open.

[cozen]

WHO: Bastien & Others
WHAT: New job, music stuff, etc.
WHEN: Harvestmere
WHERE: The Gallows & Kirkwall
NOTES: Feel free to hit me up @ circuitry if you want me to start something for you!

i. project jeshavis office

The office for Project Jeshavis hasn’t been entirely empty since Madame d’Asgard’s noble resignation, probably. The work didn’t stop for want of an organizer, and it’s still home to files and books and resources people might need.

But it’s now more occupied than before. During the first few days of the month Bastien can be found arranging piles of documents into slightly different piles, and then perhaps putting them back the way they were. Or struggling to pin twin maps of Orlais and Ferelden to the wall without leaving them crooked. Or—once the maps are up—standing in front of Ferelden and plucking out muscle-memorized snatches of melody on his lute while he stares at a bit of the map for a moment, then at the ceiling, then back at the map.

He’s learning the place names. It’s fine.

After those first few days, he starts asking Fereldans and Orlesians, or anyone with known connections there, or anyone with some other obvious potential contribution to the project’s goal to come by whenever they have a moment.

If anyone takes him up on it—or if anyone stops in just for the sake of it, that’s fine too—they’ll find the door open and him sitting against the edge of the desk rather than in the nearby chair. But he’ll stand up right away for anyone of rank or who he doesn’t know very well.

ii. musician hunt

Elsewhere in the Gallows, Bastien is on the lookout. Or the listenout, more accurately. Is someone strumming a mandolin in the courtyard? Playing an upright bass in the privacy of their own room? Mentioning, in the course of idle conversation with someone who is not him, their experience with the pianoforte?

Great. He’ll stop, he’ll wait politely for them to be finished, and he’ll knock on their door and wait outside if necessary, and then he’ll say, “Allô,” with the distinct air of a man who wants something.

Comments

elf huddle (closed to elves)

[cozen]

ooc | no strict tag order, just don’t run off boomeranging and leave everyone behind.

The invitations issued to Riftwatch’s handful of elves—verbally, mostly—promised lunch, so the project office currently smells like the barley soup that’s keeping warm near the fireplace. And there’s bread! And there’s cheese! And there’s Bastien, arranging chairs around the desk like it’s table. He waits until everyone who’s likely to arrive has done so and everyone who doesn’t refuse food has theirs before he sits down himself.

“So,” he says. “I wanted to talk to you about… elves. I assume you are all familiar.”

Off to a promising start. But it’s self-aware, at least. Self-deprecating.

[sulahnan]

"Oh yeah, I know all about those," Athessa says, sitting with one knee bent to her chest while she eats a bowl of soup and a crust of bread. "They stick outta the wall and you put books on 'em."

Shelves.

[murderbaby]

Mhavos' expression is very serious as he corrects Athessa, "no, no, he meant the number after eleven."

Twelves.

[cozen]

Bastien smiles for Athessa, then smiles wider when Mhavos turns it into a bit, and turns his gaze to the next elf in line with a silent air of expectation. Are they all funny?

huddelves

[untiltheyarent]

Running a little bit behind on account of finishing up her morning work, Fifi steps in to see that there are already people here. Clearly Bastien is having a meeting, perhaps she misunderstood--

"Ah, pardon," she says in an undertone, and dips back out.

[cozen]

RIP, broken combo.

Bastien hops up as soon as Fifi disappears from the door to go after her, with a little gesture that’s meant to convey sorry and talk amongst yourselves but might be too abbreviated to be that eloquent.

“Fifi,” he calls after her from the doorway. Not too loudly. No need to be loud in a stone corridor. “Come back. Tu me brises le coeur.”

[murderbaby]

Mhavos frowns at this exchange, turning to Athessa and opening the small notebook sitting on his lap. A large ? is drawn on the page he's turned to.

[sulahnan]

Rather than writing anything in return, Athessa just pulls an I dunno face and shrugs.

[untiltheyarent]

Fifi pauses in the hall when Bastien calls to her, points to herself as if confused, then abruptly seems to remember something and blushes pink.

