a watery white light around her. It is not enough to see by, not for a human, but it is certainly bright enough for an elf, of either world.
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