faderift | OPEN: this will be a better year

OPEN: this will be a better year

WHO: Everyone
WHAT: First Day
WHEN: Wintermarch 1 (forward-dated)
WHERE: Skyhold
NOTES: Scouts from both the Western Approach and Emprise du Lion are welcome (but not required) to have returned to Skyhold in time for this event.

There have been better First Day feasts, and less crowded ones, and cheerier ones. It isn't a good year for many to look back on, and this one isn't starting any better. Reports from both Eastern and Western Orlais are grim. Many in the Inquisition can't afford to take more than a few hours away from their work, if that.

But for those who can, the ambassador does her best. At lunchtime some tables, hot food, and finery are reserved for visiting nobility and wealthy pilgrims--cause for grumbling in some quarters, perhaps, but they're the people filling the Inquisition's coffers, and allowances must be made--but there's plenty of stew, bread, and ale for everyone, even with the soldiers and refugees who stay outside the fortress invited inside for the holiday. The recently repaired garden and its carefully tended plants aren't off limits, but anyone noisy and holding a drink will be stopped at the door; the battlements, with their potential for deadly falls, are blocked by Inquisition guards. But the courtyards brim with people, most of them happy despite the possibility that the world might end before another First Day arrives.

If the courtyards are too full of tipsy visitors for comfort, there's also the valley beyond the fortress, expansive, barren, and covered in snow. By the river the soldiers help the refugees make a bonfire larger than would ever be allowed inside Skyhold's walls, and some lend their shields to use as sleds down the embankments. A group of scouts start the most intense game of hide and seek Thedas has ever seen, with snowballs to the face for whoever is found first. In the camp, a refugee girl with her hand wrapped in a green scarf chases other children around the tents, shouting raaar, I'm from the rifts!

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Taas leans to the wall, watching the dwarven woman fiddle with the lock until she got it open. He couldn't say he wasn't a little bit curious, peering in with her just to see her reaction.

When she starts digging out scrolls and scraps of paper, he backs off a bit so he doesn't steal all her light. "One of the scouts?"

"Sort of. Not really. I'm sure I can be directed wherever I want to go if I just ask someone. But I'd rather know this place inside and out myself. And it isn't underground, so I can't exactly stone sense my way around." She makes a motion to the storage room. "Plus. Locked doors. Can't resist them. ...I don't suppose you might want anything from out of there?"

Her confession makes him chuckle a little, and he shakes his head. "I can live without writing supplies and dust." It wasn't exactly tempting to him. Neither were locked doors, to be honest.

Still, she seemed fun.

"Are you from Orzammar, then? New to the surface?"

If there'd been something more pressing (blankets or trinkets that could be sold off or some such) then she would've been more eager to take. But there's nothing of enough value to bother, so she closes up the door again. She lets the question hang while she does so, trying to decide how best to answer it. Qunari probably aren't very familiar with dwarven culture as much as she isn't familiar with qunari culture.

"From Orzammar, yes. How new I am depends. Near a year now, so, yes, still fresh enough to the strangeness of the surface, but experienced enough to not be startled by such things as wind or rain."

"Heh. Sounds like me after the first year away from the Qun." He might not know much about dwarven culture, but hey. A bit of common ground. Always a good thing for making new connections.

"How are you liking the Inquisition? The tempting locked doors aside, of course."

"It's..." Easy to be honest to a point, before it really starts getting into her feelings. "Better than where I was, in several ways. Doing better. Striving to be better. There's an air of change here, despite the old, old roots. I like change, generally speaking. Safety, work, and food are all pluses, of course."

The large warrior leans his head back and smiles at those words. She put the feeling down in a really good way, and he had to agree with it. An air of change. Hopefully for the better.

"I'm Taashath," he says with a little flick of his fingers in a mock salute. "Definitely here for the 'bettering' parts... and the food."

"Absolutely the food." She can't help her smile, nor does she want to, as she tucks her things back into her pack, along with her lockpicking tools. "That there's always some around is certainly a reason to stay."

Not that she feels she'd have too much trouble hunting down enough game to keep herself fed, but still, it's an easier road to stay here. "I am Rachette." Rachette of nowhere and nothing in particular. Not of Orzammar, not of House Dakal (ha! if only!), not of the Carta. Just Rachette.

Food, good people, a good cause. All great motivators.