"Oh-- desolée, Bastien," she sighs, and steps back over with a self-effacing smile, "my head is everywhere today."

It's easy enough to see her back in, though now she looks rather embarrassed as she gives a little nod to the other two.

[glandival]

Psych, there's another elf, and she was here the whole time.

Sabine watches Fifi reappear, an appraising eyebrow raised and expression blankly unfriendly until she reaches to pick up a remaining bowl of soup. She places it down, pushes it towards the empty chair with a rattle. There you go.

At least she was rescued from trying to think of a good -elves joke, having stared across at Bastien when it had been her turn. Now, she returns back to her own meal, tearing some bread apart,

"You want us to nominate an elf king? I'll do it."

She is kidding, mostly interpretable from the half-grin half-hidden by her next bite of soup-soaked bread.

[murderbaby]

Mhavos remembers Sabine... somewhat. His recollection of Nevarra as a whole is hazy. Gingerly, he takes some bread, and places a plate on his lap to catch the crumbs as he eats it.

"Not Thranduil," Mhavos adds. "Too tall. What about an elf queen?"

Thus disqualifying all the most annoying elves (himself included).

[cozen]

The Provost is the perfect height for an elf queen, Bastien thinks but does not say, because he doesn't know everyone here quite well enough for that. He does grin though, while he ushers Fifi in to sit, and instead he says, "The mages have been falling behind on antagonizing the establishment lately. Perhaps it is your turn. But that is probably not a meeting you need me for. You might not even need me for this one, but I provided the cheese, so."

He reclaims his chair.

"What I wanted to talk to you about is—well, this," with a gesture around the room, meaning the office, and the project, "is for counterintelligence in Ferelden and Orlais. Our small part of it."

He doesn't actually know that every elf in the room is some sort of spy or assassin. The situation would be slightly less ironic if Florent weren't standing him up.

"And I thought—we are small, and we have no money, but perhaps one thing we can do that the Chantry and the crowns can't—believably—is promise the elves in the alienages and wherever else that they can tell us, you know, if they find a blood-soaked Tevene letter in their employers' underwear drawer. And we will cover for them if they need it and not make them regret speaking up.

"So I wanted to know what you thought. If it's even possible, or if you have any ideas. Or if you would like to take turns calling me names. That is fine, too."

[sulahnan]

"Do we have any assurance to offer them that we're trustworthy?"

Athessa looks around at their scant crew. Quite a mishmash, and very Orlesian.

"It's not like they'll trust us simply because our ears match."

She idly scratches her cheek with her thumbnail. If it weren't simply coincidence because she had an itch, one might think she were calling attention to the scar that an enemy elf gave her.

[untiltheyarent]

This is a bit awkward for a variety of reasons, but Fifi keeps any reservations to herself as she daintily dips bread into a bowl, glancing uncertainly from person to person.

Though certainly a strategist and diplomat in her own right, for her own interpersonal affairs, she can't claim to have any competence at it on a grander scale; between that and being fully dressed in servants' clothes, she thinks it best to hold her tongue for now.

Except to eat, anyway.

[murderbaby]

Mhavos eats his bread rather gingerly, but no one ever taught him courtly manners. There's a little too much elbow in his movements; unmistakably, he's an untrained servant.

"Precisely," Mhavos says. "Has our organization historically given aid to elves? The Provost's position, while admirable, will not count to the common elf, I can assure you."

[glandival]

"Neither will they be impressed about our explorations of dusty elf tombs," Sabine says.

She is not in servant garb clothing, although it's how she appeared to the Inquisition itself, many years ago. She is in practical clothing, wool trousers and a clean cotton shirt tucked into them, sleeves rolled. Her mass of curls has been partially tamed back with a strategic braid or two.

Likewise, her table manners are lacking. "And whatever favour the Inquisition has gathered with the common elf, in its support of Briala, Riftwatch is apart from it."

