forbarrayar_ooc | test drive meme

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Barrayar ⚔ Cetaganda ⚔ The Invasion

Have you read the FAQ?

The Village ⚔ The Barrayaran Camp ⚔ The Cetagandan Base ⚔ The Fight

You've been on Barrayar for a while now, and you're finally starting to adjust. Or maybe you're not. Maybe this is all still too much for you – the attacks, the constant raids, living in the middle of a war zone by no choice of your own. But if you want to live long enough to make it back home one day, you might as well do what you can to help the war effort. Besides, where else are you going to go?

The fierce Barrayaran winter rages even to the southern end of the continent, and it's been none too kind to Vorkosigan's District. Temperatures at sea level are well below freezing, and up in the mountains, it's even colder. Several inches of snow already blanket most of the mountains all the way down to the Cetagandan base, and the storm that's just started up is only bringing more down. Visibility is low in the flurries, wind swirling snow everywhere, and God help you if you get lost on your own out in the storm. Nights are cold, these days.

A recent attack on the Cetagandan base has left half their facilities damaged and in disarray. Raid parties snuck in by night, planting bombs in previously scouted locations for maximum effect. Damage to the base's water treatment plant and organic grow labs have considerably impacted the Cetagandans' food and water supply, and in the chaos caused by the explosions, the Barrayaran guerrillas raided their medbay and made off with a considerable bounty of medical supplies. One man's bane is another man's boon, and while the Cetagandans have reserve supplies to sustain them for now, some of the damage is extensive and the repairs will take time. But in the meantime, the Barrayarans have scored a precious victory as well as equally precious resources.

the village
The Riverfall villagers are used to the harsh winters of the Dendarii mountains, and though they don't have much themselves, they are happy to offer what they can in terms of cold-weather clothing and extra blankets to those allied with the guerrillas. Despite the cold, the hill children are going wild in the snow, and they may try to lure you into their play by sneakily pelting you with snowballs.

Cetagandan allies, however, may not be met so warmly, and at the first sight of ghem soldiers, any children out playing in the snow will be immediately ushered into their homes. Unaccompanied outsiders from the Cetagandan base might have an easier time talking to the hillfolk, but any attempt at digging information about the guerrillas out of them will get you stonewalled fast. A sneaky hill child or two may steal away from their home to approach one of the "bad guy" outsiders to sate their curiosity.

the barrayaran camp
Morale is higher than it has been in a while after their recent victory, and the guerrillas are in high spirits. And do they ever love their spirits – as night falls, most of the Barrayarans gathered around the campfires are enjoying the deceptively named, dangerously alcoholic moonshine they call maple mead. It might start out sweet, but it burns all the way down, and a few glasses of that stuff will tank even the heaviest Barrayaran soldier.

But the storm rages on despite their celebration, and preparations must be made. Clearing as much snow off the tents as possible will help ensure that no tents collapse overnight, the horses need to be tended to, and the officers are always running training drills. Food is in real supply now, but the guerrillas need help foraging and hunting nonetheless. And when night falls, you'll have to find a way to keep yourself warm – it's a good thing there are a cozy ten of you to a tent.

the cetagandan base
The Cetagandans outnumber their guerrilla enemies almost seventy-to-one, so their base has not been completely devastated, but it hardly looks to be the work of a few raiding parties. Nothing is beyond repair, but the water treatment plant has been taken offline, which means that all water is now locally sourced and must be treated by hand with purification tablets. No one in the base will starve, but fresh food is mostly unavailable until they get the grow labs back online, which means that meals are mostly comprised of ration bars and MREs. Morale isn't exactly at an all-time low, but none of the ghem officers seem to be in a good mood.

