faderift | MOD EVENT ↠ Nothing to See Here

WHO: Anyone/Everyone
WHAT: Troubling observations.
WHEN: Mid-Guardian
WHERE: The Crossroads
NOTES: A mini-event! Feel free to use the Crossroads hazards for threads, get lost or trapped, or just ogle the new problem. If you want your character to do more than ogle, feel free to submit an info or plot request!

Traversing the Crossroads, popping from eluvian to eluvian until emerging elsewhere in Thedas, has become a routine part of many Riftwatch agents' work. It's not necessarily a pleasant one; anyone save native elves experiences the journey as disorienting and oppressive, with twisting light and a persistent distracting sound. Still, for reaching those locations and their immediate surroundings, it's faster than going by land or by sea.

But in Guardian, on one such routine journey, someone notices something wrong in the distance: one of the Crossroads' faraway crooked islands turned vaguely black in its center, with tendrils of darkness spreading like veins of mold over the stone, seeming to follow a waterfall (which is falling up, of course, because this is the Crossroads) to infect an island above it as well.

For the following few days, whenever anyone has time to spare, finding a way closer to that island is a top priority. It's not simple work. The Crossroads are a maze of crumbling ruins, and finding a way from point A to point B, even when point B is right there, is often a many-step process with disappearing stairs, puzzlebox locking mechanisms, and mazelike layers of half-destroyed buildings. Some eluvians are shattered or locked, and a necessary platform might ultimately only be reachable by lassoing a distant rock or, for the very daring, taking a leap far enough for a different pocket of gravity to snatch them out of the air and pull them to what now counts as down. And on top of that, several regularly traversed areas are populated by spirits that won't let anyone pass by unbothered.

As agents get closer and closer to the target island, things will only become more difficult. The Crossroads are already falling apart, but their disintegration seems to be progressing more rapidly near the blighted area—as it does become fairly obvious, even at a distance, that the blackness is the same substance that coats the darkspawn-infested portions of the Deep Roads and spreads through the veins of those who become tainted. Stone floors begin to give way beneath people's feet at a much higher frequency, and the rules of gravity and physics, artificially imposed by the Crossroads' shapers and now in disjointed disrepair like everything else, may change unexpectedly from one step to the next. In other places, mages may find the landscape as easy to alter as the raw fade, rock reshaping and elements shifting in response to their thoughts—though not their will, generally, in any deliberate way—with no ritual or spell required.

For obvious reasons, setting foot on the blighted ruin is a task only for Riftwatch's Grey Wardens—who, by the way, will begin to hear the song of the Calling as they come closer, and very loudly. But it's probably fine, and it will cease when they retreat from the area. But even from the safety of an adjacent platform, it will become obvious what everyone is looking at: a rift, pulsating and shifting, but filled with a dense, light-devouring blackness rather than the usual sickly green window into the Fade. The ruined structure surrounding the tear exhibits the usual ancient architecture of the Crossroads, where it hasn't yet been covered in blackness, but where it has, some of the walls seem to have been eaten away, replaced with new walls in new places. Some of them seem to be forming a doorway in the shape of a dragon. Past visitors to the Temple of Dumat may find it familiar.

This is obviously not great. But the least great part is that when they have reached the platforms nearest the blight-oozing rift, keen elven eyes—or anyone who uses a spyglass to help cut through the woozy shifting of the light—will be able to follow the direction that those tendrils of black seem to be flowing through the gravity-defying channels of water and spot among the constellations of further-flung ruins and platforms, in what would be the sky if the Crossroads had one, a second freckle of writhing darkness.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I: HOW DO PEOPLE DO THIS ALL DAY?

[He’s no Thedosian elf.

True, he might look like one (enough to pass without noticeable incident time and time again), he might call himself one as often as he finds the breath to, but Thedas itself knows better, apparently: disorienting noise clattering in sharp ears, light far too nauseating for hawkish eyes, all rolling around in his head like a screaming migraine. Or vertigo. Or both.

Nice, to be reminded of how much you don’t belong.

In other words: it isn’t nice at all.]

Oh, leave me alone.

[A crude groan, let out from behind arched fingers where Astarion’s taken to curling up against a section of misshapen rock, spending at least a handful of minutes trying to blot out what essentially amounts to sensory overload for his tired everything.]

Bad enough this bloody place is stinking with Blight [Thankfully all of it too far away to be his problem to deal with.] but now we have to sit around and wait in this equally nightmarish pit until our meager assortment of Grey Wardens returns.

[A soft groan of a sigh, before:]

If they ever return.

II: WARDEN HOURS

[Hours later, possibly even a full day later since they reached the suspended ledges bracketing tainted space, Astarion's senses haven't acclimated, but they've at least mellowed enough that he seems more his typical self: petty, snappish, whiny, mean— come to think of it, not much has changed at all.

He sits loose-limbed beside a smoldering fire, squinting out at lines of coursing pitch in the far, far distance.

Elven eyes.] If the Blight is here, do you think it’s possible to spread it into something like the Fade as well?

I thought magical spaces would be impervious but—

Aparently not.

III: WILDCARD

[ooc: you know the drill, I'll match format, I'm not picky! All that said, there is a prompt I'm doing with fear spirits in the Crossroads so if you’d like a starter involving fear spirits pls tap me on plurk at coba1t, since Astarion’s past features heavy stuff that I’d prefer posting under a separate (warned for) log just so it isn’t unwittingly stumbled on.

Otherwise feel free to mix and match these prompts or make up something else!]

[The clinking of light stone on stone answers Astarion's complaint, and should he force his eyes open through the vertigo, he'll be greeted with the sight of a chubby, curly-haired little boy who stands on the edge of the strange broken island. He's throwing pebbles, some of them bouncing and tap-tapping off the ragged stone of the Crossroads' construction, some of them simply disappearing into the open air as if it were a pond.]

I'd carry you, mate, but I'm not faring much better.

[The familiar voice comes from behind and above Astarion, its source leaning queasily against a half-collapsed arch, watching the spirit in front of them.]

Least he's got everything figured out. [Barrow nods to the boy.]

What— [Astarion grumbles blindly, only halfway opening one eye in order to squint out blearily at the figure lurking somewhere out there amongst gravitational flotsam, shifting every so often for the same of throwing....something.]

What is that, some sort of goblin?

[Astarion, you have elven eyes. If you'd just open them instead of flinching....]

[Despite how his own stomach is rebelling, the question elicits a genuine laugh from Barrow. The ghost turns to look at them both, dark inquisitive eyes over the familiar curve of his prominent, slightly-too-large nose.]

Yeah, [Barrow answers cheerfully,] not familiar with this part of the Crossroads, I take it?

Not familiar with any of it, actually.

[He snorts back, finally opening his eyes fully to take in the sight of— ah.]

....is that.... [Another squint. A narrowing of sharp eyes despite the acute pain it causes.] is that supposed to be you?

Oh. Well,

[he's about to answer, but then Astarion asks another question, resulting in a little nod.]

Think so. Frankly, I'm surprised we haven't seen a little elf running around with him. Unless you were sculpted from clouds, or... I don't know, erupted out of the ground fully formed.

[He's joking, trying to move past the physical awfulness of the moment. True to his likeness, the little boy doesn't seem in any particular hurry to move anything along, perhaps glad for the opportunity to just mess around and throw stones off the edge.]

MOD EVENT ↠ Nothing to See Here

Astarion | OTA

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