CLOSED | the perfect stormrider.

[poleaxed]

WHO: Erik Stephens, Gabranth, Diana, Benedict, Edgard, Tiffany, Dick & Jone.
WHAT: The Gang Fights A Dragon.
WHEN: Cloudreach.
WHERE: The Thenuviet estate on the Exalted Planes.
NOTES: if something looks wonky or is misspelled, please know I’m typing this on mobile & have mercy.

GETTING THERE isn’t a short journey, and they’re hardly traveling in comfort. Most of the horses are carrying equipment, armor, weaponry, and anything else those volunteered for this expedition thought to include. And there’s camping equiptment. Anyone who said the travel overland involved staying at inns was lying. Inns are notoriously stuffed with murderers, anyway.

Every night, there’s a campfire and food. Sometimes it’s fresh caught, but if it is, Jone certainly didn’t catch it. Just as likely that it’s rations, salt pork and jerky and whatever dried fruits and nuts Riftwatch can spare.

There’s a STOP AT A BATHHOUSE in the town near the Thenuviet estate, however. It’s stupid, they’re just going to dirty themselves up later, but presentation is important to these people.

Surely all of you brought fancy dress and masks, because IT’S TIME TO SCHMOOZE. There’s a small party of Orlesians dressed to their finest, having a cozy little soirée on the edge of a cliff. Literally on the edge. Don’t indulge too much in the fine wines and cheeses, because there’s a dragon waiting, but for now? It’s never a bad idea to look good in front of rich people of influence. At least, not these days.

Eventually, it’s time to move forward, which means PREPARING FOR BATTLE. Climbing down the cliff is easy stuff, if you’re good with rope or have basic upper body strength. But now is probably the time to set up any traps, get in good positions... because it’s not long before the party on the cliff above begins to cheer.

...Because a few dead swine are unceremoniously kicked off the cliff to fall into the ravine now filled with you and yours.

The cheers from the cliff face only increase as loud thrashing, howling sounds start and become increasingly closer. How long have they been feeding the dragon like this?

But then it’s DRAGON KILLING TIME. You probably know how that goes. Stormriders are huge, dark scaled, and shoot thunder instead of fire. This one is angry you’ve interrupted lunch time.

AFTERWARD, it’s time to heal, take a breath, poke around the dragon bits for fancy heirlooms, and climb back up that cliff.

Comments

[poleaxed]

“Oh, bless you, mate,” Jone says, taking a strong pull from the flask before she hands it back, mouth wiped on her fancy sash. “Savior in sore times, you are.”

What was he saying? Oh, right. “Can’t. Not well anyway. Enough to make myself known.” She taps her mask. “Bark orders, mostly.”

[nonvenomous]

“That’s a pity. I could use the practice.”

But here they are with a small court of living, breathing Orlesians, and after a cursory effort towards pomp and flattery, he’s kicking it with the Ferelden.

He drinks after her -- less deeply.

“Some of them must have unique tan lines.”

[poleaxed]

Her expression brightens somewhat, which just ends up looking clownish under the dog’s snarl. “Oh, I could teach you the swears. Orlesian has the best swears.”

She looks around at the assembled guests. “You’re assuming heaps about these knobs going outside on the regular.”

[nonvenomous]

“They’re outside now.”

His eyes are sharp beneath the sly brow of his mask; he offers the flask again, this time with a tip of his chin for her to keep it.

“Expletives are a solid starting point. Il pète plus haut que son cul,” he offers with a gesture of his glass to Benedict across the party by way of example. “Which do you recommend?”

[poleaxed]

“Not exactly blistering out,” she says, but then maybe she’s the freak who can’t imagine without calloused hands getting a tan-line. Someone once called the lines of light and darkness of her body the pattern of farmers, until she showed him her fists, and the patterns of fighters.

Still, she can’t help laughing at her joke. She hides it in the drink, abandoned and half drunk, she plucks from the table. “Ce faux cul, c’est le roi des lâches.”

[nonvenomous]

He doesn’t laugh, but there’s a tell-tale crook at the corner of his mouth before he too tips his glass up to stifle it.

“We’ll see when the dragon arrives.”

The sip he’s taken is small; how long can he nurse a single flute of this fancy swill?

“I’ve yet to meet one in Thedas myself.”

[poleaxed]

And there's the delight she always feels, at getting Si to crack anything like a smile. Even just the suggestion of one is good, means she's doing her job. Worthy work, not talking up rich knobs or punching something 'til it dies.

She smiles for him.

"Oh, I think we both know I'm right. In nos coeurs." She taps the part of her chest over rib and muscle, over her heart.

"Oh? Reckon they're different, where you're from? This one pisses lightning." Maybe she should have lead with that? Maybe Si already knows.

[nonvenomous]

“‘Le roi des lâches,’” Richard repeats to himself and drains the flute. She is right. “I trust your instincts.”

No one is looking, but he reaches behind her to obscure the act of him flipping his empty glass lightly away over the cliffside all the same. It’s fine, littering hasn’t been invented yet.

“They’re sapient -- highly intelligent and capable spellcasters, with differing personalities and breath weapons by breed. Blue and bronze dragons breathe lightning. Which reminds me,” he turns to face her, while they’re alone: “I’d like to ferry a sample of bone back to a friend off the books, provided there are any left unpulverized when this is over.”

[poleaxed]

"Pulverized bits are easier to ferry," she says, but it's with a laugh, watching bubbly ratwater spill down a cliff face. "I'll try not to break every bone in its body, I will, but I can't make no promises."

