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

[armd]

"It's fine." It comes out a little sharper than she'd like when Margaery touches the cloth to her skin, betraying how much she actually hurts. The mess is hiding a jagged cut and puncture wound about a hand's length from her armpit. Something sharp stabbed her uncomfortably deep and scraped a rib or two in passing. A jagged bit of bone or weapon, she doesn't remember which.

She holds her fistful of material up higher, and takes an uncomfortable breath in.

"... Not really," she says, on the wobbly exhale.

Would it be strange to say that it felt normal? Probably, huh. "The place I came here from was overrun with infected. Dead bodies, controlled by a cordyceps parasite."

Same same but different. A slight chuckle, and subsequent wince, "Never seen skeletons move around like that though. S'kinda fucked up."

[molineux]

Margaery has no idea what cordyceps is, but for some reason, a monstrous centipede comes to mind and she winces.

The possible depth of the puncture wound worries her more than the cut, which is why she suddenly switches tracks. "Breathe deeply for me."

Loras has told her stories of knights who appeared otherwise fine suddenly keeling over, having unknowingly drowned in their own blood from the puncture in their lungs over time. Although Abby seems to be fine overall, the sudden possibility is more than enough for her to consider it a real risk.

"Are you finding it hard to breathe at all? Or tightness across your chest?"

[armd]

She does as instructed, straightening while she does it. Margaery is clearly looking for evidence that she's punctured a lung, and while it doesn't feel like she has (as she shifts in place, experimentally rotating her trunk), she knows that the body has ways of masking the worst of a hurt, for better or for worse.

"Not finding it hard," she says, after she's exhaled. She breathes in again, and holds it, counting it out. It hurts, but she can do it without difficulty. "Just– sore."

Fucking sore, honestly. Maybe she does want to lie down after all. It would be really nice to get back to her room and into her own bed but the thought of all those stairs...

[molineux]

She lets out a rough exhale that she didn't know she'd been holding.

"Okay, okay. Good."

And the relief is so great that she just leaves it at that for a while, struggling to maintain her professionalism now that her worry is gone. Could it truly be as easy as cleaning out these wounds and stitching them up? Is it possible that despite two nights of absolutely shitty luck, they're somehow lucky enough to survive all relatively unscathed?

Margaery blinks hard to clear her suddenly blurred vision, tears rolling down her face silently but her voice and hands still steady. Right. Back to distracting her patient while she finishes out cleaning and begins stitching.

"Do you remember your first fight against those corpses?"

[armd]

Margaery exhales, like she was holding her breath in sympathy, and then she blinks, and two giant tears roll down her face.

"Hey," Abby says, soft, uncertain– she leans forward immediately as if to shield her from view. She's still holding her shirt bunched up underneath of her armpit. Margaery looks tired for a moment, relieved, and small. How long has she been working? Abby doesn't know how much time has passed since the attack began, but she's probably been here for hours and hours, helping as much as she can.

She doesn't answer her question. She touches the backs of her fingers very gently to Margaery's cheek; the only skin unblistered. A tear catches on her knuckles.

"Stop for a second." The hand trying to wipe the blood away from her skin, the other sourcing a needle, "It can wait."

[molineux]

She's torn between impulsively jerking away and leaning into the friendly touch and - does neither. Years of self-control has her pausing in motion entirely before she blinks hard to get the rest of the tears out.

"No," Margaery counters, not as gently as she normally might. It's difficult to look up at Abby now when her calm has been compromised, but she does, knowing it might be the only way to properly communicate that she's really, truly fine. "It can't wait, Abby. You can't wait."

There's guilt. The knowledge that she's not been out in the battlefield where she technically belongs. All that time spent practicing with her dagger and for what? For her to be crippled with fear for the whole day while the Gallows comes under attack? She'd felt the literal panic of losing people dear to her one night, and had been unable to do anything about it when it had truly mattered.

