MOD PLOT ↠ AND THOSE WHO SLEPT (LOG)

[faderifting]

WHO: Nearly everyone
WHAT: A return to Nevarra City, where everything goes great
WHEN: Harvestmere 30 – Firstfall 1
WHERE: Nevarra City
NOTES: OOC and plotting post here! Consolidated crystal post here!

DAY.

They ride hard up the Imperial Highway, rising before dawn the last day and arriving in Nevarra City by mid-morning. There is no time wasted on settling in, barely enough to find their rooms at their assigned inns and change into whatever reasonably-practical costume they have chosen before getting to work. Most are sent out in pairs or trios to walk certain routes or neighborhoods, marking the locations of mummies and (subtly, ideally) observing them for any strange behavior.

Despite the looming threat of war the capital is packed with visitors for the Satinalia celebrations. The streets teem with those rushing about preparing for the evening's festivities, and plenty more spill out the front of every tavern, starting their revelry early. Masks are already a common accessory, and are recommended for those patrolling the streets. It won't be difficult to see why, since many Nevarrans still blame the Inquisition for the disaster at the Grand Necropolis. It's possible to run into groups discussing it, the mummies lining the streets a reminder for many of what was lost in that fire.

The Pentaghast mummies will be found stationed on all major street corners, outside government buildings, and in front of many notable monuments, especially those honoring Pentaghast heroes of the past. Some even guard their own statues, and pains have clearly been taken to make sure their arms and armor match those depicted right down to the mummified horse and the desiccated straw of its mane. But it isn't only the royal dead who've been trotted out for a day in the sun. Inspired by this gesture, families around the city have had their own mummies brought to stand sentry outside their homes, from the phalanx of knights outside the mansion of a noble house to the less-glittering but no less honored ancestors of the poorest communities wielding the tools of their trades.

Many such communities will be hosting parties for the whole neighborhood, and local leaders can be found out in the streets laying out tables or piling up firewood. A quiet word here and there about how they handle safety issues will find most have plans for drunken troublemakers, pickpockets, or gang fights, and a few will have considered how to hurry people home if, for instance, a Van Markham assault on the city were to begin. But on the whole people are preparing for a party, not for trouble, and there's little Riftwatch can do to change that now without risking a panic that could easily turn just as dangerous as a true attack, not to mention have disastrous consequences for Riftwatch's reputation if their suspicions prove wrong. For now they walk the streets and watch and wait for confirmation.

DUSK.

As the sun sets over the hills to the west, Satinalia begins in earnest. Bonfires are lit, musicians tune up, and people gather at tables and in courtyards or in taverns to feast and drink and exchange gifts. The last of the day's light and the first flickers of firelight limn the city in scarlet and gold, and reflect off the vacant eyes of the mummies standing sentry up and down the streets.

A cheer goes up when Satina is first spotted in the sky, the edges of the full moon sharpening as the sky darkens, Luna just a slender crescent above it. Parades begin to wind their way through the streets, growing in size all the while as masked revelers join their ranks, dancing and shouting, scattering flowers and sharing wine, bearing fools on thrones before them. At first it goes nearly unnoticed when the mummies, nearly in unison, turn their faces up toward the moon.

The silhouette of a dragon launching into flight across the face of that moon, on the other hand, draws plenty of eyes. The sight is greeted by as many cheers as screams, many clearly uncertain what's happening, expecting some sort of elaborate holiday prank. Then the creature wheels about, swoops low over the city, and bellows a cloud of toxic dust into a crowd. Its roar is a rattling, rasping cough nearly drowned out by the sounds of confusion, fear, and pain that rise in its wake. Again, the dead move as one, heads turned back toward the streets. For a moment they stare blankly at the crowds. And then they move.

Every mummy in the city lurches into action, raising their swords or pitchforks or knitting needles, their hammers or halberds. But instead of the defense that was promised, they attack whoever is nearest, at first methodical but then with a mounting frenzy. They are enough aware of their surroundings to parry a blow or chase a potential victim but without any regard for pain or fear or even whether they have defeated one opponent before they swing at the next. In the noble quarters, undead knights spur undead mounts forward, charging through panicking, scattering crowds of their own descendants.

As the dead begin to create more of their own kind, even the least magically-attuned will become aware of spirits flooding the air, a torrent of them rushing out of the Fade and clamoring to find new homes in the recently-vacated bodies. The newly dead then rise up to join the old, blood still wet and warm on their skin as they take up whatever weapons are to hand and turn on the living. Above the screams and cries—and in some homes and isolated streets the echoing of music and merriment not yet interrupted—rises a howling laugh.

