[OPEN] So Much Is At Stake

[madame_de_fer]

WHO: Character(s) Vivienne and OPEN
WHAT: Catchall leading up to Orlais happenings
WHEN: Beginning of the month up until Orlais event starts
WHERE: Skyhold (early) / Val Royeaux (one week before event start)
NOTES: Open to all. Val Royeaux segment is a shopping trip en route to Halamshiral (which is available for 'guests' to tag around with each other.) Prose or brackets is fine, I'll tag to match.

Early Solace
Courtyard
Even with whispers about ongoing strife in Orlais, little notes and letters finding Madame de Fer's hand confirming as much, she remains in Skyhold for the time being. Her business is much as it has been. No small part of her day is spent working with the younger mages present in the Fortress. With no Circle to provide these youngsters with solid training, they find themselves trouble in trying to alleviate their boredom. The best solution she's found is to take an active role in not only learning their names and personal quirks, but genuinely trying to seek out responsible mages to serve as mentors to guide them. Much of her time is spent finding suitable adults willing and able to work with their younger members.

Balcony
Not quite as many new mages are joining the Inquisition as there were in the early days. Those who do are often either Rifters, or rebels who didn't follow Fiona to Redcliffe, for good or ill. Regardless of affiliation, Vivienne attempts to stay apprised to the numbers of the magically gifted present in Skyhold. It's especially important that she does so now, as the recently appointed mage liaison. For her part, she tries to remain as available to find on her balcony as she may. When a new name is brought to her attention, an invitation is sent out to join her for tea where she holds court from her chaise lounge.

Anyone passing through the Main Hall of a late night might find her still awake upstairs and intent on an alchemy project.

Gardens
Any morning following a late night dabble with alchemy will find the Iron Lady strolling through the Skyhold Gardens. She examines the plants as she passes through, calm as always, though sometimes a thoughtful hum gives away her extra consideration of something she sees.

---

Val Royeaux
Convinced now that the Inquisition will be making a move into Orlais in short order, Vivienne's routine alters. She decides that a little detour en route for shopping is absolutely demanded. Nevermind that the capital is actually beyond where they will be traveling, or that it seems perhaps frivolous to be indulging in retail therapy when there are far more serious matters to attend to. She, of course, insists that if they are to deal with Orlesians, those agents should at the very least look presentable as such. No, plaidweave is unacceptable. Find something else. Shopping is happening. They've plenty of time to conclude their business and meet with the intended encampment at Halamshiral.

She doesn't travel to the capital alone, however. There are a number of people she's invited to join her for the excursion. Not all of them are particularly pleased to be present, but somehow the Iron Lady's gotten her way. Not that blackmail was involved in any way, that's far too cheap to someone who revels in playing the Game. However, her bullying victims might perhaps feel otherwise. She's arranged lodging for them all at Bastien's townhouse, though the Duke is not in residence at present. Playing hostess is quite fun for her, thus Vivienne will point out the best shops, the tastiest pastries, and of course the most ideal restaurants to see and be seen.

Her own personal shopping involves inspecting a golden pig, which she decides firmly against, browsing fabrics, pretty jewelry pieces, careful inspection of practically every bookseller she can locate, and much time inquiring with the local herbalists.

Comments

[foxsays]

Anger flashes across her face momentarily, there and gone in the blink of an eye; she's wary of causing a scene with the collective reputation they all have to uphold and with her own marked hand tucked beneath the table but she curls her hand into a fist, feeling the nails dig into the skin.

"There are always places and people where they believe they are so very civilised," she murmurs quietly, her other hand reaching across the table to squeeze Pel's, "while the rest of us are savage or, if we are lucky, perhaps we get to be exotic." Her lips twist on the last word; it is kinder than rabbit, and certainly kinder than knife-ear but it's come with uglier names too, with leers and looks, expectations. "But you are my friend and I'm buying you a drink while I'm here, and whatever else you would like, then once we're elsewhere? I'll let you know what do at home in these situations."

[mythalenaste]

Pel hesitates, shifts, looks briefly helpless as her eyes dart between Araceli and the surrounding Orlesians. She swallows, and speaks softly.

