MOD PLOT ↠ The Soldiers of the Demon Charged

[faderifting]

WHO: Everyone!
WHAT: Striking closer to home.
WHEN: Justinian through Solace
WHERE: The Western/Central Free Marches
NOTES: OOC post. Please use appropriate content warnings in your comment subject lines.

WEEK ONE: THE COLLAPSE OF HASMAL

Recently in Hasmal, growing outrage from native Hasmalis over the swelling number of Tevinter refugees within and outside the city has led to a series of smaller violent incidents that went largely unanswered by local authorities, leading to additional targeting of more established Tevinter communities within the city and the makeshift fortification and arming of the camps outside. In the last week or so, after a period of simmering tensions, the situation in Hasmal has boiled over into violent riots. Reports out of the city conflict about what finally caused the rapid escalation, how bad things got, and whose fault they were. But they agree that it very quickly became a dangerous situation that the city authorities utterly failed to bring under control. Fires burned in some quarters of the city and deadly clashes between factions forced uninvolved citizens to barricade themselves in their homes. Some city leaders urged calm and peace while others encouraged supporters to seize the moment and fight for the upper hand. The Grand Vizier was nowhere to be seen. Somehow, amidst the chaos, the gates were opened and in marched the Tevinter army.

The violence, and then even more Tevinter's arrival—supposedly to help restore peace to the city, though it's unclear whether that has actually happened—has caused many to flee the city, particularly the refugee community who had fled from Tevinter once already. With nothing but the Tevinter desert of the Silent Plains to the north, most either jumped ship down the Minanter or came south across the river into Tantervale territory and Wildervale, with some now arriving in Kirkwall with their tales of chaos in the western-most March.

Also, Commander Flint and Scoutmaster Yseult are missing, having gone to meet a contact coming across the Minanter from Tevinter some days ago. They ought to be returning, but neither has been in contact since. In their absence, Ambassador Rutyer and Provost Stark will be running Riftwatch, and can direct Scouting and Forces as they see fit and delegate authority for those operations as necessary.

UNKNOWNS

This is a fast-moving situation, with events clearly already running well ahead of news. With limited resources at hand, intelligence networks in the previously quiet Free Marches have been somewhat neglected by the Inquisition and Riftwatch both. Much remains unclear, subject of wild rumor and conflicting reports from the few sources in the area:

There are stories that the Grand Vizier Rekam Antoninus, ruler of Hasmal, is either complicit in the Tevinter takeover or in league with refugees to try to bring down the city's nobility. There are rumors he has fled the city, or even that he's dead by a half-dozen different hands.

There are similarly conflicting reports about other Hasmal city leaders, with some said to have been encouraging the various factions involved in the riots, trying without success to calm the situation, or using the situation to advance their own interests in one way or another. It's likely that at least a few were cooperating to some extent with Tevinter, though exact numbers and identities can't be known right now.

The size of the Tevinter force in Hasmal isn't yet clear, as the numbers reported by those who fled the city at their arrival range from "most of the Tevinter army" to "five times the size of the entire Tevinter army."

All reports at this point are coming from people who have fled Hasmal, so there's essentially no reliable information about what the situation is like inside the city since Tevinter moved in.

RIFTWATCH'S WORK

As soon as word begins trickling in, Riftwatch will begin sending parties north to investigate the situation. Anyone with a relevant skill or two might be assigned to venture out to:

• AERIAL SURVEILLANCE: Use griffons for aerial surveillance of the region between Kirkwall and Hasmal, to watch for any further movement of the Tevinter army. Using sending crystals, they'll also be able to send back reports of the routes any large groups of refugees seem to be taking. And they'll be charged with assessing the roads and terrain between Kirkwall and Hasmal, identifying the routes an army could take to reach further South and what chokepoints—bridges, narrow passages, castles and fortresses with defenses that might hold—could be exploited to slow them down. (The distance from Kirkwall to Hasmal is too great for the griffons to be flying back and forth every day; aerial teams will be gone for several days at a time, and in the meantime staying on the property of a druffalo farmer in Wildervale or in wilderness camps of their own making.)


• ASSIST TRAVELLERS: Intercept people fleeing Hasmal—to assist them, when necessary, but also to get as much information from them as possible to try to separate rumors from first-hand accounts or find consistencies between stories that might point toward truths. Many of these people will be refugees twice over, already having fled from Tevinter in the wake of Corypheus' takeover, so some may have relevant information about Tevinter as well. And there is always the possibility that some loyal to Tevinter and the Venatori are disguised among the refugees, so they'll need to keep an eye out for anything suspicious.


• ASSIST TOWNSFOLK: Meet with the Countess of Wildervale and local leaders of smaller towns and villages. Those south of Wildervale may need to be alerted about the waves of travelers they're about to see, while those north of Wildervale will have been reached by refugees before Riftwatch and may be overwhelmed by the sudden swell of visitors and potential long-term residents. Some of those fleeing Hasmal may be settling into these villages for the long haul due to exhaustion or a lack of resources, while many others are terrified of Tevinter at their heels and want to go further south to put at least one major city between them and Hasmal. It's a valid fear, so in addition to discussing the refugee situation and how many more people the villages can viably feed and house, Riftwatch teams will need to help assess their defenses and escape routes if the invasion pushes further south, ideally without causing a panic.