At first he could be mistaken for Corypheus, the too-tall frame misshapen and crusted with stone and lyrium in similar ways. But Corypheus isn't really the laughing type, and this one can't seem to stop. Cloaked but unhooded, he rides the mummified dragon over the city before alighting on top of the Chantry cathedral, scampering across its roof with unnatural agility. Armed with a crooked staff of twisted wood, bone, and metal, he calls forth the dead—not just those already on display, but the contents of every necropolis and crypt in the city, even those long forgotten and built over. Mummies emerge from cellars and sewers and claw their way up between loose cobblestones, push out from walls and rise from the riverbed and set off around the city on violent parade, acting out some wild ancient celebration of Chaos.

NIGHT.

Night seems to fall with unusual speed. The dead hunt the living through the streets, and every fresh corpse joins them in moments, almost immediately possessed by one of the translucent, undifferentiated mass of spirits teeming about the city, clamoring for vessels of their own. Some shamble after their prey with heavy steps shuffling across the cobblestones, their own lethargy dragging the energy from the living around them, deadening legs and draining even the racing adrenaline of panic until their victims slow enough to be overrun. Others go mad with rage, throttling the life from their victims, or even tearing them limb from limb with slavering intensity. They come in all states of decay, from brittle bones that just about collapse into dust when struck to the well-preserved mummies with their tight, leathery skin, to those who've barely begun to go cold. The newly dead are the most dangerous, sometimes almost indistinguishable from the living until it's too late, holiday masks concealing their dead eyes.

As the mad magister capers about the city, rousting the dead wherever he goes, he leaves a trail of anger and confusion in his wake, the living suddenly driven to attack each other with mindless ferocity, and just as suddenly returning to themselves in time to witness the horror of their actions. Elsewhere, sections of the city are plunged abruptly into utter darkness, every lantern and torch for blocks extinguished simultaneously, leaving only moonlight by which to navigate the night's dangers, even that blocked out by the great bulk of the dragon when it dives to breath death into the crowds.

GRIFFON RIDERS

Ordered to retrieve the griffons at the first sign of trouble—or in some cases to stay behind and mind them—a team of riders makes it out of the city before the gates are closed and is soon in the air overhead, relaying information back to the teams on the ground.

Most of the griffons have never seen combat before. Their reactions vary, some personalities more daring or staid than others, but even the bravest griffon might take a moment to balk at the sight of the dragon they're sharing the skies with, and the most skittish might require coaxing not to ignore instructions and fly in the other direction.

From above, there's some order to the chaos. The black-marble Castrum Draconis lies at the center of the city, statue-lined boulevards sprawling out from it like spokes on a wheel. The city's structures grow shorter and less ornate the further from the palace they are, but even the smallest dwellings in the poorer areas are three stories high. The streets between them are rivers of light. But they're going dim where the living and their torches are pushed out or trampled by growing mobs of corpses. The darkness is pressing toward the eastern side of the city, where the undead seem to be organizing around a pair of dark, enormous forms visible even from above. Meanwhile, a steady glowing stream of spirits is pouring from a single building to the west of the palace, and a large crowd of the still-living, defended at its perimeter by soldiers and guardsmen, has gathered near the city's main gates.

Relaying that information back to the rest of Riftwatch is first priority. Second is the possessed undead dragon terrorizing the city—keeping it away from that growing crowd of civilians, at least, and destroying it if possible. Then, if there's time to spare, there are people trapped in the middle of the undead horde climbing onto roofs to escape them or in need of intervention from above as they're pursued by the streets.

DIPLOMACY

Members of the Diplomacy Division assemble at a small fortress near the city's main gates, typically an outpost for the city guard and tariff collectors. It's unusually empty now: everyone is in the streets. But captains and commanders still burst in and out of doors, exchanging information and orders that any enterprising Riftwatch eavesdroppers can pass along to the rest of the organization by crystal, dispatching members of Forces to assist a neighborhood no guards are near enough to help, or sending a griffon to rescue a family who have fled onto their rooftop and come to regret it, tracking sightings of the ancient magisters on one of the many maps lining the walls.

The crystal network of course allows for much faster gathering and distribution of information around the city, and before long the guard leaders can be won over by the assistance offered by their uninvited guests, and convinced to work with Riftwatch to coordinate strategy and pass messages to guardsmen and soldiers they meet.

