faderift | open | the drunk horn's so violent, all spinning out sound

open | the drunk horn's so violent, all spinning out sound

WHO: Everyone
WHAT: SATINALIA
WHEN: Firstfall 1
WHERE: Skyhold
NOTES: Party hard, use content warnings, move explicit content to inboxes.

Named for Satina, the smaller of Thedas' two moons, Satinalia is a celebration of freedom, marked by wild celebration, pranks, the donning of costumes and masks -- not the fine, delicate masks of Orlais, but animals and caricatures and playful horrors -- and the exchange of gifts both sincere and satirical. There's also the crowning of a Fool to rule for the day, or two Fools, in this case: Iskandar and Valentine are given crowns and the right to issue orders. Non-military orders. Unless they manage to start some kind of battle between their imaginary kingdoms.

Elsewhere in Thedas, the festivities may last a week. At Skyhold, no one can pause the war for that long. But all those who can be spared are released by late afternoon, given the night and the next morning -- handle those hangovers before reporting back to work please -- to enjoy the celebration in the fortress or the even less restrained revelries in the valley.

This day was originally a celebration of Zazikel, the Old God of Chaos, but let's not dwell on that.

SKYHOLD

Tables in the Great Hall are piled high with several whole roasted tuskets, meats thinly sliced in the Orlesian style, a tower of cheeses and candied fruits, and great bowls of Antivan pasta with brightly colored sauces. Casks of ale and wine are tapped, emptied, and replaced to keep a near constant stream of alcohol flowing, only improving the efforts of a trio of bards in the corner playing music that's spirited but still easy to speak over. An area near them has been cleared for entertainers: a small troupe of exceptionally limber acrobats tossing and climbing each other in increasingly impressive shapes, and then a team of dancers, romantic and expressive, performing a piece made famous in the theaters of Val Royeaux.

Even once the entertainers finish and leave space for the guests to dance, the party remains more on the sedate side. The celebration indoors is meant to impress and entertain visiting dignitaries and nobles: others are welcome to assist with the schmoozing, but anyone too rowdy or otherwise controversial will be asked politely to relocate, and no one who looks even slightly mischievous or inebriated is permitted into the gardens or library or other easily-damaged areas of the fortress.

The courtyard is noisier. The sparring rings and archery targets are claimed for contests of strength and skill made intentionally ridiculous: soldiers fighting in costume with raw fish as weapons or their hands tied behind their backs, training dummies dressed in discarded finery, an archer capable of standing on her hands and shooting with her feet who's happy to give demonstrations. As the light fades the play-fighting does as well, replaced by music and dancing, with the way lit by braziers and candles and glowlights from Orlais strung in the trees and along the walls.

After midnight, the celebrations within the walls taper off. Some people need to sleep. But those who don't may make the journey down the path and into the valley.

THE VALLEY

In the valley, there's no one to say shush. The party starts early and runs late enough to be early all over again. The food is less fine -- stew and bread, cider and ale, some barrels of young wine and rough liquor gifted by the quartermaster from a mistaken shipment. For anything nicer than that you'll have to bring your own or charm someone who has, but plenty have brought out their carefully hoarded stocks tonight. Flasks of rum from Rivain or treacle-sweet wine from Antiva, tiny boxes of candies and chocolates, small pouches of smokeable herbs: there isn't much of anything but there's a little of everything, all available for the price of a well-played trick or well-placed kiss.

Tonight instead of the usual spattering of camp- and cook-fires, the camp is lit by torches and roaring bonfires, the entire valley caught in the shifting, flickering firelight. Shadows flare and twist, flames limn masked faces in gold and orange and red, and the constant crackle and spark provides its own accompaniment to the music. Fiddles and drums pound and wail, spinning dancers faster and faster, whether big circles of linked hands tugging each other round and round the fire, or a crush of couples, each clasping and spinning and catching and pressing close again. Some duck into shadows, clutched together out of sight until the wind changes and shadows shift, revealing some and concealing others.

There are games down here, too: knives and axes and arrows aimed at hay bale targets, circles marked out with rope for grappling or boxing rings, a bizarre struggled over a greased pumpkin, even pairs growling across tables as they arm-wrestle. The prizes are mostly just the cheers of a wildly enthusiastic crowd and maybe a half bottle of stolen brandy, but there are plenty of challengers all the same and plenty willing to bet on the outcome. The Inquisition is a truly motley assortment, and scattered around are plenty showing off their skills, from juggling to firebreathing to telling fortunes. Instruments from a half-dozen countries can be heard, and small groups clustered around dry patches of ground or upturned crates roll dice and deal cards two dozen different ways.

Unlike up at the keep, this party takes a little while to ramp up, as more and more people finish their shifts and make their way down to join, and it only gets louder as the hour grows late. There haven't been many chances to let loose since all this began, and Maker knows they've all been under plenty of stress. Loud laughter and singing and music continue well into the wee hours, and the crowd only finally thins out several hours past midnight, with a hardy (or foolhardy) core still just stumbling home at dawn.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

It's not often that Ellana performs music on her lute for people, mainly because she isn't very good, but after a few drinks she scampers to Felix's tent where she last left it and comes back to the warm glow of the fires to play. She had a fennec mask earlier in the evening that's been dropped off in the tent, but the shawl part of her costume remains for warmth. She strums her lute, playing snippets of the few tunes she knows, though she doesn't sing. When she spots Araceli, Ellana beams and waves her over.

"Oh, will you play with me? You can play the really intricate parts and I'll play the simple bits."

