open.

[luaithre]

WHO: Marcus Rowntree and some random happenstances personified.
WHAT: Covering off Marcus' arrival to Riftwatch, and whatever interactions may occur immediately after.
WHEN: Throughout Firstfall.
WHERE: Many places!
NOTES: Some open prompts beneath the text. I will also use this post as a catch all for specific threads so let me know if you'd like to do anything else.

THE DOCKS AND STABLE; ARRIVAL.

It's a vague hour of the morning when a man and his horse arrive at the Gallows, made vaguer thanks to the heavily overcast nature of the sky obscuring the sun's position within it. It's late enough that the frost is melted, and horse hooves impress deep tracks in the slush that's already accumulated in the path leading from the docks to the compound where Marcus has been informed are also the stables.

The horse is large, and grey like churned snow, and sedate. The stranger leading it is of a medium build and dressed in a similar palette and also sedate, though as he moves, his gaze inevitably drags back up to the hulking shadow of the Gallows proper.

Within the stables, he doesn't seek help -- he directs the large gelding towards the likeliest looking stall, unloads saddle bags, finds a secure place to stash saddle and all the rest of it, tends to feeding and watering and a brush down. He doesn't speak out loud to the animal as some might, no soothing humming or praise, but his actions are all gentle and attentive. Although Marcus does not seek interruption, nor let it stop him from going about his tasks, he isn't actively deflecting it, taking note of every person and animal that move through the stables.

THE GALLOWS; FINDING A ROOM.

[ ooc ; limited to one. and taken! ]

The fortress feels very empty.

And it isn't, of course. The sconces have been tended to and the floors seem more or less swept, and where they don't, fresh bootprints glisten on worked stone, indicative of people passing through. But the Gallows are immense in dimension compared to most constructions, and the last time Marcus was here, it was borderline crowded.

He takes himself to the mage tower without much thought behind it, but explores both it and its Templar twin as he peruses for a place to stay, taking his time. Along with his staff strapped across his back, his other worldly possessions are contained to a compact set of saddlebags he hooks over his shoulder, held in place as he walks the rows of doors.

Noting those that are taken as well as those that aren't, Marcus touches his hand to one door with just a seam showing between it and the frame, pushing. The hinges creak and the door swings and-- opens up to a furnished room with firelight, and a person in it.

"Oh," he says, standing still, hand hovered. "Pardon me."

DINING; LETTERS AND CARDS.

If Marcus eats among with everyone else, he normally chooses a time less crowded, and brings something to do with him.

Here, he has a few loose pages of inexpensive parchment, and he uses some extra implements to keep the corners down -- an empty candle holder, a heavy fork -- and writes while his food cools. His handwriting is neat and without particular elegance, and he concentrates on completing a section or even a whole page before he sets his pencil down and returns to his meal.

On another evening, he has set an empty plate aside and filled his cup from a pitcher of dark wine, and is laying out cards in front of himself. They don't look like any kind of conventional set of playing cards, with painted images in fine colours that wash out too easily under the golden light of the hearth, the candles on the table.

He offers to whoever catches his eye or is sitting at the same table, "Care to play?"

KIRKWALL; ASKING SIRI.

"Excuse me."

It's getting late, and if you don't start for the docks soon, the last few ferries will be leaving for the Gallows without you. Not to lean into an awkward second person narrative situation, but you are stopped by a voice from your blindspot, belonging to a man you may or may not recognise as a new arrival. A man pushing into his late thirties, manner calm and collected as he stands still in the bustle of the street, apparently impervious to people pushing by. Dressed neatly and warmly, hands in gloves of fine leather, and his expression is mild in some contrast to the innate severity that pale eyes have, and the squiggled scar running down one cheek.

Marcus has a quick smile ready, which resettles to fade as he speaks in an accent that pegs him as originating from the nearbyish Starkhaven. "I don't mean to intrude, but I believe you're with Riftwatch. By any chance were you heading back that ways for the evening?"

WILD CARD; THRILL ME.

[ ooc ; stock standard riftwatch mission, a ferry ride to kirkwall, requesting help to lift something heavy, trapped in an elevator, whatever you like. ]

Comments

finding a room | former templar tower.