Unfortunately, the one thing they won't consider is opening the gates. It's the only clear order they've received from the palace: contain the threat, don't give the undead an escape route into Thedas, don't let this become a disaster Nevarra has inflicted on the rest of the world. It sounds noble. But there's a swelling crowd of living civilians trapped just inside those gates, protected at its edges by the guard and soldiers for as long as they can stay alive.

As the night wears on, word from the griffon riders above indicates that the undead have organized and are on their way through the streets toward the crowd. Someone needs to get the gate open—if not for humanitarian reasons, then for strategic ones. The crowd is large enough to increase the size of the existing undead army by a third.

FORCES

The city isn't defenseless, and at first, the most sensible thing for the Forces Division to do is to coordinate with the larger number of guards and soldiers already present to intervene on behalf of civilians and funneling them toward the city's main gates. They're grateful for any assistance from anyone who knows how to wield a weapon, and healers, magical or not, are in high demand as the injured are dragged to safety behind the line of soldiers—if they die behind the line, they'll quickly become a danger instead.

But they're outnumbered by the dead to begin with, and every time another life is lost, the body is quickly overtaken by one of the disembodied spirits ricocheting through the streets in search of somewhere to settle.

It isn't only a lack of manpower hindering efforts. Most of the soldiers and guard fight the undead with the same hesitance they might exhibit if forced to fight their own ailing grandfathers. When one of the less reverent suggests fire might be called for, she's quickly shut down. The soldiers concoct plans to block streets with toppled carts and close off intermediary gates throughout the city to contain the mummies without needing to destroy them, but the planning and the execution both take time when there isn't much of that to spare.

And the guard and the army receive conflicting orders, both large and small: the guard thinks that the army is handling the market, the army thinks that the guard is. Friction and resentment between the two groups from well before tonight doesn't help matters, and the small contingent of Van Markham loyalists present alongside the Pentaghast's forces make accusations that nearly cause a brawl before an advancing line of undead cuts it short.

In that chaos, word reaches Riftwatch from the griffons above that the dead are organizing around apparent leaders, east of the palace. Tall, corrupted leaders. Waiting for the guard and the military to organize and decide what to do about them may take all night—so go now.

RESEARCH

With eyes in the air, the source of the spirits is apparent: they're emerging from a building just west of the palace, in a steady glowing stream, before scattering wildly through the streets, searching for something to latch onto. A Mortalitasi apprentice named Portia meets Riftwatch at the entrance. She seems trustworthy, for all appearances—genuinely panicked, searching for assistance already before they arrive, trying to be helpful despite relative youth and inexperience, clutching the possessed ceremonial skull that serves as her instructor for dear life—and leads the team inside, down stairs and through a narrow tunnel that avoids the outpouring of spirits while leading to its source.

That source is a cavernous underground chamber. Its underlying architectural elements are ancient Tevene, and the remnants of crumbling inscriptions reference Zazikel. On top of them are generations' worth of Nevarran additions, dating back as far as the Glory Age and as recent as the last decade. One tiled wall is lined with stone etchings of each of Nevarra's rulers, another a map of Nevarra as it existed at the height of its expansion in the Blessed Age. A third is covered in mathematical symbols, and a fourth in flat panels that hum with the magical energy of bound wisps.

At the center is a twisting structure of stone and metal—a conduit, with beams running across the ceiling to each wall—and at its center, a glowing ball of energy from which the spirits are emerging and funneling up through the ceiling. It is essentially a magnet, the apprentice explains: not a hole in the Veil, but a concentration of summoning power, carefully situated at a nexus of the Fade's unseen rivers of magic, strong enough to pull spirits through it. It was built over the ages for the sake of knowledge and potential emergencies. It is a testament to Nevarran history and strength. And it is also a puzzle.

Each wall is a piece of it, designed to limit the device's operation to those with a thorough knowledge of Nevarran history and heroes. The kings must be pressed back flush with the wall in order—not the order they ruled, but numerically by the combined number of dragons slayed and children sired. Tiles on the map signifying the location of major battles in Nevarra's several wars must be pressed in chronological order, but any lost battles must be skipped altogether, or the whole thing will reset. The symbols on the third wall are famous proofs put forward by mathematician-philosophers at the Duchess's Games, each with several subtle errors that must be identified. And the spirits bound to the final wall will budge only for demonstrations of a number of subtle, otherwise-useless Mortalitasi ritual spells.

