faderift | Keep a gold chain on my neck

Entry tags:

Keep a gold chain on my neck

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!]

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Mobius only briefly hesitates when the Rifter asks for a sword before giving his up (though, like, give that back after, okay, please). A lot of Rifters either tend toward makeshift weapons, like whatever happens to be around for them to grab, or come with their own. If someone's asking for a sword, chances are, let's say, not negligible that they might actually know how to use it.

And damn, this guy knows how to use it.

He knows a lot, actually. Not about the situation, obviously, given he's a Rifter, but he asks questions pertinent ones, not just 'how do I get back home' and the like.

It's the question of souls that really catches everyone off guard. "Depends on the person," Mobius starts plainly, getting the obvious answer out of the way first. "The predominant religion believes if you're worthy, your spirit gets to be welcomed at the side of the Maker. If not, well, your soul gets booted to the Fade to wander around for all eternity hoping the Maker will forgive you. That's the Chantry, and a good lot of humans follow it. The elves, dwarves, and qunari are generally bound by different beliefs."

Just to make an exhaustedly long story incredibly short and simple. "We generally try to keep people from dying so they don't get to experience the answer first-hand, though."

More new people... more new rifters. Gela thinks she's getting better at spotting them over time; it certainly helps when they're rudely curious and come closer to sit, asking questions right as she's popped her spoon into her mouth.

She considers him while she chews, and swallows. Says, "Who's asking?"

"Some fresh off the boat asshole, you know how it is." He imagines if she's been there longer than, say, a week? She's probably familiar with at least the concept of fairly ignorant Rifters.

(If there's one thing Erik despises, it's being ignorant of the facts in any situation he finds himself. The man loves to plot.)

He raises an eyebrow. "Unless you want my name or something."

"Well look who came crawling back," comes the chipper drawl as a tall and disgustingly handsome Thedas native slips into the seat beside Erik, setting down his tray with every apparent intention of joining him.

"Nice to see you don't just vanish into the aether like we thought," Benedict continues, "unless you've just been wandering the countryside, which. I suppose that's all right too, just." He pauses, as if he just got walked into a mental puzzle he himself had set up, "...not... usually what happens? Not what we thought happened?"

Hello, perfect stranger.

She chuckles, digging her spoon into her lunch and leaving it there for now, "That would be nice, messere."

Otherwise she'll call you that the entire time, and with full knowledge of how squirmy rifters can be about it. Here, allow her to go first: "I'm Gela. I'm part of the Diplomacy division."

Alright. Firstly, he hands the man back his sword. Like it's payment, returning it to Mobius, for bothering to answer the weird question.

(It might be.)

"So those things we fought... they're souls the Maker is ignoring right now?" A beat. "According to... the Chantry?"

A good half dozen replies flash through Erik's mind and are summarily dismissed, including but not limited to 'who the hell is WE' and 'you mean to tell me I've been here before?' or '...say my name, then.'

Mm. No.

Instead, several measured blinks and then Erik sets his fork down: "How long I been gone, anyway?"

Because one of two things is possible: this man knows him, or doesn't. Either way?

Erik will learn something.

Messere, huh? That's different. Gela has an accent that isn't the same as a lot of other folks around, but he's heard it here and there on the island.

"Erik." The corner of his mouth quirks upward just a bit. "One of those fresh off the boat assholes I mentioned earlier. What does an agent of Diplomacy do, in a war like this?"

Edited (Gela is hella, don't cha know? ) 2023-06-27 03:44 (UTC)

He has a nice little smirk. Gela watches him measuredly, fitting her chin to her hand. That's the second time he's called himself an asshole, and she is keeping track!

"A lot of talking. If you were a diplomat from another part of Thedas, I would technically be working right now."

But, alas.

Erik's smirk increases fractionally before he pulls his expression further toward neutral. He is, at best, a wartime king. Diplomacy is far from those tactics.

"You take up Diplomacy because you like people or 'cuz you don't like to fight?"

"No, demons are twisted spirits, and spirits are a different--" Mobius pauses, face scrunching in thought as he idly wipes his blade down. He can answer these questions, yes, but he can be a little much about it, and maybe he shouldn't be a little much to someone fresh out a rift.

But then, the guy did just up and ask. "How serious are you about your question?"

Ellie is found in the griffon roost. She's not short, but she gives off the impression of being small anyway, given how narrow she is. Sharp joints, sharp eyes, careful hands. Lots of scars, though not nearly as many as him.

Erik is another stranger, and though she's heard whispers that he was here before and has since forgotten, and left after she arrived, her own memories of him are glimpses.

