OPEN | they've given you a number

[hassaran]

WHO: Open to all, plus a couple specific closed starters
WHAT: Moving into the DH quarters, general routines, and kicking off some particular intel-gathering ops
WHEN: Now-ish
WHERE: Around the Gallows, but if you'd prefer somewhere else hit me up on plurk and we can work something out.
NOTES: n/a, will be updated if that changes

Yseult's move into the Scouting office and Division Head quarters isn't immediate. There are Beleth's things to be packed up and new chosen to replace them, options scavenged from unused quarters or dusted off after years in storage. Gallows staff come and go, bearing away rolled-up wall-hangings and grumbling about how to get the old desk back out through the doorway (they got it in here so there must be a way without sawing it in half), and Yseult can be found "overseeing" the minor commotion. This appears to mostly involve her ignoring it, except to shift from perching on this windowsill to that end-table or crate corner as needed, rotating around the emptying rooms as she reads through a stack of files, occasionally making notes with a stub of pencil otherwise tucked behind an ear or rolled absent-mindedly between knuckles.

When she runs out of reading material she might instead be found even further up the central tower in the aerie, visiting with the griffons. One of the adolescents, a white female with grey-tan markings on face and wings, seems to delight in prowling on tip-toes behind her, attempting to discreetly sidle up and steal things out of her pockets as Yseult pretends not to notice, only to coincidentally shift out of reach just at the key moment. When this game grows old there are others: a version of Find-the-Lady played with three wooden cups and a hidden treat, or catch played with bits of food or a leather ball and other random objects tossed around the aerie, griffons darting between rafters and racing to beat their siblings to catch it.

The training grounds are another common haunt, though she prefers odd hours--at dusk or dawn, or during mealtimes--when they are at their emptiest. She trains most often empty-handed or with knives, obviously a favored weapon whether thrown or wielded against one of the straw-filled bags hung from the ceiling. But sometimes it's a long staff, or two short ones, a whip-fast rapier, occasionally even a regular longsword or mace if she really wants to sweat through a challenge. Most sessions begin and end with her scaling the walls of the training hall building up to the roof, light on her feet across the ridgeline to a far corner within leaping distance of the isle's outer wall and from there across parapets and rooftops and forgotten banner-line ropes back to the main towers. She usually chooses her moment carefully to make this climb without being spotted, but can occasionally be caught dangling from a gutter on her way up or down. With the Scouting suite in flux, she can still be found in the common baths in the Templar tower afterwards.

After a couple days, the dust settles on the eighth floor, and from then she can be often found in the re-fitted Scouting office, its door always cracked open to eavesdrop on the hallway invite a knock unless she is in conference with someone. The space has been rearranged, but some of the spirit of Beleth's office remains in the pair of armchairs and tea-table now set in front of the fire and in the bookcases that still line the walls. The desk, large but simply carved on its solid front, is already accumulating files and missives neatly collected in stacks around the central blotter and pewter inkwells. The walls are bare, but that seems likely to be temporary, a few rolled tapestries in a corner and paintings in frames propped against the wall. When not bent over a report, pen in hand, she might be found flipping through them, or contemplating the merits of a seaside landscape in various positions on the wall, frowning thoughtfully over a cup of tea late into the evening.

Comments

closed to bastien, byerly, colin & jenin

[hassaran]

[ Byerly, Colin, Bastien, and Jenin have all received instructions on where and when to meet: a cellar several levels below the central tower, where there is little danger of interruption or curious passers-by unless you count the occasional mouse. The wine racks that line the walls are, sadly, empty, a few stains and shards of glass all that's left of the collection formerly housed here. (Meredith probably didn't have any taste anyway.)

Several chairs are arrayed around an empty barrel that Yseult is using as a desk just at the moment, a small notebook unfolded atop it and a stub of pencil used to scratch out notes as she waits. It's shut and secured with a few quick coils of a string as the invitees begin arriving, dropped into a discreet pocket cut into her skirt. She doesn't rise, but greets the first of them to enter with a polite nod. ]

Good afternoon. If you'll all take a seat.

[keenly]

[This is barely more comfortable than Colin remembers being when Beleth summoned him to tell him she'd caught him dealing lyrium.

