CLOSED: My How the Turns Tables

[katabasis]

WHO: Ellis, Richard v1.0, Glimmer, Abby, Edgard, Vanya, Richard v2.0, Fenris
WHAT: Riftwatch agents raid a Venatori survey encampment with the intent to capture a researcher or two in the hopes that they'll be able to glean information regarding Corypheus' plans for the Gates.
WHEN: Now-ish; whenever that makes sense.
WHERE: Northwest of Starkhaven, the Free Marches
NOTES: OOC information is available HERE at the sign-ups post. The objective/points pool spreadsheet with relevant instructions is located HERE and should be open to editing. Please include any necessary content warnings in your subject lines.

THE BRIEF
In addition to a mercilessly succinct in-person briefing, a copy of the following orders are also filed:

For Immediate Dispatch,

Selected members of Forces and Project Sashamiri are to proceed by griffon-back to the last known location of the Venatori survey group. Rough coordinates provided, may be readily corroborated by Fenris and Abby. You are to seek out their current position, and assess from a reasonable vantage the details and current state of their work.

Once your evaluation is complete, you are to make your way into the camp and there capture as many Venatori scholars (or similar) as you're able. Destruction of Venatori forces, equipment, and interests is preferable where possible.* Should it prove tactically advantageous, those with anchors are permitted to open rifts and are given license to leave them unsealed should closing them in relative security be implausible.

*In the margin, in Julius’s handwriting: In the case of any notes or diagrams, acquisition would be even better, but of course if there’s any doubt of success, destruction is a viable secondary option.

Captured Venatori agents are to be pressed for information relating to the Gates, including but not limited to: Corypheus' intentions, their number, their function, how they are activated, and suspected locations. Once their intelligence has been exhausted, you are given leave to tend to any captives in such a way as you believe befits their continued value to Riftwatch or her allies.

-J. Flint

If you do open any rifts and notice any odd phenomenon, please do try to remember to jot down any useful observations when you get a chance. Likewise, if you see any strange artifacts and are not able to retrieve them, notes (or sketches?) of them would be very much appreciated. Good luck.

- Julius

THE RAID
The targeted Venatori encampment is pitched in a scrubby, lightly wooded area above a ravine located Northwest of Starkhaven. The camp, which consists of the usual pitched tents and pack animal picket lines, seems to be the base of operations for an minor excavation effort occuring in the ravine itself. Careful observation, stealthy investigation, or the general chaos of the melee may reveal the following details:

• The camp sits alongside around a roughly built dam which is currently serving to divert the flow of a very minor tributary of the Minanter from the ravine into a muddy man-made spillway. This seems to have been done in order to lower the water level in the ravine and allow the researchers access to a small ruin there.
  
• Based on the state of the work in the ravine and the activity of the camp, it seems the researchers are primarily focused on recovering artifacts from the dig site. The spillway channel is being used to sift through materials brought up from the ravine. Trays of cleaned material are arranged on portable work tables under canopies, and a small collection of either field researchers or enslaved labor (hard to say which) are studiously picking through them.
  
• The camp's inhabitants consist primarily of Tevinter researchers (which may or may not be mages), some nondescript labor force (which may or may not be enslaved), and a subset of well-armed Tevinter soldiers (which also may or may not be mages and/or enslaved). There are enough people around that a straightforward assault into and out of the camp seems unlikely, but they're scattered enough between the various points of interest that diversions or stealth may be fruitful.
  
• During the day, the camp's inhabitants are scattered between their various work stations. At night, everyone beds down in their various tents or on bed rolls around low fires excepting the soldiers, who keep a watch rotation over the camp, and two bored sentries armed with signal horns posted at the ravine dig.
  
• The draft animals on the perimeter picket line consist mostly of stocky mules, fuzzy Free Marches horses, and two beefy druffalo. A fancy dracolisk is picketed separately within the camp itself.

Now comes the hard part.

Comments

THE RAID.

[heorte]

They take a day to observe the comings and goings of camp. Ellis is a cautious man, and here they have every reason to make an accurate accounting of the number of soldiers, which tent the academics come and go from, which cart holds weapons and which holds grenades and bombs. Mark the rotation of the guard, how many are designated as sentries, whether or not they have lain any traps. Whether the laborers are also soldiers, and on and on and on until—

It is after midnight. The camp is quiet. And Ellis is reminding them again in a murmur as they steal in a wide arc around the tethered animals, "The scholars have to be kept alive. Everyone else, do what is necessary, but we need the researchers and their work intact or else this has all been a waste."

