faderift | [ota] nobody's gonna have an orgy in their mansion all over their nice furniture

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[ota] nobody's gonna have an orgy in their mansion all over their nice furniture

WHO: OTA, more or less
WHAT: An all-hands infiltration mission ends up being rather more hands than anticipated.
WHEN: Nowish
WHERE: At an estate outside Ostwick
NOTES: Sending crystals are allowed but must be used with the utmost discretion to avoid discovery. A general warning for Eyes Wide Shut-type party nonsense, but more fancy swinger makeouts than sex dungeon. Please make sure to communicate OOCly to ensure everyone's having fun. NSFW content is likely, but if a thread is going to turn into prolonged porn please shift it to an inbox.

Word has come through reliable sources that Baron Hounsford, secretly a significant financial supporter first of the Inquisition and now of Riftwatch as well, is to be the target of an assassnation attempt. Precisely why or by whom is unknown, just that the threat is imminent. Worse, the Baron has left behind his personal guard to attend a somewhat mysterious event at the home of Lord Esterhauzy, outside Ostwick. All Riftwatch has been able to learn on such short notice is that the estate is secluded and the event extravagant. The massive scale is a blessing and a curse: it's certainly big enough to sneak in quite a lot of people, so long as they look as if they have money, but by the same token it will be easy for assassins to sneak in as well, and difficult to quickly locate anyone.

On arrival, everyone willing to dress the part is ushered in to Lord Esterhauzy's glittering mansion, where the difficulties of the mission suddenly become much greater: each person, whether disguised as guest or staff, will be handed a random mask, and informed of the rules:

Merry Widow of Wycome

The dimly candle-lit ballroom is already loud with masked guests, so many that they spill out onto the torch-studded terraces and garden beyond. The room is overwarm, but not sweltering thanks to the efforts of oiled footmen posted near the windows with large fans, and the servants circulating with trays of icy-cold champagne. Somewhere in this crowd are Baron Hounsford and those who wish to kill him, and the only way to find them is to spread out, speak to as many people as possible, and regularly pool information among themselves to try to zero in on their targets. They must mingle as if lives depend upon it.

Those reluctant to participate if it might be avoided will discover that locations where private conversation can be had without complying with the house rules are almost non-existent. Lord Esterhauzy learned his lesson the last time he tried this--it is a common subject of gossip among the crowd that the last party he had advertised as the most debauched of the season fizzled out into merely a slightly racy cocktail hour with underdressed staff. This time he has taken precautions, blocking off most of the house, monitoring access to the rest to ensure it's for sexy purposes only, and empowering staff to have anyone not complying with the spirit of the event thrown out--lest they think that an idle threat, shortly after they arrive several people are unmasked and thrown out for not obeying the musical cue, much to the laughter of the crowd. Even the grounds are patrolled.

There are several spots they've overlooked: a linen closet, a stairwell alcove, a corner of the library, but Riftwatch aren't the only ones to have discovered this, and there is no guarantee any particular hiding spot will be available when the music stops.

As the night goes on and the crowd gets drunker, the tone gradually shifts from slightly giggly titillation to more serious debauchery (much to Lord Esterhauzy's delight. If at first you don't succeed!) but there remains a veneer of decorum that keeps it from sliding into obscenity: people may saunter off to the garden or a private room with someone else's spouse(s), but nobody is just openly fucking on the piano.

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closed for marcoulf
She touches her hair self-consciously, like a disturbed bird protecting its nest. Would it be unlikely if she had started to think of the knotted mess of it like that, something she could hide behind and avoid many social niceties because she was too wretched.

"It will take too long," she objects. "I can hide on the roof."

en mask, en kiss
The Hunter is unrecognizably cleaned up. The mask makes her feel more comfortable, a little piece of armor where she's been stripped of all semblance of it. It creates the distance she needs to be in this room filled with people who want to touch her shoulders and offer her drinks. The drawn out play-acting and actions not-taken disturbs her more than the kissing. It's a relief when the correct little melody plays and concrete action can be taken. It lifts the fog of perfumes and silks for a few moments after and she's able to pay attention to the room again.

