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

[shri]

How tempting it would be, to strike a pose of the Goddess she bears the name - even if it would go over his head. Still, now that he was playing - "I am all of them. Wife, mother, widow and Queen."

The last one she definitely had not brought up until right now. "And now none of them at all."

[judgemewhole]

His dark eyebrows raise together, before his expression becomes quieter. He offers her a quiet nod of respect, for to be all those things was much more than he would ever be able to do in his life. Although ...

"Well, the Queen part in Thedas could be up for debate. You never know what might happen. As for the rest -- I do not see how coming here makes you any less a mother, a wife, or a widow. Your love and your grief are still yours, my lady."

[shri]

But rather than be particularly miserable, she laughs richly. "So they are. But I should count myself rather lucky, I suspect, how many rulers get out of their task alive as I have now?"

Rather like life, that way. It's not all true but then - careful as ever in how she puts herself forward. Half statements that infer without complete lies. "Besides, I would much rather be a Deva. Fighting in Lord Shiva's army against demons. That would be mighty, wouldn't it?"

[judgemewhole]

"Considering the bloody history of most countries? Not as many as the rulers of said countries would like." James retorted, a grin coming over his face. He tipped his head to the side, nodding his head, "I can see it. Who indeed, would not want to rage against the darkness, as opposed to sitting on a wooden throne, covered in gold plating. Better to be in the saddle, out here."

He snorted softly, "I probably have a pile of paperwork waiting for me back in Kirkwall. I would rather be out here, howling with you."

[shri]

"Better that indeed. Granted, ruling does... not work like it does here."

She presses on, and for that poor rabbit that they have doubted deeply the presence of, she fishes into one of her closer saddle bags. Look for something to give it."I miss my administrators," she admits mournfully to that end. "Hours of my life they gave me back."

[judgemewhole]

"Does anything in life really work out precisely how we want it?" James mused, as he shifted his gaze down to the rabbit once more. It seemed to be keeping pace easily, just off to the side.

"I miss my assistants. All my paperwork, taken care of by recruits ..."

[shri]

"Hardly, if that." A piece of bread secured, she tears it up in smaller pieces, a section of her rationing but one easily spared. Tossing a little bit behind her for it to keep up its pace behind them.

"A dream, isn't it? Someone else to write the reports."

[judgemewhole]

"I would live and die by that dream. Someone else to write the pages of nonsense when you could boil it down to, 'We went out there. We killed a demon. We came back.'" He exhaled, watching her tear up the bread and tossing it behind them.

"Leaving us a trail to follow back home?"

[shri]

She clucks her tongue, soft little noises. Tell tale really, she isn't this kind to most people - but an animal, she all but turns soft-hearted. "One of us must make sure that your handsome face stays intact."

Another little piece of bread it tossed off, and the bunny hops on after it too.

[judgemewhole]

James watches the rabbit bounce along, going to nibble at the crumbs behind them, then over to her. His smirk remains, but it's less caustic and more just amused.

"I am in your debt from keeping my handsome face in one piece. I suppose I owe you a gift of some kind?"

[shri]

"Perhaps you do." Is the flash of a grin, all sharp and white. "But make it a surprise, I do enjoy them almost as much as the gift itself."

Glad at least that she's put him somewhat at ease in the forest - granted she isn't expecting anything worse than perhaps a roaming animal or a particular tricksy bandit. But better they were relaxed rather than wound up facing it.

[judgemewhole]

"I shall endeavor to be as surprising as possible - without using assassins coming out o a cake." James stated with a completely straight face. "That seems rude, as you are saving me from demon bunnies."