faderift | OPEN ↠ HEART LIKE ICE

WHO: New Rifters & Inquisition Members
WHAT: A journey south to make new friends and kick some ass
WHEN: Drakonis 15-25
WHERE: Sunless Lands
NOTES: Violence and language assumed. Warn for anyting else. OOC post.

The Sunless Lands are not, in fact, sunless. This time of year there can be as many as eight hours of daylight, some of it blinding where it reflects off of snow and ice that stretches from the southern edge of the Kocari Wilds as far as anyone can see, broken only occasionally by rocky masses of land jutting out of the snow cover or barren tundra peeking out in patches where constant, unforgiving wind has pushed it aside. You'll be traversing this span primarily on foot—there are sleighs, too, pulled by hardy dogs, but they're carrying essential supplies rather than spare people. The only way to get a ride is to successfully feign passing out.

Beyond the dogs, the area isn't devoid of native wildlife: white fennecs hunt rodents underground, and a herd of excessively fluffy wild druffalo is seeking out whatever vegetation it can find. But hunting down a meal or two early and preserving rations for further south would not be a bad idea, because the further south the team travels, the more inhospitable the terrain grows, and the less life can be seen. And sometimes not much of anything can be seen, when clouds roll by and burst with snow thick enough to halt progress entirely for hours.

The nights are cloudy as often as clear, but when they are clear the sky is split by green and purple ribbons of light.

I. THE RESCUE

Two days' journey south, the monotonously icy horizon is broken by something new: smoke rising in interrupted puffs, an intentional signal. Someone is out there. Chances are, it's the rifters, with or without their first group of intended rescuers. But there's no way to be sure. And approaching with caution is wise either way. Rifters have strange powers (and strange personalities), and they've been out here for days now, dealing with demons and Maker knows what else on their own. For all anyone knows, they could be the reason for the rescue team's disappearance. Orders are to approach carefully.

Then, once contact has been made and initial concerns have been allayed, make sure those poor people have something to eat, and try to figure out where their original rescuers disappeared to.

II. THE STORM

After the rifters are recovered, there's still the matter of the red lyrium mine to address. Another two days' journey south will put the group within good range of the mine: not so close as to be seen, but close enough to be able to get there in a couple of hours as needed.

Halfway there, however, in the middle of the day, progress comes to an abrupt half when the darkest clouds yet gather suddenly on the horizon and barrel down on the group, bringing with them a glut of snow that reduces visibility to only a few feet and wind that roars so loudly you have to shout to be heard. Magic can help some with heat, but the storm shows little sign of quickly abating and with hours of deadly cold conditions to deal with, digging in and getting cozy for a few hours might be the most feasible solution for everyone.

III. THE VILLAGE

Shortly before the point everyone is aiming for—one marked by an enormous stone carving of an owl, several times taller than a man, that's inexplicably been left by the ancients in the center of the tundra—something else appears not far to the west. On closer inspection, it turns out to be a circle of low-sitting animal-skin tents pressed down into the snow to protect them from wind, rocky fire pits, and abandoned sleighs. Overall, it's a cross between camp and village indicative of a nomadic group that's staying a while but not forever.

It's empty now, with a coating of snow on most of the structures that indicates it's been at least a few days since anyone was here. Closer inspection reveals personal belongings inside the tents, including toys and clothing belonging to children—and, in many tents, chunks of red lyrium in the center or beneath the skins that form the beds, each piece emanating heat. They probably thought it was safer than fire.

Wherever they went, they don't come back while the Inquisition is there. But the activity does get noticed. A few hours after arrival, enormous white bears apparently moving in a pack come within a hundred yards of the camp and pace at a distance, watching the interlopers with wary interest. Some of them are wearing collars or harnesses decorated in the same style as the tents. For enough food, they may come closer, and they'll turn out to be abnormally tame.

IV. THE BATTLE

The red lyrium mine that Corypheus' followers built when their operations were crippled in Emprise du Lion is nestled in an icy canyon, with massive scaffolding built up the sides of the cliff and too many cages to count, though few of them hold living prisoners anymore. It's a massive operation, but one that's been crippled by its distance from civilization. It's sparsely guarded compared to its size, and other than the cliffs, it has minimal natural protection. The enemy has magic-silencing Templars, enormous behemoths, and a chained white-furred giant, but they are clearly not prepared to be attacked.

Ahead of the onslaught, traps are set and any surviving prisoners are evacuated under cover of darkness. Everyone else sent to fight either creeps down shortly before dawn, rappelling quietly to avoid notice in the dark, or waits at the top for the first surprise strike to provide enough distraction for them to descend more openly. If anyone has been particularly nice to the bears (see above) then it is entirely possible they'll allow themselves to be ridden into battle.

