faderift | MOD EVENT ↠ SATINALIA

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

"Oh, is that how you think of me? I'm touched, Dick." There's a very slight emphasis there, because really, the words are funny together. He drops an accompanying hand to his chest, flutters his eyelashes, and holds out the bottle. "Not much left. Would you answer another question if I fetched you another bottle?"

“I’d prefer it if you stayed.”

He is as serious as the fire chewing its way through a warehouse across the harbor, eye contact turned steady out if its sidelong slant, just out of arm’s reach. It’s clear from the slow press of tension after his next breath that he understands he’s taking a risk in saying so.

Those are, typically, his favorite words to hear, and thoughts of where he might happen upon a replacement bottle leave his mind nearly instantly. His grin is back as he sits himself up, which is a convenient excuse to resettle just a little closer to Richard.

"Really, are you that desperate to dodge questions? I didn't think my interviews were so offensive."

An earnest thread of relief whisked along the brush of his scoff is soft, beneath the flapped confines of his furry hat. The contrast with the gothic sweep of his cloak and the jacket beneath it is really something.

He looks to the fire while Vanadi resituates himself, and back to him again up and down once he’s settled.

"Normally I ask the questions."

There's something skittish in Vanadi these last few years, a hard-learned caution against trusting too easily, throwing in with just anyone. Anyone reticent, anyone tricky to read, anyone with more secrets than things to say: they would all typically have him shying away, ignoring his interest in the name of self defense.

Tonight that something skittish is nearly drowned in alcohol and very easy to brush aside, which Vanadi does.

"Then you've been slacking," he says, and reaches in a boundary-testing hand to brush Richard's temple just below the ridiculous hat. "Here's another one: you're not going to keep this hat, are you?"

Dick is touched.

He drops his gaze but doesn’t shift to draw up or away, softer in his reserve now that temptation and wine have had time to percolate. Rather than rise to the defense of his hat (it’s luxurious, and warm -- of course he is keeping it) he catches in the barbed hook of a more intent kind of curiosity:

“What is it about these stars that moves you?”

He does indeed notice that lack of defense for the hat — and the way Richard doesn't pull away. This makes it fair game to push the brim of it back and run his fingers playfully through the hair he uncovers. He answers with his eyes on Richard, not a single glance spared for the view above.

"I'm more interested in what's below them," he says, honestly enough, and quirks a grin with it.

“The hat notwithstanding.”

Beneath the fur, his hair is still tidily combed over until Vanadi runs his fingers through.

He tolerates it as a cat tolerates having its ears turned inside out -- resignation dry in a furrow at his brow, promising to fix it as soon as it seems likely it won’t be mussed again. It’s easier to ignore when he’s being looked at the way he is, a warmer breath stirred out foggy and slow between them.

The habitual edge of his suspicion has gone hazy with desire.

It occurs to Vanadi that he would very much like to send Richard into disarray. He's so neat, so ordered, and he can't help but think how fine it would be to see all that undone.

"The hat," he admits, slow and a little distracted, "Notwithstanding."

His brushing fingers brush the hat right off, traveling over Richard's head and down to the back of his neck. There they make the perfect anchor as Vanadi leans in to kiss him.

The hat topples away and a prickle of tension takes hold in the scruff of his neck, where lean muscle bites into the knob of his skull. But he tips into a tilt to meet Vanadi’s lean in, and the last dregs of his guard ebb out through contact. Cautious in the first beat, and the second, he gradually unfolds himself to smooth a hand flat across Vanadi’s chest, following contours of muscle through the cloth.

Tryna get at that elf tidy.

This has always been, and will always be, his favorite part. Nothing compares to the tentative dance of two people figuring one another out, working to some kind of joint agreement. His hand has traveled from neck to jaw, and he curls his fingers and very much enjoys the sound of them brushing through short beard.

When he breaks the kiss and leans back it’s with a contented breath out, and he finds that at some point he’d drawn much closer. Any more and he’ll be climbing right into Richard’s lap. Which isn’t unappealing.

First, though, with a little grin and all the subtlety he can manage right now: “I don’t know you very well. Nor you I. How sure are you that this isn’t some long con of mine, hmm? Set you at ease and then pull off something dastardly.”

Richard has reclined back out of the closed trap of his cross-legged sit, lightly tousled, breaths steamed quick through his teeth. One hand still splayed wide at Vanadi’s middle, he grins late for the question, humor at his own expense fleeting, cynical, bleak in a harsher breath.

“I ran the numbers when you clawed your way up here.” He curls his fingers down, hooking round the band of what is no doubt a very fancy belt. “It would be bold of you to assume I have anything to lose.”

Very much interested in enthusiastically enjoying himself though he is, the nearly-drowned skittish thing that keeps him perpetually on edge still weighs in on the matter, even now. He cups Richard's face in both of his hands, looking faintly -- concerned, maybe fearful, as he studies him.

A stupid fear, absolutely brainless; obviously if the man had any ill intent there was a hundred times he could have enacted it on their mission together. But once burned twice shy, and it was a hell of a burn. Vanadi smiles faintly.

