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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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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.

OPEN

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