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

[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.

[murderbaby]

"The displaced and isolated..." he shrugs. "Medical supplies will be appreciated, of course, but these are people who have survived purges... These people will be best suited in opposition to inconvenient forces we have already identified."

They will want revenge is a little too dramatic to say aloud.

[untiltheyarent]

Each time someone speaks, Fifi's watchful gaze follows them, though she has no further remarks at the moment.

[cozen]

“I suppose they don’t have meetings,” Bastien says, putting his elbow on the desk and his chin in his hand to consider Mhavos. A network of displaced and isolated elves would be a little oxymoronic. “We would just have to keep an eye out for them.”

[murderbaby]

Mhavos nods, grateful as well as a bit self conscious for taking up so much of the meeting. "Merci, Monsieur."

[sulahnan]

Oh, fine, she'll ask the obvious question:

"What about the Dalish?"