MOD EVENT: WINTERMARCH WINTER MARCH

[faderifting]

WHO: Anyone & Everyone
WHAT: Winter adventures as Riftwatch heads up into the Vinmark Mountains to do some work for (Provisional) Viscount Bran of Kirkwall
WHEN: Throughout Wintermarch and early Guardian
WHERE: Vinmark Mountains
NOTES: OOC post

Still-Provisional Viscount Bran has received a number of requests for aid from communities in the Vinmark mountains outside Kirkwall. He wants to keep them happy so that they continue to pay taxes to Kirkwall and don't become problematically independent or allied with some other state. But he also doesn't want to deal with this shit, and the City Guard isn't really equipped to go tromp around the mountains in the winter. So he has asked Riftwatch to deal with this, casting it as a shared danger (if any communities were to break away, they'd be more vulnerable to enemy collaboration, or hampering travel through the passes, and things like that) but if necessary will imply that Riftwatch's refusal would weigh unfavorably against the decision to allow them to remain in the Gallows for free.

This work isn't done at the exclusion of all else--other normal (and especially high-priority) work continues. Any work that isn't especially time-sensitive may be postponed, and otherwise agents will simply have to forfeit their free time and fit this work in on top of their other responsibilities. Something for people to complain about while they're tromping through the snow.

It's not a long trip back and forth to the Gallows, so people can come and go if they want, but Bran has also agreed to allow Riftwatch the use of the Viscount's hunting lodge, a rustic mountain retreat traditionally used for hunting parties, which happens to be in a roughly central location. As Viscount Bran is both Provisional and profoundly not the sort of man who holds hunting parties, the lodge has gone unused for some years now, and Riftwatch is bringing in its own supplies and a skeleton support staff to man the place for the duration. Those traveling up in the first group will have to help escort supply wagons through snowy, muddy mountain roads, unloading casks and crates into the cellar, and pitch in cleaning, making minor repairs, and generally getting the building set up after a decade of neglect.

The lodge is organized around a central hall with a massive fireplace, and a small library and study that will be used as offices shared between those visiting. Up the grand wood stair is a mezzanine level that looks down on the hall and leads to three corridors, each with a couple rooms. Rooms will be shared by groups of 2-4 people, the exception being the two suites generally reserved for the viscount and his wife, which will now be assigned to whichever of the Division Heads are in residence (and if there are more than two at a time, then to whichever Division Heads win a coin toss or something). Each room has basic furnishings, heavy and rustic, and its own fireplace. Bathing facilities are communal, provided by natural hot springs pools. While these are outdoors, there is a roof, and there is also a small springhouse alongside for changing, as well as a separate sauna.

The stables contain a number of sleighs in varying states of repair, which can be signed out for use. They're often the best way to get around this area in winter, and can be pulled by a team of Vinmark Goats, a big-horned shaggy breed of unusually massive mountain goats that are often used in place of ponies in this part of the world. The Viscount had a herd of them, which has since run more or less wild on his land and will need to be rounded back up for use.

There are a few communities with different problems, spread out some ways apart through the mountains:

• ICE RIFT: The village of Erith has been plagued by shades and despair demons, which can be traced to a rift that has opened under the thick mid-winter ice of the frozen lake just outside town. Trying to get at it from above would mean cutting into the ice and fighting off demons while underwater and very likely freezing to death in minutes. So instead they'll need to traverse the ice caves beneath the lake to reach it, which will be complicated by the nature of shades, which leech off the energy of the livings' psyche, causing confusion, fatigue, and fear.
  
  
• SNOWMONSTERS: Cragfield has been cut off by an infestation of what's only been described as "snowmonsters," that have been harrying travelers around the village or anyone who strays too far from the edge of town. They will prove to be some unknown variation of giant, even more aggressive, though a bit smaller and nearly covered in white hair. They have some resistance to magic, especially ice magic, and one seems capable of using ice magic, if crudely. They can be tracked through the forest and picked off a few at a time, or traced back to one of their lairs, usually in a cave or tucked into a rock formation.
  
  
• THE GRIPPE: Galssop has sent an urgent request for healers to help combat a particularly virulent strain of the illness many in Kirkwall are suffering. Most of the town has fallen victim to it, including their only healer, leaving the rest without care. Complicating matters, reaching the town in winter (especially while transporting supplies) requires traveling up the frozen Wye river, using skates and iceboats. The villagers there will be wary of magical healing, and Bran as urged trying to use non-magical means of healing first if possible, though he and the sick will ultimately come round to the necessity of using some magic rather than see dozens die.
  
