SOLACE RIFTER ARRIVAL

[faderifting]

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.

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.

Comments

[alankazam]

"To the Inquisitio —"

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.

[fireandsmoke]

"Alan, is it," seethes the Dragon hoarsely, his hand dropping at last. He releases the stream of magic he was pouring into this miserable little trick, utterly betrayed and enraged by how much energy a nothing of a spell is taking out of him. He can hardly do a thing, in this state. The book abruptly quits its insistent and desperate attempt at flight.

"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."

[alankazam]

"You don't want it with you?"

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.

[fireandsmoke]

--A little bit of a shove that nearly sends him careening backwards over his trunk. Any more enthusiastic, Alan, and the Dragon might have found himself concussed and sprawled in a tangled heap. He grips and braces himself on Alan's arm harder and more desperately than he looks like he is capable of with those long, lean limbs, shock marring his cold face.

"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."