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Entry tags:
August 2022 Test Drive Meme
AUGUST 2022 TDM
INTRODUCTION
Welcome to Folkmore's monthly Test Drive Meme! Please feel free to test drive any and all characters regardless of your intent to apply or whether you have an invite or not.
All TDMs are game canon. You can choose to have your TDM thread be your introduction thread upon acceptance or start fresh. Each TDM will provide a scenario for how characters arrive in-game that particular month.
Playing TDMs will allow characters to immediately obtain canon items from homes especially weapons or other things they may have had on their person when they were pulled from their worlds! There will always be a prompt that provides some sort of "reward" to characters who complete certain tasks.
Current players are allowed to have in-game characters react to TDMs via the Network or make a log with the prompts. Current players are always encouraged to tag new people on the TDM!
TDM threads can be used for spoon spending at any time by characters accepted into the game.
Content Warnings: snakes, cultists, optional violence.
FALLING DOWN LIKE PIECES INTO PLACE
FALLING DOWN LIKE PIECES INTO PLACE
A breeze with the crisp smell of dying leaves caresses you awake. You sit up to find yourself in the middle of an apple orchard, rows spreading out in all directions. Mouth watering apples hang from the branches, and nobody will stop you from taking one. You can wander the orchard as long as you like, but eventually you will find yourself emerging into the front yard of a little farm. There’s a red barn with perfect white trim set far back, and to one side of the yard is a kiosk modeled to match the barn. This is staffed by a woman who sure looks a lot like the fox that brought you here.
On the side of the kiosk are advertised a few different items: pumpkin spice lattes, hot apple cider, cold alcoholic apple cider, and hot chocolate. The cider, you will be informed, is made on site. (But you have to be of legal age to be given that hard cider!)
There are two other things advertised: APPLE PICKING and a SCAVENGER HUNT.
“You need a buddy for those, though,” the woman running the kiosk will tell you. “Lucky for you there’s plenty of people you can pair up with.”
If you elect to try the scavenger hunt, you and your partner will be handed a piece of paper. On it reads the following:
TAKE A PICTURE OF THE FOLLOWING ON YOUR RELIC! :)
- YOU HOLDING HANDS WHILE YOU GO DOWN A PATH
- FEET WITH AUTUMN LEAVES
- SOMETHING YOU THINK IS TRULY BEAUTIFUL
- A GENUINE SMILE
“When you’re done, bring it back here and show me,” the woman instructs you. “You’ll get a prize if you do.”
It’s an easy enough list, right? Although you have to follow the instructions - you really DO have to find something you genuinely think is beautiful, and that smile can’t be forced! Those might require opening up to your partner a little bit!
If you succeed in the scavenger hunt, you will be gifted with an item from home.
Now, what if you decided to go apple picking?
You will be given a bucket. “Be careful to only pick apples from the trees in the rows,” the kiosk woman tells you with a secret smile. “You don’t want to bother the old trees off the path.”
Yeah. That sure sounds like a challenge, doesn’t it?
If you do stick to the orchard proper, you will be able to pick your fill of apples. All of them are crisp and sweet and delicious. But at some point you will see the other trees.
They’re both huge and old, standing on two sloping hills just past the orchard rows. One of them has apples red as blood, and the other apples gold as the sun. In the shade of these trees are weapons sticking half out of the earth, as if they were carelessly buried many years ago.
If you pick one of the red apples, you will find that you are suddenly besieged with huge snakes. They are as big as anacondas and an inky black that absorbs the light, with eyes the same red as the apples. They aren’t poisonous, but they bite and they crush, so you’ll have to fight them off at least long enough to run like hell!
If you pick the golden apples, a crowd of people will silently begin appearing from the orchard. They are all wearing animal masks… and they are all holding hand scythes. Uh oh. You’ll have to fight them off in order to escape! If you don’t manage that, well, in some places it’s traditional to have a big ol’ sacrificial bonfire…
All the weapons below the trees are non-enchanted items, but you may keep them.
Content Warnings: Optional themes of identity and school trauma.
