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therookery2018-08-05 12:58 pm
shri) wrote in therookery2018-08-05 12:58 pm
Entry tags:
02 | OPEN
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
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.
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Not when he has the memory of the dark place with screaming, with Lady Wemot snapping at him.
He looks at her again, and well some humans aren't always all the way human but normally they're elfblooded but so far none of the rifters he knows have said anything so he wouldn't know, and whatever she is for her to say, not for him to go guessing at.]
Chantry controls lyrium. [If he's going to go about doing this, he'll just throw everything at the wall and under the cart all at once without pause.] They need it for the Templars. I mean we - Carta - we smuggle it 'cause what's life without the black market where you get whatever you need, and even Templars get addicted or get cut off or get kicked out but still have a thirst, but Chantry controls the trade. Dwarves can find it and only dwarves can mine it safely [which is said with a scoff, he's met enough of them gone wrong when something went wrong--
Almost his whole body shakes with the shudder at something not to be remembered.]
There's the whole thing about the Stone. Ancestors and all that shit and it's shit. They've got Castes. Orzammar is fucked if you couldn't tell s'just that Orzammar is down there so humans don't need to see it with their eyes, and if you try to tell 'em, they really don't like it.
[Mages especially who cannot imagine that any suffering will ever be greater than their own, that now they're part of this world they have to live in it, that now they have to fend for themselves like every other sorry bastard does who wasn't born to a silver spoon up the jacksie.]
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Forgive me, did you say addicted? The Chantry encourages their Knights to eat Lyrium?
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Mages can do things no one else does, the game is bloody rigged compared to a whole seething mass of other people who don't have the same chance. There's an ugly heat in his chest at the thought, at the memory. He sips his tea slowly, carefully, pushes it down. (He'll train later, hit things until it goes away.)]
Well...yeah. Templars need it. Chantry needs Templars. Chantry likes to be very in charge. So… [The expansive gesture of a small dwarf who isn't exactly saying everything but sort of is at the same time because he can't just give people all of the facts, put the pieces together etc.]
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[ Her eyes slide across, briefly, behind her hand. To the door - then back to him and what he is saying and she is... in a precarious position. Naturally. She is no child of this place. She is for the mark on her hand not liked. There are things, to that end, he will be able to say, that she cannot. That in public she must bite her tongue on if she did not wish to lose her head. If it not for her failures, how badly she had lost the last time she played politic, she might not have the wariness. But she most certainly does, even and measured.
Because no - he doesn't need to explain. Not really. Listening, taking notes. Sipping her tea in a deeper mouthful. ] So they keep their grip as tight as might be. Another question if I might - what do the templars do with the Lyrium?
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Watching her carefully - he grew up in Darktown, all the dealings where it was invariably how it was said, how it was done, as much what they did say about the table or in the darkened carved out tunnels - he finishes the tea, sets it down, and scoops out one nug to set on his lap. Something better to do with both hands. Less fidgeting overall to have it nudging up into his scraped hands for the petting it thinks it deserves.] Yeah, wouldn't want Templars to be able to get it however they pleased but these days I'm not really part of it so I don't know how the Inquisition sorts that all out, must be a right state honestly. So-- it lets Templars be Templars. And it does stuff with mages. 'Cause mages use lyrium too for their spells, they don't need to but when they get all tapped out then they chug it and it's like a kick up the arse, good to go. Think it fucks 'em up too if they take too much but I wasn't sellin' to no mages so I dunno there really but Templars can stop mages doing mage stuff. All a neat little circle really; Chantry puts the mages in Circles, Chantry has the Templars, Chantry controls who gets how much lyrium, Templars can stop mages casting spells.
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Which - if that was Templars used them for - it was no small feat. A needed one too if what she saw of this place was anything to go by. But that still seemed... The opium wars, are what she thinks of. The demand and control of substances - though they certainly had quite a different purpose. Though once more she swallows back on it. ]
Thank you. You have explained a great deal to me. [ A deeper breath, watching the little creature play about in his hands with a soft look for it. ] If I may - there is one good thing to being an outsider, here. I have no stake nor weight to any of these politics. My concern, my only concern as far as my position is concerned, is that those that need the most immediate help, receive it. Mage, poor man, shard-bearer or otherwise.
