faderift | MOD PLOT ↠ WAKING AND SLUMBERING

Entry tags:

MOD PLOT ↠ WAKING AND SLUMBERING

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"You, a bad influence? Never."

Clarisse nudges her lightly before releasing Ellie from her hold so she can stand up and walk to the Smoke Tent to grab her bedroll.

"I don't care if they yell at me," she says over her shoulder, almost like an afterthought.

It's true. In the time they've been here, the amount of fucks she's been able to give about doing what she's supposed to be doing have dwindled significantly. She's even left patrol a couple times and walked back to camp in the middle of the day, without saying anything to anybody.

Bad, maybe, asking for trouble, but that's a problem for later.

"Then I'm losing my touch," Ellie mutters, shrugging as they get up to grab their stuff, and when Clarisse yells after her Ellie laughs out loud, unable to stop herself.

Fuck, she really can do anything with her here.

She comes back with her bedroll not that long later, flopping it out by the fire and smoothing it down. So much sand.

Worth it.

Clarisse comes back about the same time Ellie does, but she stands with her bedroll folded under one arm and waits until Ellie spreads hers out on the sand before she puts hers down next to it, on the side that's further from the fire. Yeah, they're definitely going to dig themselves out of a mini sand dune tomorrow morning, but she's cool with that.

She stretches out onto hers and reaches for Ellie. "C'mere."

It feels like it's been way too long since she's properly held her, not just slipped an arm around her shoulders while they sat next to each other on a rock or something.

Ellie pauses, waiting for Clarisse, but they've camped enough times for Ellie to know she's waiting for her to put her stuff down first.

The first time she did it Ellie had laughed a little bit, challenged her on it, but secretly been touched. Clarisse knows how able she is, how much she's survived, but she still wants to guard her while she sleeps anyway. Just to give her that little bit of peace.

(And maybe for Clarisse's own peace of mind, but still.)

Ellie settles down inside her blanket and between the fire, the bedroll, and Clarisse's warmth against her, she immediately stops shivering. Her eyelids are heavy, but she can't sleep yet.

"Hey," she says softly, shifting onto her back, pillowing her head against Clarisse's arm around her, their bodies aligned.

"... remember the first night we slept together? Like, sleeping. Back in Seattle."

Clarisse can feel the cold air at her back, but Ellie is warm, and the fire isn't too far away. She pulls the blanket up over her shoulder and shifts closer, pressing her lips against Ellie's temple, and that helps.

There was no fucking way she was going to let Ellie take this spot and sleep with her back to the desert.

"Yeah, of course I remember."

She still thinks about it sometimes. It had been a weird day. Not a very good day, when she looks at it objectively. But it had ended like this, lying with her arms around Ellie, and she'd fit perfectly in her arms, and they'd been able to forget about all the bad shit for just a little while.

"Gods." She huffs out a little laugh. "I liked you so much it made me want to barf."

Ellie's eyelids flutter as Clarisse kisses her, and she lifts her hand, settles her palm over Clarisse's arm around her.

It's practically an ingrained reflex, this relaxation. This feeling.

She laughs, and leans in close.

"Same," she mumbles. "I dunno how I kept my shit together when you held my hand in New York right after that. I was so fucking gone on you."

Ellie feels so much more relaxed now, settled on her back, breathing even and calm, one hand clasped over Clarisse's arm. This was a good call. Clarisse rubs her thumb over the familiar slope of her ribs. Gentle, slow circles.

"Do you think things would have been different," she asks, "if we hadn't spent so much time trying to be friends first?"

She doesn't regret anything, or consider it wasted time. But she wonders.

Ellie's lungs fill, relax, her ribcage rising and falling as she leans her eyes drift half-shut.

This was a very, very good idea. It's like muscle memory, relaxing with Clarisse touching her.

"Maybe at first," she murmurs. "But I think we woulda ended up in more or less the same place."

It's weird to think about. What if she'd been honest?

"... probably messier. I wasn't in a great place, like. Mentally. When I first started something with you."

"Yeah?" Clarisse doesn't push it, but if Ellie wants to give details, she's listening.

It does make her wonder how she would've handled that if Ellie'd said something at the time, though. She was still so new to Thedas, trying to figure her own shit out, and meeting Ellie had been a great distraction from that, but it could have gone another way. Clarisse knows there's a version of herself, angrier and freaked out and homesick, that would have backed off if she'd felt like that would have been better. Easier.

She's so, so glad that didn't happen. The idea of it makes her feel kind of sick, and she presses another kiss to Ellie's temple, squeezes her close.

Ellie tries to think of what she wants to say, but she's so tired the details all scramble together and her chest feels weirdly tight.

She remembers how she was. Strung out and numb and fresh off a new batch of mistakes, hating herself.

Clarisse had been an escape from that. Someone willing to take her at face value and just enjoy being around her for a while. The two of them putting no rules, no expectations, no history and baggage into it. Clarisse had had Ellie warn her that she had history with Abby, and she'd just... shrugged.

At the time it had been exactly what she needed.

The idea of something serious would've been terrifying and impossible. She'd needed time to settle, to open up, to feel safe.

And maybe a little bit of feeling like she'd earned the right to ask.

Clarisse kisses her temple and her eyes fall shut, some of the tension sliding away. She likes the squeeze. It makes her feel grounded, secure.

"Fighting with Abby, remember?" she says softly. "I'm glad we didn't drag you into that."

