Fade Rift: Application

[bouchonne]

PLAYER

Name: Hope
Age: Old
Contact: asyndeton @ plurk
Other Characters: Kitty Jones
Interests: With Byerly, I’m looking to get into creating and running player plots. In particular, I’d like to run player plots that present people with dilemmas — Byerly’s primary interest isn’t serving the Inquisition, and so often, these plots may fail to help the Inquisition.

CHARACTER

Name: Byerly Vorrutyer (in-game name: Byerly Rutyer)
Canon/OC: The Vorkosigan Saga
Journal: bouchonne
Race: Human
Nationality: Ferelden
Occupation: Drunken highborn lout/spy
Division: Diplomacy (EL OH EL)
Mage or Not: Nope!
Age: 33

History

A link to a rather pathetic wiki entry

For this AU, Byerly’s history will have been similar to in canon. The main outline is as follows:
• The Rutyer family are the Banns of Dragonmount. The family has a colorful reputation: they’re descended from famously brutal Avvar warlords, several of their historical members are famously insane (like, bring-me-the-blood-of-maidens-to-bathe-in-to-keep-my-good-looks insane), slavery was practiced in the Bannorn until it was formally banned (and might still be), elves have been treated with astonishing cruelty, so on and so forth. But unfortunately, like so many cockroaches, they’re here to stay – they’re intensely loyal to the King, fought ferociously against the Orlesian occupation, fielded soldiers willingly against the Blight, etc.
• Byerly is a minor son of this family – the only son of the current Bann’s youngest brother.
• He had a miserable childhood. Both his parents were neglectful: his Orlesian mother was a drinker, while his father was a misanthropic miser who never left home and who had a special hatred for Byerly. By’s only comfort was his sister, who was four years younger than him; he protected and doted on her, she adored him and only saw the best in him.
• And then someone started a rumor that he and his sister were sleeping together! Which his father believed. In a fit of rage, Byerly declared himself fucking done with the family and ran away to try to drink himself to death in Denerim. He fell in with a very bad crowd of young disaffected high-born idiots. Isn’t it Byronic, don’t you think, etc. Everyone was under the impression that he was disinherited, a belief he encouraged.
• After a few years, however, one of By’s Very Bad Friends increasingly asked Byerly to do favors for him. These favors started small but got larger. And weirdly, they all seemed to benefit Ferelden stability. Before too long, the Friend told Byerly that he was doing the work of a covert operative in the service of the King and Queen, Byerly said duh, and after that he was a full-blown spy.
• So that’s what he does now. He’s a deep-cover spy in Denerim, meaning most of his job is watching the nobility and, e.g., telling the Queen’s Spymasters which of the Arls are getting discontented and which bastards might want to make a bid for the throne.
• Recently, Byerly uncovered a little knot of Venatori sympathizers amongst some of the Ferelden nobility. He ended up killing one of them to protect his cover and then failed to adequately cover up the murder — he was spotted by a maid covered in blood and got arrested before his handlers could extract him. His spymasters reassigned him away from Denerim and to the Inquisition because 1) his cover was jeopardized by that little snafu which means he can’t really do the deep-cover shit right now and 2) “he killed a Bann’s son in a fight over gambling debts” is a convenient cover for why he abruptly left Denerim and 3) going after the Venatori looks like it’s going to be in Ferelden’s interests and 4) he personally wants to continue his investigation.

Personality

Byerly is a hot fucking mess. This isn’t to say that he’s not capable or competent; he’s extremely capable and extremely competent, an absurdly effective and skilled operative who thinks creatively and doesn’t waver in his loyalties. He’s witty, level-headed, and respected (if not liked) by his superiors. His cover is near-perfect; he pretends to be a drunken fool with a sharp tongue and copious debts, and he’s convincing enough that even people who’ve known him all his life would never suspect he’s anything more than that. When he has his shit together, he’s just about the best of the best.