  
• THE GRINCH: Lerwick's trouble is a young man who recently inherited Touraigle, the fortress above the village, and who firmly believes that Lerwick is also his inheritance. When the Mayor of Lerwick refused to enforce Lord Bertrand's taxes, the lord's guards ransacked the town, helping themselves to most of its winter stores, among other things. Riftwatch diplomats have been asked to help entreat the lord to be reasonable and return what he took. But the road up to the castle has been blocked by a combination of overzealous defenses and weather, forcing all visitors to climb a treacherous hill of downed trees covered in ice and the occasional, possibly-frozen (if they're lucky), booby trap.

In addition to these specific issues, Rift Watchers can expect to encounter the usual Vinmark winter hazards: unpredictable weather, hungry animals, bad roads, scarcities, and so forth. Once news of their presence in the mountains gets around, they may be asked to take on similar small problems for others, like dealing with wildlife issues, helping search for a missing child, rescuing a hunting party trapped by a minor avalanche, etc. There are also basic chores to keep the lodge running that will always need extra hands, like chopping firewood, hunting down dinner, safeguarding supplies on their way to and from Kirkwall, and so on.

Comments

[sulahnan]

Athessa has never been one to turn down the company of pretty women, regardless of their state of dress. Her mouth quirks into a lopsided smile and she shrugs her shoulders just enough to peek out of the water.

"Be my guest. I'm not shy." Indeed, her body language even before Lexie's appearance was relaxed and open.

[coquettish_trees]

And so she smiles brightly and continues shedding garments and draping them one by one over a lounge that likely sees a great deal more use in summer. It's a considerable number of layers, but eventually Alexandrie is free. And shivering, until she dips an elegantly pointed toe into the spring, which is followed shortly thereafter by the rest of her. She leans back against the wall with a pleased sigh, closing her eyes like a sunning cat.

"How fine this is. I forgive the Viscount for sending us."

[sulahnan]

"It is pretty nice. Makes me wish there were hot springs back home," Funny, that the Gallows is home now, huh? Oh well. "Guess it'd be hard to convince people to go back to work though."

She sinks into the water up to her chin with a sigh, the heat coaxing tension out of her muscles and far more preferable to the water beneath the ice that she was unlucky enough to dip into the day before.

[coquettish_trees]

“Oh, I should never get out, save for the wrinkles.” Alexandrie stretches a foot out of the water just enough that water runs down the slope of her ankle to her calf before rejoining the spring to make play at inspecting it critically for effect alone, having just gotten in and certainly not able to see any wrinkles from her relaxed recline.

She’ll call all this back in lessons later.

Her smile dims a bit then, to something tentative, and glances at Athessa sidelong as she returns her foot into the water, shifting her gaze to the raising and lowering her fingertips just above and beneath the surface, playing with the liquid tension of it; a movement that might be taken as soothing her nerves.

“I wish to apologize,” she says after a moment.

[sulahnan]

Athessa looks up from inspecting her own fingers, also far from pruny but still.

"Huh? What for? I already said the knife thing was no big deal, didn't I?" It's as much reassurance as it is a genuine question, looking for confirmation that she didn't just think really hard about saying it was fine, but not actually putting it to words. The unfortunate downside to smoking so much elfroot is the veil it puts over everything, muffling memory like a hood muffles hearing.

[coquettish_trees]

Alexandrie flicks her fingers, sending a small spray of droplets farther into the spring.

“For what happened at Falaise. I should have made more stringent warning. Of what he was. The sort of things he would be capable of, should he indeed live.” Do not go there, she had said, but not strongly enough. It doesn’t matter. In the end, she’d been the one to send them.

[sulahnan]

"Oh."

The change in Athessa's posture isn't sudden or obvious, but for someone trained to see that change it's probably about as obvious as the disguised villain in a play. She sinks a little lower in the water, her limbs move in a little closer to her core, and even though she gives a little shrug and her mouth quirks lopsidedly, she looks away.

"You did tell us not to go," she says, "and Fitcher got it under control." Remembering the tug of blood magic on her veins, she absently rubs her arm.

cw: implied sexual assault

[coquettish_trees]

She nods slowly, then turns to look at Athessa, eyes dark with concern.

"I am sorry too, that I did not immediately make time to speak with you. I have not felt such a twisting as you now have, but to lose control over ones body is..." The nothing hole Rolant's drugs had made; the haze, the headache, the confusion, the laughter on her waking. The not knowing. Never knowing. "For women, I think, especially." She pauses, thins her lips, then continues with sincerity, "For women who are elves, I might guess moreso." Geneviève would have never, never, but Alexandrie knows how the Chevalier earn their yellow feather. What must happen, sometimes, along with the blood and death.

"Have you been able to speak of it to anyone?"

[sulahnan]

If her sharp exhale sounds like a laugh, it's because the idea of making herself vulnerable enough to tell anyone is uncomfortable enough to warrant one. She shakes her head.

