Lock-Picking 101

[hassaran]

WHO: Character(s)
WHAT: Mandatory training on how to pick locks
WHEN: Various times this month
WHERE: Wherever
NOTES: A catch-all for RP about this training. OOC post here. People who didn't sign up for random pairings are still welcome to use this post to RP about their characters attending.

Trainings will be held periodically at various times of day, often in the unused dining hall in the Mage Tower but occasionally in various other classroom spaces. Teachers vary, generally members of the Scouting Division but not always, and the curriculum of the initial lecture is generally aimed at beginners. For them, they begin with identifying different types of locks, and display a few deconstructed examples to show how the internal mechanisms work, before demonstrating basic picking technique. If the attendance is mostly those with more experience, this might be skipped in favor of talking through more complex locks and trickier situations like makeshift picks, locks you can't see, avoiding leaving a trace, or detecting traps and failsafes.

Much of the time is spent in one-on-one instruction, and then studying in small groups made up of people with roughly similar skill-levels. There are a variety of locks and tools to work with (for those who haven't brought their own or want a new challenge), ranging from extremely basic to examples of rare and expensive locks from around Thedas, apparently from the Scoutmaster's own collection. At the end of the class, they are finally paired off to see how much they've learned by being—surprise!—shackled together until they can get themselves free. Each pair is sent off with orders not to neglect the rest of their work day(s) and bring the cuffs back when they're done.

Effort will be made to scale the challenge to fit, so those who are more skilled will be given more complicated cuffs to work with that may include enhancements like: requiring multiple locks to be unlocked simultaneously, enchantments that deliver a mild shock to the wearers if an unlocking attempt takes more than ten seconds, designs that tighten the cuffs when an unsuccessful attempt is made, and so on. If you feel your character is simply too good to be held by any such mechanism for long enough to make this fun, then feel free to make up additional complications, like being cuffed back to back, including leg manacles, whatever (within reason).

Note that use of magic (or rifter powers or any sort of unorthodox ability) is strictly forbidden in all parts of this course. If people have magical means they're willing to demonstrate or able to teach, there will be a portion of the class where they're encouraged to do so—particularly if it involves careful use of native magic that other Riftwatch mages could learn—but the purpose of the lessons are to learn how to pick locks, not destroy them, and any evidence of magical tampering will otherwise get frowned at.

Teacher ↠ Student

Yngvi ↠ Gwen

Petrana ↠ Matthias

John ↠ Darras

Nikos ↠ Kostos

Fitcher ↠?↞ Bastien

Teren ↠ Laura

Derrica ↠ Jenny Lou

Yseult ↠ Ellis

Study Groups

Fitcher + Darras + Derrica

Kitty + Petrana + Nikos

Lauralae + Laura + Kostos

Gwen + Matthias + Sidony

Stuck Together

John ⛓ Kostos

Sidony ⛓ Ellis

Darras ⛓ Kitty

Nikos ⛓ Lauralae

Bastien ⛓ Wysteria

Matthias ⛓ Nell

Petrana ⛓ Laura

Jenny Lou ⛓ Six

Comments

Jenny Lou

[windyvoice]

a. a very important realization (ota)

It's not like Jenny Lou like... Hadn't been aware. Like it wasn't screamingly obvious just by like existing in proximity to these people. But also she hasn't really been around that many of them in like. A group setting. Where there wasn't anything actively trying to kill them. So now she's dealing with this.

"Oh fuck, everyone is super hot..." she mumbles to no one in particular, trying really really hard not to stare at any one person and. Kind of failing. Just. Wow.

b. we are here to learn. (specifically for Derrica, ota for observers)

Okay, she's coping, she's got this. Her teacher is like insanely pretty, but that's cool, super not the first time she's had to think around the brain breaking thought of lady pretty before. Except she hasn't caught anything Derrica's told her in the last like five minutes because she's been trying really hard to listen to her, instead of actually like... Listening.

"Um... Sorry. Could you go over that last bit again?"

c. help. (specifically for Six, but ota to observers)

Okay. So. Her boss might be trying to kill her.

