CRYSTAL | MISS ME, DARLINGS?

[illithidnapped]

FORM: sending crystals, during the truth event, you know what to do
SENDER: your favorite rogue, Astarion xoxo
RECIPIENT: as always, everyone
NOTES: if you drank Truth Soup, cough up your feelings; if you didn't drink the soup, make it worse for everyone, I dare you

[Someone's bored tonight. And it's been over a year since the last time he felt restlessness stirring him into needling action— particularly when he's noticed a couple of blurted-out confessions running high and harsh in the air. He could sleuth around. Sniff about for any signs of volatile tampering (or ask if this is just the next phase of whatever sleepless affliction's still nipping at everyone's collective heels)....

But this is so much more fun.

Anyway— ahem, and all that:]

Name one thing you like about someone else in Riftwatch. Anything. Anything at all.

Bonus points if you feel like getting weird with it.

[And don't think he's generous enough to actually start this game himself: that, you're all going to have to do on your own.

Or maybe just ask nicely.]

Comments

[bouchonne]

He's fishing for gossip, of course.

[elegiaque]

I don't hold sleeping with my ex against him, but given how thoroughly off-putting the entire sordid mess was I don't know why he'd imagine he's not barking up entirely the wrong tree for that. My skin crawled at the thought of anyone touching me for about a year.

[bouchonne]

[ Because Byerly intimately recognizes the behavior: ]

He's trying to make peace. Dissolute fellows like he and I use gossip as a way to bond.

[elegiaque]

That's nearly as off-putting as fucking someone I thought I was married to, so that's a bust.

[illithidnapped]

What Byerly means [now watered down for general consumption] is that prying is a way of fostering understanding.

If I ask you a thousand questions, I'll walk away with at least a glimpse of who you are— and before you say something so characteristically absurd as 'just be around me and pay attention you fucking idiot, you don't need to shove your nose in everything I do', let me offer you a counter argument: it's been over a year, and you're so habitually deflective that I know next to fucking nothing about what actually makes you happy. What you enjoy, aside from— I don't know, knitting for a man that wears his own poor hairline remarkably well.

So, to answer your earlier question: appealing, yes. Eye-catching. Attention-worthy.

I struggle to buy into the idea that out of everyone here, your list of easily appreciated traits are: I don't notice you and be Commander Flint.

[elegiaque]

I have never knitted in my life, first of all.

( important to get that out of the way. upon consideration, )

I think we fundamentally don't define these things the same way. It isn't about...No one springs to mind, when you describe it like that. It's appealing to me to think I could be taken as seriously as Commander Flint one day; I admire him and I ... I feel like he's a thing that I could understand. He's intelligent and practical and ruthless and exactly the sort of person I think more people should consider being like. I want to be more like that. I want the idiots who come here to fuck around to strive to be more like him and to prioritise the things we're doing here.

I'm not happy. Nothing here has made me happy in a long time. I don't know how to answer you about made up bullshit happiness. But if I'm going to die alone in this miserable war that we've barely any hope of seeing the other side of when including Rutyer there are less than ten people in the entirety of the diplomacy division,

( she doesn't understand their job but she values it enough to have counted, )

then it's appealing to me for everyone to take it fucking seriously.

[cozen]

[ Head turn, metaphorically. ]

[elegiaque]

( what's it to you )

[cozen]

[ Interesting. ]

[illithidnapped]

Hm.

[Well, it's insightful, if nothing else. More than almost the entirety of their exchanges thus far; for that, he's relieved. Pleased, maybe? Hard to say, it's a complex mix of things all still lost beneath the ticking of his own mind, busy trying to piece it all together like a puzzle he hasn't quite figured out.]

Fair enough. [Is where he ends, and it's not dismissive in the slightest.]

So you don't have any traits that inherently draw your eye in the broadest sense? Not kindness or long hair or a particular accent— nothing like that.

[elegiaque]

Of course I do. That's not what you asked me.

[illithidnapped]

Well I'm asking now.

[elegiaque]

They have to be tall. Broad, physically fit, very strong. Preferably someone who can get his hands all the way around my waist and lift me without straining. Extremely intelligent. Intelligent enough to make it everyone else's problem. Someone driven, someone purposeful; a natural leader, or the confidence and self-assurance not to require one. Ruthlessness. Someone who'll take a firm hand with me in life and bed. Someone who doesn't care much what other people think of them, and doesn't need my constant reassurance or guidance, either.

I want the most frighteningly intense person in the room to find me fascinating. And that's part of it, too, I'm not interested in someone who isn't— mutually obsessed. Who isn't interested in me, too, I want to be necessary, important. If I've got no reason to think they're attracted to me, if I could be anyone to them and it wouldn't matter, it's not attractive to me, not in any sort of...lingering way. They aren't going to stay on my mind.

( which probably explains how the initial question failed to produce results.

and, probably, why they never slept together. )

They don't have to be absolutely all of those things, but some of them are not negotiable.

[illithidnapped]

[.....a h.

Now that is informative. And you know, not so terribly shocking in hindsight, now that he's looking back.]

The bit about wanting the most terrifying person in the room to crave you. [He's joking; he can already tell it's the intoxicating allure of obsession— because he is, despite everything, very much the same in that respect.]

[elegiaque]

Don't worry, I'm not remotely afraid of you. The worst thing you'd do is kill me.

( and like, who cares.

they can pretend that this is a joke, if he wants. )

[illithidnapped]

No, my darling. I could do a lot worse than that if I wanted to. [Ugh.] Blast this accursed magic— whatever it is.

The point I was aiming to make is that you're right, assuming you meant we're largely incompatible creatures. Well, and also assuming you meant nothing presently available to you distinctly appeals.

[elegiaque]

We are incompatible, but it hadn't occurred to me it needed pointing out. I wasn't thinking of you at all.

( or, indeed, anyone here. it's not out of the question that she could become drawn to someone here, that something might spring up,

but it hasn't. )

And I don't think I matter to you in any meaningful way that would motivate you to do anything to me other than the way you usually do, which is completely incidentally to whatever it is you actually care about. What you're capable of and what you're going to do aren't the same thing.

[illithidnapped]

[He has more to say about the idea that she means little to him, but....]

Small words, my dear. It's been a long night, and I've had a lot to drink.

[elegiaque]

I doubt I could move you to do much of anything.