player plot | castaways!

[cozen]

WHO: Bastien, Benedict Artemaeus, Eli Ever, Jayce Talis, Lalla Vesperus, Laurent Vesperus, Peter Parker, Victor Vale
WHAT: Carnivale cruise vacation.
WHEN: Justinian 9:49
WHERE: A Sea
NOTES: This is a make-your-own-adventure log. General outline and prompts are below. Everyone is invited to the crystal post here and also free to make their own for other things too.

I. PROLOGUE

So what happens is: the Crossroads collapse.

Before that, the mission goes well. Lord Cardin Popelin and his expatriate Tevinter cousin Novia Traiana and their respective spouses are very charmed by, you know, the charm, and intrigued by the harmless hints of innovative magic-science, and some combination of money and collaboration is likely forthcoming once they've had some time to stew in their charmedness and intriguedness for a few days. And the shortcut that Riftwatch's envoy takes back through the Crossroads to avoid days in wagons or at sea goes as well as it possibly could, too, until the part where the path collapses.

(The cause of this collapse could be anything. A statue knocked in passing. The wrong stone tile stepped on at the wrong time. The last syllable of one Trade word and the first of the next forming a forgotten elven word that triggers a forgotten elven safeguard. There's room for no fewer than four people to be sure it's their fault.)

The pathway collapses, is the bottom line, and it drops them not into the endless twists of the Crossroads' mix-and-match gravity fields, but into one of the Crossroads' rivers. Sometimes these rivers end in waterfalls (or water-rises, depending on where you are). But this one, running through an ancient aqueduct tunnel that forces everyone entirely underwater, ends in an eluvian, forgotten and unlocked, blocked by debris but not so blocked that the sudden pressure of eight human bodies doesn't make the dam burst and deliver them through the mirror and into elsewhere.

II. ASEA

All of that happens quickly. The time they are underwater is brief. Thirty seconds, maybe, give or take the time it takes anyone particularly disoriented by suddenly being in deep open water to make their way (or be dragged) to the surface of the sea.

A sea. A warm one, fortunately, on a relatively calm and sunny day, as bright and cheerful a blue as a sea has ever been. Also fortunate: various pieces of debris, mostly ancient and apparently rot-proof wood, have emerged with them and floated to the surface. Several of these pieces of wood are large and flat enough to support a person or two on their own. Others are portions of logs, or scraps of ancient bookshelves and chairs, and one fully intact still-alive shrub.

That is about it for the good news. The bad news is that the eluvian is now unreachable, the current of water rushing out of it from the Crossroads making it impossible for even the strongest swimmer to go back the way they came. Additional bad news is that they are, again, in the middle of an unknown sea, and judging by the height of the sun, they have a good ten hours before they can attempt to use the stars to do anything. Also, someone might have lungs full of water, and someone else might have been struck by a log somewhere in this process, and—

It'll be fine.

III. ARAFT

At some point, somehow, using some people's genius engineering skills and long strips of some people's clothing, they have managed a raft. It is inarguably better than being in the water. (Is that a shark fin? It is a shark fin. But sharks are mostly harmless.) But it is not better than a lot of other things, such as, for example, being back in the Gallows. Especially considering it goes on for two days—two days during which they have to try to figure out water, something to eat, shelter from the skin-crisping sun, and what to do about the squall that suddenly swells up around them in the evening.

IV. ASHORE

The storm likely gets most of the credit for the fact that they do not have to stay on the raft. When the sky clears and the rain lifts enough for the island to be visible, it is already very close. The waves are rocking them steadily closer, but working out a way to row—or hopping into the water to propel the raft along with kicks, or swimming and leaving Laurent behind to die, whichever—will make it quicker.

The island is an uninhabited speck, easy to walk all the way around in an hour at most. No other islands, specks or otherwise, are visible in the distance from any side of its shore. It's too small to support any large animals, its foliage short and scrubby and grassy rather than tall or tropical. But there's fresh water! There is a cave, hidden in a hillside and awaiting discovery by whomever would like to save everyone else from having to built huts or tents. And there are rabbits who, in the absence of many natural predators (aside from a pair of eagles spotted overhead) and with an abundance of grass to eat, have done what rabbits do and become so numerous it would be hard not to catch one. Everything's coming up Team Castaways, unless/until someone tries some of the berries growing on the island (the rabbits are eating them too!) and discovers they're hallucinogenic.

