TEST DRIVE MEME!

[faderifting]

TEST DRIVE: ORLAIS EDITION

I. EVERYBEAR I GO

Believe it or not, there are bears in Orlais, too. Stuffed ones posed in noble salons casting intimidating shadows as lords tell unlikely stories about how they bravely stared the great beast in the eye before they slayed it with a single shot. One comtesse keeps bears as pets in large pens on her estate, much to the distress of her nearest neighbors. But most common are the dancing bear acts found on street corners here and there. Perhaps there is some sort of special bear communication network that has passed on a message, because it seems like the presence of the Inquisition has inspired these bears to finally make a break for it out of servitude, and that is how you find yourself being chased by a bear in a belled hat down a narrow cobbled alley lined with street vendors.

II. OUI OUI MON AMI

The Inquisition's efforts are currently focused on Orlais, where a civil war is raging and intelligence indicates Corypheus seeks to eliminate Empress Celene, while the oppressed elven population's discontent threatens to bubble over into a second rebellion. The Inquisition's activities here are mostly political and designed to gather influence and information: endeavoring to make a good impression at the ball of an influential comtesse with ties to the Council of Heralds, or assisting with the reconstruction of the alienage district destroyed by fire. There are rowdy soldiers in taverns to eavesdrop on, and restless crowds listening to streetcorner speakers preach Celene's virtues, or Gaspard's, or lament the end of the world.

But honestly, who cares about any of that? Halamshiral also offers great high-end shopping. Priorities. Gowns, tunics, fur-trimmed cloaks, sleeves slashed and puffed with layers of bright-colored satin. Tall boots with gold spurs to clink as you walk. Veils, lace-trimmed smallclothes, perfumes, necklaces worth your weight in gold. If you have the coin, the shopkeeps have time for you. The slightest whiff of poverty will leave them cold toward you. They might even pretend not to see you, but hey: they work on commission.

Even among decadence and finery, there are signs of unrest. In an out-of-the-way village square, little Orlesian children gather to throw thick gold coins in a gilt fountain, with whispered wishes and giggles. All at once, a thief pushes his way into their circle, breaking the idyllic scene. He leaps into the fountain and grabs a handful of coin. Thin, dirty, ragged, hollow-eyed and, under the hood of his cloak, elven, he scans the now-screaming children -- and then takes off running.

“Stop him!” howls one precious Orlesian cherub, her rosy cheeks streaked with tears. “That dirty knife-ear took my money!”

Kids are just the cutest.

III. SKYHOLD

Skyhold is where people who don't like fun accents and life being a constant masquerade hang around repairing walls, filling out paperwork, and, on rare occasions, engaging in elaborate, color-coded team snowball fights.

That last occasion? Totally over. Now the Inquisition will see you work, work, work, work, work. Working to save Thedas is not all fun and games, and there are plenty of things to keep you busy in Skyhold. See that roof over there? It has a hole in it. Climb up, someone suggests, and fix it. See that hole over there, in the wall? Some drunk from the tavern fell through it yesterday, and it needs repairs. See that floor over there? It’s dirty. And here’s a mop.

If these tasks seem too menial and demeaning, perhaps you’d like to head up to the library and reshelve some books. Perhaps you’d like to meet a special friend there? The stacks are warm and cozy, and at least a little out of the way. Secret spaces are at a premium. But be careful: you aren’t the only one in Skyhold, no matter how many people shipped out to Orlais.

If warm ovens are more your style than warm books, try the kitchens. They could always use a helping hand - especially because one of the baby griffons has made its way down there. A sharp-beaked competition for your plans to pilfer snacks, but you’ll prevail, right? The griffon loves chicken, and the taste of your blood. Get her outside before she gets too comfortable.

Or just feed the dogs, you dirty Fereldan.

IV. WILDCARD

Thedas is a big place. Do something else in it. Maybe in the Hinterlands.

Comments

iii

[southernson]

The man who approaches is very obviously of Tevinter stock, and if one might guess from the finely-tailored cut of his clothing... of relatively wealthy Tevinter stock. Dark-skinned and dark-haired and curiously bright-eyed as a boy, the lean (but quite short) man made his way around a bit of masonry which had made a groaning, slow-motion fall from the pitch of a stairway.

