genessia | One | Video + Action

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One | Video + Action

Video | Early Morning

Oh, how interesting! [Someone has been poking around with her new phone. And accidentally pressed too many buttons, turning on the video function without realizing. Have a very-too-close close-up of her face! Also, like someone read any of the pamphlets or anything. She doesn't even realize one has money in it.]

I guess this is how this works. You know, for all I've spent trying to fix the Eluvian I have back home, I never really gave much thought about how it would work. And there isn't anyone around I can ask either, not like here. Not that there could be, just it would be nice. Still, the surface is so pretty! How does it manage to reflect anything...

[She will finally lean away from the communicator, laughing awkwardly.]

Hah, oops. I'm rambling. I always ramble when I'm nervous. I don't mean to, it just happens. I'll just...stop talking now. Yes.

[She fumbles with the communicator, eventually dropping it and the fall turning it off.]

Action | Throughout the Day

[Why anyone thought it would be a good idea to let Merrill wander around any of the cities unaccompanied or without some string to find her way is anyone's guess. She did pick up a map and she can be found throughout Genessia and other cities staring at it; sometimes it's upside down, sometimes she's not even looking at the map side of it. Yeah.]

How odd. No matter where I go, it always says that I'm "right here". But I know I haven't seen that street a second time. Unless I have and the bushes are moving on me. Can they do that here?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Oh dear god, there was a random Dalish here. Alleyana stared for a moment from across the street -- pointy ears were one thing, but there was no mistaking vallaslin -- and then she strode over. The one-armed woman was armored, a huge spiky shield at her back and a mace at her hip. Her missing left arm, gone from just below the elbow down, had been replaced with a blackened dragonbone bar with two holes drilled in it.

She wasn't the most welcoming sight. And her expression was... well. Expression or otherwise, her face always looked like it had lost a few fights of its own, between the beak of a broken nose and the scarring.

"You're holding it upside down."

Merrill looked up from her attempts at reading her map to stare at the armored woman standing before her. The look on her face coupled with the armor, and then that powerful gait screamed Aveline at her.

She knew it wasn't Aveline. If Aveline was here then that likely meant that Kirkwall had fallen to pieces. Plus, last she remembered, Aveline didn't have pointy ears. A city elf, then! Even after living in an alienage for years, city elves were still a major source of curiosity for her.

Then she actually heard what she said. Merrill looked back down at her map, and flipped it to its correct orientation.

But no. It still didn't make any more sense to her.

"No. No, I don't think I was. This is still wrong."

"Look, this part of the map is north. We're facing east, the sun came up this morning over those buildings," Alley pointed with her one, gauntleted hand. One sharp finger, not unlike Fenris' gauntlets in that regard, aimed first at the north edge of the map, and then at the buildings in question. "It's not that different from the wilds, if you just keep your bearings. Where are you trying to go?"

Some people could still pick out her accent, somehow, after all the other cultures she'd mingled with. At least, that was the excuse given when someone called her Dalish after her vallaslin had been erased... they could have just known because she was, well, the Inquisitor.

Merrill stared at where she pointed to, but was quickly side-tracked by the look of the armor. It looked so pointy! Just like Fenris', but Fenris would never dare to get that close to her or her to him. Rather prickly, that one.

"Oh, but it is different from the wilds!" Merrill said. "I don't know which wilds you've been in, but all the ones I have have nothing like these buildings. I'm pretty sure I never walked on a proper road either. Unless we're counting ruins in that, too."

"I've been in some with trees as big as these buildings... if a lot taller." Alleyana tilted her head a little to one side, "You're not a hunter, are you, or you'd at least know how to keep your bearings. The directions don't change just because you're in a deep forest, or a giant ruin, or... this place."

The only place cardinal directions hadn't been relevant was in the bloody Fade, and this was not that! Nor was she about to bring up having been there in body... twice.

"Yes, but those are trees," she said. "I haven't come across humans, or elves really for that matter, living in those trees. I think it might be because of the vertigo. If they decided to look out down below, that is." She paused for a long moment, contemplating just how anyone could stand to live that high up. "Even though living in a tree has to be lovely! Unless they were living on a branch, then that would not be as lovely."

She peered a little closer at Alleyana. The ears were definite signs of an elf, but the lack of vallaslin on her face made her think she was a city elf. City elves, in her experience, generally didn't know, or care, about the role of hunters among the Dalish. "And, no, I'm not a hunter," she answered after a second, finally remembering the question.

"We set up platforms in the trees in the Frostback Basin... whole camps. But being high up was the best defense, there." 'We' being the Inquisition, of course. As for the peering... Alleyana weathered the closer examination with one slightly raised, scar-crossed eyebrow.

She didn't assume this random Dalish was a mage, however. There were a lot of roles in a Clan besides hunter, Keeper, and the Keeper's students, and many of them didn't go roaming the country-side alone. Not that she'd be worried about it anyway.

"Look, it's not that complicated. A map is just a drawing of the area from above. See, we're here," she tapped one pointy finger where they were on the map. "If you wanted to go, I don't know, here," another tap, "you'd go two blocks -- that's the clusters of buildings between the roads -- ahead, and then go left one block. See how that works?"

"That makes sense, I suppose. Being high up does give you the high ground, as it were."

Merrill looked back down at the map when Alleyana continued. She nodded along with the explanation; it seemed so very straight-forward in theory. In practice...

"Yes, yes... That makes sense too. But how do you remember the directions after they've been given? I think that's where my problem's always been," she said. "But it could also be because there's so many things to see and do. Especially in cities!" If it wasn't battle or her studies, keeping on track and not getting side-tracked were the hardest things.

"Well, the streets have names, see. We're on Cherry Street. Right there," a gesture, this time with the bar that made up her left forearm, "is Main Street. So you look on the map and you find where those two intersect, and that's where you are. The names are on the map, and they're on the little signs at the intersections, see them? So when you're done wandering around gaping at everything, you can find where you are then. I'd mark where you live on the map, to make finding that easier, so you can find your way back at the end of the day."

Alleyana paused, and frowned slightly as something occurred to her, "You do have somewhere to live, right? You can't just pitch a tent in a city." Not that she seemed to be carrying one.

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