allthisshitisweird | TEST DRIVE MEME!

TEST DRIVE MEME

Maybe you’ve been around for a while, or maybe you’re new to the Inquisition. Maybe you’re new to Thedas, having recently fallen from a tear in reality and been collected by uniformed rescuers. Whoever you are, you’ve been sent to Kirkwall, to an outpost where many of the Inquisition’s members and allies work on some of the biggest mysteries and problems the organization must solve if it’d like to keep the world from ending, where “ending” means “falling under the power of an ancient powerful corrupted being who wants everyone to bow to him as a god.”

And just to be clear, it would like that. It would like that a lot.

I. THE GALLOWS: The Gallows is an island fortress in Kirkwall’s harbor. It’s been home to, in order: Tevinter slaves, a Circle of Magi, a lot of creepy red lyrium, and now the Inquisition, which has occupied the fortress with the provisional Viscount’s blessing. There are walls that still need rebuilding and corners that still need dusting, but for the most part the Inquisition has gotten down to business. There’s space in the stone-floored courtyards to train or spar; or, if your skills don’t lie in the realm of hitting things, there’s a large library and several offices supporting the Inquisition’s areas of research and diplomatic efforts. If you don’t know what to do with yourself, then by all means, ask; someone will definitely be able to put you to work.

II. KIRKWALL: A quick row across the harbor will take you to Kirkwall proper. The city is built into the cliffs, from exclusive and wealthy Hightown at the top to impoverished Darktown in the abandoned mining tunnels below. In the middle is Lowtown, home to taverns, merchants, and plenty of trouble to keep anyone looking for it happy. You’re welcome to spend your free time and your money here—but try not to annoy the locals too much, please, in case their welcome runs out. It’d be a shame to have to pack again so soon after arriving.

III. QUESTING: Barely had time to make yourself at home, did you, before you were sent away from Kirkwall again—but this time on a mission. There’s a rift outside of Markham, pouring demons into the fields, and the Inquisition has been asked to lend a hand. Maybe literally. If you have an anchor embedded in your palm, you’re needed to close the damn thing. If not, maybe you’re here to fight demons or guard against bandits on the road, or to gather samples and take notes on the rift’s location once its closed, or to speak to Markham’s nobility afterwards to make sure that they fully appreciate the Inquisition’s efforts. Regardless, it’s a long trip, so we hope you like campfire cooking and sharing a tent.

IV. SENDING CRYSTAL: Joining the Inquisition gets you access to the very latest in barely-understood magical communication devices—namely, a crystal, small enough to wear around your neck, that will allow you to communicate verbally with anyone else who has one. Or everyone else who has one. Say hello.

V. WILDCARD: The whole of Thedas is yours to explore, from coast to uncharted wilderness. Choose your own adventure!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Though Sina is no somniari, she is still a mage, and is familiar enough with this particular dream that she is able to recognize when something about it is amiss.
Atticus will find himself on a black beach with an eerie green sky reflecting into the lapping, viscous ocean, which pools around the hips of an elven girl who hardly looks older than twenty. From her chest glows a similar but far more saturated green, cracks-- or tendrils of it-- seeping up through her sternum and down toward her belly, cruelly tracing her modest bust and piercing right through the thin shift she wears.
She turns to look at the invader, her eyes hollow and weary yet backlit by green, her bearing decidedly unfriendly.

"Have you come to watch," she asks coarsely, her thin voice doubling over itself, "it won't be long now."

In the Fade, everything is real, and nothing is real, and all of it is true. Old instinct has him shrouded in a cloak to secret away his identity, his face masked by a helm molded into the image of an obsidian dragon's skull. (Calling it a helm is a bit simplistic; it is as much a part of him here in this place as his soul is, and blends into this projection of his body.) He has no idea what he would look like, here in this place, without it; the Fade doesn't have many mirrors.

The girl in the viscous sea is a vision--or, at the very least, the magic searing and ripping her open from torso to gut is. The power emanating from her has a magnetism that sinks its hooks into the deepest of his visceral needs and pulls at him; there's no air here to breathe, but if he could, it would catch in his throat. Marvellous.

