RIFTER ARRIVAL: Justinian 9:44

[faderifting]

WHO: New rifters & their rescuers.
WHAT: Welcome to Thedas.
WHEN: Justinian 12, 9:44
WHERE: East of the Hundred Pillars and Perivantium.
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 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, hanging suspended in the air, is a shifting, crystalline tear in reality. It's the same color as the mark on your hand.

Beyond it, the sky is a clear and black, with stars that won't show until the rift's blinding light has been extinguished but two moons visible now. One hangs above you, beyond the rift. Another is lower in the sky, cut by the jagged line of mountains on the distant horizon. There's nothing in between to obscure the view or to block the steady, warm wind from the east, which isn't howling or whistling over the flat expanse of land so much as gently humming. Not gentle: the ground beneath you, which is more rock than sand. Further to the east there are dunes; here, the land has been stripped by the wind. It is nonetheless indisputably desert, with low, shrubby foliage and the earth beneath the rocks cracked and sun-baked.

But this isn't really the time for sightseeing.

You aren't alone here. There are other people on the ground around you—humans, or at least humanoid—with matching green marks, and an assortment of junk that might be familiar or might be very much not. Beyond them, forming a crescent ring around one edge of the rift's light, are a dozen wraiths, each capable of shifting between elements and hurling blasts of damaging magic. There's also a swarm of large buglike creatures determined to eat your teeth and three ghouls in suits chasing one rifter in particular.

All of these things would probably like to kill you. But you're not alone. In the dark beyond the rift's light, a group of armed and armored people swiftly descend on the scene. Many are wearing a symbol that looks a bit like a hairy eyeball being pierced 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, it's only a short hike to an Inquisition camp in the greenery where the landscape begins its shift into plains, where everyone can patch up any wounds, have something to eat, and ask what in the void is going on here. But don't wander off. In the dark beyond the campfires there are other hazards: prowling wildlife, scavenging bands of darkspawn, unfamiliar lands and no map to guide you if you don't already know where you're going.

Comments

Myira (OC) | Rifter/New Arrival

[notacrow]

( Strange dreams and strange awakenings )

Myira never falls in her dreams. It just doesn't happen. She is as at home in the sky as anywhere else in the world and the idea of being afraid of something like falling when she can just stretch her wings out to catch a passing breeze is laughable to her. At least it is normally. This time feels different. She is tumbling, nothing but open air beneath her and at first there is no panic or worry, just the instinctive spreading of limbs and the expectation of lift. When it doesn't come, that's when the worry sets in--mostly about the flying part. She flails her limbs for a moment, trying to gain some sort of purchase, and then the ground rushes up at Myira faster than she expected.

The landing drives the wind out of her and she has to wheeze and cough and try to catch her breath for a moment as she scrabbles around on all fours, trying to get a feel for what's happening. Where am I and where are my wings duel in her mind for importance before she realizes that she still has her cloak of feathers draped around her shoulders, which relieves that tension. Pushing herself to her feet to try and get a look at the world around her doesn't have the same effect. The pain she can ignore for the moment, even with the bone-deep ache that seems to rip up one arm. It's the sickly green glow of the rift above her and the unfamiliar landscape that shocks her. She knows every tree and hill within miles of her home and none of this looks like it. Besides that, Myira knows for a fact that her home has only a singular moon.

That's all the time she has to gawk at the world around her though, because almost immediately there seems to be creatures descending on her--sickly green wraiths and buzzing little fairies and neither of those are fun. Myira isn't a fighter--never has been, even if she can get angry and besides she has no weapons. Her first instinct is to take her proper form but before she can start the magic she has to duck an oncoming fairy and make a run for it as a blast of magic also manages to get too close for comfort.

"Gerroff--! Hey, get this thing away from me--!" She yells at the sudden arrivals who seem to be on her side. Not that she trusts them yet, but hey. If they're fighting the stuff that wants her delicious teeth or to just plain zap her with magic, she's not going to ignore that. Ducking, dodging, and running, she tries to weave through the chaotic melee and find someone who she can take refuge behind until the fight is over.


