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WHO: Sonia Barra and YOU
WHAT: Wandering about the Gallows and Kirkwall, getting comfortable with her new locale, meeting people, all the good stuff
WHEN: this week, ish
WHERE: the Gallows and Kirkwall
NOTES: check out her info post if you're looking for a hook, or feel free to hit me up at

runawayballista to plot something!

the courtyard
There's something decidedly gloomy about the Gallows -- all that statuary in the courtyard is off-putting enough, but the general air of urgency and pressing danger seems to fill the place with a psychological fog that dims the heart. It reminds her of the civil war, an echo of a feeling more than a memory. But that's the thing, isn't it? This is war, too. She can't have expected it to feel like anything else.

Maybe if the scenery were a little less grotesque she'd feel lighter. She'd brought her paints with her, all her supplies wrapped in a cloth bundle tucked under her arm, but as she stands at the edge of the courtyard staring at all those tortured souls immortalized in stone, she purses her lips in dismay and blows a piece of hair from her face with a puff of breath.

"Surely there has to be better scenery somewhere."

the baths
There's nothing like a good long journey to make one feel so deeply in need of a bath. Sonia's well-acquainted with travel, but the trip from Wildcrest to Denerim is a stone's throw compared to the long haul all the way to Kirkwall. She'd come down to the heated baths with a bucket fully intent on bringing some nice hot water up to her room for a private soak, but as she stares at the bucket in her hands and contemplates the five flights of stairs up to her room, the price of modesty suddenly seems far too high.

Hm, no. She's not body-shy enough for any more grueling stair-climbing, and she wants a hot bath more than anything else right now. She sets the bucket firmly down and begins to strip down. A heated bath sounds like absolute bliss right now.

the library
It's not so much that Sonia has a dedicated work ethic so much as she is occasionally inspired by fits of duty and honor and the prospect of doing something good. When she feels like it, she can sit at a desk all day writing and reading and sorting correspondence, setting up meetings, coordinating the minutiae of an important party -- when she feels like it, Sonia has boundless energy for work.

Today, she does not particularly feel like it. Today, she is not in the library to work or to study, but to take advantage of the quiet to nurse a moderate hangover. It's a cruel cosmic joke that fun sometimes comes at such a vicious price, one she mourns as she stares blearily at the book laid open in front of her. It's some history or another -- she didn't really pay attention to the title when she grabbed it, she just needed something to put in front of her to distract from the fact that she is, actually, still drinking. From a flask this time, and a classily ornamental one at that, but anyone who gets close enough will be able to tell that it is most definitely not water.

kirkwall
Shopping! So much shopping. Sonia has, honestly, missed shopping. The journey to Kirkwall hadn't really permitted any detours, and there's something about packing up and leaving home that just makes her want things. Not just any things -- she's not usually in the habit of picking up bric-a-brac simply to collect. Some nice clothes and a few fine bottles of wine would do nicely.

"Pardon me -- hello!" She smiles sunnily, waving down someone she thinks might be able to help, familiar face or no. "You don't happen to know the merchants around here, do you? I've got a bit of a shopping list, and I'd rather skip over the ones not worth dealing with."

wildcard
SURPRISE ME MY DUDES

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"There is better scenery anywhere," a voice replies from behind her to cheerfully disparage the views available in the Gallows in a distinctly upper-class Orlesian accent.

Edited 2018-09-18 04:23 (UTC)

Orlesians. Perhaps it's just old family prejudice, but there's something about that accent that's always struck Sonia as inherently condescending. Sonia turns to face her with a polite smile.

"Then perhaps you could be so kind as to point me in the right direction?" She gestures at the horrific statuary. "These make for poor subjects."

White, gold, and voluminously skirted as usual, Alexandrie nods with a hum of thought. The accent is Fereldan, of a certainty, but cultured enough in tone and phrase to mark her nobility. Then, her use of 'subjects', the bundle beneath her arm; an artist?

