faderift | Kingsway Rifter Arrival

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Kingsway Rifter Arrival

WHO: New rifters, rescuers, and anyone else
WHAT: New arrivals are collected and transported to Kirkwall
WHEN: Mid-Kingsway
WHERE: The Brecilian Forest, near south of Denerim
NOTES: This log contains prompts for the ARRIVAL and RECOVERY of new rifters, as well as the subsequent QUARANTINE period. All prompts are open to anyone.

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I. ARRIVAL

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, they say that. Not in this one.

In this world, bathed in the light of a flare of too-bright green light, you crash through snapping branches and rustling underbrush, onto a mix of rock, fallen log, and rotting leaves. You may be bruised or scratched from the fall, but 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 obscured by the thick foliage of an old forest, with towering hardwood trees allowing only a few shafts of evening sunlight to slip through. You aren't alone here. There are other people 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, scattered in the vines, bushes, and moss around you. And above you, hanging from the trees with long and spindly limbs, are a half-dozen skeletal creatures that nearly blend in with the mossy bark, like oddly shaped trees themselves, until one of them lets out a rattling, gasping screech and they begin diving from the trees, down and into the ground like water, only to pop back up in front of you, kind of like dolphins. It might be funny, except they immediately begin to try to kill you.

Fortunately, you won't have to fight them alone. On the outskirts of the rift's reach, there are other people already waiting, armed and armored, to intervene on your behalf or to toss you a weapon of you own. 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. They've been waiting for you.

II. RECOVERY

Once the rift is sealed and the last of the demons dispatched, there's time to breathe, to collect the goods scattered around the forest floor, and to retreat to the Inquisition's nearby camp. It's too late to risk traveling, on the first night: though you're on the outer edges of the Brecilian Forest, that's still deep enough for plausible stories of ghosts and even more plausible reports of bandits and territorial Dalish elves to warrant bunking down and guarding the perimeter of the clearing until daybreak. In the meantime there's campfire food, spare clothing, and extra bedrolls for the new arrivals.

There is also a lot for the Inquisition to explain, so maybe it's lucky that it's a long trip back to Kirkwall. The walk to the northern coast is interrupted periodically by villages and cities in the distance, but despite the signs of urban civilization, nights are spent in tents, tucked away from the road, avoiding too much contact until a small ship can be boarded to cross the narrow Waking Sea. Traveling with a handful of unacclimated rifters requires some caution—hopefully someone will explain that, too.

Edited 2018-09-12 02:09 (UTC)

Kirkwall sits perched on, below, and within the black cliffs surrounding a harbor. The Gallows sit in the center of that harbor, on a rocky island occupied almost entirely by a massive fortress. Despite everyone's best efforts at removing statues of slaves and depressing murals, planting more greenery in the stone courtyards and gardens, and removing unnecessary bars, it still has the lingering aura of a prison, or a place where something terrible has happened, or both.

Still, it's home for at least the next few weeks. New rifters are quarantined in the Gallows on arrival, to an extent. They're given rooms with everyone else and permitted to wander the grounds freely, but not to leave the island fortress to explore the city. It's for their own safety—there are social mores they can't understand yet, people who would like to kidnap or kill them who they must learn to be wary of, writing that may or may not be unfamiliar and a thousand places to get lost—as well as everyone else's, but as long as no one exhibits any signs of contagious disease or a propensity for murdering civilians, it will only be temporary.

In the meantime, they'll be gathered together or taken aside frequently for talks on a number of issues considered vital to their success, or at least their basic survival, from a quick overview of Thedosian geography, to an explanation of the war that the Inquisition fighting, to a breakdown of the local currency.

There is also a seemingly endless list of don'ts. Don't touch red lyrium. Don't touch lyrium at all. Don't approach darkspawn unprepared. Don't put anything covered with odd black film anywhere near your orifices. Don't deal with demons. Don't use magic in the streets unless absolutely necessary, or else the locals might panic. Don't mouth off to nobles. Don't wander too far for too long, if you insist on wandering at all, or the anchor in your hand will become unbearable. Don't forget that you're guests, frightening ones, and making a good impression now may make all the difference in the future, when the war is over and someone has to decide what to do with this collection of Fade-touched strangers.

And don't forget, when you are allowed to leave, that the last boat back to the Gallows is at midnight.

i. arrival
[Her ankle rolls. She falls, full body, into sodden grass and leaves and poking branches in a flurry of skirts and petticoats, an indignant flap of ribbon and a thump! of a leather traveling case. Yes it's undignified, but you try falling out of hole in the sky and see how well you do.

