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

[yournewsidekick]

The dog pauses, upper lip curling unconsciously into a snarl, as if she's trying to guard her meager meal from another predator. A couple beats pass before Nimona gets it together enough to pull her lips back over her teeth; her whole chest expands on a tired sigh.

"I'm not a person," she mutters. "And... nah, this is good. I like floor salami. Way better than table salami."

She sweeps some of the cold cuts closer with a paw.

[somebodychildofanyone]

"...You wanna run that by me again? Last I checked anything with a language is a person."

She's so confused.

[yournewsidekick]

Somehow, the dog manages to raise an eyebrow despite not really having eyebrows.

"Birds have language," she says. "Deer do. Sharks do. They're not people."

Nimona leans down to snarf up the bologna.

[somebodychildofanyone]

"My sister-in-law is the daughter of a human and a bird, so like...yeah?" The elf blinks repeatedly. "Let's try this again - 'm River, necromancer and blacksmith 'round these parts. Nice to meet you...?"

[yournewsidekick]

...Huh.

Nimona chews the bologna, slow and deliberate, as she sizes up River. "Ohhhh," she says once she's swallowed -- not because it's rude to talk with your mouth full or anything, just because she needed the sizing-up time. "Okay, so you're actually cool with calling not-humans people."

This doesn't sound like a bad thing. In fact, there's a little curl of a canine smile on one side of her mouth as she says it.

"I'm Nimona. Nice to meetcha too."

[somebodychildofanyone]

"I should hope so, 'm not human myself." River flashes a sunny grin and Wiggles Her Ears, Look At Them Go, They Wigglin'. "I'm an elf, though not from around here. This place's got its own elves." River almost adds 'and I'm dating a ghost, a vampire, and possibly also a fucking rabbit?' but decides, no, that might be protesting the point a bit too much. "Admittedly I haven't met many dogs that're people but if you look over there -"

River points past Nimona to a good dog.

"- that's Amaterasu, customer of mine and a goddess of some far-off world called Nippon. Lovely lass, very soothing. Will steal your food."

[yournewsidekick]

Despite herself, the ear wiggle gets a snicker out of Nimona. Man, it's still great to run into not-humans who're pleased to be different from everybody else.

She glances over her shoulder at Amaterasu, intrigued; her smile turns toward a smirk. "I'll steal it back," she says, as breezily as she can. "So... she's an actual dog, huh? Goddess-dog. Whatever. Not a shapeshifter?"

[somebodychildofanyone]

Thoughtfully: "I've never seen her shift shapes, but I dunno that she can't. Seems like an odd thing for a god to not be able to do...but she's very dog. Like. If she rolled up to me as a fellow elf I have no doubt in my mind she'd still be very dog-like, the way some people just remind you of animals."

Says the spiritual catgirl.

[yournewsidekick]

"Heh. Yeah."

Cautiously, Nimona's tail starts to wag. Somebody's starting to relax the tiniest bit! Kinda. Ish.

"My boss is like that. Like, he's not trying too pull off the vibes of a sad baby kitten you just yanked out of a thunderstorm, but he looks like it eighty percent of the time anyway. Even when he's trying to act tough. There's always juuuust a little bit of half-drowned kitten in there."

[somebodychildofanyone]

"Your boss huh? What kinda work?"

River did say her own professions, surely it's only fair.

[yournewsidekick]

"Eh. Murder, mayhem, malfeasance, general villainy," she says with a canine shrug. "That's what I was aiming for anyway. Long story -- he wasn't actually a villain, but I got onboarded as his sidekick anyway. Great gig."

She lowers her belly to the ground with a sigh, resting her snout on her paws.

"But... I haven't seen him in a while."

[somebodychildofanyone]

"Huh. Used to be in a similar line of work, but it wasn't as much fun as I thought it'd be when I was a kid." No judgement, just a gentle, frank admission. "'m sorry to hear about your friend, though. Was he alright, last you saw him?"

[yournewsidekick]

"Yeah." She gives a little smile. "I hope so. He was pretty far away when I exploded."

It was also a big explosion, but, well. Nimona tries not to think about whether it was so big that it ricocheted all the way back to the Gloreth statue.

But enough about her! Nimona's ears perk. "So you were a villain, too? What kinda stuff? -- Ooh," and she raises her head, "was it the necromancy?"

[somebodychildofanyone]

"Hah! No, I wasn't a villain, I was a fucking goon at best. Mercenary, kept some bad company. Murder for hire, burning villages, looting widows' houses, y'know. Scumbag shit. The necromancy was a step up if you can believe it."

You were a villain too...ominous, and yet River doesn't feel like this dog is malicious. Scared, maybe.

"But," River continues, offhand like, "I did get taught by an ancient ghost who made a pretty good run at conquering the world. Well. The known world anyway, his map was missing some places back then."

[yournewsidekick]

It starts slowly at first: the tip of Nimona's tail twitches to one side. Then the other. Then a bigger arc, sweeping the dirt (and a few wayward pieces of salami) off the cobblestones as the wagging picks up in earnest.

"Whoa," she breathes, reverent. "Metal. That's the kind of villainy that'd wreck the Kingdom so bad..."

She trails off there, lost in a happy (and probably very bloody) daydream.

[somebodychildofanyone]

"Multiple kingdoms," River agrees with a guilty grin. "Robert really went to town, man's specialty was draugs led by demons - uh, cannibal corpse-people who can still think, is draugs. But he got his in the end, stabbed through the gut by a Hero, as is tradition. He wasn't too bad a teacher, though."

[yournewsidekick]

"Ugh," says Nimona, emphatic, with just as big an eyeroll to match. "Heroes. Why do they always gotta ruin everything."

She drops her head back into her paws.

"Totally fine when a monarch's in charge of everything, but one guy with a zombie army wants to rule the world instead and they're like 'nooooo, that's eeeeevil, zombies are groooossss, we can't have that.'"

[somebodychildofanyone]

"I mean, I'll level with you, empires ain't had a good track record recently from my perspective and he was definitely trying to build one. Man wanted to be the government, which is a pretty shit thing to be, yeah?"

[yournewsidekick]

Nimona wrinkles her nose. "Yeah, I guess," she grumbles. "Can't fight the law if you are the law. But at least it would've been a cool government with zombies."

She tilts her head just enough to scarf up another piece of ham.

"And then you could've had an even cooler rebellion with even more zombies when you tried to overthrow him!"