Fade Rift Mods (
faderifting) wrote in
faderift2021-01-19 10:45 pm
Entry tags:
- ! mod plot,
- bastien,
- benedict quintus artemaeus,
- byerly rutyer,
- derrica,
- edgard,
- ellis,
- isaac,
- james flint,
- john silver,
- julius,
- marcus rowntree,
- obeisance barrow,
- petrana de cedoux,
- val de foncé,
- wysteria de foncé,
- { colin },
- { dorian pavus },
- { erik stevens },
- { james holden },
- { joselyn smythe },
- { laura kint },
- { mado },
- { richard dickerson },
- { sister sara sawbones },
- { thranduil },
- { tony stark },
- { vance digiorno }
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.
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.

no subject
Presumably he should say something after having been seated, but he watches Richard pull on his boots instead while he attempts to order his thoughts. Ellis knows through experience Richard isn't given to filling a silence. He's been gone for years, but Ellis doesn't expect to find that much changed in his absence.
"Tony is dying," he says, as Richard finishes with his laces. The words feel abrupt after the quiet, and it doesn't bring any particular sense of relief. Ellis has not said this aloud, though the truth has been clear to him since Tony had collapsed and taken to his bear skin.
Maybe if Richard had arrived to Haven in better condition, Ellis might have followed this with some specific entreaty. But it's a lot to ask of a friend after having been absent for five years. This already feels like an imposition, dragging the wreck of himself into Richard's presence.
no subject
There’s a strange tilt to his ear at the news, his composure nudged out of step for the wrong reasons. Critical mission failure.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” he hears himself say, in much the same way he says anything, mild in his support.
He flexes his hands in the cold, and folds them together, rubbing circulation up past the anchor shard fractured into his wrist, into buzzing joints. If Sawbones is correct, it won’t really matter. Serrah Stark will wake up no worse for wear, apart from whatever psychological trauma accompanies uncommonly realistic dream suffering.
“Before this goes any further, you should know that I passed information on their movements to the Resistance with the hope that they would be slain.” In the interest of full disclosure. He looks over again for the first time since Ellis has sat, matter-of-fact. And wary. His reflexes are as roughshod as the rest of him.
“Is it something a Healer could attend to?"
https://media.tenor.com/images/42a1cf5be0fbb3db851c99e5cd5787ab/tenor.gif
It is at least straightforward. Richard distills the betrayal into a single, simple sentence. Yes, it lands like a bludgeon, but at least it is not drawn out beyond that.
Ellis draws in a very deep breath, posture straightening as his hands flex over his knees. Heat gathers at the nape of his neck, anger muddling through the haze of misery he'd carried from Tony's bedside and the lingering relief of finding Richard more or less in one piece.
"Why?"
https://i.imgur.com/EpAso.gif
Silas watches the color rise in his neck and successfully stifles a shiver.
“Because their creations were poisoning this world and hurting its people. And because they are valuable enough to be aggressively pursued by the Venatori even if the Resistance didn’t lack the resources necessary to mount a rescue.”
It’s all very logical, really. Grey morning light through the door feels like affirmation before he looks away from it to a trunk of supplies nearby, his bag on its side. There’s more of a case to be made, parallels to draw.
He waits for Ellis to decide on his own.
no subject
It's worse, in some ways, to consider the decision at a distance and know it to be the right one.
His hands lift. It is a careful, deliberate motion to begin working the cold from the stiff, bent fingers of his left hand as he breathes past the waves of anger, the rising thud of his heartbeat. (He is thinking of blood on sand, the wet choking sound of dying Wardens. His own sins.) Richard did not do this alone, Ellis knows. Someone above him made a decision, and Richard gave them what they needed to make it possible. But he still cannot bring himself to look at him.
"Do you regret it?"
no subject
He can sense the pounding without feeling it outright, radiating heat.
Ellis doesn’t look at him. There is a network of scars etched up from the leading crack of his shard for him to study instead, up to the point they vanish under the edge of his sleeve, and he glances over to check.
no subject
Not so long ago, he had pulled the bear skin more securely up over Tony's chest. He'd pulled the quilt higher around Wysteria's shoulders. Maybe he ought not have left their company.
"They deserved better than that."
Which is not a contradiction of Richard's calculation. The equation stands. Ellis comes out with the same answer if he input any other two names. He loves them. It muddles the outcome.
"Do they forgive you?"
Wait.
"Should they forgive you?"
no subject
“I’m poorly equipped to gauge.”
He kicks up a brow, and shifts back from the bag to his own hands in unconscious mirror. When has his life ever been fair? Humans are the ones obsessed with the cosmic value of what anyone deserves. Humans and elves and dwarves and megalomaniacal darkspawn. The bones in his hands are finer, fewer of them broken, dry blood black under the nails. He’s missing a pair of joints off the ends on the shard hand, calluses firm where a pen would rest on the other.