Spluttering, Wysteria rolls over. She's only just managed to instinctively avoid being strangled by her traveling cloak as the rest filters through. There's a tear in her hand and it matches the crackling, horrible hole above her, all of it pulsing and dripping with a bewildering amount of--

Something is as far as she gets before the skeletal creatures comes pouring out of the trees. Wysteria's on her feet before she knows how she got there and when the first horrible amalgamation springs out of the dirt near her, she screams and swings her traveling case to strike it.

The latch pops open. A small cloud of finches burts from the case and makes their escape into the trees.]

What?!

ii. recovery
[Shell-shocked is maybe an extreme term to describe the poor young woman sitting near the campfire, but it's not entirely inaccurate. Clutching a mug of warm-- well, it's not really even tea, is it? Dirty water more like it, but pleasantly dirty in a way --Wysteria's eyeballs have mostly stopped trying to pop out of their sockets. She hasn't quite recovered into the territory of sensible, conversation yet, but she has gotten as far as stripping off one of her shoes and stockings so she can poke at her swollen ankle.]

Oh, that'll be a bruise.

[She's twisted her ankle before. It's fine. She just hasn't twisted her ankle in a lunatic back woods with a glowing hand surrounded by monsters and strangers. Anyway, she won't cry. It's fine. She turns to her nearest neighbor, clearly on the verge of stubbornly not-tears.]

I'd know if it was broken, wouldn't I? It'd have to be excruciating to stand on, rather than just uncomfortable. Wouldn't it? I haven't gotten to studying medicine yet, so I'm not sure what to look for.

[It's all rather persistently grim, isn't it? Black mountains and black cliffs and horrible statuary doting the very architecture of the city across the water that everyone calls Kirkwall. It's not the sort of thing anyone could really find any pleasure in studying at length. And yet Wysteria is doing just that. There's been a lull between what seems like a fairly endless assignment of group meetings and small lessons and pointed conversations with the local so and so's and in an hour she feels confident enough to call her own before the next one - in the library, to discuss geography -, Wysteria has taken up a post at the edge of the Gallows' ferry slip and is squinting across the water toward the city proper.

She's found herself a very small spyglass (borrowed from one of the Inquisition's workshops on the way out of a laborious discussion on what Thedas apparently considers modern technology; it's not stealing if she's sworn she'll return it soon) and holds it now to her eye. Ocassionally she lowers it to either adjust the lay of her collar - the fabric of the borrowed dress itches terribly - or to ask a question of anyone unlucky enough to be at hand on the busy ferry slip:]

Excuse me? Yes, you. I only just have a very small question that I thought you might know the answer to. If you don't mind, of course. I'd hate to keep you from wherever you're off to.

[About as grim (no, he's worse, he's from Markham, cultured though it may be it still breeds a certain sort) as the surroundings is Deacon. Not the tallest of men though the set of his jaw, the close shave of his head and jawline make up for that in robes darker than most of the Faithful might wear but a man is to blend in, to not mark himself out as he waits.

Alms to distribute, too many bodies to check on too proud to ask for aid, prayers and confessions to lead them through that the voice jars him out of his reverie.

Perhaps he looks an older man with a face that's weathered enough storms to have him slipping off.]

I can make the time, I think that Lowtown might not be the place for you Serah. [More manners, at least, than a Lowtown lass tends to have by that age when they've spent them all, traded them in for something else, the promise of better days not to come.] What would the question be?

Um.

[ Clarke been staring into the fire—not zoned out, but zoned in narrowly on an idle conversation between some of the nearby soldiers, waiting for them to stop talking about spirits and Veils and start talking about something useful, absently flexing her glowing hand—and she needs a slow, tired moment to pull her gaze away from it and onto the woman and her ankle. However long she was asleep before this, it wasn't long enough.

Looking at the swelling isn't going to matter either way, but she does. ]

Does it—is there any numbness or tingling, or just pain?

Wonderful. [She snaps the spyglass shut with a decisive click to punctuate it. --And then rethinks it, telescoping the glass out again with a very faintly sheepish look.]

I've yet to cross the harbor, and I'm curious if you couldn't explain some of the more prominent features of the city visible from here to me. I'd like to know how to orient myself when I do make it over. When I'm allowed to go, I mean. I can't imagine it'll be so much longer and I'd really prefer to be prepared.