IMAKEOVER MAKEOVER
SAVED BY THE BELL
IMAKEOVER MAKEOVER
Thirteen believes passionately in education. There are, after all, five academies in Folkmore all catering to different types of learning. While these academies are open year round, it becomes apparent if you walk through any of the districts housing shops that back to school is definitely a thing.
A new school year represents a chance to learn more about the world, and about yourself.
Also? It’s a great time for a makeover!
Yes, step into any of the shops selling clothing and accessories anywhere in Folkmore and you will find yourself passionately invested in helping another person discover who it is they want to look like! Do they want to look cool and aloof? Warm and approachable? Are they an e-boy or a cottagcore witch? Punk or prep? You two can figure it out together!
As you shop together you will find it easier and easier to open up to one another, sharing who it is you want to be.
You’ll also be able to score a sweet outfit. Nice.
SAVED BY THE BELL
Wander into any school in Folkmore and you will find a handmade poster instructing all new students and faculty to report to the auditorium. Normal enough, one supposes… but the moment you enter the room you will find reality swims all around you and all of a sudden you’re stuck in a school nightmare!
You know the kind. You’re late for class, no matter how fast you run. You’re in gym class, trying to climb that goddamn rope. You’re getting your books dumped. You’re naked and giving a book report.
These could be memories, but it’s just as likely that they aren’t - you and another person are just trapped in this cliche together. Whichever one of you is in the audience role could maybe help the other one out? Get them some pants or something? Yeah.
dives back in, please feel free to drop if feels too late!
... only armed with a prosthetic crossbow. Not that staffs were needed, but they certainly were easier focal points. She'll have to see to rectifying that, she notes.
So is one of the names she hears coming from the woman's lips, and her brows quirk up, the apple in her good hand likewise rising.
"Bull, you said? I know one who'd be rather fond of the whole hack and slash if he were around too. Between him, Blackwall," she adds, choosing her names with a slight narrowing of eyes in bemused consideration, "And Cassandra, it could get quite messy quite fast. Also efficient."
Dues must be paid where they were owed, and so she will, even some odd bubble of a universe away from them all.
"Don't know that I do, but there's hardly a reason not to start. Though if you don't mind, I'll probably stick to minor creativities, like lobbing ice-apples."
Admittedly, she says this when tossing said apple with the trailing frost of using it as an ice bolt accessory making it seem like the apple might as well have been on fire. It also hits one of the snakes on the nose, causing it to jolt back and keel over, more likely in surprise than in particular one hit wonders.
"How do you feel about glyphs!"
A one armed woman, speaking about home, and what might possibly be the Iron Bull? Sounding more and more like running into a woman who also rules Ferelden, but certainly isn't Anora.
no problemo! never too late!
But, oooh. A crossbow prosthetic? She's going to have to
pesterask Varric about that. She wants one and she wants it yesterday."Yeahhhh, the Iron Bull? Tall as fuck, terrible sense of fashion, and can kill pretty much anything and anyone imaginable? He's like a brother to me, he's great!" They all were, they were all like a pack of siblings she'd somehow lucked into when she'd lost her sister (not at the Conclave, way before that).
But she squints a little at the names. "Waaaaaaait. How do you know all of my friends? All of them all of them as in Leliana and Josie and Cullen, too?"
Her suspicion lessens somewhat when ice apples are mentioned. "Yes. Yes! Those stupid snakes want some apples, so let's give them apples! Ice apples and fire apples, too! Oh, and you might wanna take a step back? I really hope this doesn't piss people off," Lila says before casting Firestorm, watching with curiosity as flaming meteors start landing on the biggest concentration of snakes.
Lila's a Rift mage, she knows plenty about elven skills and magic. Though, next time she sees Solas, she's giving him a Stonefist upside the head until he stops acting like a dick.
...granted, with the way they parted, that could take a while.
let the world clash continue then, it is grand!
"To be fair, if it was when we were having to dance attention at court, every last one of us looked ridiculous."
We, because she doesn't doubt this is going to start making more nonsensical sense to her fellow mage before long, when giant, angry snakes aren't throwing hissing fits. Ones being met by familiar magic, enough so that Ellana cast an amused glance at her arsenal of apples before thrusting out her hand, leaving the Fade-specific spellwork to her companion.
