on the nature of oaths
Sep. 17th, 2019 08:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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[In the current move, Sasha has just accepted an oath of service from Jedao, a relationship Reshad believes is coercive. I'm not sure whether this properly counts as character rp or a new half-move, but I think we all need some new space to deal with the fallout!]
Sasha is waiting outside the antechamber. She has tied her scarf again, and looks as put-together as she ever does. "Are we having this conversation in my office?" she asks Reshad. "Or over tea, with everyone?"
Sasha is waiting outside the antechamber. She has tied her scarf again, and looks as put-together as she ever does. "Are we having this conversation in my office?" she asks Reshad. "Or over tea, with everyone?"
belated xo reaction
Date: 2019-09-17 05:52 pm (UTC)After Sasha steps out of the airlock, Sulen says into her ear, "Well, that's not how I intended this to go, but it seems to have been productive."
Re: belated xo reaction
Date: 2019-09-17 10:56 pm (UTC)The momentum of the ceremony is wearing off, and she's uncomfortably aware of how much sleep she hasn't had in the last twenty-five hours. She fishes in her jacket pocket for her scarf.
Hallway Conversation
Date: 2019-09-18 02:35 am (UTC)"But first -" Reshad steps close. She looks up into Sasha's face, expression unflinching, and her voice drops to a biting, private tone. "Do not assume you know anything about Temuy culture."
She steps past Sasha and calls back: "I'll be there in five."
Re: Hallway Conversation
Date: 2019-09-18 11:53 am (UTC)Sasha should know something about Temuy--'do not bargain without data' is a lesson that was fucking ground into her--but the fault is not entirely hers. "In return, do not pretend you comprehend a binding, when you do not. What you just said to him was cruel, even if you cannot feel it."
[Is Temuy an ethnicity, or a place, or both?]
Re: Hallway Conversation
Date: 2019-09-19 01:24 am (UTC)She has a brief, spinning moment of wondering if this is what it takes. If aggression in response to aggression is the answer. Distasteful, but - this is not home. This is no assignment, where she can afford to assume and shuck identities like an out-of-fashion robe. Learn faster.
Reshad steps back, trusting her point to be made. "Would you care to explain, then." It's flat, less invitation than statement; the flare of anger is not yet gone, although a bladed protectiveness has risen in its place. "How offering hope that things are different in the rebellion than the Heptaechate is cruel; how undercutting it is not."
[Temuy is a culture, one of many on Aiwui before its fall, about which more soon. Reshad is Temuy.]
Re: Hallway Conversation (warning: theories of comparative abuse)
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From:target practice is the same thing as processing your feelings, right?
Date: 2019-09-19 04:13 pm (UTC)Re: target practice is the same thing as processing your feelings, right?
Date: 2019-10-02 02:57 pm (UTC)Re: target practice is the same thing as processing your feelings, right?
Date: 2019-10-02 04:11 pm (UTC)Seyli's finger slides off the trigger immediately when they hear another voice and realize it's the strange Hafn girl. They flip the safety on their gun and holster it, trying not to be annoyed at the interruption. At some point, they'd tugged their gloves off and tossed their uniform jacket off, feeling ridiculous in it again. "Hello, Mafyyil," they say, voice just strained without any sign of cheerfulness in it.
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From:tea and dragons improve all sorts of moods - paging everyone, especially Ione, Reshad, and Alaric
Date: 2019-09-21 01:31 am (UTC)Having attained the common room, Sasha liberates a clean teapot. She asks Reshad, "Do you like black tea, or green? Or I suppose there's coffee?"
One of the blue hatchlings crawls out of the nest, presumably curious about the noise; another hatchling is poking its nose out. Sasha's first instinct is to shush them, but she knows it's doomed. Hatchlings need socialization, and she is the available adult. Instead she whistles softly and looks for an appropriately squashy banana.
Re: tea and dragons improve all sorts of moods - paging everyone, especially Ione, Reshad, and Alari
Date: 2019-09-21 04:43 pm (UTC)But as she looks up, a cheeping sound, a whistle - Sasha has a banana in hand, unexpected - and a tiny blue nose, not belonging to Fluffy, makes an appearance in Fluffy's nest.
Moving softly, she comes up beside Sasha. "What's this?"
The color and movement resolves itself as she approaches, into what have to be hatchlings. Reshad's mouth makes an 'o' and her eyes go wide. "Oh! You're as cute as a mothling," she informs the baby. Her hands go behind her back, an instant response to the desire to touch.
Re: tea and dragons improve all sorts of moods - paging everyone, especially Ione, Reshad, and Alari
Date: 2019-09-21 07:07 pm (UTC)Though she doesn't usually drink green tea, there's a setting for it on the hot-water dispenser, and the grid will time the steeping. She mashes the banana into a bowl with the back of a spoon. "Chahle, baby frog, who's your friend?--You can go ahead and pick one up. It's good for them, to get used to humans."
[I'm not actually sure whether the Cantata's cutlery collection favors chopsticks or forks! Though Sasha's from a knives-spoons-fingers culture anyhow.]
[an unusually apt use of this icon]
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From:[a couple of possible GM threads]
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From:stray hatchlings, stray wolves, stray teacups - paging everyone, esp. Ione & Sulen
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From:trying not to break things
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From:Crockery and Cautions
Date: 2019-11-13 04:13 am (UTC)Very well; this exotic is double-edged, as so many are. How in seven stars are things like this functioning under the current calendar? Alas, she is no Nirai, nor even a hobby mathematician. She has her share of dangerous tastes, but that is not among them.
Distraction reappears as the hatchling meeps, apparently voracious; she moves slowly, carefully, swaying in unconscious rhythm, to get more of the food paste.
