open + closed.

[propulsion]

WHO: Tony Stark, Loxley, Marcus Rowntree, Florent Vascarelle
WHAT: Various activities!
WHEN: Throughout Guardian and Drakonis
WHERE: All around. Training spaces, griffon eyrie, late night kitchen, Kirkwall streets, and so on.
NOTES: Open prompts for all four in comment headers below, also a place for me to just stash some closed stuff. If you want to RP with me any which way, hit me up here or in plork.

Comments

elfbomb for Tony Stark @ research office

[ghostaught]

Without a research assistant to make an appointment with, the Lords of Fortune were forced to make an entrance.

And while any Lord of Fortune worth their fortune does know how to make a proper and striking entrance, given the circumstances, theirs was not a very grand entrance.

They are, after all, only three elves, in various states of swashbuckly and careworn. And this is only an office--rather small, as offices go, possibly disorganized (perhaps not disorganized by human standards; humans tend toward hoarding, in Fivera's very limited experience, which is often misconstrued as disorganization) (and this is a good thing, as it is a tendency that makes it so much easier to take what needs to be taken).

And their arrival to this particular office had a very long lead-up--ask for directions, make a few wrong turns, go up and down the stairs several times, find the right door, knock, and, well, enter. Its limited grandiosity might have been further spoiled by their very obvious clattering in the corridors and stairwells, at times so near to the research offices that the Provost might have been wise to their imminent arrival. Or perhaps he was not, but it is likely that he was. He seems a very quick man.

Now they are seated, pleasantries exchanged. This is Fivera, this is Xiomara, this is Evelyn, hello, hello, hello, Lords of Fortune, this is the Provost of Riftwatch, one of the Division Leaders, someone of importance, hello. On the floor there is a cup of old coffee which little Fabrizio--set down, free to wander, lucky boy--is now drinking from. Fivera keeps her eyes on him instead of the Provost, who, really, she finds too quick. Like a shivering rune or a spring snow or a bee that stings and is gone. She should not be thinking so much about bees, but she is.

Because no one ever taught her to be coy, she says, "We have an artifact."

Oblivious lucky Fabrizio keeps drinking. Being a small and well-bred dog, he is not very good at drinking, possessed of too small a jaw, too small a snout, and too curled a tongue. Coffee slops on his chest and his white fur is beginning to brown. Fivera's nose wrinkles.

"It is desired."



[lmk if anyone wants anything changed xoxo]

[biggame]

"By creepy Tevinters," Xiomara clarifies. In an hour a two, feeling like things are going to be alright, she'll be more buoyant. Right now her energy is jittery instead. One leg bounces rapidly. "They were going to pay us so much, but we decided—"

What they decided must remain a mystery, until someone else takes up this passed baton, because she is noticing little lucky Fabrizio and his coffee, and thinking about what something that gives palpitations to elf-sized hearts might do to dog-sized ones.

She leans down to steal it from him. For a moment she looks like she might drink it herself, but then she holds it out toward the Provost instead. Provost. Odd. She is not subtle about trying to check out his hands in the process.

[delven]

"We decided if they want it enough to pay the frankly outlandish sum we quoted maybe it would be bad for them have it," says Evelyn (who, having neither belts on belts of coins and jingly things nor a small dog, had made the quietest entrance of the three). There is a dissatisfied pursing of the corners of her mouth though that suggests she agrees with this decision but grudgingly, as if it has caused her some great personal cost. (It hasn't. Only money. But so much money. And Fabrizio, of course, but that was not part of the original equation so doesn't count here.)

"I mean really, if it had gone to auction the most we could've reasonably expected was half what they offered? Maybe two-thirds if we'd worked things a bit and if Desmitt was in a mood. But still. Nowhere near what they offered. It was just too good to be true. It had to be a trap."

training yard. closed to kostos.

[luaithre]

In the wake of the blizzard that had seen off the winter, Kirkwall is back to its standard of cold and wet. Everything feels a little uniformly grey, but at least there's no sleet or ice-filled winds to drive them indoors. The training yard needed some maintenance before it could be useable, but flagstone has been scraped and mud cleared.

Back to normal.

This corner of the training yard has been taken up by the sounds of the solid thumps of wooden staff connecting against other wooden staff, or sometimes human body. Marcus is not fully armored for battle, wearing instead a quilted gambeson and thick woolen sleeves that do something to take the edge off bruising. There has been, up until this point, a deliberate working back up to strength in the wake of the battle for Starkhaven, slower to bounce back than he would like.

