faderift | DESTROY THE RED LYRIUM QUARRY

The Eastern half of the quarry is not yet a quarry. Norrington and Kas come upon prisoners before any signs of mining, finding four cages in a semi-circle nestled in the dip between two hills, with only three guards watching over them. Only one of these guards show obvious signs of Red Lyrium infection. The remaining two will be more reckless and aggressive than normal, when attacked, but their eyes are normal and their skin not yet overly pale.

If the team has been quiet enough on the approach, the two who are not yet succumbing to the lyrium may be caught playing cards by the fire. All three will attack on sight, however, and as the battle progresses one of the Templars will set fire to the wooden floor of one of the prisoners' cages to attempt to distract the two men from the fight.

When the guards have been dealt with, and the prisoners freed or left in their cages for safekeeping, Norrington and Kas can proceed forward. Not far ahead, the Red Templars have made some initial attempts at clearing away trees and snow to begin digging, but they won't see substantial signs of progress until they reach the rendezvous point.

Kas has a bone to pick with these monster-templars and their people-stealing after what he's heard from Korrin, and he's going to make her proud. They were going to pay for what they had done, right?

Headstrong as he may be, he was doing good as a scout and didn't have a problem quietly getting over to an area so he could overlook the not-yet-a-quarry and the caged people. The guards weren't the scary red monsters he had seen on a scouting mission once, and two of them looked pretty busy.

Frowning, he backtracks his steps to where the guy he was working with was. Some not crazy templar, right? Kas couldn't quite remember the name, but the teen still crouches down near Norrington to give his report. "Three guards. Two of them are playing cards. They look normal."

Norrington, on the other hand, wasn't quite sure how he felt working with a teenager -- but here they were. He pressed his lips together at the intelligence before he looked at Kas.

"What we need is a distraction -- which will be me. I'll engage them in combat, if you can get around them to the other side, to free the prisoners. As you are a scout, I take it you will not need a key?"

Yes, he's making sure you can lockpick there, Kas.

"Of course I can. I was taught by Zevran Aranai," Kas says proudly, patting the small leather pouch at his belt. It contained all of his thief's tools, and he was doing quite well with the practice lock. These rusty cages would be nothing.

"I'm pretty sure I can hit the guy standing around with my bow of you want less people to deal with," the teen continues, patting his hip quiver.

"Oh, well then! Perfect." There was absolutely no doubt the young man could handle it then. Zevran was clearly the best.

He nods his head. "Excellent thinking, soldier." He leaned his head around, "I shall wait for you to take out the third, then charge the other two. Agreed?"

If it was going to be this simple, then honestly he could only imagine the other three were walking through the next checkpoint like Chantry sisters into a Chantry.

"Agreed," Kas says with a little nod and grabs his bow. Now he just had to take the lone templar out. By himself.

He couldn't miss.

Moving over to a good place, he takes aim carefully. Breathe in, pull back the bowstring. Aim for the torso, the head was too difficult. Let go.

The arrow swept through the air, the piercing arrow easily bypassing already worn metal and lodging itself deep into the templar's gut. Breathing out, Kas drew his daggers instead.

"Go!"

James came around the edge of the trees in a full bull rush, slamming into both of the remaining guards as they started to rise to their feet and go for their weapons. Sword and shield swung with vigor as he called out.

"Now!"

And immediately went to holding off the two guards as he went between the two of them with his attacks.

Kas moves quickly from his position, avoiding both the dying templar on the ground and the other fighters to head for the cages. The people in them were already calling for help, and he sheathes his daggers to dig out his tools.

The locks were pretty shitty but did their job well, and Kas is relatively sure he can pick them. The battling is a little distracting, though, and he sinks the pick in a little too deep on the first try.

The next is better, and it doesn't take him long to open the lock and go for the next one.

James pulled his sword back and then directly into one of the soldiers, before he pulled his blade out and then slammed his shield into the other soldier as he shifted his weight so he could keep balancing between the two of them.