Since she's bothered with using ice, she may as well keep on track; after all, who didn't know some of all the elements? Pure practicality!
Also purely why there's three glyphs for ice mines manifesting as the meteors strike down, ready and prepared for whichever and whatever of the serpents survives. Or are right behind the first wave, ready to come over.
(So much for this part of the apple orchard, huh?)
"You could say they're all my friends too, but that aside, leave barriers to me—how creative are you with your spellcasting?"
A nice, partly shouted conversation mid battle with giant serpents as she darts away from her original planned position of running to better cover with ease of eye-line still preserved. So strangely nostalgic, and here she still is having to do this all without a proper focus... until she uses her prosthesis as a stand in.
(Dagna, she feels, would have quite a lot to say about it, mostly regarding how to make it even more effective, and ooh, what runes might they apply?! Sera would likely suggest somehow incorporating bees. Again.)
/cackles wildly
"This 'we' thing again. Who's all included in 'we?' And I didn't look ridiculous, I looked beautiful! Everyone said so!" Because it turns out she can fight just as well in a frilly pink frock as she can in the honor guard outfits. Part of the bonus of being a mage who can hang back, she guesses.
And when she sees the combination of spells in action, it's amazing! Wonderful! Snake pulverizing!
(if the orchard was going to summon snakes it's for the best it was. dealt with?)
"Wait, really? Maker, how does that work? Ever meet a particularly nasty little Tevinter cultist named Alexius? Or, wow, I'm going to butcher the pronunciation of this and I'm sorry, but Fen'Harel?" Because if this is Solas's way of taking her off of the chessboard, she's going to be really mad.
"But I'm creative! Me and Dorian, we used to combine spells all the time! What did you have in mind?"
If she was being completely honest, she missed this. The heat of battle, the scent of magic in the air. She's fine being Leli--Divine Victoria's honor guard, but there's still so much that needs to be done and she doesn't know who's going to do it if she's here and they're all there.
Honestly, at times it was like being a glorified child minder. And they were all older than she was, so it wasn't fair.
(and she means it. she wants a prosthetic like that. it's both functional and kick-ass and she needs one, okay?)
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Perhaps. It did depend on her mood.
They're doing excellent work, which also means there are frozen and charred chunks of snake now splattered and scattered about. This, this is not her favourite part, and forlornly she wonders if there's any help they'll find later for cleaning up the orchard. Whatever form of 'spirit' folk here that populated the lands were unlikely to find that form of decomposition helpful during harvest season.
Granted, few peoples of any kind found open decay beneficial outside of obscure realms of study, perhaps some necromancy, and the Mortalitasi, if that.
"Yes, and his much wiser son, for a time." Felix had passed not long after, the taint of the blight within him claiming him wholesale.
Hearing Solas's God name leads her to an outright bark of somewhat dark laughter.
"You're being very human to ask if I've met one of the Elven Gods. We have carvings of him throughout Thedas. What you really want to ask is if I know Solas, which—incoming!"
Slithering between the trees, a massive snake pulls back its head in a tight curve, preparing to strike in their direction. Which given its length, might actually mean bridging the present distances if it chooses a target... and then there's another two behind it, eliminating the need of choosing only one target. Rude!
"Stonefist! Don't summon a stone, summon the weapons, under the trees! You've got the willpower—try!" It was a bit of a complex cheat, taking the idea of summoning when one used the Fade's particular manner of magic, and applying it with more of the Spirit Magic form of Mind Blast where willpower became its own manifested force, but if the woman's survived Corypheus and the Qunari Uprising that Solas was specifically aiming for his own means, she must be capable.
For her part, she casts protective barriers around the both of them, really hoping no one else is about to come running in to ask why the sky is falling or anything else sensibly senseless.
"Buy me time for Pull of the Abyss!"
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She was fascinated by the spirit people. This was a world full of magic and she was all too eager to explore. And maybe be able to sit back and put her feet up for a little while, that would be nice. Glorified child minder!