She looks out over the expanse of land, sickly trees and smoke in the far distance. That's not dragonsmoke, of course. It's just the Planes being the Planes.

"Our dragons ain't half so clever," she says, "big lizards, they are, and the angrier you make 'em, the dimmer they get. And I'm a professional at making things angry, though I only get paid for the killing part."

[nonvenomous]

“As long as the chunks are sizable enough to craft with.”

He seems reassured. ...Mostly, after a look away to measure the other bruisers she’s brought along with them while she explains the temperament of the local lizard population.

“Then this should be cathartic for you.” A reliable, practical application of her skillset. “Please remember that I am not capable of regrowing or reattaching lost limbs.”

[poleaxed]

"I can do sword-sized. Maybe staff-sized. That what you're after?" She isn't particularly hard to read, if you look; here is a woman eager to give a gift, and very little skill in acquisition. This, she thinks, she can do.

She grins, indulgent. "Si, mate, I managed years and never lost a fingernail. Touched you're worried, though, really I am."

[nonvenomous]

“Something along those lines.” Who knows what she’ll use it for.

Even brief consideration of the possibilities sees him sighing to himself, disapproval furrowed in stark around his mouth.

“It’s for someone I tried to have assassinated.” Still on that dream guilt grind. More presently, he adds (after a bright-eyed survey of her person from behind his mask, all fingernails accounted for): “Everyone who’s lost their first extremity hadn’t ever lost one previously.”

[poleaxed]

"Awful generous. When I try to off someone, I usually leave town. Stout heart, you have."

She says it like a joke, because the thought of him leaving is genuinely distressing.

"And cheerful, too. I promise not to lose any limbs today, how's that? Always keep my promises, me."

[nonvenomous]

“Mm,” says Richard, agreement easy for the sentiment: “unfortunately my anchor shard has rendered me incapable of sustaining escape.”

He may not be serious. It’s very hard to tell.

Also, it’s true.

“I’ll hold you to it.” Also, he will drink again from his flask before he secrets it away on his person. “I heard you ran everyone out of the baths to make way for our suit of living armor.”

[poleaxed]

"Unlucky you, lucky me." She grins. Her mood's been better, these past few days; getting back to old work, she thinks, has done wonders.

"I'd do the same for you," she says with a shrug, "though you'd not be daft enough to swear an oath to hide your face. Not that he said as much," Jone says, raising a single finger, before dropping it again, "but it's me best guess."

[nonvenomous]

“Did you look?”

Richard is 20% inebriated and so 20% salacious in asking, the kick of his brow invisible behind his mask but powerfully present in the cant of his head, a shift back at one shoulder. Implied lines, and a spark of curiosity for the answer either way.

[poleaxed]

"Oh, you're terrible," she says, but the laughter in her voice is appreciative. Jokes, they're nice. Too many cunts in Riftwatch have no sense of humor. "Don't know how I could've. Hold still, mate, lemme stick me eye in your eyehole."

She doesn't mention the bathhouse incident, mostly for Gabranth's sake.

[nonvenomous]

“When he was in the baths,” Silas is all too willing to clarify, because he is terrible.

“Unless you mean to tell me he soaks in his armor.”

[poleaxed]

Jone gives him a look that would be sour, if it weren't trying so hard not so smile. "Oh, you're a sneaky one, ain't you."

Not that Jone was particularly subtle.

"I didn't peek. Would've been bad for his morale."

[nonvenomous]

“Of course,” he says. “His morale.”

If he doesn’t seem wholly willing to believe her, it’s clear enough in this moment that further constriction isn’t likely to change the slant of her answer. But Silas does look to Gabranth declining an offered flute at the cliff’s edge, speculative in his coiling silence, with drink in hand.

The two of them standing together should be a draw for curious locals. But somehow, of the representatives of Riftwatch present struggling with undesired Orlesian attention, Silas has been swift to establish a sort of repulsive perimeter they seem reluctant to cross.

“I hadn’t realized that was a concern.”

[poleaxed]

She cocks her head to the side, supplying a withering look without any real venom. "Blimey, the one time I pretend like killing this won't be a breeze."

She looks to the sky. The weather will continue about as good as it gets for the Planes.

"Why're we talking about this? How are you feeling, luv? Nervous?"

[nonvenomous]

“Hardly.”

Trust Dick Dickerson to favor engaging a massive biological marvel over the dog and pony show they’re currently embedded in, his beak buried in relevant research by firelight on the fringes of camp at night.

“I’m curious. I haven’t spoken to him.”

Answer two questions and get a pass on the third, witness him sign the permission slip for himself, too deft for thought.

[poleaxed]

Jone is beginning to sense the rough outline of a pattern, but she hasn't caught it yet. Silas has a mind the like she isn't accustomed to, something she attributes to religion and him being from another fucking planet.

"He's a prick," Jone says with a smile. "Lucky, I get on with those."

She's heard people call him by the other name. It's a pun.

Also, Silas is a prick.

[nonvenomous]

“I see what you’ve done there.”

And he approves, dry in a side-eyed glance as he leans into the start of a step away from her.

“I think I hear Lord Crevette calling for you.”

[poleaxed]

"Oh, joy," she murmurs, looking for the rich bastard of the moment. Finding him, Jone gives Si a half-hearted salute before she wanders away. "Enjoy your secret booze."