MOD PLOT: With Strides Immeasurable

[faderifting]

WHO: Everyone
WHAT: Moving days
WHEN: August 9:50
WHERE: Everywhere, really
NOTES: OOC post. Use appropriate CWs in your subject lines. The image in this post that isn't just straight from the games/promotional images (Qarinus) is by Meggie Rock.

The world is too large and Riftwatch too small to be everywhere, involved in everything. The days of trying to keep their fingers in every pie across Thedas may be past, but the scope of the war still is what it is, rifts can still open on any corner of the continent, the enemy is active all over. So while much attention has naturally been on rebuilding and refortifying Kirkwall and the Gallows since the Venatori attack, they can't remain focused inward for too long. The reorganization of the eluvian network created a protected nexus in the Crossroads, eliminating the need for long journeys through the newly-volatile landscape. Now, Riftwatchers need only pass through the Gallows eluvian (secured in a guarded basement space in the central tower) to find themselves within steps of central Minrathous, Val Royeaux, or Antiva City. Other mirrors in the cluster provide access to new outposts in Qarinus, Nevarra City, and the Rivaini coast, or a long-neglected base in the Hunterhorns.

The priorities of turning outward now are clear: operations in Minrathous and Qarinus must be expanded, the better to marshal forces behind enemy lines. The existing base in Minrathous needs expanding, and a new one in Qarinus established. In Nevarra City, the Mortalitasi have requested assistance with a rift at the Necropolis that is hampering efforts to finally repopulate the city after its long undead occupation. Elsewhere, there are spaces to be dusted off or construction to be overseen, the lay of the land taken for future operations. While not an emergency situation, the work is urgent in the sense that all of their work is urgent. No one who might be unusually unsuited to passing as a local will be sent to Tevinter, where all work is inherently clandestine and therefore dangerous, but it's otherwise more or less all hands on deck, with the ease of travel meaning people can come and go on staggered schedules. Just make sure you've memorized the list of which eluvian is which.


I. MINRATHOUS

Riftwatch's base in Minrathous may be unfamiliar to those outside the Scouting Division, but expanding operations in the city means making space for more visitors. The eluvian is housed in a hidden room in the cellar of the Bear's Tooth tavern, a busy taproom on a middling market street near the center of the city. It's the sort of place that sees a constant stream of diverse customers but few regulars, where a minor nobleman on business might cross paths with a farmer bringing produce to market. The block behind the tavern is more residential, respectable if not quite fashionable, and home to Widow Tavisa's Boarding House, a fading but clean establishment similarly catering to short-term visitors of the mostly-middle classes. The two properties are secretly connected by a tunnel, an ancient winding servant's stair, and their owners' loyalty to Riftwatch.

The upper floor of the boarding house, with its steep eaves, dark velvet wallpaper, and inescapable scent of old flowers, has been kept available for visiting Riftwatch agents for some time now, but there's a secret expansion underway to add the bunk rooms and communal workspaces that will turn this into a proper outpost. Long ago, Widow Tavisa's extended to a second wing next door, but a fire burned most of it to the ground. Left untouched was a hidden basement—a taproom and smoking lounge only ever known to only a select few Tevinter hipsters—that now lies below the walled garden that was built on the ashes of the upper floors. Riftwatch is digging a couple short tunnels through the cellars to secretly connect this space to the other two buildings, and then performing clean-up and some light construction work to make it fit for use.

The place is all dark wood and marble and the over-gilded furnishings typical of Tevinter design trying a little too hard to look more luxurious than it is, now covered in layers of dust and ash. Some fire damaged areas will need to be repaired, and a few ruined walls are better demolished to create a space open enough to house a collection of salvaged tables, chairs, and desks for communal eating and working, centered around a large two-sided fireplace and a lightly singed Tevinter-billiards table. There are bunks to install in the adjoining private rooms, making each fit for at least three agents, and repairs to neglected plumbing in the shared bathroom.

But Minrathous is too large and dangerous a city for just a single safe house, no matter how large, especially now that the Venatori openly control the city, the streets crawling with people in silver-and-blood livery and stalked by fear of their patrolling guards and rumored spies. In addition to pitching in with construction, Riftwatch agents will be tasked with searching out and securing other spots throughout the city for potential future use. This will be good practice for those not yet familiar with moving about the city discreetly, and a chance to feel out the conditions in various neighborhoods.

Someone might be assigned to wander the fashionable cafe district around Tenquillis Square in disguise as an aristocrat's agent looking to secure a pied-à-terre for a mistress, watching the palanquin traffic and listening to the anxious edge to upper-class gossip about the Elder One's inner circle, or to pose as sailors looking to let rooms in the spindly tenements crammed between the canals of Waterside and keep an eye on the new quayside inspection patterns, as artisans in need of a new workshop in the Iron Heights where the surface dwarf community is rumbling about divisions in the Ambassadoria, or mages fallen on hard times looking for lodging in the worker slums near the magic forges of West Shrek where military recruiters haunt the street-corners and the able-bodied but unwary are sometimes snatched from alleys and pressed into service.

The Venatori aren't the only thing setting the city on edge. Pockets of strange magical effects have begun to appear in the city. There are places where gravity abruptly ceases to function as expected, the world flipped on its head for 10 yards and then just as suddenly normal again. In others, it's time that is out of sorts, the walk from one end of a certain block to the other somehow taking an hour longer than it feels, the movement of clouds overhead slowing to a crawl until the next street is crossed. Some places have simply ceased to be—half of a building replaced with a mess of crumbling walls and stairs or jagged crags of rock that Riftwatch will recognize as pieces of the Crossroads or the Fade drawn physically into this world. Even where all appears normal, one may become aware of an uneasy sensation of something passing nearby unseen, of being watched, of sounds just on the edge of hearing, emotions surging suddenly out of nothing as if catching the mood of a non-existent mob.

Street prophets cry that only the Elder One can save the city from crumbling, the decay caused by centuries of worshiping the non-existent Maker and his false chantry, and restore the Imperium to its glory. Among the populace, a fair number believe these claims. Some also blame the southern Chantry for the damage, claiming they've sent their own barbaric mages or their Templars or both to disrupt the magic that's always held Minrathous together. Still others believe that this is the beginning of something wonderful—that the Elder One is restoring a greater magic, and soon Tevinter's nonmagical population will begin to exhibit magic themselves and bring Tevinter into a new era of equality and dominance. Meanwhile, iffy areas have been marked with signage, though that doesn't keep the curious out, and outright dangerous areas are under guard. An area near the docks around the old slave market has been quietly sealed off by soldiers with stories of some sort of dangerous enemy sabotage attempts, but there are whispers in nearby taverns of Wardens seen coming and going.

There are rifts, too. Ten years after the Breach they're not unprecedented, but the frequency with which they're opening in Minrathous right now is unusual, both to Riftwatch and to the locals. The sudden proliferation over the last few weeks will be a topic of nervous conversation (and sometimes fascinated conversation, in certain circles). Whether to help close them or let Minrathous suffer for Corypheus's choices might be a topic of debate within Riftwatch, but it turns out those aren't the only two options. Riftwatchers might come upon a team in Venatori colors arrayed around a rift with anchors outstretched, shutting it themselves as others hold the demons at bay. They might also notice some members of such a team being closely watched and ushered back into wagons for transport when the work is done.


II. QARINUS

In Ancient times when Tevinter ruled the known world, Qarinus was at the heart of the Imperium, its queen married Darinius, uniting their kingdoms to create the empire and make him the first Archon. But as borders shrunk in Ages past, it found itself more and more on the outskirts, nearer Antiva and Rivain than Minrathous and nearer Par Vollen than comfortable. Positioned at the gate to the Nocen Sea, it has been a magnet for both trade and conflict. It was conquered and occupied by the Qun for the better part of a century, was the last major city to be freed by the Exalted Marches of the Storm Age, and recently suffered the ignominy of being officially renamed 'Ventus' in honor of the commander of the fleet that drove off another attempted Qunari invasion in 9:12 (a name locals still defiantly refuse to use). This history, along with its location on the border, the danger of the surrounding seas, and the large population of foreign travelers and emigrants passing through, have given it a reputation as the frontier city of Tevinter, rustic and lawless, the Imperium's version of Llomerryn.

In reality, it's closer to a normal mid-sized Tevinter city than it is an outlaw haven. Its rocky coastline has certainly long been home to plenty of smugglers' dens and pirate hideaways and the crowded port is wound with narrow, ramshackle alleys leading up to dusty central plazas still showing damage from Qunari incursions. It does have a provincial air in places, but its rougher areas are also balanced by its share of lush palm-shaded gardens and lavish cliff-top villas, citrus trees and draconic statues lining the wide stone promenades around the floating Praetor's Palace, and an outpost of Orzammar's Ambassadoria. But its reputation has become a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy, especially since Corypheus revealed himself and the Venatori began to imprison its opponents. The current praetor is Magister Havian Sulara, Venatori and a close ally of Calpernia. Even so, the city has less of a conspicuous Venatori presence, and since they've tightened their hold elsewhere the number of magisters coincidentally retreating to summer homes by the Straits has markedly increased. Rumors abound that several prominent opponents escaped to Qarinus and are still hiding out in the city, running a network of smugglers shuttling those targeted by the Venatori to safety in Qarinus and beyond.

