[OPEN]

[heirring]

WHO: Wysteria, Marcoulf, Flint, and/or Fitcher & YOU
WHAT: Open log for Wintermarch
WHEN: Now
WHERE: Various
NOTES: Mix of open and closed prompts; some threads closed to first come first serve and/or contain a few different prompts. Want something specific but don't see it here? Hit me up on discord/plurk/PM/the astral plane, and we can figure something out (or just toss me a wildcard starter if that suits your fancy; I'm pretty flexible). Action brackets aokay if you prefer it over prose.

[see comments below for character specific starters]

Comments

marcoulf

[esquive]

I. $$$

There are benefits to receiving a regular stipend, to sleeping in a bed provided to him, and to having the option of at least two hot meals served to him daily. A sensible man (and what else is he is not that?) might every now and again look up and realize he has over time acquired a not inconsiderable bit of a money lying about in the interim. For Marcoulf, that moment of looking up tends to occur roughly once every six months. Consequently, roughly once every six months, arrives the itch to spend that money.

He makes the rounds in no particular order: there is a millinery in Hightown where a half dozen hats might be appraised, tried on, and fussed over; there is a cobbler in some narrow back alley with a dab hand at resoling a favorite pair of boots; a tailor, and a side street market which specializes in imported spirits and dry good and pins and whatever other brickabrack someone with a little spending money might find themselves drawn to.

And then there are the livestock yards with their array of horseflesh - cart horses, and palfrey mares bred for fine ladies, and solid little packing animals, and cobbs of every shape and size. Horses don't stay long in Kirkwall; the majority of them are coming or going, bound for more profitable horse markets elsewhere. And while he may not be in the market for buying himself - he and the roan mare kept in Riftwatch's stables, eating Riftwatch's hay, being shod with Riftwatch's iron have an understanding -, there is a sort of pleasure to be gleaned from the atmosphere of the whole business. Anyway it doesn't hurt to keep an eye out. Riftwatch needs horses as much as any other make-do fighting force might. Nevermind that keeping an eye out here mostly amounts to loitering at the fringe of the auction yard where the horses might be put through their paces, or surreptitiously petting a series of soft velvet horses noses.

II. uninvited guests (closed to whoever gets here first)

He is determined that the big gray griffon should not be sour about returning to the eyrie when taken from it, and that means taking a series of jaunts away from Kirkwall for a day or two at a time, camping in whatever back wood or mountaintop is convenient, and then wandering back to the Gallows once the hen has stopped stamping and fussing and chewing on things to express her disinterest with being away from the comforts of home.

The weather is glum. The nights are bitter cold. And while danger is unlikely - how much trouble can one really find in the middle of nowhere? -, the griffon is enough of an asset that the work can't simply be done alone. It requires a partner on the off chance that something goes wrong.

Case in point: a bear, freakishly early to rise from its winter hibernation, stumbles into camp just as they (griffon, Marcoulf, and their plus one) have begun to get comfortable. The smell of the cook fire in the stale winter might have something to do with it, but mostly it's just awful luck. Marcoulf, sitting on his heels, looks up from the task of scraping the thing soup from the bottom of the pot. His hand stops. He blinks at the bear. The bear blinks back.

III. wildcard