faderift | 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

Poesia circles around and faces the herd head on, grinning at the game of it all. Athessa will have to attend her beast, Poesia is entierly preoccupied with tearing through the remainder of the burning beasts.

Narrowly missing being flattened by the other druffalo, Athessa returns to the one that had thrown her where it still thrashes, trying to struggle to its feet. In her attempts to get close enough to slit its throat, the beast catches her ribs with the blunted end of a broken horn and she feels a crunch and a sharp pain on her next inhale. But she can worry about that later, after she's ended the animal's suffering.

One foot planted at the base of that rib-shattering horn stays the beast's thrashing. Its legs aren't strong enough to support it, and without leverage to right itself, it is stuck on its side. Athessa says a soft apology to it for its end, and slices her blade between chin and shoulder to spill its blood across the dirt. Its body stills within seconds.

Two down, two to go. Athessa starts to sprint towards Poesia and calls: "Poesia! Toss me at that one! You take the other!"

Fastball special!!

"Right-oh!" she calls cheerfully. Fastball special!!

Poesia catches Athessa as she hurtles towards her and hurls her, using the momentum for an extra oomph. She doesn't wait to see how she does, just gets to work on her two creatures, the ground going slick and red with spilled blood.

The problem with a fastball special is it has this way of churning your mind and your stomach so much that one ends up in your head and the other in your feet, and it's pure chance that moves them which way.

Athessa's stomach plummets, and her head spins, but she's the right way 'round and flies like an arrow (true to her name) towards her target. She lands, rolls, and looks up in time to lock eyes with that last druffalo. When she sees the whites, the fear and rage and incomprehension, she drives her dagger into it, bracing her arm against her body and planting her feet, for all the good it'll do. The animal's momentum does the work for her to break through the bone at the back of the eye socket.

The beast barely lets out a scream before it hits the ground, pushing Athessa along before it.

With it dead, Athessa staggers to her feet and stands for a moment. Breathing. Or trying to, with her own ribs stabbing her on every inhale. Fucking hell that was a lot. Now there's just the matter of the fire, if Poesia's finished.

She is entierly finished, looking enormously pleased with herself, if covered in gore and a little singed in places. She's also carrying a druffalo head. It has thankfully stopped burning.

"That was delightful!" she says cheerfully, "What are we doing next?" Did she forget they were supposed to put out the fire because it has nothing to do with murder? Absolutely.

Luckily for the both of them, the stampeding of the other druffalo has adequately dug into the grass and prevented the fire from spreading. Pressing one hand to her bruised side, Athessa gestures with the other.

"We gotta put out the fire," she says, though it takes her a moment longer than it should to catch her breath.

"Goodness, you look a fright, Athessa dear!" Which is perhaps a bit hypocritical considering how much viscera is currently caught in Poesia's normally silky gold locks. She sets down her druffalo head and pats on it. "Here, I'll attend the fire."

What "here" means specifically she doesn't clarify. She does trot off to deal with the fire though, leaving Athessa to attend the severed druffalo head.

Well. There's not a whole lot Athessa can do with the severed head right now. She can barely lift it.

"Shame we can't eat you, buddy," she says to it. One thing they can do, though, is skin the body and have some fade-touched druffalo hide to make leather out of. That's something.

"Poesia, are you hurt? Or is all that animal blood?"

Stamping out fires is less fun than killing fade touched druffalo, so she does it with very little fanfare.

"I believe it's mostly animal blood," she says, kicking dirt over another fire and stomping on it, "I haven't really paid it much mind just yet, but I'm rather positive I'm not bleeding significantly."

"Good. There's a stream nearby, we can clean up there just to be sure. I definitely broke a rib or two when that one got me, but I don't think I'm bleeding," And with that out of the way: "We oughta skin these guys for the fade-touched hides, if nothing else so we can offer them to the farmer as recompense for the damages. If he doesn't want them, we can always use more materials for armor."

It's all an awful lot of responsible talk, when what she really wants to do is lay down and not move for a while. Maybe get high. Oh well. The Qunari dagger on her belt being the sharpest she has, she uses it to start skinning the headless druffalo first.

"I'm guessing you'll want the skull stripped, yeah? No sense letting it rot."

It is a good bit of responsible talk, but Poesia responds well to it, unsheathing one of her own knives to help Athessa.

"Oh yes!" she says, lulled by the familiar work of removing hide from flesh, half expecting to hear the grumblings of hungry draklings in the background, "I thought I might have someone make a chest plate for me. It's rather to big for a helmet."

Athessa nods. "Shame, you'd look great with horns."

An easy compliment, from someone who is biased. Then: "We'll probably have to boil it, then. Not enough time to leave it out for other critters to clean it, and it's gonna take too long to get back to the Gallows to feed it to the Speaker's beetles."

Unless...well, her thought is neither here nor there, really. She can call Isaac and ask him if such magic exists, but it's a long shot where traditional methods work just fine.

"I have noticed this is the trouble with souvenirs," Poesia says thoughtfully, "There is always the question of whether or not something ought to be preserved and how. I do so wish the Speaker had the forsight to bring his beetles along."

"Yeah, well. I think it'd be kinda hard to transport a whole colony of 'em."

Trying to roll the druffalo over by herself is a mistake. After she stops seeing stars from the pain in her ribs, Athessa steps back and sighs.

"Poesia, could you please roll this fucker over so I can finish skinning him?"

MOD PLOT ↠ A THOUSAND WRONGS

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cw: animal death

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