"Felix was nice! His dad, though--it was only fair that he spend the rest of his life helping the mages he'd enslaved! Turnabout being fair play and so on." She liked to make the punishments fit the crimes, with a side of creativity. See also her decision to make Celene, Gaspard, and Briala play nice together, they were all terrible people who justified killing and backstabbing because they and they alone thought they were right.
And she chooses to not rise to the bait of being called very human. She's still and probably always will be mad at Solas for tricking her, for making her think he was her friend. And in retrospect, his comments that she was unusually wise for a human seemed like backhanded compliments at best. Cruel jokes at worst.
Lila's eyes light up at the sight of the oncoming snakes. Huzzah! A tension-breaker! Nothing worked better than being in life or death combat together to make friends.
"I'm not gonna try," she called out. "I'm gonna succeed!" And she turned all of her willpower, something often masked by acting silly and completely frivolous, towards the ground, towards the weapons, and they start rising out of the ground.
Swords and polearms and daggers and weapons the likes of which she'd never seen before rise from the earth and her grin turns a touch savage. She really, really liked making people underestimate her. Corypheus, the Qunari, Solas, the more dumb they thought she was, the better it was to completely destroy that illusion by kicking every last little bit of their asses.
"Okay!" She concentrates on the weapons, on the space where they inhabited, and then on the snakes. Those snakes were so dead. They just didn't know it yet.
With a quick, decisive move she sends as many weapons as she can manage at the snakes, they're not dead yet, but they're close. Bleeding ichor all over the ground and how in the Maker's name was she going to explain this to whomever was in charge. The Fox.
Oh, well. She'd figure that out later. That seemed to have become the story of her life.
"Ready when you are," she called out in a sing-song voice.
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Regardless, she deeply appreciates the younger female's sheer can do, that call to confidence reminding her of Dorian. Even more so, as the confidence carries through in capability, as she'd hoped.
Ellana closes her right fist even as she calls out, "Now!" The full casting at a slight delay, and not exactly what it was once. Less forming any sort of rift, and more forming a sudden displacement of space that pulled everything in its radius inward and downward with a sharp, sudden whoosh, when paired with all the delightful weaponry and strength behind her companion's magic...
... Promptly pulverises the remaining snakes. Ichor goes further splattering, along with scales and bits and viscera, leaving a few twitching pieces.
"Well." She stares down at the regular apples which have scattered around them from the normal orchard, backblow effect of the more serpentine mess. "... Ellana Lavellan, former Inquisitor. Lovely making a mess with you."
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Hiking through waist-deep snow didn't count.
And she wouldn't have made it as far as she had if she didn't believe she could do it. At first, it was hard. Everyone depending on her? The Herald of Andraste and woah, she was not comfortable with that title. But herself, Lila? She knew she could do it.
And she grins gleefully at watching what they can do together. It was genuinely exciting and reminding her of old times in the best possible way.
The snake ick, she's less than thrilled at, but if she could basically pick up and keep everything which wasn't nailed down even if it was picking it off of a body? Could be worse.
Lila takes a moment to mourn the fallen apples. They'd looked tasty, but not worth it if they came with giant snakes. And she grins cheerfully. "Hi! It's great to meet you, too! I'm Lila Trevelyan and I'm kind of still in charge? I decided the best thing to do would be to help Leliana. I'm a big fan of what she wants to accomplish, but I know that a lot of people won't be."
"So! How do we know all of each other's friends? More weird time magic stuff? Do we need to kick Alexius' ass again?"
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... sitting up in your overlarge room and staring out across the mountains and valleys below Skyhold, still not particularly alone, but hey! Sometimes you're in small group movements with less constant political pressure bearing down!
Rolling her shoulders and brushing off a bit of snake that'd found its way onto her trousers, Ellana moves toward Lila.
"So Leliana is Divine Victoria for you too, that's reassuring. She's already been shaking things up since she was appointed. I'll help as I can, just... less publicly." More strategically (in her opinion), after Solas so thoroughly proved he'd too fully integrated his spies without being ferreted out in the two years he'd been absent, regaining his "strength."
At times, it's too appropriate that so many of the elven swears invoked his name.
She offers a brief smile, and then a more thoughtful look, remaining apples in her basket tangled up with her prosthetic arm attachment shifting about some as she moved.
