faderifting: (Default)
Fade Rift Mods ([personal profile] faderifting) wrote in [community profile] faderift2016-02-23 01:43 am

OPEN: turn off the lights and I'll glow

WHO: New rifters & characters in Emprise du Lion
WHAT: More people falling on ice than usual, this time with demons, templars, and bonus nighttime
WHEN: Guardian 23
WHERE: Emprise du Lion
NOTES: This month, the arrival log is open to all.


You were asleep--deeply or fitfully, for the last time 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, tumbling 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.

But there's no waking here, just a flare of green-white light and a jarring impact onto freezing stone or ice that is twice as cold and just as hard. When your breath returns and the light's after-image fades from your eyes you will find yourself beneath a dark sky, a full moon straining to be seen through intermittent clouds, and a second moon low on the horizon. Its light reflects off snow to add an eerie ambient glow to the darkness, made stranger by the sickly green tint added by the fluttery menacing shape of the rift hanging in mid-air. Be careful getting up: you are at the edge of a cliff, what was once a waterfall now frozen solid in a massive curling sheet of icicles. The drop to the bottom is several stories, surely a deadly fall even without the huge humps and spikes of ice and snow that litter the ground where splash and spray were petrified.

You are also not as you were: in the palm of your left hand there glows a narrow splinter of light the same sickly green as whatever brought you here. It aches, a bone-deep pain that gnaws even through all the distractions. Like the fact that you're being attacked by monsters--some tall, spindly stick-things with too many eyes, some hunched and hooded with no eyes at all. Some are entirely different but perhaps more monstrous for it: men and women in heavy, gleaming armor, all of them with chunks of red crystal protruding out in a way you soon realize indicates it is actually growing out of their skin. Their eyes are a dull red, hollow and empty, and they attack with a single-minded determination.

Luckily, you are not on your own. Around you others are waking up, equally confused, with the same green lights flaring from their hands. There is stuff scattered about, like the contents of someone's life exploded through the rift with them: a picnic table and benches upended, metal camp furniture flung about, clothes and utensils, bits of wood and canvas and mattress littering the ground. Even better, you are not far from a path leading toward an Inquisition camp, and noise travels far in this terrain, echoing up canyons and off cliffsides, carried by the chill night wind. Help is on its way; just last until it arrives.
dreadinquisitor: (archer)

[personal profile] dreadinquisitor 2016-02-28 12:31 am (UTC)(link)
It was, to think of it, the first time he's ever heard such a question. Darkspawn? Certainly, being the harbingers of the Blight and all. But demon blood? There might be someone out there fool enough to play with their insides, but not anyone he knew personally.

He might have laughed, wry surprise, if claws weren't swinging for his face.

He kicked out, knocking a demon back and sent an arrow down into it's leering maw.

"Probably!" he called back, turning his head to avoid the resulting splatter. "Try not to get it in your mouth."

[personal profile] thelastking 2016-02-28 03:03 am (UTC)(link)
That won a chuckle from Aragorn. "I'm no idiot, friend." He replied with a dry sense of humor as he cleaved through another angry hurlock. A hiss escaped him once the dying beast managed to swipe at him with its claws.

"They're getting nasty now." He muttered as he glanced down at the wound upon his arm. It's a slight scratch, nothing too serious.
dreadinquisitor: (smirk)

[personal profile] dreadinquisitor 2016-02-28 05:35 pm (UTC)(link)
"Demons will do that."

A wraith whirled on them, blasting frigid wind and sharp, spears of ice, and Maxwell ducked behind an upended table, jerking his face back as the shards peppered through the wood.

Still, he shot the man a grin.

"Feel free to give back in kind."

[personal profile] thelastking 2016-02-28 08:41 pm (UTC)(link)
After tearing off a piece of his tunic to stop the bleeding, Aragorn cut down the beast that attacked him and put the wraith next on his kill list. "With pleasure." Before the ghoul even knew what hit it, Aragorn lunged at it with his sword at hand.

He stabbed deep within the back of this fiend before brutally kicking it away. A sickening crack was heard as the wraith-like beast fell forward upon the ice. Aragorn purposely kicked the bastard onto a sharp icicle that impaled it right through the head. Blackened blood oozed out of the wound as the beast clawed helplessly at the ground during the final moments of its life. Aragorn then quickly finished it off by cutting the monster's head clean off. The putrid stench of rotted blood nearly made him swear in disgust.

"It doesn't get any nastier than this." Sarcasm, he has it. Aragorn glanced over the archer with a grin.

"Let's get moving before more come."
dreadinquisitor: (talk2)

[personal profile] dreadinquisitor 2016-02-29 12:09 pm (UTC)(link)
A last few arrows, fired in pairs, and the wraith arched with a scream and faded into nothing. And they were, for a moment, unmolested.

"This way," Maxwell waved a hand, gesturing away from the cliff face. "We've a camp not far from here."

[personal profile] thelastking 2016-02-29 04:42 pm (UTC)(link)
A camp? Finally. Aragorn could get a breathier at last. All this fighting was tiresome on the body. He deserved a reprieve from all this carnage even if it be brief.

"On your lead then." He said once the archer walked ahead. "I sincerely hope I could find better armaments there." Stealing broken weapons off the battlefield wasn't ideal.
dreadinquisitor: (far)

[personal profile] dreadinquisitor 2016-03-01 11:35 am (UTC)(link)
Maxwell glanced back, measuring the man more fully now that the pressing issue of staying alive had passed.

He'd handled himself well, even with the makeshift supplies. That was a good sign.

"I'm sure we'll be able to manage something. Some warmth and some answers, if nothing else."

It was, to be fair, the first time he'd encountered a newly arrived rifter, and he couldn't say he was entirely sure what the process was. But those would have been important to him, he thought, if they were reversed.

[personal profile] thelastking 2016-03-05 11:58 pm (UTC)(link)
Aragorn met the archer's glance with one of his own. The two of them are quite similar in appearance. The man before him is tall, sturdy-looking and possessed a straight but slightly relaxed bearings about him. The two of them look as if they hailed from the same realm but Aragorn knew better.

Despite all their similarities, he could almost sense something slightly amiss about this mild-mannered archer. He couldn't quite figure out what that "something" was but Aragorn felt it.

"The warmth alone would be much appreciated." The ranger replied quietly. "Answers would be quite generous." He smiled somewhat.
dreadinquisitor: (talk2)

[personal profile] dreadinquisitor 2016-03-06 02:45 pm (UTC)(link)
Maxwell offered a small, friendly smile and waved for him to follow.

"There are others who can explain in more detail, if you wish, but to start: those were demons, and darkspawn attacking you. Both dangerous, for different reasons. The demons came from the rift, the green - cloud, if you will. The darkspawn from underground, from the Deep Roads. There's an opening nearby. I understand there's a team working on it."

He paused, wondering the best way to go on.

"You came from the rift as well. From wherever you were, to here. To Thedas."