O1 ♚ I'M IN NEED OF AN ANSWER

[slaveking]

WHO: Marcel Gerard & you
WHAT: A vampire chillin' in Thedas gets a log with both open and closed starter options. Running on rooftops, hanging at the tavern, murder practice, the usual.
WHEN: December
WHERE: Various throughout the fortress Skyhold
NOTES: Up to PG-13 for language, will note more in subject headers as they arise

See comments for starters!

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ROOFTOPS [open]

[slaveking]

He boosts himself up, dark fingers on a narrow ledge, the coarse cut of his boots finding purchase somehow on the concrete. The first wall he scales is a low one; they probably used to stable horses in this building, single-story, rotted wood and blown-in bricking bearing little resemblence to stalls but failing to form much else, either. He trips over tiles on his way to the adjacent block. Three stories. Looks up.

Jumping it would be easier, but he doesn't. He's been as judicious about his powers as he can be, of late. Hunting itself, every two nights, represents enough risk of exposure and raw need that he knows to be pragmatic about it; a baby vampire in tow hardly makes things easier.

But were he to be entirely forthright, none of this is very difficult, by his measure.

At some point, he makes it up high enough that the masonry under his feet lends its function to not to horses or homes or any other recognizable function, but it looks to be braced against the sky itself. There's a tower not far away, small windows cut into the stone; he can hear ravens talking inside, their voices reverberating off of metal cages. The wind picks at his clothes, and he looks down into a courtyard that sprawls between him and the next he isn't going to make. He steps down over the stone, and his boot shifts a palm-sized fragment of -- tile? Glass? He isn't sure.

But it topples down, and he thinks to say, "Look out!"

[demonicbeauty]

The courtyard was something of a refuge for Ariadne. Surrounded by so many strange and different things, there was one constant for her: Plants responded to her gentle touch. Even if they were plants she didn't recognize, she still had a marvelous talent for making them grow. And as of late, the strangeness of Thedas had been getting to her. It was no wonder, then, that there was constantly dirt beneath her newly Human fingernails.

She was kneeling beside a bed of flowers that reminded her of Valerian violets when she heard a warning called from above her. Instinct kicked in long before thoughts of subterfuge.

For a slight, skinny girl who couldn't have weighed more than ninety pounds, Ariadne was quick. Agile too. With what looked like almost no effort at all, she threw herself into a barrel roll, spiraling under a nearby tree. She didn't even need to look up to know where the lowest branch was and she grabbed hold of it, swinging her entire body up into a squat on top of it.

Only then did she look up, brushing the fringe of her hair out of her eyes to see the debris crash down where she'd been kneeling.

[slaveking]

...well. After Ariadne's incredible acrobatic display, really, the impact of falling rubbish is actually pretty darn anticlimactic. It's just a little hardened mud, maybe a few ounces of tile, tumbling off dusty and brittle into empty air. When it lands on the ground, the condensed dirt mostly vaporizes on impact, disintegrating into a fine dust that turns the shiny green leaves of Ariadne's plants matte and slightly brown.

Maybe a couple leaves get bruised, and that's it. Of course, by the time the literal dust has settled, Marcel doesn't even have a little bit of attention invested in the vegetation. No, his eyes are fixed, instead, on the girl in the tree, tucked into her mighty crouch, the branch steady under her surefooted weight. Humans do not move like that, at least not in his world. It's the vampires, the werewolves, the occasional spelled witch. It's the wrongness that comes of improvement on the original design.

"Sorry about that."

He pitches his voice across the distance between the elevated concrete and the tree below, and he has a voice that carries well in the brisk air. By sorry, one should note that Marcel doesn't sound like he's about to slit his wrists about it, but his voice is warm, and that passes for sincerity in most circles. Marcel cocks his head, shading his eyes. "I take it you're all right. Ma'am."

[demonicbeauty]

She recognized his voice before she looked up to spy the gentleman that matched Marcel's self-description. He had a pleasant, handsome face. One that definitely stood out in the strangely monochromatic world of Thedas. But really, it was his eyes which drew her attention. They seemed kind. A little sad, maybe. But it was wrong to read too much into someone's face.

Ariadne relied more on scent to understand people.

Curiously, she grabbed a branch over her head and pulled herself up, climbing up in the direction of the rooftop.