[He's a very dour kind, isn't he? But that all seems correct, given the oppressive atmosphere of the Gallows and the dark sea past the harbor. For all she knows that particular morose look is just normal.

Anyway the point is, it doesn't stop Wysteria from offering him the glass. Or from asking just the tiniest additional question or two.]

Is Kirkwall's architecture very typical? And what's the name of the mountain there, if you don't mind me asking?

[The swollen ankle earns itself a very frank study. Wysteria absently sips from her cup as she scowls at it, trying to parse the disquiet of everything about this evening from the throb of her joint. After a prolonged beat, she finally goes with--]

Just pain, I think.

[Which is harder still the separate from the wholly different ache in her hand and the one in her haunches from sitting on a log and-- she takes a deep breath. Holds it just a moment. Exhales through her nose.]

I'm certain it will be fine by morning.

[When she wakes up from all of this.]

She probably isn’t supposed to be here. She hasn’t joined, yet. She will—soon—if only because that seems like the quickest route to information and supplies. In the meantime, though, free rein of the fortress doesn’t include free rein of the offices she’s wandering past now, late at night, when most people have given up work for the day.

She skips doors with firelight shining beneath them, but the others she tries, quietly and carefully, when she doesn’t think anyone is there to see her. Her clothes are new (to her) and native, but her boots have rubber soles. She doesn’t make much noise.

Most of the doors are locked. Those that aren’t are either empty or scattered with spare furniture, empty bookcases, unfamiliar equipment for some sort of science (or magic—magic, honestly) Clarke doesn’t recognize.

It’s one of the empty ones that she ultimately stops in, with the door ajar behind her so she can claim she found it that way. There’s a paneless window wide enough for her to climb through. At the moment she’s only leaning through it, first to consider the feasibility of reaching the adjacent window and its locked office without falling to her death, then to get caught and frozen by the expanse of the sky above the harbor.

Two moons. Different stars. She knew that, from the journey here, but it’s starting to sink in.

Connor spends a lot of time patrolling the waterfront. It hasn't yet occurred to him that he could simply cross to the mainland. He is free, but inwardly he persists in binding himself and waiting for orders that will never come. He hasn't even recognized the sensation of wanting something. It troubled him, at first, because he was not designed to want or think. Unable to resolve his experiences since arriving in Thedas, he simply sits with the bewilderment.

He turns promptly, with a patient and accommodating air, when he perceives he is being addressed. "I will answer to the best of my ability," he gives a slight nod as he speaks.

It felt good to complete his mission. And it still feels good when he returns to the Gallows. He knows, in a detached and clinical manner, why he can't rest and why it would be a bad idea to go taring off running laps around the fortress instead of trying to take care of his soon-to-be-exhausted new organic body.

His residual hyperawareness is likely what causes him to notice her at all. And his adrenaline-filled arteries are absolutely to blame for his choice to spring onto the nearest awning, swing himself elegantly over a wall onto the roof of an out building and nimbly trot across to the roof opposite the woman peering out of a window.

"Good evening," he says, showing no sign of exertion. "My name is Connor."

How gentlemanly.

"Perfect. Now you see, I've been standing here for just a few minutes,"--or fifteen--"And find myself wondering if the runes on the banners over the city mean anything in particular or if they're just some kind of sigil. A noble house, perhaps? Or maybe a prince's crest? Come to think of it, we haven't actually covered ruling houses and governing structures in my lessons yet, so maybe the real question is what can you tell me about who's in charge of the city. It's not the Inquisition, that much seems obvious. Otherwise I can't imagine we'd need quite so many dire warnings about not getting murdered in Lowtown. Or Darktown? It must be that one."

It's as if she says it all in one breath, her speaking rhythm so consolidated that there's hardly any pause whatsoever. But she hesitates now, if only in order to fix him with an expectant look.

His eyebrows bob, but otherwise he remains as patient as before. If anything, he seems a little more eager as he glances over the city. "The heraldry of Kirkwall has evolved throughout its history, beginning with its founding during the Tevinter Imperium when it was a centre for the slave trade. The sigil generally presents the image of a dragon, which were creatures revered in Tevinter. After many centuries, the dragon changed to reflect the rebellion of the slaves - you can see the somewhat chain-like quality it now bears."

He proceeds as if, despite her speed, he had catalogued the precise order of her commentary and questions. "After its founding by Tevinter, the city changed hands becoming ruled by Orlais. It was the Orlesians who installed the present form of government by a hereditary vicount. Currently, Kirkwall is a City-State of the Free Marches."

