[ OPEN ] Heart's on fire

[ombranera]

WHO: Character(s)
WHAT: Zevran Aranai's School for Rogues Who Can't Sneak Good and Want to Do Other Stuff Good Too.
WHEN: Wintermarch, all month
WHERE: Skyhold: Courtyard, Stables, Rookery, Battlements, etc
NOTES: Sass, Stealth, and Violence

He had mulled over the notion for a few weeks now; watching the soldiers take themselves to task, the warriors practicing as best they could; the mages training in their spells and thought- aside from combat (and even then there were tricks soldiers did not always think to teach) how was a rascal, a scoundrel, a rogue to learn more tricks? A well trained operation of any sort had well trained members of all sorts; the bruisers, the wizards, the rogues. Perhaps it was high time someone did something for the sneakier sorts.


[ Courtyard ]

Every lesson starts the same- a quick lap around the courtyard as fast as possible, vaulting over people and structures, running along the wall, making use of all the same skills that kept him alive all those years in Antiva City. For those that did not know them? The tricks came as a brief primer after the lap was finished- even a brief demonstration is offered. Afterward he runs them through a few training locks set into empty chests, some of the them wound with ringing alarms for the sake of practice. Trip the wrong tumbler? Off goes the alarm. After that it's stealth and pickpocketing. Sneaking about through a field of tripwires connected to more ringing bells and powder packets, a veritable labyrinth. Any bells go off, any powder on your person? You go through again. One of the training dummies has been re-purposed with bells and pouches on it- each pouch has a bell attached. They're timed and told to get as many as possible without ringing any bells. Ring a bell? Run a lap.


[ Stables ]

Here there is room enough for him to demonstrate proper trap production and dismantling. Every wound spring, every steel mechanism. They start with the basic bladed traps- though none of the blades are sharpened and none of the powder explosions hold more than dye. Once they've made traps that are...decent or satisfactory, Zevran walks them through detection and dismantling. Some of the practice traps have trick springs and triggers- if set off they'll be dusted with powder instead of losing their fingers. Later he goes through a list of common poisons and venoms to create and how to build up a tolerance for them. He does not provide them with samples this early on.


[ Battlements ]

Rappelling and dueling and improvisational combat and you! Here Zevran shows them how to climb, how to fall, how to make their own ropes when they've none of their own, how to throw a rappel to make it stay, how to haul it down, and how to dual wield on uneven ground. Demonstrations with Isabela and sparring with whoever wishes to take their turn happens throughout the day as requested; Zevran also covers grappling, breaking holds, and how to fight dirty. An honorable rogue is a dead rogue after all.


[ Wildcard ]

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[foxsays]

"You cook? Oh we have to trade then, I want to know if proper Antivan food tastes anything like my own and you have earned a meal almost as much as Korrin has." Almost because you know, Korrin, Zevran probably knows that Korrin earns it just by the virtue of being who she is. "It makes it sweeter, I remember when the older thieves taught me, how I smiled so hard my cheeks ached when I found something good inside a coat pocket. I used to make tiny cakes and put them in chests when it was my turn to do the teaching."

[ombranera]

"Finding the ingredients is difficult this far South, but I can improvise." A good, spicy meal of pasta and hot sausages? Priceless. But the tiny cakes idea seems sound. "You know...perhaps we might kill two birds with one stone. We take over a part of the kitchens and swap tiny cake recipes and tuck them into the chests."

[foxsays]

“I think the kitchen staff might hate me, or rather the head cook? The grumpy one that likes to shout at the rest? She definitely hates me , for all that I actually do help out, you would think extra hands are something to be grateful for but no. ‘If someone complains about a meal you’ve touched I’ll tell them to blame that Antivan girl with the green hand’, that’s all I ever hear.” Not that it bothers her too much, she’s choosing to put up with it but the people trying to do their jobs shouldn’t be treated badly by an old harridan. “You can try to flatter her, nothing I’ve done works.”

She’s willing to chalk that up to her hand more than anything else and the increasingly half-hearted ‘I’m not an Antivan’ protests.

“From what you’ve said before,” she starts carefully, more wary here of overstepping boundaries when so much in Thedas seems to hurt, “I take it you learned very differently to how I did.”

