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

[hassaran]

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:

1. Masks must be worn at all times.
2. When the musicians play the famous Merry Widow of Wycome, every guest must kiss the person to whom they're speaking, or who is closest. They must continue until the music stops.
3. If they aren't interested in stopping, slipping away somewhere more private is an option (but given the competition for space, finding somewhere completely private may be a challenge.)
4. Any person found to be breaking these rules, or the spirit of them, will be unmasked, removed from the premises, and forbidden from attending in the future.

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.

Comments

[esquive]

"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."

[notched]

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?

[esquive]

"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."

[notched]

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.

[esquive]

"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?