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

Barrow OTA

[thereneverwas]

I. Before (Evening)

"Soldiers they will come, and soldiers they will go,"

Barrow, having built up his customary campfire in the clearest available spot, is perched on debris beside it while he uses it to make coffee for the survivors.
And he sings quietly, a lilting and pensive tune in his untrained baritone, as much to comfort himself as it is for anyone else.

"The war will lay the lot of us in urns of polished stone;
and if I join the cavalry and perish far from home,
a life beside my lady I will never live to know."

He's quick to offer a smile and a cup to anyone who might come to sit down and partake.

II. During (for Jude + anyone else who wants)

He'd been trying to sleep, which means Barrow isn't wearing his breastplate when he hurries out into the mayhem. His sword is at his belt and his hammer hangs loosely from one hand as he scans the scene, and at the sight of Jude (and whomever else) with a cluster of civilians, he hurries over as quickly as his arthritic knees can take him.
Announcing his presence by smashing through the head of an assailant, he meets Jude's eyes: they can do this.

marcus rowntree.

[luaithre]

during. ota.

[luaithre]

Maybe, by the end of the evening, good fortune can be measured in the small steps removed from the very worst of possible outcomes, and maybe Marcus' contribution to these checks and balances is: he is awake when the attack begins. Donning his armor slowly in the dark tent, murmuring a little to the semi-sleeping body he had been sharing a bedroll with, collecting his staff and moving out to the quiet borders of the campsite. Even in this midsummer evening, dawn is far enough away that the sky is pitch black.

He might say it's a bad feeling that has him join the watch set up around the campsite, but it's simply habit. A sense of responsibility for some specific thing, this, settling at the edges and watching the gloom. Without any real expectation of anything happening between now and when the sun rises to lighten the sky by slow shades of grey, he is currently counting out his cigarettes in the copper case. It isn't hard. There are four of them. He sets one between his teeth as he closes it. Good fortune: he pockets it, in the moment before—

A shift in the wind, and from the other side of camp, where he is not looking, explosive light.

Defense against the dragon attack is an exercise of kiting, distraction, scrambling. Here, a swiftly summoned whirlwind of Fade-tinged rock is fired with enough force to cut across dragon maw, and so the jet of fire that poured heavy between its fangs disperses, only coating a small huddle of tents in flame rather than completely incinerating them to ash. Marcus, running forwards as the dragon veers away, using magic to dispel the flames and his hands to grab at the canvas to help free anyone inside.

And then when the soldiers and cavalry arrive, Marcus' approach is not merely defensive. He, personally, sets about contributing to the sense of mayhem: he becomes a gust of smoke that leaps and unhorses a rider from their dracolisk, tackled to the ground when he resolves back into blade and armor; a summoned wall of fire separates charging soldiers from the gaggle of civilians trying to find a direction to run; a soldier sinks a blade between the gaps of his armor, and suddenly crumbles to their knees as entropic magic peels the life from them as Marcus closes gloved hands around their weapon and wrenches it back out of himself.

His good fortune will run out, soon, but not just yet.

[ ooc ; some examples for action-y moments above, but likewise just feel free to place yourself in the camp and i'll reply with some chaos. feel free to lend help, require rescue, or save him from a quicker end. ]

byerly rutyer

[bouchonne]

i. before the attack, just for some light-hearted threading, open

[bouchonne]

The child's mother was injured during the attack. She'll likely survive, thank the Maker; she suffered a burn on her arm, nasty and painful, but treatable. But because she was injured, she's struggling to tend to her child, a boy of four with immense energy.

Of course I'll look after your child, Byerly had said, like an idiot.

Now: the boy yanks on his hand and screams, a yell of no clear intention or request. By has no damned idea what the child wants - "Food? Do you want food?" gets no verbal response from him - and so now he's reduced to just staring at the boy like somehow that screaming will resolve itself into something comprehensible.

