[Pel rattles off the talking points like she's reading them from a list and using the fewest possible words to convey them.]

Anyone in either the Veil project or the Artifacts project, please attend a joint meeting this afternoon if you're able. There will be food. It will be in the elven artifacts laboratory in the Gallows, so please remember not to touch anything you haven't been invited to touch. Thank you.

[Meeting log is here]

FORM: sendin' crystal

This is Coupe.

[ there are new faces; it bears repeating ]

( i wondered where the sun had gone, then it dawned on me )

Well everyone it's that time of year. Satinalia was upon us. Maybe you got treated nicely but it's probably time for you to get yourself all nice and snug. Now, I didn't get this for Satinalia but this was a gift so I thought I'd share it. Read you a bit of a story by an Orlesian noblewoman who found herself lost in the wilds, in an ambush. Set upon by Avvar barbarians--

Forgot about that bit. Avvar barbarians, swap that with elf savages, doesn't sound good does it?

Anyway, are you sitting comfortably? Let's begin.

[Several cosy blankets and pelts rustle, some nugs squeak as they get comfy again in his lap.]

Upon arrival at the hold, all heads turned at once to behold the newest arrival: she had the distinct impression an Orlesian was a rarity in these parts, and one of her calibre as Lady Sylviane Camile Roux with her hair the colour of wheat in the field before a bountiful harvest, and eyes the merchant sailors told her was the same blue as the Amaranthine Ocean on the fairest tides the rarest of all. In her finely made gown - she talks about her clothes a lot, ask me if you want the full description of the drape of her skirt and the cut of her bloody bodice - she felt she stood upon the brink. What did they know of the Maker here? Of the business of her life, rushing to and fro, never a minute to sit. To think. Clad in their warm furs--

Her rescuer, how suddenly she had come to call him that in her mind but she would certainly have been lost without him, came to her. How tall he stood. Unkempt, wild, untamed. It spoke to her.

[Look there's a lot of boring introduction before he can get to the good stuff okay, you have to meet your rugged bodice-ripping hero and his damsel in distress.]

It goes on like that a lot, just-- oh look at me, dainty Orlesian lady let me swoon into your burly arms you comely wild uncivilised man I shall be awed each time you aren't like the Orlesian books said you'd be. But y'know in that condescending way? [Elves do you get him? When people think rabbit is nicer than knife-ear? It's like that sort of thing. There's some page-flipping and--]

( and now for the good stuff )