closed | RED(CLIFFE) OYSTER CULT

[cozen]

WHO: Adrasteia, Laurentius, Edgard, + Bastien
WHAT: The Gang Investigates A Cult
WHEN: August
WHERE: Redcliffe
NOTES: OOC info, crystal chatter.

CHANTRY MINGLE

Upon their arrival in Redcliffe and expression of their intention to seek an audience with Chantry officials, the Arl's knights will escort them to the local Chantry. The party will be greeted there by Mother Bronagh, Sister Patience and Sister Theda, alongside some other curious Chantry sisters and brothers.

There are some initial questions as to what Riftwatch is as an organization; weren't they part of the Inquisition? But the initial confusion doesn't prevent anyone from delivering the hopes of establishing familiarity between Riftwatch and their Chantry. Upon hearing the heartfelt offer of assistance, alongside the wish to strengthen ties between Riftwatch and Redcliffe, Mother Bronagh seems pleasantly surprised. Enough so that she directs Riftwatch to set up their tents in the area alongside the Chantry typically used by pilgrims and refugees, and indicates that they should be able to come and go as they please for the duration of their stay.

Once this initial meeting is over, Riftwatch agents will be able to mingle with Redcliffe's people and knights, as well as with any and all Chantry personnel they come across. Once word gets around that they've come offering help with any pesky tasks, everyone seems to have something to suggest they dedicate their time to. It's a prime opportunity to make some friends, even if said friends are rattling off a whole slew of work that needs doing:

• The Chantry could use extra hands for distributing food and clothing to the poor and down-on-their-luck and has a variety of carpentry and repair that they could use help with, if anyone knows their way around a hammer and nails. A group of Chantry-schooled children also recently knocked over two bookcases, which needed reorganization anyway, so if someone wants to categorize and alphabetize the stacks of books in need of it, Sister Patience in particular would be very grateful.
  
• A group of thieves have been stealing food and tools from people's storehouses and porches, and no one has had any luck catching them. If Riftwatch manages it, they'll find the thieves in question are a group of enterprising children and teenagers who have been fencing those goods at the Crossroads.
  
• The resident healer is still and always in need of herbs, and she has such fond memories of the Herald of Andraste taking time to assist her with that when she was in the Hinterlands—maybe they're as nice as she was?

Of course, even with all these tasks for them to choose from, it's imperative to attend Chantry services. Mother Bronagh reserves the frontmost pew for Riftwatch, so any absences will be noted. (And detrimental to their purpose for being in Redcliffe, so take care not to be tardy.) In addition to the traditional singing of selections from the chant, Mother Bronagh will deliver the dullest conceivable sermon on Canticle of Andraste in a slow and creaky monotone. Points will be deducted for yawning.

UNAUTHORIZED SNOOPING

When anyone tries to broach the subject, it becomes apparent quickly that gentle inquiry isn't going to get any answers about "Brother" Gideon. No one wants to talk about him, and at most their questions garner the following answers:

• Brother Gideon went missing about a year before he arrived in the Gallows.
  
• No one heard anything from him, no letters, no note left behind.
  
• Everyone is very sorry about what he did, and they had no idea he was capable of such a thing.
  
• It has nothing to do with them, really. They certainly don't hold with such actions.

With all conversation leading to a dead end, a little snooping will be in order. By digging around for private records and journals, or eavesdropping on private conversations from within a wardrobe, or both, they'll be able to uncover enough detritus to glean a reference to a group called the "Promisers" who had previously been active in the nearby hills and whom Brother Gideon is believed to have been seen with. Whether they choose to surreptitiously use the Redcliffe Chantry's archives or crystal-a-friend in the Gallows, research into what a Promiser is will lead them to the Order of Fiery Promise. Those who know their history will recall that the Inquisition had some dealings with this cult many years ago, and that they were silent between that last altercation and Gideon's attack.

Bear in mind, they'll need to take their leave from the Chantry in a timely manner to avoid getting caught snooping. Time to pretend to be heading back, before pursuing those rumors.

MOUNTAIN FORTRESS

Armed with the word "Promisers" and the general concept of a cult operating in the mountains, the team will have a little more luck getting information out of the isolated farmers and near-hermits who live outside of Redcliffe. They'll know enough to point them in the right direction, toward a now-abandoned fortress on the edges of the Frostback range.

It's not a terrible long journey, but it still might involve some bears or bandits. It will certainly involve mud.

