faderift | [CLOSED] This is not my beautiful house

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[CLOSED] This is not my beautiful house

WHO: Pariahs, Scoundrels, and Heretics
WHAT: A catch-all log for Riftwatch's satellite office in Kirkwall for the duration of Mother Pleasance's visit.
WHEN: Fantasy!March
WHERE: Hightown, the de Foncé haunted mansion
NOTES: Related to Mother May I; additional IC Assignments/OOC info.

Is the timing of this remote Riftwatch installation in Kirkwall perhaps too conveniently in step with a Chantry Mother's visit to the Gallows? And are the particular individuals assigned to temporarily work out of the gloomy Hightown mansion more or less the exact roster that someone might wish to avoid having engaged in prolonged conversation with the aforementioned woman?

No. And if anyone were to suggest such a conspiracy theory, there would be more than a half dozen perfectly reasonable points with which to counter such a paranoid claim.

As far as anyone need know, this posting is derived entirely out of a sense of prudent caution; with Tevinter's forces comfortably ensconced in the recently captured city of Starkhaven, it is only sensible to make any potential assault on Kirkwall by that same force less straightforward than the Venatori might expect.

The de Foncé Mansion

The mansion crammed into the corner of an otherwise reasonably respectable, albeit small, square of Kirkwall's Hightown has long been considered a nuisance and an eyesore by its neighbors. Long before Wysteria de Foncé started blowing things up in the mansion's basement and her companions began to curate a barnyard in its little garden, the house was held in the possession of a particularly curmudgeonly old man whose sole ambition in the years prior to his death seems to have been to stuff as much hideous old furniture, moldy books, and ominous paintings in the house as possible in addition to harassing his neighbors with threats of baseless litigation.

Suffice to say, this particular square in Hightown is well acquainted with this corner mansion being a source of what might be delicately referred to as 'some bullshit.'

Despite the outfitting done to make the place function as a secondary office for Riftwatch (much to Madame de Foncé's extreme distress; this is an infringement on her third amendment rights! Which she knows about because maybe she read the constitution while visiting New York, 20xx!!) and Wysteria's own efforts to renovate on a Riftwatch stipend, the house remains in a state of extreme dreariness. While a majority of the rooms have been organized and scrubbed down to their battered floorboards and peeling wallpaper, still others have been piled full to bursting with the hoard of ephemera left in the house by its previous owner with their doors shut tight and narrow windows shuttered, but otherwise surrendered to a thick collection of dust. The few rooms that have been fully refurbished have a faint air of desperation to them—gay wallpaper in bright Antivan styles, the best of the house's old furniture made to look slightly less shabby and so on.

It's a shame the weather is so miserable. The side garden—which must be very charming in spring and summer—might offer up a welcome relief from the morose interior. Alas, the grim forecast has managed to flood most of the planting beds and cast even that space in hues of drab grey.

Anyone who finds themselves quartering in the de Foncé house will be fortunate enough to have their very own gloomy bedroom which may either be nearly bare of furniture or so cramped with it that it's difficult to navigate. At least all the bedding has been brought over from the Gallows, so no one is sleeping on some dead guy's old sheets, and the expansive servant's kitchen has been stocked appropriately for cooking in. Just don't go down into Wysteria's cellar; she's growing something nefarious down there. With Wysteria's maid quitting on the spot when faced with the prospect of attending to all these guests, everyone will be fending for themselves when it comes to cooking and cleaning.

In addition to suspect fungal experiments, those living and working in the mansion will find themselves companion to: six chickens, an Avvar goat who lives indoors, a large brown dog who resembles a mop (who takes her job safeguarding the house very seriously), a small white dog resembling a nuisance, and an alarmingly large dog-sized Donark ant who may or may not be poisonous (it's fine! she's never bitten a person!), and a sullen poltergeist who takes exception to visitors. Luckily most of the breakable objects it enjoys flinging at people have previously been flung, so while ducking may be at a bare minimum there's no telling when a door will lock shut or a painting will attempt to fall off the wall onto someone while they pass.

