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

[portalling]

The good doctor is impeded from answering by that vine still lashing him to the left, to the right —

An underpaid teaching assistant has extended a long pole, shouting “Docteur! Grab on!” but he can’t get at it. There’s another flash of magic, and an egg-like shell of warded protection materialises, protecting him from being dashed on the stones. Eventually, the vines settle down and he lets the barrier drop.

“Oh. That.” Stephen untangles said cloak, dragging it loose from an aerial root; the fabric is luxuriously smooth, slippery and cool in his hands. “It does that on occasion, typically during battle. It’s made of Fade-touched silk. After I realised its unique properties, I was tempted to replace my entire wardrobe with the material, but a) it’s goddamn rare and expensive, and b) I figured it might be risky. Phasing through all the furniture, falling through the floor. Still: fascinating.”

Just as the vegetation around them is fascinating. He might be cultivating an intensely nonchalant tone of voice, but part of him is also paying very close attention to their surroundings even after he accidentally pissed off the plants and got himself tangled deeper. This is a tremendous proof-of-concept, and it’ll probably get Bonheur his department grant if he isn’t drummed out of the university entirely; it’s hard to imagine a middle-ground.

[grindset]

In contrast to Strange's composure, Viktor has made, and continues to make, no attempt whatsoever to conceal his interest; it's absolutely clear that were he not folded nearly in half, he would be enacting his plan to go after Bonheur, armed with questions.

"Indeed—"

Pardon him, he's just working to get himself out of this position, which somewhat resembles sitting in an empty garbage can, or perhaps having fallen deep in a lush and leafy toilet. Still game for conversation, though, between moments of effort. (And if it seems at all curious that he's not currently immobilized in pain... yes, it does, doesn't it.)

"As for the presentation, I've seen this sort of growth before, but nothing on this scale." And his would have perished by now. None ever lasted so long. "I would very much like to— I've got it, thank you."

A second intern is forgiven for assuming otherwise, because he does not exactly appear to have it—at a longer look, however, his busy rustling amid the foliage involves wrapping his forearm, working the strand of stems into his palm, getting a good fist around it, and holding the knife in his teeth all the while. Finally, he pulls up a thick twist of vines, loose at one end, and flings them out past his legs like rope. Now plucking the knife from his mouth, pinky up,

"I'd like to examine that runestone. Take those, doctor, if you would."

[portalling]

“I think it fell somewhere over there— where the desk used to be— think the plant’s assimilated the wood.”

Having been almost smashed on the flagstones, Stephen’s on the floor now, still hemmed in on all sides by the vegetation but at least he’s upright and standing on his own two feet, which lets him obediently reach up and catch the vines and hold them taut. There’s not a lot of room to navigate, and they’ll still have to bushwhack their way out and to the front of the lecture hall, but they’re extricating themselves. It’s progress.

“You were working with plants before?”

[grindset]

"It was the last experiment I ran at home."

There's next to no emotion in his voice as he says this, in part because he's fully engaged here, but also because he's had two years to build up a wall thick enough that he can rely upon it to do its duty in public. (Often in private, too, much to his partner's ongoing consternation.)

"Unfinished," as a clarification, comes out equally removed in a way that Stephen may well recognize.

Viktor's arm now comes up with a jerk; the knife flashes wet, severed stems fall away. The greenery beneath him begins to sag, and he seems to find this encouraging.

"Now pull," he says, with the knife held well away from his own face, suggesting some turbulence in his future.

Indeed there will be, as the vines Stephen holds ought to loosen the rest of this leafy nest enough that he'll slip out. The one wrapped around his wrist, meanwhile, ought to keep him from plummeting directly to the floor. He's pretty sure. Based on what? Nothing. Vibes. This is not even a plan, technically, it's more of a whim conjured up by sweaty restlessness. Anyway, here goes—

[portalling]

Stephen pulls.

And it might be a whim but it does work, well-done, one neat severing of the Gordian knot in the way that long years of habit and instinct have taught Viktor leverage and counter-weight and sheer physics, successfully swinging him downwards as he comes rappelling like some very spindly Tarzan out of the foliage.

But the descent is a little faster than expected and so Stephen cries out, alarmed, “Viktor—“ and the sorcerer suddenly finds himself tossing up another impromptu flare of magic, telekinetically catching the falling scientist and cushioning his landing. It’s not pretty, there’s still an impact, but at least it should slow him down for landing without breaking an ankle.

“Where the hell’d your cane go?” he asks, looking around, in lieu of another reflexive are you all right. Once upon a time he absolutely fucking hated always being asked if he was all right; out of respect, he automatically, instinctively veers away from it with Viktor.

