player plot: catharsis makes me free

[aberratic]

WHO: Everyone
WHAT: Making Heroes of the Veilguard Riftwatch
WHEN: Mid-Cloudreach (April)
WHERE: Riftwatch's dwarven outpost beneath the southeastern reaches of Ferelden
NOTES: OOC post here. TW for spiders and various forms of backstory drama, I'll add anything warned for in top levels!

catharsis makes me free, for i do not prefer to be a prisoner.

For the past few weeks, Riftwatch's dwarven outpost on the outskirts of Fereldan has been experiencing an influx of creepy-crawlies. It started in Guardian with a higher-than-usual number of spiders scuttling about—not entirely unexpected in an underground living area, but notable for sheer volume. Then, in Wintermarch, a deepstalker was caught trying to make off with a nug, and it was only after it was dealt with that anyone noticed—there used to be more nugs down here, didn't there? Investigating some of the unused homes revealed holes dug up from the floors, the presumptive source of the intruder... and perhaps others. Deepstalkers are pack animals, after all.

To deal with these infestations, a greater number of Riftwatch agents than usual have been assigned to man the outpost. For the past few days, members of Riftwatch have been filling in holes in the floor, killing spiders (those are too big to be normal spiders, aren't they? Have they always been that big??), and searching for any other cracks in the walls a deepstalker might wiggle its way through. It's tedious, somewhat heebie-jeebie-fying work, and everyone will need a long bath after to make sure there are no spiders on them, no really, I swear I felt something crawling on my neck—but it's been more or less uneventful.

Which makes it a surprise when, the morning of their last day in the outpost, a number of agents can't be roused from sleep.

I. WAKING UP IN THE MORNING

For the agents who do wake up, they'd be forgiven for being a bit freaked out. Any reaction is understandable when your friends and coworkers can't be roused from sleep by any means you can conjure—not touch, not loud noises, not magic, not pain—and figuring out what to do about it may not come quickly. Someone's gotta tell the Division Heads, probably—hope none of them have fallen asleep too—and maybe somebody should stand watch over the sleeping agents... But no one in Riftwatch would steal from their unconscious coworkers, right?

II. DREAM A LITTLE DREAM

For those asleep, this might be a good chance to describe the memory they're facing without any observers or outside interference to alter it in any way—or you could start it in media res, I'm not your boss.


III. SPIDERS AND DEEPSTALKERS OH MY

The spiders and deepstalkers show up at the same time, and immediately start trying to stake their claims to the outpost. On the spider side, they range in size from a large cat to a particularly well-fed druffalo, with mom being biggest—she's young, and on the smaller side for a breeding female of her species, but she's got a lot of ambition. Ways to deal with the spiders aside from actively fighting them include burning and tearing down webs and destroying egg sacs—though doing either may turn into a fight if the agents doing so are caught. The deepstalkers are the size they should be, but there are approximately a million of them, and the matriarch is crafty: she rarely shows herself and seems almost to have a grasp of strategy in this war. Non-violent ways to deal with the deepstalkers include filling in holes and destroying egg nests, though the matriarch dislikes that as much as the spiders do. The two groups do not get along and will fight each other as eagerly as they'll fight Riftwatch—maybe that could be turned to the organization's advantage?

IV. CONFRONTING CATHARSIS

When the "delegation" to confront the spirit keeping the agents asleep find it, they will find that it...isn't a very scary spirit at all. Catharsis looks and sounds for all the world like a friendly old man, and it's as stubborn as one to boot. It has places to be, you know! There's not very many spirits of Catharsis around, and it's one of the oldest—it's needed in so many places, but it decided to help here because boy, do you all need it. It's happy to let the sleeping agents wake up... once they've untangled the knot it's helping them work on, and not a moment before! That would mean it hadn't helped, and it's here to help! What do you mean this isn't helping, of course it is.

© tessisamess

Comments

isaac;

[wythersake]

I) PRE-SLEEP

"They molt, you know," Leaned over a web, carefully levering an egg sac free. He has no intention of burning it. Cheerful: "Crawl out of these great big husks of chitin. But then they tend to eat it, more's the pity."

The ghostly shells of spiders do capture the imagination. Hang one from the rafters —

"I've always wondered about dragons."


II) MEMORY

"Have a look at her," A bundle of cloth, a squalling face. She looks like any newborn: Pale, lumpy, a bit underbaked. That fuzz of hair will darken, her wide grey eyes will. "She's beautiful."

The way you'd compliment a fine dog, or horse; a friend's painting. Isaac cradles the little body, a man of maybe twenty-five, and in life he can't wait to be rid of it.

