WHO: Fitcher, Marcoulf, Bartimaeus (+) & YOU WHAT: Ye Olde Catch'all WHEN: Nowish WHERE: Kirkwall, The Gallows, le Misc. NOTES: Starters in comments; if you want something/someone who isn't here, just hit me up and I'll scrape something together.
a. GALLOWS ARMORY Riftwatch's armory may be more extensive than is even required by the outfit, but all that really means is that there is steel sitting idle and armor going all grotty from lack of attention. Assign a chain shirt to someone and it's there responsiblity to either keep it neat themselves, or find someone to do it for them. Keep it on a rack, and it rots.
Which must be the theory behind why he's been shoved in this dingy old room for the afternoon and currently finds himself scraping and polishing and burnishing. Marcoulf has his feet up on a literal crate of swords and has some scratched old breastplate in his lap. He's either poor company for the poor bastard stuck doing the work with him, or ambivalent about greeting anyone who might stumble across him there.
b. FERRY SLIP "Hold the ferry!"
A man, sprinting, jumps from ten steps up off the stairwell running up from the Kirkwall docks. For a split second, it's a strangely graceful image of near-flight blooming in the dark and muggy lamplight. Then he strikes the paving stones with both feet, stumbles, nearly topples, then trips the rest of the way down the moisture slick quay and all but pitches head first into the last ferry to the Gallows.
Sometimes it's weird to see yourself from the other side because this could be him as Tavin does just that, a flapping of slender hands, an apology half out of his mouth before it catches, turning to a croak.
"Are you-- ah...mmm." His hands are by his face as he says nothing of any sort of use but it feels better to make some sort of noise, kneeling down to check for any bleeding; not his speciality but he can check as he glances to the one in charge of their transport. "A little light if you please!"
Because you know if there's one thing that reliably comes back in panic then it's the surety that you're still Nevarran nobility even out here so do as I say if you please.
"I say, are you well? That was quite the tumble serah, did you knock your head? Anything broken? All pieces intact on you and your person?"
For a baffling moment, he isn't entirely sure where he is or in what state he arrived there. A catalogue of facts is made: his shoulder hurts; his hip will be bruised; his head seems intact by some grace of Andraste; his sword his sprung halfway from its sheath and low lays at some hilarious angle across his lap, and one of his feet is in the ferry's bilge. Someone is speaking to him, and then the lantern is summoned back from its stern hook.
"It's nothing," he says instantly, removing his boot from the bilgewater and sitting up very suddenly out from under examination. And then he actually does pause to take account of himself, patting all his pockets and checking his swordbelt and--
Then he tastes the blood. He presses the back of his hand to his nose and it comes away all red. "Ah."
Head fine; face less so. A subtle but important distinction.
Flapping helps absolutely no one in a situation such as this but it gives the body something to do, that sweet relief of the tight knot in the chest though Tavin does take the lantern just to give at least one hand a job. He's seen people hurt in the field before come up too fast and go down faster, sometimes with vomit on them, blurry vision, slurred speech--
(Is it bad that he will take so many things but not vomit? At least not from a person? He's not a healer there's nothing he can do with that in the end.)
"Steady does it, that's quite the bump you've had, you were near a bird in flight for a moment but alas the Maker did not see fit to grant us wings. I think I've a handkerchief. Or close enough." It's a cloth for cleaning lenses in the field but a cloth is a cloth, it's clean, it'll help as he has a job for the other hand in finding and offering it out. "Well at least you made it in, I've heard all sorts of horror stories about what lurks in the waters of Kirkwall from the locals."
a. CARDS There is a standing card game in the Gallows' long hall; it is nominally by invitation only, but invitations are easy to come by, and there is never any set game. Certainly there are usual faces - players who find their way to the particular table more regularly than others -, but as with much of Riftwatch, this too has very little in the way of expectation. Some nights, the players are thin. Tonight, it's just Fitcher.
