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

[acreage]

He smiles faintly, moving closer as bidden. Jim Holden is a tactile creature, has less opportunity for that kind of comfort here than home.

"No," he says in response to her question. But his tone is wry, so it really means, yes. He breathes out, closes his eyes, as he says, "I've seen a hundred thousand corpses that looked something like that."

He sees them right now, behind closed eyelids.

"Though they weren't attacking me or the people I care about. Mostly."

[tender]

Holden makes himself biddable, and so Derrica reels him in, gentle urging of her hands until she is satisfied with the drape of his body over hers. Like this, she can put fingers into his hair. Like this she can hear him breathing, even as his voice dips towards some kind of miserable thing as he speaks.

There is a moment where she says nothing. Her fingers move through his hair. She thinks of what he told her once, about the terrible thing he had seen.

"I was there when they were made," she tells him. "They attacked us then, and when we sealed off the city, I'd thought..."

She trails off. Derrica knows now, after a long and exhausting night, that she was wrong to think that was the tend of the business in Nevarra.

"I don't think anyone was lost. Hurt, maybe. But whoever sent them to us didn't manage what they'd hoped."

[acreage]

Like this, he can feel the warmth of her, even when he isn't watching her, feel the soft fabric under his palms, smell the faintly floral scent of her, ozone like the air after a storm. Her hands, too, gentle in his hair. Small things, but all of which ground him here when memories try so hard to claw him back. Derrica is more real, right now, than the nightmares of Eros. Than, even, the mummies that had overrun the Gallows.

It won't last. But it's something.

"Not this time," he agrees, opening his eyes. Bleak, but the best he can manage this time. "How many more are there?"

In the sealed-off city. This close, she may notice how his pulse kicks up at the thought; but he has to know. If there are others, there's no reason why an attack like this can't happen again. He was a liability this time, but he can try to mitigate that in the future.

[tender]

"I don't know exactly."

And she could leave it at that, and still be offering an honest answer. Technically.

Derrica's fingers scrape lightly back along his scalp, drawing through his dark hair. It'll stick up after this, but that doesn't matter. She can feel the hitch of his pulse. And her consideration in response must be palpable, this close. She is thinking of whether or not it will help him to have more information. Is it a blessing or a burden?

Gently, she explains, "There could be more. There were generations of Nevarran ancestors raised, and then there were all those who couldn't escape the city. I don't know if we saw all of them tonight."

She doesn't know for certain. So much of that disaster had been a blur. Afterwards there had been so many wounded and the panic of trying to account for all the people she cared about in the crowds of people.

"I don't know all there is to know about how wars are fought, but I don't think they'll try again. We know they're capable of it now, and can guard against it."

Theoretically.

[acreage]

Theoretically.

He understands her hesitation. He'd feel the same way, in her position. And maybe the not knowing meant he'd been able to relax in certain ways until now, but the shock hadn't been worth it.

After all: he does doubt the likelihood of another direct attack on the Gallows like this. But they could always be ambushed elsewhere. There's no guarantee they'll never need to return to that city. He's seen red lyrium growths on darkspawn too, from the dragon. It's a favored weapon.

He thinks, I can't do that again.

He says, "If they do, I'll be ready."

[tender]

Derrica's hand tightens in his hair, giving a small, punishing tug.

"We'll be ready," she corrects.

It's nothing something Holden has to do on his own. And it isn't only Derrica who would be standing beside him, though she wants to be clear about her own presence. She'd be there with him.

And she'd be there afterwards too.

[acreage]

He makes a face, a silent note of complaint to her mistreatment of his scalp. Still, when he speaks, his tone is conciliatory.

"We'll be ready," he agrees.

There are the parts he'll need to work on quietly: the idea of those things existing, here, that they aren't protomolecule no matter how they look, that he can't get lost, like he had last night, in the blind terror of memory. Gwenaëlle had been right. And Derrica's right, too: because the problem of these undead belongs to Riftwatch at large, not just him. Because she's saying, again, you are not alone.

[tender]

That rephrasing mollifies Derrica for the moment. She'll have to remind him again, she knows. Holden needs to hear certain things, over and over. But for now, this is enough. She resumes the drag of her fingers through his hair, letting the words settle between them.

"You can always come find me, Jim," she tells him quietly. "I won't make you talk about anything you don't want to, but I like having company, and I think you do too."