Help.

ii. during the attack

[bouchonne]

He has become accustomed to the battlefield. In his time with Riftwatch, Byerly has trained, drilled, and learned to be a soldier, and he has been at war. And so he isn't helpless or hopeless out here. He's not the boy who trembled behind the barricaded door, hoping the darkspawn didn't find his hiding place as they ravaged Denerim; nor is he the young man who learned the code duello and added his little flourishes to his foppish swordplay; nor is he the man who learned to kill like a spy, deadly moves disguised under apparent incompetence. He is sharp-eyed, crossbow in hand, bolts finding purchase in the cracks between armor.

But he is also a man who's pushing forty, with bad knees, who spends most of his days behind a desk lately. And he is also a man with no ability to perceive color - his sacrifice at the Temple all those months ago - struggling to distinguish gray from darker gray and determine what's happening. And he is also someone who is, fundamentally, fatally ordinary: average speed, below-average strength, no magic, no mabari, no legendary sword. Just a man.

He's found a villager to help him - an elf, her eyes in the dark keener than his. "There," she says, pointing; he turns, sees what she's indicating, and fires. The soldier drops to the ground. She searches again - And then some blast knocks them both from their feet.

Byerly rolls, comes to a stop, winded but uninjured. The elf - Byerly spots her lying apart from him, and he scrambles over. Whatever had caused that blast had hit her harder, and it's clear at once that she's dead, head tilted at an angle that makes his gorge rise.

He's a soldier now, he tells himself. He's a soldier. And yet for some reason, looking at this brave young woman whose name he didn't learn, he finds himself utterly paralyzed. He finds himself just sitting there, staring down into her vacant eyes, thinking about her family.

III. Survivors (threadjacking encouraged if desired)

[overharrowed]

a. Immediate

Julius is a man who is most comfortable when he is aware of how he is being perceived. Depending on how well someone knows him, this may be more or less obvious; still, he spends a great deal of time calibrating his presentation and a certain persona has arisen as a result of spending so long with Riftwatch, and the Inquisition before it. He's built "Julius" into something consistent and reliable and capable.

And he can't do it right now.

Anyone who gets close enough can see by the light of the lingering fires that Julius's own injuries aren't terribly dangerous. There's a superficial slice along his left forearm that he should probably bandage eventually, and when he moves, he'll be limping a little from where he's aggravated an older injury. But in the immediate aftermath, he's just sitting near Marcus Rowntree and, he's spotted not far off, John Silver.

He knows there are things he should do. Maybe they'll come to him in a moment. There are streaks in the dirt in his face, but for now, even weeping seems beyond him.

b. A bit later

His fellow Riftwatch agents probably would have gotten him up eventually on their own steam — he'd even registered Yseult, had the passing thought that she'd expect him to be helping — but it's ultimately the children who get Julius on his feet. Years of teaching finally break through the white noise in his head when he sees a few young villagers wandering aimlessly, clearly frightened and unsure what to do now that the battle is over and the need for hiding has passed.

He's a sight, and he can't fully pull himself back together, but when he speaks to them it's kind and assured, the way a grown-up who knows what to do next would sound. He starts gathering them, checking them for injuries for all he's still so drained he can't cast even a simple healing spell yet. At least he can help triage them and get them all together for when they're ready to leave.

Eventually, momentum builds on momentum, and he can say to the next Riftwatch agent who's near enough: "We need to get moving sooner than later." He's still not himself, clearly, but at least in motion again, it seems less as if he's likely to just lie down next to the dead and refuse to get up.

III. After | Crystal - Closed to Flint & Stark

[hassaran]

This is Yseult.

[ A rote preamble. She doesn't linger over it. The smoke has scraped her throat raw, and every word sounds like it threatens a painful crack. ]

Granitefell was an ambush. Almost everyone was killed.

a. + b.

[hassaran]

There's no telling how long Yseult has been sat on her knees beside what's left of Darras when some flutter of movement finally draws her attention, turns her head on instinct. A strip of cloth caught in the breeze is dismissed as quickly as identified, but it takes her gaze to Julius. She notes without thought the similar pose, recognizes the soot-stained color of Marcus's coat from when it had flared into view earlier, interposing between her and a likely end. She doesn't think now he's dead and I'm still not. It doesn't need thinking, the knowledge hung in the air with the smoke, settling in her hair, sticking itself to the inside of her mouth and throat and lungs. She watches Julius for a moment with the sensation of being watched herself.