They won't hesitate to put you to work, either. They need all the engineers and laborers they can get for the grow labs and the treatment plant, and the medbay's inventory needs to be thoroughly audited before they can send a request for more supplies. But if you need a break, it's not too hard to slip away for a little quiet downtime. Some of the lower-ranked ghem ladies might let you participate in some more artistic activities, or maybe some of the enlisted soldiers who are a little more used to you by now might invite you into one of their Cetagandan games of strategy. Or, since the treatment plant only affected potable water, you could appreciate your comfortable surroundings and take a nice hot soak in the bathroom while everyone else is working.

the fight
PVP
You're in the midst of a skirmish with the other side -- maybe you signed up for the battle, maybe you just got caught up in the fight -- but at least it's easy to tell who's on what side. Only one side is wielding swords, and the other guns.

But then you come across someone who doesn't look like they're either -- not one of the rugged Barrayarans or the face-painted Cetagandans, but an outsider, an exotic like you. They must be. So do you fight?

RECON
Maybe you're not on the front lines, but there's plenty more to winning the war than just fighting. You're partnered with another outsider on recon; the ground is cold, and you try not to let your shoes crunch too loudly on snow as you scout, scanning for patrols or supply lines.

Or maybe you're with the Cetagandans, hiking it thorugh the mountains with one of your fellow exotics in an attempt to locate the enemy camp. Except it's damned cold, and there's hidden ice everywhere, and everything is starting to really look the same.

--

Feel free to write prompts for your character on either side -- you don't have to choose just one for the TDM! Just label it clearly so folks know. GO WILD, MY FRIENDS

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Perhaps this is a heavenly punishment. Not that Byerly has any faith in heaven (he'd had to listen to a great lot of tiresome droning about that from some otherwise-delicious Betan herm, once, who'd slapped him robustly when he'd intimated that he'd like to incorporate a bit of the sacred into their profane activities, and that was the proud day when he'd out-scandaled a Betan) or honestly much faith in punishment (it all seems to come, inevitably, regardless of your worthiness or lack thereof). But he does specifically remember sitting in class, back when he was a young budding degenerate, and thinking about this very time period: things might be rotten now, but at least I'll never have to live through the Occupation.

Ha. Ha. Ha.

He should lay down in the snow and die right now. He doesn't have the constitution for this. Is his ancestor Pierre Le Sanguinaire dead yet? Oh, he does hope so. He'd take one look at his dissolute town clown relative and order him disemboweled for uselessness. Or, worse, he'd try to forcibly make him useful...

I am useful, damn it. That's the thing. By is a damn fine ImpSec agent (does ImpSec even exist in this time? He should bloody well know this) but this is not his milieu. He's not a war-spy. He's a peace-spy. He's a love-spy. But he suspects that Piotr Pierre Vorkosigan, leader of the insane Vorkosigan forces (like there's ever been a Vorkosigan soldier, or Vorkosigan, who isn't insane), isn't going to appreciate a specialist in the seducing of Vor...

a. In camp
They put him to work shoveling snow - shoveling snow! shoveling snow. - and he agrees in spite the indignity because at least it's easy work. Or he'd assumed it would be easy work, but after about ten minutes he's already winded. He leans on his shovel and regards the wintry mountain landscape with a very sour expression.

"What happened to Vor privilege?" he mutters. "No one told me it was a modern invention."

b. In the village
This, at least, is a slightly more civilized place. Slightly. How far has he fallen, that a Vorkosigan back-country izba looks like the height of luxury? But it is not a tent, and the smells coming from a cooking fire seem at least slightly appetizing instead of perfunctory, and someone is serving ale instead of that vile maple mead concoction...Not that ale is wine, or something he really wants (he'd just about kill for some creme kava right now) but at least it's a bit better than that. So here, he's a little bit in better spirits...

But he is also working. That's why he'll hail anyone he recognizes as a Cetagandan, or Cetagandan-affiliated, calling out drolly, "You look like someone who's about half as miserable as I am. How's life amongst the invaders?" Or, anyone fighting for the Barrayarans - "Well, well. Fancy seeing you here. D'you know anything about the logistics of deserting an army you've been press-ganged into after time-traveling?"

c. Wildcard
Byerly also can be found a number of other places. Trying to score drugs? Check. Seeing if anyone can be seduced? Double check. Trying hard to avoid being spotted by any of the traditional Vor-military types who will disapprove of a drunken oversexed town clown? Check check check.