Their guide is of limited help: she knows King Caspar I killed fewer dragons than King Caspar II, and she's learned one of the rituals, but she's hopeless at math and military history, and the possessed skull she's carting around won't stop shrieking about how offensive it is to have so many foreigners in the room touching his work. But she does at least know the way to the royally-maintained library, which may have some undead shambling among its shelves but may also have some of the answers—and she knows that the device can only be destroyed (and here the skull shrieks its loudest) after it's been fully deactivated, if they don't want a repeat of 7:32, when a half-dozen mages who were concerned about the device's potential for misuse vanished and left behind only their robes and some black marks still visible on the floor.

And after the device has been fully dealt with and the flow of spirits stopped, there is then the matter of escaping the city, still teeming with undead.

SCOUTING

As the Diplomacy team is able to relay, the crown has issued frankly terrible orders: to keep the gates closed, to send the population home. The city guard has been told that the military is handling the darkspawn leading the attack. The military has been told to leave it to the guard. Perhaps King Markus is officially addled beyond competence, or perhaps someone either very stupid or very terrible is speaking on his behalf. It is, altogether, some real nonsense, and people—more people than normal, in a standard attack of frenzied undead—are going to die.

The assembled Scouting team is tasked with infiltrating the palace, to appeal to the king or cut off bad advice at the source—whatever it takes. With nearby noble families and their servants retreating into it for safety, it's a somewhat easier prospect than usual. Split into small groups to attempt multiple entrances and tactics, whether talking their way through the servants' entrances or climbing through upper windows, they'll find the place in disarray. Pentaghast cousins and advisors are engaged in fierce, terrified arguments in half the rooms. In others, some servants have broken down crying, convinced they will die at work without seeing their families again, while others are determined to clean and cook as if nothing is wrong, and a handful roam the halls trying in vain to rouse the rest into organizing and escaping.

The throne room has scattered pockets of people engaged in whispered conversations and one old man wandering with an untouched glass of wine and a haunted stare, apparently overwhelmed. But the throne is empty. King Markus is abed, and the room's main doors blocked by a growing crowd of officials and relatives trying to get in to see him while six guards and three grey-robed mages attempt to explain that he is strategizing with his advisors and cannot be disturbed. Aurelia—self-proclaimed regent and perhaps the only person capable of commanding admission or countermanding the orders—is miles away, encamped on the road to Hunter Fell with the Pentaghast army in anticipation of a Van Markham attack.

Fortunately, there's a secret entrance. Two, actually: one royal escape route with a staircase down to the lower levels, one corridor connecting to a room that was once occupied by some king or another's secret lover and is now stocked with herbs, incense, and various Mortalitasi accoutrements. And once the king has been secured, he'll need to be ferried out of the palace and through the chaos to the fortress where Diplomacy is trying to coordinate information with the guard and military leaders.

DAWN.

By dawn, the gates are open, and Riftwatch and the remaining Nevarran guards and soldiers have retreated from the city with as many refugees as could be saved. Not all have chosen this route, but many have nowhere else to go, and so make their weary way back down the Imperial Highway, battered and blinking in the morning sun. The dragon is defeated, the magical chamber's spell ended, and one ancient magister slain, but the dead have overrun the capital. Research's success has stoppered the flow of new spirits, but those already possessing the dead remain in the bodies they've taken, hungry, angry. The gates are shut again once all that can be rescued have been, trapping the army of the dead inside, a problem for Nevarra to solve another day.

Without tents or supplies, and with mounts and carts in short supply, most are forced to walk, and all to sleep on the ground beneath the stars in just their clothes, and to eat whatever they can buy or the soldiers can commandeer from villages as they pass. Unlike the shocked, traumatized refugees they escort, Riftwatch's members will be expected to help the guards and soldiers keep watch, distribute food, gather firewood, tend injuries, dig latrines, and whatever else might need doing. Perhaps they should take it as a compliment.

On reaching Cumberland, the refugees are escorted into the city, which has been alerted by earlier arrivals and seems to already have gears turning to deal with this stage of the crisis. Riftwatch will get a hot breakfast, some handshakes, even a few words of thanks from the Nevarrans, but otherwise will be expected to fend for themselves from there. Thankfully, Salvio has arranged their passage, and it's a short sail back to Kirkwall.

Comments

sabine.

[glandival]

DAY; OTA.

There's a thoroughfare that is filled with more than just mummies. There is also music, and specifically, there is dancing.