Or like... maybe she can get past this whole thing by exposure. Cus like... wow. Her partner is. Very tall. And she looks like she could snap Jenny Lou in half. But she's got this, Jenny Lou is here to put into practice the things she's learned.

"Hey uh... If you flexed, do you think you could break the cuff?"

Fuck.

[tender]

"Am I going too fast?" Derrica asks kindly. In her hands, the lock springs open. Derrica shoots her a little smile. "We can start over. Here, take the lock pick."

Mostly oblivious to Jenny Lou's internal crisis, Derrica leans over to put the lock pick into her hands. She shuffles through the little pile of locks, making sure there isn't an easier option to direct Jenny Lou to work on.

"Just remember, we don't have to figure it all out today. So don't feel like you have to walk out of here having cracked all of these."

C

[swordproof]

Six, on the other hand, is barely aware of the fact that she might seem somewhat intimidating to her partner. She's a little more occupied with the fact that she has to try and figure out how to pick this lock - it was never something that was in her skillset. She had travelled with rogues and bards, of course, who were more adept at this sort of thing, but she always simply... Broke down doors, or whatever else stood in her way.

She snaps out of her thoughts when Jenny Lou speaks to her, eyes widening for a moment before she looks down at the cuff.

"I do not think so," she admits quietly. "My wrist is not as strong as the rest of me." She could, however, likely lift Jenny up by the cuffs, but that doesn't seem appropriate. At least she's not wearing her full Paladin armour. "Would you like me to attempt this first?"

a.

[justashotaway]

"It is winter," Laura points out in a similar undertone, because of course she does. She isn't stupid, but the things people have said about her looks haven't historically involved the word hot.

(She may, admittedly, be part of the problem: dark hair falling around a not-entirely-hideous face, bright green eyes, dressed all in black. Sorry about that.)

a pirate.

[hornswoggle]

( darras )

There is a little pile of locks on the table between them. John is spinning a small brass lock between two fingers as he watches Darras' progress.

"Gently," John advises. "You can make quick work of most once you have the hang of it, but getting the sense of it is a delicate business."

Things John does not say: Why hasn't your wife taught you this already?

But then again, it isn't really essential for a pirate. Once you've taken a ship, there isn't much point in trying to work open a lock when you can simply crack open the container and take what's inside.

( kostos )

"Stop moving. I can't work on the lock when you're pulling on the cuffs," John admonishes.

He's said this twice already. In fairness, the fault isn't entirely with Kostos. Something's wrong with this lock. John can feel the way one of the tumblers is sticking, and he can't decide whether or not to risk breaking the tools by forcing it.

Magic is certainly off the table. Even if it were only him and Kostos in the room, John knows for certain that Kostos would feel even John's most minor spells.

( free for all )

Having survived Kostos, John has retreated to observing. Want his advice on a tricky lock? Alternately, care to bet on the outcome of one match-ups? Pull up a chair.

[staysail]

"This'd be about the part where I'd decide to be indelicate."

The lockpick feels particularly slender in Darras' hand, and light as a bone needle. He's not especially adept with fine work like this. Nor is he known to be particularly patient. If he were in a blacker mood, he might suspect Yseult of having designed this challenge with him in mind. Planted the seed when she told him about the cuffs in the bathtub, let him get used to the idea of helping, mentioned the lesson, acted surprised when Darras said he would join in--

Luckily, he's not in that black a mood. And he's not so self-centered as to think this is about him. Truth be told, Yseult likely barely thought of him. When there's a job, that's her focus. He knows that much.

So. He twists the lockpick, slow and careful, listening close for the next little click.

"Y'know, I stopped trying to pick locks when I was ten years of age. Didn't see the point."

ffa

[sulahnan]

Athessa, having donated a pair of cuffs but oddly not getting assigned to be cuffed or teach or learn, has also decided that watching is the only remaining option. Maybe she's practicing, per bard training, or maybe she's just passing time, but she knows which pair of cuffs is Qunari-made and which ones aren't and that gives her something of an edge in betting.

"Did you see that little finger-trap they gave to Fitcher and Bastien? Pretty adorable, right?"