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Yngvi can't help it when she says that because it sounds wrong, his face screwing up. Outsiders not having weight or stake when-- well Thranduil's in charge of their whole research division, he's always been involved in things and when it comes to being an outsider he's not just a rifter, he's a bloody elf. A tall elf. Has enough of something about him that the Dalish'd take a shine to.] How d'you--
[He stops. Considers d'you actually wanna do this because she speaks like a lady, holds herself up like one even from somewhere else, and Yngvi knows who he is. What he is. Isn't smart enough to go asking things. (Is. But doesn't think it. Talks himself out of it outside of the few trusted people who'll have the patience for it.)] I mean you're here, aren't you? S'not like you don't got weight or stakes in things. Orzammar says 'trade happens' like the Carta somehow aren't involved, don't mean we don't exist y'know? [It's a bad idea to bring those up in the same breath, he's grateful for the nug in his hands.] Poor man should come first the way I see it, who looks out for the poor man when other people can do things that the poor man can't?
[It feels very bold to say it, but he does make himself look her dead in the face so he can at least say he did that much if he goes recounting the story after.]
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But the end of that question - it is something she wants to take with both her hands and tear apart that sky herself. They deserve to lose their heads, each and every noble that caused this suffering. The teeth she sets into the inside of her lip enough to sting, the pain to clear her mind, you are not Sita to burn yourself in your rage, no matter how you might desire it. Stiff with the confinement of it all as she so often felt.
Instead, she rises, out of her seat - exactly as he said, she is stiff-backed, shoulders a rolled back line, a soldier true, but more than that no matter how much she might pretend. To that, there is a great deal she is pretending over - and the same way as with Kitty, she is not so much a fool as to want to let anyone else here her thoughts on the matter. So she goes to the door, swinging it shut. Providing them as much privacy as they could have anywhere in the gallows. Locks it, for good measure, before she comes back to sit across from him once more. To keep her face on his and refuse to look away. ]
Look at me - [ because she will have his eyes as she had given them so far, and she will have them like she means to hold a soul in her hands, as pure as that was, as tremendous surely, to ever ask someone to give that. With much tender fear and want as all that could be. She will fix to them like she means to make them her own. Without question and forward. The things she keeps back, the things she lets him have, now. Neither charming, nor eloquent, but herself, offered willingly. ] I am Maharani Lakshmibai, those names mean nothing to you, but to my people, they were a promise I made on my wedding day when I took that name. For Lakshmi, Mahalakshmi, is the Goddess of Wealth, Luck and Prosperity for my people. I swore my devotion to serving all those that came to me. That I may be their Lakshmi, that all they must do is ask it of me, and I would gladly give it to them. That when they needed protection, I would be their Kali and remove their suffering, when they needed raising up, I would be Saraswati to guide them to better themselves. That I would always, be theirs.
[ All that she is, all that she has been, and how much none of it had changed. How odd a thing that was. ] I would dishonour the lives of the people who gave themselves to my service, to treat those here as anything less than my own when they come to me. That is what it means to be Rani, to me. I was not born to that title, and I did not keep it through anything less than their love. If it means anything to me, it means that. Their hurt is my hurt, their pain is my pain, and I will be all that must for them. Poor or otherwise.
[ As fervent as prayers, she means it utterly and even that is not enough - she supposes she has only that to give, and her actions.
- And what she knows of others. ] I do not give a fuck what the Carta says, Orlais says, what Fereldon says, or even the revered Mother in the Chantry when they would as readily call me demon and see me strung up for even speaking of my own Gods. I might do much, accomplish everything I could ever hope and be as you say, with as much stake as anyone, but do not ask me to be naive and not expect the knife in my back for what I am when it becomes inconvenient or when the Inquisition cannot protect me. I have lost... too much, to ever forget those lessons.
