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

[elegiaque]

Player: libbitha
Character: Gwenaëlle Baudin
General Plans: Despite a general reluctance to go back to Orlais, the opportunity to visit Halamshiral for a reason other than emptying out dad's house and a genuine interest in the artists and academics will lure her into even volunteering to be part of the protection squad. She has her own fancy dress and existing connections to the Orlesian art scene, some of which may survive her disgrace better than she's catastrophically expecting.
Pre-existing Halamshiral Reputation: Lady Gwenaëlle Vauquelin was a socially exclusive and reserved heiress and noted patron of the arts — as well as a reputable art critic, often commenting on music, performance and literature — who was not, until her fall from grace as "sex scandal evidence", directly associated with prominent poet Ilde Sauvageon. She was last seen briefly in the High Quarter shortly before the death of the Comte de Vauquelin on the front lines, and hasn't set foot in high society since she was still using his name; her previous works as Ilde Sauvageon were all reprinted under Gwenaëlle Baudin to capitalise on the salaciousness of it all. Has made some reckless remarks about the Empress and Madame de Fer.

There are definitely people in Halamshiral she partied with on the dl at "everyone has signed a NDA and all the servants are deaf mutes" Eyes Wide Shut ass secret events.

(Also, Baudin was the married, not maiden, name of her elven mother. There are no surviving Baudins in Halamshiral — her sisters died in the massacre — but there may be elves who knew the family.)

[cozen]

Among the art scene participants who respond better to Gwenäelle and her situation than expected will be Clarice Chapentier, a young woman who was not on the scene last time Gwen was regularly around but is currently hot among the Halamshiral set, who can't get enough of her delicate wood carvings accented by glass mosaic. She's charming not in a slick overbearing way, but the way that's quiet and humble, and she'll be kind to Gwenäelle and may use up some of her clout currency to quiet a few people who are not.

So of course something is off! Gwenaëlle will be able to discover – whether by accident or by snooping for something unrelated or by having a nose for bullshit artistic or otherwise, however you want it to go down – that the carvings are actually the work of Chapentier's elven attendant Adenet, while Chapentier can only carve well enough to put on a show of something being "in progress." But things are not as off as they could have been, because Adenet is not bothered by this whatsoever. He hardly seems to recognize what he does as art in the first place so much as a craft more akin to manual labor, and he'll have a shruggy "it's paying the bills" attitude about Chapentier putting her name to them.

If Gwenaëlle is satisfied with that, either in a "none of my business" way or a "i'm going to tell everyone everything, bye" way, then the experience could end there. But if she hangs out to be more curious or confrontational with them, she may also be able to get out of them that they're romantically involved and that Adenet's satisfaction comes not from the bills being paid but from the relatively unrestricted access to the nobility that this charade gets both of them. Depending on how she plays her cards she might leave with friends among Briala's network of elven spies.

Or she can blow up their spot.

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!

[elegiaque]

Through her curiosity about "this seems to be working for them" (as a former noble who has had multiple relationships with elves), Gwenaëlle befriends Chapentier and Adenet, eventually leading to an invitation to meet some of Adenet's friends who recognise her surname as belonging to Alix Baudin, who had never become a spy for Briala but who would have done if she hadn't been killed in the burning of Halamshiral. She's discreet about this meeting, sneaking out one window and back in* a different one to make it, and trades on her genuine interest in what her sister was up to and any connection she can find to her in order to establish some friendly connections with actual elven spies who fondly remember her older sisters and are begrudgingly endeared to her sincerity. This may be useful in the future.


* plot in the first ten tags, nsfw after that