faderift | She robbed them of wealth

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She robbed them of wealth

WHO: Araceli Bonaventura and you!
WHAT: Catch-all for post-Mire; gambling in the tavern, Skyhold parkour 2: electric boogaloo, chilling in the gardens and wildcard available. Also dinner with Korrin Ataash
WHEN: Between returning from the Fallow Mire and folks departing to the darkspawn desert and red templar winter adventureland
WHERE: Skyhold; the Herald’s Rest, battlements, gardens or wherever if you wildcard it
NOTES: Feel free to have seen a wild Araceli roaming past (and possibly up and over) your windows or to have had a run-in with her fox. I’ll match your style/tense.

tavern; teaching cards and dice
If she’s going to have to learn new games of cards, the least she can do is make sure people can play a few hands of the games she grew up with or introduce them to liar’s dice. Liar’s dice is always so much more than just making coin or whatever you’re wagering after all; liar’s dice teaches you how to figure out a tell and how to cover your own with enough practice and how to tell the most bold-faced lies without a single person noticing if you’re good.

She’s more than happy to buy a drink for anyone who wants to play a hand or two. If you’re new she’ll go easy on you if you offer to explain how Wicked Grace works.

parkour;
The best thing about being back in Skyhold is actually having something to climb that won’t have her landing stagnant water that’s full of corpses ready to attack her. There’s always a little note tacked on a corner of the board in her elegant hand offering lessons and her name but it’s easier in small groups or one on one. Often you’ll need to track her down as she does her regular circuits of Skyhold, climbing up and down the walls either side of the fortress

gardens;
The gardens of Skyhold are larger than most gardens in Castileos, lacking the sea air but they’re more sheltered than most other places in Skyhold so she can some of the weak watery sun. After the Mire she needs it so she’s relocated from the library that was beginning to feel overcrowded with actual researchers, something she is absolutely not. Instead she’s working on something of a report, scowling at it most of the time and there are doodles in the margins, annoyed scribbles and half a paw print along the edge of one of the pages but it’s fine, it’s a draft, it’s perfectly fine.

Besides, it’s not even a report exactly, more of a guide, advice about how to actually get around and fight safely in conditions like the Mire.

Feel free to interrupt before she starts getting distracted with her little reference sketches.

wildcard;
Where else have you bumped into her? Or have you met a rather striking fox with streaks of red beneath his black fur and wondered who the hell keeps shouting ‘Lux’ as you stare down at said fox.

dinner with Korrin Ataash;
It took a lot of convincing to get the kitchen staff to allow her to cook. It helps that she had the coin to pay for it thanks to several profitable games of dice because it’s easy to spot a liar and far too many of the soldiers have honest faces here, the kind of men and women that’d be eaten alive in Castileos. She promised Korrin a meal she’d cooked herself and they absolutely deserve it after that hell.

She can’t make her favourite exactly. They don’t have quite as many fish but that’s obviously the problem with being stuck up a bloody mountain although there’s at least plenty of snow and ice to help keep it fresh. One of the helpers stays to explain the herbs she doesn’t recognise but all in all there’s plenty of fish stew served in bread bowls with rich tomato sauce with a healthy glug of good red wine through it.

When Korrin arrives according to the note Araceli left with her, there’s even a candle or two lit. Look, you gotta have ambience for this after she spent a whole day engaged in high stakes kitchen negotiations.

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"Oh," she answers, eyes widening a little. She nods and pulls in her chair a little closer to the table. "I'm not a good liar, so we both know already you'll win, but if you could give me some pointers on how to spot lies and tell them, I would appreciate it. I might need the skill in the months ahead."

"You know you can use that as a ploy one day; look innocent, say you're a bad liar and then at the end of the night reveal yourself as an utter shark. It's a good way to make quick money or learn secrets once you get good, people play recklessly against someone they think they can easily trounce, it's the risks they take that you must exploit shamelessly." Unfortunately it only works once in the company of that person but the Inquisition is like a little port with all the comings and goings.

Rattling the dice in her cup, she screws up her face in thought, attempting to sift through all the hundreds of tells she's seen, some her own that she's suppressed because there wasn't another choice, many from others in taverns or hunched over crates by the sea, gambling against sailors back after months on the open water.

"Everyone is different and gambling revolves around tells and bluffs, fighting your logic as you weigh up the balance of odds but the skills transfer. For instance, often liars will either not meet your eye or they'll stare for far too long, it's a strange thing but even for fractions we all look away. Some are very chatty when confident and even when pushed may remain that way but other times they'll start to clam up. Which is another trick; say you ask someone a question, keep it as open as possible. Let the liar fill in the details because they'll trip up eventually and you can catch them out.