This last is true, and certain erstwhile Riftwatch leaders have had a key part in coordinating those escapes through a network of naval contacts operating in the Nocen, assisting not only in discreetly ferrying people out of Minrathous and other port cities, but helping identify those willing and able and direct them to an anti-Venatori organization based in the city called the Lucerni. Run by a woman called "Thanira," actually Magister Maevaris Tilani who has managed to slip the Venatori net, the group is quietly gathering itself in the shadows of Qarinus. The People of the Silent Plains are active here as well, with a cell in the city similarly dedicated to smuggling escaping slaves into Arlathan Forest and beyond (which they'll report used to be pretty easy before all these shem politicians started sneaking about). While the city does not share the pervasive anxiety shivering beneath the surface in Minrathous there is a restless energy to the place and its people, a chippy edge to everyday conflicts and minor disputes. Maybe it's just the sweltering weather and the crackle of daily thunderstorms, but there is an unspoken sense of something brewing.

It's time for Riftwatch to do more to help. The eluvian giving access to Qarinus is set into the wall of a sea cave, which floods with the high tide. While moving it without breaking the glass would be difficult (potentially impossible), the good news is that the cave was once used by smugglers and connects to several others, leading up to the cellar of an old lighthouse set atop the cliffs at one edge of the city. Riftwatch has taken over operation of the light and the ramshackle smuggling base hidden within it. Here most of the conversions have already been done by the prior occupants: there's a room full of bunks and hammocks for at least 12, kitchen and dining areas, and a surprisingly cozy space for off-hours relaxation full of furniture made primarily out of barrels, rope, and grain sacks.

Qarinus isn't large enough or hostile enough to require more than one or two auxiliary safe houses, but in addition to establishing those, there are allies to make contact with and intelligence to be gathered. Agents will be tasked with assisting in moving refugees both into and out of the city; escorting potential political prisoners, escaping slaves, and supply deliveries from smuggler's landings to meets with Lucerni or the People's agents at various places throughout the city; and helping others slip out onto ships bound for still-neutral Rivain, caravans into the mountains or toward Arlathan, or the ships or wagons of smugglers trading illicitly with Antiva.

While their presence is light compared to Minrathous, there are plenty of Venatori still running the city, on watch against both agents of the Qun and any rumored resistance movement. They're doing their best to prevent any enemies of the Elder One from passing through the city in either direction. Riftwatch agents will also be assigned passive surveillance missions, tracking Venatori movements and observing their operations to get the lay of the land will also help get Riftwatch up to speed, keeping a lookout especially for weaknesses that might be exploited in the future.


III. NEVARRA CITY

The crypt is mostly empty of corpses—some destroyed or missing, others relocated to the more prestigious Grand Necropolis now that there's so much empty space—but that doesn't stop the space from being unsettling to people who are unsettled by that kind of thing. The door to the crypt is set into a hill, with ancient windows that allow some tree-dappled sunlight to pass through into the entranceway, but further back there's no daylight, only a mix of fire and veilfire braziers that throw long, flickering shadows. The halls are lined with enclaves that seem like a mix between bedrooms in an inn and big-windowed storefronts: the possessed corpses that reside here do so on perpetual display, unconcerned with privacy. The materials used to construct these little houses echo the eras and preferences of their occupants, and while they're largely empty now—the furniture and belongings that once surrounded each body have been looted, reclaimed by families, or relocated—there's still something arguably disrespectful about settling into what are essentially abandoned graves. Anyone who stays here overnight will be advised to do so in the entrance hall.

But this isn't a place where Riftwatch might routinely need to settle in and hide. They only need a place for an eluvian that's safe from observation. Outside the crypt, Nevarra City and its environs are friendly and happy enough to see them; the inn along the road to the city proper will gladly put them up for its standard fee.

The royal palace and the city center are occupied by the Mortalitasi, who are still overseeing the city's reconstruction and making painstaking attempts to match abandoned corpses to their correct ancestors, but also taking their time with it to try to settle the situation between the Van Markhams and Pentaghasts before having to commit to handing the capital over to one or the other. There's no real danger left. If Riftwatch agents visit to meet with Mortalitasi allies, the narrow streets are quiet, eerily empty. The black marble statues of Nevarran ancestors and heroes dotting the public spaces might be the only new faces anyone comes across on a walk. But around the rim of the city, outside the older walls from when it was a much smaller place, citizens have returned to occupy the sprawl of smaller houses. Most of them are poorer folks who never found anything better in the intervening years, but a number of people employed by Nevarra's wealthy and noble families are living there too, essentially glamping in large tents filled with comfortable furniture, to make sure they can be among the first to reclaim their employers' property and fend off looters or squatters when the rest of the city reopens.

The Grand Necropolis is a hulking, glowing shape on the edge of the city. A long cobbled road flanked by statues of robed skeletons, each holding a lantern lit with green fire, leads to a towering onyx gate. It is a forbidding entryway despite that Riftwatch has been invited, their presence required to close a rift. A pair of Mortalitasi greet them and escort the way into a long hall, this too flanked by skeleton statues, now three stories tall. The shape of their ribs is echoed in the twisting striping of the even taller pillars and the loose arches of the ceiling above, the gaps between leaving the space open to the air. Mausoleums line this road, style and state of repair varying widely. These levels have been cleansed of rogue undead, the Mortalitasi explain, and those that could be returned have been, but restoration of the individual tombs themselves are the responsibility of the families. Their route curves gently, and slopes even more gently, enough that they may not realize they are winding their way underground until they pass through an arched tunnel overgrown with ivy and find themselves in a cavern beside a yawning pit, its squared sides marked out by a perimeter of more green lanterns and by a set of weeping willows, ghostly pale and tinged green only by the lantern-light, branches shifting in a draft from the deep.

Here they meet the Mourn Watch, a group of elite Mortalitasi (their escorts have explained) tasked with the protection and preservation of the Necropolis and its occupants. Johanna Hezenkoss, a 60-something woman with a sturdy build, long steel-gray hair, and minimal patience, and her recently-inducted apprentice, a young elf named Lukas Rutter who looks as if he'd like to smile but is too nervous, explain the rough outline of the problem as they ride the elevator cage down (how far is difficult to gauge). Efforts to fully restore and make safe the city have been long delayed by a continuing plague of rogue undead, new uncontrolled possessions, mostly demonic, continuing at a rate the Mourn Watch has eventually managed to contain to lower levels of the Necropolis but has been unable to stop, and which is straining their resources such that they cannot guarantee the city is safe to repopulate. The source of the problem eluded all manner of investigation and experiment. The Necropolis is vast and difficult to navigate even for experts and grows only more so the deeper you get, Hezenkoss will tersely and defensively explain. But finally, someone happened upon a corridor never before seen or recorded in the order's archives and blocked by a massive rift.

To get to it, Riftwatch and the Mourn Watchers (a larger group awaits them at the end of the lift journey) will have to fight their way through an uncommon volume of demons, some in pure demonic form but most in some sort of body: corpses in various states, collections of bones reconstituted in approximation of a skeleton, scrabbling limbs clawing their way up through the dirt, giant-sized golems formed of loose collections of bone and stone and matter. The rift, when they reach it, is a gaping slash in the center of what looks like elven architecture plucked from the Crossroads and inserted into the Necropolis, like a chunk of shrapnel lodged in a wound. It is a piece of a hallway lined with doors, and while none are passable, a breeze flows outward, and the sickly green light of the rift flickers off something through one arched doorway to create an impression of depth beyond. It will take an uncommon amount of time and effort to force closed the rift, even with the Mourn Watch assisting in keeping the demons occupied. When it is done, Riftwatch will be thanked (genuinely, if grudgingly by Hezenkoss) and escorted back to the surface. Any offer or attempt to scout beyond the now-cleared corridor will be firmly rebuffed, politely at first but less so if pressed. The Necropolis is a sacred place entrusted to the Mourn Watch's keeping. Should they be in need of any assistance in future, they will be in touch.


IV. ELSEWHERE

Val Royeaux is less in Riftwatch's crosshairs these days, having stepped back from attempting to keep up with The Game enough to exert influence on the imperial court's influencers. But Orlais remains a crucial ally in the fight against Corypheus and the Chantry is, well, the Chantry. An eluvian has been located here in the shop of a fashionable and sympathetic modiste, Cecelia Clavet, allowing Riftwatch quick travel into the central shopping districts and access to the wealth of court gossip ladies spill during fittings. The latest has drawn attention: not romantic rivalries or feuding families but a ball (Baroness de Dreux's biannual Mid-Summer Mummery) disrupted by spires of stone suddenly appearing in the ballroom and the dancers finding themselves suddenly on the ceiling. The baroness will be grateful for Riftwatch to investigate (it is, as suspected, an intrusion of the Fade into the physical world), but less grateful to be informed that this is a phenomenon they have encountered before but can do nothing about.