"I shall do better and take you in the correct direction if you would like, Lady..." she trails off with a tilt of her head, a lovely smile, and an internal sigh that there is not someone about to introduce new peers at all times so as to prevent her from having to be so common as to inquire.

Well, it wouldn't hurt to have someone show her around, even though this woman looks like she's regularly attended on for things so trivial as wiping her lips after a drink. She turns the brightness of her smile up a few notches.

"Sonia Barra," she says, with just a hint of pride emphasized in her name. Her family had never been particularly submissive during the occupation. "Of Wildcrest. And you, my lady? What may I call you?"

Sonia's name is seized upon with interest, "Lady Sonia," Alexandrie repeats with a nod of acknowledgement and a slight widening of her own smile, "of the Barras of Wildcrest, no?"

She remembers the family from her studies for two things: stubborn resistance to remaining occupied, and the production of one of the only Fereldan wines worth drinking— and it was very worth drinking. Mention of the latter distinction is really the better choice for making acquaintances.

"I am greatly anticipating the availability of this year's red. Do say it shall make its way to Kirkwall soon?" Then: "Ah, pardon. Alexandrie de la Fontaine."

That tack works well on her -- it teases a slightly more genuine smile out of the polite one, feeling like a little victory.

"A pleasure to make your acquaintance, Lady Alexandrie," Sonia says, a shade warmer than before. An Orlesian noble indeed. "I'm afraid the details of shipping are not in my purview, but I do believe they were preparing the barrels as I was leaving. I have sampled, it however -- a very good vintage this year. I think it will be worth the wait."

She does, in fact, have a few bottles stowed away in her quarters, but that sort of knowledge is for closer friends. Which more or less amounts to Byerly, at this point.

“Magnifique, I am so very pleased to have run into its advance guard,” she looks it, too. “As to your earlier woe, you must first tell me what manner of subject it is you seek.” Alexandrie indicates the bundle beneath Sonia’s arm with a tilt of her head. “I paint the land, myself, and am thus most suited to showing you the vantages I have found, but I do know one or two studios of ...acceptable quality and reputation, who employ a variety of skilled models and would no doubt leap at the chance to have your patronage.” you can take the girl out of Val Royeaux, but...

Sonia is slightly taken aback by Alexandrie's interest, but she smiles, running a hand over one end of the bundle.

"I'm afraid I'm more of a hobbyist than anything else," she admits, unusually humble. "But I just like to try to...capture the moment. Any moment in time."

Alexandrie flicks her hand, dismissing Sonia's dismissal of herself.

"There are plenty of individuals who let moments flit by without taking the time to notice them, let alone taking the time to preserve them, even as a hobby. And, as the war rages on, there are... more moments that are fleeting that by all rights ought not to be."

That's a little dire for a first meeting, Alexandrie. Smile!

"Well and so. There are often boats coming in from the sea at this hour, if you should like to see the docks. Or an oddly compelling area of Hightown all covered in moss and other greenery."

That draws a bigger smile out of Sonia. Despite appearances, Alexandrie seems to have fewer pretentious notions of art than she'd expected. She clasps her hands over her art supplies, in excitement this time, not uncertainty.

"I haven't been to Hightown yet," she confesses, tilting her head. "It sounds lovely, though -- would you do me the courtesy of showing me? Some other time, if now would be an imposition."

More often than not, Gwenaëlle does go to the trouble of bathing privately—having always had some manner of attendant here goes a way towards making it if not less of an inconvenience then less inconvenient for her—but it isn't always practical, and she doesn't always care. She'd not enjoyed the hot springs in Skyhold as much as she might have done, at first, not shy but not, then, accustomed to the vicious scars that a couple of years time has dulled; she'd relearned that indifference.

They aren't remarkable to her any more, winding around her body from the torso down the back of one thigh where the rage demon's claws had caught her as she rolled, but the wyvern's teeth-marks on her thigh are newer, still healing and tender, and see her lowering with great care into the relief of hot water.

