Keep a gold chain on my neck

[clawings]

WHO: Character(s)
WHAT: A ghost falls out of a rift, only he's alive now, so that's... something?
WHEN: Justinian
WHERE: Around Kirkwall, mostly in the Gallows during Rifter quarantine
NOTES: If you knew Erik before? I'm sorry, he doesn't remember you.

1. Rock the boat like a one-eyed pirate :: once the rift has closed (arrival in the nearby mountains)

Erik had held his own fighting with the others against the demons and solitary wraith that followed him through the rift, once he demanded that one of Riftwatch's rescuers go ahead and toss him a sword. Pretty impressive, perhaps, considering what he's wearing, down to the leather sandals, wouldn't be considered all that great of a gear for fighting in.

Now, the monsters are gone and he's been given the spiel, his eyebrows working higher and higher as the state of Thedas, of Riftwatch, and his (hopeful) position therein are explained to him. When he's done asking some fairly general questions -- How long has all this been going on? Years? Fuck. And how long will it take to get to Riftwatch? -- he takes a deep breath and asks a fairly strange one:

"What do the people here think happens to your soul when you die?"

Judging by his expression, he is honestly curious. Or trying to start shit, right out the gate.

It can be hard to tell.

2. Rick James, I get glitter on my eyelids :: quarantine in the Gallows

Here's the thing: Erik can't even be too pissed at the insistence on a quarantine.

First? Because he was dead. For a hot minute. No body remained. His consciousness, or soul, or whatever you want to call it, existed solely in an afterlife that consisted of more or less one (large) room occasionally on fire. Aware of the world of those that were living in a way that could not be easily explained in many ways other than by pointing at him and going ghost.

Ancestor.

And that was no longer true. Erik was now alive, in possession of a body that required food, water, sleep. A body that itched to train. A body that looked and felt as familiar as the body he died in, and so, it was his body. Many scars and all.

Secondly, he was grateful for the time to go ahead and try to figure out just what in the whole fuck was going on here.

He's around at every meal, in the communal eating space. You do not come in possession of his musculature by skipping meals... plus it's been a while since he's had the opportunity to, yanno, eat. He sits alone at first but then picks up his plate and sits down next to someone else.

"So what is it you do here?"

He can also be stumbled upon in the kitchen, opening containers of spices and taking sniffs of the contents before peering at the labels. "Man, what kinda names are these?"

In the library he picks out ten books at random and then cracks them all open on a back table, spread out. He doesn't read them so much as he flips through them, taking note of illustrations and lists and any notes written in the margins.

Is it sunny out? Or at least not actively storming? He's in the training yard for a few hours at least, working up a shirtless sweat with a shortsword and putting his scars on easy display. If he catches anyone staring Erik shoots a grin. "Wanna spar? Won't bite."

Another encounter of note is in the griffon roost, which Erik wanders into, clearly unsure. A thousand percent a kid from the hood in over his head. Horses are one thing, but big fucking bird-cats?

His response is a murmured "Now what in the whole fuck, man?!"


[ Two notes:

1. If you would like to opt out of interacting with Erik, please click here.

2. I will match your format!]

Comments

[favoriteanalyst]

"Would that I could meet a few more people like you, Erik." In appreciation for librarians and booklearning, in curiosity about the world and theology around him, in fighting skill all wrapped up in nerdity. "I'm not entirely convinced about how much of my choices were really choices. Or, put another way, yeah we've all got enough free will to find out own ways, but I like to think I was always meant to be on this path, always meant to find my way here."

How much he specifically wants to get into 'the Maker gave me signs, and Andraste gave me a mission' with a stranger, well...maybe leave that for another time.

"Tevinter magisters are still a thing, just in a different form, sort of, since the old days of sullying heavenly places. Not much different, mind. The Magisterium is a house of Tevinter's senate, lotta ruling power." He should probably get into mages and the different flavors of tolerance thereof. At some point. "Filled with, what a shock, mages. Before I get further, I do have to make something clear. The Chantry is split into two. The Orlesian Chantry, or Southern Chantry, is the predominant version of the faith. Tevinter has its own version of the Chantry split off long ago, the Imperial Chantry. When people talk about the Chantry, they mean the southern one, overwhelmingly. There's a lot of history with Tevinter, a lot of negative history, and frankly the war is as much against them and their powers and forces as it is with Corypheus specifically."

A little shrug, a little wave of hand. "The Chantry's got a story that the Magisters Sidereal are the ones that blackened the Golden City with their wicked ways. These guys specifically were a group of magisters that worshiped the Old Gods, high priests for them, used magic and blood magic and the power these Old Gods granted to physically make their way to the Golden City, and the story goes that the moment they touched the gates to open them--that's dramatic effect, I'm sure, and depends on who's telling the story, because sometimes they simply are already in the City, you know how these things go--that their tainted ways turned it black. So now it's the Black City. The Magisters Sidereal, they get their asses expelled from heaven, more or less, land like the most cursed falling stars back reality-side, and are said to be the progenitors of the Blight."

Hoo boy. He maybe needs to explain the Blight, too. Mobius rubs his chin. Historians tend to go off on tangents, too, right? "By progenitors of the Blight, I'm talking about the first darkspawn, and darkspawn are creatures that are tainted, which is an actual literal physical thing and not just metaphor, and can spread that taint to other creatures, and places. Blights are when darkspawn have found an Old God and tainted it into an archdemon which is," with a little hand motion, "the nigh immortal dragon things I was talking about, and they're all compelled to come out from the underground and wage war on the surface."

There. There's that. But more to the point: "Corypheus is a Magister Sidereal, or at least, that's the prevailing theory. What he might have you believe, though he wouldn't be the first potential Sidereal to have been seen in modern times depending on who you believe and what stories you listen to. We have a whole group dedicated to trying to find more information on Corypheus to figure out anything that can get us an upper hand on him, so."

Mobius spreads his hands. "What's my next thesis?"