faderift | 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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"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.

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."

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.

"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.

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.

In the Armor of the Dead

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