Does the new Scoutmaster know what the old one knew?

He moves in like he's apologizing for it. Walks with a wince like he shouldn't exist and he knows it. He can't be competent, he is probably not really what she is looking for. He's just been blackmailed into being here.

But he does take a seat, without a word, waiting for what is to come.]

[triamour]

[ Is that the cook? And a drunk, ever curious.

Jenin trails a hand delicately along a dusty shard of Chateau du Marcher Swill, refrains from lancing her finger inward (clumsy!); there's no point, the kindly and callow don't meet in basements. She drops into the chair beside Colin, skirts swept ungainly aside. In stage whisper to him, ]

I hope we will not see a rat.

closed to fifi and nikos

[hassaran]

[ Fifi and Nikos are directed to a spare office room in one of the towers along the Gallows' outer wall, up several flights of tightly-winding stairs. The sound of the sea lapping at the cliffs below travels up even this high, to what appears to be a guard office, long disused. The worst of the dust has been cleared from a few mismatched chairs, and Yseult sits perched on the edge of a battered desk. She gestures at the chairs once all three of them have filed in. ]

I apologize for the excessive secrecy. The office is not available at present and we do require discretion. Are you two acquainted?

[exsecutus]

Well enough to complete a job.

[Nikos sits in one of the chairs. He's a little out of breath after climbing the stairs of the tower, but he's not particularly dissatisfied on the venue. It's a sort more familiar to him than an office.

He's answered without having spared Fifi more than a cursory glance. There are few people with which Nikos genuinely likes to work--the same people as those on the list of those really and truly trusted while working. In the Inquisition, he's kept his habit of finding out as much as he can about those around him, in case the information ever becomes useful. Some of that has informed a second list, and a third. People he might tolerate. People he might tolerate a little less, but still manage. There is little movement between the lists. People don't often prove themselves more than their first impression.

All this is to say that Nikos is waiting, reserving judgement, but the prognosis of worth is already at a disadvantage thanks to his natural cynicism. He's still in the room, at least. He crosses his arms over his chest, and waits for more.]

arrives a year late with starbucks

[untiltheyarent]

[Fifi sits straight and quiet in the other chair, hands folded in her lap and her shoulders tense, self-conscious. This is new to her, and after spending so much time in the realm of domestic servitude, it feels strange to be in a room with humans who expect her to be part of the conversation.

She shakes her head to the question, a little awkward smile twitching onto her mouth when Nikos answers. So be it, then.]

closed to coupe

[hassaran]

[ The chapel at night is cavernous, the soaring vaults disappearing into the darkness, statues shrouded in shadow. The eternal flame provides most of the light, burning away in the hollowed center of the altar, and scattered candles illuminate the pillars and pews. Yseult sits in one, not down on a knee or even bent over a copy of the Chant, but back straight against the bench. The book is in her lap, hands loose around it, and her head is tipped back to face the ceiling, eyes closed. ]

[limier]

[ She doesn't intend to disturb.

— It's why she does, the heavy trod of feet unmuffled by more than token effort (her best, she expects, would bear little difference). A warning: That neither of them is alone.

The box tucked under her arm is slim, inscribed with sun; her cloak pulled close against a season that hasn't haunted the air for a month or more. Flame flickers on upon a conscious silence. Yseult looks too composed for sleep, and for all the unity of the Chant, there is an honour due one's private devotions.

But privacy is what she sought here too, and neither will have it now. ]

Yseult,

[ She says, instead of Scoutmaster. It's small warmth, but present; if she'd come to arrangements with Ashara, their relationship yet snarled about the edge of some future dream. The future becomes present, and Beleth is not, and instead — ]

A poor time.

[ To speak, as she's hoped to. The twist of her mouth is wry, self-deprecative. The future becomes present, and if this is a poor time, there's no saying they'll be afforded better. ]

[hassaran]

[ Half-asleep, at least, or she was before the sound of a footstep in the doorway reached her ears. The shift to wakeful alertness was invisible, but had there been any bristling tension it would have eased at the careless tread and further at the voice. She lets the half-formed thoughts she'd been failing to weave into a coherent prayer drift away again for now.