Other than that, though. Huge improvement over the open water, not least because—

V. EPILOGUE

—being one static location for several days and nights makes it much simpler for them and their friends back in Kirkwall to pinpoint their location. In the end it is a combination of the constellations and the fact that the rabbits are of a particular Antivan domesticated breed, a beloved pair of which was famously set adrift in a lifeboat by their owner to save their lives when his ship was taken by pirates in the Northern Passage about five years ago, that allows Riftwatch to narrow the search radius enough for griffons to spot their campfire on a tiny island east of Par Vollen and get them out of there.

Comments

[pathlit]

Agitated, Jayce swallows and immediately regrets it; his throat somehow feels like tar and sandpaper at the same time. "Do you have any to spare?"

Luck or the favor of whatever deity Peter has in mind, he means.

[heartstumbles]

"Luck? Not really. Especially not recently," Peter replies wryly, still searching to see if he can find some sort of sign of land. Or a boat. Or any sudden, last minute miracle to get them out of this cursed ocean. "You can have my last prayers though."

Unable to find anything in the near distance, Peter curses under his breath. Then he turns back to his companion.

"Did you get hurt when we all got dumped here? Can I help?"

If he keeps busy and keeps helping to the best of his abilities, Peter won't have time to give into the panic slowly rising up his chest like bad indigestion. A flawless plan, he thinks.

[pathlit]

Especially not recently earns a lopsided shrug of sympathy, followed by a near-mute bark of a laugh. "Think I kinked my neck during that sudden rush--"

--and suddenly quiets, staring with a newfound intensity at Peter, like he might just be the goddamn godsend after all.

"Are you a healer? Like, a magic one?"

[heartstumbles]

That newfound intensity is, in its way, alarming, familiar, and reassuring; Peter can recall several citizens looking at him similarly while he was under the mask of Spider-Man back home, trying to do good and help the little guy. Now, he feels incredibly guilty for the fact that he's about to deflate this guy's hope.

"I'm not a healer and I don't have magic, but I can do some basics," Peter says, trying not to wince at how much of a downgrade his offer sounds like.

"And I can try and find a healer," he adds, glancing around and trying to get a view of the others stuck in the ocean.

[pathlit]

"Oh," he says, visibly deflating as Peter had anticipated, though not, perhaps, for the reason he might think. "Don't worry about it." Then, his shoulders shake with a noiseless chuckle; he waves his hand before clasping it over the leather cuff around his opposite wrist. Try and find a healer -- here!

"Wasn't asking for me, but I guess that could change at any moment." This wry statement is accompanied by a cant of his head toward the ocean -- specifically, toward the possibility of interaction with a shark.

[heartstumbles]

"Well, I don't know about you, but I'm definitely worried," Peter tries making a joke, tries glossing over the situation that they're currently in to make it seem not as entirely bad as it currently is. And, yeah, trying to find a healer out here in the middle of the ocean...even Peter's optimism can't really explain that particular hope.

As he gestures with his head towards the ocean, Peter suddenly has a new fear. "So like, are the sharks here, uh. Are they different? Or are they just sharks?"

He's thinking of sharks with bigger teeth, and maybe sharks that now also shoot out venom.

[pathlit]

"I hope they're just sharks." His nose wrinkles. "If they... If they weren't, wouldn't they have done something by now? Like the seamonster attacks..."

This reasoning is not entirely logical, but he is also dehydrated, hungry, sunburnt and tired -- a very different sort of exhaustion than sleep deprivation secondary to enthusiastic nerding.

[heartstumbles]

"I mean, I would hope so," Peter says, which really isn't helpful, but he's trying to cling to that shard of optimism, that shard that is no bigger than the sliver of green in his hand. "I think it's likely that there would be more information on monster sharks available and I haven't seen any in the library, so there's hope, I think."

Of course, Peter's only really browsed through the library in the Gallows; his focus of study has primarily been the history of Thedas to help establish himself here.

Peter thinks for a moment before an idea takes shape in his thoughts. "Hey, you know, if we find enough debris floating around, we might be able to make some kind of raft or boat."