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

[luaithre]

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."

[tender]

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."

[luaithre]

"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."

[tender]

"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."