Yes; bliss. Only one thing could make it better, and:

Just because she's not in private doesn't mean she's going to treat this bath any differently. All it means is that she drinks the wine directly from the bottle, instead of having brought a glass down and faffed about with being civilized. She sighs, tilting her head from one side to the other, the hair piled up atop it beginning to loosen into curls around her face where the damp air mingles with sweat collecting in the heat.

“I don't think we've met,” after a moment.

Edited 2018-09-18 11:01 (UTC)

Sonia is, generally, very good at being polite. It is a necessary skill of the nobility, and she's had to tiptoe around her uncle's temper enough that she's had plenty of practice. So she doesn't stare at Gwen's scars beyond a slight flutter of the eyes when she notices them, but they leave her very curious. What is a lady with a very noble Orlesian bearing doing with those kinds of marks? Though Sonia has to admit, privately, that that lack of apparent self-consciousness leaves her impressed.

That, and she can get behind drinking in the bath. That is absolutely her style, and her smile, though slightly distant in its politeness, is faintly amused.

"We have not," Sonia agrees as she slides into the water. Her own hair is left down -- it needs as much of a washing as the rest of her. She lets out a sigh, the hot water an immediate relief. The power of a nice hot bath is unmatched. "Lady Sonia Barra of Wildcrest. You'll have to excuse me for not being acquainted sooner -- I've only just arrived."

“Gwenaëlle Baudin.” The only thing that could make the name more Orlesian would be her assortment of middle names, and perhaps tacking on a de Vauquelin at the end, but she offers no title to go with it. Unlikely to be an accidental oversight, all things considered. “I've managed to avoid becoming acquainted with absolutely everyone in this fortress for two years at least, so I won't hold it against you,” a bit dry.

(It had been 9:42 when she arrived in Skyhold; rather a lot has changed since then. Not her willingness to criticise half the people she sees regularly, though.)

“Diplomatic endeavors?”

The usual use of pretty young ladies, in her observation, though it's never been hers.

That dry remark gets a slight quirk of Sonia's mouth, more an acknowledgment than real humor, but certainly not disapproving. There's something bold about her that Sonia likes. That sort of makes up for her being Orlesian.

"Mm." There's just a slight creak in her voice as she sinks down to her shoulders, another breath escaping as a sigh. Could she sleep here? Maybe the other woman would even do her a favor and keep her from drowning. "Yes, of a sort. That's the pretext, at any rate."

The anchor-shard buried in her left hand is clearly in evidence with nothing else to divert attention from it but her skin, an obvious explanation for her own presence; anchor-shards are well named, after all, chaining Gwenaëlle to the Inquisition since long before she believed in its cause.

“Saving the world is never enough for anybody,” she notes, flexing that hand, absently. The scars lend her a credibility that she'd be the first person to acknowledge she didn't earn getting them—there are a lot of reasons it took her over two years to join—but there's a restless dissatisfaction to the way she speaks of the institution she's bound and bound herself to that colours it.

It ought to be enough, she thinks, but she is perhaps not herself the most compelling argument for sentiment. An unlikely, sharp-edged sort of idealist.

"Oh no, that's the real reason." Sonia smiles, almost glowing in the warmth. She feels like she's glowing. She'd forgotten how heavenly a bath could feel. "Diplomacy is a pretext, as is any other excuse my family uses to send me away. But I wanted to come, anyway."

It seems like Gwen...did not, or at least, she doesn't want to be here anymore. Sonia tilts her head slightly. "Why did you come?"

Strike that, reverse it—her sentiments perhaps being more clear in the way that she visibly, palpably warms to Sonia at her clarification. Where she'd been somewhat diffident, her interest and amiability sharpen to a finer point; she is tired of that not being enough.

