faderift | In the Armor of the Dead

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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.

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.

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“Too many to be counted— ”

Cut off by a failed attack that slices through the air mere inches from the front of his helm, retaliation swift, and painted with a burning gust of flame spat hot from the edge of Gabranth’s own blade.

“Put your back to the wall, prevent them from beating down those doors at any cost!”

The smell in the air is cloying, the nonexistent reverberation of red lyrium damning to their senses, though thankfully not so pervasive as to be entirely overwhelming.

Yet there is no telling how long this might take. How long they might need to hold their ground with little chance of relief. Something to protect with no end in sight.

And it is with that knowledge that he worries, fleetingly, for his friend.

He's moving before Gabranth is even done speaking. Endless enemies, a home to defend; they're as bad odds as he's ever known. Gabranth's own alarm speaks volumes. And yet a strange calm seems to settle like a fresh fall of snow.

There are worse ways to die.

So he cedes himself to the adrenaline, to the part of his mind trained to operate in these circumstances. Positions himself as suggested, though not without some reservation — he's seen these creatures climb, and he and Gabranth can defend the doors all night without it mattering if they're bypassed. A problem, but not one he has an answer to. In the meantime, he fights. The blade used against anything that comes in range; Fade blasts as often as he can bear for those further out, and for climbers.

Magic does much to mitigate what reach alone cannot: the green crackle of the Fade, the scorching heat of spent flame, extending high and harsh in order to clip would-be ascension—

But eventually, the assault turns rampageous.

Gabranth slips back closer to the doorway. His back to its reinforced span, sweat a thick, uncomfortable film beneath the shadow of his helm. This world takes its toll in ways he is unused to. In ways that exhaust a body not designed to age, to weaken, to weary.

He feels himself growing less efficient by the second.

Imprecise as it is, a blow finds its way between the gaps in his armor. More force than agony, the sting of it only settling in when he moves to lift his arm in the next moment— defense nearly shattering for an agonizing flicker of pain.

Determination is enough to keep him going. Rage itself is enough. With a furious headbutt he slams the horns of his helmet into the skeleton nearest to him, sending bits of bone splintering away.

This isn't sustainable.

He'd known, of course, even at the beginning. But the more time passes, the more the writing on the wall becomes clear. The bruise across his chest makes breathing, moving, feel more like fire; the blade in his hands seems to grow heavier and heavier; and he's reaching his limits with the Fade energy. The pain throbs through his palm, down his arm, and a part of him can't help thinking that he might be starting to understand the kind of agony Wysteria dealt with.

Stranger still is seeing Gabranth start to tire. After all his assurances of his immortality, despite the severity of the battle, Jim had half-expected to see him fight inexhaustibly. The man's will is ironclad as always, but for the first time the fear of watching him get killed grips his heart.

Protecting the Gallows is a noble cause. Dying for nothing is not.

He lashes out with the sword, then shouts, "Fall back!" There is nothing in his voice that brooks argument: this is an order. The door is right there. He hasn't forgotten the danger of skeletons following them inside, adding, "I'll cover you."

He doesn't wait for agreement, fights his way forward instead of trying to stay in place. It's less because he thinks Gabranth wouldn't, than to be sure his intentions are clear, that he says, last,

"And keep the goddamned door open for me!"

Then: a bright flash of green.

Edited 2021-11-14 16:43 (UTC)

It is a fair decision. The right one, regardless of how it feels in the moment— how they might be swayed to excuse another minute, another push, another lull between bursts of waning strength. Were he convinced this was Captain Holden’s own sacrificial gambit, there would be no concession. No accord.

Instead, that final demand is enough.

It takes more power than perhaps he has left to spare, but through raw effort alone, Gabranth forces those heavy doors open. Half-pressed against its angled span as one final gout of flame circles Holden’s heels.

“It is done— get inside, now!”

He doesn't need to be told twice. He turns and books it, ducks to dodge a well-aimed strike from one bony hand clutching a hammer, and all but stumbles through the doorway. He braces himself against the nearby wall, turning swiftly in time to see the doors shut, the both of them on the right side of them.

And only then, finally, lets out a breath he hadn't known he'd been holding.

It is not relief that he feels, sitting down to press his back to the shut (and shuttered) doorway, feeling it vibrate with the hammering of withered fists and weaponry from the opposite side.

The night will be long in spite of this reprieve, and there is more they’ll need to do once they gather their strength.

But for now, Gabranth’s glance is sidelong. Assuaged, as he pulls away his helm in order to catch his breath.