In Antiva City, a boathouse along the Canneti canal has an eluvian installed in its upper-floor apartment. The space is neither large nor luxurious but provides a secure and comfortable spot for Riftwatch to come and go, and for Anselmo Barzini, the owner, to keep an eye on passing traffic for Riftwatch when he isn't poling travelers through the canals on his gondola and eavesdropping on them for Riftwatch. It's an excellent way to gather information, and Barzini is eager to broker a partnership between Riftwatch and I Fratelli della Forcola, a quiet and discreet organization of gondoliers in Antiva City. That's still in its early stages, but Anselmo is certain that bringing a few Riftwatch members to an informal gathering and letting them mingle and participate in a few gondola races (at which they will presumably lose embarrassingly but hopefully with good humor) will win some goodwill.

And near Seere, along the northern coast of Rivain, Riftwatch stashes an eluvian inside a wrecked ship in an isolated cove along the coast. Getting to and from shore requires either a rowboat or a short swim, and Seere itself is half a day's walk away. But much closer is a small village situated on a coastal cliff that overlooks the Northern passage, where Riftwatch has one friend in particular: an elderly Tal-Vashoth woman named Karaas who's as wary of the Qun as they come. She's spending her retirement from life at sea watching the horizon through a spyglass and keeping meticulous notes on any ships from Par Vollen in particular. It's easy enough for her to add Tevinter ships to her particular area of concern and keep an eye on their hidden eluvian for them, and she has a sailboat they can borrow to get to Seere faster if necessary. She'll also alert them to the presence of a young whale caught in yet another area of strange veil effects, trapped in a pocket of water now suspended in the air as if filling an invisible room. It will require some ingenuity, but if they can find a way to climb up, they might be able to use reality-reasserting magic, runes, Templar abilities, or anchors long enough to weaken the effect and help get the whale back down into the actual sea.

V. THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE

While most of Riftwatch's eluvians are dedicated to the need to reach the middle of a given city as quickly as possible, two are set aside for getting away from it all.

For the first: Riftwatch has long had access to a sparingly-used hunting lodge in the Blasted Hills, near the Hunterhorn Mountains and Anderfels border. It's a location that will be made infinitely more useful by trading its resident eluvian for one large enough for griffons to pass through—the transport of which requires volunteers to take a road trip with a slow-moving cart and team of draft horses and camping overnight in the Orlesian countryside rather than risk storing the enormous eluvian in a roadside inn's stables. But the ability to pull up the canvas in the cart and drop through the eluvian to trade shifts with those back at the Gallows in a matter of minutes makes it less miserable, maybe, for those who pull the short straw on any given day.

The hunting lodge itself, when reached, is unforgivably heavy on antler-based decor and covered in a year's worth of dust and cobwebs, but otherwise it's in serviceable condition. If anything it's too large; the previous owner frequently hosted guests and their horses and hounds, with spare bedrooms and an expansive stable to accommodate them, and the appointments are rustic in aesthetic only. (The fact that the woody decor and enormous murals of the chase are a bit overdone and, arguably, cringe in the capital this decade might have something to do with Riftwatch's uncontested possession of the property.) It will take some carpentry and heavy lifting to transform the existing stable into an eyrie that can comfortably house a couple of the griffons at a time. Once there's a place for them, griffon riders will need to begin practicing coaxing their griffons through the eluvians and short stretch of the Crossroads—unpleasant but blessedly quick, and something they're generally clever enough to learn to do efficiently—and can begin flying loops into Ander territory to accustom themselves to the landscape. Roving darkspawn are common in the Anderfels even between Blights, and the rule of Corypheus over the last few years has brought with it an increasing problem. A band of rogue Wardens, escaped from Tevinter-ruled Weisshaupt and living in a rough but well-established camp in the mountains, do their best to protect the villages of the area, but some help wouldn't go amiss. They'd also be struck by the sight of the griffons—previously thought to've been lost again as hatchlings during the First Warden's coup eight years ago—and will be eager (even jealous) to get the opportunity to work with them.

And on the opposite end of the continent, beneath in the southeastern reaches of Ferelden, Riftwatch has recently been granted use of an abandoned dwarven outpost. The quickest route for transporting a spare eluvian is to take a ship down the Fereldan coast to Gwaren. The isolated city was, in fact, built to support the shipping needs of the outpost in its heyday as the center of dwarven salt mining operations. After the mines were abandoned, old access points nearer to the port were walled up or collapsed for fear of darkspawn incursions. The remaining accessible entrance is a day's journey through the damp, foggy Brecilian Forest and down into a narrow, easily-overlooked cave that ends in a fortified door. Riftwatch has a key, but getting the heavy doors open also requires repairing a rusted-through chain and cranking some gears. Fortunately, once the eluvian is inside, they won't have to go through the doors every time, or possibly ever again.

Inside, they'll find the remnants of a village that was abandoned centuries ago when it became clear that darkspawn would ultimately make the Deep Roads between Gwaren and Orzammar impassable. The occupants had enough warning to pack up their valuables, and decay has had hundreds of years to do its work, so there's little in the way of personal belongings to find. But the homes were carved into the stone walls directly. Aside from a few that have been eroded by streams or drips of water, they show minimal signs of damage. Much of the furniture is stone as well: bedframes, tables, chairs, and desks all remain, though most will be improved by the addition of some kind of cushion. There's an open expanse that was once a pasture for brontos and nugs that's now been overtaken by the latter and a variety of mushroom species, a smithy just shy of still being operational, a network of mining tunnels that turn eerie and white when the salt deposits are reached, and a quiet mausoleum of stone tombs. Altogether, it's large enough to house all of Riftwatch, if that ever became necessary—it just needs cleaning and stocking, including removing debris from the underground streams and pond that could serve as a long-term water source and dealing with a giant spider and her many large children.

Spider aside, there's no sign of serious danger. The rune-encrusted, fortified entrance to the Deep Roads is still holding strong. There's no sign darkspawn have ever managed to breach the outpost itself, once it was closed up for the last time, and no sign of scavengers ever finding the entrance in the Brecilian Forest. It might be the most secure secret clubhouse ever.

Comments

LAZAR | Scouting

[extortionate]

i | CROSSROADS

He holds for the edge of the mirror ring, looks near to taking off himself. Lazar shifts, foot-to-foot, hefting the sack of Antivan liquor will serve a few bribes. He's not scared — truly, he's not; run into danger plenty, can hardly name the shape of fear. Only you get a sense for these things. Only he didn't, last time.

Doubt's a foreigner, don't know how to greet her.


ii | ANDERFELS

Dust's the worst part of it. No, the worst's the weather, louring with storm and the bright flash of lightning. Rough on the birds, makes them snappy, and that's really the worst part; the griffons. Mouthy shits.

Except that's not the worst at all. It's worsts far as the eye can see, and nothing for the grey sausage they've traded for. The villages are ugly as the pigs that range them, rooting sparse grass and rock gone black: Hurlock ripped a girl apart last month. Someone's grandfather is missing, went on his daily walk and over canyon edge.

"Hate this fucking place," Bent over a fire stinks of gurn chips. "Let the Vints have it."


iii | THAIG

He runs a finger along the wall. Licks, experimental. Salt,

Finds himself ducking for the work tunnels. Dwarven fashion's always been high ceilings, but the shelves, the beds, the old scaffolds into rock — it's all meant for a man at least two feet lower to the ground. Leaves him out with the nugs one night, eyeing a mushroom might be the kind gives funny dreams, or might just be its lookalike. The one makes you shit yourself to death.

Maybe chancing it'd be more fun than this. Place is picked clean.

Desperation or diligence finds him at one of the stone tombs, prying crowbar under edge. Necessary, you know. Make sure nothing restless waits down here.

"Figure we burn 'em?"


iv | QARINUS

Now this is a proper city. Shame about the people.

Enough got friendly faces, or what’ll pass – even if no one’s too friendly with the Walrus any more. Pirate to People to something near the Lucerni, and he’s playing the part he always plays: He’s playing the big guy with big fists, so don’t push it.

Gone fine so far. Got him here, holed up with their latest contact and tossing a fat grapefruit in hand. Gone fine right up until the guy's spied his face and gone red as citrus.

"I know you,"

Not happily. He snatches for Lazar, who weaves back with improbable speed, snatching for the silverware. This is about to escalate.


WILDCARD

[ game for whatever, hmu on plurk or discord if you've got any questions or want something bespoke ]

qarinus

[hassaran]

"Oy! Settle down, sweetheart."

That's Yseult. She's called Janna today, and the sling of her elbow over the chairback and the snap point of her finger, the gaudy flourishes to an otherwise practical outfit, all color in the shape provided by that dockside Marcher accent til it says Coterie, maybe, or something like.

"Don't look at him," she says, when the fellow hesitates a second. She's dropped a knife out her sleeve into the hand hidden behind the chair. "He's nobody. Look at me."

Thaig

[thereneverwas]

"The occupants?"

Nearby, Barrow works at the door to the crypt, oiling its hinges more for something to do than out of any particular necessity. His handier skills have been useful down this way, and he doesn't mind the break from violence, for once.

