I have moved and I've kept on moving, proved the points that I needed proving

[mythalenaste]

WHO: Pel Ashara, Morrigan, Salem Ghilain, Katniss Everdeen, Mal Reynolds, Sam Gareth, Merrill, Sina Dahlasanor (via sending crystals)
WHAT: Studying elven ruins in the Hinterlands
WHEN: End of Wintermarch
WHERE: The Hinterlands
NOTES: Some fighting, altogether Indiana Joneslike archaeology. Meaning it's not really archaeology, it's just fighting and mystical weird ancient places.

Starters below. Or make your own WILDCARD!

Comments

The Ruin

[mythalenaste]

The ruin in question (from this quest in DAI) is too ancient to date accurately, built into a rocky hillside and covered in cobwebs. Local accounts suggest it was a religious site, but there is no archaeological evidence of this. There are, however, demons: shades, spirit wraiths, and a despair demon. Watch out.

When the demons are cleared, the space can be quickly explored. Pel lights a Veilfire beacon and discovers a Veilfire rune in the wall. That's the sort of thing she was looking for.

Toward the back is an ancient device, globular and heavy. Pel will be busy with the Veilfire rune when it is discovered. It can be activated, but will require research to discover what it is and how it can be used.

veilfire rune

[mythalenaste]

Pel shines the fire in front of the rune with an elated smile.

"Salem, come here. Book, now."

That's as much talk as she can manage. She's gonna be parked here for hours.

[fortheloveoffalondin]

Salem might not have been completely happy with his being made to carry the heaviest of the supplies for this expedition, but being here in the first place more than made up for it, and he was mildly awed when he stepped into the ruin, hopping down over broken stone and holding one of the books close to him. He looked up when Pel called for him, holding it out immediately then tilting his head as he looked over the rune glittering faintly in the fire she was holding aloft.

"Brilliant," he said quietly, grinning right back at her then kneeling down and pulling his codex from its belt on his hip to copy down the most important information as she relayed it.

[mythalenaste]

Pel gazes at the rune. This is why she has come all this way. All this way for one little rune. And it feels...euphoric. Incredible.

"Frustration," she breathes. "Anger, helplessness. Entrapment, maybe." She feels elated, feeling the things an ancestor felt in an ancient day. It's a powerful rush. She takes a deep breath. "It's a schematic."

[fortheloveoffalondin]

"A schematic? For what?" Salem stops in his writing, looking quizzically from the rune to Pel. "If you can feel what it is then are you sure it's safe? It won't...I don't know, corrupt something? Like you, for instance?"He might admire magic, but he's also well aware of how dangerous it can be if it's mishandled, or even just accidentally used or touched the wrong way.

[mythalenaste]

"It's safe. It's only information. The enchantment is only in conveying the information." She flips through her own journal hurriedly. "I'm not sure what this one's for, but the Inquisition's arcanist will know."

[fortheloveoffalondin]

"So it's imparting the information through sensory...things. Words. It's conveying feeling while telling what it is." Salem's brow creases some as he looks over the glowing rune, copying the pattern, though just the visual representation was a poor substitute for what Pel was learning as she was. For a moment, he was rather envious.

"No doubt lady Dagna will be damn interested in whatever we find here."

Around the Ruin

[the_effect_she_has]

Katniss had her torch, bow on her back, as she had already cleared the place as 'nope, no traps'. Now she was carefully going around the rubble, picking through to find artifacts to show to the others, and inspecting the large murals that covered the walls.

She frowned, tilting her head this way and that, before she said to no one in particular, "... is it just me, or all these guys bald?"

[chainlightning]

She doesn't know very many of the people on the expedition, but that hardly matters. Merrill doesn't think she's very good with people anyway. What she is good at is the history of her people, and she's looking at the murals, absolutely enthralled, when Katniss speaks.

Merrill tilts her head, too.

"...it does look that way, doesn't it?"

[the_effect_she_has]

"It really does. Look." She lifts the torch a little higher, as she squints in the darkness. "There's another one. Were the ancients without hair? Was that a thing?"

She leaned back, thoughtful. "Was this what they looked like when they went to the Uthenera?"

