It only occurs afterward that she never bothered to learn his name, never gave hers. Perhaps he knew her on reputation, the Monster of Denerim, deathly mercenary, but she doubt it from how he acted. Most people who know her reputation don't step into a fight with her.
Maybe he's just incurably stupid.
Whatever he is, she's true to her word when it suits. Waiting in the training yard, poleaxe ready, dressed in full armor, she waits. When she sees him, it's impossible to miss her expression brightening. "Oi! Horns! Get over here."
“Judge Magister.” Gabranth thinly corrects, even as he moves towards her upon request, more interested in the promise of a fight than dissuaded by coarse bearing.
His helmet, clearly having been cleaned and polished to remove the shine of her blood, betrays nothing of the way his stare beneath lingers studiously upon her armor: it seems fine and fitted— more akin to the rainments he’d seen after death, rather than anything Archadian or Dalmascan (no ornate crosswork, no exposed skin for ease of movement either), but all in all there’s a cleanliness to its fashion that he finds he can appreciate.
Better than battling her bare handed between dining tables, if nothing else.
[Shoved under Gabranth's door at some point during his enforced quarantine is a packet of papers with a handwritten (distinctly lovely handwriting at that) questionnaire. The following instructions are pinned to its cover: 'Welcome to Riftwatch! Please fill out the following survey to the best of your ability and return it to the desk of W.A. Poppell in the Base Operations office. Should you have any questions, please do not hesitate to reach out for clarification. Best Wishes, W.A. Poppell, Research Division, Assistant to the Seneschal, Project Felandaris.'
The following survey is...expansive.]
Questionnaire Section A Of and Relating Specifically to the Rifter Population in the Gallows (Kirkwall, The Free Marches, 9:46)
Question 1A. Conceptually, how familiar are the Fade and the Veil to you? Are there similar phenomena (however minor the resemblance) in the place from which you came?
Question 2A. If yes, is energy drawn and/or emitted from or through it? Do cognizant beings (spirits, full bodied manifestations similar to a Rifter, and so on) pass through it?
Question 3A. Does "magic" exist in your world?
Question 3A.(i). If "magic" exists in your world, is it somehow tied to or sustained by this other space? Question 3A.(ii). If "magic" exists in your world and there is no such alternative dimension as referenced in Question 1A., from where does it originate?
Question 4A. Given the opportunity to objectively estimate your own physical conformation and comeliness against the general populace of the world from which you came, where on a scale of one through ten might you be ranked (for the purposes of this survey, please consider the numerical score of five (5) as average for your home world)? Disregard. This question has been deemed inessential.
Questionnaire Section B Rift Anchors, with Respect to All Who Presently Possess Them
Question 5B. How long have you had your rift shard? Irrelevant; it is assumed you received it upon arrival through the Rift. However, you are welcome to detail any notes you may have on it here.
Question 6B. Are you able to perform any supernatural acts with the power of your rift shard beyond closing Rifts? If yes, please detail these abilities. Irrelevant; recorded with your personnel file. Please update W.A. Poppell should your rift anchor develop any additional effects.
Question 7B. Do you have any other abilities, such as mage talent? If so, has the presence of the rift shard or your time in Thedas affected your ability whatsoever (please note whether this is a negative or a positive effect)?
Question 8B. At what point would you take surgical measures to rid yourself of your anchor shard?
Question 8B.(i). Would you permit scientific observation of the process? Question 8B.(ii). Would you permit samples to be taken from the limb?
(PLEASE NOTE that the authors of this survey do not advocate for preemptive amputation unless strictly recommended by a trusted medical professional.)
[It takes no more than the span of a full day in total for Gabranth to make his way to the office mentioned, penned responses clasped neatly in gauntleted hand and carefully folded, so as not to damage the readability of it. He is, after all, more than familiar with the concept of relaying vital information in written word.
That the subtlety of his maintained hold on parchment is so at odds with his own appearance— pitch-dark armor, shadowed helm framed by jagged horns— might do the work his voice attempts to establish when he steps (audibly, in fact) into Base Operations, approaching the only figure that might be considered an assumptive match for the questionnaire's author.]
Benedict has been making himself scarce this evening, but he isn't difficult to find, if one knows where to look.
Up the tower in the hookah room, he sits on one large pillow with another hugged to his middle, smoking a cigarette (no bothering with the hookah today) and looking out the window at the Gallows below.
That much was already certain, from the moment he’d forged agreement with Byerly Rutyer, there could be no doubt about how Benedict would come away from his inevitable chastisement. Gabranth would have preferred the sting of it be met by Byerly’s own reinforcement, yet—
Well, he cannot help but wonder if there isn’t some part of Vayne Solidor that lives on in reincarnation here, managing to deftly guide him into situations he’d rather avoid.
