faderift | MOD EVENT: Crossover

Entry tags:

MOD EVENT: Crossover

WHO: Everyone (give or take)
WHAT: Reorganizing the Crossroads
WHEN: Wintermarch 9:50
WHERE: The Crossroads
NOTES: A small event to help everyone shake off the winter break.

Shortly into the new year, Riftwatch's routine visits to the Crossroads–to get from here to there, or just to check up on the eluvians and watch for any signs of Venatori or elven presence–turn less routine. Patches of the Crossroads give way quite suddenly to patches of what seems to be (for lack of a better word) the real world, evidenced by sudden changes of landscape and temperature, the sudden presence of small mammals and birds. In the first of these locations to be discovered, snow blows up a crumbling Crossroads stairway from the snowy clearing below; in the clearing, gravity's hold is gentler than it should be, snow swirling up alongside the staircase that climbs up into a grey sky and never coming back down. Wisps or spirits may follow you freely here. One enterprising spirit has possessed a squirrel and is considering the merits of wandering off into the world. Walk far enough across the ground, away from the stairs, and things become normal (as much as Thedas ever is)–but the staircase is still waiting if you turn back the other way, the Crossroads there to walk into without any particular effort or magic at all.

This is of course a sign of a grave problem that warrants further investigation. But the instability in the Crossroads also presents a more immediate and practical threat to Riftwatch's work: the eluvians Riftwatch uses to traverse Thedas and reach some otherwise far-flung or inaccessible locations are scattered throughout the Crossroads, and reaching them is already becoming more difficult, not to mention the danger of someone else—foe or unwitting stranger—blundering into Riftwatch's work. So for a week in Wintermarch, everyone able and available will be assigned to relocating the eluvians: reaching them in the Crossroads, uprooting them from their ancient locations, and carrying them to rearrange on a single stone platform that so far seems sturdy and unaffected, where they can be more easily monitored and protected all in one place.

There are only six eluvians that Riftwatch regularly uses, but the instability is making them more difficult to reach, and they're heavy and unwieldy enough that multiple people will need to assist with transporting each one. Meanwhile, everyone will be asked to observe and make notes on the changes they encounter, as well as to collect other eluvians–the ones that lead to ruins in wild forests with no signs of where those forests might be, or deserted remote fortresses, or pitch-black caves, or the unyielding wooden walls that mean the mirror's counterpart is packed up somewhere behind and beneath loads of junk–to preserve them in case their Thedosian counterparts can be located and moved somewhere more practicable in the future. (These that are not yet usable will be arranged in a second location, separate but not so inconveniently far from the first.)

While trying to complete this work, Riftwatch will encounter the same spirits and hazards that have always made using the Crossroads a bit of a headache: paths that collapse ahead of them if they tell a lie while chatting with their traveling companions, spirits of suspicion that try to trap and drive wedges between them, guides who take on the embarrassing and/or adorable forms of the people they're guiding as children, wisps fascinated with travelers' impulses and emotions who endeavor to replicate them. The good news is that the new configuration of the eluvians will make walking through these spirits' domains unnecessary in the future and could mean many people will never have to deal with them again after this.

The bad news is that in the meantime, those retrieving the eluvians will have to deal with both the usual nonsense and the new patches where the borders give way and dimensions blend together. In these patches, the landscape and laws of the world mixes with the features and rules (or lack thereof) of the Crossroads. Sometimes this means the world, like the Crossroads, is more colorful for elves and more oppressive to everyone else–something akin to having to walk and work with a terrible headache, except there's no pain, only light and sound sensitivity and a general sense of difficulty and slowness. Other times it means something that looks more like the Crossroads feels more like the mundane world to humans and rifters, actually. Sometimes the Crossroad's loose ideas about gravity will be applied to a real river; sometimes the world's more strict laws will impose on a river in the Crossroads.

When these places are discovered, agents will be tasked not with avoiding them, but exploring them to estimate their sizes, note any features that might narrow down their locations on the map, and search for any signs of populations–in vain, fortunately. While a number of these locations are within ruins or abandoned villages, something is currently causing them to appear in areas that people seem to be avoiding. Journeying beyond the perimeter of the effect will reveal a strong contender for an explanation: these areas are places where the Veil is already damaged and thin, with spirits and demons passing through to discourage resettlement after whatever disaster or massacre weakened the barrier.