He glanced over in Kas's direction - making sure the young man was still getting those people out - before he twisted around to slam his shield into the soldier who he had just stabbed.

Holding the two soldiers at bay, hopefully long enough for Kas to finish this out.

The little qunari was doing well, opening two more cages before he's going for the last one. "Go, run! You better get out of here!" He calls out to the other prisoners before he starts digging for the tumblers in the lock. This one takes longer, however, as it's a little more rusty and it looks like someone kicked it.

Maybe one of the kidnapped people pissed off a templar.

"This lock is fucked!" He growls, reaching for a dagger instead to see if he could bend it open.

Well, they both seemed to be pissing off Templars. James muttered a curse, just as one of the Red Templars, his rage coming off of him in waves. James put up his shield to take the majority of the blows, feeling them hammer in in his side. He'd have a fair number of bruises when this fight was done.

He shifted his feet in the snow, so the soldier went glancing off the shield, sliding past him so he could lift his sword and slice the man's throat clean open.

It was only then he realized the other soldier was running towards the last cage, and he had a torch in hand.

"Behind you!" Came his yell, as he charged up after the other red templar.

Kas turns quickly at the warning, seeing the templar come running with the torch. He couldn't let the guy get to the prisoners, right? He had to... he had to fight.

It was the first time he had to used his daggers for anything other than training with Zevran. Adrenaline pounded in the teen's ears as he met the templar head on with his daggers, trying to stop the torch from reaching the prisoners or himself.

Embers flew everywhere as it connected, and the force was enough for the teen's arms and legs to buckle. His still small muscles didn't have anything to hold against a warrior like that, and the heat from the torch was overwhelming.

He was going to die. He was going to die. He was going to die.

...then everything turned black for Kas. The teen moves to the side, dodging easily and shoving his daggers into the side of the templar, right in a gap of the armor. A kick takes the templar to the ground and he slits his throat with another practiced movement.

...Well, that wasn't precisely what James had in mind with the warning, but it seemed to work effectively enough. He turned around, quickly searching the other Red Templar's body, as he called over to Kas.

"Quick thinking, there. Clean your blades on the snow, then help me find the keys so we can let these poor bastards out."

The bas was babbling, but Issala didn't care to reply. It was simple enough to pretend to be a witless imekari for now, and wipe his blades off in the snow. He pushes the templar over to check for a key, but it didn't seem like this was the guy carrying them.

"None," he says curtly. "It can be cracked with a pommel. Put it in-between the lock and the bars and bend."

Norrington nodded his head briefly, stopping his search immediately to move towards the cage. He put up a hand, speaking to the scared prisoners calmly and quietly, "I have taken no red lyrium, my friends. My friend here is a Valshoth, not a Qunari. We are not here to hurt you -- merely to free you. As soon as I open this cage, please follow the path of the others who have escaped back to our camps."

He went over to the lock, and following Kas's instructions to the letter, put it between the lock and the bars, bending it with his considerable strength. The lock gave way in a few moments, and he stepped back to let the prisoners go free.

He did not, however, sheath his sword, simply gave the young Valshoth a considering look before he nodded his head up the hill.

"Shall we?"

Issala watches the people run off, probably only to be captured again later. They were only treating the symptoms, to the illness itself.

"Let's go," he agrees, not quite yet ready to let the imekari get back in control quite yet. The bas would get suspicious.

Well, if they made it to the camp, they should be fine. They had killed all the Red Templars, and he had heard tales that refugees were being shipped from here back to Skyhold for safety.

As it stood - the illness was Corypheus, and one had to find the illness before one could find it.

He nodded, putting his shield back up on his back and leading the way to the rendezvous point, beyond these particular cages.

The teen follows in silence for a while as they head for the rendezvous point, while Issala went over what had just happened and how much it would effect his cover.

This bas didn't know the imekari, which meant it wouldn't be as suspicious as it could have been, and shock was a good excuse. Kas was young and experiences, and 'he' had just killed his first person on close combat after nearly dying.

It would have to do. Silent, he withdraws.

