[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

wysteria

[heirring]

I. base operations

The (Unofficial) Official Assistant to the Seneschal is determined to be a proper, useful assistant and thus Wysteria has made it her business to stick her nose into everyone else's. Perhaps you've been assigned a menial task - carrying important boxes up ten flights of stairs, draining and scrubbing the baths - in desperate need of being overseen, or there is very important shopping to be done on Riftwatch's behalf which requires Miss Poppell's most discerning eye.

Just don't try to file your latest expense report or acquisitions request with her. There's a growing pile - tower? mountain? - of paperwork in her little corner of the world, and it's almost certainly to be stuffed somewhere around the base of it.

II. research division (closed to whoever gets here first)

From the far side of the workroom comes a fantastic BANG!, followed by a mortified squawk and the sudden smell of burning: paper turning rapidly to ash and singed hair and the strangely musky smell of scorched leather. Wysteria, in her heavy leather work gloves and apron, staggers backward from the plume of smoke billowing from the metal bowl riveted to the table before her. She is coughing and spluttering and only slightly on fire at her very edges.

There's a bucket of water beside the bench, but she pauses briefly to smother her burning sleeve prior to dumping it all over the detritus of the work table. And then whatever was in the bowl BANGS! again, tongues of fire leaping from up through the column of smoke.

"Ack!"

And then the fire (or some burning bit of ash) leaps to the bundle of paper at the edge of the table.

"ACK!"

III. wildcard

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

flint

[katabasis]

I. office hours

--is a phrase which evidently carries very little meaning to the mind of Commander Flint. While it's true that are a few hours in the day where he might be found in the Division office working through paperwork, reading reports, handing out order, or humming and hawing over the series of maps sprawled over the large work table he'd had hauled up for this expressly purpose, it is equally likely to find Flint on the Riftwatch docks overseeing the work there. It's winter and the miscellaneous small craft in the organization's piecemeal fleet require hauling out and refinishing, and given the recent news out of Val Chevin, it is in everyone's interest to see that everything that can be done to make the larger craft fit to fight through what remains of winter has been.

Both haunts are to be expected, as is his sometimes presence (as Captain, not Commander) in whatever sketchy sailor's pub the Walrus crew has taken over this month. What may be less explicable are his occasional appearances in Hightown, leaving the house of a wealthy noblewoman, or his returning late to the Riftwatch stables one night dressed all in black, his mount steaming with exertion in the cold air.

II. kirkwall (closed to whoever gets here first)

The crews responsible for the brawl on the Kirkwall quay may have been slapped down either by the Guard or by whatever authority their respective masters had, but the sentiment (No Vints) is evidently ubiquitous enough and Flint conspicuous enough in his relation to the place that late one evening it warrants the sudden appearance of three unpleasant strangers at the bottom of a narrow back alley stairwell as he is in the process of descending it.

Flint pauses midway to assess the trio waiting at the bottom. He then turns, meaning to simply make his way back the way he'd come, only to find a fourth figure at the top of the stairs.

Ah.

III. wildcard

fitcher

[unshut]

I. card night (one thread please, no turn order; feel free to threadjack as you feel compelled)

Maybe it's the weather. Maybe it's the depressing state of affairs over in Kirkwall with all those sick and dying leeching out into the air. Maybe it's all the doom and gloom from the northern territories having leaked all the way here like molasses slowly moving downhill.

Or maybe it's just an off night. Either way, the air about Fitcher's card table these last few weeks has been decidedly a little more gloomy that she'd prefer. Which is why tonight she's brought no less than three bottles of wine and an exquisitely battered viola along with the usual deck of cards.

"Look at all of you." Thunk go the bottles as they're deposited at the center of the table. "Grim specters, one and all. Is this what the business in Nevarra looked like up close?" She sets her heel up on on the bench and the viola across her knee. "Don't mind me. Someone deal while I see if this dreary old thing can be tuned."

II. lowtown tavern (closed to whoever gets here first)

A sensible clerk - provided for in nearly every way by the organization for which she toils, and perfectly capable of wiling away the least pleasant weeks of winter warm and content in the Gallows has no reason to be in Lowtown this season. Not with all the sick around. And yet there Fitcher is, occupying some little table in one of the drearier public houses. She is in the company of a nondescript man with hair the color of forgettable. After a short interval, a purse is traded between them and the lad (is he younger or not? Hard to say) slides out of his chair, wishes her a good day, and takes his leave.

Fitcher tucks the purse into her coat, then fetches up her drink. Never let a drink someone else has purchased go to waste if it can be helped.

III. wildcard