faderift | EVENT: TRUTH BOMB

Entry tags:

EVENT: TRUTH BOMB

WHO: Anyone
WHAT: TRUTH BOMB
WHEN: Bloomingtide 15-17
WHERE: The Gallows
NOTES: OOC information. Use appropriate content warnings in your subject lines, please.

It’s an ordinary day—so not a very pleasant one. The weather is dreary and muggy, and the day’s lunch is a soup that’s a little too watery and bland. The griffons are being their usual level of noisy and swoopy. The work is its usual level of urgent and difficult.

But in the storage rooms, something wiggles. Then it hums. Then it pops.

Outside of the storage room, there’s no actual sound, no shift in the wind, and no visible sign of a change. But the pop might be felt—like the moment something finally clicks, or two ideas suddenly fit together, except the opposite. In the heads of everyone in the fortress, something is suddenly not connected quite right.

The first sign of what’s gone wrong is that someone immediately stands up and tells the cook how bad the soup is.

A lot of people’s days are about to get exponentially worse.

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[A - Open, Gallows Infirmary]

The first sign that's something a little off comes while he's petting Isaac the Second and looking through his notes. The cat attempts to eat one of the sheets of parchment and Anders sighs.

"You're supposed to annoy Isaac and mess up his things, not mine, you know. You're cute, but you're not nearly fluffy enough to get away with not being useful." As it's all entirely true, Anders thinks nothing of it and goes back to working.

[B - Open, Mess Hall,later]

That something's actually wrong, in the air or the water or the food, seems a reasonable enough thought at this point. That Anders isn't the one ranting at people is a surprise to him (and probably others.) But because somehow he's calmer than many, he's going around and trying to talk some of the more angry down... when they're not angry at him. Those are the ones he's working very hard to steer clear of.

A quick "would you like to talk about something else?" or "how do you feel about cats?" seems to do the trick in most cases.

[C - Closed to Flint]

He absolutely can't blame a few someones for trying to escape the sudden restriction to the Gallows. Frankly, Anders is more than a little tempted to try to swim for it himself. But that's not what's brought him to the docks... yet. Right now, a rowboat steered by an inexperienced, panicking duo has tipped over and dumped said duo into the water, and the male of the pair is shouting that they can't swim. So into the water Anders goes, heading for whichever one is closest.

[D - Wildcard me]

[ooc: Want something else? Hit me up - toss up a prompt, or poke me on Plurk (Nadat) or Discord (Nadat#4647)! I'm gonna be looking to not get him in fights this event just because Thor's picking them everywhere, but I'm up for just about anything else.]

I. Wild Card!

[The wildest card is putting the wildcard first. ]

II. Variety is the Spice of Life

Despite her tendency to hyperbolize things, Athessa doesn't actually lie all that often. However, she would normally exercise some restraint in what she says, picking and choosing what extremely honest thing she could say that would result in the least cutting embarrassment and, hopefully, the biggest laugh. She has, on multiple occasions, even admitted to doing something just to impress.

Most notably, one might recall an incident with her trying to single-handedly catch and relocate a bunch of bats when there was construction occurring on one of the towers, and as the bag writhed in her grip and wings stuck out the top and smacked her in the face, she turned to the person who had expressed concern about the bats' welfare and announced: I'M DOING THIS TO IMPRESS YOU. ARE YOU IMPRESSED?

So it's anyone's guess just how affected she is right now, curiously studying a book and not engaging in any of the many heated discussions, arguments, or outright fights happening nearby. Periodically, she relocates to a more secluded area, shooting furtive glances over the top of the tome in her hands.

He's trying to walk off the anger that he's been feeling for days now, though it's not yet helping. Not like he's letting it help, really, when he's picking fights over the crystals. He thumps his way into the kitchens to get another ale and looks back at the woman pretending she hadn't glanced his way.

"Is there something you would like to say?"

