Entry tags:
CLOSED: My How the Turns Tables
WHO: Ellis, Richard v1.0, Glimmer, Abby, Edgard, Vanya, Richard v2.0, Fenris
WHAT: Riftwatch agents raid a Venatori survey encampment with the intent to capture a researcher or two in the hopes that they'll be able to glean information regarding Corypheus' plans for the Gates.
WHEN: Now-ish; whenever that makes sense.
WHERE: Northwest of Starkhaven, the Free Marches
NOTES: OOC information is available HERE at the sign-ups post. The objective/points pool spreadsheet with relevant instructions is located HERE and should be open to editing. Please include any necessary content warnings in your subject lines.
WHAT: Riftwatch agents raid a Venatori survey encampment with the intent to capture a researcher or two in the hopes that they'll be able to glean information regarding Corypheus' plans for the Gates.
WHEN: Now-ish; whenever that makes sense.
WHERE: Northwest of Starkhaven, the Free Marches
NOTES: OOC information is available HERE at the sign-ups post. The objective/points pool spreadsheet with relevant instructions is located HERE and should be open to editing. Please include any necessary content warnings in your subject lines.
THE BRIEF
In addition to a mercilessly succinct in-person briefing, a copy of the following orders are also filed:
For Immediate Dispatch,
Selected members of Forces and Project Sashamiri are to proceed by griffon-back to the last known location of the Venatori survey group. Rough coordinates provided, may be readily corroborated by Fenris and Abby. You are to seek out their current position, and assess from a reasonable vantage the details and current state of their work.
Once your evaluation is complete, you are to make your way into the camp and there capture as many Venatori scholars (or similar) as you're able. Destruction of Venatori forces, equipment, and interests is preferable where possible.* Should it prove tactically advantageous, those with anchors are permitted to open rifts and are given license to leave them unsealed should closing them in relative security be implausible.*In the margin, in Julius’s handwriting: In the case of any notes or diagrams, acquisition would be even better, but of course if there’s any doubt of success, destruction is a viable secondary option.Captured Venatori agents are to be pressed for information relating to the Gates, including but not limited to: Corypheus' intentions, their number, their function, how they are activated, and suspected locations. Once their intelligence has been exhausted, you are given leave to tend to any captives in such a way as you believe befits their continued value to Riftwatch or her allies.
-J. FlintIf you do open any rifts and notice any odd phenomenon, please do try to remember to jot down any useful observations when you get a chance. Likewise, if you see any strange artifacts and are not able to retrieve them, notes (or sketches?) of them would be very much appreciated. Good luck.
- Julius
THE RAID
The targeted Venatori encampment is pitched in a scrubby, lightly wooded area above a ravine located Northwest of Starkhaven. The camp, which consists of the usual pitched tents and pack animal picket lines, seems to be the base of operations for an minor excavation effort occuring in the ravine itself. Careful observation, stealthy investigation, or the general chaos of the melee may reveal the following details:
Now comes the hard part.
- The camp sits alongside around a roughly built dam which is currently serving to divert the flow of a very minor tributary of the Minanter from the ravine into a muddy man-made spillway. This seems to have been done in order to lower the water level in the ravine and allow the researchers access to a small ruin there.
- Based on the state of the work in the ravine and the activity of the camp, it seems the researchers are primarily focused on recovering artifacts from the dig site. The spillway channel is being used to sift through materials brought up from the ravine. Trays of cleaned material are arranged on portable work tables under canopies, and a small collection of either field researchers or enslaved labor (hard to say which) are studiously picking through them.
- The camp's inhabitants consist primarily of Tevinter researchers (which may or may not be mages), some nondescript labor force (which may or may not be enslaved), and a subset of well-armed Tevinter soldiers (which also may or may not be mages and/or enslaved). There are enough people around that a straightforward assault into and out of the camp seems unlikely, but they're scattered enough between the various points of interest that diversions or stealth may be fruitful.
- During the day, the camp's inhabitants are scattered between their various work stations. At night, everyone beds down in their various tents or on bed rolls around low fires excepting the soldiers, who keep a watch rotation over the camp, and two bored sentries armed with signal horns posted at the ravine dig.
- The draft animals on the perimeter picket line consist mostly of stocky mules, fuzzy Free Marches horses, and two beefy druffalo. A fancy dracolisk is picketed separately within the camp itself.
yesss
You should get that looked at.
[ Matter of factly about one of his many small wounds. ]
YES
I will.
[Eventually. But he leans forward, peering at some of the papers shifted to the side. His fingernails still have dried blood beneath him, but at least none of it is fresh as he picks up a book.]
Can you read Tevene?
[This particular one just seems to be a history book, which is interesting, but not particularly helpful.]
Re: YES
[ She'll leave it at that (for now). No need to harass him over it if he knows he needs to take care of himself. GLimmer is still sorting through things as Fenris picks up a book. ]
Ah... No. I'm just grabbing anything that looks like it be helpful.
[ Glimmer admits with a grimace. ]
no subject
[Of course, such a thing might be interesting either way, but just so she isn't lugging several tomes all the way back to Kirkwall for no reason. He sets it down, then comes at her side.]
But if you would like to know what some of the papers say to determine their usefulness, I can translate.
Glimmer, isn't it?
[Glitter? Glamor? He remembers hearing the name at some point on the journey here, but sometimes his memory is spotty.]
no subject
[ the book in question is tossed aside. She's just trying to be helpful, which is hard when she doesn't know the language. Oh well. ]
That would be really helpful, thanks.
[ Glimmer's smile is, as is typical, a bright and genuine thing. ]
Yeah, Glimmer. You're Fenris, right? I didn't know you could read this stuff.
no subject
It is my first language.
[He assumes, anyway, but it's not as if he can remember his childhood or teenage years. But the Trade tongue and Tevene go hand in hand with one another, and one is as good as the other. A beat, and he glances up to clarify:]
I was once a slave in Tevinter. Literacy came later, but Tevene is familiar to me.
[Maker forbid she think him willingly part of that population. He is a man freed, not a defector. And he says that the way he might tell her that he killed someone today: steadily, firmly, a neutral statement rather than a bid for pity.]
Show me which you have accumulated.
no subject
[ Glimmer says it with genuine feeling. Not exactly happiness, but a sense of gratification that Fenris has managed to get away from them and is helping to fight them. It's better that way. ]
Here, uh...
[ She shoves a pile of papers and books over towards him that she's picked out of the chest. Some of it is probably valuable, but really, it's anything that has writing on it so it could be anything from a laundry list to a ream of valuable research notes. ]
no subject
[It's curious, not snotty. He glances up.]
I have not heard its like, not outside certain professions.
[Actors. He means actors.]
no subject
Ah... no. My mother and father picked it for me.
[ She smiles. ]
I wouldn't change it for anything.
[ Thankfully, she doesn't seem to take offense to last comment--she just seems mildly confused. ]
What professions?
no subject
[It's not that he dislikes the stage, but actors are a little much sometimes. And yet it's a unique craft, he can admit that.]
Is it a common name, where you hail from?
no subject
[ And now here she is, sorting papers in the wreckage of a camp full of people they just killed. ]
I don't know if it's common? My mother was named Angella and my father was named Micah... I've never met anyone else with it, so I guess not?