Meanwhile, in Kirkwall, those who aren't suited to fieldwork or who are between trips out of the city will:

• ATTEND MEETINGS: The Viscount, Kirkwall's nobility, and City Guard representatives in Viscount's Keep will be meeting for long hours to discuss whether or not Kirkwall will be able to accept refugees (and to what extent) and the city's defenses and fortifications. Riftwatch won't have any formal say in these decisions, but its representatives may be able to provide information as it becomes available and maybe sneak some opinions in there as well.


• READY LOOKOUT TOWERS: Assist the city with transporting supplies to and chasing bandits out of rarely-used guard towers in the Vinmarks.


• ORGANIZE RIFTWATCH'S EFFORTS: Amass, organize, and disseminate the information being relayed back from the teams in the field—for example, making sure the Riftwatch teams advising refugees on which villages and cities will be able to take them in aren't directing them all to the same place and causing it to become overwhelmed.

There are also a few specific missions that will be assigned to those with suitable skills at the end of the week. Based on the available information, teams will be sent to Hasmal and to Tantervale to accomplish the following:

• HASMAL AERIAL SURVEILLANCE: The Hasmal team will travel by griffon to conduct fly-over surveillance of the city and the territory to the north and west, to try to gather information about the Tevinter forces. From griffonback, the team may occasionally spot Tevinter scouting parties or small clusters of soldiers that can be picked off or harassed, whether from the air or by landing to confront them.


• HASMAL GROUND SURVEILLANCE: The griffon team will also be carrying passengers, a small team who they will have to stealthily drop into Hasmal so that they can spend two days gathering information about the situation in the city itself before they're picked up by the griffons once again.


• TANTERVALE OUTREACH: The Tantervale team will try to meet with Tantervale's leadership to coordinate defense and relief efforts. They'll travel by horseback (griffons would only remind folks how weird Riftwatch is) and work through diplomatic channels and court backchannels to try to gain an audience with the Lady Chancellor and/or her ministers and persuade them of the benefits of working together.

These missions will be interrupted by the red lyrium dragon, which will first arrive over Hasmal just as the griffon riders are collecting their spy passengers for departure. The dragon will chase the griffons off before continuing on to Tantervale, where the team in the city will be forced to flee its attack and escape from the city.



WEEKS TWO & THREE: THE RUIN OF TANTERVALE

After the news of Tevinter's takeover of Hasmal, its closest neighbor, Tantervale, is calling a muster of whatever fighting-age men are left in its territory. Most of Tantervale's soldiers have previously joined the Exalted March, leaving the city-state only lightly defended. Whoever remains is ordered to arm themselves and meet outside the city within the week to protect against the threat of Tevinter incursion, or possibly even to threaten to join any supposed 'peacekeeping' force in Hasmal. The exact plan is unknown, but the citizens of Tantervale—known across Thedas for their religious zeal—appear eager to answer the call to defend their home and any fellow devotees of the Chantry from the dangerous northern heretics.

But in the end, how many they manage to attract to this makeshift defensive force hardly matters. The gathered host is powerless to stop the sudden, devastating attack of the corrupted high dragon. The huge, red-lyrium-infected beast—known to be under the command of Corypheus for some years now, but rarely seen since it perched triumphant atop the Archon's palace in Minrathous 3 years ago—emerges above Hasmal before flying the short distance east to Tantervale and laying waste to that city.

Simultaneously, confused reports are reaching Riftwatch from both Orlais and Ferelden, indicating an array of calamities: scattered across both countries, several small villages and their fields were recently set aflame, an important bridge over the Drakon River destroyed in Ferelden, a noble family and their entire staff found hanging evenly spaced from rafters in their estate not far from Halamshiral.

UNKNOWNS

Riftwatch agents present at Hasmal and Tantervale during the early stages of the dragon attack witness its beginning, but as they have to run for their lives, little is immediately known about its outcome. Given the destruction they did see, it's believed that Tantervale was a massacre, resulting in many, many deaths and much of the city destroyed by fire and corruption. A wave of people have now joined the stragglers from Hasmal fleeing south, but how many of them actually managed to escape the city of Tantervale itself as opposed to its surrounding countryside is unknown, and among those who survived, many begin to show signs of darkspawn corruption on the road.

Per the reports coming from the South, the leaders in both Ferelden and Orlais initially respond as if being invaded before realizing that the incidents were not the beginning of a larger military push. It will take some time for it to become clear that all of these events happened on the same day as the assault on Tantervale, mostly by individual actors.

