MOD PLOT: A Night Without Moon and Stars

[faderifting]

WHO: Anyone/Everyone
WHAT: Riftwatch investigates a strange occurrence in Western Orlais.
WHEN: Bloomingtide 9:51.
WHERE: Yvoire, on the edge of the Tirashan Forest.
NOTES: OOC post with reward claims. Body horror CW for the main post.

I. YVOIRE

It should have been a straightforward mission. Not a simple one—attempting to help mediate some sort of disagreement between the people of Yvoire and some local elves isn't simple—but straightforward. The sort of thing Riftwatch's diplomacy division has done plenty of times before. From the Hunterhorns base they ride southeast, through the late spring mud to a town on the edge of the Tirashan. Instead of a bit tense, edging toward violence, maybe a little strange in the way remote villages can be, they find the entire town encased in a nearly-translucent, impermeable magical dome. This calls for reinforcements.


II. THE BUBBLE

By the time Riftwatch has arrived en masse, it's been determined that anchors (it will take at least two, working together) can open and close a passage through the barrier the same way they might a rift, allowing teams to enter and explore the area. Inside, they find themselves in the Fade—the sky an unnatural green with no sign of sun or moon, jagged black rocks jutting up from the ground, the air teeming with spirits and demons—but also not. Among the boulders are houses, shops, torn apart by the Fade stone. A barn roof is pierced by a spire of dark stone, a bakery all but flattened. The residents haven't been spared. Some have been crushed by the arriving landscape, others encased within it. Arms reach out from more than one block of dark stone, the crown of a head just visible in an edge, a corpse frozen mid-stride as if charging out of the rock, but caught just too slow to outrun their fate.

The merging landscapes have rearranged some parts of town even more strangely. More than one building has been sliced in pieces, one remaining in place, the others and its contents relocated or vanished. Every book in a library has been severed from its contents, covers slumped in a bookshelf in a bisected library, pages now suspended in a cloud above a pigsty. A pocket of pond water fills an intersection, two drowned bodies floating trapped within it along with the contents of a wheelbarrow and a couple of now-well-fed fish. A copse of trees, uprooted, grow down from a patch of earth that hovers beside the town's small chantry.

As they investigate the fate of Yvoire, Riftwatch will encounter:

• Demons, primarily of the less-powerful varieties but in unusual numbers. They don't manifest in the way demons often do and don't appear to be tied to any particular object or location. They're just here, similar to areas where a rift has been open for a time and demons are already roaming free.
  
• Possessed corpses of the townspeople, some aggressive and violent, others just curiously wandering about the town going through the motions of life.
  
• Spirits, of many different types and degrees of curiosity, communication, and helpfulness
  
• Evidence of explosive magical violence, like a body burned by a flame that seems to originate where they stood, or a person crushed under a bookshelf toppled by the tell-tale blast of Stonefist.
  
• A handful of survivors who have survived by hiding in cellars or other out-of-the-way spots who will report that whatever happened happened the morning before Riftwatch's initial arrival, when suddenly there was a strange sense of pressure and static in the air, as if a storm was arriving, and then everything suddenly flew apart or was crushed and a cloud of spirits and demons appeared everywhere.
  
• At least one survivor will report that some of the elves who have been "stalking" (their word) the village lately were seen sneaking into town before first light, lurking around the chapel as usual.
  
• Some survivors will report family members or neighbors who they had never suspected to be mages suddenly doing magic, often with deadly consequences for themselves and those around them.
  
• And among them, a few people possessed by demons who will present themselves as survivors and do their best to get Riftwatch to help them exit the bubble and be free.
  
• One elf who has been trapped half-inside a tree, his entire right side from ear to toes encased in the thick trunk of a flowering oak that wasn't in this spot yesterday. He is alive, for now.

Fully exploring the area takes time, not only because of the demons but because Riftwatch will find that staying in the bubble indefinitely is unpleasant. Humans and Qunari are affected first, then dwarves, then rifters who have amputated their anchors, and finally elves, but over time anyone may begin to experience headaches, nausea, blurring vision, and feelings of either strange pressure or the equally strange absence of pressure. The exception is anyone with an anchor — they and those in their immediate vicinity will feel fine, and once that becomes apparent, Riftwatch can begin organizing so exploration teams never need to stray very far from someone with an anchor. Even the presence of an anchor, though, won't stop some people from exhibiting the strangest effect of all: the spontaneous development of Fade-touched magic that, unlike the headaches, does not go away when they leave the area.


