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

II b or not II b

[misdirection_hex]

Back in his Circle days, Vandelin had always been infamously difficult to wake. Shouting, shaking, alarms, music--all in vain, regardless of when his classes started or what important tasks he had set for him.

The war had called an unceremonious end to that little quirk. One doesn't have the luxury of sleeping soundly when there are rogue templars, rival mages and crudely-armed civilians alike stalking the forests and calling for one's blood. And even with Inquisition-provided camping gear and better-equipped guards to ensure safety, he's never gotten the hang of sleeping decently outside.

This makes it all the more imperative, in his view, that he be left in peace to get what sleep he can manage under the circumstances. One irritable and sovereign-sized eye creaks open at the Priest's cacophony, and he squints at the sunrise in an attempt to gauge what time it is. Too fucking early for this, is the conclusion.

He ventures out of his tent, hair wild as ruffled turkey feathers and jaw set with a distinct lack of amusement. "Listen, friend," he says, "far be it from me to disrupt your...native customs, but we all need rest if we're to make it back to Kirkwall safe and sound."

squishes his cheeks

[divineshadow]

Vandelin is not alone in this sentiment; even the guards on watch, who had not been sleeping, look ill-pleased with the Priest's song. "Cut that fuckin' noise!" one shouts.

To no avail. Once begun, ritual demands completion. Consideration of the objections to it might be done later. For now, the Priest is focused wholly on castigating the sun for its faithlessness, the purest expression of a djur's all-encompassing fury at an unjust universe. Fury that requires breath to express; between one verse and the next, the Priest pauses to fill lungs with air, fortuitously silent in that moment Van chooses to speak.

Fortuitously willing to look away from the horizon a moment and regard the speaker--and the look of him's sufficient to take the Priest entirely aback. This, surely, must be a male; if the shaping forces between the rifts recast a Priest as this one is now, they would form a male so. His expression--his entire mien--pricks at the Priest's conscience; he is surely not djur and yet the idea one did not harass or disturb one's delicate brothers is etched so deep it stings with guilt.

"Your pardon," the Priest manages at length. The words are gentle. "There were no attendants posted to guard your sleep. Otherwise, this would have been done elsewhere."