It had been his better arm that the dracolisk had disabled, and it was explained to him that resting would return him to quicker overall health than not. Resting did not, however, assist in upkeep of training.

So he's a little slower.

And will likely lose this sparring round, out of breath as they circle, more defensive in tactic, until he thinks to strike out and try to clip his staff across Kostos' knuckles, favouring speed over force.

[exequy]

Regardless of whether or not Marcus was looking for someone to go easy on him and his freshly recovered wound, that's what he got. At first. More than half out of a desire to piss him off. The other half was a sore loser's desire to be able to claim a loss didn't mean anything. But Kostos' resolve in that venture has crumbled with every blow Marcus has managed to land, until now, sweating clammily in the padding he wishes he'd taken off, his knuckles clipped and stinging, it dissolves into nothing.

His face doesn't contort in fury; it's already set into clench-jawed and angry focus. But his answering strikes—a swipe, momentum carried around into a jab—aren't playing around.

[luaithre]

The swipe is countered, at the cost of only adding to the momentum of the jab that slips past defenses like a knife—

Thump. Marcus grunts as the blunt end of the staff strikes his midsection, more a forced expulsion of breath than anything else. Detecting shift in attitude through both the comparatively more solid strike than ones previous, and whatever fine signs (more tension bundling into muscle, a more assertive stepping forward) he can pick up through sheer experience.

Has the good grace to think: that's fair.

Steers aside the next hit, and by the time their staves clap together in a cross strike, hard enough to feel rattling up his bones to his shoulder, Marcus moves to twist free of what could next be a pinning down of weaponry while he says, "Enough."

workroom. closed to cosima.

[propulsion]

"Hey, so,"

is his opener, less intrusive than the fact Tony goes to sit up on the edge of the table that Cosima is working at. In his hand is a slender scroll case, although it is only held incidentally rather than being brandished for her focus.

The space is currently empty of anyone else. The Research division is a small if not exactly tight knit unit, and the Gallows are large, so cornering Cosima on her own means that Tony doesn't necessarily have to go through the formalities of scheduling a meeting. He prefers a spontaneous ambush, when possible. Currently dressed for a day of work in brisk air, with only the dimmest shine of lyrium blue escaping his collar.

"I have a pitch. Two pitches, but I'll do 'em separate, because. I don't know how I wouldn't."

[youwonscience]

She glances up from a chart she's making (she never thought she'd be so nostalgic for Excel, to be honest), not ungrateful for a break. He knows well enough that left to her own devices she's not much for field work. As a result, it's not unusual for her to be taking advantage of the quiet while her colleagues are out, a cooling mug of tea from the kitchens serving in lieu of a paperweight. Her space is more full than cluttered, though, and there's enough room for him to perch without displacing anything.

Sitting back in her chair, she says, "Hit me. What's up?"

[propulsion]

"Something I've been kicking around," he says. Tony has also brought his own cup along, charged with coffee that has definitely cooled down swiftly in drafty winter fortress rooms. Memo to self, invent the microwave.

He sips from it now, gestures. "Cross-cultural dialogue. I mean, we've been kind of parcelling out rifter-flavoured wisdom in little morsels over the years, and—look, it's my normal impulse to dazzle and amaze? But the objective is probably educating a pre-Enlightenment universe about biology and illness and disease, first, and other stuff after.

"And I don't mean in house," he adds. "Markham, Orlais, Antiva, somewhere with the kind of people who are more curious about reality than afraid of a little heresy, and would probably love to have their names attached to reverse-engineered scientific discovery."

tonyspark. open to all.

[propulsion]

A midnight snack adventure is not as fun in medieval times as it would be back home.

No gazing into the fridge, no tubs of dairy-free ice cream with deep veins of caramel to chase with a spoon, no sundry leftover Chinese to judgmentally sniff. These missing things are more keenly felt ever since their little Crossroads adventure and Tony tries not to think about it as he shuffles through the larder and kitchens attached to the dining hall.

He can be found arranging something of a charcuterie board, currently sawing a knife through some cured sausage, with a few other items procured and gathered on the scratched up kitchen table. He is dressed, rather than wearing the Thedosian equivalent of bunny slippers and terrycloth gown and hair rollers, but there is something of a rolled out of bed vibe that is stamped apparent upon him as he works. The coziest item he has, which is pretty damn cozy, is a luxurious fur coat wrapped around him against the chill.

There is also a bottle of wine, uncorked, and a cup just next to it.