She freezes, her mouth agape like some kind of dumbstruck fish who is also a buffoon. After a beat, she manages to clamp her mouth shut and make some kind of weighing hum, as if trying to remember how to speak. She almost gets there.

"There wasn't but now I--Ijustgottasaythatummmmm--" The elf clears her throat, holding the book to herself as if it might magically get big enough to hide behind. "Whooooo youuuuuu're so handsome and I kinda wish I'd been sitting over there for a better view when you walked in and that'sveryinappropriateI'msosorry."

Thank the Maker that her skin is as dark as it is, it might just hide how warm her whole face is. She stares bug-eyed at nothing a few feet ahead of her instead of at him, and croaks in a small voice: "Nice to meet you?"

"I didn't know Dalish could read."

Oh Maker no. The tips of his fingers come to the young man's lips, and he watches the elf in nothing less than horror-- whether it's because he just committed a social gaffe or because Dalish are known to skin people and make mittens out of them, it's unclear.

"I don't know what's happening," comes the miserable reply, when asked if he wants to talk about something else: Benedict has been waxing poetic on why the food here is inferior in every way to what his family's cook (a slave) used to make, a topic that he seemed to recognize as troublesome, but still couldn't stem.

Edited 2019-05-16 03:58 (UTC)

Athessa pulls a face. Any other time she wouldn't be sure what to react to first, but her mouth does the talking for her:

"I'm just pretending to read so people won't talk to me."

I. The Baths

Something has changed, but Benedict can't put his finger on what, and he's certainly not going to let it ruin a perfectly decent bath.
Whether he's still submerged and soaking his Luscious Locks or drying off after, conversations are likely to go a little differently than normal. Especially when he makes a comment, completely out of the blue, on someone's weird mole. At least he hasn't seemed to notice, not yet.

II. The Library

Off to work he goes, because letter-writing campaigns wait for no poison. Unfortunately, it's more difficult to write them today: Benedict has to keep stopping and crumpling up those that have become too candid, sometimes going so far as to outright state the position of the Gallows and their leanings on the Imperium.
Surrounded by balled-up parchment, fingers stained with ink, he's clearly getting frustrated.

III. Wildcard

Let's Get Unsettlingly Frank

"Oh. That makes sense."

He seems a little ashamed of the revelation, and fidgets a moment before speaking again. "...you see I just. I just never thought elves were very intelligent."

A moment's pause and a frown, like that doesn't seem quite like what he'd want to say, but there it is.

"That says more about your brain than mine, I think." She wants to throw the book at his face.

His pretty, framed-by-gorgeous-hair face. Ugh

"Breathe, first of all." Benedict sounds absolutely upset, and Anders urges him toward a nearby stool. "Breathe, relax. I'd not be surprised if someone's herb and potion experiment went awry and it wound up in the bathwater or some such nonsense. This doesn't seem to exactly be harmful. Distressing, certainly. Clearly. But we'll get to the bottom of this."

He's not exactly worried... but he's also not exactly the most secretive of people. There's not much that he's holding back.

That's about the last thing he'd expect out of the mouth of an elf, and Thor blinks at her. Yelling about slavery, certainly, but gushing over his looks? He straightens despite himself, anger transforming into pride.

"I thank you." He works hard to look this good. Why wouldn't people notice? "You do not have to apologize. You are with the Inquisition?" Perhaps she's looking for a place. Their household is due to increase shortly here and an elf with taste is preferable to one with none.

"Does it?"
He taps his chin, genuinely considering the question.

"So do your lot have... you know, tutors and schools and things like that?"

"You dislike me."

Alexandrie, without preamble, stopping beside him in her passing with a small stack of books held in her arms. She looks slightly disconcerted by her own speech.

"Says you're a prejudiced jerk, at least," she grumbles, and snaps the book shut.

"Maybe, I dunno. How would I? I grew up on the streets in Kirkwall after my entire clan mysteriously went missing. Sometimes I wonder if it was my fault."

