MOD PLOT ↠ ALL SOULS WHO TAKE UP THE SWORD

[faderifting]

WHO: Nearly everyone
WHAT: Retaking Val Chevin
WHEN: Late Firstfall into early/mid-Haring, 9:47
WHERE: Val Chevin, Orlais
NOTES: Generated injuries here! CWs for violence, slavery mentions. Use content warnings in your comment subject lines as needed.

THE BATTLE

The battle begins just after dawn, once the distraction at the harbor has drawn as much of the enemy force to that end of the city as possible. Bombardment (magical or otherwise) is fruitless while the elvhen shield artifact continues to magically reinforce the walls and gates, but a Riftwatch team is on its way and will soon have disabled it. In the meantime, while the enemy's attention is focused on the harbor the assault begins. The first waves of soldiers are sent up ladders to try to fight their way over. Some make it, and fight their way along the battlements to try to reach the gate below, in hopes of unbarring it from within even before the shield is broken. The attacking force very nearly manages a lightning-quick victory, numbers pouring over a section of the wall left unmanned by the harbor distraction. They might have managed it when, suddenly, a rush of magic descends down onto the walls, physically, enough to blow their hair back and everything, and a glowing dome spreads over the city—essentially an enormous magical barrier.

Those at the tops of ladders suddenly find their blows absorbed by the magic rather than landing on the overwhelmed guards along the wall, while the defenders' blades still pierce through from within. The tide quickly begins to turn in favor of the Tevinter defenders. Some of the attackers are caught already within the walls when the barrier drops, and without more following behind them are quickly outnumbered, either killed or forced to flee deeper into the city to try to avoid capture. There is traffic jam at the top of the wall as forward progress abruptly halts, and at least one ladder accidentally falls in the resulting confusion, taking a dozen or so attackers with it. Attacks from the walls above now rain down with impunity as the attackers attempt to force their way through the barrier, reasoning that all barriers break eventually and it's just a matter of applying enough force. For a short period that feels longer, the battle stagnates, all the damage being taken by the allied forces, the Tevinters on the wall able to regroup and reinforce their ranks.

It takes longer than anyone had planned but finally the Riftwatch team inside the city is successful and the barrier dome dissipates as abruptly as it had appeared. A cheer goes up, flagging morale restored, and the assault takes on renewed intensity. Without their magical protection the gate is no longer unbreachable. Rams are aimed at it and magical force as well, protected by archers and more mages, with assistance from some griffon riders above. The enemy throws down scalding stones, oil, even Antivan fire, but their force is stretched thinner and thinner, and more and more attackers make it over the walls to harry them back. Finally the gate splinters, and the armies of Orlais and the Divine stream into Val Chevin.

The Tevinter and Ander forces don't give in that easily. They make a stand in the central square of the city, fighting on the steps of the Chantry and the lip of the great fountain itself with its four leaping seahorses. They retreat through the streets, broken up into smaller groups, some barricading themselves inside a building, others seeking to hide in a home, more running, or looking for chokepoints they can defend, mages tearing stones out of walls to block pursuit. Some of the people of Val Chevin, sensing an end to the occupation at last, join the fight, driving soldiers out of their homes and shops with pitchforks and butcher's knives, raining trash and debris down on them from windows, calling out warnings and directions to friendly forces, offering water or aid where they can.

By mid-afternoon, it's over. Some of the occupying force have managed to flee into the countryside or into one of the few ships remaining intact in the harbor. Many more are dead. The remainder, perhaps as many as a thousand, are gradually cornered at various places around the city and give themselves up. Not all surrenders are honored--some, particularly Orlesians and locals caught up in the fighting, are eager to dispatch the enemy occupiers once and for all and unless someone intervenes may ignore the laying down of arms. Stragglers still attempting to hide or escape are rounded up throughout the day (some even later), tracked down by searchers or turned in by locals.

THE "SAFE AND SECURE" SHIP

Anchored at what is believed to be a safe distance just up the coast to the northeast of the city, Riftwatch's shipboard base of operations provides a landing and launch area for griffons, triage for wounded, and on large tables and boards a collection of detailed maps of the area and of the city and its various districts on which action is tracked as crystal reports come in. Some are assigned to shifts manning the crystals: taking in reports, asking questions, soliciting aid, sending griffon riders where they're most needed. Others analyze the information provided, plot it on the maps, or coordinate with allied movements. Supplies are doled out from the ship as well, from spare weapons and armor to food and water, grenades, lyrium potions, healing poultices. Though the breeze only intermittently carries the sounds of battle out here, the ship is still a buzz with activity throughout the day.

