HUMAN
“ self-fulling prophecy of endless possibility. ”
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Post by GABRIEL CAZAL on Apr 30, 2014 5:43:29 GMT
Gabriel is rocked back on his heels under an outcrop of rock, eating an apple in the darkness, when he hears the tell-tale scrape and drag of darkspawn shuffling in his direction.
He'd felt them long before he heard them, that blessed Grey Warden sixth sense that means he never gets to roast a grenlock kabob by surprise, but the group clumping towards him had been aimless in his mind, tinged with only a dim hunger rather than fury and pursuit. He figured they hadn't been part of the group he'd put down earlier; in the absence of one of their beloved Archdemons, darkspawn outside of a Blight are not the smartest creatures under the sun.
But then again, that's why he's here. Because they're learning that 2+2=4 and how to scribble terrible artwork on the Deep Road markers. Gabriel rises to his feet, stretching his legs out for a moment, before tossing the half-eaten apple core away. They've either got his scent independently of his carnage earlier or this is one of their fancy new tricks. Either way, he'll get some fun out of it.
It's rare that mages are scouts for the Grey Wardens, very rare indeed. They're usually regarded as not quick enough to get ahead and get a good look while staying out of trouble, too fragile to be able to take a beating but still get away clean. Gabriel can't even say that line of thought is wrong.
But he likes scouting anyway.
He's in a long clear stretch of the Deep Roads--as clear as they get, anyway. There's still plenty of tumbled debris and ruined glory around him; the outcrop he was under is hardly the only of its kind. He'd passed a recent-looking wreck of a dwarf caravan littered with gnawed corpses on his way down this path. A bunch of poor saps emboldened by Kal'Hirol's revival, maybe, thinking they could venture into their ancestral ruins.
Their ill-luck, not his. The darkspawn weren't in sight yet, but Gabriel could feel them drawing nearer and nearer. With a crooked half-smile he felt for his mana reservoirs, sunk into the well of magic for a moment, luxuriant--and then began striding forward. Why wait for the party to come to him? LAIKA OF GS! |
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Post by freya bellamy on Apr 30, 2014 6:16:47 GMT
she's been watching him for awhile, pushing her soft skin against the cold, jagged crevices of the orzammar caverns. a grey warden may have been an excellent tracker for the darkspawn, but freya's skills had been built up by years of practice and observation. she didn't need to wager everything on an all-or-nothing gamble in order to learn how to protect herself. people forget that sometimes, she thinks. mostly people who think that power at but an arm's length away, scrambling for whatever they believe will save them from the monsters that threaten to spill over their walls.
freya had to be blinded by the dimness of the thaig to miss the staff that the man carries. quite literally an arm's reach away, it seems. she hopes that he will not be a troublesome presence to her. unsupervised mages did not typically inspire confidence in this woman, but she is also mindful of the darkspawn that lurk this place. as long as he would position himself in their direction (and judging from the recognizable warden robes, probably), then freya has no objections. if he can clear her path, then that is half the job done.
she had exchanged a few blows with a few of the darkspawn earlier, and she decides that she would rather minimize contact whenever possible. the poisonous blood of the tainted is a bigger concern. freya had seen the state of the dwarf bodies earlier, and how a couple had chosen to take their own lives rather than succumb to the taint. she had looted the previous bodies of valuables that did not fit her client's description, but the leader of the caravan had not been present. the dwarven rings that she had taken did not bear the correct house crest.
maybe he is still alive. maybe he isn't. one of the things that freya had liked about working for other people was the fact that the burdens of empathy are not her own. they are the burdens of wives and daughters, husbands and sons. she is none of them, not for a very long time.
what might be her concern, however, is whether or not he became a darkspawn in the end. that might be a little harder to explain to a hysterical client.