Edited 2016-11-23 15:18 (UTC)

A laugh rings out behind Byerly, only half-stifled. Oh, this one's Vor, is he? What's up with a bunch of Barrayarans mysteriously turning up here with all the outsiders, anyway? If there's any logic to it, it's opaque to Sonia. She comes up beside him, hiking up her wool skirt to give him a look-over. Yeah, he looks Vor enough -- and curiously unscuffed by ten long, hard years of war. Even the Princess is a little rougher around the edges these days.

Something she's a little grateful for some days, though, because in the heavy clothing borrowed from the hillfolk, she doesn't look particularly Imperial. Her accent isn't nearly thick enough to pass for a hill girl, but hopefully no one's told this one she's a Princess yet. If he's Vor he's all the more likely to make with the too-polite conversation, and that's all Sonia gets from most of the soldiers these days. Besides, he's on the cute side, this one, and seems interesting enough.

"Vor privilege? Only if you've got a title." She wrinkles her nose and rolls her eyes. "And even then, it really only matters if you're Vorbarra. We all might as well be hillfolk to the General Count." She raises her eyebrows at the shovel he's leaning on. "If that's the worst you've got to complain about, though, you're getting off easy."

Oh, hello. Suddenly this place is looking a touch more civilized. Not that he doesn't have a certain appreciation for all the sets of broad shoulders in well-worn uniforms, of course - there's not a Barrayaran born who doesn't have some half-buried soldier-fetish, and he is (alas!) a Barrayaran himself - but they're all so dour. Give him a man, or a woman, who smiles, and even if this one's not smiling outright yet he trusts she can get there.

Still, her face looks a bit familiar...Though not, thankfully, overly familiar. Wouldn't that just be his luck, to end up deflowering a young version of Grandmere Vorrutyer or something of the sort. He is not dissolute enough to see any charm in that notion. He's not even dissolute to find much amusement in that notion. Though - he did see Miles Vorkosigan around here, didn't he, he wonders if he could make the little shrimp flinch every time a woman gets near him by putting the possibility of time-traveling incest in his head...

"Don't tell me it gets worse," By sighs, holding out his hands to her. They're gloved, of course, but the wool is rough-looking and has only gotten rougher from the shovel's wooden handle. "Look. These are practically falling apart." And then he throws a teasing glance at her as he returns to leaning on the shovel. "And I don't see you out here throwing snow around. Come on, if General Count Vorkosigan is serious about his egalitarianism, surely we should see the women doing work equal to the men."

With luck, he'll be able to tweak her into picking up the shovel herself. He has a feeling that she'd make for a very charming view if he could just get her hair disheveled and her chest heaving.

Oh, trying to out-manipulate this Princess? It'll take more than that, Byerly. Sonia's eyebrows raise slightly in amusement at his proffered hands -- one of the few Vor around here who doesn't seem like the soldierly type -- and she indulges him by touching her own gloved hands to his, plucking lightly at the tattered fabric.

"Hm. I'd lend you mine, but your hands are rather a lot bigger." She gives him an impish smile, and then snorts out a laugh. Very princesslike, yes. "The General Count? Egalitarian? Good God, no. A progressive, sure, but if anything it's his wife who's the egalitarian. Half-Betan, you know."

She glances at his shovel, taps the shaft of it with the toe of her boot, and gives him a smug look. "Oh, don't you know? I've already got a job. I'm here to boost morale."

Hah. What a thought. Piotr Vorkosigan was considered progressive in this time period. He supposes that anyone who advocated a style of warfare more elegant than "smash heads in with rocks" is comparatively forward-thinking, yes...Still, that's an interesting tidbit. Somehow he'd forgotten that the old Countess Vorkosigan had been part Betan. That's right - Miles Vorkosigan's more Betan than Barrayaran, isn't he? In retrospect, that makes his constant More-Vor-Than-Thou routine even more obnoxious.

