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allthisshitisweird2023-05-02 05:40 pm
faderifting) wrote in allthisshitisweird2023-05-02 05:40 pm
Entry tags:
Test Drive!
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.
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.
no subject
Stood at the top of the Gallows ferry slip stairs, having arrived two minutes too late to catch the boat to Kirkwall and apparently right on time to answer blunt inquiries after Riftwatch's leadership, Desidério narrows his dark eyes on the man in question.
He's a small man, the Riftwatcher in the stairs. No more than five and a half feet, and narrow in every direction save for in the broad dueling glove he wears in his left hand and the sword jutting from the belt at his right hip, he cuts an impressively diminutive figure compared to I'm Looking For a Man Named Flint. Nonetheless, this would-be discrepency doesn't stop him from sucking in a long pull from the cheap cigarette—too cheap, really; this business of pirates interrupting trade from Antiva is killing him personally—stuck between his lips before he answers.]
What?
[You know. That's sort of an answer.]
no subject
The what sounds like a goose honking. Gannicus decides that is what he'll call this man in his head. Goose. Small, loud, potentially violent.]
Have you trouble with hearing?
Flint. I was told a man named Flint could assist in earning coin.
[He speaks formally, his speech old fashioned and definitely out of date. His last master cultivated that manner of speech in his slaves, insisting they use an archaic form of language, and he's still in the habit.]
no subject
—is so brisk a thought that it hardly interrupts his patter:]
I hope you're not after much, friend. Riftwatch's wages consider that they offer to feed and keep a roof over your head.
[And clothe you, which may be the more pressing point. But he doesn't say that.]
no subject
[A pause and a consideration.]
I have no intention of staying long. I need enough coin for today, tomorrow, and a few days beyond. Certainly any wage is better than what I was offered in Tevinter.
[But he seems casual and easygoing enough.]
I heard word a man with a sword might find work and that Flint would see me well. Is there another I should speak to?
no subject
[Does it count as traitorous behavior to sabotage Riftwatch's recruitment efforts? Probably.
Squinting at him, Desidério huffs off another long pull from the cigarette. Then, with a certain air of grimly submitting to a task, he smothers the cigarette against the buckle of his swordbelt.]
All right. May as well point you in the right direction.
[A tip of the head, a sway of the shoulders. This way, you beefy lug.]
no subject
Mercenaries have no honor.
[He says it as thought that's it. But really, it's not that simple; mercenaries are often brought in to quash slave rebellions in Tevinter, and he has no desire to be involved in that.
Riftwatch, from what Gannicus understands, has no business in that regard.]
What are you called?
no subject
Amanza.
[Click goes the case. It swiftly disappears back from whence it came, folded in among various cold weather layers as he turns to traipse further up the stairs and into the fortress proper.]
You?
no subject
[He watches this particular motion. Smoking is not a pasttime often indulged in by gladiators; it takes coin, and weakens lungs, so the Doctore would say. So he's curious only in as much as there is something to be said for a novel activity.
He tugs his cloak up higher on his shoulders, in a way that now covers his chest.]
Does honor keep you here, if coin does not suffice?
no subject
I've been pressed, [is not without some humor as he flourishes his right hand. It's presently gloved, so there's no actually seeing the gleam of—] An anchor.
[He presses his thumb into the center of his palm to illustrate its otherwise currently invisible presence. Lucky him, eh? says the flexing of his eyebrows in Gannicus' direction.]
no subject
So.]
I thought all here free men.
[Men, in this context, means, you know. People.]
no subject
[This, he illustrates with a whacking motion of left hand over right wrist. Chop.]
As for me, I'm attached to this hand as much as the other one. [Well. Desidério appears to consider this, then amends:] Almost as much.
no subject
There has been a gladiator with a missing hand. His dotore tied a glaive to his stump, trained him without mercy for a year.
[So, you know. It's possible to live with a missing hand, if that's his worry. Definitely if cutting off a hand would have freed him-
-no, Gannicus wasn't desperate for freedom, not that desperate, anyway. He was perfectly content to be a gladiator. But still.]
no subject
[He's talking about Wysteria. It's not playercest if the game has under 40 characters.
But thanks for the advice, guy, says the significant sidelong look Desidério fires in Gannicus' direction. Hard pass, though.]
You're not another of Flint's slaves, are you?
[AGAIN, it's NOT PLAYERCEST if the game has under 40 characters!!]
no subject
[He says it with a feral little smile, but-
-he's joking. He really truly is. He's not actually here to cut off hands, unless people pay him to. He's trying this new thing: deciding when he chooses to enact violence for money.
Speaking of:]
Another?
no subject
I'm under the impression he has an interest in the business. I'd say more but I don't actually know who you are, and you sound like a Vint.
[A flicked glanced backward. See, he's funny too.]
no subject
[Anymore. His arm flexes a bit, but he's also not offended. If the man has eyes he can see that once, he was one.]
I most recently hail from Tevinter, yes. But I am no Vint.
[To be very, very clear.]
no subject
[Just saying.
Not that it's stopping Desidério from leading the man straight through to the vast courtyard at the foot of the Gallows' three looming towers. So if Gannicus turns out to be a spy or an assassin posing as... whatever he's posing as, that's someone else's problem. At least he won't have revealed confidential Riftwatch secrets or whatever.]
But let's say you're not a Vint. [Thought exercise!] Who in Andraste's name sent you all the way down here for shit wages?
no subject
[He snorts; his opinion is generally low of the kind of people who enslaved him. But anyway.]
I was not sent. I came, by wandering routes, and need coin to continue.
Flint was the name given, as ally.
no subject
But evidently this is a somewhat hypothetical question, as Desidério moves readily enough to a proper one:]
Continue to where?
no subject
[He knows he wouldn't.]
Continue to wherever I like. South again. Or west.
[The man has no where he's aiming to go and no one to go to, so he really is just wandering.]
no subject
[It's a long courtyard that leads up to the central tower's stairwell and domineering entryway. They have time for questions.]
You'd be better off to make your way East and North. At least the weather in Antiva would welcome you. Which is kind advice, so don't be a cock. You'd be suspicious too in my position.
no subject
You suspect me?
[Whyever would you suspect this strange man who seems to be allergic to shirts?]
no subject
[Desidério angles a sidelong look in Gannicus' direction. Bro, come on. It's a little suspect.]
I doubt you'd be the first spy to slither around dressed in [poor choice of words; he amends to,] to pretend to be something they're not.
[But obviously this is all hypothetical.]
no subject
[He says it with the terrible patience of someone who is used to saying those words and hating every time he has to do it.]
If you asked a Vint my name, they would tell you the same.
I would make a poor spy, just the same.
no subject
The Commander won't hand you coin out of charity. I imagine he'll make you roster up for it.
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