therookery | Report: Peculiar Weather We're Having

SUBJECT: Peculiar Weather We’re Having
PARTICIPANTS: Alais, Sawbones, and Aleksei (with a handwaved debrief from Julius)
CLASSIFICATION: Public
DATE FILED: Backdated to the end of August
STATUS: Complete
SUMMARY: A team went to Emprise du Lion to look into the continuing freak weather in the region. They were able to find and disable an artifact that seems to be the cause of the ongoing freeze. The team brought the deactivated item back to Kirkwall for further study.

REPORT:

It is not often that one sends out a team to gather groundwork for answering a question one expects to be long and involved and have them return with what seems to be the answer, but I find myself in just such a position. While Riftwatch was already doing work in Orlais, I dispatched Sister Sara Sawbones, Alais Amphion and Aleksei ar Waslyna o Bearhold to try to renew inquiries that might lead them to the source of the ongoing weather disturbances in Emprise du Lion. They returned with not only the news that the likely source of the cold was an artifact, but with the artifact itself (evidently deactivated) in tow.

In their debriefing, the team explained that a trader named Roger Deschamps was quite helpful. (N.B. Consider reaching out to either recruit him or, at the very least, offer him some business since we’ve somewhat dented his livelihood with the weather change?) He was able to explain that in some places, there are still thaws in the summer months, while others remained fully frozen year-round. This allowed the team, with the help of a map from Deschamps, to work toward the cold center of the area.

The agents were able to find a cave that seemed to be near the center of the most frozen area; it had likely been overlooked, in the past, as the entrance was mostly covered by a rockslide. After working their way inside with a bit of ingenuity, they found a cavern in which several bodies were suspended in ice and a pyramid with a warning not to touch it. The artifact is roughly five feet high, with vertical lines (3 on each side) that the team described as glowing when they initially found it. After deactivating the item, the glow faded, as did the intense sensation of cold (though given the amount of surrounding ice, the change was relative). Using sleds and ropes, they were able to remove the pyramid and, on finding that it remained inert, decided to bring it to where our Research division can devote further study to it. I have initially instructed that it be kept out of the Gallows proper, under guard, until we can determine that we won’t accidentally activate it again.

In the immediate, I would like to devote a team to study this artifact and try to determine how it works (and, ideally, whether it is something relatively new or an older item turned to Corypheus’s purposes). It is not obvious whether red lyrium is involved, though given the heavy Red Templar activity in the region, I suspect we cannot rule it out in advance.

— Enchanter Julius, head of Project Sashamiri

NEXT STEPS: As above, study the artifact and learn how it works. Julius also suggests monitoring Emprise du Lion periodically to see how fast it’s thawing, and perhaps recruiting NPC Deschamps as an agent or at least a vendor.

NOTES & LINKS: OOC post; IC log.