WINTERMARCH RIFTER ARRIVAL

[faderifting]

WHO: New rifters & their rescuers
WHAT: People fall out of a rift and get attacked by stuff. This time, not everyone makes it.
WHEN: Wintermarch 11
WHERE: The foothills of the Vinmark mountains, somewhere between Ostwick and Markham.
NOTES: The arrival log is open to all. Solas was (as always) able to alert the Inquisition to the general area where the new rifters would be arriving so people could be sent to pick them up.

I. ARRIVAL

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, though at least it's reasonably soft. You tumble down onto a grassy knoll, a grey and chilly day in a piece of countryside that would be entirely unremarkable were it not for the rift that brought you here, and you, and the other beings that have accompanied you. There are other people finding their feet after a similarly sprawling exit, and there's a monstrous, horned beast with too many eyes and electricity rippling down its arms, tall, spindly creatures with gasping mouths and too many eye sockets that immediately advance on you and the people lying around you, and beyond them, flickering, ghostly wraiths that begin to throw bursts of green magic that saps anyone hit of energy and strength.

If that all weren't enough there's also a narrow splinter of light in the same sickly green as whatever brought you here, now glowing out of the palm of your left hand. It aches, a bone-deep pain that gnaws even through all the distractions. Given how many other things there are to take in, it may take some time for anyone to notice that one of the people to stumble out of the rift has not gotten back up. But nothing can be done for him until the demons are no longer trying to kill everyone present.

II. AFTERMATH

With the demons dispersed and the dust settled, there's time to regroup—for the new arrivals to collect their scattered belongings, for anyone who was injured to seek a healer or healing salves as needed, and to deal with the man still lying where he fell from the rift.

He isn't moving at all, in fact, just lying face down, and it's strangely difficult to focus on him. If you look away you may find your mind skimming over him entirely, no time at all required to simply forget that he's there until you look again or someone else calls your attention back to him. Which is especially strange because he should be a very striking fellow, extremely tall and quite broad, with gaudy gold and purple attire, some sort of robe fringed with fur that looks metallic but is soft to the touch. When he's turned over there's also the way his bangs and his eyebrows have been braided together into an elaborate netlike pattern over his forehead, which really ought to be more memorable. It's currently matted to clammy skin, as is all of his dark hair, drenched in droplets of bright pink sweat. His eyes are closed, and he will remain firmly unconscious despite your best efforts.

[ ooc | No attempts at healing the unconscious rifter, magical or otherwise, will have any visible effect. What's done with him is up to your characters. But we assume they'll bring him back with them instead of leaving him in the wilderness to die, so please make sure to let us know if that's not the case. The rifter is not an apped character or a canon character. We'll provide more information in a few days, but if you have questions in the meantime, you can ask here. ]

Comments

[arcaneadvisor]

At the Exalted Plains, Morrigan had allowed soldiers in one armour or another (she hadn't looked, the young woman had been too new, too afraid, unable to fight but she hopes they'd been in Gaspard's colours) to be torn asunder by demons to allow them to make an escape back to the where the Inquisition was. So she'd never thought to ask if others made it or not.

Apparently this is proof. A potion will do him little good if unconscious but the lack of demons prowling here…well there are others, and Morrigan isn't built to carry another upon her back.

"You have come through the Fade from wherever you called home," she explains since there's not always going to be an easy way to say that surviving this far is a feat all its own. "'Tis the land of dreams but also home to spirits and demons. You have survived it, take heed of that. You may call me Morrigan."

[tagartist]

The Fade had felt not to dissimilar from the tornado and she's wondering briefly if the two are connected. This place is weird, like something out of one of Steph and Mikey's fantasy games, and it makes her wonder if whatever tear had broken between worlds could have been what manifested the storm in Arcadia Bay. Maybe it wasn't her fault, maybe it wasn't Max's, maybe it was just... really bad timing.

And she would die for nothing.

She feels like she's gonna puke again but she pulls herself upright, giving a nod at the words that may have been meant to be comforting in some way. Take heed. She talks like an NPC but NPCs don't usually have names.

"Chloe. I'm... Chloe. Does this shit happen often here?"

[arcaneadvisor]

"In the past few years? Yes. Before this, we never had people fall from the sky. Tears in the Veil - that which separates the waking world where we are now from the Fade - would occur but not this way." Pausing for a moment, she finds a poultice that might do some good for him; there isn't a wound she can see but there are herbs in it, good and strong, grown from seedlings tended to with care, so she might as well since her healing magic…

Well she learnt very much the opposite to it.