Disaster doesn't strike until the afternoon, when a group of Tevinters fleeing the city manage to commandeer one of the remaining mostly-intact ships and somehow make it out of the harbor despite not entirely knowing how to sail. They straggle out into the bay, catch the wrong current, and are suddenly on top of the Riftwatch ship. Though smaller and already beginning to sink, the Tevinter vessel manages to tangle itself with Riftwatch's anchor cable, and the couple of mages on board make a doomed attempt to trade up for the bigger, more seaworthy model. They fail, but not before managing to do some serious damage to Riftwatch's ship, sufficient to sink it as well.

A hasty evacuation follows by griffon and longboat. The ship sinks rapidly, leaving just barely enough time to get all the wounded ferried to shore and still come back for the healthy before they go down with the ship.

THE AFTERMATH

IMMEDIATE NEEDS

First things first: the wounded from the battle need to be attended to, including not only those from Riftwatch's ranks, but also members of the Orlesian military, local civilians, and Tevinter and Ander prisoners—though opinions vary about whether or not to provide them with any assistance. The Orlesian military has supplies and surgeons, and Riftwatch will be welcome to either seek care or help provide it in medical tents that are set up on the outskirts of the city even before the fighting has fully concluded. During this first evening, this area is not a peaceful place to be, filled with shouts and moans and blood-spattered people darting between emergencies. Even with Riftwatch's help (and magic), resources are stretched thin enough by severe injuries that those who look like they're going to survive without help might be turned away to deal with their pain and cosmetic concerns the old fashioned ways: finding elfroot sprouting up between the cobblestones to chew on, or gritting their teeth and getting over it.

Throughout the night, paranoia persists about the possibility that belated reinforcements—or, worse, a dragon—might arrive to prolong the battle. Soldiers keep watch along the walls and at some forward locations, and Riftwatch's griffon riders are sent to observe the portions of the occupying force that fled north and ensure there's nothing amiss. Nothing seems to be, but continuing to lightly harass the Tevinter and Ander forces to hurry them on their way and keep them from pausing to ransack anything won't hurt.

In the morning, back in Val Chevin, those who look strong and uninjured are enlisted to help with clearing debris from the places where the fighting was heavy and magical enough to collapse walls and roofs or topple statues, or else loading bodies onto carts bound for the pyres outside the city. By mid-morning plumes of smoke streak the sky. The bulk of the damage and death is concentrated on the docks, where the dreadnought crashed and where the initial smash-and-burn fighting took place. Meanwhile, throughout the harbor, griffons will prove useful in examining the water for concentrations of floating bodies—which need to be fished out to avoid a walking dead problem in the future—or debris that's potentially either useful or dangerous. Given what the dreadnought assault team reports, there's also a careful search for any red lyrium-infested sea creatures in the harbor, but while other pens like the one that contained the very large red lyrium octopus they encountered, all have been destroyed in the chaos and no other beasts are spotted.

TAKING STOCK

Over the course of the week, supplies arrive by land and by sea from across Orlais—some from the government, some from charitable patriots who put together donation drives as soon as they heard the news. About eighty percent are practical and useful: winter shoes and clothing, flour and preserves and other long-lasting foods, bolts of fabric, apothecary supplies, a few dairy animals and chickens. The usefulness of the rest varies, including a crate of used toys (labeled FOR THE SWEET PEASANT CHILDREN), an assortment of expensive hats that were in season last winter, and collections of plain masks and face paints in case Tevinter was cruelly forcing anyone to go barefaced. Riftwatch is given leave to distribute these to people as they find needs to meet.

The surviving Orlesian civilians who have been trapped in the occupied city for the last two and a half years haven't been as starved or brutalized as popular imagination may have assumed, but the experience has been plenty miserable. Outside of a few public executions, agitators and those who fomented rebellion against the occupiers have by and large disappeared more quietly. Due to its collective general experience with the Tevinter language and magic, Riftwatch is given the fairly depressing task of sorting through the cells and torture chambers in Val Chevin's central keep, where records and other evidence of executions remain. It's enough to determine who died and how. Some had quick deaths; others were tortured or used for blood magic rituals. A handful appear to have been removed from the city and sent north to be held in Tevinter instead. Relaying the specifics to family members will generally be the responsibility of Orlesian officials, but family members eager for information may corner Riftwatchers coming or going from the fortress to press them for details.

