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faderiftooc2020-08-22 08:14 pm
faderifting) wrote in faderiftooc2020-08-22 08:14 pm
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MOD PLOT ↠ A THOUSAND WRONGS
MOD PLOT: A THOUSAND WRONGS
The Fields of Ghislain is a large region, and many places in it need many different kinds of attention. Riftwatch will often be spread thinly across it, but they're not alone in their efforts: the Inquisition still has a large number of noncombatants, and the Exalted March's volunteers include many not fit for the front lines, and these three groups will be loosely coordinating.
Several of the larger towns have been identified as able to house larger numbers of people, and these will serve as staging areas, where supplies can be delivered and divvied up and outreach to smaller villages and hamlets can be staged. The main places Riftwatch personnel will be stationed and working from are:
- Pessac, a busy market town set along the small Voire river in the southeast, in the Arlesans area. It's in relatively good shape and has gotten back to "normal" quickly and welcomed the arrival of various Orlesian and allied helpers.
- Montluçon, another large market town in the northwest of the region. It suffered some visible damage during the enemy retreat to Ghislain in particular and is busy rebuilding.
- Deauville, a medium-sized village at the end of the Voire between Pessac and Montfort. It has suffered significant damage and a relatively high number of deaths and disappearances due to resistance against the enemy.
- Vézelay, another mid-sized village right about in the center of the Fields, which was forced to play host to a large enemy camp and associated officers. The town is intact, but there are still lingering signs of the occupation in trampled fields, painted sigils not yet scrubbed off, and the jittery wariness of the residents.
WHAT TO DO
Many tasks will be handed out to whoever has time and ability, and so may require collaboration with—or at least working alongside—members of the Inquisition and Exalted Marchers. But there are others Riftwatch has been asked specifically to handle given its particular capabilities, so it's up to you whether having to deal with them directly is part of any given thread or not.
Rifts
The general spread of rifts over the years had already encompassed this area, and the last several years of bloody battles and the hardships of occupation seem to have only thinned the Veil further, resulting in an unusual number of tears. In some places, the thinning of the Veil may also have caused strange phenomena, such as the surrounding area being noticeably hotter or colder—similar to stepping into or out of the shade—or people in proximity to the rifts feeling subtly more energized or more exhausted, or gravity seeming to increase, slowing people more and more as they approach the rift. Occasionally, in addition to the traditional misshapen manifested demons, those approaching the rifts might catch brief glimpses of more ghostly and person-shaped spirits in the throes of one emotional event or another: dying in battle, running in terror from something unseen, sobbing on their knees, embracing another spirit, laughing so hard they need to sit down.
Riftwatch members will be sent to close these, fighting off demons in the process as always, and to do what they can to shore up the Veil elsewhere, which involves opening a rift in a weak spot just so they can close it again stronger. They'd be ordered not to allow anyone outside of Riftwatch to see them opening rifts; they might not understand.
Enemies
While most enemy forces retreated into Ghislain or Val Chevin, there are pockets of them that still roam the area causing trouble. Teams will be asked to track them down and kill or capture them. The enemies at large include darkspawn (and red lyrium darkspawn), enemy soldiers, Venatori mages, and the occasional Red Templar.
Where possible, groups will be targeted at enemies they're best-equipped to take on (i.e. groups including a Warden sent after darkspawn), but often that won't be possible as stories about attacks are muddled, enemy groups merge and split, and trails cross. And of course, even once they're aware that Riftwatch & Co. are in the region, they may show up unannounced to attack, so you should feel free to stage enemy encounters wherever and whenever, and to tailor the size and makeup of those groups to suit your purposes (within reason; please don't claim there's still a whole army out there).
Rebuilding & Resupplying
A good opportunity for Riftwatch to earn some brownie points especially for mages/rifters/qunari/etc., is helping communities rebuild. In most places, the basic building blocks will already be there, as the stone from destroyed buildings can be reused. People in many spots are also in need of basic supplies and food to tide them over until the harvest, so there will also be some need to collect, purchase, and deliver additional supplies. This will be funded by the Orlesian government and the Chantry, so Riftwatch members are most likely to be interacting with people from allied forces while assisting with these efforts.
