faderift | open | intro log.

Entry tags:

open | intro log.

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!]

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Sigh.

"It's ok. I mean, it's not ok, I'm pretty ticked, but it was an honest mistake I guess." Now she has to remember the secondary drop location, because there's very little chance of her tracking down her contact on the streets.

"I'll give you some advice: unless you're a pickpocket, pay more attention to your own pockets than someone else's. People around here aren't exactly trusting of altruism."

His smile is thin, and a little too clever. "I'm aware. Let me help; it's the least I can do."

And having some idea of the network of this city couldn't be a bad idea.

She makes a face. Did I miss something?

"Uhhh...'kay, so that thing I said about altruism. Who are you?" Other than a random city elf with a fancy accent. Orlesian? He sounds like he comes from wherever Bastien comes from.

He dips his head. "Mhavos Dalat. New to this city. As you've pointed out, I could stand to know it better."

"Well...sure, ok. I don't really know how you expect to help--" A drop, even a flubbed drop that needs a redo, is rarely more than a one person job. "--but I guess I can show you around a bit while I try and remember where the secondary drop location is."

She extends a hand to shake. "Athessa. Sulahnan, I guess, but clan names amirite, heh."

"I would greatly appreciate it."

He considers her words, and says, with some mild-mannered surprise- "You're Dalish?" He wonders if that's insensitive. "I haven't before met the like." Or is that insensitive...

Someday she won't have to explain herself. Maybe. She makes a hedging gesture that says ehh, sometimes even as her words say: "Yeahhhh. Don't cross it off your list just yet."

She exhales and turns, waving him along. "C'mon."

He lets out a small laugh. It's an attitude he can appreciate. "I couldn't honestly care less, so long as I don't have to hear the term, what is it, 'flat-ear'."

A tad more insulting in Orlesian, he thinks. Fausse oreille, joue au lapin..

"Gave you known the city long?"

"Knife ear," she corrects absently. She hasn't heard his version before. "At least in these parts."

Honestly she's heard far worse epithets that didn't have anything to do with being an elf.

"Most of my life, yeah. Fif--thirt--no, seventeen years?" She leads the way down an alley, bypassing the market in Midtown. Is the secondary drop still here in Midtown, or is it down in Lowtown? Fuck, she should've written it down. No. No she shouldn't have, that'd be sloppy spycraft!

"Um. What about you? Where are you from? What brings you here?"

"No, that's-" Well. He's hardly going to correct her on the right insult. Mhavos shrugs, and keeps walking, observing, eyes open. The flow of the city is slowly beginning to make more sense to him, but he's not there yet. This is a good exercise, however.

The alley... a good place to get mugged. Idly, he picks up a broken broom laying atop a cart, holding it as though he's wont to fidget. He isn't.

"Orlais," he says automatically. "My employment contract ended up in the hands of someone living here." He doesn't expand on that, interested in how she'll react. It's always rather telling.

Employment contract?

"What, are you a bodyguard or something?" She looks back, thinking he looks a bit slim to be an effective bodyguard, but then again, she's worked jobs with similar descriptions and she's only an inch taller.

Notices the broom. "Cleaner?"

"In Orlais, near every servant has an employment contract." He says it... gently. Why would she know? A lifetime marcher, by the sounds of it, though the Marcher accent is terribly ambiguous in Kirkwall. Mhavos attributes it to its life as a trading port.

"A clerk, mostly." He twists the broom between his hands, parroting the motions of someone with skill, but not much training. No reason to give away his hand, in this case quite literally. "Not very exciting. But I did need to know the city. And I shall need to know it here as well."

She keeps walking, mulling it over until they come abreast of the mouth of the alley. If she were facing him, he'd probably be able to see the gears grinding away.

"So...I mean you get paid, then, right?" It's employment, not slavery, right?

As easy it is to disguise herself as a servant, she doesn't actually know what being one entails.

He just walks. Mhavos would be a very different, very likely dead person if he wasn't patient, if he couldn't bide his time and entertain himself. His own wheels turn, constructing the mental map of the city. This back alley avoids the main traffic on which streets? By the sun, they are going north, which points toward...

Mhavos lets out an indulgent sound, not really laughter, just a light huff of amusement. "Not in Orlais," he says. "Though some proponents of the system would argue food and board are payment."

He shrugs, casual, and keeps following.

"Well. Fuck." Articulate as always. It sums up her feelings on the matter, in any case.

