faderift | [Open] Toy debates

WHO: Oghren and whoever
WHAT: Oghren is looking for toys or games for kids. For reasons.
WHEN: Various points during the month
WHERE: Market
NOTES: Oghren. Really he's the main warning you need in this.

When one was thinking about a very drunk dwarf who was rough around the edges and more than a little gross and perverted, one did not usually expect to find said dwarf in the market looking around at different toys and games for children. Yet this was where Oghren was for most of this month, studying the different things there and grumbling to himself as he debated whether one was better than another. Would this be fun? Would anyone want something like this one here?

Crossing his arms, he stared at one stand, looking back and forth between a board game and what looked like a wooden puzzle that made a duck. One of those brain teaser things that he obviously he would never be able to solve.

"Felsi's better at this than I am," he mumbled before noticing someone watching him. "Looking at a free show here?"

Okay maybe he was a little moody because he hated being so bad at this. Don't mind him.

[ooc: Oghren is looking for toys/games to send to his kid! Don't mind him being moody though. He's just having issues with the fact that he feels like a failure of a dad for not knowing how to toy shop.]

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Children make Wren fundamentally uncomfortable.

They're alright, before the age of six or so, if far too breakable for any particular ease. And after twelve, they're more or less small, impulsive adults —

— She still prefers not to deal with them, when possible. Too few the pleasant contexts, too many the chances to muck it up. She loves the ones in her life as she loves many things (a good storm, the shifting colours of wyvernhide): From a distance.

Alas, paperwork doesn't really give a damn for distance, and neither do salesmen. Forget the errand she's meant to be running here, itself a shoddy excuse for a walk outside fortress walls, she's been trapped between an enthusiastic merchant enquiring after grandchildren and another talking up the virtues of teaching children strong Andrastian values through a little wooden prophet you can really set on fire,

(She's not wearing her armor. Clearly a mistake; no one assumes templars have money unless they're selling things that really aren't meant for children —)

"Warden," She seizes upon an escape route, ignore the faint air of desperation in her voice: "What a fine duck."

Nailed it.

"Looks like it is. Just can't figure out if a little nugget would like something like it."

Well, less a little nugget and more his little nugget. That was the major difference but he didn't bother to correct himself. Not when he was lifting it up and turning it around a few times before setting it down again. It was supposed to come apart somehow but he couldn't for the life of him figure out how to even start that.

Blast it but he knew he couldn't write to Felsi and ask what the kid would like. She'd lecture him for sure about not knowing what he liked and all that. As if he wasn't a terrible enough father already.

"Ten, was it?"

She turns over a pewter catapult, on rolling little wheels (throws an elbow out, terribly accidental, into the path of the oncoming salesmen).

Maker, if she remembers having anything so elabourate as this. Some other child would only have conspired to nick it — would have gotten his eyes blacked for the trouble. Wren sets it down again with a touch of reluctance.

"What did you enjoy at such an age?"

She's never heard much of Orzammar's children, but surely there are some constants.

What did he enjoy at that age? Well, he remembered one thing but it sure wouldn't make him seem all that spectacular. Probably make him look soft. So he didn't answer right away, obviously mulling it over a lot before he finally figured he might as well just say the sodding thing.

Actually no. He had to cover his backside first.

"You better not going around telling anyone what I played with when I was a nugget myself." Alright. All good to go.

"Had me this little carved bit of stone. Shaped like a bronto. Heh, I'd play with that thing more than all the other toys I had before I got an axe handed to me. Course it broke at some point. Fell a distance and that was that. Never got another one like it."

"Your secret is safe with me." Solemnly-intoned, but something tugs at the corner of her mouth — the harried tension of her shoulders slips a little more at ease. She debates a moment, before offering in turn, conspiratorial: "I'd a rag doll for a time; I was quite fond."

There, now they've both their small bit of leverage. Even ground.

"The bronto was only a bit of stone, no? What mattered of it more, the shape, or the possibilities? The stories you told with it?"

"Heh. Never took you for a doll type. Even for little you." Was kind of nice knowing that about her though. Made her more a person. Actually it made him like her more too. Their relationship was weird at best but there was something about it that suited him just fine.

"Liked about it, huh. Probably that it was malachite. Had some nice color to it. Not like a lot of those figures you see the little dwarves playing with in the richer parts. This one had some character to it."

He gave a bit of a shrug then looked at the duck again. "Bet he'd be able to figure this thing out. Got that brain from Felsi that's for sure."

"I did not say the doll went about unarmed,"

The words lift, clearly a joke, as she turns to lift a bundle of her own — and drops it with a startled curse. The Orlesian marionette clacks its finely-carved wooden jaws from behind an unnervingly painted, miniature mask. With her best attempt at dignity, Wren pointedly twists its hideous little face away.

There are dolls, then there are puppets. Frankly: Fuck that nonsense.

"I believe," She deliberates. "That it would suit. Still, there is much of you in him as well, I am certain."

It's an attempt at reassurance, however shoddy. Kids take more than just brains.

"He may enjoy the duck. But send him your story as well. It is that which he is more like to carry."

"Now that does sound more like you."

He laughed a bit before noting her reaction to the toy. Going over, he looked at the thing. Some sort of doll or puppet or something. Was she scared of those things? Her fine Templar ass was scared of a thing like that?

"Bad experience with some wood in the past?"

Believe it or not, that was not meant as a dirty joke.

She throws him a look, but if it is a cheap joke, it's not one she actually minds.

"They burned Andraste with it, you know,"

Which isn't an answer. The answer is that marionettes are terrifying abominations, and not the sort she's been trained to deal with.

"They make houses and tools with it too. Not sure why you'd have a problem with wood."

Or was it the puppet part? Maybe he should have asked about that instead. Oh well too late. He'd made his bed and all that.

[Open] Toy debates

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