III. THE ARTIFACT

Yvoire's Chantry is small, the sort of village chapel typically staffed by a single Sister, or maybe a Mother if she's a local. It was a Sister, here—she'll be found dead in a closet along with a number of her parishioners, the apparent victims of a hunger demon. Despite the limited presence of people, the Chantry is a hive of spirit and demon activity, which Riftwatch will have to make its way through in order to investigate.

Once they do, in addition to the deceased inside, Riftwatch will discover another closet that instead of remains contains a patch of stone floor that looks older than the rest, and yet also as if its mortar has been recently loosened. Levering up the large stone tile will reveal a passage into an old basement crypt, shelves of vestments and liturgical supplies covered in cobwebs, niches containing grace goods and dedicatory plaques to prominent members of the chantry past. A path has been tracked through the heavy dust, leading to the far wall, which has been demolished to reveal a different stone wall, this one elven in design. This has been opened like a door, though neither seam nor lock nor hinge is visible, one portion of the wall simply rotated on a non-existent axis to create a passageway.

Inside is a chamber not so very different in design from the chantry crypt: the walls lined with shelves and niches, all of them bare. A strange absence of dust in the room makes it difficult to tell how many were previously full, but several contain stands or racks seemingly designed for display, many in unusual shapes. In the center of the room is a plinth of black marble, the stand in its center still gleaming. There's no ambiguity about the shape it's meant to hold, the spidering fingers plainly designed to contain a sphere.

Set into the wall opposite the door is a frame in the familiar shape of an eluvian mirror, its glass dark and impassable.

Comments

TREE GUY

[faderifting]

The elven man in the tree — the man who now is the tree — does not have long. He should already be dead. It's magic that's sustaining him, and it's magic that's killing him, as any attempt at chopping into the tree will reveal he cannot be removed from the tree that has encased him because he is becoming part of it, and more so by the minute. They have until the process advances too far into his vital organs and brain to try to get information out of him.

The expression on his face when anyone approaches, a mix of pained grimace and furious sneer made more aggressive by the angles of his red vallaslin, suggests this will not be pleasant. Depending on one's approach, however, it may at least be unpleasant in a simple way.

[ OOC note: multiple threads are allowed, and multiple participants in a single thread are fine too if you want to team up. To facilitate the time-crunch vibe you can expect the NPC to die within 5-10 tags, with the upper limit of that requiring attempts at healing or Templar abilities to slow the progress of the spread. NPC tags will be network/action-spam levels of brief, so feel free to do the same. ]

[thereneverwas]

"Healer? 's there a healer about?" calls Barrow from by the tree, where he's doing his best to assess the fellow's state on his own and coming up with only: bad.
"Can you feel your right arm or leg, mate?" he asks hurriedly, circling the trunk.

pile in if anyone wants a group thread

[wythersake]

Isaac leans on the end of his own branch and makes no move to touch the oak — enough of this place points towards contagion. Without contact the brush of his spell is imprecise, a prompt toward growth that snarls in strings already beginning to weave. Animal, vegetable; and magic as like to encourage the latter. He pulls back.

"If anyone's alive, say what you'd have said."

Maybe the Dalish can make sense of it. There are better questions to ask: Who made off with the Chantry's orb? How did they know of it, and did they enter from tree or glass? But the man's going to die, and there's no telling how long he'll last. They may need to chase a lead.

for ness

[elegiaque]

Gwenaëlle has been paying attention to the elf in the tree.

Or the elf that is the tree. Was the tree already there, before the elf became part of it? That seems probable — simpler — but under the circumstances of literally everything around them and much of what she’s witnessed in the past decade, not something to take as read. However it began, it’s become clear how it’s going to end; he knows they can’t help him. He’s got little and less reason to help them, from the sound of things.

Okay. They probably don’t have time for her to think too hard about whether or not the next thing she does is a good idea, so she doesn’t; catches Ennaris by the elbow and starts walking her towards the tree, briskly:

“Tavane. I’ll ask him questions. You listen for the answers.”

Presumably she doesn’t need to be told how, or why Gwenaëlle isn’t being explicit about it in potential earshot of half the company.

