thecapitol | The Crowning of Cullen Rutherford

The Crowning of Cullen Rutherford

Who| Everyone who's anyone.
What| The Crowning of Cullen Rutherford.
Where| The new Rutherford Castle.
When| Friday, late afternoon into the evening.
Notes| This event is mandatory for all Tributes to attend. Even if you do not tag in, your character will attend this party. Peacekeepers will be on high alert, so no funny business.
WARNINGS| Please warn appropriately in headers.

The crowning ceremony takes place in an approximation of Skyhold, a large fortress with a castle with a sweeping main hall, gardens, and two levels of courtyard. Flags and banners hang everywhere, some with heraldry of the Inquisition, some with the heraldry of the Templar Order, a nod to Cullen's old days as a Templar. And of course, just as prominent everywhere you look is the seal of the Capitol. Just in case anyone forgot where they were.

The medieval fashion (or as close of approximation to medieval as the Capitol as gotten) that had come in with the 13th arena is back in full swing. There's plenty of fake armor to be seen, and foam swords resting on Capitolite hips. Sweeping ballgowns can be spotted as well, and a few more savvy people seem to have come dressed in a strange red and gold uniform. The avoxes do their best to blend in to the environment with drab brown peasant outfits.

In the main hall, tables filled with medieval food have been set up on both sides of the walls, filled with approximations of medieval food--As far as the Capitolites are concerned, that means normal food, but with a tendency for venison and large turkey legs. There are even dainty little cakes for dessert. Along the walls, above the food tables, hang multiple pictures. Featuring in this galley are every native of Thedas that had come to Panem at one point or another, all of them dressed in dour blacks of funeral wear, save the four remaining Thedasians. But of course, there are plenty of pictures of the Victor, starting with Cullen has a chubby blond child, going into him as an awkward young Templar (there's even a picture of him talking to a woman that the title identifies as Warden Amell), going through unfortunate hair cuts, and of course, various pictures of him in Panem, capturing a variety of touching and painful moments.

It all culminates when you get to the end of the hall, where there rests a massive throne just for Cullen. And behind it, the largest picture of them all, a massive portrait of Cullen. Adella stands next to him, holding an infant in her arms. Maxwell and Tabris are, for some reason, also featured in this family portrait, and you have to wonder if the artist in question didn't perhaps ship the ever popular Maxullen, because Maxwell's hand was looking awfully chummy on Cullen's shoulder.

The bottom courtyard has been set up with stalls, where you can buy foam swords and shields, little mabari plushes, and even a lion helmet. There's also little wedding toppers, shaped just like Cullen and Adella, and framed pictures of most of the art that hangs in the main hall. The nearby stables have been stocked with a variety of mounts, from the standard horses to more exotic harts, a strange dragon-like creature, and...no one is really sure what this is, but it...looks interesting?

In the upper courtyard, there's the Herald's Rest, a real, rustic tavern, with a woman playing a guitar and singing various songs. All the songs seem to revolve around how great the Capitol is, which kind of offsets the mood, but it's the thought that counts, right? It doesn't help that the bar has been outfitted to serve all kinds of modern drinks, but who wants plain ale, anyway? Outside of the tavern is a practice ring, where people can put to use their fake swords and shields, either trying to maul each other, or a target. Several peacekeepers offset the aesthetic feel in uncompromising white, carefully watching all participants to make sure that everyone is playing nicely.

If everything is just a little too busy for you, the garden is left in quiet peace. A woman dressed in red and white robes will occasionally begin speaking, extolling the virtues of the Capitol, and President Snow in a lengthy monologue.

There are a few actors wandering around, appearing as various people who have made an impact on Cullen's life. There's the mysterious Warden Amell, a man in full armor, and a woman dressed similarly. These two will wander around, swords in hand, ready to smack anyone with foam swords and accuse them of being blood mages. One actress is dressed like a certain Marian Hawke who had at one time been a tribute. She darts around the fortress, stopping people and regaling them with highly exaggerated tales of things that Cullen has supposedly done. There's even a few creatures running around that people may recognize from the last arena, such as the tastefully almost-nude desire demon that will occasionally try to sidle up to people--usually to be driven off by one of the people in armor.

