Fade Rift Mods (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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faderift2017-07-15 01:22 pm
faderifting) wrote in faderift2017-07-15 01:22 pm
Entry tags:
SOLACE RIFTER ARRIVAL
WHO: New rifter & his rescuers
WHAT: Welcome to Sunny Thedas
WHEN: Early Solace
WHERE: The Fereldan coast west of Highever
NOTES: This log is OPEN to new rifters and to anyone who might have volunteered or been ordered to go retrieve new rifters. The log is intentionally backdated to allow new players to also jump straight into RPing elsewhere. It's safe to assume everyone lives.
WHAT: Welcome to Sunny Thedas
WHEN: Early Solace
WHERE: The Fereldan coast west of Highever
NOTES: This log is OPEN to new rifters and to anyone who might have volunteered or been ordered to go retrieve new rifters. The log is intentionally backdated to allow new players to also jump straight into RPing elsewhere. It's safe to assume everyone lives.
You were asleep—deeply or fitfully, for the last time or just resting your eyes for a moment—and then you were not. And wherever you were was not, anymore, replaced by nothing but the sensation of falling, tumbling into endless, bottomless nothing. If this were still a dream, you would wake before you hit the ground. You can't die in a dream, they say. In some worlds.
In this world, you wake with a jolt when you hit the ground, dropped from above by a flaring, crystalline green rip in reality that hangs several feet overhead. Beyond it the sky is a dim, cloudy grey, with thick and warm summer rain falling in a way that's more lazy than stormy. Under different circumstances, it might be pleasant.
But here are the current, very unpleasant circumstances: you're on your back, surrounded by scattered possessions, and a narrow splinter of light in the same sickly green as whatever brought you here is now glowing out of the palm of your left hand. It aches, a bone-deep pain that gnaws even through all the distractions. From the green rift above you, tendrils of light extend in every direction. At the end of those tendrils, energy seems to gather, until it materializes into ghostly humanoid figures. Eight of them. And before you begin to think there's anything harmless about wisps of light, half of those figures burst into flame, the others into crackling immaterial ice, and all of them try to attack—
Not you. Not only you, anyway. There are other people here, swooping in to your rescue. Big, armored people, with swords. Some of them are crusted over with red crystals, and one of them is particularly hulking and lets out a roar. Altogether, they're not very friendly-looking, but they are trying to keep you alive.
***
As for the Inquisition: your mission has shifted from the usual kill the demons, save the rifter, to kill the demons, kill the Red Templars, make sure the rifter understands you're the good guys. Good luck.
Resident Dragon Tumbles In
“Valur polzhys!” sings — no, chants — an imperious voice. A line of arcing flames lances out from the earth beneath a downturned palm to meet a crackling ice demon, where it explodes in a mix of water shards and flame.
The rifter awoke abruptly in a shower of oozing green, his own sack of spell-books narrowly missing clobbering him in the skull, his locked trunk plopping to the earth with a cringe-inducing crash just several meters to his right. He was sprawled in an undignified spread-eagle, a splat of an aristocrat enrobed in velvets and leathers and utterly tousled from a violent fall.
And then the attacks came at his face, and he could no longer afford any hesitation. He catapulted himself to his feet and fought back, mouth blazing with impossible strings of lyrical incantations, hands working just as fast to direct streams of magic.
He would never admit it, but the befuddled, aching, downright aggravated wizard has a head swirling with something resembling panic and desperation. He is confused, abundantly aware of little else aside from the demons that are apparently intent on taking his life, and unable to recognize in what realm he has managed to slip into. Or careen into, as it were.
Considering his current situation, though, there simply isn’t the time to puzzle out what has happened to him. Survival takes precedence, followed by teasing out which of these foul creatures were fighting alongside him and not against him.
As another string of commanding chants ripples in undulating waves to another pair of demons, this time to rend them to pieces, he does not hear the faint crackle of a fire-demon reaching its tendrils to his turned back…
II. The Aftermath. Utter Exhaustion.
The Dragon staggers to his tooled-leather travel trunk and sinks down in blessed rest.
