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

[justice_is_blond]

"Hate is easy." It's another unfortunate truth of this world. "Thinking, realizing that situations are complex, is not."

That's not to say that everyone who hates him is entirely wrong. A few have the right. A majority have chosen the easy way, however, and they always will. There's nothing he can do about that simply fight for what is right.

His hand drops to his side and he nods. There's sadness, but it's not so much as if he'd hurt her. It's more like she's realizing that this world isn't a great place. "People choose to believe that if they have faith and follow the rules, the worst will never befall them. They're wrong, but they don't realize it until too late, until it has cost those around them everything, and then claims them as well. You'll find a great deal of denial and fear here. Rise above it, if you are able. I think you may be."

[bookish_lioness]

"Hate is the hardest thing in the world sometimes," Hermione counters lowly. "At least, that's how it is for most of the decent people I've met."

She's one of those people who'd always followed the rules, who had faith in the government and in being safe in Hogwarts and of having her parents there to always watch out for her. All of those things had proven faulty the past few years, and he's right, she had realized it too late, but even if he's rational and gives off all appearances of being sane, it can't really excuse the fact that he'd killed people. While some might have deserved whatever happened to them, surely not all of them could have.

But then, she's just categorizing him as a murderer again, and she knows enough about the world - her own and, now, Thedas - to know that things aren't that simple. Maybe he's right. Maybe hating is easier. Given the way it knots her stomach up whenever she thinks about it, though, it's hard to see it that way.

"You think a great deal of someone you've only recently met," she notes softly. "Besides, denial is easy, since it can be refuted with evidence. Fear is what's illogical, so it's not always so easy to bypass. Especially not in a place where danger can come in from any side at any moment." Even from people who don't seem quite so dangerous.