RIFTWATCH'S WORK

Most of the work Riftwatch was doing in Week 1 will continue in Weeks 2 and 3, while pivoting or expanding to include dealing with the situation in Tantervale as well:

• ASSIST TRAVELERS & TOWNSFOLK: The attack on Tantervale will essentially double the number of new refugees fleeing south, testing the work Riftwatch did in Week 1 and greatly increasing the strain on communities in Wildervale. Some they may be able to persuade to make do and accommodate more fellow Marchers, while others will reach the end of either their supplies or their patience or both, and Riftwatch agents will need to help calm tensions and find alternatives.


• SHORE UP DEFENSES: Efforts to shore up defenses in the region will ratchet up, and Riftwatch agents will be called on to do things like help train emergency village militias, build makeshift defenses, and provide advice on what to do in case of dragon attack.

For those in Kirkwall:

• ASSIST ARRIVING REFUGEES: Pressure on Kirkwall itself will increase as the first refugees arrive at the city and an even greater number look likely to do so in the near future. Kirkwall has a fairly fraught recent history with refugees from a crisis—the influx of Blight refugees from Ferelden caused a nativist backlash that went on for years. In this case, the locals will be somewhat more friendly because the refugees are their fellow Marchers, as well as slightly more frightened because this crisis isn't happening across a sea. But there will still be a fairly tepidly charitable response to the needs of incoming people, and those escaping Hasmal who are clearly of Tevinter origin will have an especially difficult time. Riftwatch's help will be needed in connecting the new arrivals with those who are willing to help them and aiding in the construction of some temporary structures and camps for those without other means of housing themselves.


• PREPARE FOR THE WORST: Riftwatch will be called upon by the Viscount's office to work with the City Guard to review Kirkwall's defenses, work on emergency upgrades, help man observation posts further afield to provide early warning of any imminent attack. For the time being, a regular rotation of Riftwatch members will be sent to keep watch at some of the further towers, since their sending crystals will allow them to pass along more information more quickly than the warning fires. There will also be a lot of discussion about how to handle a dragon attack--with the expectation that Riftwatch will take a lead role in defending against any such attack.

Elsewhere, Riftwatch will send teams to:

• STARKHAVEN: Believed to be the most likely next target for assault other than Kirkwall. Riftwatch will send a team to meet with current leadership to offer to provide mage support against a potential dragon attack, coordination of defensive efforts, and to learn how Starkhaven plans to handle Tantervale refugees.


• OSTWICK, MARKHAM, HERCINIA, ANSBURG, & WYCOME: Too far to have been directly affected yet. Riftwatch will send representatives to court to try to meet with leaders to discuss coordinating efforts across the region for mutual defense against Tevinter, encouraging them to raise soldiers, shore up defenses, and take in refugees.


• FERELDEN & ORLAIS: By the end of Week 3 it will be clear that what happened in Orlais and Ferelden is likely a diversionary tactic, meant to compel them to keep their attention at home rather than throwing too much of their weight behind assisting the Free Marches, but a few people will be sent to investigate the sites of some attacks for any evidence of how they were coordinated and to be sure further attacks aren't impending.

(OOC Note: For attacks in Ferelden and Orlais and for small villages around Hasmal and Tantervale, you're welcome to invent the names of these places and invent details of what exactly happened without checking in with us. If your character is from one of these areas, you're also welcome to say their hometowns or places they're familiar with were affected, as long as: (1) it isn't a place big enough to be on the canon map of Thedas and (2) if someone else's character is coincidentally from the same place, you check with them first.)



WEEKS FOUR & FIVE: THE MARCH ON STARKHAVEN

The situation in the Free Marches continues to deteriorate rapidly. With Tantervale now more rubble than city, nothing substantial stands between the Tevinter force in Hasmal and either Kirkwall, home of Riftwatch, or Starkhaven, the cultural and financial heart of the Marches. An advance on one or both of those cities is believed to be the next logical step, but nobody knows for sure which it's going to be or whether it's going to come in the form of an attack by dragon or just ("just") an army.

Reports from the Riftwatch teams in and over Hasmal at the end of Week 1 spotted signs of that army readying to move, and further griffon reconnaissance during Weeks 2 and 3 confirmed that with Tantervale out of the way the army is now moving quickly. Their path is clearly pointed east toward Starkhaven. Like Tantervale, Starkhaven is lightly-defended, much of its forces—along with its ruler, Prince Sebastian Vael—in Orlais with the Exalted March.

Help from elsewhere is unlikely to arrive in time. Those Marches who might have been best positioned to support Starkhaven in its time of need find themselves with problems of their own, as coastal communities in Ostwick and Hercinia suffer a rash of brutal and unusually well-organized pirate attacks. The port towns of Torbay and Ogwell near Ostwick and Noli near Hercinia take the brunt of it, sacked and burned by marauders. There are several attacks on shipping reported as well, with prizes taken from normally safe waters where the Waking Sea meets the Amaranthine. Both city-states have increased naval patrols and are now on alert, but they're looking outwards, not inland.

UNKNOWNS

How quickly reinforcements will arrive. Agents and Inquisition contacts in Orlais report that the Exalted March is now aware, and that there are urgent debates among the commanders about how to react. Prince Sebastian Vael is thought to be planning to return imminently, but precisely how long that will take—and how many men he will bring with him—remains unknown.

