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

[laurenande]

A sensible decision, in a way.

[She regarded his breastplate and, on a whim, holds out her hand to see if he might pass it over to her.]

I am accustomed to power that is more...deeply woven into the world than it is here. There are few who would think to draw up barriers or throw flame in Arda, and fewer still who would do so and expect to triumph over the enchantments I weave.

The very idea of magic [She says the word with no small amount of distaste; it is still far too broad a term for her sensibilities.] as they cast it here? It is strange to me--wasteful and imprecise. I had hoped yours would be more...akin to my own, but I begin to suspect that it is a vain hope and little more.

[apostasia]

( the look he gives her is appraising. he does nothing for a long moment as he studies her; doesn't outright refuse to pass it over, doesn't do so, either. besides that he searches for something, his expression is difficult to read in the way that had so often frustrated those who once loved him - a way that had frightened those he taught to fear him.

he is just another stranger, here. there is no weight of reputation or intimacy to shape it. he is simply a quiet, difficult man who studies a woman that wants something from him. he gives her the breastplate. )

Everything that was taught to me,

( eventually, )

tells me that what I have given you to hold in your hands is impossible, and cannot exist.

[laurenande]

[Galadriel looks away from him as he speaks and, like a woman examining some strange curio, gradually turns the piece of armor over in her hands. There is something fundamentally gentle about her touch--it isn't that she is delicate, no, the armor just seems to weigh very little in her hands.]

A limited education, to be certain, but there are precious few that are not.

[His enchantment is skilled, woven in an unfamiliar way but with reasonable subtlety. Heat is not her enchantment of choice and, as such, she doesn't seek to alter what he had wrought.]

Is it the spell it carries, the land from which it hails, or the hands it rests in that cause you conflict? For even an Age ago I would not have deemed my own skills possible, not by any measure. And yet, here I sit, wondering how dreadfully concealment might clash with warmth.

[apostasia]

In a manner of speaking, none of those things.

( how do you like it, elves of arda, asking straight questions and getting answered in bloody riddles. annoying, isn't it.

ahem.

martel exhales, regarding not the woman - he should learn her name - but the armor she holds. the way that she holds it. she is growing reluctant, disappointed in him (and isn't he always disappointing someone) and if he let it be, she'll withdraw on her own, unsatisfied. he says, )

I didn't draw on their Fade; the will that shaped that spell was, as you observed in Skyhold, my own. The spell that gave it shape, however, is a prayer to a goddess who cannot hear me in exile.

( in exile, here. abandoned by his gods (and he's had a few) to the whims of this world.

he doesn't say will not hear me. he doesn't have to, so he never will. aphrael cannot hear him from thedas - that she wouldn't listen means nothing. if he tells himself so often enough, perhaps it will become true. )

It is a divine will that can be exerted on the world; my hands to supplicate her blessing and be given what, self-evidently, I must already hold.

( his faint smile is wry; it's been like a second magical puberty. at least his voice isn't breaking all over again. )

There was always someone at my elbow, you see. Guiding. The first spell I tried in Skyhold was a catastrophe twofold in a way that I'd find dreadfully embarrassing were I half my own age - the effort it took was so much more than I was prepared for, but I'd never wielded my own will in that way before, either. I overshot the mark, exhausted myself in part through pouring more power than I needed into a spell that someone else had always checked.

( what could he have changed, if he'd only known before--

he remembers azash's bootheel on his throat with every spell he casts and his gut churns with it. )

[laurenande]

[She listens, still and silent as he explains, and whatever amount of her attention had wandered at his previous answers is abruptly focused on him again. She had been terribly curious--such abilities were rarely found in elves and even less likely in men--and his answer had given her everything she required.

Her smile is out of place, in that any expression of joy would clash with these blighted lands, but it is sincere. In fact, there is something charmed and bemused in it; it is a far cry from the frustration and anger that drove her from her tent.]

Often I have chided others, warned them that even the Wisest cannot see all ends, and here I find myself wanting for my own advice.

[She offers him the breastplate back.]

To beckon divine power is a feat few in my homelands would undertake lightly, but it seems your skills and mine are far closer than I would have dared to hope.

To use your own fëa to...cast is a harrowing experience. I imagine it is far worse for you than I, but I cannot say for certain. It is not an art practiced in Thedas, thankfully, but binding will and power to objects can make such things less...impactful.

[apostasia]

( he sets it down, and shrugs, elegant if one-shouldered-- )

I don't find it harrowing, my lady. It's been a matter of relearning my own limits; broader than they once were in some ways, tighter in others. ( one because of his lack of a leash; one because of his foreign nature in this strange world. but one complicates the other, and the thread of frustration that lingers has more to do with the lingering uncertainty of how much is what. how much of the change is thedas, and how much is that he is achieving things he'd never imagined possible?

what would this feel like, if he were where he came from? easier, he suspects. but maybe more dangerous, for all that. )

It is...

( he considers his words. )

It's natural - a grace to it. I've found it seems to be the effect and not the method that defines how much of a fight Thedas will put up to me, but the difficulty of it is - an exaggerated version of what we were already trained to adapt to. To work this way always drew on my own strength to a degree; the more complex the spell, the more I'd feel it. That's still true here, but the definition of what is 'complex' is not, ( a wry smile, ) quite universally agreed upon.

Sorcery has always carried the risk of overextending yourself. Thoughtless exertion has killed the foolish before.

( and the desperate. )