There's one more addition to the party--dogs! A very specific kind of dog. Several dogs simply wander around Skyhold, trying to steal people's food and begging for attention. Next to the throne are four particularly handsome ones, each one with a collar baring the name of one of the four Thedasians left.

If wandering around Skyhold and competing with swords leaves you dry-mouthed, you're in luck! Dotted around the area are fountains that all pour a strange, bright blue punch. Listen closely, because the fountain seems to be humming a strange tune. If you have a careful eye, you might even find the one that has red punch pouring out if it, humming an oddly sinister tune.

Well, what harm could there be in going ahead and trying it out anyway?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Luna's face turns a little red, there, and she takes a special sudden interest in her drink. Despite what's in her cup, though, it's not the alcohol for the most part. Roland's fought dragons and survived, as it sounds; Luna still remembers a very unpleasant death at the hands of the one dragon she met. Very suddenly. It's not surprising, of course, but the memory is still one she doesn't like revisiting too often. "I lasted a few weeks. To be honest, I'm glad to have lasted that long. I, um, don't like fighting." She says it carefully, like it's a source of embarrassment. It's not, but Luna's well aware that it makes her a bad fit for the Games.

Not that her time outside of the Arena has been easy either, but it has been a little better thanks to some people's help. She's thankful for that. "I've been occupied with other things since I returned. Sponsorships, some work at the hospital...it's more comfortable than the Arena was." Although she could do without half her sponsorship offers being over rumors, whether or not they're true.

Roland nods. "Fortunate that the fighting isn't the important thing about those arenas, isn't it?" Although, from the way she'd said it, he'd guess that's something she doesn't realize. Strange, how many people who endure these arenas themselves don't seem to see what it is they're really about.

"Good to hear you've got those sponsorships too, I suppose, as much of a pain in the ass as they are. Having any trouble with that? Winning these people's favor?" From watching Signless learn to be a mentor for district twelve's tributes, he's seen exactly how much polite bullshit any offworlder - or, indeed anyone - has to fight through with a smile to make any of those sorts of sponsorships happen.

"I've had less trouble than I might have had without help. One of the other Tributes in our district, Sansa, helped me get started in the little time we had before the game began. She hasn't been here much longer than I have, but she was very generous about offering her help." Luna smiles warmly, because really she adores Sansa. She's glad for Cullen, of course, but up until Sansa lost Luna had been rooting for her to win the Arena regardless of the chances.

The smile fades a little, though, as Luna thinks towards the present. "Since then...well, some sponsors want me for things I don't know I want to do. It's nothing bad - they're perfectly nice people. But they're asking me to do things I'd rather not, and I haven't really been sure what to do with them." The nicer sponsors mostly just want a pretty face, which is flattering in a way. Sponsors who want Luna for anything technology-related make her uneasy, though, and knowing how what she does affects the districts it's as hard to say no as it is to say yes.

They're perfectly nice people.

They're perfectly. Nice. People.

If Roland were anyone else, he would question his own ears. But no, his ears are working very well. What he heard is exactly what she just said. He doesn't bother to hide his expression when he hears it, either, an expression which is best described with a phrase Roland Deschain has never used, and possibly never will. A phrase along the lines of, Oh honey, no.

There is so much that is wrong there, and clearly her friend Sansa has not begun to help her with it. It is up to Roland, and Roland decides that it is best to dispense this help by working through one mistake at a time. First thing's first. "Nice, hm? What is it that makes you say so?"

Luna sees his face and assumes she's said something wrong - has she said something rude? Is it the sponsors? Should she not have said that? Roland's question only makes her doubt herself more, and she throws her hands up in an attempt to salvage the situation. "Um, well..."