RIFTWATCH'S WORK

• SLOWING THE ADVANCE: Riftwatch will do its best to slow the enemy advance and buy Starkhaven time to prepare. Without the numbers to engage the host directly, teams will instead be tasked with making the journey as difficult as possible by creating obstacles along the way: think rockslides, blown bridges, washed out roads, felled trees clogging the river, sabotaged boats and wagons, and so forth. Traps or small guerrilla-style attacks may be laid at some of these points, but with strict orders not to risk it unless conditions allow Riftwatch the advantage to attack swiftly and then escape again. The goal is to harass and pick off low-hanging fruit, not get caught up in an unwinnable battle.


• PREPARING STARKHAVEN: Preventing an attack on Starkhaven seems impossible, but Riftwatch can at least help the city prepare for it. At this point a siege is the best option, but it will mean being (or at least looking) strong enough to withstand an initial assault. Top priorities are:
  
  • Reinforcing city defenses. These efforts were already underway by Week 2, but will become far more urgent, and leaders will be much more eager to hear from Riftwatch anything they know about the enemy forces.
  
  
  • Stocking the city. This includes bringing in supplies to prepare for the siege they now hope comes, whether by wagon or boat or griffon, and Riftwatch may even be asked to help negotiate with merchants and farmers to get deals done and goods delivered faster if possible.
  
  
  • Bolstering numbers. They need all the fighting manpower they can get, so Riftwatch will be helping recruit by explaining the situation, the context of the war, and encouraging anyone able to fight to help, and then transporting them from the countryside to the city walls as fast as possible. Bringing in fighting men means more mouths to feed, so Riftwatch will also be asked to help ferry vulnerable people out of the city to safety in other Marches. At first this effort will focus on the young and old with political importance, but it will be expanded (if Riftwatch pushes and also if they work fast enough to make it feasible) to include young and old of all classes.
  
  
  • Helping keep the peace and avoid a panic. Between the news of the on-coming army, the rash of high-profile assassinations (see below) and the horrific fate of Tantervale, the people of Starkhaven are understandably on edge. The mood in the city is one of barely suppressed terror, and city officials are anxious to avoid any incidents that might light a spark and distract from necessary preparations. Riftwatch will be asked to assist the guard in patrolling public areas where people tend to gather and help defuse situations, from breaking up brawls and preventing theft and hoarding of supplies to chasing off an obnoxious crier who won't stop stirring up fears with his vivid tales of how he received his scar at the hands of the vicious, unstoppable Tevinters.


• PROTECTING THE COUNTRYSIDE: The enemy journey through the Marches isn't as orderly as it was in Orlais. Parties of enemy soldiers and mages are veering south (occasionally north, into the strip of Marches before the Antivan border, but mostly south) across the river to attack travelers, sack villages, burn farms, and generally cause chaos. This will also involve periodic dragon attacks in the regions between Hasmal, Wildervale, and Starkhaven. These attacks are sudden and brief, hitting random locations, causing death and damage, and leaving as quickly as they arrived. Riftwatch agents traveling through the region for any purpose will need to be on guard, and teams will also be tasked to help patrol the countryside and major roads to protect against enemy attacks. Some teams may be stationed in towns and villages for days at a time, ready to respond to any reports of enemy attacks nearby and coordinate via crystal.

And in the midst of this work, there will be some additional specific missions:

• STARKHAVEN ASSASSIN: An assassin is stalking the streets of Starkhaven. Four prominent citizens have been murdered in the past two weeks, including two high-ranking guard captains, a celebrated knight who won the Grand Tourney not long ago, and Lord Kennech, a frontrunner to replace Lord Greer as regent. The murders have been brazen and bloody, not identical but each marked with the sigil of a prominent family drawn in blood, the first (over Lord Kennech) being the symbol of House Harimann, now most famous for having arranged the murders of Prince Sebastian Vael's family in a coup attempt in 9:31. The other houses referenced similarly have prominent betrayals and power-grabs in their history. No one is quite sure what any of it means, but it has certainly set the city even further on edge and has suspicions between members of the ruling class nearing a high. As a neutral party, Riftwatch will be asked to help provide security for potential targets.


• DRAGON TRACKING: Corypheus' dragon has rarely been sighted very far from him, and its presence in the Free Marches raises the possibility that he's somewhere nearby. A few different small teams on griffon- and horseback will attempt to track it to where it's resting between its excursions to terrorize the countryside, with the hope that Corypheus is there and this may present an opportunity to confront him directly with fewer fortifications.


• FIREBOMBING THE ARMY: As the army nears Starkhaven, another griffon-based team will make one last push to slow them down. The evening before they inevitably reach the city, the team will fly over their camp with mages, Antivan Fire grenades and breakable flasks of oil, and anything else they can come up with to rain literal fire on the Tevinter camps.

