faderift | OPEN | the grand tourney!

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OPEN | the grand tourney!

WHO: All Y'all.
WHAT: It's the Grand Tourney! Like a normal Tourney, but grand.
WHEN: August Now.
WHERE: Kirkwall.
NOTES: Sports... injuries?

Every thousand days, the Grand Tourney is organized in the Free Marches, and all the City States-- and even challengers from farther abroad-- come together to celebrate the freedom of the Marches. This year, the event was intended to take place in Tantervale.

When that, uh, fell apart, the tourney was hastily moved to the relative safety of Kirkwall.

Festivities begin early, with musicians and entertainers coming from all around to entertain lords and ladies as they set up tents. Food vendors complete the picnic atmosphere-- you may not be able to get a seat in the stands, but the hills around where the field where it all takes place makes the event easily viewed by all. Jesters, bards, troubadours, food vendors, all are happy to serve and make the event lively and lovely-- for a price.

The first event is the Joust. The announcer goes through everyone's names, their origins, the part they play, so the crowd knows who to root for and who to boo. Before the individual bouts begin, the jousters are expected to ride around the field collecting favors.

The second event is the Quintain. A similar setup to the Joust takes place, with announcements and cheering, gaining favors, etc. The major difference-- besides the content of the event itself-- is the hastily erected judge's stand, where they can view the skills of each comptetitor. Some scores are met with cheers, some with boos. Some competitors schmooze with the judges before their bout. It's all very classy.

In the intermission guests are invited to play a game of tug-of-war over two large piles of flowers and flower petals. As the loosers will discover, there's a pit of mud underneath the flowers. Hopefully you brought a second pair of clothes, or maybe you just don't care ~~Edgard~~.

If tug-of-war isn't your game, there's drunken archery. Darktown's very best (worst) booze has been generously donated (appropriated) for the event. One shot to begin, and more shots for every subsequent shot of your bow. Landing closer to bullseye garners more points, and prizes can be collected for high point scores. Nothing particularly valuable, it's more like carnival fare-- stuffed toys, shiny gems (they are colored glass), wood carved in various shapes (some lewd). The most expensive prize is a hangover cure potion (it does not work).

The final event is the ever-popular Melee, where several one-on-one matches take place simultaneously, until someone is either undefeated or the least defeated. As with previous events, each combatant is announced to the crowd and expected to walk around the stands, receiving favors. However, they're expected to do this between every match in the melee, as their popularity rises... or falls.

During all of this, the ever-noble Pas d'Armes event is taking place. If you wander away from the event at any time, Gabranth will be there, at a nearby bridge, judging and / or fighting anyone who wishes to pass. Of course, if you wish to pass without issue, he will accept a favor from you. At the end, he'll be crowned with a white wreath of flowers, in a 'peace offering', and that is the sign that the tourney is done.

Not counting the partying into the night. No medieval camping trip is complete without waking up half clothed in a field, right?

JUST TELL ME WHO WON ALREADY.fine, fine, jesus.

THE JOUST

1st Place: Tony Stark, The Iron Man (Erroneously called 'The Man of Iron' at least once by an announcer. Several people in the stands asked if he was made of iron, why he was called that, what is he doing, why.)
2nd Place: Weary Winona of Wycome (Never took off her helm, which was shaped like a woman's face and painted like she was crying.)
3rd Place: 'Sir Sullivan of Bonneville'(Who might just be Edgard in disguise, however legend has it he's actually an undead noble trying to reclaim his family's honor in the joust. This legend was started by Jone.)
Crowd Favorite: Ellis, The Bachelor (He was, at one point, mostly just a mass of favors, which may have been why he didn't rank. The crowd screamed his name repeatedly and at one point threw flowers at him while he was riding past.)

THE QUINTAIN

1st Place: Derrica, the Rivaini Raider (The chant 'carry me home' began during her bout, and continued whenever she walked near the field.)
2nd Place: Derek, Son of Derek, of the Ostwick Dereks (The 'carry me home' chant continued during his bout, as some confusion arose over whether Derrica was a distant relation of the Ostwick Dereks.)
3rd Place: Madame Noir of Hasmal (A ghostly pale woman wearing only a black gown during her match, there were rumors she'd bribed the judges with money or a low neckline.)
Crowd Favorite: Beth Greene, The Lady of the Green (Rumor has it that she was a wild woman who came from the forests just to compete. This rumor was also started by Jone.)