At some point, she turns away. Eventually, she is on her feet again.

She does what she's supposed to do: makes a survey of the survivors' status, helps corral the wounded and those capable of treating them, delegates to the aimless simple tasks necessary to prepare for a retreat that will be both hasty and too late. She nods when Julius speaks, finishes fastening a wagon harness on one of the horses that has wandered back now that things are quiet. It's all just muscle memory.

"Civilians are nearly ready. But there will be trouble about the dead."

Peter Parker

[heartstumbles]

I. Before

[heartstumbles]

The sight that greets them is harrowing and devastating all at once; Peter shudders. But he squares his shoulders and he pushes down as much of his sorrow laden thoughts as he can manage. They are here to help, after all.

Peter throws himself into helping out where and when he can. He helps with first aid, and he uses his strength to help push aside heavy debris as they seek out survivors. He passes out food, water, and blankets when he isn't doing heavy lifting or assisting with first aid. He remembers to eat and drink, if only to keep his strength up.

When the heat breaks at night, it's a relief; Peter can barely tell where his sweat ends and his skin begins at this point. Before it all goes to Hell, Peter is catching a brief rest, more like letting his eyes fall closed for a few minutes than anything resembling sleep.

[propulsion]

[ It sounds like a joke he would make. Everyone was killed. Just kidding. ETA two days.

Which is only announced in the skeptical pause that follows and not, say, laughing, which is good. What he says is, ]

The villagers?

II. During

[heartstumbles]

The sky is literally on fire. Well, the sky and everywhere else around them. Peter jumps into action as quickly as he can; though his Peter Tingle isn't reliable in Thedas, he tries to make use of it as best he can to help people. Sometimes it works; other times, he only just manages to avoid making matters worse with it. He jumps in front of vulnerable civilians to try and shield them from as much damage as he can. He has a bow and arrows, having kept up with his training ever since Ellie first started showing him how to use the weapons. When he runs out of arrows, he focuses on hand-to-hand combat.

He ends up wrestling with one of the soldiers on a Dracolisk; he ends up with several cuts and nasty gashes in the process, but he lives. He fights through his own exhaustion, which is catching up with him quick. Eventually, all Peter can do is run and try to avoid getting hit while trying to buy time for everyone else. At some point, he fully expects to die, especially when the dragon winds up another blast of fire breath.

And yet, his Parker Luck strikes again: Peter survives.

[hassaran]

[ Contrary to popular belief, Yseult does joke. It's often deadpan dry, too, but even for her this tone is flat and empty. ]

We saved about a dozen.

III. After

[heartstumbles]

Peter feels hollow; as though someone carved out his whole soul instead of just ripping up the outside of his body. He blinks and tries to focus on the other survivors, of the villagers they managed to save. That has to count for something, right?

Guilt slides down his skin, along with the blood and sweat already there. He closes his eyes and tries not to think of Abby; he fails.

He chokes on air as he tries to pull himself together. Now is not the time to break down; that can come later, he tells himself. Now is the time to do something; anything. There must be something he can do to help.

"Where can I help? What can I do? Please, I need...something. Please." He says, turning to the nearest available person closest to him and ignoring the pain of his own injuries. As he knows (like an old friend at this point), the emotional pain hurts worse.

iii. closed to yseult

[bouchonne]

"If we take out Ferra - "

It's a desperate hope. But what else is there at this point? This has not proven to be a battlefield, but an abattoir. Children have been cut down in front of them. The sick, the elderly, the defenseless. Byerly is shaking, and weeping, tears rolling down his cheeks in a steady stream that he's not even aware of, for he doesn't pause to wipe them away or hide his face.

"They might lose some of their morale. Some of their organization, at least. It might give some small opening."

