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open.
WHO: Everyone
WHAT: Late night evacuation drill
WHEN: Early Harvestmere, don't think about it too hard
WHERE: The Gallows
NOTES: See OOC note below.
WHAT: Late night evacuation drill
WHEN: Early Harvestmere, don't think about it too hard
WHERE: The Gallows
NOTES: See OOC note below.
Lashes of rain batter at unyielding fortress walls. It is dark, quiet, and peaceful save for all the rolling thunder summoned from over the sea. It is a good evening to be warm in bed.
Until it isn't a couple of those things.
Wherever you are sleeping (or working) late at night in the Gallows, you will hear it: an incessant and noisy bell ringing, handheld, clanging and clanging loud and obnoxious from the top of each tower and downwards, lingering in the key residential halls until there is sign of people emerging from their rooms. Gwenaëlle has been assigned to harass the Central Tower, while Abby takes the Mage Tower and Matthias is assigned the Templar Tower. Even if you happen not to be in either of these places, the muffled cacophony of bells is liable to still reach you.
It may take a second to realise what's happening, and how real this emergency is, but in the past week, all will have received some suspiciously timed updates as to evacuation procedures, including the protocols surrounding what to do when the instruction is to shelter in place (because they do, after all, live in a fortress).
The first step is moving without hesitation when the warning bells ring out loud. The next is to descend the towers, down dim stairwells lit by lyrium glow, in as orderly a fashion as possible. From there, it's a matter off finding the correct subterranean chamber (tonight, indicated with lamplight) and waiting it out.
At least, this route does not take them outside.
In the basement chamber will be Edgard and Marcus, the former equipped with a medieval clipboard and the latter marking the time in his head as people enter, while semi-supervising the other man's work and guarding the exit. The space is large enough to comfortably fit the whole company, although it is also cold, dripping, and musty. There are places to sit, chairs and tables both, and a few blankets if you find yourself underdressed.
And if you attempt to leave too early, you'll be bid to wait it out a little longer to accommodate and cause no disruption or confusion to late comers.
To encourage this, there are a few bottles of wine set aside along with some lukewarm tea. Stay a while.
[ ooc ; feel free to top level at any part of this interaction! I will handwave the cooperation of anyone who doesn't tag in or assume they are out of the Gallows, so don't feel like you have to, but there is also a comment below for anyone who deliberately wants to be on the naughty list of no-shows. ]
Matthias, Templar Tower || OTA
Or at least, that's the intensity and focus with which he is performing this task. He takes the stairs at a methodical pace. In front of closed doors he stops, to ring the bell with particular focus and intent, very direct and personal and, yes, loud.
"Get up! Get up! Get downstairs!" It's a general call, but if any sleepy bedraggled residents of the tower poke their heads out to see what all the noise is about, Matthias makes sure to shout it in their direction, and ring the bell in their direction too.
And--no one asked this of him--but he makes sure to be loud on the stairs as well. The steady clomp of his boot runs underneath the ringing of the bell, steady on the way up, rushed on the way down as the momentum of his steps carries him along.
no subject
One of the bedroom doors opens (noted on the list of residents: one S. Strange, who hadn’t been in occupancy just a month ago), and a bleary-eyed middle-aged man pokes his head out. He’s in his socks, the neck of his shirt unlaced, rumpled and barely dressed. He’d practically fallen out of bed at the noise, jarred from the still-unfamiliar surroundings, waking up with the most panicked jolt he’s experienced here so far.
“What? What’s happening?” Strange asks, squinting at that very loud, very insistent bell and the very loud, very insistent teenager brandishing it. “Do we go to battle stations, or—”
no subject
Ding, dong, ding, dong. He's still ringing his bell, so he's got to shout to be heard over that din. But that's all right, he's perfectly capable of shouting. This is one of the newcomers, isn't it? Not someone Matthias has seen. He had reviewed the roster before the drill, looking for Templar tower residents who might need particular encouraging to leave their warm beds and stumble down four or five flights of stairs. Which one is this?
Ding, dong, ding, dong, ding, dong, dingdongdingdong--
"C'mon, c'mon, downstairs! Basement! I can't stand here chatting all day, mate, c'mon!"
no subject
These stupid medieval clothes.
He does dart back into his bedroom, though — likely causing an aggrieved reaction from the bell-ringer — but then he emerges a moment later with a red cloak bundled into his arms. Some people grab their pets. He grabbed this item of clothing.
“Alright, fine. Fine.” Strange falls in beside Matthias in the hallway with a wince at getting closer to the noise, but he walks briskly despite his undignified appearance, his besocked feet. “Where’s the fire? Literally. This place’ll be a death trap if it reaches the stairwells.”
no subject
Like, a red cloak? Seriously? And now he's worried about death traps?
Unfortunately, the scorn imposes a distinct disadvantage to Matthias being able to think of a logical place the fire might be.
"It's," ringring, ring, ring, flagging slightly, come on, Matthias, "above us. The roof. Coming down." Like fires do, and this bit at least he can be confident on, knowing fires so well as he does. "Not yet hit the stairs but we've got to get out, still. What's so important about a cloak that you'd risk a death trap for it?"
Ring ring ring ring ring. He's found his footing again--er, ringing.
no subject
And he doesn’t miss the slight edge to the boy’s voice, and his mouth purses, knowing he was in the wrong. The sentimentality wasn’t smart. But he’s still shaking off the cobwebs, the instinctive sense that he could be outside in the blink of an eye or an emergency, having to re-learn to take things more slowly.
“It’s not just a cloak,” Strange says, a little tersely, as he sweeps the fabric round his shoulders and pins it in place. Then, amending: “At least— it used to be more. It was a sentient magical artifact before I came through the rift. Had its own mind and everything.”
He can’t bring himself to let it burn, not when it’s one of the last vestiges of home he has. So the Gallows is going to be treated to this absurd sight: a shoeless man in PJs and cloak. Very smart, very dignified.
no subject
He watches the sweep of the cloak as the stranger throws it around his shoulders. His eyes narrow, as if he there might be some sign of magic still on it. There isn't, of course. It's a bloody cloak. Well-made, maybe, but no runes or anything sewn or painted upon it, no glimmer or glow.
"What d'you mean, it had its own mind. It could, what. Speak?"
no subject
“It doesn’t have a voice, but it could fly and levitate and gesture. A rudimentary intelligence — I’d never been able to fully suss out how much, but it could obey commands, act of its own volition, and it showed concern for others and could rescue them in a pinch. It’s saved my life enough times, I’d be an asshole to leave it behind to burn. Even if it’s… not the same, any longer.”
It is so, so stupid to feel so downtrodden about the loss of an item of clothing. But so it is. Apparently he’d grown more attached than he’d realised.