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

[atonally]

"Pretty sure," Redvers says. In most company, he'd leave it there. Not one for bragging, humble or otherwise, and especially not to people a third his age at most. But this company—strange, removed, living on an island days from the front with more books than blades—

Well.

"I stayed at the front," you know, where the action is (or was, until it recently redirected itself), "until I couldn't anymore." A twitchy movement of his fingers suggest the anchor's recent history of crackling and seeming murderous. "Now it's fine."

[inkindled]

No stranger to battlefronts, Matthias gives a nod of acknowledgement. A good place to be when you're up for fighting, that. And quite resolute and brave when you've got a shard lodged in your hand what like the Herald of Andraste had, but probably worse.

"Good for us. We did need more recruits." Well. He tips his head in a moment of exaggerated thoughtfulness and revises that statement: "Do. Always. One more's a good start. Joking," is tacked on at the end, lest this fellow think he's making too light of his misfortune. Then again, these days, what else is there to be but light? "I'd rather none of this, really."

[atonally]

Redvers hums. But it's warming hum. Who doesn't like a kid with a sword and some swagger? Maybe a kid, anyway.

He stands all the way up and then some, bending back until his spine cracks out the kinks it formed while he was leaning on the wall.

"How old are you?"

A shoulder crack, too, for good measure.

[inkindled]

Matthias doesn't get to his feet. Yet. He tips his head back a bit to watch the newcomer straighten up. Oo-er, tall. When his chin lifts a little extra, it is unmistakably a little defensive.

"Old enough." He pushes away from where he's leaning on the wall, squaring his shoulders. Still sat on the ground but maybe looking a bit taller, only not in a way what's trying so hard. "Why, d'you joke less with age?"

[atonally]

"Oh, yeah. It's the third thing to go, after your knees and your hair."

His hair is fine. His knees, eh, better side of middling.

"I have a theory," begins the real answer, "that you can measure how desperate any group of fighters is by their youngest or their oldest." It is a very simple, very commonsense theory, but he draws a shape in the air to illustrate it, unnecessarily. A big U. He pointer finger points out two potential dots, one for a young age and high desperation, one for a less young age and low desperation. "Face likes yours could go either way."

[inkindled]

Matthias does have to grin a little, appreciative of that first bit. Funny. All the same, he doesn't yet relax, lest that be interpreted as some laxness or weakness. His eyes trace the invisible shape, the distance between the two points.

"Thanks," he says, "I think. I'm," and what is a reasonable age his face might look? Can't very well give his actual age, which seems far too young by this theory. Eighteen (probably) and dragging down the average? That's not on. But he can't say an age that's too old or else he'll be known as a liar. So. "Twenty-one. So d'you reckon that makes us desperate, or reasonable?"

There's loads of people twenty-one who fight in battles and wars. The answer's got to be reasonable.