open | beach party, blight themed

[nextone]

WHO: Anyone, and introducing Antoine and Evka.
WHAT: Darkspawn! Bonfire! Character intros!
WHEN: Late summer.
WHERE: The Wounded Coast.
NOTES: This is a new character intro, but it's also an open mingle if you would like to use it to do your own stuff without Antoine and Evka.

As it happens: Riftwatch is home to Kirkwall's only near-enough-to-permanent resident Grey Wardens. When travelers report an incursion of darkspawn on the roads into the city, then, the City Guard doesn't exactly punt — a few short-straw drawers are available to help — but it does send a messenger to the Gallows' front gate with a clear expectation that darkspawn fall firmly within the boundaries of Riftwatch's problem.

At least the weather is nice. One of the cooler days, wind chasing away the sea's humidity and passing clouds across the sun an intervals that provide bouts of shade but don't threaten rain. The darkspawn are less active in the daylight; a small band might try something opportunistic along the winding roads of the Wounded Coast, but the real task is to stop them where they're emerging underground. The source can be tracked to a winding cave, its mouth scattered with the possessions and gutted corpses of smugglers who tried to flee the first scouting party of shrieks.

That's also where Riftwatch will find two Grey Wardens. New ones. Pretty nice ones, too. Not the mean and/or shady kind of Warden they already have.

But that's the last good news for a while, as the sun sets and the darkspawn in the Deep Roads beneath the cave make a renewed push for the surface, hurlocks and genlocks scrabbling through the crevices in the dark like deepstalkers while the shrieks who emerged before them circle back to attack from behind. They're well-coordinated and have the potential to turn numerous, but the narrowness of their entry point keeps them bottlenecked to a manageable but endless stream. Stopping them for good may involve an explosion or two.

By the time it's done and the blighted bodies have been gathered to burn, it's late enough that there's little point in trying to travel back to the city in the dark rather than building another, less disgusting fire on the beach and waiting a few hours for sunrise.

Comments

[interroga]

Cassian’s shoulder tips into a shrug, demurring. Altruistic protection for the city, sure, but it’s in their own self-interest too. “If darkspawn were to overrun the Wounded Coast and take Kirkwall, nobody would be happy. Us in Riftwatch least of all,” he points out, a little wry.

There had been just the slightest pause before he acknowledged it. It still feels a little stilted: in his heart, we and us still means the Shadow Dragons. It still takes some mental reorientation to remind himself of it, where he is, who he’s with.

“I think we’re the lucky ones, though. Not a lot of spare Wardens to go around these days.”

[wontknowwhen]

Antoine's smile falters for just a moment at the reminder of just why Wardens are thin on the ground in the Free Marches. Just a moment, though, before he moves past it and the smile steadies.

"We were heading for you, actually. We've been largely north of here, but ... well, I suppose exactly why will wait for us to get back to Kirkwall, no? But it seems we arrived in good time for this particular problem." It's a messy problem, but it is one that he and Evka are well-equipped for.

He brightens and adds, "I also hear you have griffons! That is not why we are here, but I admit, it was an added attraction for me. Creatures of legend, in the flesh."

[interroga]

“We should put them on the recruitment posters,” Cassian says, an attempt at dry humour, but there’s a kind of childlike warmth glinting beneath his words too, a brightness in his gaze.

He admits, rueful: “I couldn’t believe it when I saw them, too. It didn’t feel real. Like something out of the stories. They’re really something.”

[wontknowwhen]

"It is not a bad idea," he says, brightening, of the posters. "I think it could not hurt, at least. Have you ridden one yourself? It seems like it would be thrilling."

He hasn't forgotten what they were working on, of course. But he'll feel it if a significant number of Darkspawn head their way. There is time to ask griffon questions for now.

[interroga]

“Not yet,” Cassian says, thoughtful, and that yet contains multitudes. Why hasn’t he learned yet? There’s no reason not to. Mistakes have been made.

“I still need to take some riding lessons, but you know how it goes: the work piles up, you’re away for a while, you keep forgetting to get around to it, then you regret wasting time. Maybe you and I can start together, if you’re headed our way. Are you planning to join?”

His voice is warm and amiable; his own unconscious automatic attempt at the appealing marketing, the welcoming gesture.

(They need recruits. They could always do with more Wardens, with those useful senses of theirs.)

[wontknowwhen]

"I am not averse, though it will depend." On whether Riftwatch is open to Wardens, under the circumstances (which he doesn't take as a given). Whether he thinks he can help. Whether Evka wants to join.

"But at a minimum, we will ... consult, yes? I think we have some common problems." Not all of them are the Blight, but that one significantly. With an easy smile, Antoine adds, "If we do join, though, I will absolutely learn with you. I could not miss the opportunity. Though I suppose you have no way to know if it will disagree with you until you try — flying. I do not usually become seasick, but I imagine it is an imperfect comparison."

[interroga]

“I suspect the movement’s more like a horse with some extra verticality. More, uh, turbulent.” Cassian already knows he’s good on horseback: good reflexes, quick at maneuvering, dipping and diving and getting across hostile terrain. He might be terrible at the woods himself, but get him an animal to drive and he’s decent.

Their earlier time had been consumed with the fight, with pushing back the darkspawn, but it seems there’s still a bit of breathing room before the next advance: no hand-thrown explosions from the elf just yet. And they’ve pledged to take classes together, so he realises some introductions are probably in order:

“I’m Cassian, by the way. Scouting.”

[wontknowwhen]

"Antoine." Cassian cannot know it yet, but later it will probably be a bit funny that Antoine said Evka's name before his own, as if everyone somehow knows Evka.

"I am usually good with heights, mostly. Though I suppose a tower or a tree is something different from an animal. Once Evka and I were trying to lay a trap for a troll, and it was windy enough that the tree did a little feel like it was trying to shake me off, but I imagine that is not the same." His good cheer makes it a bit difficult to tell whether he's joking.

[interroga]

Thedas is so fucked-up on an everyday basis, Cassian’s simply going to cheerfully assume it’s true. Plus, troll-trapping is a fun story.

“Evka’s the other Grey Warden? The dwarf?” Your…? is the dangling unspoken question; a gap in the sentence, a space to be filled.

[wontknowwhen]

"My wife, yes." Less proprietary and more can you believe my luck, in tone. "We have been traveling together since I first joined the Wardens, sometimes with others, sometimes us two. We were out on the road for what happened at Adamant."

He assumes that's the next question, for someone with even a passing familiarity with the state of the Gray Wardens at present.

"So we have stayed on the road, yes? Doing what we can to help."

[interroga]

“Is there really no…” This is fraught territory, most likely, but Cassian finds the question starting to circle in the back of his mind; now that he’s meeting his first Grey Warden in the flesh, he’s considering, for the first time, the reality of what happened to them.

Imagining if the Shadow Dragons were to splinter (and sometimes it seemed but a matter of time, if more banal and less dramatic than magical corruption: they were always so compartmentalised, splintering into sects, different revolutionary groups disagreeing with which way to handle their rebellion). What if he was out in the cold someday, no safe haven, all organisational structure sundered? Shitty place for them to be.

“Has it just been the two of you by yourselves? No fallback somewhere to regroup?”

Contingency plans; safety nets.