faderift | But despite what you've been told

Entry tags:

But despite what you've been told

WHO: Cecil, Kevin, Sherlock, Maxwell, Korrin, Lenneth
WHAT: Four brave Inquisition members go to rescue a group of very odd people
WHEN: the next few days
WHERE: on the edge of Emprise
NOTES: Rescuers feel free to use the ooc post here to plot out how you want the rescue to go down. Feel free to make up camp details/NPC actions. Action will be split into three main threads: Captive chatter, rescue, and travelling (both coming and going). Rescue will be a group log, but for the others feel free to do one-on-one threads.

The report’s directions are clear, at least, which is good - how else would the scouts be able to find the camp in this cold, desolate landscape. Snow as far as the eye can see, but there are great red shards of lyrium breaking through the ground. The only sounds are the grunting noise of red Templars stalking their way through the construction site echos along the frozen grounds, and the freezing wind that bites through skin and fur alike.

Scattered among these fearsome foes are cages. They look almost like caravans - giant cages on wheels, with cowering, shivering figures within. A few elves, primarily humans, all cold and hungry and uncertain about their fate.

Within one of these cages, a tattoo-covered human is conducting interviews.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

No more arrows came after Maxwell's shot flew. Lenneth nodded approvingly and turned her gaze to the two trapped in Korrin's lightning field... just as the ground beneath them exploded with a loud whoomph, filling the air with dirt, chunks of ice, and snow. A strong mage, to be sure.

Movement from the tents caught her eye. Two more Red Templar emerged; one held a massive shield, the other reaching for a greatsword strapped across his back. The Valkyrie ran for them, dropping into a slide across the icy ground that knocked the greatsword wielder off his feet before he could draw. She hopped up nimbly and maneuvered around, hoping the tower shield wielder would turn to face her. He did.

Despite having cornered herself, she smiled fiercely: with the shield towards her, he'd left his back exposed to the tender mercies of Korrin and Maxwell.

The lock was heavy, but the mechanism inside was crude. He would have it open in seconds --

He spotted the movement in the tents, then, and stopped. The moment the door was opened and the captives took off, the chances of one of those templars catching him out would start to rise. And there were still two to go. Sherlock looked past the cages toward the tents, or rather, the patterns of impressions in the soil nearby. How many more were currently concealed?

One of the people in the first cage, a woman, noticed his hesitation and started to speak in a loud, panicked whisper. "Come on, quickly!"

"Shut up," Sherlock hissed at her. He had only seconds to make a decision - but that was all he needed.

"Run towards the arrows," he instructed them all, as he finished undoing the lock. "Try not to get hit." The lock sprang free, and Sherlock was already moving on. Surely they could reach through the bars, pull off the lock, and open the door themselves. That would buy him another moment of time, and every little bit helped.

Cecil had been watching with what was, bluntly, wide eyed amazement, sometimes saying "hah!" under his breath even though Sherlock had specifically told them to be quiet. Once the lock sprang free the other prisoners started piling out and therefore so did Cecil - but rather than follow instructions, he was, oddly, following Sherlock instead.

Not really to help so much as to watch, and be able to report accurately on it later.

"Thank you!" He did say, however, with a smile, his actual eyes crinkling though his tattooed one did not. "Can I assume that you're from the Inquisition? Do you have any comment to make on the current situation?"

Maxwell had seen the cage door swing open out of the corner of his eye, bright Emprise sunlight flashing off the steel, and he'd taken a daring step out from his cover to gesture toward the captives.... But paused, surprised and confused, one of them broke off from the group and - was he purple? - tailed after Sherlock like a long-lost pet.

What was he--

The reinforcements came tearing suddenly into the field, and Maxwell jumped back just in time to miss the knife meant for him as it thunked thickly into the tree trunk. Drawing quickly, he started firing again, catching the templar that turned on the cornered Lenneth just as he was making a convenient target of himself.

Taking advantage of that exposed back, Korrin grins as she aims her staff at the Red Templar, launching a salvo of lightning blasts from her staff to home in on the target ahead. That they strike at the same time as Maxwell's arrows might be overkill, but she's not about to start feeling sorry for Red Templars. They brought this upon themselves, for what they did to the villagers.

The cages are noted, but she doesn't dare draw attention to them by glancing their way, trusting in Sherlock to handle that end. For her part, she blurs ahead again to reach Lenneth. As soon as she's within range, Korrin renews her Barrier spell so it can encompass her companion as well. That greatsword wielder is getting back on his feet, and she's not about to have Lenneth face him alone.

