MOD PLOT | CHAMPROVENT.

[heorte]

WHO: Teren, Ellis, Edgard, Lucien, and Vance
WHAT: Assisting with the cleansing of Champrovent and ensuring the taint doesn't spread beyond the village.
WHEN: August through Kingsway
WHERE: Champrovent
NOTES: ooc info + warnings for infection, discussion of murder, death, general unpleasantness.

Comments

[muckspout]

Edgard sees the momentary irritation in Lucien's face and does his best not to return it. (He is moderately successful) Lucien means well after all. Edgard sighs.

"Maybe there's a way to move them without touching them? Do we have blankets?"

[coeurdulyon]

"One of these houses may have some we can use," he muses, then nods in the direction of their horses. "I'd rather not sacrifice our saddle blankets to that end."

[muckspout]

Edgard nods and then steps towards the house Lucien was looking in. He tries the door, locked, and then heaves all his weight into the door with his shoulder. The door creaks open.

"We can check, but if no blankets, we shouldn't touch them."

[coeurdulyon]

"Do you have much experience with darkspawn, then?"

This man's insistence on telling Lucien what to do, behavior far above his station, rubs the wrong way. Even as a man with ever creeping doubts about being a Chevalier, about the integrity of the Order itself. He does not take orders from men like this.

[doneisdone]

"Not good to touch anything Tainted with your bare hands," Teren calls, coming up behind them and wiping her own gloves on her already-filthy silver and blue tabard.
"But the bodies, long as you're not licking 'em or setting blood against open wounds, you're all right. Villages clean up after themselves all the time."

She motions toward the door as if to say 'allow me', trying to press through them so she can check the house first.

"It's the live ones you want to worry about."

[muckspout]

Edgard makes to follow Teren into the house. Before he steps over the threshold, he raises his eyebrows to Lucien. He’s choosing not to answer his question. He then walks into the house calling after Teren.

“Doesn’t hurt to be careful. If there are blankets, we should use them.”

[coeurdulyon]

The flash of white hot anger is impossible to ignore. The impertinence of this man, the gall! The sheer disrespect for—

Before he realizes it, Lucien has a grip on Edgard's collar and is shoving him hard against the nearest wall and snarling at him in furious Orlesian:

"You forget your place, ser," Then, though the anger doesn't fade, there's a flicker of realization as he recognizes in himself what he's come to despise from his brothers. His grip stays firm. "If you cannot muster respect for the living, you cannot be trusted with the dead."

[doneisdone]

Teren's eyes go wide at the sudden burst of violence, and she's quickly pushing an elbow between them, blades flipped into her hands with a point at each man's throat to force them apart.

"You're going to calm the fuck down," she snarls to Lucien, in fluent Orlesian, "or you can get the fuck out."

A glance back to Edgard: he'd better watch himself too.

[muckspout]

Edgard’s back aches from it’s impact on the wall, but he flattens against it as Teren’s blade flirts with his throat.

Edgard seethes from the blow and how he misjudged Lucien. The Chevalier clearly views men only by their station and disregards everything else. Naturally.

Edgard raises his hands, but whispers in Orlesian, “I give respect when it’s mutually granted” and straightens up a little taller, away from the blade.

[coeurdulyon]

Lucien glowers down his nose at Edgard (because to tilt his head down would be to impale it upon Teren's blade).

"Dishonest as well as dishonorable," but he steps back, visibly grappling with the urge to take out his anger on this other dog man. So he heeds Teren and stalks out of the house, casting about for the shovel he saw in the street so he might at least lay the groundwork for a pyre in the middle of the town.

He'll burn off his ire through hard labor before he does anything else he'll come to regret later.

[doneisdone]

Rolling her eyes as Lucien takes his leave, Teren then turns to spit out the window.

"Pair of fools, made me speak Orlesian," she mutters, lowering her knife from Edgard's throat and turning toward the bodies.
"Come on then, you get the legs. Watch for open wounds, otherwise they shan't harm you."
She bends to heft one of the corpses by its upper half.

[muckspout]

Edgard hesitates. On the one hand, this is the first thing he's actually been asked to do, but on the other, Edgard really does not want to touch the bodies. He swallows and squats down to grab the corpses' legs. It's a man, probably in his 30s. The smell hits him hard.

"I hope you're correct," He says, coughing.

[doneisdone]

"I am."

She smirks grimly, straining to lift the corpse.

"Unless you don't trust my Wardenly expertise? Don't you know your place?" Though her tone is still brusque, the glint of amusement in her eye suggests she's mocking Lucien, not Edgard.

[muckspout]

Edgard gives Teren a half smile as he moves backwards hauling the corpse toward the open door. He knows she's joking, but answers genuinely,

"Trusting those in charge and staying in my place has never gotten me very far." Or anyone he cares about either. He takes a step outside the threshold. "It's not personal. We make it through this, perhaps I'll trust your expertise a bit more."

[doneisdone]

"Nobody trusts the fucking Wardens," Teren says with a scoff, giving the impression of waving away his comment without moving her hands. "That's how we prefer it."

[muckspout]

Not altogether reassured, Edgard pauses just outside the door and readjusts his grip on the corpse,

"Where are we taking it?"

He's hit by the smell again and tries not to pull a face.

[doneisdone]

"Pyre," she answers monosyllabically, jerking her head in the direction of where it's being built. "Got to burn all of them, might as well do it together."

[muckspout]

Edgard puffs air through pursed lips, sighing, as they approach Lucien and the pyre in progress.

“Do we just leave the houses? and their things?”

Edgard still has a hard time believing any of it is safe. He lowers the body down losing his grip just before it’s on the ground so the legs plop unceremoniously. He winces.

[coeurdulyon]

The legs plop, Edgard winces, and Lucien straightens from his construction of the pyre with an expression of flat irritation. You see? Disrespectful, it seems to say, but he doesn't give voice to it.

"The houses will be burned as well," is what he does say, resuming his work stacking wood in alternating rows and packing the spaces between with tinder and kindling. It is clearly not the first pyre he's ever built.

[doneisdone]

Teren opens her mouth to respond, but Lucien hops right in with an answer, so she rolls her eyes and nudges her head towards him to indicate that he's correct.
She continues to drag the body a little farther, getting it up onto the pyre before letting it drop and bending forward with her hands on her thighs, taking a break.

[muckspout]

Edgard wipes his forehead and stretches his arms upward.

“So, the houses and bodies are dangerous enough to need burning, but we’re fine even though we touched all of it?”

[coeurdulyon]

Once it's on the pyre, Lucien gently crosses the corpse's arms over its chest. Blessedly, the eyes are already closed.

He could answer; could say that their purpose here is to ensure that none who come after are in danger of being Tainted by their own stupidity, but...well. Lucien would rather work silently, and Teren is a better authority on the subject.

[doneisdone]

"Well you don't want to breathe it in, like," she sighs, rolling her eyes, "or let it drip on you, and so forth. Things a house can do. I told you not to touch any open wounds on the bodies, didn't I?"

She pauses to catch her breath for a moment, watching Lucien settle the corpse.

[muckspout]

Edgard steps back a few strides, trying not to breathe too close to the corpse.

"Is there an amount of time before it sets in? Is that known?"

Edgard is aware he's annoying his two companions, but he can't help but ask questions. Maybe if he knows more, maybe he can make sense of what happened before. Maybe he'd stop it from happening again.

[doneisdone]

"Safe to be cautious from the start," Teren says grimly, beckoning him back toward the house to get the second body.

"If you're tainted, some say you can hack off the infected limb before it spreads to the rest of you, but that don't always work. It's unforgiving, the Taint."