Her smile matches Coupe's, once she gets her eyes open and her head turning. She shakes it, lifting an arm to lay along the back of the pew, open. ]

There are worse. You have need of me, or--? [ The gesture of her head takes in their surroundings. ] I can go you if you came for solitude. I've had my turn.

scouting office.

[ipseite]

( it isn't quite so odd to come here absent beleth as it had been to first present herself to herian in what had once been her own office—still, she finds there's a certain wistfulness to regarding the changed space, that she might work closely with the scoutmaster and it isn't the one she knew better. but, ah: change is the only constant.

the new scoutmaster is competent, she understands. that is the most important thing, and the reminder to herself is less stern than it has to be when she is regarding the office of forces. )

Scoutmaster? ( a light knock against the doorframe as she pushes the door from ajar to open. ) Mme de Cedoux. Chief Cryptographer, for my sins.

( just her little joke. )

[hassaran]

Madame. [ Her smile is warm, polite. ] Congratulations on your appointment.

[ Yseult wasn't here for all that, but she's read the files, so this creep back up and onto the ladder of power is interesting. She slips off the corner of the desk where she had been propped, considering a pair of tapestries opposite. ]

I expect we will be working closely together.

scouting office

[aenseidhe]

Iorveth had signed up with the Scouting Division because of Beleth Ashara. At the time, she was the only individual he would suffer taking orders from, as he hadn't yet met Thranduil, and the people (humans) of Thedas reminded him too much of his own world. The latter is still mostly true, but some of those in the Inquisition he's come to regard more like he does Triss, Dandelion and Geralt's other collection of well-meaning dh'oine. Some he'd nearly call friends. A couple he might actually consider treasured.

This woman he's only ever seen around the Gallows, never spoken with, and while he's sure she's competent, that says nothing of the kind of person she is, what her limits are, what values matter to her, what she'll tolerate and what she won't. It puts him ill at ease, and he wanders by to watch the parade of Beleth's things being toted away, frown etched to his features.

"A long term mission, was it?" He asks, when he spots the woman inside the room, "Was any estimate given of an end date?"

[hassaran]

She is perched on the corner of an empty crate against one wall, out of the path of the men who exit just ahead of Iorveth, carrying away the long roll of a carpet. She doesn't get down, but does lower the file she's reading to rest on a knee and look up at him instead.

"Indefinite," is an answer to both halves of the question. "I'm afraid I can't discuss the details." A hand spread, palm up, invites him to enter despite the office's state of flux. "Is there something you needed?"

the aerie

[katabasis]

[The hide ball skitters across the doorway just as he's ducking through it; he nearly kicks it with the toe of his boot. An instant later as two of griffons come diving out of the rafters after it, nearly coalescing on top of him, Flint could wish he had if he weren't so occupied with twisting out of the way of their talons and clacking beaks, ducking under sprawl of one flapping wing and letting the momentum carrying him around the pair as they go rolling paw over claw through the straw with the ball battered between them.

The dust doesn't settle so much as it simply follows the two animals, sucked along by the beat of their wings. An instant later, one of the griffons has caught the ball and heaves itself back up into the rafters - flouncing along the rafter as its brother pursues her. Flint, picking kicked up straw out of his shirt, follows the motion of her as she traverses the beam then drops back down with a heavy thump. The ball is dropped. It comes to rest within arm's reach of--]

Ah.

[The 'fancy meeting you here,' is implied.]

[hassaran]

[ She is nearly as surprised as he is, less so only because she noticed him in the doorway before he knew to look for her across the aerie. But he's certainly not expected, up here so far from the sea, and there's a faint wrinkle of curiosity in her brow as she nods. ]

Captain.

[ An impatient hop nudges the ball near enough to bounce off her boot and Yseult bends to collect it. As soon as she does the griffon ascends again in a flap, and there's a great deal of skittering claws on beams as the two griffons jockey for position, trying to anticipate which way she's going to throw. She feints across the attic, and then throws the ball at the east wall instead, hard enough to bank off the stones and send them back toward Flint again. ]

Watch your toes. [ Yseult advises, deadpan and too late to be helpful. ]

The Aerie

[circleprodigy]

As Griffon Keeper for the Grey Wardens, Inessa spending time with them is a given. Almost daily, unless circumstances dictate otherwise, she arrives to feed and groom Potato and any others who don't yet have riders. Potato, a light grey adult, takes to following her around and watching from a higher perch. When she feels Inessa is paying a little too much attention to someone else, she'll plummet down dramatically and claim Inessa's lap...nevermind that she's far too big to make that comfortable for the small elf. But Inessa puts up with it as good-naturedly as she can while ensuring that she doesn't meet her death via affectionate crushing.

