Veteran
Posts: 153
 
| so I played along with them. There were crowds in the streets. The city felt tense from the start. I picked a building and headed towards it, not to climb, but because I could see that the door was open. It was a cafe, upper class and cramped. Well dressed men and women sat at tables sipping from bone china; a harpsichord took up most of the room while a cellist sat in an armchair opposite. The walls were covered in mirrors and I remembered the dancers in the party. Just for a moment, just for a little moment, I imagined that this place existed. On the dawn of the revolution, wealthy people gathering in gold-trimmed rooms, listening to the harpsichord. It's not just the broad strokes and sensations that the animus renders. It loves the climactic moments, the fall of the Bastille, the meetings between great historical minds. Even the ballroom was a spectacular moment, rather than a quiet one. These big events are just the punctuation, though, between the many, many smaller histories the SkyForge game pays so little attention to: the exchange of coins look, the man in the corner has just bought a painting; the quiet conversations; men and women listening to a harpsichord in a cafe in 1789. Through the window I saw a man handing a bouquet SkyForge Credits of flowers to a woman, and even though I knew that across the city, one hundred men were giving one hundred identical flowers to one hundred women, I imagined him making some bad joke and her smiling and them linking arms. At this point, an agitator entered the cafe and tried to stab me in the back. The harpsichord SkyForge player got up and pointed in horror and the room filled with a smoke bomb and I left. I discovered quickly that this is not a city that particularly wants you to spend time on the streets or perhaps more specifically, spend time on the streets idly. The crowds that sweep like tides around the Palais du Justice are perfect for keeping hidden from templars and agitators, but out in the open you're very likely to come under attack. The city expects you to either be in constant motion aiming for the relative safety of the rooftops, or hidden, or directly fighting back. After the events in the cafe, I wanted to find more little histories, so I kept away from the main roads. There was a little courtyard filled with fountains far too many fountains for such a small place, with climbing roses up the walls. There was an avenue of little topiary bushes in wooden buckets. Two people sat on a bench and talked too quickly for me to translate the French, but they seemed okay. Maybe he gave her some flowers. |
joke and her smiling
