open ♔ socialization log (april through july)

[wynn]

WHO || Everyone! [ota]
WHAT || Shenanigans.
WHERE || Anywhere in the castle, surrounding environs, London, Andres, etc!
WHEN || Any time in April/May/June/July
HOW || Actionspam

[ The castle can be a happening place, even on more mundane days. This log is for random interactions over the course of these few months. Because not everyone is into parties, ok.   Characters participating in the following missions are asked to wait until their missions have concluded before tagging into things that take place chronologically after said missions:  Dead of Winter, Curse of the Homo Magi, Ravenloft, Shadow Bermuda, and City of Blood  If you aren't certain if that applies to you, please ask!  Characters who are not currently squired in may also post, as their characters are living in the castle awaiting their ceremonies.

You are encouraged to start your own threads and tag around, and feel free to threadjack into any on-going threads that aren't specified as 'closed' in the subject lines since people can enter into rooms even in the middle of what's going on. WE ARE BIG ON THREAD-JACKING HERE. You can also specify 'single thread', meaning you want only one response for all participants, rather than multi-thread, where a number of different scenes/threads can be done as replies to the top prompt.]

On this log:

Wynn/Section Heads @ Various
Cheryl @ Front Desk
Myri @ her room & various
Skye @ Various
Buffy & Rafael @ the Kitchen
Peter @ Rec Rooms, Bowling Alley, Etc.
Liam @ Rec Room
Baal @ Various
Malina @ Dragon's Fire Wing/outside/kitchen/bar/library/Rec Room
Sweets @ Dragon's Light wing/Rec room/music room
Kali @ training room / firing range / outside / etc
Elena @ firing range / gym / kitchen / common rooms
Vi @ firing range / garden / rec room
Dean @ firing range / billiards room / library / kitchen
Jaina @ garage / training room / roof / computer room / bar
Lazarus & Vi | closed
Nick @ training room / firing range / rec rooms / computer room / bar / various
Des (& Zarad) @ NYC / firing range / training room
Elena @ 21st birthday party!
Alex @ garage / airfield / London / firing range / rec room / etc
Dante @ training room / old man bar / library
Andrew @ his room / computer lab / rec room
Alcide @ bars / grounds
Faye @ Gold's room / her room / various
Thoster @ hallways
Ollie @ training room / Dragon's Hoard wing
Mars @ library / room / gardens
Doyle @ the bar
Sebastian @ training room / his room
Neal @ various
Klaus @ rec room / kitchen / bedrooms
Adam @ Dragon's Light wing / various
Aedan @ training room / Dragon's Light wing / outdoors / rec room
Thea @ training room / grounds / bar / rec room / pool / various
Carol @ training room / grounds / roof
Kate @ training room / library / grounds / London
Ric @ Dragon's Hoard labs / bars / homeschooling kids
Jo @ lobby / various
Abigail @ firing range / gym / grounds / library / Dragon's Fire wing
Steve @ training room / various
David @ training room / library / grounds / kitchen
Emma S @ the pond / library / firing range
Amy @ library / kitchen / etc
Clark @ various
Erica @ grounds / training area / library / etc
Natasha @ firing range / training room / gym / bar / billiards / rec room
Sara @ bars / training room / gym / various
Hook @ bar / kitchen
Taradiddle @ Dragon's Light wing / grounds / places she shouldn't be
Sam @ library  / shooting range / castle grounds
Alice @ Dragon Light's wing / rec room / kitchen / training room / outside
Cora @ her room / grounds / training room / library / kitchen / TV room / computer lab
Will @ pond / firing range / castle grounds

Comments

[littledhampir]

While the training room is more of Rose's playing field, running for an hour or two every morning sees her get out of the Castle a lot, even if they are stuck in the middle of London where it rains more than the sun shines. She's been here long enough that she's used to it plus coming from Chicago? She seems to be a magnet for crappy weather.

Every time she goes past Sara training while on her morning run, Rose slows her pace, drawn in my the sight of the acrobatics more than anything else. She's spent her whole life training but this wasn't really in her wheelhouse. When you trained to fight vampires? Speed was the key, not flexibility. Still, there was something close to quiet awe and respect every time she saw the other woman, a rare look for Rose to sport.