Its all very matter of fact, until she blinks at the last and it's clear she didn't mean to say quite so much.

She can't help but stare when he stands taller, heightening her awareness of just how very tall that is.

"You could snap me like a twig and I wouldn't mind...Ahem, yes. Scouting." She nods and, as an afterthought, holds out her hand in introduction.

"Athessa. You can call me Tess. Or...whatever you like."

--The problem of course, and you'll have noticed this already so I don't really know why I'm telling you at all except to prove that I haven't simply overlooked the detail, is that the options available to us as far as incendiaries go are limited to the extreme. This design would, I'm certain, work perfectly with enough propulsion from the base of the barrel, but I don't have any idea what could supply it.

[Wysteria stabs a finger at a spot on the schematic spread before them over the smithy's worktable. It's a neat piece of work - surprisingly clean and reasonably well drawn (thanks to a straight edge and a series of compasses) -, but for all her boasting to the vile Ser de Foncé it isn't an especially ingenius creation. If she's being very honest with herself (and Wysteria's feeling awfully compelled toward that this afternoon), it's in fact painfully derivative. Why, she can almost hear Mr Ralston's voice in her ear saying, 'Please Miss Poppell, you'vemerely produced a poor copy from the work of others come before you. Don't think that just because none of these people know any better that you can get away with it.'

But that's not the point and no one has asked about it, so that purely hypothetical voice can go stuff itself.]

The other issue is the matter of casting and materials. I don't even know where we'd begin to tackle any of that. I don't suppose you're close friends with either an alchemist or the owner of a very large copper and tin mine, are you?

"I could snap most elves like twigs and barely notice. You are all small. But I think most would mind. Most elves would mind, that is to say." Would anyone else really notice? Certainly if the elf was owned by someone the owner would mind, but in the South no one actually cared. They just pretended.

After a beat, he holds out his hand in return. "Thor, of House Asgard." While he doesn't think highly of elves in general, he won't deny that they're good at scouting. She's chosen, or been assigned to, a position suited to her race. "I am in Forces,Athessa."

The difference between most would mind and most elves would mind doesn't strike Athessa just yet, because during the time that her brain should connect those dots, her mouth is too busy saying:

"Oh, that's not--I wasn't meaning literally, I meant like, in a sexual way but you're right, we should just breeze past that, save us both the embarrassment. Smart. Forces, huh? That makes sense. Put all that strength to good use."

She nods through her rambling, then clamps her mouth shut to keep anything else from tumbling out. What is wrong with me?! Someone ought to gag me or something. He should do it. Oh, for fucks sake--

i- dining hall.
During mealtimes, the dinning hall is always found to be full of commotion--so that's not changed. But today the air feels different. And the commotion is different, too.

"Oh, piss off, would you, the food's not even that bad, you've not had proper bad food--at least it's fresh, isn't it, not grown eyes or chockablock full of insects--you're all a load of spoilt children for carrying on like this--what're you looking at, wanker, eyes on your own plate--"

Matthias grabs a breadroll off the table and lobs it at whatever person he's determined to be looking at him the wrong way. He's not done. His next volley is a handful of soup, which is only lukewarm, lucky for him, so it doesn't burn his hand--and he needs it to throw at his target, anyways, so even if it was hot he'd still weaponize it--no matter if it runs down his arm and gets all over the innocent bystanders.

It's a food fight, is what it is. Madness.

ii- ferry dock.
Evening is closing in, drawing its curtain and purpling the sky. The shadows get longer; the water looks darker. Across the way, the lights of Kirkwall proper are glittering.

Tucked into his hiding place, Matthias eyes are also glittering. It's not even that ingenious of a place to hide. He could be found fairly easily, if someone was really looking. There's a post of of stone with a beam driven into it, and a lantern on a hook on that beam. The post has barrels grouped around it, clustered tight like chicks around a broody, and Matthias is tucked among them like a foundling, scrawny enough that fits. He watches the lights, he watches the water--he watches the ferry, bobbing at the other dock, the one that would let off in Kirkwall. He waits.

