faderift | war table: how many riftwatchers does it take to change a lightbulb?

It looks like a clocktower, rising from the middle of a scrap of solid land. Its foundations are rudimentary stone and heavy wood to keep is solidly planted, and then twenty feet in the air, the mechanism itself, a cubic shape of metal inscribed in runes, precise clockwork gears, and an arrow shaped vane that they find turning to and fro.

At the base of the tower is an access panel, which is where Tony goes immediately, before sighing and using a rope and harness and a discreet couple of hooks up top to haul himself up—with Ellis as designated spotter and rope-holder.

"There were some defensive enchantments installed," he's explaining from up high, using a screwdriver to loosen one of the faces of the vane. "But I don't know, they're not working. And I don't see any damage. Hey, see that? Grab that," is to Gecko, pointing towards the thaumoscope lying next to an open kit of tools.

Besides this little hill of dry terrain, the area if dense with trees that droop and dangle, and pools of murky water with flying insects hovering above the surface. Gnarled roots make for good means of avoiding the worst of the wetness, especially when it's difficult to tell if a puddle will only reach as far as your ankle, or if suddenly you're ass deep in muck and trying not to faceplant the rest of the way. Probing sticks and some caution do a lot of heavylifting.

The other two Forces members have been directed to keep eyes out, whether wolf-shaped or not. To canine senses, the place just smells powerfully of tree-death, life, bugs, and water, and then—something else. Dead things out here isn't a surprise, slow decay and waterlogged rot sometimes snagging on the wind, but this is sharper. Bloodied, if not freshly so. But most importantly, human.

It's at that same time that Gwenaëlle is moving to cover more periphery, and she spies movement. A ripple the water, several feet ahead. And then stillness.

The only thing worse than seeing movement is not seeing it, immediately afterwards, and Gwenaëlle's immediate instinct is to shoulder her bow and look for a better vantage point. Like the cats with whom she shares a mercurial temperament and tendency to claw at whatever's near her, up a tree is not an infrequent solution to her problems even when not encouraged so by damp muck and unreliable ground,

given the way this place is going, relying on the trees not to be riddled with traitorous rot seems like nearly so much a gamble, but she takes it and darts up onto the thickest part of a meandering tree, loosing her weapon when she feels secure against the trunk and searching for any tell-tale ripples.

“Stark,” she says, her voice carrying purposefully to the rest of them as well, “there's something in the water.”

Probably there's loads of things in the water, but there's a scarred chunk out of her upper thigh that speaks to some experience with swamps turning nasty.

If it's possible for an extremely large wolf to get low, he is. Jude is slowly flexing his paws on the earth, reaching out and out and out, listening with the senses he no longer has, just on the off-chance that something brushes up against his sentinel wavelengths.

Gwen sees the rippling first, and Jude flicks one ear back at her voice, easing closer to the base of her tree, marking where each of the others are. Head down, ears back, hackles raised.

A low, rumbling growl starts deep in his chest, a predator's warning.

There's enough going on with the vane and Tony's borderline mad-scientist explanations for Richard to focus on, especially seeing as he'd really like to not be focussing on the swamp around him. Turned out humidity and damp didn't suit him. Who could've figured.

He has the indicated that in his hand when the warning's voiced, and his attention has to turn hard to scan over the water. Nothing immediately obvious, but then, he's not the scout in the tree or the wolf. But there's a feeling at the back of his neck that he does not like. He glances at Ellis, upwards at Tony.

"Any room up there for company?"

Height seems like it could be a good option.

Charged with managing the rope, Ellis cannot immediately reach for his mace. Whatever is provoking Jude, Ellis can't see it, but he is immediately uncomfortable with his present position.

The choice between having to drop the rope and possibly Tony versus something lurching up out of the water at them and being caught without a weapon—

Two terrible choices, frankly.

"Where did you see it?" is pitched to Gwen, rope held taut in Ellis' hands.

"You wanna narrow it down?" Tony asks, vis-à-vis Gwen's statement, not turning to look from what he's doing immediately. Metal tool in hand, jabbing at the insides of the vane. "Like, romance? Dancing fever?" Ping, some metal thing inside releases, and he flips it over in his hands. "Dysentery?"

But then the wolf growls, and Richard says that, and Ellis also says that, and Tony twists enough to look over at where Gwenaëlle has scampered up a tree, suddenly serious. Even from here, and certainly from where Jude and Gwenaëlle are posted, another ripple, this time further away from solid ground, movement disturbing the murk.

"Okay," he says, tugging on the rope to signal to Ellis. "Ground floor, please."

Maybe staying up here is the better prospect, but not when the guy holding the rope probably needs to go do his secondary job.

And then, the water churns, something beneath the surface moving at rapid speed, before it breaks, rising out. One foot, five feet, ten, the alligator powers itself in a vertical leap out from the lake with a strong thrash of its tail, maw open wide towards where Gwenaëlle is sitting in the tree. Its yellow eyes, gleaming, and an odd, greenish light clinging to its scales.

Massive jaws clamp and sink teeth into wet, frail wood, and holds on as gravity drags the alligator back down. And the branch, easily pulled into wet splinters and shards along with it. And Gwenaëlle, whose catlike grace doesn't catch her in time before she hits the water, churning with reptile.

