faderift | [OPEN] A new world hangs outside the window

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[OPEN] A new world hangs outside the window

WHO: Kit + OPEN; starters for Cade and Benedict
WHAT: Just a catchall kind of post for early September.
WHEN: Throughout early September; sometime after Benedict is removed from solitary.
WHERE: Halfway between Lowtown and Darktown; around the Gallows, generally;
NOTES: None yet, will update as needed.

It's not quite mending broken fences with the people he's most recently pushed away, but Kit has taken some concrete steps towards getting his shit carefully pieced back together after the end of a particularly turbulent previous month.

I. A HOVEL SOMEWHERE BETWEEN LOWTOWN AND DARKTOWN

This is his home turf now:

It's a ramshackle sort of hole in the wall just off one of the too-beaten footpaths leading from Lowtown down, down into the dark; but in the morning, there's still a sliver of light that comes through the window, and that's enough for Kit.

Sharing lodgings with some other Inquisition personnel, while ostensibly the safer option, just doesn't suit him right now. And besides, one can hardly call his existence here lonely. Just about every evening when he comes home, he's got to escort the same blear-eyed drunk out of his dining area; "c'mon, Chuck, we did this yesterday--your place is just down the street a way's, need me to walk you there?" Etc. (Who even knows how the guy keeps getting in.)

Whoever used to make use of this hovel left some of their belongings behind; at present, Kit is setting out old crates of random junk near the street. Already, some of the stuff is being picked through by street kids and other urchins.

II. THE GALLOWS DUNGEON (BENEDICT)

Word reaches him via some avenue that the Tevinter kid has (finally) been removed from solitary confinement and placed in a new prison cell--this one far removed from the magister's. Kit isn't sure how much interaction those two are allowed anymore, and decides that it isn't his mess to sort out or clean up.

The guards don't give him any trouble when he arrives at the dungeons and states the purpose of his visit, but give him straightforward directions on how to reach Benedict's cell. Down the stairs he goes, a freshly lit cigarette tucked into one corner of his mouth, and he wanders down the corridor of cells--some empty, some sporting the odd occupant--until he finds Benedict.

Kit stops just outside the bars and looks in at him appraisingly. "Hey," he says--it's a pretty straight-forward greeting, all things considered.

III. AROUND THE GALLOWS

Whether or not the Scouting Division has staked its claim on specific hours for the purposes of training exercises, Kit has set aside time in the very early morning for taking certain members of the division (i.e., anyone Beleth Ashara has sent his way) through some remedial work. To him, the exercises are fairly basic: fighting stances; weapons and armour maintenance; how best to engage an opponent in close-range combat when one doesn't have the training in close-quarters combat. He'll save reconnaissance and other skills for a time after he's sure his current gaggle of students know enough to keep themselves alive in combat.

Once the training session is over and his students have dispersed, Kit takes a smoke break by the dingy ferry that shuttles Inquisition personnel back and forth between the Gallows and Kirkwall, then heads up to wherever the Other Powers research offices are situated.

[OOC: Please feel free to interact with Kit at any point during this series of events! Want to be part of the remedial training session? Go for it. Want to ambush him for conversation in the mess hall? Ambush away! This would also be an excellent opportunity for him to interact with anyone else who is part of the Other Powers special project.]

IV. LOWTOWN (CADE)

Whomever previously squatted in the hovel Kit has recently begun renting left behind a few belongings that seem too valuable to just toss out like garbage. He gave first dibs to the homeless and the urchins that haunt the roads and alleys near his new place; however, after a handful of days, there are some plates and other bits of crockery left behind that he's got no use for, and evidently no one else in Darktown does, either. Kit won't get much money selling them, but he knows of a place somewhere in Lowtown that will take donations for the poor--or at least, they did so when he was last in Kirkwall, after the Blight.

So that's where he is now, milling around in Lowtown after dropping off his donations (along with what little money he's got left that he can spare). He's ambling away from the front door of the shop when he spots the back of a familiar blonde head, accompanied by some drooping, hunched shoulders that belong to someone who looks so generally defeated by life that Kit finds he recognizes the fellow instantaneously.

He cuts his way neatly through the middling crowd to catch up to him. "Cade, right?" he starts, coming into his line of sight, and offers him an easy-going grin. "How's it going with you, salroka?"

Threaded | Flat

There's been a change in the boy since he came back from isolation, though not everyone would perceive it. He's still sullen and sour, still inclined to talk back, but it's all underpinned now by a tangible fear, the slow encroaching realization that he is completely without power and at the whims of his captors.
So even when Benedict is back in a normal cell, with sunlight and voices and a bed, he sits hunched in the corner and glares, unprepared for further abuses but trying to anticipate them anyway. The magebane is so constant that he's not sure he even remembers how to cast anymore, and the mere sight of a smiling face makes him want to rage.
But there's Kit, the only face that smiles.

