MOD PLOT ↠ BEFORE THE GATES | OPEN LOG

[faderifting]

WHO: Anyone
WHAT: A race to a Gate, with detours
WHEN: Late August to mid Kingsway
WHERE: Arlathan Forest
NOTES: See also OOC post, puzzle log.

Intel out of Hasmal and the Antivan borderlands suggest the enemy has abruptly changed gears, hurriedly redeploying most of the teams that have been busy combing the southern end of the Hundred Pillars north, to the edge of the Arlathan Forest. The only plausible explanation is that they've got a hot lead on another gate, more urgent than whatever they've been (so far fruitlessly) searching for north of Starkhaven. This provides Riftwatch with an opportunity to finally beat the Venatori to a Gate and prevent them from opening it—but they're going to have to move fast.

Helpfully, previous surveys of the Crossroads located an eluvian only a few hours' walk away that leads into the Arlathan Forest, so the enemy's head start in terms of travel time can be swiftly made up. The fact that the Venatori have brought so many of their search teams up from the south suggests they don't know exactly where in the forest the Gate is, but there's no telling what clues they might be working on and they out-number Riftwatch, so it's all hands on deck to scour the ruins strewn throughout the forest and find it first.

I. HOME BASE

The eluvian Riftwatch is using is located inside an expansive chamber, so cool, dark, and quiet that it might initially be mistaken for a cave. Or not even mistaken, exactly. It is both cavernous and underground. But when torches are held near the cavern walls, they reveal a wall within the wall, smooth dolomite bricks with large, arcing windows that frame nothing but sheets of limestone, both smoothed and in some places receding in rivulets where water has been seeping through for hundreds of years. Young limestone stalactites are beginning to creep in through the windows.

In summary: a room within a cave, scattered with ancient stone benches in various states of crumbling and more recent additions made of wood, cloth, and vine, all partially rotten. One of its two expansive doorways opens on a stone corridor, perfectly straight, between three smaller rooms. The smallest looks like a shrine, walls adorned with a crumbling mosaic of the elven pantheon. Another room was not always a bathroom, but in the past century or two someone has fashioned it into one, harnessing a rivulet that's streaming and seeping from somewhere beyond the cavern walls to build a stone bath reminiscent of a fountain, overflowing into smaller pools before the water is swept out of the room altogether by the stream's disappearance through the wall. The water tastes of limestone, but it's fresh and safe to drink.

This is where Riftwatch sets up its temporary base of operations for the search of the forest. Carting supplies across the Crossroads and replenishing them from time to time is simple enough. Someone even thinks to bring hay to spread beneath the bedrolls in one of the smaller rooms. The central chamber is lit by the glow of the eluvian, torches, and lyrium glowlights, ultimately bright enough to do paperwork. Some people make a routine out of doing their normal ("normal") work here, for the time being, to be on hand if there's an emergency or to save themselves the walk back through the Crossroads between stints in the woods. A map of Arlathan Forest—a bad one, at least at first—is spread over a wooden table that's gone soft and spongy with age and moisture; it wouldn't support a man's weight anymore, but it can hold a map and the markers used to keep track of which areas have been searched, where Corypheus' people have been spotted, and which landmarks seem promising.

The second doorway in the chamber opens to stairs. Stairs down. This structure was once above, not below. But two stories deeper into the earth, the stairs give way to a natural cavern, no sign of elven construction in sight, with a draft that guides visitors through a narrow passage and out into the forest.

II. CITYWIDE GREEN INITIATIVE

Arlathan Forest is not as tropical as the Donarks that Riftwatch found themselves stranded in a few years ago, but it is far enough north to be warm, humid, dense, and deeply green, home to a constant symphony of buzzing and chirping and squeaking and the occasional (hopefully) distant snarl or growl. Of particular note are the presence of alligators, jaguars, and small elephants, along with the usual collection of smaller wildlife and the elusive halla.

Wild as it is, the forest doesn't allow anyone to forget that it was once a city. In the heart of the forest the terrain is cliffy and jagged in a way that suggests that, rather than the city only sinking into the earth, the earth might have risen to meet it halfway: there are towering, sheer-faced rock formations that evoke the image of buildings several stories tall, now encased in stone and plant life. Sometimes a vine-covered fragment of roof- or tower-top emerges from the top of one of these rock formations, or an expanse of brick wall from the sides. They're all in an ancient elven style familiar from, if nothing else, the Crossroads everyone walked through to get here. The lower, marshy land between them–in some places occupied with streams or wider rivers–have occasional patches of tiled stone where roads once ran instead.