The boy stumbles slightly with a deep breath, looking behind him. "Did I... did I really do that?"

Norrington turned to look at the boy, looking surprised at the comment. He had thought that the boy had his first kill, certainly, but he seemed surprised by the lot of it. His voice quiets, as ever firm as it was.

"Yes, you did. It's what the training is for, after all. You can take some small comfort that he would have killed you, and all those people in the cage, without a second thought." Templars were, after all, trained killers with a purpose. Sigh.

Moving on. "You should never enjoy killing though. It is a means to an end, but not something to be done lightly, or without clear forethought."

"I'm not sure I even know what happened... first I thought I was gonna die, and then..." He shudders slightly. It wasn't his first kill, but it was definitely the first one Kas made in close combat. Shooting an arrow into someone was... way different than this.

"It's hazy. I'm not sure... but it's over. People are free and we should catch up, right?" That was the important part. "I don't think I'll ever like doing that, though."

"And then your body took over. It's not a big surprise." Norrington stated simply, "You'll find that happening a lot in close combat. You're a rogue, so I believe you should be able to pull yourself out of it a lot more easily than I can."

He nodded, gesturing up the hill. "If you would not mind taking point? I shall cover you closely."

Kas takes those words to heart, even if it seemed a lot more... missing rather than just instinct. But this guy knew what he was talking about, right? He was a fancy templar person.

Nodding to Norrington, Kas grabs his bow and heads forward, quick but slightly crouched and careful. Taking point and scouting ahead was something he could definitely do.

The western end of the quarry has already been heavily mined, a warren of caves and tunnels dug into the sides of steep cliffs. Their sides are sheer, but scaffolding creates a warren of pathways up and down the walls like vines encrusting a building. The wooden walkways are sturdy but open to the elements, always creaking in the icy wind that whistles through the chasm no matter which direction it blows from. In many places all it would take is one careless step on icy boards to plummet several stories to an ugly death.

Those assigned to this area have mostly retired by the time the team arrives, and many can be caught sleeping if the team is stealthy enough. Four templars occupy a tented area at the base of the scaffolding, and there are several small caves where workers are bunked down on the floor. The templars will fight fiercely if given the chance, all of the addled by long exposure to lyrium though only one has begun to show crystal growth. The workers, once woken, will put up only moderate resistance: these are not trained fighters, and most are armed with pikes and hammers designed for digging, not for battle. Once the templars are defeated, the workers will immediately surrender. They are mostly former prisoners themselves who escaped their chains through diligent obedience.

There are fewer actual prisoners than anticipated: a couple of cages, each with just a few stragglers huddled together for warmth. Once the workers are subdued or killed and the few remaining prisoners released, there is nothing to stop them from laying waste to the infrastructure that is left if they like, or they can hurry onwards, deeper into the quarry toward the rendezvous point.

Cade has, for the time he's spent in Emprise de Lion, been operating under the delusion that things can't possibly get any worse. First he was assigned to share a tent with a qunari-- not just any qunari, but one who insisted on baring her breasts on their first meeting, and who immediately invited her also female lover in before Cade could even put his things down. He hasn't been sleeping much-- it's difficult, when one is avoiding one's own tent.
Then there was the disastrous situation with the red templars, with Alayre and himself nearly dying and going mad, respectively, the effects of which he's still not convinced have completely worn off, and now, the rotten cherry on the worst cake: he's stuck clearing a quarry with more red lyrium, with That Dwarf, who, impossibly, is even more unpleasant than he remembers from their brief encounters in Kirkwall. The team is rounded out by a sullen apostate, whom Cade swears looks familiar, but having been cautioned away from starting any trouble with mages in the Inquisition, he has decided not to push his luck.

He traipses miserably at the point of their cluster as they approach the mine, sword drawn and ready for any encounters worse than what he's already enduring.

