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

[exsecutus]

Nikos is doing his best to ignore his brother, while simultaneously remaining so fucking aware of his brother it's like someone has put a needle in the back of his scalp and run a thread back to Kostos to tug on. He finds himself walking faster, like he can escape the feeling somehow. The old story, the prince and the shadow, pulling at each other, peeling away as much as they can.

His footsteps are loud in the thickly perfumed air, and the cold of the grave kisses at his face, all cloying and smelly. At least he's first in. That stupid competitive streak. When he was here alone, with their parents, he'd wedged himself in a corner and glared at their procession. Now he turns around to walk backwards, all confidence, and gives Kostos a smirk.

"But I don't know how else to be, Kos." The sepulchral echo doesn't diffuse the drawl. Here's one thing he can do: be a prick. Pointedly, Nikos makes a rude gesture toward Kostos--two-fingered, Antivan, nothing in Nevarra but Kostos will get it--and then gives it to the crypt at large. "But why wait until I die? Come along and stop me if it matters that much to you. Or fuck off."

He turns on his heel and continues on. He remembers the way, even in the dark, and if he didn't, he'd act like he did.

[exequy]

For a few seconds Kostos refuses to follow, just out of seething spite—maybe a little out of exhaustion, too, and still having soot and grime from the capital under his fingernails, and being held together by threads so frayed that sudden movements might snap them. But mostly out of spite. He entertains a brief, stupid fantasy where Nikos is going the wrong way and has to turn back. Stupid both because he’s going the right way and because he probably wouldn’t turn around if he weren’t. Meanwhile the distance grows taut, and Nikos becomes a shadow in the discernible only by the impression of movement in the dimly lit street ahead, and Kostos deflates, all of his outrage leaking out like sand from a torn bag, and runs after him.

The look he shoots sideways doesn’t attempt to be dignified, when he catches up, so much as it dares Nikos to suggest dignity is a thing worth worrying about, after that display.

“If she’s still here,” he says in Nevarran, but he doesn’t know the end to that sentence, and he’s saved from having to decide, or at least abruptly shut up, by the the familiarity of the facade built into the stone to their right.

There’s a mummy sitting outside the door. Some ancient cousin. Whether he was exiled to the entrance by his own request or by his sister’s was a matter of ongoing family argument, until the family was just their father and them. He could be a doll now, made of leather and wood, if not for the way his head turns to watch their approach with eyeless sockets. He died in his sixties, but he’s shrunk small now, like a child. She’ll be smaller.

Kostos tips his head down, a cursory suggestion of the more respectful head bow he'd probably give Cousin Galenus if Nikos wasn't there, or if anyone else was.

[exsecutus]

A contrast of disrespect, Nikos pats Cousin Galenus on his withered old head as he walks past.

And now they're inside. Breathing Averesches--who smell, old incense, musty bandages, death. This is them, all of those from before, their own dead around them--ancestor Averesches, those married-to-Averesches, two bastard Averesches, and at least one mummified cat, who, not imbued with any particular spirit or essence, still had the rites performed thanks to an eccentric decree by a great-great-great-grandmother. The cat is this very still bundle, really dead. Everything else has a kind of life to it. Nikos doesn't need any of Kostos' magic to feel the hum of it. It is everywhere. It sounds like the dry leaves on the stone, whispers and rattles.

He doesn't hate it. As much of a shit as he was at sixteen--as much of a shit as he is now--as much of a shit as he is being on purpose, to annoy Kostos, to stave off the worst thought of not finding her here, among their dead, and then the other worst thought of finding her here among them, waiting like a wind-up toy left behind--Nikos doesn't hate it.

"Hello," he says in Nevarran, to the room at large. Slabs and seats and alters and every empty eye socket on them.

And Keto.