“I won’t ask them to.”
no subject
The clean burn of anger mixes with exhaustion. There is nowhere to direct it, just as there is nowhere to vent his grief and his guilt. It sits in his chest, crushing breath from his lungs. He watches Richard silently for a long time, digging one thumb into the pads of his palm until the ache of it becomes unbearable.
"He's going to die," Ellis says finally, voice gone so flat it can be nothing other than the by-product of carefully smothering the anger and anguish from his tone. Something catches at the end of that sentence, an almost accusation, a cruelty that Ellis doesn't give voice to.
"Is Wysteria in danger?
no subject
Softer consideration has pulled slowly in from the surface, carving resentment in close to the bones of his face. It’s a brief and unspecific breed of unhappiness, and it too withdraws into mollusky depths in a pinch at his brow and a sticky roll at his adam’s apple. Natural neutrality remains.
Silas lets it set a moment to be sure.
“Not anymore.”
He is firm enough in his assurance to look over when he says it.
no subject
"I can't pretend I wouldn't have made the same decision. I have made the same decision, in the past."
This is a kindness, even if Richard cannot name Ellis' sins. Ellis can dredge up this admission because of who Richard is to him, all the kindness he's shown Ellis in the course of their acquaintance. Richard deserves this truth: Ellis' anger is not so righteous. It is a selfish, bitter thing.
"But I don't know if I can forgive you for it. Or if it's even my place to be angry."
And he can't walk himself back to Tony's bedside and ask him and Wysteria whether or not they plan on holding a grudge. It doesn't matter just now.
no subject
The demons, darkspawn and dragons they’re bound to encounter operate on their own terms.
But that’s out there.
In here, Silas nods along in mild support of I don’t know ifs, little in the way of direction offered one way or another. There’s give to it, passive acceptance of whatever feeling lives in Ellis’ warm mammal brain. If he’d intended to mount a more rigorous defense for himself, he probably would’ve led with it.
As admissions go, the one given didn’t run up on any surprise. Either he’s made some very specific deductions through their time together, or he’s assumed all Wardens capable of following through on a particular type of math problem.
no subject
They're too far. Tony is too sick. There's nothing to do but wait, and then build a pyre.
He reminds himself of his body, rooted here in this moment. The dull ache in his hands, the rise and fall of his chest as he draws breath, the edge of the cot pressed against the back of his knees. Ellis looks back at Richard without any expectation of a contradiction. None of them are capable of performing miracles.
no subject
Touching Ellis feels ill-advised. There is an unsure parting of his hands, only for them to fit themselves together again upon second thought.
“Wysteria has theorized Rifters are formed from the dreams of our real selves, projected, perhaps, through some overlap in the Fade between planes.” Now hardly seems the time to explain that this is secondhand information, patched over from James Holden’s third party retelling. “It would mean he is likely to suffer here for a time as he passes, only for the real Tony Stark to wake up unharmed in his own bed on the other side of the Fade. Lost to you, but not to himself.”
no subject
Even if he doesn't necessarily disagree with the theory, it is hard for it to do anything more than knife up against old wounds.
"I don't know if that will bring either of them any comfort."
Under different circumstances, it might have lit the pair of them up to turn over a theory. Ellis doesn't remember this particular one coming up, but he was locked away beneath the ground for a very long time. Life had gone on without him.
"Whether or not it's true, he'll still be gone," Ellis says, head tipped up towards the ceiling. The sky is visible through broken patches of stone. The old, raw refrain goes unspoken: I'll still be here.
no subject
Gods know Richard Dickerson did the math quickly upon his arrival.
This is probably not actually very reassuring to consider. He rises to his feet also -- more slowly, hitched stiff with pain. He’s a wearier counterweight to restless movement, his own energy levels somewhere between tree stump and coat thrown over a chair.
“He will,” he agrees, “but the rest of the world will still be fighting.”
And dying.
“Sister Sara and I can coordinate the arrangements, when the time comes. Or otherwise assist, if you prefer to take the lead.”
no subject
He is so tired of being the one who survives.
"You should sit back down," Ellis says, a little absently, looking down from the hole-speckled ceiling to Richard, then away. He cannot get his voice around a proper response to what Richard has offered. He doesn't know how to ask Tony what he wants, and he certainly isn't going to make that attempt in front of Wysteria.
"I've built pyres," comes with a lifting of hands, Ellis' body half-turning towards the shuttered window. "But I've never been able to do it when it mattered, when I should have. I can't—I should be the one to take care of him now."
It's about Tony, but it's also about everyone else, all the ghosts crowding at the edges of his vision now. Whenever it matters, Ellis has come up short and other people suffer for it. Wysteria and Tony fall in among a long line of people Ellis has failed. Being there at the end doesn't lift away what he'd been absent for, what he might have prevented had he not been trapped so far below the ground.
no subject
Just worn out.
I can’t, I should.
“Alright.”