She has a spread of cards laid before her, but has evidently lost interest in the game in the lonely game in favor of scowling over a series of missives alongside it. At some point, she retrieves her pipe and absently begins to pack it. Here follows a moment or two where she feels one set of pockets, then another, before giving up and turning to whatever company is closest: "Have you a light on you?"
A match, a reed to light from the fire. Whatever.
b. THE EYRIE The griffon eyrie is dusty with bits of hay, a strange combination of both humid and draft depending on where one stands, and it reeks of marrow and molted feathers and the sweat of lumbering animals. Fitcher is, for the record, not a fan. But she's also not the type to sulk out from under the obligation of orders, and so here she is feeding little scraps of fatty meat to whatever griffon will tolerate her presence.
There is a dark haired woman at the edge of the training yard, her face obscured by smoke curling from a short stemmed pipe gone pale with the wear of being held. Her identity is hardly a mystery, but the timing of her arrival is. She's somehow slipped in and taken her post there heretofore unnoticed, content to observe the work being done in the interim.
Hammers have always seemed too crass for the likes of the Templars (unless one counts the red ones, but who does), which means that having access to hammers and pointedly not being a Templar makes this the perfect excuse to learn the proper use of one. Barrow's hand is still wrapped and healing, but able to keep a grip as he swings at a practice dummy, working up a sheen of sweat over the course of about half an hour.
It's when he takes a break, and swings it to rest over his shoulder (so pleasantly!) that he sees his audience, and raises his injured hand in an amiable wave.
She raises her hand in return, a jaunty little gesture made it time to the idle swing of her leg where she has one crossed cheerfully over the other. Don't let her interrupt.
Unless, of course, he happens to be done with the work to hand and interested in a proposal.
It isn't until they reach the Hightown gambling house that Fitcher finally sheds the mottled blue cloak. Though it is perfectly respectable wear for an evening traipsing through the city and for shielding finer things from itching fingers as they'd made their way from the Gallows slip and through Lowtown, it's hardly suitable for the work she plans to apply herself to this evening. Charming rich men and women visiting from Antiva - in the business of formalizing some new agreement with Kirkwall's Merchant Guild, and the exact sort of friends Riftwatch could stand to make - is better served by the fine tailoring and high collars with flashes of brilliant red embroidery. There is the smallest coined sized circle at the base of her throat made visible by the cut and clasp of the collar, but otherwise only her face and long hands are visible.
For the record: it suits her.
Fitcher touches Byerly's elbow as they wind their way from the door into the belly of the betting house. "Well Messere Diplomat, is there any last advice you'd care to impart before we begin?"
Maker, but does it suit her. He hadn't seen her without the cloak yet, and so the flash of color and pattern comes as a surprise; he cannot help but be captivated by the sight of her for just a moment. Oh, certainly, he looks fine enough himself - doublet and jerkin well-tailored and well-embroidered, hair well-trimmed, cheek clean, teeth gleaming - but the beauty of a dapper man rarely has the power to make your heart skip the way the beauty of a well-dressed woman can. By, being an ardent appreciator of both, feels he is within his rights to assert this.
Well. A smoothing-down of his front, a sly smile in her direction, and then he answers. "They are your people, madame," he replies. "I shouldn't be so arrogant as to instruct you. Just rest assured that if you find it advantageous to lose more than you win tonight, Riftwatch's coffers will lovingly make you whole tomorrow."
"Is the Seneschal aware of this promise, or is it entirely your own personal guarantee? I ask only as I've been on a losing streak, and I'd hate to either bankrupt us or find myself in a difficult position."
She's sticking close - not on his arm, lovely though it is, but near enough that for a moment the possibility lingers there between them regardless.
Eshal is trying to see if she can win a staring contest with a Griffon. She can't, but mostly because the beasts refuse to play by the rules. The idea of riding one seems simply fantastic, but the idea of battle shakes something in her still. It's an uneasy feeling she's tried more than once, and is now trying again, to overcome.