[ipseite]

A person—a woman—and an aging, enormous hound, the latter draped across the end of the bed (which looks as if it might be two, pushed together) and the former standing beside a desk that looks too fine to have been original furnishing to the room, her fingertips resting against a teapot, against a glyph upon it that ceases to glow when she brings her hands together and clasps them in front of herself, momentarily too startled to answer him.

And then, instinct kicking in— “Of course,” with a smile that has been practised in ballrooms and salons and has been polished so well as to be unreadable except to say that the person wearing it is very good at doing so. “I do not believe we've met, and I shall presume that you are...a new arrival to us? Monsieur?”

The accent isn't quite Orlesian; one of the hands over her heart glows dull green where the anchor-shard that embedded itself in her emergence into Thedas rests.

“Were you looking for someone? Perhaps I can help.”

She is very relieved not to be undressed, but she does feel undressed, with her hair loose and the outer jacket of her dress draped over the back of her chair where she would have tidied it away once she'd undone herself and settled in.

[luaithre]

Marcus himself is not as presentable as he would prefer, if given a choice. His hair is brushed back and recently retied, but there is trace evidence of travel still on his clothing and under his nails, in the fact he is a day out from being clean shaven. Still, neither his state or hers stops him from flicking his attention off of her to look about the room from where he stands. The dog, the glyph, the decorations, the furnishings.

Curious. He can't help that. He returns his attention when it's his turn to speak, allowing a slight smile to happen when she offers her assistance.

"Aye, I've arrived today," he confirms. "Too soon to know who I ought to look for. Just a room, I mean."

There had been a prompt back there, he thinks, for a name, so he circles back to. "Enchanter Marcus Rowntree," he says, a hand going out to sketch the partway bow he might have executed if he wasn't burdened.

[ipseite]

It's tellingly automatic, the way she mirrors his part-bow with a similarly sketched dip; she doesn't break thoughtful eye contact to do it, offering, “Madame de Cedoux,” in turn, habitually refraining from providing her given name.

The room is both warm and lived in and somewhat sparsely decorated—it shows signs of cohabitation, a man's boots sitting alongside finer slippers, and the desk looks the most lived in of anything, books and papers and work in organized chaos. Not disarray, but the way that overwork looks when it's by willing inclination.

A moment, and then: “Welcome to the Gallows, Enchanter. And to Riftwatch. We are, as you have doubtless recognized, not presently lacking for accommodation.”

It would be a welcome problem to have at this point.

[luaithre]

"The Gallows I know a little," Marcus says. Her name filed away for later inquiry, as well as, like. How it's good to know people's names. "The Riftwatch is new."

And there's a crinkle at his brow, articulating a little apology since his initial and very reflexive pardon from before. Lots of empty rooms and he happens to intrude on one of the few taken, while the lady has her hair down and everything. His hand wanders out to go ahead and grip the handle of her door so that he might start on a graceful exeunt.

But now that he's quit scoping the place, his eyes dart to the green light emanating from her hand, and apology vanishes from his expression in place of an interest at remove, movement hesitating. He says;

"I have a rude question. Seeing as I've already transgressed." May as well make it a twofer.

[ipseite]

Her eyebrow rises, very slightly. Lord knows that might very well mean just about anything, under the circumstances. From his demeanor, from the staff that he carries on his back and the way he has approached this thus far—in all likelihood, not something disinteresting, though there is room for her to have violently misjudged.

She says, “I may have a rude answer,” which based on about thirty seconds acquaintance with her he might reasonably conclude is unlikely.

It is permission, all the same. At least to ask.

[luaithre]

It might be disinteresting.

If only because certain realities are likely very pedestrian for most of Riftwatch but are very fascinating, maybe frightening, for those that are not of Riftwatch. Marcus has heard of people who wander too close to a Fade rift getting lanced with magic and bound to it, or however that actually goes, and it seems like a likelier guess than the alternative.

But he's been around enough Orlesians for her accent's subtleties to move him to guess at the unlikelier thing. Her response is-- unexpected, in a fun way, even if he doubts that she will in fact have a rude answer.