He finds Benedict where he expects to, that tightly coiled little figure in an isolated room. The hour is late, the grounds quiet; still he shuts the door behind him when he enters, pulling the helm from his head and setting it quietly aside.
“I spoke of praise for you, though I know you may not think it so for how he sought retribution.”
There’s no harshness. No bitterness. His voice is throaty with the hum of somber sincerity, as he measures the look of the man opposite to him now.
[A packet of parchment. The note attached to the top page reads:]
Mssr Gabranth,
I seem to recall you claiming some expertise with the handling of corpses and would ask that you make use of that aptitude now.
My preference would be to enroll the most creative of the charlatans on our payroll as long distance agents for use by our Scouting division. Should you fail to sway them then you are ordered to remand them (dead or alive) to the magistrates of the nearest township in order to make a record of Riftwatch's work in the area, and to see that they are handled appropriately in accordance with whatever custom the Nevarrans believe suitable.
You are to take no more than three members of the company to assist you, though they may be of your choosing. Submit your personnel request to the office of the correct authority directly should they be members of any division but your own .
-JF, Forces Command
[The rest of the packet consists of a few copied maps with locations roughly sketched on them, last known whereabouts, and what appears to be a section excerpted from a longer field report received by one of Riftwatch's contacts abroad. It reads:]
...As a final aside, I have received and verified through multiple eye witness accounts that there is presently a small company of rogues haunting the various trade routes from just outside Nevarra City and as far west and the northern branch of the Imperial Highway where it is meant to span the Minanter.
This company is allegedly making great use of the fear in that area by posing as possessed corpses in order to terrify merchant trains into submission for long enough to fetch away their ill gotten gains. As far as my reach extends, I have heard of only one death attributed to the company—that of a Mssr Adalbert Regas, an elderly silk merchant who his daughters report was frightened to death by one thief's especially gruesome visage.
Your Humble Servant +++
((ooc: handle this however you want and report back in approx. 2 months time. If you want to make it into a big deal rather than a casual side quest and/or fodder for your day to day threads, then you're welcome to use this as a springboard for a player plot submission to the mods.))
The sky glows overhead, all blue fading into green into blue, cloud scudding in the wake of the breeze. Around them, the grass is lush except where it isn't; more likely to be scorched and ashy the closer the earth gets to underfoot. The fact of the matter is that it'd be a beautiful day if not for the spangle of rifts and thin Veil in the area. It'd definitely be a beautiful day if not for the rage demons, howling and spitting fire at the men wielding weapons against them.
Jim says, "I've noticed something." And then, as he hefts his blue blade, "They don't tend to complain about my footwork as much as you do."
— so at least someone here can have a sense of humor about the situation.
"They do not wish for your success." Gabranth counters, already drawing a torrent of wind down across the edges of his own blades to counter the initial spilled gout of flame as one of the demons draws near— heat blossoming in the air despite that fact.
His posture bears forward, he catches one particularly nasty swing of molten claws with a backswing of his own, a narrow, narrow deflection.
In the meanwhile, Holden will need to hold his own.
On the third day since returning, Jone is beginning to miss her duties. How fucking strange. After days spent with Gabranth, only really leaving to get food, it's been a wonderful time. But one can only stay tucked away in their room for so long.
The sun sets out the window. Jone pulls on a nightgown, and takes out a knife. Next to her, she assumes, Noah has fallen back to sleep. It's time, then, to begin: Taking a strand of her own hair, she begins to saw it off.
The correction to be made is that he does not sleep yet, only begins to set foot upon its doorstep: the sound of her rummaging— the gentle shifting of her sawing— pries silvered eyes open not long after, leaving him to squint up at her in the dim, darkened night.
She's told him to meet her by the stables, and then, thinking better of it, dragged him there instead. If she says 'when your work's done', she'll likely never see him again.
So she leads him to the skeletal, dragon-like form of the creature inside. The dracolisk clicks its teeth expectantly, and she sighs and feeds it some jerky from her pack. She does it almost daintily, watching her fingers.
"What d'you think? It's got all you've been wanting. Not a horse. Eats meat."
He would argue that it is not all he has been wanting, given the undeniable number of differences between a chocobo and—
What is it, he wonders, trying and failing to comprehend the sight of something so bizarrely out of place. The jut of its scales, the legs that only bear passing resemblance to a horse (or a mule, now that he has become roughly familiar with the differences between the two), a head that looks as though a dragon spawn has been misplanted. The exposed teeth, anchoring easily into the offered meal.
