PLAYER PLOT: The Least of His Children

[pinprick]

WHO: Nathaniel Howe, Felix Alexius, Anders, James Norrington, Kaisa Daesun, Fenris, Araceli, Inessa.
WHAT: A quest to rescue a slave.
WHEN: August 26
WHERE: Tevinter
NOTES: Will update. Plotting post is here.

The Mastermind: Nathaniel Howe
The Game: Green Goods
The Grifter: Felix Alexius
The Mark: Magister Leo Valerius is an ailing old man, but his mind is sharp. His main concern of late has been to leave his sons a good inheritance, though he isn't exactly straight-up greedy.
The Prize: Alavda Endris is a slave to Valerius. The bad news is that she almost never leaves his side. The good news is that that makes her easy to find.

The Plan: One team is sent in, with Felix dressed as a minor lordling and his entourage trying to climb the social ladder by schmoozing an old magister. Felix claims to be staying as a guest of a nearby lord (technically true) and only visiting for the day. Valerius must believe this boy is an upstart with no political value and too much money.

Another team performs a heist and gains the money Valerius keeps at this estate by pretending to be contractors hired to work on the floorboards in the room with the vault door (an appointment Valerius set up months ago and our team hijacked). Planting bees in the floorboards will clear the room of guards. Felix pretends to fall in love with Alavda and asks to borrow her from Valerius. If Valerius hesitates, Felix offers him more and more money until he consents. He has loaned Alavda to other lords before, and Felix's show of being petulant and stupid should help wear away any suspicion that this is a set-up. In that way, it's a basic hustle. Once Valerius consents, Felix then sends an attendant outside to fetch that amount from the money stolen from Valerius' vault. The entourage departs, claiming to be returning to the local lord's house. They leave with Alavda and return to Skyhold.

MAJOR OBSTACLES:

Alavda is wearing an enchanted collar which allows Valerius to locate her. If it is cut away or in most any other way removed, it sends a massive and lethal shock through her system. The team will need to find a way to remove the collar without killing Alavda.

If/when the collar is removed, Valerius will send people to find her.

Valerius has about twenty guards on his property.

The vault door operates on reacting to a specific keystone which cannot be found, but aside from the magical lock, the mechanism is still a mechanism. A good thief can crack it.

IMPORTANT NOTE: It is vital that the members of this team keep their involvement and mission details secret before and after the mission. It must not get out that Inquisition members and affiliates were involved in hustling a magister.

Comments

[solutus]

Fenris doesn't look up from stitching the hole in the seam of his spare leggings when he's joined by a closeby presence, the Castilean woman that he knows to be Araceli, and her fox. They settle quietly, the sort of lithe quiet exclusive to those skilled in clandestine arts.

They sit for a short while, the fire crackling and throwing soft shadows over the the clearing. Every once and a while Fenris looks up toward the black forest outside the reach of the light and listens, his ears cocking like the fox's, before turning to his mending again. He's caught at it after a while, Araceli's question a whisper cutting through the relative silence.

"We have too many fires. Make too much noise," he says, shaking his head. "There is always something 'out there'. I just hope it's more than a matter of time before we are detected."

[foxsays]

"I don't think many people here have had to make a life out of being light on their feet," she murmurs, not exactly a complaint but she's aware. At least she's getting plenty of practice in at maintaining a perfectly neutral expression, and saying absolutely nothing when she wants to snap because that won't help at all but--

People are loud. Certain people are louder than others. It's grating. How have they survived this long, she sometimes wonders.

"You think ambush then." Tiredness flattens the question out of her voice but it makes as much sense as anything else, when there's this much secrecy to what they're doing. If the Inquisition lends the air of legitimacy that keeps them mostly safe and unmolested on the roads, this ragged band doesn't have that to fall back on. Just whatever lie they can try to cling to through their teeth.