[exequy]

Kostos drops his arm—pulling on the cuffs again in the process, just in a different direction, mainly out of spite—and then sits rigidly still. It will last maybe two minutes at most. Fidgeting isn't normally his problem, but normally he isn't attached to another person.

"And you working on the lock is going to eventually... do something," he says, just to confirm.

a warden.

[heorte]

( YSEULT )

"I'm sorry," Ellis says, just a heartbeat before the soft click-click-click of the lockpick skidding over the internal mechanisms of the lock fruitlessly. He breathes out hard, then lays both on the table. "I can feel it going wrong but..."

But nothing. There's nothing for it, he supposes. Looking at Yseult across the table, he can't tell whether or not her patience for his missteps are dwindling.

"I'm worried I'm likely to break the pick in the lock."

Not necessarily out of frustration, but it's a close thing.

( SIDONY )

So, this has gone wrong.

"I think we're better off trying to break them," Ellis advises, watching Sidony wrestle with the lockpick. "We've been here for some time now."

His tone is very patient, but Ellis' ability to buy in to the value of this exercise has dwindled away.

( RUBBERNECKING )

Ellis has taken up hanging around, observing, to try and pick up some tricks. Feel free to distract him from his attempts to study what everyone else is doing.

me!

[indissection]

"That defeats the purpose of the exercise, does it not?" Sidony frowns, looking down at their hands. She was beginning to get better at this, but Ellis' rebuttal makes her feel as though, perhaps, she is failing at the first hurdle. She ought to ask Byerly to help her with this (her rogueish husband must be skilled at this, surely) but she has a sense of pride: she wants to earn this skill herself.

Eyes lifting to look at the man beside her, her lips curl down.

"I am doing my best. It should not take much longer if you have a mote of patience left, ser."

Re: a warden.

[hassaran]

"Go ahead," Yseult suggests, watching Ellis from across the table without apparent concern. "They're not as delicate as they seem, but if it breaks then you've learned where the limit is. That's a good thing to know."

It seems for a second like she might leave it there, but thinks better of it and adds: "And then we can take the back off so you can see where you're going wrong. It helps to have a mental image of the workings."

Nikos Averesch

[exsecutus]

Nikos ↠ Kostos
"You're a fucking druffalo."

Nikos stops drumming his fingers on the table and holds his hand out for the lock instead. He's not smirking, but looks very bored instead, if only because he knows it will piss Kostos off. Just think: five years ago, he couldn't have said unequivocally what would piss Kostos off, because their chief correspondence were the stilted letters that they very occasionally exchanged, and whatever word made its way to Antiva to be deployed like an exploding glyph at a family dinner. Now he knows how to piss Kostos off. It turns out there's not a trick to it at all.

Their mother would be, perhaps, proud.

"I'm not even good at this and I can crack it faster. Give it."


Kitty + Petrana + Nikos
Fortified by a quick drink in the corridor, Nikos is now fiddling with one of the trickier locks set to him. Or, them. Paired with a known quantity (Kitty) and a largely unknown quantity (de Cedoux), except by reputation (because no spy network can tell anyone fuck-all about Rifters, even Rifters that have settled themselves into the world the way de Cedoux has), he has been largely reticent. Not that he's peaceful in his silence. There's a tightness to him, winched in his jaw and in the lines of his body.

Working at this, he hisses a swearword through his teeth as he twists his fine little lockpick two degrees to the left. It feels particularly fragile in his stupid fingers. There's an itch in his palms that he is trying very hard not to think about. This lock will be done in a moment.

"I think she's a sadist," he says, to the lock. But he means the scoutmaster.


Nikos ⛓ Lauralae
Why not, with the handcuffs. Nikos raises his hand and then drops it, so the chain clinks loudly. He sighs.

"Let's get it over with," he suggests, "quickly, if you can."

If he can. This exercise has been a test of his patience more than anything, which is by now wearing thin. The itch in his palms has spread up to his arm. He resists the urge to flinch or scratch at it, and instead rubs his free hand over his mouth, which is very dry. The rasp of his fingers against his own stubble is annoying to him. The Rifter he's been paired with looks positively cool by comparison, pale and somehow ethereal. But of fucking course. Why not.