Fitcher is a welcome distraction.
Her grin curves. "Odds five to one," she says, "and look at us, not dead."
If there is a look typical of gamblers who find themselves in potentially unpleasant company whom they may or may not owe considerable sums of money to, Fitcher does a remarkably good job of not wearing it as she pauses just there inside the eyrie.
She smiles at Eshal while unstringing the soggy little packet of waxed paper in her possession.
"You are certainly not." One of the older griffons has begun to perk up at the stench of raw meat. "But you must know that the odds lean farther out of your favor the closer we get to the, if you'll pardon the phrasing, deadline."
Mhavos does not smoke, but he's considering taking up the hobby, just so that staying indoors for the coming winter will become more tolerable. And yet, here he is, fiddling with a deck of cards instead of working or smoking.
He looks up with a curious eye, sees the speaker, and his expression softens. "Alas, no." He looks over to the fireplace. "I could set something alight and bring it do you, but I'm not sure how much good that would do."
"A shame. And we have such a good track record with setting things just the right amount of on fire."
(He'd tossed a letter into that self same fireplace, and she'd watched the edge of it catch before fishing it out against with an iron poker. She likes to think it was charming.)
Strange, how a second examination of her pockets yields a tinderbox after all.
"I read your book, by the way. Or your poet's book, rather."
"I've got a bit of flint," Ellis offers, digging into his pocket.
Not that Ellis necessarily needs to be carrying around these items, but after so long on the road, certain things are just habit to keep on his person. As he pulls it out, he tips his head at the papers.
A corner is torn from one of the reports (don't tell anyone, says her sidelong long), and pinched against the edge of the flint. It's all rather economical, this - drawing her little belt knife, the pipe stuck between her teeth and the rapid strike, strike, strike of metal on stone until some ember finds the paper edge.
"Trouble is something of an overstatement," she says around the pipe stem. "Let's call it instead a warning sign, and be happy that it's of a personal nature and nothing to do with our fine company here."
Athessa, lit roll hanging loosely from her lips, barely looks up before answering.
"Nope, sorry." If she really thinks about it, the elf can just about remember climbing onto a chair to light the joint on a torch. Feels a little bit like deja vu.
Ah, but she does remember the joint. She points to the smoldering tip. "Can you light it with this?"
Fitcher presses another thumb of tobacco into the well of the pipe, then closes the little tin case with a soft clack. There are sweet little leaves beaten into the tin, the rough shape of a fat bird at its center. Well loved, long held. It returns to a coat pocket.
She sets the pipe between her teeth and extends her hand to accept the roll.
Laura ventures out to Fitcher's card game late in the evening, for the first time in quite a while. She has been busy--she has been in Nevarra, briefly, and fighting people in a tavern for money, among other things--and in the last week, she has been hiding.
What draws her out, she cannot quite explain; by the standards of good ideas, she doubts it ranks as tactically sound or likely to result in any appreciable improvement in her situation. And she does not know what Fitcher thinks about the news from Nevarra. Meeting her is a risk she does not actually have to take. But she does.
The result is a girl dressed in black, hooded tonight, moving with the selfsame uncertainty she'd brought the first time they'd met, back when she hadn't known how cards worked. She pauses where someone else might take a seat across from Fitcher. Given the circumstances, Laura suspects she should ensure she is welcome first.
Nothing good, Fitcher thinks, ever came out from under a heavy hood. She should know; she's worn one once or twice.
But as it just so happens, she can think of worse (and less advantageous) company and so when her attention rises from her papers and the task of packing the bowl of her pipe, one might almost find her pleased to find Laura standing there across from her as opposed to some other, less prepared for figure. Not that she expected the girl to surface tonight or here, really-- but maybe then again, she did. Maybe this instance or ones very like it are why Fitcher, a woman with no last name, has made herself so casually accessible, so easy to find. It does someone in her business no good if the people who wish to discuss matters of the head and heart cannot locate her at the simplest impulse.