[cozen]

"Yes," Bastien says, agreeably. "Unless we leave every alienage with a hostage—" A joke delivered mostly to Athessa. "—I imagine earning trust would be a process. Maybe a long one. But I think it might be one worth starting. Trying. Making contact with their, ah—"

He does actually know the word hahren, but dropping it seems like it might sound more pretentious than well-informed. And that's the opposite of what he's doing for. He has an untouched slab of cheese on his plate, the creamy soft kind, and he holds it across the desk to see if anyone else wants it.

"—leaders, making sure they know what we are looking for and how to reach us if they see it. Then if there is something they need that is within our power and our budget, voilà: they are our potential allies in the war effort, not random people asking for a favor. And if we do right by a few, we might be able to carry it elsewhere. Maybe. That is the dream, anyway."

[sulahnan]

Well since everyone is describing how they're dressed, Athessa isn't dressed like a servant at all. She's wearing harem pants and a simple fitted shirt and sandals. Her hair is braided but not freshly so; she's obviously slept in the hairstyle at least once.

But more to the point, when Bastien doesn't say hahren, she pipes up to supply it—

And says it in unison with Sabine.

The look exchanged between them is rather subtle, but decidedly not friendly. The look is gone when Athessa looks back to Bastien.

"Definitely worth trying. But shouldn't we start with what they need, first? Nothing like, huge, but... it's better to show up with a gift than empty handed."

[murderbaby]

"Some of us," Mhavos says carefully, "would have nothing to say to a- a hahren."

His pronunciation is slightly off. That wasn't a word he knew until just now. He's since finished with the bread, and is looking at the empty pages of his notebook with an ambiguous expression, verging on blank.

"I'll start with servants and the displaced. They would have the least to lose, helping us."

Only their own skins. No risk to any Alienage.

[untiltheyarent]

Fifi, dressed like a servant because she is a servant, glances thoughtfully to Mhavos.

"Servants in Hightown have much to lose," she says politely, accepting the cheese plate from Bastien and cutting herself a small portion, "for many, it's been the family trade for generations. They are trusted with their employers' secrets, and would be left destitute if turned out."

[murderbaby]

Mhavos bows his head an inch, and his voice is very careful. "Apologies, Mademoiselle. I meant those displaced by purges in Orlais. Most have no family or Alienage to endanger. I've no wish for speak of the lives of elves in Hightown, about which I know nothing."

To the rest of them: "But you have made a good point. An opening gesture on our part would make everything far easier, regardless."

[untiltheyarent]

She nods pleasantly to him, unoffended, and follows his gaze to the others.

[glandival]

Sabine still kind of watches Athessa even after the other woman has turned away, and then throughout the exchange between Mhavos and Fifi. The expression that carries this look isn't openly hostile save for the frankness itself of the study.

"They will be suspicious of money," Sabine says, now letting the pressure of her focus up from Athessa to encompass the group. "Mostly. So it is good we have none."

She sits back in her chair, arms stretching and then folding behind her head, hand gripping each elbow. "Healers, or infirmary supplies are ever in short supply. Information of the Exalted March, for those families who sent daughters and sons to the frontline. And each hahren will have a different temperament, bien sûr. I can speak about some of them."

[cozen]

See? The barely need him, except to provide the cheese. And maybe to throw himself between Athessa and Sabine—metaphorically only, of course, in the form of some tension-breaking joke or another—but that moment passes, so instead he just listens, and smiles for Fifi when she pipes up, and nods a few times at this and that good point.

"We would not have to approach everyone the same way," he says, "or all at the same time. We could choose a few places to try reaching out first. Sabine has alienage connections," with an acknowledging head tip, "and Mhavos—do you know where you would start, for the ones outside of alienages?"

[sulahnan]

Athessa finishes off her soup and nudges the bowl an inch further from the edge of the desk, then crosses her arms over her bend knee. She listens to Bastien, looks at Fifi (who is she), briefly gives Sabine a once-over. Then she looks at Mhavos.

What connections can she even offer, here? She doesn't know other elves who aren't already in this room, or from other worlds entirely. She's never set foot in an Alienage. She can't even offer an in with the Dalish.

So she rests her chin on her arm and listens.