open 💀 a very skeletal delivery

[evilstick]

WHO: Harrow and you??
WHAT: The ferryman doesn't get paid enough to deal with this shit
WHEN: Time is fake, but vaguely before the Emergency Mage Meeting
WHERE: The dungeons, anywhere else your heart desires after
NOTES: Please only one person per dialogue prompt, but feel free to wildcard me.

[ It is both stinking hot and pissing rain when the ferryman arrives at the Gallows bearing what is decidedly not a member of Riftwatch. A member of Riftwatch might have left him in a better mood (might). A member of Riftwatch might have had the decency to tip (unlikely). But a member of Riftwatch would surely have at least accompanied their own weird cargo to their own weird island, instead of slapping a note on top and turning tail to run (eh).

Said cargo is not a member of Riftwatch, but it is only somewhat heavier, perhaps significantly more awkward to carry, and yet still approximately person-sized — a white boulder with a soggy envelope hastily nailed to its surface. Naturally, the boulder cannot be a boulder to have crossed in a row boat from the docks; its bleached surface is subtly textured, striated from side to side in curving lines like the arcs of a centipede's ribs. The envelope reads: ]

To be opened only by the highest presiding leader of the Inquisition
^ the organization previously known as the Inquisition, presently titled Rift Watch
occupant of the Gallows fortress, Kirkwall, the Free Marches, under pain of death and eternal dishonour.

---

To Whome It May Concern,

Herein lies the Lady Harrowhark Nonagesimus, Reverend Daughter of Drearburh, Blessed Progeny of the the Reverend Father Lord Priamhark Noniusvianus and the Reverend Mother Lady Pelleamena Novenarius, Heir to the House of the Ninth, Mistress Penumbral....

[ ...There are six more lines of this before— ]

...currently alive, and obligated to remain as such through the natural course of her dominion. Thereby the House of the Ninth charges the Inquisition ^ Rift Watch to watch over this lady; to preserve her life, health, sanity, and comfort to the fullest extent of their ability; and to treat her with the utmost dignity and respect befitting her station.

Failure to fulfill this most sacred duty shall result in the Inquisition ^ Rift Watch rendering an enemy of the House of the Ninth in perpetuity and beyond the very reaches of death. Every member of said faithless guild— [ A smudged word, ] —iolation of this covenant shall be [ Another, salt water spreading ink, ] a most notable coward, a false and foul vi— [ A splash obscuring, ] a base, scullionry—

[ Blessedly, the rest of the page is lost to the Waking Sea. Only a smeary scribble of a signature in a quick, rickety hand — O... —genad — graces the bottom, followed by two hasty blurs and a final: ]

P.S.S.S. ... —ift resulted.... —iver of magic unkno... ...–ddress said malignancy posthaste.

[ Whatever that means.

Eventually, presumably, someone is given the happy task of hauling the unwieldy hunk of osseous matter out of the fed-up ferryman's ferry and into the dungeons; someone else may be charged with assessing whether there is in fact a living person (and not a more insidious threat) inside who may require a healer's attention; or perhaps several someones are simply set on guard, to wait the span of a shift or two among the hours or days until the general concentration of rift shards within the fortress does its work. The Mistress Penumbral doesn't seem to be in any particular hurry to wake.

But eventually—

ca-CHUNK-a-crack goes the exoskeleton, spiderweb cracks swiftly reducing the structure to crumbling until all that remains is a rather large cloud of bone dust, which settles itself in comfortable drifts upon all the other dust the Gallows' dungeons have accumulated over the years — and upon the lady herself, giving her the general appearance of an ashy, blackened log that's just taken a gulp of two-day-expired milk but would rather hold it in her mouth for the rest of her life than let anyone suspect she hadn't sniffed it first. She doesn't say much.

Eventually, someone with the authority to do anything about the dungeon situation might come along, but in the meantime, or even afterward, she has a number of demands: ]

You, what is your rank and station?


[ Or, later— ]

Am I permitted a quill and parchment?


[ Or when she feels she has been waiting quite long enough (multiple minutes)— ]

I shall require crisp copies of any and all rudimentary research your organization has conducted into these— anchor shards, do you call them?

Comments

[evilstick]

Of course.

[ —is equally reluctant. If she isn't where she had meant to go, the lightning quelled between her shoulder blades leaves a limited number of possibilities. His accent isn't Tevene; not all Corypheus's cultists are. The air is cooler down here, thick with brine; there are other places that might be the case. ]

I had come through Antiva.

[ Through, not to. ]

[wearyallalone]

[He's already said Forces division, and he doesn't think it's a concession to tell her something she'll probably be able to deduce with time.]

Someone shipped you to Kirkwall.

[Presumably. He supposes she could have shipped herself to Kirkwall, posing as someone else, but that seems oddly baroque to Vanya.]