Test Drive!

[faderifting]

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 9:49, 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.) an organization, dubbed Riftwatch, that split off from the Inquisition several years ago. Riftwatch consists 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.

NOTE: This is a static test drive! We post them once per year or so and continue to use them for a long time, so you're never late. Current players are encouraged to track new top-level comments.

I. THE FREE MARCHES: Hasmal, Tantervale, and most recently Starkhaven have all fallen to the Tevinter incursion, leaving Kirkwall the largest city-state in the Free Marches to remain unoccupied. For Riftwatch, that means the war is closer to home than ever, and traveling anywhere north of the mountains runs the risk of running into enemy scouting parties. Perhaps you've been sent out to find these scouts before they find the unwary, or perhaps you're just trying to pass through unnoticed to Antiva or Rivain when you run into trouble. Or maybe you're more in the thick of it: joining the Free Marches armies in harassing the occupying army as best they can from outside the city, or slipping your way into one of them to gather intelligence or meet with an ally.

II. THE WAKING SEA: When Riftwatch isn't traveling by griffon or magic mirror, it frequently travels by sea, courtesy of a small assortment 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 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.

Comments

Alexandrie d'Asgard | Native OC, Bad Penny, will match prose or brackets ♥

[coquettish_trees]

III. Kirkwall docks, after curfew

Silver is no longer enough, then?

[ The source of the clipped Orlesian-accented irritation is a woman wearing a mud spattered travelling dress and cloak, obviously of extremely fine make beneath their earthy adornments. She draws the cloak tighter around her shoulders as if it could shield her from the affront of whatever the ferryman has told her as well as it does the autumn chill. Acidly: ]

Your predecessor found it perfectly amenable.

[ The ferryman is not as loud as she is, but from the arms folding across his chest he appears to be every bit as stubborn. Her voice cuts through the night again, sharp enough to draw blood. ]

Non, I do not have a crystal, if I did, I—

[ The tirade cuts off abruptly, and then she straightens and turns to look directly at you. Bright copper curls teased out by the wind frame a lovely face made lovelier by the immaculate application of her cosmetics, and a bit less lovely by the stormcloud of her expression. Eyes like the ocean, intent as a hawk, whether or not you want it you've got her attention now. ]


IV. Enchanted Book

[ You were having a civilized conversation, or at least what passes for one here, and now there are flowers. Whatever it is you write, soon enough afterwards it's being illuminated. Granted, whoever it is is an accomplished artist, but your point is perhaps a little bit undermined by all those twining vines and sprays of Andraste's Grace and— is that a bird nesting in your 'o'?

Or perhaps you like it!

...Either way, it's happening. ]


V. Wildcard

[ Would you could you in Kirkwall? Would you could you at a ball? At a battle, in a brawl, come at ya girl I'll write it all. ♥ ]

III

[altusimperius]

[Someone else has missed the ferry, as he is increasingly wont to do these days. Benedict is slumped, quite drunk and Maker knows what else, against a post by the dock, cloak wrapped around himself as he gazes glassy-eyed out at the water. And now at Alexandrie, the look on whose face immediately activates his fight-or-flight response. He can't do either. Too comfy.

He offers an innocent little smirk instead.]

Didn't you have a house? [he asks drily.]

Re: III

[coquettish_trees]

[ It takes a moment longer for Alexandrie's gaze to pierce through the barriers of that cloak and slump than it does for her to recognize the Altus by his voice alone.

So isolated from the denizens and movements and world of Riftwatch as she'd been in the Orlesian countryside, it had not truly occurred to her until this moment that time had passed for everyone else as well. That it had, perhaps, been a difficult year for them all. She turns fully around, walks to join him. ]

I did.

[ It's said far gentler than the last words had come spitting out of her mouth, and the hard glint in her eyes has softened as well. ]

But, to my knowledge, the Ambassador is not in it.

[altusimperius]

No. [A small shake of his head, which he leans back against the post, raising a cigarette to take a long, weary drag from it.] Probably not.

He's also not the Ambassador anymore.

[coquettish_trees]

[ Up go her eyebrows, swiftly, and then just as swiftly into a little frown of curiosity. ]

By his choice?

[altusimperius]

[The glowing tip of the cigarette bobs beneath the hood, in a nod.]

iii.

[elegiaque]

( the sound of that voice—

probably, gwenaëlle had had plans of some kind; there must have been a reason that she was over at the docks, likely temporarily. but whatever it was, it wasn't work related enough to take priority over hurrying towards what she's certain she's heard correctly, fumbling a coin purse at her waist to thrust a handful of definitely more coins than are warranted at the ferryman and collide with alexandrie full-body force.

it makes it difficult to immediately make out the brief glimpse of significant change — that golden eye — when she buries her face in alexandrie's shoulder at once, the familiar scent of her perfume oil momentarily overpowering with her hair loose and her cloak hanging around them both by her embrace. )

Did you write you were coming?

