[OPEN] FROM RIFTWATCH WITH LOVE: PART ONE

[unshut]

WHO: Everyone and anyone
WHAT: An abomination redecorates the Gallows.
WHEN: Early August
WHERE: The Gallows
NOTES: Part One of FROM RIFTWATCH WITH LOVE. Will include some violence, some general chaos, and some light murderin'.

There is a man in a worn traveling cloak. He is dark haired, with sharp features dominated by a dark horizontal scar near his hairline, and later someone will describe him as having been soft spoken when he asked for directions.

But something in the Gallows' dining hall, with its unreliable population for the midday meal, must catch under his skin; he's found his voice again by the time he steps up onto one of the benches.

"Is this all of you?"

Someone nearby tells him to get his boots off the furniture, so the man climbs higher onto the table and is louder the second time: "Is this really all you are? A few people in a tower on an island?"

Heads are coming up. As his voice rises, he produces an envelope from his pocket.

"Do you think this is funny? Playing at being something, and telling people you can make a difference to them? You were supposed to be helping, but you're all just sitting here! Don't touch me"—to someone encouraging him to get off the fucking table—"You were meant to be helping us. You promised you would, and I told her I believed you!"

Hands are reaching for him. No, really, get off the table. You can explain what's wrong once you're down; you're with friends— The man jerks his arm free, snarling, "Don't touch me! You're nothing!" A stronger hand finds him then and begins pulling him struggling down. With a wrenched cry of, "Livia!" the man slips from the table.

A column of fire pours upward out of him like molten heat from a crack in the earth. It bursts so high that it scorches a circle on the dining hall ceiling, and burns so suddenly hot that it sends those nearest to him recoiling backward as their clothes catch. The fire licks again in random directions, in chaotic fits and starts of light and heat, and the thing that rises up again in the mage's place isn't really a man at all.

The rage abomination will ravage its way through the dining hall and prodigious Gallows kitchens, then out into the courtyard beyond leaving considerable destruction in its wake until finally brought down by Leander. In the charred aftermath, the following can be recovered from among the mage's belongings: a leather corded bracelet with a green bead woven in it (too small for anything but the smallest wrist), a functioning phylactery, and a letter from "Riftwatch" which implies a history of correspondence and familiarly refers to the recipient by name, 'Felix.' An investigation of Riftwatch's files will reveal the log of having received a message from a similar Felix, No Lastname six months earlier. The message itself is nowhere to be found among the Gallows records.

The recovered letter assures Felix that all will be well, and includes instructions to wait in the woods above the crossroads of a small Wildervale village.

'Help will be on its way. Good luck, and safe travels.'

Comments

[muckspout]

Edgard lets out a breath of air still willing his hands to stop shaking.

"Well, I was bored." He's still laughing too loudly. "Have something destroy buildings every day, why not?"

He grins, "There might be a middle way though. Between nothing and destruction." Edgard stops thoughtful. "No there isn't. Nevermind." He shrugs and leans his head into one of his hands. The tremble is more noticeable now.

[cozen]

Bastien notices. He sets the chair down, and he sits on the bench Edgard is occupying. Not too close. A polite distance, one that isn't presumptuously familiar, but good for conversation.

"I think there is," he says. "Where are you from, monsieur?"

[muckspout]

There are a lot of answers to that question. It's been a long time since Edgard was from a place. He considered himself of a group which felt more like home to him. But, still, everyone must have an answer to that question. Edgard shrugs and nods.

"Orlais as well, various places, never stayed in one place too long. Edgard, by the way." He nods.

[cozen]

"Bastien," he says. "Of Val Royeaux."

The best city in Thedas, as most of its residents will helpfully explain to anyone who seems confused on the topic, etc. He's very proud. Under other circumstances he might ask if Edgard had been. But polite chitchat about the city isn't what he's after, here. He's after something grounding. Something steadying for Edgard's hands.

"Were you in Orlais just before you came here?" Assuming yes, and with a bit of longing, because Kirkwall is so gray and stormy— "How blue was the sky when you left?"

[muckspout]

The sky was not blue when Edgard left. It was grey with cloud or maybe smoke. He knows this because he laid down next to the slaughtered bodies, willing not to be seen, not be noticed as the only survivor. He stared at that sky breathless, but somehow alive, his heart beating so loud he was certain he’d be found. His blood mixed with all his brothers and all of those innocent people. Your mistake is everyone’s mistake, your victory our victory as the Invisible Hands always said. Was he coward or just surviving? Is there any difference?

Edgard’s hand shakes again, but he balls into a fist quelling it. He looks Bastien directly in the eyes,

“As blue as a rich man’s blood.”

[cozen]

“That blue?”

He sighs as fondly as if they were sitting in a tavern that had no smoldering rubble at all.

“Oh, I miss it.”

It‘a no help, judging by the man’s hands—he’s noticed. But it’s no good to jump around too noticeably. To make a man feel tended to when he might not want to be, or to disorient someone already disoriented with a conversation that won’t settle into one path.

“There is a bakery in Hightown that I would believe had been carried here whole from Orlais,” he says. “Their sweet ruins—magnificent. You have to go to Hightown, of course, which is a drawback. If rich people make you sneeze, I can bring you something, sometime, so you do not have to go.”

[muckspout]

Edgard is pulled out of his memory and into the current smoking wreckage: the stone and rubble combined with the hum of speaking voices. He blinks and looks into Bastien's smiling face. Wait a moment. Did this man just offer to bring him baked goods? Edgard is disoriented by the kindness. He pauses too long.

"Alright." He says, unsure what else to say to that. But, recovers: "It's less that they make me sneeze and more the other way around. But, their allergy suits me just fine."