faderift | MOD PLOT ↠ The Darkest Realms of Dream, Part II

WHO: Open
WHAT: A dreamy conclusion.
WHEN: Wintermarch 20, 9:47
WHERE: The Fade, Kirkwall
NOTES: Please use content warnings in your comment subject lines as appropriate.

THE JOURNEY

The pull to Skyhold becomes undeniable. Whatever justification is necessary to get people onto the road the dream makes real, whether that's planting an idea in their head or having a message arrive drawing them to the area or having them wake up and find themselves in an onion cart halfway up the mountain. The dream will do its best to smooth over the gaps between conflicting stories and the strangeness of everyone heading that way at once until they're all well underway.

At first, the journey seems normal (in the context of the dreamworld they're in), with the sort of mundane dangers faced by all travelers: wild animals, bad weather, brigands, and in the future where Corypheus has won, enemy patrols. But as they get nearer to the mountains, the trip grows more dangerous. More wild animals—and perhaps now they're infected with red lyrium or Fade-touched. More bad weather, perhaps almost supernaturally so. More enemy forces hunting them, ambushing them, barring the way up into the Frostbacks.

As they get into the mountains the opposition to their journey will become increasingly improbable. Hordes of beasts, entire enemy brigades that have no reason to be where they are, a necromancer coincidentally located atop an ancient cemetery hidden beneath the ice, a rift spontaneously opening to spew demons in their path, darkspawn clawing up out of the ground, a random Qun attack thousands of miles from their front, a dragon appearing out of nowhere. More and more, it will become obvious that things are not what they seem, and that something—some larger force—is trying to prevent them from reaching Skyhold.

HAVEN

No matter where people came from or when they left, they will all arrive on the road into the mountains at roughly the same time. Not precisely, but near enough that they'll begin to encounter others making the same journey. And whether they are attempting to reach Skyhold from the East or the West, they'll find themselves in the ruins of Haven first, converging with the entire group. In the world where the Inquisitor defeated Corypheus, the village is home to a monument to those who were lost when Corypheus' forces first attacked, with evidence of a steady stream of recent pilgrimages—though presently no pilgrims—to pay their respects. In the world where Corypheus dominates, a lifesize dragon has been constructed from bones, some of them human, to stand triumphant over the ruins.

Once they press past this point, taking much the same route once used to lead Haven's refugees to Skyhold, the dreams will begin to unravel. The two dreamworlds may begin to overlap and merge in confusing ways that fuel awareness that the dreams are dreams. People from one dream may step into the woods to forage and encounter people from the other dream there to do the same thing. A person who has experienced both dreams may find that they begin to bleed together, leaving them certain of one history in one moment and of another the next, and increasingly unsure about which of their conflicting sets of memories—if either—is real.* The gaps in memories will also become increasingly apparent, as will the strange coincidence of all of them heading to Skyhold at once for very different reasons.

As people gain awareness that they are in a dream, they may find that they gain more control over the dreamworld. Non-mages may find themselves capable of impossible feats, like willing a storm into being to push enemies back, or speaking to animals to learn the enemy's movements. Mages may find that the normal boundaries on magic have been stretched, and spells that might once have been beyond their power no longer are. Their newfound capabilities do have limits, though: their enemies grow in strength to match them and cannot simply be wished away, and the major threats that more and more clog their path are still too strong to be beaten by any one person alone.

The last leg of the journey up to Skyhold will be the most difficult yet, as difficult as it has ever been. The paths are even steeper and rockier than anyone remembers, in places appearing as if they've been deliberately heaved about and strewn with boulders in an attempt to narrow the way. Surely so much of the road wasn't treacherous goat paths along the edge of precipitous drops before? And if that wasn't enough, while the enemy forces have receded here there comes in their wake a blizzard of tremendous strength, clouds blotting out the sun, the way lit only by the occasional crack of lightning. Snow lashes the rocks and wind screams through the passes, ice slicking every stone, as if nature itself is trying to throw them from the mountain. While it might normally be wisest to hunker down, they will all somehow know that this is not a storm that can be waited out and the only course is to press onward through it to the top.

