everyone gets a terrible lullaby

[aenseidhe]

FORM: Crystal
SENDER: Iorveth
RECIPIENT: All errybody
WHAT: Iorveth has some nostalgia, then """sings""" everyone a song.
WHEN: Mid-Cloudreach
WHERE: The Gallows
NOTES: cw: mentions of torture/death camps??? Will mark in thread headers if anything more crops up.

This place reminds me of Drakenborg. [ Iorveth’s voice comes from the sending crystals, almost up-beat, and if you’ve spoken to Iorveth for all of five seconds before, you should know that’s Not Quite Right. But he seems casual and chilled out enough, so all well. ] It was a castle once, under a different name and a different people, then a fortress, likely named by nobles that wouldn't know a dragon if it bit them on the ass, then it endured as a shelter through two gruesome wars. Then, finally, a death camp.

[ yeah, so maybe not a cheerful talk, but his tone is even and relaxed enough. Still, you might start to guess that he isn’t complimenting the Gallows here. He goes on like it’s idle chit-chat, just swapping cute stories. ] ‘Subversive elements’, they’d say, but it was mostly Scoia’tael, and any other elves or nonhumans that breathed the wrong way at the wrong time.

[ The crunch of something that’s probably an apple sounds, and it’s followed by a stuttered laugh, muffled slightly because he’s definitely talking with his mouth full. ] Kind of a funny place, really. At night, you’d hear the prisoners in the death cell singing ‘The Hymn of the Joyful’, and they'd pick it up, all through the rest of the dungeon. You could almost bloody dance to it, if you weren’t chained to the walls, starved, half your bones broken and half your blood missing. We sung it in our own tongue, of course, but translated, it's... [ A pause, Iorveth’s voice trailing off pensively while he’s thinking of the best way to translate it to Common. He doesn’t sing it, because no one wants to hear his singing voice, it belongs in a freaking dungeon. Rather, he recites it like a poem: ]

"The hanged people dance on the ropes, rhythmically writhing in spasms. Sing your song with melancholic emotion, to amuse the joyful. Each of the dead remember, when their feet left the stool, and their eyes popped out of their sockets. Dance on the hanging ropes, happily writhe in spasms. And the wind carries their songs, the ringing chorus all around." [ It really doesn’t sound that joyful when it's not being sung. Or when one actually know what the words mean. ]

Good song, better with the tune to it. Too bad the man who wrote it was set aflame and quartered. Would’ve made a great bard. [ A short, sigh, lamenting opportunities lost. That’s rough, buddy. Humming, he takes a short pause, before adding on like an afterthought - ] Makes me wonder if your alienages here have any ditties like it.

[ Is he suggesting the alienages are glorified death camps? Maaaybe. Let’s talk morbid songs, friends. Or whatever, he's not picky, just shooting the shit, but Iorveth is allergic to small talk, so you end up with crap like this. If you happen to be looking for him, he’ll be sat or crouched up on top of a building somewhere, probably, or on a wall, munching at some fruit and peering over the courtyard, looking like an overgrown monkey-child. ]

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[inagutterson]

Bit more of a Raider thing here, better not to go stepping on their turf when we're next to the Wounded Coast. [There's the Carta, the Coterie, the Raiders, various mercenary companies, whatever else there might be that Yngvi's forgetting at the moment that all overlap with everyone. All the old loyalties, the old guard.

Even if bodies got tossed in the water because well it's convenient, and no one cares too much. Same as how the Kirkwall guard that Yngvi remembers from being younger didn't care to look too hard into whatever or whoever got washed back up with the tides.]

Who said anything about birthing? You humans and elves, don't know enough about Qunari but I reckon some sort of weird bee grub baby thing, you're the vulgar ones doing all that. Dwarves got other ways of making babies that don't get all messy. Disgusting how you lot do it. [Iorveth's not going to know and whatever, Yngvi's a bloody pedigreed dwarf so anyone who wants to come dispute these stone cold dwarf facts can come meet him in the pit.] Well we usually do jobs for nobles, they pay well. Bigger jobs a few companies all join up but signing on with the Inquisition's the biggest thing we've ever done, it's more that when it's just us being a crew of us we get to decide our lives on our terms. It works. Took a bit to get the roster right but everyone likes it now and we can travel at a good speed, swap the watches, take on the high pay jobs comfortably.

[Plus they can still go to parties with the nobles who have to be nice to the people enabling them to live their lives which is fun, really, when it's two dwarves, an elf, an elfblood, an apostate, and a Rivaini all hanging out. More fun when there was a great dirty part-Avvar and his dog there too. But Yngvi misses that life, is aching to get back to it now.]

Y'know we're not tiny, you're all lanky streaks of piss. S'alarming. Seeing some of you nude. First time I saw a naked elf I screamed, that much arm? That much leg? Someone put things together wrong when they were making the people up.