[OPEN] falling through what's left of the fractions

[esquive]

WHO: Marcoulf & YOU
WHAT: Keeping busy and getting re-acquainted with Kirkwall's hot goss
WHEN: Early Bloomingtide
WHERE: All Over Kirkwall
NOTES: Can be before or after phylactery shennanigans.

I. JUST HORSIN' AROUND - THE STABLES

Tang! The sound of a hammer on iron rings in the courtyard.

Early on, Marcoulf had made the mistake of refitting one of the roan mare's shoes in sight of someone with a keen eye for putting new faces to work. Meaning his afternoon has been filled with putting bits of metal on an whole assortment of hooves - a number of which belong to animals not half so patient as the roan he'd ridden in on. The struggle to keep his subjects still has begun to plant an ache in his lower back and bruise the inside of his knees. The muggy pending-thunderstorm heat has the whole yard sweating.

Tang! He twists the cold shoe on the anvil horn and wails on it once or twice more, allowing himself to be purposefully finnicky over the shape. Anything to delay putting the nearby horse's leg up between his again. A moment ago the stupid animal had tried very hard to pull away while Marcoulf had been driving nails and nearly put its foot where it emphatically didn't belong. When he can put it off no longer--

"You." Yes, you. "Hold his head a moment." Marcoulf gestures to the horse with the hammer and jams a few nails between his lips.

II. GUARD DUTY - WHEREVER THAT HAPPENS

The rain falls so thick that come evening, visibility relies entirely on pools of barely sheltered lamplight. The weather's so heavy that it's surely driven even the most dedicated Inquisition sentries have retreated into doorways and into whatever shelter can be eked out of the shadow of Kirkwall's imposing walls.

Marcoulf certainly has anyway. His cloak, once waterproofed, has become sodden enough that the damp has begun to penetrate and the rain is so bad that he can't imagine anyone would choose tonight to cause trouble. No need to make themselves more miserable than necessary.

At some point, he produces a paper packet from a pocket. There's cheese in it. He offers it wordlessly to his companion. Sharing is caring.

III. A LONG LIST OF TO-DOs - MISC.

He sits poorly. Marcoulf can be found in a variety of Kirkwall's corners, quietly fussing over some task or another. He has a sword in need of sharpening, a pittance of coin in need of spending (new shirts, please and thank you), and some good old fashioned gossiping to eavesdrop on. The city's rife with talk and he intends to take in some part of it.

Need a note run? A sparring partner? Looking for an escort through shady back alleys at night? Despite what the scraggly appearance might suggest, you could pick worse.

((ooc: I'm good for whatever, but if you're thinking of something in particular that you want a starter for just shoot me a PM and I'll scrape something together.))

Comments

[villieldr]

She leans against a convenient... something. A stack of barrels, maybe, fingertips tapping very lightly against the coarse, weathered wood before she purses her lips a little, tips her head to the side. Not bad seems a reasonable assessment. Some are better than others, of course. Certainly Templars have access to different training than Magni herself has ever accessed, or sought.

"They fight with expectations," she eventually settles on, after a lengthy pause that might have driven people who didn't have some familiarity with her to assume she was just never going to reply - and generally she would just have left it at body language, because more wasn't necessarily... well. Necessary. Pointing to one of them, she elaborates, "he swings his sword like he wishes it were an axe."

[esquive]

"Common enough." he says. "Here especially." He must mean more than just the Inquisition's base level of swordmanship. Indeed, it's the kind of thing he might not even speak aloud were she not a familiar face or the type to say so little.

Is there anything about the organization's ranks more immediately obvious to a newcomer than the dissatisfaction simmering under its surface? Mages and strangers with bits of magic stuck in them; a tower full of templars; elves and qunari and everything in between. The Gallows has a feel of a kennel: a pack of barking, snapping dogs who must somehow manage to sit and stay and speak when told to. This is why you don't put all sorts in the same pot, he might have reason to think, were it not for the fact that the they seem to be accomplishing things despite it all.

They'd certainly made a difference in Orlais.