She watches him curiously as he climbs into the aerie, a look of wonder and possible overload on his face. The griffons austerely look down on him from their perches and nests, ruffling wings. (Austere before one of them belches, loudly.)

At the moment she's sitting atop a griffon on the ground floor, astride the creature's withers. Her hands are buried up to the elbows in its neck feathers, clearing out impacted fluff. The griffon is apparently enjoying the hell out of the attention, eyes closed luxuriously.

She's about to say something about most new people not having the balls to come up and visit the griffons on their own, but catching his mutter, she chokes on a laugh instead.

"-yeah, I thought the same thing."

"As serious as you're willing to entertain, I guess." Erik sucks his teeth with the tip of his tongue and gives Mobius a one-shouldered shrug. "Seems like you got answers. Not like we got a helluva lot else to chat about on the way back, unless there's one of those 'but wait, there's more!' sorta moments waiting in the wings, here."

Erik focuses his eyes briefly on Ellie, takes in a deep breath, and immediately regrets that. Birds stink, first and foremost, and these are, he's decided, mostly birds with some cat swagger.

Doesn't make them any less fantastical, but he knows how to make that work with what he already knows.

"Sometimes I'd see... I dunno, illuminated manuscripts or what the fuck ever, from the middle ages, and they got all these creatures in the margin and I'd figure people were just real damned bored or didn't know how to draw and then, now, I see, with my own damned two eyes..." He gestures broadly at the roosting creatures. "Fucking fairytales."

He nods his chin upwards in Ellie's direction in greeting. "I'mma guess they ain't got these wherever you're from either, yeah?"

"There's always more. It'd be nice if there was less, for once."

It's a joke but also not at all a joke, damn.

"So let's get into linguistic semantics first, because spirit and soul as words can be used interchangeably in the common parlance, but if you want to be technical as far as Chantry teachings go, a spirit is a denizen of the Fade that has never been and should really never be a physical person in the physical world. They're concentrated elements of...hm, goodness, you could say, but that's a vast oversimplification. They're the Maker's first children, the first real whack at making people, but they didn't have the ability to be creative and make new, and that's about when the Maker made the physical realm, separated from the Fade by the Veil, and made the rest of us knuckleheads."

If some of this starts to sound vaguely familiar, don't worry about it.

"Demons like these ghoulies pouring out of a hole in reality, they come to be when a spirit starts to go wrong. They embody negativity, the 'bad', the 'sin' in a way, if you lean that way. Different theories as to how it happens; sometimes it's touching the mind of a mortal and getting to experience all the stuff we have to offer, sometimes it's by a spirit being forced to do something against its nature... It's said the Old Gods were spirits who got jealous that the Maker loved us, turned pretty wicked, got banished from the Maker's side for being little shits whispering sweet awful nothings in the ears of mortals, and became nigh immortal dragons."

But then that starts getting into different topics entirely, and he waves the rag covered in demon goop around like to make sure thy get back on topic.

"Souls are a little bit of the Fade that the Maker balled up and placed in us. We, here, physically, apart from the Fade, are immutable and unchanging, but with just that bit of spark of the ever-changing to grant us, you know, creativity, new ideas, the ability to make and think and do rather than just be. It's said that when we sleep, our souls go back to the Fade every night, and we don't remember it except for dreams. When we die, the faithful get to go back into the Fade and sit at the Maker's side, or..." He waggles the same ragged hand. "Wander around some way or another even the spirits don't really know until they get to wherever the Maker is now, since the Maker has also technically turned His back on us, and His Golden City got tarnished and is closed off to us forever. One of these things." You know, casually, just a normal thing. "The unrepentant sinners and so on and so forth, they either get stuck in the Fade adrift and wanting, or they get sent to the Void to despair for all eternity. The thing about the Void is...I mean, it's a cute story, and it's generally accepted, but we can prove the Fade exists. It's a real thing you can go to and experience. Nobody's been able to prove the existence of the Void, far as I know. Then you have things like ghosts, or spirits that end up on the wrong side of the Veil, or demons who possess the bodies of the dead, and it all starts getting more muddled."

He shrugs. "Nutshell." (Buddy I don't think that was in a nutshell but okay you do you.)

Ellie's smile grows as he talks, looking like she wants to laugh Yep, birds and cats both have a strong smell. It's helped somewhat by open air constantly blowing through the aerie, but it's still gross. Ellie prefer it strongly to the smell of rot.

Fucking fairytales. She doesn't know much about illuminated manuscripts, or anything from the middle ages, but he talks like a Rifter, and that answers a lot of questions.

Ellie shakes her head at his good catch.