It's a colourful spectacle, and all so strangely macabre with the dead looking on with staring eyes as life teems in hand-held circles, and bright skirts, and bejeweled masks. The costumes themselves range from the beautiful through to the demented, but almost always quite glorious to the point of obscenity. With her patrol partner, Sabine points to one man in particular wearing a silken tunic entirely decorated in peacock feathers, and a codpiece decorated with a curving phallus designed to emulate the peacock's head and neck.

For herself, Sabine is dressed in a fine dress of genuine Orlesian finery, with gauzy sleeves, a frilled and upright collar, a bodice that laces up at the front, a cinched waist, and overflowing skirts that look heavier than they are. Her hair has been swept up behind her head and pinned in such a way that wild curls have been tamed to sit flat on her skull, and disguise her elven ears.

Around her neck, she's painted bruising and rope marks, and she wears a rough looking noose of her own fashion, the end of which she holds in one hand and twirls idly. She watches the circle of dancing disperse and then reform as a new song begins, this one even faster paced.

"Perhaps, just for a minute?" Sabine suggests. "One dance."

NIGHT; CLOSED TO RICHARD.

As chaos grips the streets of Nevarra City, a figure climbs her way up off them.

Fluffy skirts are bundled up above her knees but are still very cumbersome as Sabine climbs up the side of a building, hand over hand, boots -- of more practical make than the rest of her outfit -- set against brick and windowsills and architectural trim. With her red hair up-swept and pinned in place, her face half-covered in a finely elegant mask, and her arms sheathed in tiered bell-sleeves of gauzy fabric, she makes for a cognitively bizarre picture of a frilly noblewoman scaling a building.

Once there, however, kneeling in the shadows, she starts undressing, tugging at the lacing at the front of her bodice as she darts a look around. Behind her mask, her eyes have been painted in shadowy black -- ostensibly a part of her costume, as her long throat is decorated in makeup bruising and rope marks.

Below, costumed citizens dart this way and that, rising chaos breaking to panic like a fever as not only the mummified corpses of generations of Nevarrans attack those they were promised to protect, but so to do the freshly dead.

DAWN; OTA.

It's time to move on. This section of Riftwatch and refugees had stopped to rest for a blessed hour or so, to tend to the wounded and eat, and Sabine has taken the opportunity to sleep.

Which she is still doing even as people are standing. A coat that didn't belong to her when this evening began but belongs to her now has been bundled up to form a pillow, and this alone she uses as comfort, save to have selected a patch of high ground away from the road, where the grass is growing thick. She looks smaller like this, having loosely braided All Of Her Hair, wearing the dark fitted clothes she'd been prancing around the rooftops in, and curled up into a defensive ball.

Most of the makeup is gone, included the mock-injuries and her deep eyeshadow, smeared to grey. If any real bruises are forming, they're disguised beneath her clothing, and she's more or less avoided any kind of deeper injury. Save to that of her circadian rhythm, which smothers down her awareness of the latest call for the caravan of people to keep moving.

WILDCARD; OTA.

[ ooc; feel free as usual to switch to action tag formatting, and also feel free to run a random encounter throughout the evening. sabine will not be in the Thick of the fighting so much as deploying some stabs from the edges, and then basically all over the place in that palace. ]

dawn.

[whatthefuckami]

Anne doesn't end up near the elf with any purpose, doesn't notice it until they're getting up to go. (She'd been shoveling porridge into her mouth with a familiar kind of weariness, then waiting outside in the weak sunlight, away from the blood and poultices.) They aren't even really near, just within sight of each other. But the group's starting to move, and Sabine isn't.

Problem with waking people up is knowing whether you're wandering into a fight. Without any idea how much shit someone's seen, she's not about to get in their face and find out if they're the type to pull a knife half-asleep. So instead, giving Jack a nod that means go on, I'll catch up, she walks up the little knoll Sabine's curled herself on and gives one of her legs a nudge with the toe of her boot. Out of range of grabbing, mostly, and of stabbing. "Hey. Get up."

[glandival]

Caution pays off.

The hand that was tucked beneath the folded jacket suddenly jerks free at the same time as Sabine lifts her head, holding something small and shiny in the hazy light. The dagger she is wielding is almost laughably small, with a blade no longer than her own palm, but Anne could probably appreciate the benefit of weapons you can hide easily.

Anyway, Sabine doesn't take a swipe so much as it raise the knife so it might come between herself and whatever she might be expecting as her eyes snap open, half sitting up from the ball she'd curled into. Her gaze sees legs, then tips up to identify who is standing over her.

