Cloudreach 9:44 Rifter Arrival

[faderifting]

WHO: New rifters & their rescuers.
WHAT: Welcome to Thedas.
WHEN: Cloudreach 10, 9:44
WHERE: Amaranthine
NOTES: This is the arrival log for all new rifters, open also to current characters who would participate in their recovery. New players can also assume everyone survives and arrives back in Kirkwall within a couple of days, but please note there will be a brief quarantine period when they won't be permitted to leave the Gallows, to get them up to speed while ensuring they're not diseased or otherwise going to kill anyone, before they're set loose on the city.

You were asleep—whether deeply or fitfully, falling unconscious for the last time in a pool of blood 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 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, bathed in the light of a flare of too-bright, greenish light you will find yourself hitting mossy cobblestones with an unforgiving smack. You're alive, and you're fine, except for 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.

Above you is a shifting, crystalline tear in reality; beyond that, gray clouds and a sea breeze, framed by the high walls surrounding the city you've landed in. There are people on the walls, some of them armored and armed, all of them briefly and collectively paralyzed by the sight below.

Don't let their terror go to your head. It's not you that has them intimidated, nor is it any of the humans (or Qunari) who are sprawled out on the ground around you, nor is it the assortment of unfamiliar—to them, not to you, perhaps to you it's very familiar—junk that's spilled out as well, most notably some flaming metallic debris and a giant wooden cross.

It's the beings that are coming out after you, almost as if in pursuit. Two are drifting, spindly things with six spidery limbs in addition to grasping skeletal arms, eager to grab hold of anyone who comes too close and fill their field of vision with swirling darkness and corner-of-the-eye glimpses of whatever frightens them. Several more most closely resemble trees, perhaps, with half-melted squids for heads—which might not sound particularly scary, fine, but their ability to dive into the ground and resurface anywhere with rasping screams helps on that front.

All of these things would like to kill you, and the people around you, and the people on the walls, and perhaps the other people screaming and scurrying into taverns and shops for cover. But you're not alone. Out of those same taverns and shops come people who do seem to know what they're doing; many are wearing a symbol that looks a bit like a hairy eyeball being pieced through by a sword, and at least a couple of them seem to know what they're doing. Almost like they've been waiting for you. In fact, exactly like they've been waiting for you.

---

AFTERWARDS, the grateful citizens of the City of Amarenthine might provide a drink, a meal, or a place to tend to wounds before everyone sets back toward Kirkwall. It's not a long trip, but one that requires boarding a ship to cross a narrow sea. It will be a rough, stormy journey, but there won't be any demons.

Comments

i

[motherfucking_ghost]

"Jesus, what are you doing, get away from that thing!" Wooden spoons are not for thwacking demons. Rifters rarely have a choice, obviously, whether they have to fight, but man, maybe don't intentionally tap an eldritch being with a cooking utensil.

He runs at it from behind, running then his sword along its back, and it screeches with some pain and moves. Which is what they ought to do. He offers the woman a hand. Bubblegum hair? Nice. "C'mon, let's try to get you somewhere safer!"

[summerfae]

"I'm trying not to die, thanks!" Is Resa's quick response, ducking around the demon as Church takes a much more effective swipe at it. While she may lack for effective, non-utensil weaponry, at least she's agile enough to keep out of range of the demon's grasping hands.

Church's grasping hand seems a much smarter choice, so she takes it with a quick nod. "Safer is good. Ideal, actually. I'm going to take a wild guess here and say we're not in Kansas anymore?" At least she hadn't called him Toto.

[motherfucking_ghost]

He's more of a Tin Man, really. Or, he was, in another life. "We're somewhere almost as backwoods as that." Ouch, get that state some ice for that burn.

Church tugs her along. There's more cover, here, and more people to help distract the demons, so he rounds a corner around what looks like a shop building and hopes their fearsome friend has lost them for a moment. "Stay close, I can protect you." Man, that almost sounded heroic; he's getting better at this.

[summerfae]

"Shit, don't tell me we're in Missouri."

She's pretty sure this isn't Missouri.

"Well damn, aren't you just a knight in shining armor?" That's a joke, because whatever hell on wheels she's landed it, apparently it was part of a ren faire, or reenactment, or--something. There is one thing she notes as she obligingly skids around the corner after him, easier to note with their hands so close, and no demon currently trying to murder them.

"So, uh. Our hands are both fucked up, and mine didn't used to look like that." She takes a moment to rub the palm where the creepy glowing green sliver is, frowning at the dull pain. "I get that we're kind of on a time crunch here, but can you tell me if this is going to kill me, or turn me into one of those B-rated horror movie monsters, or what."

[motherfucking_ghost]

"Okay. Super quick rundown before we get jumped and I have to dashingly and daringly save you and look really hot doing it." Listen, he's allowed to say these things...as long as Christine isn't around to ice him over. Probably.

"It's not gonna kill you, or like, at least it's not gonna kill you for a long time." The revelation of 'these things might slowly be killing you' is still kind of newish. "Anyone that falls out of a rift in spacetime has one." If he didn't have gloves on, his would be far more obvious. "Or sometimes native people get them, randomly, I'm not sure how that works. You can do some cool shit with them, not the least of which being closing the spacetime rifts. You'll um. You'll just get used to the pain, but we've got magic and salves and shit that help."

Church leans to peek around the corner and quickly ducks back again. "Welcome to Thedas."

[summerfae]

Luckily for Church and all his vital functions, Resa isn’t a snitch. Or she wouldn’t be, if she knew that there was anything to snitch over.

What she does do is smirk, and let out a huff of a laugh that would have been a little heartier if she weren’t currently in the middle of a clusterfuck of epic proportions. And speaking of which:

“So, we’ve got these spacetime rifts, that people can just pop out of, like some shitty sci-fi tv drama. And it gave me some weird hand scar that isn’t going to kill me right away—which is cool, I guess—which I use to close spacetime rifts and keep more people from tumbling out.” She mulls on this for a few moments. “Well. Pretty sure I’m tripping major balls, but I guess that isn’t going to solve the monster issue? So. Immediate problems first, the fact that I’m probably going to wake up in a Denny’s dumpster tomorrow, later.”