Over the next couple weeks Riftwatch is also called to assist with handling other remnants of the Tevinter occupation, such as translating documents, evaluating evidence of blood magic, and sorting through relics and enchanted objects accumulated by the Venatori. Among the things left behind is a trove of elven artifacts seemingly extracted from nearby temples. None are as powerful as the shield; most seem to be completely unmagical cultural relics.

Elsewhere, many locals were evicted from their homes to make room for Tevinter occupiers. While Orlesian officials sort through claims to those homes, including several contentious competing claims, Riftwatch is sent into them to sort through what the enemy left behind and make sure they're safe for their occupants to return to. In many they find the ashy remains of hastily burned private documents and a variety of fairly mundane magical objects: spoons that stir themselves, hats that are always cool on the inside, candles that light and extinguish in response to clapping.Each is the work of a bound spirit that can be released or destroyed—or left to continue its eternal work, if someone wants to pocket an object rather than restore it to its original inanimate state. Throughout the city, there may also be opportunities to reunite grateful civilians with appropriated belongings ranging from fine art to beloved old horses.

Orlesians aren't the only ones in the city in need of assistance. A small number of Tevinter slaves—exclusively those performing menial tasks, as far as anyone can tell—remain in the city now that their masters have been killed or captured. With the Orlesian populace and military inclined, on average, to consider them threats and collaborators, Riftwatch's intervention on their behalf is necessary. Interviewing them and checking their stories against witness accounts and Tevinter records, to ensure none of them are Venatori mages or gleeful torturers in disguise, will allow Riftwatch to vouch for them confidently. They may also be able to find sympathetic locals willing to shelter and hire those who would like to remain in the city, though there aren't that many who do want to stay.

Throughout their time in the city, Riftwatch representatives are asked to report what they find regarding the treatment of the locals and any practice of blood magic. While Orlesian officers ask for Riftwatch members to give this information to them directly, it's quickly clear that it's likely to influence Orlais' decisions about how to deal with the thousand-odd Tevinter prisoners. Individuals identified as responsible for atrocities are being tortured or executed, especially if they're unlikely to have or provide information, and there is nothing ensuring the entire group won't be ultimately executed after the dust settles. With that in mind, Riftwatch receives instructions from the Division Heads to instead bring the information to them so it can be compiled, double-checked, screened for any individuals Riftwatch may need to question themselves, and delivered with a diplomatic touch.

GOING HOME (OR NOT)

Approximately a week after the battle, as the majority of Riftwatch is preparing to leave, Empress Celene and members of her retinue arrive in Val Chevin. They're greeted by a restrained military parade and less restrained enthusiasm from the civilians, who will line the streets to catch a glimpse and celebrate the symbolic return of the city to full Orlesian control. Riftwatch's attendance is not mandatory. Most of the organization leaves that day to return to Kirkwall and their other work. However, a small number remain behind for a few more days, overseen by the heads of Diplomacy and Forces, to provide administrative support while the Ambassador and Commander liaise with the Empress' people about their plans for the Tevinter prisoners. As thanks, they might be invited to endure a few stifling fancy dinners.

Comments

[notathreat]

Astarion is heat-seeking, and Ellie curves into him, lets him closer for it.

The thought's crossed her mind too, but she knows he won't ask outright until it's life-or-death, an emergency. But she's healthy enough for this, warm enough. Her injury wasn't blood loss or poison, or anything that would make this hard.

So when he takes her wrist, she lets him, pushing her arm up to his mouth, letting him lean against her opposite shoulder.

She cut it for him, before. This time, she'll just trust him.

"Go for it," Ellie says without preamble, or a pause to think.

[illithidnapped]

Astarion is a heat-seeking creature, it’s true. Even here his blood never runs warm enough: his circulation too poor, his heartbeat too sluggish more often than not. Compounded by blood loss, her touch is a warming fire on a cold winter’s day. The sort of luxury he’d been two centuries denied, and now—

Now she fits her wrist to his lips, and while it’s a kindness, he clearly isn’t quite certain what to do in those first few beats. His driving hunger is gone, after all, and while he still holds such a fondness for indulgence, she’s— well, she’s injured. Huddled against him for warmth. Some long-unused part of his brain wonders if he should be doing this.

Stealing this from her, despite how much he wants it.

He tips his head away, snorting like an offended mare.

“You’ve barely survived a war front, and now you want me to feed on you?”

