RP:A Prisoner and a Paladin Discuss Politics

Part of the Thy Kingdom Come Arc

Summary: Trajek visits Josleen to rile her, talk, ask why he shouldn’t kill her. The conversation quickly turns political, and the power dynamic game drops. Trajek leaves questioning his understanding of recent events.

Prisoner Cages, Frostmaw

Josleen sits against the corner of the cage wrapped in dirty furs thrown at her to keep her from dying. She smells terrible. Her hair shines from unwash. Her face needs a good polish. Unaccustomed to long exposure in extreme cold, she shivers beneath mammoth wool and wolf furs. The wind bites through the hides, both dead and living. Frost strickens in her marrow. Her fashionable, but practical! (not really, marketing gimmick) boots peek out from beneath a dead wolf’s head. Above the boot’s beige fur cuff she wears an iron, anti-magic bracelet. The shamans locked this on her leg to keep her from casting illusions, an excessive precaution since the bard can not cast illusions anyway. Kovl’s involvement in this mission has not yet been revealed within Frostmaw’s walls. Last night the pixie snuck back in to bring her good news and comfort, and the shaman’s anklet effectively stopped him from rendering Josleen invisible and breaking her out. And so she waits for Hildegarde, as Kovl said she’d come. In the meantime, she says nothing to the guards, even those she’s known from past wars who she once considered acquaintances in good standing. How quickly societies sour. One bad apple, the rot spreads.

Trajek came to the cages bearing gifts to the prisoners. To all others thrown in the stacks, be they elves, humans, or other sentient detritus, it is the enticing smell of hot food that passes between bars and cages in steam. The guilty and the damned are only acknowledged with a quick, cursory nod to the giants who stand guard beside them. The giants themselves hold just as much disdain for the old man; perhaps it is for all of the furs he wore to keep himself warm in the frigid air or do to his lack of honor in the last few battles. Trajek gave them as much attention as he did the prisoners, but not one in particular. He stood before Josleen's cage, and he called her with a chorus of clanks from a mug on iron. "I bring you something to warm you up while we talk. It is stew." The declaration was not particularly needed as much of the solids that make the stew were piled near the base of the cage door, tossed out by the dragging of the mug against the bars.

Josleen watches the stew slosh out of the mug with disdain. What is this, a taunt? She glares at Trajek but says nothing to not provoke him further. Under the assumption he is trying to rile her, she makes a point to exhale slowly, maintaining eye contact throughout. You mad, Jos? Nope. Cool as a cucumber. Having performed her self restraint, she glances off to the side over a shoulder at nothing in particular, suffice it’s not him.

Trajek admired the woman's sass and much respected how well she kept her dignity in her current predicament. But the offer was genuine, and when Trajek made his way to the corner where she crept, he placed the mug between the bars. "You're cold. You're hungry. This will cure both," The old man says as he rises from his crouch. He pulled a nearby barrel close, and as sat himself on it as he spoke. "I am not here to goad you. You look like shyte, you smell like shyte, and you are probably sitting in your own shyte. You are suffering enough. I come only to talk."

Josleen doesn’t turn her chin towards him, but her eyes follow his movement through a peripheral stare. When he sits on a barrel she sits up, but continues to ignore the stew despite the rumbling in her stomach. Like hell she’ll give him the satisfaction of watching her accept his pittance, eating dumbly like a stray dog at the mercy of a creature with more power and cruelty to match. No. When he says he comes only to talk, her face tenses and eyes level. He seems incapable of speaking without humiliating her, but conversation is her forte. The bard has talked her way out of worse situations. It isn’t an opportunity she easily passes up. She just needs a little more power. “Bring me a wash cloth and some water.” Pause. “Please. And a comb, if you have it.”

Trajek snorted softly at Josleen's request. Here is a man who wore more dirt, more sweat, more grime than he did armor. Washing, at least in these desperate times, was as foreign and hated as the invading horde to which Josleen was aligned. "No." His judgement was swift, though he did fish out a some sort of cloth from his belt. "I only say no because the water will freeze, and you will freeze to death. The best I can do is this." For coming from him and his hip, the rag is clean enough. It is also warm! But he did offer her another suggestion, "If you desperately need some sort of water, you can use your dinner. Now, on to our talk. Balgruuf wants you alive, but he is also grieving. His thoughts are only with his son. I believe you should be killed, perhaps even right now." The blade on his hip sounded with a click, and what little light there was in the area was reflected from its surface were it was stuck in the ground. "Tell me why I am wrong."

Josleen is not about to rub stew on her face. She sniffs the rag to further assess its cleanliness. Good enough. She scrubs the oil and grime off her face as Trajek continues with the conversation. Her fingers comb through her hair and loosen tangles. She grabs opposite corners of the rag and whips it around in tight circles to create a fat string. He mentions that he believes she should be killed right now, once again seeking to rile her, and she takes note of this and everything else about him. Once again she fails to show the fear he wishes to induce, not because she is especially brave, but because that tactic has worked so far. She’ll be anything she needs to be to survive, short of compromising her strictest moral code (the loftier ethics up for grabs). A classically trained actress, her expression is a mask under her control, and it remains steady as she ties her hair back with the rag. When in doubt in Frostmaw, summon Aramoth: “You seek to kill a civilian? Aramoth permits this only if you can cite an appropriate crime, and then the law dictates you would challenge me to a trial by combat. What is my crime?”

