The Annulment at Dairsmuid

[foxsays]

Plotting post for everyone involved in the annulment at Dairsmuid plot!

As discussed here; Araceli has travelled to Rivain to study there for a little while where she will hear about survivors from the Annulment at Dairsmuid.

Following this, Araceli will contact Leliana (as her boss and bardmaster) and Korrin Ataash (since she's on the Mage Council) before she sends out a sending crystal to all of the Inquisition about the situation; this is where your characters will be signing up but I'll be putting it on the comms so others in the Inquisition are in the know/so people can chime in and offer insight/ask questions etc. Once everyone travels to meet her in Rivain and she takes them to where her mage contacts are located outside of Dairsmuid, they find out that the Templars attacked and abducted the mage survivors to take them back to Dairsmuid. Araceli and the teams must race to Dairsmuid to rescue them. They'll have to split into two teams to carry out the rescue: one team will go to the dungeons to free the mages where they'll have to deal with a couple of warriors and a torturer, the other team will have to kill the remaining Templar force including knights and archers. After that there will be time to heal up, explore the Circle for anything worth salvaging, reuniting the mages with their loved ones before taking them to the Inquisition, and some time for everyone to have some fun in the sun in Rivain.

The teams are as follows:
Team Dungeon Crashers: Araceli, Kas, Anders, Norrington, Kirk, Ellana
Team Templar Crushers: Aleron, Korrin, Malcolm, The Outsider, Mal

I have a draft log located here to make plotting things easier for everybody to plot ahead of time since we are all busy people and so you can make suggestions for things that you'd like/that would be helpful.  Thread suggestions are appreciated but you can of course make your own under the starters when it goes up!

So!  After that recap up there, I'll put the plot from the draft log below with the questions I have for everyone but again, feel free to ask, make suggestions, I'm open, I want everyone to have fun!

ETA
- handwaving is only for the journey to the mage contacts, we can all totally thread out the discussions!
- consensus for both threads is for recon options so I will add a little bit to each start blurb for recon!

Comments

arrival at Dairsmuid;

[foxsays]

Essentially just timey-wimey really but this is mainly for Belle since you mentioned Mal having a ship or a crew so I figured we could all just discuss if that'd make it easiest?

meeting the mage contacts;

[foxsays]

Okay the main things:

- there will be time to quickly chatter in the tavern upon arrival
- are people good handwaving the journey from Dairsmuid to the mage camp or do we want to play that out?
- questioning the mage contacts; I can npc this if you'd like but we can figure it out here so that it moves the plot along faster and people can maybe do some tracking and things while Araceli is off talking ie what direction the Templars came from, estimate of numbers, healing the people caught in the crossfire
- anything else you'd like to ask me I'm sure I'm forgetting things

[gatheringstorm]

I'm good with handwaving, so we can get to the plotty stuff! Korrin can try questioning the mage contacts, see if they'll talk to one of their own even though she's all horned and whanot.

[extramural]

I'm fine with handwaving!

[serannas]

Handwaving is good with me.

[lifeofendurance]

I'm fine with handwaving, though I suspect the contacts aren't going to be real comfortable with the Seekers and Templars in the group?

[foxsays]

Yeah, the contacts will be uncomfortable, some more than others but so long as people keep cool heads and maybe pair up with mages or non-Seekers/Templars then getting information out of them is absolutely possible. Their main goal is getting their loved ones back from Dairsmuid before they're killed.

[gatheringstorm]

Aleron can pair up with Korrin, so he won't have to deal with mages alone.

[universal_charm]

Handwaving is fine with me! If we do need to do questioning/play it out, Kirk is fine with working with Araceli on that

[justice_is_blond]

Handwaving makes sense here too! Anders can be handwavily helpful with mage questioning as well, seeing as he can heal and will be 900% on their side.

team dungeon crashers;

[foxsays]

- I think the main thing for us is probably deciding how we want the fight to go ie does everyone fight or do some people fight and others work to get the mages out of their bindings and away?
- Also: recon, yay or nay?

[quietblade]

Kas will be happy to put his rogueness to the test with recon!

[serannas]

I'll volunteer Ellana to get the mages out of their bindings. But she may have to fight a little to get in and get to their side.

[universal_charm]

ICly Kirk would choose a plan of getting the mages out while another set distract, and he would be fine being part of the squad that goes to free the mages and get them out.

Agree with Ellana-mun that there might have to be fighting to get to the mages and get them back out - kind of depends on how big the group their fighting is, I think.

[foxsays]

It's only a group of three that the dungeon group are dealing with but since they've got two mages of their own in the group who could be hit by what the Templars can dish out, plus the mages are in a pretty bad way, I figured putting it up for the vote would be the fairest way to decide!

[justice_is_blond]

Kas would be awesome recon. Anders would not be, he's not very good at being sneaky/stealthy.

A bit of a fight to get to the mages would be fun and then some can keep fighting if they want while others see to mages? Without Justice Anders' priority will be on rescuing/healing mages rather than fixating on vengeance and fighting.

[universal_charm]

Is it because he gets distracted by kittens?

team templar crushers;

[foxsays]

- Any questions you have about the fight or how to handle it, ask here but it'll be a decent force of angry angry Templars so you can treat it like any normal big battle but if you would like a sort of boss Templar I can throw one in for you?
- Again: recon, yay or nay

(I should probably have put the recon before but I can edit before I do the log, the magic of drafts)

[extramural]

Recon is probably good.

