faderift | MOD PLOT ↠ Endlessly Far Beneath My Feet

MOD PLOT ↠ Endlessly Far Beneath My Feet

WHO: Open
WHAT: A visit to Orzammar
WHEN: For about 10 days in early Bloomingtide
WHERE: Orzammar
NOTES: OOC post. Please use content warnings in your comment subject lines as required.

Orzammar is not all that far from Kirkwall: a short trip across the Waking Sea to Jader, then an even shorter (though much more exhausting than it seemed in dreams) hike up into the Frostback mountains brings them to the great stone doors that stand between Orzammar and the surface. Once those doors creak and groan shut in their wake—and the next set of doors, too, designed like a waterlock to keep the sky from reaching the city—it is no easy thing to open them again. No one's going to see the sun until they leave.

The great thaig within the mountains is much warmer than the chilly pass through them, thanks to the molten lake beneath it, which also keeps many of the open streets at least dimly lit 24 hours per day, until they wander off further than the glow can reach. The thaig is magnificent, brimming with distinctive angular architecture and statues honoring dwarven Paragons and ancestors. It's also sprawling. Despite giving the deceptive impression at the entrance of a hollow dome that can be taken in with a single look around, the thaig is home to one hundred thousand dwarves, give or take a few thousand. And that's with a dwindling population. It was built for even more. Buildings with narrow facades burrow and wind deep into the stone behind them. So do side streets that branch away from the Commons at every level. Most of them are lyrium-lit and safe to travel. But given the absence of any sun or moon, the way they ascend and descend and loop through the rock, they can be very disorienting to navigate without stone sense.

Among the locals on the street there's a lingering, palpable sense of relief that the worst seems to have passed, so far as the darkspawn at Orzammar's doors is concerned. It's put most people in a particularly good mood, and made them a bit more disposed than usual to treat the influx of visitors from above as an entertaining novelty. That won't stop the occasional dwarf from being suspicious of outsiders here to interfere with the Assembly or bitter that they want something when Orzammar never asked them for help, but friendly interest will be more common by far.

ACCOMMODATIONS

Riftwatch's Division Heads and Project Leaders will be the personal guests of House Bemot and put up in the house's sprawling, mazelike estate in the Diamond Quarter. The residence is brimming with artwork: statues of the house's prominent ancestors, dazzling stonework on columns and doorways, mosaics on the floors, and art both dwarven and imported lining the walls. They're given private rooms—many far from each other, down different turning corridors carved back into the stone—with large beds and hot water piped up from nearer to Orzammar's molten depths. The rooms are nice but don't mistake this for only an unfair perk; there are servants listening and marking their comings and goings at all times.

Since visitors from the surface are much rarer and their stays usually as short as possible, Orzammar is minimally equipped for large swells of visitors, so the rest of Riftwatch's personnel will be packed into one of two inns located in the tier of the Commons where merchants and other surface-dwellers typically reside when they're permitted access to the thaig.

The Paragon's Rest is the nicer of the two. Two ages ago it was the grand home of a prominent merchant house that has since died out; its name comes from the fact that two (two!) paragons have stayed there since the time it was converted into an inn. It boasts a modest number of small, private rooms and shared rooms with artful dividers, all with stone walls that have been carved with intricate geometric patterns. Meals and drinks are available in an expansive hall where local well-to-do merchants frequently play Diamondback and make expensive deals. The inn's position near the gates and something about the design and directions of the corridors minimizes the heat from Orzammar's molten center and even allows for a breeze to reach the common areas now and then.

Unfortunately, the Paragon's Rest doesn't have room for everyone, and the Buttered Nug is less pleasant. The inn was more recently a shop with expansive back storage for its inventory. The shop is now a cramped, sweaty tavern room, where no matter the hour a nug is always roasting—and constantly being basted with butter—over the fire, while more nugs snuffle in a holding pen in a corner, awaiting their doom. The proprietor tries to encourage everyone who passes through to have a plate. It's his grandmother's recipe. You're going to love it. The diners and residents are mostly merchants of the struggling and/or shady variety. The former storage rooms are unadorned, nearly more cavern than room, and large enough to be shared by large numbers of people, with stone lattice-work dividers between beds that provide very little actual privacy. Choosing the room deeper into the stone will make the temperature less sweltering but significantly increase the number of spiders in your bed.

Fortunately, no one has to do more than sleep there if they don't want to. And maybe try just one plate of grandma's buttered nug?

