We come from the land of the ice and snow

[faderifting]

WHO: Open to all
WHAT: Thedas' strange new guests are delivered to Skyhold
WHEN: 25 Harvestmere (October)
WHERE: Skyhold main gate & courtyard
NOTES: This is Part I of a two-part intro event, Part II will be posted tomorrow.

A long uphill tromp through the snowy mountains ends at Skyhold, the distant fortress finally before them in all its tumble-down glory. There is time to admire the drop into the river gorge far below as they cross the only bridge into the castle; it is briefly backed up with traffic, several carts bearing supplies and visitors stalled as the portcullis is raised. Those coming to help catalog and unload the shipment and greet the guests, or otherwise present near the front courtyard, will find themselves witness to a far more interesting arrival.

Guards at the gate carry the word quickly, and more gather, though they make no move to imprison the strange people who fell out of a rift. They just line the perimeter and keep a close watch. Perhaps this adds a level of tension to this first encounter, but it also reassures the many who are unsettled by the uncertain turn of events and keeps in check those who might attack first and ask questions later. Others will no doubt soften the Inquisition's first impression, offering food, information, and other assistance.

Medical attention is available in the tented-encircled corner of the courtyard where the wounded from Haven are still treated. The quartermaster's assistant is called upon to provide spare odds and ends of clothing to those in need, and to issue blankets for all, though they are left to fend for themselves to find places to sleep.

Any mage willing to help is called in to do so and a cluster forms in one side of the courtyard to examine the rifters. They are objects of curiosity in general, but the marks on their hands are of particular interest, resembling smaller slivers of the Herald's famous mark. Despite their best efforts, no mage will be able to provide any real insight after this initial assessment. What the rifters and their marks are is a question they cannot answer today.

But one question is answered: in the midst of all the commotion, another Inquisition agent arrives from Haven, rushing in red-faced to announce that the Herald's body has finally been found.


OOC

It will be decided (partly for OOC reasons, admittedly) that the rifters will not be imprisoned at this point, but they will be watched carefully, and the guards are on alert for any strange behavior by people with glowing hands or strange attire. And of course, their freedom can be revoked at any time if they're deemed a danger. Though there are some OOC considerations at play here, you're welcome to ICly lobby for more or less freedom for the rifters, and things may change based on IC action/consensus.

Also: Part II, aka the log for the funeral/wake/etc. event, will go up tomorrow!

Comments

[laurenande]

His laughter was wooden, his expression was a shaky facade smoothed over deep unease, and he tried, with such sudden desperation, to appease her statements, to explain it all away...he was lying? To her of all people? His deception was clumsy, panicked, and Galadriel listened as he spun it, as it chased his actions and the tension in his frame. He helped her sit and tried to dance back, to move away and flit beyond her reach.

She didn't release his arm.

She couldn't, not yet, and even his twisting attempts at escape couldn't pry her grip off of him. She might never catch him again, if he put mind to evading her, and she needed to know.

Her expression was grave as she looked at him again, it was as heavy with the weight of long ages, with the threat of that song and all the darkness that had come over the world. It was weary for all the shadow that had been driven out, for the light that had gone with it when it left. Her eyes were hard, tempered as only one who waited for that darkness, who watched for it could be.

He was not an agent of the enemy; he did not carry his burden willingly.

"Did you seek it?" Galadriel asked, slowly, and her fury fixed on some distant thing. Whatever had tainted him, that was what deserved her ire, her rage, and she would bring it upon them like the fury of an ocean storm. "Or was it thrust upon you?"

Her fingers were numb; she didn't have enough strength to hold him for long. If he didn't answer quickly, he would be able to draw away and vanish, regardless of how she needed his answer. Once he slipped her hold, she had no doubt that catching him again would be a harrowing task, but she had to know.

Of all the questions this land posed, of all the answers she'd been given, this one was the most important. She had to know.

[bunko]

Even in his head, Scipio's internal noooooo tapers off weakly. She might be seated, but she's still gripping at his arm, and every wriggly little move with which he decides to secure his freedom prove to be worth nothing at all. She's got him held fast. What's more, she's got him pinned, held by that gaze of hers.

He should ask her how she does it. What a useful party trick. Only all those clever little thoughts curdle under that pin. She doesn't look as if she wants to kill him, or wrench his arm off. Instead, she looks tired. Angry, and tired, and looking past him, down some deep way of darkness--one he can't see, but one he can feel. A yawning maw of some tunnel going out of the back of his head, echoing song drifting up toward him.

How does she hear it? How does she know? His arm tingles where her hand is pressed. Maybe the limb has fallen asleep. Maybe his arm will fall off. Maybe he will be able to break free and run.

He looks back at her and fees very raw.

"It happened."

How else to say it? It sounds so stupid, clumsy in a way he never is. Under her grip and her gaze and her anger, Scipio is feeling very small and very childish--but that's fitting, considering his earlier excuses were like a child's. Tending to butterflies indeed.

"We were conscripted. I think it was-- a joke." Not a funny one. He wants very badly to run away, but he would settle for being able to look away. Neither seems very possible. She's so beautiful, under all of that fury. It's really sort of unfair. "Not really a joke. I didn't want it. I didn't want to-- die, either, I'm--"

Stupid. Stop talking. Scipio sets his teeth together, hard. The clench of his jaw doesn't do much to release the tension that's crawled up from her grip, but at least it gives him something else to think about. "We're here to help. I swear it."

We is very inclusive for a man who believes in limited camaraderie. It's hard to think otherwise. He doesn't like thinking this way.

