Mingle - Emergency Potluck

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WELCOME POTLUCK

Greetings, residents! Those more observant sorts among you may have noticed a large influx of very crowded ferries. In order to welcome our new residents en masse, Town Hall is holding a potluck in Town Square. Please bring a dish if you are able and make a new friend!

All of our newest arrivals need only bring themselves. We look forward to welcoming you all into our community, and may your lanterns always be lit.

This event is open to all! In light of our new influx of prospective players following the Great Sail Migration, we've decided to offer a small public event to tide everyone over until the TDM this weekend.

Comments

wrap?

[300kgbackpack]

"Thanks man, I'll see you around." He lifts a hand, flips Snakes a small wave, and makes his way back to the festival proper to find Lou hanging out in the grass surrounded by flowers.

Sure.

[worstorganplayer]

"Sure. See you." Snakes finishes his rounds, thankfully finds things uneventful for now, and returns to the festival as well.

[battlebyballad]

"The thing about great prophesies is that they tend to be great and terrible." She smiles, polite and practiced, as she tries to get a grasp on the rest of what he said. "He must not have been a chef, I suppose."

[blindwatchersees]

"Well, that's why I haven't much interest in great prophecies. They're terrible. Good ones, silly ones... they're the ones that don't insist so hard that you actually do what they say. And no, the elf wasn't a chef. He also wasn't a thief, but he was very good at picking locks."

[maximumcake]

"I think you're right. It wasn't pleasant, but no one actually starved." A fate he's all too happy for others to avoid experiencing.

Max can still see the hesitance, but he doesn't want to push too hard and make it awkward. He'll just make a mental note to keep checking in on Bart to see how he's acclimating.

"That gives me plenty to work with. Now, when you say biscuit I'm assuming you mean something in the sweet variety that's similar to a cookie? I always have to ask because Americans have a different idea of what a biscuit is than a lot of other places. That can cause some interesting confusion when you offer someone biscuits and gravy, haha."

[battlebyballad]

"A valuable skill, to be sure." She isn't usually this stumped in a conversation. "What's your name, stranger? I'm Music."

[hereticofthewilds]

"I can become shadow," Elsie answers back from within the hollow. "It's fun. Take my hand and try." Elsie's solid hand reaches out of the hole beckoning for her to grab hold.

[astrogator]

Tayrey used to be an adventurous young woman. It comes with the territory of being an astrogator - of being a spacer at all. A certain appreciation for risk and for novelty. She'd loved fast flights, busy multicultural hub stations, stepping into the unknown of uninhabited worlds.

Captivity had crushed that out of her. The worry that her behavior might be letting her people down. The terrifying unpredictable magic. The horror of the first and last excursion she'd willingly signed up for. The fear that if she tried something new, and liked it, others would claim that she was clearly enjoying her hated imprisonment and had nothing to complain of.

Arilanna Tayrey is not a captive any longer.

She reaches out.

She takes Elsie's hand.

[hereticofthewilds]

From within the shadows where no one can see, Elsie smiles knowingly to herself.

As soon as she takes Elsie's hand, Ari will feel a sensation similar to missing a step on the stairs. It's startling, but over as quickly as it starts. Once it passes, she will be looking out from the hole of the tree. All of her has somehow been compacted down into the small space, but she will feel no different to herself. If she tries to wiggle a toe, she will feel it move, even if she cannot see it. There's no pain, no numbness, the sounds around them are as crisp and clear as they always were. The only limitation to her sight is how far she can see from the hole, but if she attempts to stick her head out of it, she will find her vision unchanged.

Elsie's hand squeezes Ari's for reassurance. The wild woman may not be visible inside the blackness of shadow, but she feels solid and warm. The warmth is in her voice as well. "Cozy?"

[blindwatchersees]

"Er, let's see. I'm..." he looks at his hand, as if trying to read something he's scribbled on it.

"The door goulash. No, wait... Theodor Gorlash, apparently. Took me a minute!"

[theresalwaystheview]

He's right there with Max, having experienced near-starvation himself before now. He'd remedied that himself, but it's a relief not to have to do so again.

It takes a second for the gears to click into place when it comes to the idea of biscuits and gravy. Switching away from the decidedly cookie-centric idea of them, to the fluffier, more scone-like savory fare that some of the arrivals have folded into the local cuisine, and Bart finally lets out a quiet laugh when it all lines up. "Yes, that's right. I must say, I have my doubts that gravy of any stripe would be particularly good over a blueberry cookie."

[astrogator]

The initial sensation is startling, but it's really nothing to worry about, not for someone like Ari who has been through L-space training. And then - she is inside the tree. She is most definitely inside the tree, and she shouldn't be able to fit, but she does, comfortably, and she still feels very much herself. She can feel her body, whole and unchanged.

Tayrey has no fear of this. She remembers Sparkles, how the little shadow creature used to hide away in its shadow realm, and decides this must be something similar. A sidestep into other dimensions, like a ship's transition into L-space, only without all the effort and expense and altered perception. This shadow dimension is not alien the way that L-space is, but the mathematics of it might be similar, at root.

She squeezes Elsie's hand in return. 'I like it,' she says. 'You feel safe in here, yes?' Tayrey would feel safe, if this were hers, and she begins to realise what it means that Elsie is sharing it with her. That trust.

