faderift | MOD EVENT: WINTERMARCH WINTER MARCH

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MOD EVENT: WINTERMARCH WINTER MARCH

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.

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The beauty of the landscape is lost on Derrica, who is miserably cold even beneath her many layers. Her tracking has improved since they came here, but she can't take too much pleasure in that just yet. It seems like an uneven trade off to her: be dreadfully cold for ages, but improve a skill she uses sporadically.

"I never asked where you came from," Derrica says eventually. "One our last journey."

She's crouching as she speaks, examining a set of crushed and broken shrubbery as she tries to decide whether it's their quarry's doing. It has to be. Derrica doesn't know what else could possibly leave such a mark.

"I'd like to know, if you care to tell me."

If it isn't painful. Origins tend to be for mages, in her experience.

Marcus has taken to keeping a look out as she studies, squinting against all the startling brightness of a snowy forest in high noon. The longer he's out here, the quicker his patience wears thin, where the prettiness diminishes in important to his own slow discomfort. But it is a long process.

The transition will likely only complete itself once they're labouring back to their base. For now, he admires scenery while also looking out for anything that might disrupt it, and doesn't turn to her when she speaks out.

"Starkhaven," he says, information easily parted with. "The city and then its Circle."

He tips a look upwards. The sky is as white as anything else.

"But I was acquainted with the Gallows for a time."

Derrica's fingers pause in their movement, coming to rest over trampled ground and what might be the heel of a great paw. She turns slightly to look up at Marcus, who is looking up and away from her.

"Why?"

Which blows directly past delicacy and into the exact territory Derrica had initially meant to avoid. But she knows what the Gallows was, and what happened within it. And Marcus has lived longer than she has. The chances of his stay in the Gallows being pleasant feel minimal.

Whenever Derrica speaks to other mages, she has the sense of pain and agony hovering just out of sight. Has any one of them not been hurt in some way? Who among them has not suffered? Maybe they never speak it outright, but the fault lines are easy to mark out. And to prod at, apparently, though she looks apologetic the moment the question leaves her mouth.

"Practicality."

If Derrica's suspicion that she's overstepped some boundary is dependent on his reaction, she might rest assured that she didn't. Marcus parts with that information easily, and when he looks over to her -- a quick assessment of her expression coupled with her tone -- the stern edge that his expression rests in softens just a little.

He curls his hands around his staff, leaning his weight. "There was a fire-- more than ten years ago, now. Strange to think. But it burned out the tower, ate its foundations. A handful of mages took the moment to run. Those of us that stayed were taken to the Gallows while reparations were made. Reparations that took almost three years."

He moves closer to where she was crouching to look over the breakages in the tangled brush himself. A bare hand reaching out, fidgeting with winter-tough leaves and hardy twig.

"There were even fewer of us who went back to our Circle, by the time it was ready."

As he speaks, Derrica straightens up. The trampled ground continues on through the bushes, and her examination is complete. At best, they find the creatures they seek. At worst, they're chased by a bear.

Either way, it seems less pressing than the answer. Derrica's skirted similar topics in conversations with Matthias, but she feels the same flutter of anxiety and anger beating in her chest.

"Why did you stay?"

A different question than why he'd been in the Gallows. That had been someone else's decision. This question was about him, why he'd remained when others had fled.

Maybe because he couldn't have done. Maybe it was practical to remain. Derrica knows this is a possibility. Not everyone could have done what she did; vanishing as she had done was only because of the chaos in Dairsmuid. If they'd ever realized she was alive, it had been after all was said and done. Knowing what she does now about other circles, their hold on their charges must have been tighter, difficult to slip. She hadn't even realized what a risk she was taking then; it hadn't felt like one to her until now.

Silence falls, softly.

He's thinking. Maybe remembering, maybe simply figuring out how to phrase the answer. A little of both. Reflecting, too, the ensuing series of fast decisions, the long time left over to question their merits.

"They weren't ready," is where he settles. "The rest of them, weren't ready."

If there is anything left to be uncertain about, it's not that, but a ghost of some regret skirts around the edges of his tone. His expression doesn't modify, save that the lines at his eyes crease a little as if he might smile at her.

"I learned in time that very few people ever are, for such things."

"And you couldn't leave them."

As ever, shame smolders as she pieces that assumption together. There are differences between his situation and hers, but as ever, Derrica thinks about her own choice to run and how many mages had simply stayed and fought.

A gust of wind rattles the branches above them, whips little flurries of snow around their ankles.

"There were enough that were ready, I heard," Derrica ventures, looking away from him and towards the trail. "Enough to fight."

Matthias. Nell. Kostos. Isaac. Others in this very organization.

But not Derrica. She'd been oceans away, and she hadn't thought anything of that until she'd arrived here. And she knows very little of Marcus, but she knows he'd been fighting alongside the rest of them..

"They had to be," is agreeable enough.