At the end, the fortress in question isn't much to look at; walls are crumbling, the roof is more missing than not. But the underground floors in particular still provide shelter on all sides, with functional, unrotten doors and everything. It's there that Riftwatch will likely want to set up camp, and it's there that Riftwatch will find the most evidence of recent inhabitants. Storerooms have been converted into bedrooms, dungeon cells into offices, and the halls are lined with rough-wood bookshelves, clearly made by people who did not fully know what they were doing and certainly not how to sand wood down.

The shelves are mostly empty now, like the rest of the fortress. There's no sign of struggle or particular haste. They'll find piles of discarded objects, clothing, and other debris that was clearly sorted into "donate or bin" piles before the group departed. It's among this that they'll find the most important information: scraps of paper where someone was practicing the Ander tongue and a water-damaged map of the Anderfels.

Comments

[muckspout]

Teen Thieves

Edgard sits on the ground up against a wall in a place where he thinks he might be unseen.

"Couple people mentioned some robberies and saw someone run past me hiding something under his shirt. It was a kid!"

He points to a porch where there is a pile of fresh fruit in a storage bin.

"Someone's going to come after that." He points a thumb back at himself. "and 'll catch him."

Fortress

Edgard frowns at the fortress in question. It doesn't look like anything good will come from it and he doesn't like it. If buildings can't stay up, they just should not be buildings.

"This it?" He turns to his companions making a humming sound.

"Can we opt for another night in the tent? Or maybe--a tent inside whatever this is?"

fortress

[glossator]

The weather does seem almost as sketchy as the state of the fortress. But standing there about the tall grass and brush near the crumbling walls, Laurentius doesn't directly acknowledge the prospect of where they will or won't be pitching their tent. Instead, he absently turns the mage's stave leaned in the crook of his arm. It must be something of a habitual gesture. It's possible he doesn't even realize he's doing it. Nonetheless, the dark polished wood turns smoothly between Laurent's fingers, and so too rotates the hand carved out of the stave's end. The pale stone held in the stave's palm circles round and round—

And then, apparently having come to some decision, Laurentius shifts forward and begins traipsing through the brush toward a gap in the collapsed wall.

"Let's make sure no one else is home."

It's quiet. It seems unlikely that anyone is still in the fortress. Hopefully that's true; he's not exactly well equipped for an altercation.

[muckspout]

Edgard blinks twice, shocked at Laurentis' sudden movement.

"Be careful!" He hisses, following right behind anyhow. The wall crumbles a little more at both men coming through. He continues at a fast whisper.

"This thing could come down on us. Guess it would take out whoever else might be in here, but also us."

He curses. "Dark like a cave in here, does that," He gestures toward the stave. "light?"

[glossator]

"No."

Has Laurentius performed a single bit of magic since leaving the Gallows? If he has, it's been the subtlest kind.

Instead, standing there in the gloom just inside the punctured wall, he flips open his satchel and goes rooting around for the little lighter he'd been given in exchange for signing onto Riftwatch's books.

"But there might be something here we can fashion into a torch."

[muckspout]

Edgard huffs. What's the good of having a whole stave if it doesn't even light?

"'Course." Edgard says in response to his question and motions towards the assortment of rubble on the ground. "Plenty! But, we need to be careful to not take down the whole place."

He steps towards a particularly promising piece of wood and an entire wall sways. He holds out both of his arms as if that would help.

[glossator]

Edgard's arms both go up to defend against the shift of the wall; Laurentius takes a precautionary step back. Two kinds of people.

After a pregnant moment wherein the wall fails to collapse, Laurentius clears his throat briskly; the Riftwatch-issued lighter is clicked a few times, and eventually a little tongue of flame blooms there so that he can stoop and go rifling through the detritus just inside the moldering passage.

"Ah. That's promising." —is for the scrap of discarded cloth that he pulls from the rubble. It looks like a scarf or an armband, too new to truly belong among the moss-eaten rubble. "Someone's been this way."

The stave may not function as a torch of its own volition, but Laurentius apparently isn't so precious about the thing not to put it to some form of work. The scrap of cloth is tied around the end and set alight.

[muckspout]

Edgard breathes out his nose and shakes his head once, following him. He doesn't say anything for a moment, watching the light flicker around them.

And then he just can't help himself.

"The stave doesn't light, so you light the stave?" He holds his arms out, keep intending to say something, and then incredulity takes over.

"Do you even have magic?"