Which is an invitation, yes, but also means that her late night stops by his room aren't going to stop anytime soon. She can't promise to be any more regular in her routine than she already is, but when she returns to the Gallows, she'll continue to nudge his door open, just checking.

[acreage]

"I grew up with a big family," he says, a corner of his mouth pulling upwards. "And worked on ships ever since then. Having this much space to myself is fucking bizarre."

So: he does like the company. He'll never, in fact, mind the company. But there's soft fondness here, in how he looks at her, in the admission, in being here at all. He likes her company. And she makes him feel safe, even when his sense of safety in the Gallows has splintered. He'll never turn her away.

God, but he's tired. From the physical exertion of the fight, from the grip of panic. He hadn't let himself feel it before; but lying here, the soothing motion of her fingers in her hair, makes it impossible to ignore.

[tender]

"I understand."

The rhythmic working of her fingers in his hair doesn't falter. It strays, maybe, down to the nape of his neck and then back up to scrape his fingers lightly across his scalp, but it doesn't stop. She's content. This closeness is good.

"I'm glad you're here."

In her room, most immediately. But she is glad that he is here, that a rift delivered him to her.

"Do you get seasick?" is a slightly abrupt departure, but Derrica has a reason for asking.

[acreage]

"I'm glad you are."

Because Derrica is no shard-bearer, no rifter. She doesn't have to be here with Riftwatch, in the ways that he does. She has options for where in Thedas she could be; but she is here, and she's stayed here. He can be glad he'd come to Derrica like she'd asked of him before. He can be glad for their friendship, for the comfort she's affording him now. For her. But being glad to be here, in a broader sense, isn't something he can feel right now.

"Seasick? No."

The lift of his eyebrows is question enough, surely.

[tender]

This response, she understands. She had met Naomi. She had met Amos. She had heard the way Holden spoke of space and the stars. She doesn't expect him to be glad to be here, when he has lost so much.

But if he takes any comfort at all in her words, then that makes them worth saying. Her fingers settle at the nape of his neck, drawing through the fringe of curl there.

"I have a..."

She trails off, casting around for the word.

"I ran to the sea when Dairsmuid fell. And if the Chantry ever takes it into their mind to come here, to the Gallows, I have thought I might have to do the same again. Not forever, but to regroup and decide what best might be done."

But of course, it is not just her anymore. (Matthias, as ever, is not far from her thoughts, but it isn't just Matthais anymore.) Which brings her to—

"I wouldn't want leave you behind."

[acreage]

It's too easy to drift like this. Feel his alertness start to soften, relaxing into this moment, drowsiness taking its place. And that makes it easy to take in this information without worrying about logistics — there'll be time for that later. If they're unlucky, there'll need to be time for that later.

But it's hard to think of unluckiness now.

"That's a good idea." He's had the thought before, of there being nowhere to go if anything happens to the Gallows. If it comes to the scenario she's describing. Amos had always kept the option open of leaving if they had to, but the question of where had never been settled. There's something of comfort in knowing this. Light, "Captain Derrica has a nice ring to it."

Normally, his first question would be about the others — how many she thinks she can save this way, whether she'd intend to come back for them. But this is Derrica. There's no need to worry she hasn't had the same thoughts.

[tender]

"Not me," she says, a gentle decline of a title that doesn't quite fit her. Derrica's hand draws down from his hair, rubs a slow circle across his shoulder blades before lifting back to repeat the slow drag through his hair all over again. "But someone I know. Someone that can be trusted."

Someone carefully chosen.

But she doesn't say anything more now. The motion of her hands continue. Slow, firm sweeps of her palm and light scrape of her nails over his scalp. They breathe together. His weight feels good pulled half over her. Holden is here and unhurt and Derrica isn't so sure that he is alright, but he is steadier now, and that's enough for the moment.

[acreage]

It doesn't occur to him that he hasn't, exactly, answered what wasn't, exactly, a question. Or, more correctly: that question and answer settled so easily into unspoken assumption. Of course, he would come with her. Of course, if the Chantry comes for them, they'll face it together. She has a gravity, and he's fallen into orbit. He doesn't have a future that she isn't part of, not anymore.

He makes a soft sound of acknowledgement to her answer. Someone else, then, another thing to be concerned with later. Who, and how, and where, and what, problems that don't exist right now.

His breathing slows, steadies. His eyes slip closed, open, and then close again. And, despite earlier protest, he's soon asleep.