[Open] OH MAN! WHIZBANGS!

[axetrovert]

WHO: Karlach, OTA
WHAT: Arrivals, first meetings, misconceptions, research, and definitely hitting things.
WHEN: Throughout Firstfall
WHERE: Gallows, Various
NOTES: Let's cook with fire, baby.

Comments

OTA

[axetrovert]

The newest addition to Forces is a bit hard to miss.

A tall and broad Qunari woman with one broken horn and a disconcertingly backlit ribcage, Karlach is all smiles.

I. The Ferry.
It starts with a stranger approaching on the Kirkwall side of the ferry docks, one big hand lifted to hail anyone who seems likely to take a ride over to the gallows. She's someone road-worn and dusty, the edges of her clothes frayed and bearing a few bloodstains that haven't yet been washed out.

Also, a greataxe strapped across her back.

Maybe that's part of why the ferryman looks a little jumpy.

"Hey! You're part of Riftwatch, yeah? Mind telling this hardworking gentleman I'm not the first wave of an invasion?"


II. A Friend

The days are getting colder, and Karlach is very, very warm. She's currently sitting in the dining hall (or the workroom, or the common room, or an alcove in the Gallows), utterly helpless, staring in bewilderment at the large furry ginger cat stretched indolently across her heated boots.

Obviously it's illegal to move, but Karlach is gently and somewhat despairingly trying to. Unfortunately, every time she tries to kindly talk the cat off of the toasty-warm place across her boots it only squirms in feline ecstasy.

Presently, Karlach attempts to nudge the cat off her foot and take a step. It only yowls plaintively at her and immediate puts itself underfoot, so Karlach's forced to hobble and stop to avoid kicking it. Then the cat sprawls across her boots and imprisons her all over again. By the deep sigh Karlach resigns herself with, this is far from the first time.

"Please," she says helplessly to anyone who looks at her long enough. "Distract her. Pick her up. Something."


III. Research

Research office. Lab. Workshop. Something. Not too difficult to find. Just... nervous, is all. Nervous, hopeful and excited. Karlach bounces on the balls of her feet, shaking her hands to try to convince the fire licking along her palms to die down.

Deep breath, K.

She raps quickly on the door so she won't leave scorch marks, and raises her voice.

"Research department?" What? What does she say? How does she explain? "You lot take walk-ins?"

I. Ferry

[muckspout]

Edgard takes a long sweeping look at this stranger that ends at her greataxe. A grin pulls at one side of his mouth.

"How d' I know you're not?"

A fair question.

[axetrovert]

Karlach skims a considering look down the front of herself and tips her head to one side, reaching up to tap her intact horn and leaning onto her back foot.

"Ah." Is a very pointed realization.

She looks like she might be trying to repress a smile, but the urgency's still there.

"Got me there." She pauses, struggling to think of how to explain herself. Nope.

"I promise I am not here to do any murders. And yes, I'm hearing it, and I know that that's just what a murderer would say-"

[muckspout]

"spect a murderer would just...murder." Edgard muses.

"An if you were some kind of assassin, 'd probably be more subtle."

He motions to the ferryman and then lowers his voice.

"That one likes to sing, so not too surprising he's a bit of a coward. Where did you come from though?"

[axetrovert]

I'll own that I would be a hi-lariously unsubtle assassin.

[It's just facts. Karlach's brow creases over the singing bit, but that's something to ask about later.

Instead she leans in to better hear Edgard, nodding her slightly shaggy head in all seriousness. Like she understands.]

Tevinter.

Which as you might have guessed, is helping the situation not at all.

[Back to being statistically likely to be an assassin.]

II

[sprent]

The unlucky chosen is Gela, who had, until now, been enjoying dinner and a show. She dutifully smears a bit of fat off the edge of her meat with her thumb and gets up from her seat to come over.

"Learned this trick at home."

She waves her hand through the air, holding it out.

All the ginger cat does is look directly at her, uncaring. When Gela reaches out a little further she angles her head pointedly away, anticipating an attempt to touch. "Oh," is all she has to say to that, amused, glancing up at the woman. "Sorry! She likes you more than me."

[axetrovert]

It's a likely approach, and it SEEMS like it'll work. Karlach holds still, widening her eyes, waiting for the cat to be lured off-

Only for her to be snubbed.

"That it, Gingey?" Karlach asks, torn between annoyed and- no, she can't be annoyed. She's so cute. And she'd really give anything to pet her. "You like me best?"

The cat turns her head up to look at Karlach's face and get another screechy meow, like a retort.

"No?"