"C'mon, mate, leave 'em alone."

anderfels

[wildered]

Has Siorus seen worse?

He's seen blight-encrusted tunnels lined with idols made of dwarven bones, but nobody lived in them. And he grew up in a bog—but the bog was green, teeming with life and water, only treacherous to people who didn't know the paths and couldn't read the signs, and home.

So: no. Not really.

But he frowns anyway, stood back from the fire because he's not cold enough to suffer the smoke more than he has to. Beyond him, Buggie is picking irritably at her talons with her beak, long tail lashing to and fro. Beyond her, thunder rumbles.

"Aren't you from this fucking place?" he asks, like these two facts shouldn't be able to coexist.

CEDRIC CARSUS | Diplomacy

[dissolving]

i | CROSSROADS

This is a new place. Not a kind one, and Cedric's kept hand to hilt since the other side of the mirror. Caution pointed out, toward an uneasy between; to whatever waits ahead.

"We got anyone watching the middle?"

Is that crazy? Overkill? He wasn't here when they cleared the ring out.


ii | CRYPT / NECROPOLIS

Watch the mummies about their strange pantomime: Skeletal fingers trace the empty, cobwebbed shelves; still tongues murmur on air. Joints twitch and crack, turn their blind skulls to passerby. One stares back at him from silver coin eyes, stitched into place above socket. It is —

Disrespectful, to linger this long. An honour to even be here. But Cedric is, for the moment, somewhere else entirely.

The next day sees him sharper, animated. Never been so near the Grand Necropolis, never expected to step inside; now or after. So he holds his back a bit straighter, walks a shade faster, keeps closer watch. The pains he takes to enunciate before Hezenkoss are, themselves, a little painful.

His mouth thins along the rattling cage down. Not long before they're swarmed: Stomping a scuttled hand, crashing a wave of corpses against his shield. They glance off lighter than the living, but furious of it, clawing for blood. He aims to cover the others, and he aims true, until some monstrosity of marbled rock lifts its craggy fist overhead.

If there's a moment, it's now — or Cedric is about to find out just how deep a templar can dig.


iv | AFTERMATH

He blinks into the light outside, struck for the afterimage of that other hall, its verdant bleed. Cedric flexes his palm against the day, solid. Bright. Real.

Something of the rift had been also. Shut, gone, between,

But real. It is only when they're alone that he dares to ask:

"How likely was it really unrecorded?"


v | ALIENAGE

It's empty here, too. Enough refugees took up with family in Cumberland, or Perendale, even hopped a border. Anyone too poor, or stubborn to abandon their home's still kept their distance from the Alienage center.

An enormous oak sways above coiling root and broken stone. Its branches stretch for the sky, waving with white finger fronds; bark rippled by the strange fusion of Fade and old bone. Those interred beneath have been drawn up, into the warp. Here you might trace the arc of a jaw. There, faded paint. A ribbon.

This is not how it was meant to be.

Between the abandoned tenements, one building strikes grander, its lower floor whorled in carvings and bleached colour. A neat, angular hand marks the door: Clear. Whatever this place was, Mournwatch has made it safe.

Cedric jiggles the handle, and it breaks off in hand. A glance to the side, a short breath. He kicks the door in, hard.


vi) ANDERFELS

He’s been difficult to pin down. Work scatters them all to a dozen winds. Maybe there are places he'd be more useful, down with the Wardens, making nice. And maybe he’ll be there, soon enough.

But right now he's squatted on the edge of a cliff, feeding Agathe from a sack of loose rats, looking maybe the opposite of Diplomacy. One slips from his hands, all blood and slobber, goes flopping wet onto the group below. Agathe burbles her discontent, too tired to chase. It's been a long week.


WILDCARD

[ game for whatever, hmu on plurk or discord if you've got any questions or want something bespoke ]

v

[doneisdone]

Grim-faced and silent alongside him all the while, Teren's stoic scowl breaks only briefly into a faint smirk of approval at Cedric's approach to the door. If it works, it works.

"Some shit's the same everywhere," she remarks dully, drawing a knife just in case as she skulks into the building after him. Wherever there's an Alienage, one can more or less guarantee it's the last to receive assistance, relief, any attention at all.

ii

[aberratic]

[ ness is not, has never been, a fighter. vazeiros taught her some basic forms, made sure she knew the sharp end of a dagger from the hilt, but it was a desultory tutelage, and she never tried to make him show her any more than he was inclined to. she's here because she has an anchor shard, not because she has any use in a fight.

so of course they've been accosted by—things. possessed skeletons? walking rocks? disembodied limbs? some unholy combination of all three?? unclear.

she's spent most of the fight up to now trying to just stay out of the way and avoid needing rescuing. it's easier than it sounds, practiced as she is at melting into the edges of a room, and so far she hasn't sustained as much as a scratch. so far, no one else in the group has either—they're surrounded, but riftwatch is full of capable, talented people. the fight will likely be over before anyone can sustain any really terrible injuries

was her thought before ness saw the shambling marble mass raise a fist(??) at cedric. she moves without thinking, shoving him out of the way with all her strength, and feels her skin writhe.

the tendrils don't have to come out of the anchor, now. practice with stephen has turned them from something that overtakes her to something she can control, springing less from her than from whatever darkness is around her—and down here in the necropolis, there's more than enough shadow to draw on. at the same time as ness shoves cedric, the shadows between her and the rock-thing solidify into tendrils that batter at it, giving it enough pause that when its fist finally slams down, she and cedric are well clear of it.

less clear of the mass of possessed corpses now very interested in ness, though. ]

GWEN

[dissolving]

He doesn't recognize it.

Couldn't have told you, stood before the gates, who ever lived to left or right. What street wound about to the shop? Where do those memories stitch? A painted sign, the view from a roof; distance stretched for a child's hand. And his mother's room —

There must have been one.

"It was on a corner," He begins, and it's not the first time in the past half hour. It was on a corner. There are a lot of corners. "Farther in, maybe."

But he doesn't move any farther. Cedric pushes out a breath, pushes the heel of his palm to jaw; tense as a struck chord since they left. It goes out of him now. Known it for a while:

"S'gone." One way or another — if the building stands, it's still lost to him. Quiet, "Y'don’t have to be here."

Of course she doesn't. A kindness of the kind she hates examining. The alcove to their left folds along Alienage wall, marked in old graffiti and chipped stone. Further along: Some carving. The edges of script.

jayce talis

[pathlit]

[ split into locations! hmu if you'd like something specific or wild card me! ]

anderfels

[pathlit]

( a, open -- The Blasted Hills )
Nice lodge. Heavy-handed on the antlers and antler-adjacent décor, but beggars can't be choosers. Perhaps they've recently arrived or perhaps the job's been put off until someone's face introduced itself to a cluster of webs. Either way, there's sweeping to be done, up and down and every which way, which means several brooms are hard at work, or hardly working--

"Whoa-ho!" laughs Jayce, narrowly blocking his opponent's strike with his broom. His is a two-handed grip, broom head first and threateningly cobwebbed. "Almost got me."

( b, open -- wilderness ) [ cw: vomit ]
While acclimating themselves to the wasteland that is the Anderfels, a small group touch base with the rogue Grey Wardens. Amongst goodwill endeavors, including the exchange of spices, dried herbs, and clarified butter -- little things unnecessary to survival, but a speck of brightness to an otherwise bleak routine -- they discuss the rebounding population of griffons in the mountains surrounding Kirkwall and the logistics of adding some of those griffons to the Wardens' ranks.

There is, of course, the matter of darkspawn. Until this point, Jayce's experience with the darkspawn was limited to secondhand accounts, written or spoken. After the latest night patrol, his experience now includes 'first-hand': a malodorous, repulsive change that rattles his innards and prompts him to seek solace behind one of many towering rocks, politely affording the other members of the patrol group some space while he retches beneath the rising sun.

( c, open -- The Blasted Hills )
Carpentry isn't part of his primary skill set, but he is an engineer and a smithy who's willing to put in the physical effort, so Jayce can be found reviewing schematics, hauling and splitting materials, and otherwise hammering or welding things together. Shirtless, one might add, because the weather is hot as fuck.

So, after a day of hard labor, rather than return to the lodge to clean up, Jayce and Uggie make a bee-line for a small lake that's just a few minutes away by flight. The water is cold, but clear. Uggie snaps up a few freshwater fish while Jayce freshens up, keeping his pants on if there's company, going nude otherwise.

Of course, he notifies someone before departing from the general group if it's just him and Uggie -- Viktor, if he's there -- just in case. Jayce has died (thanks, Granitefell) and/or gotten lost (thanks, Crossroads and Dirthamen temple) enough times, thanks!

byerly

[bouchonne]

[ gonna do a few separate starters below ]

closed to bastien + benedict

[bouchonne]

The house is a prosperous one. In Gwaren, the salt air and cruel winds make homes decay fast, so the tidiness is all the more remarkable: there's not a single spot of paint curling, not a single shutter askew. Even though it's a rather large space, inside, there's not a single draft that comes through. It's well-made.

