Fade Rift Mods (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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faderift2021-11-05 06:58 pm
faderifting) wrote in faderift2021-11-05 06:58 pm
Entry tags:
- ! mod plot,
- ! open,
- abby,
- benedict quintus artemaeus,
- byerly rutyer,
- derrica,
- gwenaëlle strange,
- john silver,
- kostos averesch,
- obeisance barrow,
- tsenka abendroth,
- val de foncé,
- { diabhall minett },
- { emet-selch },
- { gabranth },
- { james holden },
- { jone },
- { mado },
- { margaery tyrell },
- { richard dickerson },
- { thranduil }
In the Armor of the Dead
WHO: Anyone in the Gallows
WHAT: An(other) attack on the Gallows
WHEN: The next night after Satinalia. Enjoy dealing with two weird attacks back to back, now while hungover! Sorry.
WHERE: The Gallows
NOTES: This is the somewhat belated October mod event, as the theme may indicate. In addition to this open post there are also several open top-levels below with specific tasks PCs can help accomplish. There's also an open crystal catch-all post for event-related chatter. If you have questions, hit us on the Mod Question channel on discord.
WHAT: An(other) attack on the Gallows
WHEN: The next night after Satinalia. Enjoy dealing with two weird attacks back to back, now while hungover! Sorry.
WHERE: The Gallows
NOTES: This is the somewhat belated October mod event, as the theme may indicate. In addition to this open post there are also several open top-levels below with specific tasks PCs can help accomplish. There's also an open crystal catch-all post for event-related chatter. If you have questions, hit us on the Mod Question channel on discord.
Just after dusk, those standing guard duty on the walls will hear an odd rattle and clatter, like debris knocked by waves against the rocks below. Except it grows closer, scraping up the side of the fortress. Rats, maybe? Things do echo oddly here in this tall stone fortress with the sea crashing at its base on all sides, especially on evenings like this where the fog has rolled in across the harbor, catching some sounds and carrying others. By the time this noise is enough for someone to look down over the parapet, it's already too late. A host of dripping corpses has already clawed its way up the walls and now they come over it, pouring up and over the eastern battlements first but the others only moments behind. They come in numbers uncountable, crawling over each other, enveloping the Gallows in a wave of the dead.
Many are skeletal, the rest with the shrunken shrivelled flesh of a mummy still clinging to their bones. A few are dressed in the tattered rags of the long-dead, but many are in armor or finery from ages past or the blood-spattered outfits of everyday Nevarrans. It won't take long to figure out Nevarrans is what they are--surely the still-possessed dead of Nevarra City, old and new, somehow transported from that abandoned capitol to Kirkwall. A year out in the elements instead of in the protection of the Necropolis has not been kind, but the weather is not the only thing that has been working on them. Each and every corpse has red lyrium growing within it, crystals jutting out from bones or erupting through leathery skin, crusting stripes across skulls or adding vicious spikes to limbs.
They tumble down the stairs into the courtyards and flood through the fortress until they meet resistance or doors too heavy to batter down (there are some benefits to living in a prison). The spirits possessing the dead hum with the aggressive intensity that lyrium inspires. They fight viciously, without magic or any great intelligence but a primitive instinct for destruction of any life they encounter and an inhuman lack of fear. Some are armed, with weapons running the gamut from ceremonial swords and halberds to tools and household implements. They will all continue to attack as long as they are mobile, or until the demon within is destroyed. Their rage is indiscriminate but not undirected: anyone caught in the city when it happens can attest that the swarm is confined--for now--to the Gallows only, and any dead driven into the sea at the ferry launch will seek to climb back up rather than turn for other shores. No attempt is made to hold any particular position; they ebb and flow through the complex in constant pursuit of the living.
As Satina rises the temperature drops and the sky clears, the light of the full moon highlighting a merchant ship at anchor not far to the east of Gallows Island, though not so close as to have inspired suspicion. It has been there for at least a day, its position unremarkable in a harbor crowded by traffic too frightened to travel the Waking Sea further. But now a dark mass of lurching movement scrambles over its side into the water and on its deck are two spots of glowing red. A spyglass will make clear the details: a mage on the quarterdeck crowned with a strange helmet of red lyrium, chains of the crystal strung like armor down chest and arms, crusting his staff. On the fo'c'sle a Templar in an identical lyrium helm, armor studded with lyrium and cut to accommodate the crystals that grow out of her arms and shoulders. Their eyes glow red and lips seem to move in unison.
By dawn, the the eluvian the dead arrived through will have been destroyed and their flow halted, and the bomb they delivered into the Gallows disarmed or otherwise neutralized. There will need to be a thorough sweep of the fortress to ensure that all are located and re-killed, and the dead-again will need to be disposed of. The presence of red lyrium in the corpses may require some additional Cleansing of the fortress as well. The morning will also bring news from agents elsewhere in Thedas that Kirkwall was not the only target. A similar attack struck Cumberland, and another was intended for Val Royeaux, but the ship carrying the eluvian was intercepted before entering the harbor by the heavy Orlesian navy presence guarding the capital and instead the dead swarmed over several naval ships before they were destroyed.
Closed to Gabranth
So when he is alone after working late, putting himself through paces with a rapier and a training dummy outside, he is quite unprepared to have company.