"Nope, no fairytales where I'm from." She sits up on the back of the griffon to get a better look. She's dressed in local clothing, a tunic and breeches, hair tied back, her arms bare in the summery heat. She has lots of scars, and a half-sleeve tattoo runs down her right forearm.

"We've got our own shit, but nothing like these," she confirms, throwing a leg over the griffon's back and sliding off.

"Seeing them's nothing next to flying on them, though."

"Thesis with annotations, more like." There's a huff of amusement from him; either his new conversation partner is (or was) one of the faithful or the biggest religious nerd around. Possibly both.

Erik can work with that, being something of a nerd himself. "I appreciate it, though." He's got questions but there are a few things he can puzzle out first: the Fade being a tangible location in reality makes (some) sense, he supposes, and semantics gonna be semantics through and through; get far enough into any topic and the way everyone else uses a word is gonna be thrown the fuck out of the window.

Admittedly? Immediately curious about the 'tarnished Golden City'. Also: dragons?

"Nigh immortal, what's that mean? Them dragons fuck around often? Who fucked up the Golden City and where is that?"

"Yeah? I ain't done much riding before." He thinks about it a little; it'll either be too terrifying to continue, or too exhilarating to put down. Erik doubts there will be any room for an in-between reaction to getting to ride anything as physically impressive as a griffon.

(Barring dragons, but he's pretty sure that his ass does not belong anywhere near to riding a dragon just yet. Baby steps.)

He's still got on the pants he arrived in. No shirt. Hot enough to go without and it's not like he's sparring right this second. "I'm Erik." A nod, as she slides off the griffon's back. "Somebody 'round here give lessons, or something?"

Ellie nods at him, eyes lingering on the scars -- it's all curious, nothing spicy about it. It's like she knows there's a story there and that she's already mentally working her way around to asking, but not quite yet.

"Ellie," she answers, then shrugs her shoulders.

"You're looking at her. It's my job to take care of the griffons and the stables, so yeah, I could teach you if you want."

As she rubs the griffon's neck, it gives what sounds like a deep, raspy, rumbling growl. It's actually a purr, sort of.

"They're not like horses, though. You can't just jump on one and expect it to listen."

"I should've been a Chantry scholar, could be a brother spending my days in a grand library in Val Royeaux." Sigh! Alas! Alack! Had to go be a Templar, but, details.

Mobius absolutely can't keep a smile off his face, though. This guy might be new, and he might not need all these details yet, and the fact that he asked the initial question about souls in the first place...means something. Without knowing just what yet. But he's hitting all kinds of things Mobius would like to be nerdy about, so if he's willing to listen to annotated theses, well, he can talk 'til they get back to Kirkwall.

"Actual basic answers to those questions, as follows: they need a specific way to kill them when they wake up from their terrible ancient imprisoned slumber, there are regular dragons that fuck around but generally not often enough to be an issue, Tevinter magisters who sought to enter the kingdom of the Maker while still alive with blood magic, and in the Fade."

Actual nutshell, this time. He sheathes his sword and offers up a hand. "I'll get into the next thesis or three in a second, but if you don't mind my being polite: I'm Mobius. I might not be a proper scholar, but I've taken to being a librarian for Riftwatch. Bookworm, what can I say."

Oblivious, because he's too busy stirring a bit of extra pepper into his stew, Benedict looks pleasantly back at him. And blinks, a bit confused, but humors him:

"Couple of years? I think?" Time flies when you're... having fun?

"Well," if you must know, "I took it up because I'm a merchant's daughter, and I'd like to think I'd pretty good at selling people things they don't need.

Not that Thedas doesn't need Riftwatch, mind."

That thing, he said, about fighting. That he even brought it up at all! "Let me guess. Forces?"

She's not moving quietly to sneak up him, but it is still a library, so it's not hugely obvious before she speaks. "If you're looking for anything particular, I'm happy to share what I've figured out about the organizational system. You know, not a librarian, but you spend long enough looking for shit in here and you get at least a broad idea."

She didn't know Erik especially well the first time, though his face is familiar enough. Still, the Gallows is small enough and news travels, so she's not expecting the recognition to be mutual. (There's an existential element to him returning without his memories of Thedas that she can deal with later and probably alone.)

She avoids the temptation to look closer at what he's pulled off the shelves so far, leaving the ball in his court to engage or shoo her off.

Erik's expression is smooth as silk. Nothing wrong here.

"Anybody else I know still around?"

"I don't think I'm looking for anything specific right now," he says, looking up from the spread on the table and gesturing toward the chair across from him. Sit, sit!

"Mostly I just pulled shit at random, in part to see what I could read, like literacy-wise, and what I couldn't. What would be on your newbie reading list?"

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