He shifts his head back and forth, considering. "There is a fairly high probability of being murdered in either Lowtown or Darktown, but certainly higher in the later." He abruptly closes his mouth. There is, of course, more to be said but it was probably polite to keep only to what is asked of him. There's also the problem of not remembering everything anymore- only most things.

Edited (typo) 2018-09-14 17:51 (UTC)

Usually Araceli's office door is unlocked, even left open unless she's practicing her lute because she doesn't need anyone complaining about hearing the same refrain played seventeen times over until she's gotten it down. But sometimes needs must, so a locked door is better than a shut door for keeping everyone away while she tries to get work done.

A locked door does not, however, prevent something inside the office from making a break for it out of boredom. (Why is there no fire in the office? Try having a living water pistol that takes great personal exception to it whenever you go to light the damned thing.)

A wet something emerges from under the door inch by inch. Something that might look like slime oozing out from underneath until it starts prodding at this strange unwelcome obstruction in its path. Your boot, madam, move it please as more of the shape slithers with a soft wet sucking sound. Black. Difficult to tell that some of it would be faintly bulbous when it's night. It reaches for a lace as a sailor would a lifeline to pull itself more of the way to a moment of freedom.

Anduin rubs his eyes as he wanders the halls, a taper in one hand, and a large book cradled in the other. Thanks to the kindness of Lady Galadriel, Anduin had been making- he felt- great progress in learning to read the common language of Thedas. He had... perhaps over done things tonight. In his zeal, Anduin had lost all reckoning of the hour, and of his bearings.

"Light blind me," he mutters as he looks around at the stonework- all of which looks exactly the same to him. He picks a direction and heads off. As he goes, his eyes are attracted by a bold stream of moonlight. He steps over to it--

"Oh," he says, taken aback.

Edited 2018-09-13 22:13 (UTC)

Kirkwall is still such a difficult place for Anduin to settle into, with its harshness... Everything about it is claustrophobic, and he can't be sure but he thinks it makes his bones ache. Maybe it's the dampness of the Gallows itself, he couldn't say. Or maybe it was something more, and the city's many wrongs had seeped deep into it like a stain.

His pensive reverie is interrupted by a new voice, one completely at odds with his thoughts. He turns to her as she speaks. "Oh, well... certainly. I would be glad to help you, my lady." His smile is gentle and sincere.

Why are there birds in your suitcase?!

[And a proper hello to you, too. Church doesn't exactly wait for an answer, sword already running across the demon. From the blow and the strike, its attention is split, but it is still very much a danger.] Get back! We'll handle this!

How should I knowaugh--!

[Her blurted defense ends in a sharp, horrified noise at the results of the flashing sword. Without needing to be told a second time, Wysteria shrinks back with the open traveling case held feebly between her and the demon. It's less shield, more screen - like if she doesnt see the horrible creature or the horrible hacking and stabbing being done to it, it becomes perfectly managable.

Well, in any case, she at least doesn't trip as she beetles backwards out of the fray.]

[Delicate sensibilities, okay, she might be harder for him to deal with.] Because it's yours? Unless you filched it off some rando--whoa-- [Courtesy of having to move back himself from a swipe of nasty claws. He holds up his hand, surprise surprise, glowing green like hers, and manifests something of a shield himself. This all might look super heroic if not for other people also fighting the demons, and also for the unholy terror and all that.]

Go back into the ground your scary fuck!

"My, what a varied history. Oh, but port cities are often like that, I think. They're the things that change hands most during wars, you know, seeing as they're so important for trade and supply lines. Capture an enemy's ports in the autumn and take the country by spring, as they say." She clicks the spyglass shut with a cheerful click-click of the segmented metal.

As for the likelihood of being murdered-- she seems to have dismissed it out of hand. Lowtown and Darktown and the statistic probability of having her throat slit in either lays half a harbor away and she's still in quarantine. That's a problem for tomorrow Wysteria.

"I wonder if that's cause for concern for the Inquisition, actually. Given their current occupation. The fortress seems secure enough, but I don't see any cannon or armament on the city walls at all."

[Don't say the words 'delicate sensibilities' as a descriptor for her out loud; she'd be appalled, insulted, downright flabberghasted.]

I'll have you know it had clothes in it the last time I checked!

