faderift | [open] Two Tevinter Mages Walk into Kirkwall

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[open] Two Tevinter Mages Walk into Kirkwall

WHO: Thor and Loki of House Asgard, you!
WHAT: Joining the Inquisition
WHEN: Current
WHERE: Kirkwall
NOTES: Racism likely.

1. Open - In the Gallows

It's bright and early when two unknown men stroll into the Gallows, heads high. The taller, blonder one seems cheerful as he looks around.

"Grim and cold! We are truly in the south now. Which ones do you suppose are the... servants?" It's a narrow save.

"The ones with the pointed ears, as always," the dark haired man replies and settles his arms across his chest. He regards the courtyard with open distaste and his expression becomes one of resignation, after a beat. "Though we are in the south, so perhaps it is merely the poor that serve them. Their shoes should be sufficient indication."

"Shoes. Of course." The blond man starts peering at people's feet openly, making no effort to hide his scrutiny or lower his voice. "All of their shoes are poor, so perhaps all of these are servants. You there! Who is in charge? Who do two new allies need to speak with when joining?" He points at someone mostly at random.

2. Closed to Beleth

Beleth Ashara. It is an elfy name. Thor holds his misgivings close to his chest as he leads the way up the stairs as directed. Has the Inquisition already started its fall? What aid will they be in the fight against Corypheus and the Venatori if they've begun to falter? They are questions he'll ask his brother later. For now, he's approaching the open door of an office and knocking hard on it, breaking into a wide smile despite his assumption proving true.

"Greetings! I am Thor of House Asgard, this is my brother Loki, and we are here to join the Inquisition! I have papers of introduction from my father." With full confidence he holds them out. There is no way an elf could find fault or flaw in the words of Odin.

3. Open - In Hightown

Kirkwall is...tolerable, in the right light and in the right neighborhood. Where the docks and the lower levels of the city had been unbearably diverse and grimy, the finer neighborhoods are far less of both. Hightown is decorous, lovely, and well manicured. The air is clearer, the sun is brighter, and there many, many fewer of the lower classes meandering about. It isn't Tevinter but, overall, it's not a terrible place to spend a few months...or however long this whole situation takes to resolve.

It can't be terribly long, not once they've contributed their own talents to the cause.

"I imagine the view would be excellent if we can see that portion of the harbor," Loki comments and gestures down toward the sprawling ocean view beyond. It is mostly obscured by mansions. Mansions that Loki would like to own in the near future (ideally to demolish to construct a proper villa, but that was a plan for another day).

"What say you, brother, shall we purchase that one?" Loki asks and Thor, at his side. Thor, to his credit, takes a moment to peer at the house, to give it a proper amount of scrutiny, and then all but shouts:

"Yes! I like it! We shall take it!"

The owners, leaving their house and headed toward the market, seem utterly confused by the announcement.

--

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Kirk tilted his head. It was true the fever was burning in him, but he was not completely mad just yet.

"Not part of the Inquisition," he countered, a truth he kept close to himself, because he was not. True, he did 'work' for the research group, but the truth was he had no faith in Thranduil and no trust in him either. He was there for his own purposes, and sometimes those happened to align with the Inquisition itself.

He turned his head back down, drawing a circle where Thor had been standing, rather large, and began to make a notation of the star's coordinates. The movements and choice of letters and numbers was quite deliberate - hardly the notation of a madman.

"The Inquisition cannot help me get home."

"Indeed, it seems it can do precious little," Loki agrees and casts a long, slow look at his brother. This? This is what he wants to assist?

Loki had expected some measure of disarray, most armies are understaffed and overstretched, but this was--this is just ridiculous. So far they have encountered a crumbling, crime-ridden outpost city, the organization is set up in a former mage prison named after a hangman's platform, and everyone they have encountered has been some impoverished fool or a madman.

Loki was willing to assist but this was beginning to seem like a task of some difficulty. He was not willing to restructure a southern army just because Thor was on a mission to satisfy his ego and appear properly contrite.

"Then do tell me, my good man, what is the point of...this?" Loki gestures to the floor, his idle curiosity piqued.

He knows what the look Loki is giving him means. It is unsettling. If he loses the faith of his brother, he loses his sole ally out here and Thor knows he is not as politically adept as he needs to be to survive long in the south. Not ever threat can be struck down by lightning and hammer.

"It has forces," Thor murmurs, trying to keep his face and voice confident. It's not a difficult task, but he knows it likely that Loki can see through it. "Manpower. It has made some progress."

The fever came and went. He had moments of lucidity now, outside of the constant tick, tick, tick inside his head that made him do this, made him carve his path of stars into Kirkwall's very floor. He turned his gaze to Loki, fiercely blue eyes bright and seemingly sane as he considered how to phrase his answer.

"Stars," he said simply. "It's a map of the stars. But drawing on paper - it's not enough. I need it bigger. I need it big enough to see where I am, so perhaps I can send a message home, somehow, tell them where I am. Otherwise they'll never find me. Or perhaps it can be used to help control the Rifts somehow, to get certain coordinates and make sure everyone can get back to where they need to go."

His words did not come out like the babbling of a mad man. He was sure of them, made them all sound so very reasonable. Half of them, at least, were.

A map of the stars across a city.