[sprent]

"When I said more," Gela explains, "I may have meant a little more than not at all."

Which is how much the cat likes her. Still, she waves her hand hopefully, waiting for the scent of the meat fat to properly reach the animal. If it were the sweet, wee creature they once had at home, she'd be all over Gela by now. "She really likes lying on your boots. You may need a change of shoe."

3

[heirring]

If there is an answer to this particular question, it is drowned out by a sudden CRACK!, a crashing sound of impact, and a loud squawk of dismay from inside the workroom.

The victim of the assault is obvious: a great cabinet against the far room is in shambles as if someone has taken a mace to it and gone about beating it to pieces. Doors hang at all angles; drawers have spilled open; shelves have jumped free of their legs and dumped glass vessels of various materials in a shattered, smoking circle of fragments. Something tastes a rid on the air.

A handful of paces off from the destruction is a young blond woman. In her prosthetic hand, she has gripped a cable which runs to a nearby contraption with a large hammer of war rigged into it. From the general shapes and dimension, it looks like a device meant for swinging the blunt weapon around—a likely perpetrator, if not for the fact that the hammer and it's swinging arc is a number of feet removed from the ruined cabinet.

On the woman's other arm is strapped a flimsy metal circle, composed of a series of segments fanned in formation. It trembles weakly as Wysteria turns on her heel, round eyed and flustered, toward the room's interloper.

[axetrovert]

The sound of an impact and exclamation has Karlach immediately wrenching the door open and rushing into the room, a hand on the handle of her axe.

The perpetrator's not instantly clear, but for a stranger, Karlach assesses the situation with remarkable speed. She takes her hand from her axe and holds it up to indicate peace

"Shit," she says, in a tone of someone hugely impressed. "All right, there? Sounded... dire."

[heirring]

"Me? Oh yes, perfectly well," spills in a rush out of her. And indeed she does seem quite all right as she hurries to disengage the grip of prosthetic hand's grip on the pull cable. Certainly there is no indication of further damage other than the smashed cabinet. The only mystery is what caused the damage to begin with; it certainly can't have been the hammer in its swinging lever.

"No, no, everything is quite all right. As intended, truly!" Wysteria throws down the cable and kicks it away. It has the air of a child guiltily hiding pieces of a broken dish under the edge of a rug.

She pushes some flyaway bits of hair back behind one ear and then the other, determined to appear entirely unconcerned over the shattered detritus a few feet away. Puts on a rictus smile. Ha ha ha hello yes this is perfectly normal, and only afterward considers—

"Wait. Who are you, precisely?"

research, later

[pathlit]

"Hey, V, check it out!" precedes the entry of Jayce into the Research office, proudly holding up a warm, crusty loaf of bread in a towel. "I think this is the on-- oh."

This person in the room is not Viktor. For one, she is much too tall. Also, is she... is she glowing?

After a second of mentally uhhh-ing, he lowers the bread and offers her an easy smile. "Hey. Haven't seen you around yet. I'm Jayce."

[axetrovert]

There is nobody there, but the door moves when she knocks on it, so Karlach cautiously lets herself in. It's built fairly spaciously, but when she's in a place with a lot of delicate instruments she always feels a bit like a bronto in a tea shop.

Tucking her arms in front of her so her elbows won't accidentally brush anything, she's casting her eyes upward to make sure her horn won't brush any lights when she hears the rapidly approaching footsteps.

Thankfully, the newcomer, Jayce, looks happy enough to see her.

Karlach is glowing, and the second she claps eyes on him, she glows brighter, enough to backlight her irises.

(Calm down! Calm the fuck down!)

"Jayce. Well met. I'm Karlach- newest member of Forces." Technically on probation. But Captain Rowntree hadn't given her any orders to disclose that part of the arrangement.

"Hope I'm not interrupting your lunch," she says, gesturing at the bread loaf in his hands.

[pathlit]

It isn't often that Jayce needs to physically look up to someone, but it is most common that such instances involve another race. Still, her oddity, as it were, has nothing to do with being a Qunari... he thinks.

"Nnnno," he says, eyes narrowing as he openly studies her appearance, "only my perception of reality. You're burning. Literally."

i!

[brennvin]

Karlach’s finally managed to talk her way onto the ferry without being turned away, the ferryman grudgingly settling on allowing one heavily-armed woman aboard, when —

Well, a second one comes sprinting down the docks. The ferry’s already shoved off and started to move into the river, the gap to the shore widening; but rather than wait for the next departure, the new arrival takes a long, gazelle-like long jump over the bitterly-cold water, just barely landing on the ferry and sending it rocking, water sloshing. The ferryman sends her a world-weary, aggrieved look over his pole as she catches her balance and her breath.

