faderift | i try my best to become poetry. i take a bath and stain the water with black ink.

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i try my best to become poetry. i take a bath and stain the water with black ink.

WHO: Gwenaëlle Vauquelin + YOU.
WHAT: Gwenaëlle arrives in Skyhold, etcetera.
WHEN: The current AC period.
WHERE: Skyhold.
NOTES: She is arriving with a retinue, including resources for the Inquisition (a physician who will join the healers included) and her own maid. Also, if you prefer spam to prose, no problem! I will match however you tag in.

( FOR ANDERS )

( FOR ADELAIDE )

Gregoire's sister

met

else

no one

Madame de Fer

her

smart

( FOR ANYONE )

being there

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So this is where Celene's witch had gone.

It makes sense, she supposes. She makes more sense in Skyhold than Gwenaëlle is inclined to think she ever did in the heart of the Imperial Court, and the thought is even not intended to insult her. She mightn't repeat it out loud, regardless. People are so touchy about her observations, sometimes, and she has a more than healthy wariness of anyone with that much power - but not quite enough to startle and excuse herself the way a gentler creature might. She stiffens in the doorway, and then decides to take it for an invitation whether it was or not.

Something says to her this is not a woman who will hesitate to throw her out if she doesn't wish the company - and, equally, that she isn't one to be impressed by scurrying creatures who haven't the backbone to be presumptuous.

"My lady," she says, after a moment, by way of more or less polite greeting. "I'm - acquainting myself with the castle. I thought I might find something to do. I don't mean to interrupt."

But she has, and she isn't very sorry about it if someone will only talk to her.

Players of the game remember names, faces, entire lineages, lists of favours, blackmails, slights real or perceived all to further themselves. Morrigan remembers names and faces because it keeps a person alive, and she sits up a little straighter, setting the quill aside. And here she thought it would only be Vivienne that she would know from the court here, what with the war distracting so very many of them.

"Morrigan will suffice."

Orlais was where a title mattered. From some in Skyhold she will allow it but here she can be Morrigan; after all, she is one of several who were there during the Fifth Blight and her presence combined with the rest does rather confirm that yes, she indeed is the Morrigan from the tales.

"Acquainting yourself," she murmurs, looking amused as she looks over her once again. Bards are rogues after all but she likes to think that she knows the type well enough. "I am sure there are many an eager young man or woman who would be delighted to show you about, and there are many who would quickly put you to work. Come, sit, give me your name, the intricacies of the elven tongue require a distraction from time to time."

Insufferably vague nonsense and forgotten fragments, most of which can barely even be read these days, and yet she knows there will still be so many who will argue with what she has found.

"Morrigan," she repeats, and - comes, sits, the whisper-rustle of petticoats following her down as she arranges the skirts of her traveling dress. (It had been easier just to put it back on, when Anders was done; Katell is still unpacking and organising her things, and it hadn't been worth interrupting the process to dig through for something else.) "Gwenaëlle Vauquelin."

Lady, but -

She's already been invited to set aside the same for Morrigan, and she doesn't particularly want to start her first proper conversation with the woman by implying she might set herself above someone at Empress Celene's elbow. Not when that someone might actually be useful and interesting for reasons besides Celene's attention, certainly; her hand aches where the anchor-shard pulses, and she flexes it absently, hides it in the folds of her skirts as she's becoming accustomed to doing.

(She would like not to have to get accustomed to having it. She would also like there to be less elven nonsense here in Skyhold and the Inquisition, but she manages to keep her reaction to a small tightening around the mouth instead of a grimace; leading with an insult to her work will get her no where. She's a lot of things, but not stupid.)

With a brief, tight smile - "I'd sort of hoped to get acquainted enough I might find something that I can actually be of any use in to put myself to work."

There doesn't seem to be a shortage of things to do, but Gwenaëlle is not exactly suitable to most of them.

"You are the Comte's girl." You might not play the game but you learn all the pieces on the board. Curious, to find her here alone; there are no shortage of folk in Skyhold from all different walks of life though mercenaries and nobility are curiously thin on the ground, two they could use far more of though that would mean turfing a great deal of folk from Skyhold and into the camp, as well as having to feed them all. Skyhold is not a true hold, and the one garden is small and sad, having suffered the wrath of an abomination. A few herbs are barely enough to heal those in the immediacy, let alone provide enough to feed a ravenous hoard.

