faderift | RIFTER ARRIVAL: Justinian 9:44

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RIFTER ARRIVAL: Justinian 9:44

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.

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He can't know what she's thinking. To him, she's just some...fancy, ethereal woman who is, he thinks, from India, who, he thinks, may have just dropped her kid through no fault of her own when the Fade decided to take her and not a bundle of joy, who, he thinks, might be able to break half the bones in his body in one fell swoop if she so desired.

That last part is a little of seeing her fight one-armed, the other is just the air she gives off. It'd be kind of hot if it wasn't for the entire unfortunate situation.

"Oof. Hold on, I'm gonna wipe some of the blood off and see how bad it is. You might need stitches."

He sorts through his pack and retrieves a rag, wets it with water from his canteen. "This'll probably sting." Though she looks like she's no stranger to this sort of dangerous lifestyle. He's gentle, though, and careful when he peels back any of the fancy fabric. There's all due respect for the healers both practical and magical of this time and place, but he longs for the days he's familiar with, suits that fill wounds with biofoam to encourage healing and stop bleeding, a HUD that in no uncertain terms tells you where the damage is, surgery suites sterilized within an in of their lives--

(bodies murmuring white suits lights overhead, it's not his memory but one of the flashes from Epsilon come unbidden)

"Yeah, something got you good, but you should be fine. We'll get it cleaned up and covered. Might end up with a set of new scars, but you aren't gonna lose the arm, and that's always a plus." He doesn't know enough field medicine to say any more detail than that, but he's seen far far worse.

Her shoulders roll back, her spine goes stiff and she takes a deeper, bracing breath as he comes close. Ready, maybe, to do just that if he took advantage, and snap him straying in his attentions.

But he doesn't, and let's her self not so much relax but be drawn by his words. There's on the other hand, what she's used to, when he says stitches and that she doesn't need them, a murmur. "Good, it would be a waste of silk."

When he's done, she fishes for the edge of her choli, tugging it up. But feeling where it was loose, she looked back, over her shoulder to him. It's there, that she meets his eye. Directly towards him like she means to look so hard through him she could cleave him in two, then she lowers them, pointedly so to her back. The loose cords that need tying up.

Its scandalous, if she cared. Happily she lived in a brothel for too long to do so.

"What is this place?" she hisses it, quiet near to him. Frustration is easier than fear, than being over whelmed. "Is this some trick of Hastings? Has he found some other magic? Do you work for him?" The anger in her voice over the last question says probably enough to hoe she feels about it all.

...Oh. Oh. Uh. This situation has just gotten more complicated, and he's not sure which part to react to first. It's...okay, he can multitask, he can do this. Tying things back up, it won't be pretty, but the outfit's ruined anyway, so. He takes the cords in hand and makes an effort to breathe first before snapping anything back. Stares at her back--in the direction of her back, not at her.

"I don't know a Hastings, and whatever place you think he sent you to, he didn't." Nice and easy. "It'd be easier, wouldn't it? But this place--Thedas--has a sort of...magical layer enveloping it, just out of sight. The Fade. Where spirits and demons and all sorts exist in a creepy existential horror Cthulhu landscape. And there's magical energy connected to it, too. It's been acting up. Tearing open where it shouldn't. And it brings people like us through, from all places and times. All these people that dropped in with you? Me? People like us, it's just crazy random happenstance that we're here, creepy green glow in our hands and everything."

Suffice to say, that made about as much sense as it was comforting. Which was to say, not at all. He is talking rubbish as far as her mind can stumble through - and she was far more inclined to bending that Galahad ever was. Her teeth set, working through his words as best she can, as he works through tying up the laces at her back.

"And the way back from here?"

Because no matter how strange, how impossible this was - that was the most important thing. Whatever this place was, however it was she came to be here. Leaving was the only thing that mattered.

"If I knew one, I wouldn't have stayed here for--" He stops, to actually...think about it. "Nearly three years." It feels longer, somehow.

On the other hand, what would he even have gone back to? Oblivion? Fuck that noise.

"I gotta work on my 'welcome to Thedas' speech."

The reaction couldn't be more instant. She turns on her heel, the jewellery clattering with the movement, a dozen bells all moving at once. Loud as it is subtle. Turning on him like a wounded animal to the hand that fed.

( Unfair, of course, to him, not to her, she is exactly that. Wounded, angry, pushing and shoving out of this predicament because that is what she does. Open jawed, clawing to drag down. To look for the throat like someone else's lifeblood might give some other truth. She fights and she fights and she fights and does not ever lay down and accept because that way, that way, laid hopelessness, and when there was no hope - ? )

"You lie." he must. Or what then?