There are signs, too, of more recent occupation since the ancient city of Arlathan was swallowed by the earth. Forest-dwellers from within the last age have built walkways and bridges among the cliffs and rock formations that occasionally still hold up. They've left behind tools, collapsing huts, signs of occupation in caves, and occasionally a more recent skeleton or three. And there are rarer signs of the Dalish who still occupy the forest: arrows embedded in tree trunks, statues of wolves or other symbols of the pantheon, a few old abandoned camps, a damaged aravel.

III. MORE MAGIC MORE PROBLEMS

Of course, this is not a normal ancient city swallowed by the earth and left to become a wild forest over the course of more than a thousand years. It's a magical one.

Alongside the bugs and birds and creatures occupying the forest are spirits, in more abundance than most people have ever seen them. There are small swarms of wisps drifting like butterflies around objects of interest to them, and more humanoid, ghostly, temperamental wraiths drifting over marshlands. A very rare wraith will have a voice, a name, and perhaps an errand to ask or a bargain to make. Shades wait in caves, and demons of any kind might be discovered waiting for victims in the nooks and crannies of the woods–but in particular the sylvans for which the forest is known, which any traveler passing nearby is warned to watch for.

Less common are the Forest Guardians. Easily missed among the rocky, viney landscape until they begin to move, they're massive constructions of wood and stone, tall as golems, with vine-covered stone bodies, walking on four wooden legs bound to stone feet covered in runes and moss. They remain immobile until attacks on the forest (or someone drawing enough magical power to disturb the Veil) rouse them. Then they wake to hunt the perpetrators with two wooden arms that end in thick metal blades imbued with lyrium. The arms swing in predictable patterns–they're enchanted, not thinking. And with sufficient force, they can be "killed."

Between all of this and the unfamiliarity of the landscape, it may take time to notice the biggest problem of all, which is: time is fucked.

At its mildest, traversing the same ground might take an hour going one way but two or three hours going the other, as if it's stretched out somehow, despite no clear changes to the landscape to justify the added time. If there is added time? They may burn through rations and tire as if a whole day has passed, while the sun hangs unmoving in the sky or it stays dark for just as long, and return to the base camp to find they've been gone only a few days instead of the weeks they thought. And even a confident navigator may march confidently north for several hours before realizing they've been going south the whole time (or have they).

The effects become more severe the closer to the center of the ancient city one goes. At some point a team might find themselves going in circles no matter what they do to avoid it. And that's not the worst of it. If someone is inventive enough to begin marking a passed landmark with tally marks, they'll find the count flickering back and forth each time they pass it, requiring them to put the marks down out of order: their second time past the stone, then their seventh, then their fourth.

Their sending crystals work—erratically. Sometimes not at all. Sometimes with long waits between answering messages. Sometimes with responses to the five questions they asked in silence arriving out of order. To those on the other end–or those waiting for them when they arrive back at Riftwatch's underground base—nothing unusual will seem to be happening, and their trips back and forth no longer than expected.

And it gets worse!

Through all of this, visitors to the forest may begin to see themselves and others in their traveling party, some distance ahead or behind them–mirroring their actions, having conversations, before or after the real ones do or did or might have done the same. While you're not oblivious to them, they are oblivious to you–the best way to tell the real from the mirage. Except they are not exactly mirages. They affect the world around them. A bridge that breaks beneath their feet ahead of you will still be broken when you reach it; should you break the bridge, the copies behind you will stop at the destruction to plan another way around.

No one is bound to the fates of these forwards- and backwards-echoes: should a double fall off a cliff ahead of you, you can choose to be more careful or avoid the area altogether to prevent the same mishap. Attacking animals, demons, and enemies will see them, as well as you, and may be convinced to go after them instead. Or they may pick them off ahead of you, giving you some forewarning of what you're about to step into.

Despite their apparent solidity in these moments, they don't last. The branches they have bent will remain bent, their footprints will remain printed, and the debris that tumbles over a cliff's edge with them will remain piled at the bottom, but they themselves inevitably disappear when no one is looking. They're only people who might have been.

IV. THE AMAZING RACE

Anyway, Riftwatch didn't come here to hang out with possessed trees and walk in endless circles for fun. Teams are sent into the woods in specific directions or in pursuit of particular landmarks, combing the forest for signs of a Gate or the Gate itself. They may travel three or four days in one direction—three or four real days, however brief or long they feel to those doing the traveling—before reaching their destinations. Along the way they'll have to make and break camp in the safest places they can find, forage and hunt to supplement their rations, and keep their eyes peeled for the forest's other intruders.