( Who even likes hiking? )

Finally, when all the fighting and running and yelling is done, Myira joins the others in heading back to camp. Most of the trip back she spends in her raven body, not wanting to walk around in bare feet. Or at all. So on the way to camp, a random person might end up with a raven perched on their shoulder making unhappy noises. Those unhappy noises just so happen to include speech. Myira makes grumpy sounds as she preens under a wing.

"What's with this night travel, eh? Do I look like an owl? Do I?"


( Camping is just another word for suffering )

Back at camp, Myira seems to be back in her human form again. It's an odd experience. She sits at one of the fires. The girl is wrapped only in a long black cloak of feathers that seems to be her only garment. On top of that, she eats ravenously. As soon as she's given food, she begins to eat it with her bare hands, shoveling down as fast as possible as if it might be taken from her if she's not careful. If anyone wearing that weird eyeball symbol gets close enough, she picks them out for special attention.

"Hey! You! Where are we an' what's goin' on? I nearly got turned into a snack earlier-!" She's loud, indignant, but not much else except perhaps excited by everything that's happened to her in the short amount of time she's arrived. Anyone not wearing the Inquisition's symbol gets treated to the same questions, though perhaps with a bit less vitriol.

b!

[shri]

A raven.

A raven was speaking to her.

Somehow, it made as much sense as anything else did, at this point, and she could be no wary of it when she was already weary of everything that comes too close to her. Sat on her shoulder like it deserved it, pretty as the night sky. "Take pity on those that walk, and cannot fly."

But even so, the adjustment comes easy, she shifts her veil, letting it settle over, not under, the little beast. Giving some shelter if the night truly did send the - him, her? - into a slumber.

Re: b!

[notacrow]

"Well, if'n I fly I won't be able to see an' I'll lose the lot of you in the dark..." Her voice comes back again, a rough, grating thing that still carries the touch of femininity and the drawling rural sound of the West Counties.

"And I do pity those that can't, don't you mind that non--" The bird cuts herself off. There comes a muffled sound of disapproval for a moment as cloth surrounds Myira. A shifting of weight and the raven manages to free herself a little better and find a comfortable spot underneath the drape of cloth. It feels better like that. A little separation from the sky makes her anxious but it is cloth, easily scattered if she needs it. Her wings splay a bit and then settle. Myira doesn't want to whack her companion in the side of the head, after all.

"...That's nice," she admits after a long moment. "I never seen cloth this bright a'fore. All the humans in the village had duller stuff in greens and browns and sometimes blue. Never anythin' like this."

[shri]

It is mercifully, at least, light cloth. Chanderi silk was not the heaviness of baranasi silks, after all, it was needed in the hot deserts of Bundeli. Even if this one was weighed down with the heaviness of the golden embroidery.

"Then you have not been to Hindustan. Colour is easy to come by. Even amongst the poorest." She keeps walking, eyes forward, unlike her companion, she has her own benefits. The blackwater had many gifts, and sharp eyesight was least amongst them. It means there aren't likely to be any sudden falls.

Though she keeps her ear to the tone, she knows the tone, if not in this form. Ah, an English crow? There was a thought.

"Shall I build you a nest out of it?" It's mild, away from herself in any real manner. Making sure to keep an even tone to even steps.

[notacrow]

"Never heard of Hindustan. Then again I don't usually fly further than a week or two afield from home. Is it a nice place? Do the ravens there have bright colors, too?" That's the most important part. If the humans have all this sort of stuff it makes sense (at least in her head) that the ravens would be bright and colorful as well.

"A nest? I wouldn't mind havin' a few scraps for the lining. This is soft an' light. Perfect for sleeping in to tell the truth." Myira laughs a little, though it's more of a 'caw' to human ears. "Though I dunno if a human could build a proper nest the way it's supposed to be. Nice of you to offer, though. I couldn't take something like this without giving something in return, though. It's too fine a gift."

[shri]

"India perhaps might be more familiar." She hums a little, with the words. Foreigners names, even if not what anyone else called it. "I am afraid not, no, they are quite the same. But there - we have many other colourful birds. Peacocks are prized for them. So by contrast, something all feathered black? Stands out all by themselves." A consolation at least.