"Lord Marcel?" she asked, her voice light and innocent, like a child's, in spite of her decidedly woman-shaped body.

[slaveking]

"Marcel. Don't think I can justify that... honorific," he says, even though he had once rather loudly and unironically announced himself king, and went to war over the power that he thought that held. That was at least a few years ago, at this point. Marcel hasn't yet figured out who all the Kings of Thedas are, but the world is sufficiently feudal that he suspects they and their squabbles exist somewhere beyond the concerns of interdimensional sky holes, demons, spirits, the Rifters caught in between.

A slight squint furrows his brow for a moment. Nothing serious, merely patching voice to face, remembering talking to her over a magic crystal once. The disparity between the way she sounds and the way she looks is mildly jarring, but considering he's fraternized with all sorts of people and creatures. "I spoke to you before, didn't I? Ariadne. You like gardens." He steps a little closer across the roof shingles.

[demonicbeauty]

Expertly, she perched herself on the higher branch, offering him a pretty, little smile. "That's right," she said mildly, pleased to be remembered. For someone who looked the way she did, with her wide gray eyes and long braid, she could easily be lost in the background.

It was how she'd been trained.

She tilted her head to one side, birdlike. "What are you doing up on a rooftop?"

[foxsays]

Climb high enough in Skyhold and the world melts away, only the wind howling down to drown out whatever racket there is in the courtyard or within the buildings. The scenery isn't much in her opinion but she's never seen the allure of a mountain before and she doesn't now but still, it's peaceful, tucked up on a rooftop an empty diary she's studiously filling in when she hears the shout and tucks it away.

Someone else is up, about as high as her and she clambers down, a concerned frown pinching her features as she comes to a halt. The clatter has her wincing, even from this height but when she doesn't hear the horrified screams of someone being injured, she continues her descent.

"All is well? The masonry has seen far better days." An advantage to being on the small and light side of things is that unless she really botches it, most of the stonework doesn't seem to protest to her climbing up it.

[slaveking]

Marcel is waving his arm at whoever he cleared out down below. Checking they're all right, confirming nobody's-- going to get him in trouble too, although that's a secondary concern. Despite many warnings about the stigma that Rifters face, Marcel remains confident. Or overconfident, if you cast him in a certain light. It's less out of an expectation that his fellows will be reasonable, and more because he's so accustomed to having trouble to survive that the lack thereof hardly feels like living, sometimes.

He hears here before she speaks, but doesn't turn until she does. His dark eyes brighten slightly when he registers her voice, which is dimly familiar, although he doesn't correctly assess where he's heard it before right away. "All turned out," he answers cordially. "Be unfortunate if I made a first account of myself dropping concussions on the unsuspecting. I can't say I was expecting company up here, but you seem familiar, somehow." Marcel is somewhat more careful, this time, when he starts to approach her. It's not obvious, though. He enjoys grace inherent to his kind, and it looks effortless, the way he picks his way nearer across the stone.

"Do I know you?" he squints a little, as if he couldn't see her perfectly well from where he was. He's already extending a hand to shake, light flashing telltale from his palm.

[foxsays]

“It would only add fuel to the fire that some of us are wicked things and not to be trusted,” she smiles as she says it though because it still sounds so utterly ridiculous to a girl who didn’t know about anything like this until her rather abrupt crash course. As she moves closer, she keeps up on her toes, away from some of the bricks she only really trusts when she’s pulling herself up and over.

Introductions then, before anything else though she misses the bow today on account of Skyhold falling apart further. “Araceli Bonaventura, I prefer using this way to get around instead of nearly having people run right over the top of me. We might have passed each other then. Or in the tavern maybe?” She’d remember, surely, if his was a face she’d gambled with because that’s why she’s good at cards and dice, her eyes always on more than just the hand dealt to her.

With a smile though, she shakes his hand, still excited from meeting another rifter that actually knew what a gun was.

[slaveking]

A handshake. Just like home. Of course, not the first one that Marcel has enjoyed since coming through the Rift, but it's nice to know that the similarity transcends his world and Thedas. He closes his hand around hers, his palm dry and firm, answers the gesture with one like in kind. He lets her go afterward too. "I believe we spoke on some magic rocks," he offers, quirking his eyebrows. "I recall I was talking about coffee and ballerinas. And you mentioned having a friend among the Qunari.