Light as a fox on his fine-booted feet, he tutted thoughtfully at the stone while a darkly-garbed elf in a silver collar, who matched his master in coloring like a living accessory, padded quietly after him.

"My, my. All the talk about this place, and it's falling down around our ears!"

.... what an unholy alliance /lols heartily

[goodforsaken]

Lex is dressed what could be called serviceably, not immediately a noble's finery, so it might take the eye of (another) noble to note even the simple tunic and trousers are probably stupidly expensive. Maybe there's some embroidery as a concession to a person who canonically wears like, bowling shoes as formalwear.

Anyway, that's enough about clothes, until there is invariably more, because who doesn't love describing those. Lex himself has amassed a wealth of interesting details from his new conversational companion's, as well as his accompanying elf and a number of other things he will inevitably file away in case he can exploit them; that's just. What his mind does. Hooray! The observation makes him laugh, a high pitched noise that is a little awkward not due in any part to feeling awkward, but Lex just ...is. He just also has enough money and confidence to spin it into a kind of deceptively harmless boyish charm, the last of which they seem to have in common. Also: incredible shortness.

"And yet. So's the sky. A little crumbling masonry seems mild in comparison. Or at least enough to stop me making all kinds of noise about how I can't work in these conditions. I didn't just fracture any important part of you, did I?"

What with the ...falling rock sign he did not install.

you're not wrong!

[southernson]

Not a peasant or a servant? Not immediately pulling on the 'you goddamn 'vint'' scowl? Lucarius' smile broadened an almost imperceptible measure, and there was a new lightness to his languid stride. His circuit around the boulder brought them almost side to side, companionably, and he reached out with the toe of his boot to nudge at the great rock with the well-polished toe of his boot.

"Oh, the sky's not falling, it's tearing! That needs a seamstress, not a mason." He waggled his fingers playfully. "But... more seriously, my good man, if the noise is bothering you, why not cordon off the area? The, ah... the pressing need for improvement looks, one would think, as though it would justify such measures. By the Fade, it would have been an even bigger mess if this had fallen on a person."

He lapsed into quiet laughter, and clasped his hands behind his back. The attendant slave simply fell, like a shadow, a step beside and behind his master, utterly silent and expressionless.

i'm delighted, is what i am

[goodforsaken]

Lex really didn't have time for anyone's 'you goddamn anything'; his most like...fatal interpretation of prejudice would center around, uh, Superman, and Thedas did not currently contain one of those. He did harbor a certain common innate suspicion of magic inasmuch as it was power he lacked access to, but the most intelligent attitude there was to live and let live unless people started trying to boil the blood in his veins. Which Lucarius presumably wouldn't do just for sport or anything, this narrative contended. At least not right outside of the War Room, that would just not be politically savvy.

Meanwhile Lex apparently hadn't judged the conversation sufficiently distracting to stop working while having it, the plink-plink-plink of loosening another block a constant undercurrent. At least this one wasn't going to end up on anyone's foot, which Lex addressed acerbically, errant piece of hair casually attacking his eyes.

"If," he contended, thoughtfully, "people really can't get out of their own way enough to take caution on that account, well. Not passing down such a thick layer of obtuse to any future generations might be, mm, the ideal outcome."

Survival of the fittest wasn't per se a concept going by that name at the moment, but maybe Lex would pioneer it. The thought crossed his mind that had said mess fallen on the silent elf, odds were good it wouldn't be considered falling on a person. Ah, Thedas. But! Since they were engaged in reasonable amicability he put his tools down long enough to reach out a super well muscled smith arm...er. A hand, for Lucarius' shaking consideration. "Alexander Luthor," he said, even though narrative had and would continue to call him Lex, at least until it decided whether or not that was too modern a diminutive. As a noble house that had in the last ten years or so drastically increased its wealth, it might have been a name recognizable to most Southerners, but perhaps not Tevinter.

omfg, i love this!

[southernson]

"Ah, one would think! But it's unfortunately true that far more than merely heritable factors contribute to intelligence; an idiot man may sire a wickedly intelligent son. And vice versa, more's the pity. Just imagine, a well-timed falling rock might snuff out a life which could have given rise to the greatest mind Thedas had ever seen!" He smiled, tipping up his chin to watch the... mason? Architect? At his work.