So despite the exhaustion sinking into her bones and her balls of her feet aching as if they've been embedded with needles, this is the only place she wants to be. This is the only way she can rest, in the end.

"I'm fine." Her tears are swift to stop, smile returning with a hint of her normal attitude. Thank the gods for habits. "I promise I'm alright. I'm just happy you'll be okay, Abby."

[armd]

"Okay."

She'd like to reassure Margaery if she could, give her a moment to breathe, but Abby recognises the need to push past vulnerability. In a way, Margaery's said I promise in the same way she did earlier. Sometimes you can't get into it. Sometimes you don't need an audience. She respects that, and she drops her hand.

The tear is still on her knuckles. She rubs it in with her thumb, unthinking, and turns on an angle so Margaery can stitch her side unimpeded.

"I remember." She's answering the question. It can be both distraction for herself, and for her doctor, "I was thirteen." The way she'd bugged the Fireflies for a weapon for months leading up to her birthday... the thought of it makes her smile ruefully. "Shot one in the head that was going for dad. He cried."

They were fine, they were both fine, but– she thinks he was scared, for her. And sad that she'd had to do it in the first place.

[molineux]

There's something telling in the way Abby (and Ellie, now that she thinks about it) tells their stories. Violence, smoothed over by experience, until it's just become routine, expected, etched into the pattern of life. When Margaery was thirteen, she was already an adult, but only by the blood in her bedsheets and not on her hands. And her brother - well on his way to becoming a knight. Jousting for sport and only expected to go off into a real fight once the armor was thick enough to be put on by someone else.

She thinks she can understand why Abby's father might have cried.

"And how did you feel, afterwards?"

It's probably different, killing something that's already dead, but - once, perhaps long ago, they were human. And the act of killing isn't any different no matter what the target is.

Margaery's eyes skirt up to Abby's face every once in a while, gauging her expression for too much pain. "Tell me if you want me to pause."

[armd]

This offer is met with a slight shake of her head; Abby grits her teeth, shifts her weight. "Don't stop, or I won't let you start again." It's so tender, and she doesn't want to anticipate the press of the needle. Better that the both of them push through.

"Good," she answers honestly, shifting her attention elsewhere. "It was going to kill him, but I stopped it. I protected him."

I've got my little girl here to keep me safe. A joke to Jerry Anderson, and a job that Abby took too seriously, right up until she failed him.

[molineux]

Margaery's stitching becomes more methodical then, years of learning how to embroider pretty designs on a stretched canvas finally showing some promise as she works diligently, and quickly, even as she speaks.

"Tell me about your father?"

A suggestion presented more as a request, just in case the pain of remembering is worse than the feeling of her needle. But there's genuine curiosity, too. So much of Riftwatch come from worlds that Margaery can never imagine, no matter how badly she tries, no matter how universal it is that they've experienced love, and family.

"What was he like? What ways do you take after him?"

[armd]

Abby falls silent. What a loaded question.

What a new question; is this the first time that somebody has asked her this since he died? It very well might be. Everybody in Abby's orbit grew up with her and her dad. After she shifted her grief cross-country she didn't let anybody new in close enough to ask, and barely hinted at her loss. Survivors generally don't ask anyway. Everybody has a sad story, there's no need to get into them.

Margaery is stitching dutifully, the pain constant but bearable. It's clear that she doesn't need an answer, but that she'd like one if Abby wanted to give it.

She finds cause to loosen her tongue after a moment's thought.

"... Smart," is what she says first. She's gazing off to the side, suddenly distant. A little softer, in the way she holds herself. "He was a surgeon. He used to work with animals before the outbreak, and then he had to shift to people."

A soft snort, her tongue briefly running over her teeth. "That isn't where I take after him. I think he wanted me to, but the idea of surgery kinda freaks me out." She'd probably fuck that kind of thing up. Too much responsibility.

Anyway, to actually answer the question: "I guess we're both stubborn."