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

[foxsays]

"First, thank you, for explaining all of that so it makes sense." Or more sense. Much more than it had and a few extra pieces had slotted into place, things about spirits watching, the corpses in the Mire, the mark on her hand. It took longer for her to work through what she wanted to say though when it meant looking at the mages she'd met in a different light, some almost constant struggle or battle against things so wrongly shaped and vicious.

"I don't know what's worse - hearing the truth of that or when I was told about the Tranquil. Is it a matter of the will then? Say, some people like me for instance can drink and gamble without it ruining us but then there are some that cannot resist temptation and find themselves penniless and begging only to be caught in the same spiral." Something about it broke her heart to think of, a strange damned if you do, damned if you don't with the looming spectre of some hulking armoured figure watching over you, waiting. "And this is why there are Circles, why so many fear or mistrust them? Because of the potential for something so devasting?"

[amygdalae]

"It's the least I can do." And honestly, it wasn't as if Bruce couldn't understand where the mages came from; after all he had his fair share of corrupt Templars in his life too, but at the same time he had more than enough experience in seeing exactly why mages were so feared as well. Things weren't that all black and white as other people made it at times.

To her question, he gives a nod, and then elaborates further for her. "The intention of the Circles was to give every mage a chance to train and be educated in a safe environment, and the Templars were supposed to be their protectors." Everything had a good intention, but as with so many other things it was always the good intentions that get twisted around the most. "Ultimately only the will of the mage is what prevents demons from being able to take over and control them to their own whims. As long as somebody can wield magic, they always run the risk of this being their fate."

[foxsays]

At least now she could probably go compare a few notes with Korrin, if only to get an apostate sort of view on things because balance was a good idea. And some of the Dalish, they'd been friendly enough with her. She'd need to approach a Templar too but that seemed too daunting a prospect when they reminded her of the sternest guards that bellowed after her in the night, especially if she didn't hold her temper in check.

"But that obviously went wrong; I've not heard as much as a person native to these lands, I don't know what it's like but the mages have spoken of how it was to be in a Circle, and the mages that were never part of them. Everything sounds more like a prison than any sort of school, and being watched, knowing you're being watched, well a thief knows exactly how that makes you feel." Only her consequences were less severe than Tranquility because she would rather be dead than have her ability to feel taken from her. "So they're always afraid? Or are they taught to be afraid? Risk goes one of two ways - you embrace it, chase it, laugh at the prospect or you shrink in the face of it, look away as if it won't still stare you down even if you don't look it in the eye." Her life was no risk, no reward. Here, a 'reward' could easily be a sword rammed through you.

[amygdalae]

There were, perhaps, several things that Bruce could say in response to all of that, but firstly that would give himself away when he was trying to stay incognito, and secondly he personally believed that he was in hardly any position to truly judge what was right or not within the Circles. He had left it for years already, at this point, and his own experiences wasn't exactly normal.

"Regardless of how things are now, the original intentions of the Circle are what I've stated," he says, instead, because as much as Bruce has his own opinions, those were the things he had to remind himself too. "And I can't really say how it is like within a Circle, since I've never had the same potential as mages do... but like with everything that is dangerous, I think being wary and open-minded about it is the best way to go." It was reckless to just ignore the danger, but fearing it every single moment wasn't going to help either.

[foxsays]

An open mind she could live with, even wariness but it was such a difficult line to walk. Here she saw too many maps that were only a fraction of what surely had to be there; was it that the history she'd learned about in bits and pieces, Tevinter and Blights, elves and mages, had all of that kept them here, or had people left for somewhere better and never bothered coming back because well, if she had been presented with the choice of sailing into the unknown and dealing with this, she'd already be on the ship and offering her services. Well, no, she wouldn't, not right now with her hand involved but it'd be a close call really.

"I wonder if they'll go back to that whenever this ends." If this ended, because she didn't really want to ask for exact times but she had a life to get back to and each day gone risked more trouble at home than she cared to think about. "It's harder to pull someone back once they've had freedom and seen something they want, it's why we thieves never stop, we just get better at what we do."

[amygdalae]

To the question, Bruce could only really offer a shrug in response. "Who knows?" he returned with a wry smile. "Anything can happen these days, it seems. Maybe something will change with the mages in the near future."

Though whether said change was a good or bag thing however, that was something yet to be seen. Mages, Templars, the current state of Thedas and its several nations... Bruce had a feeling that one way or another, things weren't going to be as they had been before. Then again, perhaps things always had been in motion ever since the Blight in Ferelden ten years ago--and it was maybe only now that they actually were seeing what these changes were leading to.