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

[notacrow]

Myira's response to the hot response she's engendered is to grin fiercely, teeth shining in the firelight for a moment.

"Good. You do got some fire in there somewhere!" She seems overly pleased that her goading has gotten the result she wanted, but it's in her nature to be a bit smug and full of herself. When you consider you and your people the absolute experts on magic and spiritual dealings, it's quite easy to fool yourself into thinking that humans have nothing to offer you. Still, a little compassion doesn't hurt and Myira has always had a deeply buried soft spot. She adjusts her cloak a little, shifting the familiar, comfortable weight on her shoulders until she finds the right spot. Kitty's response to her attempts at reassurance earn a rough caw of laughter and another grin, a flash of brightness against copper skin.

"Mayhap you do at that! But you don't quite got the look o' someone who does, if you don't mind me sayin' so," Myira drawls in response. "Not sayin' I'm used to it either, mind. I figure if'n you came fallin' out of the hole in the damn sky we're all sittin' on the same branch."

[rathercommon]

Kitty purses her lips quite disapprovingly at the comment on her fire - it's her business just how much fire she's got, thanks very much, and also her business whether she wants to show it off to some stranger and definitely not some stranger's place to comment on it and definitely not some stranger's place to evaluate whether it's good or not - but she doesn't get overtly hostile. After all, the girl seems weird enough that Kitty's interest is engaged, alongside her wariness - even as she watches her carefully, she also doesn't necessarily want to drive her off.

"And what is the look of someone who falls out of holes, exactly?" Her voice is a little dry as she asks. "I'm not sure I'd be able to spot someone like that if I saw 'em."

[notacrow]

Don't be too hard on her, Kitty. Myira isn't used to humans.

"I dunno," she admits cheerfully. "But I was just assumin' they'd probably be glowing and green and what not. On th' other side of it, I came out of one of those and I ain't glowing or green neither so I'm probably not on the right track. This ain't the sort of magic I'm used to doin'."

Myira leans forward, resting in her chin in her hands and looking pensive. This whole situation is so bizarre and foreign to her. Still, better to act like you know what you're doing than to get pegged for some kind of easy mark or something.

"All I know is this don't look like any place near home. Not enough green for one thing. I don't like it."

[rathercommon]

Kitty, almost involuntarily, takes her eyes off the suspicious girl to look around them. No. It doesn't look anything like home. No buildings far as the eye can see, no cables bearing power from one place to the next, no roads, no villages, no people. Is there any place in all of the Empire that looks so bloody desolate? Even up in the Scottish moors, you can spot a manor house in the distance. Or, well, that's how she imagines it, anyway. Not like she's ever been to a moor, or honestly anywhere beyond London's suburbs.

Still, she brings her attention back to that earlier comment. "Do you do magic, then?" she asks, turning her face back to Myira. Her expression is more controlled, now, the suspicion shuttered behind a neutral expression.

[notacrow]

Myira gives a slow blink at Kitty's question, as if she has just asked if the sun rises in the East and set sin the West or if water is wet. The girl's head tilts to one side, then the other in an almost avian fashion.

"Ayuh. What sort of raven worth her feathers don't do magic?" What a silly question to ask her, Kitty. "Been learnin' since before I left the nest."

[rathercommon]

That's...quite a lot of bird metaphors, isn't it? What, third or fourth? And with the feathers and the whole thing...Kitty's brows draw down in puzzlement as she looks at the girl.

"You're, erm - " She clears her throat and tries to figure out a way to phrase this that's more delicate than completely loony for birds. "Fond of - birds, then, are you?" She purses her lips, debates whether she's satisfied with that question, and decides: good enough.

[notacrow]

"...Does bein' a bird make you fond of 'em?" Myira scratches under her chin, brow furrowing as she tries to decide on that particular distinction.

"I mean, I'm more fond of ravens than I am of humansbut I expect that's the same the other way 'round with most humans. Owls are idiots and I could do without 'em, though." That's definitely one way of answering that question.

[rathercommon]

"Being..." All right, the girl is looney. Or Kitty's still dreaming, which is most certainly a possibility she's considered, though this seems all terribly detailed and logical for a dream.

"So, erm - you're a bird, then," Kitty asks, rather in the tone of voice that one would ask someone, So you're King of England, then. "You don't exactly look like one."

[notacrow]

"Well, no. On account of I'm wearin' human skin right now." If Myira is aware of the complete rejection of the possibility from Kitty, she's not showing it.

"But I am a raven! I just know how to change my feathers for skin an' back. It's magic, you see. Nothing complicated about it." She gets to her feet. "Here, I'll show you--"

Suiting her actions to her words, she mumbles a few words and tugs her cloak up over her head in a smooth motion. There's a sort of twisting in the space where she is, a flurry of feathers--

And there's a raven perched on the spot where Myira had been sitting, no sign of her or her cloak anywhere.

"See?" That is definitely Myira's voice, though it has a harsh cawing croak to it now.

[rathercommon]

Her reaction isn't fear, exactly. Fear involves some sort of uncertainty - but Kitty knows exactly what she's seeing, the sort of magic that's involved here. No: this is simple, self-assured hostility. Kitty tenses, and her hand grasps towards a weapon that isn't there, the knife she's not wearing at her side - and her jaw clenches, and she says -

"So you're a demon, then."

[notacrow]

"A what? No! I'm a raven!" Myira hops to one side and spreads her wings, as if showing off to the other girl.

