MOD EVENT: WINTERMARCH WINTER MARCH

[faderifting]

WHO: Anyone & Everyone
WHAT: Winter adventures as Riftwatch heads up into the Vinmark Mountains to do some work for (Provisional) Viscount Bran of Kirkwall
WHEN: Throughout Wintermarch and early Guardian
WHERE: Vinmark Mountains
NOTES: OOC post

Still-Provisional Viscount Bran has received a number of requests for aid from communities in the Vinmark mountains outside Kirkwall. He wants to keep them happy so that they continue to pay taxes to Kirkwall and don't become problematically independent or allied with some other state. But he also doesn't want to deal with this shit, and the City Guard isn't really equipped to go tromp around the mountains in the winter. So he has asked Riftwatch to deal with this, casting it as a shared danger (if any communities were to break away, they'd be more vulnerable to enemy collaboration, or hampering travel through the passes, and things like that) but if necessary will imply that Riftwatch's refusal would weigh unfavorably against the decision to allow them to remain in the Gallows for free.

This work isn't done at the exclusion of all else--other normal (and especially high-priority) work continues. Any work that isn't especially time-sensitive may be postponed, and otherwise agents will simply have to forfeit their free time and fit this work in on top of their other responsibilities. Something for people to complain about while they're tromping through the snow.

It's not a long trip back and forth to the Gallows, so people can come and go if they want, but Bran has also agreed to allow Riftwatch the use of the Viscount's hunting lodge, a rustic mountain retreat traditionally used for hunting parties, which happens to be in a roughly central location. As Viscount Bran is both Provisional and profoundly not the sort of man who holds hunting parties, the lodge has gone unused for some years now, and Riftwatch is bringing in its own supplies and a skeleton support staff to man the place for the duration. Those traveling up in the first group will have to help escort supply wagons through snowy, muddy mountain roads, unloading casks and crates into the cellar, and pitch in cleaning, making minor repairs, and generally getting the building set up after a decade of neglect.

The lodge is organized around a central hall with a massive fireplace, and a small library and study that will be used as offices shared between those visiting. Up the grand wood stair is a mezzanine level that looks down on the hall and leads to three corridors, each with a couple rooms. Rooms will be shared by groups of 2-4 people, the exception being the two suites generally reserved for the viscount and his wife, which will now be assigned to whichever of the Division Heads are in residence (and if there are more than two at a time, then to whichever Division Heads win a coin toss or something). Each room has basic furnishings, heavy and rustic, and its own fireplace. Bathing facilities are communal, provided by natural hot springs pools. While these are outdoors, there is a roof, and there is also a small springhouse alongside for changing, as well as a separate sauna.

The stables contain a number of sleighs in varying states of repair, which can be signed out for use. They're often the best way to get around this area in winter, and can be pulled by a team of Vinmark Goats, a big-horned shaggy breed of unusually massive mountain goats that are often used in place of ponies in this part of the world. The Viscount had a herd of them, which has since run more or less wild on his land and will need to be rounded back up for use.

There are a few communities with different problems, spread out some ways apart through the mountains:

• ICE RIFT: The village of Erith has been plagued by shades and despair demons, which can be traced to a rift that has opened under the thick mid-winter ice of the frozen lake just outside town. Trying to get at it from above would mean cutting into the ice and fighting off demons while underwater and very likely freezing to death in minutes. So instead they'll need to traverse the ice caves beneath the lake to reach it, which will be complicated by the nature of shades, which leech off the energy of the livings' psyche, causing confusion, fatigue, and fear.
  
  
• SNOWMONSTERS: Cragfield has been cut off by an infestation of what's only been described as "snowmonsters," that have been harrying travelers around the village or anyone who strays too far from the edge of town. They will prove to be some unknown variation of giant, even more aggressive, though a bit smaller and nearly covered in white hair. They have some resistance to magic, especially ice magic, and one seems capable of using ice magic, if crudely. They can be tracked through the forest and picked off a few at a time, or traced back to one of their lairs, usually in a cave or tucked into a rock formation.
  
  
• THE GRIPPE: Galssop has sent an urgent request for healers to help combat a particularly virulent strain of the illness many in Kirkwall are suffering. Most of the town has fallen victim to it, including their only healer, leaving the rest without care. Complicating matters, reaching the town in winter (especially while transporting supplies) requires traveling up the frozen Wye river, using skates and iceboats. The villagers there will be wary of magical healing, and Bran as urged trying to use non-magical means of healing first if possible, though he and the sick will ultimately come round to the necessity of using some magic rather than see dozens die.
  
  
• THE GRINCH: Lerwick's trouble is a young man who recently inherited Touraigle, the fortress above the village, and who firmly believes that Lerwick is also his inheritance. When the Mayor of Lerwick refused to enforce Lord Bertrand's taxes, the lord's guards ransacked the town, helping themselves to most of its winter stores, among other things. Riftwatch diplomats have been asked to help entreat the lord to be reasonable and return what he took. But the road up to the castle has been blocked by a combination of overzealous defenses and weather, forcing all visitors to climb a treacherous hill of downed trees covered in ice and the occasional, possibly-frozen (if they're lucky), booby trap.

