OPEN ↠ HARING EVENT

[faderifting]

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.

Comments

[keenly]

Please. Colin spent two years aboard a ship. He has mastered the art of walking on slippery surfaces without falling, and those surfaces were moving, so.

Of course, the giant, burly men aboard a ship are usually not sliding around on tiny fragments of metal. So Colin has to stop and stare for a little, because what the fuck. And of course, the man has serious momentum, so when Colin starts across the courtyard (slowly), he's having to time things awkwardly. And then the wind picks up and several files in the stack of paperwork he's carrying go flying, and paper sticking to ice will really muck up skates so he's suddenly having to hurry back in the opposite direction to rescue a giant man from paper.

[paladingus]

This was not, indeed, a problem Simon had to worry about when last he went ice skating. Dodging the occasional ice fisherman, yes, but windblown paper is not nearly so easily avoided.

He tries, of course, veering first to the side in the hopes of bypassing the one sheet of it, and then attempting a quick halt as another lands in his path, but he's too top-heavy to maneuver so tightly at the speed he's going, and he overbalances with flailing arms and a crash onto the ice. The paper, to add insult to injury, blows into his face with another little eddy of wind.

"--this yours, serah?"

[keenly]

"Sorrysorrysorry! OOPH." That last was Colin slipping and landing on his rear, momentum carrying him the rest of the way on the ice. "Ow," he adds after consideration.

The paper on Simon's face buzzes with his voice, and that combined with Simon's tone get a genuine laugh from Colin. He reaches up and peels the paper off the other man's face.

"We've sustained injuries," he says breathlessly, "but at least this--" he looks at the contents of the paper "--completely redundant copy of a bill of lading survived."

[paladingus]

"There we go. That's what matters. I've done my job." Defender of the Chantry, guardian of magekind, rescuer of technically-unnecessary sheets of parchment. It's all absurd enough that he would probably be amused by it anyway, even if he's still winded enough to make mirth painful, but Colin's laughter is contagious and he can't help but join in with it.

"I hope you aren't hurt as badly as all that, though--" He pushes himself up into a sitting position so as to check on this. "S'what I get for going that fast, but it seems a bit unfair to drag people into it who had the good sense to stay off the skates to begin with."

[keenly]

"Not hurt, no." Colin sits up as if to prove it. "Well," he amends, "we haven't tried to stand up yet, so perhaps I should hold off on that assessment." He rolls to his hands and knees so he can get his feet under him before standing.

[paladingus]

"Here, let me." He pulls himself up with only a bit of a wince, and reaches down to offer a hand once he's certain of his own steadiness on the skates.

"I think you'll be all right. The infirmary's not far anyway, and I've a good salve for bruises if you'd rather not have to do with all the spirit business."

[keenly]

Colin dismisses the concern with a wave of his hand. "I've had harder falls. I used to work aboard a merchantman." He does, however, use Simon's hand to balance himself as he rises. "Felt like a copper being rattled about in a jar sometimes."

[paladingus]

"Really?" He thinks back to Rivain, to the giddy excitement of being aboard a real ship and the delight at all Araceli's stories and songs, and looks both fascinated and envious in equal measure.

"I always dreamed about doing that, as a lad. What was it like? Beyond the...rattling."

[keenly]

"Cramped," Colin reminisces. "Very smelly. No privacy whatever. I wouldn't do it again, but I sort of see where the romantic notions of it come from. Not about the sea, so much, the sea is just the road a ship travels on and I don't hear people wax fancy over roads. It's the wind I loved. A ship is a massive machine, but all it really does is catch the wind a certain way and plough the water. Sometimes I climbed up the shrouds just to be up there and feel like I could stretch my arms forever without touching anything. Nothing but me and the wind in the whole world."

He trails off wistfully.

[paladingus]

"I know that much is so," he concedes. "I have been on one a time or two, just enough to know it's not all rum and shanties and all of that. But I don't know. I'd wax fancy over a road if it was going somewhere I wanted it to. That's the appeal of the sea. Maker knows it's not the smell or the monsters in it, but everyone wants to know what's on the other side."

The wind, though--that is something. "But space for days, and all the privacy you want--that's not something you get in a barracks nor a berth. I see what you like about it." It's not something he's ever had until just recently, and that unexpected.

[keenly]

Colin looks surprised, and beams at Simon. He understood his nonsense rambling! Ooh, is this how non-mages make friends? Is he finally doing it? He'll need a name to seal the deal.

"My name is Colin," he says, tucking his things under his left elbow so he can extend his right hand.

[paladingus]

Simon has always been, among his peers, the sort of guy who makes conversations stop by walking into a room, and consequently is not the one to ask about how anyone makes friends--but it makes him all the more pleased to have done so now, and he smiles brightly back as he takes the offered hand.

"Simon. Good to know you. I'll see you about, then?"

[keenly]

"See you about." He shifts his grip on his parcels and gives a friendly nod before turning to go.