But the largest patch of bleed-through that Riftwatch will discover is also the least remote. Here a door in the Crossroads opens onto a wet, cold underground chamber, clearly man-made, roughly fifty yards across and roughly circular. The perimeter of the chamber shows signs of use for some academic purpose–crumbling shelves, the moldering and unreadable remnants of books left exposed to the damp for centuries, rusted and shattered equipment.

But the center of this chamber turns to jagged dark rock threaded with raw lyrium veins, and the ceiling shifts in the dark–sometimes a ceiling carved into stone, sometimes a churning sky in sickly dark green. Squint and you might see the Black City's floating island in the distance, for a moment. As the moments add up over the course of hours, a keen eye might notice that the carved ceiling of the chamber is shifting in a way stone shouldn’t shift, losing its careful patterns to a more chaotic swirl.

Exploring to establish the outer perimeter of this disruption will require venturing down branching hallways and tunnels, some of them populated by shades and freshly possessed skeletons. Another fifty yards or so out, in pursuit of any identifying features to place this on a map, the jet black stone and design of crumbling old mining equipment might start to give the observant a sinking feeling. Another hundred, and one of the labyrinthe and increasingly claustrophobic tunnels will end in a cave-in that is fairly recent, judging by the state of the three skeletons of people who appear to have died trying to dig back out. Their clothes and possessions have mostly rotted away in the moist air, but two of their skeletal hands are still wearing signet rings stamped with the Coterie's symbol.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Behind him shivers his tall and uncomfortable walking buddy, who peers around in an effort to see his face when Bastien speaks his name and nothing happens. Benedict is too cold to be anything but impatient, hissing "what's wrong," at the same time that the reality of the situation begins to dawn on him.

Should Bastien look behind him, he'll see that he's now receiving a funny, wary sort of look.

Edited (shhhhhh) 2024-01-20 01:29 (UTC)

"Nothing," Bastien says, conversational and mild. "The Crossroads being unreasonable, as usual—do you do this to married women?"

The question pitched to the spirit and its drawn weapon. If it even understands the question (did ancient elves marry? did the women change their names when they did?) it doesn't answer. After a polite pause to be sure it plans to stay silent and poised to fight, and he isn't only jumping to the unfair conclusion that it's a single-minded automaton incapable of empathy or complexity, Bastien sighs and turns around to look at Benedict.

He doesn't look bothered. He smiles.

"Do you think we will crack the ice if we jump? We could go around."

If anything, Bastien's smile makes this whole situation all the more unnerving.

"But that's your name," Benedict mutters, "what more does it want?" Holding his arms tightly around himself, he glances at the specter and then at Bastien-- and his eyes narrow minutely, the shadow of a thought slipping through the noise. That is his name, isn't it?

"J'sais pas. A last name?" He's looking over the side of the path. The jump is shorter than he is tall. That's not so bad. "But if I have one I don't know it."

This is not how the Crossroads work, of course. If Bastien believed that Bastien was his name—or believed it more, anyway, without any caveats or doubts—the path would believe it, too. The spirits and the magic aren't omniscient. They can only peer into the people before them and work with what they find.

And several months ago, that might have gotten Bastien through. But he's been to Kaiten since then. He's seen his little brother, fully grown and bearded, across a crowded tavern, and he's thought about saying hello and about how he would have to introduce himself if he did.

He doesn't jump off the path. He sits down on the edge of it and lowers himself over the side, as if over the walled edge of the Miroir de la Mère, and applies his weight to the ice below a little at a time.

It doesn't crack. It doesn't make a sound.

"I think it is fine," he says upward. "We can have a look around. I have some rope to help us get back up, don't worry."

This is definitely not how the Crossroads work. Benedict's intrinsic cowardice begins to creep toward the forefront as Bastien insists on circumventing the guardian, and, creeping forward slightly and unsure whether to follow him, he whispers, "Bastien, just--"

"Your heart's desire," comes the spectral voice as Benedict draws nearer, its sword now pointing firmly at him.