"Weird time magic, though I'll lay this on the Fox instead of Alexius this go around. For one, by the sounds of it, there're fewer demon armies and red lyrium corruptions over the entirety of Ferelden and Orlais. For another, we're only here in partial bits, best as I followed. Like snatches of our spirits pulled into this realm while the rest of us stay busy back home. Almost like dreaming, only we can't wake up."
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...it was the bedrolls. They made it impossible for her to style her long, curly hair and sometimes there were dead leaves (or worse) in it. Although, she enjoyed the exploring part, that was kind cool. And there was no telling where she'd find another mosaic piece!
And Lila's holding her skirt up, trying to avoid getting snake ichor on the hem of her robes. And she's ruining her boots, Leliana would have nuglets at the thought. But she smiles like she's just had a fun lark which to be honest? She had.
"Oh! Oh, good, I'm glad to hear that. Cassandra would have been okay, but Vivienne...she wanted us back in Circles! No way that's happening again, especially after everything. But...less publicly." Lila couldn't really understand and she knew that. It was bad enough she was a mage helping Leliana, but being an elf and a mage? She could make a list of people that would piss off.
As for Solas? She had to find him. Had to stop him. It hurt because she honestly thought they had been friends, but weighing one against the other...Solas lost.
And Lila smiled back cheerfully. She still had no idea how she'd explain snake bits everywhere, but at least she had a new friend? Maybe? Hopefully?
"That's what my curiosity gets me. Here and, well. Here." She lifted what was left of her left arm. "And the fewer demon armies, the happier I'll be. Dealing with the Wardens? Not fun. Even less fun, the rest of it." She blushed and looked sheepish. "I really hate spiders, now more than ever. And poor Stroud. He was nice.
So it's like this is an extra-special Fade with potentially people from other worlds like mine, only it's not me, it's you? Or even others who who aren't either us. Different versions of us? That's a little odd. And I hope that the other me is doing a good job. The other you, too. Maker, that's weird to think about, even by 'This Shit is Weird' standards."
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(There's still paperwork, it just comes in different formats now.)
"To be fair, it's apparent my curiosity lead me here too. The Fox was... a rather interesting choice for either of us to follow, in one sense. More trustworthy than a wolf, I suppose."
Dry, paired with a shake of her head. Though the name, after the mention of the spiders, presumably either those of caves or the Fearlings that tended to take on that form in the Fade, furrows her brow a touch.
"Stroud... was a warden, I take it?"
Not a name she was familiar with offhand, but the ones she was carried enough weight as it stood.
"More or less, that's my understanding of it. Only things are less malleable here than they would be in the Fade... I think? Pure will has some effect, but we're hardly reshaping the Fox's world. For her part, well. It is hers, after all."
Reshaping it at whim is part and parcel. Fascinating and disturbing for the sheer lack of control it implied, even as their lack of choice in clear, decisive ways to leave here carries a similar taste on her tongue.
"Varric would probably advise we consider how much running we'll be needing to do, what with the extra Weird Shit going on." She smiles, lifting her shoulders in a small shrug. "I choose to have faith we're not helping run Thedas into the ground. Or if we are, not faster than it was doing so itself."
It's an uplifting message! A wonderful thought! Also a true one, because she doesn't think even the most power-susceptible person who might have picked up that orb in the Temple of Sacred Ashes, disturbing the ritual, would be as lethal for Thedas as Corypheus had been. Even now, she still has nightmares of that future, that alternate timeline she was so lucky as to never personally need to live through.
This is better, she decides. Meeting another last survivor, and knowing definitively, things worked out one way or another.
"It might be as simple as who heard Divine Justinia call out, in our case. Or maybe I was never born in your timeline, or you weren't in mine. Though if it's all the same to you, shall we continue talking somewhere that isn't here, and possibly after finding where we an clean up? While even this is nostalgic, there's only so much I can pretend to miss being covered in viscera at random times."
(CW: Templars, tranquils)
"Yeah. I figured that if I didn't follow the Fox and try to get it out of there, the Orlesians would think it was a grand time for a hunt! And, no. I wasn't on board with that. One of these days, I'll learn to not follow strange beings or sounds and I'll--no, I'll always be too curious for my own good." A nice bonus as an Inquisitor, really, it meant that she got all kinds of problems solved for others. But not so great when it overrode her sense of self-preservation.