Once all of this is set in motion, Ellis won't be able to issue the reminder again. Other things have been said, but there is no need to reprise them: Only kill one of the sentry, so the other has a chance to sound the alarm and draw the rest of them out. Light up the carts holding the bombs, if you can. Only set fire to the tents they'd slept in, no others. Cut the animals free, perhaps the dracolisk as well—

Laying waste to entire camp isn't exactly his preference, but Ellis has been with Riftwatch long enough to recognize the likelihood of a situation getting bigger once they're involved. Wide-scale destruction is simply factored into the plan at hand, acceptable so long as they don't return to Kirkwall empty-handed.

That being said, his attention turns directly to Silas and Richard to remind, "We'll draw them out, towards the ravine, so you can have the run of their camp."

Here, the parting of ways:

The two Richards to whichever entry point into the camp they deem best.

And all the rest of them to hide themselves in the shadowed bushes and trees that line the path between the camp and the ravine, to give themselves the element of surprise when reinforcements come thundering out of the camp itself.

[sparklequeen]

Glimmer keeps herself hunkered down behind an overgrown log, the scrub and undergrowth keeping her out of sight of whatever Venatori might be about. She's not assigned to be the one to take out the sentry--having loud, flashy magic puts her frimly in 'team ambush.' So she waits, nervously fiddling with her gloves to pass the time.

"Waiting is the worst part," she murmurs under her breath in a sound that can barely be called a whisper. She really wishes she'd been assigned the just charge into the camp, but... plans are plans and you stick to them.

[armd]

You stick to them, sure, but if an opportunity presents itself... well. You take it.

Abby has her eye on one of the sentry. He's lingering away from the camp, trudging along his sightlines and miles away, figuratively speaking. She could probably get up behind him and take him out, if he stopped to stare in one direction for long enough. And if some kind of noise distracted him from the sound of footsteps creeping up...

She presses her elbow gently into Glimmer's arm, and motions to him with her chin. And then she clicks her knuckles, in clear indication.

snake time

[ophidia]

They work they way round to the other side of the camp, waiting for the alarm to be sounded, for the subsequent sleepy stumble into action of the majority of the soldiers. It's a classic misdirection play. Simple enough that Richard's only objection would be that their targets might be too smart to fall for it. Except, of course, they do.

The camp doesn't empty out entirely, but it's enough to hope that the ones left behind are the ones unsuited to combat. They're still awake, alerted all the same by the alarm and the clamour, and any of them with any sense or motivation will start building up the fires and lighting torches soon. So the Richards slip in amongst the tents while the shadows are still thick, splitting up soon after in order to cover more ground.

At the worktables, Richard doesn't actually have much idea what he's looking for. But he knows how people work, how they sort items of importance, and anything that looks like notes is getting immediately swiped.

He doesn't have the excuse of darkness for why a whole tray of materials gets knocked, contents spilling noisily to the ground. His eyesight's unimpeded. Maybe it was just badly balanced in the first place. He looks back to the rest of the camp for a moment, watching for any signs that it had caught anyone's attention, before he stoops to check none of it's worth taking.

The blow to the back of the head isn't enough to take him out. It staggers him, sets his ears ringing, and thoroughly pisses him off - though whether the last is because of the pain or because he didn't see it coming is hard to say. Either way, when he rounds on his assailant he doesn't look human anymore. Thick green scales across his brow, eyes slit yellow, top teeth nothing but two thin fangs.

The researcher, so brave and dedicated to their work a moment ago, gets half a shocked cry out. It's choked off quickly by Richard ripping their throat out.

SNAKE TIME

[nonvenomous]

Richard Dickerson is a shadow in mage armor some 5 or 6 meters further afield -- ready at arms past the convulsions of Richie’s former researcher, all soot-blackened metal and dark cloth with a crossbow in hand and a stave across his back. He’d raised the crossbow at the researcher’s back on instinct and held it there through the pop and tear of cartilage and flesh, the groove primed with a bolt no longer than a pencil.

Should the researcher fall, the bow stays level, fixed instead on Richard Gecko.

The nerd wielding it has gone snake still and sharp in the face, his eyes glassy bright with recognition in the dark. He isn’t having any trouble seeing either.

Hunched halfway between the Richards is a familiar black cat, all puffy fangs and a forked tongue curled between them. She hisses like a crocodile.

[doggish]

[You know, he was made for this?

Literally. Forged in steel and fire and blood, lyrium grafted onto his body with vicious precision, trained and tutored in all kinds of weaponry, oh, his master had made him to be a weapon. Intimidating and vicious, the perfect bodyguard, a wolf rendered docile by the muzzle forced over his mouth. And of course that hadn't lasted, and of course now he's his own person, but the point is: Fenris thrives in situations like this.