And during the day, his office hours tend to be in the morning time, and one can observe that the reason being is the direction of the sun, which doesn't glare too brightly through the window. It instead fills in the office space nicely, a comfortable warm light to see by blanketing over the organised chaos of desk, work table, and

an iron golem that is standing directly in front of the door, inside his office, in such a way that an attempt at opening it will find you striking the stationery, unmoving figure after a few inches of leverage.

"Yeah?" he calls out, not looking up at the dull thump of wood against metal.

And then, on any rainy day—

"Hey, hold up," shouts Tony, from somewhere behind wherever you are.

And wherever you are is the main internal foyer that leads out into the courtyard and beyond, and with the absolute friggin downpour happening outside, presumably steeling yourself for a quick drenching, no matter the quality of your boots and coat. Tony is dressed for an outing himself, smart coat and vest and boots and gloves and scarf, and in his hand, what appears to be a walking stick wrapped in some form of canvas.

This item he hefts, and with a little fidgeting, the canvas blooms open into— look you know what an umbrella is, but maybe your character doesn't.

"Wanna hitch a ride?" is the offer, once he's slung it up over his head.

midnight snack

[armd]

Abby is doing the equivalent of coming into the kitchen with headphones on after a run: humming to herself, towel drawn around the nape of her neck, hoping for something to eat before she saunters off in the general direction of the baths. When the nightmares come back in full force you have to double down on the tried and true methods: working out about it until you're so tired you fall asleep and dream comparatively less.

Nobody else is up this late, let alone doing things. The hum abruptly ceases as she registers the sound of a knife hitting wood. Tony's silhouette rushes at her when she turns the corner, still listening hard.

"Fuck-"

Whewf! Got her. She sighs, jittery, on the balls of her feet. "Sorry. You scared the crap out of me."

But don't mind her. She is here for bread.

*adventure

[propulsion]

Tony pivots in place without moving his feet, knife held loosely in hand, a long slender thing with a work-smooth wooden handle. His luxurious fur coat over his simpler linens and wools kind of bristles with the movement, and the light is low enough in here that a splash of lyrium glow is visible peeking up out of his collar.

"Oh hey," is easy, realigning his spine back to the table. "Don't be scared, I'm just making, uh. Circles."

And resumes the task, trying to get them thin, like they could be peeled out between pressed plastic. Beneath the bulk of fur coat, invisible tension draws up his spine, barely conscious to it.

Also on the table: a half-undone wrapping of cheese, a third of a bread loaf, a pot of something, all waiting to be charcuteried.

office hours

[notathreat]

Ellie's coming by to drop something off. What isn't important, probably just some papers in somebody's outbox, mostly to have an excuse to stretch her legs and go do something else for a minute.

And to ask Tony a slightly more personal favor.

So Ellie knocks on the doorway one day in early Drakonis, then opens the door a few inches, only to bonk into the golem and jump.

"Uh, sorry." Not sure why she's apologizing to a golem, but. Better safe than sorry. "I had a question. If you have a minute."

[propulsion]

Tony barely glances up as the door goes thunk, returning eyes to the letter in front of him to finish the sentence. Without looking, he picks up the copper rod laying on the desk next to him.

"Nice work, Fred. Back it up."

With a smooth whirring of metal parts, the robotic construct reverses, metal raptor feet on stone, knight's helm head giving away nothing but the faint blue-toned glow through the visor. He reverses back several feet before Tony says, "Aaand stop," freezing him in place.

The door is now openable.

Tony tips aside in his seat to see past Fred's bulk. "I can do you one and a half. What's up?" Realigns, shuffling pages aside.

nocturnal snackventure;

[grindset]

"Prototypes," says Viktor, between tiny bites of bread. "Just a few exercises in impracticality."

Upon finding Tony in the kitchen, he'd actually ducked back out, thinking maybe the preoccupation that tends to go hand in hand with nighttime wandering would give him an assist in avoiding detection. Or that maybe they could just, you know, pretend. No luck. Sheepish return slink aside, it was clear he wasn't being squirrelly for any reason beyond Because; sometimes you'd simply rather crawl under the windows to stay out of sight than answer the front door. It's like that.

Plus it's embarrassing to have bed-head in front of your boss. Viktor definitely got up and put his leg brace back on over his pyjamas. Also: shoes without socks, bony ankles scandalously on display, a robe, and a blanket draped around him like a shawl. The full granny.

