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

Erin Peters | Changeling: the Lost & CRAU | OTA

[crushed_pearls]

For a few days leading up to the potluck, Marrow Island is haunted by a strange phantom; an image of a very tall, seemingly elfin woman with broad wings, appearing as an outline in the raindrops, a shape in the mist, a trick of the light. She's shouting in English, stabbing at the air with a long, broad sword. For those of the newcomers that understand English, the author will not be transcribing the vile curses the figure is spitting. They are inventive and graphic.

On the day of the potluck though, a hearse festooned with amaranths pulls up to the square while the gathering is in full swing. It slows to a sedate stop, and for a moment nothing happens.

The tall woman who steps out is much different in the flesh; she has to fold massive raven wings to get out the door, moving tattoos of sheet music crawl along her pale arms. Her black hair moves as a cloudy mass, often falling in front of the thick green blindfold on her face.

Surrounding her is a shroud of gunpowder that pops and sizzles in the air jubilantly, like fireworks, shapes of flowers and trees and clouds forming in the haze. For that first moment she's as regal and imposing as an angel.

Then she takes one step and falls flat on her face.

Bunnytime

[maskedstarbunny]

Ryja is there, just in time, ready to help her back up. The sudden need to dart over, be right here, right now, was sharp and worrisome, considering certain events. She half expected to need the tome at her side, or something worse... But this is still worth while.

"May I help you?" She needs to make sure her presence is known, of course, and offer. There's so much about the newcomer, however, and some part of Ryja's foresight is stuck on 'look over here' for the moment, which itself is rather odd. Usually, such pulls go away, once she's arrived.

[crushed_pearls]

There's a lot of Erin to pick up, but she staggers up with Ryja's help. Her head turns and -

(Please let this stacked rabbit be gay.)

NOT FUCKING NOW ME!

"Thanks," she croaks. "I'm gonna need some water and food so I can get drunk. You have no idea how much life has fucked me lately."

[maskedstarbunny]

"You have come to the right time, and the right place, then. Perhaps we can trade stories, my recent fate has been, in a word.. fucked." Something about Erin puts her immediately in the mind of Limsa, and so Ryja's tone shifts a little bit in response. It doesn't hurt that she definitely catches that moment, though Ryja wonders how exactly.

The stacked rabbit is gay as hell, and though she doesn't make it obvious, she is a little, well. The wings, the blindfold, the entrance, all of it. No one could blame her for being impressed, right?

[sort of not here]

[notinflictthem]

Heckled, nearby, when she falls flat on her face-

"Mazel tov!"

[crushed_pearls]

Weakly: "L'chaim..."

[actuallyawolf]

Ylva had looked over when she'd seen the car, noted the amaranths with a terrible and bittersweet pang, and then was somehow running as best as she could through the crowd without even consciously making that choice.

She drops down on her knees and presses her face close, looking for signs of life. Her eyes are brimming with tears. "Erin? Erin please, can you hear me?"

If she's hurt? Well, Ylva's already digging desperately in the bag slung around her shoulders. She can do things about that.

[crushed_pearls]

"Thank fuck," Erin groans, almost sobbing. "You're my Ylva. I thought I'd missed."

[actuallyawolf]

"I thought I'd never see you again."

Ylva presses several kisses where she can reach on Erin's neck -- hasty, desperate. "Can you get up?"

[cacophonish]

"Whoa..."

Jeff should offer her a hand, but he's a little too busy trying to read the music shifting along her arms.

Don't stare at the fallen elf lady, Jeff. It's a dick move. He finally remembers himself and moves to her, reaching a hand out to her.

"You okay?"

[crushed_pearls]

Fun fact Jeff odds are really high that you know this piece: it's In The Hall Of The Mountain King.

"Buddy the answer to that question is always -"

(Wait...)

...No...

Erin's head comes up, like she's looking. "Fuck me running - Jeff? With the magic songs? Bash make it?"

[lasthumanvoice]

By the time Erin's managed to sit down and get situated, there's a man approaching with a slice of sweet potato casserole to offer her.

"Care for a nosh, Your Wingedness?"

It is Very Visible Sweet Potato Casserole to her, as visible as certain scissors one could name.

[crushed_pearls]

"...Did you make this out of the fucking Horn of Plenty?"

i herd u liek elfs

[immortaldemonsoul]

Oooh, yikes. That was a nasty fucking spill there, but seeing as less alarming people are already rushing over to help Ellarinne is just going to sit back with her wine and...observe, let us say.

Because here is the thing about demon hunters.

They sacrifice their material eyes to see behind the physical -- usually, it's true, in order to zero on in the taint of fel, but fel is only one flavor of magic in the cosmology of Ellarinne's branch of the multiverse. There are many others: arcane, druidic, the magic of the Void and the holy Light...