But under that competence and control is someone who’s just a total disaster. His shitty situation, his history of neglect and mistrust, of feeling like a villain and a pariah without ever knowing why, has left him neurotic and self-destructive. When he screws up, he screws up spectacularly, because he takes risks he doesn’t need to (though, to be fair, when he succeeds he succeeds spectacularly for the same reason). He’s frequently needlessly cruel towards others — not just for the sake of his cover, but because he genuinely enjoys upsetting people. Emotional intimacy is something he avoids at all costs. And he semi-actively seeks out assignments where he can fuck over people who are close to him, because there’s satisfaction in the self-loathing that comes after betrayal.

Which makes him sound irredeemably shitty! But there’s a softness to him under all of that. At the end of the day, what keeps him going in this miserable job isn’t just patriotism towards Ferelden, nor just his sense of honor, nor just his self-loathing, nor just his need for the money, nor just his enjoyment of the excitement and danger. What keeps him going is a desire to look out for people who need looking out for. He was completely destroyed by gossip and slander; he does what he does so that people like him might have someone quietly looking out for them. He has a quiet optimist’s heart, under all the hardened cynicism and nastiness; he always wants people to be innocent and to be good, even as they generally are anything but that. And he’ll always stick up for people who are vulnerable, even as he exerts himself to hide the fact that he’s doing exactly that.

Basically: he’s the spy-iest of spies. A soul of idealism and decency, coupled with phenomenal emotional issues and self-destructive tendencies, all hidden under a suave-and-capable surface. Like James Bond, but drunk and bisexual. Well, drunker and more bisexual. And a fop.

Opinions & Affiliations

THE CHANTRY: Byerly recognizes and respects the Chantry’s earthly power more than their spiritual power. He isn’t guided by their moral tenants but he can happily mouth doctrine to prove his point.
THE QUN: Grotesqueries. As a Ferelden, that level of dead-eyed obedience is horrifying to him.
THE MAGE/TEMPLAR WAR: Stupid. Mages are dangerous, and pretending otherwise is completely idiotic. The Templars, meanwhile, are sadists. Both sides are wrong.
RACE RELATIONS: City elves are unwashed and off-putting and make him uncomfortable because they remind him of poverty. The Dalish, on the other hand, seem all savage, and that’s sort of sexy. Dwarves are good drinking buddies but not really worth knowing. Qunari are intriguingly tall and gray-skinned and he wants to smash it.
FERELDEN NOBILITY: In general, they view him as a failure and a drunkard. He views them as hidebound and hateful and deceitful. They don’t know that he spies on them; he takes pleasure in that.
FERELDEN ROYALTY: Love/hate relationship. He serves them to the last drop of blood, but his duty makes him miserable.

Adaptation Notes

First, I’ve decided to have Ferelden as a stand-in for Byerly’s home planet of Barrayar. Barrayar, in canon, was a colonized world that was cut off from the rest of the universe a few hundred years prior to the canon timeline. After the disaster that cut it off, the planet descended into complete anarchy and all-out warfare. Gradually, however, anarchy sorted itself out into a neo-Feudalistic society; individual territories were led by Counts, under the nominal command of an Emperor who was in a constant struggle with those Counts over who was really in charge.

So, that sounds like Ferelden. As for Byerly’s personal background – I’m AUing him as a relative of the Banns of Dragonmount because we don’t know anything about Dragonmount and I want to be able to make double-entendres based on the name. Heh.

Byerly’s personal history is being kept almost identical. The only thing I’m really changing about his character is that he’s pretty non-murderous in canon, whereas in this AU he’ll sometimes get assassin-y assignments. This is based upon the fact that Thedas is a hell of a lot bloodier than Barrayar, and based also upon the fact that Ferelden’s spy agencies seem like they’re probably pretty underdeveloped — their spies are probably more jacks-of-all-trades, rather than having highly specialized roles.