“I did not think you a mage.”

He leans his back against the wall, slides down till he's sitting. It's at that point he lets go of the blade, on the ground but within reach if necessary. With the clamor of the dead still trying to get in, it's impossible to forget that they're far from safe. His eyes slide shut, briefly, as he considers a vague inventory of injury: sore all over, but the worst at his sternum and anchor hand. If the latter becomes a problem, he'll have to take it up with someone. The former won't be an issue for a healer. Nothing broken or bleeding or irreparably wrong. Better than he could've hoped for, under the circumstances.

When Gabranth speaks, he breaths out a laugh and opens his eyes.

"I'm not one. My anchor," looking to the shard, "started being able to do this not long ago. Considering how useful it's been tonight, I'm not complaining about it."

It's very James Holden, probably, to be thankful for the utility of changes in his anchor instead of worried about what it could mean for him. When a faint shudder goes down his spine, and he flips his hand so that his palm presses against the cold floor, it has nothing to do with anchor shard fears.

Instead, he looks back to Gabranth.

"Are you hurt?"

Edited 2021-11-17 14:51 (UTC)

“No more than you, I believe.”

It is spoken as no accusation, obvious by tone alone— yet Holden’s clothing is damp.

And the dead do not bleed.

He reaches high to work at the shoulder strap of one of his own pauldrons, loosening the bloodied buckle with an impatient hand. Throughout, Gabranth’s expression fails to change. No flinch, no sneering pull to his own lip.

“How long have you dwelled in Thedas?”

The sound he makes when he exhales has the same meaning to it as if he'd said, fair enough. His shirt sticks to his back with sweat more than blood, but that was also dumb luck. If he hadn't run into Gwenaëlle earlier; if he hadn't been found by Gabranth now. If the night had gone a little differently, he easily wouldn't have lived to see the end of it.

Not that there's any guarantee now.

He watches Gabranth's work, ready to pull himself closer if the help is needed. Ready to let him be, equally, if it's not. If his friend were hurt worse it'd surely show in some way, and that's another thing to be thankful for, because he's no healer.

"Around a year now. I got here before last Satinalia."

One year. So short a span, and one Gabranth knows he himself will draw near soon enough. The past collection of months have been a blink compared to the endless lifetimes he'd known before, but even then it runs so quickly: it feels fresh as spilled blood, still. Yesterday, in essence.

"Have you spoken with the Lady Wysteria as of late."

There is a relevance to it, that question. Some segue between past and present discussion, and all its impending unpleasantness.

He remembers.

He remembers Wysteria, collapsing after closing a rift under enemy fire; he remembers Wysteria, pale and feverish and in unspeakable pain under a makeshift pile of blankets; he remembers Wysteria, wasting away in the infirmary; he remembers Wysteria, inexplicably still alive, recovering at last after the risky gambit of severing her limb.

The notion of amputation is a strange one to a man from the far future. Amos had lost a few fingers on Ilus, and it'd just been a matter of the autodoc and some regrowth gel to repair the damage. He remembers, briefly, Paj crowing about the prosthetic he was due from Pur'n'Kleen. I've been signed on long enough to get one with force feedback, pressure and temp sensors, the whole package.

He cants his head, and the look he shoots Gabranth isn't unkind, but is quelling.

"I know," he says, "what the danger is. That's not what's happening right now. It hasn't hurt me." Pain from overuse isn't the same thing; his legs and feet will hurt if he runs long enough. "And," wryly, "I've promised Richard to report it if things go the same way."

It's reassurance, see, because Silas will absolutely kick his ass if he doesn't.

“I did not ask for worry,” Gabranth corrects, though there’s a decided lack of brittleness that might speak to relief all the same.

Hearing Holden has no qualms about turning to someone here for aid, should his well-being begin to sour, knowing already he has accepted the notion of self-preservation when things were at their most dire.

“I wish to measure how long it might take to...” deepen, in essence. To measure the span of his own time against Jim Holden’s. Against Wysteria’s.

He pauses there, glancing down to measure his own gauntleted hand.

He's quiet a long moment, taking that in. When he answers, his voice, too, is soft.

"I've gotten the impression it progresses differently in everyone. If there's a pattern, I've never heard of it."

Which is half a comfort — he's no scientist, after all, no healer — and half not — he's still in Research, well-situated to know if there are records on this kind of thing. He wants to believe that too, doesn't he; that Gabranth can carry his forever with no change, no ill effect.