"I am sure the lady ambassador would find a use for you if you wished to be trotted out in the endless parade for legitimacy Vivienne has unleashed upon us. A pity you missed the little ball she threw to quell the rumours you've no doubt heard before leaving." One set of invitations becomes a torrent, becomes a flood, as if there is not something more pressing to be done. A pity the little Mage Council didn't take up the entirity of her attention so that some real work might be done without the interruptions, what should the Inquisition care for the opinions of people so obsessed with themselves and their status?

Still, there is rather more that can be done, that needs to be done, and nobility comes with an advantage, not that Morrigan would ever put it in such blunt terms. "Skyhold's work is seemingly endless, as you can no doubt tell. There are many of us involved in research to further our knowledge of our enemy and to perhaps gain an advantage over him, there are likely those engaged in securing alliances elsewhere to get what we need, a letter written with the right threats and gentle implications can suddenly turn up a militia or a gift of swords and armour. I am sure those could have been done from the comfort of - forgive me, where do you hail from?"

Orlais, of course, but the parts of Orlais she cares about aren't the parts that the nobility to tend dwell in, at least not all the year round.

The Comte's girl, an appellation she manages to smile tightly at without wincing, struggles a little more to control her apparently visceral dislike of the suggestion she submit herself to Lady Montilyet to be paraded like a pretty lapdog on a leash for the benefit of the Inquisition. It isn't the Inquisition part that she finds so distasteful, however, judging by the fleeting moment of relief at mention she has been timely enough to miss a ball. Andraste's mercy visited upon even her least dutiful of daughters. She's never thrived willingly in those situations, though necessity has taught her how to turn herself to best advantage; she works at the handicap of her own inability to play nicely and sheath her claws without visible effort.

Bless her, though, for she tries.

"I suppose whatever I might do, it could have been done from Halamshiral," so neutrally referred to, so carefully she can't be unaware of what a charged thing it is to discuss her home presently.

She lays her anchored hand above the other, and the way her chin lifts very slightly has more to do with averting her gaze from it than expressing status or opinion, "But a rift interrupted my journey back to the city, and sort of," a bit dryly, "altered my plans for the foreseeable future. My lord father, the Comte, feels that this is the best place for me."

She is reconciling herself to it, since changing his mind was unusually ineffective this time.

Now that is something to note; there are so many that Morrigan has met and loathed, who trot themselves out as nothing more than an extension of dear mama and papa, the comte and comtess, or whatever other title they might hold, her lips curling just a touch. It would be the polite thing to offer tea. Even her mother had offered something to eat but well, she is an entirely uncivilised creature and she has too many things that are of a value that can't be measured in silver or gold in this room to ever risk food or drink within.

"If it could, I would have remained there myself," she says, sharper than is necessary and yet twas ill done, Halamshiral, and it never affected her personally but to see that, to watch how the world simply spun on, as the people simply complained as if it was only a passing trifling affair made the bile rise in her throat. "The Inquisition at least is involved in something rather more than involved than contemplating the virtues or one navel or another."

Hands for instance, are a rather large part of it, and she arches a brow though she doesn't reach out to grab it as some might, still disliking being touched without reason (without good reason and there are very few good reasons in this world that she can put a name to) and she reconsiders her words, her approach.

It is not always a bad thing, to be made to do such a thing.

"And yet you came through it unscathed that I can see, the fuss some caused simply by breathing at Vivienne's little soiree!" A breath of laughter is allowed before she stops, leaning closer to get a better look, weighing what has been said against what has not, and she can feel the way her lip curls at the last part. "I see," she says carefully, after a moment of pause, looking up from the young woman's hand again before she sighs.

"Has anyone told you what is known then? About the shards and, since there's quite the overlap, those who came through the rifts bearing the same marks? Tis not my particular topic of research, I believe Adelaide Le Blanc recently put out a message on the sending crystals asking about, but I can tell you what I know, and what I suspect from my own areas of study and expertise."

