faderift | MOD PLOT ↠ A THOUSAND WRONGS

MOD PLOT ↠ A THOUSAND WRONGS

WHO: Everyone!
WHAT: Assisting with the aftermath of occupation
WHEN: August through Kingsway
WHERE: Field of Ghislain
NOTES: OOC post. Please use appropriate content warnings in your comment subject lines as needed.

The Fields of Ghislain are, as the name suggests, broad open plains, more flat than not, more grass than trees. There are famous orchards around Arlesans at the southern end, but they fade into grassland and farm land, wide fields of wheat and corn separating quiet farming villages and the occasional bustling market town, the even more occasional country estate.

High summer here has always meant long hot days, dusty roads, and preparations for the harvest. Now it also means recovery from the sudden end to the area's year-and-a-half of occupation by the forces of Corypheus. On first glance, the area appears to have escaped relatively unscathed. There are a few burnt villages here and there, a few new rifts, and the scarred valley where the Battle of Ghislain took place, but there are also crops growing strong in the fields and markets open for business, people going about their lives.

On closer inspection, there's more work to be done. The immediate threats are obvious: an unusual number of rifts and the general thinning of the Veil they signal, small bands of enemies—including bands of darkspawn with red lyrium growths—still marauding through the region, isolated patches of red lyrium to be destroyed and Blight to be contained.

Most places have at least one building that's been destroyed by fire or force, some practically essential—a grain store, an infirmary, a watch tower—some invaluable in other ways—a chantry, a mayor's office, a monument to heroic ancestors. Some places showed more resistance than others, and there whole neighborhoods or even entire villages have been gutted by fire and the ruins shoved over like block towers. Some survivors fled and now return to pick through the debris, while others remained, living in shanties in the ashes waiting for a chance to rebuild. Despite the crops ripening in the fields there are signs of malnutrition in many places as well, stories of crops confiscated to feed the invading troops and only meager rations returned, worse off even than those affected by shortages elsewhere in Orlais.

And it's not just the material that the enemy has taken or destroyed. Every decent-sized village has its missing, people who were arrested and taken away in wagons or simply vanished one day out of the blue. Where there was resistance there were executions to discourage it, and while the inhabitants have already taken down and buried the displayed bodies, there are a few places where there is no one left to do so, or where magic placed remains out of reach but always in sight.

There are opportunities too: the enemy lived and worked here for 18 months. They did their best to cover their tracks when they left, but it was a hasty and unexpected withdrawal, and there is a wealth of information to collect and work through. There are houses they occupied that haven't been entirely cleaned out, papers only half-burned in an abandoned office, a storeroom in an outpost basement they forgot to empty. And there are the people who have been forced to live and work alongside them all this time to be spoken with, the names they've learned and the conversations they've overheard, the training exercises held on their village greens, all to be teased out and taken down.

One abandoned operation commands particular attention: the site that Riftwatch—then the Inquisition—observed on the eve of the Battle might be a shrine to the Old God Dumat. At the time this was a newly-discovered ruin and little could be discerned for certain, but during their occupation the Venatori have undertaken massive excavations. They've uncovered not just a shrine but a significant temple complex, much of it underground. Exploration of the lowest levels will be handled by a particular team, but there is more to see and do besides. The warren of ruins and the remains of the camp outside them must be searched for clues as to the Venatori's purpose here, and a preliminary study made of the site's contents. There are also the slaves who did the back-breaking labor of digging out the complex and now need assistance. Many are locals, who simply need a ride back to their homes. Others the Venatori brought with them from Tevinter, and they will need to be interviewed and local communities persuaded to take them in.

It is an unimaginable amount of work, but Riftwatch isn't doing it alone. The Inquisition still has a large number of noncombatants, many of whom have been sent to help with outreach and rebuilding in particular. The Exalted March, too, has plenty of volunteers that aren't exactly fit for the front lines. There is enough ground to cover for everyone, but there will be times when Riftwatch agents will be working with—or at least alongside—those from the Inquisition and the Exalted March, and orders are clear that they are to maintain good working relations and not start any trouble.

In between all of this there will be long rides by horse or cart from this village to that one over dirt tracks with cicadas buzzing in the sun, sweltering afternoons broken up by sudden, drenching thunderstorms, warm evenings playing pétanque on the green with the locals over a pint of cider. There will be as many wary as grateful, but hopefully by the end of the summer Riftwatch can tip that balance a little bit.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

This is much better. Safe, she thinks, or as safe as anywhere in Orlais can be.

"Good," she agrees with a sigh as she settles back against the tree. But rather than start talking, because where does she even begin, she raises an eyebrow at Colin. "Is everything alright?"

He nods.

"I miss Lexie. I miss Ben. Sort of stupid, but there it is."

"It's not stupid."

She misses Lexie, too.

"I wish she wasn't so unhappy. I wish I could make it better."

She hmms and takes another bite of cheese.

"I don't think it's something we can fix for her," she muses. Spoken from experience. Athessa's attempt to ease Lexie's mind backfired enough to drive her all the way to Antiva.

"I know. I'm glad she's taking time to herself, I really think it's best for her, I just miss her."

A murmured yeah is all she has to follow that up with, and she takes a sip of her wine. It's... passable. Surely someone who actually likes wine would say something about its oaky finish or notes of fruit or whatever but to Athessa it just tastes like wine. Bitter, but not bile inducing anymore.