"...will it hold?" he asks, crouching to follow.

"Probably!"

Bastien's walking out onto it either way, leaving the broken path and armed spirit behind. Whether he leaves Benedict behind depends on whether or not Benedict follows him, as he aims for the patches where the grass and weeds have grown up above the surface of the frozen water. More traction that way.

It isn't until he's on one such patch, sure of his footing and a safe distance from the spirit and its ghostly sword, that he crouches down to examine one of the faintly glowing patches of ice up close.

Looking back up is a skull—a whole skeleton, but most prominently a skull—with glowing eyes.

Bastien hums to himself and looks a little closer.

Indeed Benedict scurries after him, since if one of them is going to lie the guardian, both of them are; he's tall enough and has done enough physical training to make any required jumps without any trouble, even if he's unnerved by the ordeal.

He stops behind Bastien with a furtive glance back at the guardian, now peering over his shoulder at the skull.

The ice is thick enough for the shape of the bones to be a little blurry. Without the glow of possession, they'd likely be invisible. The ice is also thick enough to hold them, so surely thick enough to keep the spirit and its borrowed skeleton in place.

"That is probably fine," Bastien says, dropping down even further. "Right?"

Benedict is the mage. And Bastien is the one about to rap on the ice with his fist, experimentally—

The spirit shrieks.

Bastien might have been prepared for this shriek if he'd knocked on the ice. But he didn't, so he isn't. Decades of self control prevent him from flinching or jumping, per se, but he does straighten and stand up, smooth and quick and with no thought other than further away from that now please, and catches the underside of Benedict's chin with the top of his head at full force.

"Um," Benedict has time to say, leaning a little further down in tandem with Bastien-- and the only thing that keeps him from also screaming is the fact that his jaw just got punted shut by the top of Bastien's head. He sprawls backward, breaking his fall on his left elbow, from which begins to radiate a shallow but nonetheless ominous fissure.
"Ow," he whines, though the sound of cracking ice cuts him off quickly. He doesn't move, his eyes darting to meet Bastien's.

Less fine.

The top of Bastien's skull smarts from the impact and his mind feels oddly rattled within it, for a second, but for that second his body and his mouth are well-trained enough to carry on without the help.

"Sorry."

He doesn't rub the top of his head or show any sign of pain; it's only the cracks in the ice that are keeping him from going over to Benedict to offer a hand up and some polite fussing about his chin.

That, and distraction: the spirit beneath them is moving.

He'd assumed it was encased in ice, and maybe to some extent it was. But not so much encase that it couldn't break free downwards, rather than upwards, and begin to claw and crawl its way through the muddy slush below the sheet of ice, heading for Benedict.

"Fuck," Bastien says. Even though he very much means it, it sounds kind of pleasant, same as if he were impressed to the point of profanity by something marvelous.

A bit addled himself, and trying not to panic, Benedict slowly begins to sit up-- but when the ice beneath him groans, he thinks better of shifting his weight so dramatically.
Then Bastien says fuck, and Benedict isn't sure why, so he follows the man's gaze to the approaching spirit and clocks it with a loud gasp.
It seems the choice here is to move it or lose it, so, in the interest of not punching one of his extremities through the precarious ice, Benedict begins to very carefully scootch himself in the general direction from which they came.

He has the distinct look about him of someone who is only not out of his mind with panic because the situation is too absurd to be his cause of death: he would just never fucking live it down, and he has too much to lose in that regard.

Safe to say Bastien has never been in this specific situation before. But he there's no sign of panic. He goes back the way he came, along ridges where the grass is visible through the ice and he already knows the water is shallow and the ice is thick, with little hops and the occasional skating-like slide, arms out for balance, and almost looks like he's having fun.

Almost. He isn't smiling. He comes around behind Benedict to try to haul him up by the scruff of his clothing, back onto his feet on a safe patch of ice.

The skeleton has stopped following them a few yards further back—perhaps because the marsh has gotten too shallow or the reeds too thick for it to continue its crawl.

