MOD PLOT ↠ WAKING AND SLUMBERING

[faderifting]

WHO: Everyone, give or take
WHAT: Nightmares, abominations, Satinalia, and sand.
WHEN: Firstfall 1, throughout the month
WHERE: The Silent Plains
NOTES: OOC post. Use content warnings in your subject lines as needed.

The fall of Starkhaven and death of Sebastian Vael rallied the Exalted March to push into Tevinter territory and, invigorated by vengeance, raze the border city of Trevis. Since then, the March has moved past Caiman Brea (which surrendered) before stalling out at the edge of the Silent Plains to the east of the captured cities. It's been bogged down partly by the usual combination of time, weariness, and politics—mostly some squabbling over Nevarran forces diverting to try to retake Perendale and whether the Orlesian forces will be heading after to try to free it themselves–but also by a plague of nightmares that's decimating morale and causing an alarming number of mages to erupt into demonic violence. (Not that many, but any number is alarming given the devastation an abomination can cause.) In an attempt to move safely out of range of escape attempts while they regroup and address these issues, the March has pushed east and made camp at a small oasis just within the edge of the desert, which shields them from approach but also presents its own challenges.

It's not a particularly pleasant region in which to be stalled. There's water, courtesy of the spindly tributary of the Minanter that Trevis, Caiman Brea, and Nessum all survive upon; there's low, scrubby plant life, stunted olive and palm trees and dry patchy grasses. And that's about it. Even this meager vegetation fades away rapidly into desert—first dark bedrock bared by incessant winds, just a thin layer of dusty sand whipped back and forth across it. The road is little more than a faint line of wear across the stone, but the ruins of a dwarven trade outpost spike up alongside it like dark fingers, and it's here that Riftwatch will meet its guides, a pair of Orlesian siblings from the Western Approach and their pack of camels.

The exchange of mounts may seem like overkill at first given how close the camp is, but the sand grows rapidly deeper as you go east, rising up suddenly into dunes tall enough to hide a dragon (more on that later). The camp isn't more than an hour or so into the desert but there is no road here, the Orlesians, or possibly the camels themselves, navigating by instinct and landmarks alone. One rides at the head of the train and the other at the back, chivvying stragglers and dragging a camel hair broom to assist the wind in wiping away their tracks. The sun is brutal, beating down on heads and backs as they ride east in the afternoon, its glare off the pale golden sands in their eyes, the haze of heat rising off them playing tricks on the mind. They may glimpse the false oasis of a mirage several times before the real thing abruptly appears: they ride over a dune like any other and there at its base is the camp, arrayed around a crescent-shaped pool edged with palms. They arrive at sunset, just in time to enjoy a half hour or so of pleasant breezes and brilliant skies before the sun drops behind the sands and the temperature plummets.

I. CAMP

There's no need for Riftwatch to make its own camp. The Exalted March has a cluster of empty tents waiting for them when they arrive. They're barracks-sized, made to house upwards of a dozen people, outfitted with rows of narrow cots and wooden floors made of planks lashed together with rope. Riftwatch is assigned three of them for sleeping and a fourth for setting up tables and work spaces, arranged like spokes around the hub of a large fire pit. Riftwatch is invited to share in whatever grey-brown slop comes out of the nearest enormous pot each night, but if anyone is enterprising enough to hunt or forage, they might come up with something to roast or stew on their own.

The tents' arrangement affords Riftwatch a very small amount of privacy, but they're otherwise in the middle of the Exalted March's expansive sea of tents, unable to exit in any direction without rubbing elbows with the soldiers. Mostly humans, though there are suface dwarves and city elves among them, the latter largely support staff, though a few have taken to fighting alongside the soldiers they serve over the last few years. All are at least culturally Andrastian, but they're otherwise fairly varied. Around a single fire you might find a zealous Nevarran who hopes to help vanquish Tevinter and bring the Chant to the dark souls of its wayward people, a Tantervalian who barely knows their Apotheosis from their Threnodies but is here for vengeance for their lost city and friends, a barely-adult Orlesian villager who signed on because it sounded more rewarding than mucking out stables, and a spitting mercenary who's only following the Chantry's money.

