player plot | when my time comes around, pt 1

[cozen]

WHO: Abby Anderson†, Byerly Rutyer†, Clarisse La Rue†, Cosima Neihaus†, Darras Rivain†, Ellis†, Evelyn Farrier†, Florent Vascarelle, Gwenaëlle Baudin†, Jayce Talis†, John Silver†, Josias di Jaconissa†, Jude Adjei†, Julius, Marcus Rowntree†, O. Barrow†, Peter Parker, Tiffany Hart, Valentine de Foncé†, Xiomara Novoa†, Yseult
WHAT: A bad end.
WHEN: Solace 21
WHERE: Granitefell, Free Marches
NOTES: This is the first log for this plot. Use this for fight scenes, death scenes, poignant (or not) last conversations before anyone knows they're going to die, etc. Characters who are not dying or on the limited list of survivors can't participate in person or be on-site during this log, but they can appear via sending crystal as needed/desired. (Or you can inbox that stuff, but please link it somewhere so I can find and read it.)

I. BEFORE

The attack that brought them here happened a few days ago, leaving the village of Granitefell a smear of ashes on the plains between Starkhaven and Ostwick and its surviving population scrambling for shelter, food, and medical supplies. That's what Riftwatch is doing here, mostly. Helping. There's also a report that the dracolisk-mounted soldiers who burned their way through the village were looking for an elf in particular, whom they searched out by name and plucked out of the flames to carry off into the dark, and looking into that—questioning the elf's family and acquaintances, examining the belongings that survived the fire, searching the surrounding cave- and ruin-dotted landscape she used to hunt to see if she might have stumbled across anything in the process—is helping, too, in a bigger-picture sense.

The first day they spend there is hot and quiet. Even the injured villagers succumbing belatedly to their injuries do so without much noise and fuss, and the survivors not strong-backed enough to work alongside Riftwatch hide in the shade and talk quietly about what they could possibly do now that everything is gone.

The night is a little noisier. First in a normal way: the heat lifts, people are more willing to move about, the children and teenagers who spent most of the day in heat-induced dozes are suddenly full of energy. So while all or most of Riftwatch, having forgone naps themselves, may be asleep in the early hours of the morning, someone is awake to shout in alarm when something dark briefly blocks out one of the moons. Which is all the warning anyone gets.

II. DURING

The sky rains fire, and once the camp is burning, the flames light the dragon from below, glinting off the red lyrium crusted along its joints and ridges.

Not long after, attacks come from the ground as well: Tevinter and Ander soldiers, some mages, some mounted on dracolisks that breathe fire or electricity, others effective enough with their swords and morningstars, coming at the camp from multiple directions to sweep anyone who tries to flee back toward the center. They're not surprised to find Riftwatch there; perhaps that's why they came back in the first place.

But they're not distinguishing between soldier and civilian in the carnage, indiscriminately crushing bones with magic or running bodies through with swords, taking the time to pause and kill anyone who cowers and screams rather than focusing only on those who put up a fight. They're led by Itaeus Ferra, a figure who may be familiar to some, riding a dracolisk that seals the fate of many of the injured by spewing poison over their burns and other open wounds.

Still, it's a closer thing than they expected. What begins as an obvious plan to wipe out everyone they find transforms, as time wears on, into an attempt to merely take out as many as they can before their own losses become too great and their remaining soldiers withdraw. When they do, the dragon lands to guard their retreat, with a tall figure—not Corypheus, but a cackling and corrupted man of similar stature—riding astride it, urging his dragon into giving the encampment one last torching while inviting whoever may be left alive to come out of the dark and try their luck against him. (Maybe someone takes him up on it, but if they do, it does not end well for them.) It is only after a long lull when no one stirs or answers his taunting that he announces they're boring him and departs.

III. AFTER

The survivors are much fewer this time. A handful of Riftwatchers; only a slightly larger number of villagers, mostly children whose protection was prioritized. The numbers will dwindle further over the next few hours, as the sun rises and people succumb to their injuries before even the fastest-flying help can arrive.

Comments

iv. die die die

[biggame]

Here is an elf to replace the villager who fell at his feet—same clearer vision in the dark, and this one has a bow of her own. She is beside him with her back pressed against a wall that is not burning yet, but will be soon, as the fire on the other side of the half-destroyed structure works its way around to them.

