player plot: the battle for starkhaven.

[luaithre]

WHO: All
WHAT: Riftwatch and the rebel mages come to the aid of Starkhaven
WHEN: Last week of Wintermarch
WHERE: Starkhaven and outlying territories
NOTES: Open to all, with instructions/suggestions below for what your character can do, dependent on skillset and division. Violences within.



The news has been the same for seemingly endless months: the Tevinter Imperium stays encamped, entrenched, at the doorstep of Starkhaven. The Free Marches city is long besieged, strangled and dying, and its proud stone walls that keep Corypheus' forces out also entomb its own citizens as supply dwindles fast over the winter.

The Exalted March has not come. The scattered militias and militaries of the surrounding territories have not rushed to its aid. Riftwatch has done all it can with the personnel it has, sabotaging enemy movement, collecting information, supplying villages and redirecting refugees, but it seems as though all it can do for Starkhaven is stand vigil to its collapse.

That is, until some hasty conversations were had.

A trio of Riftwatch agents approached Grand Enchanter Fiona, ad hoc leader of the rebel mage forces currently under the Inquisition's banner, with a question: what would it take, for the rebel mages to lend aid to Prince Sebastian Vael?

23 Wintermarch: Stoneweale Fort

Closed: The Division Heads, Derrica, Fenris, Julius, Marcus Rowntree, Petrana de Cedoux

It rains for the entirety of the ensuing negotiations, ice wet winter striking the impassive walls of Stoneweale Fort and the tents erected within its walls. The fort stands south of Starkhaven at the edges of Tevinter's influence, and contains the entirety of Prince Sebastian's available forces and, newly, Grand Enchanter Fiona, several rain-swept griffons, and a collection of Riftwatch agents.

Not all of them take up space in the war room (for instance, the griffons don't need to be there), but those that do bear witness to a deal being struck:

Prince Sebastian speaks plainly: the situation is beyond dire. They are at the precipice of surrender, and between himself and his commanders, they've been preparing for a last-ditch effort to save as many of his subjects as he can spare. By directing his forces in a (likely suicidal) full-scale attack against the enemy, he has hope that this will distract them for long enough so that a select few of his soldiers can fell the far gate and evacuate as many citizens as they can. He welcomes any assistance the mages could offer.

Fiona, understanding the lethality of what Prince Sebastian and his men are going to attempt, first states that the rebel mages can be mustered to assist in this evacuation by destroying the wall and shepherding Starkhaven's people to safety. She also pledges to personally join the Prince and his men in their attack on the main force.

It's with gratitude that Prince Sebastian accepts her offer.

And there is little time to prepare.

23-29 Wintermarch: The Minanter River

In the coming days, Riftwatch redirects its focus towards the preparation of Starkhaven's last stand. The movement of a small army of mages from the Orlesian frontline to deep into the heart of the Free Marches is the kind of logistical effort that one would hope to have plenty of time to organise, particularly in the interest of evading the Imperium's notice for as long as possible, but time is a luxury, and there are few of those available these days.

To ensure a swift and relatively stealthy travel time, the rebel mages are broken up into still sizeable detachments – they ride on horseback, or travel on merchant vessels that have been acquisitioned for the war effort, quietly coursing down the Minanter. They camp in thatches of forest or huddle within long emptied warehouses in semi-abandoned trading settlements.

Riftwatch agents of any combat capability join them, ride with them, and stay in contact through crystals to ensure coordination.

In the sky, griffon riders are tasked with keeping close monitor of any Tevinter detachments that might push close to the small army of mages moving in from the west. The going is often lonely, long hours, solo flying with reportage over the crystal network, before gathering together in small camps to feed their mounts, themselves, and sleep in hastily erected tents that protect them from the winter-time rain.

When necessary, members of Forces and Scouting will be deployed to run interference and push back and redirect Tevene scouts or soldiers and Venatori. Sometimes, larger groups of Imperial forces threaten to intercede, in which event, Riftwatch agents may find themselves working together with rebel mages to not only prevent the enemy from interfering with their people, but killing them so as to ensure there is no reporting back of a sudden influx of mage activity.

Members of Research may find themselves based at Stoneweale Fort. After some convincing, Prince Sebastian allows his various commanders to coordinate with Riftwatch to identify locations and pressure points within Starkhaven and its defences for the purposes of sabotage in preparation for Tevinter's taking. Now is the time to plan, analyse maps, prepare explosives or enchantments, and try not to look too excited about it.

