She robbed them of wealth

[foxsays]

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.

Comments

[easternseaqueen]

"In that case, we shouldn't have any problem," Isabela said, sliding into the chair.

"So, tell me, Kitten, your deck or mine?"

[foxsays]

"Kitten?" She'd been called many things in her life, not all of them meant as compliments, but kitten was certainly a new one. Still, she reached into her coat pocket for her cards, a little worn here and there from countless games, shuffling until she plucked out the queen with a wink.

"I am rather fond of having something like that to look upon when studying my hand."

[easternseaqueen]

"Mmm. I'll just bet you are," Isabela laughed.

"So, I'm game. Tell me how you like to play."

[foxsays]

"I will bet with whatever is at hand - I managed to procure a good bottle of rum from someone who had that instead of coin, coin there is too from the good soldiers of the Inquisition, but other wagers and favours?" She shrugged, whatever there was that could be gambled and traded had always been fair at any place she had ever gambled before though she had precious little information of her own to actually offer in this instance.

"Do you know how to play the war games? Ignore the suits, half the deck each, attempt to win all the cards?"

[easternseaqueen]

"I always did like the more interesting bets," Isabela purred.

"There was something like that in Antiva I learned, mostly throwing everything down and grabbing what you could, but let's hear your version. Is it much different?"

[foxsays]

“For now, all clothes remain on, rifter reputations are things to be carefully cultivated still.” This is the one place to get booze that isn’t hanging out in the main hall and when she’s in there, she feels like a curiousity to be sat on a shelf.

“I’d need to check with Zevran but you rank high to low, Ace through two, ignore the suits and split the deck in half, we came them face down and you have to try to win all the cards. We turn over a card each, highest card wins, the winner takes them and puts them face down at the bottom of their packet. Now the war part comes if we have a tie: they stay on the table and we play the next card face down and another face up, whoever has the highest face up card wins all of them and adds all six to the bottom of their deck, and so on until the war is over. I think most games sound worse until you get to playing them. The main struggle in Wicked Grace for me is just remembering all your face cards.”

[easternseaqueen]

"Pity. For later, then," she said.

"All right, then. Deal me in."