OPEN | Straight Chillin'

[wythersake]

WHO: OTA
WHAT: A field trip to the Thedas arctic.
WHEN: Vaguely post-Satinalia.
WHERE: The Sunless Lands
NOTES: This is a sandbox log! Do whatever you like, I'm not DM-ing. If you want to do something you think needs mod approval, submit it.

(greg rutowski)


An eccentric merchant is funding fossil hunters in the far South. They've hit a big one.

Now he needs an escort to the site. Special Acquisitions has volunteered to help in exchange for a little goodwill —
and first dibs on any artifacts uncovered along the way.

Though the route promises danger, Riftwatch is thin on personnel. There are deals to broker and data to review.
Researchers and diplomats are as likely to have been sent as scouts and warriors.

Comments

DOWNTIME

[wythersake]

Past the edge of the Kocari Wilds, bog gives way to rising rock. Tundra. Wind.

Day glares off the ice for a short five hours of light. By night, their tents are stalked by the distant eyes of bears. Wooly Fereldan dogs pull a sledge of supplies and those too weak to walk, but most of the space is reserved for rations. The further you travel, the thinner life grows. You can only hunt and forage for so long.

Your guest, one Regis Lyme, is a small man in an exceptionally large coat. He's delighted to discuss your surroundings, and the habits of the nomads who call it home. Any Chasind, Dalish, or Avvar in company will receive all manner of invasive questions about their own peoples.

(He's less interested in the Rifters, unless they make an effort to sound appropriately rugged and daring.)

Isaac is tense. They're a day out when he pulls the others aside: The Inquisition cleared this area of a red lyrium mine. He suspects the dig site may be one and the same.

STORM

[wythersake]

There were people here. But Riftwatch hasn't seen hide or hair of the locals, their tamed beasts and temporary villages. Only a tall stone owl above the remains of a firepit.

So they're stranded when a storm howls down, narrowing sight and sound to inches. Nearby caves promise refuge if the entrance can be dug out in time — act fast, the cold is deadly.

Magic supplies some heat, but you'll still need other ways to warm up. It's possible to get a little privacy in the depths of the tunnel. Paintings layer the walls: Humanoid figures, animals, the spirals of something more abstract. One alcove shows signs of recent habitation, ringing an enormous, giant's skull.

By evening, the clouds clear, and the sky splits onto a dazzling aurora of light. It's beautiful. Too bad it's still so fucking cold.

[allthatgleamsisgold]

He helps with the digging, of course. It's the sort of task he was pretty much brought on this expedition for. Vlast's size, strength, and boundless stamina means he can do the work of three men. On top of that, the magic adds a fourth to that roster. When pure strength doesn't shift one particularly obstinate boulder, it winds up with a brand crystal wedged beneath it, finally forcing it out of the way enough for them to squeeze into the safety and shelter of the caves.

Out of the storm, the chill still creeps through the frozen earth and stone walls of the cavern that the cooking fire does little to alleviate; and so Vlast keeps himself moving, pacing idly between the ancient paintings that have decorated the cave for who only knows how long, to watching the storm rage at the entrance (and eventually the light show that proceeds it). He's being quite cruel keeping his toasty looking wool cloak lined with rabbit fur all to himself, considering it could easily fit one or two more people under it.

Watching the lights dance across the sky, he muses more to himself than anyone daring enough to get close;

"I may go hunting later."

[wythersake]

"We don't need the game."

They will in a day or two, and by then, the game will be gone. Hunting's a fine impulse, and Vlast likelier than most to weather the frigid night. So it can't be that which stays Isaac.

He's arrayed himself by cavern mouth, to watch the storm, to watch for stragglers - to watch, at last, that great wash of light. It's been a long day flattering Lyme and avoiding the dogs, a longer evening fretting after frostbite. Now, flicking the lighter between his hands, weariness outpaces sleep. Boredom does.

They could use the game. He could use the company.

"How do you hunt?"

[allthatgleamsisgold]

Vlast's thoughts follow a similar train which earns Isaac a skeptical huff. He doesn't press the matter; not yet, anyway. They really could use the extra game and hunting won't be so easy when they reach higher elevations.

He shoots a curious glance to the lighter. A small thing, leaving a pleasantly sharp and sulfurous aftertaste in the air.

