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

[elegiaque]

Paying enough mind to be sure that Ennaris is on board, and thereafter focusing entirely on the elf, Gwenaëlle is entirely zeroed in on their work—

and less concerned with the arboreal Dalish’s final moments. This will probably feature in a nightmare, weeks from now, but in the moment she doesn’t allow herself to think about anything except that Ennaris’s abilities might glean them something of use before he’s nothing more than a strange shape worked in wood.

“Was this deliberate?”

[faderifting]

Tree Guy grits his teeth at Gwenaëlle's approach, the red of his vallaslin almost like streaks of blood against his grey-pale skin. He is strong enough still to scoff at this question. "Oh no, it is a coincidence that I alone was sent out here to die while all his people escape. I who have served my purpose, led him to the vault. He needs me no more and now I am dead, what luck for him."

(His mind is all pain and fear and rage, pain above all, searing, stabbing, eating its way up his limbs and into his torso, like being slowly torn in half and crushed at once, pierced and branded. Only fierce will and a boiling rage keeps him lucid enough for sarcasm. The question prompts a momentary pang of uncertainty before anger wins out. Images flick through his mind too quickly to process, trees and trees and elves in a stone room, arched windows, screams, wood growing through his bones.)

[aberratic]

It's fortunate that Ness doesn't experience the emotions of the people whose minds she dives into; she hasn't the will or the rage to maintain her concentration in the face of all this suffering. Even separated from the feeling of it as she is, she can't help a wince.

There are too many possible avenues of inquiry and too few seconds in which to inquire. Without the confidence in herself to choose a path and stick to it as the right one, Ness looks again to Gwenaëlle and shakes her head—she hasn't gotten anything useful from that question.

[elegiaque]

The questions don’t have to be good, exactly. Probably they won’t be; Gwenaëlle is a blunt instrument, not a scalpel. Her participation in interrogation has generally been as the present threat, not the person asking the questions. Hers tend to be direct,

so at least she’d got something useful from him, in that one. She’s not here to get the information, only to sift it closer to the surface, so there’s something inexorable about the calm she meets his anger with, turning what he’s said over only briefly, catching Ennaris’s look out of the corner of her eye without pausing or meeting it.

“What vault?”

[faderifting]

(Pride excitement leading the way shifting stone, coughing shem bone dust, stone wall-no-door locked opening the moment waiting success!! torchlight glaring on gold on marble on bald on orb on mirror glaring, smirking whispers pushing past)

His free arm flaps back up over his shoulder, finger extending around behind his head to point toward the chantry.

(Hurts but good good to move, ripping free and stretching, punching through, ripping free but snapping off like dead wood, wrenching like green wood twisting sinews won't snap twisting twisting no no no no aravels among trees wind through leaves, singing, breathe)

"In there. Under."

[aberratic]

"There's a door that isn't," she murmurs, as fast as she sees the visions, "through it an orb of some kind, a mirror—an eluvian? Someone... bald? The torchlight caught them. He was proud."

Her eyes flicker, focusing on the elf again. A sound surrounds them briefly, drawn from his memory: the gentle flapping of an aravel's sails in the wind, leaves rustling in the breeze, the lowing call of a halla in the distance. She doesn't look at Gwenaëlle.

[elegiaque]

“What did Solas want from the vault? What’s in it now?”

It’s definitely too much to hope that they don’t have to go down there—

hopefully, they might be sufficiently forewarned to be at least minimally forearmed.

[faderifting]

It's a lot to take in, catching snatches of the murmuring, the pleasant but out-of-place soundscape, the question, the pain, hard for an overwhelmed mind to parse through. (wind through trees through sails breath through lungs through leaves sails here mad-wrong soon soon arla ven tu vir mahvir—)

He stares at the pair of them—glares, but it's partly the pain and the impending death and partly just his face, naturally inclined to frowns. But it's partly them, (dark and light one and wide sharp and soft good bones pretty pity pity Solas? Solas ena mir din hahahaha wolf-grin glinting, orb veins like gold gleaming between hands, clang-clatter thieves laughing disrespect, orb tucked in shadow clutched close, need a warrior to guard the perimeter and protect against shemlen ready! ready fool mir solas ena mir din, lurking shadows wrong shifting sifting watching), and his gaze narrows, sharpens, forcing focus.

"He came for the orb. He said I could take the rest but I am a fool to trust Fen'Harel. They stole the treasures and ran, like skinny winter wolves on carrion. What do you whisper to each other?"

skipping ness this round!

[elegiaque]

“I'm talking to you,” Gwenaëlle says, steady, mirrored focus in her one-eyed gaze narrowed just to him. “Why did he need you?”

Or did he at all. A death like this is a message,

that doesn’t mean it’s for them.

[faderifting]

"Only one ear is wood, shem, I see you whispering," (hands thumped on backs whispers skittering off stone walls 'only one more and then it's finally time' shushing as eyes meet hiding grins behind hands behind backs).

"He did not know where it was. I did." (counting tiptoes through dust the old riddles older stones the lord's secrets his secrets) "You need what I know and then you will leave me to die, same as him. Whispering tricks."

[aberratic]

"I don't think we can help you," Ness says, swimming up and out of his mind—it's overwhelming in there, and she really doesn't think she'll be getting anything useful at this point. She really does sound terribly upset, though. "I can... I can bring the aravel back to you again. I can help you pretend you're somewhere else. And I won't leave, I won't leave you alone, I promise."

[elegiaque]

Gwenaëlle glances at Ennaris — briefly, hard to read — and shrugs,

“That’s her offer. Mine is tell me something I can use to make his life harder and I can make that brief. I’m a lot of things, but alike to Solas isn’t one of them.”

She shifts her weight so her coat falls open; twin runic blades strapped to her thighs, soft leather like a garter-belt over the skin that stalks. A quick death, if he wants it.

“He betrayed us, too.”

[faderifting]

"You two are like the Keeper and his wife," he says, an incredulous laugh in his throat, "She is sweet and he is hard and with this they learn everything. They are more subtle than you." He clocks the knives but his eyes stick on Ness a moment, on the sadness in her eyes and in her promise. There is a skeptical angle to his frown that remains but his exhale has a note of resignation as he turns back to Gwenaëlle.

"He seeks another orb, like Daer-- like this one. I do not know where or whose. It is big what they are planning. They talk like they have worked long to get ready and now it is close, only the final pieces. You must be quick."

[aberratic]

There's a lot going on here that's flying over Ness's head—she has a lot to look into when they get back to the Gallows—but she doesn't say anything, just looks to Gwen. Do they have what they need? Can they help him now, and not just interrogate him?

[elegiaque]

He doesn’t finish the name, but Gwenaëlle notes it, commits the aborted syllables to memory—

“Subtlety is one of many things I don’t have in common with Solas,” would be true either way but is probably easier to say, dry, when it certainly feels like they managed more than absolutely winging this had any right to do. “I can work with that. What do you want from us?”

The dream or the dagger. They can’t give him much more than the decision, but it seems as much fairness as is available to let it be his decision.