That is what dissatisfies her about the Inquisition: its mortal limitations. The dueling agendas, the lack of support for something that should, that does concern everyone in Thedas—they should have the resources of the continent at their disposal, but they have to be polite about how they handle a failed Tevinter archon in case someone in Orlais clutches her pearls.

“I stay, or rather, I would still stay if it were up to me,” a droll little wave of her anchor-shard: it is not, it doesn't matter if she wants to be here or doesn't, “because that's the only reason that matters. But I can't say I was particularly virtuous about coming, I was only too weak from my injuries to fight back when I was forced into a carriage against my will. It's necessary for all those with anchor-shards to be here, for our own sake and, frankly, everyone else's. The Venatori managing to hang onto a few would be catastrophic.”

Sonia blinks at that, leaning back in the bath with a pensive, curious look. 'Brought here forcibly' was...really not what she was expecting, and it troubles her a little for some reason. Her lips purse slightly, her brow creasing, but then her lips thin and her expression seems to clear.

"I suppose not," she says, sinking a little to work the water through her hair, trying to smooth out matted curls. "But I suppose I wouldn't be too pleased about it myself, if I'd been dragged here against my own will."

“And two and a half years ago I wasn't,” is Gwenaëlle's philosophical, verbal shrug. “It'd be nice if it had happened differently, but it didn't.”

She wouldn't change the outcome—she understands why it was the way it was—what else is there to say?

“It doesn't matter. The work matters; that we are here is what's important. It'd be nice if more of us were at all fucking competent, but since apparently most of the world doesn't give a damn if it ends, we have to make do with what we have.”

Edited 2018-10-09 09:55 (UTC)

Sonia nods, her eyes bright and intent. Gwen has made an impression on her already -- reinforcing her own ideas about being here. That just being here matters. That they can't give up without a fight.

"We have to at least try," she says, her voice a little muted, but it echoes hollowly off the water. "I don't understand the ambivalence. I don't understand just...sitting around, waiting for bad things to happen."

“Someone else will handle it, or, it isn't their problem yet, nevermind how much worse it'll be by the time they realise that it is, or they think they can benefit from the chaos, or...”

A hundred selfish things that come all too easily to mind.

“We have to step with such care around things that don't matter, it's stupid.”

The thing is: Kitty needs that book that she's grabbed. She'd come into the library a few minutes after Sonia, and had spent a few fruitless minutes searching for the book before noticing it plopped before the miserable-looking woman sitting there. And she'd have let it be, honestly she would, and just worked with other books, except for the fact that she's glanced over at the woman three times in the past fifteen minutes and she's been on the same page the entire time, with the exact same illustration in the top right corner. So eventually she simply cannot take it any longer, and goes over to the woman with a pointed -

"'Scuse me. But if you don't need that, I'd like it, please."

Sonia's eyes had glazed over as she stared at the page in front of her, trying to will away the pounding headache, and she starts slightly when Kitty's voice shakes her out of her reverie. She stares down at the book, realizes how painfully obvious it is that she isn't actually reading, and gives Kitty a bright and slightly rueful smile. The effect is only somewhat dampened by her bleary eyes.

"Oh -- er, yes, of course. Please, it's all yours." Discreetly tucking her flask back into her lap, Sonia slides the book across the table to the other girl. God, she hopes Kitty doesn't detect the distinct tang of alcohol on her breath. This is...a little embarrassing.

Oh, God. She's not hung over. She's drunk. It's not even noon, and she's drunk. Kitty doesn't know whether to regard her with pity or with scorn, and ends up splitting the difference: she eyes Sonia with her mouth all twisted up and her brows pushed down, hands on hips, tapping her foot.

Finally, after a long moment regarding her, Kitty asks - and it's worth noting that her voice is quite bossy in the way that only teenaged girls' voices can be - "D'you need help?"