[grindset]

Habit and instinct can take a nerd only so far when what he's dealing with is tangled and organic and still moving, actually. He barely has time to feel foolish as his belly lurches weightless, the makeshift tether tearing free of a node that looked more stable than it clearly was.

And then, a wonder. Years later, and it's still miraculous to him—that one might simply fling a handful of magic at a friend, off the cuff. Contrivance transformed to instinct, as natural as the urge to shout. It's exquisite. He aches to count that reflex among his own.

And it makes a fine cushion, if rough, especially given the alternative. Ankles: intact. Tailbone: unfractured. Spine: smarting, now, its figurative goodwill running low despite certain enhancements. His bell charm's effects are limited, and the rest...
...is not an analgesic.
So he'll just sit here a moment, right where the cushion left him.

As to the question of his stick, which he would much rather look around for than discuss his own corporeal welfare, thank you for noticing,

"It's, eh..." A swivel here, a stiff attempt to twist there—nope, that's not happening— "I dropped it right, ehh... right over there... did the plant take it?"

The plant may, in fact, have taken it.

[portalling]

“Hmm,” Stephen says, thoughtful. Through a gap in the foliage, they can now see the worried face of the middle-aged human professor popping up to stare owlishly at them.

“What was in that rune, Bonheur?”

“Only a common spirit rune,” the professor says. (Other details are buried in the more detailed prospectus: soil samples taken from an area with nearby lyrium veins.) “Originally, we were looking into cleansing runes in the hopes of speeding up blight recovery on the southeastern border, but we found some of our control samples were growing faster than expected, which led to this particular experiment—”

Stephen starts to tune him out, rummaging instead to search out that cane. He pulls at a piece of wood jutting out of the greenery, which turns out to be a chairleg instead, the chair itself hanging suspended and trapped in the bush. He keeps looking, eventually spots the relevant implement, and— okay, he’s in tug-of-war with a plant now.

emerges from crypt

[grindset]

"A spirit rune did this?"

His tone, the little crease between his eyebrows, the way he looks up the length of the stalks surrounding them, it's all undisguised skepticism. One rhetorical question down, one statement-as-question coming up:

"You're absolutely certain the accelerated growth you've observed is unrelated to the Blight."

Vascular flora tend to perish when tainted, as far as he knows, but there are those few that survive in spite of it—certain deep mushrooms even seem to thrive upon it. It's worth confirming.

—And it may also be worth simply sitting here for a time in observation of the doctor's mighty struggle. Mere seconds confirm: yes, entirely worth it. Should he offer his knife? Probably. Does he? Not yet, no.

[portalling]

“Wellll,” Bonheur hedges, “No one can be absolutely certain of anything; that is the purpose of science, after all, monsieur Viktor! But Blight kills the soil that these particular plants would have needed. We have seeded earth from several differing locations, however: Orlesian, Fereldan, Frostbacks. Higher elevations, lower ones. The ones we used today were subterranean.”

In the background, Stephen tugs and tugs, and finally yanks hard enough that the cane comes loose and he goes sprawling. Muttering a curse which sounds a bit like jesus fucking christ, he finally hobbles back to Viktor and the hovering professor’s face, and holds out the cane. His ass feels a little bruised from the various falls. What a day.

“At least we can say, Bonheur, that your experiment was a success,” he says. “I suspect Riftwatch will want to see some of those soil samples.”

Their division was never lacking for things to research, and who knew what the practical applications should be if it was mastered someday, but this was— well— interesting. Even if it was just speeding up some growth in their local herb garden, for the infirmary.

[grindset]

The control Viktor maintains over his expression as Stephen abruptly wins the tug-of-war in the least fortunate way possible is only in part thanks to polite self-governance. He's still thinking on what Bonheur has said of the soil that was used to produce this plant. Though subterranean origin could easily mean Blight, he does agree with the unlikelihood of successful cultivation. More likely it means lyrium, or even traces of something Fade-touched... some thinning of the Veil, perhaps a micro-rift, leaching its effects into the substrate...

Still, as he takes his retrieved stick back from the doctor, there is a certain twinkle in his eye.

"Much appreciated. Indeed," he adds, "our provost will no doubt want to examine them." Under her cool microscope. Viktor hopes to have a turn at it.

He has a particular way of using the crutch to get to his feet, which he begins now— nope, false start. Reset. A little rallying effort, lips pressed taut, and there—up he comes, with a fawn-like inelegant confidence—

[portalling]

Stephen hovers nearby, but doesn’t even gesture towards reaching out and offering a hand. He waits Viktor out instead, letting him get to his own feet, his attention going towards readjusting his cape instead; smoothing it out, fixing it so it falls back to its dramatic drape. He still looks distinctly rumpled.

