Fade Rift Mods (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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faderift2025-05-18 07:08 pm
faderifting) wrote in faderift2025-05-18 07:08 pm
MOD PLOT: A Night Without Moon and Stars
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.
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.
we love to body horror /king julius voice
At least it’s nothing fine; a workman like blade, not meant for shoving into trees but nothing she’ll cry over later if it’s damaged or blunted in the process. It crosses her mind briefly — maybe she should get a better sword? — but there are other, more pressing concerns. She wonders what the elf’s name had been, that he had never said.
Maybe Tavane knows. It can wait.
Appraising the dead elf in the questionably healthy tree, she says, “Do you think it’s worth copying down his tattoo? I got half a name of who his treasures belonged to.” It’s always fucking something with these elves— worship tied to something like this may mean connections they can follow, elsewhere. Put Talin, so eager to be put to work, to work.
no subject
So that cuts out half the pantheon. Isaac's brow pinches, reaching for something that ought to be farther away. Working the Fade while standing within it is a particular challenge. All too much, and too near. Guessing the height of the elf's chest,
He doesn't touch the bark. Beneath his fingers, it begins to darken and crumble. Nails crook, encouraging the hole to bore deeper. It's fucking slow. It'll be faster when —
He sucks in a breath under the mask, as the runny smell of meat dribbles down.
no subject
More than the nothing they had before speaking with him, anyway. As she speaks, she’s knelt down, rifling through Isaac’s bag for the promised paper and lead; if there’s probably some of both in her own things, well, he’s offered his and she does inventory for the infirmary often enough it won’t be hard to replace for him if she has to have a few goes at this.
—her face registers the smell that’s just hit her before she knows it’s going to. Death and the accompanying realities are far from unfamiliar to her, but there’s something about the way it mingles with the fresh scent of new growth that’s just…
“Solas is so fucking dramatic,” she mutters.
no subject
Not dissimilar to what beats against her back. Leander is as involuntary a thought as ever, but that was never transmutation but a strange binding. One thing melted into another; sloppy work, beside something so mythically complete.
Isaac’s often wondered what other men make of magic: Out of reach, impossible to grasp. Lately, he feels a little nearer understanding.
Both hand scoop back now, a poor imitation of a shovel, and rot pulses deeper into trunk and heartwood, carried over human vein. Easier to encourage the spread. Here and there it touches tatters of cloth, already unspinning themselves into bark. Flax and hide are little different to the spell. He has more hope of metal, of bone. Of anything enchanted.
A hollow caves in the stump that was his stomach, and there’s been no time for the wood beetles to lay their eggs, for maggots to squirm free; but there are spores everywhere. They burst into fungus now, too quickly, rapacious in their bloom. Isaac stops digging. Can't risk the man’s face. And steeling himself to pick through the innards will be another matter.
"They've more than one name, if you believe our Dalish."
Dairn might act some piece of title. Levathanir, Falon'din. Talin is the nearest they have to an expert, but Solas had laid similar claim. It needn't be malice — people differ, understanding does. Theories by their nature compete.
(He's counting the days until some Rifter calls another's bluff.)
no subject
A conclusion she’d come to long before Sarrux’s Pass — the only reason Solas knew the faces of her family so well to reproduce them in art had been her first miserable fucking experience in an elvhen ruin — but one which that experience had certainly underscored, unnecessarily solidified.
“One he’d probably find funny, too.” As she begins working on what’s probably going to be only her first pass at reproducing the vallaslin, she says, “Thranduil talked about bringing the Dalish on side by impersonating their gods. I didn’t put it all together at the time, but it’s obvious now, it was Solas he had in mind to work with him on that. I don’t know how much he already knew when he floated it,” not as much as he did later on, “but I’d factor that into your estimates of what our errant Fade expert is capable of. I saw things, in shared dreams— things I wouldn’t have credited, then, for anything.”
no subject
"Was that all he needed of us? The joke," Perhaps they had that answer of him, while Isaac was off cringing Southward. He shakes his head. "I suppose many hands share the load, but he might have walked into this place himself."
He hardly required the backup. Maybe that says a little more of Isaac than Solas' taste for followers.
"What did you see?"
no subject
She glances up at him, stretching her neck out of a habitual tilt.
“So. Arlathan before the ruin. He put vallaslin on my face with just magic— I don’t know how the Dalish are doing it, but I bet it’s more like what I got in Nevarra. The joke he made, to Thranduil, about forgetting who was there to be worshiped,”
her little shrug is elegant.
“Look, six years ago that just sounded like a sex thing.”
no subject
It shouldn't surprise him that she's ahead of the distinction: Baudin's been about long enough, has a writer's grasp of metaphor and a history of interfering with Rifters. And apparently, she's fucked their Fade expert —
"There was that fad in the High Quarter," He'll kindly not invoke her grandfather just now. "And them? Did they bear any marks?"
no subject
“No.” She frowns, thinking about it— “Maybe Thranduil.” Maybe not; at the time, she hadn’t been focused on picking up details that would turn out to maybe matter a half-decade later. She had thought it would bring them closer, and it hadn’t, which in retrospect might have more to do with all this than not. “Solas didn’t,” is the part she’s certain of. “The difference wasn’t being an elf or not, either. In the dream I was an elf.”
Hey, let’s not unpack that.
“The way he talked about it was like.” She thumbs the fastening of her corseted armour, near her sternum, where beneath it a locket lies— “Like Vauquelin green or imperial livery.”
no subject
Isaac pushes up a sleeve, still putting off the work ahead — there'll be no getting the smell out —
"He," Their erstwhile tree. "Insisted he was tricked. I'd the thought of a sacrifice. Whenever our Northern friends rip the Veil, it seems to ask blood."
Servants are marked, slaves are branded; and he'd practiced on rats before anyone handed him a human wound.
no subject
If the Venatori aren’t digging up elvhenan dead, now it’s Solas doing it— and he actually knows what the fuck he’s looking for, and more than that, why. He isn’t chasing myths, ransacking graves in the hopes he’s interpreted some ancient mosaic correctly; he was there when most of them were built, rubbing shoulders with the builders.
Or at least the people who owned the builders. And just look how that revolution turned out for everyone.
Still: “It’s dramatic to not be.” A sacrifice. Purposeful. “And he got very snide when I asked if it was deliberate, but under the circumstances, I didn’t take it personally.”