allthisshitisweird | TEST DRIVE MEME!

TEST DRIVE MEME

While in some alternate, tidier timeline, the War against the Elder One ended years ago, you're not in that timeline. It's 9:47, and the war continues. An enemy force partially occupies Orlais and has decimated several Marcher Cities, while the Chantry, aided by the Inquisition, has marshaled Orlais and the faithful of Southern Thedas into a new Exalted March against the army of demon-bound Wardens, Red Templars, Venatori loyalists, and darkspawn Corypheus has amassed. Rifts are still scattered across the continent, periodically spitting out strangers from strange worlds with green-glowing anchors embedded in their hands. There's no Herald of Andraste to save Thedas. Someone else is going to have to do it.

You're part of (or allied with, recently hired by, imprisoned by, etc.) a newer organization that's an offshoot of the Inquisition, dubbed Riftwatch, that consists mainly of these otherworldly new arrivals, rebels and Wardens, and other people who want to prevent the apocalypse without necessarily marching under the Chantry's banner to do it. Their headquarters is an island fortress called the Gallows—formerly a Circle of Magi, more formerly a prison for slaves, but its new occupants have done a good job removing the more grotesque reminders of that past and making the place livable. Their goal is to do what the Chantry can't or won't do, to go more directly after Corypheus and the dark magic he employs, and to keep the Veil from coming apart entirely.

Maybe you're here because you want to help. Maybe you need the money (though there isn't much of it). Maybe you acquired an anchor and sticking around is the only way to prevent your hand from killing you. Maybe you've been sent by the Chantry or some other entity to keep an eye on everyone—they're rumored to be a lot of weirdos and troublemakers. Or maybe you're a new rifter and just going where the nice people with swords tell you that you need to go.

I. THE SIEGE OF STARKHAVEN: North of Kirkwall, Corypheus' forces have occupied Hasmal, laid waste to Tantervale, and has now besieging the city of Starkhaven. An army of Marchers led by Sebastian Vael has returned from the Exalted March to press against the Tevinter force, but Riftwatch's aid is still needed. With the assistance of Riftwatch's griffons, you might be doing aerial surveillance of the enemy force or swooping into the city to provide supplies and news to the people holding the walls, then bringing news and valuables back out to deliver to the Marcher force outside. Or you could be engaging directly by harassing enemy camps from the air or dealing with mages the Marchers are less equipped to face.

II. THE WAKING SEA: When Riftwatch isn't traveling by air (or magic mirror), it frequently travels by sea, courtesy of allied pirate ships. So welcome aboard. The sea is choppy and frequently violent—violent storms, violent enemy ships, or both at once—and the crew may not have much patience for incompetence, so either make yourself useful above or try not to get sick below.

III. KIRKWALL: Even when enormous evil darkspawn are trying to take over the known world and you and your colleagues might be the only ones who can truly stop him, you can't work all the time. And when you aren't working, Kirkwall is there for you with its dingy Lowtown taverns, its flashy Hightown establishments, its market stalls and street musicians and cellars hosting gamblers. (Or maybe you can work all the time, and you're in the city to do some official shopping, try to spy on a suspicious character, or show a potential financial backer a good time.)

IV. SEND A MESSAGE: Each member of Riftwatch (or rifter, or ally) is assigned a blue crystal, small enough to wear around the neck, that can transmit voice messages, as well as an enchanted book tied to that crystal that can be used to exchange written messages. They're secure enough to discuss the war, if you'd like to get down to business, but loosely controlled enough to ask a question or play a game with only a few rolled eyes from people who hate fun.

V. WILDCARD: From the Gallows' library to the pirate islands off the coast, from Hightown's high-priced market stalls to the bloody frontlines of the war, Thedas is yours to explore.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

( oh no it’s a useless Arthurian reference and he shouldn’t even bother, but he can’t resist— )

Did an arm appear out of the swamp and throw you a magic bow? Does that sort of thing happen here?

( god he's just like stark, )

That sounds a curse that should not be fucked with, actually. No, there were crows and I might have been hallucinating from the blood loss.

( #justriftwatchthings )

Is it a very nice bow?

Do you want to see it?

( it's sick as hell. )

It's called Hakkon's Wrath. It's an Avvar piece, and I've never seen one like it.

— you know what, yes, actually. I'd love to. I have some experience with — and a vested interest in — magical artifacts.

I'd bring my Cloak of Levitation to show-and-tell, except it seems to have stopped working here.

I think the Fade has limits to what rifter bullshit it's prepared to allow to work here.

( maybe even conscious ones, which would be interesting, but that's neither here nor there: )

The houseboat that's docked at a slip down nearby where the ferry comes and goes from on the Gallows island is mine.

( it's not close enough to the ferry for the daily traffic to bother her, but they're within sight of each other— her idiosyncratic home is hard to miss, in general. )

The Gallows fortress itself is large enough that Strange hasn’t felt claustrophobic or trapped during this enforced quarantine, but the broad-scale confinement still rankles for a man accustomed to jaunting across an entire planet and multiple dimensions: without a sling ring, he’s no longer able to casually open a portal to get across town, or even for something as banal as reaching for a book or a cup of tea when he couldn’t be bothered to walk all the way to the Sanctum kitchen. It’s a humbling reminder that he’d grown complacent with his magic; or even, god forbid, lazy. Without the aforementioned Cloak of Levitation, he can’t even fly.