Eyes searching for-- Hands that are too quick and too sure. Smiles that do not match the eyes inset into the mask. Mouths too sharp. The lingering scent of blood that Hunters never forget.

stalking
The simplest way to continue to stalk her object of interest and not be thrown out is to have a partner while she does it. She picks someone she assumes to be Riftwatch, takes their wrist and pulls them along.

"The assassin will not be on the roof." Marcoulf slaps her hand away from the gnarled mess of her hair. His fingers are faintly dappled with oil.

They are sitting in the back of a wagon, apparently meaning to arrive in Ostwick in no great style where they will promptly redress and find suitable transportation to the Lord Esterhauzy's estate. Here, in the wagon, her miserable appearance harms no one. But it cannot stand, and he has the means to take her to task for it.

Marcoulf returns to rubbing the beard oil into the matted ends of her discolored hair, humming some low sound of disapproval under the crunch of the wagon's turning wheels. It smells starkly of juniper.

"No, but--" she's trying to argue and somehow slink out of his reach while boxed in by the other passengers and supplies. Both her plots to recuse herself are disrupted by the the most recent bump in the road that jostles her off center. She feels swept up in some kind of absurd play, and finds herself contemplating how difficult it wouldn't be to just jump out and walk back.

It would also just be easier to cut the mess off and start over. She'd always assumed somewhere in the back of her mind that's how she would tend to the problem, whenever she decided to tend to it. She didn't yet know what she would look like to herself if she let herself not-be-a-Hunter during the daylight hours, so she hadn't tried. Neither to manage the nest nor to build up a mental map of who she would be out of her armor.

"No one will take me for a lady," she says it in a tone of voice that implies he also knows this to be true, so why is he doing this to her!(!!)

"No one will take you for anything else if you look correct." And if she wishes to escape him, she will have to climb over the side of the wagon and leap from it while its still moving.

She will take the comb with her when she goes, given how it sticks when he first applies it to the oiled ends of her hair.

She makes a face at him, the pinched and incredulous one that she makes at him often when they bicker. She has too many scars under neath all this armor, and too much muscle. Even her hands alone gave her away as literally any species but a Lady. Let alone her hair. Dead strands catch in the comb, twisting as they're pulled and crafting new knots as they tangle with one another.

"There's nothing for it."

He can try all he wants! It won't be done in time. The last time someone did this it was a nun and she was twelve, just as sullen and unappreciative.

In response, a low chiding noise. Don't be so petty, girl.

One hand turns over, gripping a fistful of her hair above the comb's snagging teeth. It's not a comfortable grip, but it's a fair buffer as he hacks away at the hair below it. He is stubborn as she is surly, and this is a simple (not easy) thing to commit to.

"Do you never see a brush? A bath?"

"Never," if you were indeed looking for petty.

It's not exactly the truth, but neither has she ever held a position in the world which required or cared for her tidiness. The expectation from the nuns had been just another tool in their arsenal of indoctrination; trying to make her into anything other than the dirty urchin she was. The Hunters hadn't cared in the slightest, and maybe being the ones to get their hands dirty while the Priest and Scholars hid themselves away in the Church Ward was a piece of their pride. Sneering at primly dressed Executioners was great fun, once upon a time.

If nothing else, she's not squawked once about how much she expects this process to hurt.

In retaliation for her hyperbole, he loosens his overhand grip enough so that the yank of comb through knotted hair might travel up to her scalp. Don't be dramatic, either.

So callous. She closes one eye, nose wrinkling, then she bats his hands away from her. She wants to get in with her own fingers and begin pulling apart the knots into more manageable chunks. Easier to just rip them up by hand and then comb out the broken pieces. She's not concerned about the overall health of this approach, she has plenty enough to spare; the whole of it is thick and the individual strands are coarse and tough. Even those few gone subtly white that were hidden before in the mess of it.

