faderift | You can't concern yourself with bigger things

WHO: New rifters & their helpful rescuers
WHAT: People fall out of a rift and get attacked by stuff, it's pretty old hat by now (sorry Jefferson).
WHEN: Solace 7
WHERE: High in the Frostbacks, within a day of Skyhold.
NOTES: This log is open to any characters who would have volunteered to go welcome the rifters, whose arrival sites can now be predicted, thank you Solas. Rifters are also welcome to begin RPing at Skyhold as soon as they are ready.

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, something has definitely died. But not you; not yet. When the afterimage left by a flare of too-bright, greenish light fades, you will find yourself in a pile of bones, stripped by teeth and weather, bleached almost as white as the snow that covers most of the rocky, mountainous terrain around you. Beneath its threadbare blanket, it's easy to pick out heaps of earth and stone and debris arranged in a rough ring-shape on the ground around you and the rift that just spat you out. Almost like...a nest? Whatever might once have lived here, it must have been very large, because the bones scattered about are the size of large livestock, at the least. Some of the bare rocks show what look like marks from very large claws, and where snow doesn't cover, the stone looks suspiciously scorched. There are no recent tracks, but maybe that's a good thing.

Less good: the cluster of demons that is emerging from the rift to take over the job of killing you. Some are tall, spindly stick-things with too many eyes, some hunched and hooded with no eyes at all, others mere wisps of greenish light. None look friendly or familiar. Also unfamiliar is the narrow splinter of light the same sickly green as whatever brought you here that now glows out of the palm of your left hand. It aches, a bone-deep pain that gnaws even through all the distractions. Hopefully you can set it aside enough to pick up a bone club and get to work in self-defense, because there is no immediate sign of road or path or settlement anywhere to be seen.

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Where is the question. Emma takes off at his advice, but don't ask her if she knows where she's going, because she still hasn't figured out where the hell she is. The panic's a definite when she's surrounded by bones, and she's guessing that was a dragon but the last one she killed made a different kind of magical mess. They don't do this in Storybrooke, even with portals and disasters and threats against the town. Back home it's always a person, not a group of dead things in an area already covered with the remains of one other enormous dead thing.

She doesn't care how Church managed to kill that thing as long as he did. Leave it up to her and the sword-swinging wouldn't be much better, but having people here to help with the fight means they need to work through this together. There's time when there's some distance between them and the demons, until there's enough rock coverage to hide them from their attackers. Although if she had to guess, she'd say it's the newcomers who were the target. Those guys might now show up without an open portal to work with.

"What the hell is all of this?" If there's a second to breathe she'd like to use it getting answers. "How do we get rid of them?" As much as she'd like the full explanation, there's not enough time for her to get everything she wants. They need to work on getting someplace safe, and she's still assuming this isn't it. This isn't her first trip through a portal, and now that she has a home to get back to, it won't be her last.

Even in the midst of battle, Church would still like to look cool and super awesome because of course!! Besides, he can form a plan in the middle of it! He tries to kick up a skull into his hands, bashes his foot against it, curses, and then picks up a...decidedly smaller skull to use as a shield.

That's cool, right? Until it gets blasted almost immediately out of said hand. He rolls his eyes and moves, following this newcomer to some small brand of shelter, even though he's sure that won't last long. "Fucking of course it doesn't fucking work out..."

He can't pick anyone off from here without his crossbow, but honestly, it might be for the better to once again let the movers and shakers do all the heavy lifting while he helps pick off some of the little green ghosties. "Uh. Okay. So. Welcome to Thedas 101. You fell through a portal in space and time through a demon dimension into a real life session of D&D. And depending on what kind of world you came from, that will either make perfect sense or you'll look at me like I'm speaking in tongues."

The first thing Emma takes away from her their interaction (second, really, to whatever he tried to do with a dragon skull) is the name of wherever the hell they are, and unfortunately it doesn't ring any bells.

