player plot | meanwhile, in orlais,

[cozen]

WHAT: While the Orlesian court winters in Halamshiral, a contingent from Riftwatch has been invited to spend a week visiting a potential financial supporter (an old friend of Alexandrie, Byerly, and Bastien) and her collection of academics and artists, where they can engage in whatever combination of philosophical conversation, fancy-dress dancing, hunting for sport, and sneaking around that suits them.

WHO: Anyone. We tried to include reasons for anyone from any division to tag along. The Diplomacy angle is obvious, but for Forces there's the need for protection on the road (and in the Bard- and Chevalier- and now ghost-infested city). For Research, the Baroness is a big supporter of the University who will also have some professors &c. come around as well, so it's a chance to befriend both her and her circle of friends for nerd network reasons. And for Scouting, Halamshiral in the winter is a great place to snoop around and/or steal things.

HOW: You can go here for an open log, no sign-ups required. You can use it as a lowkey hangout log if you want to just write your character getting lost in an ice maze (non-dangerous garden variety), or you can do something more serious with the local politics and Veil situation. That's the main thing.

There are two other things you can do:

1. Reply here to receive a custom scenario for your character to have to deal with. You can incorporate it into your RP to whatever degree you want (play it out, reference it in another thread) or just reply to us OOC to tell us how your character would respond, so we can take it into account when writing the report about how Riftwatch went over with everyone during the visit. (These are closed! But feel free to invent your own scenarios of a similar kind.)

2. If your character has their own thing you want them to get up to in Halamshiral -- like if they have relatives to visit, or if you'd like them to steal an eluvian or otherwise do something of notable consequence -- and you want to use this plot as a backdrop and excuse for them to be in the area, you can! Just submit your own plot or info requests as needed. (Dropping in on a cousin to say hello: no plot request needed. Your character uncovering an enemy conspiracy in Orlais: plot request needed. If you aren't sure if what you want to do needs its own plot request you can ask us in the comments.)

WHEN: Now. No preplanning we die like men.

Comments

[bouchonne]

Player: Hope
Character: Byerly
General Plans: Byerly will be so sociable. He's here to rub elbows, charm, flirt, and generally win over whoever he can. At the same time, he's also here to suffer through a bit of cognitive dissonance, because he's revisiting the site of some of his most flagrant youthful misbehavior when he's, like, pushing forty, and sober, and in a committed loving relationship, with a three-year-old daughter (who is a dog, but that still counts). So I'm definitely thinking about playing around with that - that discomfort of remembering your past bad choices when you're, like, an adult.

Pre-existing Halamshiral Reputation: Byerly spent a good amount of time at Halamshiral in his early twenties. He was completely penniless at that time, and too proud to beg for any sort of allowance from his more generous relatives, so he was a perpetual hustler — crashing banquets he wasn't invited to so he could eat in the leaner times, being a professional sugar baby when things were a bit better.

And because he was constantly hustling, he exploited just about every tactic available to him - and, consequently, different people think of him in different ways. Depending on the people involved, he might have a reputation as:

-A crony and a bully who licked the boots of a very bad dude (i.e., Rolant de Ezoire, Alexandrie's tormentor)
-A Southern bumpkin who had no idea how to play the Game and blundered into any number of strange scenarios and who could be easily pranked
-A prankster who was always good for inventing — and executing — plans for making mischief
-A total horndog who had come to Orlais to get laid constantly

Overlaid with these remembrances is, of course, the more recent history of Byerly as the Riftwatch Ambassador. Generally, the assumption around Halamshiral was that Byerly was just a figurehead/party planner, with others pulling his strings and making the real decisions for Riftwatch.

[cozen]

Byerly's reputation as a horny bumpkin puppet with a history of tolerating some crueler members of society (or the entertaining and correct ones, depending on who you ask) will earn him an invitation to an exclusive dinner gathering with Katelin Boudier, untitled but wealthy, and an assortment of her closest and most terrible friends. The entire group of them, but Boudier in particular, will flirt with him and try to get a feel for his opinions or lack thereof, for how much information he's willing to give away out of carelessness, and for general confirmation that he is in fact a malleable fool. She obviously wants someone from Riftwatch, with its reputation for sticking its fingers into social causes instead of only rifts, in her pocket as an informant or ally.

If Byerly plays along sufficiently with their bile and fantasy racism, it will become clear over the course of the evening that Boudier is murderously angry about an elf being made into a noble – in part due to her own petition to be granted a title failing to find anyone willing to ratify it – and seething with dangerous ambition. If she has any specific plans to cause trouble rather than to only complain, she won't divulge them yet. But she will reward his performance with an 'anonymous' donation to Riftwatch and a promise to be in touch and available should he ever need anything.

If he can't stomach it anymore and gives himself away, he'll be treated coldly until he can be removed from the premises with a veneer of politeness. No donation and no easy opportunities for further information, but he will at least still know that Boudier is a problem to keep an eye on and might pursue that through other channels.

Note: You can play this out in some way or just reply here within a month or so to let us know how your character handled the situation off-screen. You're free to flesh this out with your own details, add further complications, and resolve it however you want, including having it go badly!