Something crawls at his belly. This isn't life, and here his face pulls strange, past the pleasantries and white lies. She's beautiful. She looks like any baby.


III) WILDCARD

[ hmu on plurk if you want anything bespoke. ]

ii.

[dirthsal]

But for the trappings of Orlais, this may well be Talin's memory. Sulana had been passed to him naked, but she had wailed too. Her hair was dark as night, unmistakably fashioned after his own, but her skin favoured her mother's halla milk hue under the blood. She'd blinked up at him with eyes too light to match either of her parents', blood dried in the shell of a pointed ear, and he had held her against his naked chest and promised her—

he'd promised so many things, that day.

"She'll keep screaming until she feels your skin," he says against his own wishes, gutted and hollow and overfull all at once. "My Keeper told me so."

threadlong CW for child death mentions

[wythersake]

Brows puzzle.

He makes a point to know the servants, but Your Keeper? dies upon the creak of a door. There are always eyes here. The faceless bustle of a household exchanging places, upstairs and below; to attend to the family, to press bloody linens into wash.

"I hope she does," Lungs gasping breath, alive and forever greedy for the world. "I hope she screams loud as she pleases."

An impossible freedom. Still, a thumb brushes forehead. Wary of his own impulse to push nose into skin and whisper some remedy; an ache she can't afford. Isaac makes to place her in Talin's arms, but his own stretch along, knuckles tangled in the wrapping. He draws too close, knocks an awkward shoulder. Doesn't let go.

(He never truly had her so long. It wasn't safe to. The last time that Isaac held a baby —)

"How old?"

His children.

strand;

[anthracite]

INVESTIGATION

Strand crouches at a sleeper's side, rolls them over to press fingers to pulse.

"Have you heard of this before?"

Any given explanation would make more sense than spider venom or tunnel gas. There's no hiding a bite from those mandibles, and they're too spread through the caverns to have taken bad air.


FIGHT

"We push one into the other. They'll do the work for us."

Easier said than done. He's tried it already, and that's why he's holed up here; binding cloth about bloody sleeve. Spiders and deepstalkers are ugly things, but they're animals, and bred to the Deep Roads. They know his scent. Doesn't mean they fear it.


SLEEPERS

They're starting to rouse — some before others —

"Easy," Easier, probably, if there wasn't a gaunt man lurking above. Shadows dance. It's cold underground. "You'll be weak."


WILDCARD

[ hmu on plurk if you want anything bespoke ]

sleepers awake

[doneisdone]

"I'm,"

whatever she was about to say, Teren loses it, her eyes-- wet, for some reason-- drifting open to perceive a figure standing above her. Her consciousness comes back a little more slowly than her reflexes, and she draws her knife with an uncharacteristically clumsy jerk.

"What've you done," she grunts, trying to right herself-- the other Warden, she traveled here with him-- were they wrong to trust him?

[anthracite]

"There’s magic on," She's quick — even dazed, even fumbling — "Only took some of us."

He's quicker. Before blade clears sheath, Strand's put himself out of lunging range. When he resettles at her side, the step doesn't quite track. A stutter in the frame. Black gunk crusts about his eyes and cheeks, stains a bandaged arm.

"You've been asleep two days."

Nearabouts. Too busy to stick a head up for the sun and check. He's slower when he reaches for his flask, the motion steady and human.

(He keeps her knife in view.)

[doneisdone]

Teren huffs an angry sound, like a bark almost-- when isn't there fucking magic about, when isn't it fucking everything up-- and rolls onto her side, squeezing her eyes closed at the stiffness of her limbs. They're on stone, she's got no padding, it's been two days, this is going to smart for a while.

"Kill anything?" she asks, conversational. Might as well get to work, and ignore what was happening before this moment.

[anthracite]

"Hope you like fried spider."

They've butchered enough to feed an army. She isn't cutting, which means they must be friends — so after he pulls his own mouthful, he wipes the rim and hands it over. The whiskey's strong, and smoother than a Warden's stipend affords. Good odds he didn't buy it.

"Watcher went after the spell," He thinks. Been a while since Strand's last seen the man. "Might be something left to chase."

If she's still in the mood for killing.

[doneisdone]

She takes the bottle and drinks deeply, paying little mind to the quality or taste: it's liquor, it's hard, and it's taking the edge off.

"By himself?" she asks when she finally comes back for air, quirking an eyebrow at Strand.

julius

[overharrowed]

I. Dreaming

Julius is younger.