WEEK SIX: FALLING ACTION

The Tevinter force finally arrives at Starkhaven. After all the work to delay the enemy and speed preparations, the city is ready to hold fast against them at least until Prince Sebastian can return from Orlais with the army and (they hope) the Exalted March in tow. The Tevinter force, clearly still hoping to take the city before those reinforcements arrive, sets up camp as if for a siege but then launches a pre-dawn attack in hope of breaching the gates. This is repelled, but periodic assault (mostly magical) on the city walls continues—thus far with little effect.

Now that the enemy has arrived at Starkhaven, there isn't much more Riftwatch can do to help directly. The force is still too large for them to take on, and while they can get away with some limited griffon stealth missions in and out of the city, the large-scale operations of previous weeks are no longer possible. Prince Sebastian and the fastest part of his forces will arrive by the end of the week, and he will then take the lead in determining how to defend Starkhaven. He'll be happy to talk to Riftwatch about what they've seen and done in the interim and will be grateful for their efforts on behalf of his city. But there's a lot for him to figure out at present, and coordinating the type of smaller-scale work Riftwatch is best suited for isn't top of his agenda at the moment. Essentially, he'll be in touch.

RIFTWATCH'S WORK

All agents in and around Starkhaven are pulled back just ahead of the Tevinter force's arrival, along with any last group of vulnerable citizens they're able to get out. Riftwatch will continue to put more focus than it previously had on the Free Marches, with increased patrols and surveillance, and will keep an eye on the refugee situation as things develop. The enemy presence in the Marches will continue to cause trouble, with occasional parties of soldiers and mages marauding, posing new hazards closer to home than before that will periodically require Riftwatch's attention. And the situation in Starkhaven will continue to develop and may require more assistance in the future. But otherwise, it's more or less back to business as usual for now, just with a new set of issues added to the pile.

Comments

[poleaxed]

She's making it awkward. Jone's trained herself, when she's around Gabranth, to study every bit of movement she can, to hear every haughty breath he makes inside that helm of his. She can't read him otherwise, and she needs to read him, sometimes. He's so tetchy. She wouldn't be a good friend if she couldn't guess what new thing he'll take offense to, and being a good friend is all she really can be. She has to do that, or she's done nothing at all.

"Hehh, sorry," she says, and moves back, patting him on the shoulder. "The east wing. I thought I heard someone before you spooked that poor woman half to death."

[archademode]

"I was concerned you might be—" Another noise. Curt. Clipped. It is unimportant, and perhaps no less true than the simple fact that he'd been overtaken by lividity in the moment. Two weights, equally pressed upon his shoulders, driving him to the utter edge of poor choice.

And broken glass.

He opts not to mention that.

"Let us make haste, then. Before our quarry causes harm." Or worse. One gloved hand brushed across her unarmored shoulder as he shifts around her side, already setting his sights on the grander staircase that cuts through both wings at the edge of the hall: a serpent only needs seconds to strike, an assassin minutes to find its prey— how much time have they lost already?

It's only in a brief moment of distracted thought that Gabranth pauses, ducking the span of his head in visible deference, before adding:

"You first. For silence."

[poleaxed]

A balm to her, then, when he expresses admiration and concern. She's greedy, she knows that, but she thinks she can be content with his frigid warmth. It certainly puts a spring in her bare heels.

"Knew you'd see it my way," Jone mouths more than speaks in the barest whisper. Looking back at him, though, she fails to see the shadow moving across the window, some cloaked creature at the end of the hallway.

[archademode]

It is the nature of fondness to become poison to its practitioner. A moment of distraction, a split second of hesitation— they are the things that unmake legacies and lives alike.

In this case, however, they suffer a twofold dilemma: what might have been conveyed through a look of alarm or sparked fury, is instead masked in its entirety by Gabranth's own unfeeling, adamantine-wrought helm. His attention snaps towards movement, but it remains a nominal shift, and to sprint forward would only ruin their hunt.

Instead he yanks his shortblade violently from its holster at his belt, pommel arced towards the end of the hallway.

If Jone fails to comprehend, he will damn all caution and give chase at full speed regardless.

[poleaxed]

It doesn't occur to her that he might be pointing his sword at her, for a myriad of good reasons. She turns just in time to see a flicker of black cloak disappear down the hallway.

Running quickly, quietly, she manages to make it to the end of the hall, turn the corner, and find an open door. She's pretty sure this is the Lord's study. It connects, if she's remembered correctly, to his bedroom. Creeping slowly, she makes her way in, turning back to Gabranth with a finger on her lips.

Inside, the Lord's desk is disheveled, papers everywhere, books strewn across the floor.

[archademode]

He arrives but a few moments later to the sight of Jone gesturing towards him with discretion on her lips, his own metal carapace scraping across itself no matter how he works to conceal it. Dull and tinny all at once in the dead of night. Perhaps he ought to have done as Jone suggested, but it is far too late for that now.

His eyes fall upon the scattered array of parchment and book bindings, spilled ink, overturned letters. There is caution in where he casts his attention, the room is dark enough to conceal, and in a room littered with spilled paper, footing is a simple thing to lose under momentum.

He follows in her shadow, pommels fitted to his palms.