"As well as some insight into the stigma we face here." It's a little arrogance, that Marcel imagines he made enough of an impression that that will jog her memory. But he leaves off now, smiling widely, appreciative now he was then that she had settled in, has knowledge to spare. "But I have made friends at the tavern. Maybe work, too. It seems the best spot for a Rifter gathering." Exploring has been well and good. On rooftops, for particular entertainment. However, Marcel isn't really one to sit and talk without an agenda, a few moves planned out in the future, and he prefers his future to involve other enterprising minds.

She's met the type. You get 'dudes who are into networking' in every world.

TAVERN [open]

[slaveking]

"Why would I lie about coffee?"

Most of the jobs he's found thus far have been what he's looking for, insofar as he's been looking for jobs where you pick things up, carry them, put them down again. His reputation precedes him, the deeply inaccurate this and that about the Rifters' speculative demon heritage, but he does not flatter himself in knowing that he enjoyed worse back home, and when he was considerably more vulnerable besides. Maybe it makes him cocky.

But it gives him enough to talk about, and he's particularly shrewd about approaching Cabot. After all, he corresponded with another surface-dwelling dwarf lately who led him to understand that they tend to be a little less nervous about Rifters and than anybody else in Thedas. "That's just cruel," he says. "But you want to know what's really all the rage back home, and maybe you can use this. Infused cream. Infused syrups. There's a group called the Illuminati who came into power selling that stuff, and their coffee doesn't even taste like it anymore."

Mostly, he makes Cabot laugh. But he pays for an ale, and he's generous too, about looking a couple stools over and saying, "And for me friend here, too, who's--?" It's the kind of question you're supposed to answer with your name.

[salvatore_underfoot]

He's not here for company, or a good time, or to laugh and make friends. Normally he would be. Normally, that's why he comes here. A quick smile, an easy laugh, he'd join right in. Since the first of the new year, he's just felt dull and tired.

He blinks, head swiveling to the left. He'd only been half listening in on what was happening next to him, hunched over his drink, when the man leaned in. "Um, what? Oh. Salvatore."

[slaveking]

"Salvatore," sounds Italian? By now, Marcel is well-aware that some of the European cultures back home map onto Thedosian nations, and it's of interest to him, a little, these connections between realities. Nonetheless, he thinks better than to launch into his quest for knowledge immediately. Salvatore looks rather out of it, and it's somewhat difficult to predict if he's going to be one of those more paranoid about Rifters or friendly, after the haze burns off.

Or, you know. He could just keep the haze going.

"You look like you could use a drink." Cabot looks toward the young man expectantly too, to see if the Nevarran is inclined to accept the offer.

[salvatore_underfoot]

He huffs a humorless laugh. "Yeah. I could." He swirls the last bit of ale at the bottom of his mug and swallows it down before giving Cabot a nod, and another to Marcel. He turns on the stool to give the man a better look and more of his attention. It's only polite. "My thanks, ser...?"

[slaveking]

Marcel nods in return, equally polite. He has a rather direct regard, usually, but he's well-mannered enough not to stare at this fellow who seems to be in an unhappy mood. "Marcel." He isn't inclined to be so careful, however, as to go through real lengths to disguise the mark on his palm. He offers Salvatore a handshake, and it glows, the seam of greenish light that marks his connection to the Rift. Not all who have it are Rifters, but then he goes ahead and adds:

"I'm not from around here. You?"

MURDER PRACTICE [open]

[slaveking]

He's too quick to pass for human, which is why he's been marketing himself as a mage of a different ilk. The lack of spells, however, has left him to get his workout in with people who like beating things up with their hands and swords when he does volunteer.

Which is how he somehow winds up squaring off against an eight-foot tall albino kid built like an NFL recruiter's [something], violet-eyed, and with gigantic horns poking out of his head. The look on Marcel's face, when they see each other across the sectioned garden, is probably a little comical; big-eyed, a belly laugh running out in his rich, mellifluous baritone. Three minutes later, naturally, they're in the dirt.

Four minutes after that, he's flying across the air, pinwheeling. Lands like a cat, by which one means he scrabbles around, nearly splitting the seam in the ass of his pants to regain his footing, saying, "Fuck" a lot, but manages to regain his footing in time to meet his opponent's bellowing charge. It's something to see, an ordinary-looking man hoisting the young Qunari clear off his feet, off-balance, but game to throw.

