faderift | OPEN: Justinian Rifter Arrival

WHO: New rifters & helpful Inquisition volunteers
WHAT: Welcome to Thedas!
WHEN: Justinian 7
WHERE: On the outskirts of the Exalted Plains
NOTES: This log is slightly backdated, so it's safe to assume safe arrival at Skyhold and begin RPing there as soon as you're ready OOC. It is open to any characters who would have volunteered to go welcome the rifters, whose arrival sites can now be predicted, thank you Solas. Reaching this rift, as well as returning to Skyhold, will require passing carefully through the active and ongoing battlefront for the War of the Lions. Don't get stabbed.

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.

But there's no waking here, just a flare of green-white light and a jarring impact onto cold dirt and long grass. When your breath returns and the light's after-image fades from your eyes you will find yourself lying flat on stone, squinting up into sunlight and a shifting, blinding green tear in reality.

You are also not as you were: in the palm of your left hand there glows a narrow splinter of light the same sickly green as whatever brought you here. It aches, a bone-deep pain that gnaws even through all the distractions. Like the fact that you're being attacked. There's a massive, monstrous horned giant stomping toward you, electricity crackling over its purple-gray skin, flanked by ghostly wisps of green light that rear back to hurl bursts of pure magic in your direction.

Your options for escape are limited. To one side, a river; to another, a rock formation too tall and steep to scale. But there's cover behind you in the form of a ruined home—burnt out, missing half of its walls, but still able to resist some damage—and, on the other side of the rift, people coming to help.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Well, creepy green afterlife-y places where the laws of physics don't apply that are filled with spirits and demons also are extremely unlikely, and yet..."

A bolt of magic, or perhaps the force from the pride demon's whips, or who knows what shakes the remaining walls, crumbling as they already are. He holds up his hand, a flash of green light seen through, and a small green-ish translucent wall forms above them, letting crumbling cement or stone or whatever they used to make these buildings however long ago skitter off the shield and not, say, fall on top of their heads. It disappears the second the job is done, and he shakes out his hand a little, quietly cursing.

"Anyway, look, this place isn't gonna make a whole lotta sense to science-minded people. I mean, maybe you'll think it's great to study how horny giant people evolved along with humans and elves and I swear to god dwarves. ...And I mean horny as in...they have horns, not horny as in--yeah. Like, if you can figure that out, I'm sure you'll get super famous. Or be burned at a stake? I can't honestly say."

"Okay, well, I'm just going to throw out there = that I'm not actually going to be able to study anything if I die in the next 15 minutes, so I'm going to follow the lead of the people who have any idea what the hell is going on. I'm just..."

She angles to look out what used to be a window without making herself too much of a target.

"Is this a bad time to admit I've never been in a fight before at all?"

If it's afterlife-y, in an unspecified way, she could really use Beth right now.

"Y'know what? Now's actually the perfect time to admit that. Means I get to play protector for a while so the big guns can take out tall dark and electrifying." Means he gets to look moderately good to a new person!!! "So. Um. So this isn't a good time for small-talk, but whatever, what's weird about your world? You know LARPing and D&D, so I have to assume you're at least from a world I'm familiar with. I was talking Bowie and vinyl with someone else. She's kind of a fairytale character, though. So I have to assume your world's got a weird twist in it, too."

Church is the best welcome party, what are you talking about.

"I don't have a lot of context for comparison, though I know Bowie and vinyl. Dated someone who owned a lot of the former on the latter, in fact." She slides back down the wall, wincing a little at the sound of the battle outside.

"I'm from Earth, 2013, if that helps?" She thinks a moment, then offers: "Scientists 3D-printned an ear back in February, that was pretty cool. And it turns out the government is eavesdropping on us in a huge way, which is less cool."

"Dude, you don't even know how much that helps. It's 2553 where I'm from. When. When I'm from. Things are way more advanced, and I would love to chit-chat all about it. When we're not almost dying."

"Agreed. Not dying first, pop culture nostalgia second." She can't help thinking about pop culture she knows from 500 years before her own time. Too early for Shakespeare. Then again, did pop culture even really exist in a meaningful way in the 1400s?

Right. Not dying.

"Do you have plan? I don't think this place will hold up indefinitely to direct hits."

"Uhhhhh, the plan is let the cannons with legs take out biggy smalls there, poof the slimers, close the hole in the sky with our shiny magical glowy pain hand stones, and then sneak through an active civil war battle zone to get back to a mountain castle."

Super good plan, right?

"Look, we didn't expect a giant cackling lightning rod. Or I didn't. My pea shooter doesn't do much against that, and I left my sword in my other pants."

"Fantastic. So we're in the middle of war that doesn't involve the monsters trying to eat our faces?"

That seems somewhat like insult to injury.

"Can I apply for some kind of 'I didn't ask to be here, don't blame me' pass?"

"You're what the locals call a Rifter now, so you're kind of already a card-carrying member. Dooooesn't help that plenty of locals also think all the crazy shit going on--exhibit A, crazy shit going on--is because of us. Or that we're demons. Or we're possessed by demons. But you'll meet people who don't think we all deserve to get burnt at some kind of stake if we survive the completely unrelated civil fucking war from another country. Welcome to Thedas, I guess."

"Great. Just... great." She exhales. "Is there any way to identify the people who don't want to go Salem Witch Trials on me? Like, do they have flags or something?"

She would prefer not to be burned alive. Very much prefer.

"Uhhhh, well we have ways of identifying each other. And also other people who happens to have pain lasers that can come out of their hands who didn't drop out of a rift. We're not sure how these things happen. But don't worry. People give you grief, you come to me. Or one of us, anyway. None of us asked for this."

"...thanks, dude." It's a lot, but his offer seems sincerely meant, and she won't reject any help she can get, in the current circumstances.

"I'm Cosima, by the way." Because if the monsters do manage to get her, she'd rather not die without anyone here at least knowing her name.

"Whoa. Never heard that one before. Is that like a play on cosmos or a different language and I'm being an ignorant fuck?" The wall they've taken cover behind rattles again. "Okay, fuck it, details later, I'm Church, and apparently that means I can't point out odd names, so." He pops around the abandoned doorway and shoots ~~his mouth off~~ another volley of bolts.

"Greek by way of hippies," she says, as the cliff's notes version, once he's done firing. "Are they getting closer? They sound like they're closer."

She avoids the temptation to look, just.

OPEN: Justinian Rifter Arrival

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haha where did that equal sign come from, oops

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