Hearing an approach, he turns towards the nearest source of movement, hoping to ask for a sparring partner...and getting more than he bargained for. The glow of red lyrium jutting out from an ambling corpse reflects in his rosy eyes...his very wide rosy eyes, set in a rapidly paling face.
"...No," he gasps, stepping back once, twice, three times. In spite of himself, his gaze darts around, looking for horns, for a tail on the corpse, his heart pounding in his ears. Fear, white hot and almost alien in its ferocity wells up within him, and his breathing immediately tightens.
"No. No. No. Not now - not NOW-"
Setting his jaw, he attempts to strike out with the rapier still in hand - but his grip is slack and shaky, the point landing between ribs and being easily twisted from his hand. It's no use. He can't hold it together. All he can see is the crystal, glowing and twisting out of the bodies, a mockery of his memory, of his darkest moments -
He backs up again, hands working in panic to summon a staff that will never come, shoulder blades meeting cold stone.
no subject
The momentum of it— roughly dragging Diabhall back behind the heavy shadow of his own cloak— is chased by a buffeting flash of flame, drawn quick and boiling hot between the both of them and the oncoming cluster of straining undead. It will not last. There is nothing to catch like tinder beyond frigid earth and stale air, and Gabranth’s magic is never prolonged in its nature.
They will need to stand their ground the instant it clears.
Yet Gabranth does not know this man. His capabilities. New, he must be. A mage, he assumes, given the fruitless way he’d been attempting to defend himself with nothing more than his own raised, beckoning hand. A novice, perhaps. Such fear pervades.
Palpable as the sickening scent of spent ozone.
Gabranth's voice twists sharper than a blade, snarling beneath a faceless helm when he asks, “Can you fight?”
no subject
He has no idea who this is, but he is grateful; there is no doubt in his mind he would have taken that blow, that he would still have been staring, standing in chains of his own imagining. The momentary obstruction of the corpses from view has shaken him out just enough. It would have to be enough, anyway.
The panic is still gripping him, agonizing, holding his breath hostage. When his reply comes, it's wordless - a curt nod and a trembling, brief crouch to snatch his rapier from where it had clattered to the earth. His expression is pale, terrified, wild...but there is, at least, some sort of resolution in his eyes, a fire that is more than only the reflection of the spell.
I can try.
It isn't him.
They aren't him.
no subject
But it is all they have. And it is better than fighting alone.
Thankfully the cluster that pours through once flame dies down is no swarm yet. Felled by shared effort, perhaps with tenacity— perhaps with perseverance alone— a break eventually forms, enough that Gabranth is able to gesture to Diabhall for a retreat: the corridor at their back leads to a shuttered cloister, and if they can make it there, they stand a better chance of defending themselves.
“Come. Now.”
If Diabhall cannot manage the walk, he’ll soon find himself carried.
no subject
To fight. To build.
And that's how he manages to help clumsily beat back the little throng with movements that might be graceful under normal circumstances. He's not an excellent hand to hand fighter, but at least he seems trainable, quick.
But not now. Now, the moment there is the opportunity and the signal for retreat, Diabhall moves to do so with no question.
no subject
For now, that is not their plight.
Heavy doors slam behind them as Gabranth moves to brace gloved hands against their span, gesturing with a nod towards a nearby block of wood intended to bar the doors themselves. Heavy, but as the doorway shudders and groans, he knows he cannot let go.
It must be Diabhall’s burden.
no subject
He catches the nod, and returns it, sucking ragged breath through his teeth as he scrambles to it. He is not what one would consider a strong man, but at the least, he is no stranger to moving beams - and so, growling with effort, he leverages it upward, hauling it to rest one end on the bracket nearest him.
Putting his whole weight against it, he shoves it home, shoulders trembling with more than just the exertion.
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His blond hair is matted with spent sweat, pale eyes lifting to at last survey his companion.
“Are you all right?”
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Pathetic. He feels pathetic, but at least he's in. He's safe.
Diabhall drags his hand across his forehead, pulling hair out of sweat before finally responding in something just a little more unsteady than his traditional drone.
"...Thanks to you. That wasn't precisely what I had in mind when I thought I would practice my sword handling."
no subject
How different Diabhall sounds now, laced with fear.
"This world is unkind in its make. It affords little to those of us who dwell now within its expanse." A warning by way of subtler suggestion— and then not subtle at all.
"There will be more of this to come."
no subject
The compliment is appreciated, as this fellow does not seem the sort to give them needlessly - even as inwardly, the elf is seething at his own conduct. He froze. If this man hadn't come to his aid, he may well have perished, then and there, thinking of torment from years and years ago.
That won't do.
"...Of course. Nothing is ever simple," he agrees, tone grim but understanding. He looks down to his hand, pressed to the stone of the floor, still shaking.
Why is it shaking?
"I shall have to get a better hold on myself again. This...this isn't sustainable."
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Long has he fought this night.
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"No...but my first without magic at my disposal. I was cut from it, upon my arrival here."
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“Here, they would call you tranquil if they knew.”
What he was. What he lost.
no subject
"I make no secret of it. And if they were to refer to me as Tranquil, I don't believe my lack of magic to be what would cause the connection."
It's the stillness that would do it. He bears no mark...but there is that hollowness to him, that placidness dulling all his edges. Or...at least, it was that way. Some of those edges are breaking through, now.
He doesn't like it.