MOD PLOT: With Strides Immeasurable

[faderifting]

WHO: Everyone
WHAT: Moving days
WHEN: August 9:50
WHERE: Everywhere, really
NOTES: OOC post. Use appropriate CWs in your subject lines. The image in this post that isn't just straight from the games/promotional images (Qarinus) is by Meggie Rock.

The world is too large and Riftwatch too small to be everywhere, involved in everything. The days of trying to keep their fingers in every pie across Thedas may be past, but the scope of the war still is what it is, rifts can still open on any corner of the continent, the enemy is active all over. So while much attention has naturally been on rebuilding and refortifying Kirkwall and the Gallows since the Venatori attack, they can't remain focused inward for too long. The reorganization of the eluvian network created a protected nexus in the Crossroads, eliminating the need for long journeys through the newly-volatile landscape. Now, Riftwatchers need only pass through the Gallows eluvian (secured in a guarded basement space in the central tower) to find themselves within steps of central Minrathous, Val Royeaux, or Antiva City. Other mirrors in the cluster provide access to new outposts in Qarinus, Nevarra City, and the Rivaini coast, or a long-neglected base in the Hunterhorns.

The priorities of turning outward now are clear: operations in Minrathous and Qarinus must be expanded, the better to marshal forces behind enemy lines. The existing base in Minrathous needs expanding, and a new one in Qarinus established. In Nevarra City, the Mortalitasi have requested assistance with a rift at the Necropolis that is hampering efforts to finally repopulate the city after its long undead occupation. Elsewhere, there are spaces to be dusted off or construction to be overseen, the lay of the land taken for future operations. While not an emergency situation, the work is urgent in the sense that all of their work is urgent. No one who might be unusually unsuited to passing as a local will be sent to Tevinter, where all work is inherently clandestine and therefore dangerous, but it's otherwise more or less all hands on deck, with the ease of travel meaning people can come and go on staggered schedules. Just make sure you've memorized the list of which eluvian is which.


I. MINRATHOUS

Riftwatch's base in Minrathous may be unfamiliar to those outside the Scouting Division, but expanding operations in the city means making space for more visitors. The eluvian is housed in a hidden room in the cellar of the Bear's Tooth tavern, a busy taproom on a middling market street near the center of the city. It's the sort of place that sees a constant stream of diverse customers but few regulars, where a minor nobleman on business might cross paths with a farmer bringing produce to market. The block behind the tavern is more residential, respectable if not quite fashionable, and home to Widow Tavisa's Boarding House, a fading but clean establishment similarly catering to short-term visitors of the mostly-middle classes. The two properties are secretly connected by a tunnel, an ancient winding servant's stair, and their owners' loyalty to Riftwatch.

The upper floor of the boarding house, with its steep eaves, dark velvet wallpaper, and inescapable scent of old flowers, has been kept available for visiting Riftwatch agents for some time now, but there's a secret expansion underway to add the bunk rooms and communal workspaces that will turn this into a proper outpost. Long ago, Widow Tavisa's extended to a second wing next door, but a fire burned most of it to the ground. Left untouched was a hidden basement—a taproom and smoking lounge only ever known to only a select few Tevinter hipsters—that now lies below the walled garden that was built on the ashes of the upper floors. Riftwatch is digging a couple short tunnels through the cellars to secretly connect this space to the other two buildings, and then performing clean-up and some light construction work to make it fit for use.

The place is all dark wood and marble and the over-gilded furnishings typical of Tevinter design trying a little too hard to look more luxurious than it is, now covered in layers of dust and ash. Some fire damaged areas will need to be repaired, and a few ruined walls are better demolished to create a space open enough to house a collection of salvaged tables, chairs, and desks for communal eating and working, centered around a large two-sided fireplace and a lightly singed Tevinter-billiards table. There are bunks to install in the adjoining private rooms, making each fit for at least three agents, and repairs to neglected plumbing in the shared bathroom.

But Minrathous is too large and dangerous a city for just a single safe house, no matter how large, especially now that the Venatori openly control the city, the streets crawling with people in silver-and-blood livery and stalked by fear of their patrolling guards and rumored spies. In addition to pitching in with construction, Riftwatch agents will be tasked with searching out and securing other spots throughout the city for potential future use. This will be good practice for those not yet familiar with moving about the city discreetly, and a chance to feel out the conditions in various neighborhoods.

Someone might be assigned to wander the fashionable cafe district around Tenquillis Square in disguise as an aristocrat's agent looking to secure a pied-à-terre for a mistress, watching the palanquin traffic and listening to the anxious edge to upper-class gossip about the Elder One's inner circle, or to pose as sailors looking to let rooms in the spindly tenements crammed between the canals of Waterside and keep an eye on the new quayside inspection patterns, as artisans in need of a new workshop in the Iron Heights where the surface dwarf community is rumbling about divisions in the Ambassadoria, or mages fallen on hard times looking for lodging in the worker slums near the magic forges of West Shrek where military recruiters haunt the street-corners and the able-bodied but unwary are sometimes snatched from alleys and pressed into service.