[villieldr]

For a while longer, she watches the sword training, seems focused only on that. It seems, for her, almost to play in slow motion, watching the strike and counter strike, seeing if she can predict when and where each one would move, and then move again. "There are many worse fighters," she agrees. "I hope he is having to adapt to a new weapon, and not being denied use of something he'd be better suited to."

Broader skills, good. Using a weapon because it doesn't occur to you to try something else, bad.

"When did you arrive?"

[esquive]

He glances back from the sparring men and women there in the yard, tipping his face toward her. "You've grown talkative."

It's punctuated by a slim, sly smile and the edge of teeth flashing from behind his whiskers. He thinks he's funny. --Or he's avoiding the answer to her question just long enough to decide on the exact shape of the answer.

Marcoulf laces his fingers easily across the pommel of the sword at his side. Shrugs. "In Kirkwall? Just a few days. But I've been in Inquisition company for some time on the road in this direction." He cocks his head a degree farther, studying her with a look that asks, And you?

[villieldr]

To be ever so slightly contrary, Magni just shrugs, non-committal.

A moment longer of watching, and she tilts her head away from the training, towards another section of the Gallows. In the direction of the forge, in fact, if Marcoulf has become familiar enough with the area.

[esquive]

He has - made himself familiar. Or at the very least, a forge makes itself hard to miss. With a last glance for the templars, Marcoulf shifts forward from whatever pillar or wall he'd taken shelter near from the midday sun. He falls in step with her willingly enough.

"The Inquisition must keep you busy." How many swords and axes and maces and Maker knows what else must the they have on hand? How many need sharpening and mending? How many more need making? More than enough for whatever smiths they have, he's certain.

"But should you find the time--" Marcoulf touches the sword at his hip.

[villieldr]

A nod; absolutely, to both. She'll make it high(er) priority, even.

She doesn't hold out her hand for the blade, for two reasons. First of all, the two of them are comparatively new faces here, so whipping out a sword in front of someone skittish could lead to unnecessary melodramatics. Second of all, and perhaps more importantly, she wouldn't presume to request a friend's weapon and leave them unarmed in, again, an unfamiliar and strange place with the reputation that the Gallows and Kirkwall more generally have. Strange people from beyond the Fade, Templars, the Chantry.

The forge door way is open, stone archway and descending staircase.

"They have some good runes here. If you wanted more—" A gesture, her fist closing. Oomph.

[esquive]

He follows her down the stairs without a second thought, glancing over his shoulder only to place this passage in relation to a landmark or to visible from the doorway. He'll want to find his way back here again and the squared, blunted architecture of Kirkwall tends to belie how easily lost a person can become in unfamiliar courtyards and shadowed Gallows corners.

"The sword is fine without," he says as they make their way down stone staircase. It should be cooler there out of the sun, but the heat of the forge beyond leaks outward. The narrowness of the stair is stifling. "But I've a dagger too. That could afford it if you need the practice."

Hilarious.

(No, the rapier is at it's most useful and discreet as a workmanlike blade. Best to keep it unremarkable.)

[villieldr]

Hilarious, indeed. She huffs out a near-silent breath of laughter, though it has won a smile out of her, as she pushes the door open. "I will make you a hammer. You can practice using that."

The room is currently not inhabited by other workers, and she moves over to her work station, brushing aside a couple of designs she is working on.

"Just wear, or did something happen to it?" The blade in need of sharpening, she means.

[esquive]

Is both an acceptable answer? Because that's the one.

With a flick of the wrist, Marcoulf hooks his thumb into the ornate basket of the blade and draws it. It's flipped with an able motion, then offered to her hilt first. --Where the damage done is immediately recognizable. The seam where the guard meets the quillon has come apart and been subsequently patched. The quillon itself has been pushed just faintly crooked from the additional span of metal and the the tang shoulder of the blade suffering from the tension. It's minor. But it throws the balance and asks to be broken a second time by the right blow at the wrong time.

The blade wouldn't hurt for sharpening either.

"Caught a mace some time ago. Collapsed the guard here and here." He gestures to where the looping steel has clearly been reworked. "The repair is--" That gesture turns into a wobbly back and forth tilt of the hand: 'Eh.'