"I'm pleased to see you out and about, my darling." She nods to bench across from her.
'So you know how I did that thing for you one time and how you owe me now?' is, for the record, not the way to get him to do something without dragging his heels and complaining about it. But the way Athessa had blanched when he'd shot back, 'You mean the time you cut my arm off, you lunatic?' had stirred some latent sense of--
No, it hadn't stirred a single feeling latent or otherwise. But it had prompted Bartimaeus to at least consider the rather extreme state of his boredom - after all, one could only spend so many evenings in the rafters of the hall dropping raw eggs onto the heads of bewildered Riftwatchers -, and to admit that sure. Why not. It's not like he had anything better to do.
Which is how he ends up haunting1 a particularly grimy tunnel connecting two especially dilapidated boroughs of Lowtown just as night is beginning to fall while Athessa tries to get through explaining the finer points of the con she's running.
"I get it," he interrupts. "You explained this once already. You bring your gaggle of wide-eyed and slack jawed buffoons silly enough to pay you money to see Kirkwall where the veil is thinnest, and I play the part of undead skeleton or moaning wisp. It's insulting, but I'll let you get away with it this one time for the sake of keeping the peace between us."
1. This is going to turn out to be a great joke in about four more sentences. Just wait.
"If you got it the first time why didn't you say so before? I hate repeating myself," she grumbles the last bit, planting her hands on her hips. The jangling of the bangles on her wrists echoes through the tunnel, and yes, she's wearing bangles because yes, she's got to be in costume for this.
"It's not insulting, either. You should feel important. Being the only shapeshifter--sorry, mage that changes shape that can play this very important and lucrative role."
"Don't tell me what is and isn't insulting to a mage that changes shape of my caliber," he says sullenly while climbing up onto a small stone ledge running through the tunnel. It gives him a few more additional inches of dominance over her than he already possessed and makes him practically a looming figure in the rapidly descending dark.
"So start here, then once you and the group pass on to the other side, I'll flit along and meet you again at the fourth crossroads next. From there it's the bridge over the canal, the gallows - literally -, the burned tenement, and finally the ventilation shaft to Darktown. Have I forgotten anything?"
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ota;
Riftwatch's armory may be more extensive than is even required by the outfit, but all that really means is that there is steel sitting idle and armor going all grotty from lack of attention. Assign a chain shirt to someone and it's there responsiblity to either keep it neat themselves, or find someone to do it for them. Keep it on a rack, and it rots.
Which must be the theory behind why he's been shoved in this dingy old room for the afternoon and currently finds himself scraping and polishing and burnishing. Marcoulf has his feet up on a literal crate of swords and has some scratched old breastplate in his lap. He's either poor company for the poor bastard stuck doing the work with him, or ambivalent about greeting anyone who might stumble across him there.
b. FERRY SLIP
"Hold the ferry!"
A man, sprinting, jumps from ten steps up off the stairwell running up from the Kirkwall docks. For a split second, it's a strangely graceful image of near-flight blooming in the dark and muggy lamplight. Then he strikes the paving stones with both feet, stumbles, nearly topples, then trips the rest of the way down the moisture slick quay and all but pitches head first into the last ferry to the Gallows.
c. WILDCARD.
+1 weirdo with a sword
b;
"Are you-- ah...mmm." His hands are by his face as he says nothing of any sort of use but it feels better to make some sort of noise, kneeling down to check for any bleeding; not his speciality but he can check as he glances to the one in charge of their transport. "A little light if you please!"
Because you know if there's one thing that reliably comes back in panic then it's the surety that you're still Nevarran nobility even out here so do as I say if you please.
"I say, are you well? That was quite the tumble serah, did you knock your head? Anything broken? All pieces intact on you and your person?"