At another time, in a different mood, with less of a headache, Sonia might find this girl's attitude precocious, even a little cute -- but right now, she absolutely cannot handle being condescended to by a teenager, and a bossy one at that. Any resemblance to her own self at that age completely escapes her right now. She gives Kitty a thin smile, debating whether it's worth crawling the five flights of stairs to her room over the indignity of taking a nap in the library. Ooh, tough choices.

"No, thank you, I'm quite alright," she says primly, despite the hoarseness in her voice. She clears her throat, then hiccups, and her hand goes to her mouth. Ohh, no. That didn't feel right. She swallows and forces a bright smile, slowly getting to her feet. "Actually, if you'd do me the favor of pointing me in the direction of the nearest, ah -- "

She flaps her hand without finishing the sentence. Lavatory. She needs a lavatory, or whatever the closest thing is near to here, because she's pretty sure she might throw up.

Finch blanches a shade of white most often found in fishbellies and ghost stories (in chalk soaked a week of water),

"Messere," He manages, before anyone’s especially naked. "D’you need help getting it up?"

A pause, to hear himself speak. Who knew that fishbellies could be wrung with such abrupt, existential despair?

"Getting that upstairs, I mean."

Sonia's down to her undergarments when he speaks, and she looks back at him over her shoulder. Under different circumstances, she might be the embarrassed party here. But this little elf is just too cute, and she lets out a silvery laugh before she can stop herself. He looks a little on the young side, and that awkward entendre sounds like a confirmation to her.

"Almost certainly." She smiles brilliantly at him. "But five flights up...that's quite a favor for a lady. I wouldn't want you to strain yourself on my account."

Since turning in her report to Elven Artifacts, today is the first day that Morrigan has had any reason to come back to the Gallows, but she can't keep herself and Kieran shut away in Sundermount forever, and even a teenage boy put through all that he has can be lured by the promise of some freedom. There are enough eyes here. And the garden isn't so very far. (If they lose him, if he manages to slip through their fingers, she feels reasonably confident in them believing she has the ability to turn them inside out and that they'd live through it.)

So it's back from depositing him in the gardens, on the way to the project space for something slipping out of her head (perhaps a discussion she might wish to avoid, or simply people she'd rather not deal with) when she pauses, mouth half in a smirk.

"You missed what it was before, if you might stretch the mind to imagine worse. A prison turned Circle which is still a prison by any other name is hardly likely to win prizes."

The face that Sonia makes is somewhere between a cringe and a wince, and a delicate attempt to cover up the grimace at that gruesome thought. She might not be the most delicate of ladies, but her bleeding heart makes her plenty nauseated at the thought.

"A thing I'd rather leave to the realm of imagination, I think," she says a little faintly, and tucks her bundle of supplies under her arm more securely. She glances sidelong at Morrigan, her eyes open and questioning. "Was this the worst of the abuses of Circle mages? I've heard of it happening, but I've never...seen it for myself."

"There are things that fester if left to that, others that are better allowed out that they are given voice." After what she has seen of late, she might be projecting but that's also the right of witches: to give your opinion couched as advice, unsolicited. Her mouth curves up into the shadow of a smirk as she says it, considering.

There are a great many things Morrigan could say of Circles after all, a great many more she might say of the mages within them as well.

"I have never belonged to any of their Circles, they call me apostate as one raised outside and apart from it. Many tales I have heard from them before their fall, and after, of what came though they offered themselves up as the sheep does that lies down before the wolf even though they are very much people, same as Templars. But the Gallows did indeed have a reputation for...a certain harshness and adherence to rules beneath the last Knight-Commander." She says it carefully, picks her way over the words as one might the cracks over paving slabs, invisble lines to weave about but such is life is it not?

It's advice that makes Sonia think, at any rate. Perhaps the tension at home is the result of a little too much imagination.

An apostate, she says. Sonia regards Morrigan with more curiosity than apprehension, though she tries to be more or less polite about it. Her lips purse slightly, thoughtfully. "Whose rules, exactly?"

