Chance is the only game I play with, baby

[foxsays]

WHO: Araceli Bonaventura, Korrin Ataash, Anders, Fenris, Schrödinger's Teren
WHAT: The wooing of Capitán Gloriana Valdez by the Inquisition
WHEN: While everyone's adrift
WHERE: Llomerryn
NOTES: ooc post + full plot details

Gathering everyone together is the first bit of the easiest step of the plan. Settling them all at a table marginally more difficult considering who the company are (a Warden, two mages, a warrior, a rogue, not everyone best suited to liking one another but needs must) with less friendly, more curious eyes than Kirkwall on them as Araceli makes sure to keep herself between Korrin and Anders at the table when she comes back with drinks.

"Each captain is master - or aims to be - of their own destiny and of their ship but like everything it's about who you influence; is it your ship, is it a few ships, a small fleet, or is your word law?" Araceli leans close over her rum (watered, insultingly watered because she's a stranger and she hasn't earned the rights to the good stuff no matter how like them she looks without the hand or what she knows of a ship) with a smile as if she's telling a great story. That's what friends do in taverns. The people at the next table go back to their cards and Llomerryn Red. "I know the woman: Capitán Gloriana Valdez. A woman of reputation, three ships to her name, ties to the Felicissima Armada.

"Now," she pauses to take a drink, "what I'm proposing is that we go to her local - the Maker's Mark, what a name for a tavern, here of all places, "we need to woo her. So drink up, if you don't know the way we can all go, we look suitably roguish or fearsome or interesting to get in the door, some of us have faces befitting of reputation, no?" As plans go, it's a nice simple plan. Locate captain, woo captain, rewards. But she expects questions because you know, fearsome pirate captain, how does one woo a pirate captain, has anyone else heard tale of this dreaded woman and so on but it's a start at least.

(If anyone says what can go wrong she might try to sell you for kraken bait.)

Comments

epilogue;

[foxsays]

When all is said and done, a thief locked away in a brig, debts settled at the card table, bodies sobered with the local fare to soak up Andraste's Mercy (isn't there something to be said there? Raider Queen's bread of many tongues or Llomerryn red to accomplish that), and Araceli calls everyone into a back room.

Slightly more sober, having tried to watch things she'd been slid off to one side after Teren had taken her leave of Gloriana, she ushers everyone into a more crowded backroom where there's just enough room for them to sit if they don't mind sharing their arm rests, a desk between them and the captain. Candles burn low, some close to guttering out, papers, pouches of coin, a map weighted down at the corners with pins stuck in it, little ships.

Gloriana herself sat with a key in her hands.

"As I said, Llomerryn was not our intended destination but we recognise the value in having friends elsewhere," Araceli repeats for the benefit of everyone joining them; she's diplomacy, Madame de Cedoux's attache so trying to speak well here is something she should attempt.

"We could make pirates of you yet, if you ever changed your minds," Gloriana concedes. She's almost smiling, toying with the key before flipping into a hand she closes into a fist. "Thinking to steal from me...here of all the damned places."

"Capitán," gently, almost appeasing before Araceli smiles a thief's smile, girlish bravado she doesn't feel right now, "we came tonight to extend the hand only to you, and I don't believe I'm alone in wanting to know why someone would want to steal from you."

She looks over them, settles her gaze on Teren who caught the thief for longest, who heard what she said and then on Korrin who drank and spoke with her for such a time. "These are the keys to my brig."