[prince_of_beasts]

"Only a few days. It seems I arrived later than the rest ... which does give me hope that others have yet to follow me. There are several faces missing ... but I shouldn't trouble you with such things. We're at a celebration." Dimitri shakes his head, and turns up the corners of his mouth in an attempt at a smile. "That is good to hear. My home is prone to attacks by giant beasts in the winter -- creatures that prefer to mind their own business, as animals do, sound far more manageable."

[battlebyballad]

"Well, good to meet you, Theodor. You've enjoyed the food on offer, I hope?"

[blindwatchersees]

"Oh yes, yes! Of course! You know, when I first came here, I was terribly worried that they wouldn't have strawberries!"

[hereticofthewilds]

"Yes," Elsie confirms with a touch of melancholy. "My home." She can't describe why, even to herself, but when she is here, she feels as if she is wrapped in a warm hug. The world out there cannot touch her in here. She senses in Ari a need for safety too--a place where no one can touch her.

"I'm happy you like it. You can come in any time. Only have to call me."

[amourtician]

"We have Londinium," Anzu says, thoughtfully. "I've been told that London had that name, in places where there is a London. By us back home, it's a great city-state, wedged between whatever the Frankish lot are doing these days, and the Eastern half of the Holy Empire. It's likened to Venezia, though I'm told the weather's much less pleasant there."

He has not traveled much, though once he'd thought he would.

"I know such things only by hearsay, nu? I thought once I might make it to the far Western plena, one day, or back to Vilna ... but it seems I've put my roots down in the Talons."

He smiles, a little wistfully.

"A charming place, really. I do love it. For all that we have to bury the dead in niches in catacombs, as in times of old."

[amourtician]

"It's a celebration, but it is a weekday," Anzu says, gently; his expression is serious. But as well as reassuring Dimitri, he is fishing a little, despite himself. "Shunt not aside the wish to talk of grave matters on mine account, darling. Now, if thou wish'st not to dwell on gloomy thoughts, that's something else entirely."

"But ah, all that aside, before we get into talk of ships and wild beasts, what do I call thee? If I ask not now, I fear I shall forget entirely."

good place to wrap?

[maximumcake]

"Nnnno," Max agrees, laughing, "I can't see gravy and blueberry working together no matter what you try with them. Some combinations just aren't meant to be."

This is nice, he thinks to himself as he smiles at his new friend. This is what I've been missing all along, people. More people to share the world's wonders with.

[tehilim127_1]

Well, if she needed any further indication that their worlds aren't the same ... "By us it's the capital of an island country. Used to be a massive empire of its own, but it's come down in the world a little bit."

At the last, she cocks her head. "Catacombs, why? Is the water table too high for burial? That's a problem in some cities way to the south of us, they get terrible floods ..."

[prince_of_beasts]

"Oh!" Dimitri's posture snaps to attention; he bows, the memorized movement crisp and martial. "Dimitri Alexander, at your service. What may I call you?"

I think so!

[theresalwaystheview]

It's the lightest that Bart has felt in some time, talking with Max on something both somewhat inconsequential and comforting to them both. It reminds Bart of what he really enjoys about being around other people, and of how much he wants to be able to help improve Max's kitchen production. He would have to bring the man into his lab to see what they could do if they worked on it together.

"We can figure out how to make them when I can remember the ingredient list. I'm sure we'll find something equivalent around here sooner or later, even if we have to trade the Limoncello for it."

[astrogator]

That's exactly what Ari needs, even if she can't admit it to herself. Her starship was never safe in that way, after all. Space was dangerous. They had enemies. The difference was that all the dangers were external; she had nothing to fear from anyone inside the ship save ordinary disagreements.

'Call you? How would I do that?' She hasn't yet encountered those strange rocks. 'You mean call on you, come out here and see you?'

[graphomaniac]

Oh. Well. This isn't an angle Lyubov was expecting, and she has to fight a little to keep her face mostly neutral; as always, it doesn't quite work. She shudders, too.

"I'm sorry," she says, sincerely; her voice cracks a little. She doesn't think Erin's talking about undeath, per se, but she has some idea of what Erin might mean.

"Thou wert removed from the sphere of mortal life, and placed in a sphere much stranger, and much more hostile to the soul, nu?" she continues. "And like, such things are beyond me to fix, but I don't think thou came'st to me to be fixed. Thou sold'st thine eyes of thine own free will, so thou understands the value one can find in ... nu, shall we put it as being broken? With like, the understanding that I see myself as broken and none the worse for it." She taps her walking stick on the ground for emphasis.

She pauses again, feeling sheepish. Erin's strange, strange even by her metrics, in the opposite direction from many here. There's so many questions she wants to ask. But she can't do that. For one thing, it'd be rude.

[crushed_pearls]

"Even so," Erin agrees, a flickering smile once again gracing her lips. "Every sharp and cold edge of me, and the hot and bloody shit beneath. I've been beaten down, I've been damned, and I've been shattered, and I'm still here, on the long death march back to happiness. And in the meantime...well, there's plenty of the damned on the way, to pick back up to their feet and encourage to march alongside me."