With the lute swung to one side, Araceli's balance isn't so bad - she's been on her feet too much, and she still feels the cold in that leg more than usual as the muscle mends itself - but the swing of her hips isn't quite the usual for her as she comes to join Ellana. She sits almost immediately too, right after a one-armed embrace where she presses a cheek flushed from rum and brandy against Ellana's.

"Of course, we never had a chance before. Do you have anything in mind?"

"Hmm, let's see." Ellana tips her head thoughtfully. She thinks it likely that Araceli knows some Antivan lute music and coincidentally Zevran started Ellana out with those ones.

"Do you know this?" she asks, before she plucks the strings long enough to let Araceli hear the tune she's going for. Her eyes stay on the instrument as she plays because she wants to get it right and it's not often she has an audience. The drink in her system means she's less shy about it than she normally would be, but she still has no wish to embarrass herself by making a load of mistakes.

Listening, Araceli begins moving her fingers along her own lute without plucking at the strings as the melody comes back to her. Antivan music is like some of her own, enough that she usually balances it out with plenty of Orlesian or Fereldan fare, maybe something further afield if she can find the music for it, but the longer Ellana plays, the more it comes back to her.

"Only Lux has ever heard me playing this, or the guards." Because yes, normal practice sessions for Araceli are generally perched on a rooftop somewhere she's least likely to be disturbed by folk. "But I know it, shall we?"

It takes a little more work than usual to sit comfortably with the lute when she can't just sling one leg over the other to balance it the way she likes but she manages, shaking her hair out from under the strap so it won't snag.

Ellana nods. "Not many people hear me play either." She carries her lute around often, but the times she sits out with people around and playing it is rare. Usually she's carrying it from one location to another, more secluded one. But tonight is different. It feels like tonight is the time to try new things because everyone is acting silly and carefree. Who cares if she gets a few notes wrong? They won't remember in the morning.

And so she plays along with Araceli, having fun with the merry little tune they're producing together.

Araceli's thumb still sticks in places as she plays, slower to move when she wants it to but she'd wager that the folk drifting over to come listen are too drunk to care or won't know it too well. It's not as if she can play the lute with gloves to keep her hands warm so they don't get so stiff.

"Eventually I'll have to play for an audience," she murmurs, leaning closer to Ellana so their playing hides the words because that's the only reason Araceli got herself a lute in the first place. "An audience that won't do that."

That being two people trying to dance. 'Trying'. It's like a tangle of legs that reminds her of a two-headed octopus on land.

Ellana can only lift her head for a moment because not looking at the strings means she'll lose her place, and she quickly bites her lip to stop herself from giggling madly. She looks at Araceli with amusement shining in her eyes, but then it's back to the strings as she hits the wrong chord.

"An occasion such as this lends itself to that, doesn't it? You'll have a better audience someday."

"I think 'better' is a strong word." It takes her a while to decide just how charitable she feels like being towards the nobles. "They might not fall over their own feet but at least they genuinely appreciate the music."

Bards are a piece on the board. Important pieces but she's aware of that much, and maybe being part of the Inquisition means she'll have a different role to most bards, a different agenda, someone who cares about her well-being far more than most but she'll be part of the scenery.

So she changes the subject a little after she continues on through a trickier part that creases her brow, something a mask would hide but here she doesn't need to worry about that. "Do you play for Felix?"

Ellana hadn't even been thinking of nobles. There is very little she knows about Araceli's training as a bard. She simply thinks that on another occasion with less alcohol to drink that the audience will be better behaved for her friend.

"Oh, yes," she answers. "Though I don't know many songs." She pauses as she hits the wrong note and picks it back up to stay in time with her friend's playing. "He's probably tired of hearing the same ones over and over again, but he's too good a person to tell me to stop." So maybe she'll have to learn more, when time permits.

Hopefully better behaved than tonight's entertainment of punching each other. At least duels come with a set of rules to abide by and not apparently ripping your shirt off and shouting what she thinks amounts to 'come at me'. (Eventually she's going to have to knuckle down on the Orlesian but whatever, it's a shitty language and it makes her sound like Lux hacking up a cough.)

"I can teach you a few if you'd like - not all my hiding spots are up on the rooftops," she admits with a smile as she carefully sets her sore leg down and resettles the lute when it begins to protest. "Things from where I come from if you want something very different so he won't ever get to hear them from anyone but you."

"Oh, would you? I would love learning music from another world!" Her excitement causes her to lose her place in the music again and she giggles with only mild embarrassment, trying to find the right spot again. The audience probably doesn't notice anyway.

"I sing him elven songs sometimes. He doesn't know the words, but he likes them anyway. Except for Passing By. It's a Dalish song in the common tongue." Singing in front of people is rare for her. Only Merrick and Felix have been allowed to hear her because she's sure others would prefer to hear a better voice than hers. She'll just play the music.

"We're friends, Ellana." And Araceli could leave it at that because really, that would be enough but she covers to let Ellana find her place, drawing out the same point in the melody so her friend can pick it up without having to catch up too. "When I first came to Thedas you told me so much about your people, and a lot of our culture is songs spilling out of the taverns or the decks of a ship."

And that's a thought, really. A proper night in the tavern for the people that can actually play and sing. "Sometimes the words don't matter. You won't know all the history of my songs any more than I'll know all the history of yours but music speaks to a different part of us. You fought beside me when I sang in Rivain, you felt how that changed things."

Well, when she puts it that way, it makes perfect sense. Unlike other elves, Ellana has always wanted to share her culture so elves can be understood. The further they draw away from the world, the more outlandish stories are created about them to fill in the gaps.

"Music is a language all its own. And you're right; I felt it when you sang."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

open | the drunk horn's so violent, all spinning out sound

{ valley }

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