WAR TABLE: Start Spreadin' the News

[hornswoggle]

WHO: Clarisse, Ellie, Desidério and Vanya Orlov
WHAT: Summary of content
WHEN:
WHERE: Anderfels
NOTES: OOC Post

Desolate and dry, the Anderfels in the winter is marginally cooler, but viciously windy. Dust whips up in stinging clouds at a moment's notice, day or night, and acts a stinging chaperone all the way to Hossberg. Camping is an uncomfortable affair, with dust and sand working through even the smallest gap in tent flaps. Travelers are few and far between, though sometimes Imperial caravans can be seen passing at a distance, easily avoided if spotted in time.

The harsh terrain provides no cover, no chance of a griffon passing overhead unnoticed during daylight. While the city is never unguarded, there are better odds of making a clean pass overhead in the wee hours of night. The soldiers patrolling every entryway to the city and strolling the ramparts are attentive, and well-armed. Their longbows are easy to spot, and their quivers are full.

Dropping pamphlets: easy

Everything leading up to actual moment of the drop and the moment directly afterwards: tricky.

Good luck.

Comments

[bribon]

"I'd have the sand dunes back, haunted or otherwise."

(It is bullshit, by the way, to go from directly from trudging about the Silent Plains to trudging about the Anderfels.)

He takes another resentful pull on the cigarillo, attention shifting to squint in the direction of the very distant, very flat horizon. A flicking glance for the height of the sun—early yet—, and then his attention returns to her as Desidério exhales a long peal of held smoke. It doesn't linger long; there's just enough of a breeze panting across the stony landscape to sweep it briskly away from over his head.

"Smoke?"

[notathreat]

"Nah, fuck the sand dunes."

It is bullshit pretty much fucking regardless. At his question she pauses again, considering. She doesn't usually smoke anything but weed- or elfroot, here in Thedas- but she's feeling out of it enough that it might actually help.

"Sure."

She holds out one hand.

[bribon]

Grunting in answer, he takes another brisk suck off the cigarillo, and the rolls over across his hip in the dusty earth just far enough to pass it off into her waiting hand. He remains there after—propped on his side and elbow, more or less reclined even before he hooks one ankle over the other.

He's an exceptionally good lounger, that Desidério Amanza—puts one in the mind of comfortable sofas and low tables where a man of his disposition and bearing might sets the heels of his dirty boots. Nevermind the present grit about his general person.

[notathreat]

Ellie regards him as she puts the cigarillo to her lips. It's a stronger taste than she's used to, different, and her lungs tingle a bit. It's not entirely bad.

She regards it in her fingers. One more, before she passes it back.

"I know you're with Riftwatch 'cause you have no choice," she says, "but if you could go to any type of world or universe or time you could imagine. What would it be like?"

Because he's one of those rare people who could truly fit in anywhere. Or at least, he'd fake it so well people would never know the difference.

[bribon]

The cigarillo with its dark, leafy paper is set directly back into the corner of his mouth. It's allowed to dangle there, burning just the idle filaments of smoke for a moment as he considers the question.

(+Later, when he has smoked his very last Antivan cigarillo and every deficiency in trade imaginable stops him from laying his hands on replacements in Kirkwall for any sum but a prince's purse, he will think in this moment and regret it. Imagine! Just letting the tobacco slowly burn itself. What a foolhardy idiot he is!

But in the moment, he gives it no thought at all. Instead, he shrugs (or approximates one about the angle of the temple; it's hard to get the shoulders up around the ears while lounging on one's side). Says—

"Less dirt and sticks for miles, I can tell you that much. And less sleeping in tents." All this camping is too much for him.

Here, finally, he takes a proper draw off the cigarillo. When he has finished, he adds with a little more candor, "A friend once told me about the pleasure yacht of one of the Merchant Princes. I forget which one. It sails aimlessly up and down the Minanter, or did before Tevinter took it, and is as big as a quarter district with all manner of hanging gardens and games and so on built to skim“—he makes a gesture of his hand to indicate a boat moving across water—"just so, idle as you please. I like the idea of that. Traveling and taking the whole neighborhood with. They should make more of those, in this make believe world."