"Hello," he says petulantly, glancing around in case it's a trick.

While Kit is having his meal at the mess hall, a certain... presence hovers gently over his shoulder. It honestly starts out looking like little more than a soap bubble, its mirror finish reflecting Kit's face back to him, a giant, flimsy fish-eye lens. But then it begins to bounce and glide this way and that insistently, pulsing and flickering and silently buzzing like a pesky gnat, just barely holding on to tangibility with every faint pulse.

Hurry up and finish, Kit. Or else this thing will start buzzing faster, in more dizzying circles, until you choose to get up and follow its lead.

Simon customarily uses the training yard at the asscrack of dawn as well, and is not accustomed to finding it this crowded. It's still easy enough to find a spot to do his own exercises without getting in the scouts' way or they in his, but he finds himself periodically watching them nonetheless, evaluating their efforts and how Kit teaches them.

He's pretty sure he recognizes Kit by voice and accent, but he's not sure enough of it to say anything--what if he's wrong, and then it'll seem like he thinks all dwarves sound the same? But waiting for the ferry together once axe and sword have been hung up for the morning calls for small talk, and he supplies it after a minute's silence.

"Would have been nice to have an instructor as pleasant as you while I was in training," he says. "Knight-Captain Viljam once told me to stop breathing so hard because I was wasting air that could be going to the better recruits."

Cade looks around when he hears his name, and takes a little too long to finally realize the voice is coming below, but he looks down in mild surprise to see Kit.
He's on his way somewhere, looking none too happy about it, and when Cade reveals his face it also becomes quite obvious that someone has worked it over recently. The swelling isn't what it was when he was first dragged off the street, but the bruises are an awful yellow-grey color that nonetheless proclaim just how bad his bad night was.

"Um... hello," he says uncomfortably, with his usual demeanor of looking like he wants to crawl out of his own skin for even being witnessed in public. He doesn't answer the question, since he doubts Kit will really want to hear the truth.

Why Oghren was here was a mystery that even he couldn't solve. But there he was and there he was spotting Kit at the same time. A grin came to his face when he saw the dwarf that he'd adopted as a friend. He was a good guy and they got along great. Course a lot of that came from being able to bond together before and he didn't regret that time for even a second. It had been awhile since he'd been able to talk to anyone from Orzammar who didn't hate him so this was...a relief actually.

"Huh. You know it actually looks pretty cozy here. Might even see if I can take up one of these places myself."

He laughed a bit. "Don't have a welcome present for you but I could treat you to a drink later."

(OOC: Continued from here.)

It's late enough in the evening when Kit arrives at their predetermined meeting place in the library stacks that most of the other apprentices and researchers have left for dinner, and to find other things to occupy themselves for the rest of the night. Only a few die-hard stragglers remain--including that creepy magister, though thankfully he's on the opposite end of the library from where Kit loiters now. To give his hands something to occupy themselves with (as he can't very well light up a cigarette here), he reviews the dossiers he'd brought with him as his pretence for speaking to Vandelin, alone.

The Other Powers project office is mostly a collection of boxes and disorganized files, but Kit is doing what he can to sort through it, discerning what's useful from what isn't. That's a tougher task than one might expect; Kit's predecessor evidently had greater expectations of his own abilities than were warranted.

Still--at least this office has a window. Kit currently has it cracked ajar so that he can lean against it, smoking a cigarette while sorting through some paperwork and waiting for his guest to arrive.

The Medicine Seller looked rather out of place among the shabby, Lowtown merchants with his colourful robes and the spread of elaborately decorated bottles, boxes, and jars. Why was he hanging around this dingy part of town? No one could say, but even though he drew a few curious glances, most gave him a wide berth.

The Medicine Seller had attracted much less wanted attention, however. There were three muggers, watching him from an alley like a hawk. He was an attractive target - he seemed absent minded, he didn't look particularly strong, was dressed in expensive looking clothing, wore far too much jewelry, and who knew what kind of profitable things he carried around in that giant box he had strapped to his back...? And who was going to miss some weird elf if, in the end, he decided he valued his money more than his life and they had to chuck him off the docks tied to some heavy rocks?

The Medicine Seller hadn't looked at them once, opting to seem oblivious, instead glancing down only occasionally at a set of bejewelled scales that swayed and turned on his finger like a weather vane. When Kit brought out a particularly large and shabby looking sealed pot, the scales tipped and the little bell hanging from the tray chimed softly.

He stood, and approached. The lurking muggers stared incredulously as he just left the huge wooden box as though he were certain no one would take it. In Lowtown of all places. Was he mad? He was probably mad. One of the smarter ones was already seeing red flags.

"Forgive my forwardness," he said, bowing his head to Kit. "But where," he inclined his head to the pot that a few of the urchins were already trying to make off with, "did you get that."

Edited 2017-09-15 04:41 (UTC)

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[CLOSED] starter for Vandelin

[CLOSED] starter for Julius

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