Truth or Dare: Side Party for Servants and Scoundrels

[faderifting]

WHO: Anyone!
WHAT: A party for people who might scare the nobility, are deathly afraid of chandeliers, or fled the soiree with cheeses hidden in their clothes and need to make a clean getaway.
WHEN: During (and after) the soiree.
WHERE: The valley beyond Skyhold.
NOTES: Drinking, revelry. People might make out or something. We're not responsible for your actions.

The soiree might be fun, if you're into that sort of thing, but that isn't what it's for. It's for impressing the powerful and opening their pockets—and, necessarily, some people aren't invited. In some cases that's personal. In others, it's just understood. When they're done helping to set up, most of the servants and workers who aren't needed to serve make themselves scarce. The usual trickle of refugees to and from the fortress slows. Some people used to sleeping in the stables may find their "beds" occupied by nobles' horses or the rooms they had been squatting in cleaned and prepared for someone else to stay in.

There's no resentment. (Or at least very little.) That's how these things go. And in the valley outside the fortress' walls, there are foot soldiers and refugees and a number of miscellaneous exiles who welcome the company with large fires, cheap but freely flowing alcohol, and whatever music can be wrung out of instruments exposed to such low temperatures. The crowd thins and dwindles as the night wears on, but even after the last person has left the Great Hall in Skyhold, there's still a sizable gathering near the river with no intention of going to sleep before sunrise.

No masks allowed.

Comments

[doneisdone]

She rolls her eyes, but doesn't let his mugging distract her. Her eyes fix back on Rafael, watching him like a hawk. "Certainly," she says idly to Scipio, "shall we go say hello to your friend? He looks lonely."

[bunko]

"No, I think he has good company," Scipio says, cheerfully, smoothly, right as he steps in front of her line of hawk-sight. Too slender to be a true obstruction, and not terribly tall, which precludes the same--but he's enough to obstruct at least some of her view. And hopefully it will be enough to catch Rafa's eye and direct him away, send him into the crowd, where he might be covered by a screen of partygoers. Look what sacrifices he makes for you, Rafa.

Thus situated and scarified, he gives Teren a brilliant smile. "Not so good as me, of course. Come, where is the harm in letting him work? We are not injust men. A little injust, maybe, but a very very very little." In demonstration of the 'little', he pinches thumb and forefinger together with barely a squeak of space between. "If we say that we will give it all back, after the night is over, will that please you?"

[doneisdone]

Unfortunately for Scipio, Teren is very tall. That doesn't mean she can look over him, necessarily, but she can easily angle her head to peer around him, sipping thoughtfully at her wine. "Give what all back?" she asks coolly, and looks back at him with an arch expression. How pleased she will be is, of course, a direct result of how intently he lies.

[bunko]

This... is a trap. It must be a trap. It is so obvious a question that it is unargaubly a trap, and Scipio's smile stays in place, just as brilliant as it was moments ago, before she'd asked, but he is thinking very hard.

Maybe it would be better if Rafa came over here now.

Ah, well. "The time that we have wasted, of course." Smooth! He shrugs, carelessly, charmingly, and casts his gaze out over the ball with a wistful sigh. "The time of these nobles, and the time of you, too. Having to follow after us and think to keep us from trouble, and from troubling all that are here only to dance away this lovely night. But we can give back these wasted moments. And we will, should it please you."

[doneisdone]

Teren doesn't break her gaze from Scipio, watching him closely as he squirms. Then when he looks over the crowd, she flits her gaze briefly over to follow his, then brings it back, studying his face.
"Time," she repeats, "and how do you propose to give that back?" Downing the last of the wine in her cup, she sets it down and begins to stroll toward Rafael, mindless of whether or not Scipio follows. If he ghosts on her, it will be all the worse for him later. She is a Senior Warden, after all.

"Hello," she greets the other half, disregarding whether or not he's currently in the process of working someone, "a word with you, Rafael is it?"