Barrow OTA

[thereneverwas]

I. Possessed Corpses (fighting)

It's the violent ones first that Barrow seeks out, making it his prime directive to put them down. The hammer is strapped to his back for this, replaced by the more Templar-aligned sword and shield, albeit without the official insignia; all the better to carve his way through the small mobs, his blade flashing intermittently with holy energy. If he had to stay on the lyrium, might as well make it worth his while.
He sets his sights on the nonviolent corpses when he's convinced the others are cleared, and, unless otherwise talked down, will make quick work of them as well.

II. Possessed Corpses (burning)

Those who were present in the aftermath of the Gallows attack may remember how active Barrow was in the cleanup: strong enough to haul and pile an impressive number of corpses, he resigned himself to the task and is doing the same now. The visible Dalish are set aside-- they have their own rites, don't they?-- but humans are reliably cast onto the pyre, sacred words murmured over each in turn as he lays them to rest.

III. Wildcard

burning;

[interroga]

Cassian Andor is no templar, no mage, has no particular skills when it comes to the landscape warping beneath his feet and people being caught screaming in stone. He has his hands, and nothing else.

So as the bodies are being stacked high, he finds himself at loose ends, drifting and looking for something to do. He wipes off his sword, having helped to at least put down some of those possessed corpses. He stands too long by Barrow’s smaller pile of dead Dalish elves,

(and he remembers a streak of facepaint pressed into his chin, in imitation of what would have been vallaslin)

and he swallows, hard, before he turns and joins the larger man.

“Need any help?”

I. Fighting

[corpsestuff]

Emmrich has never fought alongside a Templar before. For the most part that's due to his encounters largely happening in the depths of the Necropolis and the wisdom of Templar absence from such areas, but they're also a group he's done his best to avoid as much as possible.

That's not a luxury he can indulge in here. As Barrow clearly sets his sight on one of the rampaging corpses, one that practically radiates fury, Emmrich directs his own attention to a pair of inert corpses nearby. With quiet words and a wave of his hands he brings them into motion, sending them directly at the target's ankles where they'll hopefully be more than just a passing hindrance. They latch on, one to each ankle, and the possessed corpse snarls as it staggers.

It's a shame, really. They're in the Fade, and this disruption isn't the fault of the spirits here. But the Riftwatch has to protect the civilians, and so these beings must be dispersed for now.

"All yours," he says just in case Barrow didn't catch why, exactly, two more corpses were suddenly moving.

gwenaëlle baudin | open

[elegiaque]

exploration

the possessed



A member of Forces — captain of the guard, habitually and heavily armed — it is inevitable that much of the work Gwenaëlle is here to do will speak to that. Neither a mage nor a Templar, she has nevertheless found herself on a battlefield riddled with demons often enough to consider it at this point a relatively usual part of her job. She has, moving through the wrecked village, her cleansing blade loosed of its sheath and in her hand, anticipating any number of suitable and effective places to put it—

but that isn’t what she’s doing right now, her head tilted with curiosity, following the bodies of who had been two young women, carrying a broken bucket between them, spilling water faster than they can take it wherever they mean to.



the spirits



The third time the — spirit? thing? — tugs at the edge of supple red leather, Gwenaëlle narrowly avoids slapping it into an entirely new form. She’s been crouched, studying the charring pattern about a corpse that the soaked rag against her mouth and nose isn’t really disguising the smell of as much as she’d like, and it has taken its time about bothering her, each effort worked up to and then delaying the next,

best not to think too hard about why it doesn’t seem to like grasping at the strange-warm armour she found in the Crossroads. It’s probably fine. She curbs her irritation, sets her hands on her hips, and stares down at the wisp of a thing,

“Fine. What do you want?”

— so if you weren’t already there, you might a few moments later see Gwenaëlle striding after a glowing, bouncing thing she’s pretty sure she shouldn’t be interacting with.



the survivors



“I’m sorry,” she’s saying, later, to a woman that same wisp had led her (and you?) to, “I think I found him. It looked like he’d lost control of a spell—”

Bewildered, the villager — Marith, she’d introduced herself — says, “He didn’t do spells.”

wildcard

( throw something else at me, add a twist, or hmu if you want a ~bespoke~ starter! )

the possessed

[wearyallalone]

When Vanya comes up to her shoulder, it's quiet but not meant to startle her. (To that end, he comes from the side with her good eye.) He watches for a few moments too, attentive. When he finally speaks, it's very low, so as not to draw attention.