She really really really hoped that the other her wasn't fucking things up.
"Yeah. Big moustache, cool accent...really a pretty good guy all around. I hated the whole leave him in the Fade to face certain death thing, but if I let Sarajane do it, Varric would never forgive me. And she'd been through enough crap for a hundred lifetimes. Plus, as much as it kills me to admit it, a Warden should've solved what the Wardens fucked up."
"And I guess if we had to be kind of stranded in a world which wasn't our own, it could be worse? And watch me eat my words later on," she said with a one-shoulder shrug and a hint of fatalism.
Because people who were animal gods and vice versa? They were always one step ahead of everyone else. It seemed to be part of the package and frustrating as all get out.
Lila was about the least power-susceptible person in all of (her version of) Thedas. She'd been mostly fine with the Circle, at least as a little girl. But for her, magic had mostly been of theory with her practicing what she could as far out of the Templars' watchful eyes as she could.
She was still afraid of Templars, even Cullen to a degree. He'd seemed to be trying to atone for what was done in Kirkwall, but Kirkwall was Kirkwall and for a long time, he'd been a willing part of their power structure. Which, ew.
She wondered how different things would have been with her older sister, Diana, at the helm. Probably a lot more violent. She'd made it clear that she'd never forgiven Lila for being a mage when they briefly crossed paths at the Conclave, even though Lila had tried her hardest to open Diana's eyes to the fact that being a mage wasn't something she could simply not be.
But, this is reassuring in a weird way. If an other her had to die, at least this woman got to take charge. She seemed really smart and extremely capable. So, Thedas could stop trying to tear itself apart for a little while, right?
Lila nodded thoughtfully, wondering at the many possible differences in their worlds. But getting away from snake bits sounded like an incredible idea.
"There's a kiosk serving hot drinks, including hot chocolate. Bull would order ten cups if he were here. I might order ten cups, it's really good."
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Shitty situations, with no good decisions to be made. Only the best that could be done, and accepting the consequences in the fallout.
"Sounds perfect, I only saw the hot mead." Which, while nice, was more alcohol than she'd planned on before the apple orchard incident. There's an apple orchard incident now.
Shifting her half full (let us be generous) apple basket to another place on her arm, she gestures down the groomed orchard row.
"Shall we?"
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There was no limit on shitty situations. At least that's something Lila had felt she'd learned the hard way. Judgement was always the worst part of her day. Other than the part where Alexius had to serve the mages of Redcliffe, that had been terrific!
"Hot mead's good, too, but I figure the last thing either of us needs is to get drunk. We have to have each other's back. If anyone's going to get even a little bit of what anyone else has been through, it's you and me, right?"
And Lila's still skirting the edges of what was left of the snakes. It didn't look like they were going to drop something valuable? Stingy as well as messy.
At Ellana's gesture, Lila bobs a neat and precice Free Marches curtsy. "Yes, we shall! On to the hot chocolate! And bragging rights to Bull when one or both of us join with our other selves! Unless he joins us here first. It could happen."
[Crouching Moron Hidden Badass indeed]
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"At least then he'd be facing the same weirdness. Though imagine, him recalling neither of us, then telling us about yet another singular survivor! We can start keeping a list."
After the curtsy, she performs am abortive bow in return, more Orlesian for the ironic turn of it all. Then she looks again to the proper groomed pathway, as if about to step onto it. Instead, Ellana pauses, then reverses direction entirely, stepping back through the scattered corpses to reach the scattered weapons driven back down by their combined magics. Not that one, not that one, no, no... Ah!
She crouches down, pulling a dagger out covered in minimal ichor.
"Just in case," she says as she stands again, looking around one last, brief time. "Alas that none of these are staves."
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And Lila giggles merrily at the thought of the Iron Bull arriving and knowing neither of them. "I almost want it to happen. There have to be infinite versions of our worlds, all with different turning points. Though, you and me, we're turning points all by ourselves. Who knows who else might have been us if we hadn't heard the commotion."