Meanwhile, those within Diplomacy, if not hovering helpfully around Stoneweale Fort, are sent to make ready for Starkhaven refugees by speaking to villages further south, negotiating for supplies and accommodations, rallying any militia that are willing to assist in their protection. It's all a little thin on the ground, but if there was ever a time to cash in some of Riftwatch's local goodwill, it's now.

30 Wintermarch: Starkhaven

The wall

A horn sounds out, long and mournful. Voices and horse hooves and sword clashing and magic casting beneath the stormy sky is reduced to a dull roar as Prince Sebastian, accompanied by Grand Enchanter Fiona, leads his forces in a frontal assault against the overwhelming Imperial presence at his gates.

As a result, the far gate has been left undefended.

Slaughtering the remaining unit of Tevinter soldiers guarding it is borderline perfunctory, but there is much still to do. The majority of the rebel mages (less those volunteers who have joined Fiona in Sebastian's host), along with any mages of Riftwatch who choose to join them, gather en masse upon the stone bridge and the shallows of the river – a small army of men and women in robes or in armor, but all holding a staff to mark them for what they are. As they begin to draw from the Fade, the air takes on the scent of bitter-storm, energy crackling and prickling across exposed skin, ruffling hair and clothing in unseen winds.

Stone cracks and wood splinters under gouts of raw magic and white-hot bolts of summoned lightning, slamming in unison against walls that have remained previously unbroken all this time. Beneath them, the ground rumbles and shivers, and debris spills where cracks form and open and widen from the base of proud walls to the ramparts.

A small group within the rebel mage forces then move together in coordination, and the stone wall before them all at once comes apart. Giant broken slabs of stone and support lift into the air as if in an explosion slowed in time, drifting away from one another as magic carries it in shimmering green-tinged telekinetic influence.

The ground shakes, again, as pieces of Starkhaven's walls land safely, if heavily, on the mud-thick river on either side, leaving a yawning opening where once were sealed closed gates of oak and iron.

On the other side, where rain beats down the rising dust, gathered citizens of Starkhaven, frightened and war-worn, stare out at an army of mages.

The sky

In the sky, over the chaos, Riftwatch uses the distraction of battle to send swift-flying griffons over the walls and into the city proper to enact acts of sabotage to Starkhaven's infrastructure. Below them, civilians flood the streets, pressing in a constant stream of bodies towards the crumbled wall. Up here, the sounds of a raging battle drift clearer from the front.

Everyone in the sky knows where they are going and what they are doing, under strict orders to avoid any harm coming to civilians. Either as a passenger or on their own, members of Scouting (and some non-Scouting mages) carry with them precise instructions from Research and the means to enact them in the form of alchemical explosives and enchanted grenade-like items that will detonate in bursts of raw Fade magic (or their own magical ability). Common targets include: the defensive weaponry and ballistae posted up on the ramparts, the chains that man the major gates of the city, certain storehouses and administrative buildings indicated on maps. Likewise, there are wealthy estates to pillage and deprive Tevinter of any coin they might find there.

But soon the city will be overrun, and those on griffonback may find themselves under assault of arrows and magic as they make their escape.

The retreat

On the ground, floods of Starkhaven citizens, soon to be refugees, flow through the crumbled wall, staggering across the bridge and through the shallows of the river that surrounds the city, helped along by mages and Riftwatch alike. It is a lengthy and exhausting process as hundreds of ordinary people, wide-eyed and terrified, are herded out of the valley and onto solid ground, streaming south for where villages have been fortified and prepared to receive them.

Then, the sound of cavalry.

Racing across the rocky plain, under Imperial banner, a horde of dracolisk and their riders come galloping at a furious pace towards civilians, mages, Riftwatch alike. Their presence does not speak well for the main battle, but they arrive all the same. Reptilian screeches and hisses pierce the rumble of thunder above, and frightened cries from the refugees begin to sound out as panic grips them, turning to run in panicked stampede at the sight of Imperial soldiers upon their poison-spitting mounts.

It was enough of a likelihood that the Forces members who have been deployed to ensure the security of the evacuation are prepared to move with the rebel mages to meet them. The battle is quick, bloody, magic crackling through the air in time with clashes of shield and flying arrows. Searing poison sprays across skin and armor and flame ripples across scaly hide as a brutal skirmish ensues.

But the battle breaks when the worth of continued harassment weighed against the potential cost. By order of Itaeus Ferra, astride his own beast, the dracolisk cavalry withdraws, tiding back towards Starkhaven, now lost to the forces of Corypheus.