"Down there is the Merchant quarter. Some neat shit there, mostly useless, all overpriced. If you want to get anything for the right price, you either have to be really persuasive, or really good with your hands," whether that means stealing or bribing is left ambiguous. In the opposite direction, she points out more sites unseen, annotating each with her opinion on them. Ripoff, ripoff, snob, ripoff, tax shelter, den of iniquity, etc.

It's a very haphazard tour, to say the least. Not nearly as good as her Ghost Tour Of Kirkwall's Seediest Alcoves.

"Who ended up with your contract?" Asked as if she hadn't just been talking about the bakery with the best day-old bread ever.

Mhavos notes all of it, keeping an eye out for anything useful. These people could become an information network easily. Money is a motivator, and they seem close-knit. Worst off, this street is crowded enough, it's a prime location to lose someone in.

"Nevarrans," Mhavos says with a shrug. "Won it in gambling."

He shouldn't play with her. It's just tempting to see her reaction; she wears her emotions so openly.

"They ripped it up."

Proving Mhavos right that her emotions are right there for all to see, her reaction to his contract--his life basically--being gambled away is to look horrified.

"Oh. Well, that's good," she says, nodding, then glancing sidelong at him. Second-guessing. "Right? That's a good thing?"

Seeing someone worried over him is a boost to his ego, and Mhavos is just self-aware enough to realize that's plain manipulation on his part. He could have said that up front. Is he really that desperate for importance?

Apparently. But keep a lid on it.

"I prefer it to the alternative," he confirms, "philosophical considerations aside, can you tell me the name of this alley? If it has one."

The alley doesn't have a name. It's one of those incidental alleys that only came to being because someone built a building with ample room for Andraste between it and the next one, and it became a convenient shortcut for foot traffic. Like most alleys in Kirkwall, when referencing it one need only say the alley between such-and-such and so-and-so.

Unlike Cutthroat Alley which was named after a series of grisly murders, and to this day sees its fair share of bloodshed.

"--you'd think that people would steer clear. Nope. Cutthroat Alley? Sounds like a great spot for a stroll. Oh, I think it's over past that side of the market. The drop, not Cutthroat, that's down by the Docks."

She's trying to be a decent tour guide, but she also wants to make sure her contact gets their payment as soon as possible, so she keeps a fairly steady pace weaving through the crowded street towards a wider expanse of cobblestone.

He's having a little trouble inferring the in-betweens, but it only means he'll have to be back later. He wasn't expecting chance to gift him with a gifted, accurate guide with an intention to detail. His luck is aggressively average, at best.

"Inventive," he murmurs. "Better than Rue de l'abattoir," he drawls.

He follows deftly. He has no difficulty navigating a crowd, Heaven forbid. "This is a path you take often, or am I steering you out of your way?"

"Rue the wha?"

She sidesteps a gaggle of children running up the path, gently slapping a grasping hand away from her dagger like the act was a common occurrence. It doesn't slow the children's flight or her own traversal. She walks backwards for a few steps to address Mhavos and shrug, hands wide for the effect of the gesture, but not colliding with anyone.

"Neither? I only had one thing to do today, and usually I don't get reverse pickpocketed so I guess we'll call this a fun little detour."

Beyond all the market stalls, the buskers, and the Marchers who wish they were in Val Royeaux, the path splits into two narrower ones, the left grading downward, the right ascending.

"Street of the slaughterhouse," Mhavos says. "It was a street by a slaughterhouse."

Mhavos passes through the children and deftly steals their ball, which he then throws down an another alley. They chase after it while swearing at him. His smile is light.

"Yes, well, I do apologize. I'll try to be less, how did you put it, altruistic? I'll have to pay you back for this, of course. You're still doing me a favor."

"Or maybe I'm trying to lose you and you're just too good at keeping up with me," she jokes. You can tell it's a joke because she laughs at it. She laughs at her own stupid joke.

It isn't even funny.

Taking the right path leads them to a row of closely-packed buildings, some of them shops and some with the appearance of residences. Athessa approaches the door to one, and pauses with her hand on the door.

"Oh. Actually I think you will be able to help."

The door opens in on a cluttered, dusty bookshop.

He laughs too, a little hollow, but still. It's pleasant. Talking to this girl is pleasant. He likes her. He'll have to keep an eye on her; she's not only useful, but enjoyable to be aroind.

People don't generally laugh around him.

And then, ah, a bookshop. "Ought I look like a respectable servant retrieving books for my master?" He can already see the shape of it. And he's... excited?

She's not sure what he's suggesting, but despite her confusion she nods indulgently.

"Um. Sure, if you want." She glances towards an aisle, trying to discern the genre labels.

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