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

Sleeping assignments have them all scattered, but it's not so impossible to find a person in the cool evenings. His presence is announced with a light thunk as Ellis sets a sealed bottle down on the table in front of Richard.

"Am I intruding?"

Ellis' hair is still damp. The tainted blood has been washed away, but it feels as if it's lingered in spite of the soap.

It's too early to ascend the stairs to the annex above the bakery. And even if it weren't, Ellis isn't fully prepared for the prying questions the bakers will be directing towards him the minute he sets foot in the shop.

Foot traffic is an inevitability where safety lies in numbers; Richard doesn’t pause in his writing to look up until the bottle bumps the table. This technically does qualify as an intrusion; Dick is seated at a scorched table in the bombed out foundation of what was probably once a small shop or home, transcribing short form interview notes from his journal onto loose paper by the light of a single lamp.

Still. He shakes his head ‘no.’ Accommodating.

Across the way, there are businesses near enough by for the murmur of other conversations to drift in. Cart wheels squeak and supplies clatter as operations wind down for the evening.

“I’d offer you a seat,” he says, twisting to scan the wreckage -- but there isn’t one to spare. The only remaining stretch of standing wall is low and broad and close enough to qualify. He opens his hand out to it before trading his pen for the bottle.

Edited (cartwheels??) 2020-09-02 22:35 (UTC)

The wall is claimed without complaint.

There is a quietly surreal quality to the serenity of the town. The world goes on no matter what kind of atrocities are contained within it. Ellis has always known this, but some days it is illustrated more clearly to him than others.

"That's for you," Ellis says, watching Richard lift the bottle.

Easy to mistake as a gift. It's more selfish than that, handing off something dangerous to himself before he can make use of it.

"What were you writing?"

Richard examines the label, the color the lamplight glows through the contents, and the seal in that order, turning and tilting and ultimately -- setting the bottle aside. The heavy base serves as an effective paperweight; he nods his thanks in time with a wary glance sidelong, measuring for mood, posture, intent.

“We’ve been interviewing the locals,” he says, looking back to his notes at the question. “Their experiences are being documented.”

For study or posterity. Both.

He’d paused writing mid-sentence, and after a moment of considering leaving it there, picks up his pen to cap off the paragraph, scratch scratch scratch.

“What’s the occasion?”

The first mission they'd attended together, they'd argued over what was to be done with a handful of trapped innocents. Ellis watches Richard for a moment before leaning forward slightly, fingers lacing together as his elbows come to a rest on his thighs.

"I helped kill some innocent people today."

Did it matter that the Taint would have killed them one way or another regardless of whether Ellis and the others decided to open that door? There was so little to mitigate what had happened. Those villagers had the misfortune of being overrun by darkspawn, and outliving their fellows. All the excuses and explanations came to the same thing in the end: they'd ended eight lives, regardless of how they cared to define the method.

"There'll be a report, at some point."

There’s a pause in Richard’s writing, brief but distinct. He raises his eyebrows at the paper, lit golden orange around the shadow of his hand. Jot jot jot, punctuation, date, and done. A flick of powder across the page sees the process complete, for now.

“Would you like to talk about it?”

After a few seconds, the ink is dry enough for him to tuck the page into a sheaf in his satchel.

He glances Elliswards again as he caps containers, sweeps away spare dust, and so on.

There is no reply for a moment. Ellis thinks: I don't know.

Maybe he should have inflicted himself on Teren, or Vance. Their disdain and irritation at his presence might not have been a balm, exactly, but they would understand exactly what Ellis feels now without question. That has always been the easiest part of traveling with Wardens. There's very little to discuss, so there is very little chance of tripping over each others scars.

"Do you remember what you said to me in the bath after we were called to that incident with the cave?"

With everything but the bottle and the lamp packed away, Dick dials the wick down to a tongue of barely-there flame, pulling the night in around them, as if to afford privacy. Certainly, the foundation of this partially-walled structure appears considerably less approachable from the street than it did when Ellis found his way over to it, low conversation in low light.

“Not -- verbatim.”

It was months ago, now, and he’d been freestyle antagonizing. There’s no regret to his brief reflection, where there probably ought to be. Just an off beat of recognition that it wasn’t very nice.

“I remember the sentiment.”

"That they were already dead," Ellis reminds him evenly. There is not particular heat to his voice, though each word is weighted, drags like a corpse.

Edgard's distress churns in the back of his mind. It sparks unease, manifests in a muted restlessness.

"But they weren't, not really. They had a chance. Not like the people I killed today," Ellis says, straightening, almost as if to stand before the urge passes. He drags a hand along his jaw, over his mouth. In the small stretch of silence, Ellis seems to reorient himself.