[ombranera]

"Ah, her. I know well enough what flattery will see us given space and ingredients enough." He smirks before sighing. "Coin. She is charmed by coin and nothing else, no words nor song nor poetry might move her from her course. But a few silvers will do the job nicely."

And for this it would not be so difficult a thing to spare the coin for.

"The lockpicking or the cooking?" Both are, like most things in his life, tied to some scrap of pain that he ignores in favor of the lessons he shakes from the ashes.

[foxsays]

"And so the hard-earned coin of the Inquisition will go back to itself, at least the scouts and soldiers will be less cheated in a roundabout way." Honestly, how they actually cope in the real world outside the tavern is beyond her when they'll fall for the same tricks every time, it doesn't even feel like practicing now, unless she's actually playing Wicked Grace with them and swearing at the unfamiliar cards in her hands.

"The lockpicking - every Castilean knows how to cook unless they're noble and get other people to do it, the first thing you do for a guest in your home is offer them food and drink before they're inside." There's a saying about it, but she'd need to explain too much to bother with it today. "Thieves steal for profit, for fun, assassins maybe for the same reason but my blade was for defending myself whenever I crept into a house."

[ombranera]

"Ah, that. I learned with the Crows, it was one of our first tests." Succeed and eat. Fail and go hungry. If you didn't eat long enough you became too weak to keep yourself safe from the other children that knew enough to be cruel and cared more for your blanket than they did you. Ah. Childhood. "I imagine you learned more to satisfy your own curiosity, yes?"

[foxsays]

"We started with the bells in a coat or a rigged purse, the docks are so busy that it was better for little hands who couldn't easily get to the places they stashed the chests." Some sailors will tolerate a young thief trying their luck, Castileans are nothing if not passionate but the richest parts are where the merchants go and they have the coin to hire thugs who like to make a child cry. "I couldn’t sit still as a girl, I loved a challenge too. Gambling was all well and good but there’s much more involved in planning a theft, how you would get in and out, doing some watching and listening. I still kept everything sharp, the last year I had different reasons to need to be the very best at it."

[ombranera]

"And those reasons were... Ah, let me guess. A particularly daring heist?" Something light, something serious enough for the locks but not so dire as the end of the world. How he tired of thinking of the end of the world. The sky is full of demons, there is a magister from the past trying to tear down everything good and living in Thedas, blah, blah, blah-

Run through a Blight and it's less exciting.

[foxsays]

“I might have broken into the royal apartments of the palace. To steal some of the queen’s jewellery. I wanted a challenge, I had been stealing since the age of twelve, what could have tested me more? The time I spent watching, memorising patrols, learning who to follow or listen to for more information, and then I did it!” Because of course she did, she’s not had a chance to demonstrate how good she is here when she’d feel too guilty - so many have so little between them, she just moves things around and gambles instead, happier to trade information in place of coin and most of that coin still goes back to the Inquisition and not her own pockets.

“When I got in, there was an assassination attempt on the queen,” she continues, her voice lower, eyes ahead and watching someone fiddling with one of the chests. Korrin didn’t react badly, there’s little reason to think Zevran will either but still she sighs. “I couldn’t stand by and do nothing, it would have been as if I stuck a knife in too, I...I had been watched too, by her guards, the assassination attempt was real but you know these things best, if someone is aware they can be managed. My reward was to become the first commoner ever assigned to the queensguard of her own country.”

And despite the nerves, she’s proud, the past year hasn’t been easy but there’s a satisfaction she didn’t always find with theft, no longer directionless and looking for the next big heist though you can remove the girl from the thieves but never the thief from the girl.

[ombranera]

"Now that is a daring heist indeed." He cannot imagine anything near so daring, if only out of the knowledge that the Queen of Antiva tended to have a personal cell ready and waiting for anyone so foolish to make the attempt. Not only were any thieves murdered- bits of them were hidden throughout Antiva City as a warning to others. It is not done. Besides. Nothing in the coffers is worth stealing.

Few prizes are worth one's life, after all.