And then, when it's dark enough, and it seems that no one else is around: he unfolds, emerges from his hiding place, his dark cloak helping to hide him but doing nothing to disguise the shape of his staff, which he has (as usual) strapped to his back. But he can't very well leave it behind, can he? So he's got it, and he grips at the strap that holds it in place as he stands at the edge of the dock, a few moments too long, screwing up his courage, and then--with a splash--jumps in to the water.

Of course, there's likely a guard posted. So what.

iii- courtyard.
"Hey, fuck you!"

Matthias, sodden and damp, is in trouble. This might actually be his third attempt to swim for it, so it's proper trouble this time. But he seems disinclined to be cowed, at all, by this danger, and is complaining, loudly, as he's led dripping across the cobblestones.

"Fuck you, you fucking fucks--hope your fathers dicks rot off and your mothers go to early graves out of shame for what you've all turned out to be--I'm allowed to leave if I want to, this is bloody imprisonment, just 'cause-- I don't even bloody well know any secrets, all right, and besides, I thought we were all about freedom and all, aren't we? Not this, this is idiotic, I can leave if I want--"

All this and more as he's pulled away to cool down somewhere. But not without a fight, which, as he breaks free--he's not tied up or anything, just being frog-marched along, and perhaps that was the mistake--and hauls off to punch the face in of one of his captors. Or a bystander, even. Might be anyone, really.

I. Early

Julius doesn't first realize the effect as it pertains to himself at all. He's used to the low itch of carrying around unvoiced opinions and unexamined memories, and sometimes that sensation is more itchy than others. But after overhearing a few interesting sending crystal messages and having a guard he didn't even know on more than nodding terms blurt out, unprompted, that mages still gave him the creeps as hard as he tried to relax around them... it didn't take long for Julius to think a bit more closely about his own discomfort.

It's likely a bad sign, but how bad he isn't quite sure.

He's heading for his office, to be safe, and considering whether to put his sending crystal somewhere out of reach. There's likely work to be done, though precisely what... well. He'll figure it out when he gets there and is no longer in the hallway. Where anyone at all can just talk to him.

II. Later

Staying quiet and out of the way only works for so long. It's taking effort, and that effort is beginning to wear on him. He decides to look for a division head, or even another project leader. Perhaps if they keep the subject matter to strictly what is happening and how to make it stop, no one will say anything regrettable.

He'd rather see strangers, at the moment. If he says something to someone with no context for him, that can be dealt with. People he knows are a more complicated prospect, and he'd just ... rather not. (He's likely not going to be so lucky; the Gallows isn't that heavily populated.)

[ Is it a boring design? Maybe. But it's new to her, and it's also — well it's very well drawn, and it's very enthusiastic, and Wysteria sounds extremely cute saying words like propulsion and incendiaries.

Kenna's leaning over the table and the schematics in your traditional workman's survey pose, but she rethinks it when Wysteria leans in to jab at the paper. She straightens up, crossing her arms and then thoughtfully placing one hand on her chin. ]

Well, [ Does she know anyone? Not really. ] I'm not close friends with anyone. I mean, definitely not an alchemist or someone in tin or copper, but we might be able to hoard enough if I make some trades.

[ That's all true enough, and honestly eager. But it trails off a bit at the end, her head tilting marginally as she eyes the drawing. ] It's a very odd cast, though. It looks a bit... you know.

I. PROJECT OFFICES

Kostos has had better days, but that's less because of whatever is going around, honesty-wise—he hasn't realized yet, or at least not the extent of it—and more because he's clearing his personal possessions out of the project office and putting things in order for whoever is taking over.

He's not sorry to have lost the post. Ask him, he'll say so, even today. But he is sorry that he has to tell anyone else he lost it, and possibly be observed in the process of losing it, rather than disappearing from it so completely and instantaneously that he can pretend he never had it at all and anyone who thinks he did is imagining things.