Truth be told Luna's standards for nice are pretty low, given the people she served at home, so she holds the baseline somewhere around "hasn't actively tried to harm me." But she does realize on some level that it's not high praise for sponsors when she tries to put her feelings to words, so for a moment she's stuck flailing about for something to say in their favor. "I didn't think they'd be interested in me at all," she tries. "As I said, I don't like fighting, and I don't think I look very intimidating either. But they were willing to give me a chance all the same."

"I'm sure," Roland says, because she does not have to say much for him to tell how it is with her. In small towns, and wherever the place she'd grown up it seems very similar to a very small town, everyone knows everyone else. Everyone in one has grown up around one another. Roland thinks that she does not know how it is with someone who does not know you, does not want to know you, would probably blow your brains out your asshole if it suited them to do it.

Not that these Capitol men would, of course. Not with their own hands. They'd probably turn a person over to the peacekeepers instead. Easier on their soft hands and softer consciences.

These sponsors are no more dangerous than any other Capitolite, he thinks, but she seems not to know that any of them are dangerous at all. If he can begin to make that clear to her, it'll only do her good. She's a tribute, a fellow prisoner, and so he reckons it's worth a try. "And those things they're asking of you, those things you don't want to do? Are they nice about that, too?"

Edited (icon) 2016-01-06 02:35 (UTC)

"Well..." That's still a hard question for Luna to answer, because being nice and talking in ways that don't make her feel like a mindless jumble of ones and zeroes had are two different things. The way the sponsors act isn't that different from Kyle or Akane in light of her mechanical nature, and it doesn't feel right to say that none of those people at all are nice. Like a matter of averages, if kindness could be quantified. By definition, the deficits can't outweigh the surpluses and any perception of such would mean the bar was being set too high.

So she shrugs, swirling her drink around in its glass and taking another careful sip. "They're very insistent about having their way," she admits. "They want me to be something...something or someone that I don't know that I am, or that I want to be. But that's not new." It's almost expected, frankly. "It is tiring. It would be easier if I just accepted what they wanted to do, but it feels...strange." Wrong, Luna wants to say, but she doesn't want to speak too strongly against the sponsors. She has her beliefs about how robots ought to act and the sponsors have theirs, and as much as those beliefs conflict it's not as if anyone other than maybe one person shared her views anyway.

"Strange in what way?" He leans forward, studying her.

"Is there some reason you're avoiding telling me precisely what it is they're asking?" Roland doesn't say it like an accusation, because it isn't one. It's just an observation, one which might or might not be true but which he delivers dispassionately, looking at her as if he can tell already simply by looking and is only asking out loud for her sake. It's the type of stare certain old friends of his used to hate, he remembers that briefly, but over the years it's served him fairly well.

But she isn't one of his students, he remembers, and so he's got no right to try and pry anything out of her. He leans back, looking away from her. "You owe them nothing, in any case, no matter what it is they ask. You do know that?"

The observation still comes as a jolt to Luna's senses; she's gotten so used to hedging any talk about herself before and after arriving in Panem that it's become her default behavior without her realization. Roland may not not mean much by it, but Luna does feel bad for skirting around the topic so much. "I'm sorry," she says. "I don't mean to--well, I'm not very good at talking about this matter. The details are public now, but it's...embarrassing." Embarrassing might or might not be the best word for it, but it fits at least. Luna takes another sip of her drink, and whether the red tinge to her cheeks is from the alcohol or from a creeping sense of shame isn't entirely clear. The stare Roland was giving her a moment ago hasn't really helped, either.

That he claims she doesn't owe anything makes her pause, though. Luna isn't much for defiance most of the time and and she usually feels obligated to do what people want anyway, so she's thrown off guard by the suggestion. "Um--well--I wouldn't say nothing..." There is a certain amount of mutuality to the relationship as she understands it, even if the sponsors hold the greater share of the power. "But it is true I haven't made a deal with some of them yet, so I still need to think more about it."

