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

[mousquetaire]

D'Artagnan's frown deepens as he works. He wipes one swathe of blood away, only for more to replace it seconds later. Not all of these wounds are superficial. He changes tack, pressing his cloth against the deeper ones and putting some pressure on. Aware that will be painful, he gives her an apologetic smile.

"I'll need to dress the wounds," he says, by way of explanation. What he's going to dress them with is another matter, but he certainly needs to. "It's all right. Tell me about your Kingdom. A crown prince was born? The King and Queen must be thrilled. My Queen announced she was with child just before I left, to great celebration."

Her attire makes a great deal of sense now. These are clothes d'Artagnan can easily imagine featuring in someone's court. They make her look expensive. Perhaps she's some sort of Duchess.

[shri]

There isn't too much for the pain, her brow pinching, a sharp little reaction that is easier - easier than his question.

"I was."

It's bitten out, her head shiting up and back with the faint hiss of pain, but the rest of her stays rooted in place, making sure not to move to disturb what he has to do. "Do what you must. I promise it will hurt a great deal less than childbirth."

That was an awful joke, Lakshmi. But she carries on, do her best to keep an even humour. "My husband insisted on three weeks of celebrations. I feared the people would grow sick with all the sweets we gave out. But he would insist, he always did." Gangadhar could never stand his happiness to be singular, it had to overflow, until his joy was everyone's, and how. Fireworks, canons, plays that were performed every night, parades where the elephants were trotted out to the loud beat of drums. "But it was a dream of then, nothing more."

[mousquetaire]

D'Artagnan looks up, eyes widening as he puts that together. His hands have momentarily stilled. He'd hesitated over the propriety of this when all he knew was that she was a woman. Now it's entirely different.

"You are the Queen," he says, softly, and drops his eyes. Damn. "My apologies, your Majesty."

He hadn't known, and she hadn't gone out of her way to tell him - he knows that much. Perhaps she hadn't cared about propriety. Still, in his experience all people who are owed respect desire it, even when they're kind about it. He goes carefully back to his work, cleaning her off gently. With care, he lifts off the cloth he'd been putting pressure on to check the wound beneath it.

"Was it a memory within a dream? A child you had once before."

[shri]

It begins to ease a little, but it bleeds still, needs strapping to say the least before it might stop. Even so. It won't kill her it seems, not yet anyway.

"If it mattered, I would have said something earlier." It is easy to wave off his apologies. She was not that sort of Queen, for all he did and did not know, she did not expect someone to come scraping to her over it.

"Yes. Yes, it was." She lowers her gaze to the once bundle of blankets that she had been holding that are now smoothed and hooked at the wrap of material around her hips. Nothing more than white and ornamental than what they truly had been. "Thank you for your kindness. Where is it that you come from?"

[mousquetaire]

In d'Artagnan's experience it always matters, at least on some level. At any rate he is used to serving kings and queens, and he'll behave accordingly, whether it matters or not.

"I'm from France," he says, while still focused on her wound. It's stiil oozing blood, and he puts the pressure back on. "Paris, where I am Musketeer to the King. I believe he would wish me to take due care of another Queen."

He gives her a tight smile, and then gently touches the wrap her hands have been smoothing.

"Can we tie this around your waist? It will need stitches, and we must stop the bleeding until we can find you a real doctor."