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 from here on, probably: medical grossness & blood

[divineshadow]

Where patience in the face of mere discourtesy comes easy, it is more difficult for what looks like obstruction. The Priest's attention remains on Fingon's face. "A knife would be suffice. It would not be for magic but to clean the wound. Bites drive filth deep."

Yet annoying as this woman--man? (difficult to tell, when all the sexes are plumed and come in such a variety of shapes)--is being, there is important information in the words. Without breaking gaze, the Priest presses a thumb against the very human bite-mark marring one palm, forcing blood from it. "Your healers are overwhelmed with the worst-wounded. There will be a wait.

"Say then what these feelings are." They've time to discuss it. They might as well, if the knife is not forthcoming.

[utulien_aure]

“The people of Thedas have a fear of magic- all magic, but that fueled by the shedding of blood in particular. There is a kingdom to the north- Tevinter- which once ruled most of the continent, and was long famed for its use of using slaves’ blood to fuel their spells. The rest of Thedas is terrified of mages using such tactics to recreate their old power base. And anyone who travels here through a Rift is under the same suspicious eye.”

Too simple an answer, too easy- and bereft of issues such as Abominations, or phlacteries, and the like. But sufficient enough for anyone’s first few hours in Thedas, Fingon thinks.

He’s hesitant to hand over the knife. Not with what he knows of medicine (though does what he know mena much, beyond Arda’s borders? He knows battlefield medicine, but was never trained in the full healing arts), not with the uneasy familiarity some of the bite marks evoke. But he can’t argue with the logic the newcomer presents....

“But if this is simply a matter of your health, very welll. What will you do with it?” He won’t deny anyone their healing practices, if it wont’t hurt anyone else. (Though if he may need to melt down one of his daggers out of disgust, he’d like to know first.)

[divineshadow]

New names, new places, new customs, new fears. All of them are strange; all are worth the Priest's utmost attention. A fear of magic is at least seemly; so all divine gifts should be regarded. "They then see any shedding of blood as preface to magic," the Priest observes; it is not inflected as a question but is, still and all, a request for confirmation. "And respond in fear."

As to what will be done with the knife: "Open the wounds to bleed freely. Remove any embedded matter. Then you will have it back." The bite to the side of the Priest's hand is slow to bleed, the effort of forcing it shortly abandoned, replaced with more intent study of Fingon himself.

[utulien_aure]

"The Inquisition is more unorthodox. They must be; they have a war to fight, and they cannot be too particular about their allies. But the rest? Many here confuse caution and mania, to their peril and that of others."

Some of the newcomer's wounds still provoke unease, but it wouldn't be fair to deny him some medical attention for that. "Very well," he says, and reaches down toward his boot- and the shift in posture reveal the side of his face, high cheekbones in the manner of the Eldar, and a pointed ear.

The knife he comes up with is plain, but sharp and perfectly balanced. It will serve for the Priest's purpose.

[divineshadow]

It will, indeed, serve.

The Priest's lips wrinkle back from teeth in an animal snarl at the sight of Fingon's ears, his face. "Alfar," the Priest spits, naming the old enemy. An old enemy this Priest has never seen in life, but they preserved pictures. They preserved stories. The resemblance isn't exact but it is close enough to bring up eerie resonance.

It's that inexactness alone keeping the Priest from going further than standing, hands fisted and muscles tense with the promise of attack--but none yet. "Say what you are and from where you come, or prepare for death."

[utulien_aure]

Eerie resonance indeed- Alfar and Eldar are not so very far apart, after all. A Man might have mistaken it, in his panic.

Fingon looks up, surprised but far from unnerved. He has faith in his own ability to defend himself, after all. "I beg your pardon?" he asks cooly. "Usually I have some idea why people might want to kill me, but I am at something of a loss at the moment."