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]

No.

( It's Complicated, but

she tried. )

[rathercommon]

[ A huff. ]

Then what about his commanding officers? Can't you tell them he's incompetent?

[elegiaque]

He isn't. So. It wouldn't be very convincing. What he is, is an old man who has behaved appallingly to his own body for years, who wants to die.

( and nothing about any of it is straightforward. )

[rathercommon]

I thought you said he was a drunk.

[elegiaque]

If someone drinks that much for long enough and manages to carry on their professional life in the meantime, either they are good at something or they're so incompetent they'd never get as far as he has. If it were as easy as you want it to be, he wouldn't be there at all, would he. I could write a series of very impassioned letters about his incompetence and unfitness for his position, and the best that would happen would be that someone would read them, reflect on how sweet it is some silly little girl wishes to protect her father from war, or possibly see it in a worse light than that, depending on their particular attitude to the war—

And nothing changes, except that someone gets a laugh out of it before he dies. Remind me why any of this is any of your fucking business, again.

[rathercommon]

[ She shakes her head. (And ignores that latter question.) ]

So he is good at what he does. That's what you're saying? Does he save lives?

[elegiaque]

He is exceptionally good at beating people to death.

[rathercommon]

Okay, that's definitely not the definition of being a good military commander.

[elegiaque]

Were you going to say anything of relevant interest to anyone at any point.

[rathercommon]

If all he's good at is murder, he really shouldn't be there, should he.

[elegiaque]

( for as many points as there are to make in emeric's general favour as a military leader (and there are a few, though with guilfoyle not at his side...), gwenaëlle would rather drag broken glass over her tongue than be backed into the corner of defending him, for anything, and it doesn't matter. they could argue the point for hours, and it still wouldn't matter, because there's still nothing either of them can do about the fact that he is there— )

I'm going to take that as a no.

There is nothing I can do about that that I haven't already tried. He's made his decision and he's enacted it and there is nothing I can do about it, so all I can do is hope that when he dies it is alone and screaming.

[rathercommon]

[ Kitty...Well. Kitty wishes she could hear that curse with indifference. After all, her own dad made it clear that she was no daughter to him - what was that, just three weeks ago, now? And she's completely fine with that. The problem is that it's just creepy to hear someone talking like that - that's all. Going on about her own father dying screaming. Kitty's squeamish feeling doesn't come out of empathy or love; it comes purely out of the fact that the whole thing is really creepy. That's it. ]

So why are you even going out there, then? If you're not concerned with him, then why do you care about his affairs? Are you just after the money?

[elegiaque]

( one day, gwenaëlle will forgive him—

but it was never going to be in his lifetime. she grieves him, but it's ugly and it's painful and it's this, turned in eight circles, frustrated that she couldn't save him and furious that she wanted to. calling him a coward for running, and leaving him nothing to return to.

it is a dull ache that will never get better. )

I could get the money without ever leaving Kirkwall.

( well, that's blunt. )

The properties need to be closed. They are fully staffed, and arrangements need to be made to ensure that none of the people who have served us—him—for so long and so loyally get so royally fucked in the process. I will be overseeing the houses being shut up, and putting a personal touch on those farewells. It is the least that can be done, as a courtesy, for what he managed to fuck up.

[rathercommon]

You can do that when he's not even dead?

[elegiaque]

I couldn't without his authority and seal.

( there's a reason she's so sure he doesn't intend to come back. )

[rathercommon]

Which he gave to you?

[elegiaque]

Which he gave to his man to give to me. When he dies, all of this passes out of our hands and there would be nothing—

It needs to be done before.

( she hadn't known it was going to be so soon. none of them had. )

Whoever oversees it afterwards. Perhaps they'd be fair. Perhaps they wouldn't. It's a preference not to leave it to chance.

[rathercommon]

It wouldn't be you overseeing it?

[elegiaque]

As punishment for passing off the bastard daughter of his housekeeper as a legitimate heir for twenty-four years, the title and all its entailments belonging to the Comte de Vauquelin will revert to the crown upon his death.

( she took her mother's name, after that. )

[rathercommon]

[ Kitty bites her lip, refraining from asking who exactly was the bastard daughter. Is the lady's sourness because of anger at an older sister who was an interloper? Or because she herself was cut out of the line of inheritance? If Kitty had to lay odds, she'd guess it were the latter - just because this lady seems like she wouldn't have refrained from bringing down curses on an older sister's head, if said sister were relevant. ]

So...Would you get anything at all once he's dead?

[elegiaque]

To be frank with you,

( as if gwenaëlle seems capable of being absolutely anything else, )

that really isn't my most pressing concern.

[rathercommon]

I'd hope not, since if that were at the top of your list that'd make you a complete madwoman. But you've thought about it, I'm sure.

[elegiaque]

Unavoidably, as he told me his plans before he left.

[rathercommon]

And?

[elegiaque]

Why do you want to know?