open; telepathy hijinks for solace and august

[aberratic]

WHO: Ness Tavane (tadfool) and you (with stipulations, see notes)
WHAT: Ness does some telepathy in various areas of the Gallows and elsewhere.
WHEN: Covering Ness' first month in the Gallows.
WHERE: Various!
NOTES: In this thread, Ness will be speaking into characters' minds and hearing their responses. She will NOT be reading any thoughts that are not direct responses to her (that comes later). This may seem like blood magic to natives! I'm cool with negative CR as a result of this. I am not currently interested in Ness experiencing severe IC consequences for this magic at this point, so if your character would rat her out to the cops, I'd prefer they not take part in this log. Remember: snitches get stitches.

i. paper in the archives

At first, Ness spends most of her time in the archives, studying and maintaining her notes. It's a meditative process for her, calming even as she can sometimes get frustrated over the lack of consistency in historical accounts, and she finds genuine joy in taking information from different sources and creating a coherent whole out of it. The only thing keeping this from feeling like a normal day at home, truthfully, is the lack of readily available paper, something which never would have happened at Candlekeeep—there, they had no shortage of vellum, parchment, or paper on which to write, each surface suited for different tools and different jobs and kept in abundant supply. It won't do to keep comparing the archives to Candlekeep, much as Ness is tempted to... but she can't help the small sighs of frustration as her handwriting gets more and more cramped in her attempts to conserve.

I wonder if anyone here has stores of paper they'd be willing to part with, she thinks to herself—herself and anyone within a 30 foot radius of her in the archives at the moment, that is. There's a resonance to her mental voice that's lacking in her normal speech, a sort of echo and hiss that pervades the mind of whoever she's speaking to. It sounds, frankly, a bit sinister.

ii. got a song stuck in your head in the food court

Now that Ness has begun to work on getting her magic under control, she's started, ever so slowly, to allow herself in public spaces again, starting with the dining area. Truth be told, communal dining is one of the more familiar parts of Riftwatch—both in its practicalities and its loneliness. Most of her meals were taken alone in Candlekeep, and most of them here are the same.

She's alone at a table, picking at her plate, when she hears the music pick up. It's unfamiliar, and when she looks up, coming from seemingly nowhere. There's no one with an instrument here in the Gallows, and even if there was, she can't imagine what kind of instrument would make this noise. Not only that, the lyrics get indistinct at points, barely more than humming through a couple of phrases. At first, she tries to just wait for it to end, but the song—it loops, starts again, in the middle of a phrase this time, and Ness can't help the internal groan and frustrated Why me? thought to herself.

iii. observations in the training yard

Mid-month, Ness is taking a few more risks, letting herself out in public more often than not. She hasn't had an uncontrolled tentacles incident in days, and now that she's gaining confidence she wants to see more of the Gallows through eyes untainted by fear. The training grounds are one area she hasn't spent a lot of time in, so they're the subject of today's excursion—not to train in herself, heavens no. She's just here to watch from the sidelines.

Riftwatch is full of people of prodigious athletic talent, she's noticing, watching people drill forms and spar with each other. Handsome people too, and there must be a reason why everyone in the organization seems unreasonably attractive, but why ponder that when she can just enjoy watching very talented people be very attractive with sharp weapons?

Yes, alright, she's just here to ogle the hot people getting sweaty and breathless. Is that a crime?

Someone in particular catches her eye, whether for their impeccable form or their attractive looks or the stormy, brooding focus in their expression. Ness turns all her focus to whoever it is she's been struck by, unthinkingly creating a link between her thoughts and theirs—though her mind is blank, at the moment, too captivated to string together a coherent sentence.

iv. artichoke please no in the eyrie

Later still in the month, now that Ness has had some more practice controlling her more violent, tentacle-y magic, she starts spending more time in the Eyrie. This particular day, she's working with Artichoke, grooming some of the more hard-to-reach pin feathers left behind after a recent moult. Unfamiliar as she is with the care of birds (or bird-like creatures), she's gotten very close to his neck, in order to carefully observe her work and make sure she's not in danger of causing a bleed. The proximity hasn't been a problem with other griffons she's worked with—mostly she's had to worry about her fingers more than her head—so Ness has stopped paying attention to whatever Artichoke is doing.