Blade and lyrium, that's what he uses: a dreadful combination of ripping out hearts or lopping off limbs and heads with his claymore. He isn't sadistic, exactly; certainly he doesn't leave anyone alive overly long. But there's a fierce bloodthirstiness that he exudes, a fierce firm satisfaction in the tiny smile he wears as he tears through guard after guard. It's messy and ugly and awful, and he does not regret it, not for a single second, for there's something so satisfying about seeing dead Venatori.

And he will, to be clear, kill as many as possible. It's not that the only good Venatori is a dead one, but at the same time . . . there's no obvious reason to keep anyone beyond the researchers alive. And the laborers, perhaps, if they clearly aren't interested in fighting. He's not a savage, just mercilessly efficient.

Perhaps you catch him in some of the breathless moments between, covered in blood with a pulsating heart dropping from suddenly visible fingers. Perhaps you feel the lyrium singing so sweetly from his body as he activates it again and again, oh, surely every mage in the area must feel something for how he moves and weaves in and out of the Fade. Perhaps he saves you via a well-placed hand through a Venatori chest; perhaps you're both fighting together and you literally phase right through him, because lyrium is tricky and sometimes people go through him without anyone meaning to do that! Wild.

Or perhaps it's later, far later, and you catch him as he walks through the camp, idly looting or untying the druffalo (somewhat warily, truthfully), freeing them. Maybe you help stitch up a wound, god knows he'll be sustaining a fair few, for Venatori don't usually like being killed, and some of them did put up a fight.]

pounces

[armd]

(If he had noted this aloud Abby would have pointed out, drily, that to her, exactly none of the Venatori seemed to want to die, and that whichever one got a knife point across Fenris' shoulder was the most unwilling of all. They got him good. She has a wad of cloth bunched up against the slice, keeping the pressure on it.

She directs his palm to the spot-) Hold this for me. Tight, (while she reaches for her pack, and idly wipes her bloody hands off on her pants. Clearly this is a situation she's been in a thousand times before.

There is a little first aid kit in here, with needle and thread. A couple of stitches across the trench of the cut will do him good.)

So, (she says, and puffs at loose strands of hair falling in her face, freed from the braid.) Did you get it all out of your system? (The murdering, that is.)

yesss

[sparklequeen]

[ Glimmer is still picking through the remains of the camp herself, her armor splattered with gore, streaked where magic has singed too close. She's sifting through a chest she's pulled out of one of the tents, not finding much useful so far. There's a pile of books and papers to one side that she has yet to go through and she looks up as Fenris approaches. ]

You should get that looked at.

[ Matter of factly about one of his many small wounds. ]

it's time for HOSTAGES!!

[heorte]

The fighting takes them up the path, as expected. As they'd hoped for.

It's not an easy thing, but Fenris rips a hole through their front line, and after that—

Well, it gives them something of an advantage. Ellis catches a glimpse of shocked faces, terror-white, before Fenris cuts them down. There is a chaotic, confused retreat in progress, which suits. Ellis has some sense of Abby in the fray, and a burst of light that is certainly Glimmer, but he waits for neither. Trusts they will come, that the flow of this brawl will carry them into camp.

Neither of the Richards are immediately visible. A hopeful sign, one would hope; Ellis spares no more time on it as he breaks towards the nearest workstation. (A brief glance towards the dracolisk. Later.) There's no one in sight, which leaves a bench full of papers and some crates, none of which Ellis intends to rummage through until—

A shriek. Something clangs against his armor, which Ellis only just manages to catch hold of only to find a wiry Venatori on the other end.

Well. Found a researcher.

The ting of a rock off one pauldron marks another. Excellent. (Annoying.)

just a flesh wound. / cw violence, murder, etc.

[heorte]

The first lesson Joppa ever taught him, before any other: It takes one mistake. One slip, and you will be dead.

The tempo of battle is familiar, a song that rises and rises, winding higher as they work. Venatori break under his mace. The camp is in chaos. But Ellis can feel the tipping point approach, the way that tempo hits a feverish height that cannot be sustained and must break to one side or the other.

It feels like success. Sweat is breaking along his temples, the nape of his neck, mixing with grit and blood, chiming with the endless vibration of impact running through his body. They are close to something, all this momentum builds to something quiet and still in the wake of all these Venatori soldiers ground into the dirt.

Is he tiring? Maybe. (How long has he been tired?)

Rounding the stretch of burlap separating this workstation (and the Venatori bleeding out into the dirt) from the next, and beyond that the center of the camp and the dracolisk, Ellis is thinking of what use they can put that beast to once untethered, and then after, what's next, who needs support, how many are left to deal with.