For all his stocky muscle and Bianca's hefty frame, Varric can move almost silently when the situation calls for it. His boots barely make a sound as the three of them creep over the snow toward the mouth of the quarry. When they come to the edge of the ramshackle scaffolding, he pauses a moment to take stock of the situation. Aside from the company on this little outing, and the scattered deposits of Red Lyrium just jutting out of the snow like wildflowers in spring, this didn't seem like it was going to be too terrible a mission.

This wasn't the party he'd have chosen, given his pick, but he'd been in tighter spots with less backup. He wasn't especially keen on having that one twitchy templar and Anders standing this close to one another, but at least he'd fought alongside Blondie before. That was one less thing to worry about and, Maker's balls, Varric needed a few less things to worry about.

"Alright, if you two can keep from stomping like wild druffalo, we can sneak down the scaffolding and catch the templars with their pants down," Varric said, very quietly, and motioned toward the shapes that stretched up out of the darkness. Shit, could they even see them? How terrible was human vision, generally?

"But, seeing as I prefer to not die horribly if neither of you are feeling light on your feet, I'm open to alternatives. Detlef, any ideas? How about you Pouty, what's your take?"

Great. There were a few Templars Anders didn't want to deal with, and the twitchy one who had almost gotten Alayre and Anders killed was one of them. Especially with red lyrium everywhere.

Anders leaned forward and squinted at the dark shapes down there. Scaffolding. Sure, there was likely scaffolding there. Was he going to find it with hands and feet properly to climb down it? That wasn't exactly something he was sure about. What he can see are tents.

"Pouty over here has trouble near red lyrium and there's a lot of it in the area. We need something more direct." Funny how there weren't any guards on the Templars when red lyrium set them off something fierce. If it had been mages... He closed his eyes for a moment and took a breath. It wasn't. And Pouty wasn't responsible for all of what mages face, no matter how he was a portion of it.

"Can you see the guards?" His voice was equally as quiet. "The large shapes look like tents, and if I fling a fireball at them we'll not only have the advantage of surprise, we may set some Templars on fire." Always a plus. "Red Templars, of course." Still a plus.

'Pouty'? Cade didn't remark on it, but the nickname rankled him. He was not pouty. He was...

...distracted by their discussion of the issue at hand, and he crept forward, frowning. "I'll be fine," he muttered to the mage, "...and that's not my name." This he added in an even lower tone, more as an aside.

Now that they were discussing ranged attacks, he wished he'd brought his bow. Not that the other two couldn't handle that just fine, but so much for being quiet when he was wearing plate and carrying a sword and shield. "The fire could work," he conceded.

"Wait, wait, wait--" Varric interrupted as the two humans squinted into the darkness. His grip on Bianca shifted as he twisted and turned his back to the quarry. It wasn't the best idea but Varric was more concerned with another, slightly shittier idea at the moment.

"What do you mean 'has trouble near red lyrium?'" Varric demanded quietly and leveled a hard look at Blondie.

Anders wasn't as new to this stuff as the rest of the Inquisition was. He'd seen it at work in Kirkwall; his definition of 'trouble' had to be considerably more severe than the amount of bullshit that just came with standing near the stuff. (And that was already a worrying amount of bullshit, in and of itself.)

"What are we talking about here? Does it make him snippy, distracted, homicidal?"

Varric absolutely did not need a red lyrium addled templar at his back.

"Twitchy, snippy, distracted. My help was requested to heal another Templar and Pouty, or maybe he should be called Twitchy, tried to grab me simply for passing past. Which almost cost the other Templar his life." Not that Anders really cares much about Templar lives, but this had been Alayre. "It was that close. He grabbed his sword, too, then jerked away and started trying to undress. Other Templars started to help with Twitchy here, so I turned my focus back to what I was doing."

He met Varric's gaze. Cade wasn't Meredith-levels of dangerous... but he might be Bartrand-levels, and Anders tried to figure out a way to communicate this along with the griping.

"It was a short-lived problem." Any dirty looks that drew would be deserved. "His brothers saw to him, from what I gathered while saving Alayre's life." That still wasn't good, but it would get the point across. He might be kicked in the shins later, and he would have earned it, but at least the message was there.