Attended by servants, too. Not a large staff, mind - the man who met them at the door clearly works as valet and footman and butler - but to be able to afford help in these times of scarcity speaks to the comfort that the Goodwins of Gwaren have managed to achieve. So, too, does the plush divan upon which the visitors are settled, and the family portrait on the wall: large and well-painted, it depicts two dark-eyed children, a young man with a receding hairline, and a beautiful woman with long eyelashes.

Byerly's eyes linger on that portrait. He's fished a coin from his pocket at some point, a copper, which he fiddles with endlessly, scratching at the metal with his fingertip so that he has something to do. He is, transparently, terrified.

ISAAC | Forces

[wythersake]

i | CROSSROADS

Absent a staff, and borrowed in black, Isaac might pass for a Vint. At least until he opens his mouth.

He has trouble with the mirrors – with keeping them straight. It isn’t so uncommon as it ought to spy him stepping out of entirely the wrong eluvian, or into another. He probably didn't mean to find Antiva. He certainly didn't mean to find Nevarra.


ii | WEST SHREK

I don’t, He’d once told Yseult, Know what it is to be a mage there.

Still doesn't, for all that he can better affect a neutral Trade. West Shrek is its own particular wakeup call. He is used to a hard face or two. He is not used to needing beware them. It's one matter to know yourself lifted from this, and another to look it in the eye, on even footing.

He's here with a purpose. He is looking for a name. He is also being followed by a pair of armed men (guards? recruiters?) half a block back. Ducking into an alley, abrupt:

"Behind me," There are a few ways out of this. Fewer alone. His breath is short, "Two of them."


iii | RIFTER WAGON

Cassiopeia was an early defector: A loud little libertarian, of blunt features and disposition. The years have added crow’s feet, a white streak, a nose that refused to heal straight. She's uniformed for the Venatori, hefting a serpentine staff.

Even from a distance, she looks tired.

From a distance is where he’s held her until now. There are a few of us – She’d written, through contacts and codes – Who want out. He'd assumed, of course, that was full of shit. Someone hoping to flush a traitor, or a Riftwatcher, and wouldn't either be the long shot with his reputation? Isaac's not known for sticking out his neck.

Even so: He's here. She is. Strangers are, with anchors in hand and eyes on their backs. They've just shut the little rift, green threads still rippling the Veil, and they're already being hustled back into cart.

Across the street, holed up by the window of an evacuated loft,

"Do you think them all natives?"


iv | DISTURBANCES / CONFRONTATION

[ one open-to-a-group thread for confrontation, to which he would not willingly take someone he didn't think was cool with mages. but feel free to use the disturbance however u want outside that. we can do recon, or examine the effect afterwards, or take out guards, or you can somewhere thread something without cassiopeia or isaac entirely ]

The city is unseaming. The weft pulls thin, onto raw Fade; a bloom of spell and emotion that comes on at once, with an urgency that shoves between senses. Fury and joy roil through the street on a sudden, wild surge. It is possible, if you listen, to hear a roar. The wet thunk of a head.

Of course, there’s nothing there. A few soldiers pace the street beyond a shuttered ampitheatre, signs for a show plastered over with indefinite hiatus. They're to meet Cassiopeia within.

Within – where an improbable field sprawls, lush and green. Flowers break beyond stone. Vines snake a tangle of thorn. The arena is overrun in growth, summer air singing with life. Stems crack up like little fireworks, blooming at rapid pace to form and unfold before the naked eye.

They wither as quickly. Leaves dry, blacken onto themselves. Petals drop and dust. A grub crawls, only to find itself hardening into case, guts and shell dissolving for a butterfly. It takes a sticky first wing to sky and falls again; dead.

The pace is swifter, toward the center of the ring. In those final twelve inches, roils a chaos of constant motion, continual rebirth. Toward the edges, where sand touches stand, normalcy resumes. Only dry stone, and wood bench, and scattered pamphlets: A man cutting the head from some great Orlesian lion.

Cassiopeia stands at the ring's far end, shaded by the overhang of the gladiators' entrance. She isn't immune to the magic here – nor are you. Enter the ring and wrinkles accumulate, flesh wears, eyes dim. Slowly. Steadily.

Still, the ring's rapid aging lasts only so long as you stand within. Exit in time, and this is only temporary.

"I’ve been waiting,"

She begins, and Isaac tenses, fingers slipping into position; ready to crook for a spell. Whether you aim to recruit or be rid of her, it’s time.


WILDCARD

[ game for whatever, hmu on plurk or discord if you've got any questions or want something bespoke ]

iii

[allthatgleamsisgold]

"No."

He doesn't need to say it aloud, but he does anyway, expression grim. ...Well, grim-er. After all, if a scrappy organization like Riftwatch has been collecting the people falling out of the holes in the world, it stands to reason that the conquering tyrant and his vast armies would find some use for them as well.

He's surprised the Chantry hasn't gathered its own little force of Rifters yet. Or maybe they're just better at keeping things under wraps. Or maybe their alliance with Riftwatch is enough and they have no desire to dirty their hands with the sorts of uncomfortable theological questions Rifters raise.

"They're likely to be bound by - " he frowns, the word temporarily evading him, " - phylacteries. Or similar magics. Otherwise we'd have probably heard about this sooner from some Rifter who slipped the leash."

Swooping down and roasting the Venatori guards would probably be pointless, then, however satisfying in the moment. And he needs to conserve his magic here.

"...What do you suggest?"

FIFI

[untiltheyarent]

I. The Crossroads

A small figure stands with her basket of supplies, looking a little lost as she glances from mirror to mirror-- but there's no urgency to her demeanor, and if one looks closely, it may become clearer that she is enjoying herself.

Periodically her gaze flits toward something that only she can see, followed by a little appreciative smile, disrupted only by the acknowledgment that someone is nearby to assist or (hopefully not) chide her for hanging around.


II. Safehouse Cleaning Service (any listed location)

After each Eluvian is placed, Fifi is dispatched (perhaps with a few others of the maid staff) to begin and assist with the deep cleaning of its corresponding safehouse. She arrives with the intent of working quietly in the background, helping to declutter and sanitize (medievally) each space alongside the teams of Riftwatchers, and although she generally doesn't speak unless addressed, a friendly enough smile is returned to anyone who initiates.

If someone ever wanted to learn how to get blood out of a stone floor, now's their chance!


III. Out and about in Val Royeaux

The one safehouse Fifi leaves is that in Val Royeaux, and only for the day: she arrives through the Eluvian dressed in somewhat nicer clothing than her usual workwear, and has a particular excited glow about her as she slips out into the street.
It's no difficult task at all to trail her, and even less of one to catch up and offer a greeting: wherever she's going, she's too excited to keep it a secret, and she certainly doesn't mind friendly company.

I

[dissolving]

"Y'need a hand with that?"

The basket. There's a sack over his shoulder already, finally wielding a broom in place of anything sharper. It's a cleaning day. His brow crinkles funny, for whatever she’s spied. Cedric doesn't like this place, but there's always something a little catching for joy.

(Hasn't spied her like that before. Come to think of it, hasn't seen her outside the Gallows, really.)

gwenaëlle baudin | forces

[elegiaque]

( starters will be stashed in here. )

hermione, abandoned dwarven outpost.

[elegiaque]

Dwarves are cool.

This is an opinion that Gwenaëlle is under the impression she has sort of always held — like it isn't even an opinion, just a thing that she's observed with her keenly analytical powers of observation. A part of her envies Wysteria her assignment to Orzammar, her access to their clever workings and cleverer minds; wonders, absently, if Kieran still has the articulated dragon she had commissioned from Alexander's dwarven-trained hands. On the surface, dwarf means the Carta, mostly, and bigger Yngvi is never far from her thoughts,

she wonders what he'd think of this place. If it would impress him. She thinks, as she nudges an errant nug aside with the toe of her boot, of him slapping that tree for her sake and decides: possibly not.

But what a lineage—

“This isn't the most glamorous first assignment you could've got,” she feels she must acknowledge, glancing back at Hermione where they're beginning to set up to clear out, catalogue, clean and prepare. “But I've always sort of liked these old dwarven places. One of these days you might see Orzammar, which is a hair livelier.”

What with being a city.

The bite of knives glint at the edges of her deep green tailcoat; she flicks them out of her way, familiar and sure, as she kneels down to crack open a case of supplies. Her working wear is piratical and practical and tailored for her in a way that costs more than months' worth of what Hermione's just started being paid; she would not be out of place on the cover of some kind of illicitly purchased book about the habits of highwaywomen. It isn't completely suited to what's mostly going to be a lot of menial work, but she doesn't seem to be balking at that, either.

ness tavane | diplomacy

[aberratic]

[ starters in the replies, feel free to dm me at plurk supersoldier if you want a thread and we haven't worked something out already! ]

for stephen @portalling

[aberratic]

"This isn't what I'd imagined when you told me we were going to a 'university soirée'", Ness says to Stephen, trying to look haughty and judgmental like a proper player of The Grand Game. It's easier than it might be if she had to worry about managing her expression, with the black-and-purple mask she's wearing covering half of her face. Taken together with the pale lavender gown she got from Gwenaëlle, the fashionably messy chignon her hair is done up in, the sea glass necklace prominent against her clavicle—it's hard to tell that this is her first time at an event like this.

