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

[elegiaque]

Gwenaëlle has a remarkably fine set of personal lockpicks for someone who, it had become immediately obvious, doesn't know the first fucking thing about what to do with them. Her approach to this entire affair has been somewhat begrudging—this is the second set of lockpicks she was gifted, two years in a row after she'd promptly regifted the first without ever touching them—but the face she pulls is in agreement:

“Unless we're learning how to become so frustrated we kill ourselves before we can share sensitive secrets.”

Seems unlikely.

“Also, I have escaped capture before.” Not on her own, and not by picking locks, and not until everyone had thought she and the rest were dead. Still.

[inkindled]

Matthias snorts, ghoulishly appreciative of the dark humor. Gwenaëlle gets an approving look for that, largely because she is a safe place to look. At least he sort of knows her. Still overwhelming, like looking into the sun, but a sun known to him, as opposed to Sidony, who is a stranger sun and therefore more difficult to look at straight on. Anyways, he would rather die than give away secrets. But he'd not want to die over a stupid lock. Far too many other important things to live for.

"I thought we were learning to get into things. Not get free of capture. I've done that as well," more or less, and not alone, but still, neither of the ladies he's with have got to know that, "and unless someone had a great load of magebane about, I reckon I could do it again, easy."

Matthias tips his head, considering his lock from this new angle, and gives the lockpick a little wiggle. Nothing happens. Typical. To Gwen: "If you escaped, does that make you expert here? 'Cause I don't know what I'm doing. Dunno about-- um, the lady."

He nods his head to Sidony Rutyer, trying like hell to ignore the pink already in his ears from the mere acknowledgement.

[indissection]

"As have I, but I think it might have been easier if I had learned to do this a little sooner."

Knowing how to cut a man into pieces was not as useful as escaping a man in the first place, and all of this ties into her desire to learn how to fight for herself. She had been captured twice, thought of as dead once and stolen from her own wedding by her family, and she is frustrated by her own lack of agency. Sidony wants to be free of the need to rely on anyone too much - and that does include for defensive purposes.

Her eyes do flick to Matthias, though, darkening a little at the very suggestion that he might be magical, before she turns back to the matter at hand.

"I know. a few things," she is married to Byerly, after all, and has read enough books, "but not enough to consider myself any kind of expert. I am willing to settle down and study all the same."

[elegiaque]

“Coupe tried to make me learn this two years running,” Gwenaëlle says, pulling a face over her own lockpicks, “but I've never tried before.”

She is not trying very enthusiastically now, which is probably not unrelated to either Coupe's gift or her own general inclination to lay face down on the floor until Coupe goes away. It's a fine, practical gift. And she's becoming quite adept in her own defense, despite the fight she'd put up against having to learn in the first place; enjoys the lessons doubling as book-club with Commander Flint, pesters her husband to watch her shoot things slightly better than the last time she made him watch her do it.

In the face of having given in on that (and how irritating it is that she likes it), this had seemed like such an easy battle to have already won and forgotten.