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

[sulahnan]

Oh shit. Oh shit. For the first time in recent memory, Athessa's actually frozen with fear at that roar. As prone to anxiety as she might be, her instincts tend towards fight or flight, not freeze.

Then Richard is off, and the hurlock after him, and the lock on her feet releases so she can pursue at a full clip.

What can she do? What can she do? She's not a Warden. If she touches the haft of the axe cleaved to the hurlock's back, which is undoubtedly slick with the darkspawn's blood, will she become tainted? If Richard gets grabbed and the thing doesn't rend him asunder, will he become infected? Athessa doesn't want to find out, on either count.

Her short-sword is pulled from its scabbard and she skids to standing, squared off with the hurlock's back. Both hands on the handle, she raises the sword over her head and hurls it forward like a throwing axe, sending it end-over-end until the blade hits its mark in the hurlock's neck.

But it doesn't fall. The darkspawn wheels around with newfound awareness of new prey. Glowing eyes set upon Athessa and overlarge jaws gnash in an awful, disjointed motion, slung thick with foul ichor.

"Fuck."

Time to run full-tilt in the other direction.

[nonvenomous]

Darkspawn armor jostles noisily in Athessa’s wake, its heavy breaths garbling in and out of foul laughter as it crashes through the brush. The axe handle clips a trunk; the blade is torn loose with a sucking crunch. The hurlock howls, and gnashes, and recoils, the snapping of branches and beating of earth muted into the soft shuffle of bloody feet dragging backwards through dead leaves as it withdraws into shadow.

Ten feet up a tree, Richard is very quietly (and very calmly) talking himself through the process of pouring lamp oil into a bottle of rotgut, put the lime in the coconut style.

He looks up at the howl, and at the ensuing silence, matching it beat for beat.

Somewhere, a cricket chirrrrs.

Slowly, Dick draws a rag from his satchel and sinks his teeth into the corner, twisting down to pop a tear through the seams.

[sulahnan]

The darkspawn withdraws.

The cricket chirps.

A twig snaps.

Athessa holds her breath. She took a hard right turn at roughly the same moment the axe was ripped from the hurlock's flesh and pressed herself flush against a tree twice as wide as herself. It's not a difficult metric, considering she herself is rather twig-like. But it's not she that snapped, nor she that did the snapping.

And so she waits. Dagger in hand, knuckles pale.

In the reflection on the blade, she sees movement just beyond the tree, behind and to her right. The snap hadn't been a twig; it was the hurlock's jaw slipping out of its socket, and popping back in with a slight crunch. Probably some rotting tissue in there fucking with the joint's mobility. Gross.

Carefully, carefully, Athessa inches around the tree, keeping the tree between herself and the darkspawn and her eye on its reflection.

At least Dick is probably safe up his own tree.

[nonvenomous]

There’s a chitinous crackling to the crawl of crystal-encrusted tissue knitting itself together where the axe was ripped loose, and lyrium heat glows low at the creature’s core. The longer it lingers there, the more its stink pervades through the air around the trunk.

“Athessa?”

Richard’s voice rings out through the trees, uncertainty in a distinct lift at the last syllable. He hasn’t heard any screaming, or death gurgles.

He’s still stuffing the rag in, methodical under pressure, careful not to drip remnant oil anywhere other than down the makeshift wick. He shifts a pair of matches from his knuckles to his teeth, and back again once he’s finished. There’s a faint, glassy clink from the direction of his voice.

The hurlock quiets its breathing, listening for a return shout, gears slow turning in its rotten brain.

“Can you bring it this way?”

[sulahnan]

Oh, bring it this way? Bring it this way, sure, no problem.

One more step around the base of the tree to face in the direction of Richard's voice, and then she's off, sprinting as fast as elvenly possible.

The hurlock pursues, all gnashing teeth and stretched skin and glittering lyrium that grinds and scrapes the flesh and bone. The darkspawn laughs. Athessa pushes herself to run faster. She can see Richard in the tree, she just has to get there.

Without turning to look, she throws her dagger behind her in the hopes that it'll strike the hurlock and if nothing else slow it down, but it flies wider than wide of the mark, landing with a soft paff somewhere in the thicket.

"Shit!"

[nonvenomous]

The hurlock gives chase.

A hammerfall of glass shatters across its sunken mug on direct intercept from above; firelight blossoms bright through the copse as flame folds around its face and breast, engulfing the darkspawn in a blazing roil of aerosolized oil mid-step. Flame smatters across damp leaf litter as well, and licks at the surrounding brush, but the worst of it is central to the creature’s flailing.

Its guttural snarl peaks into a panicked squeal; it drops its sword to claw at its eyes, its throat, its boiling flesh and searing armor.