Today as she slows her run, she comes to a complete stop, moving over to the side of where she's training to watch for a while, Rose still covered in a sheen of sweat from running as she shakes her hair out from her pony-tail, combing her fingers back through the long, damp strands.

"Guessing you didn't learn that here."

[canaria]

Sara stops and looks over at the other woman, giving her a smile. She tosses the weapons she was working with on the ground, though not a careless toss. "No. In a place that was far away from my home, a few years ago." Something that seems like it's been a lot longer than it has been, like it's been a couple of lifetimes ago when really it's been less than ten years. "A place sort of like this, but their motives were different." That's both the long and short story, in a way.

"If you need some extra water." She picks up her water bottle from off the ground where it was lying a few inches away and offers it to Rose.

[littledhampir]

Rose bobs her head, not surprised and yet still lines of confusion crease her brow, always trying to relate things back to what she knows when by now she should realize that was impossible to do around here. Heck, it was impossible for her to do back home as well, the only difference being that she no longer had those memories to appreciate it.

“I can relate to that.” Well, she thinks she can. “At least from what I can remember anyway.” Which wasn’t all that much. She recalled the experiences on a vague level but for the most part, all she seemed to retain was her training. When they were handing out memories to people coming through the veil, Rose got stiffed, big time.

She regards the extended bottle for a long moment, knowing full well she can grab one along with a shower back in the Castle but her curiosity is certainly piqued enough for her to stick around for a bit, Rose nodding once more and offering a “Thanks” as she accepts the offer.

“So what kind of place was it exactly?” Naively thinking it might be like the Academy she’d attended.

[canaria]

"You were trained before here as well?" Though she hopes the training Rose might have gone through was less of a turn-people-into-assassins kind of vibe. It's not anything she'd wish on another person. That kind of killing took a large emotional toll on Sara after a while.

Sara hasn't yet experienced the weirdness of gaps in her memories here. She doesn't remember anyone new she met in Starling City upon her second return there (family and old friends excluded from that, of course, since she knew them before), but since she hasn't come across any of those people who claim to know her, she hasn't had the moment of 'wtf?' yet.

"An organization that trained people to be fighters." That's as close as she can describe it without actually saying the word 'assassins'. "Harsh physical training, intense weapons training, things like that. Might has well have been an even more hardcore version of the US military." Not that Sara ever actually spent time in the US military. "The kind of place where they put their base and practically entire city in a mountain range." In other words, the kind of place that wants to stay hidden, is what she's talking about.

[littledhampir]

“Oh yeah.” Something in Rose’s tone as she replied suggesting that she didn’t mean some light working out on weekends either. Even Dean had been shocked by her revelations regarding her time at the Academy and when Dean Winchester thinks that your life is messed up? That’s really saying something.

While in reality, there were likely a lot of difference between St Vladimir’s and the Guardians and the place Sara was talking about, the more the blonde spoke, the more Rose seemed to think they were very much the same, a flash of understanding in her eyes, a wry, half grin twisting her lips.

“You sure you’re not a Dhampir?” Though she knows even as she asks the question that she’s not. The only other one she’d ever known in this world was Dimitri and from the way Fred had reacted to her, she got the impression that her race was more of a myth in these parts. “Cause we probably have more in common than you think.” Complete with bases and cities hidden in mountain ranges.

[canaria]

The tone in Rose's voice is something she recognizes as being something more than just a couple miles of jogging every Sunday morning, so she gives a somewhat slow nod in acknowledgement of that. Like, they have seen some shit okay. "What was your training like?"

Dhampir, however, is nothing she's familiar with. "Not to my knowledge, no. Partly because I'm ... not sure what that is." She admits. A title, maybe, equivalent to something like agent? Or a place. Or she could look like a dumbass right about now because of her lack of information about it.

"I'm Sara." Might as well make the introductions official and all.

[littledhampir]

While there might normally be some reluctance to share the details based on how people here always responded to her, that amazing crit fail on her Will Save might suggest she figures if anyone might not judge her, it's the person she's talking to.

"Long hours, from the time I was five." She offers up a wry, half grin. "I suck at math but I can tell you everything you need to know about proper guarding techniques." A well rounded education was not something that was considered a priority at the Academy where she'd trained, not if you were Dhampir anyway.

