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

[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?"