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

[ophidia]

The ow that comes out of Richard is incredibly similar to a man having stubbed his toe in the dark. Surprise as much as pain, an involuntary and simplistic vocalisation for it. He's been injured a lot of ways, some even before Kisa turned him, but it's always the small things that hurt the most.

"You shot me!"

It's hissed out, despite being fuelled entirely by outrage. Still probably too loud for them remaining undiscovered. Richard hunched over, one hand pressing tight over/around the crossbow bolt sticking out of his shoulder. He'd answered the question. This was grossly unfair.

"You fucking shot me!"

[nonvenomous]

“It misfired!” Mr. Dickerson hisses back, the spell of his contemplation shattered along with whatever crossbow component has embedded itself in his hand. The sibilant curse that follows doesn’t translate to Trade, bitten off short when he realizes the footsteps he’d heard before have gone silent.

He stands frozen, listening, right hand gripped by the left.

Richie will see the precise instant his breath condenses into fog before the tent beside him is bisected by a razor slash of ice and freezing wind, frost bristled up from the ground in a line that leaves Dickerson crackling with rime up his flank. There’s a Venatori mage already scrambling away from the far end in search of cover, sweeping up equipment pell-mell from a table as he goes.

[ophidia]

The stillness that Dick falls into has an edge that Richard knows, the poise of assessing a threat, listening. It's enough to cut him off from any response to the misfired comment, which is probably for the best considering what happens next.

Between the pain in his shoulder and the crackle of ice coming out of nowhere, Richard somehow has the space to think: magic is seriously going to take some getting used to.

He focuses on the mage, bolt in his shoulder seemingly forgotten for the speed he's able to cut past Dick and into the tent. There's still some slim possibility of minimising how fucked this could get, if the mage is stopped before he can send up an alarm, and the intent in Richard's body is something predatory and sharp as he bears down on him. He'll eat this one too, if he has to.

[nonvenomous]

Truly unsticking himself from the gloss of ice clogging his armor would require more muscle than Mr. Dickerson has to spare. He wrenches his knife arm loose at the shoulder and simply has to deal with the rest cracking free of its own accord as he twists to follow -- struggling, delayed, but not far behind.

”Don’t kill him!” More hissing, as he passes over the dagger at the back of his belt in favor of a thick loop of twine.

This is like being partnered with a tiger.

There are candles burning in the more intact half of the tent that remains, a glimpse of the Vint mage dropping his open bag upon clocking Richard’s bloody maw. He swings his staff up from the table, sucking moisture out of the air into a crust of ice at the blade, all the breath he might’ve used to call for help held instead to focus the spell he’s on the cusp of unleashing upon them.

[ophidia]

The glance he shoots back Dick's way is two parts irritation: one for the instruction, one for the implication he was an idiot. Of course he wasn't going to kill him. He knows the job they're here to do. It was just an option. A plan B.

One that might have been easier, as he swings into the original plan B. The mage is readying more magic, expecting an attack, so there isn't even an attempt at defence as Richard reaches out and presses his palm to the mage's forehead.

"Drop it," he says, and it's a command. Confident and clear as one, Richard fully expecting it to be followed as he lifts his hand away again.

Frowns, then, as the mage's fingers only stutter on the staff. Flex, like he's losing his grip but trying to keep it, his own confusion and alarm growing as his hands finally loosen and the staff falls to the ground.

[nonvenomous]

Mr. Dickerson has seen the effects of a command spell play out. He’s cast a few of them himself.

But never here.

His pause to look from Richard to the Mage and back again isn’t so protracted that he can’t wrest in to snatch up the dropped staff himself, stiff through the side, shedding chips of ice all the while. The latest cascade of debris is gummy with blots of deep red.

He turns to loft the staff out through the gap shredded through the tent wall behind them.

“Can you force him to lie down?”

How easy can they Richie make this for themselves him?

[ophidia]

He could, maybe. He's never done two commands on one person back-to-back like that - the first is usually enough. But he's distracted for a moment, looking at his hand, because that hadn't gone the way it was meant to go. Sure, there was the time Amaru had turned it around and mind-fucked him, and people could be knocked out of it, but he'd never had it almost not work like that.

But he doesn't have the luxury of performance issues, or stopping to worry about them, and even the moment of consideration he's given it is enough for the mage to be moving again. All he'd told him to do was drop the staff, after all.

Luckily for them, he's confused, scared enough that it's a backwards stumble. One that ends with a trip, landing on his back on the ground. Richard takes the few steps distance, drops a boot on one shoulder to pin him there. Looks at Dick pointedly. He's lying down. Forcefully.

[nonvenomous]

Whatever works.

Twine in hand, a hitch in his side, Dick is quick to get in low to loop binding around the mage’s ankles, a mild, “Roll him over, please,” put in once he’s tied off the knot. Mage hands go behind the back, wrist over wrist, like so --

“Leave the bolt in, for now,” he says offhand while he works. “I’ll see to it once we’re finished here.”

[ophidia]

Boot replaced on the mage's shoulders as soon as he's turned over, a task he'd been moving to do almost at the exact time Dick had asked. Practiced, maybe. Like he's done this before.

The comment prompts a glance down at the bolt sticking out of his shoulder, as if he's only just remembered it's there. He's tempted to reach up and yank it out - it should heal immediately, given that he'd just fed. But that right there is a reason to keep Dick relatively close, at least until he has some idea of what he's going to do about what he saw. So the bolt stays in, like a tether point.

"What about you?"

Belated acknowledgement of the freezer blast Dick had been hit with. It didn't seem to have done much past the immediate of slowing him down, but Richard doesn't know magic. He could be slowly dying to frostbite or something.

[nonvenomous]

There’s no second-guessing from Mr. Dickerson at Richard’s efficiency. He’s worked with all manner of man-eaters capable of professionalism in the field, when sufficiently motivated. And sufficiently self-controlled.

So long as he’s confident they’re on the same side, for the short term --

He is binding a wad of cloth in between the mage’s jaws when this latest question catches him flat-footed. A touch at his own side finds more rime than plate; his glove (crossbow splinters and all) comes away damp, but not thick with blood.

“I’ll survive,” he says, already back to cinching. “You should wipe your mouth.

"You look as though you've lost a pie-eating contest."