Once their presence is known, their orders are pretty simple. Destroy it all. Leave no one behind and nothing worth returning for.

Fire is a good strategy. Red lyrium doesn't do well in heat.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Alacruun throws the strange, magical shield a curious look. While he knows ab it of protection magic, none of the spells he throws up are able to do that sort of thing. He shakes his head ruefully.

"Remind me to ask you about that later-"

And then it's right back to digging, burrowing deeper and deeper, tossing snow out behind him. The horns make this a bit difficult, but at least the snow comes away relatively easily, even with the howling wind starting to pile up more of it on the other side of the drift.

"Maybe when we're inside."

"'s just a thing I can do with my hand cuz of the shard in it." He's had it long enough that it doesn't exhaust him the way it used to, and he hasn't had to use it with any frequency as of late. At least it'll keep his hands from freezing for a short while, and it does help the digging.

With the help of, well, everyone who's able and also doesn't want to die a frozen death, there's eventually room of some kind, enough that Church takes a break, the shield shimmering out of existence.

"Useful-" Alacruun comments and then he tries to focus on digging. With the both of them working and everyone else also frantically trying to get a bit of shelter, they have a little space cleared out in basically no time. Although it's not quite so little, because Alacruun is a qunari, which means he takes up quite a bit of space.

It's also dark.

Alacruun spreads his cloak out in an effort to insulate himself from the snow and then breathes out, catching his breath. Time to get cozy, apparently.

"Hopefully we don't just entomb ourselves here..."

"Then we'll just dig ourselves out again." But he'll try not to think of all the snow collapsing on them and crushing them and then they all freeze and choke to death. That'll be a new experience for him. He's not eager to try it.

Church cranes his head. He's used to having qunari around, it's just...unusual for rifters to pop out in the guise of one. Elves, yeah, but a lot of them seem to already have been elves, so that works. The rarely occasional dwarf. Not so much qunari.

He waves his sharded hand, though without taking off his gloves yet, the glow doesn't shine through. "Some people can shoot out of their shard, too. I can't, I'm jealous, I wanna shoot pain lasers at enemies instead of just shooting them at rifts. Some lucky bastards can do both, shoot and a shield. Must be a bitch to switch between on the fly, though."

"That's one solution, anyway..." Alacruun shrugs. He'd also rather not dwell on the possibility of being buried alive, but that's his own problem. He tends to think quite a bit and sometimes he thinks about unpleasant things. Well, honestly, that's most of them. But most of the time those unpleasant things happen to other people, not him. He shivers and draws his arms tighter around himself with a frown.

He doesn't like showing off any signs of weakness, so this whole cold thing is awful, as far as he's concerned.

"Ah. What exactly is a laser? Is that some sort of spell...?"

Look, he doesn't know this technology nonsense.

Well, that answers what kind of technology level the guy's at. "Like a beam of concentrated light. What they can do is kind of like that, but...I mean, obviously more magical. The closest I ever came to magic back home was that it was damn near magical I didn't murder my teammates when they drove me up the wall."

"Some sort of ray, then..." Alacruun can recognize that, at least. Even if he isn't familiar with terms like "laser". He nods slowly, cataloging the information for later.

"A world without magic? I've heard of stranger things. How ever did you manage, though? It's so... useful."

He can't really imagine how that might go. How do they live? Poor souls.

"Yeah, a ray!" That works. They can find some commonalities in their speech patterns yet.

"Magic is...I mean, I could ask how you guys manage without jet fuel and televisions, it's hard to know how to answer when you don't have any real concept of it. My place had science. Like physical sciences. Annnnd that's it? No magic. But we've gotten pretty far without it. Like...really far."

"I've no idea what jet fuel is, although someone has already explained what 'television' means. We have science of a sort as well as alchemy and magical research..." It's not really the same thing as his science, probably, but Alacruun feels compelled to speak up for his world's advancement. He does want to rule it, after all.

"Define 'far'. I've no benchmark for it in this case."

"Beyond the stars and planets in the sky kind of far. Thriving colony worlds. Space travel. That sort of far. I think heads would explode if I suggested stuff like that to some of the common, less Inquisition-y folk." He looks pretty proud about it, though. Even if...Jim was about the only person to understand the space travel in that sense that it's a regular thing.

"...space travel?" Alacruun furrows his brow as he considers that. He has no idea what "space" is in this context, although he knows planets and stars. He'd never really thought about the idea of traveling to other planets. Planes, yes, but trying to get off of one's planet seemed like a great deal of effort and would take more magic then he'd bothered to think about.

"That - is hard to wrap my head around," he finally admits, "How does that work?"

OPEN ↠ HEART LIKE ICE

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