[poleaxed]

Quiet, silent save for the scraping of metal, and Jone slowly opens the door to the master bedroom. A grand thing it surely is when it's lit, a chandelier of its own and several candelabras now all dark. A bed the like Jone's only ever seen in Orlais, large and frilly, domed with intricate wood carvings. Murals painted straight onto the walls, insignia and family trees. A man softly snoring in his huge bed.

A shadow standing over him.

There's a point where silence is only preventative. As much as she'd like to catch the fucker, she's here to save a rich tit's useless life. She rushes toward the bed, poleaxe ready. She thinks she feels it snag something, but it's too dark to be sure. The shadow, far more concerned with escape, leaps toward another open window.

It'll be up to Gabranth, then, if they catch him.

[archademode]

She strikes, lunging and sharp, cutting through the night with clean precision. It is no different than attempting to pierce a fly, or the heart of a serpent coiled; creatures borne of quickness and putrescence are always quicker than breath itself. Quicker than a heartbeat, than the time it takes to blink.

Gabranth is not so quick. Perhaps not even as swift as Jone herself at the height of her own feverish enragement in battle. He is, however, positioned better for this.

The assassin leaps for the window, and Gabranth is the angular midpoint— poised diagonally in Jone's shadow— between the point of her poleaxe and the sill itself. There is a clattering shift of armored plating as he lunges with all the fury held still-beating in his chest, longsword snapped out as though an extension of his arm—

And there, right through the heart of the would-be killer's shoulder, it sinks in to pin.

—

Only later is it revealed through a formal mix of interrogation and collaborated correspondence that the agent snared was merely an accomplice. A decoy. The master behind the broader strokes remained far from their grasp, and purposefully so.

In the first hazy streaks of dawn cutting clear across a violet sky, the air fresh with dew— Gabranth and Jone now made freer in the wake of diligent duty— he pulls his helm from his shoulders in the estate's unlit garden, moving to rest himself in taking up seating upon a masterfully crafted stone bench.

It has admittedly been a trying collection of weeks, but in these silent moments, peacefulness prevails. The satisfaction of a job seen through.

[poleaxed]

Jone, for herself, is feeling the night she spent sleepless. She's been this tired before, of course, and just like then, she'll prevail fine. But she is getting to the age, now, where she appreciates the quiet of a too-bright morning, if not the silence.

She sits across from him on the lip of a fountain, bubbling gently as colorful fish dart through the water. She dips her fingers in idly, watching their mouths as they gape at her. "Weren't a total waste," she says, "don't think we were much made for this work, but nobody died."

[archademode]

"We did well." He concedes— agrees, in a sense. Though there is no argument to be had between them in this moment, the words seem to act as both rebuttal and reinforcement alike to her own beliefs. Across the tops of nearby buildings, down in crawling swaths through garden flowers, sunlight seems to set the world aflame. Most noticeable in the wayward strands of Jone's hair that catch as she shifts.

He cannot hide the way he stares through eyes rimmed with sleeplessness, it would require both finer control over his own expression— and the helmet that sits uselessly at his side, as though resting in turn.

"To have snared the man— or woman, if her trade true enough— would have required more resources than Riftwatch can spare in times so dire. We are all spread thin."

There were far worser outcomes to this mission, and Gabranth is proud for it: enough that he would argue his case to any man, emperor, or god without shame.

[poleaxed]

She catches his eyes on her, but it's not noticeable enough to mark. She likes his eyes on her, so she doesn't question it. She's too caught up in the shape of his face. It feels as though it's been an age since she's seen it, though she knows it's only been a handful of weeks. Damn this war, for robbing her of the color of his eyes.

A sigh of relief, and she lets his words drift into focus.

"Flatterer," she repeats. "We make a good team. Not sure why it always surprises me."

[archademode]

“Because you have spent your life in the company of fools.”

High words. Harsh words. As saturated in conviction as the rest of his own rulings— yet here they slip softly into the quiet chill of waning night, a mellower declaration than the typical beating of a fist across his own chest, demanding reality follow suit.

This, unembellished, is simply the span of his own opinion. Ugly and flattering all at once.

“Their presence has robbed you of your own owed certainty.”

[poleaxed]

It's a strange compliment, but he's a strange man. Would she be so wound up about him if he weren't? Always the difficult thing with her, she's been told enough times to make it true.

"You've been awful kind to me lately," she says, tilting her head to the side, now studying him openly. "Are you softening me up for bad news?"

She doesn't believe he'd do that, but it's got to be something.

[archademode]

Kind to her? Him? The space between his brow pinches tight, creases forming as obvious thought overtakes all signs of stoic indifference.

In reality, the concept does nothing to offend him: gentility has never been his own, but for those he devotes himself to— as she has devoted herself to granting him guidance, sanctuary, patience, mercy— he has ever strained to make their burdens lighter. Their troubles lessened. It is doctrine. It is duty, not kindness.

He possesses no capacity for it.

“The world burns, Daughter of Denerim. I have no more terrible news to grant you.”

