faderift | OPEN - Rooks, Pawns, Bishops and Knights

WHO: Vivienne and OPEN
WHAT: Catchall post for Madame de Fer to get to know the players great and small in the Inquisition.
WHEN: Wintermarch, all month
WHERE: Skyhold
NOTES: There's a specific bit for the Council members, but the remainder is open to everyone. Anyone who's been wanting CR with Viv, feel free to assume your character got one of the vaunted invites and tag in!

For the Council
Early in Wintermarch, all members of the Council receive a gilded paper invitation. No impersonal sending crystal for this message. The contents invite all the Councilors to join Madame de Fer at the hot spring for a day of relaxation and massage. To her mind, this is no frivolous social gathering meant to impress or irritate the others. (Though if either of those become true, that is useful as well.) There needs to be a dialogue enough amongst them that they do not dither away precious time and resources having to renegotiate their relationships upon meeting. That and none of them are any use to the Inquisition if they are tired, weary, and not well taken care of.

Some of her most comfortable chairs and lounging couches have been brought to the hot spring, and tables set with with a full tea service, both sweet and savory, and a few bottles of champagne. There's even imported Antivan cheese wheels, for the eyes, not for snacking. She is determined not to be caught out letting any of the others languish behind in attending to the important business of self-care. Anyone who brings up anything of a political or divisive nature, however, will find that they are most unwelcome. Relaxation and learning more is the point, not to posture and jockey. Not today.

For the Advisors and Companions
All the advisors and previous companions of the Herald likewise receive Spa Day invitations, albeit the day after the Council. Thank the Maker Sera is not around to make a mockery of such generosity. Knowing that Cullen is most likely to be the most stubborn about leaving that musty office of his, Vivienne plans to drag him along by the ear like an errant child if he dawdles too long in arriving.

Open to All, All Month
Before everyone can scatter to the four winds on business following the start of the new year, Vivienne sets out to some business of her own. She needs to know as much as she can about anyone within the Inquisition who might be a considerable piece in the Game, whether they are aware of such or not. Invitations to join her at her balcony begin to go out to anyone of interest: mages, templars, second sons of minor nobles, people from out of the rifts. For those whose invitation falls in the mid-afternoon, it is to join her for tea. Others receive invites for drinks, well after the dinner hour, but clearly with the intent of having uninterrupted time for getting to know the other better. As much as anyone is allowed to learn more about the Iron Lady.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

No one looks at Martel and thinks there's a man who will accept an invitation to afternoon tea.

--granted, he well might do, but it is a fair assessment to say that there's little about the way he comports himself to suggest as much. So if he is surprised to receive an invitation (not substantially, though neither had he expected one), he is certainly not startled to find it does not fall during the civilized hour of tea service. If it's possible to get to know either of them (debatable), it's unlikely that that's going to happen over china cups.

While he considers declining - he knows something dangerous when he sees it, and he has no desire to be so closely examined by someone who looks capable of picking him apart - he does not. It'll draw more attention he doesn't wish to decline her invitation than it will to accept it, even if the latter feels like the more immediate threat; if he's careful and sensible, an acquaintance with Madame de Fer could stand him in good stead, and there's no analysis of his spurning her overture while courting LeBlanc's friendship that ends well. He'd sought her out in the first place for his proposal, he can't afford to be fickle just because seeking her attention got it.

"My lady," he greets her, mildly, when he arrives, very slightly damp and smelling faintly of the Orlesian soap that he'd promised Adelaide he'd move the earth for her if she shared. (Her duelist training with him had finished shortly before this - he'd no desire to present himself to anyone, least of all Vivienne, still rumpled and smelling of sweat.)

Vivienne approves of someone who arrives promptly and has the good manners to come fresh and tidy. The same cannot be said for all of the guests she's seen recently. That and there is just something about Martel that genuinely holds the Iron Lady's interest.

"Ah, my dear, it is so good of you to come. Do come and make yourself comfortable."

The seats are plush and open and she's gone to quite a lot of trouble to provide a pleasant evening of drinks. In fact, looking at her table, there is a set of three courses. The first is a sparkling wine blended with a black current wine as an apéritif. Next is a Nevarran red coupled with herbed nuts, fresh and dried fruits, saucisson, and cheeses from around Thedas. The digestif is a brilliant Antivan brandy. (Not the one she provided Zevran, alas that is entirely consumed.)

The hint of appreciation in his expression as he takes the invitation isn't much, but anything from him beyond wryness or sarcasm is in short supply; it's not nothing. Besides a courtesy drink on First Night (that he would've needed about eight more to get the best of, as that would be the point at which he couldn't taste what he was drinking any more), he hasn't really indulged in what Thedas might offer in this line, and he doesn't need to be a local to recognise the care taken and the likely quality of the offerings.

If nothing else, he likes her style. Not for Vivienne the kind of taverns he recalls frequenting in the early years of his knighthood, no, indeed. He could claim his lack of indulgence to this point is some refined palate, but the truth is that while he has the experience to appreciate this, he's been a soldier of one kind or another all his life and he can eat or drink just about anything put in front of him without complaint, by necessity. What can you expect, his little mother might have said, from a people who eat pork.

So he sits; touches the plush arm of his seat and relaxes, or at least allows himself to seem relaxed, which is almost as good and about the best anyone has got out of him so far.

"I was pleased to receive your invitation," he says, the polite fiction reinforced by the slight, rueful warmth of him; he wasn't, but he likes her company in spite of himself. Of course he does. Vivienne is his sort of people, that's precisely why he's so cautious. "You'll have to forgive me," with a gesture at his hair, his plain dress, "but I thought better to be damp than arrive smelling like a foundry. I've been told that's rather antisocial."

Probably by people he was purposefully being antisocial toward.

Ah but those polite fictions are such charming touches in most circles of fine society and to not provide some would be downright crude. It's that Martel does bring such finesse to something like her invitation to drinks which makes her like him all the more. Of course their dialogue will be a careful dance of words and gesture, but that just adds to the delicious thrill of the interaction.

It does help that he's easy on the eyes, as well.

"Nothing at all to forgive, I assure you." Clean men, even damp men, are far more preferable than one who arrives with unpleasant odors. "Although I do hope I'm not keeping you from something pressing."

Let it never be said he's unaware of his better qualities; they're so few, after all, like rare and precious jewels that need to be polished to best effect. Smiling suits him, but he deploys it as if it's a finite resource - the understated nature of the expression somehow making it more marked that he does it at all.

"Not at all," he assures her. "I train my lady Leblanc in the evenings, a taste of the sort of knowledge she can expect me to impart to her students. She had my full attention for the duration of her lesson, but it is yours now."

The woman he'd once intended to marry had wanted nothing more than the full force of his attention, but she'd have been the first to laugh, merry and a little sad, at the idea he really gives it to anyone.

(It happens. Occasionally.)

Knowing that she has his attentions brings a smile to her face, even as she recognizes that in the circles which she interacts with, no one truly gives their full attention. It's always divided between watching every little nuance like a hawk and dissecting those nuances into the most minute tidbits of information to be used. One is always playing the Game, whether they like it or not, and it's a game played to the death.

"I trust those studies are proceeding apace." Vivienne's quite interested in seeing this training at work, an encouraging addition to the standard variety one sees within the Circle. Not that she's asking for an update akin to snooping or spying on Adelaide. But there's so much potential there, nonetheless.

With a languid stretch, she continues, "How are you settling in? This is a terrible time in our history to be introduced to Thedas. I fear you must have a wretched impression of our lands with so much in chaos."

OPEN - Rooks, Pawns, Bishops and Knights

drinks.

:D

:D!!!!!

no subject

no subject

no subject