He is abysmally drained. His body aches from head to toe. His confounded hand shines and throbs with an alarming sliver of sickly green light. It is not that the battle he fought was a particularly trying one, by his standards — The Dragon did manage to carry on a full-scale battle through day and night, cutting down both army and demon, with only a single girl witch at his side, and survive — but something is wrong with this place. Foreign. Casting even his least complex battle spells felt like slogging through tar, and it all compounded and exacerbated the pains reverberating through his bones.
Still, ever the proud one, and quite conscious of other eyes in the vicinity piercing his skull and back, he knows he must at least make a show of sure-footedness and stability.
The Dragon pinches the bridge of his nose, takes care to straighten and stiffen his sagging posture, casts a rueful, irritated grimace down at his singed travel-clothes, and crosses an arm across his chest.
“Vanastalem.”
His clothing explodes in a trembling ripple, the burnt and shattered remnants of his cloak gone. In its place unfurls a rich black-and-red ensemble, laced in silver and gold. Aside from the ashes in his hair and dirt smudging his face, he looks positively splendid — well, as far as his state of dress goes. The deep lines at his eyes and mouth and the unsteady quiver in his hand betray a deeper weariness, and through a dark scowl, he realizes with creeping and utter horror that he may regret his next few (absolutely necessary, in his opinion) cantrips in the wake of his recent scuffle.
—Or the next few cantrips he intends to cast, if he can find the rest of his things. He glances around at the carnage in mounting frustration, scanning the ground from his vantage point atop his (locked) trunk with a steely, red-rimmed gaze. Books, books and tomes and heavy, vast swaths of vellum — all his — scattered everywhere, but no carry-sack.
He snaps harshly, perhaps slightly breathless, at the nearest intact and living body near him, “Well, don’t just look at me that way! See these effects?” He thrusts and sweeps his arm around in what he hopes is a self-assured manner, referring to the litter his arrival left behind. “I am looking for a red and black velvet travel-sack. Have you seen it?”
ii!
"No," He offers, remembers after a moment, to specify: "Not here. I saw one once like that, it was covered in checks. Or. No. It might have been purple. No, I haven't seen it."
All of this delivered as flatly as can be. He snaps the book shut, tucks it into a fold of coat to edge a bit closer, hands splayed wary:
"Are you hurt?"
His head tips aside, unblinking, to regard Sarkan. To say that he’d come out of nowhere isn’t inaccurate; Alan’s no fighter, loathes the need for it now, he’d done his best to keep clear of the fray until the chaos was done. The books are a pleasant distraction from the bodies yet being cleared, the stink of char and blood and Fade.
He hates this. Hates that they do this. But some of the books have pictures, and the people who were here, they weren't people any more at all.
(A lurch in his stomach at the memory of the Winter Palace, the monsters there. At all that a templar might do.)
no subject
"Nothing a vitality elixir won't cure. Now, where do you think you're taking that?" He grits his teeth against the inevitable surge of exhaustion that will bite him for this move soon enough, but he considers it more important to keep potentially dangerous spellbooks out of the hands of people who cannot even look at a book in its proper orientation. He opens up a palm and hisses,
"Tualidetal!"
Now, under normal circumstances, the book would eagerly leap out of Alan's coat and zip to the Dragon's hand like an eager pup returning to its master. But here, in this strange land, it instead quivers and jumps and fights against its fabric prison, and begins to attempt pulling Alan along with it. The Dragon's face falls and darkens, and with a silent snarl and a deep breath, he hisses the incantation again.
Surely a reinforcement should convince it to come at his summoning!
no subject
Startled, Alan claps a hand over the fluttering book, fumbles to try and pin it in place. Stay,
It’s. Not exactly working. He thumps at it a few times, like he’s attempting to subdue some furious flapping bird, expression shot briefly into — well, anything at all, but now mostly curiousity.