"Are you not from this world?" is the phrasing he lands on, standing in the doorway with a hand on the handle. If this is awkward, he doesn't seem to notice.

[ipseite]

All it takes to see the pedestrian as something fascinating again is to stand in a slightly different place to look upon it. It is a professional obligation to not tire of this, particularly; she does less direct, outward facing diplomatic work than she once did, but not none. If the loudest voice is the one that carries, then she had better not be silent.

So her expression says ah, but that's all.

“There are several schools of thought on the most precise technical answer,” she says, which means yes. “An argument might be made that I am now, as I am now, very much of this world. But the life I remember before Riftwatch is not, no. Not of Thedas.”

[luaithre]

His other hand rests on the doorframe to lean as he listens, blankly absorbing as to The Discourse until she builds to her answer. Thoughtful, he angles a look downwards, before he steps into the room.

Careful, so as not to knock staff against the frame of the doorway, well used to accounting for its presence in the way he moves. Once inside, she can see where the end of the weapon angled to clear the floor is built in with a blade that runs for almost a foot, embedded and fixed well into dense wood. Most of the more polite Enchanters this side of the continent don't come with those.

Though perhaps more, as of late. He shoulders the saddlebags off of himself, but stops short of just flinging them down -- propriety demands he hold them hovered and ask, "May I?"

[ipseite]

The contrast between man and weapon is stark. She considers it a moment, lowering herself into one of the chairs by the desk; the second less well-matched to it, a recent addition to the room. She settles on, “I should not think of asking you to stand with their weight while we are speaking,” as if all of this is very ordinary, and as if by striking the right tone of courtesy she can neatly arrange and package it into something familiar and controllable.

There are no true loyalists in Riftwatch, but the number of dedicated rebels has long been nearly as low.

It is a particularly large stick that he carries, walking softly.

“Please. Sit.”

All five feet of her the gracious lady. She reaches out to her teapot again, the glyph flaring to life under her hand— “It isn't tea, but it is pleasant heated,” and the scent that begins to rise is very slightly alcoholic.

Kirkwall; Do You Wanna Catch Some Leeches~

[okayimin]

Sawbones is, as a matter of fact, heading back to the Gallows, though her night is far from over. At the moment she was wrestling with trying to carry a large earthen pot nearly half her size in her arms, the soft clinking of smaller jars coming from inside.

She'd very nearly bumped into the man standing in the middle of the blasted street and had to set down her burden to save it from falling. Her habit had been abandoned at some point during the day, sacrificed to supplement a new baby's swaddling, and her hair was in danger of coming out of it's neatly pinned braids.

"I am," she says in response to the man's question, returning is smile with a scowl, "And if you are as well, you best come with me before we miss the last boat."

[luaithre]

The saddlebags are lowered, and he loosens the buckle near his shoulder that releases the harness keeping his staff strapped to his back. The weapon itself is set down with more care, keeping blade up from marking her floors.

He sits. He does so like he is glad to be of his feet, some.

But there remains some propriety beneath the occasional smudge of dirt and his own weariness (and the situation entire), arrangement of limbs and posture all mannerly in the way that such habits are bone deep. His attention goes to the pot and the distinct sharp scent it emanates as the glyph glows, and he tips his head to best examine this little mark of magic.

"That one of your own devising?" he queries.

[ipseite]

“It is,” she agrees, arranging two cups while the little teapot glows obediently, warming its contents. “Though I would classify much of my practise of magic as rediscovery. Books on witchcraft, I fear, had gone the way of most known witches—into the pyre.”

When she says that Thedas was revelatory in the freedoms which mages did have even within the Circle system, she has never meant that to reflect well on Thedas so much as an indictment of her own home. Knowing some of what became of it, then, as well as the different positioning of magic and magical ability in Sulleciel in the first place...

Neither have lived up to their promise. Here, though, she is still alive; there is still time.

it doesn't have to be some leeches~

[luaithre]

Her habit, repurposed though it is, as with her diminutive stature and air of busy-bodied activity that feels taller than she actually is, were more than enough to draw Marcus' focus as someone he'd seen about the Gallows to stand in as something of a. Well, a guide.

