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Entry tags:
[OPEN] OPERATION: DREAMCATCHER
WHO: Anyone & Everyone
WHAT: Riftwatch attempts to identify the nature of the nightmares plaguing the Gallows, Kirkwall, and the greater Free Marches area at large.
WHEN: The Month of Harvestmere
WHERE: All Over
NOTES: See this corresponding Rookery chatter post. An assignment generator and discovery request can be found at the OOC Post. Please use warnings in your subject lines as needed.
WHAT: Riftwatch attempts to identify the nature of the nightmares plaguing the Gallows, Kirkwall, and the greater Free Marches area at large.
WHEN: The Month of Harvestmere
WHERE: All Over
NOTES: See this corresponding Rookery chatter post. An assignment generator and discovery request can be found at the OOC Post. Please use warnings in your subject lines as needed.
SINCE EARLY DRAKONIS, members of Riftwatch have been suffering from poor sleep. What began as an incidental, easily dismissed rise in the average frequency of nightmares has since escalated to near nightly terrors and mages whose dreams touch the Fade are being visited more often by more persistent demons. What's become clear in the months since is that it's not just members of Riftwatch being affected—citizens of Kirkwall, and people elsewhere in the Free Marches have complained of the same fitful night's sleep.
In the interest of ensuring that the Venatori haven't developed some new form of psychological warfare aimed at disrupting the war effort, or that if some denizen of the Fade isn't trying to pass on important intelligence again, the Division Heads have ordered a comprehensive survey be conducted in order to identify the regions most affected and hopefully narrow in on what's motivating all these sleepless nights.
Over the next month (or more), members of Riftwatch will be expected to:
- When reasonable, interview the locals while traveling. The most important information to gather is the location and how pervasive the nightmares are in that area—does it seem like everyone who lives in that hamlet is suffering from bad dreams on a nightly basis, or is it only a few people every few nights? Try not to freak anyone out (and DO feel welcome to invent a bunch of nightmares that rando NPCs may be suffering from).
- Add to the communal nightmares board which is posted in Project Felandaris' front room, for lack of anywhere better to put it and no current project leader to argue. Riftwatchers are to anonymously note any recurring patterns or themes in their dreams, whether it be noting down a detailed description or by adding a tally or check mark to something someone else has already listed. No one's asking anyone to divulge their deep dark secrets against their wall, but if everyone is dreaming about a secret door to a spooky ruin deep in the Hissing Wastes then it might be a good idea to figure that out.
- Go on survey missions designed to test the area of effect. These include a series of camping excursions in various directions overland, and two sailing trips to determine how far from land someone (say, a particularly irritable commander of Forces) would have to go before they can expect to catch up on sleep without waking up in a cold sweat. Everyone who participates in these survey missions will be required to keep a dream diary which will be surrendered to Research Division upon return to the Gallows. If you're in Research? Congratulations on the extra paperwork, and surely none of you will abuse this privilege.
- Map the area of effect by adding markers to the large map currently spread over the main table in Project Felandaris' work room. Using information gathered while traveling abroad— be it experienced personally while on assignment or as part of a survey group, or gathered from interviewing locals—use a marker to denote the strength of the nightmares experienced there (if any). There are a variety of different colored markers to indicate the perceived intensity of the effects.
Over the next month, the information collected and mapped out will reveal that most of the Free Marches seems to be affected by whatever is causing the nightmares. The border doesn't act as a hard boundary, and people as far north as the southern Antivan countryside are reporting their sleep being a little worse than usual. Nightmares are, to a lesser degree, snaking down into Ferelden. Sailing east seemed to result in diminished severity of nightmares, but didn't fully escape them. Sailors off the Amaranthine will report the same.
The map indicates no clear centralized area from which the bad dreams are originating. Neither is the effect uniformly distributed. Instead, the flow of nightmares might be more closely analogized to a river—there are channels where nightmares are particularly worse that seem to yield to more mild effects on the metaphorical banks, with some sinuosity and tributaries fanning out and places (like Kirkwall) where the influence of the bad dreams seems to be pooling particularly deep like water in lowlands.
Further, the communal board seems to indicate no obvious pattern or shared themes beyond what is typical for a small group of people who tend to get up to very similar kinds of trouble. If this is intentional, the good news is that it isn't exactly being controlled with pinpoint accuracy. The bad news? It doesn't seem like anyone's going to be catching up on their sleep debt any time soon.
boat trip v1.0
misc. mingle
In under twenty-four hours, Kirkwall has been swallowed entirely by the horizon and the low hanging gloom of the autumn sky as the Tevinter-styled brigantine ship in Riftwatch's employ races east. In keeping with the requirements of Riftwatch's service—wherein every mission away from the Gallows must have some element of inconvenience, even work stealthily in pursuit of little more than a good night's sleep—, the weather has quickly proven to be less than cooperative. With every hour, the direction of the wind alters by degrees, and the sea grows more choppy, and the sky more gloomy, and the ship's deck slants farther until the spray breaks so regularly across the rail that it doubles as a convincing understudy for the rain that has yet to begin dumping out the sky.
For anyone prone to motion sickness, it's pure misery. For anyone well-accustomed to life aboard a ship who has instead spent a majority of the last years cooped up in the Gallows or, worse, working farther inland, it's ideal.
It does, however, make the effort involved in any evening meal downright comical. No fire can be induced to stay lit in the galley stove long enough to make anything hot; and while the sway of the mess table hung from the wardroom's overhead deck beams might discourage tin dishware and mugs from being instantly upset over every wave, the trade off is that the tables themselves are constantly threatening to knock anyone attempting to sit at them off their seats.
On the plus side, the practiced antidote for cold meals and wet weather seems to come out of a cask and is commonly served out of a tankard.
friendly fire
And then the rain comes again, and the wind cuts sharper, and all memory of the ship—which should hardly be uncommon in these trade waters, and that they have no reason to investigate despite some instinctive itch to do so scratching under Flint's collar—is forgotten.
That night, they're finally rewarded with a break in the weather. The ship's violent heel and the shriek of the wind through the rigging at last diminishes. Dawn, when it comes, is characterized by a brilliantly clear sky painted in dusty purples and pale yellows, the comparatively peaceful rasp of the sea as it passes under the brigantine's bow, and Flint at the stern rail with his spyglass trained behind them.
Most bizarre of all, some old Inquisition flag has been dug out of the ship's hold and is now flying from the ship's stern gaff line.