31 Wintermarch: Southwards and Vallomire

Men, women, children march through the cold and into the night, but blessedly, the rain eases itself to an icy misting of constant damp instead of the driving downpour from earlier that day.

It becomes clear that among the refugees, there had been those prepared for this journey. Temporary campsites, guarded by mages and Riftwatch alike, strike up so that all may take a few hours of rest. There is some food passed around, if not very much, and as the sun rises on a new day, the procession resumes, if no less wearily.

Eventually, all arrive at the half-abandoned township of Vallomire, chosen for its largely empty barnhouses and warehouses on the shores of a distributary from the Minanter. It is not large enough or manned enough to permanently house so many of Starkhaven's people, but it will do for the next few days of recovery and rest.

There is food, gathered in from as many corners as was willing to part with it, and warm blankets, and, just as important, a reduced sense of impending doom amongst those that had lived under its shadow for so long.

Spirits are not high, but they are tired. Mournful, but alive. As the day lurches into the evening, as the rain finally withdraws and bonfires are lit, and mages and ordinary citizens of the Free Marches mingle in this moment of necessity, news finally trickles in from Starkhaven.

It is as feared: the city has been claimed by the Tevinter Imperium. Much of Starkhaven's military has been destroyed, giving their lives to buy this opportunity for escape. And, in murmurs that spread from campfire to campfire, two names in particular are spoken in low, reverent tones: Prince Sebastian Vael, and Grand Enchanter Fiona, have fallen.

Stories of prince and mage charging side-by-side into a wave of enemy soldiers, fighting back-to-back against overwhelming odds after all their fellows had fallen, rising again and again from the mud to continue the fight, to hold back the inevitable tide until the city was emptied. Toasts are raised and tears shed for the saviors of Starkhaven—its people, if not its stones.

Smoke rises in the north, a black mark in the sky, as the sun begins to set.

Comments

[portalling]

It’s an unusual reversal, the scales subtly tipped from their very first conversation and the way he had picked through Gwenaëlle’s knowledge, asking questions, dutifully filing away her answers. Ordinarily Gwenaëlle knows so very much in Thedas, and Strange knows so very little — but finally, he’s back in his element, and he doesn’t even need any goddamned magic to do it.

“Pack the wound first,” he says, crisply authoritative, “with any kind of dressing you have available. If that’s a topical salve, you’ll want to reserve it for the outside. Pain management and healing is a later problem, after we get him back to the other healers. We just want to stabilise him for now.”

He’s been haunting Kirkwall’s infirmary, he’s been reading any medical texts he can find. The plants and tinctures have different names, and he’s had to memorise what elfroot looks like and what all these salves do, but Gwenaëlle can fill in those gaps. Together, maybe they can cobble together some understanding of battlefield medicine.

He’s watching her movements so, so carefully, with trepidation thundering in his ears; as if he’s monitoring a student, as if he’s going to write up a review and a recommendation for her supervisor afterward— christ, this is bizarre.

It’s harder when you’re not holding the knife. When all you can do is helplessly watch, and place your faith in someone else.

Strange is practically holding his breath by the time she finally ties off that delicate knot, tiny, barely visible, just a fleck buried deep in that leg.

But that persistent blood-loss slows; that frantic sputtering stops.

[elegiaque]

Not done, but out of the woods for the moment — Gwenaëlle exhales like she'd been holding hers, which is probably true — and sets about following his instructions as briskly as they were given. The dressings she has are likely from the infirmary's own stock (prone as she is to occasionally refilling her bag from it), and once she has them in hand she doesn't need to be told to wet them down and wring them out damp first,

this part, clearly, is another that she's done before. There's a familiarity to the process, even if she's never been so close to the business end of triaging a wound this deep, enough that her mind is free enough in the moment to fleetingly wish she hadn't shot the horse after all now that they're going to have to figure out how to move this poor bastard.

(No, she thinks, a moment later; they've both got crystals. Driving the cart that had collected the wounded had been her job at Ghislain, with Alexandrie and Kitty; someone will be doing it here.)

“No sutures yet, then,” preparing to clean the area to bandage it, instead. It is clearly more for her own benefit than his, particularly, just speaking aloud the process to methodically follow it; there's a steady calm to her that isn't false, precisely, so much as it is brutally forged in crisis. It's soothing to know what to do. It's useful. She's useful.

[portalling]

“Not yet,” Strange agrees. “Later.”