"Now that is a high honor indeed. All for being a decent person while somewhere you truly shouldn't have been at all. How many fine tales of Thedas begin that way?" Zevran crackles a laugh, elbowing Araceli in good humor. "That is marvelous."

[foxsays]

"Oh she had me followed, it was too much to think I was so good - it knocked some of the cockiness out of me, and then she had her guards ask about after me. Her councillors hated having a commoner but a loophole is a loophole, what could they do." Besides hate her. Because they do. It's why she tries so hard to be so good at her job, the one thing she does out of pure spite at times, so they have nothing they could ever use against her.

At least she has Leandra and the rest of the guards on her side, and Leandra's husband, so it's a good life to lead.

Relief has her elbowing him back as she laughs, snorting delicately. "I think here where it always seems to be doom and gloom I would've had my head cut off or something awful like that. Leandra is a good queen, she wants better for the commoners, how can you do that without having one close by your side day and night, willing to tell her exactly what it's like?"

[ombranera]

"Nobles here are quite different, sadly. The common man is ignored in favor of their grander game." He lists to the side, leaning into her easily as though such closeness is simply a thing they share regularly. And why not? She is warm and sweet as his Antivan sun that he misses so dearly, brighter and kinder than it's oceans. Wishing to steal a bit of that for himself is not so strange a thing now, is it?

"We make do on our own, find our own way as best we can. In Antiva, at least, by working hard and having the right alliances, you can drag yourself up from the peasantry and become a noble yourself. It takes some doing and a beneficial marriage- but it can be done."

[foxsays]

"I assure you she is quite alone but for a few voices of support and those are much like whispers. Being on guard when she meets with them to discuss their 'concerns' or how her own council fight her tooth and nail..." Even here where she's so far from it, she can't stop herself from dragging her hands through her hair, a quiet growl in the back of her throat. She's glad for Zevran being there, cheek on his shoulder as she sighs deeply, but it's more contentment than anything else.

"This is what she wants for all of us, a proper education, not having to worry about paying the rent or putting food on the table three times a day, every day. I wish I could give you a day in my country and more, you have been one of the kindest souls to me here, I don't want any to know hardship but those I care for..." Stories are all well and good but getting to take him home so her father could tell him stories and play cards, so her mother could fuss and tease him, where he could charm her fellow guards and run the rooftops, drinking and dancing until the sun came up? Impossible dreams but not bad ones.

[ombranera]

"Now that is a noble goal. Such generosity would likely see her shunned in Orlais or assassinated in Antiva unless she could twist it to mean better gold for those that hold the purse strings- but perhaps in Rivain she would do well. They do not have much in that country but worth is found more by helping their fellows than by acquiring gold and goods. Another country where I ought to take you. Perhaps when the weather is good and the threat of invasion is low I might convince Isabela to take us both that far North. It would be lovely in the spring- warm but not so much as to leave you begging for relief." She could see the men and their golden hoops, the women in all their tattooed glory. More than Antiva, Rivain would suit Araceli well.

Just as her own country sounds more and more like an idealized shade of his own Antiva- without the crows and without the blood. "If it were possible I would like to join you."

[foxsays]

"I have to admit, sitting at a dinner and listening to the nobles try to justify why they shouldn't have to pay more in taxes to make sure others don't starve is, well it's improved my poker face greatly. Forks are for eating, as much as you might wish to stab someone in the hand with one when they try to say that someone deserves to be hungry if they don't find work, as if it is so simple. We rely so much on coordination, on others leaving to sail off to other lands to bring back what we need, that is where the true value of us lies. That we have always been able to work together to weather the storms." Her home breeds a people so good at making the most of themselves but being able to set that all aside in an instant to help their fellows, each finding a place like a crew does on a ship, or like six young women do in becoming a guard unit that can think and act like one.

"My mother would spoil you rotten, after she gets done berating me for not managing to avoid being sucked through a rift." But at least it would be a show of Araceli trying to delicately defuse a situation whilst keeping several pieces of furniture between herself and her mother.

[ombranera]

"Is that not the way of mothers? The spoiling. I will confess to having never known my own nor have I ever been in a place to observe them." Save Flemeth and Morrigan. Though that was, as he understood it, a highly irregular situation.