Clarisse keeps Ellie pulled close, arms tight around her, feeling the rise and fall of her chest.

"Oh, right. That little thing." It's gently teasing, poking fun at herself more than Ellie. The whole Abby-Ellie thing was such a regular part of her life for so long that Clarisse sometimes forgets that it was actually a much bigger deal than she knew at the time.

It was just her routine. Splitting up her time between them, not mentioning Ellie when she was around Abby and vice versa. She still kind of does it now, at least the splitting time; she just doesn't have to be so careful about it, and bringing one of them up in front of the other no longer feels like she just accidentally stepped on an emotional landmine.

"I kinda dragged myself into it," she admits, "but only because I couldn't stay away from you."

Ellie laughs under her breath, her muscles relaxing still further. Man, she- she really is tired, and it's incredible how much this is helping.

"Completely irresistible," she agrees. "Totally won you over with my weird games of would-you-rather and shotgunning."

"I mean, you did, though." Clarisse laughs too, because it sounds dumb said out loud like that, but it's true.

"Hanging out with you was the only thing that made being here okay for me, at first. I liked that you made me feel like I could be normal." Just two dumbasses asking each other ridiculous questions, like they could have been in someone's dorm room.

"I know exactly what you mean," Ellie sighs, leaning into Clarisse's arms to exhale against her skin.

"It was nice to just be normal with you."

She finds Ellie's hand in the dark, winds their fingers together.

"When we get home, that's what we'll do. We'll do something so freaking normal, like... like get high and make a list of which US state every member of Riftwatch would come from and why. Or play flip cup. Or make a bracket ranking of our favorite movies."

The possibilities are pretty much endless, she thinks. And they both need that. They need something stupid and funny and normal in their lives, after the past six months.

"I wanna play fucking flip cup with you so bad," Ellie admits with a rough little laugh, pulling their joined hands closer together to lay a soft kiss across Clarisse's scarred knuckles. Her lips are warm, chapped.

"We can even invite Abby. I promise I'll be nice. I mean I'll still destroy her, but I'll be nice."

The warm press of Ellie's lips against her knuckles has Clarisse sighing all the air out of her lungs, slow and content. She leans in, finding the familiar dip between Ellie's neck and her shoulder, and presses her nose into it.

She's not sure whether Abby will want to play with them, but it's nice that Ellie's willing to include her.

"Did you and your friends play games like that back in Jackson?"

"Yeah, and we played beer pong and never have I ever, but with drinking."

It's got to be psychosomatic how much tension leaves Ellie's shoulders when Clarisse puts her face there. She exhales, eyes half shut.

"We played quarters too, if we wanted to be extra stupid."

"Oh, man, quarters." Clarisse chuckles, her breath warm against Ellie's neck. "Sounds fun. We did stuff like that too, sometimes."

"Yeah? You end up with any scars?" Ellie asks with a grin. The firelight's too dim right now, but at least one of the time Ellie fractured her knuckles was with a goddamn Georgia quarter.

"Yeah, I'd have some, but they healed up too good."

If Clarisse didn't have access to nectar and ambrosia back home she'd have a lot more scars than she does, most of them from stupid shit like that. Knife games, falling off the lava wall, that one time she ran into a tree in the dark...

"Sometimes I kinda wish I'd kept some of my littler scars," she admits. "Because you have so many and they're really hot. Plus, it means you have way more stories."

"Damn demigod healing," Ellie says, overplaying the words to make it clear that she's joking.

"I dunno, I feel kinda like a roadmap sometimes," Ellie admits, "... but I like the thought of them on you."

Which must be how Clarisse feels about her. Huh. "I mean I've got stories but most of them are just stupid stuff. It was the same way for everyone. Jesse-"

Ellie falters, just barely, as she decides that yeah. She does want to remember.

"Had a big, long one right up the outside of his thigh, where a horse threw him and he fell on a fence. It was pretty gnarly."

"The dumb stuff still matters. Like falling onto a fence." Clarisse gives an amused exhale through her nose. Yeah, sure, the stories aren't dramatic or all that interesting, but they're part of living. It's kind of sad to just erase them.

"I think I'd like to be more of a roadmap," she admits. "It would feel more human."

Clarisse has been talking into the dip of Ellie's neck and shoulder, their hands clasped together, the two of them close.

Clarisse says that, and Ellie pushes all of the air out of her lungs. Clarisse doesn't usually say things like this. Let on about how she feels about herself. There are several beats of silence in the dark, while Ellie wishes that someday, Clarisse will see herself the way Ellie sees her.

"Then I'm gonna stitch 'em all shut for you," Ellie says softly, pulling Clarisse's knuckles more firmly against her lips. "Cause you're gonna get a lot of 'em here."

She runs her thumb over Clarisse's knuckles. "Human. Demigod. What the fuck ever. You're my person."

Clarisse smiles, something warm and bright unfurling in her chest for the first time since they got here. "I like being your person," she says.

Human. Demigod. What the fuck ever. Like it doesn't even matter to Ellie—it never has.

And it's not lost on her that Ellie's the one reassuring her, even after the night she's had. That Ellie's willing to do that when she'd have every right not to, that they can take turns supporting each other like this, it means something. It's special.

Clarisse squeezes Ellie's hand in hers. "You're my person, too. Forever."

MOD PLOT ↠ WAKING AND SLUMBERING

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