The discomfort is there, though, much as she's doing her best to hide it. This is nothing like the serious, hallowed halls of Candlekeep, where Ness can't imagine anyone wandering around in a ball gown eating canapés under their elaborate mask—she has no room to talk, of course, with the tentacles of her very own elaborate mask flowing around her face. It feels silly, still, entirely unconnected to any academic purpose, and even sillier to believe she could ever belong in a place like this—but this is her job now, and she won't get good at it by thinking that she can't.

A passing server offers them sparkling wine from a tray stacked with elegant crystal flutes, which Ness accepts with a distracted smile. Rather than drink from her glass, she circles the rim with the tip of her finger, the very picture of a bored socialite.

In his head, she thinks So, same strategy we already discussed?

stephen strange | research

[portalling]

nevarra city.

Needless to say, Doctor Strange is thrilled to visit the Grand Necropolis. So when the opportunity arises to answer the summons and help close a rift here, of course he says yes: his head is on a swivel walking through the empty streets, admiring the architecture, for the first time behaving as his closest thing to a tourist. He talks the ear off one of their Mortalitasi mage allies, bordering on an interrogation — what are your best methods for exorcising the dead? are you allowed to explain how you bind them? what’s with the talking skulls and would it be possible to visit one? — so he might need a colleague to please come haul him away before he says something alarming.

Eventually escorted deeper and deeper into the Necropolis itself, their Mourn Watch guide Hezenkoss leads the way, a rattling cage-lift descending to the lowest levels and even the doctor has the sense to be quiet as they enter this grim, revered space. As they wend their way to the cut-off corridor, battle ensues: mages’ fire lighting up the crypt’s darkness, living skeletons clawing their way out of the depths. A possessed corpse, jaw half-ripped off and tendons dangling, comes lunging only for the sorcerer’s gleaming golden shield of magic to suddenly materialise between your face and its teeth. “You alright?” he asks, remarkably chill about all the necromancy. [spookyscaryskeletons.mp3 intensifies]

In all his work, however, the Head Healer hasn’t been much involved in closing rifts — so when it comes to this particularly large one, Strange finds himself struggling. He sinks to one knee, pain ratcheting up his arm, pulsing like a heavy heartbeat embedded in his hand. If you have an anchor, you should pool your efforts together. If you don’t, he could use the help simply to stand.

val royeaux.

He doesn’t mind Val Royeaux, especially when roaming academic circles: returning to Orlais with some correspondence, some supplies and notes from the Research division, following up with contacts from the Riftwatch Cultural Exposition. Lady Clothilde Bonheur, cousin to the Dean of Lydes, has a soft spot for the doctor, so whenever he runs into her at parties, he’s walking the knife-sharp edge of courting her scientific patronage but without leading her on; he sometimes needs an excuse to escape conversation if it starts turning towards talk of wine or dinner.

When she asks him to attend a lecture as a favour to her brother, Professor Thierri Bonheur, Strange gamely complies and brings a colleague or two. Which leads to a lecture hall and a demonstration on experimental botany, a cluster of Orlesian scholars presenting on Fade-touched plantlife and the possible applications for rapid growth. But when Bonheur proudly exposes a sample to a runestone,

the plant explodes into motion, growing fast and furious and punching through the table. People are shrieking, chairs toppled over backwards, gigantic vines growing through the wall. Some tendrils have smashed through the window, seeking sunlight: thick and flourishing and quite literally coiling around Strange as one of the nearest spectators and swallowing him up, yanked into the mass of plant-growth by his leg. There’s a furious buzz of outrage as the audience scatters, Bonheur defending himself (“You have to admit that it worked!”).

In the meantime, the doctor needs some help getting out.

Another evening, he answers the summons to the Baroness de Dreux’s biannual Mid-Summer Mummery and enters the ball to find it filled with stone spires, aggrieved dancers trapped on the ceiling. Some elven servants are trying to reach up to catch them as they jump, but can’t reach. Strange cranes his head to look up at the reversed gravity.

“Huh,” he says, eloquently.

wildcard.

( just wing something at me or hmu @ quadrille on plurk/discord if you wanna brainstorm! happy to do bespoke starters, and i can easily have him present at one of the other locations. )

for vanya (& special guest); nevarra city

[portalling]

It’s a smart idea to have a buddy system, for so many documented reasons. Strange isn’t picky about who he journeys through the Crossroads with, so long as they can put up with his occasional jokes about supervision and tying themselves to each other for safe-keeping.

Today he’s walking alongside Vanya Orlov, and he very politely doesn’t remark on why it’s such a good idea to have company. The other man is quiet and hard enough to read, difficult to tell if Orlov’s bothered at all by being back here. Their conversation remains mostly polite and professional as they head for the Nevarran eluvian, mage and (former) templar together, headed for the crypt exit where they’ll eventually be met and escorted further to the Necropolis by one of Riftwatch’s Mortalitasi allies.

As they approach the mirrors, the sorcerer finally just has to ask: “When was the last time you were in Nevarra City? Has it really been overrun by the undead for almost five years?”

Okay, but sound less excited about it, Stephen.

astrid runasdotten | scouting

[brennvin]

minrathous.

Avvar in the outside world often work as muscle-for-hire, so this is Astrid’s disguise for the week. She moves through the tense strangled city like a paid hireling with an errand to do, which in a way she is: walking briskly, gaze set down the street, shoulders squared.

Espionage isn’t the sort of work Astrid is accustomed to, but with Desidério away, it’s on her to check on their informant. She enlists a colleague to stand watch at the street corner, as she saunters to the wall behind the seamstress’ shop, pulls out the loose brick, fetches some rolled-up papers, then affects nonchalance as she shoves them into a hidden pocket sewn into the inner waistband of her trousers. Message retrieved, they have to break into an even quicker walk, heart pounding, to get away and hopefully not be stopped for questions— but there’s guards everywhere, guards blocking the way down the street, eyeing any out-of-place faces. They might have to talk their way out, or make a distraction.

Afterward, after some time to puzzle out the message in the safehouse, Astrid taps someone to join her to a seaside dive bar. Nervously smoking outside, struggling with her rune lighter, she explains in a low voice:

“We’ve got a contact. This dwarf, Avigd Nista, is his brother. We gotta get him home safe before the idiot keeps pissing off the wrong people.” Avigd’s been drinking too much, throwing his lyrium-smuggling cash around, more money and loose tongue than sense.

“Come in with me and we’ll get him out of there. Pretend we’re bodyguards or whatever. You got much experience wrangling drunks?”

blasted hills.

This is the side of Scouting work that she finds easier: out in the ass-end of nowhere, mostly alone with her thoughts, riding along in the bumpy carriage winding up the mountains on the jostling road trip. She’s used to barren mountains, but the summer heat is nigh-unbearable and she occasionally mutters to herself about the fucking Anderfels and thought it’d be cooler up here.

Once they get to the hunting lodge, however, this is more like it; Astrid wanders, browsing all the mounted animal heads and wondering what went into killing all of them. She takes up one of the bedrooms (with perhaps some friendly competition over who gets one of the nicer ones) and makes herself comfortable. Helps out with the carpentry overhauling the stable into an eyrie; others plan out the work and tell her what to do and she’ll cheerfully carry some wood, swing a hammer.

And she tasks herself to darkspawn duty: clearing out the nearby woods whenever one surfaces and gets too close to the safehouse. She’s sitting on watch today, peering out into the landscape with her bow by her side. When someone joins her, she quirks a smile at them.

“Cozy,” she says.

It’s not.

wildcard.

( just wing something at me or hmu @ quadrille on plurk/discord if you wanna brainstorm! happy to do bespoke starters, and i can easily have her present at one of the other locations; she’ll definitely stop in at seere, too. )

Anderfels - Darkspawn

[allthatgleamsisgold]

Vlast cannot spend one more moment in that lodge and almost eagerly (insofar as his perpetual scowl can seem eager) signs up for watch duty. He'll deal with Darkspawn - he has plenty of experience of dealing with corrupted, hive-minded minions thank-you-very-much. He has less experience dealing with tacky decor.

"That's sarcasm, isn't it?"

He sits down beside her, laying his greatsword over his lap.

"I walked the perimeter twice. Still no signs of movement."

a special guest appearance, Val Royeaux (for gwenaelle and stephen)

[toujoursdroit]

Despite the fact that Gwenaëlle is a reliable enough correspondent and he pays people in Kirkwall to keep him supplementarily informed, it has been some time since Romain has had the opportunity to see any of his grandchildren in person. His hands have been full with keeping his estate and his son in one piece long enough for Thomas to have something to inherit one day, and while he still contributes financially to the fight against Corypheus where appropriate, there has been plenty to occupy him in Orlais itself.

