WAR TABLE MISSION: People of Riftwatch

[bouchonne]

WHO: Diplomacy interviewers and interviewees
WHAT: As outlined in this ooc post, Diplomacy members have been asked to interview other members of Riftwatch to gather information so they can have pamphlets written about them.
WHEN: Whenever
WHERE: Diplomacy office
NOTES: None as of yet

The Diplomacy office has a rather nice set-up: there are a few comfortable chairs and couches, and the offices themselves are well-supplied with coffee, tea, and drinks of a stronger nature. So, at the very least, the interviewers and their subjects will feel relatively comfortable during their conversation.

If things go according to plan, each interviewer will be set up in the office when their interview subject arrives. Benedict Artemaeus will have opened the door and shown the interviewee inside and will have gotten them a drink of their choice. From there, it falls to the interviewer to ask the first question.

Comments

[foolsmakeitcolder]

Though not precisely the poster guy for Riftwatch, Jude has a day or so, and the Diplomacy office had seen fit to interview him. As far as friendly neighborhood Rifters go, Jude supposes that he could be a friendly face.

Jude's chosen hot tea with honey; he's reclined back in his chair, comfortably taking up space until his interviewer arrives.

A warm, genuine smile breaks across his face when he spots Loki. He rises to shake his hand; it's not the first time they've met, and it's about as exuberant a greeting as he can measure to be appropriate between the two of them.

"Loki," he says as he settles. "I had no idea you were in Diplomacy."

[icasm]

Loki has had a trying time since he last saw and spoke with Jude directly. Some weeks? Months, perhaps. Losing time is a real concern, actually. Good things have happened but also terrible things, and he's doing his best to prevent himself from spiraling further, deeper into depression as a result. So. Tasks. Assignments, even.

Helping with the war effort. Or something.

Not a bad idea, he thinks. As a plan of attack against the myriad of things beyond his control, it is vague as all get out, but it's better than nothing. Or the alternative.

All of this to say that Loki is glad to see Jude in particular for this... project, in part because Jude exudes a sense of calmness. Of familiar and familial comradery. His smile at the greeting is tempered by an inner exhaustion that seems if not bone deep then rapidly approaching such, but he shakes Jude's hand with a firm, soft grip that has only in the last year begun to develop calluses.

"I'm almost afraid to ask which division you thought I would be part of, instead." A headtilt and Loki gestures. Sit, sit. "Do you need more tea before we get started?"

[foolsmakeitcolder]

Jude settles his hand on the back of Loki's, squeezing it lightly between his own, holding on long enough to look over his face. He looks like a man far too careworn, even here in this place.

He reluctantly lets him go, setting down on the other side of the table.

"Scouting," admits with a smile. "Or Forces. No doubt either would value a shifter. But I imagine that's for when diplomacy needs a bit of help."

Jude shakes his head lightly, and instead, slides his still-warm and mostly full cup across the desk for Loki.

"You look like you might need this more."

for edgard!

[deuselfmachina]

It's the novelty of the thing that has Florent here early and ready, with some pages and a quill and ink all set up on a table next to some comfortable seating. He is not currently seated, having wandered over to where the drinks are being supplied, opening a tin of tea and shaking it around as he contemplates some of the glass bottles full of liquor.

He is colourful, bright yellows and deep blues, riotous embroidery of all colours decorating his tunic, a silken robe of a flowy nature long enough to reach bare ankles. At the sound of someone entering, he puts down the tin of tea with a clatter, as if maybe he's been caught doing something he ought not to be.

[muckspout]

Edgard's eyebrows raise at the reaction of the person in front of him and takes in his attire. He momentarily feels self conscious about his own which is the same brown tunic and pants he's worn every day for the past five years.

"Am I too early or do you need more time with your.." He pauses a bit too long. "..tea?"

Is it tea? With that reaction, it probably isn't tea.

[deuselfmachina]

It's tea.

And it's forgotten, Florent turning to face him and offering a smile. "Edgard!" he says. Instinctively switching to Orlesian at first sign of an accent, he continues with, "Yes? I hope so," while moving on in, unmindful of any disparity of wardrobe, silks fluttering as he reaches out his hands in what will be an attempt to take Edgard's in greeting.

"If not, perhaps you will let me interview you anyway so I can practice."

[muckspout]

Edgard nods gruffly, the switch to Orlesian no problem at all.

"'s me. Edgard." He awkwardly allows his hand to be taken, but he's not sure what he's supposed to do with it. It just kind of lays there.

"Must be Florent." He responds to cover this up and he smacks him hard on the shoulder with the hand that isn't awkwardly laying in Florent's hands in greeting. It's supposed to be friendly.

[deuselfmachina]

"Florent Va—scarelle," you know, in case Edgard has ever heard of him, but does not seem to anticipate it. Also, that little skip in his last name from the smack to his shoulder, which earns a late laugh while he holds Edgard's hand.