And maybe it's a minute or two after that, when he rolls to a stop against your character's toes. Marcel doesn't look too much the worse for wear; his knuckles already scabbed, peeled, the skin underneath dark and whole. "Hi," he says.

[glandival]

"Bonjour."

And like that, Sabine gives away who she is, having only communicated prior to this moment over Thedosian telephone. But it's a deliberate choice -- she knows who he is, observant enough and curious enough to cut to the chase on her own time, and now it is mutual.

Her boots, which from down there he is getting a good look at, are neat and probably the best made thing she's wearing -- the dark green skirt that ends around her ankles is peasant-made, the fabric worn and faded, a little mud spattered at the hem. In her arms, she's carrying a bundle of sticks secured in burlap, sticks that have been stripped of their flesh, trimmed down, straightened, obviously for a purpose. Her hair is left wild, a cloud of precise curls, golden-glinting red. Her long ears only just poke through.

Her expression is a little unimpressed. He looks very human.

[slaveking]

Marcel stares up her skirt, but like, up the outside of it rather than the bad version of that sentence. She does betray who she is more or less immediately, and it's clear that his brain isn't too Qunari-addled that he fails to put two and two together. That voice! That expression of amusement and possibly contempt, but that seems like a strong word for whatever's flirting around the corners of her eyes. Yes, he knows her.

"N'est pas." It's not a good day. He holds his position (i.e., doesn't get up) long enough to appear comfortable, cocking his head slightly as he studies her for the length of two or three eye-blinks. And then he starts to move, heaving into a sit upright. He smacks what he supposes might be dirt off the back of his head, but there isn't anything, really. "But no pain no gain. How do you say that in Orlesian?" He could probably work that out, actually, the grammar is simple enough, but there is a Qunari man smirking at him with the expectation he's about to retreat into an ill-conceived bout of flirtation with a business-like elf.

And by business, one means, unimpressed by somebody who's prospectively been bested in a fight, never mind about to run away from finishing it.

"Are you looking for someone in particular?" Marcel gets up. He doesn't pretend to look exaggeratedly sore or rattled, and he moves quickly, if by no means impressively so. Mostly, he's disoriented, giving his head a shake. He wraps an arm back over his own shoulder and stretches his back, too.

[glandival]

"J'ai perdu," she suggests, after a second of thought, stepping back a little once he stands and becomes all tall and such, swinging his arms about and displacing training yard dust.

At his question, Sabine shakes her head, but then stops, and bobbles it in more of a neutral way. "I suppose you are particular," she says, raising an eyebrow. "I thought I should come and see you aren't just a mysterious voice trapped in a necklace." And lo, here he is.

But she opts to elaborate, with a verbal prod of accusation; "You said you weren't human."

He absolutely did not say that, Sabine. But apparently, something he did say convinced her otherwise.

your icons are each like minimally 50% hair

[slaveking]

The dust that emanates from Marcel keeps to a fairly narrow radius. He isn't flexing or anything, sparing anybody from powdery eruptions as well as (maybe) the worst of the urge to roll their elf eyes (maybe). "Did I?" Marcel asks, not really thinking so, but not really minding. Elena is considerably more wary than he about disguising their nature, failing to observe that a disguise doesn't have to mean an explicit and wholesale denial.

Marcel has observed that magic has capital around here. "Is that what you look for in a guy?"

His smile is playful. Suggestive. But he doesn't look at her boobs, not even as he turns away. Instead, he squares his shoulders in a way that implies both readiness for conflict and a certain obliging good nature, a man with enough confidence in his abilities--or his pain tolerance--to make a joke about getting the tar beaten out of him by a giant horned fellow with skin that refracts light like metal armor. "You look kinda humanoid yourself."

CLOSED TO KITTY

[slaveking]

Fwap.

Past the edge of Kitty's book, a sheet of parchment lands on the table, flattened by the weight of Marcel's hand. When he pulls back, the removal of his fingers reveals a drawing. It looks like nothing she's ever seen before. It has the mathematical rhythm of architecture, not as intricate as the symmetry at the heart of a gem, its straight edges and repeating parts unmistakably the product of a thinking people. "Combustion engine," Marcel says. Marcel—

would happen to be the dark-skinned man standing at the adjacent armchair. By now, his clothes look persuasively Thedosian; no anachronistic zipper flies or machine weaves. If one wonders where he managed to apprehend this costume, one should mind their own business, everything is fine, no one is particularly the worst for wear anyway. He could probably pass, if he tried.