He's already in the capital on business of his own, which makes Gwenaëlle's arrival a pleasant surprise. (Whether the rest of Riftwatch is equally pleasant is a matter on which he expresses no opinion.) It's enough to make him accept an invitation he'd been on the edge of declining, much as his preference might have been for her (and her guest) to stay in. She has work to do, which is certainly something he can understand. So he arrives at the ball , as ever, fully correct in a fashionably conservative but impeccably made outfit. It appears black at a glance, but is in fact a deep midnight blue upon closer inspection. While mostly monochrome, a few silver accents on his clothing match those inlaid into his ebony mask. He does not make an especially inviting figure to most, though his presence will be a small coup for their hostess even if he speaks to no one at all.

[elegiaque]

It would not, actually, be difficult for Gwenaëlle to blend in more than she does. Her wardrobe is not short of silhouettes that better suit the Val Royeaux upper crust; she likes a great big skirt as much as the next fashion-plate aristo. She kept one or two of her masks, just in case, and her grandfather is generous with what she can invoice to him (she'd come early to make their arrangements; Liaissons Dangereuse will be in touch within the week), so it isn't as if she hasn't options. It is therefore a choice, the slim, structured fit of her burgundy gown, the hood she'd arrived wearing dropping into cape sleeves; that in lieu of a mask she wears what would be a jewel-dripping eyepatch if it weren't open to display the ruby eye underneath in place of the usual gold.

The fact of the matter is that her grandfather's ongoing support of her opens doors that otherwise remain closed, and the fact that some of them she wouldn't mind being closed is neither here nor there when it comes to opportunities that they can make use of. The fact that inviting her (Mademoiselle Baudin et companion) had good odds of digging l'Duc out of his disinterest in summer balls is not irrelevant to having received an invitation at all.

Visiting Baroness de Dreux's ballroom to examine her new architectural features will probably involve less actual dancing — or, knowing Gwenaëlle, roughly the same amount. In the meantime, the enthusiastic celebration of a recent graduate's thesis defense that she suspects is doubling as thank the Maker that's done with, now let's dangle the bait and see if we can't get you married, well. She expects the evening to result in some productive contacts for Stephen amongst the university crowd, at least, and if she doesn't stab anyone in the hand she'll call it a success,

“Bon-papa,” she says, markedly more warmly than she's greeted anyone else yet, letting go of Stephen's arm to reach for Romain's elbows and present her barer cheek to be gestured near, at least, “you did come.”

Astonishing they aren't related when they do make almost exactly the same face upon having to socialise extensively. She'd really much rather just absorb ambient gossip at the modiste, but at a certain point it becomes odd that you haven't also worn your new dress anywhere, and the combined novelty of both herself and Stephen slightly off-sets how annoying most of these people find her,

“This is Dr Strange, Riftwatch's head healer. Stephen, my grandfather, his grace l'duc de Coucy,” who she had earlier drilled him would be politely referred to and addressed as your grace or my lord Duke and absolutely under no circumstances besides express and explicit invitation Romain Charnier, his actual fucking name.

bastien | scouting

[cozen]

[ yell @ circuitry on plurk or get me on discord if you want to plan anything. wildcards always welcome. ]

qarinus (ota)

[cozen]

here & there

In Qarinus he has a quiet presence. Literally: he doesn't talk much. When he does talk he defaults to the eastern, coastal Free Marches accent that Yseult has taught him over the years, not because it passes for Tevinter, but because the shapes of the syllables dissolve in the murmur of a crowded street better than Orlesian would. And figuratively: neutral clothing, contained posture, a manner bordering on timid without becoming remarkably so, any glint of friendly mischief scrubbed from his eyes. A man that eyes will pass over without pause.

Maybe recognizable to the people who were with the Inquisition's Kirkwall outpost when he first arrived five years ago. Or maybe not. Being unmemorable is the point.

But for people inclined to spot him or assigned to work with him, he's here and there. Watching both the thunderstorm brewing out over the sea and the movement of uniformed guards on the docks from the shade of a cluster of palm trees, scratching the side of his head to signal when there's a gap in their coverage big enough for their refugee-smuggling allies to move people through it. Meandering through a market, looking at foreign food and enchanted wares with uncharacteristic impassivity—if drawing attention weren't an issue he would be touching everything, asking ten million questions, spending all of his ppocket money to taste whatever he'd never tasted before—and keeping tabs on a tall, dark, gangly, bookish-looking man, Hadrian Neromenius, who's approached the outer rim of the Lucerni with interest in assisting them but is suspected of being an aspiring mole. Or ducking into the lighthouse they're using as a base, hissing Orlesian curses, clothes soaked through and hair waterlogged by the warm, raucously windy storm that's sprung up outside.

a tavern

The mission: meet with Pollia Florens (Polli to her friends), the owner of a local printing operation who's already dipped her toes into anonymous anti-Venatori tracts now being passed carefully around among people judged unlikely to call the cops. The agents: Bastien and whoever he's pressed into service today, motivated by any combination of their being interested, being interesting, and not looking like they had anything better to do.

The location: a tavern on the border between the loud, rat-infested docks, and the less-rat-infested, walled-garden homes of people who want to live near the sea for their pleasure rather than their professions. Nautically themed. The prize above the mantle is the cracked helm of a sunken Qunari dreadnought, around and throughout which a sculptor has added the Tevinter duo of dragon and snake.

Polli Florens meets them in a private room upstairs. She's a broad woman, hourglass-figured, confident, with silver streaks in her long dark braid. With her is a younger woman with eyes so big they're a bit buggy, much less comfortable in her chair, introduced only as Polli's favorite anonymous.

"Red wine, whiskey, or water?" Polli asks the newly arrived Riftwatch delegation, in a tone that suggests there's a right and wrong answer to this question—

So Bastien looks politely at his partner to let them answer first. He can recover from her disapproval of them much easier than her disapproval of him.

a little house

When they arrive, it's already gone wrong. The home's owners (or letters, as it were) are a short, balding man named Gal—short for something too embarrassing for him to admit what—and his taller wife Vorenia with hair enough for both of them, two elfblooded soporati friends of the People of the Silent Plains. The current occupants are Gal and Vorenia, obviously, but also eleven escaped slaves out of Minrathous and two humans running from arrest for dissidence, who've spent the last week crammed into the small cellar below the equally small house, and, unfortunately, two uniformed men who have been tied up where they lay on the floor.

"We'd nearly put them off the scent, but the baby started crying," Vorenia explains once she's hurried the two Riftwatch agents past the threshold and shut the door behind them. The room is dark, lit only by the dying fire. The baby is no longer crying, and a curious refugee has lifted the cellar door an inch off the floor to peer at the scene above. "And Gal... I didn't know he had it in him."

She looks proud. Gal looks like he's going to be sick.

"Must have been a neighbor," he says distantly. He's sitting in a chair, staring at the men. City guards, now taking orders from the Venatori. One is unconscious. The other's eyes are open, flitting around above his gagged mouth to assess the situation. "Or... I don't know. I don't know how they knew. But they must have known."

They were supposed to move tonight, the refugees. They still need to move. There's a ship waiting that won't wait forever.

"They've seen... Do we have to kill them?" Gal asks. The last words are moaned. He leans forward to hold his head in his hands and his arms on his knees.

Bastien isn't sure yet, and if he had to guess he'd say probably they do, but he doesn't want the man to faint. He says, "No. Of course not."

mobius

[favoriteanalyst]

crossroads
[Mobius can be found not-infrequently in the middle of the Crossroads, running a hand through his hair and staring down at some notes in clear bafflement/frustration. He has walked through a couple eluvians. And then walked back out again after realizing oh boy he was not in the right place. He turns his notes upside down, looks at the mirrors again, turns them sideways.]

Could've sworn this one was Qarinus and this one was...

[Oh! You there! Before you go where you're supposed to go:] You got a spare quill or ink on you? Gotta update my notes. I thought I copied the list down right, unless someone's switched up where each one goes. I'm really not looking forward to stumbling into the middle of Minrathous unawares.

seere
[There's??? A whale??? Just stuck in the air???

Karaas is very helpful in telling them about some of the ships gone by when and where as of late, but it's the Maker-be-damned whale stuck in a fit of weird veil-y magic that gets Mobius' attention the most. Because...yes, yes they could be on their way to Seere proper, quite a walk it is, but the weather's nice enough to not require a sailboat nice as the offer is. In theory, the effect should probably right itself at some point. Probably!

But the thing's just stuck there making some alarming noises, and that's no good at all. He stands on the cliffside, hand shading his eyes and squinting at it. Flailing about in the water it has, at least able to breathe but not much else.]

Too far out to do anything from here. We're gonna need that boat. And... [He works his jaw a little.] How many crates you think can get piled on a sailboat before she starts swaying over? [Wait!] Did anyone bring any griffons by any chance? We ought to get some of the griffon riders, get people who can...

[He pales, a little.] Ride out and do something about that. [He's a(n ex-)Templar, after all. He can help do something about that. Um. In the air. Flying. High up. Hm.]

Tell me you've got a better idea.

minrathous
[At least he isn't here unawares.

Frankly, he's only here as a sort of test, an immersion to get him used to the place and learn quick to blend in (or blend out like any other traveler passing through). He isn't do do a whole lot outside of helping with the little underground hidey hole, but he's never set foot in Tevinter before. He's willing to take a short trip "for supplies" as it were.

