open | brain heat meme

[cozen]

WHO: Anyone
WHAT: Nightmares, slumber parties, etc.
WHEN: Throughout Justinian
WHERE: Kirkwall and surrounding areas
NOTES: Ignore the first prompt if you're bothered by bugs. Also, while this is primarily to help people RP about their nightmares, feel free to use it for any kind of RP you want. (I.e., you have permission to set up a truth or dare game at the slumber party.) Talk about dreams OOC over here

This month, our heroes' sleep is getting more and more troubled. Here are some excuses to write about it.

I. SLUMBER PARTY: Mid-month, an infestation of hardy, prolific Antivan fleas requires everyone to avoid spending prolonged periods of time in their bedrooms while local alchemist Lloyd Meyers eradicates the bugs with his proprietary smoke bombs (and an equally proprietary flea bath for the Gallows' many pets). While the rooms air out for two or three nights post-treatment, bed rolls are available on the floor of the unstaffed dining hall. Sleeping outside in the courtyards is also an option, but a sudden squall of a thunderstorm will drive people inside on the second night.

Footnote: Characters who live in the city are welcome to join this slumber party anyway. Maybe they miss the ferry ashore, maybe they're afraid of tracking fleas into their own homes, maybe they already did track fleas into their homes and Lloyd is treating them too, etc.

II. ROOM SHARE: Does the thought of sleeping in the dining hall with all of your coworkers make you break out in hives? Have you missed the ferry on any other evening of the month? Lowtown has inns, and Riftwatch has a docks-side warehouse with a few side rooms outfitted as bedrooms. But there are only so many rooms available, so you might wind up sharing a room (or a bed) with a friend or whoever is nearby and desperate.

III. CAT NAP: A lack of sleep—whether it be from the nightmares, the workload, routine insomnia, or staying up too late playing Truth or Dare during the Antivan Flea Incident—might make a cat nap on a desk, in a reading nook, or over breakfast particularly appealing. And bad dreams don't need more than a few minutes to get rolling.

IV. CAMP OUT: Investigating reports of enemy scouts in the mountains, traveling along the roads to a neighboring city-state on a diplomatic errand, looking into reports of weird magic on the Wounded Coast, or heading north to provide some assistance to the war effort? All might require pitching a tent and bunking down for the night with your colleague, whether you like them or loathe them.

V. NORMAL NIGHT: If you’re already sharing a room or bed with someone, you don't need this post. But you can still use it for your nightmare threads.

VI. BETTER IDEA: Do whatever you want. Live your dreams.

Comments

[favoriteanalyst]

"Join the club," he says with an exhausted type of amusement. "I keep a blanket at my desk just in case. It's not any better here than anywhere else, but at least it's generally quiet."

He hums and leans a cheek in propped hand. "Time for a terrible question: want to talk about it?" Terrible and potentially rhetorical. He's closer to Ellie than Abby, that much has been made clear if it wasn't already apparent, so he would hardly be offended if she said 'fuck no'. It's not like he particularly wants to talk about any of his, even the ones that don't immediately out his history.

[armd]

For a moment Abby really thinks she's about to cry. It almost gets her, her eyes burning, blurring, but she breathes in steadily and manages to hold it back. She waits until she's certain she's not going to lose it before lowering her hands again.

Clearing her throat, she concedes, "I guess. It's not exciting."

She's assuming he understands a bit about their world, if he's spoken to Ellie. "I keep dreaming the infected followed me here through a rift, and attack the Gallows, but none of you know you can't let them bite you."

Sometimes nobody wakes her up and she has to watch them all writhe painfully on the ground as they turn, paralyzed by grief, "And I never get there in time to warn anybody."

... Gotta be some symbolism there, right? She sighs, and knuckles the space between her brows. "It's so stupid."

[favoriteanalyst]

It's okay if she cries. But he doesn't say that. They are probably nnnnot at that point, even if he personally thinks it's okay if anyone cries in front of him. Lets her take her time.

Surprised that she lets herself say anything. "Hey." Gentle, when he drops his hand to lean across the table. "It's not stupid. You lived that in your homeland, and now that you're here, where we don't have anything like that outside of darkspawn--it's not stupid. The real problem is that you can't logic away dreams." He shrugs. "Like you know you and Ellie would be able to warn anyone from anywhere. You know your infected aren't here. You know that, generally speaking, most people don't want to let things bite them. Doesn't make the feelings go away."