He lifts his hands and moves them as though pushing aside some low-hanging branches, and before him, the thick water parts to offer him up a narrow, black path of sand straight to Sina. He approaches her with caution. "If I knew how, I would relieve you of your burden," he offers to her, and one suspects that this generosity is not borne out of kindness, but dark greed.

Sina's eyes widen in surprise as the water parts, and then they trail back to the masked face, narrowing. There are frequently demons about, circling like vultures over a dying deer, and tonight is no exception; they're everywhere in the two mages' periphery, lurking, waiting.
She recognizes that this person isn't a demon, but never before has someone other than Cole altered her dream in this way. ...Cole might have been a demon.

"Pretty words spoken by many," she says in a hiss, "before they flew away to let me drown." Sina herself could pass for an abomination in this state, so worn down by misery of this uncontrollable magic that she's quite literally falling apart at the seams.
"You're no different, ive'an'virelan," she continues, stepping toward him, fearlessly touching the mask. "No true dragon would speak in a man's voice."

"You're no different, ive'an'virelan. No true dragon would speak in a man's voice."

If she's close enough to touch the obsidian mask that has transformed his face, then she's close enough for Atticus to feel the burn of the magic that is consuming her, leaving her tattered and threadbare like a spool of thread unwinding.

He fixes his eyes on her sunken, furious ones, and smiles. "A true dragon," he replies, "would let you drown."

His smile fuels her anger, and quite unlike her waking counterpart, Sina is blazing with the toxic magic. It spurts and flicks off her like a raging fire, the demons noticeably moving closer as she stands her ground.

"A true dragon would eat me and make no event of it," she snarls, "what is it you want? There is something, I feel it spilling from you like grain from a cut sack."

The violence of her anger seems to fuel the hunger of the magic as it consumes her--but maybe that's just a trick of the Fade, an illusion meant to draw his eye towards the tendrils of magic and away from the demons as they prowl closer. Atticus cuts his eyes towards them and dispels the weaker ones with an easy motion of his hand. This seems to give the others pause, and though they don't flee, they seem to retreat just enough to regroup and consider another tactic.

Atticus turns his eyes back on Sina; her pain is a beacon for demons, and in her idiotic outburst, she could get herself killed before he has a chance to wrest her burden from her. "Whatever it is that is tearing you apart from the inside," he replies, reining in his impatience. "That is what I want, preferably without killing you in the process."

If the fool only knew how long this has been going on, how persistently, perhaps he would not think so little of her. But isn't it just like a shem'len, to assume authority on a situation he's only just entered.

"You do," she asks, and it's followed by a giggle, the sound so many have heard in her waking hours but not like this, mocking, desolate. "Then go to a rift and be graced with one like the rest of us." She looks down, taking a step back, her posture drooping. "It's not coming out," she adds, more distantly, morosely, "it's part of me now." Her hand presses over her chest, but may as well have no flesh at all for how the light continues to shine through it. "I belong to it."

Pathetic. An incredibly cruel and uncharitable thought, considering the young girl in front of him is dying from the magic in her chest. But it's the tone of her voice that sets his teeth on edge; his ear evidently cannot distinguish between simpering self-pity, and the dark nights of the soul brought on by true despair.

Either that, or he can tell the difference, and just doesn't give a shit.

"In that case, perhaps I should leave you as easy prey to these vultures," he all but spits, gesturing wildly with one arm towards the distant, murky shapes that prowl like wolves beyond the water's edge. He glares at her fiercely. "What sort of mage are you to let the Fade destroy you, when you should be its master? I'm offering you your life, but if you'd prefer to wilt like a dying flower rather than accept my intervention, then I'll leave you to rot."

He turns to do just that.

Sina steps back again, and begins to sink to her knees, the water pooling around her as she seems to grow smaller, kneeling in it. And she laughs, the same mirthless, desperate sound as before.
"As if it was yours to offer!" she breathes, "as if you had any say whatsoever! Ma enasalin banal!" Curling forward, she covers her mouth to cough into it, then thrusts her hand outstretched at Atticus.

"Be left here. Harellin. Die in the void, I'll see you again soon." She hauls in a deep breath and plunges down beneath the surface, for all the world looking as though she's drowning herself. But instead, the dream simply ends. Wherever the girl is, she's awake now.

TEST DRIVE MEME!

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