Corypheus' people are here too. Venatori, Red Templar, or corrupted Wardens and various lackeys have fanned out within the forest, searching for the same things Riftwatch is. Intelligence indicates they don't know for certain that a Gate is nearby. Riftwatch would like to keep it that way, so the rules are a little different this time. They can't know that Riftwatch is here. Everyone who ventures into the forest will be required to dress like they could be hunters, bandits, or recluses. And anyone who could report that Riftwatch is there can't leave the forest alive, and they need to look like they've been killed by something or someone other than Riftwatch.

This could mean ambushes and traps, herding them into angry wildlife or forest monsters (or vice versa), arranging for mysterious accidents, anything that maintains the Venatori's illusion that they are in a one horse race to the Gate. And in the meantime, the enemy search parties need to be tracked, misled, and thwarted whenever possible, and any information they have—clues they're following, records of areas already searched, maps—stolen or, if that's not possible, destroyed.

Sometimes these plans will be complicated by the presence of time-rippling doppelgangers. Your team might agree to sneak up on an enemy camp in silence, only for copies of you who came to some other agreement, apparently, to launch a coordinated fire-raining attack in the background. Or they might be ahead of you when you sneak in, oblivious to your presence while they beat you to slitting throats or stealing notes. During firefights it may not be possible to tell whether the person you've just watched die is your friend or only one of their echoes. And Corypheus' people are suffering the same effects: a man you ambush on the trail might only be a double of the real man, arriving on the scene a minute later to see himself already dead on the ground, suddenly very on guard.

Comments

[heorte]

The trouble with them both, Ellis has come to learn, is that they have a tendency to proceed through conversation at such a clip that it becomes impossible to head off either Wysteria or Tony before they arrive at topics Ellis might have preferred to divert them from.

Was Ellis finished circling the topic of Tony's mortality? Perhaps not, but apparently Tony is. The reversal of focus, swinging around to turn attention to something Ellis has kept carefully guarded. His gaze lifts away from Tony, settles on the fire in front of them while he rides out the kneejerk No until it can be stretched into something more palatable.

"About what parts of this we might soften when she asks after it?"

[propulsion]

He feels bad, for a moment.

Just a splash of guilt, maybe for not having adequately addressed Ellis' question only to wrench around and pull up something less personally uncomfortable to him in particular, but Tony had in part expected a no. But then his eyebrows go up at that answer, incredulity slapped through his expression.

Yeah, sure, he's down for this conversation.

"You think Poppell needs anything softened for her, ever?" he queries, a little rhetorically. "Or should we see how 'Mister Ellis volunteered to go live on a farm somewhere far away' plays."

[heorte]

Tension works into the line of his shoulders, the tightening of his jaw. Ellis doesn't look up, though his expression hasn't changed. There is a deep, purpling bruise rising along his arm. It twinges when Ellis works his hands along to the edges of his breastplate, working loose the straps as he lets Tony's words settle.

"I think there's no need to share every detail of a mission."

If Ellis is considering what other mission details might have been omitted, well—

[propulsion]

"Okay."

A readjustment. Discomfort singing through muscles, no real relieving position to find and be in. He doesn't want to bully Ellis for the sake of it, so there's no real sharpness in his tone when he continues with,

"The bear was pretty scary. Anything else you want to omit?"

[heorte]

This does prompt a brief, flat look in Tony's direction.

But no immediate answer. Instead, the space is filled with the creak of leather, the clink of buckles coming undone. A soft exhale of breath as the pieces are levered apart and upwards, over his head so the plate might join the bracers Ellis has discarded.

Arms lowering, Ellis slouches forward briefly. Rolls his shoulders just to feel the deep ache of tired muscle, and let it offset all other things weighing on him.

"Yes."

Obviously.

[propulsion]

"It'll get out," Tony says, keeping focus steady. "The part where you volunteered and it could have worked. That I let that happen."

This is twice, now. Twice Ellis has looked him in the eye and asked him to throw his life at something big and spikey and twice that Tony's given it his blessing, regardless as to how necessary it was.

It isn't mean or sharp or conscious bullying, but a near-tentative prod of a half-question when he adds, "But if you're talking about something else—"

Dot dot dot.

[heorte]

Dot, dot, dot, indeed.

"She won't ask."

An all purpose answer. There are plenty of things Wysteria isn't going to ask after. It stretches, a bulwark against Tony's not-quite-question.

Wysteria won't know to ask, which is a different thing entirely but Ellis lays it out as a solution all the same. At this point in time, Ellis isn't anticipating any developing links between Viktor and Wysteria. Understands Cosima's unhappiness but counts on it to settle, rather than seep outward.

"We can leave it here."

