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

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.

Richard Dickerson is accommodating. He leans to pass the bud, setting it carefully in Vanadi’s hand.

That done, he tugs his gloves back on and squares to his feet. There is a gutter around here somewhere that he used to climb up -- he smoothes himself out as glances after it. The added effort is unnecessary. He is already very clean, for a man who spent a lot of the night burgling, and a little bit of it trying to fuck on a rooftop.

“Please excuse me,” he says, deadpan as he takes up the strap of his satchel. “I think I’m hysterical.”

vThe long drag he takes is distracting enough that for a moment he doesn't notice the very distinctive motions of departure. He observes Richard impassively once his attention has found him again, breathes out a cloud of smoke, and says, "Oh, yes, I can tell."

That's sarcasm. Surely Richard's is too. He sits himself up with a sigh, the bud smoking faintly behind him as he props himself up.

"Come now, don't leave. We were having a lovely time about five minutes ago, if you can recall so far back."

“Oh, you -- think I’m joking.”

Elfroot allows for a more genuine flash of humor at his own expense, irony as fragile as it is forge bright behind his eyes. This is a man who can’t even. He has his satchel, he has his hat, and his gloves. Another step back, and he’s at the threshold.

“I have to leave." More assured.

"It’s not your fault,” he adds, both hands open before him like they should be carrying something, what else should he even be doing with them. This is making things better, definitely. “Frankly I’m not sure what I was thought I was doing.”

Oh. This is a bit of an unexpected turn, then. Feeling very much like he's gone from some thin grasp of this strange situation to none at all, Vanadi stares at him with bewilderment written plainly across his face. Isn't he supposed to be good at people? What keeps making Richard the exception?

"Why?" is about the only question he can come up with. But that's broad, and he makes an attempt to narrow it: "Why do you have to go?"

It’s a fair question.

He considers it for a moment before he repeats, with greater certainty, “I have to leave,” and steps away over the threshold to begin his descent. Safe to say, it will be less elegant than Vanadi’s ascent.

He doesn’t add, “Please don’t follow me,” until he is out of sight.

He watches him go silently. He could follow him, he has the skills and the spells, and he could, Vanadi thinks, but only briefly. Only contrarily. In fact, he very much does not want to follow Richard. He wants to sit exactly where he is for just long enough to make an attempt to gather his scattered and bewildered thoughts, and then he wants to go and find another full bottle of spirits. With any luck, maybe it'll be enough to pull this entire brief encounter out of his memory of the night's events, in exchange for a splitting morning headache.

(He won't be quite that lucky, unfortunately.)

MOD EVENT ↠ SATINALIA

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