A Very Official Party

[arlathvhen]

WHO: Division leaders and everyone who signed up
WHAT: The leaders + the viscount are throwing a very fancy party to introduce Inquisition people to Hightown nobles and prove that they aren't demons
WHEN: 29th of Harvestmere (day before Satinalia)
WHERE: Some mansion in hightown
NOTES: OOC post!

The mansion of the hightown noble tasked with hosting the party is tastefully decorated for the event.
There's a few references to the approaching Satinalia here and there, but it is clearly not a costume
party, and none of the nobles are wearing masks. Tomorrow they may done their costumes, but for now,
it's important for the Inquisition for faces to be be seen.

There's plenty of food to be had, either on a table off to a side, or via one of the servants carrying
around trays, filled will little snacks and glasses of wine. Inquisition guests will be forewarned
that while they are not prohibited from drinking--It would, after all, look super sketchy if the
entire Inquisition abstained from drinks--they are under no circumstances to become intoxicated.

The other guests are the nobles, who look like an indecisive mixture of excited, gleeful, and
terrified. There's an air about them as they chatter amongst themselves that they are currently
engaged in something quite thrilling, if dangerous. Talking to the rifters! Possible demons, right
before their eyes! They clump into their own groups for the most part, but as the party starts in
earnest, braver souls will begin to peel off from the others to go inspect the guests and speak to
them. As the party winds on, the groups will slowly begin to disperse and mix with the Inquisition
freely.

Inquisition guests are, naturally, encouraged to approach these groups or individuals directly.

Closer to the end of the night, the division leaders will break off from the rest of the party, and
along with the Viscount, make their way off to a private room to converse on how the affair has gone.

Try to behave while they're gone (and in general) or you might find yourself facing a list of the
worst jobs Petra could concoct the next morning.

Comments

[ragweed]

He has to move a little closer to her along the balcony and turn his good ear in her direction; it's a slight tell regarding his partial deafness, but not a particularly large one. Still, poor hearing or not, he's a good listener in the ways that matter, and he's quiet as she speaks her piece. What an earnest soul--

"Kit Gandir," he replies in kind, taps the ash off of his cigarette, and takes another quick drag from it. "I work with the scouts who need to sharpen up their combat skills." Which is a lot of them. "And someone thought I'd be the right choice to run the Other Powers project, but." A shrug. "We'll see how that one shakes out, I guess."

A pause, and a sympathetic grimace. "Sorry folks here are treating you like garbage. It's not right." It won't change anything to hear the words, but sometimes it helps to hear them all the same.

[foxsays]

Far from the tallest of young ladies, Araceli turns closer; a private conversation that should give the idea that only something urgent is to interrupt it. There's always having to swallow something you'd rather not after all, that's how life is, but it rubs her the wrong way to have other people put names to her again.

"They can complain about their aches and pains while they live, they'll all be thankful for the training when it keeps them or someone else from worse." Who doesn't complain about training sessions after all, they've all been there, even sparring practice to keep sharp can feel like an ordeal if you're wedging it in there. "The Inquisition doesn't make many selections blindly, they see something in a person that they think makes them the right person for the job. I've got naval presence, and I work under Madame de Cedoux alongside Enchanter Elris in diplomacy." Too polite for first names if she has a title for a person, even if she knows the name. Leaning a little closer again, she continues. "Bravado helps, when it feels like everything is going nowhere, when you're doing about as much good as shouting at the tide."

Story of the Inquisition at times: shouting at things you can't change but someone might overhear you so maybe one day that thing will change somewhere down the road.

"No one is as rude as it was in the earliest days, etiquette works both ways." Her sigh is a sharp little thing, frustrated more at herself for allowing it to work its way under her skin. "I think of myself as a member of the Inqusition before I'm anything else, having to go through the song and dance of setting it to rights when another person puts names to you? It's tiring, no?" She doesn't know too much of dwarves but she knows a little.

[ragweed]

"I think of myself as a member of the Inqusition before I'm anything else, having to go through the song and dance of setting it to rights when another person puts names to you? It's tiring, no?"

A brief laugh, mirthless as the white smile that follows it, and Kit lifts his cigarette up for another puff. "Yeah, that sounds about right," he says wryly to the night, breathes out a plume of smoke, and then regards the burning cherry with a wistful, slightly bitter look on his face. "Though I guess when the rest of the world seems like it's gone tits up, it's a little reassuring to know that people are pricks topside, too."

When she mentions Vandelin, the bitterness ebbs away, replaced by something warmer. "You work with Vandelin, eh?" he asks, not bothering to hide the familiarity in his tone. Possibly Araceli didn't see them enter together--quite the odd couple--but even if she hadn't, there's no mistaking the fondness in his tone.

[foxsays]

"This is how it goes. Call it what you want but we all have some way of governing because it's in our nature to twist and turn on one another; there's always a fight." If he's leading the scouts then she might as well offer what she can pass off as the bard's perspective on the matter even if it isn't that, if it came before. Treaties, tariffs, trade agreements, remarks made in passing over wine in your finest clothes rubbing elbows together.