His armor runs high, dark collar tucked beneath his jaw— yet without a helm to complete the look. He’s taken to permitting the facade slip sparingly, provided the situation doesn’t require a Judge Magister’s full, imposing fury.
For now, it means his muted bewilderment is apparent. Attention drifting from the beast— to her instead.
They are the self-proclaimed unwavering devotees of a god known as Zodiark.
In my own homeworld, tales were spoken of a divine being cursed into exile by the gods for its consumptive power. Chiefly, the threat it posed to all life. That creature was also said to be Zodiark— though I know not whether the two are one and the same.
[It bears repeating, still: coincidences that specific between worlds, after all, are rare.]
Regardless, whether the Zodiark the ascians worshipped shared in such contempt for mankind or not, its followers clearly did: they destroyed, in total sum to my knowledge, seven planets. The complete eradication of all life upon them.
[He knows because they are the same. There is no sign of it in his voice when he responds, but the quickness of it speaks to concern regardless.]
Wait for me.
[And, perpetually true to his word, he does indeed cut the most direct possible path to Holden's room, rapping heavy knuckles against its doorframe— nearly rattling it where it stands for nothing more than expensed weight.]
She knows his schedule by now. It isn't really a conscious memorization, just new information unfolding in her mind, and she doesn't think a thing of it. She wants to see Noah? If she knows the hour of the day, she can find him, and she does.
This time, she waits until she's sure he'll be in their shared room. They haven't spoken much of their little tiff, but that's all it was, really (right?), and they agreed to get past it (right?), so she doesn't worry. She just holds out the bag of salts and the scissors.
"We going into embalming now?"
She's aware that bath salts exist, she's even seen them, but when applied to her? It doesn't cross her mind that this might be that.
“The salt is to be used at your leisure. For relaxation, to soothe your muscles.”
When she is wearied, and worn— and given how frequently she trains, he suspects that to be a common occurrence. Enough that the gift won't be wasted.
“Regarding the rest,” he starts, sitting down upon the mattress with little ceremony, his forearms angled just across his knees. "There is something I've yet to confess."
Like the silly, stupid thing that she is, she'd talked of dancing and playing. Then the poisoning, then the dead, and Riftwatch is pretending it never happened, trying to wash it all away with a second party in the Gallows proper.
Frankly, Jone would normally leap at the opportunity to join them in willful forgetfulness. Even with her face a mass of bruises, her body sore, she'd lean into the lull of drink and let the music take her. But now there is a stain that won't be blotted out.
How fucking dramatic. She's plenty of scars all over her looming form, but this is the first she's had more than a nick to the face. Margaery, bless her, had been no slouch when it came to sewing this scrape up, but the fact remains. You can't cover up this mess.
The scar runs from her upper lip to the bottom of her nose, bright and red and angry. It makes speaking a painful difficulty-- though she manages, because she refuses to be cowed by anything as ephemeral as pain-- and looking in the mirror an even more galling prospect than it was previously.
She's not in the clothes she usually wears to fine events-- her best trousers, her best shirt. She stares at the ceiling, reclining shoe-less on the bed Noah and her share. She'd be frowning, if facial expressions involving the mouth weren't an incautious gambit. Instead, her brow is furrowed.
Even from the heights of the Templar Tower, music drifts up stone steps and bounces under wooden doors. She ignores it. It's easy to ignore.
His work this day was heavy. Grueling. Tiresome. There were bodies to be removed, scattered fragments of tainted lyrium to gather and dispose of. He returns in his armor without the heavy weight of his own helm, cloak draped dark across his shoulders as always, brow lined with residual beads of sweat.
He had expected to find her dressed for the celebration, disguise in hand, eager to press him into following suit. Instead, she rests sprawled across the mattress in a state of obvious discontent, wafting music acting as a strange counter to the scene itself.
“...are you unwell?”
She would not be cowed by injury or exhaustion, but illness...it is the only thing that comes to mind.
Jone comes home late, which isn't entirely unexpected. They tend to keep regular hours, but sometimes she disappears to the pub, and he isn't much for drinking. How he faces the world so sober, she doesn't know, but she isn't the sort to pry.
So she comes to bed late, and sneaks in quietly, attempting to surprise him. Will he rise from bed, will he move, before she can yank the sheets off?
They've played this game before, and it was colder in winter then. She likes being forgiven, is the thing. May as well earn it.
It is cold still, regardless. And clever as she thinks herself, Gabranth already lies awake across their mattress, his eyes trained upon the ceiling before he hears the door to their quarters creak, a subtle groan in a soundless night— save for the fluttering of snowfall outside, wet and heavy along the sill.