the rogue decides that the husband's body would make as good of a memento as any. she follows the man at a respectable distance. | |
LAIKA OF GS! |
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HUMAN
“ self-fulling prophecy of endless possibility. ”
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Post by GABRIEL CAZAL on May 1, 2014 15:58:47 GMT
Sparks crackle into life at the tips of Gabriel's fingers, and then burst into full flame, twining up his hands and forearms. He can feel the press of darkspawn in his mind, closer now, and closer, bearing down on him like a great black wave and then--
Ah, there they are, right on time: nine shrieks and an ogre. What an exciting day for him. Three of the shrieks raise their twisted muzzles and sniff the air, jaws slavering with hunger--lovely image, really--and then bound at a blinding speed past Gabriel towards some other prey. He dismisses them. Not his concern now, and there's less for him to deal with. If some other sucker down here gets killed slowing the darkspawn down for him, he'll assure their corpse they died valiantly for the noble Grey Warden cause.
Then he focuses on what's left of his opponents, and the fun begins. The darkspawn are still clumped together, onrushing in one lethal pack, and Gabriel reaches out and pulls, the air around them rippling and contorting as they slow to a crawl for just one moment long enough.
He slams the entire group to the ground and the flames wreathed around his hands coalesce and blossom into fireballs raining from the high roof of the cavern, pummeling the stricken darkspawn. Gabriel loves magic. LAIKA OF GS! |
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Post by freya bellamy on May 2, 2014 3:24:15 GMT
shrieks. three shrieks. freya doesn't usually consider it, but she seriously thinks about asking for a pay raise after the contract has been accepted. at the same time, she took on the job while knowing the full risks of such an endeavor. the dwarf was not so lucky.
("i didn't...i didn't know!" the woman had sobbed. "he convinced me that the darkspawn were eradicated and i - i let him go!")
for both their sakes, freya had hoped that he had known better as well. stuck to the parts of the thaigs that had been secured by the legion of the dead, maybe. that would have been the smart thing to do. in freya's experience, men rarely did the smart thing. and she is? she's becoming soft. life away from the court has taken her off her edge, and if she dies here while fighting darkspawn of all things for a couple pieces of gold--
raleigh would probably have laughed at her and asked if she saw her own father in that woman. hoping that she had always meant to be saved.
he would have, and that is probably why she had killed him with just the slightest bit of relish.
maker, she doesn't see much of a choice here. if freya does not intend to turn back, then she prefers to stick close to the warden whenever possible. if not for him, she would be facing nine shrieks and an ogre. if anything, he's the best asset that she's got. that, and her speed. freya has no plans to become a ghoul on the account of sloppiness.
as hideous as they are, the shrieks are still humanoid enough for freya to pick out their weak points. or what would have usually been elf weak points, anyway. freya keeps her distance and draws the emergency crossbow on her back. she is no genius archer by any means, but even she can hit a few darkspawn at this range. she hopes that the darkspawn enjoyed deathroot poison. freya doesn't even pause to watch the mage cast his magic, her eyes glued to the situation in front of her. instead, she listens carefully for any new arrivals who may come to ambush her.
against a lone rogue, they are practically dancing around their side of the thaig. she eventually allows the shriek in front to catch up with her as she switches to her . she delivers several quick blows to assassinate one of them before taking several leaps backwards, far away from their rotten claws. she may be on a job, but she isn't about to risk contracting the taint so quickly.
it's frustrating, to limit her skills to stay in the safe zone. at the same time, a bard's patience can be limitless. | |
LAIKA OF GS! |
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HUMAN
“ self-fulling prophecy of endless possibility. ”
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Post by GABRIEL CAZAL on May 5, 2014 4:54:28 GMT
The lovely thing about shrieks is that once you can pin them down, they tend to oblige you by dying rather quickly. Of course, the problem is getting them to stand still in the first place: that nasty habit of vanishing and re-appearing is a bit of a kick in the teeth, but Gabriel isn't some unwieldy brute trying to hack and slash with a hunk of metal. He's an artist and his medium is death. Force magic means no one moves unless he wants them to move, not even ogres and shrieks. The two shrieks who survived the initial firestorm apocalypse barely have a chance to shake the soot out of their eyes and pull their singed little claws out before Gabriel has warped the air around them, energy spiraling and dragging them into a slow relentless backwards crawl.
