faderift | stuck the landing

Entry tags:

stuck the landing

WHO: Yngvi Congealedinagutterson; open
WHAT: A glorious arrival in Skyhold
WHEN: Kingsway, whenever you'd like
WHERE: In and around Skyhold
NOTES: Yngvi probably merits his own warning but if anything comes up then I'll update it. If you'd like a custom starter, please let me know via plurk, discord or his ic/ooc contact post! Assuming prior CR is good just drop me a line here. Starters in the comments as ever.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

The second natural habitat of the dwarf. Not that Yngvi would know which end of the hammer to hold unless he was breaking your kneecaps because you owed him money (look, he'd do it cheerfully, that is absolutely a plus, service with a smile even when you're making his life inconvenient) but he does need to scope out the Undercroft for reasons. Because this is where business happens, if you happen to be Carta. And so maybe it sort of reminds him of the Young Scamp(ᴛᴍ) Years too but shut the fuck up you're not Gunnar you don't know shit about that.

Why is he here? Actually he's probably fixing his gear because yes, excuse you he is legit as they come when it comes to maintaining his stuff he's a professional. Or he's probably going to just pester you and wonder what you're up to if you were trying to get on with something in peace, I hope you don't mind crumbs getting in that, no one has briefed him on sandwich policy in the Undercroft.

(Someone has, Yngvi did not care to listen.)

Edited 2016-09-17 17:36 (UTC)

For his part, Mac is completely bewildered by the process going on in the Undercroft; it's so archaic! How does anything there work? What are all these material names? Where does anything come from--OH SWEET LIGHT OF THE TRAVELER DID SOMEONE JUST SAY DRAGON ARMOR?

Without any actual income yet, Mac's mostly living off of the charitable offerings of the Inquisition, so getting any sweet armor or weapons isn't that likely, but it doesn't mean he can't watch other people make things or take note for himself, right? Those sure are fancy metals and fabrics, and he wants a bitchin' set of whatever mages wear in this place to go with his flashy new gold-coated horns.

And then he sees a dwarf and all attention zeroes in, Mac's eyes like lime-colored saucers, cheeks puffed with the barely held back exclamations of excitement he's been forced to swallow for days. He's staring, naturally, because he's got terrible manners when he's too excited to remember them. He's seen other dwarves in the keep, of course, but he's been giving everyone a wide berth while he settles in. Now, faced with the opportunity to actually talk to one--

"Are you really a dwarf-dwarf like underground and fighting orcs and goblins and things dwarf or are you a little person dwarf?"

--he could just blurt the first idiot thing that made it past his brain-mouth filter. Was that even politically correct?

"...I mean...uh...no, that's pretty much what I meant. Screw it, I'll own it."

In theory - or something that's approaching theory, the way that a student thinks that lying down on top of a textbook is somehow going to let them absorb the knowledge within is studying, like that level of theory - Yngvi is working. Being industrious. Since he's effectively meant to at least look like he's paying his own way unless the crew are off on a job where he'll be needed.

Although actually paying your own way is for chumps, that's not even lesson one if you're born Carta, you just spring out of a hole in the ground knowing that and everyone knows that. Obviously.

Or not because he peers around for whatever has roused him from where he's assembling some sort of trap that has far too many teeth even for a trap, you'd feel bad for whatever ended up in that trap even if it was the draconic lovechild of a Venatori and a Red Templar that did it next to a rift.

And he just blinks. Parses. What bit does he correct first, ah yes, got it.

"You mean 'person with more charm, swagger, and ferocity than most in a small vessel'." Because definitions are important and wow that was some good off-the-cuff nonsense, Yngvi remember that. (Why is his brother not here to take a memo for him. And to punch him in the arm. And not take the memo.) And hello, here is someone with even less of a filter. In that there is none. Not even the concept of a filter.

"The fuck is an orc or a goblin? Or d'you mean gobbling? Because I've vanquished many impressive meals, including, but not limited to, an entire boar."

This is a real dwarf.

This is a real dwarf.

"Yes. Precisely that. Charm and swagger and ferocity and small and eats and lot and you're a real dwarf. This is the best week ever," Mac sighs, smiling in an awkwardly fluttery manner and clutching a bit of fabric to his chest - at least until one of the workers in the Undercroft reaches in and slowly tugs it away, giving the Guardian a look that speaks volumes about how weird he's behaving. Not that he notices, being on cloud nine.