"And as much information about Jedao himself - including what he understands his oath to be. And whether it's a means for harm to come to him." At this, she turns to Sasha.
"Do you think it likely he's had a chance to study Naxorian customs?" Again, her tone is careful: this time curious, without a hint of judgement.
Re: Crockery and Cautions
Date: 2019-11-13 04:29 pm (UTC)"We could check what sections of the grid he has accessed in the last few minutes," Sasha says, with friendly sarcasm. "I told you, I studied the faction oaths, in my own time. They are comprehensive in a way that--there's not a precise Naxorian analogue. Certain adoptions or very formal types of marriage, maybe, but the closest match I know is the military braid. I'm not trained as a soldier, and in case you hadn't noticed, I am not a heptarch. So we're making this up as we go along, on both sides."
Re: Crockery and Cautions
Date: 2019-11-18 03:05 pm (UTC)The silver hatchling is trying to get at Ione's tea, and is carefully removed before actually making contact between tea and tongue.
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From:literal manipulators - paging Alaric and the Cantata
Date: 2019-11-26 12:49 am (UTC)Re: literal manipulators - paging Alaric and the Cantata
Date: 2019-11-26 01:08 am (UTC)Re: literal manipulators - paging Alaric and the Cantata
Date: 2019-11-26 01:34 am (UTC)She has a different application in mind, though. "What if you could change something yourself? Would it be rude for you to open a door on another ship, or move a piece of furniture?"
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From:side note on mothy manipulation - paging Alaric
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From:[for whoever is monitoring Jedao]
Date: 2019-11-26 01:13 am (UTC)[Please feel free to fill in the details of the calisthenics routine for the GM, who is extremely out of shape and ignorant about Exercise 101. I assume Jedao would know how to stay fit for assassin-y things; I only know warm-ups for fencing, which is not quite the same.]
Re: [for whoever is monitoring Jedao]
Date: 2019-11-26 03:52 pm (UTC)Virmad arrives at the door, sewing kit in hand. “Grid, could you show me what Jedao’s doing inside?”
The grid obliges and Virmad spends a solid minute getting distracted watching Jedao do calisthenics. He finally manages to collect himself and — after a moment’s internal debate as to whether he should ring the door chime or just interrupt — decides with a sigh to use the door chime. You know what he’s like, anyway, he says to himself. It wouldn’t work. Still, though.
“Jedao,” he says, through the Grid, “it’s me, Rahal — Eshegen Virmad. I brought the sewing kit you asked for. May I come in?”
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From:paging Reshad and Sasha, or anyone else willing to help
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From:At a table, after hours
Date: 2019-12-03 08:28 pm (UTC)She's long since shed her jumpsuit, instead favoring a long shirt in muted green and simple cream trousers. Here and there, gold thread peeps. Both earrings are back in place.
Despite reading on her tablet, she's laid a deck of jeng-zai cards out in a decorative fan. It's a very Shuos sort of invitation.
Re: At a table, after hours
Date: 2019-12-06 07:02 pm (UTC)She doesn't say anything, that cultural norm of hers still clashing against the others -- just a surprise, hey, she's here in your space! -- but is leaning over the cards and looking at them curiously. And wearing a silver pseudo-dragon draped over her shoulder again.
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From:a day or two later - paging Reshad
Date: 2019-12-14 02:11 am (UTC)If. The bigger problem is, Sasha has no idea what Reshad wants. She might be committed to a role as staff, and her uneasiness with promises might be ordinary cultural reticence. She might be cataloguing all of Sasha's faults, in preparation for some grand attack that will make all Sasha's promises irrelevant. Or she might be perfectly happy with oaths, as long as they are made to her--in which case she will probably triangulate with Ashari to back Sasha into a corner.
There's a fourth possibility (four for balance), which is that Reshad only wants room to work on her own projects. Letting Reshad pursue her own missions might have worked, even a few days ago. But now there is Jedao. The one thing Sasha knows for sure about Reshad is that she is interested in Jedao. And, Prophet guide her, Sasha cannot give Jedao up. If that's Reshad's priority, then their goals are all tangled up together.
So. Spin the web, find the scissors. Sasha needs a way to work with Reshad, unless and until Reshad disclaims allegiance. She needs, in particular, a way to signal that she appreciates Reshad's skills. And while she's gaming out what everyone might do, and specifically what ways Ashari might respond, given past behavior--there's a specific, stupid problem Sasha will soon have, whose solution is precisely in Reshad's domain.
If Reshad doesn't lie to her. But there are ways to check that. One strand at a time.
Feeling, already, completely like an idiot, Sasha heads down the corridor and knocks on Reshad's door.
Re: a day or two later - paging Reshad
Date: 2019-12-16 01:15 am (UTC)"Good afternoon, Sasha. Come in, if you like." A careless wave of the hand indicates the room beyond the threshold. She treats this as entirely ordinary; indeed, it has to be less awkward than conversing in the hall.
Cantata's quarters are not extraordinarily large, and this particular room has been subdivided further. Since Sulen's visit, Reshad has added a hinged screen holding plain paper. The screen marks off an area that must be tight, even for a ship's narrow bunk - a narrow strip of private space, made distinct from the semi-public area around her table. The walls hold one decoration only: a mask, deep green fabric stretched over something carved. Its feathery cut would frame the wearer's eyes while exposing the lips and chin, were it not on a wall hanger.
A bench has been made by fixing fabbed cushions onto a storage chest, and that is where she must have been been, pinning ornaments to a mannequin's head to test their fall. The table's lone chair sits at an inviting angle, and the tablet, left open, shows fashions reminiscent of those seen at the trade show.
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From:in the gym - paging Seyli
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