WORK

Riftwatch's primary objectives in Orzammar are sharing information about the war and making a good impression. While speaking to the Assembly might be the centerpiece of those efforts, it's not the extent of them. The noble caste may sit at the top of the dwarven hierarchy, but they're not the only ones with sway or useful resources and nudging public opinion more generally could have its benefits.

There are some specific ways Riftwatch can make itself visibly useful to Orzammar, to help counter the argument that the surface is asking for help without being willing to provide any in return. Assisting with red lyrium removal, installing cleansing runes, and teaching members of the mining caste how to do both for themselves will be priorities. And while the enemy's retreat to the north has lessened the pressure on the thaig, Orzammar lives in constant fear of darkspawn all the same. Riftwatch members suited for combat will be assigned shifts with the dwarven troops on patrol in the near sectors of the Deep Roads or standing watch at the great doors that block off the ancient tunnels.

Meetings with various members of the middle-rank castes (warrior, smith, artisan, mining, merchant) have been arranged and assigned, some with an explicit focus on discussing the war effort and providing information about what Riftwatch has learned and experienced, while others are focused on building trade connections or exploring potential opportunities to collaborate on research—and if opportunities to tell them more about the war effort in the process just happen to arise, all the better. These castes span a wide swathe of dwarven society between nobles and servants, and the meetings will reflect that, ranging from elaborate dinner parties with merchants as wealthy as any lord to casual chats over a pint with a busy blacksmith in a lower-tier tavern. Reactions will also vary, but most are interested in hearing what Riftwatch has to say, even if they're not necessarily disposed to agree. Nearly all visitors to Orzammar are merchants, and having access to this many surfacers and non-dwarves is a novelty.

Members of the Shaperate will take a more pointed and professional interest in their work. Shapers may set up appointments to talk to anyone who's able to speak about their experiences in the war so far, taking copious notes. (On paper. You're not special enough to go straight into the Memories.)

For everyone Riftwatch set a meeting with there are ten more they didn't, so a major part of the company's work in the city will be cultivating more casual interactions and both gathering and dispensing information that way. Someone might be assigned to frequent a particular tavern popular with Warriors and make connections there and find opportunities to discuss what's going on above. Someone else might be asked to drop in on a series of armorers and try to get a sense of current prices, how busy they are, and where most of their stock is being sold. Other assignments might be even more general--spend time in this cafe, or at the nug races, or chatting up merchants in this sector of the market, and see what conversations you can strike up or overhear. Talking folks into support for the war effort is great, but any generally positive interaction counts at this point, so Riftwatch members will be encouraged to pitch in wherever they see help needed, but also to be careful not to get entangled in controversy.

To coordinate all of this work, Riftwatch will have command of a private dining room in the Paragon's Rest to use as a meeting room, where everyone can come back to report, regroup, and strategize after a meeting or outing.

LEISURE

Anyone who finds themselves with downtime will also not have trouble finding things to fill it with. The Commons is lined with merchant stalls selling street food and a wide variety of fine dwarven crafts: metal goods ranging from knives to toys, clothing and bags covered in carefully placed little beads, intricate jewelry, and mechanical and enchanted inventions rarely seen on the surface. There's also an artisan who will hammer your likeness into a sheet of metal while you wait. It's all cheaper than it would be in an above-ground marketplace, as long as you're willing to haggle. Shops and smithies built into the stone sell weapons and armor—or do custom work, though getting anything completed before Riftwatch leaves Orzammar will require paying a premium.

The centerpiece of the Orzammar Commons in the Proving Arena. Currently there are no ongoing provings, but there are warriors and aspirants hanging around the surrounding areas to practice and posture. They might invite a competent-looking newcomer to spar.

An alternative to violence is nug racing, where hungry, specially-bred nugs are painted with house symbols and raced through open-topped tunnels, dug into the ground to allow spectating from above. With little happening in the Proving arena at the moment, this is the more popular spectator event in Orzammar, drawing observers from every caste to cheer and gamble on the outcomes of a series of bracketed races. House Etoras' Deep Fried (called Fred) is favored to win, but House Aratack's Hops & Grain (Hoppy) isn't a bad bet, and Keltar's Perfect Baby (Baby) might pull off an upset.

And there is also, of course, an enormous pit of lava below the Commons. (This is not deadly somehow. We don't know.) A favorite game of some of the local children is collecting trash and inviting newcomers to guess or wager on which items will burst into flames before they hit the lava and which will not. These demonstrations usually end by either a fake attempt to toss a friend over the edge as the final object, or a gleeful (and disprovable) explanation that this is why no one in Orzammar is ever found murdered. They only vanish. Fun!