( —muffled, into hair and fabric. )

Did I miss it? I would have been ready—

Re: iii.

[coquettish_trees]

[ Alexandrie staggers a bit beneath the force of the embrace, shocked to silence and stillness. Then, that scent suddenly in her world again, time breaks open and Alexandrie's arms fly around the woman who'd crashed into her to hold as tightly as she can, ferryman and urgency forgotten as she buries her face in the unbound hair of her dearest friend. ]

I—

[ It's thick with feeling, muffled too. ]

I did not. Could not. It—

[ Softer still, strained, the all too familiar sound of an Alexandrie who has been crumbling away for some time beneath the perfection of her porcelain veneer, finally in a place safe enough to let it show. ]

Everything has gone so wrong, Gigi.

[elegiaque]

Come across with me,

( it takes her a moment to lean back enough to make that an immediate prospect— reluctant to disentangle, but needing to if they mean to go anywhere, talk privately. she presses her thumbs beneath lexie's eyes, holding her face in her hands, smiles, watery— )

You're here, now. We'll sort it out.

( the sort of blind confidence that's best achieved by only having one good eye. she links their elbows, familiar, pointing across the harbour with her free hand to a moderately ominous looking vessel tied up in a slip by the Gallows, )

La Souveraineté is prettier on the inside. I have wine. We can talk.

[coquettish_trees]

[ So much all at once becoming real. There is the boat they'd written about, although it's too dark to see the glitter Romain had insisted upon. Then there are Gwenaëlle's eyes, one of them shining with the dampness of emotion, one of them shining an entirely different way that they hadn't written about, and for all the letters they'd exchanged, there is suddenly also their year of untold stories— hers, Gwenaëlle's— slamming into Alexandrie's heart with enough force to push out the breath remaining in her. She thinks, for a moment, that she must have wings made of that breath blossoming from her back as it leaves.

There are things she wants to say. All sorts of things she wants to say. To ask, to know, to have known.

But feeling safe and being safe are very often disparate things, and so all she does for the moment is lean forward to press a kiss to Gwenaëlle's forehead and say ]

It is so good to see you, Gigi. [and then, in a conspiratorial stage whisper, ] Take me to your wine immediately.

[elegiaque]

( the relief of reunion is real; it will be all the realer, behind a locked door, only them. not far, then— a short trip across the harbour, hands clasped like children and their knees pressed together in the ferry, the short walk not up to the imposing structure of the gallows but cutting sideways to step back onto the (now familiar to her) tilt of her houseboat on the water. it is dark and strange and if she described it as prettier on the inside, there's pride in her expression before they reach that.

she finds it rather beautiful as it is, but alexandrie knows her well; she has a soft spot for terrible things that's never been blind to them.

it is warm and intimate and polished inside, lit with elaborately decorated hanging lanterns, and gwenaëlle bundles her directly into the gallery nearest the foyer (past the portrait of a beautiful elven woman who can only be her mother, and which must have been painted for her father), where the cushioned conversation pit takes up most of the room but for a ledge running its full exterior, the walls taken up with art pieces (some, lexie's own) interspersed by high windows. she flings her cloak carelessly, going to a latched cabinet, )

Tell me the whole of it, ( she instructs, fetching bottle, glasses, ) and you know—

you can stay, if you need.

( needn't, if she doesn't, but it's important she know. there is always a safe place for her to land. )

[overharrowed]

When the Ferelden-accented voice says "...Madame d'Asgard?" it's mostly surprise, but not unpleasant. Enchanter Julius, whose eyes she meets, looks very much the same; he's not wearing robes, but the staff on his back means he's hardly trying not to look like a mage, and he's as neatly put together as he always was. (If she looks close, maybe his sandy hair is tending a little more gray at the temples; maybe he looks worn in a way he didn't when she was here last.)

"I'm sure we can get you over, I'm heading back that way." Even if they'd never been close, she'd worked on his project and he'd always liked her, and he has no need to feign being quietly glad to see her. More than that, considering the past few months, someone's face unexpectedly reappearing is a welcome change.

[coquettish_trees]

"Enchanter!" It's an exclamation of polite delight, all the irritation of moments ago sliding from her like so much water off a swan's back. If Alexandrie's year has given her any gray hairs anywhere— which by rights it ought have— they have been fastidiously plucked, dyed, or hidden. She looks much the same, if a bit ill-treated by the road.

"How fortunate for me that you have had a late night." And then, her delight coloured with concern, "I hope not unfortunate for you?"