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"It's nothing," he says instantly, removing his boot from the bilgewater and sitting up very suddenly out from under examination. And then he actually does pause to take account of himself, patting all his pockets and checking his swordbelt and--
Then he tastes the blood. He presses the back of his hand to his nose and it comes away all red. "Ah."
Head fine; face less so. A subtle but important distinction.
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Flapping helps absolutely no one in a situation such as this but it gives the body something to do, that sweet relief of the tight knot in the chest though Tavin does take the lantern just to give at least one hand a job. He's seen people hurt in the field before come up too fast and go down faster, sometimes with vomit on them, blurry vision, slurred speech--
(Is it bad that he will take so many things but not vomit? At least not from a person? He's not a healer there's nothing he can do with that in the end.)
"Steady does it, that's quite the bump you've had, you were near a bird in flight for a moment but alas the Maker did not see fit to grant us wings. I think I've a handkerchief. Or close enough." It's a cloth for cleaning lenses in the field but a cloth is a cloth, it's clean, it'll help as he has a job for the other hand in finding and offering it out. "Well at least you made it in, I've heard all sorts of horror stories about what lurks in the waters of Kirkwall from the locals."
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tag graveyard feel free to ignore
absolutely not
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ota;
There is a standing card game in the Gallows' long hall; it is nominally by invitation only, but invitations are easy to come by, and there is never any set game. Certainly there are usual faces - players who find their way to the particular table more regularly than others -, but as with much of Riftwatch, this too has very little in the way of expectation. Some nights, the players are thin. Tonight, it's just Fitcher.
She has a spread of cards laid before her, but has evidently lost interest in the game in the lonely game in favor of scowling over a series of missives alongside it. At some point, she retrieves her pipe and absently begins to pack it. Here follows a moment or two where she feels one set of pockets, then another, before giving up and turning to whatever company is closest: "Have you a light on you?"
A match, a reed to light from the fire. Whatever.
b. THE EYRIE
The griffon eyrie is dusty with bits of hay, a strange combination of both humid and draft depending on where one stands, and it reeks of marrow and molted feathers and the sweat of lumbering animals. Fitcher is, for the record, not a fan. But she's also not the type to sulk out from under the obligation of orders, and so here she is feeding little scraps of fatty meat to whatever griffon will tolerate her presence.
c. WILDCARD
+1 charming associate
BARROW
It appears you have an audience, Serrah.
Re: BARROW
Barrow's hand is still wrapped and healing, but able to keep a grip as he swings at a practice dummy, working up a sheen of sweat over the course of about half an hour.
It's when he takes a break, and swings it to rest over his shoulder (so pleasantly!) that he sees his audience, and raises his injured hand in an amiable wave.
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Unless, of course, he happens to be done with the work to hand and interested in a proposal.
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BYERLY
For the record: it suits her.
Fitcher touches Byerly's elbow as they wind their way from the door into the belly of the betting house. "Well Messere Diplomat, is there any last advice you'd care to impart before we begin?"
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Well. A smoothing-down of his front, a sly smile in her direction, and then he answers. "They are your people, madame," he replies. "I shouldn't be so arrogant as to instruct you. Just rest assured that if you find it advantageous to lose more than you win tonight, Riftwatch's coffers will lovingly make you whole tomorrow."
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She's sticking close - not on his arm, lovely though it is, but near enough that for a moment the possibility lingers there between them regardless.
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b.
Fitcher is a welcome distraction.
Her grin curves. "Odds five to one," she says, "and look at us, not dead."
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She smiles at Eshal while unstringing the soggy little packet of waxed paper in her possession.
"You are certainly not." One of the older griffons has begun to perk up at the stench of raw meat. "But you must know that the odds lean farther out of your favor the closer we get to the, if you'll pardon the phrasing, deadline."
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The griffon directly in front of them lets out a huff. She huffs in return, mimicking it.
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a.
He looks up with a curious eye, sees the speaker, and his expression softens. "Alas, no." He looks over to the fireplace. "I could set something alight and bring it do you, but I'm not sure how much good that would do."