"Um...orc or...you know, nevermind. Forget that part. I don't know what's around here all that much. Darkspawn and demons and something Templars that aren't protecting old cups...I don't know. Sorry, hold on," he pauses, looking at both hands a moment to check for smudges before thrusting one forward.

"I'm Mac, and I think dwarves are awesome. By proxy you're awesome until proven otherwise. Also, please let me see you eat a whole boar, because that's probably on my bucket list of things to do before dying in a fantasy-dark-ages-magic-no-way world."

The realest, accept no substitutes.

But this guy - odd though he clearly is but maybe he too has stumbled here via Orlais but from a party or something - is The Guy. Saying all the things Yngvi likes to hear because finally some recognition. Enough to get him scrambling up and dusting the crumbs off though he still looks like a small dirty potato. "Obviously. Because I have finally made my long and winding way here, surviving the attentions of Comtes and slapping trees and wrangling nugs."

(Yngvi might be having that fabric. He needs to ask Gwenaelle if that's his colour, yay or nay.)

"Hooooooooow," Yngvi begins, dragging that word out for as long as his little brain needs him to, "not know what's around here? Where have you been? You're too big for under a rock? Or under lots of rock. And trust me, Templars? Don't protect nothing. Unless it's their lyrium stash. They'll sell their own mother for that if they know who she is." Because they might not, same as Yngvi doesn't but that's not because he's some weird Chantry-addled lyrium addict stuffed full of his own righteousness.

Wow. Wow no one is going to believe this so Mac hopefully you're going to enjoy being presented to all of Yngvi's friends as 'that dude that wants to see me eat a whole boar and thinks I am the dog bollocks'. What plans he has. Anyway, handshakes. Who cares about dirt, Yngvi's from Darktown, he's Carta, he's a mercenary, he's a mix of grease and sandwich fillings, shaking right back. "Yngvi Congealedinagutterson."

"Con...Con what?" he asks, shaking the offered hand without any hesitation, screeching inside like a proper fanboy because he's talking to a dwarf that is just as cocky as one he's ever read about. That last name - is it really a surname? - was a bit convoluted, even for someone like himself who had picked his own name for lack of one.

"Yngvi, then?" the Guardian asked hopefully, not keen on having to say Mr. Congealedinagutterson every time he wanted to address the man.

"I don't know because I've never been. I'm not from here, I'm from...well, somewhere else. Earth...mostly the Last City, but I'm pretty sure not you or anyone else knows where or what any of that is," Mac remarks, wiggling the fingers on his left hand and drawing attention to the ever-present green glow seeping past everything he wore.

"Congealedinagutterson. My boss - he died recently - gave it to me and my brother when we went visiting his kin, they've got big long names to do with where they come from. Said the two of us just congealed in a gutter." Needless to say, Yngvi loved it and kept it, and Gunnar sort of had to as well because they're brothers for a token value of brothers that no one outside of them understands. "Just Yngvi is fine, s'for formal stuff, going on visits where I'm an important man on an important job."

Sometimes you apparently need a surname? The world is weird. And he likes this one a lot because Asher gave it to him.

"Earth," of course it sounds more like 'urf' the way Yngvi says it but aha, what does he see (and please, blame his dead boss for this because there are others around who can vouch for this being said man's name for this)-- "You fell out of a sky vagina!"

That echoes nicely around the Undercroft, little louder for the cheap seats next time Yngvi, don't think they heard you in Par Vollen.

"I get to ask what you are then. Now I know you're not from around these parts and you know what I am."

Oh yeah, chosen and given names. Mac totally understands that, having had to name himself. Better than just being called "Guardian" all the time like everyone else. Congealedinagutterson, though. That sounds extremely unplea--oh sweet Traveler, what did he just say?

"Sky vag--I--well, I sort of thought of it more like an asshole, but if you tilt you head I guess it kinda--eugh, uh, no. No no, don't need that in my head, yes! Thank you, no," Mac laughs a bit loud and nervous, raising both hands and gesturing vague martial arts moves as though he could somehow fight off the visual.

