open | intro log.

[murderbaby]

WHO: Mhavos Dalat, resident newbie, & YOU.
WHAT: Mhavos takes stock of... all this... weird fucking shit.
WHEN: Aug 1-3ish, presumably everything in here doesn't happen the same day.
WHERE: Various places around the Gallows and Kirkwall proper.
NOTES: Poetry, discussions of slavery, a nerd whining about religious authenticit. Will update if anything intense happens.

a. OUTSIDE THE CHANTRY.

It's All Fool's Day. Mhavos has read of this holiday, but he's never been given leave to witness the celebration. He fins himself curious, and a little daring; he's got nothing else on his schedule, anyway.

Outside the Chantry, a play is being put on. In front of a respectably sized bonfire, play actors dance about, mimicking the sacred immolation of Andraste. Mhavos stands in the crowd, watching intently. At one point, he almost flinches, before crossing his arms and shaking his head. To himself, he murmurs, "That's not what happens."

b. GALLOWS LIBRARY.

Among the rows of long tables, Mhavos has collected around him a fair pile of books. He pages through one, writes something down in a ledger, scoffs, and returns it to a different pile, before selecting another. This pattern repeats, complete with Mhavos moving his lips to read each word, several times. Coming close, one will find the books are written in both Orlesian and Trade, and detail a large range of subjects.

Occasionally, one may hear Mhavos murmur, "terrible, terrible," under his breath, his Orlesian accent thicker than usual.

c. THE STREETS OF KIRKWALL.

You are presumably minding your own business, wandering aroun town, doing whatever it is you do with your day. That's fine. That's fair. Allowed.

A gentle hand taps your shoulder, or, if you're particularly tall, your elbow. Turning around, you'll find Mhavos Dalat, an elf with an Orlesian accent. He hands you some coin, or an object that's definitely yours.

"Excuse me," he says mildly, "I believe you were pick-pocketed."

d. LOWTOWN.

After memorizing a map of Kirkwall, Mhavos is set and determined to explore as much of it as possible on his free time. Lowtown is inevitable, and Mhavos isn't much afraid of it. He's just an elf, after all, and he elects to bring none of his belongings. It's easy enough to pass through without making any waves. Any ripples.

He watches a street performer, an elf juggling a series of hard wooden balls. The performer is a bit clumsy, and their clothes are tatty, and the balls are chipped from old paint, dented from years of use. It's clear why the performer hasn't moved their act to Hightown yet.

The performer drops two of the wooden balls, and they thud on the dirty ground before Mhavos deftly kicks them up into his hands, balancing them gracefully in his hands before throwing them back. The entire maneuver is quick and fluid, betraying far more grace than Mhavos had meant.

The performer thanks him, and Mhavos quickly makes his exit from the scene, walking fast, face down.

e. HIGHTOWN.

There are street preachers in every part of Kirkwall, but from Mhavos' survey of the city, the worst are most certainly in Hightown. He listens silently, walks by them, ignores them, until he can't stand it anymore.

On matters of faith, Mhavos has little care. But being uninformed...

You'll find him standing before one such preacher, an annoyed look on both their faces.

"That's inconsistent," Mhavos says, voice mild despite his expression. "Either we are bidden to choose the direction of our lives-- as you say, to be with the Maker or against Him-- or we are all acting in accordance with his will, but you cannot have both. If you preach, you are asking us to choose. If you preach that His will shapes our lives in every aspect, you are contradi-"

He's cut off by a loud shout from the preacher, and the words 'knife ear' are heard. Mhavos massages the bridge of his nose. "You clearly haven't read the Messendrine Epistles..."

f. WILDCARD.

[yo i'm down for anything, mix and match prompts, come up with new stuff, whatever. hmu @ wehwalt (i'm open to adds!) or a dm if you want to discuss anything!]

Comments

[murderbaby]

His expression softens incrimentally. It keeps doing that. "A worthy gift," he says, "and a lucky man."

He's not jealous, and a moment of pinched anxiety at the back of his mind hopes dearly that she doesn't think him so. Nothing can be done for it, though. Keep on, keep on.

"I'm glad to see you here. I'd wondered... how you'd fared." After everything I'd heard. And a line from a poem he read long ago, written anonymously. "Orlais eats its own."

Orlais eats its own,
Hunger never fed.
Children without shoes,
Offer elves as bread.

[elegiaque]

What she's about to say is probably something along the lines of I'm going to tell him you said that, because she likes to remind Thranduil at every opportunity that she probably deserves to be honoured in some fashion for her extreme forbearance in putting up with his shit—

Orlais eats its own. Yes, doesn't it.

“My fall from grace has had a cushioned landing,” she says, wry, aware of Guilfoyle sat behind them in the ferry, patient as a rock. She does not have the current means to maintain his previous salary. She had said so, and he had looked at her for a long time until she gave him something to do, anyway. Then, instead of what she's sure she's going to say (moreso than if it had happened in Orlais, which it did, but not with her there as well) until she opens her mouth, she says, “My mothers didn't die for me to waste my opportunities.”

Annegret who had chosen not to speak at the end and Guenievre whose throat had been a wreck where the arrow struck her and could not, and Gwenaëlle, carrying their legacies in hands dripping their blood.

[murderbaby]

"Far be it from me to presume to give you advice," he says, and the smallest touch of humor reaches his voice as his accent gets thicker. "But one must make the best of what they had."

He listens to her story. He hadn't heard of her mothers. He never knew his, but he understands the wanting for a lost past. If his Alienage had not been purged... who would he be?

"It only takes one boat to keep many from drowning."

