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

Sorrel's judgment of Olorin is so stark and angry, so absolutely black and white, that she cannot help but smile. She stifles her laughter but the old wizard before them does not. It is a rough and put upon chuckle and the smoke that curls out from beneath the brim of his hat is shaped like small moths. They flap about in truly impossible ways and he shifts to prod at Sorrel with his pipe.

"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."

Sorrel throws his hands in the air. The old people are laughing! And what's worse: it's at him. Well! See what good it does to try and defend someone around here.

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.

Gandalf regards her with a shred of familiarity to him but, to her dismay, it bleeds from him before her eyes. The expression on his face goes lax, still, and then the whole of him begins to fade. It is a sad sight and, despite knowing that it is not him, she still reaches to touch his shoulder as he becomes thin, like mist over water in the early morning.

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.

"Well, what are friends for, if not to bother?" He's content to hold her up until she finds herself equal to the task of standing on her own. It doesn't take long, at any rate, "Who was he, then? He looked like maybe if he weren't a spirit trying to judge you, he might not be so bad."

"He is..." It is so hard to explain and, if they were in Arda, she would not have gone to the trouble. Sorrel, however, has listened to tales of the eldest ages, he has called her old and stood by her in friendship. He was willing to fight Olorin for her sake and that, if nothing else, inspires some candor.

"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."

"I would too," He says, flippant as ever, his reflexive defense against grief, and sorrow, "Gandalf sounds like someone who gets to have friends and eat pies, and sleep in on warm days. If your name is Mithrandir and you want a drink, you can only have a fancy one in a very small glass, and they look down on you for slurping."

The Dalish are a proud people, and Sorrel is not without that pride, but in the end there are advantages to humble circumstances. One cannot only live with political allies, when actual friendship is on offer. He doesn't want to apologize for it, for joking, and snapping, and talking about a dead person as if they were there to defend themselves. As if it were mere gossip and not...

Guilt is a beast with teeth. Sharp ones.

"...He sounds like he was a good friend."

"He was," Galadriel agrees. She lingers a few moments longer, looking at the space he had been and wondering if the smell of pipeweed is her imagination. It must be, she decides and, with a wistful exhale she turns to Sorrel and gestures onward.

"Walk with me, mellon nin, and enjoy the sunlight."

Sorrel looks back at the maze, people bowed or weeping or raging at the spirits that crowd around like hens. It's an apt comparison, and he frowns a minute, wanting just to scatter them all back to the fade, to put a stop to all the peck-peck-pecking, as if wanting to walk a holy place gave that place the right to demand...

...He really was becoming such a blasphemous shem-tainted flat-ear now, wasn't he?

Sorrel turned back and jogged a few steps to catch up to the motion of Galadriel's too-long legs. Enough injustice to go around, no need to go borrowing it like a beggar.

"They showed me my clan. My mother," He says, abruptly, needing to tell someone, because any censure is better than keeping it behind his teeth. And then he thinks a minute and frowns, "...Do you even have a mother?"

The question is utterly unexpected and Galadriel actually pauses mid-step to look at him. Despite her somber mood, she cannot help the edge of a laugh that laces her next word.

"What?" She asks and waits as he catches her up. "I am not that old."

But, then, Sorrell wouldn't have known about the lake that elves awoke around, or about the history that followed. She decides he probably would not care and, in truth, there is something freeing about that. But then, of all strange and ancient memories, she must recall her mother. Eärwen was not an unfortunate memory, but the edges of her had become foggy with time.

"I have a mother. She still lives, in fact, unless something truly impossible and tragic has happened," Galadriel tells him. "Her name is Eärwen, she was Falmari, of the elves who sailed the seas."

"Oh!" Sorrel digests that a moment, and his first impulse is to be respectful. But then she laughs at him and his second impulse overruns the first and tramples it flat, "Oh, excuse me, messere I'm as old as rocks and I saw the first sunrise how am I meant to know that there's even older elves? For fuck's sake, Galadriel, have you got a grandmother hidden away somewhere? How about an old great-auntie?"

He's throwing his arms about in half-feigned, half-genuine exasperation, as if she had said it specifically to outrage him.

"And her name is Earwen! Ear. When. And she sails! Well! Well, that's just lovely," Have a look, Galadriel, "Meanwhile my mother is enough trouble that even when I'm halfway past the map from her I have spirits popping in to guilt me on her behalf!"

↠ WHAT PRIDE HAD WROUGHT | OPEN LOG

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