[laurenande]

It should have been a remarkable, that a single word had the power to break her, after all her long years. It was so small a thing, uttered in a small voice, as though he were a child awaiting a scolding. She had to shut her eyes against it, but it did very little in the end.

Conscripted.

The answer was more than she'd expected and so much worse than she'd hoped. All at once her heart broke for this man, for this world; the air was driven out of her in a silent prayer. Her grip on him came apart as she did, her strength fading as a wash of unnamed grief passed over her. Her fingers fell away from his wrist and her arm draped, numb and forgotten, across her lap.

"No, it is not a joke," Galadriel confirmed and sounded as old as she was, as though each year had worn on her as a mortal's might. She had been exhausted but, before this, she had rarely felt so tired.

He swore that he was here to help.

It was a blind oath, given with fervor, to someone who would hold it beyond the span of his life.

He seemed so young, but all men did.

She looked back up at him.

He was a creature she could not trust, not ever, and a man she could not aid. She was too weak to drive out the poison in his blood; if they had been in Lórien, if she had been at the height of her power, perhaps she could have freed him from the old song. The Lord of the Dark was too powerful for any man or elf to contend with, but his taint was not so different from his minions'. She had not tried to heal it, but she had not had call to. Even Sauron rarely took lives by halves. It hadn't taken him yet, hadn't twisted him to something foul, but--no. She was weary.

She was so weary and this place was unrelenting.

"I am sorry," she said, after a very long silence, her expression a mixture of sincere pity and grief. "I cannot help you, I have not the strength."

She would have killed him where he stood. Now, knowing what she did, she realized she should have. His future would be far less painless than a death by her hand. Unfortunately, for all the darkness threatened him, she had seen too much of the man who carried it. She would not kill him, not without threat; he savored life far too much to consider an early death a kindness.

"If you ask it of me, I would kill whatever creature conscripted you."

It was not an offer made lightly, but it was sincere. She still had very little grasp over what he was, what a Grey Warden was meant to be, but to poison any living being against their will? She would gladly end whatever had done the deed.

[bunko]

She looses him at last; he skips backwards a step, and then another, practically tripping over his feet. Clumsiness doesn't suit him, but the feeling of coming gradually unstuck doesn't give him much grace. Like waking up with his legs fallen asleep, and still trying to get up and walk.

And all the while he's still looking, still can't tear himself away. It's got to be some enchantment. Sorry? Well, she should be sorry, she nearly had his arm off, she made him feel wretched, made him think of whispered songs that he would just as soon as be done with, songs he will never be done with.

But that blustery irritation is toothless and nothing he can sustain, not with her looking so wan. Not when she's apologizing. It truly must be some magic, how quickly he wants to rush to assure her--no, nothing to apologize for, don't even think it--like words can bolster her and bring color back to her cheeks again. Like he doesn't still want to tear off down the corridor without looking back.

When he does manage to go, Scipio knows that he will not forget her: not her vibrancy of before, or her terrible anger, or her knife-sharp stare, or even the way she looks now, sagged in the chair like a poor woman thrice her age. In all of these faces she is not a person to be forgotten, though he might rather try.

Her offer isn't a vain one. She could probably kill anyone, once she's on her feet again, could at least make them feel awful and pinned-down and like they wanted to die, and, depending on the man, that might actually be worse. (First-hand experience lets him diagnose that latter part.) But even so:

"He was only a man, mia dama. Only a warden himself, no creature or demon. And he is probably dead." Or on his way. The thought is too sobering. Scipio takes another step backwards, fading toward the door. "What happened, happened. It only changes my story, it doesn't end it. Not yet. So I need no vengeance. And even if I did, I would not ask that, not of you."

It must be some magic, he thinks, for a third time, some magic that keeps him thinking so kindly of her when he was just shrinking in fear not moments before. But he knows that it isn't magic. She is captivating, and he is still a little afraid, and still he can't quite leave. The door is very close now. Another step back puts him nearer. What glow she has looks just a little brighter--Maker, he would keep looking on it, and on her, even if the grip of her hand on his arm is a memory not quite forgotten.

"If I leave you," he says, cautiously, "you will be well? You won't--" Faint, or fade, or go out like a snuffed candle. He shouldn't care. He does.

[laurenande]

It was all she could do, to look upon him, practically agape, as he retreated from her side. He was fearful, as he should have been, but that boundless, foolish kindness overwhelmed his terror. She had no words for this, for what he told her, what he was, or why he behaved as he did. There were no words. Galadriel gave him the only response she could.

She laughed.

The sound was not as bitter and weary as it should have been, there was a thread of genuine amusement that ran through her, but it was not a merry thing. It was a pale echo of her earlier joy.

"I have lived for years unnumbered, ere the first sunrise lit the world," she said dryly, for she had no energy for politesse or pity any longer. "I am weak, but this shall not claim my life."

She couldn't trust him. That fact crawled beneath her skin as surely as the poison ran beneath his. He was no clever servant of darkness, that she knew, but he was touched by it and, just as she could not be free of the One Ring, he could not be free of that song. It was curious, but she was inclined to believe him. She wanted to believe that he was just a man, that his heart had not been an impossible facade, and that he desired no violence as recompense for his fate. If it were true, though, it meant he deserved more pity than suspicion and she could never grant him that.

She was wary of him and it saddened her.

When had she become so terrible and fearful?

She was gentler, both in expression and tone, when she spoke again.

"Go," she said and closed her eyes. The sunlight streaming in from the window was watery, but she could feel it where it fell across her. "I will recover in time."