We heard you liked the Blight...

[aceso]

So we put some Blight in your lyrium so you could be Blighted while addicted to lyrium!



Hello, friends. As some of you may know (and if you don't, I'm about to spill the beans), red lyrium is regular blue lyrium that has been infected with the Blight. As the Blight can only infect living things, this also means that lyrium is alive. We learn this in the video game when Bianca tells us exactly this. And... nothing more. We don't know how she figured this out, but we're going to find out our own way in Fade Rift.

That's where you guys come in. The mods have given us the go ahead to make this info available, but it has to be something threaded out in a plot. As I've done several red lyrium plots already, I'd like someone else to take the lead on this one.

So here's what we need to do:

make the connection between red lyrium and the Blight

make the connection between lyrium and other living things (which will obvs come from point 1)

make this info available to the Inquisition

Now how do we do this? That's why I'm making this brainstorming post. We have no idea how Bianca managed to connect these two things. Blight means darkspawn, red lyrium means Red Templars, right? Where do they connect? I have some vague ideas we could mess with, but nothing solid.


Possible ideas:

Cleansing runes provide combat bonuses against both Red Templars and darkspawn. Could we use this fact to somehow take note of cleansing runes on weapons utterly wrecking darkspawn over similar weapons without runes? Is that too complicated and in the heat of battle not easily noticeable?

Something to do with dwarves, as they have exposure to both darkspawn and lyrium?

What other ways could we figure this out? Thankfully we have a host of both Grey Wardens and Templars/a former Templar/a Seeker on the Red Lyrium Project, so there have to be ways we can connect these two seemingly unconnected things together.

While this is obviously pretty Red Lyrium Project focused, your character doesn't have to be on the team to participate! They merely have to be someone who would take an interest and be willing to keep Christine (as Project Head) informed of their findings. As I said, I'm being more hands off with this one, so while Christine may or may not be personally involved with the plot, she does have to be notified of the results.


Things a player or players running this plot need(s) to do:

post a plot log where characters discovers that red lyrium has the Blight

inform the Red Lyrium Project on their project page for their records

make a follow up rookery post to tell the Inquisition

If you want to run this plot, please let me know in the comments below where I've made a header for it. Please sign up even if someone already has! Unless there is literally like half the game signing up, odds are I'll just say you can all run it together and hop into a GDoc or something to write it out together, as if it was a multi-person rookery post or something. Feel free to set up the discussion about this plot in the comments however you guys want. It's all brainstorming so it's super casual. Once we have a volunteer or volunteers (I'll give it a couple days), I'll inform them and the plot will be handed off to them, so any of our brainstorming can be picked/refined/finalized by them, as well as anything having to do with plot sign ups and when to run the plot. I'm just the messenger, really.


SIGN UPS FOR THOSE WILLING TO RUN THE PLOT
<b>Player:</b> <b>Character(s) Involved:</b> <b>Preferred form of contact:</b> Plurk, Discord, PM? <b>Is it okay to have you be part of a team running this, or would you prefer to bow out if it's not you running it alone?</b> No judgment. Some people feel they work better running things solo.


I'm outta here.

Comments

SIGN UPS

[aceso]

[circleprodigy]

Player: Isana
Character(s) Involved: Inessa, of course.
Preferred form of contact: weisshaupt @ plurk
Is it okay to have you be part of a team running this, or would you prefer to bow out if it's not you running it alone? Definitely part of a team, I don't feel like I could carry this solo and am already running a plot this month.

[lifeofendurance]

Player: Althea
Character(s) Involved: Aleron Darton
Preferred form of contact: magicarp@plurk or PM
Is it okay to have you be part of a team running this, or would you prefer to bow out if it's not you running it alone? I'd rather be part of a team. And honestly it'd depend on the timing because I've got out of state trips the next three months. But boy am I eager to see this come along.

[lifeofendurance]

So I'm working on writing up a personal-ish? plot. Sort of a revised Promise of Destruction with less "oh and about that Tranquility thing" and more about the torture and death of the rest of the Seekers. But I was gonna toss in a bit about some research notes of some of the deceased Seekers being experimented on with the red lyrium.

...if that's any help.

...and if the plot thing gets approved.

...and after I get back from a work conference in November. >_>


_____________________________________


Okay and I have more just general babble idea if it inspires/helps.

I know back with the future Kirkwall stuff, the Doctor went probing at Al's mind and hit the roadblock that stops them from being mind controlled. The plan was for him to come back and ask what that was about and talk about why Al (and Malcolm) didn't turn like a normal Templar. But didn't end up happening... I think Doctor dropped? Anywho...