"Perhaps some day I'll give you a demonstration. ...If heights don't trouble you, that is."

There's the faintest hint of a smile - proud, almost a little smug - there and gone just as quickly. He lets the insinuation for what it is sink in before inclining his head to the snoring bundle of furs by the cooking fire that contains Lyme somewhere in their fathomless depths.

"Your own prey seems quite ensnared. You must expect to find something worthwhile on this journey."

[wythersake]

"The trouble is common sense," Isaac loves the sky, but you don't live in a tower so long without pondering a drop down its side. There was that girl in Ghislain, who talked her way onto a parapet — "Alright, alright. I'll watch from the ground."

Good-natured grousing. Vlast's hinted often enough at wings. If he doesn't entirely believe it, well, it's as with Strange: One might imagine themselves a surgeon so well as a dragon. He tosses the lighter over.

"The Venatori excavate half again as much as us. It pays to keep contacts. And," A tired breath. "I suspect us familiar with the dig site. The Inquisition has been here before."

[allthatgleamsisgold]

"Trouble might be mitigated by this talk of gliders."

Redundant for him, but useful for those without the advantages wings offer. Then again, the one at the helm of their design - she seemed far more trouble than any tumble out the sky. At least when the ground comes up to meet you, there's very little left to worry about after.

The little good humour he has evaporates into his usual grim sobriety.

"Something there that shouldn't be? Or something that should be there and isn't?"

[wythersake]

"You'll forgive me if I don't look to the Qun for safety."

In parachutes, or anything else. Enough said of that.

"There's a mine, seeded with red lyrium. A great number of the locals were exposed before its clearance." And the nomads have given them all a wide berth. He can't imagine the forward party of foreigners received any warmer reception, any verbal warning. "The Inquisition reports were classified. And the corruption can be,"

Absurd, the way he searches for the perfectly picky word:

"Pernicious."

[reparo]

By comparison, she might be the weakest link here, but she'll be damned if she goes down freezing in a cave full of artwork. When lacking the proper spells to keep herself warm - those had been so useful in Taravast! - or the proper attire - she misses her dragon-made cloak so much - she has to make due the old-fashioned way.

She's doing an awkward hopping-skipping sort of dance as she paces, Riftwatch cloak wrapped tight around her, breath steaming in the air with every exhale.

The declaration cuts through the silence, and Hermione gives him a look. "Alright?" And muttered under her breath, "Show-off."

[allthatgleamsisgold]

"It has been a long time since I've hunted under an aurora," he says with a shrug. A part of him misses the northern Shiverpeaks. There is a certain stark allure to such places he cannot deny however much he waxes poetic about the desert, and the Frostbacks remind him of the snowcapped peaks with their bitter winds and harsh, unyielding beauty.

He takes his eyes off the shifting, dancing lights long enough to watch Hermione's own ungainly, hopping dance. He wonders first if she is just doing some bizarre exercise (he's seen some of the warm-ups in the training yard, thank you), before the situation clicks.

With a huff, he lifts part of his heavy cloak, lets it fall over her.

"You should have packed better for the cold. Mountains are without mercy."

[reparo]

He's not selling her on not being a show-off with that comment about hunting under an aurora. (Vlast is cool, we get it.) She can't imagine it for herself, but if it keeps him happy, glory to him and all that.

There's a quiet moment, between the hopping and the sudden warmth, where he approaches as she studies a painting that's faded with time. "Do those look like deer - oh."

The heavy cloak brings up the temperature by at least a twofold, and startles a laugh out of her. "So are a Rifer's wages," she points out in jest. Then, pause. "How is the inside of this so soft?"

[allthatgleamsisgold]

"Rabbit fur," he explains, "and lambswool."

It's not a pretty cloak - the wool is undyed and there's no uniformity in the colours of the pelts used to line it, but it's warm and relatively lightweight like the rest of Vlast's attire. Best of all, it doesn't itch.

"The pelts are easy enough to get. Better, some clothiers offer discounts if you provide some of the materials."

[reparo]

"It's so soft," she murmurs. And honestly, what does it matter if it's pretty or not, as long as it's functional? It's a warm cloak, in a frigid environment; Vlast is winning at being prepared.

Hermione isn't one for heavy armour (she's not worn armour in her life), so her clothes are mostly that. Clothes. Whatever Riftwatch gives to start-up soldiers, like Rifters who just join Forces because they want to be useful on the field.

