you're never gonna keep me down

[dashing]

WHO: Carver, D'Artagnan, Herian, Sam (with some open prompts set before/after)
WHAT: In "honour" of the Grand Tourney, a group of Fereldan ex-refugees are hosting their own competition this month: Mud wrestling. The Inquisition's members have been invited to participate.
WHEN: prior to the travel to the actual tourney
WHERE: Kirkwall
NOTES: WRESTLING. The mud wrestling final vs some NPCs will be a group thread. Only the four participants can post open top levels set before/after, but anyone is welcome to tag into those.

Comments

THE GROUP FINAL.

[dashing]

There have been individual events, duo events and somehow our scrappy heroes have made their way into the final of the group event. Herian, for her part, is not sure she'll ever feel clean again. Another part of her has a strange, distant nostalgia for brawls she wound up in as a child in the Alienage back home (whether against Saoirse, or rescuing Saoirse, or being rescued by Saoirse).

At least they have a few minutes to prepare, and she takes a sip from a waterskin, which seems to actually contain very diluted wine (which she is now resigned to) before holding it out in offering to one of the others.

She's painted with mud that alternates between still being slick and dark, and other parts that have gone pale and crumbly as they dry across her skin. Idly, she flexes her hands. She's not entirely sure why she was picked for this task (perhaps for Coupe's amusement), but they've done well enough so far. Teamwork and surprise combos have been— fun, truthfully.

"Have any of you taken any injuries?"

It is a little hard to tell under the mud, after all.

[el_tybs]

"Probably a good time to let me know now while we have time," Sam adds in to Herian's question regarding injuries. Obviously people were going to get hurt, but it wouldn't do well if someone got seriously injured in the process.

At the offer of the waterskin he shakes his head, returning to wiping his face, hair, and hands off with a wet towel. At this point Sam was completely covered in mud, still wet from his recent bout and the water used for cleaning off. At least he had the right of mind to remove his shirt and shoes before diving into this competition enthusiastically.

"How many more events do you think we have left?"

[mousquetaire]

D'Artagnan, of course, is loving every minute of this. It's almost, almost like being home and training with Porthos again. Thanks to that regular pass time, he'd rather used to being thrown around in the mud. He's also much better at it than he was a year ago, and he thinks he's wearing well.

At the question, he takes a brief stock of himself. Sore ribs, of course, strained muscles in his arms, entire body caked in mud. Like Sam, he's shirtless, but half his body is still clothed. His clothes are brown, too, so at this point he's camouflaged nicely. He takes a moment to push a muddy string of hair out of his eyes. The truth is, he just wants to keep going.

"Nothing permanent," he says, flexing his fingers. "Nothing a very long bath won't fix at the end of all this. What's next? We don't want to keep the people waiting."

Carver won't be tagging into our thread after all, feel free to mix up tagging order a bit :]b

[dashing]

Despite herself, Herian smiles a little. It's not a big or bright smile, and it might seem a little reticent. The observant individual might even think it's tired, though given the way she handles herself, the fatigue is not physical.

Like the others, she is without shoes, wearing simple shorts that end close to the knee. Though she does have her chest strapped, it is more for purposes of avoiding injury than specific concern about modesty, and the garments she wears are limited by the desire to provide as little for adversaries to grip as possible. Beneath the mud, in patches where it is thinner, tattoos can be seen that run down either side of her spine and the backs of her arms, and her lower legs are heavily, horrifically scarred. There are other scars, burns over her shoulder and battle scars over other parts of her body, but many things are covered by mud.

"I appear whole enough for now, though I'll wager my muscles will be less forgiving on the morrow."

An enthusiastic roar from the stands suggests that the next bout is being announced, and she checks to make sure her hair is safely pulled back, before gesturing to the... well, it's not so much an arena as a mud pit, with benches and crowds around it.

"They must be almost ready for us. Shall we?"

[mousquetaire]

There's a wild cheer from the crowd as their next opponents roll in, looking altogether more clean and fresh than any one of them. D'Artagnan grins, consciously loosening his shoulders again. He shoots a final glance towards his companions.

"Gentlemen. My Lady."

Then he's into it, rushing at the biggest, burliest fighter and meeting them head on. He's thrown back into the mud bare seconds later, sloshing splashes of it around him and leaving a Musketeer-shaped indent in the turf. He's scrambling to his feet again at once, and slamming his shoulders into the other's torso.

[el_tybs]

All the fighters in the next group look a bit bigger and burlier then some of the others they've met; the lesser amount of mud probably being that they could throw their weight around.

"We should really come up with a stra-" he starts to say, and then slowly starts to fade to a mutter as he notices his companion charge right in, no less taking on the biggest of targets. When D'Artagnan hits the mud Sam winces slightly. "-aategy..." he finishes saying.

"Guess I'll take the one on the left then."

[dashing]

Maker preserve them. She throws a glance at Carver, and the two of them move in to join the fray. Their team is of three, rather than four but all of them are bigger, in muscle if not necessarily in height, than the Inquisition's team. It would seem that the teams may have been judged and classes by weight, although Herian could not say so with any certainty.

One of their team, a dwarf with a blond beard that is braided and could be best described as majestic, barrels towards Carver. (Their battle is an epic one, that perhaps cannot be given justice through words alone. Perhaps it is best left to the power of... imagination.)

Herian, running forward, ducks under arms coming to grasp at her, sliding in the mud to come closer to the giant combatant D'Artagnan threw himself at, and uses everything she has to leap alongside D'Artagnan and bring the big man down onto the ground. Perhaps, hopefully, the two of them can bring him down.

[mousquetaire]

He's terribly sorry. Or at least he will be later, when he's still seeing stars from that splashdown. D'Artagnan doesn't immediately notice that they've joined the fray, until the man topples forward. He lets out a 'Ha!' of triumph, and then sees Herian on the other side.

By this stage, he's covered in a whole other layer of mud, and his arms feel like they've been pulled out of their sockets.

"Don't let him up!"

He shouts, and immediately falls on the man's legs. That leaves Herian with the head, which d'Artagnan had imagined might have been the gentlemanly thing to do. That upper body strength might see him wrong, though. He focuses on hooking his arm around one lower leg and throwing his weight against the other, trying to hold the big man down.

All this, while there are two others still stomping around.

[el_tybs]

While everyone else was already tossing in the mud, Sam and the third combatant from the opposing team were having their own stand-off. They each had initially ran in to join the fray and instead had intercepted each other. Now they were circling each other, sizing the other up and making feints. Every so often a hand would connect, making a wet slapping sound, but no confident grasps as their fingers slipped through the mud on their skin.

At one point though Sam shifts focus when he hears someone on his team yell out, and that's when the other man struck. Obviously his intention was to grab him square in the chest, but the mud slips his grip to Sam's midsection, which doesn't give him enough leverage to topple the mage over. Instead Sam bends over, counter-grabbing the other.

With neither of them able to simply shove the other over, it quickly becomes a dance of who can trip the legs out from their opponent.