"Tualidetal," He echoes precisely, still battering the poor book against his chest, feet shuffling against their pull across the floor. "I'm Alan,"
That's clearly what they've just exchanged here: Introductions.
no subject
"You will take it no such place!" Clearly, he doesn't care who or what Alan is taking it to; it's stolen property, and he has no right at all to take it from him. Especially in his current mood, especially in his current state of mind, which cannot seem to catch any solid ground at all. Flustered, he gathers himself up, musters all the willpower he can and pushes his groaning, creaking body back to his feet. If he must, he will pry it from Alan's cloak himself.
... If he can. More than likely, he will just huff and puff and sink back down onto his behind. Then, later, he would have to concern himself with retrieving his materials as soon as he is more able-bodied.
"I shall only tell you one time." Oh, dear. He is truly fighting the fatigue, gaze dimming and surging intermittently. He outstretches his hand and attempts to will any trembling out of it. "Give it back here. That is mine."
no subject
Brief bafflement: of course they'll take Sarkan to the Inquisition, and of course he'll already know this (after all, Alan does). He steps back, caught between caution of Sarkan's advance, and concern for the obvious weakness with which he does so.
"You can't carry them all," He points out, not that he's ever particularly intended to give it back. There's a rather good drawing of a plant in this one that he might cut out, probably Thranduil would like that.
Alan hovers a moment in place, quite torn — before shifting forward to offer out a bracing arm. Maybe a little too enthusiastically for someone weary and a touch off-balance.
Maybe it's a little bit of a shove.
no subject
"Certainly I can," he hisses once he recovers enough to steady himself, utterly bewildered by this Alan fellow. "If my carry-sack were intact!"
If nothing else, though, his quick-calculating brain is able to piece together something out of this fog and mess of a conversation: the only logical conclusion is that he is being taken. As a prisoner, more than likely. That entices a bitter, humorless grin to bloom at his lips. He almost allows himself a defeated, exhausted chuckle.
"Since I haven't the choice, you'd better take all my things." He clicks his heel against the trunk behind him, most of his weight bearing down heavily on Alan's shoulder. The trunk emits a musical glass-clinking-against-metal sound. "Don't leave this behind. And don't let the rest of captors play with it without me, either, lest they do something stupid like singe their faces off or sprout tulips from their ears."
I
Lightning dances over her bow as she draws it back, then over the arrow she looses right at the rage demon coming for Sarkan. The electricity flickering over it stuns the demon long enough for Beleth to volley a few more arrows, and once satisfied that it's down, the Dalish elf turns to the new rifter. A hectic battle is no place to try to explain the entirety of the situation he's now in, but with the red templars in play, it seems apt to at least point out which people he should spare from his odd magic.
"Those with the red rocks sticking out of them," It's necessary to shout over the din of the fighting, and Beleth scoots a little closer, trying to keep herself between him and any dangers that might draw near. "They'll try to kill you, as will the demons. I and the others are here to help you. We'll take you somewhere safe." A pause. "And you can shut that rift, if you point your hand at it. It's where the demons come from."
no subject
“Then hold them off for a moment!” he shouts back at her. He trusts enough in her competence after that first show of battle-prowess and magic. No need for further confirmation that she knows what she is doing.
The Dragon takes a (rather educated) wild guess at the girl’s meaning and thrusts his throbbing hand toward the rift. Sure enough, he can feel a sort of invisible push as the sky-tear slowly twists and seals shut at his beckoning.
And without even allowing himself the time for this all to sink into his quickly-wearying mind, he whirls around, cloak fluttering, and keeps the Elvish girl at his back, hands up and poised for another offensive volley of spells at their assailants. He cannot fathom why a group of strangers from a land he does not recognize would want to bring him somewhere safe — unless it’s straight to confinement or a prison — but he is also intelligent enough to understand that he currently has no choice but to listen and support his apparent allies. He lets loose a handful more rapid-fire rending spells when a deafening roar from the largest of sparkling red-rocked beasts nearly bowls them over.
Not good. Not good at all, when the Dragon is already feeling abnormally drained from all this effort. He cannot afford to simply chuck around dark magics willy-nilly without knowing the best strategy. At his next chance, he reels back, close enough for this girl to hear his call.
“Any tips for the ruby mammoth over there?” he demands breathlessly over the din. “Tell me the direction! Earth, Water, Truth, what bites things like that hardest?!”
no subject
Maybe?