But he's also had worse days. Like, nobody is dead. And Talas is methodologically breaking small pieces off a long, thin stick he brought in from the courtyard, in the room's far corner, and then fluttering over to the desk to deliver them one by one out to Kostos, which is the only thing in a long time that Kostos has considered cute.

The door is open, if someone needs him. Or likes ravens. Or likes little piles of stick bits.

II. FOR NELL

"Crystal."

He's now realized the extent of it—and that Nell has it worse, which is why he's locking the door to an empty residential room that doesn't belong to either of them and holding one hand out to her.

His crystal is in the palm of his extended hand, but Kostos isn't giving it to her. He wants hers. He'll put them in a drawer, just in case. Maybe they can keep their mouths shut. He definitely can. But there's more than one person here he wouldn't trust not to take advantage of the opportunity, so they aren't getting one.

He has a bad feeling about it, but he has bad feelings about nearly everything. It will probably be fine. The room has four beds and a bathroom, and he brought a deck of cards.

Edited 2019-05-19 05:48 (UTC)

PROJECT OFFICES;

[ while Vane wasn't particularly close to the bomb, he was middling enough that the truth bubbles up in his head, along with the vague compulsion, but despite the fact it doesn't feel very pressing, vane also makes zero effort to hold the words in.

so, as he goes about his work in the project offices, occasionally, he might pass people in the halls, and that's when the fun occurs. ]

You're a fuckin' prick and I hate how slow you walk in the halls.

[ he says to a man collecting some papers from the Research office to run it up towards the Scouting office. the man looks offended, but too shocked by the sudden offer of the commentary to say anything, and Vane paces on, until he turns a corner and nearly runs into someone leaving the Diplomacy office. ]

That hat makes you look like a pretentious, hightown cunt.

[ he's making all kinds of friends.

if you're about to pass him by, there's a good chance you're about to get his personal opinion of you blurted out as he wanders along. ]

ADDITION FOR NELL;

[ at some point, he's done charting some courses on the maps in the once naval presence office now that room he and flint sit in office, ready to head back to the docks for the rest of the day, and it's the mage girl from the Venatori ship thing that's pacing the opposite way down the hall.

of course, when she passes, the truth curse flares up, and out come the words - ]

You were a badass on the ship raid and your hair's a nice color.

[ a pause, and vane frowns. well, that wasn't an insult, and it's much less satisfying to blab out at a stranger. Then again, hey, nice hair. after a thoughtful frown, he smirks, then lets out an amused snort. ]

i. consider this to be as wildcard as you see fit
Lakshmi goes about her business, as she ever does, brisk, direct and uninterested in things getter in her way. If especially so right now. Ignoring the network, which might tell her that something was strange going on, she throws herself into work and strictly discussing nothing at all but her work, and avoids any situation where she must be around anyone she doesn't have the patience for. Her steps long, irritated as she has been since the word of the vote came in. The same frown on her face that seems perpetually stuck on her face that says to her bad temper. Her steps long, adjusting the saree that says she'd been out doing her personal business rather than the Inquisitions - or whatever they were now. Foolish idiots.

Until at something of a hold up of people moving through, she is stuck staring at the walls of the Gallows Fortress. Frowning at the architecture, as ever, a thing that has irritated her since the day she came. "Who designed this fortress? Orlais? It would be their dreadful ostentatious taste."

Edited 2019-05-19 09:19 (UTC)

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Page 1 of 12

EVENT: TRUTH BOMB

Anders (open, far-to-middling)

Athessa || open, close-to-middling

II

no subject

II

B

no subject

Benedict (open, middling)

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

II

no subject

no subject

closed to kenna

no subject

no subject

Matthias || open, close-to-middling

Julius | open, middling

no subject

kostos | far/low

charles vane ; comment here for probably-insults ig???

lakshmi - close/middling - come get roasted