[rathercommon]

Kitty doesn't really laugh except under the most extreme circumstances. But that makes her snort, and makes her mouth twist a little to the side, and makes her nose wrinkle, so that her appearance is one of amusement even as she avoids actually smiling.

"Let me give it a try." She holds her hand out for it.

its me

[rakta]

Lauralae is too busy staring at their cuffed hands to make any kind of note of what Nikos is saying to her.

There's a flare of panic in her eyes, her fingers flexing open and closed, gloved in dark black silk. It's clear, as the seconds tick by, that there's a real agony to her, something she can barely swallow as she tries, pathetically, to slip her hand through the cuff and remove it. It's almost as if it pains her to do it, as if the very notion of having something tight against her wrist, near her fingers, is a brand new kind of agony.

"Quickly." She repeats the word almost breathlessly before she fumbles, made with jerky motions, to try and start picking the lock. Her hands shake as she does it.

[exequy]

"Fuck off," Kostos says, like clockwork, and pulls the lock closer to his chest, like clockwork. "I was a fucking terrible teacher—" Not that many of the apprentices he taught are alive to say so anymore. "—and I was still better than you."

The picks are possibly, maybe, stuck in the lock. He rattles them a little and then holds them still. He doesn't want to break them. But he possibly would prefer breaking them to giving it to Nikos to fix.

Darras Rivain

[staysail]

Fitcher + Darras + Derrica
"I asked if we could make it a drinking game." Darras tosses the lock he's holding and catches it, then holds it to the lamplight to peer at the tiny notch that is its keyhole. "And the scoutmaster, Maker love her, said yes, as long as we agreed on the rules up front."

The pile they have to work through is rather sizable, an assortment of locks and cuffs and two small boxes with delicate little mechanisms that will be painful to undo. A challenge. Unfair, Darras had complained, when the scoutmaster--his wife--knows full well how little patience he has, to which Yseult had only smiled and said yes, she did know full well, and that was that.

At least a game will make it bearable. Darras tosses the lock up and catches it once more, one-handed. "So it'd be... a drink for each time you picked the lock, or a drink for each failure?"

Darras ⛓ Kitty
The cuffs set to challenge them are broad, more like manacles. Darras plucks at the chain that joins them like the string on a lute. The metal clanks, dully, with hardly any music to it at all.

He gives Kitty a little smile. "Am I your punishment?"

He doesn't mean anything by it but as a joke. Knows only a bit about her, largely by reputation. Rifter, loud, not unlikable but not likable, either. And likely better at picking locks than him.

[rathercommon]

Her response to that is a keen, unsmiling gaze. Kitty's not sure the exact relationship between Darras and Yseult, but the Gallows are too small and the quarters too close for her not to have a few guesses. So he's smiling as he says it, but the question makes her wonder: how much does he know? Is he a punishment? Did Yseult task him with raking Kitty over the coals? He's got a sweet enough face, no doubt of that, but Kitty's known plenty of smiling traitors.

"You'd probably know more about that than me," she replies, dropping her eyes to her task. There's a faint stiffness to her fingers as she starts exploring the lock affixed to her wrist.

[unshut]

"What have you brought for us to drink, would be my first question." This from the dark haired woman on the other side of the pile of locks. She has not touched a single lock nor pick since sitting down.

"It will be much easier to decide whether the game is worth winning then."

Matthias

[inkindled]

Petrana ↠ Matthias.
For the third time, there is a soft sharp twang as the small and sensitive lock-pick gets stuck on some inner working of the lock. Tension bows the thin tool before rocketing it out of Matthias' grip and across the table, where it plinks down before Petrana.

"Shit," Matthias mutters, for the eighth time, and scrubs a hand over his face. He has been pink nearly this entire lesson. Petrana--Madame de Cedoux--looks somewhere between perfect cake and beautiful sculpture sculpted perfectly by a master sculptor. He doesn't know where to look when he looks at her, so he's kept his head down nearly the whole lesson.

