MOD EVENT ↠ CREEPY CRAWLERS

[faderifting]

WHO: Everybody
WHAT: Weird shit comes to Kirkwall Riftwatch earns its keep
WHEN: August 20-22
WHERE: Kirkwall
NOTES: OOC post! Random creature generator! CW: creepy crawly animals and the combating thereof.

I. KIRKWALL

The first Fade-touched creatures are small—they must be—because the first signs that something has gone wrong aren't swarms of oversized pests stomping through the streets, but a half-day of unexplained fires in Lowtown and Darktown, splotches of mysterious ice on the walls despite the heat, and the sudden simultaneous electrocution deaths of two dock workers standing knee-deep in water.

Rumors that mages must be to blame don't have an opportunity to get louder than whispers, fortunately, before the first pack of double-sized, fire spitting nugs is startled out of hiding and runs through the city, squeaking wildly and singeing walls.

By nightfall, it's become an invasion: rats, nugs, bats, deepstalkers, some oversized, some aggressive, all exhibiting unusual abilities. The City Guard—already overworked due to the traditional rash of crimes that often accompanies a heatwave combined with the caffeine-related unrest—does its best, but by morning the pests have reached Hightown and begun scorching curtains and leaving trails of poison slime through gardens and the Provisional Viscount sends a formal request for aid to the Gallows. It has a seal and everything.

II. DARKER THAN DARKTOWN

The old mines that Kirkwall was built around and on top of are only heavily populated near the surface. Beneath Darktown's shanties and encampments, the mining shafts narrow into passages too cramped to easily live in, twisting away from any natural sources of light and down into the black rock until not even dwarven and elven eyes can discern anything in the dark. At first, it seems cooler underground, as one would expect. But the air stagnates and the humidity rises and at times it seems that the deeper one gets, the hotter it is.

The tunnels aren't entirely deserted. Signs of activity litter the paths, along with skeletons—some animal, but also some human, dwarven, or elven—and detritus, discarded rags and broken pottery, and a whole collection of dolls made of bundled twigs. The smugglers and reclusive Darktown denizens who travel this deep are difficult to come across in person, and prone to attacking first if cornered by anyone too clean and official-looking, but now and then they can be seen disappearing around corners or heard whispering from side passages.

Navigating the mining shafts is fairly straightforward, most of the time. Widening passages and upward inclines are the way out; narrowing passages and downward inclines are the way in. If fire and glow stones fail, sending crystals cast a faint light that's enough to keep anyone from being completely blind in the depths. But there are still passages that turn back on themselves, downward tunnels boarded over with bridges that have begun to rot, tunnels half-flooded with Maker-knows-what, steep drops—and the occasional stampede of Fade-touched creatures, more and more frequent closer to the rift.

Close enough, the jet-black stone walls begin to reflect green light, and then the tunnels open up into a wide open space full of damp, briney cool air. And demons.

III. THE RIFT

It's just a rift: the usual split of churning green, so bright in the dark that it's nearly blinding, hanging over standing water in the center of a wide-open chamber, patrolled by the usual demons.

But once they're dispensed with, and the rift closed, the chamber is something more unusual. The standing water is salty—coming in from the sea, at least in part, never deeper than the knees (or waist, maybe, on a dwarf) but populated with a few small fish, and the stone around it is covered with deep mushroom, ghoul's beard, and a few sprigs of rare felandaris. Beneath the overgrowth, there are signs of architecture, dwarven columns and crumbling statues of dragons in the Tevinter style.

Beneath the water, the floor is carved with a design not unlike a glyph, and also not unlike the pattern of Kirkwall's streets. The Veil is so thin that a sneeze could have torn it open.

Comments

[saam]

The cute ones are always going to get to her. Eshal watches the way the other one wrinkles her nose.

Who cares about glyphs.

"I'm Eshal." Her smile is sharp and confident.

[heirring]

It is, Wysteria thinks, an odd sort of introduction. But it is not the oddest and it is certainly not the most inconsiderate, all of which seem like attributes which warrant encouragement. So she flashes the woman the brief, bright smile of a person who isn't quite sure what she's smiling for but feels it's the right thing to do regardless.

"It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Madame Eshal. I'm Miss Poppell. Or Wysteria, if you care be familiar." Punctuated with a sidelong look for the sake of comedy: Ha ha, yes it's a very witty little joke, isn't it? No one seems very fond of their family names here. "I don't suppose I might tempt you into taking two steps in that direction, could I?"

[saam]

"Eshal Fazon, then." She can sort of see Poppell's implication. People here like to have two names. She has two. She picked them both, because she wanted one from each side of life. The luxury of choice; she could have given herself three, if she'd wanted.

She moves, rather than aside, forward. Eshal climbs on Poppell's perch to look down at the glyph. "Why do you care for it?"

