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player plot | castaways!
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.
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.
no subject
"God abandoned us here, Victor," Eli says, tone serious. Does he believe that? Well, it's not like he's saying it for Victor's sake. He knows Victor doesn't believe in god. Eli still does. He can't do anything else, even here in this strange land with magic and monsters.
God doesn't talk to him. But neither does Victor. It does feel like abandonment; for once something he says is true. Gross.
He squeezes water out of a sleeve, uselessly, for want of something else to do.
"Shame you can't turn off the cold," he says back, venomous because he's Eli. Not that Victor would do him any favours. He wouldn't ask him to. He just can't leave off on something too honest, too close to a real feeling.
no subject
There is a version of Eli's face that Victor can see in his minds-eye that he could share parts of these thoughts with, and even then not all of them. It was only at a final hour he showed Eli he could grasp hold of nerves, never told him about the glittering blue vials he had stashed in a pocket, never fully shared some of the things Victor had lived since long leaving their world behind.
Maybe god hadn't abandoned them there, but Victor has certainly felt something lost along the way. Truthfully though, loss is perhaps the most intimate and consistent thing he and Eli share irrespective of everything else.
It remains hard to look Eli in the face, but not for the reasons the other EO might suspect, and precisely because it's difficult to look at him, Victor forces his gaze to stay firmly in place as he snorts unkindly.
"You could always trade Him in for the Maker. It's all pretty much the same thing in the end. You can even join a new book club here!"
It's all fairly low-hanging fruit, but they're both as petty as the other.
no subject
But he still pulled Victor out of the water. He can tell himself it's about keeping up appearances, but it's always more complex than that. The ocean taking Victor from him is unsatisfying. No one should get to kill Victor but him, not even god or this Maker.
His smile finally fades.
"It's not the same thing," he says, icy. It's a nerve and he knows Victor knew it would be, but he can't pretend otherwise.
He blinks, looks away, slides whatever mask he thinks makes sense back onto his face. No one is watching them, so it doesn't matter. He doesn't have one he wears for Victor other than to grate; Victor has never been a good enough mirror for that. But he has practise being whatever it is he's decided he's going to be this week, even if all that amounts to right now is not a drowned man. The others are off trying not to drown too.
One of the worse parts of Eli (as if there were better parts) imagines them all floating around them, dead, leaving only he and Victor alive in an ocean of bodies. Wouldn't that be fucking fitting? The only two people who can't seem to just stay dead, piling up more corpses even when they didn't do it on purpose.
He lets that go and reaches for another piece of wood that floats by, hauling it up and dropping it between them. He waits for another. As far as he knows, he can just exist here, undying but miserable, forever. Victor can't. These other people can't. If the Rifters stage a rescue and Eli is the only one who lives, that will look suspicious, which means…he has to help, somehow. What an annoying thing that is.
He knows not to look away from Victor for that long, though, so he looks back to check before reaching for another uneven piece of wood.