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

a special guest appearance, Val Royeaux (for gwenaelle and stephen)

[toujoursdroit]

Despite the fact that Gwenaëlle is a reliable enough correspondent and he pays people in Kirkwall to keep him supplementarily informed, it has been some time since Romain has had the opportunity to see any of his grandchildren in person. His hands have been full with keeping his estate and his son in one piece long enough for Thomas to have something to inherit one day, and while he still contributes financially to the fight against Corypheus where appropriate, there has been plenty to occupy him in Orlais itself.

He's already in the capital on business of his own, which makes Gwenaëlle's arrival a pleasant surprise. (Whether the rest of Riftwatch is equally pleasant is a matter on which he expresses no opinion.) It's enough to make him accept an invitation he'd been on the edge of declining, much as his preference might have been for her (and her guest) to stay in. She has work to do, which is certainly something he can understand. So he arrives at the ball , as ever, fully correct in a fashionably conservative but impeccably made outfit. It appears black at a glance, but is in fact a deep midnight blue upon closer inspection. While mostly monochrome, a few silver accents on his clothing match those inlaid into his ebony mask. He does not make an especially inviting figure to most, though his presence will be a small coup for their hostess even if he speaks to no one at all.

[elegiaque]

It would not, actually, be difficult for Gwenaëlle to blend in more than she does. Her wardrobe is not short of silhouettes that better suit the Val Royeaux upper crust; she likes a great big skirt as much as the next fashion-plate aristo. She kept one or two of her masks, just in case, and her grandfather is generous with what she can invoice to him (she'd come early to make their arrangements; Liaissons Dangereuse will be in touch within the week), so it isn't as if she hasn't options. It is therefore a choice, the slim, structured fit of her burgundy gown, the hood she'd arrived wearing dropping into cape sleeves; that in lieu of a mask she wears what would be a jewel-dripping eyepatch if it weren't open to display the ruby eye underneath in place of the usual gold.

The fact of the matter is that her grandfather's ongoing support of her opens doors that otherwise remain closed, and the fact that some of them she wouldn't mind being closed is neither here nor there when it comes to opportunities that they can make use of. The fact that inviting her (Mademoiselle Baudin et companion) had good odds of digging l'Duc out of his disinterest in summer balls is not irrelevant to having received an invitation at all.

Visiting Baroness de Dreux's ballroom to examine her new architectural features will probably involve less actual dancing — or, knowing Gwenaëlle, roughly the same amount. In the meantime, the enthusiastic celebration of a recent graduate's thesis defense that she suspects is doubling as thank the Maker that's done with, now let's dangle the bait and see if we can't get you married, well. She expects the evening to result in some productive contacts for Stephen amongst the university crowd, at least, and if she doesn't stab anyone in the hand she'll call it a success,

“Bon-papa,” she says, markedly more warmly than she's greeted anyone else yet, letting go of Stephen's arm to reach for Romain's elbows and present her barer cheek to be gestured near, at least, “you did come.”

Astonishing they aren't related when they do make almost exactly the same face upon having to socialise extensively. She'd really much rather just absorb ambient gossip at the modiste, but at a certain point it becomes odd that you haven't also worn your new dress anywhere, and the combined novelty of both herself and Stephen slightly off-sets how annoying most of these people find her,

“This is Dr Strange, Riftwatch's head healer. Stephen, my grandfather, his grace l'duc de Coucy,” who she had earlier drilled him would be politely referred to and addressed as your grace or my lord Duke and absolutely under no circumstances besides express and explicit invitation Romain Charnier, his actual fucking name.

[portalling]

And for all that Stephen has absolutely no respect for the nobility, or inherited titles, or all this social pomp and circumstance, he doe respect the mere concept of Gwenaëlle’s grandfather. Would’ve respected the man even if he was a pig farmer.

(All three of her parents are dead and there’s the nagging horrified self-conscious thought that this is very much the closest he’ll ever get to meeting the father and needing to make a good impression—)

So this is perhaps the most polite and properly-behaved that Thedas has ever seen the doctor: “A pleasure to meet you, your grace,” Stephen says, and executes an attempt at a half-bow.