The teaching assistants are flocking on the other side of the hall, a chatter of excited buzz. The safety of his guests now guaranteed, Bonheur extricates himself to check on the students (“ah, apologies messieurs, his father donates to the college, we can’t have him getting eaten by a hungry plant”).

While Viktor wobbles back up, Stephen shifts, fidgeting over that ache in his bruised tailbone. “You seemed interested in this,” he says. “I mean, any reasonable person would be interested in this, but— I thought your specialty was engineering and runes rather than flora.”

[grindset]

As Bonheur departs to tend to the more politically-shaped garden of school finances, Viktor gets his feet under him, fully unbothered by the lack of assistance (he doesn't doubt the doctor thought of it) and only superficially worse for wear, though he'll likely be regretting this and every other choice in his young life tomorrow. (Supplementing in the morning won't be an option, either; he can feel the empty charge of delirium sizzling around the edges, taste the whiff of ozone deep in his sinuses: signs of a limit he oughtn't cross.)

Rumpled, the both of them. Perhaps a touch crumpled.

Neatening the twisted fit of his jacket, with some amusement for how decisively Stephen emphasizes reasonable, "My work took on some tangential relevance to botany later in its development—we used plants as test subjects while investigating arcane influence, not so unlike what the professor was doing here."

How easily the desperate scrabble for survival can be spun into a casual study with just a little flexibility of phrasing. He thinks his dispassion is total as he adds,

"The work was left unfinished,"

but it isn't quite. The barest flicker of something glints behind it—sadness, anger. A grief that won't fade.

[portalling]

“Hm,” Stephen says, thoughtful, weighing it over. “I mostly attended this lecture as a personal favour to the professor’s sister — she’s been helpful to the Research budget — but if you’re genuinely interested in this field, we could stay in touch with him. See how it goes. Maybe chip in. I mean, it’s not my strength,”

he knew blood vessels and nerves and tissue, the workings of meat and animal organism rather than plantlife,

“but our division has a broad umbrella. And Riftwatch travels often enough, and works with esoteric artifacts often enough, that we’re probably a good port of call in terms of arcane influence.”

[grindset]

Though he does concede with a little tip of his head, he must add an amendment:

"Good enough."

Limited resources, limited collection, limited staff—but they persevere nonetheless, and an advisory collaboration is indeed well within their collective capabilities. And even if they didn't end up contributing directly, monitoring the professor's progress would satisfy that completionist itch in the back of his head...

"It's worth keeping an eye on. If nothing else, there's a distinct satisfaction in knowing someone is following your work, which I'm sure the professor will enjoy."

(It's not about him. Don't look at him.)

[portalling]

A good thing, then: Stephen is distracted enough by the chaos around them, and bad enough at reading people to begin with, that he’s adequately deflected and doesn’t notice, doesn’t suspect.

(But perhaps it lodges there in the back of his mind; a little splinter, to be noted down and considered later.)

He snorts a laugh instead. “I’m sure. You know, there was a doctor in my own world, shortly before I came here— they became accidentally popular for some niche analysis into olfactory ethics in literature. Their department was completely overwhelmed by requests to read their thesis before its embargo was even up. Everyone else can only dream of such academic success. Point being, I think you’re right; at least Bonheur would be glad to know someone’s paying attention and he’s not simply shouting into the void.”

[grindset]

"A need verging on universal, among academics and others alike." This look, cast smoothly sideways, fixes squarely on the doctor. "Although experience would suggest we have the market cornered."

There is, of course, a little gleam in his eye. If one cannot occasionally rib a companion, it asks, what good is there in having any? It's not even really an insult, besides—while there are outliers, it would still be fair to say that everyone likes to be understood now and then—but Stephen Strange, specifically, very much does enjoy attention and his little friend here is not afraid to say it.

Speaking of him, he's got himself together now, crutch snug under his arm and all, radiating a silent, Shall we go?

🎀

[portalling]

Stephen sends Viktor a look askance, an answering wryness in his own voice: “Did you just call me needy? You save a man once from ravenous plantlife and there’s simply no gratitude, I swear to god—”

But the crotchetiness is amiable and entirely affected, as they wend their way through the remainder of the flora and depart the ruins of the lecture hall and take their leave, albeit with a promise to later stay in touch with the frazzled professor and his entourage.

And this research probably won’t cause any further problems down the line. Right?