crystal;

[satinet]

FORM: Crystal
SENDER: Cassius
RECIPIENT: All riftwatchers great and small
NOTES: You should definitely reply to this. Don't worry about why. Threadjacking welcome/encouraged.

Greetings Riftwatch! This is Senior Enchanter Black speaking—the Seneschal.

[This particular cheerful intonation may strike fear into the hearts of certain members of the company. Namely, those who would prefer not be talked at for ten minutes without interruption, or those who might flinch at the prospect that at any moment their wages might be trimmed further in order to set aside a reserve fund for Refugee Orphans Or Whatever.

But today, when Cassius says,] I'll be brief, [he means it.

Which is definitely not ominous in the slightest.]

I'm collecting information about which nations and known institutions we as an organization know best. If you would be so kind as to reply to this listing the peoples, places, and various consortiums big or small for which you feel the most affinity or understand the intricacies of, that would be of great help.

There's no need to go into any detail if you don't feel inclined. A very general list will do just fine.

Comments

[armd]

Seconded.

[satinet]

Ladies, please. Taking the offer to make broad statements a little too seriously.

Have you really formed no specific opinion on anything here? I promise not to be critical.

[This is a safe space for your bad Rifter opinions. You're welcome.]

[notathreat]

Dwarves have you all beat in the mead department. Some of the ale here at the docks tastes worse than some of the stuff I've found back home, and that was a quarter-century expired.

Most of the hats mages wear look really fucking stupid.

[satinet]

Those hats are patterns passed down from inside the Circles, designed by people who were rarely subject to the whims of fashion.

[Is he joking? Hard to tell. He definitely thinks something about this exchange is funny.]

A critic, [he decides.] Anything else? You wouldn't want to waste this opportunity to make your opinions on the trajectory of our work known, I hope.

[notathreat]

My opinions don't matter. It's what I do, what we do, that matters.

So, what are you planning to do?

[satinet]

Whatever I see fit, apparently, seeing as no one on this entire island seems to care one way or another.

[He sounds quite cheerful over it. Hooray, full license to spend their entire diplomatic budget entertaining Chantry Mothers and rich nobility.]

[notathreat]

Okay, then what do you see fit? We can't actually advise if we don't know what we're advising about.

[satinet]

I'm drawing up plans for which guests and inquiries we should bother entertaining for the coming year. That's what you're advising on. If you prefer it not to be all Chantry representatives and chasing after the favor of Free Marcher magistrates, now is the time to make your opinion known.

[notathreat]

Then why'd you have to open up the floor in a muahaha-way instead of just saying that? Jesus.

Anyway, reach out to the people getting hit by the war. Concentrate on them, or people who are about to be hit. They need us and it'll be easiest to get them to commit. We can't waste time.

[Ellie's voice settles into something very much like distaste, jaded and a little bitter.]

If you're gonna fuck with Orlais then have the people who know the games handle 'em, or send our weirdest folks. If you throw a fancy party for them it'll just be another fancy party. Barter services instead. Make it unique. It'll get their attention.

[satinet]

[Muahaha-ing is his native language. See also:]

Is there a particular direction that the Venatori are traveling that you'd like us to look in first? I'm under the impression that there's few places which haven't felt the effects of the war.

For example, Orlais. We have nobles with property to recoup and peasants with axes to grind. I can't very well entertain both. That's how you get headless nobility and miniature wars between every garden wall.

[notathreat]

We're on our way to Antiva, right?

[Verbal shrug, a little humming noise.]

So we throw the rock into the part of the pond that'll make the biggest splash, try to angle it in the direction we want.

[satinet]

And which direction would that be?

[Somewhere, Cassius Black has set his cheek idly on the loosely curled knuckles of one fist—the posture of a man idly steering a conversation on a whim.]

[notathreat]

[Ellie sighs deeply. There's a reason she never got into politics or diplomacy, but she can't pretend she doesn't know anything.]

It's gonna be with the people. The civilians.