[It's a stupid semantics thing to insist in the middle of all of this, but she finds herself illogically drawn to it. Horrible monsters and people with swords and holes in the sky and the pulsing, persistent, near nauseating sensation of the strange arcane drenched over every inch of the immediate surroundings are bewildering enough to prompt her to grasp at anything familiar. She knows she had a second dress and a pair of undergarments, a sleeping gown and two pairs of gloves (in honey yellow and white) and one pair of slippers and a necklace with an amethyst stone in there, and the fact that they've all apparently transmuted and very literally flown away is equal parts bewildering and infuriating and--

A second twisted creature bursts out of the ground beside her. Wysteria swings the suitcase again with marginally less screaming.]

My Lady. How positively old fashioned. --Which shouldn't be shocking, given the givens. All of Thedas, or at least the parts she's seen of it between the rift and the Gallows seem in keeping with the theme. Still, she finds herself making a slight face of distaste. 'My Lady' sounds like a grandmother or a long necked woman wearing an imperious air and a string of black pearls. She'd rather associate herself with neither, thank you very much.

"Please, Miss is perfectly fine. Now," --moving on quickly before any protests about impropriety can be made; she has a particular distaste for those-- "I just found myself wondering if anyone knew what makes the mountain there behind the city so especially black. I imagine it's something in the soil or the stones, but I'll be honest when I say it doesn't seem out of the bounds of imagination for it to be something stranger. I like a good juicy folktale, don't you? And that mountain seems grim enough to have inspired at least one."

[Something sinks in his heart. It's a heart used to it when the past fifteen or so years hasn't been particularly kind, when the Chantry might tear itself to pieces yet before they seat a new Divine upon the Sunburst throne but he is here, isn't he, to listen, to see, to report. Only the new rifters are kept here but if their paths have crossed then this is a chance.]

Kirkwall was part of the Tevinter Imperium long ago, filled with more slaves than you or I could possibly imagine; in Lowtown they have foundries, and outside the city itself there are still quarries like the Bone Pit. Slaves worked those, all to expand the Imperium. It's how the Bone Pit got it's name. [For the first time Deacon turns to regard her, something about her not unlike the scholars who'd turn up for a bed or to comb through the library at Markham, all their questions. Easy to slide into the familiar. (Easy. This is how demons might be invited in.)

One hand lifts up to say no, no thank you to the glass, smiling despite himself. Abigail was much the same at that age, Deacon can still remember all too well.]

What you'll see by the water are two great statues called the Twins of Kirkwall - the Chantry has done all it can to remove the shameful marks of Tevinter's legacy, their disgraceful imagery of the Old Gods carved into the cliffs - but the Twins hold the great chains Kirkwall can use to close the only shipping lane. Handy for them. Everything with Kirkwall is a remnant of Tevinter. The Gallows we live in was once a prison then. I can't think of many cities where it's split over levels in such a way, Hightown, Lowtown Darktown.

[Probably Tevinter. He'd heard rumours, those who'd delved to try finding out-- But there are more questions and thankfully he's not a man with lyrium eating holes in his memory.]

And the mountains we're near would be the Vinmarks.

[All the better that he refuses the use of the glass himself. It allows her to set it back to her eye sonshe might shift the sight of it to scour the city across the harbor for the features he's describing. What she can see of them, anyway. The only truly obvious figures are the Twins themselves and the great weight of their respective chains looped like hideous garlands across the running channel.]

Has this place long been out of the hands of the Tevinter Imperium?

[The way he talks about it, it's as if Tevinter is a dead nation whose only claim to this land or any other is their evidently very poor taste. But that can't be true. That nation's name is in every mouth in the Gallows. When they're not talking about Nevarra or Orlais or-- well, she understands things are rather fraught at present.]

I take it we're not their biggest fans, by the way. Tevinter's, I mean.

[She tips the glass down and shoots him a conspiratorial sidelong look.]

"Who says--" No, he thinks, he could follow up on the reference another time, now that she's already moved on. "There is a diplomacy division which could provide you with a better context. I... don't know a great deal about the political situation; I've only been out of quarantine for a few weeks. There's a war among the powers to the west and... north, I think?" He winces, and rubs his right temple.

"I'm sorry," he says stiffly. "I've been finding it difficult to think properly ever since I arrived." Ever since The Change, he means. He knows that it's academic to consider if his situation is comparable to operating with a malfunctioning processor or if this is really what it feels like to be alive.

He makes an effort to appear less crestfallen at his glaring failure. "Are you considering joining the Inquisition? If you have an interest in politics and history you could approach the division leads of Research or Diplomacy."

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Kingsway Rifter Arrival

ARRIVAL

QUARANTINE

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clarke griffin | the 100

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