"Everyone hears about how Val Royeaux is the most glamorous place in the world. Even rumors round a trade blanket give you that. It's clean, educated, and has every wonder you can imagine. And now I'm here, I can't experience any of that. I can't...I've never...had to face being really limited, before. Even knowing that's how things are for elves everywhere, I never once...felt...not-free."

And this is what it's like for elves like Kallian and Sabine, doomed to see and not touch for their entire lives. And now Araceli is offering her a loophole by which she can not only see and touch, but taste. And there are elves all around them who can't have that and never will, if they don't steal it.

She rubs her face with her hands and pushes stray strands of hair back over her head, hands coming to rest behind her neck.

"Just...a glass of plain gin, please. I know you're supposed to get wine in Orlais, but I can't tell the difference between good wine and bad, so it'd be wasted on me."

[foxsays]

"Plenty of beautiful things in this life mask such ugly truths; you cannot polish a shit but you can roll it glitter," she says because she has the freedom here to get away with saying what she wants with getting in the least amount of trouble for it. "The same thing happens where I come from, only it's the nobles keeping down anyone that they think of as common. People like me: my mother is a whore, my father is a pirate, I am the most common sort of girl you can get, believe me. It...it was hard when I realised just what people thought of me because of who they were, or what they were. Because of the choices I made. There are ways to work around that but it takes a lot of time, a lot of patience, a lot of very careful work."

Araceli's entire existence over the past year is a loophole, a thief that rose too high for nearly every noble to stomach it. The worst sort, to now know their proper place; the quickest way to make her angry is to deny her the right to live as she sees fit, and to deny that to others.

"Wine is really only for dinner anyway, waiter! A glass of gin, for my friend." He isn't happy to comply but there is coin on the table, and Araceli's smile has an edge of steel that isn't to be trifled with. "I prefer Antiva to here already and I haven't even been here five minutes," she mutters once he's gone.

[mythalenaste]

"Do you think I could make people here read what I wrote?" She peers keenly at Araceli. "Do you have a trick for that? For making people listen and think?"

It's not really a criticism. She halfway hopes Araceli has some magic by which Pel can be effective in her mission. She has never really encountered a thing she could not do, or that couldn't be done, and being able to see injustice and having no power over it seems more impossible than Araceli having a trick up her sleeve for every occasion.

[foxsays]

Taking a sip of her brandy, Araceli allows herself a moment to think; she doubts Pel will like her answer. A few years ago a younger Araceli wouldn't have liked the answer she's about to give as she rolls the glass between her palms, taking a look around them as she collects her thoughts. After all, this is her life in the guard but even with all of them and the queen on board? Progress over the last year hasn't been easy.

"The world does not change overnight, and if it does then that is not always a good thing," she begins carefully her fingers circling the rim of her glass, making it sing very faintly, the hum of conversation, of Orlais being Orlais around them drumming it out. Pel is older than Araceli, at least she she's very sure that she is since it's tricky to tell with the elves precisely how old they are but it still feels odd sometimes to be giving the advice.

"Please don't think I am accusing you of this, I am not but firstly the world changing overnight makes people frightened, and that is never a good thing because the rich and the powerful will trample over the rest of us that they don't even see because they never look down as they try to get out of the way. Secondly," she pauses for another drink, "the world cannot be beaten into the shape you want it to be, it sounds ridiculous to say it but that isn't fair since there are still people that will get hurt that way. You have to a more gentle touch if you want change to last, for it to come about properly. That takes time. Hearts and minds have to be won, and that is...that is frustrating," she grits her teeth on the last word, that particular sort of knowing that comes out, that draws her brows together. "Believe me, for every step you take forward, there will be people ready to knock you back and kick you into the gutter, or to use any sort of rumour or story against you personally where they might seek an apology as if you were somehow involved, or to hold you to account for anything and everything ever done by your people.

tw: mention of violence

[mythalenaste]

In the city, Pel is only a child. Years don't matter. This is a world entirely foreign to her. Here, she has no power. Oh, she could hang these nobles by their ankles from the trees at a gesture, but it would only cause problems. Her word means nothing here. If the soldier who beat her all those weeks ago had been a citizen of Val Royeaux and he'd caught her here instead of there, nobody would have stopped him. That same attack would have left her dead at worst, arrested at best. Arrested and Tranquil, no doubt.