And he needn't even inquire further as she invites him along. Invitation possibly something of an interpretation, sure, but it amounts to the same.

"Certainly," he says. Maybe he can cut a quicker path than she. But first-- "Do you need help with those?"

[luaithre]

She can consider herself watched as well as looked at, whatever subtle line between those two things may exist. He absorbs this information quietly and it disappears behind a somewhat inscrutable expression, content to sit and ponder to the subtle sounds of water warming, of cups being placed. It's maybe odd, that he offers, "You have my sympathies.

"How long have you been here?" as he wanders out a hand to idle with the cup in front of him, turning it. He supplies; "I'd wager long enough to have a handle on how our witches get along."

[ipseite]

Not unwelcome, if it's so odd. If it was wrong for Marius to build his empire on the back of martyred women, it is not wrong to mourn them; it is not wrong, she thinks, to have made anyone care. Nor to mourn the loss of knowledge as well as lives, of history that was unwritten and picked apart and remade, what was lost that no amount of laws changed or churches burned would ever bring back.

She pours two cups.

“Two and a half years,” she says, with a small smile he might take for agreement. More than long enough for that. “I am the organization's chief cryptographer, though I previously occupied the role of ambassador at the head of the diplomacy division. To date, though multiple rifters have held such positions of power in our tower of leadership, and staffed their offices with this mage or that, we have yet to ask anyone to expressly follow the orders of a native-born mage as provost, ambassador, commander or scoutmaster.”

So she has a handle on how things stand. Yes.

“The ability to learn from one another was a revelation to me,” she says, considering him. “I would have been remiss to overlook anything before me.”

[luaithre]

Marcus picks up the cup once its charged, bringing it up to catch its scent more fully. His attention flicks up at her summary of Riftwatch leadership to date as he does so, and his mouth curls a little at the corner -- something like a smile, even if it never reaches any other part of his face.

He sips from his cup. "I'm certain many would say that it's enough that mages are free to come and go and collaborate as I heard they do here," he says. He lifts his cup a little to her, indicating her revelations. "It's not for nothing, of course."

Upon sitting down and putting himself in proximity, there'd been the overriding scent of things like 'horse' and 'mud' and 'rain-soaked wool', quickly extinguished or at least neutralised with the rise of warm alcohol and the cleaner aromas of her own living space. His clothing, anyway, has long since captured and held hostage the scent of smoke, released with minor movement, subtle enough as to be borderline subliminal.

"Those are lofty sounding titles."

dining.

[dutyful]

Ashen is still growing accustomed to what it means to be part of Riftwatch; he's too used to being a Warden, too used to that kind of brotherhood, and the mixture of people here is strange after being alone for so long. He's baffled by it, especially when he feels that awkward homesickness for the Avaar and Bran, hand hovering at the ring around his neck.

It's enough that he is distracted more often than not, unfocussed on the food in front of him.

It takes him a moment to jerk back to reality, and then his eyes land on a stranger.

"Play?" Head tilted, he leans forward, looking at the cards. "What would you have me play?"

Not that he is likely to refuse; he enjoys a game, as long as he does not have to risk too much. Isn't life dangerous enough already?

it's probably going to be leechesss

[okayimin]

She eyes the big earthenware jar with a glare and then a resigned sigh. This Duster is tall at least, with arm length to spare.

"I do," she says grimly, shaking out her arms, "Blasted things are heavy and they'll be heavier by the time I'm done." Not to mention woozy from the bloodloss. Sawbones eyes her new companion, "Say, you got any business that needs tending to?"

kirkwall;

[inkindled]

"Uh," Matthias says blearily, "that's, ye-ah--"

There's a hitch in his voice, and a sway to his steps that lingers even when he's stopped walking and tried to get a look at the man that's spoken to him. Might look like sea legs but for the fact that they're on solid ground, and for the fact that Matthias smells as if he's been dipped in a barrel of ale. Takes a moment to fix on the man's face, and even once Matthias has managed it, he can't be sure. Does he know him?