Vivienne's little soiree, yes - here she is among titans, expected to what, exactly? Gwenaëlle doesn't care to sit about idle long enough for someone else to decide an answer to that question; she suspects very strongly that if she does, it won't be one that pleases her. Her allies here are next to nonexistent and her usefulness far from irreplaceable...if she has to be here, if she has to be a part of this, then one day when she leaves it's going to be under her own power and remembered by her own fucking name.

That the Comte would probably be proud of the bloody-mindedness behind that impulse is irritating, but not quite enough to turn her sedentary out of spite. (And at least someone might be proud of her--)

"I've learned little yet," she says, in a tone of admission. "Lady Leblanc's brother recommended to me that I make her acquaintance, but she was not the healer I saw when I arrived, so I've- yet to do so." She intends to, certainly, but she did not intend that her weakness and her need be Adelaide's first impression of her - for all that it might well have helped. Gwenaëlle, whose wide eyes so easily turned luminous and fine features set in solemnity lend her mercurial temperament a fragility she is not completely incapable of exploiting for her own benefit, is far too proud to make that a first resort.

(And her ability to play the ingenue really only works so long as she doesn't speak.)

"Then I shall tell you what I know so you will not go before her fumbling and blinking, dumb as a moonstruck calf." Let Adelaide wonder where the girl has learned what Morrigan is about to tell her after their last conversation ended so frostily; Adelaide can think what she will of the Circles but a prison rots the mind, and whatever memory she has of a life before, it was a life that still knew the Circles to be something required, something necessary. Morrigan knows no restrictions, no net to ensnare, and so there is no need to guard her tongue as her gaze lingers on Gwenaëlle's hand for a moment that is likely rude, that is certainly uncomfortably long before it comes back to her face.

Knowledge after all is a blade; useful, certainly, though liable to be dangerous in the wrong hands or if used improperly.

"What pain you might feel from the mark will fade soon, you will be happy to know that if there is one thing agreed upon by all with them it is that it does not linger, and not all have been made to close rifts if that is not to your tastes." Fereldan nobility and Orlesian nobility are very different after all, though then again, Skyhold has hardly escaped the ravages of the rifts either. "T'would be remiss of me not to inform you though that there was a rather unfortunate event recently where a young elven mage bearing a shard found that she accidentally opened a rift within Skyhold, that seems to be an isolated incident but I am sure that is what has prompted Adelaide's research, as well as the arrival of the rifters beyond the Veil from other worlds and the increasing numbers of those such as yourself bearing the marks. If all your marks are connected to one another I cannot say, and I cannot think if that could be tested at all since you are all of such varying temperaments and I would not herd you like sheep or cattle to poke and prod were you not agreeable to such. I will not lie; there might be some connection between the ancient magics of the elves, and the Tevinter Imperium for did they not plunder much from them, and our enemy, but that is little more than speculation."

But there she has it, more than she might have heard from others and a place to start at the very least, a friendly offer if nothing else. Morrigan is helping. In her own way, after a fashion.

It's the most useful information she's been given since she arrived - her gaze drops to her hand and she makes a fist without thinking when Morrigan speaks of accidentally opening rifts, the memories of the rift that gave her this shard still too close and easily recalled. Cold terror and the burn of the rage demon's claws in her flesh, and scars that she is like to carry the rest of her days - but knowledge is power, and Gwenaëlle is prepared to claw her way out of helplessness if she has to. Learn everything that she can, prepare in all the ways she can, make herself useful, valuable, interesting--

Everyone is quite busy, here. If she needs saving, she is probably going to have to do most of it herself, and given the choice she will gladly take Morrigan's information over someone else's tea.

She has absolutely no intention of going and chasing down rifts to close...but perhaps, one day, it would be just as well to know how to do it. Just in case.

"Your particular study," she says, after a moment. "The ancient magics, that is, if I'm not mistaken?"

Of elves. Yes. Great, them.