"I was hatched a raven and Skies willing I'll die a raven but I ain't like, a demon. What's a demon, anyway?" This terminology is all new to her and the reaction that Kitty is having is more baffling to Myira than anything else. Surely once they clear up this misunderstanding, things will be okay, right?

[rathercommon]

"It's - a - " This is not something she ever expected to have to explain, and so she certainly doesn't have an explanation ready. That's like asking what's a building. It's a thing, a thing that doesn't give you shelter but is instead wicked and violent and cruel and an ally of evil -

But that's not true. Bartimaeus had told her that much, that none of that's true. He'd told her that they're bound unwillingly to the desires of humans, who are themselves the wicked ones. So even the standard rhetoric doesn't work, now. She runs a hand through her hair, and complains -

"How can you know magic and not know demons?"

[notacrow]

The raven's head tilts to one side, those same pale eyes examining Kitty for a moment. The bird makes an annoyed sound, then there's another twinge of space, a rustle of breeze and a few spare feathers float to the ground. The girl is back, still wrapped in her cloak of feathers. She leans over, chin in hand again. It's easier to talk to humans like this.

"Magic doesn't have anything to do with demons," she explains, though she sounds confused herself. This whole idea of a thing called a demon just doesn't sound real.

"Th' Winds and Skies whispered magic to the first Ravens and then mothers passed it to their daughters and so it's been ever since the Skies made the winds and clouds and all the flying creatures."

[rathercommon]

"That's - " Very romantic-sounding. Rather too romantic for magic. Far better than magic deserves. Kitty is still on edge as the raven-girl settles back down, not unwinding a bit; instead, she keeps watching, still wary, still confused.

"I don't know anything about how it got started, magic." It certainly wasn't anything they taught in school. And if it was, it would have been a load of shit about the grand and wise magician who first blah blah. "But now it's done by people keeping demon slaves." And a hesitation, and she admits, a little reluctantly - "At least...that's how it is where I'm from."

[notacrow]

"I don't know either, but that's what my grandmother and mother told me so it must be true." That logic is rock solid as far as myira is concerned. She frowns as Kitty speaks again, then scratches under her chin again. She's not nearly as on edge as poor Kitty, more curious than wary.

"...Maybe magic is just different for humans and ravens? I never saw a human do magic before. Or it's different where we come from. I mean, different people do magic different ways." Even if the raven way is the best way.

[rathercommon]

Kitty pauses, and then shakes her head, letting out a frustrated, huffy breath. "I've never seen ravens do magic," she says. "Where I'm from, all they do is flap about and eat - oh, I don't know what they eat. Seem too big to eat birdseed. Chips that get dropped on the ground and that sort of thing, I suppose."

cw: mention of gore, kinda?

[notacrow]

"Don't mean we don't do magic," Myira replies in a cheery voice. "An' we eat all kinds of things. Fruits, seeds and nuts an' squishy little maggots and grubs and sometimes mice and frogs but I like carrion the best. Especially after a battle, all those eyes not doin' anyone any good any more and they're easy to get at."

Myira trails off for a moment.

"Those don't happen too often though, so usually it's a deer the wolves got at or something."

[rathercommon]

"That's - " Disgusting, Kitty thinks to herself, but then bites down on the word. Is it disgusting? Not like she isn't eating carrion herself, when she has a stew or some chops or something. And the French eat frogs. And yeah, the thought of gobbling down eyeballs and desecrating the dead like that turns Kitty's stomach, but that doesn't make it inherently disgusting. Just means that she's disgusted. What would a raven care for the integrity of human dead? Humans don't care for the integrity of a dead raven.

"A bit different from my diet," Kitty finishes, managing a tone that's at least reasonably polite. "Do you eat that when you're, erm, a person, too?"

[notacrow]

Myira is all grins. She knows humans get squeamish about carrion and scavenging the dead and she takes a strange sort of delight in the way that Kitty forces herself to be polite about it. The question though catches her off guard and she lets out a faint sound of uncertainty.

"...I haven't spent enough time in this form t'need to, thinkin' on it."

[rathercommon]

"Well, are you hungry? When you switch forms?" Kitty fiddles with the ends of her hair, reluctantly letting her wariness give way to curiosity. "Like - if you're eating as a raven, I assume you've only got a little bit of food in your stomach, 'cause ravens have got little stomachs, haven't they. So is it, like, you change forms and suddenly your stomach's empty?"

She's really asking the hard-hitting questions here.

[notacrow]

That is actually a very good question that Myira has never really considered. She's never been too focused on her belly when she's been like this before and now it has her thinking.

"I dunno! I'll have to try it. Magic works weird ways though, so... Hmm..." She trails off. Kitty's curiosity is breaking down a little of Myira's own snobby tendencies. Curiosity seems to be a common theme between them.

"I hope it doesn't work that way because if I had a full stomach in this body I'd burst turnin' back! Skies, I ain't never thought of that before."

[rathercommon]

"Well - " She gnaws pensively on her lower lip, then suggests, "What's that cloak do, when you transform? Does it change with you?"

[notacrow]

Myira clutches her cloak tighter to herself, almost recoiling at the question.

"Um. Yeah. That's what it does," she stammers hurriedly. "All them feathers gotta go somewhere. Ha ha."

[rathercommon]

Kitty's eyes narrow a little bit as she watches the girl shrink back. That's...odd. And so she takes a stab, guessing - "What, do you need that cloak to change form or something?"

[notacrow]

"I didn't say that!" Myira's voice is a little shrill. She glares at Kitty and her hands clutch a little more protectively at her cloak.

"...It's mine an' you can't have it." That wasn't what Kitty said, Myira. But okay.