"Think, then," Roland says, sitting back and not pushing to try and find out just what it is that's so embarrassing. If she wanted to tell him she'd tell, and so far as he knows it isn't really relevant. "Only remember, men here will do a great many things to try and convince people like us - especially people like you - that they are owed. They will say a great many things. Take care who you allow to convince you that they're right."

Luna's a little relieved for the break, whether it's conscious or not. She's had far too many people interested in her life lately, and finding someone who doesn't want to pursue the matter is nice. On the other hand, not everything is so easy.

The idea that she shouldn't listen to everyone is a simple one, but it feels strange in relation to how Luna's seen herself for a long time. At least the concept itself is easy to make sense of. "Yes, I understand. I do have rules, of a sort." They hadn't mattered much before. Just the fact that she has the option of saying no is relatively new. Of course she isn't about to decline anything just because she can either - that just wouldn't be her, and that thought brings her to something else. "Maybe my...gut, too. Have you ever had any luck with that?"

"And by my gut you mean instinct, don't you? The way I judge which man may be trustworthy, and which man may not?" Roland thinks about this. He trusts his instinct implicitly and always has, but he has lived enough to know that some people do not merely fail to listen to their own instincts, they do not have them. When it comes to people, judging them, some'll walk into any trap with a smile on their face, with just the right encouragement. It would be best for her, best by quite a lot, if she isn't one of those.

"That can't be explained, that 'gut feeling'. It helps to observe. Look at people's faces, the way they hold themselves. Observe their reasons, too. Someone looking out for a stranger just for the sake of it - that's rare. Rarer in some places than others." Some places, and this place, especially.

"But your rules, what are they? If you've no instinct about people, perhaps rules'll be some help."

More complicated than hoping first impressions might be her simplest answer, then. So much for that. It figures given the company Luna keeps, but she's run on feelings more than logic before in other ways and while that hadn't exactly turned out well it had gone better than expected in a sense. She doesn't doubt Roland's right, and so it makes sense to fall on her old principles instead. They haven't guided her wrong before, provided she continues to stick to them.

"It's usually very simple." She doesn't think Roland would recognize Asimov, but the ideas are clear enough. "Don't do anything that would hurt others. Be helpful when possible. And...nothing that would hurt me, unless there was a good reason." Simple indeed - except that Luna's still debating with herself over what constitutes a good reason.

Roland nods and, she's right, Asimov is not a name that would ring even the smallest bell in the long, crowded rooms of Roland's brain, but those rules do seem sensible ones. Not, however, particularly helpful with her problem. "Well as those are, they don't tell you how to judge what it is that would hurt you. What is it that tells you your Capitol sponsors truly are looking to help you? We can start there."

What is it that tells her? That's a tough question, and Luna has to pause to consider it. "Well, I know that sponsorship is a trade of services." It's a clinical description, but it helps to look at things objectively right now. "Tributes help sponsors promote their brand or their image, and in return sponsors send Tributes help in the form of items in the Arena and money for day-to-day life. So it's a beneficial relationship for both parties to help each other, if all goes well."

That's an if, of course, and Luna finishes her reasoning hesitantly as if to ask a silent Right? at the end. With so little time her arrival and the latest Arena's start, the fact that she'd gotten anything from sponsors at all owed more to her mentor than anything of her own merit. She hasn't yet gotten the full sponsorship experience.

"Mm." Roland looks that over, feeling out what it says about her that she thinks it. She's either got a naive mind or a clever one, giving an answer with no opinion at all to it, nothing that could be called wrong. "And is it an equal relationship as well as a beneficial one, do you think? Who can make the most demands without consequence, who reaps the most benefits?"

