[ open?? closed? schrödinger's log?? ] heroes always get remembered

[goodforsaken]

WHO: Lex Luthor, assorted guest stars, and YOU??
WHAT: General intro purposes? Get you some arms and armor made, Inquisition! Geek out in the library! Be confused by the incongruous noble all up in the Undercroft!
WHEN: Approximately now - the end of August.
WHERE: Skyhold: the Undercroft + Library + the buffet option
NOTES: Starters in comments. As it stands no warnings are required; I'll edit here a/o subject lines if that changes. Here is Lex's info post for anyone who'd like to run with the idea that they've heard of him/had contact before!

Being possessed of the incredibly informed opinion most not!Orlesians have of Orlais when they've only ever visited and spoken mostly to people wearing silly hats, Lex is more than comfortable with his first forays into the Inquisition taking place in Skyhold and not Halamshiral. That's where he's ultimately most useful anyway; he suffers no illusions regarding any diplomatic capabilities that don't involve ensnaring largeish globs of money.

The day side ....globbage occurs, however, is not this day or, nor is it whatever other days this log ends up involving. No, instead here we are in Skyhold, where Lex's general occupancy encompasses the following:

Comments

mid-to-late august.

[elegiaque]

The next time Gwenaëlle finds him, it's in the same place as the last time - a bit less harried, none of the birdlike distraction that made it seem like she might blow out again with the wind in her haste to look at everything and be done again. Asher is gone, his funeral done, almost everyone she knows in Skyhold either in Orlais or off on some other adventure; there's no where else she urgently needs to be this very minute.

"Hello," she says, blithely, as if she makes a habit of visiting the undercroft.

(She does not.)

"I thought I would - see if you'd had any time for Kieran's dragon." She doesn't expect finished, but maybe something to look at. Besides anything else she might have come down here, incidentally, to look at.

[goodforsaken]

Well, if anything else might have been Lex's arms, they are all ...out and stuff, just being muscley and lean and awful how dare he--anyway. The look he gives her highlights that this is not exactly a usual haunt for her, but not in the sense that she can be expected to state her business quickly (even though she does) and then resume unhaunting it. It's just wry. As is the "Lady Vauquelin," with which he greets her, gesturing expansively in a 'one moment please' little wave.

The fact is, her being here isn't any more a departure than his not completely ignoring a person who doesn't have some direct benefit to him, so, not a bad start. Lex's player does not have all the talents he does, so this is ...definitely stolen from the internet, but look, we have to have something for our pretendy funtimes here and no one is making any money, so! So. Like most Thedosians he's never seen a dragon, but he did all that research and found enough similar elements to have created cohesive imagery. For a medium sized child, probably the most important element is that it has lots and lots of teeth.

Which Gwen may indeed look at! Along with all the rest of the important dragony bits, probably most closely resembling that Ferelden Frostback guy everyone tries to kill while they're way underleveled. Nothing assembled or finely detailed yet, but coming along.

"You're not in Halamshiral," he observes, somehow making it sound like this is a profound depth of discovery. Then again the fact that he gives even the remotest of shits is kind of profound, to be honest.

[elegiaque]

The arms are a problem. Or a solution, depending on your perspective, certainly to the immediate problem of 'not knowing any other smiths particularly well to ask this of', and also 'having something to look at when she visits the Undercroft', which in fairness is a problem she wouldn't have otherwise because she's never visited the Undercroft prior to following Yngvi's recommendation here.

It's all very complicated.

Plans and parts of dragons are much more immediately compelling than talking about Halamshiral - she very nearly just wiggles her shard-hand under his nose, but a glance sideways and some forethought and, all right, he is probably being slightly more specific. In this case. What with everyone having taken off to Orlais, specifically. She curls her fingers into her sleeve, instead, mostly instead of fidgeting with the edge of her neckline where she isn't even a little bit self-conscious about the scarring. Not even at all.

"Lots of people are in Halamshiral," she says, shrugging, unhooking her reading glasses from their chain at her hip to get a better look at the plans he's assembling. "Doing lots of terribly useful things, I'm sure. I'd only get in the way."

[goodforsaken]

Lex's eyeline follows her hand and drops; like a corvid of some kind it's like he's attracted to the movement, but it doesn't linger. He probably would have looked at her neckline the same way, a mixture of curiosity the way he looks at everything, then a sort of--especial layer of that, not the type of glance he gives much else.