Now leaning hip-first against the broad edge of the counter, he's been pulling the fluffy middle out of the bread's severed heel and delivering it to his mouth pinch by pinch.

"We built miniatures, once—teleautomata." Roughly three feet long, says the spread of his hands, crust and all. "Staged a race for a fundraising gala. They crashed spectacularly."

Talking about cars has gone a long way to relaxing him into the idea of hanging around looking like this.

[propulsion]

If Tony is a few glasses deep into the wine bottle he'd twisted open sometime before Viktor's first and second arrivals—

Well, it's basically impossible to tell from casual observance. Any slight slip in manners or articulation, or the more languid quality to his motions can be credited to the late hour, for Tony's handling of food and sharp objects is all careful, precise, steady. Currently, the knife is laid down as he goes about topping up his cup, a deep red vintage that was possibly reserved for something more important than a midnight feast.

He's heard the nun's been turning this stuff down, so, he won't feel too defensive about his lack of guilt, should it come up.

"Sucks we didn't get to fieldtrip to your world," he says. "Probably a hell of a lot more translatable tech you wouldn't have to go through all the trouble of explaining by yourself."

It could probably be twisted into thinking that Tony only means the wild advancement of his own world make its inventions too sophisticated for Thedas, except how he never really says that, even when true. He's had enough time here to know there's nothing strictly linear about the way scientific development finds its path, and the extent to which the prominent civilisations of his home turf have advanced without the presence of magic only means they've been operating hamstrung.

Anyway.

He offers—not the wine bottle, but the concept of sharing a drink, via the tipping of the object in his hand. He'll need to go find a cup.

To that point: "Thedas can prob'ly do better than, you know, becoming dependent on machines that require finite, atmospherically damaging fossil fuels to sustain itself. Hoping we can skip that part."

office

[ashing]

It's not the first time in his life that John's attempted to open someone's door and found it hitting against a barrier after only a few inches. Usually that's for when he's been expected, though. As far as he knows, the owner of the voice on the other side didn't know he was coming, and he hadn't done enough here to warrant being barred anyway. Yet.

"'Research' needs a doorman, huh?"

Dry, bemused, the quote marks audible.

[propulsion]

"Obviously."

Because, look, it just doormanned.

Tony tips his head, though, in a natural kind of Pavlovian response to a voice that is unfamiliar both also—familiar. Accent, cadence, observable even in that short sentence. He blindly picks up Fred's rod he has resting at his elbow, mutters something that has the robot backing up out of the way.

On John's side of things, he'll hear mechanical whirring and the sound of heavy, metallic feet on stone.

"Can I help you?"

rainy day.

[portalling]

“Please.”

Stephen had been standing at the edge of the courtyard, looking a little forlorn and reluctant to start walking into the chilly pouring rain. Once upon a time, he’d held back the entire lake next to the Avengers compound, so shaping this rain so it avoided his head should have been nothing, but he couldn’t get the magic working delicately enough. He never thought he’d be so relieved simply to see their working umbrella prototype. He needs to start wearing a cloak of sealskin or something, like a barbarian.

So. He wedges himself beside Tony and ducks his head under the canvas, and falls into step beside the other man. It’s oddly comfortable, this camaraderie; the more that the weeks have been inching on after the Crossroads, he’s discovered that they’re settling into some kind of working normal. Colleagues. Days whiling away doing research, heatedly debating some base magical concepts, Stephen grilling Tony about the ins-and-outs of the thaumoscopes and the ARRIVED system, and then, even being trusted to wrangle a particular nun without being shunted off to Hightown detention.

And herein lies the one bright side of being out in this interminable downpour: most people in their right minds are staying indoors, Mother Pleasance included.

With that thought, he says, apropos of nothing: “Have you noticed that that woman always seems to appear out of nowhere? She’s like a jump scare.”

marcus rowntree. open to all.

[luaithre]

It would be easy to feel like perhaps the Captain of the Watch harbours some resentment for you, if you find yourself on guard duty on a night like tonight.

But every night is like this, silver sheets of rain coming down, lashing against unfeeling stone. It is silent, cold, lonely work, unless you manage to come by a friend out there to exchange some pleasantries. There are the occasional overhangs and sheltered spots where one can find a place to shelter, and Marcus takes up one such spot, back against the grey stone and a cigarette between his fingers.

If memory of the guard rotation serves you correctly, he had not, in fact, assigned himself a shift this evening. But here he is, dressed in layers of grey and dull green, a cloak with the hood flipped back off his head while out of the rain.

