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

[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."