Betraying a confidence is not betraying a confidence when she had not been asked to keep a secret but she sees little need to bring up many details of her discussion with Sina regarding the shard, not with someone so new and when it's a theory she hasn't seen fit to run past others quite yet: if the shards could, in theory, connect to Corypheus, though she firmly believes they would be very much aware of that should it be the case. But perhaps having someone who is of actual power with a father of rank (people will learn, Skyhold does not do well at secrets for long unless they are uttered in the Nightingale's ear or said in the proper place, at the proper time, unless you are practiced at the art of them) and importance will mean that something gets done. It galls her, of course it does, but it could help because it is easier to dismiss people who fall from the sky when they are still more of a hindrance, so many strange problems for the established order of the world who balk even at magic.

Easy to dismiss an elf woman from beyond a rift that the Dalish and others revere, less so to dismiss a daughter of nobility should she prove a useful asset of her own, and that means just as many answers for the rest of them rather than scrabbling around in the dark. Let them see who has the stronger will.

There is something stern in a young woman when she comes into her own, when she learns to lash her will and her temper, when she makes it into her own, and when her silence can be used to as deadly effect as her tongue.

Skyhold has been absent some interest.

"That which many mistakenly believe to be lost. I first came to Celene's attention when she wished for something more than the rather blinkered and limited perspectives of the Circles, of which I have happily never been a part of. I study and seek to restore that which once was so the world will not become as mundane as it threatens to be."

What hasn't come from the elves though? They were the very first after all.

Celene's arcane advisor, the apostate - yes. It's a perspective on the Circles that Gwenaëlle has frankly not been exposed to, in the past; her experience of mages is naturally limited, and through that limitation comes the reticence that is fear of the unknown. Mages are frightening because they have power that she doesn't understand, and it seems fitting that they be in Circles, where Templars can protect them. Can protect everyone else. Sitting here with Morrigan is strange in ways she'd struggle to articulate if asked to, but it's difficult to cower from the terrifying mage's failure to provide a proper tea service when the scars of a demon attack that she survived are still pink and healing.

The worst happens - and then it isn't the end. And then you live. And then you'll find newer, more terrible things to be afraid of, but only after you've relearned where to draw the lines. Old fears aren't so powerful. Old certainties seem less concrete.

She'd always rather understand.

"I must say," after a slight pause, "I've many words for the world we presently live in, and not one of them is 'mundane'."

Once Alistair asked her opinion of Circles after she had first set foot in one. A blood mage had taken hold so the whole place had been overrun with every sort of horror imaginable including abominations; she had met the Commander there, a first impression she is careful to remember, someone she will still never fully trust. Templars are Templars after all, he had endured something that drives out the truest, darkest parts of a person and well, her own mother had taught her what no Circle ever had yet for every story about Flemeth, there had never been a single abomination then. Neither had the Chasind ever produced one and they had lived very close when they had dared until something had sent them scattering from them.

That is likely what happens here too, runners that come because they are asked until they trade off to friends, calling in favours unless they're the ones with the same interests. But the girl remains, and she is to be commended when the door is open.

"No?" Sometimes it's truly rather tiresome to put on the act that isn't always expected but would be missed if she didn't bother, and she has gone so long this way that she doesn't know many other ways to be anyway. "Twould rather depend on the definition of mundane but I do not so much mean what appears exactly; the themes, the shapes. There is war where a monarch grapples to claim the crown and another tries to tear it from them for their own head. Mage against Templar is a tale almost as old as this world itself. Tevinter causing an upset in some fashion, how long has that particular refrain been sung? As many times as they have sung the Chant in the Grand Cathedral? I would wager more." What a scandalous thing to say, no wonder she gives such a wicked smile to say it because the Chantry for all that they speak of the Maker and Andraste never move on, dragging the world back into the mire, into the muck and blood. "The Breach and the shards, the rifters, those are less so but when one thinks of even the fragments of Arlathan, of what might once have been accomplished in Tevinter on those rare moments when they did not resort to the blood of slaves and theft? That is what is missing. The Chantry dictates what a mage might learn, indeed they dictate much of what the world might learn, increasingly so if the Qunari threaten to come again or Tevinter truly rallies behind Corypheus."

"Do you think that they might? Tevinter, rally in truth behind his banner?"

Whatever else she might have said - whatever she keeps herself from saying about the fragments of Arlathan and all of the hurt-child parts of her that can allow there to be no value in all that isn't ever going to be hers the way it could have been her sisters' - that question, rather suddenly delivered, seems an earnest one in every expectation of being given an intelligent answer. It's very easy very quickly to think of Morrigan both as someone who will have an intelligent answer to that disquieting notion and as someone who might give it to her, if only simply because she thought to ask and wait to hear.