At some point, she looks over and smirks to see that mostly-white adolescent griffon stalking and trying to steal from Yseult. She would have warned her, but as the other seems quite aware, it's an entertaining game to watch from the sidelines. Stroking Potato to keep her appeased, she chuckles softly. "You're better at playing that game than I am. That young one made off with my quill and some mabari crunch treats I was saving for Garahel. I'm sure the former remains in her stash somewhere." Potato makes a rumbling noise and Inessa renews her grooming. "Shh, it's alright. I'm not done spoiling you."

[hassaran]

"Practice," Yseult replies, with a friendly smile to match Inessa's. "She's getting quite good, I have to keep making it harder." She checks over her shoulder, making eye contact with the griffon, who squawks and hops back to 'hide' behind a hay bale. "Perhaps the next trick will be getting her to put things back into pockets, not just steal them out."

As the griffon begins creeping out again, Yseult turns her attention to Inessa and the larger griffon in the Warden's lap. "Does yours have a name?"

flashback, hostile powers office.

[exequy]

[ It's a relatively small thing.

But there was an ambush in the Hunterhorn Mountains yesterday, and a contact in Qarinus has gone silent, and elsewhere there's the Divine, and a bunch of pirates who can't even pretend to be reliable for the sake of making a deal, so— ]

It's not that fucking hard.

[ He means filing—which is a little bit fucking hard, given how much is encrypted—and illustrates that by dropping a foot-high stack of documents on his desk, cutting them like a deck of cards, and holding one up with one hand while he fans one stack of the others out to search through. ]

I assume they teach the alphabet in the Free Marches.

[hassaran]

[ Yseult looks up from the stack of reports she is reading, and map she is making notes on, because they need to find someone that can check in on Qarinus, and someone else they can free up to head to the Hunterhorns to prevent future ambushes, never even mind the pirates and the Divine.

She looks at the stack of documents he's playing with like cards, and then at Kostos, and finally lifts a brow. ]

What's the problem?

[nadasharillen]

[ Even though it was for an important mission that required Beleth's particular set of skills, the turning over of the position of Scoutmaster from Dalish to human sets Nari on edge. It had given her some sense of security, knowing that Beleth served the People as well as the Inquisition, and with the secretive nature of her assignment, both the rank and file of the Inquisition and the people of Kirkwall were again simply seeing the elves supplanted.

Even having those misgivings, the Scoutmaster is still the Scoutmaster, and the clandestine operations of the Inquisition still need to stay clandestine, and so the craftswoman has dutifully come to what is now Yseult's office to divulge the finer points of the desk she'd constructed for Beleth. She raises her hand to knock on the door, only to have the first rap obscured by the distinct sound of protesting wood.

Not too odd, they've been moving things today.

Her second tap goes uninterrupted, and Nari follows it with a quiet call just in case. ]

Scoutmaster? Nahariel Dahlasanor, Master of Works. Do you have a minute?

[hassaran]

[ There is another squeak of wood stressed, and then the sliding of draws, an odd sound like cloth dragging on carpet, before soft footsteps and then a call from within: ] Come!

[ Inside, the new Scoutmaster is brushing off the back of her shirt (a very dark blue, sleeves rolled tightly up forearms and collar spread wide open) from beside Beleth's desk, the one piece of original furniture remaining in the office other than the bookcases. Those have been shifted out of place, standing temporarily and uncertainly toward the center of the room, along with a couple crates and two mismatched chairs, a rolled-up rug or tapestry lean alongside. She rests a hand on the corner of the desk (its drawers slightly ajar, a small leather wallet such as might contain lockpicks, if one is familiar with such things, on its top) and smiles politely. ]

Forgive me, we are still mid-transition. What can I do for you, Miss Dahlasanor?

office visit

[staysail]

The first to find her is Rosana.