"Well, as long as you've balanced the equations," he says, aiming for wryly sarcastic and falling just a bit short. But he can't read any malice in the face before him, and so he leans in again to kiss it.

His face is rawboned beneath the tidy scratch of his whiskers at Vanadi’s palms, his nose beakish, the polished glass hone to his eyes gone dull with impatience for what’s next. But the longer he’s held there, and the longer he’s studied, the more time the silt stirred hot in his blood has time to settle, until he’s focused back into a glimmer of clarity. It’s just in time for him to clock whatever the tail end of that look is.

Vanadi leans in and Richard tilts his chin down and away, eyes shut hard and breathing controlled, stifling frustration.

“Something is wrong.” He’s patient, when he speaks, still close, for all that he’s loosened his hold on the belt. “What is it?”

Richard tilts away from the kiss, and Vanadi draws back almost instantly. There's nothing worse than an unwelcome kiss -- a terrifying thought he came close to nearly giving one.

"Nothing," he murmurs, but he knows already he's let this moment slip away. Maybe he can rebuild it, but this present incarnation seems done for. He lets out a slow and disappointed breath as he glances away, though he stays close.

"Only that I'm drunk and -- brittle, sometimes, is all," he clarifies, "Nothing is wrong."

Okay.

Dick draws himself back up into a proper sit, legs bent up before him with his elbows on his knees. The steady stir of his breath has slowed, vapor still glowing orange in the waning light of the warehouse fire.

He doesn’t say anything.

Vanadi's back is to the fire, his attention fully on Richard even as his gaze is turned away. This is ... guilt, he thinks. He should be past this kind of thing. He should most certainly not be letting it ruin any evenings.

He takes a breath, an apology forming in his throat, but instead what comes out is, "What is your name?"

“My name is Zseiless Atheris.”

A reasonable question, reasonably answered. He plucks at the tip of his glove, drawing the right off before the left, and dropping them flat between his knees with a plop.

“Is yours really Vanadi?”

The straightforward approach wins another round, and Vanadi would smile, but the name strikes him as familiar. Not that he's heard it before -- but he's heard its sounds. His family hosted dignitaries of nearly every species, he's met a snake or two. He looks Richard over with a renewed interest, seeing him in a new light for the first time.

"It is," he says, distracted. "So far as my parents ever informed me, in any case. Vanadi de Vadarta, for their estate ... but perhaps that should be simply Vanadi, as I believe I was disowned."

Vanadi looks at Richard, and Richard looks further away -- doggedly past him, over him, to the fire and the cauliflower billow of black smoke over it, and eventually down, between them.

“I’m sorry to hear that.” A little dry. If Vanadi knows what he is, he will know his sympathy likely has limits. It’s made harder to read by the way he’s covered his face with one hand, with the thumb hooked in hard under his brow. Where is his hat?

He reaches back to collect it with his free hand.

Avoidance does nothing to curb Vanadi's watchful study; if anything it's license to carry on. He offers a one-shouldered shrug, saying simply, "Don't be."

It could lead into an explanation of Vanadi's embarrassing hesitation, but he would much prefer that it not. Nothing could be less sexy. He watches with dismay the hat make its return, and settles himself down a little more comfortably and permanently.

"Did you always look like this?" he asks, with a nod toward Richard's general Richard-ness. "I hear there is quite a lot of ... variety."

A damp sniff does little to unwind the frustration gripped in grim at the back of his jaw, once he’s dropped his hand; he tugs the hat back down over his ears, and reaches into his jacket for a tobacco box. There are joints rolled inside, and matches.

He helps himself, with a humorless huff for the question.

“I had more hair, when I was younger.” And fewer scales. But those didn’t follow him here. He strikes up a light, cups his hands, puffs.

Fine, be reticent, Vanadi will just imagine where the scales he's heard about might have been. Or might be? But if Vanadi's face changed proportion to match the elves here, it seems unlikely Richard got to keep any scales.

(A shame, really.)

"Which name would you prefer to hear from me?"

The scent to what Richard’s holding in is skunky and rich, kicked out in a spiral of short, quiet coughs, all steam and oily smoke, tucked down to his chest before another, deeper hit. He takes his time with it, curtained off in his own dimension without any sense of urgency for the question at hand.

At face value, it’s quite rude.

But he doesn’t seem concerned with that either, one hand after the other warmed around the ember. The splinter of green light in his left palm burns brighter for all the fiery golds and oranges it’s up against.

“I’ve had many names, and none of them have mattered to me. Do you smoke?”

It is, perhaps, the tiniest bit relieving that Dick is such a dick about it. Annoying at first, certainly, but then Vanadi flops down into a recline, folds his hands behind his head, and opts not to give a shit. A bold choice for a man always performing to some audience, but what has he got to lose tonight?

He doesn't answer, just holds out a hand in silent request — demand, maybe. The bottle was shared, the expectation has been set.

MOD EVENT ↠ SATINALIA

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