OPEN: Justinian Rifter Arrival

[faderifting]

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.

Comments

[youwonscience]

"Given the tone in which you said that, I'm guessing the answer isn't 'click your heels together and say there's no place like home.'" Cosima is frustrated, but she's also still concentrating on not dying for now. (And running isn't as easy as she'd like it to be, though she's trying not to let that show as it catches up to her.)

"Yeah, I want to get home, but I want to survive the next hour too, you know?"

She tries not to snap at the person who is keeping the demons from killing her. Both of them, presumably, but the point stands.

[arcaneadvisor]

"Clicking your…" Only Morrigan could raise one eyebrow quite so high and turn her head in a fashion alarmingly like an owl whilst still running because that is ridiculous. "If one wishes to look like a fool whilst being devoured by demons with their limbs being torn from their body then well they might!" Clicking their heels, how foolish, what sort of world does this woman come from? With a sigh, she stops by an outcropping, using it for cover as she peers out.

"You survived the rift, believe me, once you know the truth of that you will know that you have survived much of the worst."

[youwonscience]

"That'll be comforting once we're away from the demons, I suspect," Cosima says, not purposely rude, but a bit short as she catches her breath a moment. "Will they give up eventually?"

[arcaneadvisor]

"A demon embodies a part of our nature, rage, desire, hunger, pride, fear, despair. They feed on such parts of us, their strength, their intelligence are drawn from those darker places within us." Terror demons are base fears but given that they're running, she has no idea just how frightened the rifter may or may not be - Morrigan is too proud to believe she would be frightened were she thrust into an unfamiliar situation as such. "If they find other prey, then yes. Demons are not known for strategy. There is much fear in the air here to draw a terror demon elsewhere."

Like that passing patrol of unfamiliar soldiers.

[youwonscience]

Better them than us is not at all Cosima's usual outlook, but the truth is that the group of soldiers look like they're able to fight back. Cosima is not really qualified to defend herself, or even keep running indefinitely.

"Okay. So calming down might help make a less attractive target in the meantime," she says, latching on the one active thing it sounds like she can do. She knows emotions are largely chemical responses, and there are external ways to influence them. Steady, deep breaths, for one.