If he sounds like he ought to be standing at the front of a classroom waving a stick at a blackboard here, well, that's just the sort of tone Roland slips into sometimes. Especially when giving a direct answer isn't the point. The point is seeing if she can learn a little about how to come to these sorts of conclusions on her own.

If Roland is the teacher, then Luna follows like a good student. "The sponsors, of course. They're already established, so they have a much larger pool of resources than any Tribute has." That part is easy enough, just a matter of more reasoning about the situation in Panem. "As for who benefits...well, Tributes must depend on sponsors more than sponsors depend on them. So that would probably be determined by how the sponsors choose to approach their relationship with the Tributes they work with."

Yeah, that part is familiar. Luna's used to a colder treatment from her superiors, as well as an inherently unequal relationship. But that makes sense: she was made to serve them, and it isn't as if they go out of their way to belittle her. She's never found reason to question it before, but somehow it feels different with these sponsors now. "How do sponsors usually treat the Tributes?"

"Like dancing dogs. Put them in the fashions of the day, play a tune, show them off- But that's to be expected, I suppose. There are rumors of men who demand more, but the Signless - a mentor who works more closely with Sponsors than I do - hasn't ever mentioned hearing anything more than rumor. Nothing more than what you might expect, ordering tributes to behave a certain way, set out on a romance with this or that person, say this thing to that newsman, on the promise that a disobedient tribute is a boring one." Which, in a land where tributes are prized for their ability to keep a crowd fascinated, is one of the deepest threats there is, at least as Roland understands things.

"It sounds as if you know already that those who've made their offer to you aren't making it out of the kindness in their hearts, if they could find any there in the first place. Yet you feel - obligated to them, I think you said? Why?"

Luna's quiet for a moment. It's a matter she feels conflicted over herself, so it's hard to form an answer. "I've never been good at saying no to others. I suppose I never had a lot of room. I told you my home had only a few people there, right? It was always...easier, to go along with them, whether they were kind about it or not. There wasn't any problem with what they were asking most of the time, anyway. And now..."

If the view she paints of her relationship with the family in the Rhizome is a pessimistic one, it's because there wasn't much to begin with for two out of three. Luna hardly realizes any of the implications right now, still stuck in thoughts of the sponsors. "It's not just me I'm concerned about, either. It will be good for District Six if I can get more sponsors, right?" She's never been to the district personally, of course, but if Luna can help them she'd very much like to. Even more so now that some of their own have been killed again in the latest Arena.

"It could be." Roland shrugs, his eyes going to the crowd and his whole manner a little more dismissive than it has been. Roland Deschain has never felt unable to refuse someone in his life, and her statement that it's 'easier' to do so makes him even less willing to keep exercising his extremely limited sense of sympathy. What he's heard is that it isn't that she doesn't know enough to understand the way the people of this place think and act, at least in a general sense. It's that she considers it easier not to. She has not lost his attention, but mostly because the conversation's gained a little of its own momentum now and because enduring these parties is even more tedious without at least some kind of distraction. "Signless uses them to get more appearances on this place's, ah, TV's, where he tries to put people in mind of his own district. I suppose some good may come from that. He certainly thinks it does."

"Don't know that you could talk any Capitolite into something like that merely by being perfectly agreeable, but you're not wrong that doing so would need much less effort. Since that's what you're after."

When he puts it like that, Luna can see some of the weakness in her own thinking. Largely Roland's not wrong - she still has the option of saying no, and she's uncomfortable with it partially just because she's not used to saying no to anything short of murder. Pretty sad for a Tribute due in Arenas to come, really. "It was because of Sansa that I got as far as I did," she admits. "She was a big help in meeting people, and talking for the first time. And ever since some...things were printed about me, some sponsors have become more interested in me. Some less." And that might have been by design, she remembers, according to what Phil had said. Sigma's way of getting her sponsor attention, maybe, not that she knows what to do with it now.

