MOD PLOT ↠ SECRET STEEP'D ROOTS

[faderifting]

WHO: Open
WHAT: Trapped! Trapped in a jungle!
WHEN: Bloomingtide 9:46
WHERE: Unknown
NOTES: OOC post! The three starters in the comments can have multiple threads, and feel free to ask us on the OOC post if you have any "what will happen if I x" questions.

When the eluvian shatters, there's a stutter in the flow of the fight. The eight Venatori nearly all freeze in place for a moment when the glass cracks, watching their way out and their plan crumble, and afterwards they never quite manage to get their rhythm back. But they don't quit, either. In the end, they all go down fighting.

Riftwatch takes no casualties, and the four members of Riftwatch who were taken captive are all alive, accounted for, and mostly unharmed.

That's the end of the good news.

The massive, shattered eluvian was set within a ruin carved and built out of a steep embankment, now almost entirely reclaimed by the jungle. All that's left are the remains of walls—some full height, others crumbling where vines have pushed between the stones or spreading tree roots have disrupted the ground. But with daylight fading and several injuries that need attending to before anyone can move, the surviving walls and thick plant growth form the best shelter anyone can hope to find before nightfall.

When the sun rises and better stock can be taken of their position, the jungle in which everyone finds themselves is still not immediately recognizable. It's hot compared to Kirkwall at this time of year, with temperatures hovering around 75-80F and kept relatively consistent between day and night by the high humidity and non-existent breeze. It rains with some frequency—light showers that are little more than mist by the time they reach ground-level or torrential downpours that start with little warning and drop several inches of rain in an hour before disappearing as abruptly as they'd arrived.

Most of the ruins extending up or out from the embankment are little more than chunks of moss-covered stone buried in the undergrowth. Searching around them will find them a stream running through the remains of a carved stone channel, fast enough to be safe to drink, and they can follow that a short ways out of the ruins to where it joins a much larger river. They won't see any traffic along it except for a variety of river creatures that would be happy to eat them. Judging by the position of the sun and moons, the river leads south.

There is one half-sunken portion of the ruin complex that's more intact, but after exploring it confirms there is no back-up eluvian on offer, there's little choice but to set out into the dense growth of the jungle. Huge trees create a canopy far overhead, and the floor is soft and springy with dead matter. Giant ferns, vines of every variety, and flowers of every conceivable color crowd them at every turn, making travel slow and damp. Overhead, and all around, are the sounds of other creatures moving through the same space. Birdsong, monkey screeches, the constant buzz and chitter of insects. The fauna in the jungle is a mix of the usual sorts of beasts one would expect in such a climate: parrots, monkeys, snakes, absurdly large insects, the rare big cat, whatever other weird animals walk around a jungle.

The walk south along the river will be a long and difficult slog through dense jungle with no real respite from the environment along the way—and no real certainty about their destination. They'll have to make a new camp each night as best they can and push on the next morning, hiking through seemingly-endless forest. At first, they will have the benefit of a path, a trail south alongside the river that appears to have been cut less than a month ago. It will lead to a second set of ruins where signs of Venatori presence will be obvious. They will make camp here for a couple days while they explore more thoroughly for clues about where they are and what the Venatori were up to.

Beyond that point it will be necessary to cut their own trail, an exhausting process that means even slower going and tired arms for everyone who takes a shift at the front of the line. The only break will come when the jungle abruptly gives way to a deep gorge, the river taking a hard west-ward turn and dropping down a series of magnificent waterfalls to what looks like a very large lake at the bottom. They can either find a way down the falls and hike west around the lake, or cross the river via a narrow rock bridge over the falls and continue south back into the jungle. They'll stop here and make camp among the rocks for another couple days to try to identify the lake or the falls before they go any further and risk walking miles in the wrong direction.

The journey will take a few weeks in total, with plenty of time and opportunity for a few people scouting ahead or foraging for food to find trouble (or fun) on their own. But the entire group will also encounter a few hazards together, including, in chronological order:

• Shortly after leaving the elven ruins where they came through the eluvian, a flash flood will catch the camp one evening, despite its position on the best available high ground, sweeping away some supplies and ruining others. People outside of the camp, for whatever reason, will lack the high ground and might experience a more dangerous rush of water, and everyone will have to go to sleep damp and hungry.
  