[armd]

Abby glances up the moment he drops his hand on the table and for a wild moment she thinks he's going to try to give her a hug. Thankfully she doesn't flinch or anything stupid like that. She blinks, and eventually, relaxes again.

"... Yeah." He really gets it. It's relieving, actually, to have somebody sit here and say this to her instead of reacting out of pity.

"How do you make them go away?"

[favoriteanalyst]

"Distraction." There's a small shrug of his shoulders. "Time and distraction. That's really it. You know how dreams usually are. Maybe remember details in the first few seconds of being awake. Maybe remember some feelings associated with through the day. And by the time you're tucking in for dinner, it's all gone. And that's if it isn't all gone by the time you actually roll out of bed. It's only worse because...it's all worse."

Because it's all nightmares. Because it's all nightmares every night, every time they sleep, and that sticks. This isn't normal.

[armd]

Distraction. Well... Abby kind of already knew that, it's kinda the whole reason she has hobbies. She doesn't know what she was expecting, exactly- for him to give her some surefire way out of having shitty dreams all the time? If somebody knew that secret they would have passed it on through the Gallows the moment this all started.

"Yeah," she says dully, dragging a hand over her face, "I guess."

A happier subject is in order. "What's your favourite kind of distraction?"

[favoriteanalyst]

"I could be boring and say reading or praying or training. The expected kind of answers." The ones that are less frowned upon by some. "But sex or a really good drink have to have all those beat. And I don't mean just drinking until you don't remember anything; I mean an honest to goodness good drink."

He grins. "Unfortunately, neither of those last too long."

[armd]

Abby is noticeably surprised by this response but she recovers quick, grins approvingly. "I knew you weren't just a nice Chantry boy."

Sex and a good drink, huh. Yeah... yeah, those aren't bad ways of coping at all. And because one of Abby's favourite distractions is gossiping she adds, "Got any tips for where the good drinks are kept? I only really know the Hanged Man."

Which is... it's... fine...........................

[favoriteanalyst]

"I'm full of surprises. Nice Chantry boys are boring. What's life without a little blasphemy and rule breaking?" He has stories. Stories he will not tell Abby at this juncture, but they exist.

"There are so many places to drink in Kirkwall, it's shocking that there's anything but piss here. Which is fine, I'll throw down a coin for pisswater ale if I still need a drink, but that's not the same. The best tip though isn't so much a question of where, but a question of who to ask and how to ask. You tip well enough, some places might be willing to break out a bottle from the back. And, unfortunately, any place where they'll actually regularly serve anything good are all in hightown, which means more expensive."

Coin is water to businesses; that's just the way the world works.

"And dwarves. Dwarves know their drink."

[armd]

"Dwarves, huh..." Abby has seen dwarves in Kirkwall before but she hasn't spoken to one. Considering her track record with talking to elves perhaps she shouldn't ever try, "I'll keep it in mind."

Maybe. Honestly, if she's got coin she isn't going to waste it on something like alcohol. She'd rather buy food or books, or treats for the dog.

Offhandedly, "Friend of mine back home used to make sangria if we could get him a couple bottles of wine. It was so fucking good. He'd make a batch and trade a full cup for all sorts of shit." She sounds tired. Wistful. "He had to water it down to make it stretch but nobody cared."

[favoriteanalyst]

"Drinks weren't disallowed where I was, so long as you weren't drunk or stinking of it on your shift." Which probably does a little bit more to tarnish that Nice Chantry Boy image. "Though it would be discouraged. Sometimes you couldn't really get the good stuff, whether for lack of coin or lack of being out and about to the good places, so you'd get people making their own."

Yes, fermenting homemade hooch stashed under your bed is a tradition that spans worlds and dimensions.

[armd]

"Yeah. You know what I'm talking about."

Abby grins suddenly. "It's pretty hard to get the good stuff where I came from, it kinda depends on how searched out the area you live in is. Houses are first come first serve, so." Only makes finding a secret bottle of mezcal all the more exciting, to be honest.