Instead, from where it's stopped, there are distant, thick thuds. Some further cracking. It's trying to break through. And the faint, scattered glows of the other frozen bodies beneath the surface are moving now too, making their way toward the spiderweb of the crack Benedict left behind when he fell.

Scrambling upright with Bastien's assistance, Benedict steadies himself in time to get a good view of the mob that's about to descend upon them. He's in the process of turning to say something to Bastien when, out of the corner of his eye, he is instead surprised by the apparition of a sword (and its bearer) jutting once more toward them. Persisting.

"Your name," it demands once more.

"Why don't you bother him," Bastien snaps back, hands up in the face of that ghostly sword tip. They are the first words he has said out of thoughtless, angry reflex in some time, and of course they have no effect.

He throws a look over his shoulder. Calculates without numbers the time it will take those skeletons to reach them, once they've clawed their way through the ice, against the time it will take him and Benedict to shoe-skate their way further down the path, away from this guardian, and scramble their way back up onto it. If the guardian doesn't follow them. If the ice doesn't give.

He bites out, "Laith."

It's quiet. Not inaudible, unwilling as he is to waste seconds litigating whether mouthing a word counts for this spirit's infuriating purposes, but quiet. Maybe the consonants are obscured by the sound of the ice scraping and creaking as the undead soldiers scratch at the seams of the cracks. Without time or presence of mind to adjust his accent, the th becomes more of a dz. Maybe what Benedict hears is Aze. He hopes.

Regardless, it's enough for the guardian, whose sword turns like a compass needle to Benedict, bothering him after all.

This is both the angriest Benedict has ever seen Bastien and the first time he has ever had any reason to think ‘Bastien’ isn’t his name, so there’s an uneasy sidelong glance happening from Benedict’s end. It lasts exactly as long as it takes for the sword to point towards him, and he quails, caught off guard.

“I don’t know,” he says, barely getting the words out before the spectral knight begins to advance again, driving him back toward the now-emerging shitshow behind them.

“I—-“ he stammers, holding up his hands, “I don’t know! Love!” The sword holds fast, but doesn’t come closer.
“…being loved,” he tries, in a low, mumbling voice. not in front of the guys,

Edited 2024-01-29 01:39 (UTC)

"Créateur me préserve," Bastien says, perfectly loud and clear in its deadpan unkindness.

He's still angry.

But the spirit is satisfied. The sword lowers and the guardian drifts back, away from them. The path beyond it is satisfied too: the pieces that had fallen away at the first lie rearrange themselves, curving sideways and down to reach toward them in a short floating staircase. Very accommodating.

Behind them, the skeletons have found their way through the ice. Bones and the corroded metal of the armor they were wearing in death rattle as they start to climb out.

And angry as Bastien is, he grabs a fistful of Benedict's sleeve to pull him along, then propel him ahead of Bastien toward the path. This is Bastien's fault—and however uninterested in nurturing Bastien is, Benedict is younger—and if one of them is going to be pulled back into a mass of evil skeletons at the last moment to never be seen again except in unrecognizable pieces, it'll have to be him. That's just how these things are supposed to go.

Not needing to be told twice or otherwise spurred onward, Benedict is fast behind Bastien-- in fact, the forcefulness with which he's shoved in front of him almost makes him stumble, but he manages to catch himself and spare them both getting killed in the most inane way possible.

He only slows when the last sounds of rattling bones and armor have faded away, and the path has given way to seemingly another location entirely: a dry stone hallway lined benches, overgrown with ivy.

Adrenaline is good for a lot, but it can't make Bastien's legs any longer, so when Benedict slows down Bastien has slipped to a few yards behind him. By the time he arrives at Benedict's side he's also slowed to a walk, which he turns backwards to look behind them, where the skeletons aren't.

It is possible they lacked the coordination to climb the little staircase. But even though it would be really funny, if that were the case, he isn't going back to check. He isn't going to stop moving yet, either. He keeps walking backwards even as he's putting his hand to his side and bending forward a bit, taking a few measured deep breaths to catch up on oxygen.

Then he says, "Sorry."

Trudging to a bench, Benedict sits with his hands clapped over his thighs, letting his head hang forward as he gasps for breath. He's not in bad shape, really, but he has perhaps been a little negligent of his physical training now that he's got his fancy new office job.

