tonight, we burn it (but not all of it)

[kantikoy]

WHO: All of Riftwatch is invited
WHAT: A burning of things/ideas for the New Year
WHEN: Mid-Wintermarch (nowish)
WHERE: The Gallows main courtyard
NOTES: Mobius' post inviting one and all to come burn stuff (but no bodies or large fabrics or explosives, s'il vous plait.

It's not exactly raining but it is cold on the island housing the Gallows this night. There's fresh snow on the mountains viewable beyond Kirkwall, and earlier in the week there was even snow in the city proper —typical for this time of year.

The bonfire is in the middle of the courtyard, with some benches and seating pulled far enough away that stray flames shouldn't pose a problem to anyone seated there. Adrasteia is also on hand, with several large barrels of water and buckets placed near every building entrance within sight. Just in case.

Comments

[youwonscience]

Possible. [She allows it without fuss, but then adds:] Complicated in other ways, then, though. Some rifters wake up with other memories from their lives back home, but don't observably go anywhere. Or, um. I don't want to share anything the person doesn't want me sharing, but there's a rifter here who should be very sick without a medical device from home, but it's somehow working here in ways that don't make medical sense. We're not spirits, that's true. But sometimes we react to stimuli as if we're taking lyrium when we aren't.

Well. I'm not, I can't answer for everyone.

[Don't ask her what every rifter gets up to recreationally, she wouldn't judge.]

I'm not ruling anything out. Like I said, I've got notes and some theories, but it's really hard to prove phenomena you've got no way to measure. And to generalize from such a small sample size.

[It has, bleakly, occurred to her that she probably has more sisters than there have been rifters, total. She'd have to do the math, but she wouldn't be surprised if the Ledas came out ahead.]

[favoriteanalyst]

[Left unsaid: Andraste's gentle bosom, none of the Rifters had better be taking any lyrium.]

I can only assume you've shared your notes with the rest of the research division? I'd be very interested in taking a look. Even if it...maybe doesn't necessarily make that much sense to me. There's only so many conclusions you can come to without more people experiencing all this.

Can you...elaborate more, on reacting to stimuli like you've taken lyrium?

[youwonscience]

[After her involuntary experience with red lyrium early on, the chances of her taking lyrium on purpose in any non-emergency situation are nonexistent. That said:]

The Research department has my notes, yeah. Everything that's measurable for sure, some of the theory, though the stuff that's just conjecture I haven't included yet. If I think of ways to make testable hypotheses, they'll be the first to know.

But it's not one to one, with lyrium and rifters, it's just ... ok. So probably the biggest piece of data we have is from the Blood Plague. Back in 9:44, a Rifter arrived, really sick. This is back when we were still Inquisition. Templars started going into lyrium withdrawal and the rifters, we started ... fading, I guess, for lack of a better word. Natives would forget about us, we'd act like caricatures of ourselves, some of us were literally turning partially transparent. Turns out there was an organism breaking down the lyrium, somehow. In the templars, and in us. If you look at the notes, I named them lyriophages, though some people preferred "blood shark" so you might see that too, same thing. Anyway, the upshot is that rifters ... our nature is tied to lyrium, somehow. Those of us who survived were cured, in part, by dosing us with uninfected lyrium.

That's why rifters quarantine now, after they arrive, for the record. No more bringing something nasty through the rift, at least in theory.

[favoriteanalyst]

Maker's breath. [That's horrifying on several levels, and frankly spontaneous lyrium withdrawal symptoms is the least of it.] But is there any of that still floating around? Something to test with? I don't know of anything that exists in this world that breaks lyrium down like that. That could be used as a red lyrium cure potentially, or have benefits in some of the mines, the dwarves who come down with illnesses related to it. Or--

[But first, it's not something anyone would want to just keep around, and second, how would one even do that? (What's a electron microscope? What's a petri dish? What's a gram stain?) Secondly, perhaps more immediately importantly:]

Rifters and lyrium are tied together... [Quiet, a revelation.] Yes...right, that makes sense. If there's a manner of impermanence to you, if you can leave and come back without going back through a rift and have all this knowledge pass through, then maybe your bodies aren't truly your physical bodies having physically gone through the Fade. Your spirits seem to have passed through just fine, and maybe something in the lyrium in the Fade gave you bodies, and they look like you because...your spirits aided in the impression of you?

[Sssssomething something like that, maybe.] I guess this is the conjecture part, the part that can't really be tested, or at least in no way safely, and in no way that someone would sign up for.

[youwonscience]

The Inquisition might still have samples. Which is a little alarming from a what-if-enough-Thedosians-get-anchor-shards-and-they-decide-we're-demons-after-all perspective, and otherwise not much help right now. On the other hand, even if they were willing to share, it's not like we have a safe way to transport or store it, so bringing it to the island where most rifters are seems ... not great. I appreciate the big-picture thinking, though.

I can show you my notes from the time, if you want. I wasn't at my best, I was sick, but I was able to observe the lyriophage under some serious magnification, and it behaves like certain pathogens — things that can make you sick — from my home world. Obviously my world doesn't have lyrium, but there were some similarities, at least.

But yeah, my best guess is that our physical bodies are somehow constructed in the Fade itself, or on its border. That's why we show up with the things we were wearing or holding when we dreamed. Or at least, as close an equivalent as the process can manage, it's not always perfect.

[favoriteanalyst]

I would genuinely love to pour over your notes on anything and everything. And then bother you at all hours asking for clarification. I've already got a lot of catching up to do, what's a little more on top?

But, on the topic of clarification: it's not always perfect? What, like the nature of dreams and the nature of the Fade are both in so much flux that people don't always get the bodies they think they should?

[youwonscience]

I've heard of that, to a point. People whose home world physiology doesn't match up exactly with the sentient species in Thedas might get, uh, translated to the nearest equivalent. Though that's not something I know enough about personally to tell you much about.

[She has wondered whether the IP protections are still in her Thedas DNA. She suspects not, but she'll never have a way to know.]

I was thinking more about gear, though, just now. Like, both times I showed up with a device that can do a lot of things, back home, with the right power source. The first time I came, it looked physically identical but it didn't do anything at all. Fancy transdimensional paperweight. This time, it can do one of the things it could do at home, but in an unpredictable way and without any evidence of a power source. Maybe I was dreaming about listening to music using it when I came here, or maybe the Fade picked up a different impression of what it was for than last time. Things we're dreaming of that exist here seem like they make it through, things that don't ... sometimes.