  
• A day after the group leaves the dwarven ruins, a swarm of dragonlings and several drakes will emerge from a mountain cave when the group passes too close, breathing fire and intent on chasing them away. Their high dragon won't appear for the fight, but several days later she will fly overhead, barely visible through the canopy but obviously very, very large.
  
  
• A few days later, they'll come upon a hot spring that appears crystal-clear and fine for drinking and bathing, but will result in people developing minor, mostly auditory hallucinatory effects an hour or two after their exposure to it. The plants growing nearby will show to have an even stronger effect, if anyone is foolish enough to eat them to find out.
  
  
• In a few areas, the river will cut gorges through the mountainous terrain, and following it will require either walking along narrow traversable paths on the cliffsides or holding supplies overhead and fording through the water. Watch out for dickfish.

Comments

[cozen]

Legs appropriately rearranged, Bastien lies back down, this time at an angle that allows him to plant his head on Byerly's chest like a flag. Ribs claimed for Orlais.

"What do you think I think?" he volleys back, just to tease. And to buy a moment while he wiggles his shoulders to get comfortable.

[bouchonne]

By cards his fingers through Bastien's hair. It's a little self-conscious, perhaps, but genuinely affectionate.

"I think you value life for its transience," he replies. "You see particular value in the way that it is limited, and therefore precious. No?"

[cozen]

Bastien successfully quashes the urge to duck his head—not because he’s opposed to being petted, but because he suspects his hair of being gross—and twists to look at Byerly’s chin. He hadn’t expected an actual answer.

“Transience,” he echoes. “That is a good word. And I think that is probably what I think. I think…”

He lets out a long exhale. The last time he drank and argued this through with anyone, he was in his twenties and fresh off poisoning someone who’d trusted him. Believing life had inherent value wasn’t in his interest at the time. Now he’s not sure.

“Whatever its value, it is all we get,” he decides, “so if your cousin is safe for one more day, even if it really is just one more, and even if she spends it in the jungle, eating terrible campfire food and being harassed by monkeys, it is not nothing. It is everything. But it won't be one more." Important footnote. "It will be thousands more. And you will both be so wrinkly.”

[bouchonne]

"Perhaps," is as much optimism as Byerly will permit. Still - it's slightly optimistic, which is rather better than usual. "Though I could then counter with the fact that every day is miserable, existence is a curse, this mortal world is the Maker's punishment towards us, He has turned his face away, so on and so forth. What say you to that, Monsieur le Bonheur?"

Since he has no access to Bastien's hair any longer, he goes for the mustache instead, stroking it like one would a beloved caterpillar.

[cozen]

"I say..."

He trails off into a thoughtful silence, thoughts evidenced by an occasional shift and move of his mouth beneath Byerly's mustache-petting, as if to begin a syllable. It goes on for several seconds. Then he holds up both hands and lifts his shoulders, on in this case nudges them back into Byerly's side, in a lazily overacted shrug.

"Is every day miserable?"

[bouchonne]

"A bit," he answers, utterly without the misery or weight one might expect should be given to that sentiment; he sounds, if anything, breezy. "Are they not for you?"

He moves on to Bastien's eyebrows.

[cozen]

"No," Bastien says. He angles his head like a cat turning its chin toward a skritch, first, because he does appreciate it, but then he clamps his hand around Byerly's wrist to drag his hand away and imprison it on his chest, because it's ridiculous.

For nearly anyone else he might add, Never. For Byerly, he adds, "Not on average. I'm not sure I would keep going, if they were. I think I would just lie down somewhere and let the moss grow." He can't see much of Byerly's face at his angle or in this light, but he tries. "But you haven't."

[bouchonne]

He spreads his fingers over Bastien's chest, feeling his ribs rise and fall. His smile is a little distant, a little wry.

"What is a Fereldan," he said, "but a collection of the stubbornest donkeys ever to amble down from the Frostbacks?" But that's a glib answer, and not really a true one; there have been plenty of Fereldans over the years who have laid down and let the moss grow.