From on high, there’s an answering flicker of eyeshine where Mr. Dickerson is coiled up in the branches. He twists a dagger from the small of his back, long and mean, and drops it point down in Athessa’s path.

It stakes itself into the dirt a few paces ahead of her, double-edge bright beneath the grip.

[sulahnan]

Athessa sees the dagger. Drops to one knee mid-stride and slides, turning, grabbing the dagger as she skids past it.

She doesn't bother to stand before drawing her arm back and releasing it forward, sending the dagger through the air towards the hurlock's screaming, snarling face. The blade hits its mark, sinking into the darkspawn's eye socket, but stopping when it hits bone. It isn't deep enough to kill.

Of fucking course it's not.

There's nothing else for it. Athessa launches forward, running directly towards the tree almost directly to the hurlock's right. The flames engulfing it radiate intense heat that starts to evaporate the sweat from exertion and replace it with sweat from being so close to the fire.

With a leap and a well-placed foot on the tree trunk, Athessa bounds from ground to tree, and twists in mid-air to put enough force behind a roundhouse kick aimed at the pommel of the dagger.

The blade thrusts out through the back of the hurlock's skull with a crack.

Its limbs go slack, and it falls backwards.

Athessa lands on her feet and stumbles back a step, falling onto her arse.

The darkspawn is dead.

[nonvenomous]

Flames crackle merrily over blackened flesh, seethed through with raw red veins of lyrium. A few feebler patches of fire dwindle against damp wood and earth where the oil spattered thickest, flickering low in the breeze. It looks unlikely to spread.

A full body twitch through the corpse sees Richard pausing in his descent through the lower branches of his tree. Bark cracks loose when he resumes a beat later, crumbling into the leaf litter to mark out a landing spot near Athessa before he drops the rest of the way down.

Whumpfh.

He swings down to land on his feet, strangely poised in spite of cold sweat and rattled nerves. He brushes at his palms, looking over to gauge the state of Athessa on the ground as he does so.

[sulahnan]

Physically, she's fine. There's a long silent stretch of her simply sitting, staring, catching her breath, and then that's interrupted by the sudden need to make absolutely certain she hasn't been exposed to darkspawn Taint.

It's a little bit like the dance one does to rid themselves of an unseen spider. Hopping to her feet, she pats herself down semi-frantically, checking the point of contact where she'd just kicked the dagger (no ichor, just a tiny patch of flame that she pats out), and her arms, anywhere she can see that might have been scraped or splattered.

"Did I get any on me?" She asks, craning her neck over her shoulder in a vain attempt to see how her back fared. But she doesn't wait for Richard to respond before her attention turns on him and she looks him over. "Are you okay?"

[nonvenomous]

He produces a pair of gloves from his satchel, and tugs them on while she performs her patdown -- not the most reassuring of measures, in itself. But it does make for a more thorough inspection of her person, once he’s made his way over to brush detritus from her back, and out of her hair, paying close attention to the color, the consistency, the weight of leaves and grit falling away.

He nods, late, in answer to her second question, reassurance hazy once he’s registered the need for it.

“I’m fine.” Probably. He sweeps at her shoulder, and gives it a pat. Good as new.

“I don’t see any cause for concern.”

Apart from the mass of bone and flesh hissing and spitting in the flames behind him, which he turns to watch from her side.

...Now what?

[sulahnan]

Athessa heaves a great sigh and doubles over with her hands braced against her knees.

"Fuck. I was —" She straightens and gestures off toward the road. "— ya know, patrolling, cos someone said there were bandits or maybe Templars over in this area, but fucking hell if I'd known there was gonna be darkspawn I would've brought a Warden, cripes!"

At the end of her breathless exposition she claps her gesturing hand over her heart. Deep breath in, and out.

[nonvenomous]

Richard stands upright and silent through Athessa’s heaving, bracing, gesturing and heart clapping. He watches the body burn with the distrust of decades worth of experience: sometimes things stand back up again when they shouldn’t.

“If you hadn’t happened by, I would be dead in a tree, so thank you for that.” Plain, in aside. After that and a shuddering intake of breath, he busies himself with prying his crystal out of a small pocket in his vest.

“I’ll make arrangements for its removal.”

[sulahnan]

"Yeah," Athessa nods, staring at the burning darkspawn as well. Part of her wants to just throw her arms around Richard and tell him she's glad he's alright, that his safety in this moment makes having to deal with that evil thing well worth the effort.

But the other part of her has control and it dictates that she must simply wave a dismissive hand and say, "don't mention it," to his thanks.

She'll probably hug him later on, anyway.