MOD PLOT ↠ Endlessly Far Beneath My Feet

[faderifting]

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.

Comments

[clawings]

"Shit," Erik says eloquently because he really was... slightly worried about how golems came to be, especially since Gwilid kinda dodged his vague questions about it and now he knows, and it's fucked up. Like. Severely fucked up. Also, he'd like to not have to physically outmaneuver freaking golems set to the chaos setting at this point, but he's not sure about Molvena — namely, what to do about her involvement in the theft that's happening elsewhere.

He looks at Silas because that's who he knows best, here, and then back to Molina. "Can we get a copy of that record?" You know. Just in case.

[revise]

With a great rumble of heavy things in motion, the golems under Molvena's command begin to move out of their lines and into the great underground compound's considerable courtyard which was previously dedicated to demonstrations of their considerable abilities. One of the golems takes hold a heavily laden wagon and begins to push it to block the exit of another adjacent building from which more backup might be expected to stream forth at any moment—

And Miriam, at the margins of the assembled Riftwatch agents with her mage staff hooked under her arm, is finally jolted out of her shocked silence by Erik's question.

"We can't just stand here."

Is a statement for the group at large, stated so broadly that it's as if she's dazed by the avalanche of information coming from their guide. And then Miriam's second hand closes about her hammer-ended mage's staff. She swings it at Molvena.

[muckspout]

Whether the statement was a decision or not, Edgard's not going to let someone attack on their own. He is instantly armed with his bow and sends a few arrows toward the golem with the wagon. He spins around assessing the area.

The rest of the team is looking at a piece of paper. He inhales with slight frustration.

"When the rest of you are done reading," He says measuredly. "We appear to have a situation."

[rezni]

The immediate calculation: this is a horrific practice set against the use of these—

No.

Miriam's staff swings and Nikolai turns immediately to try and push her off balance before she can make contact with Molvena.

Yes, they need some kind of evidence. Yes, they need to be seen doing something other than standing by in the middle of all this.

But surely that something isn't laying flat someone who is unspooling proof for them to make use of.

[nonvenomous]

We appear to -- Edgard is saying.

In a show of solidarity that follows too soon to have not already been in motion, Richard Dickerson pivots to crack his clipboard two-handed across Mariam’s face or ear or the top of her head with all his strength as she’s pushed towards him by Nikolai.

He is not, for the record, very strong.

[clawings]

Erik misses Mariam's movements, which are, in fairness, a bit eclipsed by the one-two combination of Nikolai and Richard rounding on her, and so he, being within reach of Molvena grabs the dwarven woman and pulls her towards him and away from the mage.

This is going to hell isn't it?

"Got it, Edgard. What is your goal, here?" This is said to Molvena, who looks at him like she thinks he might be politely insane. 'To keep the others safe while they take the records.'

[revise]

The twang of the bowstring is muted by the scrape of heavy stone things, and Molvena's heels as she's whipped back out of reach, and the crack of Miriam's hammer on the paving as the swinging line of her staff is knocked short, and the considerably sharper crack of the clipboard across her temple.

Bright pain blooms white hot before her eye. She staggers. Already a small woman, it puts her at considerable disadvantage should anyone else feel compelled to reach after her further as Miriam claps one hand senselessly to her face.

Or it would, were it not for the hot tang of ozone magic burn and the rapidly coalescing spark of frost that blooms over her person as if sucked there from the air—

"Edgard, stop her!"

[muckspout]

Edgard, who had been concentrating on the golems, instantly flips around as his name is called, sees Miriam's condition, ignores the golems, and instantly focuses aim on Molvena.

He takes a deep breath, straightens his posture, and once he's locked on her he shuts his eyes, releasing the arrow. He hears an arrow land and Molvena's shriek in response.

He opens his eyes.

[rezni]

Nikolai's objection comes first in a sharp, furious burst of Ravkan.

The control rod clatters as the bolt buries itself into Molvena's shoulder. Nikolai lunges for it, slapping Edgard's crossbow down as he goes.

"Are you completely brainless, or is that how you think someone turning to us for assistance in exposing an atrocity should be answered?" is snapped in trade, as much for Miriam as for Edgard.

But the second he has the control rod, Nikolai takes up Molvena's work directing the golems. If he's put himself into the space between Erik and Molvena and the rest of them, well—

He's trading on nothing but the idea that they aren't inclined to doing serious injury to each other in Riftwatch. More of a gamble than Zoya would appreciate him making, really.

[nonvenomous]

Dick Dickerson’s clipboard falls to clatter through his fingers as he whips around on the defensive in the middle of this mess, putting his back firmly to Erik and Molvena, Nikolai close at hand with the rod. His eyes are bright in the volcanic light, both hands raised at ready. Ready for what?

His notes have scattered at their feet.