He shakes his head as he speaks, the gardens that surround them a vague reflection of his first conversation with Lady Alexandrie— how she’d endeavored to stitch neat the frayed hem of their kinship. Were she witness to this now, she would no doubt find some small ember of contentment in the midst of war’s unfeeling cruelties.

Even so, it remains better that she is not.

“What I give, I give because you are— ” He stops for lack of knowing. For the reach of an inadequate vocabulary, where intent falls short of articulation.

“Important.”

Is the eventual decision, pale a descriptor as it feels.

“I would not see you made miserable by my ceaseless presence. I know I am, at times, punishing to endure.”

[poleaxed]

She doesn't laugh, so her humor curls up into a warm smile. What a very dear, very strange man he is. From experience, she knows what he means, but his words always have such a blunt formality to them, easily misinterpreted.

"Can't argue with that," she murmurs, "Know my fair share of plonkers. Gabranth, you- you know you're important to me, too." She finds her voice is soft with understatement.

All this time, she's just been staring at how mouth. Ridiculous. Her eyes flicker back up to is.

"You've never made me miserable. You couldn't, unless you were gone."

[archademode]

Against all instinct, it eases something calloused in him, the promise laid out by her claims. Skewed by her emotion, he does not doubt it is her opinion that he makes for adequate companionship, rather than the burr beneath fine skin that he remains— proof and testament to it written even here, not only in the ruined stretch of his past.
 
His stare is fixed. Unwavering until hers lifts— both shifting their attention to different points, fighting to make the fumbling framing of this exchange more palatable than piteous.

“I have made you miserable. And I have been absent.”

Beneath the mask. Beneath the armor. He is a ghost of intermingling determinations. An imitation of life now lost, and yet Jone knows nothing of Basch fon Ronsenburg. She does not see Gabranth as anything but himself.

“I often wonder why neither has driven you from me.”

[poleaxed]

Jone leaves the fishes, sitting nearer to him. Still on the ground, she folds her arms over the bench so she can rest her head on something other than stonework. "I think you might make yourself a little miserable sometimes. Not me."

She's spent years of her life filled with anger, and with every conversation she escalated to violence, Jone became more convinced everyone was filled with rage. Years spent in fear only inspired more fear. She wonders if that's the same for him.

Fear and anger are the same, aren't they? She thinks they are.

She reaches out to poke him, his upper leg, unprotected by armor. "You tried to tell me about yourself, once, but I were too scared to listen then."

She looks up at him now, a question in her eyes.

[archademode]

To that, he looks away. His jaw tightens, his breath made hotter with every exhale, as though something in him longs for the comfort of outrage—

Or the hollowed barrier of his helm.

But those dark brows ease back in their curvature a beat later, unfixed gaze settling soft as silt for how near she rests. For how she touches him, even in glancing attempts to draw his attention. The memory of every tap to his pauldrons, every knock leveled against his chest— even the way she digs her index finger against leather now, as though speaking to a fond friend rather than a suit of armor. It is not a recent development.

She’d thrown rocks at him right from the start.

“Afraid?” The word is almost scoffed, though true to Gabranth himself, it ends instead as a throaty, stubborn snort. “The Daughter of Denerim fears naught. You are mistaken even in memory.”

Yet without a helm to carry whatever iron-cut certainty facelessness provides, that confident cast wanes a moment later. Shrinks into shadow along with the rest of what still lingers of nightfall.

“You know already of my brother, gone from my side as you from yours. Of the loss of my homeland, and my purpose thereafter in serving the same Empire who so ordered its end. You know of my death, and my curse— and what role I now stand to serve within this nascent world.”

He turns his head back towards her then, pale eyes searching.

“What more do you wish to hear? I shall keep nothing from you, we stand beyond secrets now. And always.”

[poleaxed]

What a strange thing, to have such a fierce defender. Stranger still to be defended against yourself by an outside source. She wants to say she feels fear all the time. Fear is just the other side of anger, she's coming to believe whole-heartedly. Yet, she can't say that to him, can she? No, it hurts to chip at that faith he seems to hold, even if she thinks he might be joking.

She thinks, sometimes, he does. Joke, that is. He might even do it without realizing. How conscious are people of their own actions? She was always touching him, poking at him, even before she realized how much she...

Well.

"Maybe... maybe I was just worried," not afraid, "to hear about you talk like you were dead. I, you know, I don't like to think of that."

She thinks he'll let her get away with that.

"You told me you were immortal. I didn't believe you, but I do now. You wouldn't lie. Tell me... all of it. Weren't listening, back then."

[archademode]

“It is not true immortality. To possess that is to be blessed without knowledge of death's interminable grip.”

Perhaps he can understand it, why she would recoil from the implication that his life has somehow been reduced to ashen decay— in truth, or within the confines of his own mind. That he has resigned himself to it for far, far longer than she will ever truly grasp or comprehend. One gauntleted hand raises, shifting in a stiffened motion towards the undamaged contours of his own features. “I have died thousands upon thousands of times. I am as I was when my life first ended. No visibly older. No more scarred.”