[elegiaque]

The late Comte de Vauquelin had had the starring role of Gwenaëlle's scandal, in which she might have been a footnote to her own story had she not made the decision to republish those works, and in that fashion. The mistake his. The disgrace his. His daughter reduced to a piece and not a player; his wife forgotten beyond the occasional, viciously pious expression of sympathy for all she must have endured, his mistress a blur that might have been any pretty elf with legs to spread.

She has pinned her birth mother's name to herself like a badge of honour. How she feels about that is less relevant than the importance of doing so.

“It hasn't turned out so badly,” she says, her smile small and lopsided and like a poem, private. “Now, I might have something to say about the world needing to come to the brink of absolute catastrophe in order for me to find a better place in it to stand, but—”

Her eyebrows rise meaningfully.

“It's probably my artistic temperament.”

She thinks she's hilarious.

[murderbaby]

He lets out a huff of laughter. She's funny, too. Her poems and prose often were. It shouldn't be a surprise, and yet.

"Since I've come here, I feel as though the world has forgotten itself. Is that always the state of Kirkwall?"

[elegiaque]

“More or less,” she sighs, in the manner of one who has had to put up with a great deal of Kirkwall this past year and some. Occasionally, though less and less with every turning season, she finds herself missing the straightforwardness that was hiding themselves away in Skyhold and emerging only to make trouble.

This is better, but it's also exactly what anyone might imagine it would be. And, probably, could only have ever been done in Kirkwall, because Kirkwall is terrible.

“My husband is the Provost for Research, he's always,” her nose wrinkling, some poorly defined gesture communicating much less than her writing might. “Something is always on fucking fire.”

Figuratively.

Occasionally, less figuratively.

[murderbaby]

Mhavos frowns in something like contemplation, thinking a moment on a snatch of memory his mind became caught on. Provost Baudin. I took my wife's name.

Cautiously, Mhavos says, "he... wouldn't happen to be, ah... forgive me, I can't think of a gentler way to say it; he wouldn't happen to be an irregularly tall elf?"

[elegiaque]

“Oh, you've had the pleasure of the dirty great nuisance.” Her tone is plainly fond, her expression softening in a way she hardly seems aware of, at odds with the particular way she expresses it. “Yes, he would. He came through one of the rifts several years ago, not long after I had my own close encounter,” tilting her shardbearing hand illustratively.

And what a surprise he and Thedas were to one another.

“He's less tiresome about it than he once was, but he takes a general interest in elves. I expect he'll remember you, too.”

[murderbaby]

Mhavos turns his head to the side, clearly thinking, clearly unsure what to think. "So I'm correct in my assumption that he is, indeed, an elf."

He shakes his head. "Forgive me; that was rude. Only, I've never encountered..." He's at a loss for words. "He was perfectly polite. If anyone as a nuisance, it was surely me."

[elegiaque]

Her amusement is clear in her sidelong glance, the quirk at the corner of her mouth. “Based solely on this one meeting, I doubt that extremely. You've quite clearly encountered an aristocratic ego a time or two before.”

It's a little droll. A little self-aware, even as she's quite rudely calling out what ought to go unmentioned; the careful way that such interactions are navigated by those who have been obliged by circumstance to become skillful. Gwenaëlle has always thought there's something ironic about how much better some elves are forced to become at the game Orlesian nobles play, and it's hard not to find it bleakly funny at the cutting edge.

She'd have been as oblivious as her peers, in another life.

“Imagine him with round ears and suddenly he makes sense. But elves are—very different, where he's from. I'd have had pointed ears if I were born there, for a start. It's a source of great consternation to him.”

[murderbaby]

Elves aren't just the point of their ears, he wants to say, but then again, how would he know? He can count on one hand the friends he's had in his life, elf or no. What community does he come from that he can claim that right?

And how bleeding wise would it be to say that to someone elf-blooded.

He looks down, scratching the back of his head, allowing himself to show real, true embarrassment, and that in itself is freedom enough.

"He... he did not strike me as the aristos to which I am ...accustomed." A sigh. "He endured my whining about religion and a short lecture on architecture. If I'd known... please, convey my apologies."

[elegiaque]

“I don't know for what,” she says, briskly, dismissing the notion of apologizing in a way that she sort of intends to be bolstering, although she's always had mixed success with anyone actually taking it that way. Fine, if you like that sort of thing is sort of Gwenaëlle all over—

“Thranduil 'endures' very little he doesn't have to, especially in Thedas, where the number of things he does have to endure is a good deal higher than his fanciness was previously accustomed to.” 'Some elf's lecturing in the street' is not something he's going to face immediate political consequences for failing to tolerate; it's been her observation that while his patience with elves is not unending, it is a deep well.

Probably, he was interested.

[murderbaby]

Mhavos lets out a sigh.

"I'll just have to assume he's from some place where being an elf means a fair amount more than it does here." And a fair amount less. Wasn't he just mentally comparing experiences? What a hypocrite he is.

"In any case, I'm glad I know the both of you. A bracing introduction to Riftwatch, but one I'd not go without."

[elegiaque]

Being a King means a fair amount anywhere, but Gwenaëlle is no more inclined to advertise that in specific than Thranduil himself; less, probably. She says, “I'm routinely astonished that the culture shock alone didn't kill him, certainly in the form of all the stupid things he did when he first arrived.”

If anyone is going to take her husband seriously, it will not be her, particularly when she can remind him of his arduous adjustment period.

“But,” drolly, “I hope we don't give you an unwarranted impression of Riftwatch's overall competence. I do have to believe that our work will be successful, or else what's the point, but I strongly suspect it'll be by sheer luck.”

[murderbaby]

A little huff of laughter. "I'd never considered the viability of success. Just the worthiness of the cause. Of having a cause. Rather selfish of me, now that you put it that way."