1a. Giving normal processed lyrium to rifters will have mostly the same effect as giving it to mages—those with abilities will find them enhanced, those without will find that the anchors become more powerful. Like mages, rifters can overdose on lyrium. This will cause the same effects as in mages (including conscious dreams in the Fade such as those experienced during the Harrowing, periods of dizziness, and hearing voices), but Rifters will also experience additional short-term effects that muddle their reality. This includes very brief flashes of the memories belonging to nearby people, or of things taking place in their home world that are from beyond the point at which they came to Thedas or beyond their own experience of the world (i.e., conversations they weren't present for, events they didn't witness firsthand). These will be disconnected flashes rather than full coherent scenes, like disjointed scraps of old memories. They are all but indistinguishable from a character's own memories; it will require considerable thought and effort to establish with confidence that they are not actually remembered. These effects will be temporary unless the overdose is truly massive, which would require an amount of lyrium we don't think even Wysteria would consider a reasonable experiment.
1b. Too many layers of made-up magical biology for something that might continue to remain hypothetical forever! If someone ever apps a rifter dwarf, come back and we will nail it down.
2. THEORETICALLY SPEAKING it would not cause insta-death the way it does for mages, even for rifters who have magic-esque abilities. Instead, the effects will be more similar to those experienced by dwarves. Initial exposure can cause some nausea, blistering of the skin, and mild dementia of the sort suffered by rifters who overdose. Repeated exposure will lessen those effects, but can lead to deafness and memory loss, both mild and temporary (though dwarven sources will indicate that over many years of daily exposure these often become permanent in miners).
However, unlike dwarves, rifters will also experience physical mutations. These will be non-lethal but otherwise unpredictable, taking the form of things like growing horns, webs between digits, nubs of new limbs, and similar. They won't last—a couple weeks without lyrium exposure will see these crumble and fall off. This all assumes that at worst they're handling raw lyrium with their bare hands. Direct exposure of raw lyrium to open cuts, inhalation of raw lyrium dust, or contact through the eyes or mouth will increase the speed and severity of both the side effects and these mutations, though this will all still be non-lethal so long as the amount of lyrium and frequency of invasive exposure is minimal.
3. Nope, the regenerative abilities appear to only be triggered by disconnection from the host. The physical mutations associated with raw lyrium exposure won't regrow a missing limb, though it might replace it with a flipper or horn or something.
no subject
1a. Giving normal processed lyrium to rifters will have mostly the same effect as giving it to mages—those with abilities will find them enhanced, those without will find that the anchors become more powerful. Like mages, rifters can overdose on lyrium. This will cause the same effects as in mages (including conscious dreams in the Fade such as those experienced during the Harrowing, periods of dizziness, and hearing voices), but Rifters will also experience additional short-term effects that muddle their reality. This includes very brief flashes of the memories belonging to nearby people, or of things taking place in their home world that are from beyond the point at which they came to Thedas or beyond their own experience of the world (i.e., conversations they weren't present for, events they didn't witness firsthand). These will be disconnected flashes rather than full coherent scenes, like disjointed scraps of old memories. They are all but indistinguishable from a character's own memories; it will require considerable thought and effort to establish with confidence that they are not actually remembered. These effects will be temporary unless the overdose is truly massive, which would require an amount of lyrium we don't think even Wysteria would consider a reasonable experiment.
1b. Too many layers of made-up magical biology for something that might continue to remain hypothetical forever! If someone ever apps a rifter dwarf, come back and we will nail it down.
2. THEORETICALLY SPEAKING it would not cause insta-death the way it does for mages, even for rifters who have magic-esque abilities. Instead, the effects will be more similar to those experienced by dwarves. Initial exposure can cause some nausea, blistering of the skin, and mild dementia of the sort suffered by rifters who overdose. Repeated exposure will lessen those effects, but can lead to deafness and memory loss, both mild and temporary (though dwarven sources will indicate that over many years of daily exposure these often become permanent in miners).
However, unlike dwarves, rifters will also experience physical mutations. These will be non-lethal but otherwise unpredictable, taking the form of things like growing horns, webs between digits, nubs of new limbs, and similar. They won't last—a couple weeks without lyrium exposure will see these crumble and fall off. This all assumes that at worst they're handling raw lyrium with their bare hands. Direct exposure of raw lyrium to open cuts, inhalation of raw lyrium dust, or contact through the eyes or mouth will increase the speed and severity of both the side effects and these mutations, though this will all still be non-lethal so long as the amount of lyrium and frequency of invasive exposure is minimal.
3. Nope, the regenerative abilities appear to only be triggered by disconnection from the host. The physical mutations associated with raw lyrium exposure won't regrow a missing limb, though it might replace it with a flipper or horn or something.