The Work

Two of the least miserable rooms in the mansion have been converted into temporary working space for the duration of Riftwatch's quartering there. The library has been converted into a shared office space, containing a few worktables and chairs, a desk for Flint's use, and so on. What is likely meant to have been some kind of dining room is currently acting as a temporary armory.

For the duration of the time that this secondary Riftwatch office exists, those assigned to it will be expected to quarter within Kirkwall (be it in the mansion or otherwise) and report to these offices rather than traveling to the Gallows. Anyone who doesn't already frequent the mansion is barred from it. While those assigned to report to it may still attend to work in Kirkwall and beyond with their colleagues still living out of the Gallows, they are similarly barred from actually traveling to the fortress.

In the mean time, the work everyone will be turned to typically involves coordinating with the Kirkwall Guard to assist in reviewing, repairing, and bolstering the city's defenses should any attack occur. There are also refugees to herd, Tevinter supply lines in the Marches to disturb, and rifts still in need of closing. More than likely, those working out of the division will personally receive their orders directly from Flint rather than having them dispensed in any other fashion.

Everyone is very busy, and the house is very drab, and there should be little reason to think much at all about the Chantry Mother visiting the Gallows.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

His explanation of the book's provenance merits a smile, however fleeting, and she shrugs at the (unnecessary) question, "Retiring. Bon-papa keeps a room for me under ordinary cirumstance, nevermind these."

Which are, whatever else they might be called, not ordinary.

"I don't mind the female de Fonce's company," much, any more, "but I'm not taking reading suggestions from the poltergeist in the dead of night."

"The ghost is harmless, as I understand," is punctuated by the flip of pages between John's hands. A few feet away, an armchair twitches a few inches to the right. "But I won't fault you for seeking a bed elsewhere."

Ghosts aside, there is the difficulty of musty rooms, to say nothing of long-disused mattresses—

But that is a digression, one John doesn't entertain.

"Can I delay you?"

Not to speak in this room, but on the strip of creaky front porch where they are less likely to be overheard.

More convenient to stay where she's already a comfortably appointed room and belongings and habits— a topic she could probably expand upon, easily and aimlessly, but he sounds like he has something particular in mind to discuss and she studies him for a moment, deciding whether or not she wishes to be so delayed.

Possibly not. Even still,

“I'm on no urgent schedule,” is assent. “The walk doesn't become more compelling for having done it a few times, either.”

"I imagine not."

Having some experience in tackling the many flights of stairs involving in navigating Kirkwall, ascending from docks to Hightown, John is very aware that repetition doesn't instill any particular fondness for the journey.

The book is discarded. No new item is pitched after them as John opens the door, accompanies Gwenaëlle to the strip of front porch. Rain is sheeting down, pattering heavily in streams off the gutters. The door behind them is tugged firmly closed, before John takes a few hopping steps to the side to pat down his pockets for a small metal tin, a packet of matches.

"I'd heard that you had some discussion recently with my partner," can only refer to one man, really. "As to your potential for assisting me with my work."

It doesn't, immediately, track to anything that Gwenaëlle had taken away from that conversation; a few letters that she might have written, and Flint's obvious (to her) opinion that she shouldn't write them. No mention of Silver - no indication that it would involve anyone else, beyond that it became clear to her that whatever she was thinking of was better done by diplomats and not herself - no proposal of anything beyond what she had been envisioning, rather different to what John Silver now proposes.

So the polite absence of recognition, waiting for more information, is not pointed. It's only what it appears to be.

After a moment, when he doesn't elaborate to make sense of what he's talking about, she says,

"I don't think so?"

This is not, for the record, the response John was expecting. But it doesn't trouble him overmuch, because he is aware Gwenaëlle does not play games. She is painfully straightforward, so this response is not an attempt at playing coy, or evading the topic.

"You had the idea of writing to some lords, I heard," John prompts. "And an assortment of other acquaintances who would be more interested in hearing from you than they ever would be in hearing from me."

A gentle nudge of an implication. Go on.