No recognition, but only at first. Then it clouds back in, and she squeezes her eyes shut. Knife lowering, then held lax as she uses that hand to press knuckles to forehead.

"What fucking time is it?"

[whatthefuckami]

Knife that small, you'd struggle to stab a man--but it could cut out an eye, get the side of a neck just deep enough to start spurting blood. Anne approves, on an everyday sort of level; it's just good sense, having a weapon at hand.

She toes at Sabine's shin again. Even if the elf hasn't fallen back asleep, she's not getting up, lying there like she's got the continent's worst hangover. "Set down 'bout an hour ago. S'time to go."

[glandival]

When Anne nudges at her leg again, Sabine pulls it back out of range with a peevish jerk, but that's all. She drags herself up to sit with a curl of her spine, sliding the blade back into the sheath at her belt, and then continues the rest of the way to her feet. She picks up the coat and shakes it out of dew and dirt. It smells like a man wore it, but at least one that was alive when he put it on for the first and last time.

Which is not a guarantee, given recent events. Sabine swings it around to put on, oversized but comfortable, now blinking towards the caravan of refugees that have started to move.

Then she peers at Anne, faculties returning enough to seem thoughtful about it.

"Your man make it out as well?" is toned to expect that as a yes. From her initial impression of the two, she can't imagine Bonny as giving a shit about a relative stranger sleeping in late if something that awful had happened.

day.

[elegiaque]

In a manner of speaking, Gwenaëlle and Sabine have simply traded: where Sabine's ears are cleverly tucked and hidden beneath her hair, the addition of jeweled ear-pieces has elaborately extended Gwenaëlle's into high, dramatic points that are impossible to miss. Her gown is the most traditionally Orlesian thing she's ever worn, the skirt improbably wide with bouncing hoops—not the plain things beneath most such dresses, but elaborately filligried and jeweled because they are perfectly visible beneath utterly sheer fabric. The boots rise high upon her thighs, soft, pale white leather made to look as if she wears only stockings, pretty garters stitched in place as if they hold them up the same colour as the frilled knickers that don't completely cover her backside, the same colour again as the low, tightly-laced bodice that draws in an already tiny waist.

Diaphanous sleeves billow much the way Sabine's do, but sit off the shoulder—all in green, the rich green that had signified Vauquelin to educated eyes in Halamshiral or Val Royeaux. And set atop her hair, worn cleverly styled into the shape of the mask and hair-coverings presently fashionable at court, a crown. When she had meant this for a private game, that crown was a more elaborate piece; this one was no small expense, but the pretty green gems are not true emeralds and if she's obliged to take it off and throw it at someone at some stage, she'll miss it less. She does sort of think it would suit the man with the peacock cock, but taking it off would ruin the impact of her costume.

The Empress has died, outfitting Sabine in Celene's favoured shade; long live the Empress. What is Satinalia if not for a bit of fantasy. Probably for the best this is all going to go to pot and they won't be anything like the most memorable things anyone's seen tonight—

“One dance,” she says, considering her skirt. They can probably get close enough; the hoops are like to tilt, but it's not as if lifting it will flash anything she isn't already displaying to everyone they walk past.

[glandival]

It would be a shame to attend Satinalia in Nevarra City and neglect to enjoy even a little bit of it. Sabine is well accustomed to moving through alien spaces for the purposes of Work, but equally not immune for a chance at revelry. She grins as her patrol partner agrees, and she leans in to collect Gwenaëlle's hand with the same snappy, rough enthusiasm as a playful pitbull.

She leads the way, dragging them into the thick of it by pulling along mock elven royalty with the indelicate steps of someone who is wearing sensible boots underneath all of that. Already, from Gwenaëlle's angle, she can see red curls escaping the fine styling of Sabine's hair. That might not even last the afternoon, let alone the chaos to come.

Sabine releases her dance partner, and sketches a curtsy.

dick.

[nonvenomous]

Directly across the street, at approximately the same y axis, a mosquito hawk of a man in burglar’s leathers is halfway through kicking off a set of borrowed robes. The flicker of torchlight reflected in his eyes is a little queer when he pauses to glance over the gap at Sabine; the rest of him is remarkably (fastidiously, even) normal.

Robes bunched in hand, he reaches to wick one end into the lick of a lit sconce, lingering long enough to let the flame take hold before he slings it over the side and across the face of an undead something clawing up the wall after him.