[glossator]

"I do, actually." It's taking some effort to coax the scrap of cloth to burn, actually. This would go more easily if he'd some accelerant, but as it happens he doesn't keep that in his pockets either. "Most mages produce light by channeling some form of elemental magic, and I've never had much of a knack for that particular school. I prefer working with glyphs."

(And channeling power to support Lalla's work; but that's not exactly relevant in this moment, now is it?)

—But ah, there. The little cloth wrapped about the stave's end has finally begun to burn properly. It casts a sad, paltry glow that affords them a vision of their immediate surroundings if virtually nothing else. Laurent tucks the lighter back into his satchel and affords Edgard the glowering snake version of a cheery smile.

"Shall we?"

[muckspout]

Edgard gives an exaggerated motion forward with his arm. He's a little annoyed.

"By all means, lead the way!"

He follows him further into the building. The light reveals rats running along the floor. Edgard sighs, but the rats aren't what's bothering him.

"Could've made a torch. Just thought you'd do it faster because--" He gestures. Because of the magic. "Know how to make a torch."

He's not stupid, okay!!

[glossator]

"I seem to recall you otherwise occupied with making sure no walls were going to collapse on us," has the mild, untroubled timbre of a man more than happy to assure his present company that no such torch-deficient related thoughts had occurred to him. And in that same key as Laurentius leads them down the glum, moldered passage:

"I'm sorry if I've failed to live up to your expectations as a northern mage. I'm reasonably certain one or two of my teachers might have cause to agree with you."

Not that he'd attended a particularly prestigious Circle but every mage scholar in the Imperium hopes to raise some savant under their tutelage, don't they?

[muckspout]

"Don't know enough about mages to know. Just thought they were more--" Dangerous? He should not say that.

"More battle-y and less book-y. But, guess there's weirdos everywhere, huh?"

He immediately realizes he's called his companion a weirdo.

"I mean, didn't mean--" A rat suddenly scuttles out of the darkness and Edgard shrieks unprepared for it.

[glossator]

Whether it's the shriek reverberating off the close stone passage of the moldering old fortress or the rat itself that does it is difficult to say. Regardless, Laurentius jumps so sharply that he nearly fumbles the staff-turned-torch in his possession. It takes a split second of mildly comical scrambling to get both hands back around it before it goes clattering to the mossy paving stones.

"Andraste's ashes—" is Imperial Chantry Brother for 'Jesus Christ, you scared me!'

[muckspout]

As the staff torch clatters to the ground, it alights the area the rat came from revealing even more rats skittering over parchment.

Edgard strides over and picks up the staff torch gently. He half expects the thing to explode. He lets a breath out after successfully picking it up.

"Think you found something." He says motioning with his head to the scene. "More rats!" He laughs. "and some paper. Maybe...something is on it." He says.

He doesn't offer to check himself and he doesn't offer the staff back. Don't mention he screamed.

[glossator]

For all that Laurentius doesn't flinch as the staff passes into his companion's possession, the stave may very well be just be exactly what it looks like: a very large stick, helpful for traipsing about the backwoods and little more. He certainly doesn't move to immediately take it off Edgard's hands.

"Apparently so."

Instead, Laurentius dusts his own palms absently against the front of his coat as if to settle himself—less shouting and screaming would be preferable—and then, with a decisive step forward, wades through the half-light afforded by the impromptu torch toward the rodents. They skitter away from his shadow, abandoning the parchment readily enough. Laurentius fetches up the the first scraps that are convenient without much caution for the grime or little rat footprints speckling them. He motions with his elbow for Edgard to bring the light closer.

[muckspout]

Edgard doesn't want to get closer to the rats, but also doesn't want to admit that. He takes tiny steps, hesitating too long before each one. Finally, he's just above Laurentius looking at the scraps.

"Is it...the diary of the rats?" He whispers, a poor attempt at a joke.

[glossator]

In the warm glow of the make-do torch, Laurentius unpeels one filth speckled page from the other and makes to hold the various scraps up to the light in an effort to get a better look at their contents. It's all rather unflinching; this isn't the first grimy bit of vellum he's had cause the handle. You'd be amazed at what can happen to rolls of parchment or books forgotten in damp corners of private libraries, and how often those papers find their way into Chantry hands for this reason or that reason.

"No, I don't think so. I don't see the word for cheese here anywhere."

(Look at them, a pair of comedians.)

"Someone has been practicing their Ander vocabulary. Look," he says, tipping the page so Edgard might review it. The alphabet is more or less familiar; the arrangement of the letters is likely not.