↠ 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

[sarcophage]

The request opens his eyes, if only just, narrow in feline repose and glinting in the firelight. Up comes his hand in a lazy shuffling, to find hers, and to pull it gently free of his hair, down the slope of his forehead, grazing his nose, so that he may press his lips against it. Warm, soft, where Derrica's fingers meet her knuckles.

"Of course."

Neither may be the one the other wants, and this context entirely removed from their truest wishes—it's nice to be wanted, all the same.

[tender]

"Thank you."

She had never summoned spirits or invited possession in front of anyone but the Seers. But Leander is all she has now. He will have to be her safeguard against all that could go wrong. (Derrica doesn't even fully grasp the consequences, but she knows they exist, and that they are something she needs to ward off one way or another.) For a long moment she watches his face, thinks again of how grateful she is that he is alive.

"What did you see there, on the path?"

It's an unfair question. But some part of her wants the comfort of knowing she is not alone in seeing some blood-covered figure, embodying all her sins since she was forced from her life.

[sarcophage]

"On the path," he repeats, still grazing, close as silk. His breath flows over her hand several times before he sucks it in more deeply, a cooling rush, and finally turns his face away to sigh. It's not a bad sound. Restless, perhaps. (Not what he wanted her to ask.) Likewise, his hand slips loose of her fingers.

Derrica may follow the journey of his gaze by watching his eyelashes move: up the column of smoke from the evening fire to where it becomes the sky, and further among the stars, where it moves between the motes of light without particular goal.

A gentle sound to clear his throat—he's awake now. "Myself."

[tender]

Slowly, Derrica levers herself down to lie beside him. Her body curls in to face him, eyes on his profile.

"I was afraid of seeing that. Me."

So afraid that she hadn't tried at all. His answer feels almost like confirmation. The shared thread between them, the templars they'd killed at Dairsmuid, feels almost tangible now.

"Are you okay?"

[sarcophage]

The question slides off him like water beading on the surface of a bottle, no reaction through opaque glass, thoughts still secret inside. Someone caught off guard by Derrica's affection or concern might smile about it—so he does smile, and sighs through his nose in one longish syllable of fondness, like people do.

"Yes," he answers to the sky.

He then turns his head to look at her. "Are you?"

[tender]

"Maybe."

She stretches the word out. She retreated. She'll never know what lay beyond that templar, if her own face would have stared back at her or if it would have been someone else from her past.

Running from clear danger has never felt like such a transgression before.

"I'll be okay," she amends. "I haven't thought of a lot of this in a long time."

This meaning Dairsmuid. This meaning that last sight of Leander. This meaning that first man she'd killed. It's all been put aside for so long. She hadn't been prepared for all her sins to be so abruptly wrenched to the forefront of her mind.