The Avvar woman is dressed in winter furs, her long dirty-blonde hair disheveled; currently bent over, hands pressed to her knees and panting. It had been a headlong run down all those stairs and stairs and stairs, then down to the water.

“Another one for the Gallows, I’m assumin’?” the man grouses.

“Yeah. Think so. That’s where Riftwatch is, right?” She straightens up, readjusts the longbow on her back, and then… finally seems to notice the immediate other occupant of the boat, and her eyes widen owlishly, goggle-eyed in surprise, as she breathes out a little “Oh.”

[axetrovert]

Karlach's bulk and weight on the far side of the ferry actually helps to stabilize it when the other woman makes that awe-inspiring leap. It rocks on the water, the small splashes dying out during the swift exchange, and when the Avvar woman looks up, she'll find that Karlach is already wide-eyed right back.

"Gorgeous jump," Karlach praises her readily, beaming while she balances her axe over one shoulder.

"If you're on your way to Riftwatch, that makes two of us. So. Ferry-buddies?" She cocks her head with a larger grin. There's a boisterous friendliness there, but also something softer and more hopeful, like she hasn't tried this in a while.

[brennvin]

Despite her current discombobulation, the compliment and immediate friendliness makes her preen, a smile automatically dimpling. “Ferry-buddies,” the woman echoes, agreeing, but she seems to have lost her train of thought right after that. She’s still caught on Karlach’s massive stature, the horns, the broken horn, the glowing eyes— like something out of a storybook—

She’s staring. Oh, shit, she’s really staring, and her silence has gone on too long, hasn’t it? Flustered, she looks around until she finds a bench along the edge of the ferry and then plops down into the seat, swinging her bow loose and setting it across her lap. She folds her hands over it as the ferryman starts poling again, moving them further out into the water, still muttering under his breath.

She’s still staring.

This is very rude.

But fuckit. She just blurts it out: “You’re, like. Uh. You’re a Qunari, aren’t you?”

For Marcus

[axetrovert]

Karlach's obviously not allowed to wander the Gallows freely, much less given access to command. Though the Riftwatch agents she met on the outside have gotten her through the door, Karlach's still from Tevinter. All they have is her word. And even if all she has is her axe, Karlach can still do significant damage.

And so she's escorted -- rather politely, in her opinion -- down to the cells beneath the Gallows. They're also not bad. Pleasantly cool, actually. She doesn't protest giving over her weapons, or settling in for the night.

They do feed her, and it's simple but good. Karlach's not ashamed at how enthusiastically she houses the whole plate when it's offered.

By her reckoning it's the next morning when someone comes to speak to her. She rolls to her feet, all seven feet of her nearly bouncing upwards, a grin on her face. She has the look of someone who's moderating a lot of energy and excitement, expending effort to remain calm. Every inch of her is fierce hope.

(She's not worried. If she can get through ten years of Zariel and Seheron, she can get through a conversation.)

"Hey there," she breathes, the brush of a relieved laugh edging her words. "You the one who's come to ask the questions?"

The lyrium practically bleeds off of her, unstable. Her ports flare blue.

"First one out of the way: I'm Karlach. Cliffgate. Karlach Cliffgate."

The man has a serious but not unkind face. Karlach knows better than to judge by appearances, but she maintains that years of being an asshole will seep into the eyes, the mouth, and crack you.

[luaithre]

There is a door of bars between them, and for a moment, it seems as though the man on the other side might keep them there. It would likely be wise to. He is dressed in layers of linen, nicely tailored and offering nothing in the way of armoring, and carries no sword or axe or mage staff. While this newcomer is likewise undefended—well, she is qunari, and therefore large, a good foot and change of height on him.

His study of her is curious, calculating, a zigzagging look that moves off her face to that lyrium glow with frank appraisal, and then he fishes the ring of keys from his pocket. "Marcus Rowntree," he says, as he slots the key into the lock, and tumbles it open.

She's not invited out; Marcus invites himself in. The door is shut behind him and left unlatched, and he gestures, loosely, to the raised cot that can serve as bed or chair as needed in invitation for her to sit.

"Captain of the watch," and by now, a Starkhaven accent stamped plain in his voice is readily detectable. A little rote; "Am I right in understanding that you've defected from the Imperial army to join our ranks?"

[axetrovert]

The look of shock that spills across Karlach's face when the keys come out is plain, and she steps back automatically to give the Captain space to let himself into the cell. There's plenty enough room for them both.

