The memorial garden has grown, and grown, become thick with grasses slim and tall or bent beneath seed heads, leaves spreading broad or in fine sprays of green, flowers upon flowers upon flowers. Trees raise twisting branches in praise of the sun. Vines stretch, coil, and cling to weave canopies over walkways. And the building of metal and glass, standing where once stood Kirkwall's Chantry, dominates the skyline with a silhouette of spiralling organic forms.
Within the structure, consuming much of its footprint, is a hole, carved straight down through the city to open its long-neglected depths to filtered light, to air that moves, and life has mustered in village terraces all around its circumference, from Hightown to the lowest of the low. Vent shafts, marked by windmills, pierce the city's crust all around. Darktown's air flows as fresh as that of the clifftops.
Visitors will find the streets clean and lively, its dwellers united by a spirit of progress. All ornament is evolving toward the biotic: ancient stone walls are refined, additions are wrought in iron and steel, round windows form new spirals of coloured glass. Fellowship pervades and technology flourishes. Machines are everywhere: a wagon of alloys pulls itself; sleek-built golems share a heavy load; enormous engines nod, nod, nod their steel beams in ponderous rhythm; others bore through the rock below. All are inscribed with flowing runic sequences and limned in lyrium blue.
Loitering around the greenhouse tower will soon prompt a question from a placid man with iridescent marks, like scars, maybe, across the upper half of his face: Have you come for an audience? It's not a trick—one need only ask, and be led inside.
Or, perhaps one is far below, one of many in a tended garden of gently pulsing vesicles, ready to emerge. The chrysalis stretches, splits for determined fingers. Luminous film sloughs away in strings. Of the body emerging, what was damaged is now whole again; what once was frail is now fortified by a scaffold of some unnamed alloy, branching across the skin to form a shimmering mesh wherever it's needed most. The metal is unyielding to touch, to grasp, but flexes like flesh—alive.
On the face of every emergent soul are ovoid marks, like scars, maybe: five of them, around the brows and eyes, spaced like fingerprints.
All those similarly blessed, their thoughts half-open to one another, to murmur nearby, like the muffled voices of family in another room. Emotions soften toward the pleasant. Heads turn to look, eyes and mouths smile. There are no strangers here; not anymore.
Those who came before, who now dwell here, do so happily—they start families, make lives, enriched by community and all they share. The citizens of Kirkwall share everything, happily, from the food on their plates to the marks on their faces: five, spaced like prints. Some are tasked with bringing unmarked visitors to the towering, twisting, hive-like greenhouse. One simply must be led inside.
The turn begins as a slow erosion of mood. Vitality drains from the streets, though the bodies linger. Gazes persist, smiles lose their warmth. Food spoils in the mouth. Machinery slows, stops. Glass cracks in its frame. Clouds thicken to overcast. The many-hued metals begin to spread, to envelop surfaces indiscriminately with a gleaming, creeping, plasmodial film, sharp-edged where it sets, which mages fall sick to touch. The blue glow dulls to purple, then to a deep red.
Soon, fluid drips from the eyes of citizens and those newly hatched alike—first eyes, then mouths; first pearlescent, then viscous black, as all iridescence decays. They engage in fleeting squabbles among each other, but outright attack visitors on sight, viciously, mindlessly, tooth and nail. It spreads and spreads and spreads, withers the gardens, chokes the air, darkens the sky, gurgles in shrieking throats, rot upon rot upon rot.
Too late to run. The city has changed. The Blight is everywhere.
[be a tourist, live here your whole life, hatch from a magic blister, become darkspawn, present your friends to a twink against their will, etc. will NPC the friendly forehead guy on request, and if anyone enters the greenhouse Viktor will join the thread. catch me on plurk at abyssal or discord at whalesfall if you want V some other way (oh my) or have any questions.]
kirkwall: the herald's collective (oblique spoilers for Arcane s2);
The memorial garden has grown, and grown, become thick with grasses slim and tall or bent beneath seed heads, leaves spreading broad or in fine sprays of green, flowers upon flowers upon flowers. Trees raise twisting branches in praise of the sun. Vines stretch, coil, and cling to weave canopies over walkways. And the building of metal and glass, standing where once stood Kirkwall's Chantry, dominates the skyline with a silhouette of spiralling organic forms.
Within the structure, consuming much of its footprint, is a hole, carved straight down through the city to open its long-neglected depths to filtered light, to air that moves, and life has mustered in village terraces all around its circumference, from Hightown to the lowest of the low. Vent shafts, marked by windmills, pierce the city's crust all around. Darktown's air flows as fresh as that of the clifftops.
Visitors will find the streets clean and lively, its dwellers united by a spirit of progress. All ornament is evolving toward the biotic: ancient stone walls are refined, additions are wrought in iron and steel, round windows form new spirals of coloured glass. Fellowship pervades and technology flourishes. Machines are everywhere: a wagon of alloys pulls itself; sleek-built golems share a heavy load; enormous engines nod, nod, nod their steel beams in ponderous rhythm; others bore through the rock below. All are inscribed with flowing runic sequences and limned in lyrium blue.
Loitering around the greenhouse tower will soon prompt a question from a placid man with iridescent marks, like scars, maybe, across the upper half of his face: Have you come for an audience? It's not a trick—one need only ask, and be led inside.
Or, perhaps one is far below, one of many in a tended garden of gently pulsing vesicles, ready to emerge. The chrysalis stretches, splits for determined fingers. Luminous film sloughs away in strings. Of the body emerging, what was damaged is now whole again; what once was frail is now fortified by a scaffold of some unnamed alloy, branching across the skin to form a shimmering mesh wherever it's needed most. The metal is unyielding to touch, to grasp, but flexes like flesh—alive.
On the face of every emergent soul are ovoid marks, like scars, maybe: five of them, around the brows and eyes, spaced like fingerprints.
All those similarly blessed, their thoughts half-open to one another, to murmur nearby, like the muffled voices of family in another room. Emotions soften toward the pleasant. Heads turn to look, eyes and mouths smile. There are no strangers here; not anymore.
Those who came before, who now dwell here, do so happily—they start families, make lives, enriched by community and all they share. The citizens of Kirkwall share everything, happily, from the food on their plates to the marks on their faces: five, spaced like prints. Some are tasked with bringing unmarked visitors to the towering, twisting, hive-like greenhouse. One simply must be led inside.
The turn begins as a slow erosion of mood. Vitality drains from the streets, though the bodies linger. Gazes persist, smiles lose their warmth. Food spoils in the mouth. Machinery slows, stops. Glass cracks in its frame. Clouds thicken to overcast. The many-hued metals begin to spread, to envelop surfaces indiscriminately with a gleaming, creeping, plasmodial film, sharp-edged where it sets, which mages fall sick to touch. The blue glow dulls to purple, then to a deep red.
Soon, fluid drips from the eyes of citizens and those newly hatched alike—first eyes, then mouths; first pearlescent, then viscous black, as all iridescence decays. They engage in fleeting squabbles among each other, but outright attack visitors on sight, viciously, mindlessly, tooth and nail. It spreads and spreads and spreads, withers the gardens, chokes the air, darkens the sky, gurgles in shrieking throats, rot upon rot upon rot.
Too late to run. The city has changed. The Blight is everywhere.
[be a tourist, live here your whole life, hatch from a magic blister, become darkspawn, present your friends to a twink against their will, etc. will NPC the friendly forehead guy on request, and if anyone enters the greenhouse Viktor will join the thread. catch me on plurk at abyssal or discord at whalesfall if you want V some other way (oh my) or have any questions.]