THE MELEE

1st Place: Pierre the Virtuous of Hambleton (On a particularly sunny day, some suspect he only won because the reflection from his bald head.)
2nd Place: 'The Dark Jaguar' (Who may be Erik Stevens in disguise. A nighttime assassin, he appears from nowhere during a fight ~~usually with the aid of a conveniently placed piece of hanging black fabric but shhhh~~.)
3rd Place: Laura, Lady Nightshade (Rumor has it she threw her fight to get third place, but everybody who knows Laura knows she'd never do that... right?)
Crowd Favorite: 'The Acolyte' (A young man of roughly the same height and build as Benedict Artemaeus, the crowd really responded to how nervous, yet trying to be brave, he looked.)

THE OVERALL WINNER OF EVERYTHING:
Ser John 'the Anointed John' Pembroke of Tantervale
...who trained for this every day and is a professional Tourneyman, and whose win for Tantervale really lifted the spirit of the game to a high note, so how can we be bitter, really.
(Note to 1st placers in other events: this means he beat you in your event.)

[ooc Also final reminder that you don't have to have signed up for an event to have your character participate!!!]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"I like things naughty," By says.

A keen eye can likely start to tell the difference between Byerly's smiles: some of them are crueler, false, while others are more genuine. This one is true, a grin of real pleasure as By takes a bite of his own out of the other end of the sandwich and then bends down to feed Whiskey her own share.

Whiskey sits down on Gabranth's foot. She seems pretty satisfied with life right now.

"And besides, you took no oath to suffer discomfort, did you?"

“Longing for comfort is a sign of weakness.” Fussed over, flesh and bone and that length of blond hair on display, there’s no mistaking the depth of his own humanity— and the fallibility of it. The mortality of it. “To be witnessed in such a state as this would no doubt mar the image I strive tirelessly to maintain. The sole purpose of a Judge Magister.”

Yet when Whiskey seats herself upon his armored foot, the only thing he exhales is a lone, long-suffering sigh.

Some part of him, ancient in its make, is weaker than the rest.

He denies it by changing the subject.

“How is it that you do not understand the nature of my own respect for you?”

Edited 2021-08-17 09:08 (UTC)

Respect. Respect? The very word makes Byerly nearly crawl out of his own skin then and there, a skeleton emerging from flesh. Surely, surely, Gabranth is too good a fellow to feel any such sentiment for Byerly. Surely a man that handsome, clear-eyed, square-jawed and broad-shouldered, a fellow that knightly and chivalrous, can see right through the scrawny little liar standing before him.

"Why, my good man," By says with an easy (false) grin, "because I'm ever so disrespectable." Then he flutters his eyelashes flirtatiously, and invites him, "But you're welcome to tell me all about the things you admire," and he hopes that that's flirtatious enough that flustered Gabranth will do no such thing.

Easier: "And longing for comfort is simply the nature of all living things. Bodies want what they want. And sometimes they want a soft bed and a plush fur to rub their cheek against."

He sees a great deal. Orzammar chief amongst his memories, when the man before him hunched for hours across his given desk, scrawling away simply because it needed doing.

If he is a liar, if he laughs in jest, or divests himself from the yoke of his own responsibilities for a time here or there, it does nothing to change what Gabranth has already witnessed. What he is confident of.

“You cannot distract me.” He says, although there’s a thinness to the words that suggest he is still— beneath an iron gaze— somewhat vulnerable to the tactic.

“What is there to fear in knowing you have done so much for Riftwatch? In knowing your efforts have held us aloft in most dire times? You speak as though you crave shallow praise, and yet spurn the truth as poison.”

What is this, some sort of punishment? By doesn't generally think of Gabranth as particularly subtle, but it certainly seems like he's devised a clever little revenge indeed. The temptation to hurl the sandwich off the bridge and flee is strong - or to say something witheringly unkind, something cutting, something destructive.

"Oh," By says, laughing again (maybe he could hurl himself from the bridge?), "I'm a failure. Others would have done it better. Say, how would I go about challenging you?"

“You already have.”

Byerly had, after all, stepped in near enough to be considered a spectator no longer, entirely of his own volition.

And if there is a note of dry, invisible cleverness dwelling in Gabranth’s admission— Whiskey’s warmth now permeating the leather and metal of his boot— his stiffened gaze betrays nothing else of it.

Well. Look at that. It seems Gabranth is a bit of a bastard, after all. Who knew.