When Bastien speaks, Benedict looks up at him, a touch of his earlier wariness remaining; just because other things were going on doesn't mean he doesn't speak Orlesian, didn't hear what he said.

"I can forget about it," he pants, pushing his hair back out of his face, "if you can."

Bastien watches at him with an expression that’s mostly blank, slightly pleasant, slightly exhausted. His breaths are still coming deep, but slow and quiet; he’s realizing he’s a little clammy. Wherever they are now, it’s not as cold as before, and the exertion is catching up.

He should squint, is what he should do. He should exhibit some skepticism that Benedict is going to forget — or maybe take it as a compliment. Maybe he is so convincingly trustworthy that it really does seem like nothing to worry about. Maybe he should take a bow. Or be offended. Or both.

But any reaction would only draw attention to this thing that he would actually prefer Benedict forget. Forgetting would be great. So he takes a louder breath, wipes his damp forehead with his sleeve, and says, “I’ll forget it five minutes.”

He turns and sits next to Benedict on his bench.

“So you have that long to tell me if you’re alright. You know people love you, ouais?”

Folding his hands and allowing them to droop between his knees, Benedict sits hunched and lets the adrenaline slowly leave him. He's almost too tired to have this conversation, especially when he already knows all too well how pathetic it is, and how little anyone wants to have it with him.

"...maybe," he admits, and fusses with his hair again, straightening a bit as if that will save his dignity. "I'm all right." If the spirit with the sword were here, they wouldn't be satisfied.

Neither is Bastien. But he only hums, a short and agreeable sound, and fishes his cigarette tin out of his pocket.

"You know, I made a career out of, uh," a lot of things, but most importantly, more importantly than the music or the robbery or the murder, "figuring out what people wanted and giving them enough of it to get something else out of them. And it was almost always love that they wanted. Some kind of it. I think people have loneliness more in common than anything else. I would say it is what binds us together, but the lack of binding, that is kind of the problem, no?"

He's patting around for his runic lighter now, unlit cigarette in his mouth, but when he realizes where it is — an inner pocket with an inner pocket, lots of buttons in the way — it's simpler to cock his head and ask Benedict for a magic light with a gesture.

"So it's nothing to be embarrassed about," is his point, "but I'm sorry. Spirits are dicks."

Benedict obliges easily with a snap of his fingers, leaning over slightly to offer the flame.
"That makes sense," he concedes, still clearly feeling a bit raw on the topic despite Bastien's reassurances, "...the lack of binding. Nobody knowing that everyone feels the same. And it's still hard to think about other people, sometimes."

He looks down at his feet. Poor little rich boy, who wanted for nothing, who never even realized connection was something he needed until he saw that he didn't have it.

"Why'd you change your name?" he asks gently, carefully, and is quick to add: "you don't have to say."

Edited (grammar) 2024-01-30 19:35 (UTC)

Bastien shrugs, like he doesn’t know, and in silence enjoys the scratch of smoke down his throat and the shape of the vines overhead.

“It’s nothing you need to worry about,” he says. “I mean, it’s not a security issue. Byerly knows all of it. Yseult knows it wasn’t always Bastien. Ellie guessed — Bastien de Ghislain, he was the Black Fox’s apprentice, you know? So it was,” hm. “Aspirational? Dorky? I don’t know. I was twelve.”

Give or take. He looks back the way they came, but no skeletons are heading their way. And Benedict would probably hear them before either of them saw them.

He says, “Don’t tell anyone?” with the syntax of a command but the intonation of a plea. “Anyone who doesn’t know. If you need to check I’m not lying, that’s alright.”

Nothing you need to worry about, merits a wry little chuckle, but Benedict doesn't interrupt, instead angling his head to watch Bastien as he listens.

"I won't tell anyone," he says quietly, with a subtle shake of his head, "it's none of my business." It kind of is, in the sense that he's Personnel Officer now, but there's no reason he can't work with the names people give him.

"Twelve's pretty young," he observes, however, casting his own glance back at the path from whence there arrives not a single skeleton. This place is weird.

MOD EVENT: Crossover

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