Though to the latter she takes a second to think, seems to be mulling it over with idle speculation. "Perhaps we find something similar to it whenever we reach where they take us. I think this may be too decorated to be completely comfortable to sleep in." Her hand lifts, one finger pointed as she taps a point out of the air. "Then that can be our exchange. I will find the fabric for you, and you can show me how to build a proper nest."

[notacrow]

"Nope," Myira admits. "Never heard of it before. But I don't talk to a lot of humans." Not now anyway. That wasn't something she wanted to think about too much though, so she just brushed past it onto more pleasant things.

"Well, ravens are just about the smartest birds," she opines with more than a little smugness. "And I like my black feathers." She preens a little, the pride in her voice unmissable.

"Sure! That sounds like a fair exchange t'me. I'm hoping they take us somewhere with more green than this--it's too barren for me to really like it. Where's the trees? Ugh..." Myira seems to exchange one thought for another almost as fast as they come into her head.

[shri]

"I do not know... it is home, at least, similar to my own." It's habit more than thought, of a lifetime spent with animals in one form or another - that she reaches her hand up to scratch along black silky feathers.

"The desert stretches on for days there. But people live there all the same. Trees, too. I am sure you will find something to hide in, one way or another."

[notacrow]

Myira seems a little surprised by the touch of fingers against her feathers. But in a moment she relaxes and lets out a soft, happy sound. Humans are good for a few things, she'll concede. This happens to be one of them. Her head tilts, nudging into the strokes a little.

"Desert? No thanks, give me forests and green pastures an' rolling hills..." Myira sighs, wistfully thinking of her home. "Not so much hiding I care about--I like havin' somewhere to perch and see everything."

who even likes hiking (me!)

[the_cleric]

"Oh," Jester says, "my goooooosh..."

Squeals is maybe a better word for it. Jester squeals, the way any girl would squeal when she is faced with a cute talking bird on a basically midnight walk back to a cozy campsite. Especially when the talking bird perches on her shoulder. What girl could resist that?

Girl is not actually the first impression that Jester gives off. Seven feet tall--muscled like a body-builder--grey--horned--well, she looks like a qunari. But a qunari in a cute blue dress and a little white pinafore with pink trim. Plus a well-made belt with pouches and a wicked-looking sickle. Her cloak is blue, too, and there's a patch in the shape of the Inquisition's eye sewn neatly to the front of it. The sparkles that decorate the eye? Those are all Jester's doing.

And right now, she's staring, enraptured, at her own shoulder, where the talking bird has landed.

"Wow," she says, "wow wow wow! You do not look like an owl, no way. You are a beautiful, beautiful crow or something. And you can talk! This is amazing!"

THIS POST CLEARED MY PORES AND WATERED MY CROPS

[notacrow]

Myira isn't exactly used to weird non-human looking creatures and/or people but she's not the kind of girl to let herself be flustered by a little thing like horns or gray skin. She preens under one wing and adjusts herself a little to make sure her perch is comfortable--and then Jester calls her a crow.

"Oi! First of all I ain't a crow! I'm a raven!" Myira grumbles under her breath and spreads her wings for a moment, as if that proves what she's saying somehow.

"And of course I can talk! Why wouldn't I be able to talk?"

:> happy to be of service

[the_cleric]

Oh shit. Jester actually covers her mouth.

"Raven," she says, through her fingers, "so-rry. But I don't know the difference, okay! And I also didn't know that it was bad to mix up ravens and crows... You are the first one I have ever talked to. So that's why it is cool that you can talk, too!"

Druids can change into stuff, right? Animals and things. It's in books. And there's spells that can make people look like animals, too, sort of like how Jester can make herself look like someone else. Like, the pretty lady that she had met at the ball is her favorite someone-else to look like right now. But would she want to be a cute raven? Totally. Especially if she could tie a ribbon around her neck. It would look great.

Actually--

"Can I tie a ribbon around your neck?" She's reaching, already, for one of her horns. There are ribbons tied there, and little chains and decorations and things. She would totally give one to this beautiful raven.

:>

[notacrow]

"Ravens are bigger. An' just generally better, though the crows'll say different. We're family though, so it's really jus' all talkin' at each other for fun." Myira seems a little mollified now that she has an apology. She puffs up a little.

