Crow Hunting | Intro OTA

[imbroccata]

WHO: Lino Nieri & YOU
WHAT: Recruitment of a Crow, ensuing insult and injury
WHEN: covering a span pre- and post-holiday
WHERE: Various
NOTES: Possibly some description of animal skinning, otherwise it’s mostly just introductions and bandit killing

I. Hunt a Killer

Whether by assignment or volunteering, you’ve taken on the task of tracking down a possible recruit. A Crow, more specifically. A task not many would find success in, if said Crow did not want to be found, but somebody who knows someone who heard from someone else says that a man with an Antivan accent has been seen in the Hinterlands, taking on small contracts and jobs from locals to deal with Venatori, slavers, fade-touched bears, and find missing persons.

Riftwatch intel, being as it is, suggests the possibility of this man being one Lino Nieri. Allegedly, a Crow in exile. Self-imposed, as the Crow way is to punish failure or transgression with death.

It is armed with this information that you happen upon his camp.

II. Kirkwall

[ Crowds. Lino hates crowds. The only good they serve is to hide what’s truly going on beneath a tide of chaos.

Case in point, Lino snatches up what appears to be just one of a group of children, running among the people and laughing, playing. He hoists the urchin by the collar and holds out his hand, receiving with reluctant grumbles the coin purse that had just been pinched from whichever unaware sod traipses beside him. ]

Watch yourself. [ Said simultaneously to the urchin and his companion before he releases the former and returns the coinage to the latter. ]

III. The Gallows

In the first days following his recruitment, Lino spends most of his time familiarizing himself with the layout of the Gallows. The armory, the courtyard and its defenses and weaknesses, the uses of the individual towers, he scrutinizes all with the look of a man planning fortifications. Attacks will come from there, the best vantage is here, exits in a pinch are here, here, and here...

When he is found in the library, however, that hypervigilance is seemingly refocused on memorizing the books and scrolls and where they belong. It’s a different kind of vigilance, one driven by a personal interest in knowledge for its own sake, perhaps.

IV. Wildcard

((take a sip, babes))

Comments

[exequy]

Kostos spares a brief look at their surroundings—and at Marcoulf, who is doing a very good job at damage control and does not deserve this, but if anyone got what they deserved the world would be a very different place, so—and, unfortunately, sees nothing but trees. No signs of the war raging further north. No Venatori lurking behind the trees. No red lyrium erupting up from the earth. The sun is shining. Birds are singing.

But surely Nieri knows how to read.

He opens his mouth.

[unshut]

Worse people were sent.

Like, genuinely. The pair of them might (allegedly) be ill-suited for cutting about in the woodd, and Fitcher may insist that they talk their way into sleeping in the barn or on the hearth of whatever not-so-distant farmhouse which may exist in proximity to the ex-Crow's new camp rather than roughing it on the ground - "I hope you weren't set on camping, Bastien. My back simply isn't made for it." -, but what they (allegedly) lack in wilderness survival expertise they more than make up for in charm and wit. If the irascible old Crow wants a story, there will give him a pretty one. Or an ugly one. Or whatever best suits his mood, whether it be in Trade or translated into Antivan.

At the very least, they've managed to keep the mud to their boots.

When they arrive at the edge of the camp, and once the man in it has been identified as not presently interested in murdering them outright, Fitcher produces a bottle of wine from the bag at her hip.

"I heard this went poorly the last time, so we thought we might start on friendlier footing this go around."

All of Thedas knows not to take chances with Crows, but drinking with them? Now there is what one might call a time honored Antivan tradition.

[imbroccata]

Lino raises his eyebrows.

"Well, that will at least get you invited to sit down, bella."

Log or rock, take your pick.

[cozen]

Bastien will not ultimately require a personal invitation to sit down, but he will wait until Fitcher has situated herself, and perhaps their new friend, as well, before it comes to that point. In the meantime he's picking absently and unobtrusively at a loose thread on the cuff of his sleeve—the only sign of an appropriate and reasonable degree of apprehension, he's sure, given the local wild-life, never mind the local assassin population—and pausing his interested look around the camp to smile.

"Is it true that you fought a fade-touched bear?" he asks, then backtracks with a gesture. "No, I am sorry. That can wait."