[overharrowed]

He smiles properly when it's clear she's pleased to see him. "Not at all. A diplomacy assignment that ran a bit late. I thought I might have to stay in Kirkwall overnight, but I slipped out in time, and I'd generally rather sleep in my own bed if I can."

He offers her a hand, friendly, with a brief glance at the ferryman that clearly expects him to correct his attitude now that a known member of Riftwatch is present to confirm everything is as it should be.

"But it is good to see you. Are you here for a visit or a more extended return, or do you know yet?"

[coquettish_trees]

"A visit," is the easy reply as she takes the offered hand with a flashed smile in appreciation for Julius's politesse and a little dart of a glance towards the ferryman in reprimand for the latter's lack thereof, "until the trade contracts I hope to make here are completed to my satisfaction. I have little enough idea when that will be, I suppose it depends upon how readily I can convince a cadre of merchants that truly beautiful cabinetry is still worth trading even during an increasingly threatening land invasion." A soft chuckle, a theatrical sigh.

"I am very charming, especially on the behalf of the prosperity of the people of Val Fontaine, but considering the circumstances I may have to be both very charming and very diligent. And even then I may have to instead write a letter home asking our artisans to consider making beautiful well-fitted siege weaponry instead."

ah, just like old "I thought I'd tagged this" times

[overharrowed]

"I understand completely. Well, I'm sure we'll be happy to host you for however long your business keeps you here. As always, we've had personnel in and out, but there are certainly faces you'll know."

As they get underway, the ferryman keeping his reaction to himself, Julius adds, "It's been a strange time for trade, I can say even as an outsider. I'm in contact with a few merchants as part of my work, and it seems that things blow hot and cold, depending on where one is and where the front is." The shift from Orlais to the Marches had certainly affected Riftwatch's supply lines as it had everyone else's.

v.

[cozen]

[ By the time Bastien has her in his line of sight, she has been back a day. Perhaps two, depending on how much of the first she spent being difficult to find. On that note, perhaps three.

Enough time for him to know she's here and to sit alone for a little while with the stew of feelings—mixed but warm, you know, only a few chewy or slimy pieces in the bowl—that arrived with her. Enough time for her to have had any number of other conversations with other people and to know nearly anything new he might be able to tell her.

Their little Lowtown house, hardly lived in a week. Before that, Byerly's resignation. Before that, Byerly's temporary death, which is of course fine now. All patched up.

But what no one else could have told her even if they cared to is that in the undone time before it was fine, Bastien wrote her a letter, terse and desolate: He's gone. I don't know what to do. Don't come here. I'll come to you. If things had taken a little longer to be set right then the letter might have reached her (before it too was undone) and a few weeks later Bastien would have washed up onto her doorstep, too.

Now it has doubly never happened. It is only a vague plan born from a months-old feeling in a world that doesn't exist anymore. It animates him all the same, though, when he catches a glimpse of her hair and she stops being the vague idea of Alexandrie Back In Kirkwall. He's swift down the stairs cut into the side of the Gallows' wall. He says, ]

Alexandrie,

[ seeing as he's coming from behind her—hurrying briefly away from her, due to the direction of the stairs—and he would prefer not to be stabbed today, just before he plants a hand and hops over the pony wall protecting the stairs so he can skip the last ten of them and go the right direction instead. The warning (and the thud of his feet, then the slap slap of running after her, of course) leaves plenty of time for her to turn around before he's there and hugging her not a single ounce of deferential propriety. ]

Re: v.

[coquettish_trees]

[ The number of days, whichever it is, is an entirely unsuspicious one. One crafted not by what would I do, but what would I be expected to do; a one-woman show for an as yet unknown audience. And how would Bastien be cast? A friend, a dear one, even, but also the love and lover of her love and lover... and if whoever watches has been watching for long enough to know what would keep her in Val Fontaine, they will have watched long enough to see her covet Byerly Rutyer as jealously as the ocean does the ships it wrecks and takes to hold forever in its depths. And so Alexandrie waits.

And so does Bastien.

And then finally there he is, and there they are, and she's swept up in his arms and smelling the cigarette smoke in his hair, and returning the embrace fiercely, and if her shriek of surprised laughter rings too loud and bright to be entirely sincere, the smile that follows and the warmth and relief in her eyes are real. ]

Oh là, Bastien!

[ She raises her hands between their bodies where they are hidden by his arms, lays them on his chest to gently push them apart and free herself—

And signs being watched there against him while she smiles, playfully scolds. ]

We may celebrate my visit without wrinkling my dress!

[cozen]

[ Bastien accepts the distance easily, smiles easily, and does not look any less at ease at at all when her message is received through the winter layers on his chest—save the twitch of his eyebrow, just a hint quizzical furrow. Even here?