And the Orlesian bow makes her smile a little. She likes her fellow Inquisitor more than she liked any Orlesian. Other than Leliana and she was technically Fereldan. But in the meantime, Lila herself is looking for a weapon to help. No mage staves! Not okay! But she selects a curved dagger, the kind which would do more damage being pulled out than going in for herself.
"I think it's a good idea to expect the worst. With any luck, we won't run into Corephy-buttface on the way." She liked giving Corypheus stupid names. Sera helped. It cut him down to size in her mind.
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Sounds like one of Sera's ways of naming people.
"Coryphe-rockface might have been more visually accurate, though if there's ever an example of someone who doesn't need to achieve any more potential and should in fact stop achieving anything at all, it's him." A pause for a beat, and a tip of her head toward Lila as they start back through the tended orchards, away from the two beautiful, ancient trees, and the graveyard of snakes and weaponry left behind them.
"Or the Venatori, Viddasala. Or Solas," she says, lips thinning over his name.
Nonchalantly, she gets something that squishes between her toes wiped off on the leaves underfoot as they go. Ugh. The unpleasant sensation wasn't limited to the ichor she'd just wiped away.
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It was! Sera wasn't her type, but they'd had fun. Life wasn't worth living without a little bit of fun amidst all of the serious.
"I swear, it was so satisfying to send his sorry ass into the Fade. Though...if the Veil is destroyed, then what? Will every awful thing in there get out? I can't let that happen," she says with lips thinned. "I'll do whatever I have to to make sure it doesn't."
And here's the real Lila, not the frivolous young woman obsessed with pink, but who becoming the Inquisitor made her: a young woman with powerful magic and a league of friends, followers, and both, one determined to save Thedas no matter the cost to her herself.
"Yeah. It's like everything which could go wrong is in the process of doing so. The really crappy part was that I believed Solas was my friend. He saved me, but. He's also going to try and annihilate anyone and anything which doesn't fit his vision. I can't let that happen, no matter what."
And she's holding the hem of her pink robes up with her right hand as she carefully tries to pick her way around snake ichor. Even though that seems to be useless, good-bye shoes she'd previously liked!
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What the Veil crashing down means...
"The saddest part," she says, "Is he probably believed the same. As for the Veil... when it first separated the mutable world from the immutable, it held back magic so you had to reach for it instead of be surrounded by it at all times. Not even the spirits want that violence of a return, magic and matter colliding, shaking each other to pieces. Destroying minds, civilizations, repeating the same sundering of thousands of years past, only in present. I don't know that it'd stop echoing through the world that would come after, or that his presumptions on who would triumph or who would not would even hold true. Or how the dwarves would be effected, given their relationship with lyrium and magic."
Untouched by one, manipulators of the second in a way no other race safely manages.
These are all questions that have no clear answers; she doesn't want too clear a view, because by then it would presume the worst to have happened. Educated guesses are good enough, and more important is getting ahead of whatever else he plans to thwart it much as he'd manipulated her into thwarting the Qunari's Dragon's Breath.
Tevinter. What a headache that's already been, but at least she can rely on Dorian, and on her lack of vallaslin to grant her a peculiar sort of anonymity to even those of her own people.
"Surely there's some sort of public bath in the village?" A pause, and she shakes her head. "Or an inn that offers some water for bathing."
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"I've wondered what would happen to the dwarves as well, should Solas get what he wants. But, I'd imagine they'd be wiped out as well, I didn't think to ask Solas when he, you know." She waves as best as she can with what's left of her left arm. "I was a little too mad, I think. Betrayals weren't...uncommon in the Circle, especially if it meant the person doing the betraying would get preferential treatment from the Templars. 'So-and-so's a blood mage!' And then so-and-so would be made a Tranquil. But," her lips thin, "there's a way around that."
The Ostwick Circle was considered as a happy medium, at least by outsiders. Though, Lila could tell them tales that would make their hearts stop.
But when it came right down to it, she knew Solas had reasons behind his actions. Some very good ones from his point of view. And foiling the Qunari plan meant that the leaders of Thedas were safe, at least for now? That was a good thing. It had to be.