He catches a glimpse of the mage, stepping out from around the canvas.

There is an explosion of pain, force catching him up and holding him in place. Grinding, screaming agony as his armor creaks underneath the application of unyielding pressure that slams him down so hard into the dirt his ears ring and his vision goes gray. The scrabble of boots, trying to find purchase as the force resumes, bearing down and down and down, inescapable. He can't get a breath to shout, not even when the glint of steel flashes over him and comes down over the heavy knot of scar at his throat.

[wearyallalone]

Vanya Orlov has been very open, from the start of his tenure at Riftwatch, that he is no longer a Templar. No one in the organization even knows his formal title, unless they bothered to look it up in Inquisition records. The insignia on his gear has been long since faded, wiped out or covered up.

But one can't set down years of training (or addiction, it turns out) quite that easily.

Most of the battle has just been hacking and slashing, the kind any well-trained ex-soldier could handle. He's good at it, but it doesn't set him apart. Everyone here is good at it (to a lesser or greater degree). But then the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. He turns in time to see Ellis hit with a spell and the training kicks in without conscious thought. He raises his sword, two-handed, for all it might look a bit strange in armor not polished to a high shine and a helmet that doesn't obscure his face. It works just fine without the aesthetics, though. A wave of energy sweeps out from Vanya and the moment it touches the Venatori spell, the spell shatters like brittle glass.

AFTERMATH: DANNY'S, AN ALEHOUSE

[heorte]

The collective exhaustion in this room is palpable.

It had cost Ellis a handful of extra gold to have the backroom of this alehouse. An extra handful of gold put directly into the grimy palm of the titular Danny, who observes the range of blood and dirt and ash coating them and very obviously decides to ask no questions.

The ale is good though. (Ellis is taking slow, methodic swallows. Cautious.) Trays of food have been set into the middle of the table, meat and bread and soup for the taking. There is an accounting to be made, before everyone is asleep. There are hostages pinned in place by griffins and a dracolisk in the hayloft of the barn that Danny did not give them permission to use but likely will not object when he catches sight of sharp beaks and talons.

There is a crumpled piece of paper on the table that Ellis smooths his palm over before looking around the table and asking, hoarsely, "What do we have to show for all of this?"

Apart from the path of destruction carved through that camp, which had been very well accomplished.

[wearyallalone]

"We did get some of the notes, as requested," Vanya says. He looks tired, but he's pushed through worse. He does, however, appreciate the trays of food, and he dips some bread into the soup. "In addition to the hostages, who may or may not tell us anything useful." Hazard of hostages, in his view; a lot of trouble for an uncertain reward. But then, Vanya's view of the Venatori is especially dim, so maybe he's being pessimistic.

THE HIJINKS.

[heorte]

GRYPHONS ARE COOL

[sparklequeen]

Glimmer, as one of the gryphon riders sent along on the mission, is going through the daily chores associated with the creatures. Feeding, grooming and the like. At the moment, she's giggling softly as Blanche does her best to poke a beak into one of Glimmer's pockets in defiant search of treats (and simple because she likes to untie and mess about with things).

"Nooo, I haven't got anything for you! You already got fed, you big bottomless pit--" Another laugh as she tries to deflect the creature's head and looks towards one of the others.

"She's such a brat."

[wearyallalone]

Vanya is punctual, which means Pamplemousse looks up expectantly a moment or two before he arrives. The quiet, perhaps imposing, ex-Templar smiles a bit at finding Glimmer laugh, and he's there just in time to receive her comment.

"This is the problem with the clever ones," he says, fond, as he comes to offer his griffon a fish, which Pamplemousse takes from him with evident relish. "They are clever enough to find their way into trouble."

The biweekly meeting (for Ellis)

[wearyallalone]

After they've made camp one evening, Vanya settles himself on a log near, though not too near, the place where Ellis has decided to eat dinner. There's no visible sign exchanged between the two men, where one might normally expect a nod or a motion of the hand, if not an actual greeting. Instead, Vanya sets up his own meal and begins to eat, unhurried.

[heorte]

Along the side of the log lays Ellis' mace, propped within easy reach. A bowl is balanced on one knee, spoon tapping at the edge. By the sound, the bowl itself is half-emptied.

His eyes lift, cut sideways to Vanya, then return to his meal.

This is, for a long stretch of minutes, the most acknowledgement Vanya receives.

But by and by, Ellis tips the slab of bread towards Vanya in silent offering.

campire 🦇🔥

[armd]

Campfires are always a welcome respite for the sleepless; what's the absolute worst part of a work camping trip? Dealing with the snoring, obviously.