[notathreat]

"You make it sound like I barely crawled out of there alive," Ellie answers, barely able to keep back the astonished laugh in the back of her throat. Even over a year removed from her world, and it still takes her aback how differently she views illness, injury and risk.

In the back of her mind she knows it's fucked up, that she's the unusual one, but to her it still feels as though it isn't a big deal.

"I have a burnt foot. It hurts like a bitch, but I'm not bleeding out and asking you to take more."

Insistently, she holds her wrist out.

... and it doesn't escape her that he's still trying to watch out for her.

cw: blood and blood accessories....

[illithidnapped]

"If memory serves," He interjects tritely, fairly certain his impending accusation wasn't just a fever dream brought on by spreading poison, "I seem to remember firing a very vital arrow during an exceedingly crucial and heroic moment."

But it's no fatal wound, no. And an injured foot— sans any further complications— isn't going to tip the scales of her wellbeing in any significant amount overall; she tips her wrist once more, and his own stomach growls shockingly (nothing directly timed: he's gone over a day without eating a thing, it'd growl with or without the offer of blood), buckling the visible edges of his resolve.

Yes, he's looking out for her.

He'd do it a thousand times to keep her safe, but...

His fingers fall light across the contours of her forearm, careful as handling rare jewels or spun glass— the sort of care that so often comes at cost, but in this case? In this case, it's all too readily spilled: he fits his fangs to the soft span of vulnerable skin between fine bone, and bites.


And maybe it's the way they're built, the anatomy of a creature designed for feeding more out of deception than violence, that it doesn't hurt terribly at all as he settles in. Or maybe it's the way he does it, slow and cautious, so that when her skin breaks it isn't anything but delicate. Either way, it's no different than it'd been in the Silent Plains: he drinks from her like a thing starved, and counterbalances that hunger with doting affection— with gratitude that lives in the way he folds his hand across her arm once he's had his fill (barely a handful of minutes at most this time, no jarring urging required), clamping down on the bloodflow to stay it.

His lips are stained ruddy crimson.

He looks at ease when he sighs, flush with stolen warmth.

"I killed someone with these fangs, you know." Confessed in the beats between breaths as he starts to relax, tipping his head back towards the crates once more. "A native Thedosian."

[notathreat]

"I remember a couple of those. You were awesome."

It's sincere, even if she says it playfully. He deserves the praise -- had she not had magic on her side, she'd have been in a terrible spot for that second one. He'd have outright saved her life.

As it is, she's in such good condition because he watched her back.

But he's taking the offer, and Ellie relaxes, knowing what it means. The both of them need to help.

She sighs quietly as Astarion's teeth break her skin, so sharp they slip in instead of pop through. So sharp she barely feels them. It's a touch strange, knowing she's injured but not feeling much pain. Something of a relief, and something of a threat, if it were anyone but him. She lets her eyelids relax, her head tipping back to lean against the shelves.

She's so, so tired -- it's probably for the best that he was the one to cut himself off. In the crash of adrenaline, she might've let him take too much.

Her pulse beats hard against his palm as he holds it tight, putting pressure on the wound, and Ellie opens her eyes with a hum.

"Does that bother you?"

Maybe it should bother her.

cw violence, slavery, death

[illithidnapped]

He pulls her in against his side, tighter this time. Arm around her shoulder, temple finding its way to briefly nuzzling along the top of her head. Quick as a blink, and only just before he settles.

(He falls into it so often without realizing it when his guard is down, the language of animals rather than anything noble or practiced— like a pup scuffing at its denmate. A true sign of contentment, those little lapsing moments.)

“He was a blood mage.” So no, is the answer. Hard-edges and filled to the brim with certainty. “He’d bled countless slaves to fuel the relic keeping this city shielded— all of them strewn at his feet like unwanted filth.”

Pitiful, a death like that. Not even buried, not burned, not fit into a corner.

“So I tore out his throat, and I left him there to bleed out with them.”

And if ever there was a more hateful promise of pride to be had, it lives in the cruel catch of Astarion’s blood-drunk voice.

[notathreat]

The old bat. Ellie grins to herself where she's ducked out of sight against him, squeezing him back from her awkward angle before she leans up against him, resting. It's good, here. He's solid. Safe in a way few things have been.

Ellie listens without flinching for an instant, with the tiniest nod of her head. It's not a confession, to her. It's a victory.