It's nice, to be understood. Her subtle turns of phrase in the notes she says them in all indicate that that's what's happening, which certainly makes speaking of dreadful things a little bit worth it. Perhaps greatly worth it.

Marcus starts down the trail that Derrica's identified, cloak swaying, hems white with frost. It feels natural to use the blunt end of his staff as a sort of lazy walking stick, and there is a little enjoyment to be had in poking it through the white crust of snow to sink through and stop at the ground beneath.

"And where were you, before joining this outfit?"

It's fortuitous that Marcus chooses this moment to take the lead and step ahead of her. Shame is momentarily so painfully present on Derrica's face as she tries to consider her answer, pulling the folds of her scarf higher as she follows after him.

"I was on a ship, far to the North," she admits.

His strides far outstrip hers, but she manages to fit her feet into his tracks to make her own way easier. Because he's offered her answers that are delicate and painful, she dredges up an explanation of her own.

"It was the best way I knew to disappear after templars destroyed Dairsmuid."

Derrica can't help but be a little proud of herself. The words are steady, if strained. Yes, it reveals her to be a coward. But even so, it is the first she has said aloud in such plain terms to someone who will understand exactly what she is referring to.

The name of 'Dairsmuid' chimes like a bell, a discordant note, and all at once, her caution that had surrounded her incaution makes painful sense.

He keeps walking, but he is quiet, at first. From where Derrica walks, setting her feet in the indentations his larger boots make, it's impossible to know what he's thinking. To know if he judges her to be a coward or not, or worse.

Finally, still keeping his attention forwards; "Everything I know about Dairsmuid is about how much was lost, and burned. How many were slain."

In the space between her admittance and his answer, Derrica draws several deep breaths against the knives dug into her chest. Her heart is beating very hard. Unreasonably, she wishes Leander were here.

"Almost everyone was killed," Derrica says softly. She draws to a stop, bringing both her mittened hands to rest on her staff with her feet in Marcus' boot prints. "For a long time I thought I was all that was left."

And maybe it was still only her and Leander. Two survivors out of the entire Circle, with the rest put brutally to the sword.

"You are from the South," she continues, though he must need no reminder. "I don't think you need me to tell you how it went."

Even if all the news that ever drifted South was the inventory of destroyed objects and a cursory list of the dead, there was no need for her to describe any further. (She isn't certain she could, regardless.) He knew what templars were capable of. She is certain of that.

As she stops, so does he, turning back to her. His focus on her is very intent and there is a renewed tension in his face as he regards her, both hands coming to grip his staff to rest there.

"It's only good that you lived," he says, with the quiet emphasis of someone who very much wishes to impress what he's saying on another person. They are standing at a respectable distance, but the quiet of the snow-filled forest means that even someone mildly spoken can be heard clearly, precisely. "That you survived is good, and nothing else."

He draws in a breath, which is maybe the only tell that Derrica can get of a stranger who is otherwise collecting his thoughts, his feelings.

"Would you tell me, then, of Dairsmuid? Before it was put to the blade."

What can she say in the face of his conviction? She has barely been able to admit to herself that she is often unconvinced that her survival was such a good thing. Derrica is alive through sheer luck, and so many people braver and more skilled than she had died. Marcus' tone doesn't leave space for doubt, but Derrica feels the guilty flutter of it in her chest as his words hang in the air between them.

"It was beautiful," Derrica says quietly, mirroring his positioning, the placement of his hands on his staff. Her voice is a steady, even as tears prick her eyes. "We could come and go as we pleased, and many of the students had families, or friends outside of the tower. We were treated like people. I didn't realize how rare that was until the templars came to punish us for it."

Even such a simple description feels like being hollowed out, dredging up memories with a crude knife to set on display. She thinks of Leander's voice on the crystal, telling Matthias: I learned to swim. All those simple pleasures, Derrica hadn't understood what a transgression they had been until it was too late.

It is painful, too, to listen to. Like all the urgency that had dulled itself on the unstoppable nature of the Inquisition and the ceasefire sharpens itself a little, throwing sparks. Marcus is quiet as he listens and quiet after she pauses talking, taking measure.

Here is a mage that lived as they should all live. Here it is, proven, embodied. Not a hopeless fantasy, but real.

"And you were not beset by countless abominations," he says. There is a new tension in his voice, some other pressure clamping down on vocal chords, but only subtly. "Those that mingled with your Circle were not afraid of you, and you didn't live in fear of yourselves. You weren't ashamed."

"I have never been ashamed," Derrica says, though it's a more fraught declaration than she's letting on. She's been terrified for years. She was absent from the fighting when perhaps she should have joined the fray. The line between those failings and shame feels very thin.

"I saw what the arm of the Chantry did at Dairsmuid, and I know I am not the one who should feel shame."

Her voice rises slightly as she speaks, cutting through the cold air. It is no more than she would say in Kirkwall, across the crystal. But she has not had occasion to say it so plainly, and not to someone who she knows will not rebuff the sentiment.

