scouting mission: opening doors.

[glandival]

WHO: Aenor Dinadhal, Caric Van Kassel, Ellis, Sabine, Vanadi de Vadarta, Vance Digiorno
WHAT: The gang are sent on a mission to the Anderfels to retrieve an eluvian from a lake and install it in Hossberg.
WHEN: Drakonis
WHERE: Hossberg, the Anderfels
NOTES: TBA

Comments

part two; installing the eluvian.

[glandival]

The team will need to do the legwork to find a good place in Hossberg to install the eluvian. This place should be somewhere that people can come and go from without drawing much attention, able to be secured in their absence, unlikely to interest either the authorities or thieves, and able to be obtained for free somehow or for a reasonable price from a seller or landlord who isn't likely to ask questions or drop by in the future. It will be up to the team to figure out the specific type of premises they want to look for, get into the city, and find and secure such a place. You'll need to include in your final report info about where they decided to stash the eluvian, which will be used for future missions.

Traveling to Hossberg, whether by riverboat or by road, will involve an overnight journey. How they acquire the means of transport (and how tough that is) is, again, up to you. The countryside here is more densely populated than most anywhere else in the Anderfels, but it's still small towns and farmland. They may pass military units marching to or from the city, and there is a sparse Warden guard presence on the roads, but they appear concerned with bandits and darkspawn, not stopping normal-looking travelers.

Hossberg is walled and the gates are guarded by Wardens who inspect wagons and ask anyone entering questions about who they are, where they're from, and what their business is. Healthy-looking men of military age (basically anyone not a child or elderly) will likely be questioned more closely about their military service and especially about why they're not currently serving. There's no identification papers, travel permits, or passwords of the day or anything like that, but they will need to be careful not to give the guards any reason to be suspicious or to want to hassle them. When they bring the eluvian they'll need to either have found a way to conceal it from the guards' search, or have identified some other way to get past the guards—bribery is risky, but not impossible, especially if they've done some work beforehand to pick out a soft target.

Inside Hossberg, life seems to continue more or less as normal. There's no significant military presence or trappings of Tevinter rule—it doesn't feel like an occupied city. Two things will stand out: first, there is a noticeably high ratio of women to men and military-aged men with no visible injuries are rare enough that they might receive dirty and/or suspicious looks from locals. Second, there are too many Wardens on the streets, more than would be expected even if all the Wardens in the invading army had returned. They will also come upon criers and posters encouraging citizens to volunteer to join the Wardens—there's a recruitment drive in progress, and it looks like it's been pretty successful so far.

There are also a few signs that all is not as peaceful as it appears. They may spot signs of a local resistance to Tevinter rule if they go looking, mostly in the form of wanted posters and occasional graffiti, which most often takes the form of dead crowned griffons, quotes from the Chant (particularly those that are in some way derogatory of Tevinter/magisters/mages), or the arms of House Augustin, the former ruling family deposed by the Warden coup.

The biggest potential hazards they'll face in the city are being spotted as foreigners without a very good explanation for why they're there, which may draw suspicion from the authorities, and being forcibly conscripted. Press-ganging is apparently alive and well in Hossberg, though it's still relatively discreet and tends to happen to foreigners and visitors from outside the city unlikely to be immediately missed. Men are more likely to get snatched up than women, but there are equal opportunity gangs too.