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

Silas/Richard Dickerson

[nonvenomous]

[ starters below, hmu if you'd like to plot something. ]

Week 1 - Hasmal - FITCHER

[nonvenomous]

The room is only half-tossed, the inn underfoot alive with raucous laughter and the pounding of nationalist boots to the beat of a lively song about Tevinter refugees.

Refugees, what we gonna do?
Feed ‘em to goats like the Avvar do!

They’re on the second verse when the man Silas is wrapped around the throat of thinks to bull rush them both headlong into the flipped mattress, bursting it at the seams.

Straw shrapnel rattles across the far wall.

He’s built like a bronto and purple in the face, one violin-sized boot lashed out to kick over a nightstand with its open drawers spilling out onto the floor with a great clatter and tumble of cheaply-bound chants. Dick has him from behind, now beneath, twisting between a side of beef and straw stuffing while this man, mark, plant, whatever, claws at him for purchase

and finds -- at Silas’ hip -- a dagger.

Week 1 - Hasmal - MADO

[nonvenomous]

Dust still whorls thick in the streets with the vortex of beating wings fading into a remote thump in the sky. Here and there, folk have filtered out of inns and homes to see about the fuss, fearful in their murmuring. Was that a dragon? Soon, soldiering boots will muster to investigate reports of griffons fleeing pell-mell into the night.

Silas, with his back pressed flat against a blackened wall in the moon’s shadow, is shivering with gusto enough for his teeth to chatter. He was the only survivor left behind on the ground when the griffons fled.

Definitely.

Totally alone.

In through the nose, out through the mouth he breathes, closing his eyes to steady himself in the rubble of this burned out building. The dark shape of a cat huddled across his shoulders purrs against his cheek, drawing his focus inward, away from the echo of a distant roar.

[unshut]

It's a familiar knife. Fitcher seems to recall wrapping it in a ribbon last year—

She leaps onto the slab of a person, tacitly ignoring the fact that it means applying that much more weight to the lanky, otherworldly mage stuck between him and the tatters of the mattress.

Ka-thump! The headboard strikes against the plaster wall, and Fitcher—riding the bucking shape of men and knife and steel—finds herself grappling with a thick wrist, and a flashing knife. A knee jams against their mark's chest (means a knee in Silas' chest, by some transitive property of force). Fitcher moves for her own knife.

(That too had been a gift.)

cw violence all the way down

[nonvenomous]

There isn’t much of Silas visible to see the pulse of alarm in his eyes when more weight piles on -- he’s red in the face himself, bunched with his nose buried in a cauliflower ear -- go to sleep -- while the cartilage flexed in his ribs creaks and pops. His teeth part; there’s no air left in him to grunt with.

Ka-thump!

Caught at the right wrist, the ogre beneath her breaks from prying at the arm at his throat to swing for her with the boulder of his left fist, hail mary.

Dick closes his jaws around the ear lumped beside them, and rips.

week one.

[charmoffensive]

There isn't really any sort of quiet hour in a city that is in the process of complete collapse. Whoops and shouts and the odd shriek drift up above the rooftops. Baying dogs, breaking glass, and some queer thudding that Loxley has yet to determine the origin of, but is in fact small groups of rabblerousers striking the walls of residential buildings to unsettle and terrorise those barricaded within. It sounds, almost, like a beat to music.

But there are quieter areas, and this is one of them. No one sees a lithe qunari figure fling a jet-back grappling hook up into the air, or sees it catch against a stone ledge, or see him move as a darting shadow up the skinny rope he's strung in place.

Once there, he crouches, looks around while blindly gathering the rope into a tight coil. He is dressed in grey-blacks of a specific sort of Rivaini cut and style. By day, it seems to pass muster to the average person to simply read as odd Tal-Vashoth foreigner. By night, it blends in the darkness a little better than the adventuring leathers he normally wears. (The boots are the same—those are never getting left behind. The rapier, though, must be hidden elsewhere, as he only has daggers as his means of defense.

And magic, one supposes.) His hands are gloved, concealing any glimmer of green within.

He is confident he is alone, until he notices glowing eyes in the dark, lambert and feline. Well, it stands to reason that some paths might lead to the same destinations, the same people of interest, and there is something particular about them that Loxley doesn't dismiss them as belonging to any old cat.

"Hello, you," he says, quietly, securing rope and grappling hook to a belt that runs off his shoulder. "I don't know that we've been introduced formally."

ellis.

[heorte]

[ content to follow. holler at me if you want to plan something specific. ]

derrica.

[tender]

[ content to follow. holler at me if you want to plan something specific. ]

john silver.

[hornswoggle]

[ content to follow. holler at me if you want to plan something specific. ]

nikolai lantsov.

[rezni]

[ content to follow. holler at me if you want to plan something specific. ]

sidony venaras.

[indissection]

( threads here! feel free to msg/plurk for something or just hit her up wherever she is on the plotting post. )

james holden

[acreage]

[ starters tba! hmu for plotting. ]

cw just dont look at this thread

[unshut]

Refugees, what we gonna do?
Show their asses the toes of our shoes!

is met with a particularly enthusiastic hooting and hollering. Maybe someone downstairs is demonstrating. Up here, the brute between them's scream is reduced to a choked gargle under the blunt pressure of Silas' arm. His swinging fist becomes a grasping hand. It catches at her arm, at her shoulder, and her hand is forced from the halfway pulled knife.

