faderifting: (Default)
Fade Rift Mods ([personal profile] faderifting) wrote in [community profile] faderift2020-10-24 08:10 pm

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.
degenere: (33)

[personal profile] degenere 2020-11-22 05:29 pm (UTC)(link)
In fact hardly anyone is aware. It was very brief. An expedition to study the ancient pyramids. Have you read any of Rojas? She has a very good summation of the theories of Par Vollen's earliest peoples. It is thought that the birthplace of humanity is the rainforests of that island.

[And even without her attention--or perhaps in spite of her lack of attention--Val's words pick up in both speed and eagerness.]

Imagine what might be unearthed if a scholarly expedition was made. And the wildlife of that region--nearly unseen! A hoard to catalog and identify--and without the diversification and co-mingling of breeding and cross-breeding, the development of these creatures would be narrowed and contained, and give a light to what our own creatures might have once resembled. Think of it.
heirring: ([050])

[personal profile] heirring 2020-11-22 06:09 pm (UTC)(link)
[She has not read Rojas. Under the weight of the warm cloak, she considers at length the distance to the shore as it inches slowly closer and the crooked sense of sullen irritation which grows in proportion to that distance's shortening. It is a very bright evening, moons and starlight all in full. She can make out every little pole and docking post and barrel and indiscriminate knots of people roving quay as they roam from one public house to the next, and she decides resolutely that she doesn't care about Hightown or Lowtown parties, or about Gerard or Rojas or pyramids. It is meant to make her feel less foolish, to chase the hot prickle of illogical frustration threatening the backs of her eyes to wherever it had come from to begin with. For a short time, it does the job quite satisfactorily.]

How fine an image you paint, de Foncé. [She says, missing no beat whatsoever.] You will have to tell me every detail when you return. When do you suppose you will make this second attempt? Indeed, it is a shame Mademoiselle Fazon is not still with us for I imagine she would have been a useful asset to the planning of your expedition. Yet perhaps while you are there you might still make some diplomatic overtures on behalf of Riftwatch; it could hardly do us harm to have connections among Tevinter's great enemy. You ought to discuss it with the Ambassador before you go.
degenere: (23)

[personal profile] degenere 2020-11-22 07:49 pm (UTC)(link)
Not too fine an image, I hope. Poetry, mademoiselle. Remember: it is my bane.

[Only half a joke. The bane part is very real. He looks up at the sky again, tracing out the shapes of familiar constellations.

Quite airily,]
Of course I would tell you each detail, but why will I need to? You have eyes of your own, yes?
heirring: ([037])

[personal profile] heirring 2020-11-22 08:17 pm (UTC)(link)
I believe you can see them even now in my—

['—face,' is how that sentence is meant to end.

Wysteria turns very slightly where she is sitting, forgetting the Kirkwall side of the harbor altogether.]


Well. The question of timing yet stands in any case.
degenere: (55)

[personal profile] degenere 2020-11-22 09:47 pm (UTC)(link)
[Val is looking in the other direction now, only because Toth is in that direction at this time of the year and this part of the world, and he must see it. If he is at all aware that the mademoiselle has turned just slightly, or that her attention has changed at all--well, he shows no sign of it.]

Timing is everything! On that we are agreed. Your star-gazing, there is that--and the project--and the five or six things that I am working on, to say nothing of the finding of a suitable husband for my dear Veronique--but in the early part of the year, I think. After the worst of the storms, so as to make any sea voyage a sure thing.
heirring: ([035])

[personal profile] heirring 2020-11-22 11:45 pm (UTC)(link)
Certainly. I suppose that should be vital for any passage by ship. In fact, if we are very selective with respect to the prototype's manufacture in these coming months, that might very well be the perfect opportunity to give it a proper field test. You must tell me how you mean to approach it. You said that your first attempt to explore the continent was cut rather short. I do think there would be some value in consulting the Ambassador. It is very possible that--

[She is attempting to follow his eyeline, and then stops.]

I'm sorry, who?
degenere: (16)

[personal profile] degenere 2020-11-23 03:21 am (UTC)(link)
Hm?

[He looks around at last, as he casts backward to find what it is she might mean.]

Cut short, yes. Well, it was not entirely sanctioned. One is not easily granted access to its borders, and so we found it best to improvise and beg pardons later. And we were forced to do so rather swiftly, and with much hasty retreat--I left a very good shirt there that day. Of course I had others. I hope Par Vollen's native peoples are quite enjoying it still. I cannot imagine this Ambassador or any other would have contacts within. An angle worth pursuing, certainly, if only to be sure, but not with much hope in the heart.
heirring: ([040])

[personal profile] heirring 2020-11-23 03:37 am (UTC)(link)
I-- No. I mean, that I am very to sorry to hear about your shirt, and no I rather doubt we have contacts presently but it may be worth exploring the possibility as a sort of dual goal of the expedition if only as it might allow us to make use of Riftwatch's resources to--

[With visible effort, Wysteria firmly forces the leap back to the other rail of conversation.]