[unshut]

"I'd actually very much like to hear about the bear. Or perhaps you might regale us with details of that business you allegedly had with that dastardly chevalier."

This from the log she has settled herself on as she cracks the wax from the bottle and works free the cork.

"Do you have a cup, Ser, or shall we do this the old fashioned way and simply pass the bottle?"

[imbroccata]

He looks first at the woman, then the man, and the corner of his mouth twitches with amusement.

"I like old fashioned," he says, answering the more pressing question at hand. It's the one that will reward him with drink, after all.

"And no, not fade-touched, just great."

That fucking bear. He sometimes regrets not letting it eat Lazar before killing it.

[cozen]

"They should never have started calling them that," Bastien says, quiet in the way of an aside that isn't meant to interrupt the flow of a conversation and does not require acknowledgment. "It has gone to their heads."

It will not go to his head, that they have managed to be invited to linger and share wine, even gotten something close to a smile and not anything remotely resembling black eyes, just by showing some basic courtesy. But he will certainly make sure others are aware of it when they return—for the sake of deflating some other heads, not inflating his own.

[unshut]

Bless a bit of unobtrusive wit. It makes this whole shaky business seen a little less so, doesn't it? Why, it's almost as if they belong out here in the sticks. Privately, entirely unspoken except in sunny optimistic tones as they had made their way through the Marches, Fitcher had suspected there must be an even chance at this. Either the Crow will be amenable to a second pair of nuisances in the shape of a couple of Watchers, or he will not. If he is not, they will be soon be a pair of corpses.

She has yet to rule out the latter possibility on the basis of being allowed to sit and the barest spirit of a smile on the big man's face, but it's as they say - hope springs eternal. She will have to burn that letter left in her trunk should they return.

Taking the first swig from the bottle, Fitcher holds it out to the Crow. "This charming specimen you see before you is Bastien of Val Royeaux, and I'm Fitcher of--" in Antivan now, "--here and there."

Her smile is crooked, honestly so. Sliding back into Trade: "We'd prefer not to be wasting your time at all of course, but evidently there's a war going on."

[imbroccata]

His introduction slips in easily after theirs, a simple admission of his name. He hms and takes a slug of the wine and a moment to savor it. There was a war on when he last set foot in Antiva, too.

"Which one is that, again?" He asks dryly, passing the bottle to Bastien. "It's hard to keep track."

This is one of his favorite Antivan traditions. Sharing a bottle with strangers. In antiquity reserved for friends, thereafter common among enemies in times of tenuous truce. The idea being that in order to drink with someone, there is a display of trust; one cannot drink from a poisoned bottle and expect it to kill only their enemy. A cute thought, and about as true as fairy tales, but nevertheless Lino finds it just a little bit charming.

[cozen]

Bastien, without a lick of Antivan to his name, uses the time he spends drinking from the wine bottle to optimistically file away the syllables of here and there as the name of a village to search for on a map sometime later. Then he looks at the label while he swallows, eyebrows slanted in appreciation.

"They do run together," he says, "but in this case the aspiring tyrant is particularly ugly—" The bottle is returned to Fitcher, along with a smile and little nod for her taste. "—and the threat particularly dire. They have resorted to employing printers and clerks as envoys."

[unshut]

"Which, as I'm sure you can appreciate, is no way of going about things. Flattered though we might be with the responsibility."

Fitcher accepts the bottle, takes her requisite second swig and then passes it on despite her preference to set it there on her knee. Lacking such an occupation, she instead busies her hands with retrieving the smooth white pipe tucked in her belt and packing its bowl.

"Alas, here we all are and so I must ask the question. Are you especially fond of all this?" She gestures with the pipe stem to indicate the camp, the woods, the general environment in which one might scream and never be heard. "You see, we have a bet going about which tack would be best to take in convincing you to return with us, and mine relies rather heavily on you being sick of exposure to the elements."

[imbroccata]

"Well, I would hate to make you lose that bet," he says. He looks down at the bottle as if reading the label, leaving the unspoken but hanging in the air until he takes a drink. He hands off the bottle after an appreciative nod.

"So I won't. You're correct, it is wearing on me a bit."