She's making a note to keep an eye out for pelts.

"You'll have to point me to clothiers, in that case. I would hate to wander into a store that thinks the best way to dress people is to skimp on fabric." Orlais.

[allthatgleamsisgold]

Vlast's minds eye also conjures images of the absurd Orlesian fashions; gaudy without a hint of practicality that are little more than displays of wealth.

"I will show you when we return. In the meantime, you can borrow this."

If he gets cold while they travel, he has a quilt that he can improvise into a decent substitution.

"Why were you curious about the deer...? Are they not usual subjects in human painting?"

hi zeus

[reparo]

It does not fully compute that he intends to lend her his cloak, because she's deep in the woods of her own thoughts. See, fashion.

Sometimes, she spots a person wearing one of those masks, and what they think is the height of fashion, and she can't help but wish Wrathion were here to witness them. Then again, either they'd both share a Look, or he would start to incorporate Orlesian details into everything he creates, so maybe it's a good thing he's not?

(It's a good thing it's just her. She tells herself this every day: it's better that it's just her, and nobody else from either Akhuras or her world. She misses her friends, she misses her found family, she misses her actual family, but she has to accept the fact that somewhere out there, Hermione Granger is carrying on with her life without any awareness of the split. It's a good thing it's just her, and she does not feel lonely at all.)

"Oh no, they are, I just haven't seen them much here - I keep noticing halla instead, so I was curious if they exist as a biosphere's replacement for deer." A pause, then as an aside joke: "Like chickens, instead of harpies."

[allthatgleamsisgold]

"Chickens exist in my world," he insists with a sprinkling of petulance in his tone. "I just preferred hunting harpies."

He gives due consideration to the paintings of deer...? Maybe harts or elk this far south. The work is a bit too stylized that to his own eye it could be any of the three.

But it brings up something that's been niggling at the back of his mind since arriving here.

"It's strange," he says slowly, "what commonalities each world has and doesn't have."

[reparo]

She bites back a smile, head facing forward - gaze deliberately on the paintings. "That's fair, I suppose. In my world, chickens are basically domesticated animals - you'd barely need to actually hunt them..." Not that Hermione tolerates the idea of hunting harpies?

A core memory gets triggered at the thought of harpies. The top of a fortress, four factions fighting off armies of undead and harpies swooping in. A harpy's clawed feet catching Hermione's cloak, flying up and up and up, only a severing spell managing to get her free, and plummeting, plummeting, -

On second thought, maybe not all harpies have rights.

"It does. Makes me want to keep a written record of it," she admits, a bit more chipper. "But methodically. Maybe go at it in categories. Plants and flowers, animals and magical creatures, cultures and historical events."

UNDEAD MAMMOTH

[wythersake]

The Venatori dug this lyrium mine, and the Inquisition burned it. Smashed the cages, broke the scaffolds; freed, and killed, and cleansed whatever they were able. They left nothing worth returning for.

Not to Corypheus.

But above the scorched and blasted remains, wave a team of beaming fossil-hunters. A mix of academics and mercenary guides, they've been chipping at the enormous, frozen corpse of a mammoth for weeks. It's still buried. The excavation goes slowly, but faster than expected — the ground is strangely warm, melting the beast out for them.

That's a bad sign.

When it happens, it happens fast. Trunk wiggles under pick. A horrible crack, a rumble that shakes the earth itself, and the entire cliffside shears off into a crash of snow and stone. Those dodging the avalanche still need to contend with the possessed mammoth.

It bellows, enormous tusks threaded with crystalline growth, tall as twice the greatest war elephant. And mad. The spirit of this place — of all its bloody Rage — infests the shaggy corpse. A trunk thick as trees throws rocks for rag dolls. It stomps, it kicks, it tramples. Its hide studs with layers of spiky rime. Bringing it down won't be easy.

Later investigation reveals a seed of red lyrium still cradled in the mountainside, tendrils spreading outward from the chest of a small, fully-crystallized corpse. A local. Someone must have tried to escape the Inquisition's first assault.

Lyme alternates between the thrill of adventure, and outright hysteria for the site's destruction. He, and the others, will need to be watched closely to keep from toting home tainted flesh and rock.