"Prior to the what allowed you and the demons that attack to pass through, there came a thing called the Breach, a massive tear in the Veil that threatens to split the very sky asunder."

Fortunately there are agents of the Inquisition about, the benefit of sending crystals, and a quick message to someone better equipped to deal with this--

"Come, you might wish to be away from this lest the demons attack again, and he's hardly in any state to fight." It's a favour to him to be a moving target that they'd be drawn to first while the runners can do their job, her staff at the ready because after last time and other tales of rifts, Morrigan doesn't trust that there won't be creatures lurking, ready to strike. "Thedas is in a time of crisis, Chloe, if you have questions though, I shall do my best to answer, I cannot imagine how alarming this must all be."

[tagartist]

Tears and Fade and Breaches - she rubs at her forehead as she watches her tend to the unconscious rifter, her mind still trying to wrap around these sorts of things, trying to grasp them as something other than a bad dream. She's still leaning heavily on the 'you're dead' theory and that Thedas is just a fancy name for whatever bad place all religions tried to conceptualize back home. Like Hades. Or whatever.

"I did not play enough D&D for this," she grumbles, more to herself than to Morrigan, hands still cupping her face for a moment before she lets them drop. Her cigarettes are crushed, she didn't think to bring pot with her when the tornado struck Arcadia Bay, and she's not even sure whether or not all of that would have even come with her anyway because hey - her gun's missing, why not her other worldly possessions she carts around in her pocket?

At least she still has her panda keychain, which she is promptly fiddling with just because it gives her something to occupy her hands with. "Alarming is a word for it. Not as strong as some of the stuff I could come up with, but a good one." She's standing up, though, nodding at the idea of going some place else, because attack again are the words that settle in her head and it's enough to get her blood pumping to run as far in the opposite direction of all of this crap as she can. "I don't even know what questions to start with, but uh - lead the way, I guess."

[arcaneadvisor]

"A thing from your world?" It's a reminder that perhaps she should get on with sorting through old notes half-forgotten after the move from Skyhold to Kirkwall, all gathered from rifters about their worlds to be given to the project looking at them. The things that overlap between them. With Thedas. Coming here was a better idea than she initially realised if it's dredged that up from the void.

A long time ago, Morrigan had to explain much of Thedas to a rifter. She can do it again as they walk away from this place, past the scorchmarks where either Rage or Pride burst through a thin Veil to wreak havoc. "What you have in you now is a piece of magic, not well understood though efforts continue as they have these past two and more years. The rift that you came through can be closed by you and others like you. More than likely there will be healers with us – mages; is there magic, or do you come from a place where 'tis but the realm of tales to be sat upon the shelf? I know from others that magic, dragons, demons, all the things we know to be true, living and breathing in this world, are mere fantasy to them."

[tagartist]

"Oh, uh, yeah." She rubs the back of her head a little awkwardly. She guesses she'll have to get used to people not knowing what she's talking about with some of these things. "S'a game. You make up these fantasy characters, describe an adventure, defeat some baddies." Basically everything that had just happened to her. She sighs a little. "Didn't think it'd become a real thing anytime soon."

She supposes that that description probably answered the question, but she's nothing if not thorough sometimes when people ask her stuff. "All fantasy. I mean - mostly. It's - I guess my friend can do something that'd be considered magic, but it's not normal. I thought she was making it up at first. So sometimes - I dunno. It's not wide spread and there are definitely aren't crazy things with tons of eyes that shoot lightening out of their hands."

[arcaneadvisor]

"That sounds much like the tales written of some of us who lived them, stripped down." Embellished too but the truth is seldom palatable in the bulk of those tales, not to those who like it where the hero triumphs and wins the day. Life isn't like that. "Are there dragons? 'twas a surprise to me, how often dragons featured in so many tales across so many worlds, in fiction or not."

Also alarming given Tevinter. The Old Gods. The Fade.

That the demons are stronger now than they were in some instances might be a sign, it might not: they aren't so far from Kirkwall, the Veil might suffer here too. "What you described is a pride demon, a powerful creature to be treated with caution though they can be defeated. Your friend, what she does-- would you call her a mage? Something more subtle than the more primal magics."

[tagartist]

"In some stories, yeah. They've got different versions of 'em in different countries and stuff, too." She had never gotten as in to dragons as some of her friends had. Unicorns had been a thing for her once upon a time, maybe, but she had been far more into sci-fi than she ever had fantasy when she thought about it. "Kinda weird that they're span universes, too."