He still follows these rules for himself, motioning as if he’s still standing in that operating room. Always be explicit. Don’t resort to a noncommittal grunt or a noise which could be misinterpreted. It helps to be crystal-clear, in situations like this.

It’s a familiar numb calm which has sunk over them both: that knife-sharp attention to detail and honing in on what matters and only what matters. He doesn’t have eyes for anything else, only Gwenaëlle’s work, Gwenaëlle’s hands. He had called her a jack of all trades, he remembers. This particular trade feels like overturning the soil and unearthing yet one more capability, although it isn’t alien or unexpected now that he considers it, lining up the edges. It fits neatly into his ever-building picture of her: steady, capable, brutal.

And now that their patient isn’t imminently dying and there’s a second to ask, indulging his curiosity — “Have you had healer training?”

[elegiaque]

“Nothing so formal,” as the wound begins to disappear beneath dressings and bandages, firm but not over-tight, confident and familiar with manipulating the dead weight of unconsciousness. “My lord l'Comte liked to drink and fight and he did not like to be physicked and would not hear of a physician being brought to the townhouse, so I learned to patch him up myself. Some of the house servants knew a little, and we had workhands who were strong—”

For when he was not unconscious, and not cooperating,

“—and then I picked up more from the healing tents at Skyhold. One of the healers did teach me remedies that were less...”

In another moment, if she were less busy, maybe she'd shrug.

“My lord was a habitual drunk and my lady was confined to her bed to die. Most people can't abide the strength of the sort of tonics that they required for pain or for sleep, but I didn't know any others or any better. Well, I would dilute it a bit, for my own use.” Probably not as much as all that. “I know how to make gentler things, now— there aren't many people in Riftwatch with the same requirements. But if you spend enough time at sickbeds and deathbeds, it's difficult not to learn anything.”

For some people, it is not. Gwenaëlle, who cannot abide feeling useless, can't help herself but to try to be useful.

[portalling]

Interesting, Strange thinks, and does not say aloud. Instead, with his free hands, he’s busied himself with taking the initiative and presumption to reach into that satchel of tricks and pass a length of bandage to her whenever Gwenaëlle requires more. Rooting around in the bag, he finds another knife (how many knives can one woman own? he’s not complaining) and cuts through the fabric where she indicates, shortening the length of bandage for their needs. It’s automatic work, instinctive, as if on autopilot. He could do this part in his sleep.

And yet it’s been so very long since he was cast in this role of assistant, of helpmeet. The aftermath of adrenaline is still thrumming in his fingertips, but there’s little for him to do now that the crisis point is passed, and so he asks questions.

“Your lord and lady. That’s…” The way it’s phrased sounds like her employers, Gwenaëlle like some housekeeper patiently tending to the lord of the manor, but that doesn’t track. She’d once mentioned inherited wealth, a rich grandfather, living in Hightown. Being an elfblooded bastard. It’s a little slow in coming as he sounds out the detail, considering his lack of experience with nobility and how they refer to each other, but:

“Ah. Does that mean your parents?”

[elegiaque]

“Two of them,” is agreement.

Once, she'd have said: my lord, and my mother, but it can be confusing, now, when there are two women she might mean. Easier to say my lady and Madam Baudin, for clarity's sake, where the purpose of my lord has always and purposefully been distance. It had pained him, in life, the clipped, cold, formal way that she spoke to him —

he had not failed to understand why. Mostly.

“The Comte and Comtesse de Vauquelin. My lady mother was the Duc de Coucy's surviving daughter,” until she wasn't, “thus our connection.” The rich grandfather in Hightown. “Some people speculate he favours me still because he couldn't abide losing an argument with his son-in-law.”

She doesn't sound as if she believes it, but it's not as if she'd never wondered.

“They loathed one another.”

[portalling]

It’s been habitually hard to tell, in conversation with Gwenaëlle Baudin, whether she’s brandishing an actual wound or if she genuinely doesn’t give a fuck. It’s that carefully-cultivated, matter-of-fact tone regardless of the subject.

(One gets the impression that they’re both good at being flip; that they both skid past the things which might hurt them.)

“Well,” he says. “Small favours. At least a skill came out of it.”

Which is a terribly clinical way to look on that silver lining, more like carving one out of a pound of flesh, but he says it nonetheless. And they’re cinching that last bandage, and he rocks back on his heels and then slowly stands, looking across the field in search of a wagon for their wounded. Exhausted, suddenly, now that the moment’s passed. Without thinking too much of it, he reaches out a bloodstained hand to Gwenaëlle to help tug her back to her feet, out of the muck and the mire.