"New, are you." The pleasant tint that the abundance of drink had given the tavern has not transferred well to the open streets of Kirkwall. It's loud out here, too full of people or too empty of them by turns, depending on which street you're walking. And it smells, and it's all over gray, and damp, and now there's something talking at him. One, someone. Matthias scrubs a hand over his face, and scratches at his hair. Trying to be normal, and steady. "D'you really not yet know where the ferry is?"

[luaithre]

Marcus obligingly spreads a few cards out nearer to be observed, observing the stranger in kind as he does. The images are painted and have been handled with enough care to preserve their integrity, depictions of people and environments, style over detail. A baying wolf before a full moon; a female hunter with a spear and long elven ears; a young boy with lightning emanating from raised hands. These last two have numerical indicators, with a 'five' sketched into the corner of the elven huntress card, and a 'two' in the other.

"It's named Muster," he says. "A war game, of kinds. The deck is split, and we draw nine cards each to begin with. The game is three rounds, with two new cards drawn on the second and third. We play them against each other--" And he illustrates by placing the two numerical cards opposite one another. "--like so. Here, the play is won by three."

He reaches for his wine to recharge his cup. "Rounds finish when one side decides he is defeated, or will certainly win, and draws no more cards. The victor is he who has won two rounds."

[luaithre]

"Well, I'd get there eventually."

There is a patient sort of humour to his tone, recognition having settled already in his features as he gives the younger man-- no, boy, really-- an open and frank assessment as to his state. Upright in spite of the way he seems to be adjusting his feet and stance as though the solid earth beneath them were shifting like a ship deck, so that could all go to pot as soon as they start moving.

Still, Marcus continues to address him as he has been, which is, as though he were sober and capable, sharp focus couched in bland pleasantry. "But perhaps not in time for the last ferry back. So if you'd be kind enough to let me join you your way there?"

[ipseite]

“Many,” she agrees, without agreeing any further. It is not nothing, but neither is not nothing a place to stop and where mages within Riftwatch fall upon that subject is of great and immediate interest to her. She supposes she might be more direct, but then: he is very new. And she has not gone so native as to forget the lessons that have allowed her to thrive here.

Burned in as they are.

“Riftwatch's hierarchy is most direct. Possessing a title within it typically means a great deal more responsibility, and markedly less respect.” Which can be true and still coexist with the fact that it is interesting that a mage might not possess the highest of them. Responsibility in Riftwatch means, usually, suspicion and blame from one's own subordinates—that a mage might still be less trusted to have a hand in decisions that will lead to them almost certainly being blamed for things that had nothing to do with those decisions and were in fact not their fault (among the things that might be), and less trusted than a pirate from Tevinter, well.

It makes the pirate from Tevinter's interest in them interesting, too. Another time.

[luaithre]

Marcus obligingly steps forward and picks up the pot in the interest of expeditious movement and something like a fair trade, help for help, and insufficiently curious about its function by the time Sara has come around to ask him as to his business.

He pauses to think about that, and admits, "Beyond a ferry ride and a nightcap, no," while bracing against someone pushing past him where they stand in the midst of the foot traffic. That person earns a glance their way, one that lingers as he adds, "I shouldn't wish to steer you off yours, of course."

[luaithre]

He's had conversations like this before, where something unsaid fills in the gaps of what is said like shadow, silent but seen. It is in his nature to be direct, but it is also in his nature to be tactical.

So Marcus focuses on this more apparent thing they're talking about. Gladly, at that. The Riftwatch is an enigma to those on the outside, after all.

There's a twinge of humour writ at the corner of his mouth as he asks, "Which one of those two things had you step down?"

[ipseite]

Petrana hums over her cup, something like ruefulness tugging at her own mouth—

“I suppose, boiled down as simply as that, the latter. I had sooner leap than be pushed, and so. I did appreciate the forewarning that I would be, when it came, but that was confirmation more than...I was not surprised.”

A tilt of her hand. “Are you at all familiar with the negotiations between the Inquisition, Chantry and the mages who joined the former?”