A battle of wits, and you're getting trounced. Shape up, Byerly.

"But my dear man," By says, making a grand show of horror, "I'm unarmed. I must have a weapon if we are to fight. Give me a dagger, won't you?"

"You remain sharp enough without one." He counters easily, batting aside the performative display before him with dour wryness.

But the scales are then silently reset; pale eyes fixed on Byerly without the weight of a sightless helmet barring them from one another. He blinks too little, perhaps that too unsettles.

"So I ask again: why think yourself a failure? Why wallow in the supposed certainty that you are undesired, untouchable— known to few and suited to less? Do you believe me misguided, or would you call me a liar for my care?"

Maker preserve me. The expression of studied innocence drops away, in favor of a dry, almost bitter smile. He tosses an elbow up on the railing beside him, and offers the sandwich out to Gabranth again. If he must endure this discomfort, then, by Andraste, Gabranth must endure comfort.

"Misguided," he answers simply. "You're not a liar. I know liars; you haven't the qualities of one." A hand held in front of his face - "If you did, you wouldn't wear your helm all the time."

"I am unskilled at it. I am not incapable of it."

As for the rest...Byerly is too perceptive to be incorrect in that regard. Much of what he wears is a shield, just as he makes himself into one by proxy: the thinnest line between person and purpose to ever exist.

But he is old enough to reserve that right.

"For it was once my duty to impersonate my own brother, and slay the king he served with all aching, ceaseless loyalty."

That -

What the fuck?

Whatever Byerly was expecting, it wasn't that. It takes him enough by surprise that his expression is unguarded - and unguarded, the horror is clear. For all By's pretending at dishonesty, disrepute, dishonor, for just a moment, he can't disguise this: open, fierce disapproval of such an act.

By serves a Queen, and would do anything in her service; it is unlikely that he'd ever be called upon to act as an assassin, but if called, he'd take up the blade. By detests his family. And if he got the chance, certain loathed members of that family - Yes; he'd smear their honor, even do underhanded things to saw away at their standing. Yet there's something terrible about that combination. He imagines what it would be like if someone - his kin - came in and pretended to be him, plunged a dagger into the heart of the Queen. How he'd shatter. The cruelty of it -

He gets control of himself, pressing himself back into his usual mold of droll irony. But behind that smile there's a flinty hardness in his gaze, a sharp focus. He is re-evaluating Gabranth - holding judgment until he learns more, because he knows so little, but...Maker.

"Who assigned that duty to you?"

Where Byerly's expression briefly reels, Gabranth's remains placid; he'd known the full depth of his own misdeeds long before choosing to lay them openly at Byerly's feet.

Perhaps the man had thought it foolish poetry, the promise he had made when they'd first met. The blood that cannot be washed away, the sins Gabranth cannot— will not— forget.

"Lord Vayne Carudas Solidor. Heir to the Archadian Empire, and the throne I served from the moment my homeland was erased in its totality." The words are stony, practiced and unflinching, perhaps even made callous by it: to speak of damning his own blood without adopting so much as a drop of visible guilt.

"His King had intended to sign a peace treaty with Archadia, ensuring the Empire would leave his far more insignificant stretch of earth untouched. When he was then slain by his most trusted subject— one who spoke openly of rebellion with blood upon his sword— the Empire was then forced to take control of his kingdom. Peace, and leverage alike, were lost in a single moment of treachery."

Swifter than the fires of war. Equally as cruel.

"And it was my brother who paid the price for such a strike. The betrayal he could not explain. The crime witnessed by those who saw him rend their world asunder."

"How many died for the loss of that peace?"

The words are sharp. They're also rather disconcerting, contrasting oddly with Byerly's foppish attire. In moments like this, it does become clear just how much this is a costume - a comfortable one, to be sure, well-worn, comfortable, not entirely false, but still a costume. No disreputable fool would look so hawkish when hearing tales of injustice. And no anger would spark in some indifferent rake at the thought of dead innocents.

It's still a lovely day. The wind rustles that tree, and coddled, well-fed Whiskey sighs and settles down further on Gabranth's boot. But Byerly doesn't look away.

“I cannot say.”

And it is not a lie. Many, but he did not count. Those forced to slums from the surface, those who lost much more than that, all ceded to an Empire they never knew had robbed them.

“But you would not be wrong to guess, I suspect. In any estimation.”

How ugly he must seem now, at odds with the beauty of a bright day. The scattering assortment of tokens and favors. The stolen face he still wears, even now.