It would make for an alluring dream, that. More enticing still, the hope that perhaps all those present might never know a fatal increase in pain, or calling, or whatever it may be that turns the shards from assets to ruin.

Beneath the armor, welling blood shines wet in dim light. He pulls a length of bandaging from a pouch at his hip— and then another for Holden himself, held out in offering.

Their injuries are manageable. Better to treat them themselves here and now before the battle grows far more dire.

"In my world, it was emotion that could bring about spreading corruption."

There's a brief temptation to refuse. Gabranth's stores are limited — his, even counting his room up four flights of stairs, fairly nonexistent — and the worst of his bleeding is scrapes, scratches from moments the undead moved faster than he did. But even small wounds can invite infection, and he doesn't do either of them any favors by courting that risk. So: he takes the offered fabric, moves to wind it around any open wounds.

"Emotion?"

If he sounds baffled, well.

A wise decision. Their adversaries, painted in red lyrium, might be able to affect open wounds as far as Gabranth is capable of guessing. The more care shown, the better they might fare.

Even so, his own binding is (perhaps predictably) adequate at best. Straightforward to the point of being inattentive. Slightly haphazard.

"Most spoke of it as darkness. The word itself an understatement, though for men like the Ascian, Emet-Selch, there is no description that could prove any more sufficient in its make: resentment, grief, hatred, despair and hopelessness all possessed the ability to resonate with the world's inherent magic— altering its shape." Negatively, if the suggestion means anything at all.

"Thedas, its Veil, the Fade. I find little here that does not remind me of it, when one considers how the Fade itself is manipulated in order to make matter whole. Or how Templars restrict the influence of mages themselves."

A lot of the explanation, truthfully, goes over his head. So maybe that's why the first thing he does is frown, moving closer with hands outstretched.

"Here, here. Let me do that."

There's nothing wrong with Gabranth's bandaging, and his isn't likely to be much better, but — he'll take more care with it. And it's easier, isn't it, to bind someone else's wounds than your own. They can get back to the topic of conversation in a minute.

Edited 2021-12-14 19:41 (UTC)

His grunt is irritated, something akin to a dog's reaction to someone else reaching for what it thinks is its own: barely a shade away from growling.

But he relents.

The gauze is passed on, he leans back against the door, ignoring deep set vibrations.

"If magic here resembles the magic I once knew, it is possible the way we feel— or the perhaps the way we choose to engage with the world though our anchor-shards— will affect its spread. Its potency."

Or, to be more precise.

"Its malignancy."

He gets to work once Gabranth agrees, unwinding some length of bandage and then setting about to more carefully arrange it. His eyes are on his task, mostly, though he's clearly listening and thinking on this explanation. All things considered, his hands are surprisingly steady as he handles the bleeding wound.

Or maybe not. Unfocused fear has always been so difficult for him to deal with. As long as he has something to do, it's easy to keep going. And if there's still the occasional tremor, well. Maybe it's not too obvious.

"If we use it for good or evil, you mean?"

There was a time, many months ago, he might've sounded dubious. But it's not too hard to imagine right now: the difference between shooting Fade to save someone, for instance, and opening a tear in the sky to kill a village.

His head tilts away from Holden as that bandage falls tight against the wound and bloodsoaked leather alike, pulling with bursts of inflamed irritation that fail to reach either Gabranth's face or expression, his every blink leveled. Slow.

"Nothing so simple." How does magic define morality? Gabranth can't pretend to know. "Despair and anguish, suffering, resentment. In my own world, it would fester."

It was strength, to Gabranth. It granted him destruction at cost.

"If we are the conduits, then our own mental state might well influence the magic imbued to us. The magic that surrounds us. The magic that defines Thedas itself."

But...

"There is no guarantee, however, that what I once knew resembles the Fade— or the sliver of it left within us."

He nods, listening. It makes some kind of sense, that their emotions might be able to affect their anchors. Could affect the magic in Gabranth's world. Magic is still something strange to him, hard to understand — impossible, in some ways, to ever fully grasp — but he understands it as being an intrinsic part of people who have it. Why not be tied to emotion?

There's a slight wince, sympathetic, as he unrolls fabric over a particularly nasty-looking part of the injury. But he handles it as gently as he can, sure as he does that he'd never be so stoic about it in Gabranth's shoes.

"You've still got a leg up on me," he comments as he works. "There's nothing remotely like any of this, where I come from."

Edited (sorRY) 2021-12-25 16:20 (UTC)

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In the Armor of the Dead

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