Not massively; a decade, maybe. It's his demeanor that's different. Tenser, less tired, more sharpened to a point. He's walking through the halls of what, for those who have seen it, is clearly Kinloch Hold. It's a brisk walk, a purposeful one, but not a run. His staff is in one hand, a pair of books tucked beneath the opposite arm. A Circle mage in the place he is expected to be, looking how he is expected to look.

For all he's been in the Circle for three decades, he's never made any attempt to run. He's not even sure this counts, exactly. Under the circumstances. Still... He can hear loud, angry voices coming from the Harrowing chamber. Someone runs by him going the other way. A mage shouts another mage's name in a room down the hall. The noise always bounces around the stone tower, given the construction and the distinct lack of rugs and tapestries that might absorb sound. He knows exactly how things carry through the air in this place.

Julius ignores it all. Instead, he is working his way down the stairs at his same quick and steady pace. He knows exactly how many before he reaches the ground floor. After that, his experience is more limited, as he's distinctly aware. No matter. A steady pace is the thing for now.

II. Wildcard

[Reach out on plurk or discord if you want to set something up pre- or post-dream time.]

dream

[wythersake]

He's never been to Kinloch. He's been here the whole time. Details swim if he stops to examine them.

Someone bolts past, a blur of their own, and Isaac flattens against wall; instinctive. It's an idiot who runs in a Circle, and apprentices are idiots, and there have been more runners of late. Voices. Shouting —

Timing catches him as Julius descends. Enchanter Kellar, the dream provides, a Loyalist near enough in age.

"Julius," Naked of title, strange and urgent of it. "Wait."

From above, the stench of burning hair.

[overharrowed]

Julius doesn't, though he does slow enough that Isaac can catch him up if he tries. There's a sense of something off, with Isaac there; something he can't quite put his finger on. But that sense of offness doesn't prevent him from engaging. "What is it?" isn't unfriendly, but it has the briskness of someone in the middle of something.

With luck, no one is going to ask what that something is. Julius is relatively senior (for all he hasn't snagged that word in his title) and known to be level-headed. With luck, it might be enough.

[wythersake]

"Do you even know where you're going?"

It's a stumble to catch up. Julius looks how a Circle mage ought to. He holds steady, and he carries the props, and he doesn't turn his head for trouble and that's all as it should be. That's ordinary.

Tonight isn't ordinary. Light flickers where the edges of the dream threaten briefly to link, become some place between nations. Kellar has never been to Ghislain, but he knows it for a distant tower; mired by swamp and fields, and an uncertain border.

Here there's only water, cold and still. The way out is simple, it's anything but. And somehow, he knows, can't say how he knows —

It doesn't lead to Andoral's Reach. Julius looks like a Circle mage ought to, and he's leaving the Circle, and he's leaving the mage.

[overharrowed]

The trick to lying is that you, too, have to believe it. At least partway. That sort of double consciousness has gotten Julius through worse than this, for all he isn't exactly through it yet.

"Did someone need me for something?" Yes he knows where he is going is so clear in his manner that he doesn't bother to articulate it. A question countered with a question, but turned at an angle to avoid seeming evasive. Brisk, but with the understanding that perhaps someone does. Not so engaged as to stop yet. The calibration is precise.

(What Julius might have accomplished in an Orlesian circle, where there was real patronage to court? Where he wasn't playing a game of solitaire half the time? The flicker of a thought could be either man's, for all the Julius in this memory wouldn't have known to wonder it.)

[wythersake]

No, comes the recoil. He doesn't need another debt.

Once, on an evening like this, Isaac watched the infirmary burn and made his accounts: What favours were due, and who'd be the first to collect. He read the sums, past the places they drew close enough to slip, and he chose a side. Stay or go?

He'd gone. He'd never thought to go alone, and resentment furrows of it; strange over Kellar's brow. Solidarity is a calculation, should be. Somewhere along the way, he's lost the sheets —

"You need us," Absurd. Mind (dream) clutching for a reason: "To get across the lake."

Stupid to his own ears. There's distraction all about them, and a plan in his step; if Julius wanted friends, he would have called.

[overharrowed]

When he asks "Us?" this time it is just a little sharp. Solidarity is not a thing that Julius reaches for regularly, or at least not at this point in his life. The Circle is sinking, one way or another. He intends to step cleanly on to the land without getting his boots wet. He'll move lightest and fastest alone, and no one can betray you if no one knows your plan.

This interruption tugs at him, something off. Misaligned. This isn't how it happened, but it is, at the same time. The memory is less crisp than it was, maybe, but no less compelling.

Julius considers making a run for it. Could he get out of Kinloch Hold before anyone has the time to try to stop him? Perhaps. But that's not his way. He still has this situation under control. It can still work as he so carefully planned it, as long as he doesn't lose his nerve.

