open: something grabs ahold of me tightly

[faderifting]

WHO: Inquisition Forces
WHAT: Inquisition forces cross the mountains into Orlais to deal with Emprise du Lion
WHEN: Wintermarch 25 onward
WHERE: EMPRISE DU LION
NOTES: This is a mingle-style log for the Inquisition camps, local tavern, and general/open Inquisition work, etc.

This time they hike down to the west, but the trip through the mountains is no easier. The snow is heaped up about the road where wagons have pushed it aside, stomped into slippery pack beneath the feet and hooves that have gone before. Of the main track it is ankle deep at best and in places it drifts, waist-deep on a tall man and enough to bury a dwarf who hasn't come prepared with snowshoes. Everywhere the wind howls, biting cold, and the sky hangs low, a pale flat grey that makes it difficult to judge distances. Those who know winter weather call it a snow sky, and near-daily squalls prove them right.

They set up camp in Sahrnia, across the broad expanse of frozen river that has trapped the villagers here upstream. Tents pop up in rows and in the shells of tumbled-down buildings, fires blazing and thawing the ground to mud. When the supply wagons roll in they re-open the local tavern, brightly lit with flaking paint on the walls that might once have been colorful and patterned tiles on the floor that seems to swim like an optical illusion after too many glasses of the cheap red wine that fills the cellars.

Even deadlier reds hold the hills: Red Templar sightings have been frequent and it is said they are operating in several locations in the region in significant force. Some of these men and women have become hulking, crystalline beasts. Many others are in the earlier stages of corruption: red-veined and -eyed, aggressive and superhumanly strong, but still visibly human and coherent if spoken to. Red lyrium is even easier to find, jutting out of the ground or cliffsides, filling caves-- the Tower of Bone, a fortress that has stood for centuries, now threatens to split from the inside out. The area's wildlife was none too friendly before, but now the wolves and bears have begun to be corrupted by the lyrium and many will attack on sight, without provocation. (The snofleurs that bumble harmlessly around the river seem unaffected.)

Everywhere there are ruins: broken bridges, crumbling colosseums, and the great hulking mass of Suledin's Keep tucked between the distant hills. Scouts reported that Red Templars hold it as well.

RIFTER ARRIVAL - SAHRNIA - THE HILLS - TOWER CAMP - A HANDY MAP

Comments

[maladgogo]

"Damn, so this ain't the first time this shit happened to someone. Hopefully we all gettin' home when this is over." He shook his head some, running his hand over the seahorse tattoo without thinking, though he glanced up in time to notice her looking at it. It was still fairly new, standing out some on his skin whereas the other one had a few years of fading to it. "Ain't even sure where to start askin', if I'm perfectly honest with you. I'm just try'n'a get warm again. There was a lady came through where I did, but she said she had somethin' real important to do out there in the hills. Ain't seen her since."

[foxsays]

"No, this is the third time now but a way home isn't considered to be a priority." Several months here and even for her it's on the backburner, letters she can't send but writes anyway for the comfort they bring. She's making a life here, bit by bit, that's enough for now. "What we have in our hands, they're smaller pieces of some sort of magic that another woman they called the Herald had. She died sealing the same thing we all came through, though some of us rifters have sealed them with no lasting ill effects."

Jamie's here though and she knows he's sealed a rift so if she can find him back at camp then she can do the introductions and allow him to explain that himself.

"She just went off on her own after coming through the rift? There are worse things than just the snow and wolves out there now, I'll need to let the scouts know. But for now - do you drink? The brandy is good here, it'll warm you and there is never a question of paying me back when a seahorse tattoo is there." That's teasing but it's been so damn long since she saw anything so like home.

[maladgogo]

A way home isn't a priority? Well, that might be true for some of the new arrivals, but he would really rather not be here when he has classes in the morning and someone to go back to. He doesn't say it though, instead focusing on Araceli again and rubbing his hands together thoughtlessly.

The question makes him chuckle quietly. "Nah sis, never really been much'a one for alcohol. Least, not straight. Would like to be findin' somethin' to smoke, but I wouldn't know what to ask after 'round here." He pursed his lips, though that broke in a laugh at the comment about his tattoo. "Got that shit special. 's important to me, n' if it's somethin' to you too, you can be lookin' all you like." It shimmered very faintly in the scale pattern, as if the ink had been vaguely metallic.

[foxsays]

“In Skyhold you’ll have more of a choice - avoid the dwarven stuff, it’s foul - but here with the river frozen, supplies are difficult to come by. It’s whatever they have, or whatever you brought with you.” There’s a good reason she travels with a flask at all times, and with the rest of a bottle stashed in her pack for emergencies. Smoking isn’t something she can say she’s ever indulged in so there’s very little she can actively offer up as a solution. “Seahorses - anything connected to the sea really, that’s all important where I come from though many people here have never even seen it.”