But: there are forms much lovelier than that hyperactive dwarf's to contemplate right now. "Well. And a marvelous job you're doing. They should give you a raise." He turns his hand around to capture hers and sweeps an exaggerated bow over it, pressing an admirably chaste kiss to the back of the wool. Miracle of miracles: she seems to be the one person in camp who doesn't stink. "I know my spirits are lifted, Lady...?"

Sonia positively grins at that kiss to the back of her hand, a girlish laugh escaping her. Oh, and he's fun. Dour Barrayaran soldiers, indeed; bless them, but they do get old after a while. She can already hear Olivia's sigh of disapproval and she can just about feel the look that goes with it, but screw it. Olivia's married, and Sonia's bored, and without Armsman Gavalas around, really, who's going to stop her?

She bats her eyelashes at Byerly in response to the compliment, fully exaggerated, but the grin is genuine. "A raise from what?" she laughs, tossing her hair. "Just Sonia, thank you. And now you've got me at a disadvantage, sir."

And you a lady with such marked...advantages. He suspects, given her liveliness so far, that she'd savor a few well-placed double entendres, but this is a notoriously humorless era of Barrayaran history; he has no great desire to offend the lady and end up hanging by his toenails in Piotr Vorkosigan's war tent. So instead, gallantly, and without addressing either advantages or things that can be raised, he responds, "Byerly Vorrutyer."

And then, pressing her hand between his, "You are a breath of fresh air, Sonia. I had started to think that smiling was disallowed here."

Sonia's eyebrows raise slightly as Byerly clasps her hand in his, but she gives him a tilted smile, her dark eyes bright, permitting the flattered look to show on her face. Ooh, and he's got all the right lines, too.

"Only when the General Count's looking," she says teasingly, and looks around in mock furtiveness. "Hm. I don't see him anywhere around here. And I promise not to tell."

She turns her smile back at Byerly, tilting her chin up. "Not Lord Byerly Vorrutyer, I hope. I've found high Vor to be so stuffy. Not an ounce of fun in them."

Like, say, a certain General Count.

"Heaven forfend," Byerly responds, laughing. "Not Count Vorrutyer, not Lord Vorrutyer, not even Lord Byerly, and praise be to the rare streak of unambition that led my ancestors to not try for any political power at all." Which would be happening right about now, wouldn't it? Perhaps he ought to go out and find his grandfather, just to put a word or two in his ear about disinheriting his father once and for all. Perhaps starving him as well. Giving him a good kick or two, to see whether a bit of that would improve his personality. The bastard.

Anyway.

"After all, the only thing duller than talking to a High Vor, I should think, is being a High Vor. Have you had to put up with many of their type, milady?"

Oh. Oh, good. Sonia awards him a wild grin. She doesn't correct his mode of address this time, taking it for a sign of flattery, and to turn that down would be quite out of line here, she thinks. She tosses her hair in an appropriately exaggerated sign of exasperation and disdain.

"Oh, only all the time. It's not so bad here, at least not all the officers are Vor, but Count Vorkosigan," she says, just barely catching herself from the decidedly more familiar Count Piotr, "he's the stuffiest of them all. He doesn't have a stick up his ass so much as a steel rod -- or maybe an entire maple tree, for all I know. I'm not so sure he even knows how to smile. The man doesn't know the meaning of the word fun."

True, she's somewhat fonder of Piotr these days, ever since he married her sister and proved to be a good husband who makes her happy (no accounting for taste, there), but God if the man isn't the most hard-faced high Vor out there outside her own Imperial family. She casts Byerly a sly look.

"You look like you do, though."

Byerly Vorrutyer | OTA

a. i'm so sorry

I'm so happy

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c. b/c you demanded it and i live to serve.

You're the best

i am, yeah

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Re: Byerly Vorrutyer | OTA

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A

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