Fade Rift Mods (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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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.
runs into magic daddy's arms!!!
[ the flinch that comes at his voice is—well, to be perfectly honest, it's a little dramatic. it's not as though ness expects to be flogged in the middle of the stacks and thrown out of the library in humiliation, or anything, even for candlekeep that would be a hell of a leap for a first offense. she doesn't like to be caught out doing something wrong, though, and would have preferred to be ignored rather than had her momentary break with etiquette acknowledged.
ah, well. at least she can make up lost ground by being extremely well-behaved now. ]
Pardon my outburst, goodsir, I usually have more sense than to raise my voice in a library. [ which you can tell by how soft her voice is now—not ridiculously, exaggeratedly so, but girl takes "inside voices" seriously. ] The histories don't match.
[ she splays a hand across the pages of one of the books in front of her—a tevinter history book, flanked by orlesian and fereldan volumes of similar periods. ]
I'm used to parsing for differences in viewpoint and perspective, but some details are entirely changed from nation to nation, even dates. [ dry as the western approach, which she has learned is the desert to mention here, ] It vexed me.
just barely spared a half-naked awk first meeting
But Strange still steps closer and peers over the table to see what she’s been reading, and his mouth forms the shape of a knowing ah, before he glances over at her. ]
It’s a pain, isn’t it? Of course anytime anyone’s at war with each other, their retellings will differ, but without an objective third party to report on what actually happened, you have to sort of— read between the lines.
And even if they do agree, the terminology doesn’t: I had a hell of a time translating between the Chantry calendar and the Imperial calendar when I first got here. Different month names, even. Had to make myself a little cheatsheet for the reading, to remind myself that Wintermarch is Verimensis which is probably January, where I come from.
[ There’s something almost professorial to his chatty cadence, the sound of someone who very much likes the sound of his own voice. But then it settles back into targeted curiosity, his attention sharpening as it lands on the other rifter: ] So you’re a scholar?
she might not have survived it tbh
[ immediately, ness decides she likes this man—she nods enthusiastically along with everything he's saying, and at the mention of cheat sheets, just barely resists picking up her own notebook and pointing out where she's done the same thing (save for "hammer" where he might have put january). his professorial tone is familiar in a way that lowers her guard, somewhat, so that a bit of her apprentice's enthusiasm shines through her careful propriety. ]
It's one thing to know that every group will have their own version of events, but to not even agree on the basic facts—it's irresponsible!
[ how will posterity know what lessons to take from history if all it is is a bunch of myth and propaganda dressed up as fact?! this is an outrage! someone needs to introduce the concept of journalistic integrity to thedas!!! ]
Ah—[ a bit deflated now, but proud, too, ] No, not a scholar. I grew up in—well, it's a library, but it's really more than that. Anyway, it's the biggest and most complete collection of the written word in my whole world. My father was one of the Avowed scribes there, and I lived with him, so I learned from him and the rest of the monks, but I'm not any kind of scholar myself, no. I'm just me.
[ a beat while she remembers her manners. ]
Me being Ennaris. That's my name. Hello! Ness is also fine, if Ennaris is a mouthful!
no subject
[ And he can’t help it: he hears library and monks and he accordingly thinks Kamar-Taj, and so there’s an instinctive flicker of recognition, a wistfulness for a place he’s never been. Ness’ description sounds like hyperbole, but if it isn’t an exaggeration… ]
The biggest and most complete collection of the written word in the whole world? What I wouldn’t give to see a place like that. I originally learned magic at a monastery staffed by monks, they had a very impressive arcane library, but the preservation of knowledge wasn’t their main remit. And Riftwatch has assembled an esoteric collection, for the benefit of regular members and rifters and alike, but we’re still not, y’know, a university. There are gaps.
no subject
[ look, her name is perfectly normal where she comes from, and it's really rude to comment on another person's name like that—
oh.
as soon as he settles next to her, ness begins to make space for him, closing up her books and stacking them and pulling them out of his way. ]
Pleasure to meet you, goodsir Doctor, [ as she caps her inkwell and sets it neatly next to her notebook. desk tidied, she looks to stephen with genuine interest, and the sort of giddiness that comes of unexpected familiarity. ] It seems we have similar backgrounds, then. Candlekeep isn't a monastery itself, but there are temples there—it's devoted primarily to Oghma, our god of knowledge, you'd be hard-pressed to find any Avowed who doesn't at least light a candle for him. The library is... amazing, truly. Not just the important things, arcane scrolls or great histories, but recipes, journals of the common folk, elementary primers. I could live there my whole life and not even scratch the surface of what it contains.
[ the wistful yearning for home aches in her, but it's an ache she's already resigned herself to—she left candlekeep before she ever made it to thedas, after all. ness allows herself only one moment to sigh and feel sorry for herself before she refocuses, turning herself back to stephen. ]
You are a wizard?
no subject