WHO: Ashton Carver, aka Lady Ashe Harwood // also Poppy Keo / Adamantea
WHAT: Around-the-Barge + The Old Smoke port
WHEN: Late April before port + during the first week of port (pre-Trevor)
WHERE: Around the Barge + around London
WARNINGS: potential reference to period-typical bigotry, further added if needed

or close the wall up with our english dead 🩸
Starting a few days before the port, Ashton is scarce for about a day, nearly nonexistent, before getting back to -- "normal" may not be the right word. He's a little more subdued than usual, generally keeping out of places Arthur or Sokie might be and seeking out John less, but generally he seems like he's fine; he works in the library, he practices with his powers in the Enclosure, sometimes he goes to the warden conference room and pages through the Inmate Ledger.

If asked if he's alright he'll just laugh it off -- it's nothing, really, he was just being dramatic and needed some space, you know how he is. He's still wearing a ring on each ring finger just as he's been since December, and his Dancer is now a snake that sits comfortably on his shoulders as it's been for about a week now -- if he was actually upset would he still have any of these things? Don't be ridiculous. He'll be fine!

This does not change the fact he's still sleeping during the day in Ulla's cabin, or that for anyone with the perceptions to sense such lingering feelings he's bleeding heartbreak and a tired sort of acceptance out and everywhere, no matter how convincingly he keeps up an external façade of being alright. Whatever's going on in his head isn't anything good.

And of course, on the day the Barge makes port he disappears entirely and stays gone for a week. Being overboard will do that.

---

thine face is not worth sunburning 🩸
The Lady Ashe Harwood is (in no particular order): relatively young, clever, unmarried, reasonably affluent, and no-one quite seems to remember exactly what the rest of her family is doing - or where or who they are - except for that her father is surely deceased, the poor dear. During evenings and nights she may be found in the Piccadilly and Points West area - out and about, or in her own estate ready to receive visitors - or at the Markets, browsing supernatural items. At all times she's appropriately attired for a lady of the era.

The weekly salons she holds are always popular with a certain sort; she likes to invite thinkers, scientists and writers and poets and artists alike, anyone who might see the world differently. (Especially if they may not be... entirely human.) Anyone bold enough to barge in of their own accord she'll entertain -- although their making it out alive is questionable.
She makes her rounds of all the other social events she ought to be at as best she can, despite the fact her distaste for other vampires is not particularly well-hidden.

And any rumors that you saw Lady Ashe out in the graveyards late at night, or walking with the grims that stalk the East Side -- surely those are just rumors. Don't mind the necromantic magic and metaphysical stink of death that permeate the grounds of her estate, or whatever powers you think you may have seen her use. Surely whatever made her eyes so green was only a trick of the light. Surely those dogs were only some of the hounds she already raises. ...right?

Sometimes she dresses in men's clothes, workmen's clothes, and visits places a well-to-do lady wouldn't be seen dead in; fighting rings, for example. As little as she regrets her decision decades ago to live her public-facing existence as a woman -- there are times where other options yet serve.

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two of pattern

c

Making herself wholly unremarkable is a very easy kind of magic. No non-magical resident of London gives Poppy Keo a second glance unless she wants them to, and even most of the magical ones; her crystalline intrusions are hidden away, replaced with splotches of vitiligo that trace down her limbs, and though her features should mark her as a clear foreigner nobody seems to find it particularly noteworthy or interesting.

She likes cities! They always let her stretch out, metaphysically. She Knows so much of this city by the end of the first day, and it's soothing to not have to guess with interactions. (She leaves the Barge denizens alone the same she's been doing - she won't read them any deeper than surface unless they consent. She'll bring no harm here: only observe.)

Adamantea Poppy is always at the markets looking for the items the Admiral has requested, haggling politely-yet-firmly; she'll aid with others' bargains if she feels the shopkeep may be unfair. She's also down at the river, ethereal and faelike, feeding kelpies like they're tame ponies and getting along perfectly well with just about every fae entity she meets: they might not know her, they couldn't have ever met the lady of gardens prior, but they know what she is. These are the people she knows better than any other.

She always seems to be available near the Barge to help coax out passengers who might be shy or discomforted about leaving it. Even if she's... already somewhere else. 'One mind in one body' is such a silly rule to work by!

And she does let her current inmate Valentino wander, though she does it with a firm advisement: don't start getting into trouble. No, even if he can get out of it or get away with it. She will know.