And like dealing with a wounded animal, he pulls his hands back, like she might bite them off. "Hey. If there's a fucking way out of here, I'd take it, and so would a lot of the rest of us!"

Nevermind that some people have left. Somehow. Unknown how. Ruby. Jim. Did the Fade open up just enough to draw them back in? Are they home? He hopes they're home.

"So guess what, your options right now, as it stands, are go wander off into a place you don't know shit about, or come with us because we're not gonna kill you and more or less know what we're doing about people falling out of the sky."

It couldn't be less welcome. It could be more sickening. Strikes her down like she is back to being as young as she looks, stuck at the behest of others. to it, she recoils. Reaches her hand to the fabric of her son, gone out of her arms. As near as comfort to his hands.

She doesn't have a choice, and she loathes it. Because he's right. He pulls his hands back and she steps directly into his space like she has a right to it. To meet his eyes in the upturn of her face, her jaw set, her teeth against each other in a hard click that makes every muscle so obviously tense. Unforgiving of it or of him. On the attack even when she has no sensible reason to do so. Simply, that there was little in the way of other options.

"Swear then - swear on your life that I do not deliver myself into chains by trusting any of you or your word."

"Listen, lady, I'm trying to be helpful here." Getting on the offensive with Church usually triggers a likewise response. He'd removed his hands, but now he doesn't care where he puts his hands, gesticulating vehemently and occasionally putting a finger in her face for it.

"Let me put it to you this way: you don't attack anyone, you don't get put in chains." Like Helena. "On that, I swear. Sounds like a pretty normal way of doing business, right? We're here to help so the demons and bears and bad guys don't get to you. Don't you fucking get all uppity with me like I did this to you."

"Very well." it's a last bite and with it she realises she cannot say more. Her jaw snaps, the draw in of her breath heavy, because in the end, he is right and she can protest it, she can rage against it until she beats herself raw. But what good would ever come of it? She barely understands what it is she is fighting against, how outlandish it all seems. She wants him to lie, she would even take them all turning into lycans in a single moment because at least it would let her know what to do.

So as quickly and as decidedly as all that rage had come, it goes, locked back away into a tight coil, like it hadnt risen up at all. She removes herself from his space, with the same small step she took into her. Her face turns away and she reaches for her veils. To pull them over hair hair and down to cover her face. To hide herself and everything else she might be, behind it. Still visible, through it, but decidedly with a wall there, if the only one she can manage. "So be it. If that is to be the deal then what issue could I possibly have with it?"

Other than clearly, it still seems a trap she cannot escape. "What is your name, soldier?" Or so she assumes by the sword, at least.

Not that he blames her for her reaction. It's more than fair. But would it kill her to learn a little bit of chill? He takes in a deep breath, holds it for a moment, lets it go. His anger issues have always been there, but blowing up isn't going to help. So.

"Church. Leonard Church. I'm from a time when space travel is a regular thing. Which just goes to show anyone can make a living in a place like this. Whether they want to or not."

Her mouth closes, fixes to something hurt that is covered as quickly, her eyes narrowing behind her veil. He thinks that is her concern? Even if what he says - that is another series of questions. That cannot be possible. Such things belong in Vern's fantasies, not life. Where are you from?

"Queen Lakshmi Bai, of Jhansi. I'm wanted for treason and rebellion against the British Empire. I care little for survival."

Edited 2018-06-26 03:17 (UTC)

"Uh." Super eloquent there, as ever, Church. "Queen. Wow. I don't know where Jhansi is, but I'm gonna take a wild stab aaaaaat, India?" Her dress, her general appearance, 'British Empire' of which there hasn't been technically speaking in hundreds of years. "I...doubt you're gonna get treated like royalty, but it might help you along here if you've got, y'know, diplomatic and people-person skills."

A blink, her nod heads. Yes, India. He at least seemed to know, where the few that she had met so far... didn't seem to know her from a stranger. Her mouth pulls, bitter, unhappy. Of course. What else would be the assumption when she hung gold off ever finger? That she can't blame him for or even be particularly cross with what he hears the word Queen and thinks. Save for her own frustrations over the whole matter.

"I am a soldier, I do not sit in perfumed parlours fussing over tea trays," it's tired, almost, and it's an often repeated line that she seems to have to fight over, to make others lesson. As for the other matter: " - and I do not expect loyalty from those that have no reason to give it, any more than I feel a want to give it to those who have not earned it from me."