Which doesn't need to do anything but be held as Florent goes to pull him towards the seating, a very friendly grasp as though they'd known each other for longer than approximately seven seconds. "Would you like anything to drink? I think we're allowed."

for gigi 💕

[sprent]

"So," Gela ventures, and shuffles through paper, "I've heard you authored a few poetry books."

Gwenaëlle Baudin is a very beautiful woman. She even smells beautiful, sweet and sandalwood-y, something that is almost as distracting as the curious tip of scar tissue that arcs across her décolletage to disappear into the neckline of her dress.

Gela glances up, and manages to keep from looking at it for a second time, but only just. She thinks she might have been more nervous had she known the woman, or spoken with her before now- as it is, she has no idea who Gwenaëlle is. What she's like, or her story. It makes all the difference, to her.

With an easy smile, Gela recounts, "I've done a little writin' of myself, from time to time. Nothin' I'd ever show to anybody; too nervous! What was publishin' your work like?"

[elegiaque]

It's strange, to be on the other side of the figurative desk. The literal one, even, since Gela needs somewhere to write even if Gwenaëlle has spread her lightweight skirts over one of the more comfortable chairs, considering the Diplomacy office with some interest as a place she doesn't spend a great deal of time for reasons that tend to become clear upon early acquaintance.

Raleigh Samson had not been nearly so finely accommodated, when she'd interviewed him. Probably it remains to be seen which of them is more or less forthcoming, but she supposes they might break even on cooperative— in neither case has anyone been pressed into it.

Into prison, in Samson's case, but no one had forced him to speak with her.

“Straightforward,” she says, after a moment, reflecting only briefly that it's hard to say it's a surprise where the interview starts when she'd come in with really no notion of where it might. It's a little akin to her old project, and with many of the same goals; she had, and she imagines they will, cast a wide net. “I have a literary agent in Orlais who handles all of that for me, and they were a personal recommendation from a friend, and had the connections I needed to make it happen discreetly. For anonymity, at the beginning, I never handled any of it directly, only through my agent. And there's no need to change that, now, just because I'm less anonymous; it works well.”

If it ain't broke, etcetera.

“She also handled everything that I published under my own name, mostly art critique until my brief foray into propaganda for the Inquisition during the time I was at Skyhold.”

[sprent]

Gela did a bit of research the night before, or rather, she kept her ears opened and listened to a few conversations, and she has her starter. The rest, she's winging, but she doesn't feel worried about it. If there's one thing that Gela loves to do, it's chat, almost as much as she loves to listen to other people tell a story. She leans forward eagerly across the desk, and writes, literary agent Orlais, and taps her pen a few times. Adds, agent handled anonymity AND published name propoganda art critic and then she circles art critic, in reminder.

Right. A quick breath out, before she scrapes some hair back from her face to tuck behind her ear (it curls free again, almost instantly). She says, "Congratulations, by the by. On the publishin'. You must be proud."

And, "I haven't read any of your work before," as she scans through her notes. "If I wanted to, where would you suggest that I start? Is all of your work available here for others to read?"

[elegiaque]

“Sure,” she says, of you must be proud. Moreso, when it was more recent and pressing; now it's combing back to experiences that she's years removed from, a thing that she's had to set aside for the war, and it feels raw and uncomfortable in a way that she's taken off-guard by, a sense of loss that she hasn't reckoned with suddenly exposed by a stranger.

It's not Gela's fault. She knows that. It's not something Gela could have predicted because it's not something that she knew, so there's no point snapping at her about it and she doesn't, just sets her jaw and looks at some point over Gela's shoulder, shrugging—

She is proud. It means a great deal to her, and at first she can't figure out what the difference is. How thrilling it was for Mhavos to know her work, why this grates, and it's — easy, actually, when she examines it. She hasn't published new poetry since she left Orlais, half a decade ago now, a different person entirely. She's written, still, of course, but it stings to be congratulated on a publishing career that's been stalled out for years by someone who might not care for her writing at all, once she reads it.

Is her most interesting accomplishment something she did years ago in another life? Believing that she'll live to do it again is still wobbly—

“My work isn't the sort of thing that you can casually recommend to a person you don't know,” she says, finally, “and I don't know you. You're free to seek it out and find out for yourself. I believe the library carries much of it.”

[sprent]

And because she conducts herself in much the same way through a twinge of sudden pain, Gela will always recognise a pinched nerve when she sees one. She presses her teeth together sympathetically, but doesn't say anything. Gwenaëlle is free to work through the realisation in silence; Gela is only waiting for the answer to her question.

A soft hum accompanies a doodle on her page: a bird. Or, the shape of a bird. Maybe something bird-like, but only to her. "Why do you say that?" She doesn't sound put-out. She adds, "Would you like me to ask you about somethin' else?" Because she was thinking that she would put a note about where to find Gwenaëlle Baudin's work should any reader reach the end of her interview curious, but if they're all under another name and not casually recommended...

Her pen hovers above the notes she's taken, ready to strike them out.

barrow!

