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

[dreamcatcher]

"Maybe I'll get to meet him sometime." Compare him to Grumpy and all her mother's dwarves. She had to guess they were not quite the same as the egg-born whistle-while-they-worked variety she was used to.

Emma had to lift her brows at the last bit. "Meaning you wouldn't answer if I wasn't?" It's teasing, even though it's a little dry. Very much a man answer, wasn't it? This guy was maybe a little too much like the pirate she was missing for her own good. Damn it, Killian Jones, for wearing down her immunity to charming men.

[aintwejust]

"He usually hangs about the great hall, writ'n letters, or the Herald's Rest, tell'n tales. Sometimes plays cards but you watch him good on that, he'll cheat." Most people do. It's half the fun of the game.

"Oh I'd still answer. I'd just flirt a li'l less." Not much less, it comes hand in hand with being civil and being kind.

[dreamcatcher]

"I am the bane of men that like to cheat at cards." It's always been a skill of hers, much to the frustration of the people she played with. Her internal polygraph machine had been showing its flaws lately, but she was still pretty handy at spotting a flub in a card game.

She laughs a little, admiring the honesty at the very least. "I'm guessing the fact I've got someone back home might discourage that, too." A boyfriend that she misses, that she loves. Loving her was apparently a curse nearly as potent as the one she was afflicted with, because in the end it left people dead or alone.

[aintwejust]

"Ah, shoulda known." He rests a hand on his hip, chuffing out a laugh all his own. "It certainly would mean I'd do that a li'l less- or I wouldn't at all. Your prerogative really."

Yes, that's a big word, yes, he knows what it means, yes, he drawls it out all semi-ironical like he do.