The gin arrives. Pel stares straight through it for a moment. She looks from it to Araceli.

"I...I gave up being a Keeper. But I never gave up my oath to protect the People, and the People need my protection. I can't sit in some ivory tower and hope somebody else gives them shelter. The Dalish won't. The humans certainly won't. The qunari do, but at what cost? Why don't they have a better alternative? Why do the Dalish think it's more important to repeatedly resuscitate the old ways than to help people who are living here and now, and have nowhere to turn?"

She's growing somewhat angry. A fist curls over the tabletop. Her gin is left untouched.

[foxsays]

Elven politics aren't something Araceli is versed in. The agreement she made with Leliana isn't even so much an agreement as stating the obvious: Beleth should be the one to focus on elven matters, with Araceli lending her support as needed, and Araceli will work to help the mages since her heart lies there. There aren't elves where she comes from. There isn't the same sort of oppression to unravel and pick through, to try to imagine, and what Pel says makes her tap her fingers against her glass thoughtfully.

Araceli's culture is in some ways like the Dalish. But Araceli has grown up as common as a city elf, looked down upon by the nobles, called a hundred different things and told she shouldn't be in certain places even if the same blood runs in her veins as theirs, as if the country isn't her home too.

"You can't protect everyone, and there will always be those who dig their heels in. People who resist and fight to hold to what they had. In the ancient days my people had an empire below the waves as well, when we were parted from it we built our ships and took to sailing, we have the culture we have now. I...I cannot say how we were able to move on but for the love of the sea, that we wished to roam with our hungry hearts to see more, to share that love with others, to see what else there was. Even now that still drives us. To remind folk that we came out of the ocean, that before we ever walked we swam." It's an aside, but not one she mentions often here since she spent so very long before so very aware of what it was to be a rifter, to be in a land not her own where even her body wasn't entirely as it was.

But it's speaking with Sabine that she remembers more than anything else, along with a certain set of nobles who looked at her or spoke to her at home in a way that made her want to scrub her skin. "Calma calma, Pel, people are always watching. You have to listen to them too though, the people actually living in places like this, in the alienages or wherever else they live in the human cities. You might have an oath but what does that matter when you come face to face with what they want or what they need? There are so many people out there without a voice - you don't have one, not here, not to so many people but you have the Inquisition. You have friends. You have connections. You can offer that. Extend a hand, support them, give them a stage and allow them to tell their stories too."

[mythalenaste]

There's a long pause. Pel's fingers trace the pattern of the wood in the table. Not her voice. Her voice is irrelevant anyway. She is a free woman. It's other voices that need to speak. But she is a published author, with a publisher that doesn't care she's an elf writing about elf things and a solid ally in Varric Tethras. She is also trained to be a Keeper. That's two stages.

She appears to resolve, though the only resolution she has made is to make a resolution. She has at least two ways of making change that are obvious to her now. Or semi-obvious. Two ways forward, with any number of branches in each path. If she has the fortitude to walk them. She inhales as if her body is waking up from the emotional slump.

"Thank you." There's another pause as she gets her bearings. "I've only been at sea once, but I think I understand. About your people. The Dalish have aravels in the woods instead of ships at sea, but I know the feeling."

[foxsays]

"Castileos has always been our home, it's above and below; glass floors so we can see and we did build on the foundations of the past but," she shrugs and knocks back the last of her drink because it seemed so simple to her ancestors and she finds it so difficult in Thedas. To be so mired in everything that came before. To not want to reach towards the future as well with outstretched hands, excited and eager, chasing the horizon as if the sun is the greatest golden coin you have ever gazed upon.

"Yet wherever there is the sea? That's home too. The waves, the ships, the crew; my father has never slept a single night on land." I have never been so far from the sea for so long, she thinks as she looks around at the cafe, knowing that somewhere beyond the walls and the tables and the quaint little draperies there's an artificial body of water with red-and-gold canopied boats. "We didn't lose so much as your people did. We have always been free, and when my home had a war, my country ended it. It's probably why we're still so very loud about freedom for everyone, and following your heart and your desires, and being in love with life itself. All the things Thedas likes to believe are impossible outside of stories that happen to other people." Meaning people not like Araceli or Pel.