If she likes she can actually pick up a few of the prototype pieces to look at, because eyeballing up little disconnected dragon legs and wings and heads is definitely what she came here to do, right? Right!

"I feel much the same, actually," he informs her; it's humorous, one hand curved around his mouth like they're sharing a confidence of the most intimate sort. "Not about getting in the way. But I have trouble imagining you making yourself deliberately unobtrusive."

[elegiaque]

Right, definitely, which is why it's one of those dragon wings her fingers tighten around when he makes his observation - presses her lips together in a small, odd smile and shakes her head, a little rueful in a way that she doesn't seem to be immediately inviting him into. "People keep saying things like that to me, lately," she says, holding the wing up beside the plans on paper and squinting at it, imagining.

"But I don't think there's anyone's attention in Orlais I'm in such dire need of," more lightly, smiling the very slight distance up at him. (There probably aren't a lot of people in Skyhold shorter than Lex, but she manages to be one of them.) "They can all read my work the same as anyone else without my being there to watch them do it, I think."

And she much prefers that.

[goodforsaken]

It's true, according to a certain unofficial Skyhold census the people shorter than he are pretty much entirely elves and dwarves, hurr. Whatever, that just means he's closer to the Stone. Which if he believed in any religious concept, it would be that. He doesn't, however--what he does believe in is the ability of a person to be exceptional on their own merits. To wit:

"Do they? Should I be pleased to be upholding common standards? Or embarrassed to be so common?"

Ha, ha ha. He's just going to rest on the idea that while it might not be dire, he could probably hold her attention here. At least a little. With ridiculous wordplay and dragon parts.

[elegiaque]

Gwenaëlle scrutinises him carefully, which is really only helped by the fact she does it over the thin, gold rims of her reading glasses, lips quirked to one side, a little tilt back of her chin to get, presumably, the more thorough picture of the man. That she doesn't actually frame him with her fingers is presumably a show of unprecedented restraint in a young lady not known for that at all, except when trying to get Sisters Nightingale to become less interested in her and her affairs.

"I don't think," she says, at length and after apparently much deliberation, "that you are either very common or think yourself to be."

And she doesn't mean the title, although 'nobleman becomes blacksmith' is sort of inherently unlikely, and one of the things which caught the attention he now has and might yet hold. He doesn't seem quite in step with everything around him, but indifferently, in the same sort of a way as she's so admired in Morrigan.

Standing in the middle of a river and saying, you, water. Go around me.

[goodforsaken]

That's damn right. Also, carry my bags upstream, if you would.

Uh. Anyway. He does what is only semiconsciously a similar lip quirk; his mouth turns down at the corners, giving his resting face a deceptively pensive cast, so his one-sided smiles are S-shaped. As it's been said before but must be defined again.

"The lady is perceptive." He's ...like composed entirely of ego and good hair. "I do strive not to be. But the same could be said of yourself, no? You can't be what's common in Orlais."

Spoken like a Marcher who has never been there, even if he's. You know, correct.

[elegiaque]

A factual observation. Possibly nothing more or less, although she thinks it's a compliment, actually. She wants it to be a compliment, it tastes like one, it isn't even as if she so admires all of those things she isn't - but where it lodges between her ribs is an old wound still sluggishly bleeding and although her smile comes quick it isn't pretty, not those first few moments.

After that. She can be winsome, when she wants to be - but not at first.

"The lady is a thing unto herself," she says, playful, as if pretending that never happened means it didn't. "It's more interesting that way."

[goodforsaken]

Lex often lets things like that go by, because the last thing he wants to do is poke the sluggish wounds of other people--then you have to either deal with the fact that they're bleeding, or not deal with it, and frankly although he is far more comfortable with the latter than sane people, well.

"It was a compliment," he clarifies, looking at her with far more bald scrutiny than she would probably like, then, look softening: "But I can see that."

That the lady is a thing unto herself. On anyone else it would be flirty, but it cannot possibly be on Lex, because like, that would mean the world was ending and it's already doing that.

[elegiaque]

A number of protests come to mind and the tip of her tongue; that she knew that, what's he fucking looking at, everyone compliments her because she's perfect, thanks much. How presumptuous, to reassure her -

The other thing his face does, though. The thing that isn't looking uncomfortably through her and all of her weaknesses. She likes that, slightly more than she wants to - to embarrass herself any further with transparent objections.

"I think I do better here."

Stop the presses because she's not said as much out loud before.