"It's a shadowkind thing. Half-Human, half-vampire." She is quick to add. "No bloodlust or, biting at all just in case you were wondering." If anything, Rose probably sounded more crazy than Sara did a dumbass. Even people who had been here forever didn't seem to know what a Dhampir was.

"Rose. Dragon's Hide... Which is just code for, I'm one of the Knights here that likes to hit stuff."

[canaria]

"Five?" Her eyebrows rise slightly. She's definitely not judging, just surprised. Five sounds really young to be trained like that. Sure, Sara's dad had been a police officer, and he put her and her sister in self defense lessons when they were younger, but she sure didn't get the level of training she had in Nanda Parbat at a young age. "I suck at math too." She replies easily. "Though you've got the earlier start than me in the training, for sure. I was almost finished with college when I was just about literally swept into the world I was swept into. What did you have to guard?" Is she allowed to ask that? She's asking anyway, she'll find out if she's not allowed to ask.

"Hadn't gotten quite that far in wondering what it would mean, but always good to know." Vampires don't exist where Sara is from, so all she has to go off of is mostly shitty fictional movies and books. Which probably don't work in those at all the same way they do for Rose; stuff like no sun (they're outside now anyway), garlic, religious objects, blah blah blah. That's how far she had gotten in the thought process.

[littledhampir]

Until coming here, Rose hadn’t realized how strange her upbringing was. She has always accepted that a Dhampir was born to protect the Moroi or to raise future protectors. The only reason a Dhampir ever attended college was if their charge did and even then? Their degrees meant nothing at all, their grades bought and paid for by the Moroi Royal Court. If somebody like Rose went to College and actually learned something, then she wasn’t doing her job properly.

“Uh... Vampires, actually. From other Vampires. Different races... It’s, really complicated.” And didn’t really matter here. She’d seen all of two Moroi since arriving through the veil and nobody was hunting them here like they were back home.

“Neither race sparkles though, for what that’s worth.” Rose’s pop-culture knowledge was practically non-existent, but Adam had forced her to watch Twilight. Unsurprisingly, she’d hated every second of it.

“Most people haven’t even heard of Dhampir but they hear half Vampire and jump to evil so I’ve learned to get in first.”

[canaria]

"That does sound complicated." She agrees. "The closest thing I could maybe compare it to are the ethnic or religious conflicts of where I come from." Which are also complicated. And violent. Just ... way less supernatural involvements, as in none at all.

"Oh god." Sara catches the Twilight reference, which changes her tone from more serious to more on the amused side of the scale. "Yeah, I think sparkling skin by any of the races might put them on the Cannot Be Taken Seriously side." Because really. Sparking skin? That's bad enough in fiction, but if it were real, it'd be even worse.

"I'm not one to claim that the better safe than sorry approach is a bad one in some cases." She says. "Is 'sunlight equals bad' a thing?"

[littledhampir]

There’s all of that where Rose is from as well, only she remains for the most part ignorant to what goes on in the human world. She’s ahead of the Moroi community by actually knowing what Twitter is. They live so apart from the humans that so much goes over their heads.

“Thank you!” Rose might have taken offense to how completely off the mark Twilight had been. Of course, she may have also been disturbed by how close it had gotten certain aspects as well, the red eyes for one. Here that wasn’t a factor but where she came from? The whole ‘Vegetarian Vamps’ thing was just ridiculous though.

“With Vampires it is, but not for Dhampir. We get a portion of the perks but without the downsides.” She includes blood drinking as a downside as well because the idea of that for herself is disgusting to Rose.

[canaria]

"Yeah ... honestly I just think of an explosion in a glitter-making factory when I think of sparkling skin. Or, you know -- someone after a nice and long, extreme workout." One of those has a higher probability of happening, though, than the other. Twilight why would you do this and lead people on the wrong path of thinking this way? And for the record, she meant a workout like on a treadmill or something, but after she said it the way she did -- her wording made her mind go to the gutter for a different meaning, whoops. She'll have to word that differently next time.

"No downsides sounds like a fair trade off." Ish? Depending what the perks were, probably.

[littledhampir]

[Continued Here]