( open ) let me tell you a secret —

[delphian]

WHO: Tsenka Abendroth & some strangers.
WHAT: Tsenka dreamwalks through the Gallows.
WHEN: Over the course of this month.
WHERE: Asleep in your beds.
NOTES: You do not have to have commented on my OOC post to participate. Details within. Chicken horse not guaranteed.

HOW THIS WORKS.

Under ordinary circumstances, Tsenka is an expert in the delicate, painstaking manipulation of a dreamscape in order to extract the information that she wants—in this case, she is seeking knowledge of Riftwatch, the Inquisition, Kirkwall, the state of things and the safety of mages within the Gallows presently. Unfortunately, in this case, she is also fresh off about two and a half years in captivity during which she was often kept drugged out of her mind and exhausted from sleep deprivation; these are not ordinary circumstances, and she is not at her best. Her attempts to guide dreamers to what parts of their psyche she wants to see may not be as deft as they ordinarily would, and she'll have less patience for dreams embedded in less relevant information.
I will write Marcus's starter, but your character's dreams will begin like any other; set up your dreamscapes below, and await the chicken horse.

Comments

[luaithre]

Marcus follows her to the window, bare feet on stone, and then the rug which protects bare feet from stone. He stands at her shoulder and looks out into the woodlands, seeing what sense can be made from tangled branches beginning to lose their summer's vitality, especially the further south she gets.

He looks to her, then, at that name, a confused silence following. Then, "He's of Riftwatch," a little stilted. "Why should he be of help?"

[delphian]

“I've my doubts,” can come as no surprise, or at least significantly less of a surprise than Vanya Orlov's name in the first place. “He was the Nevarran mage's lover. And the Nevarran mage,” the traitor, the turncoat to the Venatori, “an optimist.”

Imagining that the lover he'd left behind would be thrilled to hear his name, and moved to aid the woman he'd exerted himself to free—that to hear Antosha repeated might not undo whatever trust could be gained.

[luaithre]

Dreams are strange things. There's no shift to the landscape, the room, the air, but that cosy warmth that Tsenka had been attracted to seems to stir. Some black hostility at the mention of a Nevarran mage lover in connection with one Vanya Orlov, although it lacks the specificity of a personal offense.

He has heard of mages laying with Templars, of course. That it's not always drenched in fear when they do. He knows, something, of what Nevarra is like.

Still.

This feeling passes like a gust of smoke, quick to disperse. "Your Nevarran mage friend took a Templar as a lover," Marcus says. "You don't need him. He's not important."

[delphian]

It disperses; something similar coalesces in the space it leaves behind, Tsenka's eyes cold and hard—

“He was not my friend,” doesn't sound like a new decision, actually, because Tsenka has at no point considered Antosha or Myron's contributions to her rescue anything other than the absolute least either of them could do, “and I'm going back to Minrathous to beat the shit out of him.”

A jagged, furious laugh: “The traitor would send me to a fucking Templar, I will kill him, Marcus.”