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

Nearly a year deep in this plane surfing adventure, Richard Dickerson isn’t the same laser attuned reptile that washed up on day one. He is rarely intense about anything apart from his own privacy, anymore. He wears less black.

He nods at ‘nothing of note,’ crossing with carefully considered steps to place himself nearer a wall, and a toppled bookshelf that he might use for cover, in the event of demons. Or mercenaries. Or templars. Or darkspawn. But his thoughts are elsewhere by the time he gets there, the springwire tension gripped up his spine not quite enough to keep him from thinking back to Leo Fitz genuinely believing that he and Miss Poppell might bone down in their shared attic crawlspace the night before.

So he too has been distracted.

He keeps thinking about it. Why does he keep thinking about it. Why was Fitz thinking about it?

“I’ll follow your lead.”

His focus centers naturally back onto Loxley, from however many miles away it was in a dark attic, and lingers there for a beat. Outright Performing a Read, after his attention catches on a rough edge or a trailing thread, while the household creaks around them, and dappled light shifts across the floor.

"Alright. I'll go on ahead, a ways."

He picks up his rapier again, held in a way that seems looser than it is. Richard's never seen him drop his weapon in battle, so no reason to assume that Loxley will start now. He moves on by on quiet feet, adding, "When I say the code word, come running. Something like 'inarticulate screaming' or 'profuse swearing'."

The humour that comes is both easy, reflexive, as well as strained. It's probably not terribly hard to put two and two together.

Promias has never been at war. Not like this, and not in Loxley's lifetime. Countryside burned, villages pillaged, the shock of it beaten into the land like a season of endless rain -- or drought. There is a strange and vivid immensity to this sad place, from abstractions like a struggling commerce through to the sour notes of neglect within these walls, warmed up in the high summer.

It's all a little uncomfortably real.

Loxley checks the immediate chambers of the lower floor, swiftly executed in the way only experienced dungeon crawlers can, and then winds his way to the staircase, rune-inscribed leather boots worn out of any potential creaking.

Dick drifts out into the foyer at a distance, following as an (outwardly) unarmed accessory in thieves’ leathers. He does not seem deeply affected by the emptiness of this home, or the devastation around it, beyond his very reasonable distaste for being ambushed.

Prior to their arrival here, he might not have seen infantry marching, or the spoiling of cities by enemy troops, but the yuan-ti are always at war. It’s just that the forces they’re in opposition with aren’t usually aware, or can’t be bothered to muster the resources necessary to flush a deeply entrenched nest of psychopathic viper spawn out of the jungles of Sylvica. In spite of the snake church’s preachings, plenty of mortals around Promias, Ifrin and Lloryndell have never heard of the yuan-ti, and never will.

Just so, he is quiet, but he is here, following and keeping an eye in spite of his distraction and a low key desire to wait outside with the engine running.

Despite its impressive interior proportions, the manor is not too sprawling -- summer home smallness where the house's divisions don't constitute whole wings but still leave some room for guests and privacy. The ceilings are tall, the windows bright, and it seems the upper level has been spared some of whatever scuffling occurred downstairs.

But it has been occupied. The bedrooms look lived in, beds mussed and smelly, the occasional scuff mark of a boot, a hearth that has been used and not cleaned out. Loxley makes a note to look into that in one of the larger bedrooms, first instead -- cocky, now, that he's rather sure of this place being abandoned -- reach out to draw aside a privacy screen--

Flapping, squawking, a sudden rush of movement as a handful of local birdlife come rushing out from where they'd been nesting, making a frantic pace for an open window past Loxley, who just yells--

"Fuck!"

--echoing out to wherever Richard has trailed behind.

Out in the hall, grown man Richard Dickerson crouches like a spooked cat, with a dagger snatched out into the dusty sunlight before his free hand finds the floor.

The absence of sound tells a story -- there’s no clattering of steel on steel, or scuffling of heavy feet. No watery arterial spurt, or throaty gurgling. Cold adrenaline fear is an ongoing adventure. Dick shivers in his otherwise rapt silence, and listens.

A few seconds have passed before he finally appears in the doorway, pale in the face and sweaty at the temples.

He looks unappreciative.

MOD PLOT ↠ A THOUSAND WRONGS

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