[OOC] The Sky is Falling!

[eolasemah]

Recently a rift opened in Skyhold itself. Although nobody saw it happen, it was rumored to have been opened by a mage native to Thedas and not one of the rifters.

There are damages to the courtyard from where buildings and vegetation have been singed and frozen and dented from the resulting demon battle. It looks a mess. This is a mess.

The purpose of this post is for general opinion gathering, rumormongering, and plotting for the fallout from this fiasco. If people can just open rifts wherever they want, what does this mean for the Inquisition? Can rifters do it, can regular mages do it? Why would someone within Skyhold and ostensibly part of the Inquisition do this in the first place? Why weren't snacks provided?

If you feel so inclined, reply with your character's reaction to the news (or the sight, or the battle) and what action they might want to take, if any. Plot, make CR, do the thing!

Comments

[gatheringstorm]

While Korrin is briefly around, she'll energize rubble and help restore what she can, move aside what she can. She will also be checking in/guarding Sina and Nari from anyone trying to do something to them out of panic.

[judgemewhole]

Norrington is really starting to wonder if they need to have a Templar contingent around to help with all these demons and abominations that keep appearing inside THE WALLS.

Not to mention KIDNAPPING PEOPLE WITH BLOOD MAGIC.

[wickedchase]

While Twisted Fate isn't terribly interested in helping with constructions (yikes, think of the effort!), he'll be tending to some of the vegetation. He claims it's out of habit, darn it.

The rumors are unimpressive, and Fate starts a rumor that maybe it was a golden nug wearing little socks that started the rift. The rumor he creates comes in varying degrees of success.

[the_effect_she_has]

Katniss is going to be horrified, and then she's going to go looking for volunteers to help fix the Courtyard because people live there.

[madame_de_fer]

Vivienne has very firm opinions on this. Of the "what are we going to do to prevent this from happening again?" variety. Anyone who suggests a pick up the mess and move on and thassit response will find her exceptionally irate.

Since the demon fighting was well in hand with many of the others at the time, people might have noted that she was busy scuttling young mages, untrained apprentices and initiates well away from the danger. There were far too many vulnerable young people present to have been left to their own devices.

[stabsbooks]

Cassandra's with Vivienne. This is absolutely unacceptable, and she will be heavily interrogating everyone involved to figure out exactly what happened and how to ensure that it never happens again. Once she finds out that it's not a rifter whose hand had acted up, but a mage attempting magic while in possession of a shard, she's going to swing heavily in favor of increased mage supervision (or at least Sina supervision). This has the potential to be A Big Deal and Cassandra can certainly make it into such.

[judgemewhole]

Norrington Greatly Approves and will back her up to the Hilt.

[judgemewhole]

You have Norrington's full suppor, Seeker. He'll back your play.

[wontforgetyou]

Jamie will be exhausted after closing the rift (naturally) but after being questioned, he goes to Emprise du Lion almost right away - so any rebuilding of the courtyard he does will be minimal at best. He'll check on Sina very briefly before he goes but mostly in a 'stick his head in the door and see she's still unconscious sort of way', and since oocly I have completely lost track of where the rifter meeting falls into this he'll state that if someone wants him to come back to deal with the fallout more he will and to let him know if he needs to come back to Skyhold any time soon.

[wontforgetyou]

Jamie's answers aren't going to be at all helpful because he was asleep when the whole thing started, but he'll tell her exactly that and that when the shard woke him up he ran out to see what was going on and then proceeded to work with the others to fix it.

There may be a few faces pulled here and there, but he's not lying or even trying to skirt around the truth - he really has no idea how it happened.

[stabsbooks]

Once it becomes clear that he's actually telling her everything she knows, she'll ease up on him, but she will be interested in the shard 'waking him up,' as well as want a full report on who was involved and how they managed to close the rift.

[nadasharillen]

Nari is wary, but will answer any factual questions she can. She will, however, become very bristly and defensive at any attempt or implied attempt to question the still recovering Sina, and will demand that such things wait until the mage in question has recovered, and that she be allowed to be present for any such questionings.

[serannas]

Ellana was the one who was giving Sina one-on-one training, but now she's sure she isn't the right person for the job. She will agree that Sina should probably be supervised, but will vote for it to be a mage, and preferably one who has been studying shards. She'll be against Templar supervision, just because she thinks Sina will be against it, but if Ellana gets overruled, she's overruled.

[wontforgetyou]

He means literally the shard reacted and and and he couldn't sleep through it, and he can tell her when he gets close enough to a rift the shard in his hand flares and sparks and is maybe just a wee bit painful - and while he hasn't been there when a rift has appeared out of nowhere before, he thinks it's entirely possible that it's the same reaction as getting close to an already existing one.

The rest of it he can give the names of the ones he knows out of the group which would be Church and Galadriel (and I think possibly Mal because it's after a war table mission he's supposed to go on with him?), and he can describe Martel but doesn't know his name. And he'll mention that Mal's dog and Bethany were helping get the demons off the group so they could use their wills to work together and pull the rift closed like they did when they closed that one in the Mire.