"I've been here a year. I can't tell anymore if I'm shirking my duty or contributing to something greater."

This is a lot to frame up.

Richard turns his chair to face Ellis more directly, hard angles -- tidy tailoring and the jut of his ear -- softened by the lamp’s glow. He leans forward once he’s resettled, right hand lifted to smooth his whiskers back from a frown, mirroring the gesture without thought, much less motive.

He’s quiet, while he runs it all back for himself, including whether or not he’d feel any differently about the cave people today than he did then. Probably not.

He might be more conscious of the worth in helping a friend who did feel differently.

“What do you think you should be doing instead?”

There's no calling the words back, no way to order them into a less disjointed litany.

"What I did today. What I have been doing here, clearing darkspawn, burning the taint where I find it."

Even if you find it in a house of innocents, whose only misstep had been their presence in a town darkspawn were marching through. The black veins spiderwebbing across their skin marked them so clearly, and all the argument, all the discussion, didn't change what happened.

"It's a Warden's duty. It's what I was doing before I came to Riftwatch."

More silence, more thought.

He’s still not especially well-read on the Wardens, or the Blight, beyond a basic awareness of its cyclical nature and infamously irreversible corruption. Not all Wardens are as sullen as this one -- he knows that, also.

“If Corypheus destroys the world as you know it, would there be a point?”

There’s a spark of genuine curiosity to his asking, beyond establishing perspective. What are the depths of this commitment, exactly?

"If Corypheus destroys the world, then..."

Ellis' hands spread. It's a complicated question, and Ellis has tried very hard to avoid that kind of philosophizing. The decisions about higher threats had never been for him to assess, but with the Wardens so fractured and disorganized—

"We've failed, I suppose. Or we've succeeded, depending on how that Warden chooses to look at it."

Is it a failure because Corypheus has destroyed the world or is it a victory because with the world gone the blight has gone with it?

"I'm sure that's not unexpected. Wardens are as varied in their opinion as the members of Riftwatch."

He only sees the one Warden here now.

But the lead in to this conversation wasn’t about faction politics. It was about slaughtering innocents out of necessity.

Leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees, Richard studies him across the shell of the room they’re in. He has the advantage there, in the barely-there lamplight, his focus crisp in spite of pooled shadow.

“It must be easier for you with Riftwatch,” he supposes. “Slaying enemy soldiers.”

Tony's said as much recently: "Are we talking about Wardens, though? I thought I was talking about you."

It isn't fair to come here and put the weight of all his disillusionment on Richard's shoulders. It isn't fair to deflect, Ellis knows. The urge shudders through him anyway as he shifts, half-rising then sinking back.

"It's never easy."

There are those who would say otherwise. (Some are even here to do so; Ellis has to admire Vance's restraint.)

"I didn't come here because I wanted life to be easy," he says slowly. "I came because I thought...because I wanted..."

Ellis trails off, looking at Richard, hands flexing as he tries to think of how to describe what he'd been looking for and how he didn't find that exactly, but fell into something else that he is often aware is too good, too comfortable.

Humans as a people are often naturally compelled to fill awkward silences.

Dick doesn’t have that problem.

There’s no prodding impetus to his study, past a twitch at his brows where he might have stepped in to clarify something he’s already said -- steady patience without pressure while he waits for Ellis to work his way through to an answer. Clarification can wait.

A faint stir at his collar recalls the ghost nudge of a rat or a roach under the clothing of a corpse, a little snoot going about its evening on an otherwise still form.

Edited (snoOT) 2020-09-08 23:37 (UTC)

The stretch of silence doesn't make the words come easier, but the agitated motion passes out of Ellis' body, lines of his shoulders settling as if resigned.

"I missed doing this work alongside others. I told myself I would be better served by putting myself into an organization that was working towards something that felt familiar."

And had been so quickly disabused of that desire in Champrovent, the reality of what he wasn't doing being brought not only to the forefront but coming with a fresh reminder that it was a horror. It isn't Edgard's fault, nor is it Teren's, or Lucien's, or Vance's. But if he is not more effective in the midst of others, then what is he doing here?

"I would posit that -- for the average human -- " Richard concedes to the danger of generalization with a splayed hand, an ember of glowing green buried in the heel, only for him to stop himself before he carries on. He doesn’t have to explain degrees of trauma to Ellis the Warden, surely.

"You were fortunate to find a place here," he starts anew. "That you haven’t been suffering up to the usual standard due to a diversity of responsibility and association doesn’t mean the work you’re doing is cheap, or dishonest.

"You haven’t deserted your duty. The world you protect is begging you to supplement it.