The Venatori aren't the only thing setting the city on edge. Pockets of strange magical effects have begun to appear in the city. There are places where gravity abruptly ceases to function as expected, the world flipped on its head for 10 yards and then just as suddenly normal again. In others, it's time that is out of sorts, the walk from one end of a certain block to the other somehow taking an hour longer than it feels, the movement of clouds overhead slowing to a crawl until the next street is crossed. Some places have simply ceased to be—half of a building replaced with a mess of crumbling walls and stairs or jagged crags of rock that Riftwatch will recognize as pieces of the Crossroads or the Fade drawn physically into this world. Even where all appears normal, one may become aware of an uneasy sensation of something passing nearby unseen, of being watched, of sounds just on the edge of hearing, emotions surging suddenly out of nothing as if catching the mood of a non-existent mob.

Street prophets cry that only the Elder One can save the city from crumbling, the decay caused by centuries of worshiping the non-existent Maker and his false chantry, and restore the Imperium to its glory. Among the populace, a fair number believe these claims. Some also blame the southern Chantry for the damage, claiming they've sent their own barbaric mages or their Templars or both to disrupt the magic that's always held Minrathous together. Still others believe that this is the beginning of something wonderful—that the Elder One is restoring a greater magic, and soon Tevinter's nonmagical population will begin to exhibit magic themselves and bring Tevinter into a new era of equality and dominance. Meanwhile, iffy areas have been marked with signage, though that doesn't keep the curious out, and outright dangerous areas are under guard. An area near the docks around the old slave market has been quietly sealed off by soldiers with stories of some sort of dangerous enemy sabotage attempts, but there are whispers in nearby taverns of Wardens seen coming and going.

There are rifts, too. Ten years after the Breach they're not unprecedented, but the frequency with which they're opening in Minrathous right now is unusual, both to Riftwatch and to the locals. The sudden proliferation over the last few weeks will be a topic of nervous conversation (and sometimes fascinated conversation, in certain circles). Whether to help close them or let Minrathous suffer for Corypheus's choices might be a topic of debate within Riftwatch, but it turns out those aren't the only two options. Riftwatchers might come upon a team in Venatori colors arrayed around a rift with anchors outstretched, shutting it themselves as others hold the demons at bay. They might also notice some members of such a team being closely watched and ushered back into wagons for transport when the work is done.


II. QARINUS

In Ancient times when Tevinter ruled the known world, Qarinus was at the heart of the Imperium, its queen married Darinius, uniting their kingdoms to create the empire and make him the first Archon. But as borders shrunk in Ages past, it found itself more and more on the outskirts, nearer Antiva and Rivain than Minrathous and nearer Par Vollen than comfortable. Positioned at the gate to the Nocen Sea, it has been a magnet for both trade and conflict. It was conquered and occupied by the Qun for the better part of a century, was the last major city to be freed by the Exalted Marches of the Storm Age, and recently suffered the ignominy of being officially renamed 'Ventus' in honor of the commander of the fleet that drove off another attempted Qunari invasion in 9:12 (a name locals still defiantly refuse to use). This history, along with its location on the border, the danger of the surrounding seas, and the large population of foreign travelers and emigrants passing through, have given it a reputation as the frontier city of Tevinter, rustic and lawless, the Imperium's version of Llomerryn.

In reality, it's closer to a normal mid-sized Tevinter city than it is an outlaw haven. Its rocky coastline has certainly long been home to plenty of smugglers' dens and pirate hideaways and the crowded port is wound with narrow, ramshackle alleys leading up to dusty central plazas still showing damage from Qunari incursions. It does have a provincial air in places, but its rougher areas are also balanced by its share of lush palm-shaded gardens and lavish cliff-top villas, citrus trees and draconic statues lining the wide stone promenades around the floating Praetor's Palace, and an outpost of Orzammar's Ambassadoria. But its reputation has become a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy, especially since Corypheus revealed himself and the Venatori began to imprison its opponents. The current praetor is Magister Havian Sulara, Venatori and a close ally of Calpernia. Even so, the city has less of a conspicuous Venatori presence, and since they've tightened their hold elsewhere the number of magisters coincidentally retreating to summer homes by the Straits has markedly increased. Rumors abound that several prominent opponents escaped to Qarinus and are still hiding out in the city, running a network of smugglers shuttling those targeted by the Venatori to safety in Qarinus and beyond.

This last is true, and certain erstwhile Riftwatch leaders have had a key part in coordinating those escapes through a network of naval contacts operating in the Nocen, assisting not only in discreetly ferrying people out of Minrathous and other port cities, but helping identify those willing and able and direct them to an anti-Venatori organization based in the city called the Lucerni. Run by a woman called "Thanira," actually Magister Maevaris Tilani who has managed to slip the Venatori net, the group is quietly gathering itself in the shadows of Qarinus. The People of the Silent Plains are active here as well, with a cell in the city similarly dedicated to smuggling escaping slaves into Arlathan Forest and beyond (which they'll report used to be pretty easy before all these shem politicians started sneaking about). While the city does not share the pervasive anxiety shivering beneath the surface in Minrathous there is a restless energy to the place and its people, a chippy edge to everyday conflicts and minor disputes. Maybe it's just the sweltering weather and the crackle of daily thunderstorms, but there is an unspoken sense of something brewing.