Just as she'd hoped, her trapped position reversed quickly. She couldn't see much of what had downed her foe from the other side of the massive shield, but she assumed it had somewhat to do with well-placed arrows and the lightning striking snake-like from the sky.

Lenneth landed a boot in the center of the shield, knocking the wielder to the ground, and thrust her blade into the now exposed place beneath its helmet. Redundant, perhaps, but these were not men anymore, and she did not know what the Red Templar were truly capable of.

As she yanked the sword free, Korrin blurred into existance beside her and made some movement. Lenneth felt an odd sensation in the air around her, as if it were moving to form a sort of shield. No, not the air. Something else. She furrowed her brow, reminded of the wall between her and her powers. Perhaps it wasn't a wall at all, perhaps it was more...

The Valkyrie's face went blank with concentration, and instead of yanking on the power, she reached. Her free hand moved forward. Light tinged with blue danced along her fingers, collected, and then shot forward in a thin scintillating beam to impact the Red Templar's arm as it lifted the massive sword into a ready stance. It crystallized, encased in ice, and Lenneth let out a wild cry of exultation, sprinting forward with sword already swinging to shatter both crystal and arm.

His steps didn't slow, but Sherlock cast a bewildered look over his shoulder at the prisoner following him. And asking questions. Questions whose contents Sherlock pointedly ignored as he strode on to the next cage, because really, if there were ever a time for such things, this was not it.

"Hush," he instructed, having listened just enough to know the man was still talking by the time he started on the second cage. At the same time: movement on the cliffs above. Another archer, this one with the correct vantage to see the one empty cage. The new arrival let out a shout, and Sherlock swore under his breath. He and the tagalong had not been spotted yet, but it would only be a matter of seconds. He would need to maximize every one.

"Down," he hissed, putting a hand over the top of the man's head to 'encourage' him into a crouch, while Sherlock got to the ground himself, and began picking the second lock.

"I take that as 'No comment'," Cecil had been in the middle of saying when suddenly there was a hand on his head and he was being pushed down to the ground. He didn't fight it (after all, the man had just rescued him), but had no idea what he was ducking from, so while he did stay down, he was looking around curiously and probably not-at-all helpfully.

"Ah - now I see, that one is about to shoot--" He started, but was cut off by an arrow suddenly whizzing past his face, fletching nicking his ear, to slam into the snow behind him.

Light was flashing below in the camp, not just from Korrin now, but from the rifter as well. He hadn't realized Lenneth was a mage... but all the better he decided in a heartbeat.

An archer was bearing down on Sherlock and the strange prisoner (maybe he was helping somehow?) that had followed him, and Maxwell had no choice but to turn his aim from the women below to them.

He yelled for the freed captives - just reaching him - to take cover and then began to trade arrows with the archer pinning down Sherlock. The Templar was good, so Maxwell had to settle for driving him back and into cover - at least until the man slipped up and gave him a shot.

Lenneth's magic catches Korrin by surprise, and while she does her best not to let that hinder her, that moment of pause could have been disastrous. Silently reprimanding herself, the Vashoth mage backs away and renews her focus. She won't be any good to anyone if she's felled due to distraction. This is one more reason to get to know her allies -and their powers- better, especially the rifters.

Just because she put some distance between them doesn't mean Korrin is done helping Lenneth, though. Fine with being a ranged distraction while Maxwell focuses his aid elsewhere, she keeps firing with her staff, waiting for the chance to renew her lightning assaults as soon as she can.

Even armless, the greatsword wielder continued his assault--albeit with a wicked-looking shortsword from his belt. Lenneth grimaced, the brief elation from finally touching her magic falling to the wayside as the Red Templar advanced. Truly these creatures were tainted beyond repair. She reached again, felt her fingers tingle, but no power built. Perhaps she now used the energies of--what had they called it?--the Fade, rather than her own Divine energy. It made a certain kind of sense.

The shortsword whipped out at her and she blocked it just in time, wincing slightly at the impact. The battlefield was no place for theory. The power came or it didn't--it was not to be counted on.

Not wishing to look away from her opponent, she called to Korrin over her shoulder. "Is this the last?"

Where the previous prattle of questions had earned a confused glance, this time the man gets a glare. He couldn't have ruined Sherlock's cover any more if he'd been jumping up and down waving his arms.

At least someone was being useful: he heard Maxwell's shout and the zip of an arrow through the air shortly afterward. Beyond that, the cage itself gave him a non-negligible amount of protection, and he soon had the lock to this one open as well.

