Work Proximity Associates Meme

[byblow]

This is a meme for getting quick and dirty CR with characters you might not normally tag, because for the most part everyone lives or works in the same place and would be interacting during the daily grind in ways we might not think about or have time to fully RP. It isn't designed or intended to make characters become best friends—though if that happens, cool!—but to give people entry points for future CR development, or at least IC awareness of who a few other characters are, even if it's just "that lady who glared at me for ten minutes without talking."

INSTRUCTIONS

1. SIGN UP. Go HERE by the end of the day on August 28 and sign up (comments are screened) with a character and list of opt-outs. Depending on how many people participate, I'll give everyone up to three randomly chosen matches to tag.
   
2. WAIT. I might need a day or two to get everyone matched up correctly and hand out those matches. Once that's done, I'll unlock this post to allow comments and post the scenarios list.


3. TOP LEVEL. Post a top-level here so people can tag you. You aren’t required to have signed up for matches to participate, but you are required to tag at least one other person if you post a top-level comment, or I’ll find and destroy you.
   
4. PICK A SCENARIO. For each character pair, roll for (or deliberately choose) one of the provided scenarios. Or make up your own. It's all cool man.
   
5. TAG YOUR MATCHES. You can actionspam an actual conversation/thread, or you can just chat out OOC how things would go between the characters and what (if anything) they would learn about each other over the course of their time together.
   
6. TAG WHOEVER ELSE YOU WANT. It's your life.

SCENARIOS

THE GALLOWS


1. FERRY. Your characters are stuck on the ferry together, alone, for the 10-15 minutes it takes to reach the other side. Possible complications include a drunk ferryman, a drunk singing ferryman, bad weather, capsized boat, and lost paddles.
   
   
2. HEAVY LIFTING. Your characters have been tasked with moving a large, heavy, and ungainly piece of equipment in a large wooden crate up to the seventh floor of the Central Tower. Magic isn't cheating, but it will still take more than one person to guide it up the staircases without anything breaking. And it is entirely possible that, once they get it up there, they'll be told it was actually meant to go to the basement of the Templar Tower.
   
   
3. DINING HALL. They're either awfully early for breakfast or awfully late for dinner, making them the only two people in the fairly sizable dining hall, and the staff insists they sit together at a little table in the corner so the rest of the tables and room can be readied or cleaned in the meantime.
   
   
4. GARDENS. The herb garden has been invaded by caterpillars. They are adorable and fuzzy, but they have to die. Or be picked off the leaves gently and transported out of the Gallows. Or, if butterflies and pickles sound fun, they could be moved to one of the Gallows’ smaller decorative green spaces and enticed to stay there, away from the medicinal herbs, by planting dill and fennel, their favorites. Their fate is in your characters’ hands.
   
   
5. LIBRARY. Not every book in the Gallows' library belongs there. A sizable number are on loan—from Skyhold, from the universities of Orlais or Markham—and sometimes they have to be sent back where they came from. Your characters have been tasked with finding a text called Qunari Irrigation Techniques: What We Think We've Learned From Staring At Par Vollen From A Long Way Away somewhere among the thousands of books on the shelves.
   
   
6. TRAINING GROUNDS. Maybe your characters are sparring! Maybe one character is practicing and the other is nearly getting their head chopped off trying to walk past because neither of them are paying attention! Maybe a gust of wind has blown someone's important research into the path of someone else's archery practice!
   
   
7. GRIFFONS. One of the griffons has taken something important—armor, a sack of supplies, whatever else—and is playing smug keepaway on the walls and rooftops. Good luck.
   
   KIRKWALL
   
   
8. STABLES. Besides the griffons and everyone's dogs and cats, the Inquisition's domesticated animals are largely kept in stables located safely on the docks—no horse likes a row boat—inside the old Qunari Compound. So go exercise some animals. Or heckle them. Or sleep in the loft because you missed the last ferry.
   
   
9. LOWTOWN. Kirkwall is a large city, and the bulk of its people live in Lowtown. That’s where you’ll find the loud, busy market stalls, the taverns, the street performers and scammers. It is where you won’t find Gareth—not the Templar, not the archivist mage, another Gareth, young and recently missing from his guard posting—but it is where he was last seen, flirting with a woman selling fruit, so your characters have been asked to scour the area for any sign of him.
   
   
10. DARKTOWN. What are your characters even doing down here? It’s dark. It smells weird. And at the moment, one of them is likely being mugged, and the other is likely lost.
    
    
11. HIGHTOWN MARKETS. Getting past the guards in the residential areas of Hightown might require looking like you belong there, but the market square will take anyone who has money to spend—which currently includes your two characters, equipped with a purse of coins and a list of purchases to make on the Inquisition's behalf.
    
    
12. CHANTRY GARDEN. Keeping a place looking this tranquil (ha ha, sorry Anders) takes work. It isn’t strictly the Inquisition’s job to do it, but nonetheless, after a strong summer storm rattles the topiary and scatters debris around the garden, a couple of people—your characters—are dispatched to put things back in order. Please do not reshape the topiaries into anything obscene.
    