Curiosity, not resistance. Even here, there was Fitcher. Up goes his guard against everyone, everything. Alexandrie included, for completion’s sake. ]

Of course.

[ Perhaps Byerly mentioned—he said that he wrote to her after their visit to Arlathan Forest, when a bastard of a spirit leeched the color from his vision down to sunset hues. Perhaps he also mentioned Bastien’s hearing was cleaved down the middle. Or perhaps not. Either way, there is a touch of care and deliberateness—of a sort that’s uncommon for him, the way he masks his poise behind leans and slouches and hair that is never perfectly neat, and of a sort that normal people would never notice—that hasn’t yet been fully smoothed out of the way he positions himself specifically to her left.

Once there, he offers his arm. A cheeky, affectionate pantomime of chivalrous manners between class-divided friends, and an opportunity for her to keep any future taps of her fingers hidden safe against his arm. ]

Wherever you are headed, I’ll walk with you. You have to tell me everything. How is your father?

[ Surely he’s alive. Word of a Comte’s death would have reached them long before Alexandrie herself, however she hurried. ]

[coquettish_trees]

[ Whether or not Byerly had written of it, whoever had read those words had decided Alexandrie would not do the same. She knows some letters had been lost— or “lost”— now, had gone back and started looking through the record of her correspondence after the night she’d discovered what was truly ailing her father, but not which or how many.

Bastien’s arm is taken with exaggerated delicacy and demure delight—her half of the pantomime—and her fingers answer the question posed by his eyebrow on the way: Unknown. Being careful. At the question he’d posed aloud her countenance turns grave and a little sorrowful, a little resigned. ]

Living, and I thank Andraste for it, but unchanged. He took the winter very poorly, rallied enough in late spring to give us hope, but a few weeks before the early harvests… [ A wan smile, a shrug of her shoulder, ] again to bed. And still, we do not know what ails him.

[ If the movement of her fingers’ earlier answer had not been all that definitive, this one—

Blood magic. ]

[bouchonne]

[ She's like an apparition. For a moment, he thinks he actually might be hallucinating, so unexpected is this beloved sight. He had dreamed of her so often, of course. It had been heartbreaking to then go about his day and know she was far away, far out of reach. So seeing her here now, with no warning, in such an ordinary way, makes him wonder if this is some false vision, some fade spirit, a dream indeed. ]

You're -

[ His voice is low and choked. ]

Here.

[coquettish_trees]

[ It breaks her heart and makes it again, his voice. In a hundred years when any flesh that he had ever touched is gone, they will find those two words written on the bone nearest her heart.

In this, if in no other meeting since her return to Kirkwall, she is allowed her truth unvarnished. Ever since the silence they'd both carried in tense fists for more than a decade had broken over them, she had never been other than a storm. The halls of the Gallows had echoed with her passion: rage, sorrow, joy. Her fear. Her love. It would be stranger if she didn't draw a harsh breath full of promised tears and had her eyes fulfil that promise as she turned to him.

A year, a year, a year. Four seasons and one more. She had traced the path of his pen with her finger and imagined the grace of his hands. She had begged handkerchiefs scented with cologne and wine and smoke and taken them to bed to ease her fretful sleep. She had sat on the swing in the gardens and smiled, sometimes sat on the same swing and wept. And now she running, is stumbling on the hem of a skirt she's forgotten to lift, is crashing into his chest— real, solid, real— and finding the warmth there and choking out ]

Yes.

[bouchonne]

[ He wishes he were the sort of man who could pick her up and spin her in some grand gesture of manly but whimsical strength. Unfortunately, he has neither the musculature nor the strength of back for that. Instead, he just catches her and holds her tightly. ]

When?

[ He nearly whispers that. ]

You said nothing of this - Have you outpaced your letter? Or was it lost?

[coquettish_trees]

Last night. I was too late for the ferry.

I did not know how to find you.

[ Short, simple phrases. Soft and stunned and delivered into his chest. ]

I stayed with Gigi in her ridiculous boat.

[ She can hear his heartbeat, his breath moving. Remembers through this to take care of her own so she might steady herself enough that she can look up at him. The eyes she lifts are not hawk-sharp; when she whispers, they are filled with the dread of a creature that's pursued. ]

Someone is moving me, Byerly. Someone who knows how.

iv.

[icasm]

[ What was the conversation about? Unimportant. Loki was mostly talking/writing out of a sense of boredom anyway, the kind that itches at his skin and prickles behind his eyes. The kind that makes even sleep a non-starter.

The conversation comes to a halt, of course.

But this?

This is interesting, or at the very least, pretty.

Loki's return doodles are more architectural design meets schematic, truth be told, but there's a pattern that Alexandrie might find familiar, from the house she used to stay in, in Kirkwall proper. The pattern is akin to the designs around the window frames. ]