“Yet this world is free of the akashic weave of the gods’ vindictive damnation. It is possible that death here might at last be final in its totality. That I would indeed know peace after an eternity denied.” Words that will not bring Jone assuagement, subjects that will not mend the worry that works itself into the edges of her thoughts, as she already confessed. What he segues into instead is an offering made at the altar of it; the outstretched hand he cannot provide, instead left resting idle at his side.

Spoken sentiment in the absence of touch.

“Even so, my hair does not grow. I need maintain nothing beyond the most basic needs of food and rest. I have spoken with the Lady Wysteria at length about its significance, and thus do we continue to keep watch for signs of change.”

[poleaxed]

In the face of all that, she becomes selfish. Is it not enough to want every piece of him for herself, his past and his present, to claw at him constantly, to ask for his time and his rest? No, now she must scramble up to sit beside him and want to be the one to comfort a comfortless man. A hand on his pauldron, she hopes he finds no pity in her expression. She feels more horrified than anything, worried for him. Can you be sympathetic to something you'll never experience.

"Oh, Noah..." She wants to embrace him, but the armor he wears feels, in that moment, made expressly to keep such things from occurring. She finds his helm instead, hugging it close into the padded fabric of her gambeson. "I should have listened. I'm so bloody sorry."

She knows what a burden it is, to hold things back. She knows how much more steep that burden becomes, when you're ignored. She'd known that even then. She'd just been a coward.

The helm digs uncomfortably into her; it was not made for this. She holds it regardless.

"Who did that to you? Said something about... gods." She needs to know who to pray to and who to curse. Clearly the Maker has no hand in anything that matters to her.

[archademode]

She says his name— Noah— and it aches more than every other word, every other sentiment or denial given up unto this point. His expression pinches, his head turned away. It was given to her to be used. For this purpose no less. More the fool him, for buckling beneath its weight.

“Chaos, Cosmos. The war they waged against one another in the hell between worlds was one with a dire need for fodder. Much as this world steals souls— the living and the dead— to no doubt defend itself from the threat that now rises, so too did they tear mortals from their moorings, conscripting them to a game without end.”

Not divine aspects to be prayed to. Not merciful divinities. Only powerful ones with an appetite for sport at cost. A board to be wiped at their leisure, nothing beyond its scope to be considered. They do not make the endless stretches of worlds and universes better for their existence. They do not grant gifts, nor hear prayers.

“For each time a god and its aligned pawns were slain, their false world would be reset anew, and memories wiped from mortal grasp: it was far too long, the cycles of wanton slaughter that I willingly participated in, thinking my cause just. I have memory of it now. I did not then.”

When he looks back at her this time, it is at her hands. Rough and pale and notched with the work she's made for herself. A promise of pain overcome— and embraced, now, where the sharp, pitch-colored edges of his helmet dig in like thorny barbs against her.

He sets his palm atop them both.

“You have nothing to be sorry for.”

[poleaxed]

All of that, she has no words for, except... "They tortured you."

Anger snakes behind her teeth. Coiled rage that can't be avenged. But there is sorrow, also. She can't fix this. She can only make the world softer for him, something he refuses to do for herself.

Giving into temptation, her hand finds his. Selfish creature, she takes more and more of him. "You're here now," she says, because what else can be said? Well, one thing.

"Not sorry 'cos I think I did it. Not that daft." Her words are slow, careful. "Could break every bone in my body and not care. But you- the thought of you hurt-..."

She looks at her boots instead of his face, instead of his helmet in her lap, his hand in her hands. She's said too much already.

[archademode]

“I am not weak, Jone. It is nothing.”

He knows this response. Because it is hers. when he’d struck her. When he’d cast her down with hatred in his own scorched heart only to find pain clinging welcome in her posture— how disconsolate he’d become, brooding over her injury and his role in it.

How it assaulted her pride, that concern. Remorse.

Now she is tensed with outrage at pain he draws his own pride from. Now he is quick to dismiss what might indeed be justified— if he could stomach the thought of weakness that it seems to promise to his shattered sense of dignity.

He forces the harder depth from his bearing, sitting idle in silence for too long, feeling the air— kissed thoroughly by sunlight— going colder for lack of movement or voice. He stares so long at the slope of her features behind a curtain of fallen red.

And then he lifts one arm, carrying with it the heavy span of his cloak. An offering for her. An opportunity to move in close.

[poleaxed]

The difference, perhaps, between these mirrored actions is Jone's response. Still staring at her boots, she murmurs, "I know you're strong. Strongest man I know. Don't make it right."

And then his hand has moved over her shoulder, welcoming her in close, and she hasn't the strength to resist it. In no scenario can she imagine she would. She leans into him, her head on his metal shoulder, just as her pulse quickens. Being so close to him is always an excitement, a vulnerability, a precious, precious thing. A flickering flame on a stormy night. She holds it to her, just as she cradles his helm close, horns curving into fabric.

"All that time," she says softly, "you were fighting, was that all? Did you... sleep or eat or have a life? In this... hell place."