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(He'd tossed a letter into that self same fireplace, and she'd watched the edge of it catch before fishing it out against with an iron poker. She likes to think it was charming.)
Strange, how a second examination of her pockets yields a tinderbox after all.
"I read your book, by the way. Or your poet's book, rather."
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a.
Not that Ellis necessarily needs to be carrying around these items, but after so long on the road, certain things are just habit to keep on his person. As he pulls it out, he tips his head at the papers.
"Business troubles?"
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A corner is torn from one of the reports (don't tell anyone, says her sidelong long), and pinched against the edge of the flint. It's all rather economical, this - drawing her little belt knife, the pipe stuck between her teeth and the rapid strike, strike, strike of metal on stone until some ember finds the paper edge.
"Trouble is something of an overstatement," she says around the pipe stem. "Let's call it instead a warning sign, and be happy that it's of a personal nature and nothing to do with our fine company here."
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a.
"Nope, sorry." If she really thinks about it, the elf can just about remember climbing onto a chair to light the joint on a torch. Feels a little bit like deja vu.
Ah, but she does remember the joint. She points to the smoldering tip. "Can you light it with this?"
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Fitcher presses another thumb of tobacco into the well of the pipe, then closes the little tin case with a soft clack. There are sweet little leaves beaten into the tin, the rough shape of a fat bird at its center. Well loved, long held. It returns to a coat pocket.
She sets the pipe between her teeth and extends her hand to accept the roll.
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a.
What draws her out, she cannot quite explain; by the standards of good ideas, she doubts it ranks as tactically sound or likely to result in any appreciable improvement in her situation. And she does not know what Fitcher thinks about the news from Nevarra. Meeting her is a risk she does not actually have to take. But she does.
The result is a girl dressed in black, hooded tonight, moving with the selfsame uncertainty she'd brought the first time they'd met, back when she hadn't known how cards worked. She pauses where someone else might take a seat across from Fitcher. Given the circumstances, Laura suspects she should ensure she is welcome first.
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But as it just so happens, she can think of worse (and less advantageous) company and so when her attention rises from her papers and the task of packing the bowl of her pipe, one might almost find her pleased to find Laura standing there across from her as opposed to some other, less prepared for figure. Not that she expected the girl to surface tonight or here, really-- but maybe then again, she did. Maybe this instance or ones very like it are why Fitcher, a woman with no last name, has made herself so casually accessible, so easy to find. It does someone in her business no good if the people who wish to discuss matters of the head and heart cannot locate her at the simplest impulse.
"I'm pleased to see you out and about, my darling." She nods to bench across from her.
Go on. Take a seat.
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for athessa;
No, it hadn't stirred a single feeling latent or otherwise. But it had prompted Bartimaeus to at least consider the rather extreme state of his boredom - after all, one could only spend so many evenings in the rafters of the hall dropping raw eggs onto the heads of bewildered Riftwatchers -, and to admit that sure. Why not. It's not like he had anything better to do.
Which is how he ends up haunting1 a particularly grimy tunnel connecting two especially dilapidated boroughs of Lowtown just as night is beginning to fall while Athessa tries to get through explaining the finer points of the con she's running.
"I get it," he interrupts. "You explained this once already. You bring your gaggle of wide-eyed and slack jawed buffoons silly enough to pay you money to see Kirkwall where the veil is thinnest, and I play the part of undead skeleton or moaning wisp. It's insulting, but I'll let you get away with it this one time for the sake of keeping the peace between us."
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"It's not insulting, either. You should feel important. Being the only shapeshifter--sorry, mage that changes shape that can play this very important and lucrative role."
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"So start here, then once you and the group pass on to the other side, I'll flit along and meet you again at the fourth crossroads next. From there it's the bridge over the canal, the gallows - literally -, the burned tenement, and finally the ventilation shaft to Darktown. Have I forgotten anything?"
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