I was not aware you were in the matchmaking business, de Foncé. Who is Veronique? A cousin? The daughter of some business associate to who you owe a favor?
Edited 2020-11-23 03:39 (UTC)
degenere: (14)

[personal profile] degenere 2020-11-23 07:32 pm (UTC)(link)
I did acquire a new shirt.

[Interesting point about the dual goal, and he would say as much--what a compliment!--except that he then jumps to the other rail with her, and bursts out laughing.]

I hate my cousins! We do not speak. They would not trust for me to arrange marriages for them anyways. No, no-- Ah, 'husband' would not be correct. I forget that the word has that, hm, nuance, which makes it so human, and makes the word sound so silly. 'Mate'. Veronique should have a mate. Did I not tell you of her? I thought that I had.
heirring: ([035])

[personal profile] heirring 2020-11-23 08:14 pm (UTC)(link)
[How does one choose what to unpack first? There are, after all, only so many hours in the day. Or rather, only so many minutes before the ferry will arrive in Kirkwall. Best to make the most of them.

She decides to discard cousins, as they seem most irrevelent.]


I see. So Veronique is one of your animals.
degenere: (84)

[personal profile] degenere 2020-11-24 02:26 am (UTC)(link)
[Val makes a noise of guttural disgust.]

As if I keep a personal menagerie! I would not. And you would not speak of her so if you had met her, so you have, without meaning to, answered my question. Veronique is a very large ant that returned with me from our wandering in the jungles this year. You recall that expedition, I can assume. She now lives in my workroom, at least for the present. I think that she likes it very well. She has certainly grown, which is an excellent sign when one is raising a creature. It is when they are underdeveloped that you must question the quarters that you keep for them.
heirring: ([009])

[personal profile] heirring 2020-11-24 02:43 am (UTC)(link)
A very large ant is living in your workroom and you mean to find her a husband.

['Returned with me,' he says, as if Veronique had expressed to him personally a desire to travel.]
degenere: (07)

[personal profile] degenere 2020-11-25 01:25 am (UTC)(link)
Yes, you see, it does sound so very silly when it is said aloud. I mean to find her a mate. And, yes, eventually I will return her and the fellow to their country--indeed, I would never confine any one or thing to live permanently in Kirkwall. This would be a fate most horrible!

[To that city, looming ever-closer as the ferry closes the distance, Val makes a rude gesture.]

I have not decided on the offspring, should there be anything. I would see them freed. But to release a creature that was born in a workroom into the wild--the chance of its maladaption saddens me. Truly the correct thing to do would be to release Veronique and Garçon before there were any young. And yet the chance to study the whole of the process! It is torment, this decision. So then I thought: perhaps I take Veronique to her home and allow her to choose her own mate. But how, then, do I observe? For she is not like other creatures that one might observe with relative ease in the field. She is a burrower. I cannot follow.
heirring: ([039])

[personal profile] heirring 2020-11-25 01:47 am (UTC)(link)
[She opens her mouth to reply and finds, much to her amazement, nothing at all ready. A very large ant is living in Val's workroom and he intends to breed it, presumably, with a second very large ant— No, he means to find it a partner, the natural progression of such a relationship being evidently a question of some ethical dilemma and—

Wysteria closes her mouth. She squints at the multitude of Kirkwall's lights for a moment.]


Is there nothing between the two? Surely you might raise the young in a very large box with dirt and plants and so on where they might be none the wiser and you could... observe them. Similar to how a chicken is kept in a coop and rather than roving about the kitchen.

[How irritating to know anything whatsoever about the keeping of poultry, she thinks distantly.]

Who is this acquaintance? The one who will you be seeing so shortly. I failed to ask.
degenere: (07)

[personal profile] degenere 2020-12-24 01:08 am (UTC)(link)
An interesting suggestion, [and he means it, even if he moves to critique it in the same breath,] though it would have to be a very large box, I think. The Gallows is full of unused spaces and yet to establish such a territory for this family of mine would be quite noticed--and they are a, oh, it is not burrowing, the word, something like burrowing--they spend time underground. This is why I have housed Veronique in my workroom, you see, so that she feels at home, and I have put cloth over the tables and chairs so that she has tunnels to move through, and she seems to like it tolerably well--but a true dirt would be much an improvement for her. There is something to the idea. To give her an estate of her own--much better than a common chicken coop, of course. A chicken does enjoy the wandering better than the enclosed, you know. The acquaintance is no one you know.

[The answer comes so briskly it is, no doubt, easy to overlook. Except by now surely Wysteria is familiar with the pattern of Val's conversation.]