If they'd like to explore beyond the Commons and the Diamond Quarter, no one will actively prevent Riftwatch members from venturing into Dust Town, the dilapidated sector of the city where the casteless live and the Carta rules. Outsiders might even be able to stumble into the area without realizing it, if they get turned around in some of the narrower back streets carved through the rock. But however they arrive, visitors to Dust Town are unlikely to make it very far without running into trouble.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

( peace is debatable, but the last time they talked,

which was the second time they had talked,

all right, it hadn't gone great, but frankly gwenaëlle has had worse interactions and she knows for a fact he sought out alexandrie afterwards so he isn't a total waste and occasionally she has found it useful, when avoiding company, to have company other people might also avoid.

probably won't work that well on riftwatch, generally, who as a group fucking love weirdos (birds of a feather, and all that, and she includes herself among them even if she prefers not to do it explicitly or out loud too often); will serve for the locals, she reckons. she announces herself into his moment of zen by balling up a fist and rapping her knuckles sharply on the back of his plate, which is rude as hell but not even in her top ten. )

Move over.

( he literally doesn't have to, she's already sitting down next to him. she takes up so much less space than she sounds like she will, over the crystals; the voice is impossible to mistake but the woman it's attached to is small and sleek, in leather so dark green it looks mostly black except the way it shines in the warm, dim light. she would not look out of place among particularly stylish pirates, her hair braided down her back and on her person what look like the start of a comedy routine about someone removing knives from their person. a strange gauntlet that her anchor-shard glimmers through, and a matching glove on the other hand. she is also wearing small, thin, gold-rimmed reading glasses, although she's in the process of taking them off and attaching them to a chain on her vest and tucking them within. )

Feel free not to talk, we don't have to make this weird.

Edited (im sorry i then caught a typo and died inside) 2021-05-11 10:35 (UTC)

[She makes herself so difficult to abide. Every action an intrusion, her words coarse-cut, and it drags out a throaty brand of snarling irritation in the base of his throat as she trespasses upon shadowed silence— but for the same reason she applies her claws delicately, he too keeps his own fangs withdrawn: Alexandrie is the counterbalance to them both. Gwen’s advice had been sure, even generous compared to what it could have been otherwise. He owes her much for that.

And so he moves aside, though only just.]

There is an entire cavernous deep in which you might not make this weird, Lady Gwenaëlle.

( there was enough space for her if he hadn't; there was, as he says, an entire cavernous deep, a phrase she immediately likes. what she actually says is, )

Madame Baudin, ( matter of factly. ) Is my name. You're being legally inappropriate and overly familiar.

( probably the most important thing they could be discussing, for sure. )

Because you are so committed to propriety, Madame Baudin.

[Derisiveness slithers into his tone at her correction, his own heavy helm twisting to finally glance her way over the steep, protective rise of his own pauldron. And yet—

Well, there's no follow up to it. He considers her for a beat, held silent as distant noise fills empty space around them— and then he turns back to the matter of surveying those myriad glinting lights in the dark, his shoulders rounded, arms slung across his legs, not at all defensive.]

( very mildly, )

If you want to call me Gwenaëlle, you aren't butchering it, you can. I sort of assumed you were doing it out of some kind of misguided formality, though, in which case you probably want to get it right.

( it could be he's just one of those m'lady guys, though. is it clear that the scrutinizing look she's giving his helm is trying to assess that? impossible to tell through the armor. )

That seems more your style than just being rude to me on purpose. Accidentally, sure, but you seem to care about propriety.

...you are correct enough.

[Enough because he won’t bring himself to admit her such an assumptively decisive win.

So that, at least, concludes the whole of that subject with little flourish or fanfare. Her seated beside him, he beside her, and the whole of that earthen emptiness framing the strangeness of them both where they sit in idle observation.]

You do not look as I had imagined.

( now, a lot of the things that come out of gwenaëlle's mouth really just ... fall out of her mouth, these pearls of inadvertent wisdom or appallingly inappropriate thoughts she didn't censor when she should have. it is, he'll come to see, mostly just how she communicates. like this. all the fucking time.

but there is definitely a deliberate choice being made when she nods, wisely, and says: )

I am very pretty.

( yes, she does think she's hilarious, thanks for asking. )

Yet no finery adorns you.

Your clothing hardly suits a woman that keeps company with the likes of Alexandrie d’Asgard.

[Just saying.]