One good fireball finishes those last suckers off. Like shooting fish in a barrel. Yeah, he's a goddamn da Vinci of death, although the reference would be lost on him, Leonardo da Vinci (and Italy entirely) not existing in Thedas. Alas.
The ogre, however, is not dead. Ogres are generally spiteful brutes. They never lay down and die no matter how nicely you ask, or how smooth your spell conjuration is. Rude of them, but there's nothing to do but deal. Gabriel figures he still has a few more seconds before it shakes itself free of the gravity maelstrom currently anchoring it in the same area as the shriek corpses, which means he has a few seconds to think of a plan.
He gambles and throws a glance over his shoulder, checking up on whatever those three shrieks were after when they bypassed him. If they're coming back for him, he'd like to know. If they're dead, even better--whoever won that battle has gotten a grand prize: the privilege of killing this ogre for him! LAIKA OF GS! |
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Post by freya bellamy on May 7, 2014 8:57:56 GMT
she admits that it is a bit of a nasty surprise when the darkspawn do not fall after being impaled in the throat by an arrow. that, and freya doesn't fare well against numbers, but beggars can't be choosers. there is no beggar greater than a bard with no patron.
she is no indiscriminate killer. even after the initial arrows find their target, follow-up attacks increase the concentration of the venom. if the bard does not finish the darkspawn, then time will rob them blind.
the second falls, and it is almost too easy of a kill. freya figures out why when the third ambushes her from behind. she drops the bow when the shriek leaps at her. freya draws an unbroken arch with her dagger, planting the point firmly into the shriek's eye.
critical hit! it is super effective!
if freya is dismayed at getting poisonous darkspawn blood on her prized dagger, then she doesn't show it. it has slain nobler men than this shriek.
the assassin pivots on the balls of her feet and sees that the ogre isn't going anywhere, but he will be soon. she grits her teeth. killing darkspawn may be a warden's job, but if there's a task that needs to be done, then it needs to be done. freya grabs her shortbow from the ground, for i just realized that a crossbow and a shortbow are not in fact the same thing. obviously i got the dragon age weapons system down pat.
freya has killed a kossith before, which she figures is probably the closest approximation that she will ever get to killing a real ogre. frontal assaults were never wise. backstabs were often only half-successful. flanking was just asking for broken teeth. or in this case, crushed organs. she notches an arrow and tries to assassinate the brute through the eye sockets. they are beady things, and freya did not exactly go around advertising her skill with a bow. she got lucky with the force mage, however. the gravity field draws her arrow in with a little more force than physics would have allowed, allowing for the metal tip to lodge firmly into the ogre's head.
the earth shakes when the magic dissipates enough for the body to fall. that was admittedly more bow practice than she usually gets in a full week. | |
LAIKA OF GS! |
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HUMAN
“ self-fulling prophecy of endless possibility. ”
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Post by GABRIEL CAZAL on May 8, 2014 4:57:42 GMT
The ogre goes down with a series of sickening cracks, landing on a shriek corpse and splattering guts everywhere. Gabriel rolls his shoulders and stretches out the arm he uses to cast. His fingertips still burn white-hot for a moment, and then even the last vestige of flame trickles away until it's needed again.
The eye covered by the patch throbs for a moment, and then Gabriel bounds off to the nearest ledge, hauling himself up before sprawling out on the dusty stone and digging through his pack. He's ravenous. Burning your enemies to a crisp will really take it out of you. He surfaces with a slab of hard black bread and rips off a chunk, chewing as he looks over at the mighty ogre-slayer.
"Great job," he says through a mouthful. "Excellent work. I'll nominate you for some sort of honorary certificate if you make it back out to the top. You can see if bars will give you free ale for it."