"It can be difficult, sometimes, to tell at a distance. Whether demons are possessing the living or the recently deceased. If the demon is quick about it, in the latter case, it can go quite some time before the tells begin to show. But it takes finesse, steering a corpse." Living possessions can take advantage of the original inhabitant's ease with their body; wisps guided into corpses in Nevarra have the help of a necromancer (mostly). The jerky motions are far from conclusive, but they suggest something. On the other hand: "If it's a living possession, sometimes the person possessed is actively fighting it. That causes its own signs."

the spirits;

[interroga]

“Is that a good idea?” Cassian asks, falling in beside and slightly behind the woman and the wisp.

He’s new here, but as captain of the guard, she’s probably been briefed about the unfamiliar face: Shadow Dragon, new recruit, vouched-for. Quietly competent, although he looks distinctly out of his depth here in this bizarre landscape; he’s a restless blade without a hand, a man waiting for orders, instinctively looking for somewhere he could be made of use.

He follows her for a few different reasons. For one, maybe this other captain will have orders. For another, while Gwenaëlle looks like she can handle herself, it’s still best for people to have backup and not walk off alone into this nightmare,

and, also, he can’t get out of this bubble without an anchor-bearer.

Rule number two: build your exit on your way in.

the spirits

[corpsestuff]

He hears her voice and sees her expression but neither register right away. Instead his focus is on the little wisp ahead of her and how it clearly is on a mission.

"Oh, a helper!" Only then does it register that he's the only one delighted by this. She, quite distinctly, is not. Emmrich tries to moderate his joy as he stands up from where he was kneeling, watching the fade-fish.

"Ah. I mean they seem to wish to assist. That's not uncommon, for wisps. May I join the two of you, Captain?"

the spirits

[magike]

Rowena had arrived at some point during Gwenaëlle's investigations, standing silently as the woman studied the charring pattern. Rowena had taken the opportunity to assess it herself, making visual observations for the moment.

She makes a sound when the woman snaps at the wisp, and whilst Rowena doesn't quite recognise what it is, she has her assumptions. A spirit, a soul, an essence of a person? Being the Queen of Hell gave her a little insight, and she could feel something from it.

"It sounds as if it's trying to give you some information."

Said much sweeter than the first time they'd met, though perhaps with an edge of condescension to it. Rowena prides her magical knowledge.

wildcard; tree elf autopsy

[wythersake]

"I don't suppose you've a saw?"

Isaac crouches close, palm hovering above trunk. The man's been dead a while, but there's still flesh in there, receding before the steady creep of spell. When they open him up, it'll spill more than sap. Gruesome work, and not the sort he'd be seen at — which must explain the rag about his face.

(A farcical shield, little more than habit. He's seen enough of this place, has spoken with enough survivors, to be identified. To know what he plans to make of it.)

The elf wasn't turned to this naked. There's a chance he carried something still buried under bark: A name, a secret, something they can trace. It's a slim hope; it's worth hunting.

wildcard -- the artifact

[sumptus]

The Chantry is a hive of spirit and demon activity, and that's only one of many reasons Riftwatch is meant to be traveling in teams. Even Caius, presumably, started with a group when he entered the dome, but he's never been much of a team player.

Or a fighter, inconveniently. Somewhere out there, a hunger demon still roams the halls, but here in the closet it's mostly corpses. The Chantry Sister, the charred remains of her parishioners, the nearly unbearable miasma of burnt and rotting flesh wafting out from a crack in the door, and Caius — oversized skeleton of a man, stinking like a farmyard, popping his head out into the hall to see whose footsteps sound blessedly non-demonic.

"Of all the haunted villages in all the world," he says, proving he's watched one (1) play in all his life. Fancy meeting you here. He looks more than a little grateful to see her.

wildcard vignette;

[aberratic]

"...and that's all I could get," Ness concludes her business-like explanation of what she was able to read from the poor elf in the tree. He's silent now, and she can only hope that means he's as sentient as any natural-grown tree, lacking sensation and thought and will. She's too afraid to try to read him again to find out, though.

There's so much going on here that she doesn't understand, references to people she's never heard of and things she has no context for passed between the elf and Gwenaëlle easily. She could ask, of course, Gwenaëlle wouldn't avoid answering her about something to do with their work, but...

Honestly, the idea of talking to Gwenaëlle and her stone wall of apathy is about as appealing as amputating the other arm. Resigning herself to waiting is about as desirable though, stewing in ignorant confusion until she's able to dive into the Archives—to look for information that may very well be above her pay grade, confidential and need-to-know, beyond her ability to discover even if she does manage to make herself be patient—

But she doesn't have to resign herself to that, does she?

