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

[glandival]

There was a wrathful demon. The ones formed of fire. Destroyed my arrows.

[ Hence, the peelings of bark falling to one side of her, the stripped sticks, the ones yet to be assaulted.

But her work halts as she listens, her flicking back up to Araceli's face and then down again to her hand. 'Distracting' is the word that has her jaw firm up and her eyes flicker, and she is silent for a moment where she sits. She'd never seen the Herald, only really heard her story in retrospect when the sky was sealed, but it's the description of the little green sliver of mysterious magic that continued on. ]

Perhaps they called Trevelyan demon too, ah? Walking from the fade, marked as that, well before she was a martyr. [ She returns her focus to her work. ] Somewhere in between these things, she was a hero.

[foxsays]

Ah, I heard about those before, I was fortunate that it was spindly things and the floating green ones.

[Fire is a whole other kettle of fish that has her wincing in sympathy before she looks at her hand again, sighing.]

Most of the time I can forget it but when I climb and it’s dark? Very strange. Or sometimes when I try to sleep and I can see light behind an eyelid because I’m trying to sleep with that hand on the pillow. I would be a shit thief now, they’d see me coming, or shadows and reflections, green light bouncing off things. [Not to mention her rapier hilts are elaborate things of twisted gleaming metal that catch the light from each and every angle.]

So is that it? Such a short time to be so many different things - are people ever just people here? There always seems to be so much attached; titles that ring with expectation or scorn depending on who you speak to. It’s hard to think about heroes, here, from everything I’ve heard since I came here they all seem to get lost one way or another.

[glandival]

You arrived in a place that is not like any other place. Most places are not so muddled. The nobles of Val Royeux, or the magisters in Tevinter. Dalish in their forests, my kind in our cities. The Inquisition has all of these things. We all have different notions of hero.

But most people are nobody.

[ She lifts a shoulder. ]

And sometimes, it is a lot of nobodies that do the work of heroes, when they lack them. [ And there's a note of certainty, in that, an idea that means something to her. ] Perhaps that is how the Inquisition will be, but you know. Shems, they like their stories to be neater than that.

[foxsays]

[Well that certainly gets her attention.]

The Dalish have told me much, the only elf I think I can name that is not Dalish besides yourself is Zevran. [Zevran is not most elves, she already knows that one.] How different is it? To be an elf and to come from the cities? I...I know something of the history but again, it is from the mouths of the Dalish.

[An oversight, she senses, but she's come from a place of nothing but humans to where humans have done such terrible things it makes her sick.]

Many hands are needed to crew the ship but in time all that is remembered is the captain, maybe his first mate and the quartermaster if they served together many years and accomplished much. The Inquisition certainly feels an awful lot like a ship in a storm except no one seems to agree on which way the wind is blowing or if we're about to run into the rocks or the shallows. Shems, that's the word for human, yes? [All these languages and accents, it's a lot to just be dropped into.]

[glandival]

Shemlen. The quick people.

[ It's not a nice word, really, but the translation -- a little inaccurate though it might be -- doesn't sound especially derogatory, Sabine's tone affirming that yes, this means human.

How different is it, she asks, and Sabine closes her knife. Her fingers have dirt beneath them, making little grey crescents beneath translucent keratin, and she fidgets with the knife like she's fidgeting with that question. It feels oddly big, the heaviness of a history putting pressure on conversation.

Still, she forges on. ]

In many cities, elves keep to their own kind in the alienages, small portions of city for them alone. Where I am from, in Halamshiral, it was once a city for the elves until Orlais' conquering. We may outnumber the humans, but we live away from them, and their guards walk our streets. There are laws, and restrictions, and in alienages, walls so high the sun never rests long on the ground. So, you see, we live among the shems, but also apart.

We are not properly elves, to the Dalish. We are something else, made human in association, forgetting what it is to be really elven. [ She doesn't literally roll her eyes, but it's laden in her tone. ] That is not how the shems would see us, in turn, you know?