02 | OPEN

[shri]

FORM: Sending Crystal.
SENDER: Lakshmibai
RECIPIENT: Any one and everyone.
WHAT: Head of Community Outreach & Are you a rifter? Do you know how to weave? Want to turn a profit and help out the inquisition? Please inquire.
WHEN: Time is a flat circle.
WHERE: The Gallows
NOTES: nothing too serious

Greetings... It is Rani Lakshmibai.

[ Right, that out of the way. ]

I have two matters which I need a moment - [ Here we go. ] - I have recently been made Head of Community Outreach, for which I'm honoured. I wish to a little more to understand where I might be applied in helping others, but as yet many things still escape me as where help might be best applied to those that need it. If you have a moment to speak with me, in person, I would be much obliged. My Quarters are in the Gallows.

[ Onwards then, because who works and doesn't overwork? Not her. ] Secondly, and for rifters amongst us... I have spoken with Master Barnabas, a merchant here in Kirkwall, and I realised that whilst what many of us bring in terms of items here can be desirable and turn a good profit for it's... foreign nature. Such things are short-term investments. [ And that as far as she's concerned, is a waste. ] As such, I am looking for women or men, of moderate skill in weaving textiles and who can take direction easily, to join me in such work. You will be paid, though primarily, all extra earnings are to be funded back into the Inquisition. I intend to work things that no part of Thedas has seen before, and feel we are uniquely qualified for such an endeavour.

If such a thing is in your ability, please enquire.

[ Somewhere, her husband is following her about, tugging at her hair and laughing. ]

That is all. My regards.

Comments

[laurenande]

My people have long favored embroidery and bead work. This is not because the result is superior by nature, but rather because there is more time required in the working of it.

[She looks back at the cloth on the loom--it was a simple piece meant to become a shirt, nothing more. She could remove and unstring it but it would take many hours to arrange threads for this Chanderi cloth. She was not so far along that it could not be re-purposed to that pattern, but she has no idea if the color is of key importance.]

When one is very long-lived, they must fill the hours somehow, and the Eldar are very given to crafting.

Please, tell me more about this cloth. What colors should I use or avoid? Will finely worsted wool suffice in place of cotton? How long a piece is required to make such an arrangement?

[shri]

[ That makes her smile, pleased to hear so. ] As do mine. We value vibrancy in all things.

[ Carefully, she takes out from a small bag a series of folded squares of cloth. Mock-ups of patterns, weaves and fabric. Things she has poured over making for hours upon hours even for so little.

Because if what she wears now is vibrant, what she holds in her hands is a riot of colour. Fabric is woven densely into tight, geometrically interlocking patterns, others are not patterned except for wide borders of gold, but instead is one block brilliant colour that is tightly packed with the same gold, that as it moved, it shifted between light and dark hues like water shimmering, two colours all at once. The material below it, the same bright purple, but this one woven with patterns that varied in size.

The last of the set, she fishes out is a different sort of design again. But that one, in particular, she has gone even further - the patterns in sections were lifted up - woven in mirrors that shimmered and reflected the light. Embroidered as she said - not in gold thread, but in fine metal that is beaten flat, in places worked with beads.

All of it vibrant, no one colour made to be lesser, softened or the edge taken off as she holds it between her battle-scarred fingers. ] There are many more, and with some time I could make them. Nor am I the most skilled in all of them, and I have been at war too long to be truly deft in the art as I once was, but... these are but the kinds I was taught to make. My husband had... elegant tastes. I did my best to provide for them.

[ It's a little fond, that clear image of her husband still after all these years. A proud, well-dressed man. In brilliant gold, white and blue. Stung with pearls, holding the sword of the state against his side as he talked to her in her mind's eye. Truly cosmopolitan and possessing of a self-respect that let him move with a deft hand. ] I hope you can understand from seeing this why I say that my homeland's fabric is sought all the world over by Kings and Queens. I do not think it will change much here.

[ A little play, as she tries not to bite at it, nobles did not change much, it seemed. ]