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

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.

[rathercommon]

Sounds like a yes. So, what - she's some sort of...bird-selkie, then? That's weird. That's definitely weird. But Kitty's definitely not one of those fishermen that just steal the seals' skins and force them to marry them in those stories; especially after all she learned from Bartimaeus, she'd sooner run through the streets naked than keep a spirit in bondage. She's no magician.

"Don't want it," Kitty answers bluntly. And then, satisfied enough with her cleverness that she actually makes a little joke, she adds, "It's not really to my taste."

[notacrow]

Myira purses her lips, expression falling into something like a pout as she realizes that she's given the game away. At least Kitty doesn't seem actually interested in taking the cloak or using the knowledge against her. She slouches her shoulders, then sighs. She glances sidelong at Kitty, then snorts, unable to restrain a faint burst of amused laughter.

"Raven ain't good eatin' anyway," she mumbles, then cracks a smile. "...What's yer name? I like you."

[rathercommon]

"Erm - " That comment takes her by surprise. I like you. It's so...guileless. So she tucks her hair behind her ear, a little disarmed, a little self-conscious, as she answers, "Kitty." Then: "You?"

[notacrow]

Myira is clever and cunning but she lacks entirely in guile and deception. It would never occur to her to tell a lie about something like that. Misdirect someone so she can take some food? Sure. Point someone in the wrong direction just to laugh? Definitely. But when it comes to people she is painfully transparent, all of her emotions on her sleeve. Er, cloak. Myira grins at Kitty again.

"Myira," she chirps. She tilts her head to study Kitty a little more closely, completely blatant in her open curiosity.

"Never met a human named Kitty before." Myira, you've met like one human before.

[rathercommon]

"I've never met a raven named anything before," Kitty returns. Then she shrugs, and admits, "It's a nickname. My legal name's Kathleen, but everyone calls me Kitty." Well. "Nearly everyone." Everyone who matters in her life. Who didn't hand her over to be tortured and executed even when they ought to have been loyal and loving.

Suddenly feeling a bit moodier, Kitty scuffs at the ground with her foot and tries to change the subject. "Can all ravens talk, where you're from?"

[notacrow]

"Oh, that's neat. I'll keep calling you Kitty, though. If you don't mind." Myira isn't really sure about this multiple names thing but she's not going to complain about it for now. As Kitty's mood changes, Myira leans forward a little, frowns.

"Aye, of course. Why wouldn't ravens talk? We don't always talk with human tongues or to humans but we talk that's for sure. You should hear all the grandmothers gossipin' when there's a family get-together."

[rathercommon]

"Then - " Kitty hesitates, then asks, aware she probably sounds incredibly silly - "Do ravens talk in my world?"

[notacrow]

"I dunno," Myira admits plainly. She stretches, leaning back a little as she does so. Being in human skin always felt a little strange.

"Never been there. Probably! We like t'chat."