As the lockpick is right in front of her, Matthias now has no choice but to look at her. A little more red creeps into his cheeks. He raises his chin, stubbornly, fighting against the urge.

"You should do it," he says, and then, "please," and then, "m'lady," and maybe that's right? She's a Rifter, isn't she? What if they've got other terms? What if he could stop being an idiot, for twenty seconds? Imagine. "If you do it I could watch, like. Maybe."



Gwen + Matthias + Sidony.
"Right, so. This one's shit."

Matthias shoves the lock across the table for one of the others to try, and scratches his fingers at his scalp, mussing his hair. When he pulls his hand away, his hair has fluffed in size, all curls and waves, badly in need of a trim. There's a small pile of locks and cuffs on the table for them to choose from. He grabs for another one, a fine little thing, plated in gold, styled like a padlock. Matthias frowns down at it, and turns it over in his hands a few times, as if he might make it reveal its secrets or otherwise fall open after sheer scrutiny.

When neither of those things happen, he sighs, picks up the lock pick again, and shoves it into the keyhole to have a go.

"D'you think any of these actually can be unlocked? Wouldn't surprise me if they were all trick. Teach us patience."


Matthias ⛓ Nell.
Now would be a good time to ask Nell Voss--something. Now would be a good time to ask Nell Voss how she gets her hair to look like that. Now would be a great time to say something seriously cool and casual to Nell Voss, something that will make her really see him. Or, barring that--now would be a decent time to as how she managed being Forces assistant. 

Now would be a really brilliant time to, you know, say anything to Nell Voss. But, Matthias reasons, if he says something, then there is over half a chance that he will say something stupid, and she'll think of him as stupid, which, all right, just kill him instead, thanks. Death would be a better fate.

Well, not actually. But nearly actually.

But he's got to say something, now that the handcuff has been closed over his left wrist, and her right wrist, joining them together with a slender chain. He's not said anything for far too long already, he's starting to look like a serious weirdie, he has got to stop--

"Are you," too loud; he swallows, hard, tries again-- "Are you any good at this, then?"

[indissection]

It's difficult for her to resist the urge to reach out and smooth down the child's hair; he's precious, in a way she has not often felt, and there's something of a smile on her lips as she lets herself watch him. Being here with Gwen is, too, a comfort - there's familiarity in that, a secret shared between two women that has brought them closer together. It makes this whole venture seem more acceptable.

Leaning forward, she picks up one of the locks and turns it in her fingers, head tilted. She is well versed in using small, fiddly tools - surgery does allow for such a thing - but this is different. This is something that she must know in case of capture once more, but... It seems complicated all the same.

"That would be pointless," she admits finally. "We're to learn how to free ourselves from capture, not how to sit and wait for someone to save us from our own demise."

[galvanising]

"Nope," says Nell, clearly not the slightest bit concerned about seeming stupid in front of Matthias, "Not without using magic. I got a couple lessons from a friend a while back, in case of magebane, but that's it."

She's peering at the lock on her cuff, and thoughtlessly pulls it closer, lifting his arm up with hers with a jerk. She laughs. "Sorry. Did you grab the picks? It's Matthias, right?"

[unshut]

BASTIEN;

There are a series of picks, hook nosed and flat sided; and there are big heavy square padlocks for gates and storeroom doors and little finicky delicate things like as to be found in drawers or on boxes filled with the most secret sorts of correspondence (secret shipping manifests, or especially passionate love letters to someone's married cousin, et cetera et cetera). Of the options available before them, Fitcher has promptly stuck them with the best.

Literally - by sliding it onto Bastien's ring finger.

"I think a Rivaini finger trap sets off your knuckles marvelously. You should ask the Scoutmaster if you might keep it once we've finished here."

[cozen]

"I might," Bastien says, shifting his finger to examine it as he would a ring. "She is soft on me, you know."

Politifact would rate that statement Half True, at best.

His attention lifts back to Fitcher, who he's half-true soft on, and who killed—or incapacitated, at least, given they did not linger to check for a pulse or observe any healing—a blood mage with a candlestick, and who knows he is someone who keeps lock pick in his boots, and who he is certainly not going to decide to talk to about either of those things in front of all these other people.