[wythersake]

"Them." It's us because it's them, and — "Maker, do you really believe they'll forget who you are?"

Those accoutrements, the petty accessories of this life, does he mean to dump them overboard? Else parlay them into some parlor setting, a pretty and acceptable exception. A memory of its own jarred loose. Disgusting as it's foreign here.

When Isaac steps ahead, it's not to block the door, but turn an eye about its edge. For anything that might threaten them both.

Teren von Skraedder

[doneisdone]

Dreaming (cw: death)

It's half a memory and half a feeling, a wash of bitter cold over a day that's moderately warm, the sunlight piercing the clouds and washing everything in a sickly grey. A masculine figure putters in the background of things, by the tents, attending to the horses; Teren sits on the ground, holding a missive, staring. Staring.

If it's not a cruel joke, it has to be a lie. But who would lie about such a thing, and why? Alistair dead, Anders dead, Nathaniel dead. Just like that. Elsewhere, and now nowhere. Their bodies empty meat and bone and viscera, the Them of them gone away. She'll never see them again.

Her focus slides stiffly from the page to a patch of gorse, where a little bee hovers lazily near a flower and then, with no urgency, disappears into it. How can there be bees? How can there be flowers when this has happened?

Wildcard

(tagging into others' toplevels for the other prompts, hit me here if needed)

dreaming

[wythersake]

He's smoking. It's a nice day — nicer than it's been lately — and other people are doing the hard bits; and von Skraedder's quiet. He prefers that.

But there's a look on her face that isn't a look at all, thunderstruck to some absence, and if this is how an apoplexy takes her he'll get no end of shit. Warden Isaac (conscript, the dream suggests, murderer) draws near. Thunks himself into the grass, just near enough to be annoying.

"You've been at that a while," He wasn't wholly convinced she could read. "Anything good?"

[doneisdone]

To be fair to his assumption, it did take her a while to get through the letter.

She turns to look at Isaac, eyes narrowed, uncomprehending-- her usual canniness is supplanted entirely by the face of a lost geriatric. Something is off, but her grief overwhelms it.

She shakes her head.

[wythersake]

Scrutiny: Coordinated enough to hear him, to respond. Pupils steady. The cigarette twitches between finger, falls into a slow, twiddling circle. Isaac can't make out much of the page from this angle, but he hardly needs to. All death letters begin the same way.

I regret to report,

"Take this," He presses the cigarette out, "I'll trade you."

A tug at the edge of page. Testing — he's not about to tug-of-war for it.

They've both seen people die. It's a different thing, with blood on your hands and a heart in your throat; friend or foe, it's different to watch. Better, maybe. Sometimes (Joselyn) he thinks (who?) it must be better. Gives you something to do.

[doneisdone]

She doesn't smoke. Takes the cigarette anyway, and just holds it, her resolve beginning to crumble. If she dropped it, would it burn the whole field and take her with it?

With Isaac's presence, the moment has skewed from reality: it needles at the back of Teren's mind, and the wrongness of it overwhelms her. She drops her head to one hand, eyes squeezing closed in a silent grimace of anguish. Tears wet her face. This never happened, perhaps never will, but it's certainly happening now.

https://media.tenor.com/TrfVrW1Uj-cAAAAM/feel-better-jack-donaghy.gif

[wythersake]

She takes the cigarette, and Isaac takes the letter, and the words change — words do, in dreams —

But the meaning lingers. The air cool against his throat, and still, something catches. A little for Griffonwing, which he'd hated; for Anders, ever so frustrating. For a dozen men he'll never meet, and for the promise of something better, its head staved in the dirt.

It's a little bit for all that. Mostly, it isn't. The page crumples in hand, and when he looks for her, he looks too high; still expecting that tall, frozen frame. Fallen. Folded on herself, and it would be kinder to look away.

(Friend or foe, it's different to watch.)

When he reaches back, it isn't for the cigarette. Isaac hooks the tips of her fingers, the roll burning slow between them. He grips tight.

[doneisdone]

A deep, gasping breath, and she crumples further, her knees giving way to drop with a thud onto the damp ground. Her fingers are held, but don't hold back: she may not remember how, but the small act of sympathy has been enough to demolish Teren entirely. The sound she emits is a broken thing, like a wounded animal, completely foreign to her voice.

[wythersake]

"Yes," He agrees, with nothing in particular; inaudible below that wail. Thumbs move over knuckle, careful to not grind spark into skin. "That's so."

