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

it's like CW levels of spice

[doggish]

No.

[His voice is a rumble, a low growl that offers two seconds of warning before one of his hands shoots up, grabbing Astarion by whatever scraps of fabric he has left around his torso and yanking him forward with brutal abruptness. It throws him off-balance; it leaves him sprawled over Leto, that perfect ass pushed upwards, and there's just enough time for their eyes to meet before Leto's palm lands with a ringing slap against his left cheek.]

You have been an instigating little brat from the moment we left Kirkwall.

[He seethes it against his ear, his voice low and tight, as his hand raises again. It's three rapidfire slaps this time, his palm landing just on the underside of his ass, and oh, god, he wishes he could see how it bounces, but later, later. Smack, hard against the meat of his ass this time, his fingers curving ever so faintly so that his talons tear through leather, drawing pinpricks of blood as they slice through thin skin. And then it abates back into something lighter again and again, twice, three times, scolding and rhythmic, and there's no one who hears who won't know what it means. Whether or not they know which is being put in his place depends on just how quiet Astarion can be.]

Complaining about the food. The ground. The dirt. The air. Complaining about your wine supply and how much you miss sleeping on a feather bed, and all the while wandering around looking like a damned Dalish. [With a growl he bites sharp at the line of one pale ear, a chastising spark of pain that serves as distraction while he switches hands— one always gripping Astarion's clothes, fingers knotting to keep him close.] When you know I do not like it . . .

And you have been a temptation. A tease. Do you think it is a game, looking at me like you do? Wrapping your lips around a bottle of wine and staring at me across the fire, whispering filth in my ear with the others not a foot away— do you think I have not noticed? Flirtatious little brat, baiting a wolf and thinking it fine sport . . .

[They haven't fucked in days, and right now, Leto can feel every bloody second. It's a surge of lust and frustration and anger, and it comes out in the brutal smack of his hand, outright bouncing Astarion's ass as he spanks him. It doesn't matter how he squeals or wriggles or bellows indignant shock, it simply keeps happening— until all at once Leto's fingers dig in, groping crudely at his flesh, talons digging in with vicious intent.]

Don't move. Not unless you want me to tear these.

[And he will. He absolutely will. Leto tips his head back, his eyes heated and dark as he stares up at his Astarion.]

I know I taught you how to apologize.

Paeniteō. Tell me. Or I will strip you down and put you over my knee, and after a time, we will try again.

I'd actually watch a CW show with gay vampires and elves, js

[illithidnapped]

[Oh but he doesn't want to apologize. Doesn't want to be the first to concede. To bend. To plead. Not because of Cazador— not because he'd always been obedient once the strings set in about his wrists, so much quicker to bend than his fellows (their resentment mattered even less than his dignity, which in turn mattered infinitely less than persisting long enough to see another night)— no, that's all been relatively dissolved by now, flotsam memories now so distant when he's staring down into gold-green eyes.

It's stubbornness on both sides. They haven't fucked in days, and right now, Astarion can feel every bloody second of impact as it comes hammering down against (mercifully) clothed hips— scolding and impulsively aimed, like swatting at a misbehaved whelp: each compounding smack more condemning than whatever words might be spoken overhead, considering there's not a living (or unliving) thing in either Toril or Thedas that doesn't understand what —no, bad— means when it's delivered with a stinging side of soreness. Even Astarion, frequent delinquent that he is, always knows to yank his figurative hand out of the fire before it burns.

Audible yelps intertwined with the sound of scuffing heels promise that he was a little too slow tonight.

Much like the subsequently sudden bite of claws perched tight around the pliant curvature of his own tender backside promises the importance of graceful concession.

And you know, like this, there's a fine-toothed sliver of a moment where the Foundry's acrimonious stench comes to mind. Talon-tips a little like a dagger slipped beneath his chin, demanding attention in the way Leto instinctively knows best (though oh, despite a pitch-eyed fondness for it, Astarion's never been so stupid as to mention that fact out loud). Little pup. Little wolf.

He doesn't curl his fingers this time. No more lowered ceremony, and no feigned surrenders— not when he's likely to end up sporting a host of stripes for it just as before. And yet his hips sting and his eyes have long since watered, left hot-mouthed and disheveled in arms too strong to run from: lithe back still arched, those claws stay there, and like a pack animal with its jaws locked around the neck of a companion, Astarion knows there'll be no truce until Leto's certain his imparted lesson has been thoroughly, demissively learned.]

Mmph.

[Aren't they just a pair. One elf more than ready to make good on his threat; the other arched towards that anger, hooded eyes sluggish as they blink, slow as his wicked lips when they part for the sake of a drunken murmur:]

I'm sorry you couldn't endure it.