"Breeding intellect into slaves was a long-lived project of past magisters. In these times, it's broadly more accepted that introducing rigorous education and critical thinking skills early and consistently produces far more positive and predictable results." His smile widened still further at the extended hand, the corners of his eyes creasing in what might be genuine pleasure. The hand offered back was long-fingered and tanned, scarred here and there. The grip shared was firm but politely brief.

"Luthor," he murmured, black brows jerking towards his hairline in surprise so earnest it was the most palpably real thing he had done so far in their conversation. "Andraste's cold tit, what manner of blackmail must they have on you that you've been reduced to, ah..." He indicated the stones, "Hard labor?"

[goodforsaken]

It was an easy assumption, one Lex cultivated or not as needed; in this case not. "Nothing, I hope," he demurred, although if we wanted to be honest we would have to admit Leliana probably had a stack of as much thick as her arm. "It needs doing, I can do it. Paying my dues, you could say."

Before they would let him get his sticky fingers all over the Undercroft and therefore fade-touched materials.

Lucarius maybe hadn't meant for his beginning and ending statements to follow one another, but in Lex's mind they met with a head-splitting clang; as much as he liked to think he'd taken what he needed from any ancestors, most especially his father, and left the rest behind, there was no denying his razor sharp intelligence was why Lex could speak both Anders and Common, as a for instance, less than a year after he could talk. And his name had been known in its own right before Lex took the reins of the house and yanked it ungently into the present.

Still. "You've got me at double disadvantage now. I don't know if you know my name or my father's, and yours could still be anything." After a second he added, genuine friendly advice: "Word to the wise, I'd take care who you share that kind of sentiment with." The whole uh. Breeding. People thing. "Someone's likely to put you in the stocks."

Not Lex, but someone. He raised an eyebrow with something like shared amusement. "Or at least try. I don't imagine it'd be easy."

[southernson]

"Dues," murmured Lucarius, letting his shock fall from him like so much water. Underneath it he looked... troubled. Cautious, now. One hand lifted to his face, touching his jaw in tense wonderment. "I... see." He didn't; not really. They'd both understand that. But the thought that powerful men would resort to such low drudgery for something had opened a black box of possibility in the back of his mind.

If men were all beasts than clever and ambitious men were the most dangerous kind; with sharpened senses and unerring direction, always up. Lucarius likened them to sharks, able to scent blood in the water for miles and hunt tirelessly for the source.

Is there more to gain here than I anticipated? wondered Lucarius, and wet his lips with the pale pink tip of his tongue. Smoothed his expression with a smile. "Let me put us back, then, on even footing. Magister Lucarius Silanus. Officially here as an envoy of the Imperial Senate. So..." His smile quirked cattishly up, and he winked, "If my cultural peculiarities cause anyone trouble, I must be suffered to some degree. Diplomatic immunity is quite a beautiful thing, and I'll admit I enjoy seeing the hackles rise on some of these backbred moralists. They love to hate the idea of slavery; but most slaves are worlds better-kept and better-educated than any elf you'd find in an alienage. If a few have intolerable men to master them, is the improvement in status for the majority worth their plight? And does the absence of slavery elsewhere save elves from horror?"

He snorted, as if the answer were obvious: small-minded nonsense, barely worth his breath to elaborate on. So he made an airy wave of his hand, as if to brush away that vein of conversation. "But... thank you, for the warning. I hadn't expected such gentlemanly manners."

[goodforsaken]

"I'm a complicated person," Lex cleared nothing up at all in regards to what dues would earn him, or why; it was dry enough to indicate four words covering a multitude of sins. His bizarre trifecta of occupation wasn't secret enough that he wouldn't discuss it, he just defaulted to holding back information until it was useful to share. Then again, if the Luthor name had reached all the way to Minrathous, it might well have been because its youngest scion had thrown together several rarely combined ingredients, so, the point was: "Commit to enough hard labor and sooner or later someone around here will owe me a favor. I'd prefer sooner, not that later can't be said to serve its purposes. Best served cold, as they say."