"One lord," she corrects him, clarifying, and studies him with some clear bemusement. If he hadn't expected her answer, she seems bewildered by the turn of the conversation entirely, finally saying, "I wasn't having a conversation about your work. If Flint was, he didn't indicate anything about that to me - it seemed clear,"

she considers her words, carefully, stopping and restarting. After a few moments,

"I brought it up with him because he's talked about things like whatever it is that you do to me before, and I thought there were people I could write to about the Grand Enchanter specifically that might move that story further, faster. I thought I'd broach it, in case it fit with something he had in mind, or...I don't know what he's had in mind. But it was clear from our conversation that it wasn't a good or appropriate idea."

So the fact that Silver is bringing it up to her in this context, framed this way— she isn't offended, just confused.

"The moment's passed, anyway, hasn't it? I thought a recent, eyewitness sort of thing from Starkhaven would be useful to the rebel mages. It's not exactly news any more."

"We'll make a list between us of who you know. And who they might feasibly be able to pass the words along to," is an easy aside. A pin in the concept before it gets away from them, because there are other parts of what she's saying that must be addressed.

So the concept of who has which contacts is a stop on the way to—

"The moment passes when we allow it," he tells her. "We can certainly make something of it, particularly as the Divine is helpfully ruminating on how best to honor the fallen. People still talk, and you have reach in places I would have to work very hard to gain entry."

They have knocked into this concept before. But John has a better sense of Gwenaëlle now; he has a clearer idea of what might be asked of her, and perhaps she will entertain him.

"Say we write it together. I know you have talent, and between us we might manage something moving enough to cause a stir among Orlesian nobility and otherwise."

Her expression is increasingly dubious, as he speaks — where she had been leaning, more relaxed, nearby him on the porch, she is more stiffly held. Put off in part by the way he frames a thing she had imagined very differently, and in part—

“One lord,” she emphasises, “in Markham. We're not talking about Orlesian nobility, I intended— if you want to help me write letters to people I know, then fine, and I'll sign your name to them as well, but we're talking about the publishing house that I've connected Bastien with already, a mercenary band that had previous ties to the Inquisition, and the Avvar hold its former leader came from.”

People with reach, yes; when Gwenaëlle had started thinking of who she might write to, she'd been thinking of who travels, who trades, whose thoughts on her words might go further than their own heads. What they aren't talking about,

even Alexander, Orzammar-trained and Boneflayer-adjacent,

are audiences that would balk at hearing from John Silver.

“Maybe Cullen, if he's still taking letters from me. But if you want to cause a stir in the nobility, you're talking to the wrong person.”

Edited 2023-04-11 20:39 (UTC)

A hand turning in the space between them, an unspoken wait for that tension bristling in her. Between two fingers, a tightly rolled joint, still unsparked.

"Forgive me my misunderstanding," is a necessity, even if John's already realigning his considerations.

None of what she rattles off are small options. There is a wealth of possibility within this configuration, albeit possibility that stretches in a different direction than John had been envisioning when he had asked her onto this porch.

These names, John turns over as he might a handful of precious stones, a stack of coins over a stained table in a Lowtown tavern: a lord in Markham, a publishing house, a group of mercenaries and Avvar holds.

"Do you know what I've been spending coin on, these past months?" he asks, a minor change of tack as he lifts the joint to his mouth.

To Gwenaëlle, these are—

intimate connections, in different ways. Maybe not people to whom she can claim to be as close (as maybe she'd like to be), but who have played important roles in her life; who mean something to her, as individuals, that is significant. People who are not unused to hearing from her, accordingly, and connections she is inclined to jealously protect — her back is still up at the idea of crafting something moving to cause a stir, something that can't help but feel slimy and dishonest to her inherently, and after a confusing conversation of mostly questions she felt ill-equipped to even consider answering with Flint that has apparently led to this even more confusing conversation—

“Get to the point,” she says, flatly.

