open; left to the wind and rain

[redinside]

WHO: Raleigh Samson + a star-studded cast
WHAT: a prisoner is brought from Skyhold to Kirkwall
WHEN: first half of Harvestmere, some early evening
WHERE: The Gallows
NOTES: General warnings TBD, if any.
Inquisition authority figures: I am a slave to your whims; summon this character to meetings etc as you see fit.
Everyone: got an idea not hinted at in this post? Hit me up.

Right, then. Here he is. The one place he was sure he'd never see again, except maybe on its way to ruin, smouldering, the Reds marching through. But that's Kirkwall for you: the rest of the world could be in flames and through the smoke you'd still see the shape of the Gallows. That horrible, wonderful silhouette, getting bigger as the boat bears you across the bay. Your heart thumping you from the inside to remind you, as if you need any reminding, that this is where you belong.

This is where I'll die, Samson thinks, as his feet finally alight on the wood of the dock. It's where I was always meant to die.

While he's being hauled along under a serious guard of five armed templar soldiers, for once it's done without the hood of his prison togs buckled around his head, nor with a heavy hand pushing forward the back of his neck to alter his silhouette. Propelled by giddy dread, he keeps up with them easily despite the chains. He's not smiling or anything so foolish, nor does he particularly feel like smiling, but all the same, he probably doesn't look as penitent as he should...
Oh well.

The group travels up the docks to the stronghold entrance, through forbidding gates and guarded archways to the cobbled yard of Templar Hall, up those long stairs, and inside, no doubt on some official business. From there the prisoner—still under heavy guard—is escorted to the Mage Tower, through the common areas of the lower floor, up to the main residences above, and beyond them.

The group moves efficiently, but not at a hurried pace. Should they pass anyone who wishes to address the prisoner, the retinue will tolerate verbal exchanges—get too close, however, and gloves will reach for sword-belts in warning. These particular templars are not fooling around.

The ultimate destination is a floor occupied by no one else: there Samson will be allowed to dwell, in a room of his own, without black bars, without vermin, where he may easily walk to a window and look through it and see the sky. There, with both fists clutching at the bedding—of modest quality, but immeasurably more comfortable than where he was—he cries himself to sleep like a child.

Comments

[redinside]

It's a good guess, the bit about the weapons, and Samson nods after it.

Movement, then, in his peripheral vision; it snatches his attention and drags it over that way with casual interest. Not any particular flavour of interest, mind you. It would be very easy to turn that observation about Nevarra City—a place Samson has never seen, apart from illustrations—back on the man himself, something or other about beautiful things, but it's a lazy thought that passes by without impulse. No need to make this weird...

Then again, yolo: "That's quite a scar you've got there."

Unlike that earlier scowl of judgment, his gaze doesn't linger on this observation—indeed, there's no suggestion at all in the way he sits up in the basin and twists away from Ilias to reach for his own bath stuff at last. Swipe, swipe, fingers just short of the target, a soft grunt and an extra stretch, and... a clatter as something wooden drops to the floor. This hissed puff of breath sounds like he's laughing at himself as he reaches again to snatch it up.
There. It's a brush, palm-sized, with soft bristles.

[libratus]

It's— challenging not to pull the offending mark out of view again with any unusual swiftness. There are plenty of subjects Ilias has learned to talk around with ease in the course of his life, but this one he covers in high collars and propriety, relies on other people's apathy or distraction to avoid questions when he can't. It helps, though, that the question comes from someone who apparently isn't paying it undue attention. Who seems to be sufficiently (and a little charmingly) occupied with picking up his brush. Ilias softens a touch, settling back into his tub. Dunks cloth and soap beneath the water.

"Not so much worse than yours, is it?"

As if any battle scar was half so neat and clean. As if Circle mages saw many battles at all, before the war. But it's a comparison drawn for less fantastical reasons, too: if they're talking scars, it won't just be his.

[redinside]

"Not at all, friend." Samson sits back down in the basin, and brings his nearer elbow forward to show Ilias the back of his arm. "Nothing wrong with a scar. Got this one most recently, myself... sword, I think. When you're in the thick of it, it's not always easy to tell who's pokin' who with what."

It was an Orlesian sword. Cut clean through his sleeve and managed to edge past the chain beneath. A good slice, deep enough to count, across his triceps. Samson barely felt it. Burning bright and terrible in the red with blood spattered across his face, he laughed like a demon at the soldier's futile bravery and then broke his neck with one hand. That evening, Maddox stitched up the wound with the same careful precision he applied to everything. Applies? Applies, still. He's got to be alive, he must be.

"Yours seems more deliberate, is all. Reminds me of that, er... what do you call it. Where you cut on purpose to make a mark." Gesturing with the brush-wielding hand, one finger extended to feign a loose slicing motion across his own chest; in the next moment he's buffing the well-used bar of soap a few times to get those bristles loaded. "For cultural purposes, or what-have-you. They do that in Nevarra?"

[libratus]

Ilias tilts his head to follow the line of it. An awkward location for a gash, from the sort of scrabbling fight he has little (but not no) experience with. Difficult to stitch. All of which seems to suit the man in front of him, or at least what he's seen of him so far.

"No." They don't do that in Nevarra. It would be an easy lie to tell, that they do; he's the only Mortalitasi here, and people jump to such wild conclusions about their secrets, especially this far south. But much as this isn't a subject he brings up voluntarily, it feels like a betrayal to lie about it, too. To allow a false impression of it to take root. To misrepresent the dead.

"But it was not so different from that. Nothing so ritualistic, but— purposeful."