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Thranduil is taller and a rifter but he's never made Yngvi feel little. Always strangely fond he reckons, Thranduil who asks after his hurts. Who has his place here and wouldn't do it this way. And Coupe is tall, is broad, is that sort of towering strength you'd say was a force but she's been his friend so long he gets to forget that. Get pissed in a cellar then spill your hurts and she just is. Not rifters or Templars or titles. There's a lesson in that somewhere.
This isn't-- None of him likes this, the nug is tucked back in his pocket, his coat is folded about himself as his shoulders move restlessly, trying to decide if he should be larger or smaller, which one gets him what, what works better in a strange room with a closed door with a strange woman. His heart is too fast, mouth dry, throat sticking to itself as if he didn't just finish a cup of tea. Breathe. Just breathe. What's the very worst thing that'll happen to you in here?
(He can imagine a lot of very bad things.)
Before he knew much of anything, there was an obedience instilled in him. The jerky snap of his head, jaw clenched tight so his mouth doesn't do anything he doesn't want it to.]
But you're not a goddess! You're just a woman, the same as everyone else that comes here and has to live here and it doesn't matter what you were there. D'you know what you sound like just-- just reeling off all of that? You sound mad. You sound like the mad terrible people in the tales that did terrible things and crushed all the small people right under them because they thought they were right! [His voice, perhaps regrettably, creeps up a whole octave, bottom lip starting to go alone with the whole chin; if he tried to clench his jaw any harder he'd have broken it. Sometimes the body does all it can to protect itself, and it gives in, says that no this is the time to be soft, stop doing this, stop making yourself terrible and hard even when you think it's what you want.
His eyes are very bright but he can't look away, wonders if this is how nugs feel before of wolves as his breath comes out of him in horrid staccato shudders.]
You can't make yourself that, you can't say you'll be that and expect people'll just go along with it - what happens if they turn around and say no your holiness? You gonna hold their feet to the fire? You're human. You don't know what-- you don't-- you--
[There's a horrible moment when he thinks that he's going to be sick. Or cry. The crying would be worse, his mouth is hot and salty for all that his face is dry.]
You should care about the Carta. You don't know shit and might have a dozen names when I got one and a second what got given to me by the man who took me and my brother out the gutter but the Carta is everywhere. They take people in Orzammar who've got nothing and they're in Darktown and Lowtown, and they're probably hobnobbin' with the nobles because they'll get you what you need. But you'll eat your own brothers and sisters, and if you have the choice of Deep Roads or Carta, or starving and Carta, you'd take it. You don't know because you're not from here. You won't ever know what it's like. To be part of that. To always know you're there. That you're in it.
[All of this is entirely the wrong approach with someone like Yngvi. And fear sharpens up all the parts of Yngvi that have only ever known what surviving is on a knife's edge in the dark. He wants her to shout, to be angry, to be told to leave because he has to go, he can't even breathe in this room, there's no air left--]
Open the door. [Is that him? It sounds very far-off, his own voice.] I want to leave.
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No, none of it comes, for in her mouth sits independence, sits a homeland that is free, but she is trapped here, and she has not wept in years. She cannot. If she begins where is she to stop? Another day she could have swallowed of this all and spat back all he, in turn, did not understand. She had put of something into his hands as surely as she might anyone else, a want to speak honestly to how she felt. How much she loathed the games of nobles, lords, priests, to assure him that she would always know what would come first.
But she had been wrong and -
She snatches for the veil, that ugly sting she can feel all the way down. That feels like frustration, humiliation and so surely grief. Her head snaps away. Proud because that is all she has, stiff because she doesn't know how to give herself in.
After all, she had been told, and Gwen had warned her, and she had no one else to blame but herself. ]
Forgive me. [ Because what else was there to say? Her fingers grip so hard into the cotton, they turn white. ] The door was never locked. Thank you for speaking with me.
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(He knows where he's going to run after his rooms. When he's calmed down. Changed his clothes that cling to him now, sticking to him when he gets up on numb legs.)
One nod with a jerk of his head, and he moves fast for a dwarf but when did he ever have the luxury to amble about, to stroll unless it was for a reason? His hands don't fumble with the handle. He doesn't look back.
He's still polite enough not to slam it behind him. Wouldn't want to make more of a scene than he already has.]