Do undead make sounds in this universe? If they do, this one makes the sound undead make when they’re surprised to find themselves on fire as it falls.

It lands in a burst of sparks in the street.

Hands free to rearrange his daggers into more convenient hideyholes on his person, Richard mimes an offer of bodice assistance with a wiggle of his fingers. It might be the least salacious proposal to help get undressed she’s ever been faced with.

[glandival]

Instinct has her go still mid-lacing when she spies someone of notice, neither dead nor panicked and running. Wary, first, ducking down a few inches lower, and across the street, it's likely hard for him to read much of her expression with her mask covering her brow, the planes of her cheeks, shadowing her mouth. But she reaches up, then, and takes it off, ribbons slithering free.

There is a corpse-like quality to her makeup, ghoulish shadowed eyes and lips painted pale and cracked, but when compared to the actual walking dead below, the theatre of it shines through more than horror. Happy Satinalia.

The woman across the street tips her chin up to him in a quick jerk. Acknowledgment and acceptance of assistance both.

[nonvenomous]

The street here is narrow enough that a leap across would not impossible, or even especially impressive. Richard backs into the shadows atop his perch, weighs out the odds of falling to his death, and --- quells short of kicking off to a running start. Something about the firelight wobbling with the struggle of the undead burning beneath the silhouettes of fleeing locals below.

He just has to think about it for a second.

Two seconds. Three.

In the end, he takes his chances with his friend in the street, slithering back down the side of his building, kicking cinders over cobblestone, and retracing Sabine’s path up the side of hers. Nobody seems to take note. The cityfolk are very preoccupied.

“Hello,” he says, and sets directly to unfastening, unlacing, etcetera. “I can’t help but notice the celebration seems to be going very poorly.”

[glandival]

"Bonsoir."

Richard's going at the lacings of her dress is a more patient approach than her own hasty tugging, so Sabine cedes this to him as she gives him a once over at better proximity. His face might having a passing familiarity -- as large as the Gallows are, as crowded as Kirkwall proper is, the Riftwatch itself is small.

As soon as the bodice is loose enough, she stands to tug it down and off her shoulders. The gauzy tiers of her sleeves expose bare arms, save for where she has one knife strapped above her wrist, and a more complicated gadget affixed to the other, where she'd been using the fluffy bulk of chiffon to hide the little hand crossbow ready there.

The clothing beneath itself seems to double as both modest undergarment and light armor, deep navy quilting, leather panels, all a little more worn than the genuinely fine gown she is shedding like snakeskin with Richard's help.

"You know how messy these festivals can be," she is saying, all the while. If Richard has been tracking the way accents work, he would identify her as being very distinctly from Orlais, whatever that means. "Everyone drinks a little more than they should and the next thing you know--"

A piercing scream, something like half a block away, finishes Sabine's answer for her. She bares her teeth in the firelight.

[nonvenomous]

“There’s a dragon and your mummified grandparents are tearing your neighbors apart in the street,” Richard finishes for her, flat after the scream. Sabine shows her teeth; he glances to her eyes while he’s still close enough to get an unobstructed read. His own are cool despite the prickle of sweat on his brow, probing through a rapid risk and sanity assessment.

He might not have spoken to her before, but the hair and associate reputation would’ve been hard for him to miss.

It’s probably fine. Options are limited.

He sweeps the gauzy tumble of what she’s shed aside with his boot as he steps away to peer after the echo of that last scream. There’s nothing specific for him to see, really. Everything is terrible.

“The palace?” He certainly hasn’t received any updated orders.

[glandival]

There's fear to be read there, hazel eyes open wide and alert, but it's an expected level -- a level that understands the situation and her immediate place in it. Her hands are steady as she checks in on weaponry -- another blade at her boot, and a small bundle of deadly fine bolts secured at her thigh. Prepared for a discreet kind of work, whatever that may be.

None of this feels very discreet anymore, but still. She keeps her hands empty for now, the fine gold hair on her arms raised against the chill in the evening as she glances at him, and nods.

"The only order making it out with any coherency is to keep the gates closed," she says. "No organisation otherwise."

She hesitates, then picks up the mask she discarded. "If we can keep off the streets as much as possible, we might live long enough to be of any use," she proposes. "Do you know Nevarra at all?"

[nonvenomous]

“Naturally.”

He only has the two daggers, underwhelmingly armed for the occasion, but his armor is scarred with slashes of fresh leather around the vitals, and the steel studding glitters with evidence of glanced blows.