She's quiet for another moment, but Roland's comment about the Signless is helping. "I guess if I could really help District Six, it wouldn't be so bad. I wish I could see it someday. Maglev...Maglev seemed so alive, the last I saw of her." Of course it hadn't lasted, but Maglev left strong impressions in Luna's memory all the same.

The name, Maglev, gets back a little of the attention Roland's let wander. The fate of whichever children who hadn't disappeared in the arena's blackout was a sorry one - more than that, an unforgivable one, another of Panem's atrocities to pile on top of the rest - but what may or may not have become of his own district's boy had never prayed on Roland. Roland might, no doubt, be called heartless for that. He'd been prepared to help the boy, never found him in the arena, not once, and that was that. That was all. That was all there could be.

Maglev, though - Karkat had grieved for Maglev. Roland remembers that grief, and that does prey on him, a little. Karkat cares, gives of himself in that deep, personal way which only the young can manage to do so freely, and he had cared about Maglev. Roland would wager that Luna does not care in quite the same way, is not quite so ruined by Maglev's death as Karkat had seemed, but her regret here does seem genuine. She may not care enough about herself to keep this place's people from using her and eating her alive, but perhaps she cares a little about this.

"I never met her, but I know that Karkat did. She was one of the children I was trying to look out for." He says that latter not to endear himself to Luna at all, but only to clarify, his voice cool and factual. Roland had not found her in the arena, not once, and she had died. And that was all. "Did she speak of her district much to you? Is that why you'd like so much to help its people, even though you've never been?"

"I guess...in a way." Luna fiddles with her cup, having given up drinking for now but finding the distraction useful as she thinks back to those times. "I knew that our success in the Arena can have an impact on the districts, but Maglev was the first person I'd met who was really from there. She, Karkat, and I were all together at the beginning of the Arena. Maglev had gotten hurt early on, and I knew it was hard on her. But we found some old cars, and that was where she shone."

Luna looks up from her fidgeting and there's a bittersweet smile on her face, wonder at the change she'd seen mixed with sadness for a girl now long dead. "She was hurt, and in pain...but she knew exactly what to do with those cars because she'd grown up with them all her life. When she got one running, it was like none of that pain mattered. She took so much joy in driving that car. I--I wish it had lasted longer."

Luna sighs, and looks a little more tired. She hadn't known the girl as long as Karkat had, but she has known many people killed by a game like the Hunger Games and Maglev had been so nice. "I know she can't represent all of District Six by herself. But it was her home. If the people there are anything at all like her..." Well, Luna's always been one to work for what benefits others. Now Maglev's made it more personal.

Roland listens closely. It may do him no practical good to know of this girl, the one he'll never know, one among hundreds, perhaps more, who've died in this place at the hands of the gamemakers and the Capitolites and their bloodlust. But Luna tells him a part of this girl's story, a story which is over now and over for good, and he stores it in his mind where it will not be lost.

"Maybe they are." He shrugs, knows that people in district six are the same as people anywhere else, knows that they interest him just as little as any of the people of this country do, and knows that if this is what drives one more of his fellow prisoners to stand against their captors in any small way she can, then his own feelings on her district or on any other matter about as much as a fart in the wind.

Alright. Helping people like Maglev matters to Luna. He can do something with that. "And what do those people need? What can you do for them?"

Luna, unfortunately, never even considers the idea that taking a stand for herself might be the way to go here. Not when District Six is so much bigger than her, not when they matter more - not to mention the effects of a lifetime emphasizing her responsibility to serve others. But she is willing to take a stand for the district, and she thinks that she can see a way now.

"If I take the sponsorships...that would help support District Six, wouldn't it?" She looks at Roland for confirmation. "Some of the money I earn would go back for them to use, and I'm sure that will make at least a small difference. And if I were better known I could bring more attention to them as well, like the Signless." The idea scares her, to be honest. But if she can accept death to save a few people, she can deal with her personal shame to help thousands of people.

The Crowning of Cullen Rutherford

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