[heirring]

Wysteria, accommodating soul that she is (ha ha), shifts sideways to make space for the significantly larger-in-every-direction woman on the base of the crumbling statue. Her hand hurriedly resumes its task and her eyeballs their study, but neither seem to get in the way of her prattling on:

"Why, because it is an object of power of course. Well-- 'object' is perhaps now quite the correct word, seeing as it's the symbol itself that holds the power more so than the rock it's carved into but you wouldn't really have one without the other. And because it is historically significant. If the dragon statues are anything to go by, this place must be a remnant of Kirkwall was part of the Tevinter Imperium. The fact that a rift formed here of all places would suggest that this space might have once been used to do all sorts of nasty things, and I suspect that mark there has something to do with it. Maybe if we copy it down, we can find out what it does and somehow use it to our advantage. Leave no stone remain unturned for the war effort, eh?"

She laughs at her own joke, then shoots Eshal a sidelong glance to make sure it lands. Get it? Because it's carved into the rock.

[saam]

If Eshal squints, she imagines she can actually see the words as they softly fly over her head. She lets out a confused laugh in return. "Sorry, love. Don't know shite about magic."

[heirring]

Now that gets her attention.

"Really? Nothing at all?"

[saam]

She shakes her head, lips pursed. Nope. Nothing.

[heirring]

"Oh." How novel. She tucks her pen behind her ear and half turns from the rune etched into the floor and toward her. "--But surely you have opinions on it?"

[saam]

Palms to the sky. "Pretty from far away."

This is clearly a person who wants to explain magic. Why take that away?

[heirring]

She instead tips her head, examining the woman with something near the interest she'd had in the rune.

"Where are you from, Madame Fazon?"

[saam]

Eshal points a single finger skyward, because her homeland is north of almost everywhere anyway. "Kont-aar."

She even very politely makes sure her accent doesn't round that first vowel into an entirely different word.

[heirring]

She looks up. And then quickly back, realizing how absurd it would be to take the motion literally.

"Do you not have mages there? I thought they were everywhere in Thedas."

[saam]

"No, no," she says. Clearly they didn't understand. Eshal shakes her head, and clarifies- "Kont-aar is a Qunari settlement."

[heirring]

"A Qunari settlement!"

The delighted cry carries in the cavernous space, sharp enough that it makes a few other lingering Riftwatchers glance up from whatever they're doing. In the time it takes them to dismiss the affair, Wysteria has set a rapturous hand at Eshal's elbow.

"Miss Fazon, you wouldn't happen to be a Qunari warrior would you? I have been doing a considerable amount of reading concerning the tools of their trade and would be grateful - no, overjoyed - for a first hand account."

[saam]

Eshal puts her hands up in a pacating gesture. She also wonders what a 'Miss' is. If Eshal's a Miss, and Poppett's a Miss, does that mean Poppett's a woman, too? Seems like a good enough theory. Either that, or Poppett's one of the (not insignificant amount of) people who thinks she's a man.

Eshal doesn't regret leaving the Qun, but damn does it make life confusing.

Still, it's rare someone gets that excited about meeting a 'Qunari warrior'. Fuck, this girl better not be a convert... "Ex-Qunari warrior. A proper Qunari'd smash that stone the they you saw it." She points to the glyph. "But, yeah, I grew up in it. I can answer questions, if you answer mine."

Wink.

[heirring]

"Of course. I would be more than happy to. All education should be like that, don't you think? I know I learn best while teaching. It forces one to really consider their own thoughts. Go on," she says, closing her little booklet with the rough scribble of the glyph. "Ask me whatever you like."

It takes her a few moment to locate her pockets in the bundled loops of her skirts, but once she does the book disappears into one of them.

[saam]

Sure, okay.

"What's 'Miss'?" Seems to be the best question.

[heirring]

"An object of address for a young woman." A beat of hesitation. Hmm. "Unless you're married. Or would prefer something else. Or perhaps just to dispense with them altogether. --But of course it can also be an object of great affection! Of respect, and true friendship."

[saam]

She shakes her head. "S'fine. Just wanted to know what I was being called. That's not the worst of it, Sweet."

She leans back a bit, giving the girl (definitely a girl, then) room. The city is still burning around them. Eshal still keeps ignoring it. It's happening somewhere else. It doesn't matter. She's done her fucking time.

"Your question, then."

[heirring]

"Have you ever fired a cannon?"

[saam]

Eshal snorts. Here she was, expecting a tough question. "No. I was karasten. Infrantry leader. All on foot, weapon in hand. There were special teams trained for using gaatlok and adaar-- cannons and death powder."

[heirring]

A slight disappointment, but hardly a complete wash. "But you've seen their operation? Might you describe how they functioned? Their scale?"

[aos fandom flashbacks]

[saam]

"I've seen it," she says. "You pour the gaat in, and then you put the ball in, and then you light a match on the back. Oh, and they gotta be tied down, 'cause otherwise the explosion will just-"

She makes a zipping motion with her hands, like something flat flying backward.

"Right off the deck."

youre welcome

[heirring]

"So you do not carry them under the arm or anything similar? They are not hand held?"

She has a very particular axe to grind with a very particular Orlesian over this very point, you see--

[saam]

"Fuck, no." Eshal shakes her head. "Gaatlok is too volatile. You don't want it that close to you. Enough people get their shit blown to pieces just by using an adaar the right way."