Trajek huffs loudly. Her words, her dictation of law and custom, was a punch with a great effect; he pitched back on his barrel, and the menacing sword was lifted from the ground and placed on his lap. He did everything but say 'touche' or 'well-played.' But the chin her demand had not hit a glass jaw, and her demeanor brought a merciless smirk to his weathered face. "I butchered elves and thrown their mutilated corpses into your camp. I burned your soldiers alive. This sword beheaded an elder elf and countless men and women in Frostmaw. I will raze this city and all its inhabitants to the ground before I allow Hildegarde to retake it." He leaned in close to the prison bars once again, and his eyes were colder than the air that frosted his breath. "And you try to bind me with law? With honor? Remember who it is you threaten. I am the butcher, not the sow."

Josleen notices the utility of her demeanor evaporate. The butcher killed that too. She changes tactics. It’s easier this time to let some of the fear bleed through her stare, spill out her open mouth, for it is real. As he speaks of himself she builds a profile of him in her mind, tries to find and exploit a weak spot. None are apparent to her yet. Keep talking. “I would not dare to threaten you,” she says as her chin dips a little like the stray dog he wanted her to be when he first arrived with the stew. He seems to enjoy his butchering too much for her to needle at him there, though this realization causes her to involuntarily shudder. Not all things can be under her control. This isn’t a stage, after all. War is messy, plucks the nerve. “If you would rather raze the city to the ground, then what are you fighting for if not for Frostmaw?”

Trajek was quick to let his demeanor soften. He spoke of being a butcher, but all that he was at the moment was tired. Her question was a good one. It was pointed, yet it was also blunt. He heaved a sigh that lifted his shoulders and the many furs layered upon them. "I am fighting for peace. There will never be peace with Hildegarde on the throne. While she was the steward, the need to throw off her oppressive yolk festered. And here we are now," He cast his arms in their respective directions, and in those lines were giant and non-giant alike, battered, bruised, and imprisoned. "If peace requires the city to razed so Hildegarde will not rule, then so be it."

Josleen cants her head to the side, this time genuinely confused. The act is gone because his statement strikes her as so absurd. “Were you here during her rule as Steward? I never saw you in the fort, where I resided and worked in peace. Or at the tavern, where I performed for merry crowds of giants and other races. Or at the coliseum, or at the market.” She intones like a poem, each line performed as spoken word, so an audience would let her monologue a little to let her paint her picture of the history she knew. Bard skillz. “Does anyone use the coliseum now? Is the market still alive? Who performs at the tavern? When I came here a few days ago, I saw dead streets. No children racing, no women gossiping. But I know where they should be. My memories of them fill the blank spaces with their ghosts. The only ghost I can not place is you.”

Trajek jumped up from where he sat with his hand thrown southeast. "Who sits at the gates? Who brings death, disease, and pestilence? Who keeps the markets from being filled, and the stomachs of the inhabitants empty? We are not blockading trade routes. We are not starving ourselves!" If her goal was to get him angry and defensive, she most certainly suggested! "The children have died in their mothers arms because of this -war-. And every chance Hildegarde could have ended it....every chance she could have stopped this war...she has declined. She has been selfish! Who does the most evil? We in Frostmaw who are living under wartime conditions, who must do things, heinous things, to survive? Or could it be your precious Hildegarde, the steward who puts her pride before the suffering who she is supposed to protect!"

Josleen is pleased as he becomes agitated. At least he’s thinking about the things she wants him to think about. However, the conversation gets her thinking too. She can’t properly argue the optics of Hildegarde’s army. The bard had advised the dragon to not appear as an invading force, but the gospel of Aramoth prefers a more direct, blunt approach in all things. There was no place for Josleen’s war-time theatrics. If all of life’s a stage, then religion is a bad director forcing actors to make awkward choices. Not that Josleen would ever say any of this to Trajek (so the player hopes you enjoyed the meta narrative). Instead, the bard shifts focus to Balgruuf. “And what of Balgruuf? The coward. Hildegarde was murdered and Balgruuf slithered onto the throne in her absence like the snake he is. And under what right? No one asked for him to rule. There are no jarls in his ancestry. His thirst for power offends the gods and his methods run against what Aramoth teaches. At least Hildegarde was chosen by a former monarch. You say that life in Frostmaw was oppressive during Hildegarde’s stewardship? And where did you hear that? Balgruuf?” She snorts. “How do you account for the giants who defected under his rule to join Hildegarde’s army? How do you account for my experience? But if it is Balgruuf that told you life here was oppressive, then I do not call him a liar. A man as power-thirsty as that snake-oil salesman would indeed feel oppressed by any who outrank him. It’s only a matter of time before he goes after the gods. Will you support him then too?”

Trajek listened as Josleen ribbed him, but a lifetime in the field had trained him to temper his feelings when swords were out. He could only shrug at the bard's last question, as rhetorical as it was, as he sheathed his sword. "Frostmaw was in disarray, leaderless, and rudderless. You say he took power without being asked. What if he took power to bring peace? When there were only cowards scurrying at the base of an empty throne, who would not sacrifice themselves for the greater good of Frostmaw, one giant did...and his son is now dead." His weary eyes looked at the now cold, if not frozen, mug of stew. "I will bring you more food in the morning." And with that, Trajek was off to go do whatever morally compromised paladins do.

Josleen calls after Trajek a parting rhetorical question to take on the road. “Did he wait long enough for anyone to scurry?”