It's time for Riftwatch to do more to help. The eluvian giving access to Qarinus is set into the wall of a sea cave, which floods with the high tide. While moving it without breaking the glass would be difficult (potentially impossible), the good news is that the cave was once used by smugglers and connects to several others, leading up to the cellar of an old lighthouse set atop the cliffs at one edge of the city. Riftwatch has taken over operation of the light and the ramshackle smuggling base hidden within it. Here most of the conversions have already been done by the prior occupants: there's a room full of bunks and hammocks for at least 12, kitchen and dining areas, and a surprisingly cozy space for off-hours relaxation full of furniture made primarily out of barrels, rope, and grain sacks.

Qarinus isn't large enough or hostile enough to require more than one or two auxiliary safe houses, but in addition to establishing those, there are allies to make contact with and intelligence to be gathered. Agents will be tasked with assisting in moving refugees both into and out of the city; escorting potential political prisoners, escaping slaves, and supply deliveries from smuggler's landings to meets with Lucerni or the People's agents at various places throughout the city; and helping others slip out onto ships bound for still-neutral Rivain, caravans into the mountains or toward Arlathan, or the ships or wagons of smugglers trading illicitly with Antiva.

While their presence is light compared to Minrathous, there are plenty of Venatori still running the city, on watch against both agents of the Qun and any rumored resistance movement. They're doing their best to prevent any enemies of the Elder One from passing through the city in either direction. Riftwatch agents will also be assigned passive surveillance missions, tracking Venatori movements and observing their operations to get the lay of the land will also help get Riftwatch up to speed, keeping a lookout especially for weaknesses that might be exploited in the future.


III. NEVARRA CITY

The crypt is mostly empty of corpses—some destroyed or missing, others relocated to the more prestigious Grand Necropolis now that there's so much empty space—but that doesn't stop the space from being unsettling to people who are unsettled by that kind of thing. The door to the crypt is set into a hill, with ancient windows that allow some tree-dappled sunlight to pass through into the entranceway, but further back there's no daylight, only a mix of fire and veilfire braziers that throw long, flickering shadows. The halls are lined with enclaves that seem like a mix between bedrooms in an inn and big-windowed storefronts: the possessed corpses that reside here do so on perpetual display, unconcerned with privacy. The materials used to construct these little houses echo the eras and preferences of their occupants, and while they're largely empty now—the furniture and belongings that once surrounded each body have been looted, reclaimed by families, or relocated—there's still something arguably disrespectful about settling into what are essentially abandoned graves. Anyone who stays here overnight will be advised to do so in the entrance hall.

But this isn't a place where Riftwatch might routinely need to settle in and hide. They only need a place for an eluvian that's safe from observation. Outside the crypt, Nevarra City and its environs are friendly and happy enough to see them; the inn along the road to the city proper will gladly put them up for its standard fee.

The royal palace and the city center are occupied by the Mortalitasi, who are still overseeing the city's reconstruction and making painstaking attempts to match abandoned corpses to their correct ancestors, but also taking their time with it to try to settle the situation between the Van Markhams and Pentaghasts before having to commit to handing the capital over to one or the other. There's no real danger left. If Riftwatch agents visit to meet with Mortalitasi allies, the narrow streets are quiet, eerily empty. The black marble statues of Nevarran ancestors and heroes dotting the public spaces might be the only new faces anyone comes across on a walk. But around the rim of the city, outside the older walls from when it was a much smaller place, citizens have returned to occupy the sprawl of smaller houses. Most of them are poorer folks who never found anything better in the intervening years, but a number of people employed by Nevarra's wealthy and noble families are living there too, essentially glamping in large tents filled with comfortable furniture, to make sure they can be among the first to reclaim their employers' property and fend off looters or squatters when the rest of the city reopens.

The Grand Necropolis is a hulking, glowing shape on the edge of the city. A long cobbled road flanked by statues of robed skeletons, each holding a lantern lit with green fire, leads to a towering onyx gate. It is a forbidding entryway despite that Riftwatch has been invited, their presence required to close a rift. A pair of Mortalitasi greet them and escort the way into a long hall, this too flanked by skeleton statues, now three stories tall. The shape of their ribs is echoed in the twisting striping of the even taller pillars and the loose arches of the ceiling above, the gaps between leaving the space open to the air. Mausoleums line this road, style and state of repair varying widely. These levels have been cleansed of rogue undead, the Mortalitasi explain, and those that could be returned have been, but restoration of the individual tombs themselves are the responsibility of the families. Their route curves gently, and slopes even more gently, enough that they may not realize they are winding their way underground until they pass through an arched tunnel overgrown with ivy and find themselves in a cavern beside a yawning pit, its squared sides marked out by a perimeter of more green lanterns and by a set of weeping willows, ghostly pale and tinged green only by the lantern-light, branches shifting in a draft from the deep.

