faderift | OPEN ↠ HARING EVENT

WHO: All
WHAT: WINTER IS HERE
WHEN: Haring 15-Wintermarch 1
WHERE: The Gallows, Kirkwall
NOTES: You can use this post as an event-style mingle log, or just use it as background information for your RP elsewhere!

It's been a chilly month already, but in mid-Haring the temperature suddenly plummets. One day it's merely cold, and the next morning the Inquisition wakes to frost on the inside of the window panes and an icy draft whistling through every crack in the tower's masonry. Downstairs, the pipes that feed the bathing chambers and the kitchens creak in the walls, loud enough to be heard even out in the courtyard, where they run beneath the stones, and around midday, when the sun has failed to raise the temperature above freezing, a blocked pipe finally gives, cracking open to spill water across the central court and send it running down side passages. The whole area floods several inches deep and almost immediately begins to freeze, presenting at first a gigantic, treacherous slush puddle and, after a few hours, a sheet of sheer ice.

Melting a safe path from door to door and laying down sand or wood to keep it from becoming slick again is a simple enough undertaking, but before the entire courtyard can be thawed, someone appears with ice skates—and that’s a better idea, surely, for at least a few days. Anyone who complains about the frivolity can be assured it’s good exercise, not to mention good training for a force that may have to travel or fight on ice in the future.

Temperatures remain cold enough that even some parts of the harbor begin to freeze, first just at the calmest edges of the shoreline, and then the more protected nooks and crannies of the bay, inlets and the spaces between piers and beneath docks. It snows most days--not real storms, just a couple inches here and there--little enough for the window to blow most of it off the icy plain of the courtyard and other wide open, paved spaces, accumulating on branches and in alleyways, and creating growing drifts in corners and against walls.

After a week or so actual chunks of floating ice begin to fill the narrow channels of the harbor, threatening smaller and less-sturdy vessels, and the situation in the poorer parts of the city begins to grow dire. With the Viscount's blessing, Inquisition teams (particularly mages) are called in to help. Some are assigned to the docks, to clear ice that makes landing and unloading treacherous, others to help escort ships into harbor by melting a path ahead. Others are sent into Lowtown to clear ice and snow and to provide warmth and medical attention where needed. At least one mage is sent with each team, and while many neighborhoods are pleasantly surprised and grateful for the quick work fire glyphs make of cold hearths and frozen streets, a few are unable to overcome their distrust, and refuse the teams entry, determined to take care of their own without the help of dangerous outsiders.

In the last week of the year, a true blizzard strikes, snow falling steadily for more than a day, blanketing the city at least three feet deep. Digging out the Gallows will be a group effort, and most non-essential trips outside the base will be cancelled for a few days until travel is less difficult, while those who reside in the city or elsewhere may be encouraged to stay a night or two in the fortress so they might continue to work without traveling through the storm. But on the first day of Wintermarch the First Day feast goes on as planned, with modest but plentiful food and ale served in the Gallows' dining hall for anyone who wishes to celebrate the new year.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Herian straightens up slowly from her task, stacking firewood. She seems probably less emotive than she would have on the trip to Starkhaven. On the way there, she'd been carrying a spark of energy and excitement, contained as they were. Now she seems more severe and serious, the pallor of her skin making her seem as though she were carved from rock, rather than a living person.

"My thanks, Ser Ashlock, but I can work a while longer. I am sure there are others in greater need of relief than I."

Possibly not, by the same token - she's been doing this for a long time. "It was thoughtful of you to attend."

He doesn't know enough to guess why, doesn't keep up with the crystals as he should, or speak to their mutual acquaintances about it. But that granite reserve is not lost on him, even without its context.

"There may well be, but it doesn't follow that you should run yourself ragged until you're the one who needs it most. At least let me help."

He isn't entirely sure what to say to that last. I came on orders would sound unkind in a way he certainly doesn't mean, when it's not a hardship to come and help, and he does shiver in sympathy at the thought of being out here for as long as she has. Or perhaps she means something else by it.

"It's nothing," he offers, as an addition. "Truly."

She stills a moment, before making her reply. Her instinct is to beg him begone, but she cannot. It would be poorly done, to dismiss a fellow knight, who had done her the kindness of looking to her well being. A slight against him and his duty, and foolish on her part.

There is a brief silence, before she exhales, and nods. "You speak rightly, Ser Ashlock, of course. I thank you."

Solitude would led her only to despair, and what then? What demons might she face when next she sleeps, if she carries on so? She steps back, allowing the Templar access to the wood needing to be moved.

"Have you any news of Starkhaven? Are they experiencing the winter so bitterly?"

He hastens to take over with the firewood, hauling it from the sleigh and pausing with his arms full of it, as if it might as well be a delicate Orlesian hat or something else of totally negligible weight. The fact that she would have had to drag this whole heavy lot here on her own, that she's been doing it all day, is not lost on him. Not for the first time, and not as the first knight-enchanter of his acquaintance, the thought bumps just briefly and vaguely against the back of his mind--what if you could have been one of us?

It's a thought both blasphemous and insulting, and he shakes it off with no small amount of guilt. There isn't a mage he knows who wouldn't be disappointed in him for it. And it certainly doesn't matter right now.

"I--don't know, to be quite honest." He should know. He used to be kept up to date on these things. "I haven't had a letter from my ma since we left. I hope it doesn't bode poorly, but I think it's just her holding a grudge, so it's likely enough that the rest of Starkhaven's perfectly fine."

His comment about his mother makes her pause for a moment, almost imperceptibly. It is a check, a falter, barely noticeable, perhaps dismissible as a moment of tiredness before she resumes aiding in the task.

"A grudge, Ser?" There is some interaction required for polite conversation; silence can seem too cold, she's realised. "Did some problems come to pass in your visit?"

She's envious, in a strange way. A mother's displeasure seems far easier to bear than her demise, but that's about as insightful as remarking that the water tends to be wet. If she could roll her eyes at herself without it being mistaken for rolling her eyes at Ser Ashlock, she would.

Unaware though he is of Herian's particular circumstances, he realizes, dimly, in the belatedly self-aware part of him, that complaining about his parents to any mage is insensitive at best. At least he was permitted to see them on weekends throughout his childhood; at least his absence thereafter had been by choice.

"She never was thrilled about my line of work," he says at length, "and less so still, now that she's seen it. But it'll sort itself out. I shouldn't complain, I know. I've far from the worst of it."

"Is she troubled by the danger of it?"

That, by her understanding, seems to be a universal quality of parents, fearing for their children's wellbeing. It seems more likely, at least, than a woman of a devout city taking umbrage with her son taking a role within the Chantry. But then, what could she know with any certainty? People cannot always be generalised.

Herian shrugs a little, and keeps moving the splintered logs. "Matters that trouble us being far from the worst do not make our own troubles less, Ser Ashlock. They are legitimate grievances, still."

"...More or less." Herian's phrasing is more charitable than Simon has wanted to use, but that is the heart of it, really. Hypocrite, he'd called her, for thinking it the sort of work other people's children should do, but perhaps hypocrisy in the service of concern is more forgivable.

"It's kind of you to say," he says, and means it. "But still. I can afford to keep my grievances to myself when they're about choices I made. It can't have been so easy for you, going back."

“And yet, if you did so then the knowledge and the feeling of them could turn more terrible, like some splinter buried in a wound.” A small complaint turning septic and dangerous.

It would be great, by the way, if she followed her own advice. “Our choices are our responsibility, but how we act after a choice that we regret is equally so. Acting to make amends, to change, all that matters. We cannot erase an act itself, but we can do our utmost to change.”

OPEN ↠ HARING EVENT

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