In the Armor of the Dead

[faderifting]

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.

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.

Comments

[elegiaque]

Gwenaëlle's knees press into the griffon as she braces herself, booted feet against the back of Thranduil's calves as she rises very slightly, bringing her bow up and sighting along it as they approach the Gallows' walls. Sounds familiar. She makes a noise that could be taken for assent, but what she says is,

“Get me near the battlements,” and then, “above, but not directly,”

which sounds like probably there's some kind of plan, although whether or not it's going to be one he'd like to hear about in advance is another story entirely.

[rowancrowned]

He did not confirm anymore than she did, but there was a shift in his riding, a tighter hold on the reins, a change in his posture, and Coupe's alertness narrowing.

He did as she requested, making some adjustments-- chiefly, a height that wouldn't involve certain death, or even likely death, and Coupe at about a quarter of her speed gliding, and then the very hardest part: not saying anything.

There will be time after they have won.

[elegiaque]

Her bow has no string.

Her bow has a string when it matters. She nocks an arrow into place, sights, and fires—picks off her targets strategically, firing arrows that trail ice and land with enough force to interrupt the stream of dead up and over the parapet. Here one dragging down his fellows from beneath, here another clearing her a path at the top. A blast from her glaive smashes a group of them partially into dust, tumbling bones and red lyrium into the sea, which

seems like it's probably bad, but if they live they can worry about it. She adjusts her grip on her bow and grips Thranduil's shoulder behind her, using him—“Steady,”—to brace herself as she brings her feet up underneath her and prepares to jump. From where they are now she can see Holden, presumably being insufferably brave, and she says,

“Merci,” as she launches herself from Coupe's back in an acrobatic arc, angling heel down so it connects with a sickening crunch to the skull of some rotted Nevarran husk when she lands. The glow of her anchor-shield makes it impossible to make out, from the distance he's at, what happens next.