“Are you that eager to murder a civilian on a mage’s orders?”

He’s speaking to Edgard in clipped Orlesian, presumably in the split second he has before Miriam turns him into an ice sculpture.

[revise]

Molvena's cry of pain snaps her attention up. For a split second from in the midst of her iced over form, the alarm is quite evident in Miriam's pale face. Still blinking the sight back into her one eye, she hesitates.

(A poor habit. It would be more effective if she could decide quickly between simply chasing the golems now, or plunging forward to try knocking Nikolai off his feet to wrest the control rod out of his hands, or— There is a fix to this, and maybe if she were studying the pieces on a board the answer would be more obvious.)

"Put it down, Nikolai, or I will make you put it down. If we're seen helping her—"

She doesn't speak Orlesian.

[clawings]

Erik understands more Orlesian than he speaks and so he catches the main drift of what Richard is saying. Fucked up but true; the dwarves don't have mages after all, and it's not like anyone else trusts them on the whole.

"If we're seen helping her we can explain ourselves! For one damned thing, she hasn't tried to kill anyone, unlike us at this moment, and if we fuckin' kill her how are we gonna explain that, huh? Fuck's sake!"

Molvena, for her part, looks like she'd rather throw up perhaps than be party to this conversation, thank you very much. She's turned rather pale even for someone who has never seen the sun.

[muckspout]

Edgard yelps as his bow hits the floor--it's fine, thank the Maker--and quickly squats to grab it while everyone starts yelling. (Including Dick in Orlesian which has always felt condescending to Edgard. He can understand Trade just fine.)

He whips around from face to face.

"I thought--" He starts gesturing at Miriam who clearly got attacked.

"What the fuck is going on? What do you want me to do?"

Edgard gets yelled at when he doesn't listen and yelled at when he does.

[nonvenomous]

“Watch for witnesses and reflect upon your penchant for making difficult situations worse by blindly firing arrows into them,” is Richard’s answer, decidedly clipped in its confirmation of condescension, his eyes like chips of ice burning in his skull. Livid. It’s also back in Trade, now that he’s caught a glimpse of Miriam’s gut reaction.

Is Erik armed? Dick glances to check as he turns to reach for Molvena. The offer of a trade is implicit in a pleading look: he can tend to her, if Erik can make their case to Miriam.

“I can ensure she survives. If we bring a golem over here to ‘engage’ us it will provide us some cover.”

He stresses invisible quotation marks, teeth flashed white through his whiskers.

[rezni]

Nikolai's absolutely withering look underscores Richard's sentiment as he adds, "Don't shoot any of the witnesses."

You know what's hard to explain away? Murder.

"If you can ensure Molvena is well enough to take up her objective again, it'll alleviate Miriam's concerns."

And the problem Edgard created. They might have done this more gracefully, but Nikolai is quickly coming to the conclusion that Riftwatch tends to operate in opposition to it. With an incline of his head to Molvena, Nikolai does peel off a golem from the presently rampaging quartet to redirect it's attention towards their group. If the first flung barrel shatters a few feet from Miriam, well. A coincidence.

He is very carefully refusing to feel any particular way about the utility of the golems, or to delight piloting them. The decision has already been made. They can't ignore the price, even if Nikolai knows immediately how much of a difference this kind of asset would make on a battlefield.

[revise]

The sharp look she affords them—the lot of them; it takes in an expanse bit of territory, that stare—is broken by the thrown barrel coming to pieces at her feet, one of the beaten hoops bouncing free and flying just low enough to prompt Miriam to duck reflexively.

"See that she understands exactly what we're risking while you're at it," she barks from behind the shifting frost barrier.

And then with a crackle and tang of lyrium, Miriam moves: out to find a match against the golem. If they want to make a show of it, she damn well will do a proper job of the thing.

[clawings]

Erik is always armed; there's at least one knife on his person, but his runed sword is definitely at his side. He hasn't drawn it because he was hoping to avoid violent confrontation (and there is something very final about unsheathing a sword that burns with magical fire at an ice witch, in his opinion).

He gives Richard a nod. Go ahead, please, and help this poor dwarven woman before she bleeds out and dies on them and then they have that to answer for.

"Don't attack anyone. Except for the golem, that's fair game." This is to Edgard. "What's happening is that there are dwarves in there, alive, that have been changed by lyrium without being told what they were in for. Their families haven't been told what's happened to them. Molvena's people want to get the records of that shit to the public of Orzammar." That's it, isn't it? No one is gonna argue with him? (Hopefully.)

"No one has to die here today." This is to everyone, but especially Miriam's retreating back. Erik feels pretty confident that Nikolai and Richard are on the same page with him, which is 'wtf is this,' alongside a healthy dose of 'we can't condone it and we damned sure can't afford to be culpable for keeping that information away from everyone who needs to hear it'.