Madame Dupont--a widower, a Free Marcher, [ugh, he makes a little gesture, the way one might flick away a fly,] she married an Orlesian gentleman of a certain age and then inherited quite nearly everything when he did her the kindness to die of that certain age. She is a great patron of scholarly work, and considers herself something of a scholar. Her parties are, at least, entertaining.
heirring: ([099])

[personal profile] heirring 2020-12-24 01:28 am (UTC)(link)
Oh.

[The semantics which she might argue over with respect to giant ants and the keeping of them, neither or which are topics she cares for whatsoever beyond this immediate instance, are swept away in favor of this later revelation.]

A widower. So she is also rather old as well. [And very drab and aged looking, she decides. That is all perfectly well.] How fine to have hobbies in one's twilight years.
degenere: (23)

[personal profile] degenere 2020-12-24 02:01 am (UTC)(link)
Oh, she is...

[Hm. He looks over at Wysteria, gives her an appraising up-and-down.]

How old are you? I do not know.
heirring: ([103])

[personal profile] heirring 2020-12-24 02:10 am (UTC)(link)
[She begins automatically to say 'Twe—'nty something or other and then closes her mouth with a click of the teeth. Amends to:]

Eligible.
degenere: (47)

[personal profile] degenere 2020-12-24 05:36 am (UTC)(link)
'Eligible'.

[Hm. Amused, he considers that.]

Comme ça. The Madame is similar. Or else, was, and then married, and then was widowed--alas--and now again. Almost as if she grew younger. It is very funny, no? That a marriage might make someone old. And then, one becomes free of it, through whatever circumstance, and one is again the age of 'eligible'.
heirring: ([088])

[personal profile] heirring 2020-12-24 06:08 am (UTC)(link)
[The line of her mouth thins, then wrinkles. In glancing away, she realizes with some irritation (because she will need to surrender the cloak once they arrive and she isn't looking forward to the chill in the air) that the Kirkwall side of the harbor has crept very near indeed.]

Yes, that is quite funny. What a shame that you find her so disagreeable.
degenere: (28)

[personal profile] degenere 2020-12-24 04:18 pm (UTC)(link)
[With a conspiratorial air, Val leans in to confide:]

Truly, mademoiselle, you have hit upon the very thing. She is disagreeable. She thinks herself a scholar, but she has not the mind or the temperament--certainly not the schooling--and she argues every point with the blunt force of a child who understands nothing of the world or the points that she is so clumsily trying to make. I would rather be going elsewhere. So sadly I shall be very unhappy and lonely for nearly an hour and pretending to be even the slightest bit interested in what passes for conversation.
heirring: ([006])

[personal profile] heirring 2020-12-24 06:54 pm (UTC)(link)
Alas, if not for Gerard you might simply be waylaid by pickpockets and tomorrow write your apologies for missing the whole thing on account of being victimized.

[She shifts the ends of the heavy cloak absently about her and after a moment - but not so full of one that he will have time to interject, so it is really a pause of half a second or so at best - says offhand into that pocket of conspiracy between them,]

I suppose there is always the very obvious solution, of course.
degenere: (56)

[personal profile] degenere 2020-12-30 04:08 am (UTC)(link)
[His little hm! of interest at that first... well, it was not a suggestion, was it? Then again, he would rather be waylaid by pickpockets than to spend the evening engaged in such paltry conversation, so it might very well be a suggestion--

Then again, there may be another suggestion.]


'Obvious'? [We'll see about that. But, expectantly, he leans in a little closer to hear, and prompts her,] Continue, please.
heirring: ([131])

[personal profile] heirring 2020-12-30 04:26 am (UTC)(link)
Well. [If she says it as if it is the obvious solution, then it cannot be the indescribably rude one and certainly not desperate by any means. So, with a throwaway air:]

You might bring along a companion with whom you might converse with more easily, of course. For it is a holiday, and if the lady is so eager for company then she would hardly refuse an addition brought along by someone whose opinion she values so highly.

Then you would have both Gerard and someone to speak to, and if you were particularly close in conversation with a companion then perhaps the hostess might be inclined to overlook you for future invitations unless you expressed some other desire directly.
degenere: (60)

[personal profile] degenere 2020-12-30 05:05 am (UTC)(link)
Ah! A very interesting proposition, mademoiselle, and one I dearly wish I might have the opportunity to act upon. Yes: to have an agreeable companion, one who knows how to behave at such a gathering while not minding to be out-of-fit just precisely enough to be both interesting and fashionable--someone who can carry on a conversation and does not want for wit, or lack the sharp skill required for the back-and-forth of the banter--and then someone who might excuse one from being present at the next Satinalia gathering-- a dream, mademoiselle. And it would be obvious, but alas--

[He slumps away from her with a sigh. His breath clouds on the air, silver.]

Where would one find such a companion at this late hour, on this day? The baroness is too far away to be called upon. All otherwise passing company is spoken for.

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