Labor, favor, later. The repetitive, carefully placed sounds extemporized to catch on the ears and stay in the brain weren't an accident; if Lex had not been all the things he was already he'd have made a killing (.....on so many occasions so literally, tiny sobs) in politics.

If Lucarius was stitching shut that vein of conversation Lex wouldn't press it; while he had no interest in owning slaves and had been raised with the concept as repellant by virtue of the Southern part of the world, well--he'd been born into a family line probably not all that stable to begin with, not exactly softened by upbringing he held so far below the public eye the Deep Roads looked shallow in comparison. A wellspring of empathy he was not.

What he was, was an appreciator of good strategy, and sending Lucarius on behalf of the Senate was certainly that. See?, it said, not so much as raising its voice, there is a middle ground between the Venatori and the 'good Tevinter' gracing the Inquisition's presence. Lex inclined his head and picked up his tools to resume working on the wall, presumably to impart 'sure, ain't no thang,' except that. You know, no one in Thedas would ever like, say that. "I did almost crush your foot. It seems unfair to do you near-insult in addition to near-injury."

Let us laugh at his cleverness, won't we?

[southernson]

Favor.

Later.

It brought back echoes of the battlefront, like after-images of light and shadow burned into the insides of his eyelids. A quickened pulse, remembered adrenaline. His lips compressed in a suppressed smile at the memory, and he inhaled quietly. "To each man his own! I far prefer to employ the manners of leverage which don't require I sweat."

He purred the half-truth and his hand dropped from his face back to his side.

So sweet, to change his tune!

Only moments ago the stranger insisted that only the unwise and unwary might be crushed. "I don't mind unfair," chirped Lucarius, beaming, "As long as I'm the one with the upper hand. Tell me, when will your work here be finished? For the day, I mean, not... in its entirety. If I were you I'd enlist a team of some sort; otherwise I fear you might be at it for a decade."

His dark eyes assessed the long wall, the height and thickness of it, and added (only a little dryly), "Or two."

[goodforsaken]

Oh no, my friend, it was the same tune! Maybe just lowered an octave, or whatever was the metaphorical equivalent of by this point Lucarius had distinguished himself as interesting, and therefore Lex would be slightly more 'damn shame, that', if his head had been squished like a grape or something. He considered his work, which was progressing at a reasonable pace despite how people kept interrupting him in other threads (...no they didn't). "Once I'm obliged to work by torchlight, more or less."

Unexceptional brute labour wasn't going to earn him enough goodwill to make that worth it. Anyway, because how Thedosians tell him escaped management at the moment, maybe that met uhhhhhhh about two hours, yes? Sure! What an arbitrary designation.

The observation on the wall, meanwhile, was--well, deeply accurate; Lex let his eyeline follow Lucarius and chuckled, again high-pitched and a little awkward, but carrying it well. "I'm not a mason. Once all the loose stones are out I hope they take the trouble to put a team on it." Pretending, of course, that at the time of their actual handshaking the detail had been included that Lex's hands wore the kind of wear and tear ascribed typically to craftsmen, not combatants.

He tilted his head over renewed tiny hammer taps, its angle avian. "Why? If you're looking for a tour diplomatic immunity will get you much more interesting places than I can."

(Lex didn't think that was why.)

[southernson]

"How grueling!" Gasped Lucarius, faux-breathless with sympathetic indignation at the plight of a fellow upperclassmen. The wickedly good-humored glint in his eyes gave him away, as did the way his serious expression, the soft 'o' his mouth had formed, seemed all liquid around the edges. As if it might fade and lapse into laughter should the weight of Lex's attention linger on it too heavily.

And then he did laugh, low and soft sound, as unobtrusive as a big cat's contented purr. "Wring out enough benefit of them to be worth the callouses! And good luck to your work; I'm not at all envious of it. And-- whyever would I desire a tour? Gambling with my life for the risk of more of this old ruin to fall on me? No, no..."

He cleared his throat, canted his hip. Crossed his arms, picturesque as a painting. "Less... diplomatic immunity. More... wine-fueled rhetoric and discourse. No strings attached, and I'm happy to supply the wine."