There's a brief hesitation, an internal war over this invasion of her superior's privacy... but it's only brief. Gwenaëlle is walking away from her. There are no eyes on her, no one is concerned with what she's doing.

Ness's eyes flash violet, and she slips quietly into Gwenaëlle's thoughts, skimming the surface for anything she can glean.

wildcard pls

[explosion]

Wanda rushes toward Gwen before she slows and speed walks toward her. She doesn't wish to alarm anyone who happens to be watching them, whether they be Riftwatch or villager. Keeping her shoulders tugged back, she tries to emulate Natasha Romanoff, but she isn't quite sure if Natasha would've left the villager beneath the large sheet of heavy roof. Does it matter? Wanda can't help the way instinct calls for her to.

So, she does what she knows Vision would encourage her to: she asks for help.

As painful as it is.

She feels utterly stupid. She feels utterly useless. But death lingers in the edges and centre of this village, and Wanda isn't quite certain of what the urge she feels is. To walk to it? Run away? Yvoire reminds her of Sokovia, with the only difference being unfamiliar faces.

Once she's closer to Gwen: "I need your help." She glances over her shoulder as though she's capable of seeing through buildings before looking at her once more. "Someone's trapped, and I can't move them on my own."

Emmrich | OTA

[corpsestuff]

1. WARNING

To him it seemed obvious where they were the minute they stepped in, and from what he knew and had seen of the Riftwatch he'd think they could all make an educated guess and land on the correct answer, but above all he was a teacher. Making an assumption about what others know only set a group up for failure.

"We're in the Fade. Be mindful of your emotions, and question the reality and logic of what you see and hear." His voice was calm, though he had yet to put his staff back into its straps on his back. He'd pulled it out before coming in and for now at least it was staying in his hand, just in case. The presence of lesser transformed spirits was a comfort, though. They weren't fleeing a stronger, more predatory being. "We are likely not in immediate danger, but do stay alert."


2. POSSESSION ('ARMLESS)

An older woman, missing her left arm and much of the skin and hair on the left side of her face, stared at the library in dismay. "The books, all the books," she seemed to say, sounding mournful. She wasn't bleeding, and she'd taken no notice of her injuries.

Emmrich joined her, gaze on the damage. Obviously the woman was long gone but one must still be considerate and careful when dealing with a spirit that had been caught up in the emotion of the dead and dying.

"It must have mattered a great deal to you." Others were tending to the living. He could help see to the dead and a tangled-up Compassion spirit, even if it might look rather odd to an onlooker.


3. POSSESSION (NOT SO HARMLESS)

"You have to help us." The speaker was a young man. His abdomen was wrapped in bloodied bandages, and the jacket over it as well as his pants were filthy. There was an air of condescension to his words and the way he looked at anyone around him. "That's what you're here for, right? You can get us out of here?"

Of course a Pride spirit would be the first to attempt to cross over, Emmrich thought but did not say. It was strong. It was powerful, old enough to seem convincing, and it was right next to actual, non-possessed survivors which means it couldn't be simply confronted. He'd have to play along and hope for assistance.

"In good time. We must first figure out what's happened, so we know it's safe to remove anyone or anything." That was almost definitely not Riftwatch procedure. Emmrich glanced around to see if anyone nearby had also picked up on Pride's presence, or if he was about to be contradicted.

4. WILDCARD

[Hit him up! His focus will be mostly on helping/dealing with/fighting the spirits and aiding any survivors who are in mourning, but I'm down for whatever.]

'armless possession

[magike]

Rowena was not one of the people tending to the living. Enough were with them, and though Rowena had healing spells, she'd kept that knowledge very quiet. She was taking the opportunity instead to find out more about what had happened, needing to know if she still needed to be concerned.

It was the sight of the library that had drawn her, overhearing Emmrich's conversation with the spirit as she stepped closer.

"Knowledge like this is difficult to replace." She adds the comment with ease, thinking little of the fact that he was speaking to a spirit. It was a normal occurrence for Rowena, given where she'd been before arriving here.

"They're not ever just books."

vanya; csi yvoire

[dissolving]

Survivors will tell: When the lights went out, they went all at once; not a guttering of candles but the fall of some great shadow. They'll say that it was darkest in the Chantry. They won't have seen it for themselves.

There'd been scratching at the door, and a girlish voice. Please help, I'm pinned. It'd taken an axe to clear the makeshift barricade. Noisy work. Through it all, small reassurances, simple questions. Simple answers.