"Come on; same as the last," he encouraged the prisoners as he pulled off the lock — but just before another arrow whizzed down from the ledge above. It might have hit Sherlock dead on, if the very edge of the cage's roof hadn't gotten in the way. The prisoners quailed, and Sherlock backed off, looking upwards while he reached for his belt of grenades. He wasn't going to stop being a target so long as he was the one releasing the miners. Time to be proactive.

The jar of bees was a heavy bit of business compared to other projectiles. It required planting one foot behind himself, a solid pivot point from which to wind up and hurl it over the cage to the cliff wall. But it struck, the glass shattered, and the majority of the bees swarmed upward toward the archer as their buzzing added to the cacophony in the air.

The majority of them. A few decided to drift downward instead. The prisoners at the very back of the cage shouted for the others to start fleeing. Sherlock, who'd allowed himself to get mildly distracted by the jar's effectiveness — his mouth ticked off a smirk as he looked up toward the panicking archer — then swung open the door and left them to sort out the rest of the escape. Two birds with one grenade, as it were.

Sherlock wasn't the only one who got distracted by just how effective that attack was.

"Beeeeeees," Cecil said quietly to himself, in an amazed sort of awe, but once Sherlock had snapped out of it, Cecil quickly did too - and finally decided that maybe he could actually make himself useful, rather than run around after a man who was very obviously not interested in making a comment. He'd seen where the others had gone, however, and with a wave of his arm to the new batch of prisoners, said: "This way!" And led them off himself.

Bees.

A quiet voice in the back of Maxwell's noted the dark, swirling, angry cloud as well - simultaneously amused and fascinated. How did one even manage such a thing? He would have to ask, if they all got out in one piece.

(He also made a note to never upset Sherlock, lest he find himself in the midst of such a swarm.)

All the while, he continued to draw and shoot, and finally, as Sherlock as making his move toward the last cage and the Templar grew desperate to stop him, Maxwell got the opening he'd been looking for. Quickly, he took advantage, striking the arching in the shoulder to disarm and disable him; then a second arrow put him down as he floundered.

Immediate danger neutralized, his bow lowered and he waved the new group toward him.

"Quickly! Stay low!"

"It looks that way! I don't see any others coming, but we'd better get moving after this." Talking and fighting can happen at the same time, and Korrin proves it with summoning a lightning bolt to strike the opponent in front of Lenneth. Paralyzed for the time being, the Red Templar now awaits its demise at Lenneth's hands.

Korrin glances around again afterward, just to be sure, and that's when she spots the swarm of bees. Of course she knows what that's about, having heard of the grenade recipe before, but it wasn't something she'd attempted to make for herself. Now, seeing it in action, she seriously reconsiders. "...nice."

Right. Back to work. As soon as that last Red Templar in their vicinity is dispatched, the Vashoth mage heads toward the rest of the group. It's time to get out of here, before reinforcements overwhelm them.

Edited 2016-01-05 14:56 (UTC)

As the anguished yelps of the swarmed Red Templar were cut off by Maxwell's arrows, Lenneth quirked her brow and shook her head. Apparently there were also bees in Thedas. And no matter the world, angry bees were nothing to be trifled with.

The stormshocked foe in front of her offered little challenge, although the red lyrium cluster jutting from his neck made his decapitation slightly messier than she'd aimed for. The Valkyrie wrinkled her nose in disgust as the corpse thudded to the ground. She raised her sword to the sun, watched the cluster it had stuck in and yanked out sparkle a malevolent ruby on the blade.

"...Would a sample help anyone back at Skyhold?" she asked, lifting a boot to shove the cluster off her blade and into the snow.

Sherlock didn't dawdle in opening up the third and final cage, but there was a decidedly more relaxed air to the way he popped open and removed the lock, then swung open the door.

The others could debate the merits of carrying red lyrium back to Skyhold itself. Sherlock wouldn't be getting any closer to the stuff than he had to. While they spoke, he went for the nearest stack of trunks and supplies, on the hunt for anything useful he could grab before they made their exit.

The Templars finished, Maxwell slipped his bow back over his shoulders and, after a glance over the prisoners to make sure they'd all made it out with no extra appendages, he slipped down to the camp proper to rejoin his team. Just in time to see Lenneth kicking at the lyrium.

"Be careful around that, I've seen what it can do, up close." He still saw the body sometimes in his sleep. "But if we can transport it safely, I think they're looking for some to study."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

But despite what you've been told

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject