faderift | MOD EVENT ↠ SATINALIA

WHO: Everyone
WHAT: It's Satinalia and no one dies.*
WHEN: Forward-dated to Firstfall 1
WHERE: The Gallows and Kirkwall
NOTES: *If you kill your character or an NPC please let us know so we can adjust the log description. Fire cw, use other cws for your tags as needed please! And participate in the gift meme if you want to be cool.

Named for Satina, the smaller of Thedas' two moons, Satinalia is a celebration of freedom, marked by wild celebration, pranks, the donning of costumes and masks—not the fine, delicate masks of Orlais, but animals and caricatures and playful horrors—and the exchange of gifts both sincere and satirical.

I. THE GALLOWS

In Riftwatch's fortress home, the dining hall—not the one recently wrecked by an abomination, the other one—and an adjoining garden courtyard have been decorated (by Benedict, thanks Benedict) in green, gold, and black, with enough torchlight to keep the room glowing once the sun goes down and a fire pit in the garden.

Dinner starts early, to leave ample time for festivities afterwards. Also to make sure everyone has time to eat, because there's a lot of food. Under Colin's direction, the banquet table hosts a spread representing many of the home countries of Riftwatch's members: coq au vin and tiny Orlesian cakes; Fereldan fish-and-egg pie with saffron and some potent cheeses on toasted bread; seafood with white wine sauce on noodles and fresh oranges from Antiva; spicy (very spicy) Rivaini curry and spiced rum cakes; a sampling of Nevarran soft cheeses, fruit, and dry-cured, thinly-sliced ham; and slightly spicy shrimp soup and chocolate-filled pastries from Tevinter. The centerpiece is an enormous and completely edible depiction of the Celebrant (aka the constellation Satinalis). It’s made of various breads—the man himself made of a lightly sweet bread rolled with cinnamon and chopped dates, his lyre golden with an egg wash, his clothes of rye, the stone he sits on of buckwheat. The constellation over him is drawn into the dough, the stars represented by clear rock sugar.

Every table is decorated with a ‘bouquet’ of delicate, edible marzipan roses, and in addition to the table wine and mead from Riftwatch's stores, there's a whole case of semi-decent Nevarran wine provided by Derrica and Athessa.

There's also a table set up to the side with plain, basic masks and a collection of paints and feathers to decorate them with, courtesy of Isaac, for anyone who doesn't have a costume or just enjoys arts and crafts. Some of the masks' interiors are subtly coated with invisible ink, slow-acting glue, fine glitter, or itching powder. Hahahahahaha.

Not long after most people have filtered in and found seats, the mostly-annual tradition of choosing the organization's own Satinalia Fool—usually arranged in advance, sorry, but there is a war on—is upheld, with little warning, by an apologetic Bastien. Volunteers (or those volunteered by their tablemates who don't do a good enough job demurring) are subjected to a few rounds of voting by applause. Some people applaud for their favorites, some for their least favorites, some for their crushes and some for comedy, and in the end Byerly Rutyer and Wysteria Poppell emerge as co-victors. That makes them co-rulers for the remainder of the evening. Or possibly the remainder of the week, by Antiva Rules.

Once the wining and dining are in their dying stages, the music starts. It's informal, at first, with Riftwatch's amenable musicians filtering over to their instruments as they finish their food (or bring it along with them), but once there's a critical mass, they coalesce into a tune that can be danced to. The next hour or so passes with a mixture of peasant reels and formal court dances—the latter mostly by request.

Eventually, after a break for a white druffalo gift exchange, the party disassembles into unstructured mingling. For anyone who wants to stick around, there's more alcohol, smoking in the garden, card and conversation games at the cleared tables, and a game of musical chairs with the rules altered so anyone left seatless has to take a drink and keep playing.

II. KIRKWALL

But across the harbor, the city is rowdy and reveling and will be all night, so making a break for the ferry instead won't be considered rude. The excitement in Lowtown spills out of the taverns and into the streets, with masked celebrants on their worst (but mostly harmless) behavior while street performers of all stripes provide entertainment for tips. The alienage has its own party—not because the gates are locked, but because the elves who aren't working generally don't consider throngs of drunk humans to be a good time—with a bonfire and shadowplays, and friendly outsiders might be allowed, especially if accompanied by an elf.

Hightown is quieter, but mainly because there's enough room in the mansions there for various parties—ranging from dignified, religion-tinged feasts that absolutely require an invitation to a word-of-mouth orgy at a particular mansion that only requires looking sexy and disease-free at the door—to be tucked away inside.

III. AFTER PARTY

Late in the evening, there's an outcry at the docks after an over-excited amateur fire-juggler lights fire to a partially-wooden warehouse full of wooden crates. By the time there's an organized effort to put out the blaze, it's roaring, threatening to leap to neighboring structures—including the warehouse and stables Riftwatch maintains on the docks—and visible from the Gallows. Any assistance from Riftwatch members in containing the fire will be noticed and appreciated by the locals, and just in case, it might also be wise for people to move the various horses, harts, nuggalopes, dogs, and any particularly stupid cats further away from the fire until it's under control. Which it will be, eventually, leaving a blackened ruin of the warehouse where it started but only singing one of the walls of Riftwatch's property.

However, for better or worse, someone took pity on the ferryman and sent him home at midnight rather than making him wait around all night, so everyone who'd intended to go back to the Gallows can either draw straws for who has to play ferryman to get people back to the island and then get the boat back to the docks, or else just pile into the stables and warehouse for an impromptu slumber party.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

She bends a bit to make the turn, but this isn't, in fact, the first time she's danced with a man shorter than her and let him bloody lead. "You're nimble. You've finesse. Makes a good dancer, and a better fighter."

"Like Athessa," he muses, thinking it over, "...or a fencer." Step back, step forward, quarter turn, "can you teach me to fence?"

"Not much for finesse, me," Jone says, "but for you? I can find somebody. You ever considered dueling?"

"Not before now." But it stands to reason, it's a gentleman's sport, isn't it? He doesn't have to throw a morning star around when a light sword would almost certainly suit him better.

"...I think I'd like that."

Jone isn't thinking of the gentleman's sport, because that would be the sort of clever intellectual maneuvering she's absolute rubbish with. "The style's good." The fighting style. "Dead versatile. Use a dagger, or a proper rapier, quick on your feet. You've the height for it, too."

The type of intellectual maneuvering she isn't incapable of: sizing people up. He's responding a fuck load better to compliments. Fucking shocking. She's worthless for training people, she really is.

If he's aware of Jone's doubts, Benedict isn't aware of it-- instead, he's too busy flying away on a fantasy of rapiers and daggers, getting lean and mean without having to be a brute about it. That's the magic formula, really.

The dance goes on for a little bit, and then he has another question:
"why me, anyway?"

The question causes Jone to stop, a moment-- keep dancing, but her expression falters. She regains herself pretty quickly, and when she does, her voice is surprisingly soft. "You remind me of somebody," she says. "He's likely stone dead, and I wonder if he wouldn't be, if he'd some proper training."

That catches him by surprise, and Bene watches her quietly, with something that almost resembles sympathy.

"I'm sorry," he replies solemnly, "that he's gone."

Jone shrugs, eyes distant. "Just how it is for mages. At least there ain't a Blight on, top of everything else."

"Southern mages, maybe," Bene remarks, but as gently as he can. It's not like this everywhere.
But then, he's in the South and likely to remain here, so perhaps the point is moot anyway.

"That's the last thing we need." A Blight.

"Southern mages, yeah, which is why you've made it this far." But she stops herself before she goes on a tangent. A sigh, ungracefully pushed through her mouth with a vague pbthbb, and she reconsiders. "One Blight's enough for a lifetime."

"What was it like?" he asks, realizing only now that he's never thought about it-- never cared, perhaps. It was irrelevant in the north.

"The Blight."

"Ran away about a week before it overtook Denerim," she says, voice not quite blank, but certainly lacking the raw emotion she usually shoves into everything she does. "It's how the world'll end. Not this Corypheus shite."

"With a Blight? You think so?"

That's concerning.

"You haven't seen it," she says. "It's a poison for everything. Nothing comes back."

There's something to think on, and perfect timing for it, as the musicians bring the song to its final measures. Everyone stops, claps, bows; Benedict chooses the third option, bending pensively before Jone.

"Well," he says haltingly, after a pause, "thanks."

She holds onto him an extra moment, just to say, "I'll get you a fencing coach," and lets him go.

He smiles at her and nods as the dancers disperse, swapping partners and making way for new couples.

MOD EVENT ↠ SATINALIA

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