When the lights went out, The voice said, They went out all at once.

It's silent now. The storeroom packs with the dead, slumped atop each other in the way of people first afraid, then very afraid. Something's been chewing at them. Walls score with claws. Cedric hangs back, lifting his anchor as lantern. Briefly, something shifts —

Trick of the eye. The room is very still.

[wearyallalone]

Vanya takes it in, quietly, but he doesn't hang back. Instead, he comes in and crouches (slowly; his knees aren't what they were) to look at the bodies. By the light of Cedric's anchor, the wounds tell a very specific story.

"Given where we are and what's been happening elsewhere, I think we can rule out a wild animal," he says, quiet more out of respect for the dead than immediate concern the demon is still nearby. It might be, but a slightly lower tone of voice won't help if it is. "What a wretched way to die. Maker."

Very carefully, he starts to shift one of the corpses from the top of the pile to the side, to tease the mangle of limbs apart. He supposes most Southerners would just drag them outside in another pile to burn, but at least he needn't explain to Cedric why he takes more care than that.

Gela, OPEN

[sprent]

AMBIENCE
It's highly unusual to see Gela among the ranks of Riftwatch today; she doesn't go anywhere that could threaten combat but, before the slick appearance of the pearlescent dome and the town held within it, the diplomacy party sent ahead had little reason to think it would come to that. Things have changed, but she's stayed anyway. She doesn't have to go inside and probably shouldn't; it doesn't seem like she has a weapon of any kind on her being, just a silk cloak draped around her shoulders, held in place with a clasp. Her hair is drawn back.

She says, "I haven't seen anything like this before."

Green sticks to the inside of the dome. The shapes of what she thinks are people move around inside but both too fast to really be people and also too slow.

She's thinking out loud while she watches. "We should set up a perimeter... And send reassurance to their neighbours that this isn't about to happen to them too." You know. Probably. Hopefully? "The last thing we need are mass evacuations."

SURVIVOR-PRESENTING
The woman who comes to stare at Gela plaintively through the surface of the bubble has her palms pressed flat against it. She's more visible now that she's close and it's so easy to see her expression, how it twists in fright and desperation. The rest of her body disappears behind the translucent shield, torso and legs more indistinct but angled strangely, suggesting pain and injury.

"Help meeeee," she wails. The sound comes through as if from underwater and then she's crying noisily, fogging the dome from the other side. "Please, they're coming. Please help me—"

"We will," Gela urges her, horrified, turning her head at once to look for shard-bearers. Raising her voice now, anxiety in the short, sharp breath that heralds a shout, "We need help! Quickly!"

She can't get the barrier open herself.

ESCORT MISSION
"I can help."

Gela has a knife in her hand — been a while since she's had to use it but it's not like you can really forget how to stab (or at the very least threaten that you're going to do it convincingly). "There are people missing still."

Most of Riftwatch is concerned with battling the demons; finding the source of the barrier; holding off the corpses of the people who didn't make it. Doesn't leave many hands left to coax out the hiding survivors and, in good conscience, Gela simply can't stay out here comforting the people who have broken free. "Can I go in with you?"

WILDCARD
go hard

survivor-presenting

[altusimperius]

He’d come in for reasons similar to Gela’s, not that Benedict doesn’t have combat experience— for his own various reasons he prefers to stick to the sidelines when things get hairy. He’s behind Gela, at her shoulder, eyeing the distressed woman with a look of potent unease.
His hand crackles; he looks from Gela to the woman to the barrier, tentatively extending his hand and wincing as the energy from it catches. This never isn’t awful, but it seems worth doing in the moment, in the interest of aiding someone.

Abby, OPEN

[armd]

SORRY ABOUT YOUR POSSESSED CORPSE
The first dead body Abby sees walking around isn't attacking — only because it isn't looking at her. The man catches her off-guard as she rounds a corner and, instinctively, she kicks him hard in the calf. He goes down yelling a very human, upset sort of wail which is the only thing that stops her from continuing the momentum, and driving her boot heel down into the back of his skull.

"Owwww," says the corpse.

He's very, very obviously dead, made obvious by his smell and the way half of his face has been melted down to almost nothing, something she notices when he flips over on the ground like a fish to look at her accusingly. It makes him seem even more mournful than he already is; he groans, pale hands descending to his leg, clutching it. "What was that for...?"