So like an absolute pleb, Doctor Strange has to use his own two legs and walk down the island towards the ferry and Gwenaëlle’s houseboat moored there. It’s unmissable as he approaches it: tumbledown wood storeys, layers piled on top of layers, as if the chaotic building had grown itself naturally out of the water. He stands on the shore for a moment, craning his head back and peering up at it. Houseboat, she’d said, and he had pictured… well, something else. Rich friends with yachts and their luxury boats had primed him for entirely the wrong picture. This one has overgrown foliage crawling up the walls.

A curious sight for someone’s home; but also, he’s in his forties and living in a goddamned Riftwatch dormitory now like he’s an undergrad again, so. Who is he to judge. A private home sounds marvelous, even if it’s Baba Yaga’s riverboat.

He’s still wearing his scarlet cloak despite the fact that it’s theoretically useless, but the rest of his attire is Theodosian basic, with mage robes similar enough to what he’d worn back home. The man paces up the creaking deck to the front door, knocks briskly on it, and ignores the stab of pain in his knuckles at the impact.

Strange's first glimpse of the interior of La Souveraineté comes around the silhouette of a man roughly of a height with him, older by some indeterminate number (twenty years, at least? but he is well preserved—) and dressed in unfussy, unmemorable black. Well-tailored, but not so as to catch the eye in admiration of it; workmanlike, if that workman might be expected to be presentable for his betters. The warm light from the coloured lanterns affixed within, lighting up the shifting shadows of hanging silks, spills out around the shadow of him, gaunt and severe—

“That'll be the rifter, he's expected,” and without changing that expression, if Felix Guilfoyle can be said to have an expression (or a speed other than 'walk' or 'kill'), he simply stands aside, that Stephen might walk past him into the foyer.

The polished hardwood, the rich velvets and the fine fixtures— the shape of this place is as curious as its exterior suggests, but the interior is perhaps more in line with what he'd been expecting. Baba Yaga's luxury yacht, and the young lady herself: slight and striking in the doorway of what is the main space for receiving guests, a room dominated by a wide cushioned depression, surrounded by hardwood flooring wide enough for perhaps two people to walk abreast and cabinets, art. More of those lanterns, that drapery.

Gwenaëlle is nearly a foot shorter, one eye — the right — false and golden, only golden, the other dark amber and frankly appraising. She doesn't look like any sort of soldier, in summer-weight silk (black, or some colour so dark it needs daylight to be anything else) and barefeet, her hair braided back from her face and then curling down her back. Old scars, the scrape of a rage demon's burning claws, drag down her décolletage to lend support to the story she'd told earlier of her arrival with the Inquisition, those and the eye wrong notes in a pretty, simple melody.

“He's nearly as bad as the dog,” she says, to Stephen, which is actually maybe ruder than that'll be the rifter, and equally casual. “You'd think I couldn't walk myself down a street. Do you know how many knives I have on my person right now?”

It's a non-zero number. Guilfoyle, wordlessly, withdraws.

“You had mentioned. I believe the exact term was ‘a lot of knives’,” Strange says, and there’s a touch of amusement in his voice, and acceptance. He’s aware how this might have looked. This is a stranger, a newly-arrived stranger, and he is now in her home. The mention of the knives feels like the gentle flexing of a cat’s claws: not an overt threat, but a quiet reminder.

He cranes his head and watches Guilfoyle go, silently wondering what his deal is. Manservant? Butler? General attendant like Wong had once been, but more intimidating? But as the man vanishes, then Strange’s attention finally drifts to the hostess and the rest of the room. And he is, inevitably, impressed. There’s undisputed good taste at play, with high-quality renovation and stylish but not garish additions. Unexpectedly, the sleek hardwood and draperies suddenly remind him of the Sanctum Sanctorum and not for the last time, he finds himself sharply homesick.

The woman herself, too, is striking even before the scars and the glass eye, the way she brandishes her history in plain view. For a while, he’d worn gloves around the Sanctum to hide the scars on his hands, self-conscious; it had taken time to stop giving a damn.

“It didn’t look like much from the outside,” he says, frank and perhaps a little rude before he continues to the actual compliment, “but this is a hell of a boat. Is it still able to move, or is it permanently moored here?”

For the record, it's actually three knives.

“She moves,” she says, directing him into a room nearby off the foyer that is as dedicated to comfort as La Souveraineté's exterior is dedicated to being off-putting. In lieu of a sofa, the room is dominated by a soft cushioned depression in its center, surrounded by narrow hardwood flooring and low cabinets, with art hanging above. It might be considered a particularly luxurious gallery, throw cushions of varying sizes spilling over the soft depression, with steps from the doorway down into it.

“Not gracefully, and not on the open sea, though. When our time at Kirkwall is done, I'll have to make arrangements with a more manouverable vessel that can hug us along the coast.” A girl and her boat. (And her menagerie— half-buried in cushions, a lykoi cat lies sleeping, lazy.) “Now; wait here, I'm going to get my bow.”

( continued! )

TEST DRIVE MEME!

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