Not even once and it disturbs her more than she’s ever said because that would be rude.

“How do you make them do that though? Mine are simple black and grey affairs,” it’s a bit difficult to shove her sleeve up what with all the layers but a grayscale fox stretches out across a forearm, small and simple. “The big one honestly makes me afraid to bump into a shirtless you on a dark night lest it try to eat me.”

[maladgogo]

"Wish I had brought some'a my shit with me. Could go for a bowl full'a crippler right about now."

He peeks down at the fox, or at least what little he can see if it as they are, and he smiles faintly. "That's real fuckin' nice, sis. Had a good artist." He glances at his own ink, his smile growing lopsided. "Ha, ain't nothin' spooky 'bout it after you get the context, but I guess I can see where you's comin' from. See, the bull, it's a fuckin' life source for the spirits. Ain't the only one, just one'a the most important. N' the snakes, that's Damballah, the Father, n' his wife Ayida-Weddo. It's...well. Dependin' what world you hailin' from, might'a heard'a vodou."

Rather than standing there in front of the fire, he gestures to one of the nearby tables, conspicuously abandoned, but once he sits down in one of the wobbly chairs and leans on the splintery table, it's a little more understandable.

"Grew up right up on the ocean, m'self. Island'a Haiti. Moved northward when I was real little, stayed right there on the water though. Moved somewhere steeped in lots'a magic that got all motherfuckin' applied to what we was livin' with. Technology, n' coffee shops, n' tattoo parlors with magic. Got my seahorse glitterin' from a fuckin' mage livin' there in the city. Damn good artist."

[foxsays]

“What is crippler?” Look she’s all for trying ridiculous things, she parkours across Skyhold but crippler just sounds bad.

Considering that most of the land animals people take for granted only turn up butchered in shops, few of them found roaming around doing whatever they do, and even a picture in a book isn’t the same as something on someone’s skin, because then it’s more alive, never still. “Never heard of voodoo, sorry,” because she is, because being homesick is like a punch in the gut still, catching her in the moments she least expects it to. “But those are your beliefs then, yes? Because they have spirits here too, though not all of them are a life source, not like that.”

She’s not entirely sure what spirits are like, reports can be a bit conflicting depending on who she asks and what she’s seen.

“I come from a nation of islands, if natives mention Antiva then my home is a less murderous version of that. And someone else from another world to me seemed to think I was Spanish.” Only he never actually told her what that meant, come to think of it, just another place that she’d probably fit in well. She scoots her seat just close enough to balance her heels on the table, stretching out legs sore from hiking - climbing up a building, fine, climbing up steep inclines made of snow and ice, fuck that. “You’ll fit in here then - magic is normal in Thedas, though everywhere but Tevinter the mages were confined to Circles, assigned jailers called Templars. They don’t have magic that can do tattoos though but summoning the elements, moving faster than the eye can see, creating barriers to shield you from harm? That they can do but technology is...limited. We use the wind and waves for electricity but here there is none to be found.”

[maladgogo]

"Figured by the lack'a lightin' besides torches n' fires that tech wasn't much of a thing here. Gonna take a minute t' be gettin' used to, not even havin' a phone to be callin' home or somethin' with." He rubs his hand down his face, looking off toward the bar, and its patrons with faces beset by gravity and age. The longer he's here, the less inviting this entire affair looks.

He realizes she's asked a question and turns back, leaning forward on the table with his arms crossed over one-another. "So y'know the kinda shit you can smoke what mellows you out, makes you kinda sleepy, makes you wanna eat everything in sight if you ain't distracted? Think that, but potent enough to put you in a coma for a couple'a hours. Used to grow it back home, wit' m' brother's help. Had a greenhouse just for growin' that, n' all kinds'a other strains for sellin'."

[foxsays]

“We don’t have phones where I come from but we have proper lighting everywhere except the ships. I’ve written letters but I don’t know if I can even put something through a rift, the demons all seem to be something more like fine ash when they’re finally killed.” Which raises more questions but not any she cares too much about at present, she’s written the letters and she keeps the most important ones tucked in her pocket, should the opportunity strike.

“Smoking isn’t as popular where I’m from, and it’s mostly just normal tobacco, in a pipe. Life is so busy that I don’t think anyone could conceive of taking something just to be out of it for hours.” They nap through the hottest part of the afternoon if they can but it’s too hot to do much beyond swim on those days, a refresher for the rest of the evening and night. “It’d be bad for sailors if they got into such a thing, supplies are limited, worth more than their weight in gold when it comes to certain things and it’s so expensive to import something like that from the places that grow it.” That time she managed to steal some and shift it on the black market? She ate like queen and so had her whole building. “I suppose I’m so bad at being still, I can’t imagine ever wanting to knock myself out unless I’ve been hurt.”