But, assessments of morality and the quandaries therein can wait. For the moment, Beleth finds herself fully occupied by shooting down anything that gets too close to The Dragon, lightning arcing and dancing as she carefully aims and fires away. And he's figured out the rift bit! That'll make the battle easier.
An easier battle, however, does not mean easily won, as the massive red templar reminds Beleth. She wheels around to face it, and for the sake of her new guest, and the person she's been entrusted to fetch alive and whole, she tries not to look overly worried about it. He's being a good sport about it, at least, wanting to know any potential weaknesses. It's a smart move, and Beleth would admire his moxie if she weren't busy trying to figure out how to answer him.
"I've never noticed any elemental weaknesses, but neither have I noted any resistances. They were humans once, you know." There's a moment of debate, before she reluctantly adds, "Admittedly, I usually keep a healthy distance between us when I engage them. I would recommend that as the best strategy I'm aware of." She's an archer, after all. Close combat has never been her preferred style--better to kill your foe before they can even come close.
But she usually has a warrior or two providing a meatshield and a distraction. It might be a tad more difficult with just the two of them.
no subject
No elemental weaknesses. Dark magic, then, maybe -- if the ruby (formerly human) demons go on the offensive against them. It is a trying choice and a last resort that would expend every ounce of his spirit, but he has some spells committed to memory in his back pocket if he must... and a veritable litter of spellbooks scattered all over the ground after their rough journey through the rift, of course. If he could reach them. But thus far, like the elvish girl, he has also noticed that he has not suffered any direct attack from the behemoths. It's the fire and ice demons that are most intent to see to their swift and violent deaths. How many of them are there? Seven? Six? The Dragon reels back, cries out another foreign incantation and lobs a stream of ice with all his might at a fire apparition just as a fireball blows past his face, singing his ear, hair, and collar. He could smell the sickening stench of burnt fibers and hairs; his earlobe goes numb, and he heaves in as much oxygen as his lungs could handle. So short of breath...
It strikes him that he is unsure of how much longer he can maintain this feverish pace. Astonishing, he observes to himself distantly. Yet he has no choice but to hold on and to fight. There are only two of them there, after all.
"Well," he forces out on an exhale between volleying a massive, magically conjured boulder at an ice creature, "we're marvelously outnumbered." In fact, he is actually exerting all the willpower he's got not to brace himself against this girl's back. "Is it really just us or have you got a gaggle of able men lurking in your back pocket?"
no subject
A vague gesture, at two warriors that had been on the edge of the battle--one with a handsome mustache, the other a bit young and pimply. She gives them a sharp order, that they're quick to hop to--so she's probably the one in charge here.
It hasn't escaped Beleth's notice that the rifter isn't looking like he's in the best of shape. All things considered, he's been doing pretty well--plenty of rifters haven't had any form of battle training, and this is a harder fight than the usual gaggle of demons a fade rift accrued. "Do you need lyrium? It's, ah--It's a liquid, for mages. To help restore your mana." Just don't ask how it works, because fuck if Beleth has any idea.
"Even with the others, I'm not sure our situation has completely reversed. My mission objectives were to retrieve you safely, and to make sure the rift was closed. So as far as I'm concerned, I'm perfectly happy to let the demons and the red templars to kill each other, and take our leave. The other two can help with your, ah. Luggage."
no subject
"What --??" The Dragon cuts himself off to volley another spell over Beleth's shoulder, and this time he does brace himself against her with his free hand. "Oh, never mind, so long as it's a vitality elixir and not a poison, that would be eminently useful right about now!"
The Dragon is inclined to agree with her suggestion for retreat: four (or three, if he's out of commission) to a beastly, superhuman eight certainly didn't seem like the best odds to him, either. At the next opportunity for a break, he sweeps an arm (which would look much more dramatic if he weren't feeling so weak) at his scattered effects and hisses to her through his teeth,
"Wouldn't mind a fast exit, but we can't leave anything behind." Though he is an academic and a bookworm at heart, his scattered effects, his trunk, and his books are not just benign objects: the trunk contains alembics, vials, elixirs, various ingredients and brews in progress, while the scattered books are highly advanced spell tomes which, if placed in the wrong hands, could cause considerable damage. Like, for example, bringing about a swift and certain apocalypse if anything in those books happened to be miscast or fumbled by an inexperienced idiot. "Normally it's a stupid nothing of a trick for me to gather it all, but for now I'll need a moment."