"And of course I can talk. I ain't stupid. Not like most humans listen to you anyway. Well, some do. But they're uncommon smart--" Myira's treatise on raven-human relations goes by the wayside as Jester offers up a pretty ribbon or something else. Pretty decorations? Myira is all about pretty decorations. She tilts her head to look at the ribbons.

"...Sure! You have so many!"

[the_cleric]

"Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh..."

It's not that she's not listening. Man, is she ever listening. How is she not going to listen to a raven talking to her? It is pretty much the coolest thing that has happened to her today. So that definitely proves that she, Jester, is one of the smart ones. Even if she isn't human.

She pulls the end of one of the ribbons so she can look at it. It is one of the pretty blue ones, that looks like shallow water.

"Okay okay, so do you like blue? I think I have some pink ones too, but this one is really pretty. And I think it would look great with your feathers."

[notacrow]

Myira tilts her head to one side, then the other as she examines the ribbon. That is a pretty good ribbon, all things considered. And this strange girl seems really nice! Her head bobs in a brief sort-of-nod.

"Ayuh. I like that one. It's a good color!" Myira proffers her neck for ribboning. She's gonna look great.

[the_cleric]

"Awesome!"

Pleased, Jester twists, so she can get the ribbon around that cute raven neck. She's careful in the way she tugs it tight--not too tight--and works at a bow. It's hard, because she's basically working one-handed, because the hand that is at the end of the arm that is under the shoulder where the raven is sitting, so she basically can only use that hand to hold the ribbon still, while her other hand does all of the looping and stuff. But she'll get it looking okay!

"So-o, what is your na-ame? My name is Jester. And I am a rifter, too, but I have been here for a little while."

[notacrow]

Even if the bow comes out a little lopsided, Myira doesn't seem to mind. She's downright please, honestly. Getting fancy things and praise is all great as far as she's concerned. She puffs up a little and looks important.

"Oh, I'm Myira! Nice t'meetcha Jester. I suppose that makes me a Rifter, too?"

b;

[inagutterson]

Yngvi isn't one of the walkers, not anymore. No, now he has a stupendously oversized horse from an Orlesian at the tourney, him perched atop comfortably. Gaspard (the horse, a big majestic absolute unit needs a name like that) flicks an ear.

Surprisingly, he doesn't jump too much at a talking bird. Enough time with the Avvar and you shrug it off if the feathers are black.

"There's a fare," because he only does freebies for a few folks, talking birds don't count. "Ain't like you need to be awake for it, could do a spot of roosting, he's got a big enough arse. Reckon we all just fancy making decent time for once."

Re: b;

[notacrow]

Myira takes the opportunity to flit down from Yngvi's shoulder to the horn of the saddle. She balances there precariously and without a care in the world as she sways with the motion of the horses plodding clop.

"A what? And I'm thinkin' on it. I'd fly it m'self but I dunno where we're goin' an' I'd lose all of ya in the dark. Skies above, what a night it's been..." She trails away into a grumpy mutter.

"You gotta good horse, though. The ones I seen afore were all poor little farm nags for the most part, always workin'."

[inagutterson]

"A fare, y'know, a toll? He's not a free ride, are you Gaspard?" Yngvi has to lurch awkwardly and alarmingly in the side, digging in with one thigh to keep himself anchored to pat the horse's neck when it snorts, and he doesn't really know too much but he'll be taking that for a 'yes, of course, look at me I'm the size of a gurn son'. "Gotta say, all the birds I know that look like you don't talk much, if they do it's croaking and just any words someone taught them, you're not a demon? Just to check. Since you're on my saddle, on my horse, in the dark. It'd be manners to tell me what's riding along right in front of m'bits. And I'm guessing you probably fell out of a sky vagina."

Which he'll explain, if asked, because yes there's a reason he calls them that but he clicks his tongue and here's the good thing about a dwarf: they see better in the dark even if he'd never admit that because he was born on the surface, and then tips his head down at her.

"That's 'cause he's a tourney horse, someone didn't want him anymore because they didn't win on him and I got him for a bargain before I left. Plenty of sad farm horses elsewhere but where we're going, eventually, you'll see good horses. Solid horses. Besides the things other people ride because oh look at me, too fancy to sit astride a horse."