Karlach takes the seat offered (it creaks dangerously under her weight) and spreads her feet, resting her forearms on her thighs. She looks from the still-unlatched cell door to the man before her, tilting her head to one side. A few things shuffle round in her head, but she hates to overthink this. So she won't.

"Well met, Captain." The inflection is very military, clear and sharp and rising on the last word, like a yes sir.

And her answer next is just as prompt: "I haven't defected, because I never swore a damned thing." She spreads the fingers on her right hand, palm up, and the lyrium shimmers in her pores.

"I was sold off ten years ago to a magister called Zariel. She had me in Seheron fighting the Qunari, when she didn't have me serving as her personal attack dog."

[luaithre]

His stance is upright, stiff in a kind of reflexively soldier-like in tune with her tone, but not tense, not bracing. Still, the swift way Marcus' focus darts from her face to the turn of her hand betrays some sense of keen-edged caution, subtle but present. Threat-assessment in more ways than only a series of questions.

Back to her. His countenance at this news doesn't shift.

"What brought you this far south?"

The obvious answer being: there's an invasion going on, but whether her story is true or not, she's obviously no ordinary soldier of the Imperium, which he assumes has yet to negotiate its peace with its northern neighbours.

For Petra

[axetrovert]

Finding Marcus isn't always easy, unfortunately. He's rather hands-on at his job, which Karlach can more than appreciate in a captain to report to, but it also means he's out sometimes. And she hasn't learnt all of his usual haunts yet.

So this evening finds Karlach heading up to Captain Rowntree's office with a question about the uniform. (None of them do, in fact, fit her. They'll need to slap something together in the meantime.)

The door isn't shut completely shut. Pausing for a moment, Karlach raps on the door and then pokes her head inside.

"Captain?"

[ipseite]

Although generally speaking it isn't so very strange to find Madame de Cedoux within this office — if she isn't in her own, the list of places she might alternately be found is rarely very long — for someone newer to their number it may come as something of a surprise to open Captain Rowntree's door and find behind it a petite blonde woman rifling through a drawer in his desk. She's sitting, so it's difficult to get an exact impression of height, but if she were to turn out to be 5'10" the proportions would be profoundly confusing; her affect is soft, round face and no edges, her hair neatly pinned back and the dress she's wearing plain and roughspun but elegant in its cut and tailored to her shape. The jet locket at her throat is a bit of severe finery, almost discordant.

Apparently unconcerned with having been discovered with her hand in Rowntree's effects, she looks up with only affable inquiry—

“He is occupied elsewhere, presently. Mademoiselle Karlach, I think?”

A most striking individual; Petrana will be surprised indeed if she should be wrong.

[axetrovert]

It definitely comes as a surprise.

Where Karlach comes from, backstabbing, intrigue and politicking are the bread and butter of the magisters. One simply does not come across others in a private office unless they've been explicitly invited. Especially one going through the Captain's -- ahem, drawers.

And Karlach, the newcomer, has to wonder whether she's just stumbled across a spy in the act. Or even one of Zariel's Siccari.

(She hates it. She hates that she jumps first to the paranoia. It's never sat right in her bones.)

"In the flesh," she answers, dipping her head as she straightens up, takes a step inside the room. "Mostly," she concedes, gesturing at her still highly visible exhaust ports. Friendly, genuine, a little awkward. Innocent until proven guilty, after all.

"But now you've got me on the back foot. You are...?"

[ipseite]

And what remarkable flesh it is; Petrana sits back (in Marcus's chair, familiarly) to take in the full first impression of her, smiling back at Karlach. There's a reserve to her — a sense of restraint, even in that warmth — but either she's done nothing wrong or she has nerves of steel.

(It might be both. She has her moments.)

“So I have— forgive me, I am Madame de Cedoux. Chief cryptographer for Riftwatch, though I am here presently in my capacity as Captain Rowntree's secondary scribe,” a thing she might have said a bit more acerbically to the man himself, and infuses with a little humour for Karlach. It is easier to find traces of that in the situation now that it is so much less burdensome than it once was, his progress on the literary front marked and significant,

for all that any efforts on his part to make light of his chosen illiteracy are still met with withering set-down, lest he get any ideas.

“He more often prefers our third companion's assistance, but occasionally I am faster.” Julius is both more patient and less critical when Marcus needs an extra set of eyes or hands, although Petrana suspects he's as susceptible as she is to how lulling his reading voice can be, and occasionally sorting some of his reports is not actually all that taxing.