Or the Lyrium, whatever-it-is. If it doesn't kill him with one taste.
no subject
"I'm pretty sure you're supposed to take the entire bottle, but if it bothers you, you can stop."
That taken care of, she puts her bow by her feet, and starts on the next task--collecting Sarkan's various belongings. While being a small, squishy rogue might not be great for helping fight off demons and Templars, it certainly pays off when trying to dodge around the battle, snatching up books and whatnot. Surely not all of this can be that important, but Beleth knows well that people tend to think that their belongings are utmostly vital.
And besides. All of this are the last things he has from a world he may well never see again. But it would probably be rude to mention that.
The items that are gathered are placed haphazardly on top of the trunk, while she shouts orders to the two warriors, making sure that they're where she needs the enemies distracted, and that they'll be ready to grab the trunk when it's done.
"I think it'd be best if you decided where you wanted your things inside your trunk--I'm sure you know better than I do where they should go." The last thing she needed was to put two volatile magic items together and cause the whole thing to go up in smoke.
no subject
Whatever that concoction was, he has to admit it helps. At least, it helps a little. Enough that he can summon and organize what he needs to while the distractions are ongoing. He shall have to request a precise recipe later.
Sarkan takes a step away from her, sweeping one palm in the general direction of his fallen things, and another outstretched in a grasping motion to his right.
"Tualidetal!"
Whatever remained of his books lurched and zipped to his feet of their own accord. In his outstretched, grasping hand flew a black-and-silver embroidered velvet sack, which had lain cast aside and partially singed from flame and ice while the battle seethed on. He shakes it open with a deft flick and changes gears.
"Dualidetal!"
The books proceed to arrange themselves neatly within the sack. His trunk, meanwhile, shudders open with a loud click, and any glowing vials (of all different colors, mind you -- red-violet, violet-red, purple-blue, glimmering gold-green, green-yellow, green-blue...) or alchemic equipment that were misplaced in the fall settle snugly back into their cushioned homes. With all that finished, the trunk slams shut with an elegant clack, and he allows himself to again sag in weariness.
Well, the lyrium-stuff spared him just enough energy to get everything sorted. Barely.
His hands are uncharacteristically clumsy as he knots his sack, and knots it again.
"Finished," Sarkan hisses, satisfied to simply breathe while he keeps an eye out for any stray attacks headed his way. "Tell your men to be delicate with the trunk. It's volatile. Now, which way are we going?"
no subject
A new revolution. With more cleaning and less explosions.
"That--That's convenient." She manages to say, before barking orders to the two warriors, who are more than happy to get out of this clusterfuck of a battle. As to where they're going...Beleth's first instinct is 'anywhere that isn't here', but the head of Scouting getting everyone lost by wandering in a random direction would be a far more mortifying fate than a heroic death by Templars. So she takes the time to recall their encampment's direction, peering around them, before pointing off in the distance.
"We have a camp this way," She assured Sarkan, in what she hoped was a voice too quiet for the Red Templars to pick up, "Where you can get some rest and food. Hopefully the two groups will keep each other occupied while we leave." She's already starting in the direction she's indicated, though slow enough to make sure that she's followed by the three men.
I'm assuming we're about wrapped here, since the fight's winding down? ;)
And after that... well. If he has the energy, his head is absolutely overwhelmed with endless questions and confusion. He can hardly make rhyme or reason out of his own disorganized, muddled, exhausted thoughts. In some far-away corner of his mind he wonders if perhaps that is the shock of his current puzzling reality setting in.
All of that will have to wait.
Following Beleth's cue, Sarkan nods a sharp, silent affirmative and prepares to haul his soot-blackened, singed self and his sack of books as quickly and nimbly as he can while they have an opening.
"Lead on."