A whispered word to his wrist sees the thin coil of wood wound there relaxing itself into the darker hide of a garter snake. Even with his back to her, it’s not difficult to discern that Dick has immediately set to teasing a tightly rolled (and slightly damp) length of parchment from its parted jaws. The snake helps, walking its needle fangs backwards along soft parchment. Regurgitating.

He has it about halfway before he twists the remainder out with a tail of stringy mucus; the snake flinches. He tells it, thank you, and says to Sabine:

“Only what I’ve read.”

Surrounded by death and undeath on all sides, they are officially entering a no judgment zone.

The parchment is a map. He peels it open to show her, matter-of-fact while the snake winds its way through leather plate for his collar.

“I have no idea where we are.”

[glandival]

Thanks she hates it.

Which is maybe her fault for looking, making no effort to be inconspicuous about the tilt to the side enough to watch at least some of this process. That she has fought alongside mages of various inclinations, that she knows their value in fraught situations and she has failed to make contact with anyone else, means that by the time Richard is turning back to her, she hasn't silently jumped off the edge of the building and out of sight.

No, she's there, lip curled. Sure. No judgment zone. She sniffs and now leans in to look at the parchment. She studies it in silence for a few seconds, before she points. "I just came from this thoroughfare, and the river is that way." Her finger moves, indicating the basic approximation of their location, and then raises it to point further up the street. "And there is the palace."

No identifiable landmarks when everything is fire and darkness, and a maze of impressive architecture defining the cityline. She withdraws, getting to her feet. "That is if your weird snake friend knows its maps."

And then takes off at a run -- enough that she can clear the narrow gap between this building and the next, and immediately looking back to check that the shem is following.

[nonvenomous]

I just came through this thoroughfare.

“Ok.” Richard is following along, as the serpent sinks into a gap at the back of his neck. And there’s the palace. “Right.” Still following, fixed on the map. Surely there must be a safest route, or at least a strategic angle they can discuss. Somewhere he has a piece of charcoal --

He looks up late after the dig about his weird friend, brow knit with halfhearted reproach, and Sabine is already running.

Shallowly-buried instinct spurs him to start, stutter stop, and start again after her, map folded over and stuffed away as he goes. Solid start, promising partnership so far.

[glandival]

Sabine gets her way, for all that she doesn't think twice about it, for approximately a block or so. Motivated by the urgency and real fear of a city collapsing around them, her instinct is to take a straight shot for their destination for as long as the going is good, and this stretch of street has the buildings lodged close together with the occasional required jump. But it can't last forever.

In their way rises a larger construction, with glass windows, arches, a slanted rooftop some twenty feet upwards, and no immediately obvious means of scaling it.

Ducking down into a crouch at the sound of running and echoed voices, Sabine glances back for Richard, then peers down into the skinny street below. Empty, where an old cart has been pushed in and neglected likely a longer time ago than just tonight. The two corpses currently lying limbs akimbo several feet leftwards are probably more recent additions.

A moment of pause, indecisive, although her body language is keyed to show she is thinking of trying her luck in jumping down.

[nonvenomous]

Dickerson doesn’t quite keep pace, losing ground when he balks at the occasional leap, and gaining again in the stretches in between. There he is, and there he isn’t.

He’s quiet, when he finally catches her arm from behind, warning sharpened a little wild by the forced stifle of all the huffing and puffing he’s doing through his teeth. There’s accusation in his hooded look from her to the corpses, and back again.

The dead no longer seem content to stay that way, and if he’d known she was a gambler he might have stayed on his own roof.

“I have a map,” he reminds her, helpfully. Quietly. “We can retrace our steps and circle around.”

[glandival]

Her arm beneath his grip stiffens, but she's not quite in the mindset that would have her balk and yank it away -- there is purpose in his grab, the way quiet communication may manifest, and so she heeds it with just a sharp look downwards and then back.

Accustomed to traversing in this manner but not immune to its rigors by any means, her own breathing comes short and sharp, so she just nods and moves backwards out of sight of-- dead men. The whole evening feels strange, weirdness in the atoms in the air. She hasn't an ounce of magical sense, but a sky full of spirits, unknown and unseen, still raises hackles and heart rates.

Sabine says, "Alright," and ducks into a crouch to stay unseen from the road. Every now and then, there's the sound of running and movement that could be the dead or the living alike, and Sabine would like attention from neither.