Info Gathering
People will be assigned to interview the leaders of various communities, who will then also help put together lists of other citizens who might have information about the invaders. This will mostly be people who were forced to house officers in their homes and who worked as servants for them. There will also be some surviving members of local resistance efforts, who may have been deliberately collecting information already. There will also be people who had more limited interactions but who can still offer some insight: smiths put to work forging for them, innkeepers and tavern maids who served them, farmers who were forced to supply them, people who drove their wagons or polished their boots or happened to see or hear things in passing. There will also be efforts to collect information about the missing, and to try to trace where they might have been taken.
Many of the people PCs speak with will be some degree of traumatized by their long ordeal, and dealing with them and extracting their stories may require care. Some will be eager to talk, grateful for the chance to help, while otherwise may be reluctant, ashamed, or even resentful that Riftwatch and its allies are only now arriving after leaving them to the mercy of the invaders for so long. Many of their stories will be of small personal cruelties or unexpected moments of connection, not useful, but worth hearing.
The overall picture that will emerge is that the invading army were for the most part well-organized and well-disciplined, quick to deal harshly with any perceived resistance or disrespect (typically through execution or enslavement) but not arbitrarily brutal if people obeyed. Most stories are along the lines of being callously tossed out of their homes, their possessions/livelihoods stolen or destroyed, or demeaned by being forced to work for their occupiers and threatened with imprisonment or enslavement in Tevinter if they disobeyed.
There will of course also be stories of the occupiers abusing locals in various ways, and some places will have suffered more and crueler ill-treatment than others depending on the character of the individual leaders in each. Whether you want to engage with this in your RP is up to you, please clear more sensitive topics with your RP partners and include content warnings on threads as applicable. In general, these incidents will be more like individuals getting away with crimes due to their power over the locals rather than a deliberate campaign of abuse—e.g., a soldier in one place might get away with badly beating a local who wouldn't give up his seat in a tavern because his commander doesn't care or approves of harsh and demoralizing tactics, while in another town the same behavior might get the soldier a minor punishment and the citizen some manner of apology because his commander is trying to win hearts and minds. There doesn't seem to be a top-down "pillage and murder to your hearts' content" strategy in place, so things like arbitrary mass murder with no inciting event are unlikely, but neither have they been ordered to use kid gloves.
The Venatori were the more feared, often arriving suddenly and taking people away with them who were not seen again, and anyone who acquired an anchor or showed any sign of magic was swiftly collected. Of the various sorts of enemy personnel scattered throughout the region, the Venatori mages, though not a large percentage of the force, were the most likely to commit arbitrary atrocities—villages burned in response to small slights, people killed in the street for fun.
For the most part it's just a lot of data gathering that will need to be sifted through and compiled into useful conclusions afterwards, and you should feel free to use this type of work more as a prompt for your characters to talk to each other about things rather than feeling the need to NPC actual interviews with locals unless you want to. There may also be some nuggets here and there of more immediately useful intel: a cache of hidden supplies, a stolen document, a snippet of revealing conversation. If you'd like your characters to uncover something that's immediately actionable or could be of plot use in the future, please comment below and link us to a thread already in progress, and we'll give you a tidbit to uncover and share.
Temple Exploration
Exploring the deeper, more secret reaches of the Shrine of Dumat excavation will be covered by a closed mission, but everyone can freely poke around the rest of the shrine. It's a fairly large site, with the excavated portion roughly the equivalent of 100x100m, and a few stories deep. The most pressing jobs will be searching the place thoroughly to (i) make sure there aren't enemies or other threats hiding in it and (ii) collect anything the Venatori left behind that might be of use or explain their interest in the site. There will also be an effort to document as much of the temple as possible just in case it's lost or destroyed in the future, e.g., by creating maps of its layout and sketches of the surviving carvings, murals, and mosaics.
For the most part the site is a typical Tevinter-styled ancient temple and safe to explore, with any major hazards in the main levels already cleared out by the enemy occupiers. But PCs may find a few booby traps that were reenabled by the enemy before they left or missed in less-traveled corners, or the occasional cursed/possessed artifact that was left behind (maybe intentionally), so you should feel free to have your characters grapple with minor issues along those lines.