[propulsion]

Tony kind of tips his head backwards as if to relieve some tension gathered in his neck. You know when sometimes when you're roped into a stressful secret and your trapezius locks up.

A small show of annoyance, but it's not surprised, either.

"Yeah," should also not be mistaken for enthusiastic consent. "Sure we can."

[heorte]

It is not mistaken for enthusiastic consent.

"I'm sorry."

Sorry to have said anything at all. Perhaps sorry to be alive still, which has created this unforeseen complication.

"May I have the ring and chain back?"

This is something to be sorry about too. Stringing request upon request when they might simply be silent now.

[propulsion]

Oh yeah. That.

Tony is still for a few seconds before drawing himself back out of his stretch. Locating the item in a pocket. "Don't," on a delay, at I'm sorry, giving the gold ring and chain a closer study.

He could probably play some keepaway, except instead of dangling it over anyone's head, it'd be asking some questions. Opts against it, gathering it into a palm and holding out his arm for Ellis to put his hand out.

Only once the item hits the other man's palm does he ask, "When'd she give you that?"

[heorte]

Tony wouldn't be the first to hold ring and chain hostage, require a series of questions for its return. Ellis is very still, watching him. Letting the question settle before dredging up an answer.

"Last year at the tourney. Before the joust."

The clasp of the chain is small, very delicate. Ellis thumbs over it where it lies on his palm, eyes cast down.

"She asked that I hold it for her," is a roundabout way of telegraphing: She didn't mean anything by it.

[propulsion]

"Good job."

The trace of amusement here doesn't have a sarcastic edge to it. No acid to his tone or even the more subtle variant of being a little shitty but too tired to project it more obviously which is a frequent kind of mode he might adopt at times exactly like this one. No, there's a more genuine fond note to his tone.

A little sympathetic, too. Ah, buddy.

"How long have you felt this way about her? That long?" An adjustment to his slouch. "Longer?"

[heorte]

It stings, regardless of how delicate Tony is approaching the topic.

The question is difficult. Not because Ellis doesn't know the answer, but because speaking it aloud feels like a kind of trespassing.

"It doesn't matter."

Is also a true thing. It doesn't matter how long he has carried this with him, how intractable it has become. It changes nothing. He lifts the chain, maneuvering that delicate clasp to hook the chain back around his neck, let the ring disappear beneath his tunic.

"She is married. And happy. It would be unkind to interfere," is only necessary because it winds along to: "Which is why I need you to leave it. Please."

[propulsion]

She is married and happy and woof, not strictly incorrect, those things said in any order, and yet, Tony kind of sinks his head back on his neck again to watch the sky as if it might spare him.

The rest washes over, but isn't ignored.

"I don't like this thing you do," he says, eventually. "Makes me wonder what you keep out of our conversations that you'd rather not let me make a decision about."

Probably not romantically charged. Unless?

"And you make it sound all considerate and sensible. Like it's for her, you know? Not for you."

[heorte]

What Tony says isn’t necessarily a shift in the conversation, but it isn’t anything near what Ellis has expected to receive as a response.

It flattens his expression by degrees, drags up a tense, guarded quality as Ellis looks back at him. Eventually, he looks away.

“It is for her.”

A narrowing of focus, disregarding the larger point. What he may or may not withhold. How much was kept from each of them and why.

This, on the heels of some gathering motion, the suggestion of departure in the way Ellis seemingly gathers himself, straightens under the tension pulling taut in his shoulders.

[propulsion]

"Wait."

Maybe Ellis will. Tony draws out of his slouch, hooked back in at the sounds of Ellis about to leave. He doesn't himself get up, that sounds tiring, but does pitch his focus over and up at the other man.

"Just,"

a hand up, lowered.

"Sorry. Long day."

[heorte]

It is enough, in the moment, to stall Ellis’ departure. Not to dispel the braced tension in his shoulders, but to keep him there.

He shakes his head.

It isn’t for Tony to apologize. (Ellis shouldn’t have said it aloud in the first place; that is the real trouble.)

“I’m sorry,” feels guarded still, in spite of their sincerity.

“I’m sorry,” he repeats, a breath later. “I won’t change my mind.”

It feels selfish, no matter how Ellis turns it over in his mind.

[propulsion]

"You're fine."

Maybe Ellis has regrets, but Tony doesn't share them. Not for this conversation, anyway.

"I didn't mean it that way, I just think,"

and what does he think? That Ellis is too well prepared for his own funeral, and would like it to be a modest affair? That Ellis wanting something selfishly would take the sting out of all that sense of duty, and could he try, for Tony?

"—that you could look at it from her perspective."