[quietblade]

Taas missed the action and isn't happy about this =(
He's even less happy about the fact that rifts are popping up inside the fortress and want some deets on how it went down and why it took so long to close.

Kas is just happy it's gone and may sideeye mages for a few days.

Shale left their own commentary and would have liked snacks if they could eat. They don't really care that much about the why and how, but would have liked to punch a demon.

[stabsbooks]

Cassandra won't be at all happy about any delays to questioning Sina, but will begrudgingly accept that the elf needs to at least be conscious and at least partially recovered in order for her to give any useful information.

She'll also question exactly who Nari is and why she needs to be present. Is she a healer? Is she responsible for Sina's care?

[stabsbooks]

Cassandra respects Ellana's own abilities as a mage, but she'll still be pretty blunt in asking after her qualifications as a teacher, Sina's own level of control over her magic, and whether Sina was acting under her orders/with her knowledge. If she wants to step down from training Sina, Cassandra won't argue, but she'll insist that someone be responsible for supervising her, and probably insist that her training stop until there's some guarantee that this won't happen again. She would argue for Templar supervision, but if she can be convinced that a) this was an accident and b) Sina absolutely will not try anything like what she was doing again, she'll begrudgingly back down.

If/when Sina's training does start again, Cassandra will vote for her teacher to be a Circle-trained mage - she's thinking someone like Vivienne, if she'll agree to it. If Ellana has the names of mages who have been studying the shards in detail, Cassandra wants to hear them.

[stabsbooks]

Cassandra will be tracking those people down and questioning them too, if she can. Jamie gets a pat on the head and can go get cookies and juice at the snack table.

[serannas]

Ellana's answers will be that she was taking part in the mage training sessions and taking what she learned there to Sina, since there were worries about how Sina's shard would react in a big group (and personally, Ellana thought Sina might not want to be in a big group setting). At the start, they were focusing on Dalish demon-resisting techniques, so really just a refresher course for Sina. She hadn't left Sina with any instructions on magic she should be practicing on her own, so she has no idea what Sina was doing at the time. Ellana also has confidence in Sina as a mage, because Sina was raised as a First. However, Ellana is concerned about this shard and how it may throw all that out the window.

Ellana does agree that a Circle-trained mage would be better, because they have had access to a lot more literature on forms of magic. ICly, Ellana doesn't know who has been studying the shards, but she'll ask around! OOCly, I have no idea either, lol.

[gatheringstorm]

Korrin will definitely agree with Vivienne that they need a plan in place to prevent this from happening again. When they have that mage meeting, she'll place emphasis on protection for the mages with shards, since they seem to be at the most risk.

[apostasia]

Martel will be cooperative and straightforward in recounting what he remembers; he didn't see the rift opened but like Jamie, felt the shard react. Went out to deal with it, saw two other rifters, led them through the first attempt to close the thing, was joined by several others (he doesn't know any of their names, offhand, as Martel has negative eighty interest in other rifters) who worked in tandem. He remembers up to the barrier he cast around Jamie and Church being broken by a demon, and after that he'll be frank that he'd overextended himself and his head was on fire with spell backlash, his memories are a pain-fog until the following day when he woke up in his bed.

[stabsbooks]

Cassandra can't really argue with either Ellana's teaching strategy or subject matter, so she's (reluctantly) let off the hook. She obviously shares her concerns about how the shards are or may be interfering with magic, and will definitely be investigating that further.

[stabsbooks]

As a rifter AND a mage, Martel is going to get a lot of Cassandra's attention (and not the good kind). She'll ask him a lot of sharp, unpleasant questions about his shard, his magical abilities, what magic he's been doing since he got to Thedas, and if he's ever experienced any signs or indication that he might be able to open a rift himself (accidentally or otherwise). She will be disinclined to let him out of her sight without Templar supervision.

:) hooray new cr

[nadasharillen]

Nari responds that she is Sina's clanmate and the safety and well being of the aforementioned mage was entrusted to her by their Keeper. She considers that to be her duty above all else.

[ungovernable]

He'll definitely find it tiresome and be politely but bluntly disinclined to deal with Templars unless/until it's an official Inquisition stance, but he'll otherwise answer her questions frankly and straightforwardly!

No signs or indication of that nature; his magic is called sorcery and he prefers to be called a sorcerer as he has fundamentally almost nothing in common with their mages beyond "does magic", but doesn't mind the association and has definitely aligned himself with them since arriving. Sorcery is essentially a channeling of divine might that he can explain to her in greater detail if she wants (will give a brief overview of sorcery-as-religion, the necessity of learning through a patron god, the fact that it isn't an inherent quality someone is born with but a skill that can be taught - like music, you can be more or less talented but you aren't born with a lute appendage). He will note that demonic possession is a completely new concept to him introduced by Thedas!

He's done very little magic as he's noticed it expends more energy here than it did at home and why use magic if you can use something else, reserving it for when it's worth the hassle; e.g. casting that barrier because he didn't have the option of using a weapon instead, using a spell to become literate in their local common tongue because he needed to be able to study Thedas to assimilate and acclimatize.