In terms of finding pieces of potentially useful information, as with the info-gathering above, if you'd like your characters to come across something that might have plot relevance, please comment below and link us to a thread already in progress, and we'll give you a tidbit to uncover and share.
QUESTIONS
DISCOVERY REQUEST
Thread link: Please include a link to a thread in progress, ideally one that's proceeded at least a few rounds. This is to help give us a sense of what your characters are up to, so we can adapt discoveries to match, and also so we can make sure we're giving things out where they're most likely to be used/played.
What do you want: Are you looking for (A) a piece of information your characters can act on immediately in this thread, or (B) something they can discover that might turn out to have plot relevance later?
Wishes or Ideas: Is there something in particular you're hoping to find or interested in exploring? E.g., you'd like to uncover some treasure so your characters can bicker about whether to return it and to whom, or you'd like to learn more about Venatori taking people with anchors. We'll do our best to honor these if we can.
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Thread link: here
What do you want: Option B, s'il vous plaît
Wishes or ideas: Something exploitable to do with Ander-Tevinter relations would be awesome. Alternatively, kidnapped anchor owner info is great, or something to do with who inside Tevinter are either major suppliers and/or supporters of the war effort or are avoiding supporting it would be neat.
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The rest of the stack is more interesting. It's separated from the top with a clip and a note that reads "Refer to Raeus for further action." These letters, also written by Anders, are highly critical of their Tevinter allies, expressing dissatisfaction with their methods, distrust of their aims, and urging those at home to be careful and skeptical of Tevinter and to quietly spread the word to others to do the same. The one letter addressed to Tevinter is similar, except the negativity is focused on the Venatori rather than Tevinter in general.
Judging from the style of the letters and some random details scattered throughout, they can gather that the most interesting individuals are:
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Thread link: yonder
What do you want: more B than A. they are picking through a manor that Venatori had been sighted in bunking down in.
Wishes or ideas: any kind of intelligence that a Venatori posting might leave behind in a fancy house -- a document, an artefact, a piece of correspondence.
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Thread link: here
What do you want: option b
Wishes or ideas: our hope is for spicy letters. we'd like to get some information on venatori kidnappings of people with anchors/other dissidents
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Thread link: Basically, Mhavos and Ellis are currently trying to find a lockbox within which a small group of peasants have stashed some amount of their goods (so they say), since the building it was hidden within was destroyed in the fighting.
What do you want: b preferably but i aint picky.
Wishes or ideas: How do the villagers respond to an elf and a warden finding their valuables? Do they care at all? Are they enraged? Do they accuse either party of stealing? Are they extremely grateful? Etc.
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In addition to the collection of small valuables, the lockbox will also contain a page of what appears to be an inventory. It won't be possible to match it up precisely with the current contents of the box, but there is a notation that may stand out as odd: an entry for a jeweled brooch in the shape of a rooster is crossed out and marked "return approved by Raeus at request of 'the Helmsman'" with a question mark in a different hand afterwards scribbled out.
CHAMPROVENT
What: Riftwatch has been asked to handle the sad case of Champrovent, a village north of Arlesans that was overrun by darkspawn and its inhabitants consumed by the Taint. Riftwatch has been tasked with burning and cleansing the remains of Champrovent to ensure the Taint doesn't spread.
Champrovent was once a very picturesque town, butting up against some of Arlesans' famous orchards—the most northern reaches of which have now been corrupted along with the village, leaving blackened trees with withered black apples filled with something the consistency of pus. The village itself shows signs of attempts to hold back the spread of the taint: some homes have barred doors and windows and are marked with the traditional yellow circles, indicating their inhabitants were infected. Some of those homes now host corpses, but a few might have still-living, staggering ghouls whose minds are long gone. Many of the village's colorful little houses now have tendrils of moldy black taint spidering over their walls, occasionally threaded with veins of what appears to be red lyrium. It's thickest around the Chantry, where careful exploration will reveal that the darkspawn—who have since moved on—tunneled through the Chantry's cellar into the earth below.
