war table: mending rifts

[tender]

WHO: Riftwatch + Showdown closed to lucky winners.
WHAT: Rift-closing, damage control + a Scooby Doo heist.
WHEN: Solace
WHERE: Picturesque Antivan farming communities, The Weyrs
NOTES: OOC POST, GENERAL OOC INFO + Reputation Building and Clue claim sheet

MENDING RIFTS - THE WEYRS, ANTIVA (ALL DIVISIONS)

The Antivan countryside is lovely, even in the heat of midsummer. Here, visitors can find all the expected trappings of the pastoral scenery: rolling green fields, well-tended vineyards, the lowing of cattle being driven out to graze, dusty roads cutting between swaths of farmland leading travelers to small hamlets and bustling villages, guiding them past farmers tending their crops and livestock.

Except as Justinian comes to a close, the sky tears open. Not once, or twice, but over and over again. Instead of thunderstorms, the countryside finds itself weathering a storm of demons. Rather than sending word south to appraise merchants of crop estimates and trade, letters are dashed off to Kirkwall and Riftwatch pleading for a remedy to the rapidly escalating appearance of new rifts surrounding their land.

Upon arrival, the most pressing of tasks needs no explanation: the fresh rifts dotting the countryside must be closed up.

But closing rifts isn't the end of the work. There is damage done to farm and field, to townships and Chantrys. Barns and homes will need to be rebuilt, scorched fields cropped and resown, ruined infrastructure reconstructed.

And most importantly: the demons that clawed through those rifts must be located and dispatched before they can do any further damage.

While all this work is arduous and time-consuming, no one can say it's not what Riftwatch does best. The locals in most of the affected villages are cautiously welcoming, and by the time two or three days have passed their initial wariness has thawed and given way to genuine appreciation.

Which is why it is so disastrous when Mother Sveta marches her way into the cavernous barn Riftwatch has been occupying as their central base of operations to lay an accusation at their feet.

Mother Sveta claims to have witnessed a member of Riftwatch open a rift over her chantry. Her fellow sisters and their congregants were forced to flee, and the building destroyed. She lays the blame for this at Riftwatch's feet and demands the offending agent be brought to justice swiftly and without any attempts from Riftwatch to shield the guilty party, or else she will publicly share her testimony throughout the region.

As if Riftwatch doesn't have enough to do, now it is imperative to seek out (or put together previously gathered) clues and track down the sabotaging Riftwatcher before their reputation in the Antivan countryside (and maybe beyond) is completely tanked by Mother Sveta's account of events.

Comments

[laruetheday]

If their group were larger, Clarisse would suggest splitting off into two, one to go after the fleeing target and the other to deal with the rift. With just five of them, she's not sure that wouldn't be more trouble than it's worth.

Erik threw a knife at the guy, but clearly dealing with the imposter is his second priority, which... is fair, considering what just happened. Clarisse likewise holds her spear at the ready, but still, she's not too sure about dealing with the rift first.

"Shouldn't we grab him first? Deal with this after?"

She looks to Flint as she says it, but she's addressing everyone.

[tender]

The figure staggers, yelps, but doesn't drop. Doesn't quite slow either, though it is hard in the dim, shifting light to discern where exactly that thrown dagger landed.

"Yes," Derrica answers immediately, pitched loud over the crackle of rift energy roiling through the clearing. "We can't let him escape."

Though the sweeping entirety of this (newmade rift, the nightmare working spindly limbs through the gash in the sky, the swirl of wisps eddying overhead) is no small thing either. The stamp of her stave against the ground sends a wash of energy outward, barriers coating Erik and Flint as the air around them grows heavier with the spark of ozone, the thickening of clouds overhead moments from giving way to a storm.

Two shards are needed to close a rift, this she knows. Derrica and Flint possess no shards of their own, and of the three shardbearers in their midst, who is fastest? Derrica's eyes flick towards the Commander, return to Clarisse and past her to ask, urgently:

"Loxley, can you catch up to him?"

[charmoffensive]

Loxley's remaining eye (where his other's absence is covered by matte black patch) gleams like a dull penny in the evening shadow, the golden reflective substance that absorbs light and renders the indistinguishable shadows into coherent shapes. He can, point being, clearly see their quarry rabbiting his way through the brush and the trees.

"Certainly," he confirms at a clip, already moving.

That there is no glance to Flint is, perhaps, forgiven for the speed at which he must move for the action to have worth—that, and adventuring doesn't lend itself so well to a coherent chain of command. So he goes on Derrica's prompt instead, stowing his rapier, drawing two daggers from inside his coat. Launches himself away from the green-lit encampment, a thump of foot hitting the ground following the somewhat preternaturally predatory leap out of sight, in the path of their scrambling villain.

[katabasis]

Already, dark shadows are moving to slither free of the glowing gash in the world—dark, curious smears sloughing in from the Fade too weak to manifest into anything more substantial than the glinting suggestion of figures, and easily dismissed with little more the the blunt sweep of a sword. Out from under the sinewy magic of the barrier, Flint's hacking falchion sword cleaves a shadow in two nearly as an afterthought. Where there are wisps, there will be shades and more. A clock is ticking. Maker only knows how long it will take for something substantial to notice the gap in the seam between this place and the Fade.

"Leave it," he barks, even as a milky white limb thrusts out through the Veil's tear, black clawed digits plucking at the air as if reality has a texture that might be felt against the fingertips. "We'll come back for it."

His turning from the rift and the demon pulling itself free of it, Flint's feet already moving in the direction of pursuit, is punctuated by the sudden electric green flash of a concussive blast—their quarry having raised his anchor hand and detonated some offensive attack in Loxley's direction in order to buy himself more ground.