Here they meet the Mourn Watch, a group of elite Mortalitasi (their escorts have explained) tasked with the protection and preservation of the Necropolis and its occupants. Johanna Hezenkoss, a 60-something woman with a sturdy build, long steel-gray hair, and minimal patience, and her recently-inducted apprentice, a young elf named Lukas Rutter who looks as if he'd like to smile but is too nervous, explain the rough outline of the problem as they ride the elevator cage down (how far is difficult to gauge). Efforts to fully restore and make safe the city have been long delayed by a continuing plague of rogue undead, new uncontrolled possessions, mostly demonic, continuing at a rate the Mourn Watch has eventually managed to contain to lower levels of the Necropolis but has been unable to stop, and which is straining their resources such that they cannot guarantee the city is safe to repopulate. The source of the problem eluded all manner of investigation and experiment. The Necropolis is vast and difficult to navigate even for experts and grows only more so the deeper you get, Hezenkoss will tersely and defensively explain. But finally, someone happened upon a corridor never before seen or recorded in the order's archives and blocked by a massive rift.

To get to it, Riftwatch and the Mourn Watchers (a larger group awaits them at the end of the lift journey) will have to fight their way through an uncommon volume of demons, some in pure demonic form but most in some sort of body: corpses in various states, collections of bones reconstituted in approximation of a skeleton, scrabbling limbs clawing their way up through the dirt, giant-sized golems formed of loose collections of bone and stone and matter. The rift, when they reach it, is a gaping slash in the center of what looks like elven architecture plucked from the Crossroads and inserted into the Necropolis, like a chunk of shrapnel lodged in a wound. It is a piece of a hallway lined with doors, and while none are passable, a breeze flows outward, and the sickly green light of the rift flickers off something through one arched doorway to create an impression of depth beyond. It will take an uncommon amount of time and effort to force closed the rift, even with the Mourn Watch assisting in keeping the demons occupied. When it is done, Riftwatch will be thanked (genuinely, if grudgingly by Hezenkoss) and escorted back to the surface. Any offer or attempt to scout beyond the now-cleared corridor will be firmly rebuffed, politely at first but less so if pressed. The Necropolis is a sacred place entrusted to the Mourn Watch's keeping. Should they be in need of any assistance in future, they will be in touch.


IV. ELSEWHERE

Val Royeaux is less in Riftwatch's crosshairs these days, having stepped back from attempting to keep up with The Game enough to exert influence on the imperial court's influencers. But Orlais remains a crucial ally in the fight against Corypheus and the Chantry is, well, the Chantry. An eluvian has been located here in the shop of a fashionable and sympathetic modiste, Cecelia Clavet, allowing Riftwatch quick travel into the central shopping districts and access to the wealth of court gossip ladies spill during fittings. The latest has drawn attention: not romantic rivalries or feuding families but a ball (Baroness de Dreux's biannual Mid-Summer Mummery) disrupted by spires of stone suddenly appearing in the ballroom and the dancers finding themselves suddenly on the ceiling. The baroness will be grateful for Riftwatch to investigate (it is, as suspected, an intrusion of the Fade into the physical world), but less grateful to be informed that this is a phenomenon they have encountered before but can do nothing about.

In Antiva City, a boathouse along the Canneti canal has an eluvian installed in its upper-floor apartment. The space is neither large nor luxurious but provides a secure and comfortable spot for Riftwatch to come and go, and for Anselmo Barzini, the owner, to keep an eye on passing traffic for Riftwatch when he isn't poling travelers through the canals on his gondola and eavesdropping on them for Riftwatch. It's an excellent way to gather information, and Barzini is eager to broker a partnership between Riftwatch and I Fratelli della Forcola, a quiet and discreet organization of gondoliers in Antiva City. That's still in its early stages, but Anselmo is certain that bringing a few Riftwatch members to an informal gathering and letting them mingle and participate in a few gondola races (at which they will presumably lose embarrassingly but hopefully with good humor) will win some goodwill.

And near Seere, along the northern coast of Rivain, Riftwatch stashes an eluvian inside a wrecked ship in an isolated cove along the coast. Getting to and from shore requires either a rowboat or a short swim, and Seere itself is half a day's walk away. But much closer is a small village situated on a coastal cliff that overlooks the Northern passage, where Riftwatch has one friend in particular: an elderly Tal-Vashoth woman named Karaas who's as wary of the Qun as they come. She's spending her retirement from life at sea watching the horizon through a spyglass and keeping meticulous notes on any ships from Par Vollen in particular. It's easy enough for her to add Tevinter ships to her particular area of concern and keep an eye on their hidden eluvian for them, and she has a sailboat they can borrow to get to Seere faster if necessary. She'll also alert them to the presence of a young whale caught in yet another area of strange veil effects, trapped in a pocket of water now suspended in the air as if filling an invisible room. It will require some ingenuity, but if they can find a way to climb up, they might be able to use reality-reasserting magic, runes, Templar abilities, or anchors long enough to weaken the effect and help get the whale back down into the actual sea.

V. THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE

While most of Riftwatch's eluvians are dedicated to the need to reach the middle of a given city as quickly as possible, two are set aside for getting away from it all.

For the first: Riftwatch has long had access to a sparingly-used hunting lodge in the Blasted Hills, near the Hunterhorn Mountains and Anderfels border. It's a location that will be made infinitely more useful by trading its resident eluvian for one large enough for griffons to pass through—the transport of which requires volunteers to take a road trip with a slow-moving cart and team of draft horses and camping overnight in the Orlesian countryside rather than risk storing the enormous eluvian in a roadside inn's stables. But the ability to pull up the canvas in the cart and drop through the eluvian to trade shifts with those back at the Gallows in a matter of minutes makes it less miserable, maybe, for those who pull the short straw on any given day.

The hunting lodge itself, when reached, is unforgivably heavy on antler-based decor and covered in a year's worth of dust and cobwebs, but otherwise it's in serviceable condition. If anything it's too large; the previous owner frequently hosted guests and their horses and hounds, with spare bedrooms and an expansive stable to accommodate them, and the appointments are rustic in aesthetic only. (The fact that the woody decor and enormous murals of the chase are a bit overdone and, arguably, cringe in the capital this decade might have something to do with Riftwatch's uncontested possession of the property.) It will take some carpentry and heavy lifting to transform the existing stable into an eyrie that can comfortably house a couple of the griffons at a time. Once there's a place for them, griffon riders will need to begin practicing coaxing their griffons through the eluvians and short stretch of the Crossroads—unpleasant but blessedly quick, and something they're generally clever enough to learn to do efficiently—and can begin flying loops into Ander territory to accustom themselves to the landscape. Roving darkspawn are common in the Anderfels even between Blights, and the rule of Corypheus over the last few years has brought with it an increasing problem. A band of rogue Wardens, escaped from Tevinter-ruled Weisshaupt and living in a rough but well-established camp in the mountains, do their best to protect the villages of the area, but some help wouldn't go amiss. They'd also be struck by the sight of the griffons—previously thought to've been lost again as hatchlings during the First Warden's coup eight years ago—and will be eager (even jealous) to get the opportunity to work with them.

And on the opposite end of the continent, beneath in the southeastern reaches of Ferelden, Riftwatch has recently been granted use of an abandoned dwarven outpost. The quickest route for transporting a spare eluvian is to take a ship down the Fereldan coast to Gwaren. The isolated city was, in fact, built to support the shipping needs of the outpost in its heyday as the center of dwarven salt mining operations. After the mines were abandoned, old access points nearer to the port were walled up or collapsed for fear of darkspawn incursions. The remaining accessible entrance is a day's journey through the damp, foggy Brecilian Forest and down into a narrow, easily-overlooked cave that ends in a fortified door. Riftwatch has a key, but getting the heavy doors open also requires repairing a rusted-through chain and cranking some gears. Fortunately, once the eluvian is inside, they won't have to go through the doors every time, or possibly ever again.

Inside, they'll find the remnants of a village that was abandoned centuries ago when it became clear that darkspawn would ultimately make the Deep Roads between Gwaren and Orzammar impassable. The occupants had enough warning to pack up their valuables, and decay has had hundreds of years to do its work, so there's little in the way of personal belongings to find. But the homes were carved into the stone walls directly. Aside from a few that have been eroded by streams or drips of water, they show minimal signs of damage. Much of the furniture is stone as well: bedframes, tables, chairs, and desks all remain, though most will be improved by the addition of some kind of cushion. There's an open expanse that was once a pasture for brontos and nugs that's now been overtaken by the latter and a variety of mushroom species, a smithy just shy of still being operational, a network of mining tunnels that turn eerie and white when the salt deposits are reached, and a quiet mausoleum of stone tombs. Altogether, it's large enough to house all of Riftwatch, if that ever became necessary—it just needs cleaning and stocking, including removing debris from the underground streams and pond that could serve as a long-term water source and dealing with a giant spider and her many large children.

Spider aside, there's no sign of serious danger. The rune-encrusted, fortified entrance to the Deep Roads is still holding strong. There's no sign darkspawn have ever managed to breach the outpost itself, once it was closed up for the last time, and no sign of scavengers ever finding the entrance in the Brecilian Forest. It might be the most secure secret clubhouse ever.

Comments

[altusimperius]

Trailing after him and, in an unusual reversal of temperament, Benedict looks rather more at ease with the situation than Byerly. Having his cloak and bag taken by a servant has re-injected a little bit of long lost Artemaeusness into his posture, but it's still with a sympathetic eye that he glances from Byerly to the portrait.

"That's you," he observes, neutrally.

[cozen]

The observation prompts Bastien to give the portrait another glance and closed-tooth smile.

