FIRSTFALL RIFTER ARRIVAL

[faderifting]

WHO: New rifters & their rescuers
WHAT: People fall out of a rift and get attacked by stuff, as usual.
WHEN: Firstfall/November 14
WHERE: Somewhere a ways off the Imperial Highway between Cumberland and Nevarra City
NOTES: This arrival log is open to all. Solas was able to alert the Inquisition to the general area where the new rifters would be arriving so people can pick them up. Rifters can then either continue on with the main Inquisition caravan to Nevarra City or be escorted back to Kirkwall.

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, when the afterimage left by a flare of too-bright, greenish light fades, you will find yourself landing with a wet smack. There is no avoiding the mud: this rift has opened up in the center of some unfortunate farmer's field, and all his hard work plowing and manuring has now been ruined, first by the rain that has churned it into a thick and especially fragrant muck and then by the arrival the rift itself, splitting the air mid-field and making it impossible to safely plant. And now, of course, there's you as well, tumbling out of the Fade and into the shin-deep mud.

The cluster of demons emerging from the rift seem at odds with the setting, strange stark shapes in this empty space, standing out against the grey sky. Some are tall, spindly stick-things with too many eyes who seem like they should tumble down the hill in a tangle of limbs but instead sink into the snow to anchor themselves and use the long reach of their arms to attack. Some are hunched and hooded with no eyes at all, others mere wisps of greenish light that float over the icy ground. 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.

All around is more fields, except for an abandoned farmhouse a ways off, beside a windbreak of spindly trees topping a low ridge before the next stretch of pasture. As you find your feet, you may catch sight of a handful of figures in the distance, exiting the farmhouse and hurrying away over the hill. If anyone ventures to the farmhouse, they will find the remains of a camp, and may be able to locate a dropped notebook or what looks like pieces of some unknown scientific instrument, apparently broken in the rush to leave.

Comments

[mactears]

Loghain steps forward to watch the rift fixedly as it shimmers and pulses and at last seals itself with a burst of sound. When Brónach collapses, he quickly surveys the rest of the field, but it looks as though the remaining monsters are being handled deftly by the other members of the Inquisition. They're safe, for the moment, and a quick whistle to his hound has her prowling the perimeter, alert to danger.

This allows him to crouch beside Brónach and assess her in a glance. His expression isn't kind, but there's a reassuring steadiness to be found in straightforward candour, he's discovered. "You've come through a rift," he explains. "Things will be different, going forward, but I'm your ally." A pause, then, "Can you stand?"

[earthbones]

Once as near to two years past as Brónach cares to remember a dragon rained fire and hunks of molten rock into being as her head was placed on the stone for execution. A Stormcloak had bid her run with him. She had. Had kept running, turned her back on Helgen, on the Pale Pass, on her past.

Had grit her teeth at the Empire and given them nothing.

Using her bow as leverage, she's up, glancing between her hand and what showed in the sky. Herma-Mora but there's nothing black reaching out of it to trace the edges of her vision now, and there's an absence of whispering in her ear so she listens instead to the man. "When is it not different? Nothing's broken - they weren't dragons." A laugh follows, a tired bitter edge that says she might have preferred a dragon. A person knows where they stand with a dragon. "I'm guessing that doing the opposite with this isn't going to be a thing?"

[mactears]

"I'm guessing that doing the opposite with this isn't going to be a thing?"

"I've not seen anyone try it yet," Loghain admits dubiously, "but I would not suggest trying."

She looks able-bodied enough to get up on her own, and so he doesn't offer her his hand, instead searching the field for any glimpse of his hound. He spots her loping back in his direction; the rest of the battle seems to have, at last, come to an end.

"I'm called Loghain." Best to get the introductions out of the way; she should know who she speaks to.

[earthbones]

That part of her that might always have been something else since no one was clear on if she was born with a dragon's soul waiting, curled and coiled within or if she's just always been a bit cracked freezes. Tips her head to smile a wolf's smile, all teeth.

"People say that all the time then things have to get done." People wouldn't suggest shouting down dragon's and yet…Her shoulder rolls, pops too loud in the open.

"Brónach," unfamiliar to taste it these days with titles strippibg it away. "This isn't Markarth or near enough, where is it."

[mactears]

He is not well suited to this role, one that involves guiding the newly arrived rifters into the reality of their new world with sensitivity. Brónach, at least, looks as though she will bear up well under the revelation, if that wolfish grin is any indication.

The wolf-dog at last comes trotting up to his side, maw bloodied but her head lowered in greeting. Loghain bends to clap her affectionately on the side. "Nevarra," he tells her, looking to read the expression on her face. "It is--a different world, from where you are from. You've come through a rift, a--portal. I know not how else to describe it."

[earthbones]

Hounds with too much wolf in them make her think of Jorrvaskr so down in her knees Brónach goes until she can look it in the eye, let it get a measure of her. No beast blood left in her but she smells of the hunt under the fresh mud.

"She got a name?"

That buys more time to weigh Nevarra. The blank in her mind at it. Still she can only make a face, rising to her feet again because this isn't the moment to stay crouched in the dirt. "I've seen things like that before, Daedra can use something like it to appear, to come speak."

[mactears]

"She got a name?"

"Primrose," Loghain answers. The wolf-dog snuffs once, ears perked and alert, and looks back at Brónach with intelligent topaz eyes. (It's the mabari in her that lends her the appearance of understanding, even if her intelligence is of the wolf-ish variety.)

Daedra. An unfamiliar word, but it conjures up images nonetheless. "I'm not familiar with daedra," he says nonetheless, frowning. "Are they demons?"

[earthbones]

A flat repetition: "Primrose."

This one better not talk, even if that was the doing of Clavicus Vile. Most dogs all had hard strong names that made her spine stiffen, even Ysgramor and Tiber were dogs she met along her way because people were strange in Skyrim, not to be trusted to name a damned thing. Hadn't someone tried to sell her a hound once when she'd still been full of the beast blood?

After what she just saw, Brónach snorts. "Some of the lesser ones might look it, things mages conjure up called atronachs but no. Means they're not our ancestors, didn't help make the world they're just-- they are what they are, they're different. Can't be killed for starters, only banished. Depends what some of them do, what some of them ask what you think they are. They aren't those things."

(Nocturnal, Herma-Mora, Hircine. The three of them watch her and have hooks deeper in her soul than all the rest though each one she's served in turn, has done wicked terrible things for because she was there, because she wanted to, because it was asked.)