Abby has never had this happen to her. She opens her mouth and nothing comes out.

CLEARING OUT THE CHANTRY
It's the busiest place in the entire town — Abby has been back and forth across the length of it a few times now, hauling wreckage aside to free survivors, sending the odd possessed corspe scrambling in the other direction, helping anchor-less members of Riftwatch get to where they're going without puking all over themselves. The chantry is in the middle of it all, sitting exactly where it is in good condition, innocent and small. Consistently spawning demons.

"We have to go in there," she says, wiping her brow as she looks at it. "Fuck."

And later, in the middle of the fray —

throwing rift-energy projectiles over her shoulder at anything in her periphery, reserving cruel mace blows for the corpses that stumble and jerk across the floor, their juddering arms outstretched as they get in close —

she shouts aloud, breathless and furious. "How many more?!"

WILDCARD
go hard

chantry, middle of the fray

[thereneverwas]

”Ten, fifteen,” Barrow calls back, all business. He and Abby have done this before, actually; when aren’t they fighting swathes of undead, these days? His sword flashes as he buries it in a corpse’s back, and the spirit leaves it in a gasp.

“Watch—“ he calls, “watch where you’re aiming those things!”

isaac, forces | OTA

[wythersake]

a. documentation

"I've never heard of such a late bloomer."

He's keeping track:

Nils, crouched over his own, smoking hands. Alaina Durand, who no one can get near for the pressure she now radiates. Melisende, electrocuted while trying to pull free of the floated pond. Her burnt body still dangles from it, suspended to the waist.


b. the thing | cw potential animal harm

Flitting between the work and the anchors like a bee to flowers, or a man on hot coals; Isaac sweats against the night. The bubble shimmers before them. A dog scuffs the dirt below, and whines.

"Do you suppose his head's exploding too?"


c. or wildcard me

the thing.

[mournwitch]

As much as there’s a limited amount of time that either of them will be any good to work in here without a shard-bearer handy, Athénaïs has come and gone; she’s at the start of that reset clock, and feeling about as fresh as someone might under the circumstances. Probably, she thinks, gazing at the whining dog,

that may be about to change regardless.

“If we’re lucky,” she says, envisioning what a backend explosion might entail. “Can’t believe Siegfried’s missing this. Are you going to examine it?”

The sound of a woman gearing herself up to have to help, probably.

astrid runasdotten | ota

[brennvin]

possessed.

This year has, apparently, been forcing Astrid to become accustomed to walking corpses no matter what, and so she finds herself morbidly fascinated by these more peaceable ones: they’re not actively trying to bite her face off, not trying to escape their current circumstances. They’re just… there. Mucking out the stables, carrying a bucket of water from the well, caught in a tidy domestic loop.

When it looks like someone’s about to go interfere or cut them down when they stand, Astrid startles, and grabs their arm. “Hey, wait, leave ’em alone—” Plaintively: “Maybe it’s like sleepwalkers? We just let ’em do their thing. Not all spirits are, y’know,” and she mimes gnashing teeth and claws.

stone.

First things first, they’ll need to resolve whatever the fuck is going on in this town before they can fully turn their attention to cleanup, but there’s still some concern pinching the furrow of her brow as she surveys the warped landscape and the bodies trapped in the rock like flies encased in amber. She knows what Andrastians like to do with their dead.

“How d’you burn someone stuck in stone?” she asks aloud. “Like, d’you think we’ll have to hack them out of there first?”

Gross. But not beyond what she’s accustomed to.

lookout. (cw: emeto)

Astrid’s been walking carefully on her still-healing ankle the last few weeks, and it’s still a little shaky, so she doesn’t take herself into the frontlines fighting demons. Instead, she adopts a lookout position, more like a scout befitting the division pin on her jacket: she’s sitting on a rooftop of a house which has been half-swallowed by stone below, the entire storey sunk into the ground until it was easy to climb up here. She sits on a half-crumbled chimneystack while keeping an eye out for corpses and demons approaching their makeshift field headquarters.

It’s relatively early in their occupation of Yvoire. A headache’s been needling at her temples all day, a heavy lingering pressure like her head’s underwater. She breathes in thin, shallow breaths against the rising nausea. Until, finally, Astrid gulps another shaky breath and then— lurches off, to vomit over the edge of the building. Hopefully no one was standing below.

“Korth’s fucking balls,” she mutters. She sounds and looks miserable, face drawn and white. What the hell is wrong?