This woman doesn't seem to match any of those. For a moment Ellarinne thinks she might recognize the hues of Ardenweald and its Night Fae, but...no. There is too much of death and pain about her for that restful realm and its unchanging shadows. This is something altogether new, and that makes it worth studying.

After a moment Ellarinne rises and fetches a second cup of wine, carrying it over to the woman's table with an ironic smile on her face.

"I think we have something in common, you and I," she says by way of greeting, and sets the cup down next to the woman's plate with an audible tap against the tabletop. "Drink?"

NSFW allusions in narration

[crushed_pearls]

"If this is poison it better be the good shit," Erin answers; she raises the glass as if to toast, and downs it to buy time to study this...

...This...

...Wait a fucking minute. Memories from a lifetime of hookups with fellow Lost and some mortals are trying to tick their way into the front of Erin's mind, fighting their way past pillow talk to get back to fascinating infodumping and eating girls out under their computer desks and...wait...

"You wouldn't happen to be from..." there's a name for this, wait, Erin knows it, it's not Azazoth that's the Lovecraft guy and also that's the whole planet, hold up, focus, summon the lesbian power GOT IT - "Teldrassil, would you? Hugeass tree?"

[yournewsidekick]

Nimona's first thought: oh, damn, now that's a metal arrival. Still in the shape of a thin stray dog, she peers out from under one of the tables, already starting to grin as the hearse's door swings open.

And then --

Her eyes widen. As if transfixed, she steps the rest of the way out from under the table, staring as Erin unfurls herself from the car like a queen returning to her rightful throne. "Erin?" she starts to whisper, but the name gets bitten off with the THUMP of Erin hitting the cobblestones two seconds later.

Without thinking, Nimona bounds over to her side. "ERIN!"

[crushed_pearls]

Glamour. Intense and focused and there; Erin snatches at it (from the outside it looks like she's reaching for Nimona), and the rush of the harvest makes her suck in a sharp breath.

Awareness is slower, but it gets there. Pink, and that voice...

"Heya youngblood," Erin croaks. "Not my worst entrance but it'll make the scrapbook."

[comedyequalstragedy]

At one point in the evening, after her entrance, there is...

A pair of cold eyes on her, from somewhere across the gathering.

Somewhere in the neighbourhood of 20 minutes later, a Wyrd fellow happens to be in the neighbourhood, and taps her on the shoulder-

"A hand with this, please?"

That certainly is a very large pot that he simply could not carry by himself. He sounds precisely at the knife's edge of cheerful and dead inside as someone on an IT centre help desk.

[crushed_pearls]

Erin cocks her head. Snowflakes start forming in the smoke that surrounds her, prompting a hissed, "You quit that," at it, which returns the gunpowder to the trees and potatoes it was showing.

Louder: "You got it, you'll need to guide me though."

Finding a place to help grip the pot takes some careful feeling about.

[littlefairytale]

It's late in the gathering, when she arrives.

She barely looks like herself. Dressed in the simple outfit supplied upon arrival, with the addition of only a plain patch over her empty socket, her silhouette is wrong. But it's not just that. It's the way she's holding herself. It's how lost she seems. It's how dim the light behind her eye is. It's... a lot of little things.

But she's here. Despite everything, she's here. And so, it seems, are people she knows.

Familiar faces, all around. Faces she saw not all that long ago but that feel like they're from another time all the same. Most of them people she doesn't approach. Most of them too close to strangers to feel safe.

But not all of them.

Ruby still hesitates. But, eventually, this familiar-and-yet-wrong figure steps up to Erin, and just asks, "...is it really you?"

[crushed_pearls]

In a tight voice: "Imagine if it wasn't. I'd flip my lid the first time you brought up Liz."

a little after Gilbert leaves

[stonecoldtop]

In a moment when she's a little more out of the way of the crowd of people, George approaches.

"You seem the sort of person one ought to get to know," he says by way of greeting, "I'm George, you've already met my more secretive friend"

Which is why he's a) not asking about her Mask, and b) skipping the more formal introduction.

[crushed_pearls]

"Erin," she introduces back; the winged Lost pops a picture perfect curtsy, minus the skirt given that everyone new is wearing work pants right now. "Charmed. Gotta beg your forgiveness in advance, it's been a rough...more than a year. And. Well."

She did enter the party by faceplanting off the hearse.

Wildcard

[maximumcake]

Erin escaped Max seeing her unceremonious faceplant from the carriage, but that means she has to be assaulted by his shrill screaming of joy instead--incoming, one beefcake at top speed.

At the last second he remembers she's not a hugger and he skids to a stop in front of her. "Erin! You're here! You're really here!?"

[crushed_pearls]

Not a hugger? Wrong this time. Max is getting the fucking business; hope you don't need those bones my dude.