For those who don't feel like turning in just yet there is ample time to sit and stare into the flames, or hunt in the grass with your hands for little twigs, dry leaves; the snack-food that is eventually handed out is a dry, tough, salted stick of meat, each.

Abby is busy working on hers when she asks aloud, to anybody listening, "What's the worst meal you've ever had?"

This isn't it. To clarify, "I had dog biscuits for dinner, once." Bleakly, "Stale dog biscuits."

[muckspout]

"Biscuits aren't s' bad." Edgard responds, not knowing they aren't talking about human biscuits. "Even stale ones. Did the dogs get any?"

He warms his hands by the fire. He is a little concerned she was stealing from dogs, but he knows what hunger does to a person.

"If you're hungry enough, doesn't really matter, does it?" He doesn't think too much about the quality of the food he eats. "Suppose food's made me ill before, that was probably the worst."

illegal threads.

[heorte]

abby.

[heorte]

The sounds of fighting, even tapering off into frenetic, clanging retreat, finds them on the darkened outskirts of the Venatori camp where Abby has set Ellis down.

It's not quiet, but it is removed enough from the close pressure of combat and blood-spattered earth and the heat of fire that Ellis can find some traction. He can claw back into himself, forcibly wrestle with the scraped-raw mess of his reaction. The lingering impression of Richard's fingers around his wrists is enough to keep Ellis' hands from returning to his own throat in the moment, and instead laboriously wrench his breathing back under control. Compress everything, wind it in and in and in until he can shunt it off and away from himself where the events of this stretch of time can exist at some remove in his awareness.

The straps on his armor have been cut. Ellis' shirt is soaked in blood. He turns it in his hands, considering whether or not to put it on. Here too is a distant awareness of his own bared skin, the rattling after-shocks of the day's events, how far outside his control both have ranged. Ink-lines of tattoo on his chest, old scars spidering along one side, over ribs, down his waist. Dirt and dried blood clinging to his shoulders. Breath still labored, if steadier now.

"What happened?" is ragged, scraped out a little hoarsely in spite of how incongruously measured Ellis' tone is. 

[armd]

"You were on the ground," Abby starts. She is sitting beside him, and not out of solidarity (though that is a happy bonus). The fighting and blood letting have finally caught up with her, and she's taking the chance to rest here with Ellis instead of heading back into the fray. Too out of it to feel any guilt; she's got her own hurts besides (though none so bad as the throat of her companion was). Sweat is slick on her brow and her voice is far away across the field. "Vanya did something that broke the magic, but it wasn't quick enough. They drove a sword in your throat."

The blood, thumping in her ears, is it the same blood that is now in his body? Abby looks at him and her gaze slips over the tattoo, brow furrowing in distant curiousity. Something to ask about later.

All that blood and dirt on him. Doesn't she have something? Water? An old scrap of fabric?

Where is her pack? She took Ellis and went. Pressing her palms over her knees, she continues. "You drowned in your blood. I think you were dead for five minutes. And Dickerson did something, he cut my arms, some kind of magic. Something illegal."

He hadn't used that word, but it's not hard to put two and two together. Abby doesn't care. Ellis is alive, and so why wouldn't they have done it? And who would they bother to tell. Only four people know.

richard.

[heorte]

The conversation doesn't come immediately. There is work to be done. An accounting of what they've laid claim to, hostages to secure, and within hours, they are on the road again. Ellis has other things to hold his attention.

It's not until the last stretch, a day's flight outside of Kirkwall, that Ellis takes advantage of the late night quiet to set himself down alongside Dick Dickerson by the fire.

Ellis has wound himself back into his skin. The scar at his throat still sticks out, livid where it peeks out from behind the tug of his collar. His eyes are on the fire rather than Silas. The quiet between them stretches, settling, while Ellis turns the impulse to speak over and over before settling on—

"Abby explained to me what happened. What was done."

And Silas is welcome to clarify, if he believes that's necessary. Before they go any further.

[nonvenomous]

Mr. Atheris is well-suited for late watches. He could, in theory, vanish at any moment, but he is reliable and focused and he can see in the dark.

He’s working when Ellis joins him: mending a tunic across one knee without benefit of needle or thread, closing a slit through the side with slow passes of his thumb across cut fibers. He whispers here and there, tugging at dark-dyed linen to test the cloth. It’s tacky at his fingertips, the cloy of old blood sickly-sweet near the warmth of the fire.

The silence continues to stretch after Ellis has spoken. Silas is mid-spell or mid-thought.

He hasn’t looked up.

“My warning about discretion was well-heeded.”