There are a few signs of violence, as well, from when the darkspawn who overran the town killed several locals outright and set some homes on fire, but the villagers burned their neighbors bodies before the taint began to overtake them, so no one is dead in the street. It's just corrupted and empty, with the uneasy silence occasionally punctuated by the groan or wail of someone or something locked in one of the homes.
Actually removing the taint is, of course, impossible. The team's job is to burn what they can, paying particular attention to try to prevent any Blight-touched rats from escaping burning buildings to potentially carry the taint elsewhere, and to establish a marked perimeter around the village to ensure travelers don't come close enough to become tainted.
In the process, however, they'll discover the reason that Riftwatch was asked to handle this business in the first place: barricaded in one of the homes is a group of eight people, all of whom are showing small signs of the taint but who haven't yet become ghouls outright. They'll be able to speak through the doors and explain they were herded and left here by the scouts who first visited the village after the invading force was expelled from the region.
A few members of the group will ask to be killed, and one will voice the correct assumption that Riftwatch has been sent here to make sure once and for all that none of them are able to spread the taint, as well as disappointment that the earlier scouts didn't have the balls to set the house on fire. (This individual has also, apparently, killed two people in the house who succumbed to become ghouls in the time since then, and may threaten to hurry it up for the others.) A few others will insist there's not even anything wrong with them—but there is, with black tendrils visible around the thin skin of their eyes and wrists and so on, if anyone takes a look—and demand to be let out. One of these individuals is an adult young woman who (if asked) will say she was a hunter and knows how to fight. The middle-aged man who's been killing those who turn into ghouls is also able-bodied but will have no interest in the Wardens, who he doesn't trust. The remaining are too old, too young, or otherwise very poor candidates for becoming Grey Wardens.
It's up to your characters whether to put them out of their misery, leave them there to die slowly, or try some other option.
OOC Notes: If they do try something other than leaving them there or killing them, check in with us to let us know what they're doing so we can let you know if there's any fallout! And be sure one of you posts a report to the rookery comm by the end of September.
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In terms of the Joining, you can roll to see who survives. We estimate the chance of surviving the ritual is about 70% for people who're otherwise strong healthy adults (minus the blight) and decreasing from there for people who're too old, too young, or too frail.
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MARAUDERS
What: A band of Venatori mages have been marauding through the area, stealing, ambushing travelers, destroying crops and homes, and generally terrorizing the locals but never staying in one place long enough to be captured. Riftwatch has been asked to track them down and deal with them.
Tracking the marauders will be difficult and require several days of rapid travel across the fields from incident to incident, as the band leaves a trail of destruction—burning fields, wrecked caravans and houses, and occasional casualties. They aren't moving in any discernible pattern, so it will mostly take good tracking skills and/or luck to eventually manage to track them to some dwarven ruins. It's the main entrance to a network of tunnels, one that's been enabling them to pop up in different regions without having to travel above ground. Observing or sneaking in closer will reveal a few things:
1. There are quite a few of them, generally working in smaller groups while others remain underground. They've been supplying themselves with crops and goods taken from the farms and caravans they've destroyed.
2. They aren't Tevinter. Their accents, appearances, and any conversation that the team manages to eavesdrop on will reveal them to be Southern mages from a variety of countries, with a limited number of Venatori and Tevinter outfits they're sharing among themselves. They're all adults, no children.
3. More prolonged eavesdropping may reveal them to be deserters from the Inquisition/Exalted March's mages. There are also some differences of opinion among them: some will brag about having killed the merchants in a caravan who called them spellbinds, others will rebuke them for it, etc. But the general sense will be that they are, overall, angry at the world.
Learning any of this will require sneaking around in the underground tunnels around their hideout cave without being caught, which will require splitting up at least a bit, so it's possible that some people may overhear information that other members of the team aren't necessarily privy to unless the eavesdroppers choose to share it. Feel free to use that to create some opportunities for lying, manipulation, difference of opinion, etc., within the team.
Regardless of how everyone feels, there will be too many of them for a direct assault by five people to be effective. So the team will have a choice. They can do something sneaky and surprising with a big splash zone to wipe them all out quickly, leaving open the option of reporting back to the Chantry and Inquisition that they were Venatori mages after all. Or they can go to the nearby Inquisition outpost for reinforcements and a chance of taking at least some of them in alive, at the cost of making it known to the Chantry and then likely to the locals that all of this trouble has been caused by angry Southern mages rather than Tevinter enemies.