How many other scenes like this? They've made enough of them. He started young; she can't have been older. Every life you take spreads a little rot. That ought to make this better, or at least even —

But the game doesn't play like that. It doesn't get better, and it doesn't get even, and it's lonely to be the one left behind.

Abby

[armd]

PRE-SLEEP: A SPIDER
It's mid-conversation that you find yourself suddenly slapped across the top of the head by Abby — she's not taking any particular care to be gentle so this may ruin a careful hairstyle but in her defence it would have been more ruined if, "Shit, sorry, god I'm sick of these fucking things—" the large spider that was crawling around up there had been allowed to keep doing its thing.

Now, swatted to the ground, Abby brings her boot down on it with gusto.

"Gross." She heard its body squish.


MID-SLEEP: A MEMORY (cw violence, kidnapping)
Abby is happy. She's smiling, bolstered by good news; a warm shadow trails after her inside the old house, a young teenager with dark hair and eyes and a bow slung across his chest by the string. They're headed up the stairs together, talking the whole way, an easy back-and-forth that sustains them until they reach the way out and Abby shuts up to slowly pull her body through the gap between stacks of old boxes and furniture lining the inside of the garage.

It happens fast.

She hasn't completed a full stride out before they're on her — a man knocks her to the ground with a bat and she hits it hard, stunned and shouting for Lev who comes out armed, bow raised, an arrow nocked. It flies, hits someone who goes down cursing, but another man catches his head in one hand and slams him into the half-raised door of the garage. When he collapses Abby screams and twists, pinned and bloodied.

The bat slams into her stomach. She's still screaming and screaming ("Don't fucking touch him!") when everything goes dark—

And you're at the bottom of the staircase with her again, back in the dimly lit basement of the Firefly house; Abby starts to climb the stairs.


POST-SLEEP: A FIGHT
It's like waking up high or concussed, like something is wrong with her arms, and Abby lashes both out as if to knock an assailant back with a full-bodied heave for breath. Thrashing once, she bolts up from the ground in seconds, adrenaline driving the quick, military flick of her head from side to side to take in her surroundings. All she can hear is her own heart. Mouth tastes like blood where she's clenched her jaw too hard in her sleep and gnashed her teeth.

"What," she spits out, rough. Not entirely awake, "Lev."

memory;

[wythersake]

It happens fast.

The memory repeats. Stair, bat, blood. Hardly time to breathe. This isn't his first ambush, and it's certainly not hers because the dream just keeps unfolding, once more; maybe twice, and the speed of it —

Isaac catches himself. Catches her arm. A finger draws over his mouth, sharp and pointless; whoever's up there already knows they're coming. His eyes scratch the surface of the room and find it unfamiliar: If there's another exit, he doesn't know it. Doctor Kellar is a stranger here.

(Where is the boy? Is the boy still moving? He only has two hands.)

[armd]

Isaac doesn't have to worry about the boy because he stops when Abby does and, as one, they both turn to look at him. Abby doesn't say a word — she's straining to listen. She completely understands what his gesture means outside of be quiet and her gaze flicks to the top of the stairs, then to Lev, who nods and eases his bow off, retrieving an arrow soundlessly to fit to it.

Abby, looking back at Isaac, mouths upstairs? and points with her finger. She's already shifted her weight to her back foot and she scrunches her eyes shut in an attempt to count exits, walking all three of them back through the house.

They came in through the garage... but there's a sliding back door.

[wythersake]

A nod —

Front, He mouths, and doesn't know the proper word. Holds up three fingers.

(Impossible, that he should know that; for the ears alone to glean.)

They should run. Split and regroup. Whoever's waiting expects a trio, not separate, moving targets. Maybe it's too late for that. They talked the whole way up, but they've stopped speaking now, and silence is its own signal: Time to act.

Outside, there are bodies on the move. Isaac reaches for something that the dream insists isn't there. There's no magic here, no protection save cunning, and luck, and the strength of her arms. The boy's arrow won't be enough.

memoryyyy

[laruetheday]

"Wait," Clarisse says, reaching out to grip Abby's arm with a tightness bordering on desperation. She feels sick, almost lightheaded with an anger so deep that she has to work to stay in control of her own body.

They're back where they started, at the bottom of the stairs. It's a loop. It's going to keep happening. (It's already happened.)

There doesn't seem to be another exit, at least not from this room. A basement? Yeah, probably. They need to think of a plan, but Clarisse can't right now. The only thing she can think about doing is walking outside and ripping those people apart with her bare hands. How many? Three? She thinks, but—

"Stay here," she whispers to Abby, who's happy and unhurt and has no idea what's coming.