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

[keenly]

Colin's eyes squeeze shut, knocking tears down to his cheeks.

"It's done," he says, and sniffles. "And there are plenty of people who have helped me in this fight. You've even done so without knowing it, by helping me with Lutair. You can do it again--by doing what I'm asking. No more judgments. No more snide comments. No more suspecting my intentions. I'll miss your friendship. I have missed it. But if it's not something you can offer me, you can at least do this."

[bouchonne]

"This being what, exactly?" he asks. "No judgments, no snideness? You wish me to - what - treat you differently from how I treat everyone else? I cannot imagine how that would help."

It is something of a genuine comment. To refrain from those things would be, in Byerly's view, to treat Colin like an ill man, someone delicate. The only way to move past any of this would be some return to normalcy.

[keenly]

Colin's hands come up to pull at his own hair, a breath hissing in through his nose. It's not that Byerly seems to be willfully misunderstanding, but trying to explain what he means in a way that makes sense is something he is finding very stressful. He spends a few seconds like this, eyes closed, cheeks gleaming with tears.

"No judgments about this," he clarifies. His eyes open and his hands come down to his sides. "No snide comments about this. If I speak to you professionally, speak back to me professionally, unlike when you asked if my questions about transferring to your division were real. Treat me exactly like everyone else instead of letting this poison everything. Snide comments and judgments are fine, just...not where this is concerned. Pretend you never heard about it."

[bouchonne]

"And how am I to do that, precisely?" he bites back in return. "Because I did. And the knowledge sits with me. It will always sit with me."

Then, a low scoff - "I would not forgive anyone who tried to kill you. You ask me to do so now, just because the hand was your own?"

[keenly]

"Yes," Colin says bluntly. "I already hate myself enough for the both of us, I don't need it coming from you, too."

He takes a breath to speak more, but finds himself expelling it in shuddering, dry sobs, face crumpling again as more tears release. He lets himself break down for a single breath before pulling himself together.

"How can you care enough to be angry, but not enough to stop treating me like shit? How do you get so blinded that you forget you're hurting the victim as well as the murderer?" A pause as he decides whether to say the next thing. "What do you think I would do if our situations were reversed?"

[bouchonne]

His answer comes in the form of a rough shake of his head. His fists are clenched so hard that his nails might break the skin.

What would you do if our situations were reversed? You would forgive me at once, because you would not care enough to feel anger. That is the problem. If he was willing to remove himself, to destroy himself, then what care could he possibly have for the people around him? By thinks of his mother; he has been thinking of his mother all this while - His mother who is still alive, but a living corpse, turned into nothing by her own self-loathing and self-destruction. She'd stopped caring. Lost her love. At least his father had hated him.

"Answer me this," he returns. "Did you save Sonia because you wanted to save her? Or did you just do it because you were hoping they'd cut your throat in her place?"

[keenly]

The horror on Colin's face should be enough of an answer. If not, the way his fist balls at his side as if he'd like to strike Byerly might also speak for him.

"This," he says with an angry tremor in his voice, "is exactly what I mean. You've forgotten everything else about me except that I tried to kill myself a year ago, and how painful it is for you." He shakes his head slowly, trying to clear his head enough that he doesn't lose his temper. "The man wasn't looking for someone to kill. He was looking to soothe his ego after he tripped over a woman's foot in front of everyone. I spoke to him to let him know we all knew our place was beneath him; if that hadn't worked, he might have beaten the shit out of me, but I've been through that before. She hasn't."

[bouchonne]

Tightly, he responds -

"Perhaps I'd have an easier time forgetting about it if you didn't bring it up every fucking time we talk."

[keenly]

"I don't bring it up every time we talk. We haven't spoken about it since I told you about it. Though apparently you're thinking about it every time we talk."

[bouchonne]

"You brought it up this time." His lips tighten. "I'd have been glad to speak of it not at all."

[keenly]

"Well, I should have been more mindful of your desire not to think about the harm you're doing me."

[bouchonne]

"The harm I'm doing you." He chokes out a vicious laugh, his head swiveling around. His eyes are wild. "How fucking dare you."

[keenly]

"All I am asking you for," Colin says through gritted teeth, stepping forward, "is some fucking dignity. And you're fighting me on every letter of it."

[bouchonne]

"Dignity is not mine to give, dear creature," he snaps in return. "You must take it." Which is a good retort; too bad he follows it with - "And I don't see how you have the right to ask for anything."

[keenly]

"Why haven't I?"

[bouchonne]

He doesn't quite have an answer to that. So instead, he answers something else altogether: "I haven't done anything to you," he snaps back. "Aside from trusted you. And look how you repaid that trust."

[keenly]

"How have I? Am I some investment you've made? Do I belong to you?"

[bouchonne]

He scoffs, turning his face away. "Come now," he says, "don't play the affronted freeman, bristling at the yoke. Did I say anything about you belonging to me? Did I even imply that?" And - "Do you claim you have not violated my trust?"

[keenly]

Colin opens his mouth to ask why Byerly is so special, why Byerly's trust is the one that can never be earned back while everyone else has been forgiving. Instead of speaking, he looks at Byerly's face. He looks at the only friend who has reacted in anger instead of grief. He wonders if this is his only friend who is being honest with him.

The anger smooths away from his face, replaced with guilt. His head shakes.

"I do not."

[bouchonne]

That - is not what Byerly expected. He'd expected more resistance, more denial. He eyes Colin warily, now, worried that the cycle will go back the other way - that he will collapse into the self-recrimination and self-hatred that is his frequent state of being. By doesn't want that, either.

So what do you want?

"I can't forgive you," he says. And, because this is what he cannot get past - "If another had turned their hand against you like that, I'd never have forgiven them. I can't forgive you." And it is unfair; he knows it's unfair. He knows that Colin is victim as well as perpetrator. But he cannot forgive it.

[keenly]

Colin's gaze falls away.

"Makes two of us," he says hoarsely. "Just...I'll leave you alone, like I've been. But..." He changes how he's been saying it, to reflect what's really true at heart. "I owe you an evil man. Let me do that for you. You never have to forgive me. I won't ever expect that, or anything else. But I want to do this for you. Let me make a little of this up to you. Please."

tw rape and animal cruelty

[bouchonne]

He doesn't want Colin to make anything up to him, either. Or perhaps - he doesn't want Colin to feel as though he needs to make anything up to him. Is that it? Maker, he doesn't know. He doesn't have any fucking idea.

A moment of silence. He's not sure what he's going to say until he says it. "He tried to rape my cousin when she was a girl. When she fought him off, he drowned her dog to punish her. And then he convinced everyone that she'd done it. They treated her like a hysteric for years after." He sets his jaw. "This may not be the evil man you should be fighting." A little too close to home, perhaps.

[keenly]

Byerly could be right. Going after Lutair, then Devigny doesn't make him immune to these sorts of cases. But if he could manage with them, he knows he has the strength to manage this one. His chin tics up slightly.

"That's exactly the kind of evil man I should be fighting," he says steadily. "If I don't owe it to you, I owe it to myself, and to her."

[bouchonne]

For the first time, a bit of humor comes into his voice - dry, droll, but humor nevertheless. "If my dear cousin caught wind of you playing the knight," he says, "she would flay you. Verbally. Perhaps literally as well. She is not the sort to want to earn anything by her past suffering."

[keenly]

"She didn't," Colin says lowly, seeing none of the humor in this that Byerly does. "I escaped. I had justice. That leaves me with a debt. A duty. He can't be allowed to take power."