Even before she'd begun to look upon her old works in the worst possible light, the best version and lightest touch of what he seems to be proposing to her had been the part that always felt ugly to her, that had even then been frustrating, a tainting asterisk in something that she had, for a time, been proud of. Talking to Flint had made her sure that she was wrong to even entertain doing it again; how clear it is now that she'd wildly misunderstood that conversation and his part of it mostly makes her feel exposed and foolish, even less equipped for whatever the fuck this is,

it's an unpleasant state to remain in, on the scenic route. It is her regard for both men that stops her from snapping something regrettable and ending the conversation entirely, but she near to vibrates with the desire to do so.

A beat, in which the lighter clicks, sparks. John draws in a breath.

It has been a long day of ascending and descending steps. But that reality has little place in the midst of this conversation.

"I pick a sailor about to head out and trade them a fair bit of coin to speak to whomever they meet, whether it be merchants or sailors or their acquaintances in port about certain subjects that would benefit from the attention."

An old trick. It had been more effective in Nascere, a fishbowl of a place, where a few voices could carry far. How far does this move the needle of public opinion now, when it's a handful of sailors shouting into the wind?

Maybe little and less, but better than no shouting at all.

"The point is that the people you are speaking of, that might read your letter and carry word beyond us to people who neither of us know and may never meet, are of interest to me. Their voices carry, and may echo farther than the nobility. It is not a small thing to have access to."

Gwenaëlle holds up a finger.

“If I don't know what I'm talking about, I'm not writing it down for someone to repeat — either I personally saw it or I personally believe it, no exceptions, no matter how interesting a story it would be.” A second finger: “You don't see or contribute to any letter you aren't prepared to personally sign and take responsibility for your words in.” A third finger: “We don't play stupid guessing games about what the fuck you want from me.”

And then, perhaps, she'll think about it.

“I don't like the idea of granting access to people who matter to me in something that, if anything, talking to Flint made very clear I don't know how to navigate. Apparently, I didn't even know what conversation we were having — it doesn't fill me with confidence that we're talking about something I could responsibly do. That's not something I'm going to offhandedly agree to on this porch. I'll bear it in mind.”

(It's one thing to be reckless on her own behalf; another, entirely, to involve anyone else.)

Edited 2023-04-16 07:23 (UTC)

A weighing beat following after; John is many things, but he is always a man who is judicious about the battles he chooses.

Is it wise to sign his name? What does this name (affixed to him by Billy Bones, a man perhaps dead, perhaps alive, years gone regardless) drenched in blood and violence lend to the letters they may write together? Will it diminish what they might craft together?

But that is perhaps a conversation to have tomorrow, three days from now, maybe in an the office he so rarely uses, provided their visitor has departed and they can move freely about the Gallows.

"No guessing games," is first, the point John feels most important to be clear about. "Today's misalignment was my error, and it won't happen a second time. If we embark on this, all we put to paper will be done together. I've no intention of putting words in your mouth, only finding a way to carry the message forward in a way that ensures it will be heard."

A flick of his fingers, dispelling ash, drawing curls of smoke through the air between them.

"Think on it. We are all unsettled these days, and it's hardly conducive to new business."

Chantry Sisters and other, brewing uncertainties, known and unknown.

"But as we are making ourselves clear in this, know that I don't make a habit of forming partnerships with anyone I judge to be incapable, or inept. And nether does he," to reference the architect of their current circumstance. "If you wish to engage in this, believe I wouldn't leave you to navigate your way through this on your own."

“I can think of very few things that I'd wish to do less,” she says, not a further hostility but an honest assessment — being as frank with him as she's asked him now to be with her. “Wishing to do it has nothing to do with considering it. I'll consider it.”

If it might be worth something, truly—

that had been the thing that had made her step into Flint's office, turning it over in her hands, the idea that to do so might still have value. She's not convinced it's so, or that it'd be worth it, but she's at least willing to reconsider.

"Find me when you've given it due thought."

There is nothing to be gained by pressing the point. Her apprehension is clear to him, and he made a bad start. That they've come to some understanding, and she has given over some measure of accommodation is something.

He tips the joint towards her, a silent offer, as he says, "You'll at least have very little trouble finding me, for the moment."

Mired in this house, for the time being. (A self-imposed exile, but still.)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[CLOSED] This is not my beautiful house

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