Mid-morning, the door bumps open and the little cat slinks in. It's her, a sleek tabby without a collar. The notch in her left ear, earned in a fight, and the crook in the tip of her tail. She leaps right onto one of the armchairs with a brrt, and considers Yseult with a frank gaze.

Rosana sleeps in the chair for a week, on and off. Some days she's there for the whole day, sun up to sun down, waking to wash her paws or reposition herself, or to lap water out of any cup left out. Some days she's gone for half the day, only to reappear, suddenly, bumping open the door with her narrow shoulder and trot right back to her spot in the chair.

And then, it's night, late. In Rivain, they call the hour Soul's Midnight. Poetic, but it's three hours, really, and it comes after midnight, well before the sun comes up, in those gray hours where time doesn't matter. Only the restless and the guilty are found awake, souls haunted by some shade or spirit known only to them.

The scoutmaster's office is in a different tower. A stripe of light spreads narrow and spare from the space between door and doorjamb. It's dark, otherwise; the nearest lantern is halfway down the hall, barely enough to see by. Darras scuffs his boot against the strip of light on the flagstone, like he could wipe it out. Then he knocks, and pushes open the door.

The smell of the sea is still on him, soaked in his coat and rimed on his skin, salt and damp and sweat, all sharp and brackish. He's got a bag slung over his shoulder, and he lets it slip off his arm and drop, heavy, to the floor, hits with a solid thunk.

Rosana lifts her head off of her paws, her ears pricked. Once she marks Darras, she stretches her toes, and goes right to licking determinedly at her forepaw, rubbing it against her whiskers. Getting in a good wash; giving Darras and Yseult a moment, together.

To start with, Darras closes the door behind him, hooking his foot around it and letting it bump closed.

"Heard you were Scoutmaster. Didn't know you were in the business of stealing cats as well."

[hassaran]

Yseult has never been an animal person. She rides well enough and is kind to horses but claims no particular bond with them. She knows a few tricks to quiet dogs but they mostly consist of carrying treats and were learned to avoid detection not build an affinity. She has as little use for cats as cats generally do for people. But returning to her office to find Rosana curled up on a chair brings an uncharacteristic smile to her face, and visitors in that next week will, often as not, find her working from the couch beside the window, the little tabby on the next cushion over, one paw reached out to touch the Scoutmaster's leg.

It's the same that evening when Darras arrives, though Rosana is quick to busy herself with other things. Yseult heard him coming up the hall, of course, because you don't live this long in her profession if you can't notice boots up the hall in the middle of the night, but recognized his gait before she'd quite reached for the dagger hidden between the cushions. She lifts a brow as he lets himself in and drops his things as if they were somewhere else entirely, closing the folder on her knee and tugging her dressing gown smooth beneath it.

"She stole herself," she replies, catching up, "I'm just in temporary possession."

after the MURTHERRR of Agathe

[coquettish_trees]

[ These are not the circumstances under which Alexandrie wished to meet Yseult. These are not the circumstances under which she wished to begin any acquaintance—any day, even. But here they are. A Grand Cleric assassinated, the Sunburst Throne anticipating, at long last, a true ascension, the Gallows fraction of the Inquisition considering something between a diplomatic severance and a diplomatic suicide.

But here they are. She's knocked, slightly muted by her ubiquitous gloves, been admitted, given her qualifications: her name, pronounced with the weight that might still be utilized. (Yet, risk. Here is that woman who has made a name for herself on both her own account and the larger sin of publicly (and enthusiastically, by all accounts) associating with the son of a Magister. She looks pleasant enough for a traitor, the copper of her hair well-coiffed, her waist tight-laced to perfection. ]

A moment of your time?

[ it is said as if she expects an affirmative. ]

[hassaran]

[ Yseult inclines her head in to give it, a murmured invitation accompanying the gesture toward the chairs opposite her desk. ] A moment, [ she says, a report to finish, dry, and seal before she sets it aside and turns her attention to the woman in front of her. ]

Lady Alexandrie. [ her pronunciation is impeccable, if less pointed ] How may I help you?