"Nooooope. Nope. Nahp. Ehhh hehe. O~ka~y! So, maybe a little more vulgar than expected but that's alright! Not everything should be predictable! I like it. This is good. No more sky hoo-has, though. Yeah." He huffs a sigh, glancing around awkwardly - sorry sir, ma'am, no he's--he's really not the product of a sky vagina--you know what, nevermind. Please carry on, he wordlessly pleas, gesturing vaguely in small shooing motions at any eyes pointed his way.

"Hoo-has," he mumbles under his breath, chewing on both lips before making a soft popping sound, clucking his tongue and clapping his hands once to snap the focus back.

"Earth! Human! Sort of. Well I mean, evolved human. A lot? Awoken is what we're called. Regular humans stayed on the ground and kept going there for generations, but some humans went off into space and when they got back they were different. There's more to it than that, but the watered down version is my people are from the stars?" he offers, voice lilting up in a questioning tone at the end, hopeful Yngvi could put things together on his of.

"There's a Lady of the Skies. S'what my boss believed in, his people have different gods to others about but their gods are really old so that's probably why he picked it. It's what he wrote in the letters back when he was here but we weren't." What faces they'd made, then they'd had to send Nasir off scouting again to find out what was really going on and it had seemed to fit, so the term had stuck in their group. Had sort of infected a few of their old mercenary friends. Because that's what friends do. Share the wealth. Even if that wealth is an unfortunate name for a thing that's going to slip out around the wrong company one day and horribly offend somebody.

But then everyone takes Andrate's bodily parts in vain so whatever, Yngvi probably offends a greater portion of the world each time he breathes.

"Ev-olved?" There are a few more repetitions. What it's a new word that isn't Orlesian or Qunari-language. "Wait--wait wait wait. Are you trying to have me on? Because I'm not one of those ones that thinks I'm going to fall up into the sky, I'm not a tit like everyone living under a hunk of stone." Spoiler: this is what dwarves actually believe, Yngvi always laughs at how stupid everyone from Orzammar is when they go around believing they're oh-so-superior, what a bunch of tits. "No one does that, no one goes off up there!"

Explain yourself sir!!!

"Have you o--oh. No? And really, I think the gravity on this planet is entirely sufficient to keep people from falling into the sky. Strictly speaking, that's not even really possible..." Mac protested briefly before shaking his head and holding a finger up with a matter-of-fact expression.

"Excuse me, but in some places, yes they do. Just because someone doesn't do something where you're from doesn't mean it isn't done someone else. Birds fly, right? They go off into the sky. So do bats and butterflies and every other manner of flying thing. With the right mechanics a person can accomplish flight as well. Where I come from, we went up, and once we learned how to get out there, we never stopped going." It's a simple explanation without a lot of detail, but the dwarf sounds flustered enough that a winded description might cause a greater misunderstanding. Better to go light and fill in the blanks if asked.

"I can't show you how right now, since I don't have my ship, but I could certainly sketch you examples of more primitive flying machines. Once the facts are laid out it's pretty obvious how it all works, I think. But no, sir, I'm not trying to make a joke at all. I'm actually trying really, really hard not to joke too much because no one understands and I'm not trying to get my ass dead. Sir."

Edited 2016-09-25 21:57 (UTC)

"Let me tell you a thing about dwarves. The shit kind of dwarves." Did you know there's a shit kind of dwarf? Well actually there are a lot of sub-categories but that's a topic for several drinks so Yngvi can write it down and knock pints on the floor with sweeping gestures. "Because some of them live all their lives under the stone and never come out, and you stop being a 'proper' dwarf if you do, and they think you will fall up into the sky when you go up top because all that stone just squashes the sense out of them or rots them, or maybe it's that and drinking brewed lichen. Which is another thing."

Orzammar dwarves are weird. Which is why Yngvi has to just shore up those details sharpish because he is a dwarf who has vast stores of knowledge about such things. And his opinions on dwarf matters are the only ones that count. (To him. Because he will climb something and talk louder if he must so that means he wins.)

