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

a.

[elegiaque]

The woman who kneels down nearby flashes sickly green light through the focus lens on her gauntlet—

“Good,” succinctly, “I didn’t bring this out here to finger myself with.”

The accent is Orlesian — sounds like a High Quarter princess, but the close-fitting red and black leather was picked up from the Crossroads, there’s a blank gold false eye where her right one should be, and the oddly unstrung bow glittering ice magic down her back looks like Avvar make. She sweeps her braid over her shoulder, offering the waterskin in her hand over— water, mostly. The bitter scent that says it isn’t just that is herbal, not poisonous, like it’s been preemptively laced with some unpleasant but soothing alchemical concoction.

“You’ve scouted it already?” is an assumption and a prompt— expectant of some degree of competence, if she’s done as much and come away from it intact enough to warn someone else. “How big?”

Her anchor-shard can close some rifts singlehandedly; others, maybe she should call reinforcements. Specific ones, instead of just generally to keep from eating shit to demons before she can get it sealed.

[foramen]

Nice clothes, clean face, interesting weapons. What do they call Alti, in the south? She is one of them, above the hoi polloi with a ladder underfoot. Well, good for her. Not Calpernia's problem. In fact, it could be Calpernia's gain, if this woman wants to be a bulwark.

Calpernia attempts to summon the veneer of friendliness, but even she knows she has no charm. Her smile shoes off her gap tooth, and every motion of her face reminds her how thin and sallow her skin is. "Some middling demons. Despair and rage, I think. Two of one, one of the other."

A failure to appear anything but Tevene, this absolute lack of fear of demons. She's only been in the south very recently; later, she'll look back and cringe at how obvious she's been.

[elegiaque]

Middling demons sounds doable with one anchorshard, albeit not with only one set of hands. The voice speaking it reminds her a bit of Flint, which doesn’t immediately do anything but bolster that initial impression of competence; a beat later, when she registers what has reminded her of James Flint, the gaze she returns to Calpernia is more frankly measuring. The narrow point of her focus, particularly as one of her eyes is not an eye at all, can be unsettling— she doubts any Tevene this far south is that easily off-put.

The point isn’t to intimidate, particularly not someone who already isn’t scared of fucking demons. It’s just the thing that her face does: convey very directly what is happening behind it.

(Some people are subtle. Other people are a burning brick thrown through a window. Gwenaëlle, the latter, is more comfortable here than she ever was an imperial courtier.)

“You have anything good for either of those?”

She saw the fire leap to Livia’s hand; mage, then, so useful even if unarmed, and probably not actually unarmed. Not that difficult, sitting by a fire, to lead the eye away from a staff stashed somewhere nearby— maybe she hasn’t got one, but it’d be really convenient if she did. They’ll need more than only the two of them, of course, but there’s a fire and the rift isn’t going anywhere and she’s not the only Riftwatch agent roaming this way. It’ll be interesting to see how Livia wishes to play it, regardless.

[foramen]

She can feel her merits being weighed, and like a dog in front of a hunting party she instinctively tries to raise her value, chin out, eyes keen. In a high-born woman this would make her seem haughty, distant-- with this girl's face she would appear remote and daunting, she's sure. But she is poorly bred, with a legacy of poor health, sunburnt skin and moles and bad teeth. It just makes her look mean.

So be it.

So, a staff-- ornately-carved with silver edges, all the better to conduct arcs of lightning-- is pulled from under her travel bag. Yes, she had been hiding it. Anyone with half a brain should hide who they are in a warzone.

"Do you? They are demons of heat and freeze. What protects you from one won't work for the other." It's not something Calpernia has to worry about; it's not her job to be in close combat with these beasts. "Burns and frostbite aren't fashionable in the South, are they?"

Always jockeying for position, trying to cement her position-- it's the half-curled leaf of an insult around the bouquet of a challenge. Are you just a pretty thing? Do you have any real value?

[elegiaque]

“We’re not actually in Orlais, despite my accent,” she says, dryly, of fashionable. “And fuck all is protecting me when I’m locked in place closing a rift, which is why I won’t be completely relying on a stranger to keep the demons off me no matter what your answer is.”