She lets the smaller sections fall to one side over her forehead, now better prepared for his comb.

While she tears her hair into sections, he thumbs out a few additional drops of oil and rubs them into the teet of the wooden comb so that once Anna has down the ripping and tearing work he might be ready to commit to the finer sort. Pick, pick, pick, say the combs teeth.

"It will take soap to flush the oil from your hair," he says after some minutes of grousing and muttering and the occasional pop from hairs too tangled to salvage. "But for this the grease will serve you just fine."

Better than the tinderbox kindling she's worn her hair as for the duration of their acquaintance.

Pick, pick, pick.

"They'll like me better smelling like a shrub?" From someone else this might've been a humorous comment, but it remains an expression of her reluctance in this case.

"Yes."

Simple as that.

"I've no pins," he says as he works the comb. "It will have to be braided and tied. You may sleep in it, but tomorrow come to me so it can be undone. Don't simply leave it in place as it goes like this again or we will need to cut it out."

The most serious question of all: "Do you do ladies' hair often?"

Which makes him laugh, a low acerbic sound punctuated by the rhythmic clack of the comb's thin flexing teeth. "You can be trusted to stand still better than most horses."

She makes the face at him.

He resolutely ignores it.

Her flustered aggravation with him is hot in her face. She hasn't felt this way since she was a teenage girl, being teased by the Hunters older and wiser that she admired. Knowing there's no ill-intent in any of it but detesting the drumming in her chest all the same. Thoughts racing to make sense of a scenario she's never made herself engage with before.

Her old master and companions would tell her to just go do it, that comfort and ease only came with doing. She pulls apart the hair with renewed spite.

"You'll be a spy after all," she observes, because she's tired of talking about herself.

"So it seems." There's a hard won inch of hair that he can pull through without catching now. He moves up the strands accordingly, protective grip above the work of the comb settling. It isn't pleasant work, but there's a steadiness to it, a straightforwardness, the compliments that rattle of the wagon and the closing distance between then and Ostwick and the Lord Esterhauzy's estate and the work they will find there.

"If we're thrown out, feel free to say I told you so."

What she had told him was that there were always horses to tend, and here he was doing her hair like she was a particularly mangy pony that needed to be ready for the show.

"Husbandry still applies."

So of course it will work out in his favor, won't it?

"Work is work," he decrees, and it feels mostly true. What difference is there is one bit of labor over the other, except maybe the length of time one has been after it versus the other? A hand might be trained to do a half dozen things. It's only a matter of practice and study and enough time for both.

She does not, he thinks, want to talk about spying. Or her hair. Or assassins or sitting on roofs or what he can or cannot do. They might at this moment easily lapse into some crooked kind of silence, underscored only by the gnawing scrape and pull of the comb.

But he knows the pull can be unpleasant when sustained. So.

"I've never done the mare's mane; there's been no reason for it. But during the war, we would braid and bag the tails of the horses in the rear march to keep them from the mud."

Work is work. If there was ever a moment she might've asked him if he would really do anything anyone asked of him-- this might've been it. Maybe a good thing he fills the silent space in her stead, that wasn't the thing to bicker about today.

"Whose war was this?" she inquires absentmindedly. She's not a local, no real reason for her to know and maybe a little history lesson is the kind of mindless chatter for this.

"Empress Celene and the Grand Duke de Chalons' in Orlais." Pick, pick, pick go the comb's teeth. "You will hear very little of it now, but five years ago the Empress had become unpopular - soft handed and silly, it was said, with no love for the people who made Orlais. The Grand Duke - he should have had the throne, but it is complicated and I can't speak well on it - thought to resolve the issue and so split the army against her. I know only the details of the fighting not the politics, and only then that of the last two years. In Wintermarch :43, peace talks went poorly and the Grand Duke was taken and executed. That was more or less the end to it."

And now Orlais is occupied by Ander infantry and Tevinter cavalry at the behest of a mad old Magister. Who is surprised?

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[ota] nobody's gonna have an orgy in their mansion all over their nice furniture

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