You're no one to pass judgment. By reminds himself: for all of his pretentions, Byerly himself is a man without honor. A spy. If he's never done an act that vile, it's because he's never been asked to. Who knows what would happen if the day ever came that Her Majesty asked him to dismantle Riftwatch from the inside?

A genuine conundrum. Honestly, he doesn't know what would happen.

He takes a breath. In and then out. "Why did you do it?"

There is no grand moment of consideration. No flickering in his expression, placid and still as the lack of breeze in the air. The answer comes quickly, and easily; he's had an eternity to dwell on it.

"Because it was asked of me."

That gets a little bite of sarcasm in return.

"And you are, of course, an ensorcelled prince living under a geas, who must do anything asked of you. No request refused."

“Would you care to hear me justify it?” The words come quick as drawn blood, sharp as the edge of a blade— though it isn’t suffused with anger.

Only his gaze narrows beneath the shadow of his own brow, the product of baring old marks.

“To speak of the helplessness of a boy abandoned in a land so ruined— so bereft of survivors from the Empire’s wrath— that its very existence was wiped from both history and memory? Whose twin so fled and left him there, with a mother he could not save and a future that was not his own? To serve the Empire as its watchdog, to serve the very Emperor that cast his world into nothingness?”

There is no pity he expects. None he would ask for. None he craves.

“I could tell you of it all. It would change nothing: I did as I was bid to, and damned myself for it.”

"I'm no judge," he replies, an edge of sharpness in his voice. "Offer justifications if you will; as you said, it will change nothing."

He presses a hand into his pocket. Lifts his head. Looks at Gabranth.

"My interest is knowing who the man is who fights beside us. If he'd throw innocents into the fire here, as well, if bid to do so."

"There is much I would do, were you to ask."

The edge to his voice dies there at the start of it, his own shameless response. To say guilt was never his burden would be a lie— to say he doesn't feel it now would be an equal untruth— but pain and misery and the devouring of sin has always been his lot, what point would there be in pretending otherwise?

He bloodies his hands so that others never have cause to.

"Yet I am not the man I once was. Know that I have turned my blade upon my masters when they strode too far into the realm of atrocity. Know that the gods themselves condemned my destiny of defiance when I cut them down."

There's no comfort in this confession, not for either of them.

"I have sworn to serve Riftwatch; I shall honor that oath. Give me no cause to shatter it."

His mouth (thin, tense) relaxes just a bit. His jaw tilts up.

"Well, I certainly know nothing about gods or anything like that," he says. "Or destinies. Sorry for the lack of grandeur involved in this particular bit of service."

A sigh, and he props an elbow up on the railing behind him.

"But I'd prefer that a fellow plunge a blade into my heart rather than follow an immoral order." A shrug, and, a bit more lightly - "With immorality generously defined, please. I'm talking slaughter of innocents here, not killing me for smoking too much elfroot."

“You speak as though the force we fight does not claim itself divine.”

He snorts it, made irritable by such a cavalier dismissal— but that is indeed their way: Byerly fluid as water, Gabranth as immovable as submerged stone.

“And were I draconian enough to believe smoking a sin, Lord Artemaeus would no longer be with us.”

"No one likes a tattle-tale," By says dryly. "What if I didn't know that Artemaeus smoked? You should support the young fellow."

Don't be a narc.

Then another sigh. "Goodness is what I care about. True goodness. Not propriety, not loyalty, not rigidity. Not honor. Certainly not honor; I have none of that, myself. I want you to be a man who truly protects those who cannot defend themselves, and everything else can go to hell. That's my only real order."

“You would be blind not to know it. Noseless not to smell it.”

He can support him and be a narc, Byerly.

Still, though.

“But if goodness is what you desire, you ought have asked the Fade for my brother rather than myself. I am his wretched reflection. Lesser for all I lack. I can only offer my blade— and an accursed wellspring of wrath for those who would see this world undone.”

"That's the thing about the Fade," says Byerly with a gusty sigh. He seems to have recovered his usual insouciance now, pursing his lips and tilting his head back to the sun. "It doesn't seem to answer our pleas. Nor does the Maker. I mean, look at what we're stuck with - an incompetent Ambassador, a Commander with split loyalties, a Spymaster who trusts no one aside from herself, and whatever the Provost is."

A shrug. "If we got the greater of the reflections, I'd be genuinely worried something had gone wrong."

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