He makes a terrible spy, so mostly he keeps his eyes open and his mouth shut. There's some commotion, though, down a side street, through an alley, across a way to--a rift. His hands clench, unclench. He can't feel anything in them anymore, but the shard in his right still makes some kind of vague sensation. Itching? Tickling? Maybe even distant pain? In response to proximity. Like a phantom limb.

People are encouraged to keep moving, but just as many stick around like this is a spectator sport. From a safe distance, of course. It's tempting, tempting to jump into the fray or to make a hasty retreat to get reinforcements. But then Venatori appear doing the same damn job with the same abilities. Watched. Watched and then rounded up again not like heroes but like cattle.]

We ever hear anything about their own version of Riftwatch? [Asked to whatever partner in crime has witnessed the same as him.

Of course, that's not the only strange thing afoot in the streets of Minrathous. An area is cordoned off, but that doesn't keep one from seeing nearly half a tower uncertain whether it exists in this plane of reality or not. A different street sees a small but unfortunate section of storefronts dealing with reversed gravity, people and pets and wayward objects falling into the sky for a short distance. A dwarf watches with wide eyes and quietly curses, "they said this would happen" under her breath before quickly heading inside.] Write this down. Quick, write down all the things that are happening; act like you're going to write a paper on this.

antiva
[He politely declines, at first, to participate in the gondola races. He's not a very strong swimmer ("oh, the waters here, they are no problem, shallow enough!"), has never driven(?) a gondola before ("no problem, friend, no problem, is just for fun!"), wouldn't want to make the guild feel like they're being made fun of ("feh, guild, so formal, too formal, we are all friends here!")--

And so he eventually finds himself on a gondola, stick awkwardly in hand.]

Look, you can be passenger if you want, but I'm happy to switch if you want to give it a whirl.

crossroads

[reparo]

[Does she have a spare quill? Obviously she has a spare quill, she's not an animal.

Though Mobius might notice that the bag hanging at her hip, not really bigger than a coinpurse, should not have the capacity for a set of quills and more parchment paper, Hermione still digs her hand inside the opening of said bag - deeper than it should go - and withdraws one quill and an inkpot, sealed, out of it. ]

Here you go - what's wrong with Minrathous, exactly?

hunting lodge (open, one thread please)

[thereneverwas]

"Sure is a lovely--" Barrow leans over to see the text-- "Orlesian Courser you've got there. Think she'll come along with me."

He plucks the aforementioned Courser card from the spread of the player to his right with a smug puff on his cigar, nesting it triumphantly into his own substantial collection of mares.

It's late, too late, at night; the bottle of fine whiskey and box of cigars they found is almost depleted, but the game has only just begun.

[extortionate]

"Aw hell," What a shame. Pretty filly, that. Lazar shrugs, looks aside to the next player — "Oughta gang up on him."

(He has been steadily pocketing a card here and there all night. There's more than one way to steal a horse.)

Vlast | Forces

[allthatgleamsisgold]

Crossroads

[allthatgleamsisgold]

Vlast likes it here, this strange in-between place. Sometimes he comes just to sit and bask in the flow of ambient magic. It's not like outside where the magic flow is little more than a trickle, and it's not like the glimpses he's got of the raw Fade through rifts – roiling rapids waiting to whisk away the unwary.

Here, it is a gentle stream washing over him, cool and calm. He can breathe. He can mend.

(It won't last, he knows. The wound will inevitably reopen, but he's gotten it to a point where it's at least stopped bleeding. Relief is relief, however temporary.)

He spends long hours here, wandering the winding paths, curiously inspecting the broken eluvians or the crumbling remnants of buildings from a time long past. There is so much to learn, so much for him to catch up on.

The books only do so much.

As he climbs up the shell of what once might have been a spire (now little more than a wall) he hums a melody, low and deep;

No more to tame the wind and rain
The skies to swallow whole
She flies no more in glinting beam
And leaves a hollow hole.

Alas her magic strewn in sand
Alas her soul undone...

Clarisse | OTA

[laruetheday]

the middle of nowhere

The Blasted Hills might not be the most sought after spot for a job, but Clarisse isn't complaining. It's free fresh air and a workout, hello? And once they get the biggest cobwebs out of the lodge, the place isn't half bad. The decor is so in-your-face and tacky it reminds her a little bit of the good old Ares cabin. Mounted heads all over the place, you know?

Even though reworking the stable into a functional eyrie is hard, sweaty work, she doesn't mind doing it. A lot of climbing and lifting heavy shit is her idea of a good day.

Currently, Clarisse has her sleeves rolled up to her shoulders (and only hasn't ripped them off entirely because she's not about to pay for a replacement) and has pulled herself up to balance on one of the old stall walls, a heavy wooden beam propped against the same near her feet.

"Hey, lift that up to me?"

(( if you'd like to wildcard, feel free! if you'd rather discuss a closed starter, hit me up on plurk or discord! ))

gwen | qarinus

[laruetheday]

The sweltering heat isn't the only thing that has Clarisse sweating. There are Venatori all over the city, and it feels like their eyes are tracking she and Gwenaëlle as they make their way to the prearranged spot. In reality, they probably aren't being watched (not them, specifically, at least)—but that could change.

And it's hard to shake the feeling that something big is building in Qarinus, and that whatever it is might spill over at any time.

It's just smuggling people out of the city. Pick them up, get them back to the docks. No big deal. Not like they're totally screwed if they get caught or anything.

"Fuuuck," she mutters, and runs a hand over her the back of her sweaty neck for the millionth time since they've set off.

Minrathous; for Basterly

[altusimperius]

It would've been nonsensical to stay behind on the jaunt to Minrathous, if only because Benedict knows the layout of the city (at least the wealthier parts), the language, the politics, and-- most importantly-- the fashion.

Not that anyone is dressing up too nicely under his watch or otherwise; all the better to avoid detection, but he's still got an eye for ensuring they're able to blend in as unremarkable citizens while attending to the safehouse.

He's here, then, taking a chance at procuring some supplies in a lower-class area, Bastien and Byerly in tow, when the sound of a woman's voice nearby stops him dead.
Benedict has come to be somewhat of an anxious type, but he rarely looks so pale as he does now, turning abruptly to specifically Byerly: it's Her.

[cozen]

Bastien's learned to get on with one working ear as well as he's every likely to, but there are things that can't be learned at all. The best he will ever be able to do with the tangle of overlapping conversations in the flow of a busy market is to let it wash over him without trying to follow any specific thread.

Which he hates. Obviously. And twice as much in fucking Minrathous.

But he's less wound up about it than he might be–not none wound up, but less—with Byerly there, walking on his deaf side with intention that's become thoughtless for both of them. Byerly will hear what needs hearing, and most of Bastien's attention can stay on looking like he belongs here and perpetually scanning their surroundings without looking like he's doing anything of the sort, until Benedict is turning to look stricken in Byerly's direction for no apparent reason.

It doesn't mean By has just been struck by an arrow Bastien couldn't hear whizzing in, a quick glance confirms. But it could mean he's realized his boots are out of fashion. It could mean he just realized he left his money in the safe house. Or it could mean they're all about to die. All three seem equally likely, so Bastien loosens his shoulders and grounds his feet, just in case he's about to have to move very quickly.

viktor / research

[grindset]

ferelden / abandoned dwarven outpost / open, one thread;

[grindset]

Roughly ten minutes ago, Viktor stepped through the eluvian with tools in hand. He could have sailed out with it, yes, but he could do a lot of other things he's not inclined to do, and hanging around on a boat for days while his stomach shares its opinions on the six degrees of freedom is not listed among those he's willing to suffer. Not for this.

So, the mirror—a most convenient shortcut, even taking the Crossroads into account—stands some metres behind him. Those tasked with keeping sentry, whether swapped in for the sea-travellers or determined to see this all the way through, occupy themselves around the cave entrance or the Brecilian mists beyond while they wait for this great old dwarven door to budge. As of now, it has moved not at all.

"It's well hidden," he's saying, fingertips running along stone seams, "I'll give them that."

A means to reach the mechanism, that is. There must be an access point somewhere—hopefully not only on the inside, or they're going to have a hell of a time breaking in.

talin shira'nehn | scouting

[dirthsal]

[ individual starters in replies! ]

gallows

[dirthsal]

It's some kind of omen, probably, that Talin's arrival to the Gallows is heralded by a mother fennec and her kits making it through the eluvians and the Crossroads both to take up residence in the courtyard—but what kind of omen, he couldn't rightly say. Reading the signs was never his job; wrangling animals, though, is.

Talin has dropped his pack somewhere behind him and gotten to his knees to approach a nervous kit, making soothing noises as he inches slowly forward. The kit is backed against a wall, but there's room for it to dart to the side if it spooks before he can get a hand on it.

Approaching footsteps earn a calm but forceful "Stop," and once Talin has determined the kit hasn't spooked with the addition of a new person, he gestures toward the left without taking his eyes off of the fox.

"Over there. If it runs, be prepared to catch it."

Congratulations, you've been volunteered to act as assistant fennec catcher!