So. "I'm just a miserable bastard," he says meditatively. "Miserable bastards learn to live miserably. Misery is not in your nature, so of course you're more vulnerable to it when it comes."

[cozen]

“You are acclimated,” Bastien says, tone considering, “like the northerners to heat.”

The bastards. Even at night the air feels clammy, like someone’s rubbed their sweaty palms everywhere. Like he is a sweaty palm. But a very content one that’s accepted its fate and won’t be particularly sorry if it leaves any damp spots behind where his shoulders and neck and cheek are pressed into Byerly’s shirt.

“Does that mean you are more vulnerable to happiness? Would too much of it make you sick? Turn you into vapor?”

[bouchonne]

"I would pop," he replies, "like an overinflated bladder. Guts flying everywhere. Blood. Bile. You'd be picking bits of Byerly from your hair for the next three months."

The real answer: he wouldn't ever find happiness. It's not in his constitution. If happiness were ever to find him, he would systematically dismantle it so it couldn't touch him, turn it away from the door like an elven god in one of those old elven stories where people get transformed into beasts for their inability to accede to the will of higher powers.

"So don't you dare bring that dreadful stuff anywhere near me, do you hear?" For good measure, he takes his sweaty hand and rubs it through Bastien's hair, for a little preview of the viscera to come.

[cozen]

The noise Bastien makes in protest would only qualify as outraged if it weren’t so quiet and brief, or maybe if he moved at all. As it is, it barely qualifies as whiny.

“I will be very careful,” he promises, “not to drip. Though—if we are to be sworn enemies, someday, and it becomes my job to destroy you—now I know how to do it. Ha ha,” a yawn, and, “ha.”

[bouchonne]

"You'll make a girl swoon with that evil panache of yours," By simpers, fluttering his long eyelashes at dear Bastien. Then, a little less facetiously - "I saw that yawn. Does sleep finally beckon you?"

[cozen]

"No," Bastien says through the wide grin that eyelash fluttering earned. But it's a sleepy, sloppy grin—wouldn't be, if he cared enough to be a convincing liar, but is—so he amends to, "Maybe. Don't worry, I'll move. We can't have everyone thinking they can use ambassadors as pillows. It would be anarchy."

When he lifts his head, though, it's just to readjust.

"But first you have to tell me a story."

[bouchonne]

"A story," he repeats affably. "Shall I make it erotic?"

[cozen]

"Nnnnoo," Bastien says slowly, like it's actually an offer in need of some deliberation rather than of one of the worst ideas he's ever heard, given the circumstances, and then more decisively, "No. Make it about young little Byerly in the Bannorn and some of the mischief he caused. And make it, mm. Seventy-five percent true. Or sixty percent, minimum. That is as low as I'll go."

[bouchonne]

Byerly's hand, which has been stroking Bastien's forehead, pauses momentarily in its ministrations. Only momentarily, though; a moment later and he resumes. His voice is light.

"Young little Byerly in the Bannorn, hm?" he asks. Then - "Well. Young Byerly had a proper little Chantry education. Did I ever tell you that? Trudging down every morning into town, off to the Mothers and Sisters to learn my sums and my letters and my Chant. Young little Byerly, however, tended to prefer spending outside the classroom rather than in it, because as a wee lad he was enchanted by the frogs in the ponds and the Chantry mabari, and as an older lad he was enchanted by the storehouse's wine and the way that other people's mouths tasted. So he spent much time plotting escape from the classroom, even as the poor matrons plotted ways to keep him imprisoned."

[cozen]

"Scamp and authority, chaos and order, trapped in a never-ending conflict," Bastien murmurs, with all the attention he can save from being diverted by the forehead-stroking and by imagining the solid version of that tattered little spirit kicking through water in pursuit of frogs. "Who won more often?"