Thedas is an unknown to her, confusion that's balanced out against the annoyance that comes with knowing exactly how portals to other dimensions work. It'll close and she'll be screwed, and even if there was a way back towards where it'd opened up, she doesn't like her odds against an army of those creatures.

He said they were demons and that explains a lot. "Half of it makes sense." The part where she understands the references, not the idea of her being in the middle of this. Thedas doesn't sound like any fairytale world she's ever heard of, who the hell did she piss off this time? "How do I get back to my world?" Maybe she should have started by asking how she fights them, but if there is a window of opportunity, Emma isn't about to miss it.

"Uhhhhh, we're working on that. Right now the answer is 'you don't', and it sucks exactly as much as it sounds like. You've got an added bonus of having a painful lil piece of shit in your hand. You'll do cool shit with it eventually, probably. Liiiike closing those things." With a point to the rift she fell out of.

Yeah, that thing that she might be thinking of somehow going back through. "Yeah, no, see, those things? Need closed. Because those things," with a point at the HORRIFYING DEMONS, "come out of them too. It's kinda like a portal to a hell dimension. It sucks. Trust me." The Fade is terrible and he never wants to go back please thank you.

The next pertinent question: "How good are you in a fight, scale of 1-5? 1 being 'hey I'm just gonna sit here and let you protect me oh brave and truly studly knight', 5 being 'I got this on lockdown and sweep the floor and you'll be picking your jaw up off the floor'."

"The green glowing thing is magic? I already -" Have that, and probably shouldn't be announcing it to strangers in the middle of nowhere. She shuts her mouth as quickly as she opened it, looking back toward the portal at his explanation. There goes her chance at using a portal (like that one) to get back to where she came from. They're probably one wrong turn away from a hell dimension, and with her luck, she'd end up there.

"Between those extremes?" Brave and studly, come on now. "You won't need to protect me but I won't do it all on my own." She's the savior and her instinct is to protect people, but she's never fought these things before. A little backup is necessary and she's not afraid to admit it. Seems like he's perfectly capable of pitching in.

"We need to fight them until they're gone, don't we?" Destroyed or sent back to wherever the hell they came from. She's assuming they can't be left to run around here. Now that she's had a few seconds to catch her breath, she's good to get back into it if he is.

"Magic is everywhere, and it's fucking annoying to people who have never had to deal with magic before." Wave. Hi. Like himself. Where all the tech at, bros?

"Okay, cool, I mean, if you said you didn't know which end of a sword was the pointy one, I'd still be fine with that, but this makes things a liiiiittle easier. And yeah. Yeah, those things have all gotta go. We got fucking rad mages who can barbecue things pretty well, so, y'know, I kinda tend to leave the worst for them." What, battle-bred mages gonna battle, apparently. "Still. Yeah, gist of it. Fight 'em 'til they're gone and they kinda dissipate into nothingness."

"Mages?" At some point someone's going to have to tell her what those are. For now, she can tell that fucking rad isn't a part of their actual description, and that there's magic involved. Sounds like she came into a world that's no better off than the remains of the Enchanted Forest during her last stumble into a portal.

Except back then, she had Mary Margaret to help her navigate this, and right now, it's looking like she's on her own. "Alright, so we fight. And when they're gone?" What's the plan? She doesn't know where the hell any of these people came from, but considering they're pulling out all the stops for a rescue, she needs to know where to go if they get separated.

"When they're gone, rift gets sealed up, we take you guys back to our mountain fortress in the middle of nowhere and get you settled in. Maybe you get an angry woman demanding you join the Inquisition. Just call her names, that's what I always do." Yeah, and how's that working out for you, Church? At least it wasn't the name calling that almost got his head cut off, and sure, things with rifters seem to have calmed down some since Galadriel's been released, but...eh...

"Pseudo-military independent peacekeeping force kinda deal. Mostly legit. Probably won't let you do anything fun and shiny unless you pledge allegiance though. Oh, spoilers: this world is kind of on the brink of tearing itself apart. So. Good times."

You can't concern yourself with bigger things

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