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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.
rowena.
The man has a sword, and sharp blades can do some damage to corporeal demons, but he’s spent years focused on fighting ultimately very human magisters. Methods to take down mages, suppress magic, turn the tables on them, but battling demons in the Fade is a different prospect entirely —
They’ve been thronging in the landscape of what once was Yvoire. They’re weak, but there have been so very many of them to clear out, and Cassian’s but one man without an anchor-shard, without magic of his own, without even a handy enchanted blade to make this easier. He has to be quick on his feet, swinging the weapon to cut into the demon’s warped non-flesh, then trying to dance backwards out of the way of its grasping too-long limbs. His healing stab wound from Minrathous is still tender, hurts like hell if it’s struck, and so he has a worrisome mental image of accidentally ripping it open with too much strenuous movement.
He’s trying to figure out the best way to attack the demon from afar when he has no ranged weapons of his own, when suddenly— there’s a burst of magical flame flying past him, hot on his skin, practically crisping some of his hair, and his head whips to the side to see where it came from, sword still raised.
no subject
She was too far to do much, though a small electric blast at least throws the demon back from the man, putting some space between them before it can attack again.
"I'd run, if you can." Rowena doesn't say it to be noble, even if she's confident she can handle one demon alone, but because of his injury. Don't make it worse and make her have to heal you too.
no subject
“We need to stop it from reaching the town,” Cassian says, stubborn, not giving way yet. It was their job here. The Orlesian villagers (provincial and aggravating as they could be) were definitely, absolutely civilians, their numbers already decimated, the square piled with their dead, corpses still trapped in stone; unlike Riftwatch, they weren’t equipped to fight back the waves of demons that kept circling back in.
no subject
"Move." Is the only warning Rowena gives before she throws her hands out, discharging the magic in a clean arc, the power of it pushing the demon back with the force of the spell.
no subject
Some deep-trained pragmatic loyalty wired from his hearing to his brain to his limbs sends him automatically leaping to the side, hitting the ground and rolling out of the way while the electricity flies cleanly above his head, shoving the demon back.
The air is thick with the smell of spellwork. His side aches where he hit the ground, and he’s scrabbling out of the way. He can keep his head in a fight, normally, but he’s distracted for a second watching the rifter, the magic crackling at her fingertips, realising that she was indeed the source of both blasts. A mage. A rifter mage. Okay. That’s fine.
He hesitates a little too long, and the demon starts slowly climbing back to its feet, its corporeality fraying, one limb hanging half-severed by the attack.
“If you can stun it,” he says, “I’ll hack its head off.”
Does that even work for demons? It works for most things —
no subject
But then the demon's moving and it takes both of their attention. She nods at his request, throwing both hands out as she spells, "Manete."
Rowena can feel it fighting against her magic, her brows knitting in concentration as she holds it, keeping her hands out to keep it contained, paralysed to the spot. He had to be quick.
no subject
Cassian’s fingers grip tight around the hilt, and he swings the sword. It’s good form, well-trained, just as he’s been taught with drills over and over and over. It goes straight for the neck.
And yet the single blow doesn’t do it, whatever passes for muscle and tendon and bone resisting the sharp edge. So he has to swing again, and again, like sawing through particularly stubborn meat, ripping apart what makes the demon corporeal, until the neck is finally severed and it starts to simply dissolve around them, component pieces drifting back into the Fade, suffusing the environment. It fades. Something smells like burnt metal.
“Thanks,” he says, a little numbly. He doesn’t drop the sword, doesn’t have to wipe it off on his trousers (these things don’t bleed like normal), but he staggers backward. His side feels annoyingly wet; the stitches ripped open, somewhere in that daredevil roll.
no subject
"You shouldn't be here fighting." Rowena's moving to his side, trying to lower him to the ground, and if she needs to, she'll use her magic to pull his sword from his grasp to make the struggle easier, throwing it aside rather than using it to force him down.
"Let me heal you, and then we can get back."
no subject
but unfortunately the way something invisible yanks at his sword and suddenly disarms him and tosses it aside makes Cassian struggle even more, abrupt animal panic kicking in. Seeing Rowena immobilise a demon to help him is one thing. Suddenly being on the direct receiving end of that magic himself, his hands reaching empty for his weapon like a child missing its comfort-blanket, now bladeless and helpless, already bleeding, he barely even hears what she’s offering or that she means to heal him.
“No, don’t,” he starts, already trying to squirm out of her grasp and scrabble for the blade again. His heart is pounding hard in his throat. The sensation of that unseen force pulling against him, stronger than him, ripping the hilt out of his hands so easily it was almost offensive. “I need—”
Needs to not feel helpless; needs options to hand.
no subject
"You can be a reckless idiot later." Because she certainly wasn't saving him from a demon only for him to bleed out. Once she wouldn't have cared, now she seems to, even if it's more hidden.
Her hand remains on his chin, the other hovering over his wound. Words are quietly muttered, a Latin spell as she passes her hand over him in the air. He'll feel the blood slowing, the wound knitting together. It won't fully heal, this realm limiting her magic, but it's enough for him to get back without bleeding out.
Once she's done, she releases him, standing. She doesn't offer a hand to him, instead, picks his sword back up, dumping it next to him.
"Are you coming?"
no subject
He’d seen it happen often enough back home. A mage twists their hand and one of his comrades buckles to their feet, movements spasmodic and jerky, almost biting off their own tongue in the effort to get their body back under control. A mage jerks their fingers and someone’s entrails are ripped out.
He reaches for the sword. Takes it. Readjusts his grip and looks up at the red-headed woman and for a second— there’s burning shame, anger, discomfort, gratitude, all of it in a disgraceful cocktail in the back of his throat and on his face, feeling disgraced that she had to see him like this,
but he forces himself back up to his feet. He’s no longer bleeding.
“Thank you,” Cassian mutters, grudging acceptance. (He has a debt, now. He’ll have to find a way to repay it someday.)