In addition to these specific issues, Rift Watchers can expect to encounter the usual Vinmark winter hazards: unpredictable weather, hungry animals, bad roads, scarcities, and so forth. Once news of their presence in the mountains gets around, they may be asked to take on similar small problems for others, like dealing with wildlife issues, helping search for a missing child, rescuing a hunting party trapped by a minor avalanche, etc. There are also basic chores to keep the lodge running that will always need extra hands, like chopping firewood, hunting down dinner, safeguarding supplies on their way to and from Kirkwall, and so on.

Comments

[propulsion]

"Okay, well. That's a lot of responsibility. Hope you're ready for it."

The trek to find a good location isn't far -- Tony had passively scouted out the landscape and mused over a certain incline that leads towards frozen lake a little ways off from the lodge. The kind of slope that looks not too terrible at first glance until you are in fact on the top of it and looking down, the prospect of uninterrupted descent and velocity.

Tony sets the sled down, which rattles a little, digging its runners into the snow a little so it won't immediately take off once butts touch down. He imagines, anyway.

"You taking your big stick with you? It's not gonna shoot fireworks in my face if you get excited?"

[obdurata]

“Leaving it lying about is frowned upon,” she says, instead of dignifying her readiness for the responsibility of not crashing them into anything with a response. “And I don't get excited enough about anything for that to happen.”

Which sort of sounds like a challenge when she puts it like that, and is more akin to something of a private joke. Dull Miss Smythe whose restrained control over her magic is nearly tranquil, no threat of possession because demons must get tired of having nothing to offer her. It'd have been hurtful if it weren't such a good shield; so commonly accepted as boringly devout and unambitious that any evidence to the contrary slides under glazed eyes.

Sometimes she still misses the Circle. It's not something she really knows what to do with.

Loading the pair of them into the sled is a tricky prospect even a little dug in, and not only because of the dirty great staff strapped across her back. They're not—completely—ready when it begins to slide, and Joselyn yelps in immediate contradiction of her confident assertion of dull blandness.

[propulsion]

Tony awkwardly kind of crabs his way over the top of the sled, holding it in place even as he sits down, heels dug into snow. Brings them up to brace, and now Joselyn is tucked between raised knees. There's a dull pressure on the mage staff she's carrying where Tony helps to wedge it in with an arm. He pushes with a heel, and the whole rig lurches forward.

She yelps, in spite of her confident assertion of dull blandness. He laughs, quick and easy, in spite his everything up to this point.

And then they're off.

And it turns out that two full grown adults, even if they're not very large ones, make for a very fast journey down a perfectly snow-smoothed hill. Dust-like ice roostertails up around the runners, the complete absence of friction making for a fast and easy swoop of a journey but also means that every time they hit a patch of slightly raised ice or rock the jolt is jarring. Tony finds himself gripping her arm, rather than just the sled, as if to keep her on it.

Or take them both out if he bails, one or the other.

He is also going, "Ssshhhii--" as they plummet for the icy lake ahead.

[obdurata]

A crystal clear thought forms in the space of time between her gripping the sled and Tony's knee at her side and the unexpectedly delighted, terrified noise she makes that she most certainly could not reproduce on command and that is not clearly conveying any one response even though sheer terror feels like it would be right—

Oh, we're going to die.

Probably they aren't going to die, but they hit just the perfect raised angle of ice and rock to go briefly airborne long enough that she feels at once weightless and acutely aware of the weight of them combined about to hit the ice again and of all the ways that she could go out this seems the stupidest but not the worst. They skid, wildly, out onto the frozen lake taking what feels like forever to slow, and Joselyn becomes aware that the laughter she can hear, slightly hysterical, is her own.

[propulsion]

And the man cozied up behind her is likewise cackling, the kind of sound that always sounds a little in spite of himself, definitely right now, quick to catch and quick to burn out.

The sled, awkwardly loaded with mature adults, skids a little in a back-end heavy circle as it slides to its inevitable but delayed halt as runners slide along flat ice. Tony lets out an audible breath that sounds a little like an affirmation as to how they're alive, still, and uninjured, isn't that neat. Adrenaline without the impending possibility of a panic attack.

"Not bad. Hey, nice work." Patpat gloved hand to her shoulder. "You know if we had some WD-40 we could probably get another ten, twenty feet out. You wanna go again?"

[obdurata]

“I think I want to lie unmoving somewhere embracing how the ground is still underneath me,” Joselyn says, in the thoughtful way of someone working through a process and trying to decide if the part of her that definitely does want to go again deserves to be listened to or quashed without mercy for being an absolute fucking lunatic.

[propulsion]

"You can do that anytime."

There is a testing attempt to catch his boot against the rough, yet ever-slippery surface of the frozen lake, pushing off. It only really slides them several inches back towards the bank, heel slipping.

"No one just goes a round on a sled and calls it a day. You should try it like a penguin, or we both could, like stacked-- penguins-- okay this is-- this isn't working. Stay there."

After trying and failing to do something like nudging them back to the shore, Tony sets about getting off the sled, carefully. The boots on his feet aren't terrible for navigating the icy surface, but its still a precarious and uncertain thing he is doing, all the whole using the structure of it to balance.

"You can pick the next thing."