"Everything else? Wings. And most dwarves? Too heavy. Boulders. Sad that they let themselves get that way." Moment of silence for dwarves you can roll down halls like so many marbles. It's a short silence. Yngvi has like no respect for anything. "So what's up there? Interesting things? There must be if you kept going up but then humans do a lot of stuff and I don't know why, same as elves but elves like to say they've got reasons, and get very shouty if they're the living in the woods with poncy deer types. But--" Snagging some parchment that didn't belong to Yngvi but he's hold it and possession is the whole sum of the law in the Carta, and the Carta is Yngvi's lifeblood so there you go, he holds it out with the expectation of a small child on some sort of appropriate holiday.

"Come. Draw. Draw for me." A beat. This is where he lays on the charm. "I'll feed you."

He almost turns down the offer of food out of habitual politeness before remembering that he has to eat in this world and nods slightly. Not that Mac minds, either way, since dining with a dwarf is on his revised bucket list. That and something about Yngvi's tone made him feel awkward enough that he had to accept on principle, face a bit more flush with color as he clears his throat and pulls a piece of charcoal from a worktable.

"There's all manner of things out there. More lands, more suns, more moons," he murmurs, wandering over and tugging a stool close to an unused bench, hunching over it as he drags out long lines.

"There's darkness. Lots of it. Between all the stars there's empty space and it's a bit lonely and you feel entirely too small, and then you find something remarkable and everything else ceases to matter for a while."

He smiles as he speaks, drifting on his own words, thoughtful, distracted with memories. He remembers to pause, looking up at Yngvi to ensure his words and work aren't too dull before shaking his head and returning to sketches of a few simple plans for a hot air balloon, the first plane, the first dirigible and a simple jet. Anything using hot air he knows people of this world can easily replicate, but actual planes or starships? He has no idea how to explain them so it seems pointless to consider at the moment. Getting people off the ground would be astounding enough.

Besides, the idea of elves and dwarves ruling the sky first just pleases him more.

"Nothing is too heavy out there," he adds, gesturing vaguely upwards. "Once you get far enough away from the ground, you really can fall into the sky. But if you manage to get up there, you usually have a way back down planned anyways. Out there, you can move so fast that you can catch fire. It's such a strange place. My sister thinks I'm an idiot for reading fantasy novels instead of being obsessed with the mysteries of our own world like she is, but here I am talking to a dwarf and really damn grateful I read about any of this stuff. Never thought I'd be chatting about space travel with a dwarf. Though I should probably explain physics but...you just asked for pictures," he chuckles, arching a brow and cocking a look Yngvi's way.

"I need to introduce you to a friend of mine." That makes it sound far more casual than it actually is, and a lot less shady too, as if Lex is just Yngvi's mate the way other people are his mate and that there weren't a whole bunch of deals in place to pull strings but looking at all of this, he can hear the gears turning. Is amazed that Lex hasn't materialised at his elbow already. Tutting. Probably. This feels like something Lex would tut at Yngvi for because Yngvi should've probably come to fetch him or to make introductions more immediately but he was meant to be working on traps.

Again, inventory can wait in the face of this.

As a general rule, Yngvi only feels small if it suits him and the con to feel small. (The success in pulling off any sort of con is to pull it off with great feeling, it's the same thing as feeling sexy in a dress or something. Because that's probably a con too, he has seen bodices and corsets, how many ladies are nothing more than layers of petticoats, whalebone and lies). But something about looking at this settles uncomfortably in him, like drinking up in the mountains, peering out right over the edge in the dark when it's the world then the stars, when it all melts away unless a hand pulls you back--

"Wonder what you'd make of the Deep Roads. Like, it gets really big in places, huge, and it's not empty but it's meant to feel that way and it's dark. And awful. And lonely. But people come back with all sorts." Red lyrium idols. The Blight. Treasures from lost thaigs. Six of one, half dozen of the other really. His hands don't trace the drawings - charcoal being what it is - but they move above them each time they're done, just trying to imagine.

Not that he can. Not really.

"My friend would get it." And he is confident down in his bones that he would. There are no humans smarter, in his esteemed opinion. "Pictures are fine, words are-- words are better out of a mouth. Pictures are better drawn somewhere, you get me?" He's not much of a reader, is Yngvi.

It takes him a minute, but he understands - to a degree - and nods. No judgments from him, he simply isn't the sort. Besides, dwarf or otherwise, Mac is just happy to talk. Being the kind that runs people off entirely on accident back home, it's rather pleasant being a novelty. He'll enjoy the discourse until the new shiny wears off and people start getting annoyed again. Perhaps by then he'll have accidentally made friends?

