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

[aintwejust]

"If it gets 'em drunk and won't kill them? Dwarves'll drink just about anything." Least as far as he's seen. A good glug of ale and it's Fereldan so it's familiar, comfortable, even if it don't takes like much for the first few sips.

"Captain Malcolm Reynolds, and right back to you Miss...?"

[eviscerates]

"Captain, wow. I'm starting to feel like the only person with a title of some kind around here." Princess Emma, Admirable Isabela, Captain Malcolm... she's not entirely sure that being a Wolf would win her any kind of good titles, though. Normally it just brings out more of the worst.

"Ruby Lucas. Are you a pirate, too, or a different kind of Captain?"

[aintwejust]

"Eh, titles are just what fancy people use to make themselves sound all important. Folk like you and me? Titles tell us who can do somth'n for you. Me, I'm a ship Captain. Not a pirate, a real legitimate ship what does legitimate business. So you hear Captain Reynolds and you know 'this guy's gonna get what needs go'n somewhere where it needs to be' or some such." More or less.

[eviscerates]

"So," Ruby starts, expression very very serious, not at all teasing, no way no sir, "You're a courier. Like a mailman?"

She's a bad person, and she sips her beer innocently.

[aintwejust]

"I." He says, brows lifted. "Am a respectable businesman in the business of shipp'n, escort'n, and the occasional bit of bounty hunt'n. I get people and things where they need t'be when they need t'be there."

Not a mailman here, no ser.

[eviscerates]

"Oh, you're right. UPS never gets things delivered when they're meant to," Ruby concedes, raising one hand in a faintly melodramatic gesture of well, I should've known.

Probably better, or she'd think about making a joke about dogs chasing mailmen, and she's not ready for her evening to disintegrate quite that dramatically yet.

"Is it dangerous to ask about the most exciting thing you ever had to escort?"

[aintwejust]

"Now you're just be'n contrary for the fun of it." He snorts a soft laugh, not quite so fussed as he might be. No reason when describ'n the nature of his work is a little sideways and sly anyhow.

"Not particularly. That'd be when we hauled a buncha nugs, two red lions, and a drakolisk on the same damn trip. One a the nugs got loose, spooked the lions, set off the Drakolisk- it was a mess."

[eviscerates]

Ruby grins, unashamed. "Isn't that most of the point of being contrary?" Being contrary without it being fun just seemed like being annoying, really.

And she probably shouldn't laugh, but she does. "It sounds a little like a circus."

[aintwejust]

"Circus' get paid. We damn near didn't and almost lost half our haul cuz of it." But at the end of the day? He does his work, he gets paid. That's how Malcolm do.

[eviscerates]

And Ruby just shakes her head. "I have some friends back home that I think you'd get along with," she says, and her tone suggests that it equal parts endears him to her, and leaves her concerned.

Another swig of the ale - could be worse - and she leans back to set it down on the makeshift bar. "So. Do we dance, or are we too civilised for that kinda thing?"

[aintwejust]

"I hear that a lot." With the endearment and the concern. More the concern than the endearment, really. He finishes his beer with a deep swig and offers Ruby his hand, smile wide and rakish. "We dance. C'mon, I'm pretty sure I know this one."