open

[atonally]

WHO: Redvers & You
WHAT: Traditional "new arrival hanging around the Gallows" log
WHEN: Nowish
WHERE: Kirkwall
NOTES: Wildcards welcome. If you want prior CR with a Starkhaven Templar and don't want to wing it, hit me up via plurk or discord or pm.

I. WAITING FOR THE FERRY

The pain in his hand subsides by the time he reaches the docks. So what exactly is the point of going any further, is what he's contemplating, sitting on his heavy trunk (left crooked and in the way, where the cart-driver and a charitable passing dock worker helped him unload his things) and watching the dark waves. If this is close enough, he could stay in a tavern. See about the city guard in the meantime, if the Chantry won’t pay for lodging while he’s trapped here.

The ferry is occasionally visible in the distance, when the moons peek through the clouds. Headed for the Gallows now, and then it will come back. There’s plenty of time to leave. So Redvers contemplates it, and he thinks he’s very serious about it, but he doesn’t move until someone else comes to a stop on the same dock.

The look he gives whoever it is is wary interest, not unfriendly. His glowing hand is hidden in a glove; his unmistakable Templar armor is hidden in the chest he’s using as a bench. He’s dressed to travel in the cold.

“Someone told me people go over to that island sometimes and never come back,” he says, which is true—someone did tell him so.


II. IN THE GALLOWS, AROUND

Redvers doesn’t go join the city guard. He goes to the Gallows, talks to whoever he needs to talk to to be allowed to stay, and finds himself sleeping on a bunk bed for the first time since he took his vows.

His uniform comes out in the morning, but only so he can rearrange the contents of his chest for a longterm stay. The pieces left haphazard on the empty bed across from his are indistinct in bundles of oiled cloth, but the neatly folded red and white robes that go with the plate are a dead giveaway. So’s the lyrium kit and his careful use of it, sitting on the bed with the box open on his knee.

Otherwise—it isn’t that he’s hiding it. He’s tired, he’s dressed for being off duty, and he isn’t announcing himself by name and title when he enters a room. That’s all.

He wanders around the parts of the fortress a new, involuntary arrival is allowed to wander around: the courtyards, the dining hall, the baths. Eventually he’s standing at the edges of one of the training yards—just to watch, bent forward with his forearms on a wooden barrier while others shoot arrows at targets or try to non-fatally pummel one another with practice weapons.

If someone joins him (or looks at him long enough), he waves his glowing green hand less in greeting than demonstration.

"It had to be my sword arm."

Not that the anchor prevents holding a weapon. He'd have cut it off by now otherwise, is what he means.


III. WILDCARD

Comments

II - inside, lmk if you would like any adjustments

[sohighandwild]

At some point in his wanderings in the fortress, a young woman turns the corner and her expression immediately registers delight, as if he's a long-lost friend found again. Her dress and, when she speaks, her accent suggest an Antivan origin rather than an otherworldy one, despite the green glow in her right hand to match his. They've never spoken, but that seems irrelevant as she approaches him without hesitation and starts without a traditional greeting.

"Excuse me, are you busy just now?" He doesn't look busy, and the question is evidently at least somewhat rhetorical. She continues: "I need help with something, and you seem perfectly suited. It should be quick." She seems to fully expect an affirmative answer without further explanation or introduction, waiting expectantly.

[atonally]

Redvers could not possibly look less busy. There also could not possibly be anyone behind him, leaned against a wall as he is to observe the quiet comings and goings in the library, but he turns his head halfway toward checking anyway.

So. Alright.

"Are you about to ask me to carry something heavy?" he asks, in the Starkhaven-accented tone of a man to whom that happens all the time. Even now. No respect for the grey in his beard and the bad back that could easily, theoretically, go with it.

[sohighandwild]

"Not initially, though I though I could think of something heavy for you to move, if you're in the mood for it." She does seem, briefly, to consider his arms and shoulders. "I don't need someone strong, I need someone tall."

At this point, it can be noted that she is nearly a full foot shorter than Redvers, give or take some footwear.

[atonally]

Redvers needs another moment to consider it. To consider the whole of the situation, really: being trapped here by his own hand, in his hesitation to join anything relegated to a bunk bed in a room shared with a pack of hormonal young men, a walking mud pie, and one older fellow who seems normal enough but is named Mobius and thus cannot possibly be. Fed but not paid.

Fed isn't nothing, though. A bed's a bed. He's not doing much of anything else. And she is very short, and plenty charming.

His sigh is the sort that sounds like stop sulking, self, more than it sounds put-upon.

"In that case," he says. Alright.

[sohighandwild]

"Good man." She takes off back in the direction she'd come, expecting him to catch her up, or at least fall in behind her. "I'm Ket, by the way. You're new, yes? I feel like you would have been hard to miss, before."

Because of the whole tall and brooding thing, yes. She's also not not flirting, but seemingly more as a reflex than anything, more actively focused on the task she's roped him into.