"Still, we are all different - you are elven, I am human, you are a mage, I am a rogue. Some people sweat, some people blush, some people will close off their body, tense shoulders, crossed arms, leaning away, all to put an extra boundary between you and them. That's why gambling is good see, usually people are drinking, there are distractions, they have to repeat themselves when it gets loud, all useful tricks. One thing I've noticed in my time is copying the wording of the one accusing them, 'Felix, do you have three eights and a king', 'no Araceli I do not have three eights and a king' because they've answered the question without volunteering more."

It's a lot, but then she learned how to read faces and bodies in the brothel of her mother, around her father's ship. Every sailor, every merchant, other thieves and fences; a thief's life depends on being able to know exactly the situation from a single glance about to a few words, and now as a guard, it's more toned than it was, always assessing the danger to her fellows and to her queen which is why she slouches back and takes another drink, allowing Ellana to process all the rambling.

Being deceitful won't come easy to her, but for now, this is just practice; just something to attempt to see if she actually can. And while she doesn't buy stories as easily as when she was young, she hopes this game can help her to think more on not just what people say, but the way they say it and how they look while saying it. Maybe if she'd had some of these skills years ago, she wouldn't have had her heart broken by a lying cheat.

"That's a lot to look out for," she says, feeling a little overwhelmed at all the information. Something tells her she won't be able to remember what's what when she needs to. It's a lot to keep in her head at once.

"Well, I guess there's no better way to start than to just dive in and see what happens. How do we play?"

"I had an advantage in having a prostitute and a pirate captain for parents, they teach you things most parents do not, and my home is like Antiva if Antiva knew what real romance was." Please do not tell Zevran that but Antiva is too violent for her, like if her home was stripped back and laid bare, all the wonder peeled away. "Life is a better teacher. We learn by our mistakes. You misjudge the jump between rooftops wrong you fall and break a wrist. You let a smile fool you and almost get knifed. Life is learning."

Or she always tries to look at it as learning, she's looking at home differently now, trying to see it through the eyes of strangers instead.

"Right, today I will show you the individual hand version, for two players. What you do is keep your dice in the cup but shake them to roll them, then you look and make sure I can't see. If any of your dice are on top of the other you need to roll again, you have to be able to see the faces of each dice. One player, I will go first to demonstrate, calls their hand. Then the other player, being you, can do one of three things: call their own higher-ranked hand, re-roll some or all of their dice, or accuse the first caller. When a bluff is called, the accused must show their dice and then we find the winner."

The comment on Antiva has Ellana's lips lift with a smile. As sweet as Zevran is, she recognizes that he's creating an atmosphere of romance without actually committing to it. It's all for fun. And so she can agree with Araceli's assessment of it.

"I suppose I've been lucky. In the past, pretty words from someone fooled me for quite some time. But there was no knife hidden behind his back." Just another woman he was also sleeping with. The experience has taught her to be more cautious, and recognize the difference between love and lust.

"All right. So how are the hands ranked?"

"But there was some other young lady or man or several? I suppose in some marriages I've been the person behind another's back." But Castileos is 'permissive' if you're polite and 'loose' if you're not so it's something people tend to gloss over quite quickly. "Unfortunately given the current climate here, we all have to learn a few new skills."

Like archery if she has no guns and it's the reason she's staying here in Skyhold when others depart so she can at least be halfway to decent with a bow before the next lot of assignments come up.

"The best hand is five of a kind because you have five dice. Then four of a kind - highest value of the number itself would win but say we both managed to have four twos then it would come down to the value of that fifth dice. A high straight is from two through six, full house is three matching of one rank and two of another rank say, two sixes and three ones. Three of a kind follows the rule of four of a kind, two pair is two of one rank, two of another rank and a pair is the same but one less. The runt, the last and least, is simply one of each number barring whatever one you can't have with five dice." She will perhaps need to write these down and pin them up somewhere in the tavern. "For now you can just call what numbers you have or what numbers you're bluffing, it's what most do when they're learning the ropes."

"Yes, but she didn't know about me either. We were kept secret from one another while he spoke of love and forever." It seems impossible in a clan for such a thing to go on, but he had been crafty that way, claiming he wanted their romance to be secret. And he had been a hunter, which left plenty of opportunities to slip away with the other woman -- also a hunter.

Now Ellana tries to keep it all straight. It sounds easy at first, but then more hands keep getting piled on and by the end of the explanation, she's shaking her head and laughing.

"Forget bluffing! If I try that, I'll probably mess up and give myself a lower valued hand. Let's see how much I can remember here."