[chainlightning]

"Maybe not without it entirely, but- perhaps they cut it off? Or shaved it?" Though she supposes it is possible that they were far more hairless; another division between human and elf that no longer exists quite as much.

Her fingers trace over stone, just outside of the murals; she doesn't want to hurt them, but she can't help the instinct to touch. "I suppose it would help stop them from getting bed-hair, if nothing else. Practicality."

[the_effect_she_has]

"That's possible. But why? And why all of them?" She frowned as she stepped closer herself. Not touching, but almost.

"Heh. Considering how tangled my hair gets, maybe they weren't that far off." She stated with a wry smile, as she scanned the mural. "What are they doing? Playing instruments?"

[chainlightning]

"It could be part of a ritual; all of it. There is a poem about uthenera that I once recited as part of a ritual; even that much held great power."

But past that... she doesn't know, and that's frustrating. What are they doing? "It might not even be literal at all."

Demons and devices

[el_tybs]

Demons, Sam can handle. They were bad and they needed to be gone for them to get any research done. Ancient Elven ruins? That was something he was a whole less familiar with, making sure to keep his hands to himself mostly; he didn't know what any of this stuff was.

Which was particularly true about the odd globe type thing further into the room. "Hey... anyone know what this is?"

[arcaneadvisor]

When one has studied as Morrigan has studied, hours can be spent in a place such as this, these relics and outposts with no true path to lead to them - did an eluvian once stand in these lands? Sam's voice gets her attention as she inspects the statues with the aid of the veilforce torch in her hand, staff still in the other out of habit.

"Elven," she replies near instantly but given where they are, that's hardly surprising though it bears closer inspection and so she approaches, kneeling and setting the torch down a safe distance away. "I have seen their like before, thought not where they should be."

[el_tybs]

Elven

The immediate response has Sam giving an amused snort and a slight roll of his eyes. Well he had figured that much out, but he still finds the answer humorous, mainly since he might have done the same.

"Not where... they should be? Are you saying it should be placed someplace else?"

[arcaneadvisor]

"No, this one is where it should be, the others had been recovered from other such sites though tracing their provenance was somewhat impossible; too many only cared that they'd brought back some strange bauble." This man is a stranger to her so there's no way she'll say that they're just hanging around the Winter Palace in Orlais at present.

Besides, some baubles she brought back herself, sneaking into the palace with them much to Celene's delight.

"Still, one wonders if it was disturbed at any point, anyone might have found it before the entrance crumbled upon itself."

[el_tybs]

Well it was good to know that someone knew what it was, but that didn't exactly tell him what it was besides elven. Still, Sam waits to see if Morrigan would divulge any more, and only when it seems like she isn't does he press.

"So... what does it do? And by disturbed you mean... damaged or something?" He doesn't know elven ruins, and he's definitely not pretending to know, but he certainly wants to know if its something they have to be careful of.

[arcaneadvisor]

"I cannot say." Much as it annoys her, she cannot. There are some things so old that there is no record of them and this place is a wreck; the bones, the symbols on the floor drawn in blood - all of it means that any number of folk could have lived here once. "Perhaps the Avvar held to this place, though not my area of expertise there could be a suggestion of it - see the ram's head?"

Not to mention the mabari and surely that must mean Ferelden influences at some point in the past.

"As for disturbed, I only meant that I believe it has been moved. Such a thing should not simply be sat upon the floor. There is a power within it, can you not feel it too?"

demons, demons, despair.

[glandival]

[ Because demons are a big deal, for those who have never met one.

Sabine is among those that take point, and fighting demons sounds fine, in theory. They're made of ordinary enough stuff that smart use of arrows and knives should work out just as well on them as bandits, and yet. She is a tense, nervous shape in the gloom as they creep within the dark tomb. Or maybe it isn't a tomb, Sabine doesn't know.

It feels like a tomb. Water in the stone and cobwebs and dust tickling her nose. When the first demon rears its head -- a shade, long armed, screaming -- Sabine lifts her aim even as a wave of-- something. Magic? Leaves her feeling dizzier than she began, and her arrow flies, sinking into the unnatural, twisting flesh. A second arrow, loosed quicker after the first than she's ever had to draw before, sinks into where she approximates its face to be.