"There’s no reason to over-correct, apart from indulging -- what is this, guilt?" Only now is there the barest twinge of judgment in his brows, a little mean, as he sits back and reaches for the bottle. "You’re all on borrowed time."

A twitch of humor at average human. Surely both of them have been disqualified from that category.

But he does bristle at the idea of guilt. (Is it a correct summation? Maybe, maybe not.)

"This is not about my suffering. It's not about guilt. It's about those eight people and their suffering."

And however many else, all the others alongside them. The taint is endless. Ellis can put himself between it and them for a thousand years and it will endure long after he's fallen. And he hasn't been doing that. He doesn't know what other Wardens are doing, what the First Warden has been directing them to do in the midst of this war.

Maybe Richard's assertion of borrowed time is a shot in the dark. How could he know what a Warden is made from, that Ellis has been dead for thirteen years already? The shard is a similar thing. It'll kill him if Ellis doesn't take it off him, or if Richard isn't drawn back to where he comes from. Ellis' fingers press down on the heel of his own hand, unconsciously recalling the feel of that shard under his fingers.

"They deserved a better death than what they got from Riftwatch. Arguments and mistakes and men indulging their own fear when none of that matters next to people rotting to death."

He draws a breath, sits back, hands falling to his knees. He's speaking too much, which he can't decide is better or worse than if he'd gone somewhere on his own to open that bottle.

"You might be right. I don't know."

In the absence of real context, it’s more of a sawed off shotgun blast in the dark, pointed loose at an amorphous stirring of doom and gloom on the wall opposite him. Maybe some of the shot will find meat.

Richard is attentive to the point that Ellis winds down into I don’t know, with one hand wrapped still around the bottle’s base, and the other at the neck. Emphatic denial doesn’t evoke resistance in return, anymore than ‘you might be right’ elicits impatience, where it might from someone with more of a stake. It’s not cold, at least, or clinical, in this case -- a softer assessment than the dental pick scratch of his stare in their first conversation.

He doesn’t twist until Ellis has finished, opening the bottle’s contents for the scent to carry.

“Tell me what happened.”

After a beat, he thinks to add:

“Please.”

"Nothing I haven't seen before," is what Ellis says first, before exhaling hard. Richard is a Rifter, and Ellis is familiar with what that means, what Richard likely won't know.

He looks away from the table, through the wreckage to the emptying street. The town around them is quieting as the night drags on, which seems all the better.

"There was a village not far from here. Darkspawn overran it, and by the time they tunneled back underground they'd infected the people living there with the taint. At first, we thought everyone had died and it was a matter of burning what was left but..."

A brief gesture, something close to a shrug moving through his body.

"Whoever found it first barricaded the last of the townspeople in one of the houses. All of them had been tainted. The people who left them there must not have been able to bring themselves to burn it, and I don't begrudge them that. It's not their duty."

Surely it is easy to divine whose duty it was to deal with such matters. Ellis' tone doesn't waver at all as he relates it.

“So it wasn’t the barricade that bothered you.”

By Ellis’ own logic.

Or it was and he’s already girded himself against it under direct scrutiny. There’s a speculative slant to his not-quite-asking, and Dick drinks from the bottle, mild (but watchful) behind dark glass. He’s listening.

"No." Maybe it should. He's aware of that. "I understand why it was done."

Even if it would have been kinder to set a fire rather than to leave them in the house.

"They'd already had to kill a few of their fellows by the time we got there. And we stood outside arguing, like fools, over what should be done."

Three Wardens, entertaining a discussion when they had all known how they should proceed.

“Can you imagine what might have happened if you hadn’t been there?”

Only a little arch, Richard drinks. Are humans ever stupid enough to attempt full on rescues of the tainted? Turn them loose, or keep them trapped in a glass jar until they lose themselves entirely? It seems like something they would do.

“Humans are resilient,” he says, after a longer pause. “The disruption was likely unremarkable at the scale of trauma they were contending with by the time you found them.” But it’s easy to say that. “I’m sorry it happened.”

He hooks one elbow over the back of his seat, and stretches his legs, one long across the other. Settling in, the same way his snake settles in where she's slithered down his sleeve.

Is resilient the right word? Ellis bristles at it, aware that it doesn't fit quite right. That boy who tried to run, what would that be called?

"I know what happens when a Warden isn't on hand to give someone infected a merciful death."

Because Ellis can't let that pass. Arguing with Richard isn't why he came here either, and he stops himself, sits back, draws a break while he scrubs a hand over his face.

"We're speaking at cross purposes," Ellis says after a moment. But he doesn't find himself with a neat way to redirect. Whatever he's seeking may simply be beyond Richard's ability to give him.

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