"No," And she could leave it at that, but: "Why would I? It all turned out fine."

Her knees tuck up to her chest and she rests her hands on them, fingers tapping mindlessly. When she notices the tic, she tries to be more nonchalant, draping her arm over the tops of her knees and resting her chin in hand, only serving to look more fidgety. Restless. Uncomfortable about being laid bare in more ways than one.

If it were between her experience with Devigny and being puppeted by a blood mage, somehow she thinks the former would be preferable. The lesser of two evils purely by virtue of being able to fight back, even fruitlessly.

[coquettish_trees]

It's not entirely kind, having calculatedly trapped Athessa in this particular way. Nakedness strips defenses as well as clothing, an environment that is both open to the sky and enclosed offers enough of a feeling of freedom to keep her from crossing over the edge into fleeing the intimacy necessitated by the spring itself, and alternately pressing and withdrawing in speech and body language does the work of keeping the woman off balance and allowing enough time to recover such that she doesn't fall.

But Alexandrie is rarely called kind.

To the end of the last, she nods slowly, draws up her own knees in mirror, albeit not as tightly, and looks at the rising of the steam into the air. See? It is hard for me too.

"I thought I..." she begins softly, and then lets it fade. Waiting to see if it will be reached for.

[sulahnan]

And reach for it she does. Not immediately, and with much hesitation, but a reach all the same.

Athessa watches Alexandrie, waiting to see if she finishes that sentence before giving the nudge she wants.

"Thought what?"

[coquettish_trees]

The breath she held is expelled, up into the grey sky with the steam, her gaze pointed upwards as well, as if to find the rest of the pieces there.

"That I was fine."

[sulahnan]

"Hm," She frowns and taps her fingers a few times more. "What happened?"

If Lexie is admitting that thinking she was fine was a mistake on her part, then where does that leave Athessa? She knows she isn't fine. But it doesn't help to know and not know how to fix it.

same cw agaaain~

[coquettish_trees]

"I loved and trusted and gave myself to a man I should not have, and he ruined me. I was a court scandal before I had even been formally introduced, and I will never know the extent of what happened to me that night." She flicks the water.

"For a long time, I could say nothing. Everyone at court knew what kind of things Rolant did," yes, him, "and so I did not need to. And then I became strong and cruel myself, and believed I was no-longer able to be hurt by it. Even to a confidante, I should not have felt the need to speak of it."

Of course, she hadn't had one, but it was irrelevant.

"I did not know, until I spoke the words for the first time and ended weeping on the floor, what I had been carrying. It had been fine."

blanket cw it's gonna be an ongoing subject

[sulahnan]

Her thoughts return to those awful dreams she shared with Colin and Laura, and how it felt a bit less of a heavy burden to have someone else know what she had suffered. But the burden hadn't lifted entirely, and the heavy fear brought on by blood magic had a disparate, coppery tang to it.

"Are you offering to be my confidante?" She asks, gaze flitting up from watching the water, to gauging Lexie's expression. "Or just telling me that I should have one? I know what I'm carrying, and that I'm not fine. I don't know if I'll ever be fine. Making someone else carry it isn't..."

But now she just sounds petulant, doesn't she? She sighs and sinks lower, water up to her chin.

"Sorry."

[coquettish_trees]

"For all you and Bastien have attempted to absolve me I yet carry the heaviness of sending you to it," Alexandrie tilts her head, turns it slightly so she can look at Athessa. "In this instance to lighten your load is to lighten my own."

[sulahnan]

"I don't get how," she says, but shrugs her shoulders, sending a little ripple across the spring. "There isn't much more to say than what was in the report. I was controlled, forced to kill an already dead man in front of an audience, and likely would have been killed if Fitcher hadn't acted when she did."

A rote summary, detached from it as if it happened in a dream, or to someone else entirely. Never mind that afterwards she would feel a spike of panic at every minor muscle twitch, at her own hands shaking, or that being on display had just enough similarity with being trotted out for potential sale that she spent a week wanting to disappear.

[coquettish_trees]

"Those are the bones of it, yes," is her careful reply, "but... not the flesh that surrounds them; that which might bear bruises, tears. The parts of us that bleed."

[sulahnan]

"Well whaddya want me to say? That it felt bad and I never want it to happen again? You already know that."

[coquettish_trees]

"It is not about what I wish you to say, not even about what you wish to say," still careful, still watching—but only long enough to deliver the next, to pause for its impact. She will look away afterwards.

"It is about what you need to say."

[sulahnan]

She wants to insist that she doesn't know what she needs to say, because what she needs to say and what she wants to say seem like the same thing, at least in her mind.

But something Lexie said prompts a different question:

"Did Bastien tell you to check on me?"