What they all have most in common, right now, is exhaustion–the kind that comes with frayed nerves, trouble thinking clearly, and an unusually high probability of starting to shout or cry over minor inconveniences. While the Free Marches dealt with nightmares for months without most people becoming so affected, on Riftwatch's first night in the camp, they'll find the nightmares are worse than what they ever experienced in the Gallows: vivid, specific, twisted, and difficult to shake when they wake up panicked in the middle of the night. Anyone who wanders out of the tent into the cold dark will find at least a few soldiers from nearby tents have done the same, stalking around like sleep-deprived undead or sitting and staring into the fires with vacant expressions.

In recent weeks, this steady stream of nightmares has had a predictable side-effect: a small outbreak of abominations among the mage army that had been accompanying the Exalted March, several with death tolls in the teens before they were killed or driven away by the Divine's loyal Templars. As a precaution, the mage army has since sent all mages too young to have been harrowed and any who were identified as vulnerable back to Orlais, with the rest residing instead to the west of the main camp rather than integrated within it. Templars camped along the rim of the main camp to provide a barrier should there be any further incidents.

Riftwatch's mages aren't subject to this division–a condition of their help–but they'll find the camp a less friendly environment than they may have grown used to in recent years, as many of the soldiers either survived a recent mage-borne horror or know at least one person who died in the outbreak and are understandably wary of having more mages in their midst, and strangers at that.

II. SATINALIA

Riftwatch's arrival comes the day before Satinalia. That it's neither the ideal setting nor the ideal mood for a celebration is apparent as soon as they set foot in the camp. But Captain Thevot Gaffey joins Riftwatch at their camp fire early on the first morning looking frayed and cold and glassy-eyed with exhaustion or perhaps just misery, and he drops some heavy hints that he and some of the other brass would be extremely grateful if Riftwatch contributed some of its better-rested energy to helping the soldiers have a nice evening, especially as the expected shipment of less gruel-y food has failed to materialize.

So consider this task number one: assisting the minority of Exalted Marchers who are straining to keep everyone else's spirits up in conjuring a good time out of nearly nothing. Organize games and dances, convince officers to give up bottles from their personal stashes, share whatever Riftwatch brought, or lean into the mood and try to lead a few soldiers into a more relaxing card game or fireside storytelling session. Anything to try to convince a bunch of cranky, overtired, frightened soldiers that things aren't really so bad at least for a few hours.

III. FIELD WORK

Of course the primary reason Riftwatch has been brought to the Silent Plains is to solve the problem of the nightmares. But there's a long list of other problems that the Exalted Marchers could use their help with while they're in the area, especially with their own forces so run-down at the moment.

While they stay in camp they'll be expected to pitch in with the mundane tasks that keep a camp running: helping tend the camels and other mounts, repairing equipment, re-staking tents, hauling water, tending to ill and injured and such, so long as it does not interfere with Riftwatch's primary assignment of resolving the nightmare issue. As soon as they've settled in, they'll all be assigned to assist with hunting parties and patrols, circling the perimeter to keep watch for any suspicious movement or dangerous wildlife. The camp has encountered the usual desert fauna: hyenas and quillbacks that prowl the river's edge, gurns and phoenixes among the sands. Each poses their dangers, but can provide needed supplies as well, and the March isn't in a position to be picky. Supply runs by camel or mule to the few near-ish settlements, either on the outskirts of the desert or other oases, are in much demand, but the journeys have to be discreet and round-about; as new faces, Riftwatch may be asked to help with these as well.