OOC Notes: If they try something other than the two options above, check in with us to let us know what they're doing so we can let you know how it goes and if there's any fallout! And be sure one of you posts a report to the rookery comm by the end of September.
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But that said, if it's going to totally ruin everyone's fun to not be able to find a way around the problem, then go ahead and circumvent to your hearts' content.
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Thanks for the speedy response!
PÉROUGES
Who: Bastien, John, Madi, Sawbones, Yevdokiya
What: Riftwatch has been asked to investigate a series of murders that have taken place in the town of Pérouges over the last month or so. Pérouges is a medium-sized town, smaller than Pessac but too large to properly be called a village, certainly not large enough for six murders in as many weeks. The locals believe they are caused by a demon stalking the town, due to the brutality of the crimes and the lack of any obvious culprits or clues left behind.
The town is relatively well-off due to the presence of a fountain shrine where it's claimed Andraste stopped to drink and pray during her march to Tevinter, which has become a minor pilgrimage site. Unlike many symbols of the Andrastian/Orlesian Chantry, which suffered under occupation, this one has been left unscathed, as has the town in general. Tevinter soldiers were based here throughout the occupation, and a party of Venatori even took up residence in the mayor's house for some months, but there is no significant damage to be seen, and the townspeople will report having been afraid, threatened, property confiscated, but nothing worse.
Despite this, the mood in the town is particularly low and tense. This may be attributed to the prolonged occupation and the active serial killer, but over time the most perceptive in the group may pick on a hint of guilt underlying the fear. Many people are terrified that they might be the demon's next victims, and though no one will discuss it outright, they may hear whispers that suggest the general belief is that this is a demon of vengeance.
The Mayor of Pérouges, a sturdily efficient and friendly man of about 60 named Maurice Liseaux, will brush any such rumors off as the product of fevered imaginations and people overwrought by difficult times. He believes the murders are a demon but suspects its presence is caused by all the rifts and such in the region and specifically requested Riftwatch's assistance for that reason. A pair of identical elven twins named Lisette and Robert serve as the Mayor's all-purpose personal assistants/clerks, and he will assign them to assist the team with anything they need during their stay. Lisette and Robert are very reserved and professional, but will be of great assistance in terms of facilitating the investigation, providing information about the town and its inhabitants and getting them the necessary access, introductions, and interviews.
The murder victims:
- Achille Duguay: prosperous cloth merchant and local justice of the peace, killed in his office while working late
- Émilie Plourde: brewer whose business doesn't appear to have suffered despite the grain shortages elsewhere, killed while walking back from a rendezvous with her lover, Denis Travert
- Denis Travert: banker and the Mayor's cousin, killed while riding home from a rendezvous with his lover, Émilie Plourde
- Françoise Blanc: the town's sheriff, killed in his office early one morning just before his deputies arrived
- Odile Masson: innkeeper whose premises were heavily patronized by the occupiers, killed in the tavern's main room one night not long after closing
- Yanick Bonnaire: local gentry, minor in the grand scheme of things but important by the town's standards, killed while taking his nightly constitutional about the grounds
While investigating, three things will gradually come to stand out:
If the Mayor is questioned directly about this, he will admit that the enemy--specifically the Venatori who spent some time in the town--rounded up the town's elves and took them away, and that he and the townspeople allowed it because it was made clear to him that the alternative was the enemy taking them by force along with anyone else who resisted. Any other townspeople pressed on this will tell the same story, at times exactly the same story, word for word. If Lisette or Robert are questioned about this, they too will provide the same story. Lisette will tell it convincingly, but Robert will almost verbatim parrot the Mayor's words in a way that makes obvious that it's what they've been told to say.1. All of the victims were killed at times/places that suggest that if the murderer is not a demon, it must be someone who had enough familiarity to be aware of the victims' routines and/or to have been granted admission to their homes.