( Note: The Fade-induced illness which gets better with the presence of an anchor; she could have been on watch with someone else who also doesn’t have one, or an anchor-bearer eventually comes across her like this! Also happy to run w/ wildcards or to write you a bespoke starter, just hmu. )

[dirthsal]

"Shit—" Astrid lurches to the edge of the roof and Talin lurches toward her, one hand curling tight around her elbow to keep her from tumbling to the ground below their perch.

"Asta, you look—" like shit, honestly, but he doesn't finish the sentence, just pushes her hair away from her face, concerned eyes intent on hers. For as long as he's known her, Astrid has been hardy—flames, he can't even remember if he's ever seen her cough. He knows he's fretting but he can't help it, pulling her close to tuck her into his side, pressing his lips to her forehead to check her temperature. "What's wrong, da'fen, what do you feel?"

cassian andor.

[interroga]

( Closed starter(s) below; happy to do others for folks on request! )

talin; cw fantasy racism

[interroga]

Tensions have been slowly simmering in this town, and something’s completely broken down in Yvoire.

For the most part, the Dalish dead — there are not very many of them — have been abandoned where they fell. The townspeople don’t want to touch them. There’s a curl of a lip from the survivors, spitting on the ground, as they gather and huddle elsewhere and attend to their own corpses. If these elves really were responsible for the destruction of this town, then the vitriol makes a kind of frustrating sense, maybe.

Maybe.

Stalking through the ruins, Cassian can feel the red-hot anger brimming beneath his skin; the one he tries to keep tamped down at all costs, a kettle with its lid clamped firmly into place. If he bites down hard enough on his tongue, he can taste blood.

It’s not his place to tell them what to do or what not to do, so he’s on the verge of skulking away until he sees one of his Riftwatch colleagues squaring up against a couple humans. “They’re not from here and they were fucking stalking our village,” the Yvoire man, burly farmer stock, says sourly to Talin, “we haven’t the time to do anything. Just stick ’em in a mass pyre, I don’t fucking care.”

Not his problem, not my problem, Cassian reminds himself,

but before he even really knows what he’s doing, he’s already started marching over to join the dark-haired elf and hopefully interrupt what looks like a no-good very bad time.

stephen strange.

[portalling]

( Closed starter(s) below; happy to do others for folks on request! )

wanda.

[portalling]

They’ve done a fairly good job of quietly coexisting. Wanda’s retreated to the Gwaren outpost, and work keeps them busy; they can sometimes cross paths in the library or sit at the same long dining table for dinner; they can get along, cautiously, without both levitating into the Gallows courtyard and throwing down for a magical duel. They both know there’s more important things at stake. They’ve been taking wary steps towards trusting each other once more, like carefully introducing two cats to each other, letting their territories overlap.

It’s a slow process, trying to remember how to be teammates. And sometimes a rage demon in Rivain comes along and gets you pissed off at each other all over again, so it’s one step forward, two steps back.

But Yvoire needs all the shard-bearers they can get, and here are two, healthy and hale and available to pry open the magical bubble as needed, ferry people back and forth, and safeguard against those odd looming migraines.

Stephen’s not immature enough to request a different patrol partner. So he’s walking the perimeter beside Wanda Maximoff, keeping an eye out for any other spirits or animated corpses or demons trying their luck to attack the town. Along the way, he’s picked up one of the severed books from the gutted library: an empty book-cover, all its pages floating above the pigsty down the road. He frowns down at the bare spine, the straight cut.

“It’s weird,” he says, musing. “Buildings being randomly cut in half, sure, fine. Like a giant arcane chainsaw. But how does the magic know to separate the covers from the contents? Does the Fade have a special relationship to books? Makes you wonder.”

cedric; closed starters

[dissolving]

gwen;

[dissolving]

The people here are scared. They aren't alone.

He does a good job of hiding it: Steady face, steady concern, steady-steady-steady but she knows the tells by now. His eyes and knuckles always tense at a spell, and they haven't stopped since lifting the barrier together. The Fade opens raw above rooftops, swallows stars and sky; claustrophobically vast. And beside it, the Anchor —

You have to choose. That's the thing. The lyrium shutters a door, the shard opens it again. Open. Shut. One hand, or the other, you have to choose.

"Shit,"

Rafters splinter underfoot, threatening to break. The stone impaling this barn holds it upright like a drunk on nails. She's ahead. Always had the lighter step, the better balance, and it's that which opens a sudden hole beneath her feet.