When she pulls, his fist is iron, closed about the end of the sheet.
It is the only part of him that remains resolute, given how his mending musculature fails to compete with her own— and ah, there it goes— yanked away despite how he clings to one corner like a dog with a prized toy.
“Jone.” He growls warningly in the dark, more bark than bite. More adoration than ire.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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Maybe he's just incurably stupid.
Whatever he is, she's true to her word when it suits. Waiting in the training yard, poleaxe ready, dressed in full armor, she waits. When she sees him, it's impossible to miss her expression brightening. "Oi! Horns! Get over here."
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His helmet, clearly having been cleaned and polished to remove the shine of her blood, betrays nothing of the way his stare beneath lingers studiously upon her armor: it seems fine and fitted— more akin to the rainments he’d seen after death, rather than anything Archadian or Dalmascan (no ornate crosswork, no exposed skin for ease of movement either), but all in all there’s a cleanliness to its fashion that he finds he can appreciate.
Better than battling her bare handed between dining tables, if nothing else.
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Lbr tho if he was from Thedas he’d be Tevinter
squenix!!!
cue the FF battle music
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a survey;
The following survey is...expansive.]
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That the subtlety of his maintained hold on parchment is so at odds with his own appearance— pitch-dark armor, shadowed helm framed by jagged horns— might do the work his voice attempts to establish when he steps (audibly, in fact) into Base Operations, approaching the only figure that might be considered an assumptive match for the questionnaire's author.]
Lady Poppell?
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crystal.
Hi, uh--Gabranth? It's Beth.
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Is something amiss? [Really, why else would anyone be calling him?]
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crystal; late cloudreach.
Gabranth! You'll never believe it, mate.
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What is it? Speak plainly.
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action
Up the tower in the hookah room, he sits on one large pillow with another hugged to his middle, smoking a cigarette (no bothering with the hookah today) and looking out the window at the Gallows below.
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That much was already certain, from the moment he’d forged agreement with Byerly Rutyer, there could be no doubt about how Benedict would come away from his inevitable chastisement. Gabranth would have preferred the sting of it be met by Byerly’s own reinforcement, yet—
Well, he cannot help but wonder if there isn’t some part of Vayne Solidor that lives on in reincarnation here, managing to deftly guide him into situations he’d rather avoid.
He finds Benedict where he expects to, that tightly coiled little figure in an isolated room. The hour is late, the grounds quiet; still he shuts the door behind him when he enters, pulling the helm from his head and setting it quietly aside.
“I spoke of praise for you, though I know you may not think it so for how he sought retribution.”
There’s no harshness. No bitterness. His voice is throaty with the hum of somber sincerity, as he measures the look of the man opposite to him now.
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crystal.
D'you get me gift?
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[He has always been poor at fair treatment of those he desires to keep near.]
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Has something happened?
[Does she need his aid?]
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crystal
Gabranth.
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[That tone. Is he all right?]
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where I pretend I’m not just threatening to hit myself repeatedly
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crystal; late one night
If you ain't up, ignore this. [ Never mind that you possibly woke Gabranth up Erik, but, whatever. ] It ain't important or nothin'.
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What need have you?
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orders;
[The rest of the packet consists of a few copied maps with locations roughly sketched on them, last known whereabouts, and what appears to be a section excerpted from a longer field report received by one of Riftwatch's contacts abroad. It reads:]
((ooc: handle this however you want and report back in approx. 2 months time. If you want to make it into a big deal rather than a casual side quest and/or fodder for your day to day threads, then you're welcome to use this as a springboard for a player plot submission to the mods.))
crystal.
[That day has not yet come to pass.]
Gabranth!
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Welcome, always, though perhaps at lower volumes.]
Jone of Denerim. [is the dour, even-set reply]
I trust you are in no peril.
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Jim says, "I've noticed something." And then, as he hefts his blue blade, "They don't tend to complain about my footwork as much as you do."
— so at least someone here can have a sense of humor about the situation.
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His posture bears forward, he catches one particularly nasty swing of molten claws with a backswing of his own, a narrow, narrow deflection.
In the meanwhile, Holden will need to hold his own.
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80000 years later we come back to this idea
WE MADE IT LADS
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some evening in week one of Solace
Gabranth? Are you there?
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What is it, Lord Artemaeus?
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The sun sets out the window. Jone pulls on a nightgown, and takes out a knife. Next to her, she assumes, Noah has fallen back to sleep. It's time, then, to begin: Taking a strand of her own hair, she begins to saw it off.
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"...what are you doing?"