Because the are the Rules, the ones you're supposed to follow -- and then, of course, there are all the little rules people in power invent for themselves, to execute whenever convenient.

"The Circle." A pause to consider (how very new, this one) and then the gratification at being the one to impart the lesson on this particular topic. So many - too many - are far too fond of the thing that turns around and bites them, forgiving it, excusing it, time and time again. "The Chantry, 'tis the religious body, the main religious body here, founded on the beliefs of the prophet Andraste, Bride of the Maker, though much was written after. The treatment of mages that they themselves very much allow comes from one line in the Chant: Magic exists to serve man, and never to rule over him.

"You see how easy such words are bent to suit?"

When those ruling are those very much without though Morrigan will of course continue but she does enjoy the opinions others have, it's been too long since she caught up with new arrivals.

Sonia nods, frowning, a little crestfallen. She's familiar enough with the Chantry, though the Barras have never particularly been known for their piety.

"I do." She looks out over the horrifying statuary -- makes herself look this time, even though it makes her want to look away. "I...confess I never thought much of it beyond the abstract. I've encountered it little personally. But when I started to pay attention, look a little closer..."

She's a spiritual person, generally speaking, but the more she learns about the truth of Chantry Circles, the more she starts to question which spirits in particular she ought to be contemplating.

"Better to keep as far from it as you might though even without a Chantry to speak of we have Templars, Brothers, Loyalists and other faithful clustered within the Inquisition. As you might imagine for a thing formed from a dead Divine and given form by her Hands."

Leliana might forgive her that, and Morrigan knows her well enough even now to imagine that little furrow in her brow what are you up to Morrigan, she would ask. She misses the letters. The chats on the crystal. It's been a long time now.

"How is it that you've come to find yourself so far from it? You hardly have the look of a cultist nor Avvar." And Morrigan would know a Wilder much as a Wilder would know her, though what reception-- no, that isn't what matters in the moment. "The Chantry is the thing that stands as it has ever stood, that it stands as it does relies upon not being questioned. Perhaps you might do so. Is there more that has troubled you when you looked closer? There is a long legacy of what it likes and dislikes, selective as it is."

Legacy curated carefully as the garden of nobility, weeds torn out at the roots, only the semblance of wildness remaining much as Orlesian's with their hunts orchestrated lest a noble die in the wilds somewhere rather than ride about inside some carved out wood fit for purpose.

"There is. At Skyhold."

Luca speaks up from the bench he'd been lounging on, munching at an apple while he does some people watching. Part of his job as a Seeker, that. To keep a read on the pulse of the Gallows, observe how it runs, and who runs it. Of course, he isn't wearing his Seeker gear any time he isn't definitively on Seeker duty. Tends to make him stick out like a sore thumb, and leaves more than a good number unwilling to speak to or near him. This chat, though, has nothing really to do with business. Just idle friendliness.

"But if you aren't feeling up to the trek along the Frostbacks, I'd recommend the docks at sundown, on a cloudless evening." Luca lifts a hand to point in the direction of the docks - if she hurries, she may get there just in time tonight. "The ambers and pinks leave the bay looking like a sea of enchanted flames."

"Oh?"

Sonia glances over at the sound of his voice, eyes brightening as they fall on someone who looks decidedly friendly. He sounds friendly, at any rate. And Byerly had made it sound like there were few friends to be had around here. Respectable friends, anyway, and Sonia can't speak to the respectability of someone she doesn't even know.

It's a powerful suggestion. It sparks her imagination and appeals to her particular sensibility -- it's all about capturing the moment, just a single moment in time, and that sounds like a beautiful moment indeed. She smiles then, and it lights up her face. She looks poised to run, but pauses, hovering.

"I suppose you wouldn't mind showing me the way, would you? I'm very new here."

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courtyard - hey baaaabe 8)

sticks leggy out

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the baths.

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library

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baths

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courtyard;

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courtyard!

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