"Perhaps the Inquisition has a place for those who are confused like this?" Thor asks Loki in Tevene, hoping the man doesn't speak it. He's a Rifter. He shouldn't be able to. But already Kirkwall has been full of surprises, most of them disappointing, so Thor cannot count anything out.

"Is your home very closeby, to see this?" he asks the man, feeling sorry for him. Clearly moving through a Rift had jostled his mind and he wasn't even aware of it.

Loki is less charitable than Thor. When presented with a rambling madman who seeks to replicate the stars in earth, his first urge is not to send him home. He is making up lines, very large lines, in a city that is almost runic in its construction. This man is, quite probably, a danger to himself--he is certainly a danger to others if he keeps this nonsense up.

"I should hope so, a cell if nothing else. He is going to start summoning things if he keeps this up."

Loki gestures to the ground.

"He is trying to send messages with this."

Kirk did not, a failing on his part. He really should be learning more of the languages, but Tevene had not been a common one for him to come across. Orlesian seemed more important, given proximity. He pouted at both men, the fever ebbing enough for the moment for him to know he was being talked about. Not that either seemed to make a secret of it.

“I know you don’t beleive me,” he stated, turning his attention back down and drawing a smaller circle off the big one, labeling it briefly. An unimportant planet to this star, he knew. Not even worth mineral mining. “I don’t think Samouel believes me sometimes either. But I can’t actually blame you. I know to a world like yours, the things I say sound crazy. Hah, why wouldn’t they? Two hundred years ago, in my own world, I would have sounded crazy and we KNEW about the stars back then.” He paused in his drawing of three more planets, spaced across an eleptical orbit.

“Though a Rifter knowing things you don’t sounding far fetched is also a little crazy,” he turned slight and drew a new line, towards Loki, pointing where he stood. “This star’s twin - right where you are.” Aka - MOVE.

Loki is not a powerful man, he is lithe and smaller than his brother and cannot take a punch well--he is, however, very quick with knives and rather dangerous in his own right so, understandably, he is unused to people demanding that he move aside so callously. Not that he...actually demanded, more implied with a point of his stick. It was more than what the dark haired Altus was familiar with.

"Brother," he starts as the rifter approaches him with the line on the ground. "I would prefer not to kill him and if I attempt to subdue him, well, he shall be far more than unconscious."

Loki steps back, hurriedly, as the madman slides into his space and looks like nothing so much as a put out housecat.

Thor nods, both to himself and to Loki, before he steps forward and puts a heavy hand on the Rifter's shoulder.

"Come, friend. Let us get you back to the Inquisition Headquarters, where they... where I am sure you have more friends who would be glad to see you." His grip is not negligible. He has no intentions of leaving this poor man out on the streets where anyone can see and laugh at him or worse. They're here to help the Inquisition, not watch it be shamed in front of the whole city. "It is not like this map of stars is large enough to be seen from the Gallows, and if the people you are looking to reach are even further, this will not help."

“You don’t listen well. I’m not part of the Inquisition,” he repeated, making his markings, seemingly ignoring Thor’s grip.

He twisted and rolled his shoulder, dislodging the others grip and continuing his notations.

“Doesn’t matter if they can see. What matters is I figure out where I am,” he said earnestly. “If I don’t they can’t find me. They’ll never find me. The star ocean is to big, this planet to small.”

He turned back to Thor and grunted, poking at his boot to get him to move. He was standing where a polstar went - an important marker. He shouldn’t forget it. No, he couldn’t. Don’t forget it. Map it map it map map map.

"You are mad, and you will," he says firmly, grabbing the stick he's being poked with and yanking it out of the man's hands, "stop poking me. Do you have a minder? Or is this city so poor that they don't care if their madmen are out in the cold alone?"

"Just because someone understands something you don't doesn't make them mad," Kirk retorted, his usual diplomatic filter eradicated in the face of the fever, to much of his mind concerned with the map and the stars. Diplomacy had no place right now.

He reached for his drawing tool, grasping it and jerking sharply to try and get it back.

"I know stars. And I need to map them."

"Someone drawing in the dirt while mumbling to themselves, intent to be seen in the open doing that and convinced their dirt drawings will draw the right sort of attention is mad," Thor says with calm conviction.

After a glance at his brother, he gives up. There is no point in helping a madman in a foreign country when he has no idea what shape the help here takes. The stick gets dropped on the ground before Thor turns to walk away.

"Kirkwall is more disappointing than I anticipated."

"It is certainly a haven for unsettled souls," Loki agrees and backs away himself. He considers incapacitating the man but, as it is, Loki would hardly mind if he summoned up some ancient demon.

Crushing half of Kirkwall might actually improve the city.

"Quickly, let us depart before he actually calls something forth. I have no desire to be blamed for his good works."

And he would, immediately, if history had taught him anything.

"Super nova," Kirk suddenly stated, pointing to where Thor had stepped, his stick for a moment forgotten. He said it in such a way like it only just occurred to him, or perhaps he had just remembered. It was so hard to keep up with his own mind right now, because this itch he had to keep scratching before it drove him mad. "Last light of a dying star."

His gaze turned back to his own feet, mumbling something in a series of numbers and letters, his brow scrunched. It made sense to him, the calculations he had learned in school, though running them by hand was a daunting task. Still, he could try. Cover the distances. Find where he was. He just had to keep map map map...

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[open] Two Tevinter Mages Walk into Kirkwall

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