[heorte]

The flat look Tony receives in return doesn't telegraph comprehension.

He's come to a conclusion. A scattering of components have already been laid out between them: the selfishness of it, of intruding into something long since settled. And beyond that—

Perhaps Ellis understands how anything beyond that would be received, and has done exactly as Tony suspects in deciding to leave them unspoken.

[propulsion]

"Imagine someone loves you," Tony continues, because Ellis is crinkling his brow at him and hasn't walked away, "and you never get to know about it."

They could get into it. He could. He kind of opens his hand, relaxes it. Well?

[heorte]

The point eludes him still. What good comes of knowing? (It will ruin something, Ellis thinks. It will be a burden to her, or worse, it would exert a kind of pressure and expectation that would fray and shred the connection they have now.)

"She's happy," Ellis repeats, words falling like stones from his mouth. "Married, and settled in it."

Maybe it's a relief to say it aloud, test these words and find them to be true. No contradiction rises to meet them.

Maybe it is difficult to have carried this for so long and have to lift it again, when he had been so certain he'd set it down for good.

"That isn't going to change."

Just like Ellis is unlikely to change his mind. Just like this thing he feels will remain unchanged, steadfast regardless of how useless it is.

[propulsion]

What's frustrating about this conversation

is how tired he feels. Like maybe he could move the needle if he was feeling a little more feisty, a little less heartsore and, well, buttsore, a little less absolutely freaking exhausted, with ancient temple dust gritty in the folds of his clothing, bruises settling in. But Tony can also imagine the absolute refusal for engagement if he tries to rain check it.

So he says, "Her happiness is one hundred percent independent from the guy she married for the paperwork," and the look he gives Ellis suggests that the other man must know that. "He seems fine, maybe it's fine, but is it great? Is it exactly what she deserves to have, in her life? Like, is Valentine Thirty Names the best she gets?"

A flip of his hand.

"You told me back there to tell her you love her. After you're safely out of the picture, and she gets that burden without any ability to do anything about it. That's why this is about you and not her. I get the impulse, but maybe you should do it yourself."

[heorte]

There is sound advice here, and it is not entirely unheard, except that it strikes some part of Ellis as confirmation: he should not have said anything at all. That it was exactly as selfish as he understood it to be, but it can't be undone.

A stretch of quiet follows after. Ellis stirs only to crouch closer to the fire and feed a log into the flames, let the work of tending the burn create space between what Tony has said and whatever attempt at an answer Ellis can scrape together.

There is an avenue, a true avenue, where Ellis says the first thing that comes to mind: Wysteria deserves better than him, his blood-drenched hands, his tainted blood, all his unspoken ambitions. (This is a separate matter from Val, what Valentine of the Thirty Names is and what kind of option he might be for Wysteria.) But Ellis is aware of where that road branches to, and doesn't wish to travel it.

So instead—

"It shouldn't be about me," feels true to Ellis. "Unburdening myself of this at her expense. It was only..."

A moment of hesitation. Ellis' hand turning between them, alternately lit and shadowed by the fire.

"I couldn't hold it," as if it is a physical thing. (It is. Ellis feels it, where it beats in his chest.) "I needed to say it, once. It was enough."

[propulsion]

Tony kind of watches Ellis and his response in a fixed way, a certain sort of aggravation returning to him in the set of jaw and unnerving focus. The aggravation that comes like when you say a bunch of stuff and only 5% of it is fixated on by the person you are saying it to because it loosely supports a thesis you are 95% opposed to.

Almost exactly like that.

"Okay," he says, after a beat.

And then relaxes. Grudgingly. Recognises, in a distant way, how impossible any divergent path of conversation might be, and so he could almost summon the gratitude for Ellis to divert them accordingly. He can, for a moment, pretend that a thing spoken once (to him, whispered, moments before imminent destruction) was enough.

"You know I do have some experience in this area, right?"

Just so we're clear.

[heorte]

They could argue, Ellis knows. Tony could spend some time chipping away at Ellis' fortitude, while Ellis dug his heels in against it. That is a possibility.

Ellis is stubborn (defensive, shielding this weak spot as well as he knows how) but Tony is incisive. Knows him well enough that perhaps, if given time—

Well, there need be no speculation on it tonight. The conversation moves on. Okay loosens some of the tension in Ellis' shoulders. Not all of it, not entirely; some lingers, through the second question.

He shakes his head in answer. (Thinking again of the son, swept away forever.) Realizes he has little idea of Tony's wife, who and how Tony might have married.

"No, I didn't."

Just to be clear. To invite, if Tony is so inclined to offer a more complete answer.