Seated to one side of Byerly on the divan, he's arranged in a way that is as effortless as it looks only because it's so well-practiced he doesn't have to think about it. Slightly crooked. One leg extended a bit further than the other. His lean against the back a touch askew. His arm dropped across his lap. Common, casual, calm, and only narrowly within the bounds of good manners. Effortless but intentional, to look so confident and unworried.

He considers the portrait, then By's profile. Then his fidgeting hand. There are times and places Bastien would have covered it with his own to calm it—affection, but also a correction. Be still. You're giving yourself away. Now, he leaves his hand alone, and instead he fixes a few strands of Byerly's hair that don't need fixing, then leans around a little to catch his eye and make a silly scrunched-up face.

No commentary; he can't confirm or deny who's in the portait, himself.

[bouchonne]

It is him in that portrait, and it isn't him. It's funny: that portrait is of his sister, her husband, and their two children. A boy and a girl. But that boy does look exactly like he did, once, and that girl looks exactly like Nadine. What is it about the damnable Rutyer genetics, where everyone from his cursed clan looks all but identical? What does it say about the prospects of those two poor children, that they have the poison in them? What -

Byerly looks up when Bastien fixes his hair, and looks right into his silly grotesque face. He feels torn between laughing and crying. Settles on laughing.

"It's close enough," he answers Benedict. And then the door opens, and in walks the woman from the portrait.

She's overdressed. That's the thing that catches Byerly's attention first. Her clothing is far too fine for the simple act of greeting family: waist narrowed by stays, feet in delicate kidskin boots, dark hair perfectly styled. In his paranoid mind, he wonders: Is this a message she's sending to me? Is she telling me I'm family no longer?

But those a bit less paranoid and a bit more perceptive - certainly Bastien, maybe even Benedict - may notice, also, her chewed fingernails and her anxious gaze. This isn't a clever, subtle little sartorial message; this is someone who's trying not to look like a total hayseed in front of her worldly older brother.

"Hello," Nadine greets them. She is painfully beautiful, and her voice is lovely. She's also twitchy, plucking at her skirts. "I assume you're - Benedict Artemaeus, and Bastien. My name is Nadine Goodwin, and I'm - Byerly's sister. Hello. Byerly." Her gaze falls on him, and she gnaws at the inside of her cheek, and says, "Could I fetch you some mead? Have they taken your coats? It's very cold here, I imagine, for all of you, coming from the North, even in the summer. It's always very cold here. But it's a nice day today, I think. We might see sun later. Wouldn't that be pleasant? I - Hm."

She falls silent, and presses a hand to her stomach, and then settles it instead at her side. A bit of fidgeting from someone who is, suddenly, clearly very aware that she doesn't know where her hands are supposed to go. Byerly, who's risen to his feet, looks over at Benedict and then Bastien a bit helplessly. How rare it is, to have him be utterly without words.

[altusimperius]

Nadine's entrance and introduction earns her a courtly bow from Benedict, who has certainly noticed her nervous manner, but knows better than to say anything.

"A pleasure to meet you, Lady Goodwin," he says gently, and then, with a quick glance to Byerly and then Bastien, adds, "you-- have a lovely home."

[cozen]

Bastien stands when Byerly does, tips his chin in greeting when he's identified, and—

He doesn't love her, instantly, the way Byerly loved his cadre of siblings and their children. He's a colder thing than Byerly is. But he does like her instantly. Her chewed nails and chewed cheek and nervous hands. The effort in her hair. And most of all offer to fetch the mead herself instead of calling in someone to do it.

He doesn't return Byerly's look; these kind of nerves, and she might take a silent exchange of glances the wrong way entirely. He catches it peripherally, though, and begins speaking so immediately that it might seem as if he's the kind of chatty fellow who'd have piped up even if Byerly weren't helplessly silent first.

"I will not think any less of Gwaren if we don't," he says. "Sea voyages always make me a little sick of the sun. The sun and the wind, and the whole time you are rationing water even though you are surrounded by it. I shrivel like a fig—so I would love some water, actually, if that is an option, and," at the end of this one-breath deluge, "it's lovely to finally meet you, Madame. Byerly has said so many good things."

[bouchonne]

Here's one difference between the siblings: while Byerly doesn't blush, Nadine does. It's not an especially pretty blush, either: she goes pink blotchily, mostly on her neck.

"Has he?" And then she seems to register that she's asking that question when Byerly is right there; she turns to By and says, "I mean, have you? I'm glad, I thought all they'd hear was that...You know. What a dreadful brat I was. I've gotten better since then, I do promise."

This self-deprecation cuts, at last, through Byerly's paralysis. His lips part, and he draws in a breath, and he says, "Maker - I would never have - You weren't a brat." And then, for some awkward reason, he turns and gestures towards Benedict: "This one, he's a brat. Just look at him."

"Oh, no," Nadine is immediately protesting, holding her hands out towards Benedict like this gesture can shield him from this censure. "Don't say that; he's wonderful."

It's all so awkward.

[altusimperius]

Benedict's eyes go a bit wide when he's put on the spot, but it's enough to immediately endear him to Nadine when she comes to his defense.