"Good," she says, simple and blunt, and with a shade of her own viciousness. The same way she's said it in the past. Had she been in his shoes, she'd have done the same. "He deserved worse."

In fact-

"Back in my world, in the last few months, I was making my way through Santa Barbara," Ellie says, settling. "I ran across a group calling themselves the Rattlers. Slavers. They tried to catch me, but I got free."

Simple words for a very bloody slipped noose.

"When I was heading through their camp, I found out that some of the slaves who tried to escape, if they caught them- they infected them on purpose. Left them tied to chains, like mindless guard dogs. Would tease them like it, too."

Disgust creeps into her voice, a detached sort of anger.

"I shot their chains off. They ate them alive."

[illithidnapped]

His mind is a wicked tool. That much is obvious to any stranger that happens to cross Astarion's path on a bad day, true, but here it manifests in how he immediately leaps to imagining that horror— not the suffering that came before, but the ending, bloody and violent and filled with the sound of desperate screams. That, truly, feels lulling to his monstrously contemptuous heart.

And whether she looks or not, he smiles.

"You know," it's a slower start, there. A kind of tentative roll into conversation that doesn't sting with the overbearing weight of suffering kept in cold places. "I always wondered how it was that right from the start I could tell you and I were alike."

Not in suffering or form. Not in the places they'd been or the people they'd known. Not even in preference, different as they are in almost every recountable way.

"But now I know."

[notathreat]

Ellie gives a laugh under her breath, just a little huff. She doesn't need to look to know that he's smiling. She can feel it- when he smiles something changes in his voice. Leaves it more raw, more serious somehow. All of the lilting playfulness eases up.

She likes Astarion's playfulness, but craves the moments he drops it, the moments he's real. She covers her hurt with stony silences and explosive, cutting anger, while he smiles and flatters and postures, but it's the same.

"You mean after the verbal slapfight?" Ellie snickers, then relaxes, growing more thoughtful.

"Tell me."

Because she knows, too- she's always known. But she wants to listen to him.

[illithidnapped]

“Oh please. Slap fight? That was more like a handshake, darling.”

It is his way, after all.

And so many never get past those first few tentative steps: his bitterness, strong-steeped and assailing to the senses, and no amount of saccharine charm makes it any more palatable for the rightfully disinclined. “You grinned far too much for someone actually put off by all my teething overtures. I could hear it in your voice.”

His lofty mirth there ebbs a bit, just in the aftermath. Content as he is in satiety and warmed by the heat of her presence, arms wrapped fast around her shoulders, it's so easy to let everything slip down into true, utterly undisturbed contentment. No more nagging fears for the moment, no more overwhelming undertakings.

Just them.

“But...that’s how I knew. No one laughs like that except for the ones who understand just how deep suffering can run. The ones that’ve tasted horrors so unconscionable that everything else— even the stupidest or most nonsensical of jokes— winds up mattering all the more simply for being misery's antithesis. I saw that first,” he liked that first, how she knew he was all bark in his mischief, “then I met you, and noticed the scars. Whatever tried to hurt you, whatever you’d been through, it failed. And you weren’t weak or weeping, you weren’t shattered in withdrawal. You were strong, and sharp, and clear-headed about exactly what this world wanted from people like us.”

The same mind. The same thoughts. The same embittered conclusions, each and every step of the way.

“And you stayed. Throughout everything you stayed, and you fought back— and you made them bleed time and time again, powerful little thing that you are.” Sentiment punctuated by a muted kiss set against her temple, leaving a ruddy little smudge amongst the rest.

This battle was a wretched one.

“So yes. All the differences between us still exist, but you and I, darling? Birds of a feather. Always.”

Astarion, who believes in so very little, believes in that.

“And we’ll bite every reaching hand until they learn better than to even think about muzzling us.”

[notathreat]

It's easy for Ellie to reject offhand when people talk about her, either because she doesn't believe them, or can't see herself in their words. Perhaps it's that she's unwilling to.

Maybe it's that she's come quite a ways in the past several months. Maybe it's the fact that she knows Astarion isn't flattering her and never has, when it comes down to it. She doesn't preen under his praise like she might someone else's- it goes deeper than that, curls up somewhere deep in her chest, and warms her.

Astarion loves so well that she wonders, at times, how he's managed to spent centuries without loving anyone at all.

So she grins at his little kiss, the smudge of blood left on her skin, and sets her cheek against him with a contented sigh.

She whispers back, her voice soft, smug, and impossibly fond:

"I knew you were a sap."