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."

[extortionate]

Guy pauses, and that's enough to shift the serving fork in Lazar's hand. A better grip. He watches Yseult over the back of head and parlour chair, eyes the slant of her shoulder.

Alright. He rolls the grapefruit back onto tablecloth. Lowers the fork, not too far,

"You're employing degenerates," Is a helluva a thing for a Vint to spit, especially one got his money like this. Not slaves, but cheap workers: Mostly Ander, shipped off for a bid at the good life. Maybe some of the pay will even make it home, bait in the pot. "I expected better of our mutual friends."

"Dunno why," Murmured, behind. They're pirates.

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."

[extortionate]

"You want surprise corpses?" A grunt of effort. Alright, they built the tombs here thick. "Heard of that shite, you know. Rock wraiths. One of them casteless told me, way back."

This is not, precisely, what they told him.

[thereneverwas]

There aren't many flashpoint topics for Barrow, to the extent where one might wonder if anything ever makes him angry: the way his shoulders tense and he stops what he's doing, turning toward Lazar with a strange light in his eyes, suggests this might be one of them.

"They're fucking interred," he snaps, "show some respect."

Hearing himself, he turns back around with a grumpy shake of his head, perhaps ashamed of the outburst-- "we'll hear rock wraiths coming."

[extortionate]

Eyes narrow. Barrow doesn’t blow often –

Tempting to strike, way it's always been tempting. A gong, a skull, a hornet's nest. Reaching for the limb that won't hold. But Barrow slugs hard, and it's been a long week without much to show, and maybe graverobbing's just too far for Chantry.

So he leaves the bar. It hangs there, still picked under lid edge. Lazar dusts his hands and spits: Mouth smeared grey with sooty tomb-shite.

"What’s eating you?"

[thereneverwas]

Just a bit too far, it's fair to say.

Applying himself a little too intently to oiling the door, Barrow doesn't look at Lazar.

"Nothing," he bluffs, but after an awkward pause, adds, between swipes with the rag, "...corpses were people."

[extortionate]

"Yeah, mate." He squints. "So's ashes."

Ashes were people, and people have got stuff, and – right. Focus up.

"You don't want none of that Nevarran shite do you? You gotta tell me if you do."

Obviously, he'll be there when Barrow dies.

[thereneverwas]

"No," muttered grumpily back, "I fucking don't."

He works in silence for a little too long, stewing-- Lazar is curious, asked what he's about, but he isn't even certain he has the words for it: that corpse could be anyone, could be your Mum, your neighbor, your first sweetheart. To see the body after death, let alone engage with it, kill it again, is the stuff of nightmares--

he throws the rag down, finished as he's going to be, and moves to walk off. A nerve has clearly been touched.

[extortionate]

A grunt. Lazar lets it be, waits for him to go –

Then checks down the hall. Waits again. Counts footsteps: Fifty, sixty, before levering the edge off the coffin. Empty. Not even bones, and it's a right pain to get the lid back on right. Make it looks undisturbed.

But he does. Wouldn't bother, save that later, he'll go find Barrow; crouched around the nug-spit. Fat crackles. Dumb little things sniff about the edges of the (night? day?), hungry for their kin. One runs over Lazar's boot,

"Need your fuckin' cats," Make quick work of nasty hands, might also shove off this strange mood. "Least they wash their paws."

[thereneverwas]

"Wouldn't leave anything for us," Barrow grumbles, ladling a bit of grease over the nug as he turns it. If he's still stewing over what happened before, or if something new has darkened his demeanor, it's hard to say: impenetrable even at his most cheerful, now he's like stone.

He does, however, pick up the whiskey bottle he's been nursing and silently pass it to Lazar.

[extortionate]

He takes a long swig – look, only ever the first one's guaranteed – and doesn't yet move to pass it back. There are limits to how far Lazar's consideration ever extends, and just now he's squinting down the neck of the bottle.

"You know, Astrid don't snore half so bad as you."

[thereneverwas]

"Saying you miss me?" Barrow grunts, furrowing his brow and nearly smirking-- even in his foulest of moods, it's hard to resist banter with the right person.

"Or should I pick out a wedding gift?"

[extortionate]

"Saying you don’t gotta sleep out in the yard," By Lazar’s reckoning, Lia’s a damn lucky pull. Hasn’t escaped him that Barrow doesn’t feel the same. "But figure you do owe me and Sybelle."

None of Riftwatch got them shit. None of them knew she existed, either, but that's not his fault.

[thereneverwas]

"Ah."

He catches Lazar's meaning, and Barrow stares into the fire as he contemplates a response-- then, perhaps unexpectedly, he mutters:

"doesn't feel right, bunking with a woman." what if she sees my underwear. what if I see hers

[extortionate]

The way he squints for that —

"What?" Well, Lazar’s got a lot of languages. Just that right now, he looks like Barrow’s spoken backwards Qunlat. "Weren't you in the army?"

[thereneverwas]

"We had dormitories, mate."

Come on man, Barrow's face seems to say,

"You think they're going to throw a group of stirring mixed-gender adolescents into a room together at the Chantry? They need the girls to become Templars, too."

[extortionate]

Well look who's fancy, with their doors and dorms. Whatever's wrong with Barrow, it's half the same with Astrid; asking on propriety and all.

"So, what. You never slept with a girl?" His brow's furrowing. "Lit-rally, I mean."

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.

[extortionate]

"Only good thing it's made."

So it can't be that great. Lazar goes for his flask, remembers only when his fingers thunk metal that it's empty. For the twelfth time today, it's empty.

"Time was they'd like you, though." Wardens are heroes. A flash of grey for all that ichor-black. "Cut a man's throat, and they'd throw a damn parade."

Doesn't mind Siorus standing out here, himself. Long as he doesn't stoop up, Lazar's not the tallest thing in the storm's path.

[wildered]

Siorus hasn't quite had time to smile about that first part before the second quashes the urge.

"Yeah," he says.

His pause isn't long enough for interjection. They're just him working his way through something. Trying to keep from scowling, with mixed results. Trying to keep from insisting on not being grouped in with them, also with mixed results.

"Good thing it never went to their heads." Their, not our. The mixed part. Dry. Angry. "Maybe it'll be different, if the Anderfels gets out from under this. Something'll have to be."

He lifts his canteen from his side in silent offer. It's watered-down wine, nothing flask-worthy, but if Lazar wants his mouth wet more than he wants his nerves numbed, it'll work.

[extortionate]

He's scratching under an arm by the time Siorus passes that canteen, watching open the way his face twists. Their, and grit in the throat, and alright. Not the only conscript he's known.

"Unless different takes the Blight with it, figure it's just fucked." Takes a swig, doesn't pass it back just yet. Figures he can get two in before stretching the limits of patience — "What'd they get you for?"

[wildered]

"Far as I can tell, they were out collecting mages for a demon army," is his dry and less than generous interpretation. Wouldn't quite fit the timeline, for the Wardens who took him and Rhian from Fereldan to already know what plan was dawning in Orlais. But they were all the same to him, and it all happened in a blur.

He doesn't ask for the wine back.

[extortionate]

If Lazar's got thoughts on how anyone strong-arms a mage the size of a cart, he's distracted by chugging.

"All that seemed daft," Around a swallowed mouthful, bit of purple clinging to his beard. "Demons crawling out the damn sky, gotta be an easier way to do it. So, what, they block the exits on you?"

How's it taken him so long to make a break?