And when he says on your shift like that– "What were you doing before you came here?"

[favoriteanalyst]

"Before here?" She hasn't specified, but given the topic, she is likely asking about his circumstances (re: personnel-made hooch). But he won't get into that. Questions like that would only start to get vaguer responses, like 'I worked for the Chantry', and then let people make their assumptions from there. Astarion had whittled him all the way to Seeker, funnily enough.

"Was more a general laborer. Putting up buildings, patching leaky roofs, stuff like that." Even when not swinging a sword or wearing heavy armor, he was at least keeping in shape. "Good, honest work. Seasonal work. You'd get farms that needed hands in the springtime, or chopped wood in the fall, too."

So none of that's a lie. That's some of what he was up to, before Starkhaven started to burn, before the long caravans across the Marches. (Plus, you really don't want to show up drunk to jobs like that.)

"So, I'm trying to imagine what it would've been like," he then says, redirecting back to Abby's world. Less out of a feeling he might get caught out, more out of genuine curiosity. "Search the houses, yes, for blankets and food and whatever useful materials might still be there. That'd be the first thing. Any military outposts, since that would give you the addition of weapons." Picturing it is difficult, because he only has Thedas to compare to. "Taverns for whatever dried goods might still be in the stores, and the booze of course. Chantries are bound to have some goods, and tend to be big and sturdy enough to hold a lot of people if you need to make camp indoors. Apothecaries, for medicines. I don't see much use of hitting, hm," how to phrase it, "financial institutions. Depends on the state of money where you're from, but sounds like goods are the more important trade."

Thedas does not have office building highrises, multi-floor hospitals, whole blocks of apartments, specialty stores, supermarkets. That's a completely different world.

cw mention of suicide

[armd]

"... Really?" It's not that she doesn't believe him, it just doesn't gel at all with the book-reading Chantry image he's frequently promoting (or what he looks like, curiously absent of any defined muscle from what Abby can see of him). And he's off the subject again so quick that she knows that's not everything, it's a very unsubtle dodge. She'll let him have it, though. For now.

"Are you trying to build your own apocalypse plan?" It's amusing to her at the very least, "I can't say what it was like at the start. Outbreak day was years before I was born. But yeah, we don't use money. Whatever's in the highest demand will get you the most in return- first aid supplies, alcohol, lighters. Batteries. Condoms." She adds the last one in offhandedly, but.

Hey, it's true. They're all expired, sure, but they're better than nothing. "Best places to hit are cities," she continues, "'Cuz nobody had time to pack their shit. Way more stores, too. There'll be more competition, sure, but there's usually enough to go around.

Otherwise you have to start looking through suburban areas, and they're usually full of infected because that's where most people got stuck and died in their houses. Or killed themselves because they didn't want to go through it." And honestly, fair enough.

Those are Abby Anderson's scavenging hot tips.

[favoriteanalyst]

Hey, he might not look like much, but he's stockier and more fit than his clothes might show off. Sword and shield and armor over decades is a pretty good workout.

Not that she said so, so not that he'll say, but. Could be they should spar sometime.

"The last time there was a Blight, it didn't reach all the way across the Waking Sea, to here in the Marches. But if it ever happens again, if it's up here..." He frowns, sighs, shakes his head. Nobody ever knows how to react because it happens so infrequently. And leaves so little in its wake, from what he can tell.

"One apocalypse at a time, I guess. Corypheus is bad enough. Red lyrium doesn't seem so prevalent, thank the Maker, but the blighted stuff could easily destroy a town if left unchecked." He doesn't actually know what the infection from Abby's world entails. But he might liken it to a red lyrium infection if he ever does. "Doesn't hurt to be prepared, but hopefully we'll be able to keep it from getting to that point. Might have to dig through whatever's left of the taken cities when we beat him back. A few tips and pointers won't go amiss."

[armd]

Abby sighs and raps her knuckles on the desk. "Don't say that." Don't... tempt the Blight here, she's not ready to deal with that. She's really enjoying this infectedless existence thanks very much; one apocalypse at a fucking time.

"But don't worry, I've got a lot of tips to pass on. Ellie too, so." May as well implicate her in this. "Double the expertise."