It would be on brand for Stark to assert in jest that Ellis should cut and artisanally shape each piece of wood himself, given time to write out a list of demands. So long as no one thinks to provide him with a pen, there’s nothing to prevent Sara from bullying others around camp into heavy labor -- he is still and quiet as the stonework around them while he makes mental notes on the degree of subversion they’re likely to get away with.
And the longer this goes on, while he’s gambling anyway, he ventures a level:
“What else is bothering you?”
Apart from his specific betrayal and the imminence of death. His eyes, as ever, are bright in the sickly shamble of the rest of him, expectant of an answer.
natural 1 means richard wins a prize
I'd rather not talk about things like that, he'd told Wysteria once. But the question posed then hadn't caught him the same way. This feels like a hammer brought down over splintering stone.
"I'm alive," is a whipcrack statement, blunt to the point of discouraging any further discussion. It's broad and simplistic, but it covers enough ground so as to be overwhelmingly true in this moment. He is alive and he is tired of it. His hands come up to scrub at his face, obscure the aftershock of having said such a thing aloud. Even if Richard doesn't parse the full meaning of it, it's still been said.
"I'm tired," comes almost as a correction, meant to obscure rather than clarify, muffled before Ellis takes his hands from his face. "And none is this your burden to carry."
no subject
There is a beat where Dick can’t be sure he’s heard correctly -- his brow hoods and his focus whets sharp. And in that moment of rapid reassessment, it’s clear at a glance that no amount of correction or obfuscation is putting that cat back in a bag.
"I am still a cleric -- ostensibly -- " his voice slants low into fleeting self-shade, "so I think that it might be."
His own floor has fallen out, the burden of self-loathing shrugged aside in his startled grab for actionable experience, human or otherwise.
"You do know that if there was some way for you to trade places, he would almost certainly deny you the satisfaction." Laughably, given how hard he and Poppell had evidently clung to the teet of life in Venatori care. But that's a bone he can pick with Tony himself in the waking world, provided they ever return to it.
no subject
Ellis has turned, paced the length of the room and half-turned back.
"I know," is easy enough. Richard is not telling Ellis something he doesn't know, and it is an impossibility regardless. There are no exchanges. Ellis knows that. (He has known that for a long time.)
"You don't need to minister to me," is necessity. The excuse goes unspoken: I am tired and misspoke. "There is nothing about this that can be changed. I didn't come here thinking you would perform a miracle for me."
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/c1/6d/e9/c16de91f978bae987768072c940a197c.gif
Silas flounders a moment in a wash of detached derision directed inwards. Thinking, as he’s dragged in the sand and the foam. What’s the point of dreaming communally if you only use it to unravel everything you’ve worked for, what’s the point of being human if you can’t appeal to another human in crisis.
A twinge of broken glass ire for his own wasted effort pinches late at his brow. Minister. Honestly.
He sits down, at least, hands pushed idle into his lap.
Even the words I want to help you are selfishly weighted. So he sits and is quiet, breath steaming faintly while he packs anxiety away. That he watches Ellis all the while makes it less effective as a courtesy, in the same way that a dog staring at your dinner from across the room is only polite against the alternative approach of jumping up onto the table.
https://i.ibb.co/qCFTwbW/dogs5altalt.png
How long can they sit this way? Richard isn't compelled to fill the silence the way Wysteria or Tony might have been. For his part, Ellis circles around and around different apologies and denials until the spin themselves out into nothingness.
"Do you want me to go?" Ellis asks after a time, voice dipping quiet over what feels like a fair question. He isn't unaware that he's done Richard a disservice, but none of what's been said can be taken back.
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_D_Z-D2tzi14/TNjSBnZcKmI/AAAAAAAAED8/EAiTJlg6PAc/s280/dogs14altalt.png
“No,” Silas is quiet in exchange, “but you don’t have to stay.”
They don’t have to talk about it.
He’s far from qualified to argue for the sanctity of any one specific life, having killed or conspired to kill more friends than he’s saved over the past five years. Now they’re all here, huddled on the rocks of Haven.
“We must have been drawn here for a reason.”
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_D_Z-D2tzi14/TAWodn6GuUI/AAAAAAAADCE/9Sk2vgTBXmw/s320/texas13.png
If he takes a minute to try and examine the conflicting tangle of emotions around Richard, some of that peace would dissipate. So Ellis simply doesn't, lets the complications sit as he considers the bigger picture of their presence here. That's a difficult enough thing on it's own. His thumb rubs fretfully back and forth along the inside of his wrist as he draws in a deep breath.
"Aye, I hope so," he agrees, voice a little strained. "Or I dragged my friend up this mountain to die in the snow instead of going to Orzammar to get him what he needs."
Ellis is no mage, has little grasp of magic and less of mythical forces surrounding them. He can't guess at what they're meant to do. But he knows the stakes. He knows what they've cost, and it there's nothing—
Well.
"But I can't guess. And I can't ask Wysteria now. So we'll have to wait and see."
Or Richard can ask Wysteria for her theories. Maybe he'll be better received.
(no subject)
put a bow on this y/y