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

[thereneverwas]

Barrow may be smarter than his general archetype might suggest, but having only recently (in a comparative sense) begun to travel outside his homeland, identifying accents has never been one of his talents. Not Fereldan is the label most would wear, with the occasional Obviously Orlesian, but something as detailed as Minrathousian is beyond him.

"Ferelden," he says easily, Cassian's reply sailing right through him-- they've had Vints before, and no doubt will have plenty more before the effort's through. "Crestwood." A faint, wry smirk, "ever been?"

[interroga]

“No. Too far south,” Cassian admits. “I’ve been to Denerim by sea,” in the way that most cosmopolitan people might have reasons to stop by the capital but nowhere else, “but I had work. Didn’t see much of the city.”

A city that had particularly suffered under the Fifth Blight, then struggled in the years after and had to rebuild; a city whose comforts and amenities paled next to the architecture and marvels of Tevinter. Unlike so many of his compatriots, though, he didn’t curl his lip in distaste over it. He’d spent more time in Docktown than the halls of the Magisterium.

[thereneverwas]

A grunt of pleasant-enough acknowledgment, and Barrow takes no offense from it. Most people haven't been to Crestwood, unless they're passing through it.

"Y'know," he muses, looking blandly at the pyre of burning people, "I've never actually been to Denerim."

[interroga]

“Really?” A blink of surprise. “Even now?”

Pre-Riftwatch doesn’t shock him. If Cassian had just shut up and stayed in Ferrix like he should’ve, then he probably wouldn’t have seen the big cities either: he’d have gone to work in the mines like every other sturdy solid man from the mountainside he knew, day-in and day-out, spending their whole lives toiling away on behalf of Minrathous without ever seeing its supposed wonders.

This particular organisation, though, seemed to wind up everywhere. (The eluvians helped.)

[thereneverwas]

It's almost funny-- or at least the newcomer's reaction is, and Barrow is forced to smile a little, offering a shrug.

"Just never made it over there," he admits, "...s'pose I could, now that we've got the eluvians. But haven't had any particular reason to." Once a person has seen Kirkwall, any other city is going to pale in comparison. ...or at least that's what he tells himself.

[interroga]

“No interest whatsoever? It’s your capital.” Cassian tilts his shoulder into a shrug. “Everyone back home’s always on about it if you’re from the country. Ohhh, you’ve never been to Minrathous, you have to go to Minrathous, see the floating palace.”

It’s evident from the man’s dry tone, though, that he’s being a little sardonic, tongue-in-cheek, poking fun at that exact attitude. He knows how it sounds.

[thereneverwas]

Chuckling to the extent he'll allow himself under the circumstances, Barrow shakes his head.
"Dunno." Raising his eyebrows at Cassian, he smiles at him, an expression somehow as warm as it is abstruse. "Got hit pretty hard during the Blight. Lot of places did. S'pose I don't like to remember it."
Sometimes it can't be helped, it's unavoidable; but Maker knows if Barrow can avoid something, he will move the Fade and Thedas itself to do so.

[interroga]

“Ah. Fair.”

Cassian’s head tilts. In all the troubles Tevinter’s had over the past decade, at least they’d mostly escaped the effects of the Fifth Blight; it had been contained, a foreign problem, barely believed if you hadn’t been there to witness it yourself. He finds himself morbidly curious —

“Did you see much of it? The Blight.”

[thereneverwas]

Barrow's gaze goes a bit far away again, his mouth pulling to one side contemplatively as he stares into the burning corpse pile. Something unspoken passes over him, like a blow glancing off armor, the impact felt if not heard.

"Some," he says evasively, "got lucky, was far enough north we didn't get hit too badly." A long pause like a held breath.
"...it got Crestwood, though."

[interroga]

“Ah,” Cassian says again, and the pause that follows is awkward, off-kilter. He doesn’t really know how to follow that up. Regrets, a little, pursuing this particular line of thought, but there’d been no saving it from the moment they started excavating these bodies; the conversation was probably always going to be bleak.

“Sorry,” he adds.

🎀?

[thereneverwas]

"'s all right."

It's not, obviously. But Barrow isn't going to belabor the point, not while they're already having such a pleasant time in a place brimming so with delight. He doesn't give any indication, anyway, that he resents the line of conversation. It is what it is; what's been has been.