He is a brat, but it's nice to be given the benefit of the doubt.

"Mead would be a delight," he says politely, having some difficulty fighting the smirk off his face. She said he's wonderful.

[cozen]

It's very awkward. It's also very endearing—even Benedict, who Bastien probably believes is a brat much more sincerely than Byerly does. And it's enough chatter for him to ease back into his more natural state: watching quietly rather than yammering on.

Smiling, though, and clearly charmed.

[bouchonne]

"Mead," she agrees earnestly, and then to Bastien, "water, and - oh, I see you there, Winifred! I see you snooping."

This last part is called out into the hallway. There's a moment, and then a girl - perhaps sixteen years old, and her mother's spitting image - eases into the sitting room. She curtseys to the visitors, and in theory it should look like a modest little gesture, except that she doesn't drop her gaze at all when she does it. Instead, she looks directly at all three of them. (She looks a little longer at Benedict than at the others, with a gleam in her eye. He is a very pretty man, after all.)

"Hiya," she says. And then, over at her mother, "I wasn't snooping. I was just passing by."

"Passing by for a full minute." Nadine is clearly far more comfortable in the role of mom than she is in the role of hostess; her arm comes out to hook around her daughter's shoulder, squeezing her tightly against her side, in a familiar and comfortable gesture. Winifred wrinkles her nose but allows herself to be lightly manhandled - clearly displeased by the fact that this is happening in front of strangers than she is displeased by the fact that this is happening at all.

"Well, you definitely needed my help," Winifred says. Then, to Byerly: "You're my uncle, right? Tell Mom that you're not going to think she's boring and provincial."

"Winifred," says Nadine, not as aghast as one might expect. Indeed, her gaze turns immediately to Byerly, evidently hoping for confirmation.

Byerly picks up on the cue: "Of course I don't. I'm just - so glad to see you so well. The whole family so well. And prosperous."

"And - Bastien, right?" Winifred's bold gaze turns to Bastien. "You're from Val Royeaux, which is the most beautiful city in the world, but you still think this is a nice home."

It is clear that Winifred will be allowing Bastien no room at all to disagree. Winifred is here to safeguard her mother's feelings.

[cozen]

Shame, really, that I grew up sleeping on the floor and in the streets in a crumbling neighborhood where everything stank of sewage is not the kind of thing you can tell people the first time you meet them—or perhaps not tell them ever, if you're Bastien—no matter how much it might calm fears of judgment.

He only nods an eager nod, paired with a shyer smile, and says, "It's lovely. Really. And it's very gracious of you to let an Orlesian and a Tevinter intrude on your reunion and to be so welcoming about it."

[altusimperius]

Rather than intrude on the lovely moment by sticking his foot in his mouth, Benedict stands by with his hands folded behind his back, smiling politely. He breaks it for an instant when Winifred's gaze catches on his, and he can't stop himself giving her a little wink-- but he's content to let the adults talk, such as they are.

[bouchonne]

Winifred, like her mother, blushes; like her mother, it's blotchy. She does not giggle and hide her gaze, though; instead, she grins at Benedict, and grabs her mother's hand, and gives a little flip of her dark hair.

"It's our pleasure," says Nadine. And then her smile weakens a little bit as she looks at her brother. And she says, "I can't believe - What a life you've led. It seems impossible." And then, finally, with her free hand, she reaches out for Byerly's. "And even more impossible that, after all that, you'd come here."

By hesitates. Nadine marks that hesitation and quails just a bit, her hand retreating very slightly. But then By reaches out to take that hand; he hooks his fingers into hers.

"I thought you might detest me," he confesses. "For everything." She starts to shake her head at once, and he confesses: "For leaving."

"I thought you might detest me for not following," she answers. "I thought about it so often, but never did it, and all I could think was he must think I'm such a coward - "

"Mom's not a coward," says Winifred fiercely. The ferocity is not directed at anyone in particular amongst this group; she seems to simply want the universe to know. One she's finished that declaration, she goes back to making eyes at Benedict.

"But I'm so glad that - Oh, Maker, I'm so glad to see you're not lonely." Nadine, having squeezed her daughter's hand, squeezes Byerly's hand and turns her eyes on Bastien. "He's as handsome as you said." And then, in country-accented, ill-formed, but fluent Orlesian: "I know that you must be a happy man. Bally is so kind. I know he must be good to you."

[altusimperius]

Sadly for Winifred, Benedict's attention is immediately drawn by the revelation of Bally, at which point he directs a look of barely contained delight at Byerly.

[cozen]

Bally.

But Bastien’s eyebrows only tick up a millimeter above his smile, which has already brightened with bashful pleasure at being called handsome, and at being so freely and happily acknowledged as more than a friend, and before that when By took Nadine’s hands—something that made him glance over already, wanting to see his face. So there isn’t much room for his expression to brighten again before he’d look like a maniac.

“He’s wonderful. Kind and funny and daring and talented. I will swap you stories for stories, yeah?”