Strengths & Weaknesses

Strengths:
+Clever
+Scheming
+Remarkably attractive and quite seductive, which is good, since a big part of his job involves bangin’
+Pretty good in a fight, as long as it’s okay that he’s fighting really dirty
+Arsenal of spy tricks
+A capable liar
+Perpetually underestimated
+Wide network of contacts

Weaknesses:
-His loyalty – he will always act in Ferelden interests, even when those interests don’t align with his allies’ or even his own
-Unless his sister is involved; he would sacrifice everything he is and has for the sake of his sister
-His fidelity to his cover keeps him from exercising some of his strengths; e.g., he feigns being a poor fighter, and it takes a life-or-death situation to get him to pretend otherwise
-A bit of a coward, especially emotionally
-Self-loathing and emotionally dishonest; this sometimes manifests as active attempts to undermine others’ affection for him even when that would be advantageous for spyin’
-Semi-functioning alcoholic
-Conservative, under all his hedonistic flim-flam; he believes in upholding the old order and in his duty to his liege, which can lead occasionally to inflexibility. It can also lead to personal stress, since that underlying philosophy clashes with his need to hate the high nobility for the way that it rejected him.
-Slow to anger, but when he does, watch out boy, he’ll burn everything to the ground (including himself)
-Completely broke

Inventory

Byerly will be coming with:
-Light weaponry typical of a Ferelden nobleman – sword, knives, a light crossbow
-A full arsenal of spy’s equipment, including:
+Poisons, various
+Tools for the encoding and decoding of letters
+Dossiers on key Inquisition personnel (with a permissions post letting people opt out of this)
+Medieval Funtime Truth Serum – a tincture of blood lotus and lyrium that will lead to uncontrollable babbling when administered. He’ll have a very limited supply, so this won’t be anything he pulls out with any regularity (but could open plot possibilities + the opportunity for people to play their characters spilling everything if they want to get em talking but can’t find reasons to do so).
-Really fucking ugly clothes that he thinks are fantastically fashionable

Motivation

His Ferelden spymaster ordered him to join the Inquisition. He’s normally assigned to Denerim, but in the course of an assignment he discovered that some of the disaffected Youth amongst the nobility have started to sympathize with the Venatori. One of them found him snooping, he had to kill him to keep his cover, and so now he’s been reassigned to the Inquisition. Privately, his spymasters don’t want to deal with the mess that would be involved if they kept him in Denerim, and plus they want him to keep investigating the Venatori presence in Ferelden and using the Inquisition’s resources could be advantageous. Publicly, Byerly is fleeing Denerim in a cloud of scandal after he drunkenly killed his drunken friend in an argument over debts; he’s not quite a wanted man, since it was idiocy on both sides and the Rutyer family name is enough to keep him semi-safe, but it’s clear that his bad reputation is even more tarnished.

By is going to be keeping his true allegiances secret from everyone, including the Inquisition itself. During his tenure in the organization, he will not be using his skills to advance Inquisition interests; rather, he is going to be trying to thwart threats to Ferelden and to advance Ferelden interests. So while he won’t ever actively harm the Inquisition, some of the player plots he’s going to be instigating will not be helpful to the organization. Eventual IC consequences for this are anticipated and welcomed. Spy hunts!!

SAMPLES

Sample one.
Byerly once was in love. It was the worst six months of his life. He’d been eighteen at the time, callow, not in Denerim even a year yet, and when you’re eighteen and callow and just starting to shed your devastatingly provincial outlook and Orlando LeRoc smiles at you from across the room, you fall. You fall painfully, and you write poetry about those dark eyes and about those fine hands and about that voice — ah, he’d had the most remarkable voice, a pure baritone fit for the opera or for the ear of the Maker himself. He might have been the second coming of Andraste, the way he sang. Byerly had followed Orlando about from spring to autumn, smiling ingratiatingly, laughing too hard at his jokes, feeling suffocated when Orlando’s eyes followed a shapely rear end or a trim pair of ankles.