[cozen]

The conclusion of all the initial greetings, small talk, drink-fetching, and chair-finding is that Bastien is in a particularly large wingback chair, sat sideways with his legs hanging over one arm and the wing as half a backrest, with his pen and paper on his thighs and a cup of coffee balanced expertly on the peak of his knee.

He is very at home in this office, for obvious reasons.

"I think the first thing anyone will want to know," he says to Barrow, whose name he is writing messily at the top of his notes, "is whether or not you were a cute child."

[thereneverwas]

"What a foolish question," Barrow replies indignantly, sitting tall and with a certain degree of dramatic self-importance, "of course I was cute. Chubby, had a mop of curly hair, you can see it in the Crossroads even-- I'll never be that endearing again."

[cozen]

"No," Bastien agrees easily, because who among them will ever be more endearing than when they were children? It's all downhill from there.

He scribbles chubby curly child under Barrow's name.

"And what did your family do?"

[thereneverwas]

"Farmed. Wheat mostly, but we had a cow and a few chickens, would sell any of the excess milk and eggs when we could. Or my mother would just give them away, because she was..."

He pauses, having struck an unexpected cord in himself, "...like that."

for Tony

[altusimperius]

It feels strange to sit in Byerly's chair, to perceive this side of Byerly's desk, but Benedict is determined to look and act as confident and buttoned-up as possible while interfacing with the one other department head who, by his own admission, presumably doesn't wish he were dead or down a hand.

That factor does make things a little easier, but it's difficult to conceal what nervousness is there, his quill tapping lightly on the edge of the desk as he waits for Tony to make himself comfortable.

"Thanks for coming in," he greets, all decorum. "There's coffee if you'd like some."

[propulsion]

Tony more or less bee lines to coffee as a first order of business, still standing as he pours himself a generous helping. He, on his part, is not nervous, terminally relaxed, only buttoned-up in the way his jerkin closes at the throat (to conceal any trace of glowing lyrium from his chest). Sleeves rolled, some smear of soot curling up along his wrist in the same path an open flame had taken earlier today.

"Last one of these I did was for Vanity Fair," he says, "which. Is a magazine. Like a—book. Pamphlet. That was about three-hundred grand. How much am I getting for this? I'm kidding, no one pays. Not unless you're on the cover, and I'd be asking for a mill at least."

He sits.

"You're welcome," he adds, late.

[altusimperius]

The rapid-fire commentary has Benedict opening and closing his mouth silently several times, only finding a moment to chime in after he's already formulated and then lost the next question, because something has disrupted his thought process.

"--a mill? What would you do with that?" Maybe he'd grind lyrium into powder. ...for some reason.

[propulsion]

"Give it to charity," obviously.

They're definitely talking about the same thing.

"So," Tony says.

flint!

[cozen]

"I will try to make this as painless as possible," is what Bastien led with when Flint first arrived. A nod to the polite fiction that anyone is all that pained by being asked to talk about themselves. At least when the stakes are low and the questions are refusable.

That was several minutes of drink and seating logistics ago. The counterbalancing of Flint's presence against his comfort with the room means that Bastien has one whole foot on the floor beneath his armchair, the other leg crossed, knee a platform for a writing board he is already writing on—needlessly—before asking any questions.

"Commander-once-Captain James Flint," he narrates, and glances up to evaluate (also needlessly) before deciding, "fifties, of Tevinter. Would you like to be more specific than that?"

[katabasis]

"Not if we can help it."

Having been somewhere in the neighborhood of five minutes late, Flint has apparently since made himself comfortable enough on one of the narrow sofa to deploy something like sounds suspiciously like a joke despite its bone dry delivery. Clearly, he's spent the day prior to this outdoors. The back of his neck above his collar has taken on the distinct tint of 'ginger-spent-too-long-in-the-sun' and, despite having changed into a fresh set of clothes before crossing over to the Diplomacy offices, the general malaise of work and sweat remains persistent about his person.

"Though if we desperately need a city," he says, filling a cup from the water pitcher near to hand. "I'm sure that between the two of us we can manufacture something compelling."

[cozen]

It's obvious and half play-acted, the way Bastien glances over at him, like a dog making sure it really, truly has permission to do something typically verboten, before he grins.

He suspects Flint suspects that Bastien might have heard, from someone, about something-something McGraw. But he also suspects this will become a very different sort of meeting if he gives any sign of recalling it. He doesn't plan to.

"Vyrantium?" he proposes. "Or perhaps you were born at sea. Washed ashore alone in a rowboat and raised by a fishmonger."

[katabasis]

The sound of that second one appeals, says the slant of his brow past the edge of the cup as he takes a drink of disappointingly lukewarm water (it's the wrong season for anything in Kirkwall to stay cold unless it's been subject to some enchantment). Though what he says is—

"No one would believe Vyrantium. But Kyrses would serve. That's the town that came up around the shipping yards north of Asariel."

It's the sort of place that breeds Imperium ships and insolvent sailors.