"Now that's the worst sort, there are some things you lie about but when it comes to matter of love and lust, honesty is the best and really only policy you can go with." Sometimes you tell a lie or two but only little ones, and mostly with noble girls because they want to believe they're your whole world and special.

She doesn't really understand noble girls if she's honest, not completely, cards and dice are so much easier to understand, for her at least.

"Then today is a teaching day because unlike some, I have a conscience. Here we go." The dice rattle loudly inside her cup until she tips it just enough to have a flick at her own, expression unchanging as she reaches for her brandy. "Two pair."

That's something Ellana agrees with wholeheartedly. She now refuses to let herself fall in love with anyone unless she knows she can trust them to be honest with her first.

"Now if I believe you're bluffing, I would ask you to show your dice now? But if I believe you, I shake up my dice?" As a show that she believes her, Ellana shakes up her dice and overturns the cup, tilting it up to take a peek. "Three of a kind."

“Usually, because what is life without passion, you would call me a liar but you are to shake your dice and call your hand when it’s just the two of us. There’s a version of this that has say six folk all around one table and you must keep track of all the cups on the table. Those games can decide a great many things.” Whole cargos can be won and lost on such wagers and they draw a huge crowd and she’s spent many a night watching such games to cheer all the parties on. “Now that we have both rolled, and I shall believe you, then we roll again. The game ends when someone is called a liar and the dice are finally revealed.”

She rolls again, peeking at her cup.

“Full house.”

"Six people sounds far beyond me. Have you been playing all your life?" Ellana looks from Araceli to her tilted cup and shrugs. "I didn't see any tells, but let's say you're lying now."

"Close enough. Most children do because they pick it up easier and it’s a good life skill. I'm told there's nothing quite like a girl of five standing on a barrel to look a man in the eye when she calls him a liar." But it was always more for what it taught them, that level of quick thinking so young so it becomes a part of you, she wonders if it's the same in Antiva too. "I am called a liar so I reveal my dice to you and...I am a liar indeed."

Not even three of a kind but a runt and she grins, raising her glass in a toast.

"Usually you would win whatever I had bet if we were betting, that's why you play with many people too because you can walk away a rich woman at the end of the night."

"Oh, lucky me!" she says with a smile, then leans over the table, scooping her arms across. "Let's pretend I won everything." Ellana slides her invisible winnings towards herself, giggling all the while.

"This is fun. But we'll have to do more rounds before I really start to catch on." Being lucky is one thing; being about to read a person is the goal here.

It’s hard not to laugh herself so she doesn’t even try to fight it and really, she should have offered something for betting but the coin she’s won is her only source of income and she’d already opened the brandy to start with so it would’ve been a poor show.

“That’s why it works well with a group, you see much more, the common tics and the unique. You should come even to watch some time, when you don’t need to worry about your own hand too. If it hadn’t been so likely to ruin my cards and my dice. I’ve had one of these sets a long time now.”

And it’s whale bone too, very rare and not the sort of thing easily replaced.

"Watching without being the center of attention might work better for me before I start trying to lie myself." Scooping up her dice, she places them back in the cup and rattles them around.

"I'm not sure where you would buy new sets of dice to expand the game, but they must be sold somewhere."

Araceli grabs her own, rolling her dice and rolling again when two stack on top of the other until they settle, stealing a look. "High straight," she calls, lips curved into a satisfied smile.

"I need to go to somewhere with actual stalls and shops, not just what they sell here, I'm grateful for it but the choices, so limited. But I'm spoiled, every single merchant passes through my country and there are hundreds, it would take several lifetimes to see everything at every single market. Luckily soldiers are the same as sailors when it comes to having time to kill between rotations."

Following along, Ellana rolls her dice and checks them.

"Two of a kind."

But she sounds a little distracted, more interested in hearing about Araceli's world than in the game. The rifters are a fascinating bunch, and they all have stories to share. Even if they don't feel their lives are interesting enough to speak of, they're interesting to her, simply because they're from someplace else and have different experiences from Ellana.

"Would you tell me about your home? You must have seen such diverse people!"

She rolls again but doesn't call immediately, instead leaning forward a little, her smile soft. Home is a word that's starting to hurt now, the bruise you didn't know about and now can't leave well enough alone but she can't deny a friendly face or a pretty one so both at once is impossible. If it hurts, it keeps it fresh in her mind and she would never want to forget.

"Certainly. Castileos is a country but I use that lightly; we are islands, many many islands, connected by waterways or bridges, some of stone and some of wood and rope. In the heart of the ocean where we came from. We love the sea above all other things and the moon because she causes the tides that give life and every shore is a port or it can be. Our markets teem and bustle, the people you see, from all nations, busier even than Skyhold even on a quiet day."