He’s dressed more austere than she is, leaning towards Orlais’ more conservative current trends; a black raven mask and his outfit mostly in neat black, with the occasional burgundy trim or decorative flair to match Gwenaëlle’s dress. Getting dressed for this party had felt a bit like suiting up for battle, and he’d leaned on any advice she had for the effect he was aiming for: playing along with trends where she flouted them, Stephen not trying to make too many waves. The fact that he’s a rifter and already associated with a few radical academics from the university will do that on its own.

The biggest affectation is the red half-cloak hanging off one shoulder; a nod to his origins.

“I’ve been able to hear Gwenaëlle at the pianoforte on your estate, starting a year back,” he says. “It’s very much appreciated. I don’t know where else I’d have access to such an instrument.”

[toujoursdroit]

He kisses the air next to Gwenaëlle's cheek as expected, but the warmth of his hand on her arm is affection that form does not require. "Belle petite, I have few enough chances to see you in person these days. I would not willingly forgo one that is so convenient to us both." The smile is subtle, and would be even without the mask to hide part of it, but she knows him well enough to notice it all the same.

The hints of a smile fade into simple neutrality as he turns to Strange, giving a slight bow that is (as Gwenaëlle likely told Strange to expect) shallower than Strange's own. "Doctor," he says, without doing anything so gauche as to openly look the man up and down. "It is always a pleasure to meet someone my granddaughter deems worth of her time. I hope it is an honor you do not take lightly." The observation seems to be rhetorical; at the very least, the Duc doesn't linger over it. "Do you already know anyone at the party? As a doctor of medicine from elsewhere, I assume you'll have attracted at least some University attention by now."

[elegiaque]

Just as a masque makes her no more subtle than she is without it, it always strikes her that her grandfather hardly needs one to be so ducally opaque. As visibly pleased as she is to see him now, and as much as that small gesture at her elbow warms her — how long had it taken for her to recognise what he had presumed obvious to her? To see his affection in his actions?

She beams when he calls her attention an honour, unfashionably open in her ever-readable, expressive face,

and the way that her red matches Stephen's, that, too, is clear to interpret.

“The interesting sort,” she contributes, of university attention, mentally excluding Lady Clothilde from the statement. “I don't know if you much recall Provost Stark, but he was from the same background,” is not quite correct educationally, but a more tactful way of addressing shared rifter origins in a context where it's just too easy for more open discussion to lure in listeners before she's quite ready for their conversation to be broken up by rubbernecking curiosity.

[portalling]

The comparison’s close enough to count, and hopefully evoking Tony makes for a smooth patch rather than being guilty by association. Stephen has been pithy and breezy and confident at medical conferences, in front of the hospital board, casually cruelly arrogant even to other surgeons, to other superheroes, but l’Duc is a different matter and a brand-new challenge, so the doctor is locked in. Not simpering, not fawning, just—

Polite. Professional.

“The dean of Lydes College, plus a couple other professors in our pocket,” he says. “Research is always trying to make new friends, as I’m sure you’re aware. Do you have any favourites in the university set, your grace?”

I.e.: any names which might be of use, who could have their ears bent towards Riftwatch? This, too, is strategy; he can’t really turn off that part of his brain either, as much as all the internal klaxons are currently shrieking something about this man pays for Gwenaëlle’s lifestyle and she loves him so much and I really gotta make a good impression and is he even more intimidating than Guilfoyle, hang tight, more data needed.

[toujoursdroit]

For all Romain's opacity, Gwenaëlle is likely to get a sense of how Stephen is doing in the ways her grandfather refers to him (or fails to) in his correspondence. Right now, at least, the doctor hasn't gone so wrong as to shake his grace's reserve or to chill him into a more observable frostiness.