A few weeks ago, a party encountered a group of dragonlings and dispatched them, only to find scouts ambushed by a full-sized dragon the next day, bellowing fire and sprays of sand powerful enough to strip flesh. It has attacked several supply deliveries and hunting parties since, and there have been reports of sightings nearing the camp. Anyone venturing out into the dunes will be warned to be on their guard. Qualified members of Riftwatch may be recruited to travel along to help protect these groups and to help hunt the dragon down. There are plenty of smaller dragonlings with weaker sand-breathing powers prowling the area, and there may be more than one encounter with the dragon before it is killed.

Patrols and hunting parties will also be asked to keep a lookout for signs of elven surveillance, and, if Riftwatch is amenable, to make an effort to find the elves that have been watching the camp and make contact with them to discover their allegiances, which at first were presumed to be neutral until a supply caravan was attacked last week. (Anyone may be tasked with the search for the elves' encampment, but to make contact please sign up.)

While a few of the recent spate of abominations were killed in the camp, a small number escaped into the desert and need to be tracked down before they cause further harm. (If they can be. Abominations roaming the countryside for years without being caught is not an unheard of phenomenon, and the risk that they eventually make it to a village or trade caravan is too high to leave them to the whims of the desert.) Riftwatch is enlisted to join in the hunt, either in groups of their own or as part of larger parties of Exalted Marchers, mages, and Templars trying to follow the abominations' trail through the desert.

It's not an easy task, in a landscape where sand is quickly blown over most evidence of something passing through a given area. Finding them is so much more difficult than fighting them that even people who are not exactly equipped for combat against a powerful magic-wielding demonic being may be enlisted to help anyway if they have skills useful for tracking. With some aerial scouting from griffons, tips from passing travelers, and the discovery of a few small massacres where the abominations have run into merchants or scouting parties or wild animals and left scorched or bloody scenes in their wake, it will be possible to track some of them down in the desert–and then to take them down, as that's the only known cure.

Everyone traveling through the desert will also have to contend with the natural dangers of the environment: navigation is difficult and getting lost easy; water must be carefully rationed away from camp; and sandstorms may spring up with little warning, though most blow through in a matter of minutes. Most, but not all. Midway through their stay a storm rises on the horizon, large and dark enough to give them about an hour's warning before it arrives, just enough to batten down the hatches—if they're near any. The storm whips enough sand into the air to blot out the sun in mid-afternoon, flinging it about with blinding ferocity for the rest of the day and into the night, forcing the camp to take stock and dig out from some new drifts come morning.

IV. A COMPLICATION

Every mission or patrol that takes Riftwatch into the desert comes with an added problem: venture any further north than the main camp, and people begin to find that their nightmares aren't waiting for them to fall asleep anymore. After a mile, images and sounds begin bleeding into the world, at first distant blink-and-you-miss-it brief, just a mirage, maybe, then closer and lingering as parties move further afield. Though they're pulled from your nightmares, they aren't private hallucinations; whole groups see the same visions at once. A hoard of darkspawn crests a dune and rushes a party with weapons that pass through them harmlessly. Enormous spiders click their mandibles in the dark. People you hoped to never see again walk amongst the party for a mile or more at a time, looking solid and sounding real but leaving no footprints behind them.

The visions vanish on their own after a while, or sooner if silenced by a Templar or dispelled by a mage, and none of them can hurt anyone–not here, not yet. But they keep coming, and they keep growing stronger the further north anyone goes in search of rogue abominations or dinner, or, obviously, the source of the nightmares. Those traveling alongside members of the Exalted March, a good number of them superstitious and all of less used to this sort of nonsense, will have the added task of keeping them calm. At least the first time or two before they, too, get used to it.

Comments

i. camp

[icasm]

"Ah, yes, Lorin, was it?" Loki is crossing the space as ostentatiously as possible in the hopes of wrenching the Templar's attention from Kostos and refocusing it on himself.

Loki doesn't know that he'd manage to talk Kostos down from whatever is brewing here, all things considered, but he can make a solid attempt to confuse or otherwise talk the younger man out of rising to the bait.


For his part? No mage staff to be found, and his uniform is clearly Riftwatch. He breaks out in a wide smile. "Is there a curfew I wasn't told about? Honestly, a poor fellow feels left out of such information!"

