crystal.

[elegiaque]

FORM: Crystal!
SENDER: Gwenaëlle Baudin.
RECIPIENT: Anyone with a crystal.
WHAT: Summary of content.
WHEN: Currentish.
WHERE: She's in Halamshiral; wherever you all are.
NOTES: Optional side quest. Also I know the difference between Kirkwall and Halamshiral and didn't edit her misspeaking a day later. You don't know.

This is Gwenaëlle Baudin. I need to make a brief trip from Halamshiral to an estate in the Dales, and given what happened the last time I took that road—

( understandably tersely, for those who do know what it was that happened, )

—I would prefer to do it with several able warriors. I've some other contacts I can reach out to closer to hand if no one is available, but I'm not in a great rush to do it, so if anyone is bored of the unrest in Kirkwall and would like to make a bit of coin on the side while touring some different, exciting unrest in what I assume will be remembered as the last days of Orlais before it was overrun by Corypheus, do be in touch.

Do not bother responding if you can't bring yourself to refrain from embarrassing the Inquisition in the High Quarter.

Comments

[elegiaque]

Nothing the contents of the townhouse's wine cellar can't fix.

( girl please )

[rathercommon]

That's not a very...healthy solution.

[elegiaque]

( said her smaller echo, disapprovingly, furious in emeric's study and gesturing a little too carelessly with a bottle that had cost him no small fortune indeed—what an appalling waste of money, what stupidity, what she had emptied years later in an act of petty vengeance motivated by grief upon guenievre baudin's death.

gwenaëlle and her father are far more alike than she is comfortable looking right in the eye. )

No.

Well.

Neither is marching off to the front lines like some kind of cunt, and no one stopped that happening.

[rathercommon]

But -

[ Kitty's voice is equal parts confused and firm. She may not have much of an idea what she's talking about, but it's not going to stop her having an opinion. ]

That's not all right, either. That shouldn't be allowed, either.

[elegiaque]

It's done and I'm handling it. Thus the trip.

[rathercommon]

Who marched off to the front lines? Was it you?

[elegiaque]

( gwenaëlle heroically manages not to ask a perfect stranger if she sounds like a fucking idiot, because you simply can't trust people to answer that question correctly. )

The Comte de Vauquelin. I will be settling his affairs.

[rathercommon]

And...who is he to you?

[elegiaque]

( there's a question. )

Regrettably, we share blood.

[rathercommon]

Brother?

[elegiaque]

Father.

( officially, she doesn't have a brother. unofficially, emeric refuses to be held responsible for marcellin roux's existence. )

[rathercommon]

Oh. I'm sorry. That's really difficult, too.

[elegiaque]

Not for much longer.

[rathercommon]

[ A hesitation. ]

Sorry - what do you mean? Not for much longer?

[elegiaque]

He's a wine-soaked old roue on the front-lines of the Anderfels invasion.

( that math is very straightforward, no matter how hard her father can hit in a brawl. )

[rathercommon]

Oh - um. [ She clears her throat. ] Sorry - I thought from what you were saying that he was dead.

[elegiaque]

Certain legalities will be simpler if they're handled before that happens.

( where 'simpler' means 'harder to undo later'. )

[rathercommon]

Well, then - you could go in and pull him out. Couldn't you?

[elegiaque]

I could stroll into an active war zone and force an officer of the imperial army to desert.

[rathercommon]

Well. Why not?

[elegiaque]

The words 'a hanging offense' spring to mind almost instantaneously.

[rathercommon]

This isn't the Imperial Army, is it?

[elegiaque]

No. Nor is it a body with any authority to intervene in the unrelated criminal acts of some fuckwit drunk who's going to get what he deserves.

It's stupid, it's dangerous, and it's pointless. I can't think of any good reason to do that.

[rathercommon]

Well, war is stupid and dangerous and pointless, unless it's a war for a just cause, in which case a drunkard shouldn't be in charge. That seems like reason enough to me.

[elegiaque]

That sounds like a problem that will solve itself, don't you think? Nevermind what part of 'I require bodyguards' sounded to you like 'a person who's going to traipse into a battle'.