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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"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."

"All these big animals, all of them just roaming around and on our islands things are small, aside from a few farm animals, we can't have big things. Whales, sharks, dolphins, octopi, crabs - all in the water." Giant squid that help you when you fall in by accident and maybe sometimes get overzealous in warning off a ship via crushing them but then sails are mentioned and what is Ellana ealking about. "Why does a caravan have sails? Sails are for ships."

Unless it's just a translation thing because merchants with pretty caravans are always going on about their awnings if she's used them as a platform or a landing pad.

"So you believe that you really were created from, well whatever you create people out of." She says it carefully, trying not to offend, more testing out the concept. It's easier when you believe that things rose up from deep below and came up and onto the land, you have fewer questions then.

"I've only crossed the sea once, and I sadly didn't see any sea creatures along the way." Mostly because she'd been seasick most of the time and chose to lie down.

"It's meant to help the halla. When the wind is at our backs, we open the sails and the halla don't have to pull as much." And since the halla are their friends, not beasts of burden, they try to make the pulling as easy as possible.

'Yes. There is so much that was lost when the Elvhen empire fell to the Imperium. So many stories and tales. I would be able to tell you more if I knew it."

"I've followed whales on their journeys, watching them leap out of the water for the sheer joy of it, the dolphins racing. I've even seen sharks breach the waters and a squid larger than anything but the very biggest of whales, it just rose up, golden eyes and these great long arms and then it slipped beneath the waters again before I could call for someone else to see." They would have believed her anyway, who could say for certain all that the sea contained, especially at night without stars and without a moon, when the waters were flat and still as a mirror, the sky and sea touching without an end.

"A ship on land and pulled by a creature? I had never imagined such a thing before, I must make every effort to see this one then." Seashell chariots pulled by horses of waves and breaking foam were one thing but this was something else entirely, something that she was sure didn't exist at all back home.

She pauses, drumming out a little rhythm on the table as a shudder passes down her spine, her father's voice at her ear, the duty of reminding people where they come from, what makes up their blood. "Your people have forgotten parts of yourselves?"

"I wish I knew what all those creatures looked like," Ellana says, wishing she had seen such things on her journey over from the Free Marches. But there were animals aplenty on land as well, and she wonders if there are some that Araceli does not know.

"It's only a bit like a ship. They're small -- just to carry our belongings -- and on wheels." It's only now that she's thinking on it that she misses the bright red sails and the snow white halla and other such things. But she's lived her entire life in the Ashara clan, never able to travel beyond the surrounding area of camp. She is glad to be away to experience all the world has to offer her. And now the experience of seeing all these sea creatures is definitely on her list of things to see.

"Yes. So much was lost with the fall of Elvhenan, our great empire. We don't even have a full language anymore. Just certain phrases here and there. Our written language is almost entirely gone. But we've kept some things. Our crafts, our tattoos to honor our gods, our halla. Not everything is lost, as long as we kept remembering."

"Maybe that's something us rifters and natives can swap, there are plenty of long journeys from Skyhold to anywhere and I don't know about you but I found it harder to sleep on that mission than I do here or at home," she suggest, recalling how Clint had explained druffalo to her because apparently never seeing one was the most shocking thing and now she just really wants to see how big one could possibly be.

"A bit like a ship is still like a ship and I love ships. I have so many models at home, little ones and bigger ones, a lot of them in bottles." That's something she needs to find at least one of here to keep in the little space she's claimed as her own because she adores any sort of ship; the crack of sails is a sound she misses desperately but what Ellana is talking about is going to be as close as she'll get for who knows how long.

"I am so sorry," she reaches across to lay a hand over one of Ellana's, brows pulling together. "I cannot imagine how that must be, we have Sons of the Sea who sail and sail to remind people of where we came from and nowhere is that stronger than in Castileos, where our history still lives above and below. Now the valla-- vallaslin, it makes much more sense." The emphasis still settles on the wrong places but Sina made it sound important and since she knows the word, she feels she ought to try, slow and halting though it may be.

Ellana thinks that is a splendid idea, and it shows on her face. She loves hearing stories and would be happy to share her own. "Stories would be a wonderful way to pass the time, and I love learning about all of you. I even love learning all about the, uh, natives, as we are. Before coming here, I was rather isolated."

Araceli's gesture is kind, and Ellana gives her a thankful smile in response. "Vallaslin," she corrects gently, though that Araceli would even try to pronounce it makes Ellana proud. "I will say that the elves have a certain... bitterness about us, deep in our hearts. Whether that's all we show on the outside or not depends on the person. I would rather we not solely live in the past, but look towards building a better future too. But many have no wish to move past what little traditions we've preserved."