2. All of the victims are either sufficiently wealthy or run large enough businesses that they ought to have a larger number of servants and workers assisting them, but their homes/farms/warehouses seem nearly empty. Anyone questioned about this will provide vague excuses about losing staff to the war and unreliable servants running off at the first sign of trouble.
3. Once people start thinking about servants, it may become noticeable that there are almost no elves around, which is unusual in an Orlesian town of this size. Further digging on this subject will only make it more suspicious: there is a (very small, not actually walled) 'alienage' district in Pérouges that the townspeople have simply stopped mentioning or visiting, and which now appears to be abandoned.
It's after this conversation that the Mayor and Lisette and Robert all disappear. By process of elimination, smarts, or tracking skills, the team can trace them back to the Mayor's own house, which the Venatori occupied for quite some time, and to the secret basement where--it will quickly become clear--they conducted blood magic rituals. There, Robert and Lisette are holding the Mayor, attempting to force him to write out a confession before they kill him.
They'll tell the team the real story, which they saw play out from their place in the Mayor's office: the Venatori did demand that the Mayor provide a certain number of people for their use, and there was a clear threat that if he didn't, the Venatori would take whoever they pleased. But it was the Mayor and his cronies who decided to offer up the town's elves specifically. At first it was just the handful the Venatori demanded, but when their compliance seemed to grant the town protection from the abuses the Venatori were said to be inflicting elsewhere, they decided to keep it going and make sure that the Venatori received a consistent supply of elven victims, offering them up even before requests were made. Some human citizens complied out of fear alone, but others were eager to seem friendly and sympathetic and reap the rewards that followed (more/better food, guarantees of safety, business arrangements with the occupiers). The few people who spoke up against this were given to the Venatori as well, effectively crushing future opposition.
The Mayor will tearfully admit that all of this is true, but profess that he was just doing what he had to do to keep the town safe, the Venatori would have killed far more if he'd done different, and that he protected Lisette and Robert because they're like family to him, but that's the best he could do. Unmoved, the elves will refuse to stand down and will make clear that their only remaining desire in life is to mete out justice on the people of Pérouges. They will not trust the entirely-human Riftwatch team to get justice any other way, or to ensure that they and the mayor stand trial and get the truth out. The options will be to allow them to carry on with their mission of vengeance, or to kill them. Either way, it will also be up to the team what story is presented to the public (and to the Chantry/Inquisition).
OOC Notes: If they do try something other than letting them go or killing them, check in with us to let us know what they're doing so we can let you know how that'd god and if there's any fallout! And be sure one of you posts a report to the rookery comm by the end of September.
Re: PÉROUGES
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if they were to opt to involve outside authorities, expose the town's crimes to the inquisition/the chantry/orlesian authorities? what would that look like?
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ETA: But if this was more of a logistics question like "who is around to be told" or something like that, then we can definitely answer those.
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The Inquisition and the Chantry, like you mentioned, have a presence in the region that definitely comes with some authority, especially right now. They'll have a hierarchy of people overseeing operations in the region and in sub-areas, so they could take this to the local captain or sister, or up the chain past them to the people overseeing the whole Fields operation. (Doing this could look like conceding that Riftwatch answers to them and that they have the right to decide things that Riftwatch doesn't, so that's something to bear in mind, but on the other hand who among the DHs would want to touch this business with a ten foot pole.)
Obviously this is all a bit vague because we don't have NPCs ready to go here, but if one of these options interests you and you think your characters would reasonably know some facts already about the people they'd be applying to, I can make some up.
TEMPLE RUINS
What: Just before the Battle of Ghislain, Inquisition agents observed Venatori researchers investigating a set of ruins. During their quick peek inside, they found indications that the ruins might be related to the old god Dumat. During the year and a half the Venatori then spent in control of the area, they've undertaken extensive excavations of this site. The team will be sent to explore the deeper levels of the excavation, which the Exalted Marchers have left alone due to, quote, "a real creepy feeling."
The source of that feeling is twofold: first, there just is, straight-up, a creepy feeling and general sense of malaise that settles in upon descending the last set of stairs, similar to a sense of being watched in the dark or sensing something with malicious intent is just behind you. It can be ignored and powered through, of course, but its source is external and no amount of personal cheeriness or bravery will make someone immune to feeling it.