A brief flash of instinctive fear lights up hot. She can't divert the knife in his other fist forever and there's a tilting quality of the momentum here, threatening to tip in the favor of the assailed over the assailants. And then the ogre's grasping hand finds her thick braid to yank instead of her arm, freeing her to clap a hand to Silas's arm.

Fitcher bears down on it and the man's throat.

starkhaven. gabranth.

[indissection]

[ Sidony isn't often the kind to care about who she is put with on missions - she is a healer and has become accustomed to meeting with many people, learning of people by face rather than, perhaps, by name and reputation - but when she does know someone she is to work with she will take care of them. It is what happens when she realises one of her companions is the dear, darling Gabranth himself is to come to Starkhaven.

It doesn't take much at all for her to gather her supplies in her little bag, hair tied up in her new pretty pins, and trot along to find him. It would be preferable to get him alone again, she thinks, if only so that she can peer at his face and make certain that he's well after the last few weeks and all that came before it. For some reason she has the image in her head that he is not the type to necessarily ask for help if he needs it.

Thankfully, finding people you have been teamed with is not the most difficult. While Sidony has kept herself away from much of the danger - she is well aware that her strengths do not like in combat and warfare but in her hands and her words - but she's a touch run down, a little tired, a little frustrated and on edge. It means she's a little more purposeful when she finds him, reaching to grab his arm and tug at him almost immediately.

Rudeness? Of course not. She simply has business with him. ]

Darling. With me a moment, please?

margaery tyrell

[molineux]

[ starters to follow. lmk if you'd like to plot something! c: ]

^

[nonvenomous]

The strength of this man’s knife hand is inexorable, curling in with dead weight determination to skewer the point of the blade into the meat of their chokehold just as Fitcher leans into it, snapping the windpipe beneath (pop!) into a fatal crimp. The result is blind druffalo panic: he tears the dagger out in a bloody arc between them, bucks and kicks -- the headboard splinters, and the bedframe drops down from 4 legs to just 2, whump.

The momentum of the fight doesn’t just tilt, it rolls. Silas is shed like a tick, dropped away in a tumble of boots and knees. His left arm is laid open to the bone, a flash of pink past the roll of his sleeve --

And their foe has come up on his feet, his thumb hooked as if to pop his larynx back into shape while he pistons a stomp down into Silas’s scrambling.

He’s smashed back to the floor, but not before an answering tangle of electricity ladders through his fingers. In an acid green flash, the bolt roots up through the lummox’s calf and for an instant he’s seized stiff heel to skull, muscle bolted down to bone with Dick under his boot. His eyes are crimson around the undead grey of his irises fixed on Fitcher, blue lips peeled back from yellow teeth, bloody froth dripping at his chin to mix with the ooze from his ear. His knuckles bleach white around the hilt of Dick’s dagger, locked in spasm, the blade turned at ready.

[unshut]

Fitcher, upended in the chaotic tumble, in that moment rears back up with one of the snapped free bed posts. The crack of it striking skull is like the explosive pop of an egg shell left too long to boil. The fist around the knife doesn't loosen; rather, it's carried down with the grunt as he collapses away, striking the side table whose spindle legs shatter under the weight on his way down. Cheap porcelain wash basin and pitcher go with it—a fantastic crash of glass and splintered wood and the jerking shape of a man dying.

Seeing as they likely won't have the opportunity to question him further, she cracks the brawler with the bed post once more for good measure before chucking it aside.

Breathless, with hair coming undone and blood from some preliminary blow coursing down from her left temple, Fitcher pivots her attention to Silas smeared across the floorboards.

"All right, dear?"

She's fumbling at the pouch on her hip, struggling briefly with lacings. Thump. The lug on the floor gives a last trembling kick, and below them the chorus of the song rises.

[nonvenomous]

The sound Silas makes from the floor is little more than a labored squeeze of his diaphragm under burning lungs, ozone still sharp over the coppery tang of blood in the air. But he’s free to hitch himself up onto a knee, the dead man’s shin jostling under his grip when he braces against it.

He spits the ear in his cheek down onto the body once he’s stood -- wipes his shoulder at the bloody drool in his beard while thicker stuff dribbles off the wing of his elbow and between his fingers where he’s closed them around the wound. Straw clings to him where it can. He scans her over for stab wounds -- nods when he finds none.

All right.

A scan of the room reveals a trunk left to search, a desk, a coat on a hook. There are exits to the east and west -- one of them a window. More importantly, there is a corked bottle on the table.

“The hallway is clear,” he reports, in much the same informational tone as he’d reported, ”Someone is coming,” moments ago. “We have time.”

[unshut]

"Lovely," is an absent observation as the pouch has come open under her fingers and she has produced a tightly wrapped roll of fabric. There is a hammered tin for tobacco which doesn't hold smoking leaf but rather a sewing kit along with it, but that she leaves where it is. Time to toss a room is not time to sew up the full length of his forearm. That much will have to wait until they've successfully engineered slipping away elsewhere.