She wets her lips, working, quickly, over the details she has so far. "Who is this group that you speak on the behalf of?"

"Warrior queen." He smirks. "Cool." Church please let's not do this now...

But he moves right on from that. Whatever she is, was, it won't have much bearing on what she ends up doing in the inquisition. Only her skills.

"The Inquisition is the group that's come to your rescue and the people I work for since I fell from the sky. Not the happiest name, I know." He bites back the urge to make a 'Spanish Inquisition' joke, because...well, he has no idea the specifics of history, but it's much closer to a reality whenever she must be from than to his. "But it's a group of people from all walks of life who are rising up against a growing evil. And now I sound like a movie trailer guy. There are forces at work in this world that would see a lot of death and destruction and maybe, y'know, the end of all things. We're trying to stop it and also trying to keep the rest of the world from falling apart in the process. It's...eh. It's a work in progress."

That - far more pleasantly - surprises her just as much. It didn't matter if he knew who she was or not. For men to hear a woman and soldier in the same sentence tended to shock them, utterly, and not in the impressed way he just had expressed.

( - Well, no, that was not true completely, there was nothing but awe in Galahad's voice when he learned who she was. He had never doubted her ability to fight, no less, to kill. )

So she clears her throat, carrying on. "Yes, well." She smoothes her veil's edge. "That does sound like a Penny Dreadful or some of Stoker's drivel." But it was not as though those stories don't hide a glimmer of the truth of them. Something the aristocracy would rather pretend only existed in books when their people were torn limb from limb. "But I would be lying to say it is not unfamiliar. These demons... are there Half-Breeds and Purebloods among them too?"

"No?" He furrows his brow at the question. Purebloods and half-breeds sounds like some Harry Potter bullshit. Or some elfy bullshit. "No, that's not a thing with these demons. They're just...demons. Uh, the way I understand it is, they're spirits from the Fade that've just gone bad somehow. Do you fight shit like this already back home?"

"Demons, no, they live in tales, vanquished perhaps thousands of years ago or never existed at all, I cannot rightly tell."

The way that myth mattered and did not matter. Of foul many faced creatures like Ravana, stealing away Sita, or the armies of Asura's that fought under Lord Ganesh's commands.

"I fight... you may know them as Lycanthropes. Vampires." She swallows, and it is a palatable effect to her. Even their name makes her want to spit it out before she swallowed the sound. Reviles her so deeply.

Granted, that she sounds probably insane doesn't factor in, at least not yet.

"Whoa, you come from somewhere with vampires and werewolves?" Someone doesn't know about that one quest with the werewolves and the elves, shh. "That stuff's...y'know, that's Stoker's tales, that sorta thing. Where I'm from. Only in stories. Shit, though, that's rough; those can't be easy to fight against." With the kind of weaponry and technology that she must have had. He'd like to see a werewolf go up against a repeating plasma rifle, no need for silver there.

When Nikola Tesla makes your weapons? The possibilities were dazzling.

"No, it is not. Especially when knowingly or not, they are backed by the United India Company and thus the military power of the British Empire." It's all teeth, hated and sharp, gritted out for the wars she had faced. And lost. Her scars that are under the blood. Here hands that were calloused with the effort of holding on so tightly. To weapons, loved ones, homelands and her life, "Not that they need such armies. They make a powerful enough one of their own."

No one, no one tell her. It will end so badly. "Will I armies of the same here, fighting for this... Inquisition?"

"That's...really fucked up. Like really fucked up. How do you even control vampires? Don't they live forever until you stake 'em in the heart?" Or garlic? Holy water? Crosses? He's not Christian enough for the latter two, damn it.

"The Inquisition's forces are made up of a whole lotta different people from across the world. We've got humans, elves, dwarves, and qunari--the people with horns, I promise you that they're not demons. We've got people who can sling magic cuz they were born with it. And we've got as many opinions as we've got people, so things can get hectic. But no vampires, no werewolves, no demons."

"The controlling is easier, apparently, when you are a member of parliament as a vampire, and in the House of Lords no less. Ear to the Queen of England, I'm told." A pitiful picture. A corruption that spread like disease. But still, she smiles, polite and sweet, easy as could be. A demure little turn down of her eyes like she is coy and playing with him. "A stake? No, or at least, I have not tried it. But I find shoving a grenade down their throat works perfectly well."

Still - she nods, assured for the moment. She will take it for what it was, because how could she do otherwise. It was always possible he could be lied too, as mislead as Galahad had been. But time would tell on that.

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RIFTER ARRIVAL: Justinian 9:44

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