"Once we set the fires to the tent you and I hang back as we're ranged anyway and we let him go down there and stab anything he gets twitchy enough to see as a threat. If he goes for a prisoner, I'll throw down a paralysis glyph." They might as well use the rabid dog they had.

Cade couldn't believe this. He was standing right here, and they were talking about him like he was someone they'd heard about in passing, a week ago.

"Yes, they saw to me," he snapped at Anders, his voice quiet but quick and filled with venom, "it was taken care of. I was..." He stopped himself, shaking his head irritably-- on the one hand, none of that was false, and he had no excuse for it. On the other hand, he was here to do his job, and found instead that he was being gossiped about right in front of his face.
"...I got... a bit in my mouth, when the big one fell on me," he grumbled, with his usual halting demeanor, leaving out that he had also been in the process of saving Alayre's life when this had happened, "...but it's gone now. I'm not going to go for any prisoners." Although there was anger in his explanation, it was laced with incredulity and self-consciousness.

(OOC: WHOOPS, SORRY. DW never sent me this notif.)

Right at that moment, Varric wasn't sure who he would rather punch. He wasn't normally a violent sort of guy (attacks on Red Templars notwithstanding), but someone deserved a right hook for this situation. Whether it was the templar who signed up despite the fact that being near red lyrium made him twitchy and eager to swing a sword, or Anders who was cheerfully and obliviously trying to call his dead, asshole brother to mind, Varric couldn't say.

He just stared at the both of them and sighed heavily. It was entirely on accident, mind you, but it was a very good impersonation of the Seeker.

"Okay, new plan," Varric said tersely and pointed at Anders. "You, paralysis glyphs first--throw them down at the front of the tents and then set fire to them." He turned his attention front Anders to Cade. "You, stand between the templars and the prisoners and push them toward me, and I will throw down some traps and mines to take them out. If anyone gets through the gauntlet, Bianaca and a few spare spells will finish the job. Agreed?"

The way he asked that was less a question than a statement, really.

He'd needed to get a message across without Cade picking up on it, and it seemed to have worked. He'd see if he could apologize later. At least it was the brother that had tried to get them all killed and not a beloved one.

The strategy got a nod from Anders, and the mage slipped his staff off his back. It was always easier when someone put together the plan of action, no matter how much things tended to go awry.

"As soon as you're in place, I'll toss them down. Directly in front of the tents, mind, and they won't glow until stepped in, so watch where you go." That was directed at both of them as he settled down on the ledge and took a breath. He glanced at Cade. "When Varric gestures that he's prepared, I'm casting, so watch him."

With that he was ready, braced to cast, with Justice up close to the surface and looking forward to the fight.

"Agreed," Cade grumbled, and proceeded toward the scaffolding, which he descended with a remarkable amount of grace for someone in full plate. He kept his footsteps quiet, but when he arrived at the indicated spot on the ground, the prisoners began to get anxious, all speaking at once. He turned to hold a finger to his lips, out of direct speaking range but close enough that they could see.
When they had settled down, he looked up and waited for Varric's signal.

The two sides of the quarry meet in a deep ravine chiseled into the mountainside, a sudden drop from the snowy ground-level down at least four stories. Heavy chains are strung from each side, meeting in the middle in a massive metal blade with a long spike of lyrium in the center. As Cade, Varric, and Anders approach from the west they can either circle from above along the scaffolding that rings the quarry, or make their way down to the bottom.

It's dark at ground level, but despite the shelter from the wind it's no warmer than at the top. There's a single cage tucked into an aborted, half-drilled tunnel, packed full of skinny, shivering prisoners. A handful of templars huddle around a fire, but the first to note the presence of intruders will be a behemoth, arising from the shadows where its lyrium-crusted shape resembled just one more jagged boulder.

DESTROY THE RED LYRIUM QUARRY

EAST (Norrington, Kas)

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WEST (Cade, Varric, Anders)

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Feel free to godmod him into casting glyph/fire when ready if needed in your tags!

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RENDEZVOUS (Everyone)