The question, certainly, neither seems a presumption nor a surprise. "I could pass along a few names, though I have not focused my attention extensively on that sphere. Unfortunately, the overlap between the few I could mention and tonight's guest list is minimal." Not zero however, and he glances subtly over Stephen's shoulder before slightly dropping his voice. "Beatris Lavaud might not be a waste of your time. Dark green gown, gold mask with dragon adornments. Lavaud is an internationalist by inclination, which is a bit of a mixed bag for her as social capital goes. Thinks Orlais should continue looking outward, both academically and politically, which is something of a controversial stance in some quarters." Romain doesn't comment on his position, predictably. "But it suggests to me she might be receptive to the unique perspective a rifter could offer. Her specialty is zoology, I believe, which obviously is not medicine but is not so far away as it might be."

[elegiaque]

The long look that Romain earns from his beloved granddaughter for his close comparison of zoology and medicine is less adoring, although whatever that's pricked she doesn't assume enough bad faith to snap at him for it—

a borderline suicidal thing to do to a Duke, though Maker knows at this point that alone wouldn't be enough to stay her hand if she felt the impulse.

“I think she has a point,” she says, instead, of Lavaud's internationalist inclinations, though she further holds off launching into an enthusiastic account of the writings that had introduced her to the topic, since while trying to win him over to Stephen seems like an ill-conceived moment to remind her grandfather how close she'd come to marrying a legitimate aristocrat, even if he was a Marcher.

“We haven't got as far as we have with Orlais alone, after all.”

Promising, she decides. Maybe she'd be interested in Beatris Lavaud's ideas, too— she asides to Stephen, “We could seduce her with my dracolisk. The ones you get around here don't typically fly.”

[portalling]

He’s in the middle of mentally cataloguing the target, filing away l’Duc’s description, when Gwenaëlle veers him off-course.

And then Stephen can’t help it; some real amusement slipslides through that professional facade, glittering in his eyes behind the mask. “Dracolisk seduction,” he asides right back to her, ruminative. “Probably worth a try, even if I’m not sure if Bellerose has practiced batting her eyes winsomely enough.”

Okay, so his very serious demeanour lasted, what, five minutes? (As Gwenaëlle has said to anyone who’s ever asked her for a description of the doctor: he thinks he’s funny.)

“Has she told you about the scaled fire-breathing monster she’s been rehabilitating?” There’s a recognisable warmth in the way he says it, though: monster (affectionate).

[toujoursdroit]

If they'd been alone, Romain might have pressed at that look from his granddaughter, but as it was, he let it pass when the conversation slid another direction. "She has, though," to her, "you'd not mentioned your new addition was a namesake." Perfectly mild. "Still, I suspect you're right that it could get some attention, if you were willing to go that route. Something concrete to contribute to Lavaud's field more directly. It seldom goes amiss with academics."

It doesn't seem as if Romain misses much, but the shift in Stephen's demeanor doesn't draw a visible reaction. Then again, Gwenaëlle has heard at length what he thought about her moving to a houseboat, and she can safely assume that adding a fire-breathing animal didn't render him more enthused. He doesn't feel the need to spell that out in this setting.

"And for what it's worth, if I thought international connections had no value, I'd have brought your cousins home by now, chérie." It's not as if Kirkwall is, at present, appreciably safer, even if that had been the original reasoning.

[elegiaque]

Gwenaëlle looks just a little too much as if she's got away with something in the face of that mildness, only shrugging when Romain calls Bellerose a namesake and pleased with the approval of her suggestion. It's a little pert, a little insouciant,

diminishes not at all the way she glows under even perceived praise.

Probably it's some degree of graciousness that helps her bite her tongue on you don't want to bring Thomas home where he might join the chevaliers or the army, a thing they don't need to be overheard discussing in such blunt terms at a party like this. Instead, “I think Kirkwall has been very educational for them,” which is agreement, more than anything else. “And I could probably convince Raoul of just about anything if I promised to let him go up on my dracolisk, so it's worth a try with an academic,” lightly.

[portalling]

“I’ve long thought the academics were a promising angle in.” It was a remnant of Tony’s influence and priorities, the exposition being held in Val Royeaux, their attempts to slowly sway some of the locals toward rifter science. “I admit that the nobility isn’t— my strong suit, generally,” this was an underestatement, “but Lavaud, I can work with that.”