"I didn't think cultures in one place would vary so much. You see, we're all far apart, Castileos in the sea with nothing for so many miles, very few countries physically border one another and then the divides aren't as they are on your maps. I suppose magic and having more than just humans changes all of that." That's the main difference she can think of because even when they vary, certain things seem more tied to groups, right until you get to the Vashoth and Tal-Vashoth.

"Vallaslin," she echoes, hoping she'll remember it this time. Learning other languages is fun up to the point where you remember just how natural it is to stress certain things in your own tongue and how fast she tends to speak never helps with that. "I've always valued tradition but then I have never lost my home and so much of our teachings are from what your parents or the people around you show you. Navigating and sailing, reading a person like a book, handling weapons. That was always our way, loving the sea and all within it, we never knew anything but. I think there's a way to move forward - we don't live in the water now and we no longer build below the sea but we sail and make sure we see it each day, we wear our charms and trinkets. Are people truly so opposed to that way of being?"

"You have neither of those things?" she asks, struggling to comprehend that. It's just so... different. It's hard to picture a world like that, but she's sure there are some here in Thedas who would love a world without magic and with just humans populating it.

"You built under the sea? That must have been difficult, especially without any magic to speak of. But your people must have been very resourceful."

Ellana sighs and sits back in her chair. "Yes. That there are Dalish here in the Inquisition at all shows that not all feel that way, but others wish for complete isolation from everything else outside the clan. It's only during a meeting of the clans every ten years that a great deal of news and clan members are exchanged."

"Nope, no elves, no dwarves, no tall grey horned folk of various relation to the Qun. Magic is just sleight of hand, like pulling a coin from behind an ear, breathing fire, tricks anyone could learn if they have the time to master them." Lots of thieves learn the coin tricks at the very least and she fishes a coin from her own pocket to demonstrate, passing it neatly and easily until it seems to disappear entirely.

"Oh not us, we haven't built beneath the sea in generations. The merlings did it long before us, before the realm below was lost leaving us firmly above apart from special glass that we repair." It doesn't really count as building below the sea when you're building down from the surface, not in her opinion and not in the opinion of anyone Castilean really. Maybe it would help if she mentioned how once they could all breathe in the water and that the merfolk could shed their tails but details, details.

"Every ten years? Our most respected captains try to meet every year and that's prior to an audience with the queen - do you really spend so much time apart from your own people? Doesn't that mean things are lost more easily if a clan just loses track of all the rest?"

The trick makes her lips twitch with an amused smile. It looks like something Zevran could do while complimenting her to cause her to lose sight of it.

"That sounds amazing. Well, it is sad that such a place was lost. I can sympathize there, from what I've told you of the Elvhen empire." Once something is lost, there is very little chance of it being found again. She knows that well. Places, people, states of being; once they're lost, so much changes. People are displaced and struggle to remember who they are.

"It's necessary, I'm afraid. Humans don't like it when too many elves are in one place at the same time. That is why Arlathvhen -- the meeting I spoke of -- only lasts several days. If the clans banded together, or even lived near one another, humans would think we were organizing to go to war with them again." Or at least that is what Ellana's been raised to believe, and it makes sense to her.

"If it had never been lost then we would never have built ships and sailed, settled other lands or found the people already on them," that part of the story is always unclear and everyone clings to their own myths, why shouldn't they? "We built something new and beautiful from what was, it's what you do but then we were the first, the oldest, the ones looking out to the sea and wanting to know more."

After all, it's in their blood to want to go roaming with hungry hearts, following the wind and waves, the great beasts in the ocean, finding their kin split from them centuries beyond counting to remind them of the truths they all used to know.

"Humans here sound like bastards, I'm honestly ashamed to find the way so many of them talk of anyone who happens to be different to them. Are they truly so threatened just by people gathering?" Here, she honestly wouldn't put it past them but when it leaves her mouth it just sounds so utterly ridiculous.

"And that is a wonderful thing. Your people looked forward and tried new things -- different things. My people aren't like that. They lament the past and only really rejoice in a good hunt. It's not moving forward. Not at all." And it's why Ellana had to get away from that life as soon as opportunity presented itself.

Before answering Araceli's question, Ellana looks around the tavern to make sure they aren't overheard. "People believe all sorts of things if rumors are passed around long enough as facts. Some claim the Dalish sacrifice human children. Completely untrue, but with our clans scattered, we cannot prove it. They will say, 'Well how do you know for sure one clan doesn't?'"

She robbed them of wealth

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