It's so easy to conjure an image in her mind of this home of Araceli's. She can see the tiny bits of land dotting the water, can hear the creaking of boats tied up to the docks, can practically taste the exotic foods brought from leagues away to be sold at market. It's a place she'll never get to see except in her mind's eye, but her imagination is vivid.

"I can almost hear the noise of the markets as merchants sell their wares. And the people in the taverns playing this dice game." She sets her chin in her hand and exhales a soft sigh of regret that she can never go to Castileos to experience it all herself. "I love the moon too, because our people say that Mythal created the moon out of the ambient light left over when the sun descended to the earth's bed to rest. And I love Mythal over all the other gods." Her vallaslin can attest to that.

No one knows yet about the glass floors in every building, the deep levels in some places from long ago where you can stand and look a whale in the eye. She could talk for days about her home, though she could listen for days about this world too.

"The docks are even better, old crates, barrels, piles of netting with something for a table right by the sea. It's the same place I learned to duel." Does Marjani miss her, she wonders, does she look for her now that she's disappeared? She shakes the thought away, smiling openly with bright eyes. "We believe the moon is a pearl that a mermaid sits in, she and the sea reaching for one another, I'm glad there are others with stories as such, I would hear more of them, they're always better coming from a person and not a book."

"Oh, that sounds beautiful," Ellana says with a dreamy sigh, chin still in her hand. "We elves have many gods. Together they're called the Evanuris, or the Creators. Mythal is the mother goddess. She holds love, family, and justice for those wronged the highest. We've lost much of our history and our culture, but we know our gods."

Even though Ellana is an optimist and wants her people to live better, more fulfilling lives than they do now, she doesn't want a return to the old ways. What's lost cannot be regained, and living in the past only leads to bitterness and sorrow. Ellana would prefer to move forward while respecting that the past is what brought them here.

"Have you traveled the sea?"

"I'm still getting used to people having 'gods', rather than...than the place, things," she makes a face at her own wording because 'things' isn't right but she doesn't really know how better to describe it. "Maybe some nights in the tavern should be telling tales but the ones people believe in, people from here, other rifters. How many more gods do you have? If there is a mother, there is a father too, yes?"

This is what she's missed since she's been gone from home, the stories about things people believe in. More of them are what men and women glimpse out at sea, or in their own lands but it's the look people get talking about something like that. Ellana has a terribly beautiful smile too, and that doesn't hurt at all.

"Not too far, not when I think of the voyages so many make where I come from but my father took me out to sea often when I grew up. He's very literal about showing you the ropes, he had me climbing the rigging as soon as he thought I was strong enough for it." It's her conversation with Sina in the garden about sailing that nags at the back of her mind, prompting her own question. "Have you sailed much?"

Ellana nods as much as she can without removing her chin from its seat in her palm.

"Elgar'nan. Together he and Mythal had several children, depending on what legends you believe. Sometimes it gets tricky, and gods are said to be the brother or husband of this goddess, or what have you. But there are the twins: Falon'Din and Dirthamen, Andruil, Sylaise, and June. Ghilan'nain was said to be one of the People, but Andruil turned her into the first halla and she became a god too. And then there is Fen'Harel, but he betrayed the other gods and locked them away from us."

It's so good to speak of her gods with someone outside of the clan. She's spoken a little of Mythal with Galadriel before, and she enjoys being able to share this part of her culture.

"I confess, I would struggle to keep so many names and duties straight but I understand the overlap; the sea is male overall, the moon is female but the sea has traits we associate more with women. Different aspects of the same thing." And then you can be male or female but still have aspects of the other, you just tend to shrug and roll with it over the course of your life because you understand it somewhere deep in your bones. Perhaps that's how it is for Ellana. "Before I ask about this betrayal and how or why a god would lock the rest away, what is a halla? And one of your gods could make another god?"

Eyes like saucers, she leans even further across the table, sliding her cup enough out of the way so she doesn't knock it over, scarcely able to believe such a thing and yet, wasn't it the same as some beliefs back home, like the blood of the merfolk still running through some veins?

"A halla is a type of stag. It is pure white, and large enough to bear riders or pull an aravel. That is a caravan with sails. They have beautiful curved horns. You can see one if you go to the stables. One of the other Dalish arrived with it." And it's nice to see something familiar here, even if Ellana is excited to see everything new.

"The legends say it is so. After all, they are the Creators. They created us, so it's possible they could bestow their power to one of us."

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