open | now give me something to believe in.

[interroga]

WHO: Cassian Andor & you
WHAT: A liaison from the Shadow Dragons arrives
WHEN: Bloomingtide
WHERE: Minrathous + Kirkwall
NOTES: Some injury description

arrival.

It’s a late spring night when a stranger arrives at the Widow Tavisa’s Boarding House.

Most regular guests would take the front entrance and speak to the innkeeper in the main room; but this one slips through the back entrance and takes an out-of-the-way servant’s staircase, into a shuttered wing of the building which isn’t supposed to be open to the public. But those rare people in the know might be aware that this leads to Riftwatch’s secret outpost in Minrathous —

The darkhaired man slumps against the locked door leading into their safehouse. He knocks on the door in a fixed, staccato rhythm identifying him as an ally. He has a hand pressed to his side with worrisome urgency, jaw tight and teeth gritted against the pain; he knocks again a little louder, in case whoever’s on watch is dozing.

No one’s expecting a new arrival right at this hour. It’s not ideal.

settling in.

After finally getting vetted and officially joining, Cassian tucks the Riftwatch pin into his pocket and starts to get the lay of the land, gathering information, pressing a finger to the pulse of this new city he’s going to be calling home.

There’s a kind of amiable affability to this new arrival, his smile calculated to be inoffensive and mild, even as the gears are very busily ticking away behind his dark-brown eyes.

You might find him at the Gallows bar, pouring himself a drink and smoothly sliding into the chair at your table to pry: “So, what’s your favourite place in the Gallows or Kirkwall?”

Or wandering the battlements of the towers and looking out across the city. Rebuilding is expensive, and so some parts of Kirkwall still bear the marks of the Venatori attack a little over a year ago: collapsed buildings that never got raised again, battle-scars and scorch marks from dracolisks. “What was it like?” he asks. “The Venatori attack.”

He also goes for long walks through the city, right past the alienage (although his gaze lingers), and venturing into the deeper recesses of the city slums. One particular afternoon, he emerges from Darktown blinking half-blinded into the dim light of Lowtown, which is right about when a few thieves assemble around him for an attempted mugging, knives brandished. “I really don’t have time for this,” he says to the ringleader, looking more annoyed than frightened; which is right about when a Riftwatch colleague might turn the corner and encounter the scene.


( Also happy to receive wildcards, or to write up a bespoke starter for you; just hmu @ quadrille if you’d like to discuss! )

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[interroga]

Once Yseult turns around to face him, and once she speaks,

then there’s a sense of nagging déjà vu nipping at his heels, a faint disorientation like climbing a staircase and miscounting the steps and missing the landing. He trips over that metaphorical absence, then recovers, and moves forward to take the offered seat in front of the desk. Cassian’s good with faces, but the context’s so wholly different that he can’t pick out yet what she reminds him of. Give him some time to chew over it.

(The two fake servants working the magister’s party that evening had had different names, both of them.)

“And you. The Lucerni appreciate Riftwatch’s efforts in the region— as you probably know, our operations have changed over the last year, we’ve had to go underground,” into the shadows, “but the Dragons wanted to pick up collaboration again.”

And it had been an easy choice to send Andor. They pointed him and told him to go, and off he went. He could think on his feet and improvise if necessary, but in the meantime, he would stay loyal and focused on the cause.

[hassaran]

"Collaboration would be welcomed." Yseult is confident she can speak for the Division Heads on this much, at least. "Riftwatch has shared the Lucerni's goals and our work together had been productive." And has continued to be, though of late it has primarily involved smuggling those targeted by the Venatori out of Minrathous, to the Lucerni's new base in Qarinus or beyond. Their own work together was productive—infiltrating an enemy site is dicey enough before pairing with a stranger, but Yseult had been pleasantly surprised by the man's professionalism—a rare mission that proved easier than anticipated. She wonders why they've sent her someone so capable.

She wonders too how long it will take him to place her, and whether he'll admit it when he does. She has him at a disadvantage, the Scoutmaster title is helpfully vague about what she herself does and the last time they spoke she was using a Tevinter accent, a soft one but enough not to draw the second looks a foreigner might. She sounds Marcher now, a crisp upper-class accent and just a slightly unusual lilt to her intonation that's impossible to place. As she watches him she fiddles at one of several slender chains around her neck, drawing it out of the neck of her blouse to thumb with seeming absence at the ring that dangles from it. (Kassa, it whispers in her mind. Close enough for now.)

"Is there any work in particular the Dragons wish to undertake? Or are you intended as a more permanent liaison?"

[interroga]

“Permanent liaison, if you’ll have me.”

You had to show your cards to get some back, exchanging trust-for-trust, and so it’s with some weary self-awareness that Cassian admits, “I stayed in Minrathous too long. They learned my face; there’s a few Imperials eager to have me in a prison cell. So it was decided I would do better work abroad, and it’d be best to stay away for a while until the heat dies down.”

He’d practically become one of those very targets; he’d just had to smuggle himself out by hammering on Riftwatch’s door.

He continues running through the rest of his introduction at brisk pace, however, sitting at rigid right-angles, hitting the notes he’d been reminded to touch on: “It probably won’t be a surprise that we want to break our Lucerni allies out of prison, but that’s a long-term goal. Needs more preparation. For now, I’m simply to assist you in anything you need. Everything Riftwatch does helps us, too.”

this is a terrible tag but I have to restart somewhere I guess

[hassaran]

Yseult's nod is understanding; sometimes you just need to get out of town for a while and give people a chance to forget your face. "Then we're happy to have you," comes with a polite smile, genuinely welcoming but keyed at professional more than friendly. "A prison break would require planning, but that can be discussed. We've had some past successes."

"What type of work have you been doing for them, primarily?"

reaches for

[interroga]

It feels a little bit like a job interview — probably because it is — but there’s little indication of the conversation making him nervous. Cassian knows his answers. He’s technically been preparing for this particular interview for six years.

“Espionage, reconnaissance, sabotage, and assassination,” he says, as perfunctory as if he’s running through a grocery list. “Escorting high-value targets. Disguise and impersonation. Heists. A variety, whatever’s needed, although I have less experience with rifts or the Fade—”

When he mentions disguise and theft, it’s like a key turning in a lock and Yseult can see the startled recognition and slightly crinkled brow as Cassian finally starts to place her. The faint hints nagging at the back of his mind, the longer the conversation goes on and the more he hears her voice, until recognition starts to flicker.

“—and I’m sorry, wait, have we met before?”

At the time, a couple years ago, they hadn’t outright told him you’ll be working with Riftwatch; she’d just been another face, another operative joining him from the shadows.