It made her wonder...wouldn't have mass chaos and instability drive more to Solas and his plans? So what was the roles of Celene, Briala, Gaspard, Alistair and his missing queen, and the Free Marches in general. Pawns to be moved about the board at will?
Tevinter would be like descending into a pit of snakes, the likes of which they'd just killed. She knew Dorian would do everything he could to help, to point her in the right direction and to the right people
"I sure hope so. Anything but a sponge bath in a river! I got so sick of those along the way! Or the inn. Either way, it would imply that we're to be here for a while."
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"He doesn't know. He hopes. The more he has to face that we're all people, the less steady the path beneath his feet."
Ruthlessly undercutting what was left, foiling his attempts to return the world to a state that he believed would give elves a greater chance to be as they once were, all of it was gambling. He has a two year lead on all of them, but what he refuses to work with and those he overlooks out of his selective blindness are all aids on their behalf.
They're here. They're real. They've achieved and failed on their own, for hundreds of years, and thousands before that.
But it's not something to linger on, here and now.
"However long it takes to appease the, what was it called... full potential? Our Fox wishes to see. Unclear targets make for difficult ones to hit." A nebulous concept, with no clear understanding, and can't she be done with that anyway? She's not that young anymore. Not ancient, either, but that's irrelevant.
"A moment, let me leave the apple basket up there with the one handing them out."
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It's fascinating on the level where she is a mage and spent a great deal of time reading about magical theory, but. Well. 'What the fuck?' has been uttered on more than one occasion.
"You really think he can be swayed from what he wants to do?" Not judgmental, not skeptical, just curious. Because Lila has her doubts.
She wonders who could help him change his mind. She'd do whatever she had to to help, but they didn't exactly part on the greatest of terms. There were so many lives at risk and who could say that if he did somehow succeed, the elves left alive would be who he wanted them to be, instead of still carrying memories of past mistreatment and destruction.
But at the same time, she tried to understand the allure. She figured that if someone came to her saying "I can do such-and-such and so-and-so and all will be better (but in much more poetical and intellectual terms), that would be a powerful draw.
Yeah. Though, she envied the other her. She'd finally managed to flirt enough with Harding to start a relationship and now the other her is having fun not being single anymore.
"Oh, I know! I mean, us being us? What more are we supposed to do? Apparently it's not enough for us to save Thedas from Coryphyshithead. It's confusing. I'd like to have a list of things to accomplish, then huzzah, I'm fixed!"
Lila still feels terribly young. She was only twenty-three when shit got weird. She's twenty-five now, feeling more comfortable in her skin and with the vast amount of power she can wield, but sometimes she still looks in the mirror and wonders how in Thedas she was the lucky one caught up in all of the mess.
"Okay! Oooh, hot chocolate next and bragging rights when we get home!"
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Divested of apples to the curious look of the fox-woman running the stand, she rejoins Lila. The remaining ichor has started to dry, along with blood and whatever viscera might have unluckily landed on her, and she sighs, shaking her head.
"Just like old times," she says, gesturing to herself with her right hand. "Anyway, there's the inn with baths near, then this hot chocolate?"
Note that doesn't mean she has anything to change into, but damp clothing in this weather isn't the worst. A bit of an autumnal nip in the air, nothing cold-catching, really.
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Lila waves cheerfully at the fox-woman with her remaining hand. And she feels positively covered with snake ick. And her dress is a total loss. Oh, well. She'd ruined armor before and was able to do something about it, she figures she can with dresses, too.
"I know! Did you feel...ready when stuff. Happened? 'Cause I didn't," she admits with a small sigh. "Andraste's tits, that's something to look forward to! A nice, hot bath...do you think they have bubbles?"
If they have bathrobes, she's swiping one. Towels, too. One never knew when they'd need a nice towel.
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As Leliana had not said in so many words in the doomed world she'd encountered her in, but it's poignant, as a reminder and indication.
"I have no idea," she says, shrugging her shoulders, "But I don't see why not. As for your question, what, when I woke up chained in Haven, or after that first rift closure in the temple?"
Heading along the path into the village, getting helpful bobs from giant... walking... sunflowers... along the way.
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