I'm sorry I made it too hard for you to focus with all my entirely legitimate complaints, and my need to do things like— drink. Eat. [He tries to sound coltishly apologetic, even as he nuzzles Leto's jaw, occasionally chancing the pinch of his own sharp teeth over inhumanly pretty skin. Hello. See? I'm being good. I'm playing nice.]

You know I can't help myself when you're around.

[Careful, the way he rocks forwards over the stiffest angle of Leto's smothered stretch. Down, more than slipping back and forth, effectively drawing them closer. Careful, so careful, hips as appeasing as his sweetened tone; which carries the same intonation as what he'd use to coax in shoal-sensed prey at the fringe edge of aromatic shadows, as far away from the herd as he and Leto are from camp— though his tone is so much deeper, promising it could only be theirs, this game. He smells of smoke and lilac. His bleeding mostly stopped, iron is the faintest trace left slithering behind the rest; it cedes to drying spice wine, still flush with Arlathan's humid clime.

He's a fox. A corvid. A cat. Leto has the jaw strength, but he has foresight— for if Astarion were easy to outwit, he'd have never survived long enough to see Thedas: he bites until he's cornered and then he's all belly. Soft fur and pretty lashes fluttering darkly under pale curls, longer these months than ever before.]

You're too much for me.

And yet I crave you all the same.

[None of it's a lie.

His hips still sting, but there's no subtlety left in his movement: he tests the limits of his companion's addled focus by rocking back against those claws, gloved touch dropping to pry gently at a faintly smoke-stained lip.]

Ignosco mihi, amatus.....let me have you as I like.

bumpin it up to hbo levels

[doggish]

[It's a trick. Obviously it's a trick. He knows Astarion, knows just how he gets when he's finally been cornered. They've tussled with one another (with knives, with words, with deft fingers and slick tongues) too often for him not to know that that sweet simpering is merely a cover. His fingers flex against the curve of his ass, groping and releasing again and again— a cat kneading a favorite spot as he tries to think of what he wants to do about it.

He could spank him again, obviously (that does have an appeal— high as he is, he swears he can feel the heat of reddened, bruised skin even through the thin fabric of his trousers). Or he could tussle with him a little more (but Maker, he doesn't want to move, not when there's that gorgeous pressure rocking against the line of his prick, slow and rhythmic and sinfully good). Or he could— mph, tip his head back a little more, his eyes focusing on the distant stars as teeth nip gently at the soft skin of his neck. Blindly his hand slides up from his ass, pressing down hard on the small of Astarion's back: first to encourage him into a more blatant arch, and then (fingertips digging in that soft spot just above his tailbone) to turn that rocking into proper grinding.

And when Astarion draws himself up, Leto gives chase— but not before a gloved hand works its way between them, thumb pressing gently at his lip as all the while he still squirms.]

Amatus . . .

[It's soft. Adoring, his emerald eyes wide and wondrous, his tongue darting out to lap slowly at the leather, teasing the pale elf gently with what he's surely about to take anyway. Blindly Leto rests his hands upon Astarion's knees, squeezing just once before he smooths them slowly upwards. Dyed leather is cool against his palms, and he drinks in the feeling of hard muscles tensed beneath them. Every sensation seems important to focus on suddenly; every pulsing push of Astarion's ass against his prick a dizzying jolt that leaves him biting back groans. Like that, yes, don't stop, his heated exhales surely encouragement enough.

There's a part of him (a very large part, in fact, and growing every second) that wants nothing more than to melt beneath Astarion. Yes, take me however you want, submissive and sweet, his legs spread and his moans swallowed by Astarion's hungry lips (for Leto has absolutely forgotten about the camera by now, thanks). Yes, that's all he'd have to say. Yes, please, yes, and for a moment he considers it, but . . .

Leto cocks his head to one side, eyes bright, and chuckles.

There's more fun to be had yet.]

. . . you must think I am the most foolish man in the world, to count that as an apology.

[Quick how his hand strikes: thumbs slicing down in swift mirror movements, slicing through the taut fabric near his thighs— and then again, slicing up towards his hips, his other fingers curving, and Maker, how easy it is to slice his trousers to ribbons. They hang loose and useless, swaths of pale skin peeking out from the falling fabric— but it's his prick that Leto focuses in on. Thick and hard and such a welcome sight, stiff and overheated pressed against his bare stomach.

His mouth waters. Absently he tongues the corner of his mouth, his attention forcibly rerouted— and then his eyes focus back up on Astarion. An insufferable sort of smile curls on his lips, his eyes hooded and dark as he stares fearlessly upwards.]

A mercy, amatus: I'll give you another chance before I force you over my knee.

[His voice is a low drawl, deliberate and wry, as he adds:]

Perge.