Up in the eyrie, Marcus regularly comes in to check in on Little White Monster, where only one of those words in her name is a falsehood. Her gravelly screech sounds fierce, cutting through the ambiance of scuffling feathers and contented growling, but it's only in impatient response to being fed dead rats, which Marcus takes out from the bucket by the tail, and flips into the air for her to catch.

At one stage, something goes awry. Grooming long white feathers with the wired brush catches somewhere, and she reacts, as large predatory animals sometimes may. She twists, fast, catching her beak up against his calf, just piercing fabric above where his boot ends.

He jerks backwards, and his stumble into a fall is only slightly controlled, catching himself backwards on his palms. More due to the seeming advantage in this sudden spark of conflict, Monster rounds on him, eyes bright and wings flaring, her shriek now piercing enough for the other griffons nearby to stir.

Reflexively, Marcus raises his hand, summoning a short gust of smoke and ash and ember, which does something to drive her back a step, but evoking a second shriek as she hackles and puffs up.

Hopefully he doesn't get eaten, because that would mess up my continuity.

And then the order comes through, and for the length of Drakonis, Marcus (along with some others) finds himself confined to Kirkwall. Which is an odd way of thinking about being barred from the Gallows, which was once a prison. His prison, even, for a time.

And Hightown is hardly very prison-like, and not wholly unfamiliar to him. Between duties, he slips out into it with the restless energy of a man who does not really find himself surrounded by friends, at present.

He'd thought to bring with him a few passable things, and so is dressed nicely, neatly, as he moves through Hightown. It rains just as well up here as it does down there, if with less mud in the streets, but he doesn't mind. Rain speckles his nice coat and sleeks through tied hair, and he is without his mage staff, and so almost fits in.

Nearly. There is still something about his manner that feels like intrusion. The scarring, maybe, or the open curiousity with which he looks at everything, or his willingness to walk through downpour without minding while most denizens dash through or keep to shelter.

Beyond roaming the streets, he enters stores, creating puddles of rainwater on fine flooring as he presides over wares, asks questions, unnerves merchants. The usual.

Hightown

[cozen]

When Marcus emerges discomfiting his latest shopkeeper, Bastien is leaning against the stone facade, barely sheltered from the rain by the architecture above, with a cigarette he is struggling to keep from becoming so damp it goes out. He has a hand held over it, every puff a two-armed motion.

In Hightown, he fits in so well—in his way, without any attempt to mimic the lords and ladies, only to look like someone who'd have a good reason to knock on one of their doors, with even his mustache failing to distinguish him, because mustaches are incredibly fashionable, did you know—that overlooking him entirely would be forgivable, except there is no opportunity. He is budging from his post as soon as he hears the door.

"I was not following you," he begins with, "but I did stop because I saw you going in." A looking-over, and he sounds a touch admiring: "You are so wet."

[luaithre]

There is not too much momentum that Marcus needs to kill as he exits the shop—something of vague enough purpose which had been half the reason he went in, but has exited with having actually purchased something small, wrapped in a linen that is going into his coat pocket.

Looks, surprise not doing very much to move his expression save for where it pinches a little tense, a quick flick of study that zigzags over Bastien. Doesn't so much as relax as return to status quo.

He is more expressive at that observation, an eyebrow ticking up and glance angled downwards at where rain water streaks and soaks dark grey coat, rendering it darker in patches. "Mm," Marcus agrees. It is not actually very comfortable, that he be so. "I wanted to go through the," there is a titled name for it, capital letters, but he doesn't know it, so just tips his head in an east direction, "gardens, that way, while they were quiet."

Due to the rain, with only some brave souls with parasols for company.

And then, "You stopped?"

crystal. closed to julius and petrana.

[luaithre]

[ It is late, when Julius' crystal glows.

Very late, to the point that even they will be asleep. Marcus' voice is familiar in the way that he is, of course, familiar, but also for the distinct quality of sleep-roughness. ]

Are you awake? Hopefully not.

[ He will wait long enough to see if he's answered, before turning this into a message for the morning. Content to reach over and take up his glass of wine he's poured himself. ]

[overharrowed]

Yes.

[The answer is prompt, though quiet enough that Petrana might not be. While soft, Julius's voice doesn't suggest Marcus's message woke him, at least, absent the transitional fuzziness he tends to when coming out of sleep.]

Why are you awake?

[ipseite]

( quietly, through julius's crystal and at a slight distance, )

I'm awake.