faderift | 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

In another life,

but that future never came to pass, and Gwenaëlle doesn't remember what's never happened. The Gwenaëlle Vauquelin that Luwenna Coupe met in Orzammar had more of an impact on Gwenaëlle's life than she can possibly imagine, and that woman simply does not exist.

“No,” she says, wrinkling her nose. “I'd be perfectly happy to keep it that way, but I'd trust most Wardens about as far as they can be thrown, so I suppose it's a matter of time.”

They tend to be dense, in her experience. Tricky to hurl. Unless she had a trebuchet, but there are a lot of reasons that no one is giving her a trebuchet and that isn't even in the top ten.

“Some kind of fucking irony if we managed to unleash the next Blight. Here's hoping for anything but that.” She reconsiders the breadth of anything almost immediately. “Well, for not that. Anyway, pick something, you can't risk the Deep Roads with garbage.”

She has the self preservation instinct not to jingle a heavy coin purse in a public place, but the implication is clear all the same as she picks up the knives she wants and says, “And whatever she asks for. I need sheathes for these, thank you.”

There's a story there -- somebody being shady, and Ellie arches a brow but doesn't ask right away, and that's helped along by her having to swallow her surprise. She'd been planning on either scraping enough together herself or laying a few favors on top of the pot to sweeten it.

She bites down on the tip of her tongue to keep the defensive orphan hindbrain from coming out like whiplash to insist she doesn't need the help, but Dina's is in the back of her mind. Let people do nice things for you.

After another moment of thought, she offers up the knife she'd been holding so the merchant can charge accordingly for it and get the sheathes together -- he gathers a simple one for Ellie's, too, something she can lash to her upper leg, and pleasantly completes the exchange.

"Thanks," she says, both sincere and wary, and pushes past that feeling, resisting the urge to ask what she'll undoubtedly owe her in the future. "And don't think too hard about it. Doubt they'd let us in if they thought amateur hour would trigger some bullshit like that."

She flips the knife, puts it away, and holds out her hand. The one that's whole, without the shard.

"Ellie."

“Gwenaëlle.”

Written down, it's a mess; said aloud, the w is almost silent, Guh-nayl. (Orlais has other Gwenaëlles, who pronounce their names closer to the way it's spelled, but hers was meant to rhyme with the name of her birth mother, Guenievre Baudin and she has always been finicky about people at least trying to get it right.)

She shakes Ellie's hand with her own ungloved, unburdened — there are the necessary and inevitable calluses from her blades, her bow, but her hands are overall manicured, cared for, moisturised. Her grip is easy, not so light as to be weird and not so firm as to be some kind of dick swing.

“Baudin,” she adds, as an afterthought. “Forces.”

That she'd clocked Ellie for Riftwatch before making her offer is obvious, but it's not as if anyone with an anchor-shard is coming from anywhere else. Anyone in Orzammar right now with a shard of the anchor is here to work.

After a moment, “Don't ever take for granted that we can't fuck something up because we're being allowed to do it. Riftwatch is all Riftwatch has got. It's just a question of the stakes.”

Edited 2021-05-22 23:55 (UTC)

Ellie's grip is similar, though far less moisturized or cared for. She's got a broken nail or two, one that's in the process of growing back after being smashed at some point. The calluses are nearly the same.

"Scouting," Ellie says with a nod, and doesn't offer a last name. It's not like it'll mean anything here.

She takes the advice with a nod, breathing out and resting her hands on her hips, glancing off toward the lava, the vaulted stone and the constant buzzing murmur of voices.

"Then I'll try not to fuck it up."

She pauses, then wrinkles her nose in distaste.

"... unless this place have some kind of pantheon of gods or some shit that really get their rocks off on irony. Then I didn't say anything."

Gwenaëlle's smile is very like the edge of the knife she just purchased for Ellie.

“Having met two of the elvhen 'gods',” the air quotes are indeed audible, “who are, if the sample size and general pretension means anything, cunts—let's keep that between you and I.”

Probably there's some fucking elvhen god of irony and fisting, Maker knows. Maybe that's why the Maker really abandoned them, having made a world that seems powered exclusively by exquisite nonsense. She has her doubts about Solas, now, but it had always been discomfiting to think too hard about the idea of,

she doesn't sympathize much with the Dalish. They're a dead people who haven't noticed and she's tired of hearing about them. But she thinks about Morrigan's mother, walking among them for centuries, heedless of generations of elves crying out to her, and it's difficult not to tar all of those overpowered ancients with the same unfeeling, selfish brush. The dismissive and distant way that Solas had about him from most, coupled with Fen'Harel's moves now, difficult to parse in a way that flatters someone she'd thought of, at one time, as a friend. As if she's so selfless, she thinks, but still: it bothers her when she lets herself think on it.

More philosophically, “Thedas doesn't hand out medals for effort. You make a bad call, if it doesn't kill you then you'll probably have to live with whoever it did. You might as well have a sharp knife.” It feels simple, in that moment. Try hard and carry a sharp knife.

Ellie sighs, but it's a knowing sort, the tired sort, someone who's long dealt with that sort of bullshit and expected there to be more, but still isn't thrilled to be proven right.

She listens, adjusting the fit on the sheath as she does, taking the words to heart with a grim set to her jaw and a steady look in her eyes.

"Sounding more and more familiar every day."

It's not — approval, exactly, that flickers in her expression. In her eyes, mostly, which are hazel-gold above high cheekbones and expressive in a way that's typically as difficult to read as your average block letter, one sentence a page picture book. But something similar, or at least: bleakly familiar.

“The ones who come here and it isn't,” she says, “they have a harder time. But, you know.”

As it seems like Ellie actually does know, she doesn't finish that sentence — but war doesn't care about how offended any of them are that they have to fight it, but the world doesn't stop turning because you're sad, but when you're fighting mostly to stop the world from getting worse more than to make it directly better it is sometimes the most depressing shit imaginable,

and you get up, the next day, and keep trying because it's something. It's better than not trying. She isn't often certain that they're going to win; she is always sure that whenever and wherever she dies, she will do it certain she did everything in her power first.

A lot of the things in Gwenaëlle's power involve sharp knives, these days. It wasn't always the case.

It's that look, of like recognizing like. That grim solidarity. Not exactly happy of all things, but at least there's the knowing that you're on that same level of understanding. That you won't have to watch the light leave someone's eyes because they were convinced that the world was better.

It's the type of person that Ellie feels most comfortable with.

"Yeah, I know."

She lifts one shoulder and gives Gwenaëlle a wry smile. "Good hand and a sharp knife, though. It's a place to start."

Maybe Riftwatch won't be so bad after all.

MOD PLOT ↠ Endlessly Far Beneath My Feet

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