( she laughs, and it's sharp but the edges seem more inherent than pointedly aimed, )

We get paid the same, Gabranth, I know you can't afford what I'm wearing. Which are, and I can see you should know the distinction, work clothes.

( she isn't currently aware he literally only wears the armor, but even still he must surely know that's super weird. )

You think Lexie was wearing a court presentation gown next to me when we were killing slavers? I know you know you and I are in the same division.

Edited 2021-05-12 00:34 (UTC)

I know I see no slavers here, nor bloodied combat. [It’s a toothless concession, he isn’t of a mind to set his jaws to much of anything at the moment, worn thin from more than just lack of sleep.]

Still, it does suit you, Madame Baudin.

I know.

( her look is tight as fuck, gabranth, thanks for noticing.

she bumps her shoulder into the side of him. presumably something clanks. )

Just for a second, picture Flint's face if I showed up for field work in full petticoats. You should have seen his face when he saw the Satinalia costume I was wearing when we had to fight the undead in Nevarra City.

[He grumbles like a dog disturbed when she presses against him, pure grousing with no spine, no backbone— gone the instant she withdraws.]

Flint is— yes. I suppose he would.

[A low second or two of lingering pause; if he regarded her more respectfully he would leave her the quiet calm of this without any further interjection. As it is, he finds this balance suits them, and so instead adds:]

Why did you choose to align yourself with Forces?

( it seemed, for a moment, that she was preparing to explain it,

and then she breathed out, laughed. )

A long story you aren't interested in. ( not really. she's a curiosity to him, she thinks, which is well and good but hardly something she's of a mind to exert herself on behalf of. )

It was what made sense at the time I was choosing. Probably get me killed, ( philosophically, ) but the anchor-shard will do that eventually anyway.

Wysteria did mention there was possibility it need be cut off. [The wording in that questionnaire had been so peculiar at the time: amputation over such a small glimmer of magic, with useful application by his own understanding.

Now, with a little more time tucked beneath his belt, he grasps the meaning more fully.]

There was an elf who got hers in the chest, years back. She didn't last long.

( and it's a lot harder to amputate someone's fucking chest cavity than their hand, no matter how much of the arm has to go with it. )

...that is...

[He need not say it, the misfortune is obvious, and he leaves it where it lies in silence wreathed around them, his gauntleted hands resting idly in his lap.

For a moment, that is all that remains. Empty space, unspoken words, before his throaty voice reaches to share a rare truth, unusually soft in cadence, and held with care like broken glass:]

It is not so terrible in truth, death. Though few know this well enough to speak of it.

( there is something about the way she says, )

I know,

( that is assertion, more than agreement. she knows death well; better than she should, better than she might, and since long before luwenna coupe put a knife in her hand and lived to regret it.

it seems that maybe that's all she's going to say. eventually, )

Death is just what happens at the end of life. It is what it is.

There is yet more.

[Still retaining that care in his cadence, he watches her peripherally: just where the edge of his helm fades deeply into shadow.]

It is not a single, definitive finish.

If you start proselytizing,

( in a tone of friendly warning, )

I'm going to hit the back of your armor so hard with the pommel of my sword you can hear bells ringing next week.

No.

[It isn’t a chuckle, but by his own standards perhaps near enough.]

Only that I am the aftermath of my own death, and deaths beyond that, and that I have walked enough of the veil between worlds to know of what I speak.

( gwenaëlle pushes herself to her feet, and raps her knuckles on the back of his helmet. )

Neat.

( there are a lot of different things she might have said — some more or less productive. some commentary on the (many) deaths that she has been intimately close to, either as their cause or at their side. some more glib remark on how close they are to the deep roads, and what ghoulish things await anyone unfortunate enough to die that way. a rumination on rifters—

but neat is all she finds she has the energy for. )

Don't fall into a lava pit. If you're going to die again around here, try and do it in a fun way and leave enough of yourself so we can take the helmet off after and get a load of your moustache.

( he definitely, for sure, has a moustache and she's going to arbitrarily die on that hill until such time as he proves definitively, empirically otherwise. )

Bye, Gabranth.

Gwenaëlle—

[No, despite his own rise to his feet in the aftermath of her abrupt dismissal, he has far too little to say that would not amount to simple, childish refusal of her claims: pointless, useless, a weakening of his stance and not worth the effort.

He had thought they might find some strange, yet unearthed common ground here.

Instead he finds her more vexing than ever, and contents himself with sitting once more in now-uneasy stillness, wrapped thick as a cloak across his bearing.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

MOD PLOT ↠ Endlessly Far Beneath My Feet

leisure.

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