MOD PLOT ↠ A THOUSAND WRONGS

[faderifting]

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.

Comments

oh my god they were roommates.

[positioning]

The two of them can be forgiven for assuming "room in a stable" meant the hayloft, or even a hastily-cleared tack room. What it turns out to mean is that it is a stall that likely once housed a horse and is not expected to house two grown men. Aleksei is humoring it, on account of the fact that it is preferable to being lightly drizzled upon.

If he is unhappy about being separated from Yevdokiya, he is planned on telling Tova about it once the redheaded man has left or fallen asleep. So in the meantime—

"Do you think this was a stall for donkeys, or for a fine horse?" he asks, balanced on the wooden partition marking off this stall from the next. Tova is within arm's reach. Aleksei intermittently rests a hand on her, even as he's looking down at Marcoulf.

[esquive]

"It's straw either way," is Marcoulf's professional assessment. Speaking of, he is presently in the process of kicking the dusty old (mercifully clean) bedding of the stall into two distinct stacks. The pitchfork he'd unceremoniously scavenged from the stable's back wall has a bent prong that makes using his boots as able a tool for the work.

His coat is hung up out of the way of the straw lest it pick up any dust or debris, and his own horse - a rosy roan colored animal that may suit Marcoulf slightly too well given the overpowering quality of their ginger coloring in combination - is a few stalls over and is tactfully ignoring all of them in favor of nibbling stray bits of hay.

Save for the rasp of straw being sorted, it's pleasantly quiet in the insulated way stables often are.

"I trust this not to be the first barn you've slept in."

[positioning]

"No, but normally I am allowed into the hayloft."

Allowed being a very generous assessment. Yes, Aleksei and Yevdokiya allow themselves into the hayloft of barns they haven't asked permission to be in. Why wouldn't they?

The heel of his boot drums arrhythmically against the boards, knocking a beat on every other swing. Tova huffs, perhaps in agreement, or perhaps in annoyance.

"Those are fine beds you are fashioning us," Aleksei continues easily. "I take it you are no stranger to making due when all other options are spoken for."

Whether or not anything is actually spoken for is debatable. There is probably some stingy widower with an attic crammed with junk he couldn't bother to offer up. Aleksei had marked a few houses that seemed the type upon their arrival, and that knowledge sits in his thoughts. Useless at the present moment, but unavoidable.

[esquive]

A tip of the head and a quirk of the brow says, Something close to that, yes, and so would be a perfectly serviceable answer all on its own.

But there is something pleasant about the rasp of shifting straw and impatient sounds of the horse beside them and the familiar vowel roll of the Avvar accent and even the sticky heat clinging to the back of his neck. So.

"Better a stall than the ground. During the war—the one before this one—it was more that than anything else. Even barracked in Fort Revasan, you were fortunate if you had your pick between stone floor or dirt floor."

His sidelong look has some brisk, lopsided flicker of humor in it. Soldiering is all rubbish.

[positioning]

Soldiering is rubbish, the way lowlanders do it. Aleksei folds his hands over his belly, leaning back against the post with one heel braced against the stall to preserve his balance.

The impulse to ask: Was it a good war? Did you fight many battles and win many victories? crosses Aleksei's mind. But this man is not Avvar, and maybe he did not glory in the clash of armies.

"I would choose dirt," he says after a moment's consideration. "Even in the rain it makes for a more comfortable bed."

Yevdokiya and Aleksei have had years to make the comparison and decide between them.

"Which war?" Aleksei asks after. "Not the one between the mages and their minders?"

A kinder term than captors.

[esquive]

The soft tsk sound he makes as he sweeps another heap of stray into this pile or that one says, No. That that one.

"The one here in Orlais." Largely South of here, really. But what does that matter to an Avvar, particularly one who would choose sleeping in the mud over some sensible place? "La Guerre des Lions, between the Empress and Duke de Chalons to decide the throne three years past. Had you come down out of your Hold for such news then?"

Is an honest question.

[positioning]

Aleksei's heel taps at the wood again, setting off a restless stamp from Tova, as he thinks back three years. Three years ago, where had he and Yedokiya been three years ago?

"My clan is not so interested in wars in the lowlands."

Which is not much of an answer. Aleksei shrugs a shoulder, sits up a little straighter on his perch.

"I think maybe my sister and I had come down to trade, but not to gossip. The world was not in such an uproar then."

But now everything is an uproar, all the time. It hadn't bothered either of them until the chaos had embedded itself into Yevdokiya's hand.

[esquive]

"Maybe not the sort of uproar that might reach most Avvar." But plenty to go around for everyone else even then.

He kicks another lump of straw into one mound or another, then allows himself to be particular with the prongs of the pitchforks. He fluffs this edge or that, finnicky for the sake of a diversion rather than need. There is an urge in this - to ask questions, to be curious, to pick at the edge of an old scab and see if the skin under it has healed enough that it will simply flake away or if disturbing it will cause the blood of the thing to well back up again.

"You and your sister are close, I take it."