Her working wear is halfway between particularly stylish elf and particularly slutty pirate; an armoured corset added to a striking set of leathers, but it’s not plate, exactly. The thing that protects her is being fast and, when that doesn’t work, not being an idiot about who’s watching her blind side.

It’s a true answer; it’s also a fundamental dismissal of the premise of the question. Livia isn’t relevant enough to insult her, and the challenge rolls off her as less interesting than the information she does consider immediately pressing.

[foramen]

Beauty and wealth are their own prison, but they never cage the beautied and the wealthy. It would be tragic, if this woman didn't have all her teeth. Calpernia stands. "If I frighten you so, bring your defenders. I'm sure a some hardy Templar would love to earn your favor. But if you think I am so stupid as to attack someone fighting with me, I shouldn't be trusted to fight beside you at all."

[elegiaque]

Gwenaëlle doesn’t actually laugh outright, but it’s a near enough thing — see: brick, window, etcetera — that the modicum of restraint involved probably doesn’t actually help.

“That wasn’t actually my concern, no,” she says, managing to pull it together— shaking her head, pretty sure that trying to explain the funny part of that really wouldn’t help. It’s so… this woman doesn’t seem younger than her. Hard to tell, with the way she looks. But the degree of reactivity — the leaps to assumption —

maker, is this what she was like to deal with.

“You’re not going to look me in the eye and say if our positions were reversed, you’d put one hundred percent of your faith in a stranger to dedicate themselves completely to keeping you alive if they had the option at some point in that to decide it looked rough and fuck off. Please. There’s a limited number of people I know and like that I’d believe that of.”

She spreads her hands— “But I’m from Orlais. A runaway Tevene mage assuming backstabbing first thing isn’t exactly insane to me.”

It’s what an Orlesian would think, too, which is also part of why she’s not in Orlais.

“I’m not holding you prisoner. Feel free to have a normal conversation with me or fuck off, as you prefer.”

[foramen]

She doesn't exactly seethe, just watches, bored and alone. High society types, the self obsessed, people who in general collapse if someone doesn't find them charming-- it's all beige paint over the backdrop of betrayal broiling in her. This little creature, all fluff and fairy-dust, isn't even her concern. Why did she put so much effort into striking out at her?

Worry. Simple worry, deep in her gut-- she needed someone to strike out at. She'd forgotten the simple fact that talking to people like this is pointless.

She stands tall, like a mage should, and remembers that the only weapon this woman has is words. If she were capable of intrigue or influence, that would be obvious by now. "Are you asking me for help with demons or not? I tire of this frippery."

And she steadies herself, ready for a tide of condescension.

[elegiaque]

Heroically,

and it does take a lot of effort on her part,

she does not answer this with thrilled you’re done with the pointless dick measuring, I’m sure yours is bigger, thank the Maker we can move on. It’s a close run thing, but probably not helpful and definitely not actually satisfying. (What’s the point in fighting with people you don’t know or like? Fight with people whose conclusions matter to you, it’s meaner but it’s worth more.)

She nearly says, well, that’s what I was trying to ask, for fuck’s sake— but fine, she had been distracted by lead in questions. She’d have got to that, directly, but she hadn’t, and whatever the fuck this is had happened instead. So, fine: that’s not technically accurate, and if it were her on the other side in this kind of mood, she’d probably instantly quibble it and they’d be trapped here forever. Instead, frankly: “Are you offering?”

[foramen]

"Keep the demons off me during the fight," she says, voice as level as she can make it. There's still that tone of flighty impetuousness to it, but it's significantly less haughty. "And I will protect you while you close the damned thing."

[elegiaque]

A win for normal conversations. Gwenaëlle lets the rest of it pass without any colour commentary — Stephen will probably get to hear that version when she recounts this, later, along with the withering self-awareness of how fucking miraculous it is that she hasn’t herself been backhanded more frequently in her life — and tips her head, mouth quirking. To business, then, and she considers their options as she leans back on her hands.

It’s an honest attempt to workshop a strategy where this just works with the two of them, but realistically—

“We’ll need more hands,” she says, finally, “regardless. They’re what you’d be protecting me from, and I can’t realistically keep them off you in any meaningful way.” Her strengths lie in dipping in and out of combat, working as much from a distance as she can, and being brutally efficient when she gets in close. It’s not crowd control and it’s not going to provide enough cover that Calpernia wouldn’t be exposed.