Probably not, if they were any of the bars he'd been in. LAIKA OF GS! |
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Post by freya bellamy on May 9, 2014 3:06:21 GMT
if freya is just the tiniest bit disgusted by the black stuff that the warden is eating, then she doesn't show it. it might even be a little impressive that he can eat at all after watching bits of darkspawn gore fly everywhere. comes with the job, she supposes. walk around in a certain pair of shoes for too long, and you might just grow into them.
the bard is not only trained to use her eyes, but her ears as well. that, and she has not been in orlais for so long that the differences between the trade tongue that she is used to listening to and his words are immediate.
"...you speak with an orlesian accent." maybe it wasn't exactly obvious to most, but it certainly was to a woman who used to deal in secrets. freya almost envies him, remembering the days when she had to spend hours of her day trying to rid herself of the coarse language that her ferelden father had given her.
then she decides that it probably wasn't a good idea to be engaging in this sort of conversation with a grey warden when she is the one who is entirely unauthorized to be here. she is neither a warden nor a legionary, sneaking about in the deep roads. if she's getting free ale anywhere, it would probably be in orzammar's detention cells.
freya was about to make herself scarce while the warden was taking his lunch break when she notices that something among the darkspawn blood and gore is catching a little too much light. one of the shrieks had thrown up a gold pendant upon being crushed by the corpse of an ogre. she walks over to the bloody jewelry and pulls out a piece of paper with her reference.
the house crest that is carved into the emerald bears an uncanny resemblance, as unfortunate as the implications are.
freya takes out her water flask and pours half of the contents onto the bloody pendant. hygienic reasons aside, it seemed...unnecessary to bring the memento to the woman in such a gory state. | GABRIEL CAZALuh feel free to tell me to change it if the plot device ain't kosher |
LAIKA OF GS! |
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HUMAN
“ self-fulling prophecy of endless possibility. ”
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Post by GABRIEL CAZAL on May 9, 2014 15:16:18 GMT
Gabriel was lost in thought, seriously contemplating deviating from his spell specialization in order to be able to carry perishable food into the Deep Roads when he realized the girl was talking to him. Oops.
"I speak with an Orlesian accent," he said. "You don't. We can't all be native to the most beautiful language in Thedas though. Without all those uglier tongues, I'd have nothing to feel superior about, after all."
He stuffed half the loaf of bread back into his pack. Better to save it, after all. He wasn't sure when he was getting back out.
"If you wanted to find some jewelery to sell, there are probably shinier pieces above ground. Easier to get your hands on those as well."
LAIKA OF GS! |
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Post by freya bellamy on May 9, 2014 15:34:53 GMT
like all sophias, freya does not take very kindly to being insulted so blatantly.
"if lies are what people find the most beautiful--" she snarls in the sort of orlesian that she would have usually saved for the grand game, a little less colloquial and a little more carefully constructed. "--then it certainly is the most beautiful language of all." she had desired to own it for so long, and now freya is surprised to feel as much disgust as she feels now.
she should not have said anything. she should not have said anything, but the man brings out everything that she has hated about playing the game. everything that she has hated about playing for him.
she does not rise to the bait. freya wraps the item in a blanket of plain cloth. she would be lucky if the warden truly pegged her for a common sneak-thief, but the deep roads made that a rather distant possibility.
freya had watched the warden clear the path of darkspawn from the entrance. she figures that she can run back to orzammar in one piece. she starts heading off in that direction with no intent to turn her head back at all. he wasn't worth it. few men ever were. | |
LAIKA OF GS! |
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HUMAN
“ self-fulling prophecy of endless possibility. ”
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Post by GABRIEL CAZAL on May 9, 2014 18:34:54 GMT
Lies are lies in any language. They all sound about the same to him, however you spit it out.
But arguing about philosophy? Maker, he can't think of anything more boring. The girl walks one way, and Gabriel goes the other, deeper into the tunnels.
He does, after all, still have a mission to carry out. And there's nothing more important than completing the mission--if he doesn't complete it, he doesn't get his post-mission bar hop indulgence.
LAIKA OF GS! |
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