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So she leads him to the skeletal, dragon-like form of the creature inside. The dracolisk clicks its teeth expectantly, and she sighs and feeds it some jerky from her pack. She does it almost daintily, watching her fingers.
"What d'you think? It's got all you've been wanting. Not a horse. Eats meat."
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What is it, he wonders, trying and failing to comprehend the sight of something so bizarrely out of place. The jut of its scales, the legs that only bear passing resemblance to a horse (or a mule, now that he has become roughly familiar with the differences between the two), a head that looks as though a dragon spawn has been misplanted. The exposed teeth, anchoring easily into the offered meal.
His armor runs high, dark collar tucked beneath his jaw— yet without a helm to complete the look. He’s taken to permitting the facade slip sparingly, provided the situation doesn’t require a Judge Magister’s full, imposing fury.
For now, it means his muted bewilderment is apparent. Attention drifting from the beast— to her instead.
“You acquired this for my sake?”
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What do you know of the ascians?
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They are the self-proclaimed unwavering devotees of a god known as Zodiark.
In my own homeworld, tales were spoken of a divine being cursed into exile by the gods for its consumptive power. Chiefly, the threat it posed to all life. That creature was also said to be Zodiark— though I know not whether the two are one and the same.
[It bears repeating, still: coincidences that specific between worlds, after all, are rare.]
Regardless, whether the Zodiark the ascians worshipped shared in such contempt for mankind or not, its followers clearly did: they destroyed, in total sum to my knowledge, seven planets. The complete eradication of all life upon them.
Nothing was spared.
And now, one of their number is here.
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a couple of days after satinalia, by crystal,
[ a beat, and then admitted, ]
I could use someone to talk to.
[ awkwardly done, maybe, but gabranth surely knows this doesn't come to him easily. ]
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Wait for me.
[And, perpetually true to his word, he does indeed cut the most direct possible path to Holden's room, rapping heavy knuckles against its doorframe— nearly rattling it where it stands for nothing more than expensed weight.]
Captain.
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This time, she waits until she's sure he'll be in their shared room. They haven't spoken much of their little tiff, but that's all it was, really (right?), and they agreed to get past it (right?), so she doesn't worry. She just holds out the bag of salts and the scissors.
"We going into embalming now?"
She's aware that bath salts exist, she's even seen them, but when applied to her? It doesn't cross her mind that this might be that.
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When she is wearied, and worn— and given how frequently she trains, he suspects that to be a common occurrence. Enough that the gift won't be wasted.
“Regarding the rest,” he starts, sitting down upon the mattress with little ceremony, his forearms angled just across his knees. "There is something I've yet to confess."
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Frankly, Jone would normally leap at the opportunity to join them in willful forgetfulness. Even with her face a mass of bruises, her body sore, she'd lean into the lull of drink and let the music take her. But now there is a stain that won't be blotted out.
How fucking dramatic. She's plenty of scars all over her looming form, but this is the first she's had more than a nick to the face. Margaery, bless her, had been no slouch when it came to sewing this scrape up, but the fact remains. You can't cover up this mess.
The scar runs from her upper lip to the bottom of her nose, bright and red and angry. It makes speaking a painful difficulty-- though she manages, because she refuses to be cowed by anything as ephemeral as pain-- and looking in the mirror an even more galling prospect than it was previously.
She's not in the clothes she usually wears to fine events-- her best trousers, her best shirt. She stares at the ceiling, reclining shoe-less on the bed Noah and her share. She'd be frowning, if facial expressions involving the mouth weren't an incautious gambit. Instead, her brow is furrowed.
Even from the heights of the Templar Tower, music drifts up stone steps and bounces under wooden doors. She ignores it. It's easy to ignore.
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He had expected to find her dressed for the celebration, disguise in hand, eager to press him into following suit. Instead, she rests sprawled across the mattress in a state of obvious discontent, wafting music acting as a strange counter to the scene itself.
“...are you unwell?”
She would not be cowed by injury or exhaustion, but illness...it is the only thing that comes to mind.
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So she comes to bed late, and sneaks in quietly, attempting to surprise him. Will he rise from bed, will he move, before she can yank the sheets off?
They've played this game before, and it was colder in winter then. She likes being forgiven, is the thing. May as well earn it.
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When she pulls, his fist is iron, closed about the end of the sheet.
It is the only part of him that remains resolute, given how his mending musculature fails to compete with her own— and ah, there it goes— yanked away despite how he clings to one corner like a dog with a prized toy.
“Jone.” He growls warningly in the dark, more bark than bite. More adoration than ire.
Fond and irritable in the same snarling breath.
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