Strange wasn’t a scientist, strictly speaking, but he was still a doctor with multiple degrees under his belt; part of him still gravitated towards research and studies and papers and proof. No wonder some of the outdated Orlesian gossip around Gwenaëlle had gotten muddled about her tall rifter beaus in Research.

[toujoursdroit]

Given the situation, he's more concerned with Thomas joining Riftwatch at present (or, more worryingly, Raoul running off to see if he can track down the departed pirates), but that's a conversation they'll have behind closed doors and not at a party. If at all.

Instead, he responds to Strange's observation. "It is not that the academics in Orlais do not participate in the Game, exactly. But a bit of eccentricity is useful to them more often than it is to nobles. Not that no one has capitalized on how odd they can be, certainly that's been done. But it's a more challenging gambit for those outside the university." Which is to say: Stephen might find academia an avenue less challenging for an outsider to navigate than Orlais's upper crust.

"I do think it's a good sign that you," a collective you, here, and not Stephen alone, "are likely to be here a bit more often going forward. The more your faces," ha, "are seen in Val Royeaux, the more people will include Riftwatch in their own calculations. Not an unmixed good, but I think on balance it's useful to your cause."

[elegiaque]

The way she turns her head away is at least part involuntary— to spare her beloved bon-papa the kneejerk face she pulls at the prospect of a general you that necessarily includes her being more frequently seen in Val Royeaux, a place she has thawed upon but not warmed to, exactly. (You know: Orlais.) She isn't looking in any specific direction, just casting her gaze off somewhere she won't be as tempted to roll her eyes,

and she is still so close to Stephen that he can feel the way she tenses, caught off-guard by eye contact she could not possibly have been expecting.

Her recovery is not as graceful as she might have liked. It irritates her, instantly, that Marcellin's is; his own conversation smoothly uninterrupted, but his sister now distinctly aware of him within her orbit. If not in arm's reach, then certainly within striking distance. (A tall man in a brighter shade of red, his hair nearly so long but much straighter, his masque artfully matched to his outfit and his awareness of them moving through this evening constant. He must be of an age with her, indeterminate how close or on which side of the number; something familiar to his mannerisms.)

“You'd think all the work we've been doing this past decade would have merited being taken seriously,” is a sharper gripe than she might have made if she weren't off-balanced; the way she presses her mouth shut after saying it suggests she knows as much.

[portalling]

“I’ve been slowly gathering that my lady is not, strictly speaking, a fan of the beau monde,” Strange remarks, his voice dry as the desert, half-amused as always.

Which is the sort of acid-tipped censure he knows so well from her, but usually it’s not so sharp and open like this, audible in the middle of a ball. But he pauses, his gaze following Gwenaëlle’s and the taut lines of her shoulders, to the anonymous masked man who caught her attention.

One of the reasons he finds the masks so irritating is that he struggles to identify people by fashion and voice and absurd hats alone. Stephen does not know this man. He wouldn’t even know Marcellin bare-faced. An ex? She’s presumably got a score of them —

“Are introductions in order?” he asks, his voice quieter, glancing over her shoulder.

[toujoursdroit]

There's no reaction to Gwenaëlle faltering, but unfortunately, that tells them nothing about whether or not he noticed it. He is a man who has lived to be old and powerful among Orlais' nobility; not reacting is table stakes. He, unlike Strange, does not look in the direction she'd been looking.

Romain lets her answer the doctor's question as she likes. His comment is more of an aside, responding to what Gwenaëlle had said first: "I think you are taken seriously, at least in some quarters, for what it's worth. But you know perfectly well that it's not only what you do for the world at large. It's what you might do for the people considering you. A few in the Game have noticed that the world is at war, but even so... old habits." That observation might have the smallest hint of judgment to it, but only in contrast to how neutral his observations have been previously.