Royan, of course. But free of frills, with hints of the rougher streets. The way he talks to Byerly, the way he would talk to everyone if he weren’t trying to talk any other way. He wouldn’t let By put on a false accent for his family, so it’s only fair. Even with Benedict in the room.

To Winifred he adds, “And I know he has stories about your mother when she was small, for you.”

[bouchonne]

Bastien gets a pained look when he starts praising Byerly. But that's only a momentary break in Byerly's expression, because mostly By looks tentative, and uncertain, and - well - hopeful. Nadine looks that way, too. She smiles up at her brother, and he smiles down at her.

"Stories you'll be able to use to get out of quite a lot of trouble." Byerly amends towards Winifred. "You wouldn't believe the things she got up to."

"Nooo," Nadine moans at once, adopting a very put-upon sort of expression (theatrics run in the family, it seems). "You can't. She'll never obey me again."

"I don't obey you now," Winifred chirps back. Nadine bumps her shoulder against her daughter's; her daughter bumps her back. These two make for a very happy pair.

Her duties concluded, Winifred extricates herself from her mother's grasp and makes her way over to Benedict. "Are you really Tevinter?" she asks him. "You've come such a long way."

Meanwhile, Nadine is looking towards Byerly and Bastien. "How long will you be able to stay?" she asks. "I can't imagine...I know the war won't wait. But I'd like - as long as you can manage."

[cozen]

Should someone warn Winifred? She doesn't seem like the sort of girl who would appreciate being warned of much. And maybe her mother would in fact appreciate the existence of a tall handsome foreign person of interest who's as unlikely as Benedict is to get her daughter into that particular kind of trouble. Maybe Benedict's the one who needs the warning.

All of those thoughts are contained to a single glance in their direction before Bastien turns his smile back on Nadine.

"Two days," he improvises. The eluvians are a secret even from sweet sisters and fierce nieces. And that's a fair amount of time, right? Enough for estranged siblings to find a bit of comfort with each other to carry home and nurture in their letters, but not long enough to be burdensome or press things too quickly.

He puts his hand on Byerly's back. Companionable, but also a way to quietly communicate, despite By's occupied hands, if anything Bastien says warrants voluntarily or involuntarily tensing up muscles.

"But we will—we cannot talk about it. But there is work that will probably bring us back again before the end of the year."

Half a lie. But without disclosing the eluvians, they can't explain that they won't need much of an excuse to come to Gwaren anymore. The day-long journey through the forest to reach the city, that will be the hard part. The rest of the distance will be crossable in minutes.

[altusimperius]

"By way of Kirkwall, yes," Benedict replies genteelly to Winifred, "it's been some time since I was in my home country."
He plays the part of the charming, aloof noble well, and one can only wonder how many non-Vega girls managed to get through the veneer to the arguably worse interior.

But he's relaxed, unexpectedly so, and soaking up the wholesomeness of the moment: this is a family that really loves each other, and as delightful as it can be to see Byerly uncomfortable, the energy in the room is simply... Good.
Peaceful. The awkwardness of meeting new people of whom his friend was clearly afraid has melted away to something healing.

[bouchonne]

"That's so much - Oh, it's more than I'd ever dared hope for." Nadine reaches out for Bastien's hand, too, and Byerly completes the circle of contact by putting his own arm around Bastien's back. It's certainly awkward, and looks silly, but it's so sweet. The whole thing is sweet.

Nadine releases them after a moment, and steps back. "I think - I want to get you the mead, but I don't want to - Just come with me to the kitchen. You're all family." And from her glance, it's clear she doesn't just mean Bastien and Byerly, but Benedict, too - even a Tevinter adopted at once into this generous house.

Nadine leads them, then, out of the stiff formal parlor, and into the generous kitchen, where the family maid is peeling turnips for the stew bubbling on the stove. "I hope you don't mind - We're not getting too many ingredients from the North. Not with the war happening. Our dinners are all very Gwaren down here."

"Endless cod," sighs Winifred. And then, perking with interest - "Can you bring some spices when you're back? They grow spices in Kirkwall, right?"

"Not grow," Byerly answers his niece. His manner is a bit stiff with her - he certainly gives the impression of someone who has no idea how to talk to a teenager. "But it's a hub for trade. We could bring things down."

"Imagine. Something more than just salt and dill for seasoning," Winifred says.

(Dinner, it seems, is going to be as wholesome as this family, but quite a bit less appealing.)

[cozen]

"I love dill, though," Bastien says, which isn't a lie. He doesn't love only dill, would certainly tire of it being the only spice—but they'll bring something back. Something nice, even if it's expensive.

He'd been prepared to protect Byerly, if necessary. From awkwardness, or from resentment. From someone asking why he didn't stay or why he didn't bring her with him. But so far—they're so welcoming. Unpretentious.

By should have had this a decade ago.

Bastien smiles at the maid when he manages to catch her eye, tipping his head in greeting, hello fellow commoner, but in the meantime he's asking Winifred, "Will you brother be around today?"