[OPEN] lets say its like the sunrise

[esquive]

WHO: Flint, Wysteria, Marcoulf + YOU
WHAT: Guardian Catch-all
WHEN: Right Now
WHERE: Kirkwall, unless otherwise noted
NOTES: Hit me up if you want a specific starter!

FLINT

I. BIRD'S EYE VIEW
Somewhere in the Gallows, there is a narrow interior courtyard. It's shielded by much of the weather if not the chill by the high walls surrounding it which makes it more conducive to loitering than most. In this courtyard, a minor noblewoman from Ostwick and a merchant of some middling means are carrying on a conversation while the noblelady tosses a ball down the length of the narrow yard. Her dog, long-legged and mad from hours locked away in a Gallows apartment, races after it - digs up the winter bare planters - rolls in the ice - while his mistress is saying:

"--It could be done, of course. But the price would be astronomical."

The shape of the conversation wanders upward, carried by the cold air and the narrow walls of the courtyard to where on the balcony above, a man in a dark coat is taking some air. Flint stands far enough from the balcony's wall that it would be difficult to see him from the courtyard below. He's nursing a steaming cup of something and is absolutely not eavesdropping.

WYSTERIA

I. INDEPENDENT STUDY
There's a young woman with possession of an entire table in the library. Frankly speaking? That's rude and unfair to the six dozen other scholars jockeying for any available study space to be found in the Gallows. And yet Wysteria Poppell persists with her charts and papers and open books sprawled about her in every direction.

For the most part they're awfully boring sorts of books - natural history and long, dry examinations of the Fade. But one of the books - in fact the one that sits open over top of everything else - is at least interesting for the fact that it's so comically massive and seems to be all but crumbling under its own weight. Wysteria's isolated a section in the back and seems to be studying this book very carefully indeed, pausing frequently to make chicken scratch notes in the sheaf of papers at her right hand.

(Yes, she is technically avoiding her work for Base Operations by hiding out here. No, she'd rather not discuss it.)

MARCOULF

I. WICKED GRACE
The weather's miserable to the point that they're no point in spending any more of it than necessary out in that cutting harbor wind or through the rain and sleet slick the plagues the higher reaches of the city. Between patrol assignments along the Inquisition's harbor space and work in the Gallows, Marcoulf spends any spare scrap of time available near whatever fire is most convenient.

Translation: he's in a tavern, nursing something warm to drink with a hot plate of doesn't-really-matter-as-long-as-it's-warm while losing hands of Wicked Grace. Hemorrhaging the coin this way should bother him (it does); he shouldn't be spending it in the first place (he is).

"Ah," He makes a low noise, then turns the card he's just draw face up on the table. There she is: Lady Death. Time for a show of hands.

II. MUD WRASSLIN'
Kirkwall is no city for a horse in the best of weather. It's all miserable stone roadways and twisting stairwells, made incalculably worse by the rain and the freeze and the melt and the rain and-- All the sand and dirt pulled down into the Inquisition's stables compound and training yards have only turned to mud in winter. The creatures there - exercising fighters and unused mounts - are the worst combination of restless and caked with filth. Trying to keep anything clean and happy is a fool's errand.

But here Marcoulf is, religiously making an attempt anyway. The little roan mare keeps shifting around and stamping her feet, mud-clumped tail thrashing irritably while he scrubs at her mud-caked haunch with a stiff bristled brush. He keeps having to raise an arm to fend off the WHACK! as she swings it like a mace.

[[...or wildcard whatever you want/shoot me a PM for a starter. I'm not the boss of you.]]

Comments

4 gareth

[reshapes]

One thing leads to another, and another things leads to another thing (as they are often wont to do), all of which converges to put him squarely outside of the Gallows dungeons. It doesn't liberate him from suffering through the dull passage of quarantine on the island proper, however. Which, look, technically he's under no obligation to do what anyone tells him to much less obey rules like 'Hey, Bartimaeus, maybe don't leave the Gallows until we give you the official say-so', but for the sake of keeping the peace and not having to sneak past a guard every time he wants to stretch his legs... sure, he'll play along for a bit. He can be a good sport.

That's the idea anyway. The reality is that he's had about two days of peace and quiet outside the dungeon's walls and more than a handful within them, and it turns out the former isn't really markedly different from the latter in terms of entertainment value. The fact that no one's asked him for much of anything doesn't really square with how this is supposed to go either. Not that he misses the whole 'getting ordered around and doing it or else' thing of course, but do you know how irritating it is to be stuck in a physical form like this with nothing to do with it? One can only play high stakes card games with the soldiers loitering around the margins of the Gallows courtyard before they've won more money than they know what to do with¹.

So the invitation, oh so mysterious though it might be, is something of a welcome respite from the drudgery of being idle. Sure, he might be walking straight into someone unhappy with him being released now trying to stuff him into a sack and purloin him away from the Gallows in order to subject him to the good old fashioned Essence Rack or whatever these people do to torture spirits for fun, but hey! What's life without a little excitement, eh?

He's not going to be stupid about it though. Which is why, when the other half of this party arrives (looking confused? holding a similar looking invitation? having been being pushed by the winds of fate and whimsy in this direction? who can say), he'll not find a sketchy looking boy in his late teens waiting. Rather, sitting on the bench of that awful derelict swan boat is someone who looks very like a certain miss Kitty Jones.

The girl sets one of the oars. "It's about time you showed up."

1. Or has lost their shirt. But not to worry, he's acquired a new one. You should see the other guy, etc.

[foundmyselfagain]

The person who shows up does indeed carry a similar invitation, and definitely looks confused. The invitation had seemed...suspicious, at best, and the first thing Gareth thinks of is that someone, somehow, figured out that there was more to him than a scrawny mage nerd. Which is why he accepts the invitation at all, because if there’s going to be trouble, it’s his job to find out, and face it.

But he hadn’t expected trouble to come in the form of a teenage girl.

He knows of her, in a vague manner that includes little more than that she's a rifter with Opinions. Which is not the kind of person he would expect to attempt to confront him about possibly less than savory magical use—and he’s definitely sure he’s never engaged in anything akin to it around her.

But if this isn’t about his propensity for bloodletting, then what could it possibly be about?

Utterly baffled and just a touch paranoid, Gareth steps up to the boat, but doesn’t quite get in yet. Instead, he holds up the smelly invitation in one hand, and gestures to it. "It didn’t give me a meeting time. Or a deadline, really. I don’t suppose you'd know anything about that?"

[reshapes]

"Come on, Romeo. Don't be so coy."

The teenage girl in question - who, come to think of it, must have a hell of a head cold; she sounds almost nothing at all like how she usually does in her waxing sending crystal monologues - quirks an eyebrow that segues impressively into a truly phenomenal eye roll. She reaches into her tunic, produces a similarly scenty invitation.

"Honestly? Your guess is as good as mine. If I were a betting--" something "--hm. If I had money on it, I'd say whoever set this all up has a pair of eyes someplace sneaky watching all of this right now. Why?, you ask? Who knows. But there's only one way to find out."