[elegiaque]

Gwenaëlle breathes in deeply through her nose and out her mouth, squaring her shoulders and and resolutely pivoting, shoulder to Stephen's chest (she's glad, abruptly, for not having worn the veilfire dress that would have prevented as much) and her back to Marcellin Roux. The space between her shoulderblades feels tight in a way she doesn't like, and it shows, lingering in her discomfort.

It's very polite of her grandfather not to outright acknowledge what he's definitely noticed, but she's not remotely close to subtle enough for anyone to plausibly believe he didn't.

“I know perfectly well those are excuses,” she says, “made by the ignorant or the cowardly or both. Unfortunately, we have to deal with more of those than I personally think is fair but not,”

to neatly answer Stephen's question,

“that one, no. And I remember the names of everyone who wants to know what else we can do for them first, and I'll remember them when this is done, too.”

[portalling]

Grudges, complications, manipulations.

Orlesian fêtes often feel like he is very much out of his depth, particularly alongside this older shark in the waters. Stephen likes a concrete physical problem, like solving a logical puzzle. Re-attach that nerve, activate that neuron, sever that lobe. Brains are a complex series of buttons and levers. Neat, tidy cause and effect.

People aren’t neat and aren’t tidy; they don’t behave in predictable ways. They’re mired in personal history and traumas that he can’t read on a chart.

So he consigns himself to eventually letting it wash over him. Romain and Gwenaëlle talk and catch up and strategise, and discuss the household’s plans for dinner tomorrow, and Stephen dissociates for a little while to watch the rest of the party over the edge of his drink, sizing up those potential prospects to bother about Research patronage later. He tunes back in once it seems Romain’s about to leave them to do his own rounds about the room, and the sorcerer deploys a polite smile, a gracious goodbye, a thank-you once more for hosting us, and we’ll see you back at the house.

[elegiaque]

Roux doesn’t go directly to them, in l’Duc’s wake.

He’s twenty-nine, an heir apparent, operating on his own say so in the imperial court; he’s not that stupid, even if he’s getting towards that desperate. No, he circulates, fully aware of where both his sister and her terrifying grandfather are in the room. Measuring the distance between them (and him); the differences between this and the last time he and Gwenaëlle had crossed paths in an Orlesian ballroom. Or had it been the gardens, that time? She’d been harder to get close to in that lit up veilfire gown of hers.

But he does, inevitably, get closer. At her elbow, in fact, pressing a glass of wine into her hand to make it difficult to hit him and only considering a moment later if he may not have miscalculated that wildly.

Her fingers grip the stem at first automatically, and then as if she is seriously considering fucking up his math,

“You don’t answer my letters, Gigi,” he says, warmly.

“You are one to fucking talk, Marcellin,” she returns, flatly, and will not look at him. Very well,

“It is the nature of the game. Won’t you introduce me to your companion? I have it on good authority you dance with this one. No, really, Gigi—”

The aborted gesture looked more as if she might elbow him in the ribs or pull his hair than reach for a knife; they really do not, on this closer impression, seem like exes.

[portalling]

Some very swift mental arithmetic starts happening on her other side, too.

Gigi, the use of the name familiar in a way she only affords with a few; the newcomer’s voice also warmly familiar, even if hers is the very opposite. An almost-jostling grumbling chiding contact, perhaps a colder version of how he’s seen her with Cedric.

And it comes back to him so, so quickly as a spark of memory — Donna with Victor in an earlock, the two of them squabbling, Stephen’s world-weary voice telling the two of them to lay it off, a warm Nebraskan summer — and he, suddenly, has a guess. Maybe a cousin. Certainly family.

“Doctor Stephen Strange,” he says. Not frosty, still in ambient grudging politicking mode, but his tone remains politely blandly neutral. Gwenaëlle’s spoken of her sisters and cousins at length; she has not mentioned a half-brother to him at all. (Maybe that, in and of itself, says something.)

“And you, monsieur?”

His Orlesian’s accent’s awful. Bless.