    ELSEWHERE
    
    
13. THE WOUNDED COAST. Not everything grows easily in the Gallows gardens, but there are reports of Amrita Vein scattered around the winding, sandy shores beyond Kirkwall (beach day!) and Ghoul’s Beard growing in the craggy caves of the Wounded Coast (giant spider day!), and your characters have been rewarded/punished with the task of collecting some.
    
    
14. PLANASCENE FOREST. Spooked by something in the woods, one of the Inquisition’s suppliers bolted on horseback and left behind his cart of goods. The Inquisition cannot PAY him ENOUGH to go back into that CURSED FOREST ALONE to retrieve them. Fortunately, the Inquisition doesn’t have to pay your characters anything extra at all to go do it for him.
    
    
15. VINMARK MOUNTAINS. Somebody’s fickle mount—be it horse, hart, dracolisk, or nuggalope—got loose and is really enjoying Mount’s Day Off in the mountains, while your characters get to enjoy Riders’ Day In Pursuit. Unless they don’t. How much do they care about that beast, really.
    
    WILDCARD
    
    Do whatever you want, whether it's completely new or an altered take on one of the prompts.

Comments

Alistair

[byblow]

[somethingwild]

[Okay but how do you feel about Newt, Alistair, and giant spiders? I'm happy to do any of them but that prompt stuck out to me for a variety of reasons. Also, any preferences for action or dialog threading it out? Or if you'd rather discuss how it goes, I'm good with that too!]

Kostos Averesch

[exequy]

11 (let me know if it needs adjusting!)

[toujoursdroit]

Unless and until Romain actually joins the Inquisition, most of his duties boil down to talking to other nobles and spending money. Today it's the latter, and while he wouldn't typically do the actual shopping himself... well. Some of the items need a mage's eye, and none of his servants can be trusted to keep their head around a mage. They would go if he told them to, of course, but if they're so nervous that they become careless, what good would it do to force the issue?

What Romain himself thinks of mages, now as always, is supremely unimportant. That's what the mask (metaphorical and literal) is for.

He's at the place they agreed to meet, punctual but not early. (Fairly easy when you already live in Hightown and can just walk out your door.)

Brother Jehan Mercier d’Annecy

[apologist]

[hassaran]

no joke I actually rolled a very on-the-nose 12, but open to whatever

Ser Silas Caron

[spellshatter]

[aventuriere]

[ I propose 14 or 15 unless you've got your heart set on another ]

Kitty Jones

[rathercommon]

2

[limier]

"We could number them." Gareth one. Gareth two. Gareths twelve through twenty. "Then tie some bloody bells on."

This isn’t a serious idea. Probably. Maybe. Ask her again in a week. Kitty’s been sent to join the search for reasons perhaps evident in last seen flirting with young woman.

(Coupe’s sent herself because terrifying a teenage guard out of skivvying is basically a two-hour vacation.)

Yseult

[hassaran]

[rowancrowned]

Twelve or one?

Nell Voss

[galvanising]

[winterwinds]

i got 9 but we could do something else too :o

Freddie Durfort-Lacapalette

[aventuriere]

7

[strangel]

The griffons. They are being strange creatures, she thinks. And these not-French, they might be enjoying the strange creatures, if the one from the caves is anything to go by. (Admittedly he was liking less when it was trying to be eating him.)

Helena might be a suitable choice for retrieving items, if the way she is finding tiny hand and footholds in the ruined wall and hauling herself up, though the knife between her teeth and the bow at her back may be less reassuring for the sake of the griffon, and the very rare scroll it has taken, retrieved expertly by the Inquisition, and hopefully with some keys to Corypheus past. Hopefully.

She looks down at Freddie from her perch, and adjusts so the knife is in hand, and she is steady and still for a moment. "What if scroll makes way to griffon belly? Are we wanting scroll back or griffon alive more?"

Rey

[provenforce]

9

[overharrowed]

Julius rather likes Lowtown, despite himself. It reminds him of his early days on the road, when anything "not a Circle" had seemed new and odd and interesting. (A lot of things in Lowtown could be described by one or all three.) But today, he's here with a job, and it wouldn't do to get distracted -- nostalgia or otherwise.

"You don't know this guard, do you? It would be easier if we knew for sure what he looked like." Possibly also easier if they weren't a rifter and a mage with a large staff proclaiming the fact, but what could you do?

Geneviève De La Fontaine

[bouclier]

3

[wythersake]

If there’s a benefit to the evening shift, it’s in leaving just ahead of the breakfast line. If there’s a downside, it’s in the inability to wake at normal hours even on your stupid day off.

So he’s early. Very early. Much earlier than planned.

"Early bird gets the worm," He slides into place across the table. "Can't say I feel much like a sparrow."

Audra Hawthorne

[winterwinds]

12 if that works for you but I am happy to rewrite or adjust!

[degenere]

I should like to reshape the topiary into something obscene.

[The gardening tools make a quiet clatter as Val sets down the basket he has lugged all the way from the Gallows to the garden. He surveys the scene before them.]