I volunteer the Outsider as bait :v

[gatheringstorm]

Korrin will probably try to stick with Mal, since he knows how she fights, and Aleron, so he can stop Templars from disrupting her magic.

Recon is good, though Korrin isn't especially stealthy. And I'm all good for a boss Templar fight, that sounds awesome.

[lifeofendurance]

Recon is good yup.

aftermath of the rescue;

[foxsays]

- So what do we do with all these gross Templar corpses guys?
- And we're going to be total nerds and bring home books yes? (Because I'm pretty sure that the majority of this party is the nerd squad)

[extramural]

The good news is that anyone the Outsider kills turns into ash! So that's a few less bodies.

shoves books into pockets somehow

[gatheringstorm]

Burn the bodies, take the books. Except any books on gross stuff like blood magic or demon-summoning, the Inquisition doesn't need that shit.

[serannas]

BOOKS. Yes, good.

[lifeofendurance]

Burn the corpses, standard Chantry service for them.

And yeah the books have gotta come back. Good luck prying them out of Al's hands. He'll be reading the whole way back.

[universal_charm]

Bring home the books. All of them. Kirk volunteers as tribute.

Bodies - well, burying them doesn't seem very sanitary or good for the ground, so probably burn them if he's there to make a choice about it, but he would like to stand downwind please.

[justice_is_blond]

Kick the corpses a few times Probably burn them so as not to annoy the Chantry types in their midst though Anders doesn't think the Templars deserve it.

BOOKS YES PLEASE HE WANTS BOOKS

timestamp; Dairsmuid adventures

[foxsays]

Are there any adventures you really want to have in Dairsmuid? Plot them here!

Araceli's birthday is on July 22nd so she's staying a couple of extra days to celebrate.

Oh and I'll be writing an epilogue where the farewell for the mages leaving for the Inquisition will happen that we can all thread out but I'll wait a few days until we get going with the log before I start writing that one up!

[gatheringstorm]

Handwaving, but Mal, Kas and Araceli will definitely get to meet Korrin's grandmother and be (over)fed by her.

[serannas]

IDK if this will be of interest to anyone else, but Fate told Ellana there was a clan of elves in Rivain working on forming a permanent home and I'd love to build on that by having Ellana go see them. That's all the information I have, so if it's good with Alba (I'll ask her), the clan could be right outside Dairsmuid. Otherwise, I'll just handwave that she went to see them before the group goes back to Skyhold.

eta: Okay, it's fine w/ Alba that I build on it. There's conflicting info on the wiki about it, and where there's conflicting info, I say make stuff up! So my idea is they're still living in a camp, but they reveal how they're been saving money from selling handcrafted goods/furs/leather/etc. to one day buy land.

[universal_charm]

If Ellana would like a companion for that, Kirk would be very interested in going, though it would depend on whether the elves would be okay with a human in their midst maybe?

Basically, Kirk would volunteer to go with her if she would like it.

[serannas]

I think they would because on the wiki it says Rivaini have a peaceful relationship with the elves! I'd love to use it as an opportunity for people to see a better relationship between humans and elves, like people in Dairsmuid being generally cool with Ellana since she's the only elf on this mission. And she would really be grateful if he'd accompany her, just because wandering out there alone is the unknown.

[universal_charm]

Oh definitely. Buddy system is a good system!

[gatheringstorm]

Korrin could go with, as long as it doesn't overlap with Araceli's birthday, because promises.

[serannas]

Yeah, if I can squeeze it in between the end of the main plot and her birthday, it would be great if Korrin could go!

[justice_is_blond]

Anders would be very interested in this because permanent home building for a targeted community is high on his research list.

[serannas]

Noice. Based on the wiki saying that Rivain has a peaceful relationship with elves, I figure the Dalish there will be fine with Kirk and Anders coming to their camp. They would have traded frequently with humans to raise money anyway.

Mage contacts questions

[foxsays]

To make it easier for the mage contacts questioning, are there any burning main questions the group would have for them? Or just anything for camp questioning/searching? If you don't want answers right away feel free to just hold ideas here for now!

[justice_is_blond]

1) Are there tunnels into the towers?
2) Do you know how well-supplied the templars are when it comes to lyrium?
3) Did you see any red lyrium anywhere?
4) Did you overhear any part of the templar plans beyond hurting the mages?

[foxsays]

Anything in a bracket is me giving the OOC answer, the bit before is what the group would be told via the contacts!

1) there are one or two tunnels but the mages destroyed them in their escape to seal them shut behind the combined Seeker/Templar forces on the way out from Dairsmuid the first time. (The tunnels are incredibly badly damaged and time hasn't really helped that, trying to even shift the stone with magic would alert the Templars ahead of time.)
2) they don't know about the lyrium situation for the Templars. The mages requested lyrium be sent for themselves via the Inquisition which would have arrived with the group - this hasn't reached them since the Templars arrived first. (The Templars have been relying on black market caches of lyrium, they have very little.)
3) no red lyrium. (Red lyrium will require a bit of explanation at first, they've had other concerns.)
4) all plans were about finishing what they started - they said they'd be back for anyone that helped. (They plan to root out the families and friends, as well as finally putting every room in the Dairsmuid Circle to the torch.)