If there's anyone left that was on the future team that saw first hand that Al was clean off his rocker, they could share what info they have about it. I thiiiiiiiiiiiiink the only one left is Wren (the character) but she kind of despises Al so dunno if she'd do the sharing or not?

But part of the aforementioned plot, I'm willing to (gulp) volunteer Al as tribute and have him get red lyrium poisoned so the effects and eventual connections could be sussed out... instead of just having the hell beat out of him. There is a major BUT and that's the I will not do this unless Wren(the mun) is okay because this would be horrible to Bethany. It might not be a feasible option anyway because unless it's a lethal dose, it'd take years for the results to come in. Maybe? idk

So maybe remnant future team is still the best bet?

[limier]

Malcolm got told about red lyrium seeker stuff; she's relying on him to tell Al or not, so that's between you guys! She's been trying to keep it on the DL for obvious reasons. That said, if it facilitates stuff ooc to have her be the one to drop deets, just ping me.

[lifeofendurance]

Ah gotcha gotcha! I'm not in on the loop on that and well... Al and Wren get on like oil and water so...

But yeah, obvious reasons. >_>

[limier]

Yeah it was back around February; my bad for not organizing the reveal more ooc.

She dislikes both Al and Malcolm right now, but she's not so petty as to keep something like that from someone for anything other than security reasons; if you need her to bring it up again ic we can find a way.

[lifeofendurance]

Yeah I remember now trying to juggle event tags from a hotel room on crappy internet. And the insanity of selling the house and well... my general aversion of the month of April. Prolly my fault with all that it fell through coming out.

Maaaaaaybe after this plot thing I'm working on it might make sense to bring it up again?

Edit: Or maybe this is the Maker's way of telling me that I need to satisfy my itch to play Bianca. XDDD

[limier]

RL happens, it's no big thing!

Sounds good; just hmu on plurk or discord if you want to hash stuff out. -b I'll probably be throwing her at this one, but I need to sort out some schedule stuff first.

[faithlikeaseed]

I'm going to throw the initial idea I had when I saw this up here, and maybe keep editing this comment for brainstorming as I go along.

I'm actually kinda wondering if we couldn't go the wrong way around on this--figure out regular ol' blue lyrium is alive, then get to the idea it's Blight making the red lyrium be all busted. Admittedly this is the way harder direction to go because: how are you gonna notice the blue sing-y rock is alive, huh? But there you go.

[youwonscience]

Sub-thought, very tentative: I'd been thinking about running past the mods Cosima finding a microscope (the kind with a mirror, obviously not with an electric light source) as an AC reward Rift item. IF they okay it, I would definitely be down for it to be a way to help gather evidence as to lyrium's nature. (If desired -- I'm definitely not married to this idea, even if the mods do approve the microscope, but I thought I'd float it here.)

Alternately, if a mage is interested in helping her magnify shit, that's also a potential workaround if we can think of a way that makes sense; she's been talking about magnification to a lot of people in various places.

[faithlikeaseed]

DUDE THO. That would be really cool! Obviously the mods might need to Make Stuff Up about the molecular structure of lyrium (at a level that'd be noticeable with light microscopy), buuut.

...okay what've we got for mage spells that deal with optics. Illusions don't happen much on Thedas but there's gotta be some way to use the Fade as a lens.

[aceso]

That is a really great idea and would help a lot in discovering it's alive. I'd say its worth asking the mods about.

[youwonscience]

Update: The mods have approved Cosima's microscope and broadly OK-ed using it to help the team work out lyrium is alive so long as we keep them in the loop!

[aceso]

Nice! \o/

[limier]

Just +1-ing that this could be a cool way to go! And potentially lead into more Descent style stuff on the side, which I know Liz has been kicking around some.

[lifeofendurance]

+1 I like this approach to things because it's different than having Bianca just march in and tell you so.

[justice_is_blond]

Once you know it's alive, I've got a guy working heavily with the Blight who could start to notice similarities where he'd not considered them before. He'd be in as soon as it's known they're dealing in Blight anyway, so this is just a hair sooner.

[faithlikeaseed]

Yesss excellent that's kinda-sorta how I was figuring they'd link up. Once Anders and the other Wardens know it's a living thing, red lyrium's "behavior" might start to ring some bells in a way it doesn't when it's an inanimate object.

[justice_is_blond]

Awesome, yes. Ring all the healer instinct bells, take another look at the thing, and go oh. OH. HEY NOW.

[aceso]

This is a really great idea, especially since once they figure out it's alive, they can go "Okay, so can it get sick? Is red lyrium sick?" and that could lead towards the Blight since it's the the biggest, baddest infection they know.