"Is there a trick to this? Or must we cut off our fingers?"

wysteria!

[cozen]

Bastien has been more useless than this. For example: he once feigned poison-induced unconsciousness for several hours, forcing his poor panicked companion to carry and drag him home, to slow down their journey and buy some friends more time. Here, at least, he made a few attempts before declaring himself hopeless and leaving their shackle in Miss Poppell's semi-capable hands.

His free hand is now writing a letter. Yseult did say not to neglect their work.

"This seems like the sort of thing that should end in a marriage," he says when there's a lull, rattling the chain a bit, "if there was any good in the world. Not us, of course. I am far too old for you. And the Scoutmaster did not seem to pair anyone else up with romance in mind—what a terrible shame."

[heirring]

There is a small tug on the link between them as Wysteria turns her wrist in some new direction, her free hand consumed by the tricky task of managing both pick and wrench.

"I can't say that I know her particularly well, but I suspect the Scoutmistress has priorities within Riftwatch that take precedence over romance. But I agree that it's seems like an oversight, particularly when she might have satisfied both at once. At that point, it really is more of a question of efficiency. Matthias and Kitty might have been put together. Or Ser Six and Mr. Ellis could have been a very fine match. Not that I have any interest whatsoever, of course."

Tick, tick, tick, goes the pin in the lock. Absently, laissez-faire to the point where it's clear that she truly has not given the thought any consideration whatsoever and is stating it wholly due to her mouth being disengaged from the attention of her mind: "Anyway, you are not really so old. But the mustache ages you considerably."

laura & lauralae.

[exequy]

Kostos wouldn't say he's been made to sit at the kiddie table, exactly, because neither of the girls—women—he's been grouped with are kids. If they were kids they wouldn't be here. If they were in a Circle, they'd be approaching their Harrowings. They're adults.

But they're very young adults. And very strange ones, questionably civilized. So it feels vaguely insulting just the same.

He could sulk. Sink down in his chair and glare at the assortment of locks on the table before them. But he is, actually, self-aware enough to know that that would make him look like the child. So he's sitting up straight to glare at the locks instead, one held in front of his face with the keyhole near an eye while he tries to convince the wisp hovering near his shoulder to attempt slipping inside it.

The wisp isn't having it. Now and then it comes close, but then it backs away, intimidated.

"Who said you could have a sense of space?" Kostos asks it quietly. "I did not teach you that."

He's ignoring Laura and Lauralae. Maybe that way it will be like he's just sitting with them, instead of sitting with them, etc.

[justashotaway]

Laura's ability to focus on lock-picking--particularly when limited to actual lock-picks--is hampered by the thing that floats back and forth in the air. Her gaze drops to the lock she's holding, then returns to the ball of light, then away again. Its color is someplace between purple and blue and white, it doesn't have any real form beyond 'round,' and she suspects that if she touched it, she'd feel only air. There is little to it.

And yet she can't ignore it. Something about it makes her neck prickle--perhaps the fact that it must be magic. And it seems to have its own will, if the way Kostos speaks to it is any indication. That makes it dangerous in a way a mage not doing magic isn't.

"What is that?" she finally asks, still staring at the light. Kostos will surely know what she means; everything else in their vicinity is self-evident, even the woman who smells like dying things.

for Laura

[doneisdone]

Laura has been invited to the Warden office for her tutelage, since there's no reason not to get some paperwork done on the side while she no doubt takes some time to fiddle with a given lock. She'll find Teren waiting inside at her desk, shackles sitting atop it and her brow furrowed in concentration, though it lifts when she sees that someone has entered.

"Afternoon," Teren greets, and gestures vaguely to the chair across from her.

[justashotaway]

Laura has never visited the Grey Warden office; she still has only a rudimentary understanding of what they are. (They kill monsters underground. A book taught her this.) She enters when bade and sits at the edge of the chair she's offered.

"Are you Teren?" She's seen the woman in passing, but she's never known her name.