[elegiaque]

“Lord Marcellin Roux,” he introduces himself with aplomb, though the space where once he might have said our families have always been ever so close is, for a moment— a missing step in the conversation. The nature of the game, indeed. “If you might be prevailed upon to spare your beautiful companion for a—”

“No,” she says, flatly.

“Gigi, be reasonable—”

“No—”

Marcellin almost visibly counts himself down from being dragged all the way down to Gwenaëlle’s willingness to slapfight him right here in front of everyone’s canapés. He is still smiling, even as he says, lower and through his teeth, “Gwenaëlle Clothilde, I need to speak with you.”

“That doesn’t work for you,” she says, shaking him off her arm. He releases her, slipping a folded square of paper into the drapery of her gown’s cape too swiftly for any but the most attentive of observers to catch, sighing, all exasperation.

“Well, then. The pleasure was all mine, Docteur Strange. Apparently.”

[portalling]

“Charmed.”

This isn’t Stephen’s territory or stomping ground — he’s a fish hopelessly out of water — and so he inevitably takes his cues from her, for better or worse. And more importantly: this guy is clearly bothering her. So after the initial introduction, there’s a tightening of Stephen’s expression beneath the mask the flatter and more curt she becomes. He’s unconsciously moved even closer to Gwenaëlle’s side, shoulders angled so they make an impenetrable wall with hers.

Once upon a time, in Halamshiral, she had saved him from another Clothilde, and so this time:

“Speaking of dancing, we haven’t actually had a turn ourselves tonight,” he says, his head turning to look at Gwenaëlle instead of the upstart lord. If there’s another world where Stephen cranks up the charm and tries to smooth things over between these two, then he’d be hard-pressed to imagine it. She clearly wants absolutely nothing to do with Lord Marcellin Roux, and so Stephen instinctively closes ranks.

[elegiaque]

Real irritation wells up inside Marcellin, fixedly smiling at Docteur Strange as he so graciously extends a hand to gesture them to the dancefloor, of course, he’s heard they dance and all. His sister and her temperament — mercurial and mean — are a familiar element. The presumptuousness of her acquired academic, some rifter nobody, either to dismiss him or to take precedence over him with her—

He involuntarily rolls his eyes when she sets her hand in Stephen’s, diverted from her own irritation by being visibly pleased.

Gwenaëlle’s singular regret is that the closeness of her gown doesn’t exactly allow her to sweep away with all the drama that the moment deserves, but she gives it a haughty chin and it’s nearly as good, leaving Marcellin in their wake. He will not, she knows, be that easily put off. This isn’t going to be the last she hears of whatever this is. But for now...

“The fucking audacity,” she mutters, “as if he didn’t forget how to hold a fucking quill the instant I lost my inheritance—”

The nature of the game. She’d tucked that wound away, spoken of it never, to no one, but it had stung. It stings, now, Marc’s thumb digging salt in with his presumption.

[portalling]

Stephen takes her hand and settles into position across from her, practiced and smooth. He’s better with formal dance and more accustomed to her own movements than the last time they did this, having settled even further into Thedas and its rituals, wearing it like another mantle.

It makes for some well-needed privacy as they take to the floor, away from the hovering crowds and onlookers with their drinks; there’s a safe distance between them and each other moving couple.

“Another cousin?” he asks, a polite nudge, cracking the door open to let Gwenaëlle talk about it. He already suspects there’s something else lurking beneath; she’d always been warmer and more open about mentioning Thomas and Raoul, only fondly irritated by them if anything.

[elegiaque]

The slight shake of her head is a little musical for the sake of the jingling, dangling metal hangings from her ‘eyepatch’; there’s a hesitation before she says,

“Our families were close, though,” as she moves into the familiar steps of a dance she can very rarely be coaxed into participating in except with him, “I was named for his mother.” The bell that should ring is particular: the matter of her name has come up before, after all, and her disparaging commentary on not Clothilde but Decima—

the insult that it had been to her mother, naming her after the Comte’s mistress.

“My lord was a favourite friend of his uncles.”

Annoyed the piss out of Lord Roux, though he’d been better than Emeric at keeping a lid on that. Most of the time.