"Fucking Tevinter bullshit bastard shitfaces," she says half-sensically as she nocks an arrow. "I've killed so many things bigger than them—"

She pivots around the edge of the wall and lets the arrow loose after only a moment's consideration, lodging it not into the soldier who's pursuing them, but into the dracolisk she's riding. She's more familiar with the weak spots on animals than on people. It screeches—a sound unfortunately accompanied by a blast of fire—and tumbles. It will take the soldier a bit to recover from the spill, if she recovers at all.

"—they do not get to kill me, that would be so stupid."

Back beside Byerly now. She looks up at him—quite a distance up. There's no fear on her face now, and there won't be until later, until the moment she realizes her luck has truly run out.

"Alright. What?"

She'd heard the very beginnings of a proposal, before they had to duck behind the wall.

the the the

[bouchonne]

"Ferra."

There is fear on his face. Fear, misery, and the trail of tears that have cut through the ash on his face and left starkly pale lines behind. This doesn't look like much of a man to follow - but in times like this, any plan may feel like something good enough.

"We wound him with envenomed weapons. I've coated these crossbow bolts and these daggers with venom from dead dracolisks - " He holds forth the meager supply of weapons. "If he's hit, he may retreat."

And then a pang of guilt compels him to add - "It's unlikely to work. And we are likely to die in the attempt."

la la la

[biggame]

"You're likely to die in the attempt," Xiomara says.

It's a joke. A joke that is true. She's seen people who were going to die soon before, and some of them were a lot like him, tear ducts hollowed and now fixated on some improbable hope. Like this last idea was the only part of them not already dead.

If any of them also looked like her, eyes a little wild with the force of their denial that this could really be happening to them, she's not thinking about that—you know, on account of the denial. Maybe he'll die. She won't.

She considers his spread of weaponry and nods.

"Alright. I'm in. Where do you want me?"

[bouchonne]

That comment pulls a laugh out of him. It's cracked and off-kilter, but it's still a laugh. He hopes she's right. He hopes her bravado lets her live a hundred years. He hopes she rediscovers the secret of elven immortality.

"What weapons are you good with?" he asks. "How do you fight?"

[biggame]

He laughs; she smiles—halfway, grim and reasonably appropriate for the situation. Maybe the improbable hope isn't the only part of him still alive. Her head cocks toward her bow. Though,

"Swords too," is cocky. Her sword—a dueling rapier, nothing meant for outlasting a mounted soldier swinging an axe—is gone, torn from her hip as she slid and stumbled her way through debris to avoid some previous impending doom. "I could do alright with daggers. So you pick your favorite."

Beyond them, in the red glow of the massacre, there's a scream. Or one scream of many, really. But this one's close.

[bouchonne]

He has only crossbow bolts dipped in that venom - nothing for the bow. It's almost a relief, thinking about how he'll be able to stay back from the fighting...He feels a ripple of shame over his mind even straying to such a cowardly thought.

And so he asks, "Crossbow?" And he holds out his own weapon for her inspection. If she takes it from him, then he'll be the one with the daggers - the one in greater danger. Which only seems right.

[biggame]

In other circumstances—one where people weren't screaming in the way people scream when they're truly about to die so close to them, one with less fire and crackling corrupting energy—or if he weren't one of their leaders, Xio might think through the implications of this more. Might tell him to keep his crossbow and his daggers both, and let her use the weapons she already has to try to draw their target's attention.

Maybe she'll kick herself later, when she thinks of that.

But for now she grabs the crossbow with urgency, no thought and no discussion, as if it is an order rather than a question. "I can work it," she says. She's used one before. "I'll try to cripple his mount for you—not with—"

The poison. The poison needs saving for the man. She wiggles the bow in her other hand; arrows for the dracolisk, bolts for the soldier.

"You good?"

[bouchonne]

Fuck, thinks Byerly, and also, good. Good, because the one at close range is most certainly going to die. Good, because there will be some chance, if they can effect their retreat, that she might be able to go back to her treasure-hunter friends. Good, because she looks young - is she young? it can be so hard to tell with elves - and there's a bit more life ahead of her. If he's bought a few more years of life, on the balance, that's good, isn't it?

"That's good," Byerly said, and then corrects himself, "Yes, I'm good." He swallows. He learned first to fight with daggers on the stage; his spymaster taught him more, after. He's not hopeless. But no resurrection at the curtain call, here. "I'll be coming in from behind. Going for the armpit or the neck."

And then he nods at her, and he tightens his grip on the pommels of those daggers, and he lifts his head to look at the dracolisk riders. They're traveling across their line of sight - trampling towards the village square, a squadron seven strong, Ferra amongst them. About a hundred yards away. He and Xiomara will be able to keep to the shadows of the remaining buildings to get within striking distance of them.