Pride demon. Sure. Why not. That was a good enough name for it. She shuddered at the too fresh memory, still able to feel the crackling of electricity and wanting to never have to deal with something like it again. Clearly she'd treat it with plenty of caution. Enough that she ignores the subject entirely, focusing in on Max.

"Uh - no. Probably not. More like a One Trick Pony. A girl with a lotta bad - or good, maybe, depending on how you look at it - luck. She can rewind time, but it's got limitations and shit, I guess." Limitations she's still pretty sure might have ended her up here somehow, but she doesn't want to put that sort of blame on her best friend's shoulders without more proof of it.

[arcaneadvisor]

"The Fade is called the Beyond by the ancient elves and the Dalish. Place? Time? They have little meaning in it, 'tis why I wonder how so many of you come to be with such shared things, is there more to it, I ask myself. Different lands here have tales of there own too; if a Fereldan tells you a tale, you'll know it for the dogs involved. Or werewolves." If they start singing about the dogs then grab your drink and leave, they'll be there all night roping more and more people in, things might get incredibly messy in an embarrassingly short amount of time.

Perhaps she might need to speak with the head of the project at some point, even if it wasn't her own area of expertise, to ask if anyone had looked to seeing what demons tended to appear at rifts. If they'd changed with time. Pride was unwelcome. Powerful. Especially so close to places anyone lived.

"Must it be either of those things? Could it not be fate extending a hand?" As if the words covered for the way her breath caught, the strain in her voice at time magic. The implication of it. "Such a thing is-- impossible here. Speculation perhaps," except not but Morrigan isn't one of those who remembers it, wasn't one of the people even present for it or caught up on it, "but impossible. And you say 'twas not widespread...I have never heard of a single person able to turn time back at all, were she here, there would be a great many who would seek her out."

[tagartist]

"Ferelwhatsits sound like my kinda people," she said a little half-heartedly. Dogs were definitely something she could appreciate, after all - or well. Animals in general. It was one of those soft spots she at least didn't try and hide. She wasn't sure how to wrap her mind around time and space having little meaning in anything, though; a week was hardly enough exposure to make her immune to this kind of thing.

She should never have stopped watching sci-fi movies. Damn.

Impossible here. She doesn't mean to, but Chloe gives a laugh. There's an exhausted note to it, especially as she continues. She would've been the first in line to market Max's abilities when she first heard about them, but after everything, there's a slow head shake. "Yeah, it's supposed to be impossible back home, too. Magic in general is supposed to be impossible. Her shit isn't something you wanna go making requests of, though. The price is... Not worth it."

[arcaneadvisor]

It's a rare kindness that Morrigan chooses to leave the discussion of the wisdom and intelligence of mabari to those who own the hounds. Her own experience has always been somewhat different, an overgrown, slobbering thing thrust upon her. (And that's typically the owner.) It's one place though that her research never dug too deeply into, and should she ever pick it up again--

How do rifters dream here? Is it as clear as a mage? Are they as aware? Or are they as those who aren't? Perhaps she might ask again when the hours grow late, when Sundermount is dark, and lonely, though never truly still or quiet, and searching for answers as to her mother vexes her.

"The main religion here for humans and elves in the cities, the Chant, claims that magic is to serve man," she notes with a sour dryness that could strip paint from a wall. "Some magic...well, there is ever a cost, 'tis taxing. Some spells cost little of us but others take far more from you, they can be interrupted, and so forth. Of course there is blood magic which is forbidden but practiced in places where many have used that of others rather than their own for obvious reasons."

[tagartist]

"There's a surprise," she says with the tone of voice of someone who is absolutely unsurprised. "I dunno anything about elves, but humans back home are pretty prone to thinking everything is to serve them, especially the religious ones." She was pretty sure that magic was something that could be well left alone if it was anything like Max's shit, but - well, she also knew she was in a world where maybe the price wasn't quite so steep as sacrificing your whole town.

Blood magic, though, sounds painful and gross, and she wrinkles her nose at the very thought. She figured she could guess pretty easily why it'd fall under 'forbidden', and the idea of people using other peoples blood for practicing any kind of magic makes her nauseous. Thedas is seeming more and more like a really bad dream connected to eating something she probably shouldn't have. She feels like her head is gonna cave in on itself at this rate.

"... This place is fucking bananas."