"I never wanted anyone to fear me, and I don't think I'm alone in that," she says, softer. "But I worry that maybe if they had they wouldn't have come to destroy us."

"Fear is useful," Marcus states, agreeably. "That's why they used it against the rest of us."

It's so cold out here. It was before they started speaking of things of weightier matters than tracks and weather, but a wind cuts through with sharp enough teeth for him to notice. Without really thinking about it, he lifts his staff by an inch and gently strikes the ground, and the etched runic symbols in the wood all glow a lurid orange. The next wind that courses through his space, into Derrica's, is uniquely warm.

"But I think," he says, "they did fear you. In a different way, certainly, but I'm sure it was fear. Fear've the possibilities that you represented. That you still represent."

He offers out a hand -- more to beckon her to resume walking with than anything more familiar. But his focus is quite intent. "What did you do, in Dairsmuid?" he asks, an invitation to speak of things more bittersweet than bitter. But no less important. They have traveled twice together, now, and both times, Derrica will have noted that he is not one for purposeless small talk. "Did you have an occupation?"

She's forgotten too, what it was like to have magic so casually employed. The simple conjuring of warmth, passed between them, speaks to an environment wrenched from her in fire and blood. The glow of runes puts her at ease, aligns Marcus with the experienced mages she'd known in the Circle. It makes the words come to her a little easier in response to his question.

"I was about to become an Enchanter," Derrica tells him, snow crunching beneath her feet as she falls into step with him. "And I was—I am a healer. People would come to us for help, and we'd assist however we could."

But there is inevitably a beat of hesitation before she finishes—

"I was being trained as a Seer before the Circle was destroyed."

He would hear this of her sooner or later. It isn't a secret, even if Derrica supposes she'd never needed to confirm the whispers about it when Kostos had asked. But Marcus' reaction is crucial. It decides whether this conversation continues or whether Derrica wrenches it towards safer topics.

The air around them stays magically imbued with warmth as they move, with the occasional harsh wind managing to slither through before it's dispersed again. He has some of his mind still committed to the task at hand, but if they walk a big circle and see nothing dangerous and only speak, he will have considered the outing successful.

There is a rueful smile when she speaks of her title, and perhaps he has something wry to say to it, but then she says this other thing, the one that demands a more immediate response.

At first -- as always -- there is none, Marcus silently absorbing information as they go. Then he confesses, "I know little of Seers," when he senses it's his turn to speak his mind. "Save for some stories I've heard, and what the Chantry would have us think of them, so." So. In essence, he knows nothing. Dangerous apostates all. His tone is, as she might have guessed, empty of anything disparaging, and there is a true thread of curiousity as he asks the question he deems most important in this moment;

"Do you think you'll seek them out again? When all is done."

Marcus can't know that he's asked something Derrica has agonized about since the day she'd fled Dairsmuid.

"I don't know," she says after a moment of silence. "I would think it depends on what you mean by all this. Defeating Corypheus is different from settling things with the Chantry."

Something she's certain he knows. It's something every mage knows, even Derrica who arrived late to the entire conflict. This temporary break between open hostility doesn't mean anything. She's heard Ilias speak on what had been achieved, and it felt less like a step in the right direction and more a reminder that their place in the world was not secure in the slightest.

"I couldn't try to return to Rivain until I knew the war was over properly. I need to know it's finished and the danger is passed."

"I mean the war," Marcus provides. "The one against Corypheus."

They are comparable enemies in his mind, although he has more experience with battling the Chantry's former soldiers than the evils commanded by the ancient Tevinter despot.

"Settling things with the Chantry may come quickly or may take decades yet. I think it matters much what we do during this 'ceasefire'," he says, and there are just audible quotation marks around that last word. "But no matter the outcome, there will be mages who will do as they like, or attempt a semblance of it. Leaving southern Thedas altogether, or hiding in its woodlands."

He adds, "I've not interest in returning to the Circles, myself, or anything like them."

"I can't think of going anywhere until I know that the Chantry is finished sending it's people to kill mine. I wasn't here when it mattered, so I can't—I can't turn my back on it now."

She can say this to him without any hesitation. She's tempered her own anger, quieted it into something more palatable even though she knows there's no mistaking her disdain for the Chantry in the end. Marcus' tone is a familiar harmony. She hears in him what she's carried with her for years, what the agony and loss had calcified into since she fled Rivain.

There is some discordant note that she knows stems from the Circles they emerged from. But does her idea of a Circle even count as such? The Chantry hadn't thought so.

"I would have taught young mages how to use their magic, or I would have taken my place among the Seers. But I can't do any of that until Corypheus is dead and the Chantry is dealt with. So it doesn't matter. Not yet."

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MOD EVENT: WINTERMARCH WINTER MARCH

snowmonsters iv: snowmonsters returns (with a vengeance!)

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