She might be stalling, or she might have let her mind wander away from Colin's desire to talk about Churneau. Who can say.

He leans in to nudge her with his shoulder.

"You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to."

"I just dunno where to start, or...what you'd wanna hear, ya know?"

If you're asking about the mission, or about Derrica, is what she means, but doesn't say. Recounting the mission is easy enough. Addressing the torture, the way things seemed to be mending between them on the road only for Derrica to put up a new boundary on their return...that's going to be more difficult.

"All things considered, we managed to get away pretty clean."

"I want to hear whatever you need to talk about."

Athessa pauses with her cup of wine halfway to her mouth. What does she need to talk about? What does she need to tell him?

"I...went back to Devigny's place."

She sips the wine then, steeling herself for his reaction.

That is the last thing Colin expected to hear. His eyes widen.

"Why?"

One shoulder lifts in a slight shrug, her expression a little wry.

"I didn't plan on it, but...after that man turned, in the dining hall, I found Matthias and Jenny Lou sitting in the rubble. Matty'd been pretty badly burned, and Jenny Lou was only a little better off, but neither wanted to go to the infirmary so. I sat with them, put some salve on the worse of the burns—" Just as she'd done for Derrica. "—and kept 'em talking about other stuff so they wouldn't...I dunno. Spiral.

Matty ended up asking what we'd pick if we could smash anything, and I mentioned Devigny's wine cellar. They kinda latched onto the idea and weren't gonna be dissuaded, and I didn't want them to get themselves in trouble, or arrested, if they'd tried to go alone."

A smile touches Colin's lips, but he quickly suppresses it and waits for her to continue.

"The place was a total wreck already. Abandoned and boarded up and all, but looking at it...you'd think it'd been years, not months."

She smiles into the cup as she takes another drink of the wine, a proud little thing.

"Jenny Lou smashed that fucking chandelier in the dining room," she reminisces. "And Matty set fire to the table. And I got to smash the cellar, but more'n that...I drank some of the wine," That's when she looks at Colin, half-suppressing her grin by chewing on her lip. "I thought I would retch or panic or end up back there, in my head, but it was just wine. And the house was just an empty set of rooms, no power over me at all."

“That’s...” Colin grins broadly. “That sounds brilliant. You got the last laugh.”

She laughs, and it feels good. Happy, maybe, or if nothing else just relieved.

"I did. I also saw what was left of Devigny. Not, like, his body, of course, but..." The stain on the floor, on the bedspread, the hole in the mattress where Deimos' sword ran him through. Athessa tips her head and sets her cup down to take up more meat and cheese. "It actually feels like it's over, now, Colin."

Beaming, he pulls her into a massive hug.

"He doesn't get to be in my head anymore," she says into his shoulder, before she shifts to rest her chin there rather than be smushed into him. It's too hot out in the midday sun to get smushed.

And with him hugging her, and her winding her arms around him, the next just comes tumbling out:

"I'm sorry I didn't tell you sooner. About that and—'bout everything else," Everything else she still hasn't told him. "I didn't want to make myself a burden to you, or only ever talk about everything that's wrong and never about the good."

Colin pulls back from the hug to cup her face in his hands.

"You're never to worry about that," he says sincerely. "You could never be a burden. You're family. Want proof?"

He tugs at the neck of his shirt and pulls it aside to show her the fresh tattoo there. It's different from the one they talked about--seven small stars rather than one large one, but all are unfilled.

"There's seven there, one for each of my family. One of them is yours. Been wanting to show you."

She isn't going to cry. She tells herself that, though she does gasp when he shows her, and she feels a familiar tightness in her chest, something like how she feels when she looks at Derrica, but without the desperate sense of longing that comes with it. Like she has a small sun in place of her heart and it's trying to shine through her.

There's a dozen things she could say, but none of them feel quite right, and she instead decides to touch her fingers to the skin beside the fresh ink, avoiding the lines themselves.

"I...I know I should say something but I don't have any words that feel big enough."

"I've got six black ones on my back. Still your design, really." He leans in to plant a kiss on her forehead. "So don't ever worry about being a burden. You lift me up, you don't drag me down."

She closes her eyes for the forehead kiss and smiles, nodding. She'll still worry, but he'll remind her even without words.

"I've just felt like such a mess lately," she says, looking down at her hands. She holds one of them up to forestall any assurances that she isn't a mess, or that it's okay to be one, or anything he might say. "I think I've spent so long ignoring the things I should've been feeling for so long that they've gotten to be too much, too...confusing. Because they're all tangled up with one another, and I...I gotta untangle them so I can give them their dues."

He nods and says nothing. It's time to listen.

"And of course I trust you with those feelings, but I don't...I think as much as I love you and your support, I really have been relying too much on everyone else when the only person who can really do anything about them is me. Whoever that is.

"I feel like I've been trying so hard to be the person I used to be, before I lost what I've lost and found everything else that I didn't notice myself outgrowing her."

She takes a breath, gathering up one of Colin's hands between her own.

"When we're done with helping here, me n' Bastien are gonna try to find my clan's aravel. Their last camp. So I can give them their rites. And because you're family, you're welcome to come too, but I won't be hurt if you can't, or if that's asking too much of you."

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