open | put my faith in the hard of heart

[achievable]

WHO: Howard Stark & Anyone
WHAT: Congrats Thedas, you’re saved!
WHEN: Nowish
WHERE: The Gallows
NOTES: Nah

Comments

settling in. (open)

[achievable]

Howard wastes no time.

No. He wastes some time. But after, between, and during the drinking and existential crisis, he finds a charming little workshop—where charming means small, underequipped, cluttered—and moves in. Underquipped and cluttered can be fixed. Small can probably be fixed if they let him at the walls. Wysteria Poppell (charming name, charming hair, where charming means—) doesn’t seem immediately aware that she’s his assistant now, probably because she was there first, but time will probably take care of that, too.

Miss Poppell’s section of the room looks like the aftermath of a tornado. His (slowly expanding) section is literally alphabetized, with the handful of curiosities and gadgets he’s managed to acquire so far evenly spaced on a shelf and a single book open on the desk.

“I changed my mind,” he says, without looking up from that book. “It’s not that people are stupid. It’s that they’re bad thieves. All this innovation exists, but no one is stealing it.”

falling with style. (open)

[achievable]

“I could do better,” Howard says.

The story of his life. It works on multiple levels.

But specifically, right now, he’s referring to two broad-winged contraptions he’s hauled to the top of the fortress walls during a spot of clear, calm weather. They’re made partly of bedsheets and melted-down swords that previously belonged to dead people. Still, for things that he made alone, from memory, using literally medieval equipment, and primarily to prove a point, they’re pretty good.

“It’s astonishing how much things cost when you don’t have any money,” he goes on, plucking experimentally at the rigging on one of the gliders. “But they’ll work. At least once.” He considers the water—not that bad—and a pair of griffons swooping over the harbor. “I assume you can swim.”

You. Whoever is up here with him. He made two—surely someone isn’t a coward.

landing with flair. (closed to me.)

[propulsion]

A little hasty guesswork alongside his developing spacial awareness of the layout of this weird island prison sees Tony amble his way to the edge of the waters rather than stick around to watch the immediate take off. Of course, anything could happen -- a fault, bad construction, sudden gusts of wind, one of those flying animals could take them out, but what can he say. Tony is an optimist, and he optimistically expects the little science project going on right now to land in the sea.

He is right.

There is so much to be curious about. So much that he absolutely isn't. Anchors, barely. What's happened to his arc-reactor, sure. But everything else has abstracted itself into a grey haze of incomprehensible bullshit that he is only just deigning to roll with, and he wonders if he'd be better about that before handsome aliens brought their drama to his world. Maybe, maybe not, doesn't matter -- to wit, Tony has not been easily distracted owing to all of it is distracting.

This, though, gets his attention, and he finds himself actually wanting to meet the entrepreneurial spirit(s) who did it, whether they're from olden times or something like from where he's from.

So he stands at the nearest path leading back up from coast to fort, arms folded, watching. He has dressed in some local cast-offs -- there's a lot of brown leather, apparently. Some boots that fit him okay. A grey cotton shirt chosen to diffuse the glow of blue at his chest while the relative humid heat of the area denies him the ability to layer up comfortably, inconspicuously. His stance doesn't suggest that he is ready to help or do much of anything else but observe, but he is watching carefully for sign that he ought to.