To love is to serve. And, oh, By served well. During his time in love, Byerly executed the following duties for his paramour: provision of sexual favors; provision of sexual favors to a merchant in the Alienage in return for a steady supply of redleaf; provoking jealousy in three of Orlando’s highborn lovers, ensuring that they didn’t stray from the LeRoc four-poster bed; paying for Orlando’s food; paying for Orlando’s drink; falsely confessing to thievery so that Orlando’s friend would escape a stint in the city jail; truly committing thievery so that he would have the funds to pay Orlando’s way. He’d hated it, and hated himself, but love is the cruelest and oldest of feudal codes. It ties you to a liege who may or may not be worthy of your service, but service is non-negotiable. To resist it is to turn traitor. To die the most painful of deaths.

Thomas, he’d realized tonight, is in love with him. It is perhaps not to his credit that it had taken him this long to realize it. He has been smiling ingratiatingly; he has been laughing too hard at his jokes; he has gone flushed whenever By flirts with a comely lass. The obeisances due a liege. He just always seemed so sensible, Thomas had — when he’d gotten this assignment, he’d even said it. The dear boy will be quite the challenge. Severe, intelligent, lovely, he ought to have been too elevated to even look at him without him working considerable charm. But here he was, head over heels, suffering these torments.

By wishes he could say that he’d been the one to leave Orlando. He wishes he could say that, that Harvestmere, when Orlando had distributed his love poetry amongst their friends, when they’d started jeering it into his ear at the theater and at drinks, that he’d decided it was too much. But it had been Orlando who’d left him, who’d told him at Satinalia that it was simply not fun any longer. By had been left there in his fool’s mask, utterly wrecked.

A good man would be gentle to Thomas. Thomas is young. He is intelligent. He is lovely. He has never been broken by love. And honestly, if the circumstances were different, By thinks he’d let the boy down gently, disentangled from him kindly. But. But By has his assignment, and he will complete his assignment.

And so, that night, when Thomas is asleep, Byerly slips out of his room and into the manor-house at large. He was told to steal Thomas’ father’s correspondence; that’s all he was after. But he needs to cover up that theft, confuse the trail; and so he also takes a pillowcase and stuffs it full of Thomas’ mother’s jewels, the family’s silver, the crystalware and the finest bottles of wine. He takes a shit in a chamberpot and leaves it there. And he writes a note, sprawled in the front cover of Thomas’ favorite book —

Sorry, love. It’s just not fun any longer.

He thinks of Orlando as he goes into the night. If he hadn’t had his heart broken, he wonders, would he be doing this? No, he thinks; he wouldn’t. He certainly wouldn’t. Oh, he’d still be fucking Thomas over, no doubt of that, but he’d be going about it a completely different way. Different note written in the book, et cetera. Utterly different.


Sample two.
[ The voice on the crystal is not Orlesian, no matter how he peppers his speech with little words and phrases: he’s Ferelden. But Ferelden of the drawling, upper-class sort, with a nasal accent that speaks of nothing so much as it speaks of a sort of mocking cosmopolitan condescension. ]

Bonsoir, Inquisition. My dear brave warriors and warrior-ettes. I have arrived, so you may release that breath you have bated; you may allow your loins to ungird themselves. Je m’appelle Byerly, Byerly Rutyer, once of Dragonmount, today of — well — here, I suppose. Do tell me all about this sweet little cottage with its charming statuary. Who was the sculptor on those? Where might he be found? My great-aunt Mathilde would simply adore a figurine from him, I think, of a sweet little round-cheeked puppy being whipped and tortured to death. I’d be the favored nephew if I could get her that.

But once we’re done speaking of architecture, I’ve a far more serious matter. I have here, in my hands, two bottles of red. A very fine vintage, velvety with just the slightest bit of grip. Semi-dry. If you can come and guess the provenance of this bottle, then, dear friend, you’ll win it. A fun game, no?