But she doesn’t stop there, considering what she does have, Calpernia’s staff, who she knows is near enough to join them—

“What’s the landscape around the rift like? Tree cover, flat, an incredibly convenient cliff—”

Belatedly, as her mind rushes ahead to how they could make best use, it occurs to her that Livia introduced herself and she hasn’t, focused on that rift this entire conversation. “I’m being rude,” she says, which is what she says when she means and not on purpose, “Gwenaëlle Baudin. Captain of the Gallows Watch.”

It costs her nothing to offer the courtesy, though it would’ve, once. She offers a hand.

[foramen]

Something besides scorn colors Calpernia's face-- interest, and she doesn't try to hide it. It even lightens her voice, a naturally sweet thing turned sweeter. "In that Riftwatch organization?"

She'll manage tactics later. After years of war, tactics are something she can manage in her sleep. Alliances, negotiations, significantly less so. She'd rather focus on the more difficult part of this exchange before this Gwenaëlle woman annoys her past the point of reason.

[elegiaque]

At no previous point in this conversation has Gwenaëlle been particularly off-put. Frustrated, baffled, groping in the dark to figure out what version of her Calpernia is disagreeing with in her head, yes; prepared, on the face of what she appears to be, to try and be patient with someone who probably has good reason to react harshly to someone who looks and sounds like Gwenaëlle does.

But that little uptick of sweetness earns wariness that nothing else had. Throughout this entire exchange, her only interest has been in tactics; that doesn’t change now, she’s just suddenly foreseen an immediate future where she actually has to engage with the difficult part and briefly considers just trying her luck with the rift on her own to avoid it.

“We’re the only people closing rifts,” she says, just this side of pointed.

[foramen]

That's the only throughline she needed. Calpernia would prefer to avoid trying to walk to Kirkwall without any aid, and submit herself to Riftwatch's judgement like a peasant. She nods, curt, and turns toward the treeline of a forest over a sloped hill. "How fortunate," Calpernia says. "The rift is that way. There's a ridge I can conduct myself on, if you can keep yourself out of imminent danger while I climb it."

One may reach the conclusion that condescension has been baked into her over the course of years. One may also just shrug and decide she's just a bitch. Both are, invariably, true.

[elegiaque]

Gwenaëlle could not be more transparently relieved that that’s the extent of that conversation—

and, by its tone a genuine question: “Is that the sum total of information you’re planning to share about it?”

For a cunt notoriously disinterested in what other people think of her, this is honestly just the normal conversation she was hoping to have in the first place.

[foramen]

Calpernia decides she's not going to exert any more energy toward trying to gauge this woman's motives or judge her. Maybe she's used to being judged and weighed, maybe not; it doesn't matter. Withdrawing is a kind of release. Calpernia realizes she needs to better remember what it was like not to be a general, a leader. She's just anybody, now. She hates it, but she is.

So she answers, voice flat, "what else do you want to know?"

[elegiaque]

It is entirely possible, Gwenaëlle thinks, that this woman has heard about one word in three of everything she’s said and filled the rest in with hon hon hon frilly baguette. Sufficiently possible that she doesn’t bother reminding her she’d already asked (probably serving only to ruffle her already puffed up feathers), but simply repeats, prompting,

“The landscape around the rift. So we’ve got a ridge— tree cover? Uneven ground, wide flat space, anything nearby?” To either keep in mind or to make use of. The nearest settlement’s further out, and probably if there were anyone nearby then Livia wouldn’t have been alone when she’d come upon a fire, so at least they likely don’t have to worry about hysterical civilians.

(Or they’re dead. She should have died, nearly a decade ago in a broken carriage, a thousand times more helpless than she is today.)

“We might have to make do with keeping the demons too occupied to focus on singular targets,” is thinking aloud, the likelihood of this fight ending up a bunch of people who aren’t exactly plate-wearing siege engines, something for Livia to factor in as well with where she places herself. “Scatter, distract. It’ll be faster if I don’t have to wait for the field to clear.”

Riskier, too, but if back up means a sprint rather than a marathon, that sounds better for what it looks like the state of Livia’s stamina might be.