None of these questions get an answer, but to be fair: the answer is quite clear, as Gwenaëlle plummets through the air into the murky, awful water. Probably she saw it quite close to where she's just landed, altogether too fucking close to a thing that has just demonstrated physical power she certainly does not have herself—

for a moment, it's impossible to tell where in the churning waters is Gwenaëlle, hitting the water with such force as to drive her dangerously deep, but the self-preservation instinct that Coupe had worked so hard to instill in her, along with the muscle memory to act upon it, means she reacts fast before she's regained enough of her rattled senses to think about what she's doing. The water lights up with a sick green glow from beneath as she launches her anchor's shield around herself, clearly telegraphing her location.

And to the alligator.

Jude gnashes his teeth as the creature takes out the branch, and Gwen goes straight into the water with the thrashing beast.

It smells wrong. Not of rot, but of something uncannily like an alligator, but not. And currently, it's attacking one of the people he's circled, protected, gained the scent of.

Thousands of years of evolution make him ferociously defensive of pack.

Jude leaps into the water, heading fangs-first for the blighted alligator. He's huge and strong, and on land he'd be a more than formidable match against plenty of dangerous things in Thedas. In the water, though-

He's going to need help. Even the most powerful of shifters still needs to breathe.

The situation descends from concerning to a major fucking mess at a speed Richard only sees around predators. Granted, the predators in question are usually culebra, but the point remains. He's also usually suitably armed, and it occurs that all the weapons he'd resentfully turned his nose up at in the armoury for not being guns might actually be perfect for dealing with a fucking alligator.

Hindsight. It's not going to help them now, and while he knows the less people in the water the better, he also knows one just leapt in while the other dropped with enough force to have maybe knocked herself out. Between wolf or woman, it's a pretty easy decision to make.

The thaumoscope is dropped unceremoniously, his cloak shrugged off somewhere on the way down to the water. Then he's diving in, headed directly for the green glow where Gwenaëlle dropped.

Having obliged Tony by returning him to ground, Ellis is free to pivot towards the churn of water.

There is a moment's pause where Ellis looks back to Tony. Maybe slightly apologetic. But it is a foregone conclusion. Satisfied only one person need tend to Gwenaëlle, Ellis and the knife he pulls from his boot plunge after Jude.

One might hope that Gwen's anchor provides enough light for him to see by. Ellis is just a Warden, and has no particular gift for seeing underwater in a swamp.

Ellis looks at Tony. Tony looks at Ellis, spreading his arms helplessly. Come on man.

And there he goes.

The water is thick, dark, kind of uncomfortably warm. Where Gwenaëlle has impacted the water and suspended, she might see (only barely) through the confusion the way a massive set of jaws opens and grates across the flash of green barrier, repelled backwards. The barrier fades, leaving behind the fairy-light glimmer of green in her palm.

Jude lands, attacks, fangs and claws on thick but not impenetrable hide. Around his muzzle drifts blood, and a flicker of green energy, lifting off the surface of scales, Fade-touched and made all the tougher for it. The alligator thrashes, suddenly, a big churn of muscled tail that thrashes mud up from the surface. Unless Jude disengages, he will be pushed under even deeper as the alligator rolls with more speed and grace that something so large and prehistoric has a right to.

The mud clouds, for a moment, Richard's vision, but there, the wink of green crackling from Gwenaëlle's open palm, and for a moment, spared the alligator's attention as wolf and a guy with a knife occupy its focus.

Ellis plunges, sees, for a moment, the pale belly of the alligator, as the tail comes around to slam into him.

Instinctively, in that split second, Ellis follows the only instinct he has and drives a knife into that belly. Or attempts to. How successful he is in this stabbing is guesswork in the murky water.

Either way, the knife isn't in his hand after the impact of that tail sends him skidding through the water.

The force with which Gwenaëlle hit the water was enough to have winded her, knocking her breath from her lungs as she sank, which is— under the circumstances, less than fucking ideal. The barrier does its job, just, and she is left disoriented and battered in a new direction as the force of the alligator's motion causes the rush of water around and against her, sending her spinning with the slow drag of heavy leather pulling against momentum.

She can't see a goddamn thing and she can't breathe and when Richard reaches her she's struggling free of her coat, trying to figure out which direction is up.

The blood that fills his mouth tastes of the Fade, cutting even through the acrid taste of the water.

Jude's wolf isn't a dominant, crazed and driven with the need to protect, and he's not a youngster to fight with only half of his mind. Wolf and man align here. Though he wants to lock his jaw and ride the beast, he instead pushes all four paws to the tough hide, digging in all of his claws, like he'd rend the belly of an ungulate, and gives a powerful, tearing push.

He comes up, snarls air in time to see Ellis go skipping across the surface- and with no time to waste, he dives again, knowing he'll have only a limited opening for another attack.

If it's at all interested in going after any of the others, Jude is about to remind the gator why he should be the center of it's attention.

Gwenaëlle is a churn of green light and limbs and fabric when Richard gets to her, none of it good. Panicking in water was dangerous enough, but even more so when you were trying to get away from a predator. He deliberately doesn't look over his shoulder to see how well that part of the situation is going.

Instead he grabs for the first part of her he can reach, hoping for a wrist or a shoulder but getting only a handful of coat. It's enough at least to try and anchor her movement for a moment, make some attempt to find her face, get her oriented so he can get her to the surface.

And if that isn't quick enough, he'll just use it to drag her up, as the thought occurs dully that he doesn't know if culebra can drown.

war table: how many riftwatchers does it take to change a lightbulb?

the vane site.

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sneaks in quick

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