Questioning doesn't always teach you anything more than how a person chooses to answer them - but sometimes learning what it is that someone wants you to know is valuable in itself. Gwenaëlle remembers as much often enough to take, as often as she can be bothered, the opportunity to keep asking when answers are forthcoming.

She might learn a little about the subject. She will almost always learn something interesting about her teacher.

"Who can say for certain, I would be wary to put much stock in it when a far larger concern would be in what will happen with Orlais and if Nevarra will become at all involved, and how long it will take the Chantry to choose a successor to Justinia. However, they will certainly watch with great interest. There will always be those in Tevinter seeking to reclaim what they believe to be rightfully theirs, and if there is a chance where the south would look to be weak, if they believed that Corypheus could truly lift them to the exalted heights of old again? There are those who would do it in a heartbeat. But they have not so much been bitten as they have been savaged, left to lick their wounds a long time. They are shrewd and canny these days."

Venatori have attacked those responsible for bringing her eluvian to Skyhold when much of what Skyhold has dealt with thus far have been the Red Templars, so there is less to go on but the reports are disturbing. All but the mages seem to have worn shackles, not that it surprises her, not in truth, but it is one thing to know of it, and quite another to have it confirmed in the cold light of day. Not that there's very much they can do about it but there's also whatever strange rumours flit in and out from the Grey Wardens but she has her truce with Alistair, and she is good enough to keep some secrets.

It wouldn't do to be fearmongering but Tevinter is a hungry creature and it is to her own advantage that Tevinter and the Venatori aren't forgotten about simply because people wish to wring their hands about the Red Templars. Sentiment gets in the way there, people upset because oh poor Templars, it might be someone they knew. No one forced them to take the lyrium same as no one forced them to be a Templar in the first place.

It is very unlike how the mages were forced into Circles, and though she has little enough sympathy for them even now, her sympathy for Templars is even less.

Gwenaëlle makes a sound that's barely a sound; a huff of air, a quirk of her mouth. "No one," she observes, "wants a fight they're not already assured of winning." And if she says it with some asperity...the jostling for power and position and presentation of all of this is hard not to be frustrated by when the urgency of it has been driven into her body like a wound. By the time everyone agrees the world ought to be saved, what will that look like?

It isn't the Inquisition she worries about tearing itself apart so much as the great nations. As a cause, she wouldn't have guessed saving the world would struggle so with drumming up support, and yet - cannot be surprised by the truth of it. By the bitterness and infighting and those who will not see what's in front of them because admitting it is frightening and pride is more important than survival.

All opinions she might not have thought to hold, were she still safely tucked up in Orlais, untouched by the breach - but she isn't. So here they are.

"History is forgotten very quickly. For all intents and purposes, this is very much like a Blight; there is a Magister, there is something very much like an archdemon, there is something tainting the very world itself, indeed it is worse. A Blight is more readily defeated." It had taken only a year to go from Ostagar to the Hero being named the Hero after all, drumming up the support though it had felt like pulling teeth at the time; now the sky is torn apart, people are falling through it, there is a civil war in truth in Orlais of all places with the Divine dead, the Mages and Templars have barely finished fighting and yet what do they have to show for it? Everyone crammed into a fortress with holes in the roof or camped in the valley, all of it groaning under the weight. "I am sure Vivienne and Josephine meant to assure the gathered company that we are the winning side, though I think it will take rather more than parlour tricks to accomplish that."

It will take real words, real action. It will take Celene perhaps pulling her head out of her backside for five minutes to get her house in order because Morrigan might not care for Orlais or for the Game but Gaspard is a tyrant, a rabid dog barely kept on the leash for the moment. Gaspard in charge would see a much more dangerous world. When the dust settles after all this she can barely imagine the paths she will have to tread.

"They will take some convincing. There are plenty of very empty heads simply waiting to be filled."

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i try my best to become poetry. i take a bath and stain the water with black ink.

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i finally return to this

we are rolling backwards like weird slug babies toward the finish line

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