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

The sincerity is unmistakable, and Ellie holds her gaze, with calm weight. Yeah. Derrica obviously gets it.

She hesitates a moment, but every hesitation Derrica gets from her is shorter than the one before it. She quits her fidgeting and offers her hand, palm up for Derrica's inspection. It's the one with the missing fingers; healed, but with still-fresh scarring. The wounds weren't clean; whatever did that wasn't a sharp sword or knife. They were crushed off.

"I'm starting to see that," she admits, with a tilt at the edge of her lips. "S'kinda different from what I'm used to, is all."

She pauses, opening up her palm to give Derrica more to look at, a sober expression on her face.

"Where I'm from you had a few people, maybe. Caring about more than that was... kinda impossible. Unless you got really, really lucky."

Lucky like Dina hopefully was, back safe in Jackson.

Painful way to lose fingers is the first thing that comes to mind. She's known men missing one or two off their hand before. Sailing is the kind of occupation that brings along a whole mess of dangers. Missing fingers had often been the least of it.

When she lifts Ellie's hand in her own, it's to very carefully examine the scarring, and then to just keep hold of Ellie. Derrica cradles her hand in the palm of her own.

"I understand," Derrica tells her. She understands the shape of what Ellie's telling her, even if Derrica has been so very lucky in her life. All that she'd lost, and still, she has habitually surrounded herself with groups of people to care for. "Is this too much for you, being in the middle of all of us here?"

Though Ellie's skittish with touch she's also starved for it, like a mistrustful feral cat, unsure of intentions but too hungry not to chance a dish, once offered.

Her hand is a little tense at first, but then it slowly relaxes in Derrica's warmth, getting used to the sensation. Ellie's hands are rough, scarred, from work and from her guns and her weapons, from hitting things. From climbing, and blocking, and the sun. They are freckled and chapped and her nails are hewn short with a knife.

She studies the difference between her hands and Derrica's own, trying not to think of Dina's -- how soft they could still be even though they could do everything Ellie's could, and sometimes more.

The question immediately has her sucking in her breath, ready to dodge. To brush it off and insist that it's fine, it'll just take some getting used to. The words stick in her throat, and she sits in silent for a few more moments, just staring down at their hands.

"Sometimes," she admits, quietly, but the words to explain why really escape her. She's not sure if she actually can.

There's no need for an explanation beyond that. Sometimes is linked to all the other parts of Ellie that Derrica has been learning: the way she flinches, the powers she has, the sadness that clings to every line of her body.

Instead, there is a few moments of quiet while Derrica's gaze falls down to their hands. Ellie's severed fingers, the rough callouses over her fingers and palm that say this is a woman who can wield weapons and protect herself, that she has had to do those things and they've written themselves onto her body.

"I don't know if I can help with that," Derrica says, gently folding her hands over Ellie's, masking the scars, loosely encasing her fingers. "But if there's any way I can make it easier for you, would you please promise you'll come to me?"

It's warm, and Ellie tries to trust it. The hold is comforting, but she knows from experience how easy it would be to tug her hands away.

Ellie stares down at their hands, her eyes far away from the busy little tavern, her lips a too-steady line.

"Why do you want to help me?" Ellie asks, suddenly, looking up and at Derrica's face. "You don't know anything about me. I could be-"

A murderer? A torturer? A thief, a blackmailer, someone who would-

Ellie cuts off the thoughts.

"It wouldn't matter."

But that's not necessarily enough. And Derrica has had time enough to know that there are things that matter to her, that a person could have chosen something that would separate themselves from her good will forever. (Though the chances of Ellie turning out to be a templar are slim to none.)

"I know how unkind people can be," she continues, meeting Ellie's gaze. Her hands tighten, and then loosen, punctuating that thought. "And I want to be kind. They've taken so much from me, and I don't want them to take that part of me too."

They standing in for a swath of things, for the Chantry and templars and men like Byerly Rutyer and Brother Gideon, piously content to turn a blind eye to what mages suffer. All of these factions have been bearing down on her for so long. They've exerted enough pressure, narrowed her world. They won't have any more of her.

It hits, and hurts. Echoes but doesn't fade out, or dissipate. Instead Derrica's words sit there and thrum under Ellie's skin, itching, aching. It makes her think of Lance, the eternal optimist even in the face of everything wrong with the world, how he could face it and still try even without a trace of naivete. The guy who'd rather not carry a gun even into a proven-murderous rush of refugees. Makes her think of Dina, and the way she sings in the mornings and tries to fix everything, from electronics to people, even when she can't put them back together. How she wades into the pain and lets it wash over her and somehow doesn't fall apart piece by piece.

She thinks of Joel, and the way he asked her why she was in Seattle. And the look on his face when she answered, so ready for him to be angry, so ready to meet that anger in kind, and instead she'd seen his heart quietly break. Finally put together what he'd tried so hard to protect her from, and how they'd both failed.

Ellie's eyes are misty for a few seconds, before she blinks it away. Swallows as she straightens her neck, looks up toward the ceiling of the tower, and breathes out.

"I'll promise. If you will too. Deal?"

The offer takes her slightly aback.

It's rare for such things to be turned back on her. And Derrica has never looked for any of her kindnesses to be returned in kind. She's never needed that, and never wanted such a thing to be conditional.

But she understands why Ellie has offered. She understands some of what it means to her, to be able to offer comfort in return. (Maybe this is guessing, seeing some part of herself in Ellie and assuming things because of it.) And the moment of hesitation is Derrica feeling out her instinct to balk even at the thought of it, and knowing that if she makes this promise in kind, then she doesn't want to back out of it.

Derrica's quiet for a moment, looking down at their linked hands.

"Alright," she says softly, smiling. "I promise."

Ellie watches Derrica's face, the look in her eyes, that instance of hesitation. That hurts too, because she sees that less often on kind people, but it's something that she recognizes much better. That momentary balk at the idea of tenderness.

It's something she knows how to navigate, and how to handle. Ellie knows more about what to do with hurt people.

It makes her feel better for it, too. The knowing.

"Promise."

Ellie squeezes her hands back.

MOD PLOT ↠ Endlessly Far Beneath My Feet

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put a bow on this y/n

Y!