But there is a seam of queasy greenish light in his hand that he makes no move to hide. More importantly, where Kitty is concerned, the deep pitch and cadence of voice probably rings a bell, even if it was weeks ago since they spoke. Weeks enough to apprehend parchment. Which was actually somewhat less tiresome than-- finding clothes. "If you aren't Kitty, the surface-dwelling dwarf," he says, smiling and gesturing down at the page he created for her. "This is going to seem very awkward."

i love them

[rathercommon]

"You're quite mistaken," Kitty responds wryly. She doesn't even try to sell the lie; instead, her voice is quite cheerily sarcastic, and she plucks up the page he's drawn for her without even hesitating. "I'm a titan who's suffered a terrible accident. - This is interesting. I can't make a great deal of sense of it, but it's interesting. I can pass this along to other people who'd know more than me?" And then she looks up at him, meeting his eyes.

She has a sweet face. She's a respectable-looking girl, to be quite sure: simple clothes, well-maintained, hair cut to her shoulders and shining with good health, expression bright and curious. An observant eye might notice just how intent her stare is. She studies Marcel's face with a gaze that lingers a little bit too long to just be friendly - there's some information she's seeking there - and her glance flicks very quickly to his hands, his belt, his pockets, sizing up the money he has, the weapons he has and the frequency with which he uses them. His shoes and how worn down they are - because you can often tell the state of a man's life by the state of his shoes. Up to his face again. But there's never a flicker in her sweet smile.

"I assume you're Marcel, by the way. If not, then you're one of the other people I have coming by to show me fantastical technologies from other worlds."

me too X(

[slaveking]

Marcel's clothes are telling. At least, insofar as that he hasn't lived a very exciting life since coming here, and the fabrics are clearly secondhand and reasonably well maintained. The trousers are of particularly solid make, actually-- and there's a telltale scorch mark near the bottom of the left leg that suggests that they belong to a ferrier. Which, despite the degree of interest his chickenscratches pose to dwarves such as herself, Marcel quite clearly is not.

He's unarmed. Or only has something small, maybe a knife in his boot. However, he moves with the perfect balance of somebody who has trained to have it upset by some form of attack for a long time, and a great deal of confidence besides that. He watches her watch him and smiles through the whole thing himself.

"Guess I skipped the line," Marcel says, wryly. But her rejoinder is friendly enough that he makes the move to pull back the next chair, set himself down in it. "I've gotta say, you're not making me feel too special. Even if that was a joke. I know Rifters are a dime a dozen out here, and there's a guy you might've heard of--" Marcel fails entirely to look threatened, sitting back in his chair. "Who's flown out to the stars. But you got me. Marcel Gerard, at your service."

[rathercommon]

"Oh, I don't mind having you one bit," Kitty says with a smile. She likes his wry humor, she decides. She likes the way that he doesn't seem to talk down to her - there's still time for him to get all facetious and irritating, no question, but he hasn't yet even though he isn't accustomed to her or her people and she likes that. She doesn't know much about the Rifters. She doesn't know whether they're good or bad, trustworthy or not. But she knows she likes him.

And so she drops her teasing air to speak with a bit more sincerity, for just a moment. "Are you doing all right here? All things considered. As all right as you can possibly do, being even more of a refugee than the rest of us are."

[slaveking]

Marcel pats his hands lightly on the armrests on either side of himself, appreciative of solid craftsmanship. Also of libraries in general. As of his last year in New Orleans, his aesthetic really tended to run the way of jazz clubs, candelabraed courtyards, Bourbon street, historical graveyards. Less in the way of libraries. It reminds him of being in school. Or at least, being tutored by an ancient psychopath with a weird personality, during some of the most nostalgic years of his life.

"I'm doing as well as can be, considering I miss my home," he answers. "I'm pretty adaptive, although I like to keep my eye on the prize. Speaking of which, it looks like I'm stuck here awhile. I don't know how closely you were listening to the talking... rocks," super good terminology here. "Still haven't turned up an omnipotent wizard. You haven't stumbled on a good book about that, have you?"