[bouchonne]

"When I was younger - they did. When I got older, me." Would that that were due to increasing cleverness or something of the like. Instead, it was due to his father's decreasing status - in the early days, when the old man just seemed a greedy recluse, Byerly's status as the heir to the Lord Rutyer had meant that the Chantry had been invested in his edification. Individual lessons, dedicated teachers...As he'd gotten older, and Lord Rutyer had gotten dirtier and more pathetic, the Mothers had given fewer and fewer shits, packing him into lessons with other children of lesser status, not bothering to look when he disappeared between class sessions.

Ah, he does miss those days sometimes.

He hesitates just a bit before he adds - "My sister would help. She was very good at asking just the right question in the right way to distract them so I could sneak out. It helped that she was often genuinely interested in the answer - I thought she'd take vows for a little while there."

[cozen]

Bastien gives a hushes sort of whistle, the sort of sound he'd make if someone only narrowly avoided being hit by a falling rock. "If you were related to a Chantry Sister, you would have to behave better."

But he noticed that hesitation. And he did ask, a decade ago, when he was fond of Byerly in a curious and distant way that didn't preclude gossip. He asked in Orlais, in a sideways Orlesian manner, and received a sideways Orlesian answer. Five of them, actually. Each less informative than the last—but enough for Bastien to not be surprised there is a sister. And Byerly's prior silence on the subject was pervasive enough for him to not think it's nothing, for Byerly to talk about her now.

He promised not to pry. So while he's shifts partway onto his side, smushing his cheek and ear into Byerly's shirt and then briefly trying to smooth the wrinkles that causes out with his jaw so they don't put lines on his face, he discards a half-dozen questions that might approach the realm of what happened.

What he settles on, as he settles down, is, "Were you very different?"

[bouchonne]

"My sister and I?"

Different, yes. Like the chambers of the heart, each one crafted by the Maker for a different purpose. Like soil and water, sunshine and the seed. As different as music and hearing. As different as a story and a laugh.

"Different enough," he says, affably. "She played the good girl, but had a streak of wickedness deep down - " That is said with clear approval, so wickedness does not mean anything like the true evil or madness that runs through his family true - "While I played the wicked boy, but perhaps wasn't quite as bad as people thought of me."

He toys with Bastien's hair, allowing a brief bubble of anguish to rise up, then pop. He fixes the smile on his face and continues on.

"We were both dreadfully clever. We both loved music and loved fashion. She was fond of reading, while I couldn't really stand sitting still that long. I enjoyed danger, and exploring hidden places, while that made her quite anxious. The small differences between as, as we got older, did not grow, but they were enough to take us towards different fates. She, respectably married to a wealthy merchant in Highever. I..." Well. No need to elaborate there.

A moment. And he says: "She was the kindest and best person I ever knew. Her love was - is - boundless, her temper sweet, her heart generous. You would like her. Everyone does."

[cozen]

"I am sure I would," Bastien says. "She sounds wonderful."

He sounds sleepy, still. Muted. Between the hair-toying and the way Byerly's voice reverberates where Bastien's ear is pressed against his ribs, he could fall asleep in seconds if he decided to.

He's keeping his eyes open, though, watching as well as he can from his odd angle, with his hands still on his chest where he's keeping By's spare hand trapped. There's nothing better than people talking about what they love. Who they love. When he's feeling silly enough to suppose there's a real, unified purpose for all of this, he thinks that must be it.

"The way you talk about Dragonmount, I am glad she was able to leave." Leave and live, despite those slips between tenses. They must not speak often anymore. Maybe not at all. But what Bastien asks is, "Did she play an instrument, too? Was she as good as you?"

[bouchonne]

"Far better," he says, in that odd paternal way that probably means it isn't really true. Not that Byerly doesn't believe it - he clearly believes it - but his answer is just a bit too quick, and there's not the bubble of resentment or jealousy you'd expect if he were admitting that literally anyone else in the world was better than he is. No; that is the tone of a fellow who's blinded by love and adoration.

"The lap-harp, primarily. And she sang. A voice that could charm the birds down from the trees." In any other circumstance, that would be droll, a cliche delivered wryly; here, it's painfully earnest. He means it.