As a joke, of course. I would set them to rights before anyone took true offense. [And even someone taking true offense would neither fuss nor cause Val any significant issue.] What do you think?

[Is his work partner willing to enter in to this mischief with him? He knows nothing of her. Cares nothing of her, really, if he were to be honest. That doesn't mean they can't have a good time together.]

Anders

[justice_is_blond]

[rowancrowned]

Seven or fifteen?

Thor

[thorndergod]

[byblow]

[ Yo buddy, we’re going to the mountains. Do you want to RP something or just discuss it? ]

Lakshmi Bai

[shri]

14

[periastron]

"Yeah, yeah yeah yeah, yeah, nice, fuckin' great."

Perhaps she sounds less than sincere. "Nothing says we value the lives of rifters like sending us into a haunted fuck off forest." She doesn't know if it's haunted even be reputation, but it seems like it could be, from how the supplier acted. Alex is sitting atop a griffon, wings folded to the side as Uggie prances along. His feathers are dark grey, mostly, and he has a look of perpetual stress that seems more in keeping with his rider's mood than with his own disposition, as he continues his enthusiastic pace.

She rolls her shoulders and scoffs, irritated. "What a cunt, honestly."

Kain Ventfort

[in_death_sacrifice]

1

[summerfae]

It's not that Resa doesn't like music. It's that she doesn't like the music that the ferryman is singing--or at least, attempting to sing. Maybe if he could carry a tune half as well as the ferry is (slowly) carrying them, she'd have a little more patience. As it stands, she's eyeballing the ferryman, then the bay, then the ferryman again.

She yawns, stretches out--and her foot stretches right in the way of the ferryman as he walks past her, caterwauling away. Said caterwauling is rudely interrupted by a surprised yelp, and then a loud splash.

Whether purposeful or accidental is hard to say, but Resa doesn't look overly concerned as she inspects the rather wet ferryman, now splashing about to the side of the ferry. "Oops."

James Norrington

[judgemewhole]

[shri]

[ 14 or 3? C: ]

Myrobalan Shivana

[faithlikeaseed]

2

[thorndergod]

"...You are Myrobalan Shivana." His voice is a little flat. He has to move furniture with an elf. A blind elf. A blind, scrawny elf. He's going to have to do the navigating and any heavy lifting if the magic slips.

"Tell me you are least proficient in force magic."

The Priest

[divineshadow]

Fingon

[utulien_aure]

[bouclier]

would you like a 6 or an 8?

marcoulf de ricart

[esquive]

[rowancrowned]

eyebrow wiggle.

I rolled a nine and a three, either interest you?

Thranduil

[rowancrowned]

8 (let me know if this needs any modifying!)

[toujoursdroit]

Hightown is many things, but "a convenient place to stable horses" is not among them. (Stairs everywhere.) So one of the few errands that takes Romain to the Gallows regularly is to check on his mounts (and Gwen's). He trusts his groom implicitly, of course, and said groom is there daily, but still Romain likes to keep his horses fond of him between rides. Treats and time spent in their company go a long way.

He cannot be said to be soft, even here, but he has a patient affection for his horses he seldom displays with the people around him. After a conversation with the groom, he's taken over carding one horse's mane. Romain is dressed for riding, though clearly not about to depart.

Vandelin Elris

[misdirection_hex]

11

[spellshatter]

The Chantry can teach little boys to behave like gentlemen, but it doesn't make them wealthy or noble or comfortable with either—so Hightown means Silas' eyebrows go up a centimeter and stay there, like he's always a little bit skeptical, or like he's ready to turn abashed at a moment's notice. On the line between those. It's very thin.

"Eight silver rings," he reads off the list, to the elf he's accompanying. "What does anybody need with eight silver rings?"

Newt Scamander

[somethingwild]

15

[youwonscience]

It's obvious why Newt was sent to try to coax the wayward mount back into the fold. From what Cosima's gathered, charming animals is sort of his deal, and he seems decently well qualified, what with the magic and the experience with animal handling.

Cosima, on the other hand, likes animals fine, but wouldn't say she has a particular knack with them. (She also does not have a particular knack with mountains, for what it's worth.) When she gives it some thought, she suspects her main function in being assigned to the mission may be to make observations like "We should stop and eat something" or "I think it's getting dark" if necessary.

Even if she's unsure how helpful she'll be, she is genuinely curious. She likes hearing people talk about things that interest them. "Have you ever dealt with a dracolisk before? I've seen them from a distance, but not up close."

ISAAC

[wythersake]

4

[faithlikeaseed]

"Do you think," Myr says, plucking another caterpillar from a leaf and dropping it in a jar with a squirming horde of its fellows, "there's a spell for putting them all quietly to sleep. Or summoning flocks of birds."

He reaches for the next plant in line, feeling up his elfroot in public like some kind of monster. "Because it seems the kind of thing that ought to exist. I could bring in wasps but they'd be too long about it, this time of year."

And for some reason the inhabitants of the Gallows get weird about swarms of flying, stinging assholes sweeping through the gardens on a regular basis. Weird.

COUPE

[limier]

[utulien_aure]

[Either 15 or 3 work for you?]