The second is that ancient enchantments in the lower chambers kill or absorb any sound that travels through the air. They'll hear their own breathing and heartbeats and stomach grumbles, but talking to someone right next to them will require shouting, and even those shouts will be heard as quiet and distant, as if they were shouting from somewhere very far away. For the first few rooms, the only light will be what they bring along with them, and it, too, will seem to not travel as far as it should.
The rooms and passages they travel through on this level are formed entirely out of seamless obsidian, decorated with (literally) knife-sharp carvings of symbols that unmistakably invoke the Old God Dumat. No tool formed the unsettling angles and whorls of these shapes, magic manipulating the stone with perfect precision. The deeper they go the more elaborate the carvings, some shot through with embedded veins and accents of bloodstone, all depicting Dumat's power and dominion and the blood-soaked rituals of his worshippers. It's difficult to focus on them, details somehow more easily glimpsed out the corner of an eye but sliding away when faced head-on. But there is a clear progression, Dumat's power growing as they follow the hall deeper, the carvings themselves growing too, jutting out from the wall further and further to slice at unwary elbows, little channels even carved into the edges and the floors to capture and carry away any blood lost. The final meters are entirely encircled by a carving of the dragon himself, his wings enveloping the walls and floor on a downstroke, his jaw gaping to form the doorway.
Beyond the doorway is a ritual chamber. It doesn't have a sign, of course, that says Ritual Chamber, in ancient Tevene or otherwise, but anyone with basic familiarity with the layout of ancient Tevinter temples will be able to figure that out, either now or later. The silence and dark are worse here. But the air has the lightning smell of lyrium, and one edge of the room is stacked with corpses, arranged so neatly they must have been put there by someone still living, but now blackened and half-melted as if caught in a blast radius. Suspended in the center of the chamber is what appears, using what little light is able to reach it, to be a tear in the Veil, but rather than the sickly green glow and shifting Fadescape usually visible from such tears, there's only blackness so dense it could plausibly go on forever. Unfortunately, they won't have much time to examine this phenomenon. They'll have a few minutes—maybe as many as fifteen—because of the darkness and silence eating up signs of their presence, but eventually one of them will wander close enough to the chamber's other presence to be seen and heard.
That other presence is a man, or what was previously a man. Now he's discolored and disfigured, his proportions unbalanced and twisted, clearly tainted, with his clothing and hat (a typical set of Venatori robes) melded onto his withering form, and what looks like stone scaled across his misshapen jaw and down one unnaturally elongated arm. The reshaping of his features is ongoing; if anyone does manage to look at him long enough, they might see his nose shift or his eyes change shape, skin bulging as if bones are rearranging themselves beneath the surface and chunks of stone jutting suddenly through it or receding. Judging by the readable parts of his face, he's screaming something. Hopefully none of these assorted non-Warden/non-taint-immune people will get too close without a barrier, but if someone does approach near enough to hear and is able to either understand Ancient Tevene, it's BE QUIET, over and over.
He seems (understandably) disoriented and may not immediately give chase. The triggers for him losing his shit and going after the party include: (1) attempting to close the rift—which will also just cause it to expand, for the record, with something black and tarry and tainted bubbling out; (2) trying to touch him; (3) turning around and running; or, (4) hanging around too long just trying to ignore him. Avoiding any of those things may allow the party to slowly back out and leave as if nothing happened, especially since he'll lose the sight and sound of them in the dark. Otherwise, if he does decide to go after them, they may have to make a break for it through the dark chambers, unable to hear or see how close he is behind them until he's right there.
He is shockingly fast given the state of his body, and wields magic erratically but with plenty of power. Despite that he can be killed as easily as any human—though, again, he's tainted, so getting too close to do it isn't advisable. Whether they kill him or not, he won't leave the lower chambers to follow them, instead slowing down and then retreating as the darkness and silence both become less heavy.
OOC Notes: Be sure one of you posts a report to the rookery comm by the end of September. It's also entirely possible (in fact, encouraged) for there to be a return visit with Wardens or additional equipment/goals after this! It would just need to be organized like a player plot (with accompanying requests for info + approval) rather than part of this specific mission.