[exequy]

"No," Lorin and Kostos say in perfect unison—Lorin faintly bewildered now over top the irritation, Kostos biting out the word like he'd assumed Lorin would try to say yes and is trying to speak over him.

The overlap gives both of them pause. During this pause they hate each other too much to say jinx.

Then Lorin says, "Especially not for your lot." Riftwatch, of which Kostos (for like a week longer) is not currently a member. "But it's helpful to know where the mages are at night. So we know about where to run toward the screaming starts up. Professional courtesy, right?"

Kostos is silent, teeth grit and glare mutinous, but if he's learned anything in the last few years, it's that he should occasionally shut up and let someone else handle the talking.

[icasm]

There was a pause in that moment after they both said the same thing equally emphatically. It was full of loathing with a hint of violence. Loki's eyebrows went up about it.

Fascinating.

"I thought..." Loki points at Kostos. "Last time I was paying attention he was in Riftwatch, however, that perhaps is not as important. But I do want you to imagine, for a moment, being a creature whose entire existence is to convince this man," Loki is... still pointing at Kostos but he puts his hand down after that, "to do something he doesn't have any interest in doing."

And then Loki grins.

[exequy]

Kostos' face darkens further. Is Loki calling him stubborn? Pointing at him? Is he teaming up with the Templar to give him a hard time? Is—

"Well," Lorin says, his tone shifting.

He's charmed by the grin. He's willing to be pals.

Kostos' teeth are grinding.

"You're basically describing my life, aren't you? But it is a pretty miserable existence."

"I'm going," Kostos announces, and he goes, stomping forward through the sand. This time Lorin doesn't step into his path. He only sighs.

[icasm]

"Good man," Loki says to Lorin, because while Kostos is clearly pissed, it did work.

Kostos is free to come and go as he pleases without Lorin stopping him. Mission accomplished.

Still. Kostos has about two minutes of relative silence before Loki jogs up behind him. "The intention was not to poke fun at you," much, "but merely to point out that a demon convincing you to do anything you didn't desire on your own is roughly as likely as us waking up tomorrow and the entire desert has become a sea.

When did you leave Riftwatch?" Because he imagines Kostos is going to try ignoring him otherwise. Which is fair!

[exequy]

A reasonable prediction. Loki's explanation, if anything, tightens the hunch of Kostos' shoulders, because there are few things worse than storming off in a huff only to be told the huff was some kind of misunderstanding.

But the question spares him from needing to acknowledge the rest of it directly, which, yes, drastically increases the odds that he'll say anything. And so he does:

"After you did," he says. Is 'leaving Riftwatch' the right term for what rifters do? "To come here. The Grand Enchanter died."

[icasm]

Well. It's not fully incorrect as terms go, is it?

"I'm sorry." He doesn't know if Kostos and the Grand Enchanter were close; he doesn't even know if Kostos liked the woman. But he knows that the cause of mages in Thedas is one that Kostos feels strongly about and therefore decides the death of its leadership might be something worth expressing sorrow over.

"Has a successor been chosen? Will you return to Riftwatch then?"

[exequy]

"Interim successor," Kostos says, and, "Rodrigo Valenzolo," in a tone like motherfucker.

He isn't a fan. That's why he's here, standing beside Nell with his arms crossed and a scowl on his face whenever the mages try to decide anything and Valenzolo needs to be barked at—and that's why he'll be traveling back to Kirkwall with Riftwatch, 'reassigned' to assist them.

But he doesn't know that yet. So he says, "I'm not coming back," unaware that his certainty might be embarrassing later, and looks sideways at Loki. "Sorry to disappoint."

[icasm]

"Ah, I see." Not really, but Loki can read Kostos' tone all the same (and he will refrain from politely asking so what happened? when he sees Kostos again in the future).

Though he doesn't really know what to do with the conversation at this point, so Loki nods. "Not really disappointed, per se, but definitely curious."