↠ WHAT PRIDE HAD WROUGHT | OPEN LOG

[faderifting]

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.

Comments

[writteninblood]

"Elgar'nan was Mythal's husband, the god of the sun and of vengeance. He has a cruel face, and he punished the wicked. But Mythal was the high queen, the Mother of us all, and it wasn't reprisal she was known for," He says quietly, the cadence automatic, as if Sorrel were retelling a story that had been told to him many times, and codified in the telling by storytellers from long ago. It was the only form of immortality the Dalish had left, "Justice, true Justice, Mythal's Justice, cannot exist without Her mercy. Because it is not about punishing the wicked, but about saving the unjustly harmed. That's why the People never forgot her name, and ever revered her above her fellows; because we were trapped in dark places, chained and hated, cast out and despised, but we never forgot what once we were promised."

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."

[laurenande]

"What, then, is Justice here?" She asks and the question is largely rhetorical. To answer these tests as she would expect they wish to be answered is counter to the point of them, isn't it? It is a test to determine if a person is just, not if they are merely clever. But to employ mercy is a tricky thing, especially in cases such as this. Mercy is oftentimes the harbinger of great suffering and yet avoiding it is the only way to be certain that suffering will come about. Is this test a question of whether Sauron deserves mercy, or is it a question of what shape that mercy is?

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."

[writteninblood]

Sorrel opens his mouth on the first thing to come into his head, then stops, and thinks instead. This isn't a question of philosophy, like Myr in the forest, hunting rabbits and debating the nature of holiness. This is a real question, a Keeper's question; and who is he to advise someone like Galadriel? Failed First, false Keeper...

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."

[laurenande]

It is precisely the sort of answer she should have expected; every Dalish elf she had met held a similar view, that the best one can be expected to do is to try sincerely. His forgiveness, however, is another matter. She absorbs his first encouragement in silence but the absolution makes her start-- it is a kindness, that, and one she...had never truly expected to hear.

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."

[writteninblood]

"So fuck off," Sorrel punctuates, with a clear sense of so nya in his tone. He knows what he sounds like, but sometimes life isn't about dignity or maturity, or grace. Sometimes it's about looking bad things in the eye, and sticking your tongue out at it.

[laurenande]

"Yes," Galadriel agrees and holds a hand to wave the armored figure away. "Fuck off."

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.

[writteninblood]

"You know, I think that trying to guess what the Creators would have wanted is Fen'Harel's game. You passed the spirit's test, or you couldn't go through, so that's what matters, hey?" but he's beaming up at her with unreserved delight, "You cursed! Lady Galadriel."

Oh! The sanctimonious scandal! The Horror! The grin on his face!

"Such foul language. Think of the children, won't you?"

[laurenande]

"Fen'Harel's game, is it?" It is a strange turn of phrase and her smile quirks just so as she turns it over in her mind. It is something she may have to discuss with him later but, for now, she accepts its meaning as Sorrel presents it.

"Well, if I am to play such dangerous games, my language shall need to match," she defends but her smile grows as she defends herself, her tone high and haughty. She still has a hold of his hand and she pulls him forward as she walks through the doors and into the inner sanctum of the Temple.

"If I must harm children...well...it is regrettable, but so be it. They shall be harmed."

[writteninblood]

"Ugh! My tender ears! My child-like innocence! My pure, white heart, as clean and smooth as the unriven snow! You have corrupted me forever, and now that I know what the word fuck is, I shall go forth and do evil in the world."

He grins at her, holding onto the joke a moment longer before he laughs. It feels good to let it go. Which is why it's such a shock when, as she walks with him toward the exit, for him to be brought up short by a spirit of his own.