It's all the same thing. They're all here for a reason. To get something done tonight, to make an impression on the influential people of Kirkwall that they can call the good people of Kirkwall because it flatters the ego jst right. "For them we look like something that fits the story that came before," the Qunari as the foreign heretical invaders, a Viscount lost, a mage rebellion that exploded a scant few years after. "Dwarven politics playing the same games doesn't surprise me. They do the same at home too - the dance steps are different, the colours."

A small nod at that. "A recent thing, we didn't get the chance to meet until the island, that can hardly count. People will talk," and it's-- not pitying. More sympathetic, knowing. Skyhold gave her time to get used to it when the stakes felt lower.

[ragweed]

"People will talk."

Kit glances down at the burning cherry on the end of his cigarette, then brings it up for another drag. He blows out a whorl of smoke and watches a gust of crisp cold wind carry it away. "They always do," he replies, a small smirk tugging at the corners of his mouth. If he knows Vandelin at all, he'll find the scandal flattering.

A conversation with Melys suddenly tugs at his memory. He smiles at Araceli again. "You're with Korrin, aren't you?"

[foxsays]

Watching the smoke, she's reminded of late nights on the docks with sailors, wrapped tight in her coat with the rattle of dice in cups or the hushed whisper of cards over the lapping of the waves against the hulls of their ships. Each time she finds a familiar thing it's a comfort. Not quite an anchor but as close as she'll allow herself to get.

"Information is worth its weight in gold." A bard knows these things. A thief knows it better, all the things she stole and sold in the past. "To be a fly on the wall of some dining rooms and kitchens come tomorrow morning, can you imagine? Rifters, elves, mages, all of them in positions of power in their city?" Still managing to smile; they're sending the message the right way tonight, hopefully. Politely. Well-heeled. All polished manners and flawless courtesies.

As ever, any mention of Korrin pulls out a particularly fond smile, eyes bright. "I am indeed, two years when First Day comes again. You've met?"

[ragweed]

"We did," Kit replies affably and taps the ash off his cigarette. "We were both part of the group that went down to the Korcari Wilds with the Arcane Advisor, a few months back." There he grows uncomfortably silent for a moment; the shaman's words have become a haunting refrain that visits him when his mind is left idle for too long. He clears his throat and wrangles his thoughts back to the present. "I haven't seen her too much since then, but things've gotten busy pretty fast."

[foxsays]

"Sirena and her bogs - do you know that after going to the Fallow Mire with what was most of the Inquisition, she went back? Willingly?" More fool Araceli for going with her to aid in wisp hunting. The shrug is helpless: what can you do when someone you love wants to go wade in murky stagnant water and reeds for their living? Korrin isn't here to defend herself, her girlfriend can tease all she likes with her fondest smile.

"Before some of us were off to collect the new rifters with the stay on the island then Llomerryn, Korrin was in Wycome." There's a hint of what sounds like regret on her part too. "I was meant to go there with her but as you said, things were busy and I know how to sail. She managed to meet us all in Llomerryn, catch the same ship back here."

[ragweed]

Kit's lips tug up into a white, lopsided smile at Araceli's teasing, and he chuckles some. They make a pair so oddly and perfectly suited to each other, he decides; they complement each other well.

"I'm glad she caught up with you," he tells her, and a look in his eyes shows that he means it, that it isn't just some trite platitude said because it's the polite thing to say. He takes one final drag off his cigarette, then puts out the cherry and flicks it over the balcony. "It was wearing on me, not knowing what was going on with Vandelin. I'm pretty sure he didn't tell me the worst of it, but I heard stories. Sea serpents and sod like that." He grimaces, rubbing his jaw, gaze gone distant.

[foxsays]

Considering Vandelin in his fine robes? Araceli could certainly say the same at least from the picture the pair of them have to paint together. She'll have to look when they rejoin the party, see what noble looks like they've swallowed an appetiser the wrong way.

"Emprise du Lion was worse, truthfully. The Winter Palace too. When it's what people can do to other people it never quite matches up to anything else after you've sewn up the sails, patched the hull, caught your breath." No one died, she thinks, mouth bitter as the wine she'd downed before finding her way out here. "Being able to see what the red lyrium does to the rest of the world that has no part in this war was painful, creatures suffering and driven to madness. We have serpents in my home. And krakens. But these beasts lashed out, the kraken especially was what forced us to stop in Llomerryn from the damage the ship sustained.

"Even the island had scaled cats. I didn't know cats could come with scales unless they'd gotten into the fish. I've been the one stuck behind and the one in a terrible place. Sometimes," she can't speak to Vandelin's reasoning but well, she'll hazard a guess as someone with a partner, "you say less because that person can't do anything. They'd want to but you're there and they aren't. They'll turn it over in their head. They'll worry. If they have another job to do what if you distracted them from it? At first it wasn't very clear how any of it was going to go right after we landed and got the rifters."