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?

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"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.

"If you manage your offers carefully enough, aye. Let the sponsors do whatever they like and they'll steer you down the path that helps them best, whether it has anything to do with your district or not. It's a careful sort of balance, steering things your own way without making too many enemies, and I haven't seen enough of you to know if you can do it. I suppose you'll learn, if you'd like to try. But ultimately, yes. There's little other way to do good in this place, is there?"

That last question isn't asked to make a point. It's asked thoughtfully, slowly, and Roland's frowning as he says it. He's never had any pull to court the richest and most spoiled of the Capitol's people and dance to their tune, and he does not think he ever will. This, by itself, is not what bothers him.

Luna doesn't know if she can manage that balance Roland speaks of, either. She's always seen this sort of thing as a binary choice, compliance or disobedience like life and death. This is somewhere in a middle zone that she's never seen until now, and she already knows that trying to navigate it won't be easy. But she supposes she'll have to try. There are too many people at stake not to try.

Roland's last question catches her attention, and Luna ends up watching him for a moment before she says anything else. "What about you? Have you been trying to do good here?" It's not meant as an accusation, but it is something of a probing question. Roland sounds like he's just realized something, and Luna's not yet sure what that means in relation to his own district.

Roland does not look at her as she asks. He does not answer right away, either, and though she's hit right on the thing he'd already started to chew over, he does not try to reassure her in any way that she isn't being ignored. All he does is frown into the distance for a couple moments, giving the question the consideration it ought to have. The inclination, of course, is to say yes, yes of course he has. This inclination he recognizes as bullshit, the useless flotsam and jetsam a man's mind churns out to keep his ego warm. It may or may not be the right answer, so he keeps digging past it.

"For myself, yes," he says, sitting back. "For my friends, yes again. More than that? There are ways to ask a gunslinger's help, Luna, ways, and even without knowing them, if a people wanted me here in that role it would be a simple thing to make clear. I'm not here as a gunslinger, I'm here as a dancing bear."

Roland looks at her closely, looking thoughtful again except this time his thought is not going inward. He's studying her. "You, though. You want to change these people, or at least put yourself to some difficulty to help some of them. Though you've never seen the district, and you may as well have been matched with it at random. Though its people haven't asked a thing of you. Why?"

Luna waits patiently as he thinks, wondering after a moment if she's hit a nerve despite her intentions. She listens curiously to Roland's response when he gives it, and she sees the point in what he says. When he turns the question back around on her, though, she barely even considers applying that same logic to herself. There are different standards, she thinks, for the both of them. More than that, different values.

"I just think it's the right thing to do," she tries to explain, but considers that for a second. "No, not only that. It's that...I'm one person. I have the ability to make things a little better for so many more. Why shouldn't I do what I can to help them, whether anyone asks me or not?"

"Why shouldn't you?" Roland shrugs because, in a practical sense, there are a few simple answers to that question and they're easy to see, if you try to look for them. "Getting involved with these people - any more than we have to, anyway - is more than a pain in the ass. It's dangerous. It's a risk. There are plenty of reasons not to bring that risk into your life and the lives of the people around you."

He isn't arguing with her, or at least, does not think that he is. This is his way of getting toward the heart of the matter. He thinks a moment on how to explain that, absently tapping the end of one metal finger against the table and listening to the dull noise its rubber cover makes against the wood.

"'Why shouldn't I' is a phrase I used to hear nearly every day as a boy. It was one of Cuthbert's favorites, usually before doing something that'd get us all sent to bed without supper. Not that I argued with it much, but I always knew it was never what he truly meant. For a few mischievous boys playing a prank on some visiting lord, the why of it didn't matter much. Are you so sure that's the case, here?"

Luna shakes her head. "No, it's not. What I mean is, it only seems like the right thing to do. And...I try to do the right thing, even if it's difficult. I've never had a good experience when I didn't." Which is true, limited sample size aside.

Roland's question is deeper than that, though, and Luna trusts him but the real answers take more than she's ready to give right now. She gives him the best she can all the same. "I've always thought that it was better if I could help others, even if things were difficult for me. Bringing that to other people, though, is...new."

It's something she hasn't given as much thought to, the possibility that her potential sponsorships could be bad for other people aside from competition. Luna looks to Roland thoughtfully, considering this unknown. "Does dealing with sponsors usually threaten the people around you?"

"Depends on what you mean by threaten. Depends on what they're going to ask you to do. But these people, if you displease them, have powers over us we can do nothing about. They wouldn't last five minutes in their own arenas, most of them, but they're dangerous all the same. To tie yourself to one is to be vulnerable to his whim. Not to mention that it's a pain in the ass."

He shrugs.

"These are all things that ought to be considered, that's all I mean. If you're going to try and help here, the decision ought to be well thought out. Mayhap my answers aren't objective, either. I have, after all, decided that what help these people want, they'll have to find for themselves." It's the first time he's said that out loud and it makes his frown deepen, makes his look go distant for a moment, but he doesn't shy away from saying it. He probably ought to have said it, at least to himself, much earlier. "May be best to ask others, too, decide this based on all the information you can find. Have you? I expect some would have given you truer answers than others."

"I haven't. I, um, didn't want to talk to Phil about it until I was more sure about what I was going to do. And the matter is something that's a little personal to me, I suppose. I didn't mean to talk about it this much." Which is all true: Phil's worked hard enough that she doesn't want to reject his efforts without commitment, so Luna's been debating the whole thing on her own for a little while now. She hadn't expected to talk about it like this with Roland, either, but she's kind of glad she did.

Luna gives him a grateful smile for that. "Thank you for listening, and giving me this advice. I appreciate it, I really do. I'll have to think about this a little more, but...you've helped."

He nods, pulling his drink toward him and moving to stand, because Roland has given a dismissal or two in his time and knows one - intentional or not - when he hears it. "Good. If you need the matter cleared up any more tonight I'll be somewhere."

He takes a look around at all of those somewheres he's got an option now to wander to. Take any people of any culture of any world, put all their rich and powerful in one place, and call it a party, and there will be people wandering around, drink in hand, ready to go on about nonsense. He sighs.

"You've helped too, you know. Kept me busy a while. Asked me questions no one else has asked yet." He shrugs. That's important, somehow, but he isn't going to bother trying to fit into words just how. It's important, even in a small way, and he knows it. That's all.

"Luck to you, miss Luna," he says, dipping his head.

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The Crowning of Cullen Rutherford

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