At the moment, they're hidden away, he and Yseult. They won't be for long, of course; they won't allow themselves much time away from the slaughter. But it feels like a blessing to, even for these few minutes, not see it - even if they can still hear it and smell it, they at least don't have to look.

during. closed to john silver.

[luaithre]

The kind of exhaustion that comes with extensive magic use has, finally, begun to eat at the rest of him. It is with a certain reckless abandon, the next time Marcus hefts his bladed staff and brings it swinging overhead, cleaving it down into the fallen Imperial soldier, and when he jerks iron edge free of broken armor and meat, he staggers backwards. Manages, barely, to stay on his feet.

Smoke hangs in the air. Smoke drifts off the edge of his blade, gore burning black and sizzling on the iron edge that is bright orange beneath. Smoke clings to the edges of armor, wreathing him. It itches his lungs and his eyes, and obscures his surroundings. This campsite could be a dozen other battles, with a dozen other enemies and a dozen other allies. There are bodies, crumpled. He recognises some of them.

For a beat, there is nothing to attack or be attacked by. Blood runs out from his hairline, cutting through the soot on his face. Blood, elsewhere, runs free enough to gather as low as his bootheel that when he takes a step, the earth cling to it while he leaves behind a rust-coloured mark.

Two things manage to pierce through the haze.

First, movement. He turns, defensive, when he sees someone approach, his eyes bright and posture coiled in readiness to fend off attack, or start it himself. The second, the sound of cavalry that has regathered, and is circling, and setting up another attack to run the space through like a knife.

[foolsmakeitcolder]

They weren't at Starkhaven for nothing.

The both of them haven't been sleeping well, but the only armor Jude needs is fur. He's shifted when they meet, snarling. Fire's raining from the sky, screams rising up to meet it.

There is a dragon.

They can't do this. But that doesn't for a minute stop either of them.

Jude races to Barrow's side, splitting from him to help herd the civilians to any semblance of safety, away from the fires. If they can run and take cover, they might live through the night.

A firebolt comes out of the sky, and Jude hurls himself at Barrow, spilling them both into the grass.

florent vascarelle.

[deuselfmachina]

Abby, OTA

[armd]

I. BEFORE
There is a feeling of restlessness in the camp. Abby tries to sleep and finds she can't even though she's so tired from the day's effort of searching cave and hillsides, looking for dirt and shoe prints, even blood. If there was any trace of that elf woman's disappearance, she took it with her. Or somebody cleverly erased it as they went.

She sits up near a campfire in tired contemplation, watching children run around and laugh, generally immune to the current mood. They're playing games.

She says to someone near her, "What's tomorrow looking like?"

In terms of next steps.

II. DURING
Feels kind of like an infected outbreak at home, there's that same flavour of panic and hopelessness in the air. Abby might have thought she was somehow back there if it wasn't for the lack of gunfire but Granitefell falling for a second time is just as loud. Maybe louder. People are screaming and dying. Dragon roaring splits the scene in two. It's hard to fight back around those who are fleeing in the dark.

One of them crashes into Abby, knocks her over. They go down together, Abby cursing, and the woman pushes up and off of her in her haste, disappearing into the dark.

She has no idea where the others are. For a moment she lies there, lifts an arm to wipe sweat out of her eyes. God. It's so fucking hot.

When the soldiers arrive it doesn't feel good. Doesn't feel like they're winning. Feels like something is going wrong. Abby's still comparing it to an outbreak in her head but where she'd typically take her group and beat a hasty retreat, she knows that isn't an option here. They're staying, they're fighting.

Finding herself in a pocket of calm, she stills, panting. She's injured. There's a ripple of disgusting, burnt skin on her hand and wrist where one of her gauntlets came off and was lost in the dark but it's not like she can do anything about it. Hurts like a motherfucker though.

during. closed to gwenaëlle.

[deuselfmachina]

Someone, running in a different direction than he, slams into the back of him. Painful, the jolt where knees hit firm ground and palms scrape on stone.