And he gets self-conscious, suddenly, talking about her, and tries to change direction. "Were you the oldest?" No question of whether or not Bastien was an only child. He adores Bastien, but the man is as common as dragonfire is hot. Lower Freemen like Bastien's parents doubtless were don't stop with just one kid.

[cozen]

The wide, warm smile that had been stretching across Bastien’s face at Byerly’s hyperbole (surely, and how sweet) doesn’t vanish all at once, when the subject changes, but it does shrink to something less enchanted.

“Second oldest,” he says, and elaborates with an air of magnanimity, so generous to be sparing Byerly the trouble of asking: “Three younger, and three others who died in the cradle.”

The truth, as far as he knows. He last counted twenty years ago. His parents still had a few years to add on, if they were ambitious, and the world has had more years to subtract. Anis took after their father; when Bastien thinks of him, which is only sometimes, he’s a solemn little creature tucked near the fire, wrapped in a grown man’s coat, chest rattling and eyes bright with fever. And any one of them might have drowned or joined an army.

“I don’t envy you, being the oldest—“ Bastien assumes, unless the Rutyers were old-fashioned enough to skip a heir for being female. “I would not be surprised if my sister went gray before she was grown.”

[bouchonne]

"I don't envy you, having so many." By's fingertips dig into Bastien's chest. Lightly, just lightly, but the pressure is unmistakable, some little curl of grief. Eight, and of them, three dead. Maker. Some strange grief, or some strange love, makes him vulnerable enough that he says, "Every person you love is like a piece of your soul carved off of you. And there's no way to draw them back into you, where they'll be safe - they just stay out in the world, vulnerable to hurt."

Even though it's Bastien, he does regret that a little. It's raw and honest. And at the end of the day, Bastien might still be manipulating him. It'd certainly be an astonishingly long game for the Bard, but - you know. Bards.

So, he forces his voice into flippancy. "Assuming you loved them, of course. I'm sure they were proper beasts if they were anything like you as a young man."

so many words i'm sorry

[cozen]

“They weren’t,” Bastien says, aspiring to sound swaggering. I’m one of a kind and all of that. But it’s a subdued effort.

First because it isn't true. He believed it before, when he tried to show the little ones how to write their names on the dirty window and they smeared the letters away to draw tits and snicker, when Anis wheezed if you say one more word about your stupid friends I am going to die on purpose, when his older sister wasn't speaking to him because he'd wrested the only book he owned back out of her hands and insisted that he would rather watch everyone freeze than let her tear out a single page for kindling.

But his littler brother's favorite game, once he was old enough to join Bastien in scouring the city for coins, was for Bastien to ask do you know who that was? and follow up with a dozen questions to lead him through inventing outlandish identities for people they passed. The youngest once went so still and gripped his hair so hard, sitting on his shoulders to watch a parade, that he worried she was frightened, but when he pulled her down to ask, she whispered I want a sword and a uniform with red feathers with an intensity of purpose that might have been worrisome if she'd been any bigger than a wet kitten. So they weren't all so dissimilar. He can see it better now.

And second—because he can still feel an echo from the curl of Byerly’s fingers. He can remember him gnashing his teeth at everyone in the wake of Sonia's abduction, and the naked misery on his face at his wedding. Partly because of how thoroughly stabbed he was, perhaps, of course, but he had seemed more worried about his wife than the expanding pool of his own blood. His impatience with Darras and Bastien, more recently. That, too.

Bastien tries to imagine that protective streak amplified for a sister—an only sister, a younger sister beloved from birth. He imagines it deep enough for a man to drown in, and when he starts rubbing the back of Byerly's hand, without much thought, it's with a finger that—splayed, or tapping, or otherwise made prominent across a room—means the coast is clear, or it's safe to progress to the next part of the plan, or that everything will be all right.

“I loved them,” he says, “but I left them behind, and by the time I thought to look back they were gone. I have not known anything about them for a long time. So you must not feel too sorry for me.”

His tone is idle. Threaded through with a little shame, maybe, but he'd rather admit to his failings as a brother than leave Byerly thinking that he's been dancing around Thedas carrying five times the weight Byerly feels on his shoulders. Not when they're being at least 60% honest.

“Do you ever see her now? Or write?”