[OPEN] all life has taught me

[esquive]

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.

Comments

ota;

[esquive]

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.

c. WILDCARD.
+1 weirdo with a sword

ota;

[unshut]

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.

c. WILDCARD
+1 charming associate

for athessa;

[reshapes]

'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.