OOC | * Characters from one dreamworld won't meet the other version of themselves face to face. There's only one consciousness in the dream per person, in one 'body'. They may switch back and forth between dream versions, or lose one version entirely, or begin to muddle their memories and personalities together, or drop them both when they become fully aware of the fact that they're dreaming, but the two versions will never coexist as separate entities at the same moment.

SKYHOLD

They will know when they've reached their destination because just as suddenly as it began, the storm ceases. The tranquility is as abrupt as walking through a door: one moment they are in the howling heart of the blizzard, and in the next step they are beyond it. The air is cold but still, the sky clouded but calm, the path across the great bridge to the main gate clear of snow.

Skyhold would be a striking sight at any time, perched atop its peak against a backdrop of stark white mountaintops, but in these dreams, it's ethereal. The stones have a faint luminescence, like a smooth pond bathed in moonlight, that makes it stand out clearly against the night sky. No windows or braziers are lit, and the valley around it is still. The walls are unguarded and the portcullis open in an invitation they can't bring themselves to refuse.

As they approach, they'll find themselves able to call on memories from both dreamworlds at once—while the gaps in their memories of the years prior to the last month grow. And memories of the true world, one where it's Wintermarch 9:47, may begin to reemerge and solidify, no longer a future that will never arise nor a past that's been left far behind them. By the time they reach the Great Hall, yesterday may feel like as many as three different days, each memory as clear and vivid as the others.

Once inside the walls, the castle grows still more dreamlike. A great tree grows out of the far corner where the War Room ought to be, its massive trunk somehow coexisting with the walls around it, its canopy broad enough to stretch into the Great Hall. The building's form doesn't seem wholly fixed in time—one moment it will appear to be the Skyhold of the Inquisition, in another, one might instead see a glimpse of the ruin it was before the Inquisition arrived, or a bare mountain peak with only a few foundation stones laid, or even an ancient elven temple built around that great tree. There are remnants too of those who have lived and work here in ages past: a flicker of movement in the corner of an eye might be the ghostly shape of an ancient elf or a dwarf lord or a Fereldan mason, or even someone in Inquisition uniform. Attempts to interact with these apparitions will fail, as they continue on about their routines, incorporeal and unaware, vanishing again as soon as they're out of sight.

The only exception is a spirit in the Great Hall, waiting for them.

AFTERMATH

When they wake in the Gallows, it is Wintermarch 21, 9:47, and nothing in the world—outside their own heads—has fundamentally changed from when they went to sleep.

OOC | It will feel like a month has passed at most, similar to how rifters wake up from their canon updates. They will only remember that month-long span of the dream itself, not the years of history that led up to that point. Essentially, they may wake up from the dream and remember "so back when the Inquisition fell I turned assassin and killed a bunch of people," but they'll only be remembering that in the dream this fact was true; they won't remember a years-long period in which they became an assassin, the assassin skills they supposedly learned, or the act of killing those people.

As is the manner of dreams, memories may be fuzzy or disjointed, and some things may stick in the mind more clearly and vividly than others. Anyone who interacts with the Herald spirit (or witnesses others doing so) will find these memories particularly clear and strong.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Actually getting a look at the thing in his chest doesn't really sway her prognosis one way or the other. It looks bad and they're going to need an archanist at least. Or maybe a tranquil...

And then he's awake, which makes things a little easier. "Not yet," she says, because it isn't, "Can you stand?"

"Sure."

Then Tony looks down, at the mess that is magical poisoning, at the exposed glow of lyrium, at his nips suffering in the cold, and he hisses out some kind of cuss as he goes to close up his shirt which was definitely not an open kind of dealio when he put it on

days ago, probably. The going is clumsy, and there is snow all over his hands, and it's the worst. Squinching his eyes closed, Tony sits up, but doesn't get further than that, arms folding tight around his torso and legs splayed broken doll style in the snow in front of him. His butt is now freezing. He is in no hurry as black and light spots burst in his vision.