There is no clear way to go. No obvious place to hide. For a moment, Florent huddles in place. Dirt and soot cling, now, to the silken nightshirt he is wearing. His anchor shard flares in his palm as if in response to his own sense of brimming panic. He watches, without really reacting beyond mute shock, as a steady gout of flame scorches across the campsite, and he watches the fire engulf a pair of fleeing bodies, and light up some carts, and incinerate half-collapsed tents, and then with a gust of wind that buffets the smoke in new directions and lifts of the ash and dust from the ground, the winged creature above pulls itself back out of sight.

There is, also, the sound of galloping. Screams. Riders tearing through the campsite. Florent laces his hands over the top of his own head, curling up where he kneels to make himself small, and the slightly hysterical thought that soon someone will find him and put a sword through his back doesn't compel him to move. It seems less scary than the prospect of attempting to run.

A little like a nightmare, you hope it will be over soon.

leaps in

[armd]

Before the fire, there's a stillness. Everything becomes hot and stuffy, the temperature climbing, breaking, and the air grows so thin. Abby's gasping for breath like she can't get enough of it. The sting of heat makes her eyes water. While she's looking around, trying to find the dragon so she can figure out how to go in the opposite direction of it, she sees him.

"Hey, kid!"

Forgot his name, they spoke that one time. In this terrible moment he's distressingly Lev-shaped to her though admittedly older (but by now he would be, too). He's bleeding. That's not what she's worried about, they're all fucking bleeding.

She grabs his arm. She can see the dragon now, as the fire in the sky blackens out, masked by a giant shape—

"That way." She turns him by his shoulders to show him, "That way, now. Grab as many people as you can while you go. If they don't come along, forget it. I'm right behind you, I'll get them."

At least the dragon has to wind up.

[elegiaque]

The next thing to collide with him is not a sword.

A hand grips his elbow— Gwenaëlle's hand, Gwenaëlle dragging him up to his feet with the strength of combined training and adrenaline, her bow on her back and the gauntlet on her hand lighting up a shield around the pair of them that at least buys time. His terror of running is apparently, in this moment, irrelevant to her determination that he should regardless, and her hand on his arm keeps him close to her.

“Don't think, just move,” she says, not sure he'll hear her; not sure he's able to, not even entirely sure that she's said the words aloud rather than only in the chamber of her own mind. “I'll find cover—”

She smells of smoke and blood, but so does everything. It's impossible to distinguish.

[hornswoggle]

The air around John is still blurred, resolving as he comes to a hasty, jolting stop just beyond Marcus’ reach.

“Peace,” he says quickly, raising one slashed palm. Blood has soaked heavily into the cuff of his sleeve. A crossbow bolt is dug into John’s side, revealed by the flutter of his coat as he closes the distance between them.

“They’re going to cut through us,” isn’t anything Marcus can’t discern for himself. “We only have a few minutes before that.”

He has some sense of existing outside of himself, examining the situation from a great distance. Realizing he could leave it, and that he won’t.

“I thought I’d ask your intentions.”

A question delivered with some grim amusement as he stands, bleeding, alongside him. Marcus, to his eyes, looks exhausted. John could change that, will if Marcus gives any hint of an action that might make the approaching cavalry turn and flee.

[hassaran]

She has blood dripping from her eyebrow and blood drying sticky in her grip on the handle of a sword that isn't hers and a terrible ache in her hip that suggests the dracolisk's hoof may have chipped something and the man she was trying to hustle to the safety of the treeline has just been shot in the leg and then, as she tried to drag him to cover, again in the throat, his eyes going wide and still with a gurgle she can't hear over the noise but feels in his shoulders.

It is after the beginning of the ambush but before the end, if one counts the end from the moment the enemy departs. It's difficult to be more specific about time in any objective sense, but there are moments of demarcation. This will be one: the moment she sees Darras die. She is watching that now, having leaned out of cover to plan a next move and instead caught a glimpse of a familiar shape across the chaos. Tracking it with an eye she looks for a route toward him, feeling relief at this confirmation, and then--.

She stands and watches him fall, and doesn't even hear the riders bearing down.