It's a thought, anyways.

"The Deep Roads sound like the Hive strongholds on the moon back home, sort of. Once you get deep enough, everything just opens up. The ceilings are so high up it's too dark to even know you're there, and the pressure of the ground surrounding you makes you feel suffocated..." he murmurs, trailing off a bit and shaking his head.

"I hate it, being in there. It's like a great prison with no bars. You're completely forgotten there, in the dark. Space is different...it's more like...swimming at night," he offers with a slow nod, approving his own analogy. "Or being out on a boat?" he suggests offhandedly, assuming Yngvi to be perhaps less of a swimmer than a passenger, at any rate.

"If you've ever been out on a great still lake at night with the stars reflecting in the black water all around you; space is more like that. You know there are things all over, but they're far away. The stars seem like they're right there but you can't touch them. You're floating with no ground beneath you and much like falling into the water, if you go out of your ship in space, you drown. In a manner of speaking." No use going into detail there, despite entering a vacuum was far worse than drowning.

"The massive caverns in the ground made me feel terrible, but in space I definitely felt less afraid, if fear is what I felt at all. I'm not sure what the unease was. Not that the caverns aren't chock full of awful things out to kill you, but still..." The guardian shrugs, handing the sketches over and rubbing charcoal off his fingers.

"Horrible or wondrous, I want to see everything this world has to offer. I'm more than happy to trade simple sciences or stories for someone else's stories and a good view. I'm even happy to help build something. Gliders or balloons. You can't tell me aerial reconnaissance wouldn't be a fine leg up?"

"Yeah, I've known up top. I mean Darktown is still on the surface, don't even know when any of my family lived under the stone. Don't know who out of them to ask if I cared to know." Because if he wanted to know then there would be one of them that would actually have found out those sort of things, and Yngvi could ask, and get pointed in the right direction. But he doesn't care, he's Yngvi and he has his brother Gunnar, and he has a million and one sprawling relatives that he picks and chooses favourites from depending on what they've done and what he's done, things like that. "It's just under. Kirkwall's built like on levels? Like Darktown was all mines once, and then there's Lowtown and it's the shit bits and commonfolk, and then Hightown with all the rich tits and important bits. All stacked up. Lots of stairs. Wouldn't believe how many stairs in Kirkwall.

"I was in double digits me, before I got to see Lowtown but that good salt air that had a whiff of rotting corpse at a low tide." Is that a fond sigh or is that just indigestion from all the sandwiches he already inhaled before he got chased out the kitchens, you decide Mac. "Been places like that though. Once or twice for work. Threw a mate over the side and you've never heard a person scream like that, sounded like a stuck pig - you still have pigs, right?"

That is a singularly upsetting and panicking thought - what if there are places with no pigs and therefore no bacon. The heartbreak.

"You know," and he leans up, leans in, all smiles like they're about to seal a deal and maybe in Yngvi's brain they are, "we have parachutes. In Kirkwall."

"I believe we do. I never bothered to check, myself, but I know people in the city eat as normal as ever. Then again maybe not, now that you mention it." He's never had cause to seek out answers about how people eat and where the food comes from back home. With the higher enlightenment and the loss of land, using animals for food was a largely discontinued barbarous practice. Maybe they didn't have pigs? At least not for eating.

"Parachutes? Really," Mac mumbles thoughtfully, leaning back a little and raising a brow at Yngvi. The Guardian was terrible at observing personal space requirements for other people, but when someone crowded his own he became singularly aware. The only reason it made him uncomfortable was because he liked too-friendly, intimate closeness, and that seemed somehow incorrect or wrong. He constantly wanted to be close to people but had an instinctual aversion. Call it an imperative, call it whatever you want. Perhaps a sense of self-preservation designed to protect he and those like him from the consistent pain of loss. Being immortal meant seldom carrying others through the ages with you.

"If you have parachutes, it only seems sensible that you would have good cause to use them, hm?" he remarks, smiling back down at the dwarf and lifting both brows suggestively before pausing and cocking his head slightly. "But what in the world did you use them for in the city? Were you lot just jumping off buildings and into pits?"

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

stuck the landing

iii; the undercroft

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject