COOLER THAN BEING COOL || closed

[inkindled]

WHO: Barrow, Cosima, Fingon, and Matthias
WHAT: the gang researches winter
WHEN: fantasy July
WHERE: NOT Emprise du Lion. Antiva.
NOTES: none (for now)

Efforts to eradicate the red lyrium in Emprise du Lion have been ongoing, but hampered by the prolonged freeze—now going on four years of bitter cold, even in the summer—that both encourages the red lyrium's growth and has made keeping a population of workers and soldiers in the area increasingly unviable. It's also just damn difficult. As there's no artifact anyone has seen in Emprise du Lion in these last four years that's helpfully labeled "SOURCE OF ETERNAL WINTER," a team will be tasked with researching possible causes and methods of weather control to get a better idea of what people should be looking for on the ground....

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Didier Duret -- the scholar

[inkindled]

The library's antechamber has a little table for bookbinding and a single chair. There had briefly been a book on the table, with a calfskin binding, very new, but when Duret had entered he had picked it up, and given them all a very shrewd and jealous look.

But other than these fixtures, and the narrow door to the library beyond, the room is otherwise empty. Which doesn't help it from feeling very crowded. There's something about overt prejudice and bizarre paranoia that fills in all the free space and sucks the oxygen out of the place.

The smell of prunes doesn't help. Because: the antechamber also smells of prunes. But that might be an odor coming off of Duret himself. The aged scholar is wearing a prune-colored coat with long tails, and his shoes look quite polished. He's a spry man, despite the hunch of his shoulders. His earlobes hang curiously low, nearly drooping over his shoulders like two fat teardrops of skin.

"Your servant shouldn't touch," he warns them, in a quaver. He means Fingon, who he'd assumed (before introductions or lies could be told) to be a member of their staff. "None of you should touch. The oils, that are on the fingers. They stain. They can destroy. And these books are so precious--some of them the very last in existence. The very last!"

He fishes a great big ring of keys out of his pocket, and begins to pick through them. His fingernails are just a little too long for fashion or common hygiene to sanction. Whatever lies their squad has told needs to be kept up, but Matthias is already turning white with the pressure of it. And he's just a mage. Imagine being an elf, or, Maker forbid, a Rifter.