But despite the tense atmosphere, it's only Edgard who needs to get on board.

This shitshow might be salvageable, in Erik's opinion. They can't use the golems on the battlefield, not after hearing about this, but that's a conversation for afterward.

leaves abby in the dust

[rezni]

Salvageable is a very broad descriptor, but when all is said and done—

Their involvement seems to have been overlooked. They are present when Molvena is escorted away, presumably to jail. They are allowed to leave. They are allowed to leave, and return back to the Paragon's Rest.

It's a quiet walk by necessity. But soon enough, they make their way back, all the way to the meeting room.

"We'll have to make our recommendation to the Commander," Nikolai begins, the moment the door closes. "Shall we start the argument, or should we get something to drink first?"

[nonvenomous]

“What is there left to debate?” is, potentially, a bold point of entry for a man who spent most of the walk back carefully smoothing scattered note pages into the compress of the journal on his clipboard. This as opposed to offering to heal Miriam’s bonked noggin, or apologizing to Edgard for ripping into him in the field.

“The thieves escaped and will almost certainly disseminate what they’ve learned. We should commit before the ethical uproar affects the rate of production and the price becomes unmanageable.”

Also he wouldn’t mind a drink, he realizes, now that he’s slid his clipboard onto the table and said what he’s said.

[revise]

Miriam, sweat prickled and sporting
the marks of what tomorrow will be a fantastic bruise across one side of her face, stops halfway through the process of stripping off her thin coat to shuck down to her undershirt. Her own portion of the return walk had been conducted in stony silence, pace furiously brisk despite her disadvantage in height.

Here, still standing, she bristles like a cat ready to spit.

—and is very moderate, all crisply reined in syllables when she says, "You think Riftwatch should still use them."

You're unfuckingbelievable.

[clawings]

Erik feels like he should be less surprised that Silas wants to use the damned things, but alas. Here they are, with him literally biting his cheek before answering: "I think drinks are in order before we have this argument."

Because it's gonna be an argument, sure as shit. Silas might be outvoted just on the basis of pure numbers, but he also wants to get a sense of why he thinks it's cool to even connect Riftwatch to this. Just because they already exist? He can see an argument for that, but still doesn't feel good about it.

[muckspout]

Edgard puts his hands to his pinched brow and breathes out heavily. To Erik,

"Drinks sound like a good idea."

Edgard gestures to the rest of the crew.

"Would have been nice," He says icily. "if we had this argument beforehand. Would have been nice to be on the same page."

He huffs, angry at all of them.

[rezni]

"Oh? Were you aware of how golems were made all this time and declined to share with the rest of us?"

It's an irrelevant complaint. None of them had known the full truth of what they had come to witness. If they had, maybe they'd never have had the meeting in the first place. This man's misplaced anger is a distraction from the matter at hand, which is—

"Their utility doesn't outweigh the drawbacks," Nikolai proposes, without waiting for drink. He's taken a seat, hooked an ankle up over one knee as he leans back. "Consider what we have learned of their origins, what is likely about to be exposed and disseminated throughout the city, and how that is likely to be received. Preserving what headway we've made in establishing relationships here is more important than whatever finite advantage those golems will bring us."

Not to mention the rest of the equation, the horror of being trapped in servitude and encased in metal, but Nikolai doesn't expect that to sway Richard's conlusion, so he does not include it in his rebuttal.

[nonvenomous]

Feeling, perhaps, the static prickle of Miriam’s indignation in the air, Silas turns to measure what kind of danger he’s in -- not so much taller than her that he feels secure without the plate of his clipboard in hand. The breath he takes in to answer (in the eminently reasonable affirmative, already sketched in between his brows) stops short at Edgard’s interruption, released in the slow press of a sigh. He nods to her instead, wary while he’s within easy reach. Yes.

And he is tall enough to look across the top of her head to Erik.

No support there? His disappointment is likewise tempered by the knowledge that he should also be less surprised than he is. Nikolai’s proposal gives him pause -- brief but distinct -- while he considers.

There’s more than one reason he isn’t in Diplomacy.

“You might be over-estimating the value Orzammar places upon the lives of the Casteless.” Silas is slow in saying so, his words carefully chosen. He has not taken a seat. “She stated she intended to dissuade the Casteless from volunteering under false pretense.” As opposed to persuading the other castes to reject the process.

[revise]

If stares could eviscerate—

"He's right," she says, drawing fully free of the thin coat. It ends up balled in her hands rather than draped across whatever chair back is conveniently placed.

"I doubt anyone will give enough of a shit. They might have fewer volunteers."

Someone might write a sad letter. And then someone else will write a sad letter in response about darkspawn killing everyone, and what then.

(Probably. What the fuck does she know about dwarves in Orzammar?)