Fitcher nods to the bloodied clamp of his fingers.

"May I?"

[nonvenomous]

“I can stem the bleeding,” sounds less controversially magical than, say, I can reduce the damage.

Still, he peels his fingers away to proffer his arm where the muscle’s been slashed open like a slit fish. She’s asked very nicely, and healing won’t keep the sides hemmed together while they’re on the move. His bloodied right hand he keeps out to the side, with only a fleeting stir towards wiping it off on her while she’s distracted.

“Shame about the mattress.”

He has to say so through gritted teeth while she works.

[unshut]

Good that it's only a fleeting consideration. She likes this shirt, and the skirts for that matter. Nevermind all the blood that's soaked into her hair and is dotting her collar. Later, she will be irritated at it, but that will be easier to mask with embroidery than the smear of fingerprints.

"Oh, I don't know. The straw you have from it in your beard lends you a certain roguish air," she observes archly. The bandage's end is secured to his shredded forearm with a sturdy thumb with a sidelong look. "Though maybe I'm thinking of the blood in your mouth."

Her field dressing is briskly accomplished. It has the air of something well practiced, like the drafting of a report in the scouting division offices or the easy way she deals out cards. The loose end is secured with a pin from the same belt pouch.

"If he'd been two inches shorter there'd have been no trouble whatsoever."

closed

[radicans]

I am. [ familiar with their destination. Maud replies with, she hopes, less reluctance or regret in her tone than she feels about that fact. She'd had less than zero desire to return to Tantervale, especially as an emissary of Riftwatch, but had felt obliged to volunteer given that no one else in the organization seems the slightest bit familiar with the place. As evidenced by the team they've sent, though at least these rifters seem both willing and able to make a good impression.

And so she finds herself on the road to what is, officially, her home, face shaded from the sun by a wide-brimmed summer hat, talking to a man from the Fade. ]

You'll find it quite different from Kirkwall, I'm afraid.

Tiffany Hart

[fairforce]

[Starters for the weeks/projects/misc will be below, happy to make specific plans/threads just lmk]

OTA | WEEK ONE/TWO - on the way to Hasmal

[fairforce]

WEEK 1 - outside of Wildervale.
[They're bound for Hasmal, but the road to Hasmal is the road that cuts through Wildervale, and all the little villages between Hasmal and Wildervale lie off that road, too.

And on the road are the refugees. The trickle of their number quickly becomes a flood, people on horse and in carts and on foot, pulling wagons and pushing wheelbarrows and carrying bundles, or carrying nothing at all.

Whoever is unlucky enough to travel in the company of Lady Seeker Theophania Hart will find their way to Hasmal is very slow. Tiffany stops for anyone that calls to her. She gives away her food, she gives away her blanket, and then her other blanket, she gives away her spare socks. We have to help. She says it so often it becomes a mantra.

Two hour's ride from Wildervale, they come upon a thin man with a screaming baby strapped to his back and a cart with a wheel stuck firmly in the mud of the road. The line of refugees pass by him, a parade of equal misery. Tiffany pulls up her horse and gives a look to her traveling companions as she starts pulling off her gloves again.]

We have to help. Come with me.

WEEK 1 - outside of Hasmal.
[Night comes too quick, but the dark isn't dark. Torchlight is everywhere, lanterns swaying from their posts on rumbling wagons, and in the fields and copses of trees beside the road, campfires flicker like warmer starlight.

The horses are tired. They have to rest before they will reach Hasmal. But the next village is so full of people--people sleeping in the streets, down every narrow lane, tucked up against barrels and bales of hay, people in hay lofts and on the stone steps of the crude country chapel, where the doors stand open to reveal--yes--more people, sleeping in the pews and on the floor and sat against the walls.

Tiffany stops there. Her tabard and her boots are thick with mud. Too many stops on the road. She peels off one of her gloves and passes her hand over her face.]

Where will they end up?

[It's not really a question. It's more like a prayer. Please, Andraste. Help us. Help them. They have to talk to these people, too. Everyone has a story to tell. They've heard it, all up and down the road. The army was bigger than they expected. The army was what they expected. The screaming started when the gate was opened. The screaming started before the gate was open. The fire ate everything. Tiffany had held hands with a girl whose hair had burned away, leaving her with a charred tonsure and burns that her mother was treating with a poltice that smelled of honey and bran, a thick sweet smell that twisted with the stench of burned flesh. Where will they end up?]

gently places a phone tag from the surface of the sun

[archademode]

[She need only ask. As it is now, and as it will be ever, the hierarchy of respect housed within Gabranth’s mind is unshakable. Iron.

That she herself is a welcome presence only heightens the strength of his ruling in regards to her— and so where normally Gabranth would hold hesitancy in pulling himself away from ceaseless routine in duty (what risk do minutes away from their charges pose? Even seconds shift themselves into opportunity), he is there at her side and in her grasp without complaint, fitted like a shadow against her footsteps.]

Is something amiss?

[Concern isn’t present in his voice, only his readied posture; he wonders vaguely if she’s spotted something with keen eyes.]