[notacrow]

"I dunno what a toll is, neither." Myira says with complete earnestness. The idea of paying for a thing seems foreign to her. Maybe exchanging one thing for another thing but this is silly.

"I ain't a demon. And yes, I fell out of the sky but I dunno what you're talkin' about with that sky vagina talk. The rift or whatever it is? It was the worst." Myira gripes about her situation in no uncertain terms.

"That seems like a poor reason to get rid of him. He seems like a nice type of horse. At least he ain't flighty and skittish or nothin' like that." She turns her head to preen under a wing for a moment, then tilts her head to look back at the dwarf.

"I usually fly but you try doin' that in the dark."

[inagutterson]

"Where d'you come from that you don't know these things? Even birds got a sense of payment, I've seen 'em, scrapping over who gets what. Especially ravens, got a better sense of taking their due." Maybe he should write to Aura, ask her if the ravens in her dreams ever do any talking or not, what he does instead is rummage through a pocket for some of his rations: cubed cheese, dried meat getting tougher and saltier by the day it'd seem, and of course the essential hardtack getting down to crumsb. "Hungry?"

(Yngvi knows what it's like to be hungry. And there's...well it's hard not to look and to speak with a raven, to want to offer out something in an open palm.)

Considering how to answer that, he does smile, kindly but it's hard not to be a little amused all things considered on his end at least. "You got a Lady of the Skies, right, that's what my battle master and his people all believe, so the sky and all that it's a lady. And the rifts are in the sky. So. Sky vaginas," he replies, calm, collected, assured in the logic of this from a recent addition to a slightly haphazard introduction to a faith. "I'm a dwarf, we burrow, crunch the earth down with our gnashers. I see bloody brilliant in the dark but got nothing to get me flying do I?"

[notacrow]

"Arguin' about who gets what bit of meat ain't payment or whatever you're talkin' about. I take what I like and if someone else wants some of it we work it out." Makes sense to her! She preens, then perks up at the sudden arrival of food. She bends forward a little and pecks at the various options, then decides to work on the crumby hardtack. The meat is too salty for her taste. She gulps down some crumbs, then peers up at Yngvi.

"Well, the Skies ain't really a lady nor a male nor anythin'. They're just the Skies an' they made everything. But I suppose they could have a sky vagina if'n they wanted to, thinking on it." She peers more intently at her new companion.

"You don't look like no burrowin' animal I ever seen. Not mole nor ferret nor nothin' like that--more like a human. And flyin' is the best there is so of course it doesn't. Owls can see in the dark of course but they're a big lot of fatheaded idiots with no sense."

[inagutterson]

"It is in Darktown." These days he can just about hold his mouth in a straight line while he says that, picking at old scabs like he does with it since some things might always be what they are but best to just say it. Tell this crow girl person rifter nibbling away in his hand before they get where they're going.

"The skies are a Lady though. Lady of the Skies commanding the wind and all the dead go to her when the ravens eat the bodies laid out. Avvar ways are good ways with that. Better'n Chantry ways, now that's a scam and they'd put you in the pot if they could catch you." He says that light enough for a joke. The catching. Deniability if Wren or Herian hear somehow and come to glower down from their impressive heights.

Clicking the horse on, Yngvi grins, shrugging expansively. "You met many dwarves? Don't think us and birds usually got reasons to be meeting. D'you know owls though? The way you talk, they sound like old noble dwarves or the Shaperate lot, pricks the lot of them."

[notacrow]

"Ain't heard of a Lady of the Skies before. Grandmothers always just called 'em the Skies. They always been there and always will be, ya know? Before there was anythin', not even birds nor clouds nor earth nor trees nor water. Before male an' female. And they'll be there long after we're all dead an' gone." This is definitely an interesting exchange of cultural ideas. A bit of a clash, but interesting.

"Oh, aye. Dead that get left out are a treat, no mistake. The eyes are the best part." She pecks up some more crumbs between words. "An' no one's gonna put me in no pot. I ain't some ninny-brained chicken!" Huff! The very idea is preposterous and so she laughs. The mention of owls again brings her around and she flaps her wings briefly.

"I met a couple. They like to make like they're wise but really they got brains full of nothin' and they're easy to trick. Even if they see at night."