TEST DRIVE MEME

[faderifting]

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 filled with bears. Choose your own adventure!

Comments

[thunderproof]

❰ this is just... depressing. what is it with elves in these other planes, that they're all so downtrodden and dejected? granted adalia only knows of the elves in toril in stories and from what the elven avowed in candlekeep tell her, but she'd know if there was anywhere where they were like this. they keep to themselves, they're kind of haughty, they look at humans with either a paternalistic sense of amusement at the actions of a fumbling child or they outright disdain them for their impulsivity. no elf anywhere lives in an alienage, on toril. no elf would allow a human to dictate their place to them. what has happened in these planes, that their elves are so meek and cowed that they would?

well, she knows what happened in thedas, at least. humans happened, and the quickening, and tevinter.

adalia listens to the rifter's explanation, nodding along as she folds her own burlap sack, although she's not nearly as determined in doing so, and she gets distracted by the history as she does. ❱

Aen Seidhe — that's what elves are called, where you're from? ❰ she files that away for whatever further conversations they may one day have. ❱ Where I'm from, elves and humans live... separately, and there are many of each race who disdain the members of the other, but there was never any kind of real conflict. Not one that would decimate elves like the ones here have been, or your Aen Sidhe. I'd say I can scarcely imagine it, but.

❰ she's living it now, sadly. even as a half-elf, she's non-human enough to count for the average person here. can't enter hightown, no one trusts that the fancy things she owns, she earned herself, she's been mistaken for a servant or a slave... honestly, she might just stop claiming her human side altogether. ❱

[aenseidhe]

[ Iorveth nods - yes, Aen Seidhe is the proper name of his people. 'Elves' was something humans made up to better suit their clumsy tongues. Easier to pronounce, shorter, lazier. He listens to her talk of her lands and it pains something in his chest. That's what it must have been like, long before. The dream they'd all like to return to. Where Aen Seidhe cities are still beautiful, peaceful, undisturbed things, and the humans that coveted it weren't permitted to walk there. Until they learned what disadvantage they had to war. ]

I'm sure your lands will bear witness to their savagery eventually.

[ The Aen Seidhe had many powerful warriors and sorcerers, grand armies and resources, proud kingdoms and knowledge. But their numbers weren't so easy to replenish. You kill a human in battle, and his son takes his place in a hand full of years. You kill an Aen Seidhe, and it could be centuries before another can be born. Long lived, but procreation was limited to a short time in their youth. They couldn't multiple fast enough to stave off the barbarian horde. ]

Man craves nothing more than conquest. To seek power and profit, fill their gluttonous greed to the brim and over again, and pay no mind to the mountain of corpses their thrones sit atop of. [ Iorveth spits bitterly, eyes cast to a pair of human guards passing through the area, as if he's ready to pull free his bow and drop them both merely for existing. ] Don't let them into your lands, or spare them any of your secrets. Once they learn a means to take from you, their nature won't allow them to resist it.

[thunderproof]

❰ that... is a possibility adalia had not considered until just this moment. she has no particular connection to the elves of toril, no more than she has a connection to the humans — being an orphan means she claims no race's culture as her own, human nor elven — but being in thedas, where she's considered an elf purely due to the point of her ears, has begun to affect who she identifies with more. she's an elf, or as good as, and the thought of the elves in toril going through everything the elves here have —

she shudders and shakes her head. if it hasn't happened yet, it won't. elves and humans have lived side by side in toril for thousands of years — sometimes uneasily, but rarely in open war, and never trying to exterminate and subjugate the other. what's happened in thedas, and to this man's aen sidhe — it needn't happen in toril.

still... ❱

I'll... make sure to tell the elves if I go back.

❰ conspicuously, the elves, not her people. she doesn't have a people, and she's not about to claim a race she's only ever met in passing or in a library-cum-temple, devoid of outside cultural influence. ❱

[aenseidhe]

[ Yeaaaah, he knows he comes on kind of strong with the 'humans are the worst, they will murder everyone and eat your children any chance they get' thing, but he's Seen Some Shit, okay? Maybe he'd be nicer about it if humanity's wars weren't the sole reason his race is dwindling into extinction.

As for Adalia, Iorveth doesn't miss the distance from the elves. not her elves. it's somewhat difficult to tell these things here - pointed ears can mean a lot of things, it seems, and the elves of Kirkwall don't look like the elves of the Continent, thus he doubts any other world would be so close in representation either. Iorveth turns, leaning a hip against a nearby wall, considering her for a moment. ]

You're very familiar with them for not claiming the community.

[ By choice or exile? She's told him a lot about the elves of her world, but very little of herself. ]

[thunderproof]

I'm very familiar with the history, ❰ adalia corrects, picking up another sack to fold, to keep her hands busy and her eyes off of the man next to her. she isn't really accustomed to talking about herself — or to anyone caring to ask — and the discomfort that comes with any new situation can look like the discomfort of a liar, if she's not careful. better to have a reason to be fidgety and not looking him in the eye than look like she's lying. ❱

I think I'm a half-elf. I can't know for certain, being as I've never met my parents, but I'm certainly not fully human, and the elven monks in Candlekeep don't claim me as an elf, either, so.

❰ she shrugs, like it doesn't bother her at all that she doesn't know what she is, having no community or past is fine, she has better things to worry about than where she came from. ❱

Candlekeep is a library. The library, really. Many of the monks there are elven, and they would tell me about their people if I asked. I could read history books to learn about the rest.

[aenseidhe]

[ So some variant of elf blood. The numbers and percentages never really seemed to matter to Iorveth - only really the point that someone was markedly nonhuman, and thus suffered the prosecution for it as well. He's not sure how to consider it in Adalia's case, given her world seems to be free of that level of prejudice.

There is, however, the point of human blood in her, and perhaps that's concerning. After all, his world had seen the scars of mankind's whims and lusts scorch their earth over centuries and centuries, stories so far back that the elders say humanity came through the Conjunction of the Spheres only after they'd already left a dead husk of a last world behind. But Iorveth also can't say the small handful of Geralt's friends he'd come to accept weren't of true heart.

Something to hold in his mind. ]

Lineage hardly means much in the face of experience. [ Their used to be high elven houses, when there were still high elven cities. it falls to dust in the end. that part isn't something he's concerned about. ]

You live in this library? Candlekeep. [ she mentions it like a place of origin, and Iorveth's head tilts, watching her. ] What interests you with all this knowledge?

[ there's many reasons to bury yourself in something like that. he'd like to know what hers is. ]

[thunderproof]

I think that's very easy for someone with lineage to say.

❰ it's not a combative observation, by any means — adalia sounds pleasant enough as she says it, and she's not looking to offend — but not having a family history to fall back on means that she knows nothing of herself. who's to say what of her is truly hers, or something passed down from mother to daughter, from father? her flaws, her triumphs, maybe they could have been foretold if she knew where she came from. experience certainly has its place, but it is most effective when combined with knowledge of the past. adalia has the one, but no means of acquiring the other.

at his question, she pauses, then shakes her head — he's asking the wrong question. ❱

I didn't choose to be there. I was found on the Way of the Lion by Seekers when I was a babe, and brought to the library because the people who found me didn't know what else to do with me. The monks kept and raised me, and I grew up in Candlekeep.

Which isn't to say I'm not interested in knowledge, I absolutely am, but I don't know that I would have been if I hadn't grown up somewhere it was so prized.

❰ and more than anything, it's not knowing that kills adalia. she is a naturally curious person, her upbringing aside, and not truly knowing herself is a wound that will never fully heal. ❱