More demons. More fighting. Somewhere, magic is being flung about, making the hairs on the back of her neck raise as she glances. She's never seen a mage in full swing, either.

Once the shade is dispatched -- Sabine fixed in place, bow and arrow ready, wild-eyed -- she sees out the corner of her eye a dark, drifting shape, one that's holding back. She reacts before she comprehends what's happening, as a steady stream of impossible ice magic jets directly to where she was standing. With some miscellaneous Orlesian curse word, she lunges out of the way, hitting the ground in a roll and righting herself to fire her arrow-- and forced again to take cover as the stream of magical cold comes for her, painting stone in a thick layer of ice, plummeting room temperature to a temporary winter. She ducks behind a pillar, bracing herself as coldness streams on either side. ]

[chainlightning]

[ Demons, and these ones are not contained. These ones are not trying to trick them. These ones are in the world and are lashing out, trying to destroy, and that makes them dangerous. That means Merrill answers with magic, with electricity crackling in the stone chamber, with her staff spinning and the Veil rippling around her. It's as easy and as natural as breathing for her, even against enemies that are a little more difficult than average.

The chill of unnatural ice makes Merrill shiver as she spins, switching from lightning to fire; flames leap out of the ground toward the despair demon, crackling and bright. A heavy breath and she calls up a barrier for the archer behind the pillar, hoping the woman doesn't take offense. ]

I can make your arrows be on fire, if you want! [ she calls a second later, even as she has to cast back a wraith with another crackle of lightning. ]

[glandival]

[ Sabine's eyes widen as strange, unnatural light glimmers over her, but it's not the look of someone taking offense so much as someone possibly in over her head. But she's nothing if not adaptive, snapping a look towards Merrill when the other elf calls out to her. ]

What?!

[ What would setting her arrows on fire accomplish! She needs her arrows! She needs them to--

Oh, wait.

Sabine chances a look around the pillar, the sharp impact of cold managing not to sink its chilly fangs past the barrier that surrounds her. Think fast. She pauses, quickly fires an arrow that whistles past Merrill's head to stick into the wraith she's trying to fend away, before yelling; ]

Now!

[ She moves out of cover enough to set arrow in place, aiming for the despair demon. ]

[chainlightning]

[ That's a yes, or so Merrill assumes -- hopes. Sabine deals with the wraith and another crackle of lightning helps finish it, and then it's time for the despair demon. Now and Merrill is used to fighting with a group, reflexes still as sharp for it as when she traveled with Hawke -- she has fought and traveled with the alienage elves since then, after all, and plenty of them are archers.

It's familiar, and even as fire sprouts up on the head of the notched arrow, Merrill almost feels at peace.

The large blast of fire she immediately whirls and hits the despair demon in the face with just maybe doesn't make it seem that way. ]

Keep shooting and I'll keep enchanting them!

[glandival]

[ Later, she will say that the flaming arrow slammed the despair demon between its eyes and then it died, who wants another round. In reality, she startles, and the flaming arrow misses its target by a few crucial inches. She swears a stream of Orlesian throughout the time it takes for her to collect another arrow and line it up, trying to still the shaking in her hands that has nothing to do with fear and everything to do with adrenaline.

But she nods her understanding at Merrill, and releases the next, teeth bared. This time, it sinks into dark, flapping robes and twisting flesh, and the torrent of ice magic suddenly ceases as it writhes, magic flames biting in.

This time, her grimace is a grin, and she continues to let fly the fiery arrows. ]

[chainlightning]

[ It does go down. That's what matters, and Merrill grins too, face lit up by magic before it burns yet another demon trying to take them out.

When the fight is done, Sabine's arrows will be unscathed from magical fire -- perhaps not from demons or impact against the stone walls, but the enchantment, at least, won't have hurt them. Merrill will approach with one that she's found on the ground, staff still out; she's leaning against it slightly, not used to fighting that many demons so regularly and taking the chance for a breather. ]

Here. You're excellent, with your bow.