That was her first mistake.

She first becomes aware of the insistent tug on her hair while she's in the middle of gently rubbing a keratin sheathe off of a pin feather.

"That's very rude," she calls back to whoever is grabbing her hair, but doesn't straighten to look back at them until the feather is fully freed from its sheathe, and the tugging doesn't stop. It gets more insistent, even, and more still as she begins to straighten up and turn around—begins to, because that's when she makes eye contact with Artichoke and realizes exactly who it is who's pulling on her ponytail.

Oh, hells, she thinks, broadcasting it to anyone else visible from Artichoke's nest in the Eyrie. Artichoke pulls again on her ponytail, and Ness stumbles toward him in mounting panic. How in the hells do I get through this without losing my scalp?

v. intrusive thoughts on the ferry

It's the end of her first month in Thedas, the end of her quarantine period, and Ness is finally, finally allowed to leave the Gallows. She's hopped on one of the earlier ferry crossings, excited to at last be able to see the rest of Kirkwall, even in its damaged state, and stands at the rail to watch as they move through the bay. It's a pristine morning. The sun's early rays sparkle on the water, gulls call, and waves lap gently at the side of the ferry. All is peaceful.

A thought, or a series of thoughts, occurs to Ness, halfway across—I could jump in here and drown and no one could stop me. Well, I might not drown immediately. I know the principles of how to swim, would that be enough to get me back to the Gallows? How big are the fish in here, anyway, would that be a concern? Are there sharks? If I jumped in right now how quickly would I become fish food?

These thoughts are all, to a one, broadcasted to someone else on the ferry, in the vaguely sinister, echo-y resonance of Ness' telepathic voice.

Comments

[aberratic]

The energy in the Eyrie gets noticeably chillier, and Ness would have to be far more oblivious than she is to not notice that squint. She blinks at Teren, guileless, but does seem to give the question real thought.

"Not that I'm aware of? Can one be an archdemon and not know, I thought archdemons are very specifically blighted dragons."

[doneisdone]

It's a convincing enough response that Teren's figurative hackles seem to lower, but she continues to eye the girl with a measure of suspicion.

"That they are," she says, "and, as far as I know, are the only sort who can talk to people in their heads." To Wardens, at least.

[aberratic]

"Talk to—oh!"

The look of dismayed realization should be convincing too, given it's entirely sincere. Ness huffs and does her best not to fidget too badly, though the nerves that come with never knowing how anyone is going to react to the mental intrusion are hard to sit still through.

"I apologize, I didn't intend to do that. It's, that is, I'm a rifter. It's a magical talent that's possible where I'm, ah, in my previous world. I haven't got the knack of engaging it on command, just yet."

A brief pause, and then, equally as sincerely, with a bit pleading thrown in for good measure:

"I'm not an archdemon, or even a regular kind of demon. Really."

[doneisdone]

Continuing to watch her, unsmiling, Teren's expression at least softens slightly at how clearly Ness has been put on the back foot. Rifters are strange, skittish things, and much like Thedosian mages, often capable of far more than they realize.

That's not a good thing, but it's not their fault, either.

"You'll want to watch that," she offers, measuredly, "last thing you need is to be tried as a blood mage the instant you set foot outside the Gallows."

[aberratic]

"I'm very aware," she promises, and here is where she would be wringing her hands in front of her from anxiety if she were not holding herself so tightly controlled. "I've read a lot, and heard from others, I know how bad this would look to anyone who doesn't understand rifters. I'm working on gaining control of it, and until I do that I have no intention of leaving the Gallows."

It would be very suspicious to add so please don't tell on me to Enchanter Julius so she doesn't, and very carefully doesn't even think it too hard. ...but please don't tell on her to Enchanter Julius.

[doneisdone]

"Wise."

Teren doesn't hear her this time, of course, so perhaps it's just coincidence that her parting words hit on Ness' particular anxiety:

"I'll not go wagging my tongue," she assures her, pausing in the doorway, "but-- sort it out."

[aberratic]

Whether it's coincidence or Ness' eminently readable expressions, she'll take the reassurance and be grateful for it.

"Thank you," she calls after the stranger, and only realizes after she's gone— "Oh, I never got her name... "