"That was my good shirt." It was a very bad shirt.

"I'll stitch it back up for you," she says, bracing her hands against his shoulders so he doesn't flop back over, "And find you proper gloves while I'm at it. But I'm more concerned about the chunk of lyrium you seem to have imbedded in your chest. And the bit where you collapsed in the snow."

"'s actually a lyrium-infused Fade quartz?" Tony says, still keeping his eyes closed tightly. Sawbones will feel the faint pressure of his reliance on her hold, and he goes and grabs a handful of snow to pack into his mitten-clad palms. "Replacing a refined lyrium core. It's got a side effect or seven."

Fumf goes the snow directly onto his face, the startling cold of it doing something to slice through the fuzziness.

He tosses the excess aside, sniffing loudly.

"The collapsing's a concern," he grants. "More of a swoon."

"If it ain't properly refined, it's no wonder you're falling all over," she says, sighing. She'll stay where she is, a sturdy little lump of grumpy determination.

"What's it do?" Because there is a rather large thread of curiosity running it's way through professional concern.

He's been asked this before. He remembers a teenage girl from Riftwatch demanding answer, and Wysteria Poppell sitting across from him, leaning in close and eyes bright, and he remembers these things a lot more vividly than his haunted impressions of Venatori figures twisting the answers out of him far less charmingly. Probably for the best.

Weird, though.

It doesn't feel like a secret, in this moment, and Tony says, "It powers an enchantment," breathes in, breathes out, "that stops shrapnel fragments in my chest from shredding my heart. We were going to Orzammer to replace the core but," wheeze, "hit a wrong turn, I guess."

"All right." She takes a breath of her own. "The only thing I know about enchantments is fucking around with them is a great way to get blown up. How long you reckon you have?"

In the best case scenario, they're days away from Orzammar. And that's if the travel doesn't get bogged down. If they can even get off this bloody mountain and away from whatever force is drawing them forwards.

"You know, depends."

He is beginning to shiver, and he sets his heels in the snow like he's thinking about getting to his feet.

"Either the blood poisoning thing'll take me out, or the core will run down and de-activate the enchantment, and I probably got a week on the clock on that one. I'm an optimist."

There was a time when Tony would not so easily rattle all this out for Sister Sara's benefit, or anyone. The time has since expired. (Get it, because he is? Anyway.)

"And I don't have what I would need to treat blood poisonings." Which is also optimistic, treating blood poisoning under the best circumstances was tricky.

"Right. Lean back against my hands and push up, try to get your arm around that tree over there." She nudges his shoulder in the direction of a scrawny pine near them. "We're going to need a mage who knows spirit healing and a cart, but let's get you out of the snow first."

"I trust you completely," is wheezed out.

Snow shivers off the pine as Tony uses dwarf and tree both to get to his feet, head swimming and muscles on fire. He squeezes his eyes shut at the next series of black spots in his vision, shaking his head, before straightening his back. He looks at the bundle of wood he'd been dragging in like he's never seen it before.

That's better, anyway. Butt out of snow. "If you see a blonde lady with extreme small dog energy and the second most handsome man here any time soon, you don't have to tell them about this little episode, how's that sound."

"It sounds like a load of nugshit," Sawbones says, turning to dig around in the snow once Tony is leaning on the pine. "Hate to say, salrocka, but where you are, it won't make a difference what I tell them. You look exactly as bad as you feel."

She pops out of the snow with a long stick in hand. "Here we are. Try putting your weight on this, see if it holds."

It too short to be a good walking stick, but then so was Sawbones. As long as she could get him close enough to the camp to find a cot and a fire, they'd be closer to keeping him alive for a little bit longer.

MOD PLOT ↠ The Darkest Realms of Dream, Part II

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