"Rachette, huh? That's a nice name." A little spring in it, just like the woman herself. "Are you going to check another door, or do you want to go grab some ale?"

That...is not something she knows how to react to. There's a thoughtful look across her face. A nice name. It's just a name, one that her mother chose presumably before she became a drunken ass. But a nice name.

She smiles. "Skyhold's mystery doors will still be here in the morning. I think an ale would be fine."

"Excellent." Taas grins again and gives her a moment to get ready before he heads towards the main doors. The festivities were still in full swing, and it shouldn't be hard to find some ale to share with the dwarf.

As soon as he spots what he wants, he hands Rachette a mug.

She does drink, she just makes a particular point of not drinking much. Or too much. She isn't about to turn up her nose at those getting a little too merry, of course, and won't begrudge anyone their fun. "Thank you, ser."

Besides, it's impolite to decline free drink. At least the mugs aren't of a ridiculous size.

He laughs again at that, gently patting her shoulder as he takes a swig of his own ale. "No 'ser' for me. Just Taas is fine." It felt a little weird to be spoken to politely, after all.

(Let's not mention these tiny mugs >( )

Taas finds it's quite nice to speak with this one, both because she seemed fun and then fact that he could look down at her and see her lips even when she had the mug in the way.

"Forgive me for asking, but is it true that you cannot go back to Orzammar after being on the surface?"

It's a force of habit she should, eventually, try to break herself of. That anyone without a brand is to be ser. Still, basic politeness isn't hurting anyone. Even after a year and change on the surface, looking up at people is still...interesting, and qunari are just even taller. It's amazing. Not amazing enough to soften the blow of the question, but she hides the initial sting with a swig.

"It's true. There might be a few rare exceptions, but to my knowledge, once you're on the surface, you're exiled. Might as well be human."

Taas might not be as observant and intelligent as the iron Bull, but he's not stupid - and he knows he's on a sensitive topic. He wouldn't blame her if she punched him in the gut.

"Hm. I apologize for digging into sore subjects. I was wondering if it was anything similar to the Qun. Once you leave, you're branded a traitor. A thing."

"That does sound similar," she admits, looking at him curiously. She knows nugshit about the Qun. And most of qunari life. She did hear rumors about a qunari with the Warden that flipped Orzammar on its head, but she hadn't known what one even really looked like before being brought to Skyhold.

Of course, she was already branded a thing as soon as she was born, literally and figuratively, but it's her understanding that those that go to the surface otherwise are thought of much the same. "And you can't go back, either? To the--Qun?"

"Hm. Guess stuff isn't so different here, sometimes. Glad you got out of it." Really. She didn't seem like she belonged trapped underground, but then again, non-surface dwarf stuff wasn't in his collection of knowledge.

When Rachette asks him about the Qun, Taas shrugs yet again. "No. I would be useless to them. That's why I left in the first place... they wanted to retire me."

"And I am to assume that an early retirement would involve blood spilled. Namely your own." She shakes her head with a sigh. "I'd simply be barred entry, though I guess if I tried to get in they'd arrest me, and given my status, they'd probably just leave me there and not bother to kill me. Beneath them. Guess someone could always dump me into the magma floes and be done with the whole thing."

"Not quite so dramatic. The Qun is not cruel to their veterans in that way. It would mean I would not be allowed to fight any more, however, and to be cared for by those that care for the enfeebled and damaged. I did not enjoy that thought." He wanted more blood spilled, okay? Fighting was his life. "But now? Yeah, they would kill me."

He sips his drink with a curious look in his brown eyes, but it soon changes to a frown. "It sounds as if they think you're worth even less than a traitor." Taas shakes his head. "Good thing we're not going back, right!"

...Huh. Maybe it's a pride thing, but that doesn't sound so bad. Compared to rotting in a prison or being executed. "I am worth less than a traitor, but that's just how many view casteless." A fact of life. One slowly...slowly starting to change, but not fast enough for her tastes.

She holds up her ale. "To not going back."

Another case of cultural differences. If Taas knew more about dwarves, he'd probably explain that it was like being a good caste and then being thrown to casteless. At least that was what it felt like, to him. He'd known his place, and then he was taken away from it.

He frowns at her mention of being worth less than a traitor, and it leaves a bad taste in his mouth. He wants to protest, but he barely knew her, after all. Instead he lifts his drink to knock with hers.

"To not going back!"

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OPEN: this will be a better year

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