open ♔ socialization log (summer pt 2)

[wynn]

WHO || Everyone! [ota]
WHAT || Shenanigans.
WHERE || Anywhere in the castle, surrounding environs, London, Andres, etc!
WHEN || Any time in Summer / continuations of threads from the last post when it hits captcha
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: 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:

Lance/Malina/Cora/Kate/David | continued
Abigail/Alice/Amelia/Kali/Sean/Thea/Winter | continued
Gwen/Rose/Kenzi/Sawyer/Avaleen/Frankie | continued
Erica/Natasha/Sara/Wanda | continued
Mars/Sebastian/Doyle/Deryn | continued
Jaime/Killian/Carol/Tdiddle/Han | continued
Myri/Andrew/Faye/Thoster/Clark/Neal | continued
Baal @ training rooms/firing range/movie theater/billiards/bar
Alex/Will/Dante | continued
Lila @ library/firing range/dragon's fire wing/
Astrid @ med center/library/starbucks/front desk
Sarkney | continuedw
Buffael threads | continued
Emma/Skye | continued
Drax @ training room/bar/outdoors
Elena/Sam/Snow/Bo/Dennis/Groot/Miles | continued
Topher @ computer lab/dragon's light/round table room
Sark @ library
Ella @ dragon's fire wing
Christos & Steve | continued
Jeanne d'Arc @ stables/kitchen/training room
Regina/Snow/Emma | continued
Willow @ the library
Henry @ the library / grounds
Paige @ castle ground
Nyna's resurrection @ Dragon's Light wing

Comments

july works!

[generaldavideus]

[David glances up at the familiar voice, giving her a small smile around his stack of books on Atlantis, Mystra, Poseidon and anything else he can manage to get his hands on. Also curses, but he's less likely to get any answers there - right now he's mostly focused on finding Circe and seeing if there's a way to get what happened to Emma reversed.

He would rather be in the field, actually doing something to help, but he told Zatanna he would keep an eye on things here - Amara and Emma both.

Still, he could use a break.]

I've been tied up in some other stuff. Last mission I was on didn't end as well as we would have hoped.

<3

[leftenants]

['Didn't end well' can mean a lot of things, but as a cop, her thoughts immediately move to the worst. She raises both eyebrows at him, helping herself to the seat across from his without preamble.]

That can be rough. [Like any law enforcement job gone wrong, she assumes.] You okay?

[Always the first thing you ask, in her opinion.]

[generaldavideus]

[He nods, closing the mythology book in front of him because he's fine. He made it out okay. Other people didn't.]

Yeah, I'm fine. It was one of the other team members that took the hit, and she's ... dealing.

[Not in the most healthy way, at least in David's opinion, but he can't control Emma, nor would he want to. If she wants the help, it has to be her choice.]

[leftenants]

[She's glad to hear he's alright, but the way he says that-- it doesn't sit right, makes her wonder what kind of hit he's talking.]

Someone get wounded?

[She knows they're prepped to handle that kind of thing here, but still, getting injured on the job is no joke.]

[generaldavideus]

[He shakes his head, because while that isn't not true - they all took damage in one way or another, that is mostly fixable. What happened to Emma? Not so much.]

Cursed.

[leftenants]

Cursed.

[She frowns as she echoes him, her eyebrows knitting together. Curses, she's familiar with-- unfortunately.]

Not the kind that can be reversed easily, I'm assuming, or else you wouldn't be sitting here with a long face on.

[generaldavideus]

[He shakes his head.]

According to the one bestowing it, we have to wait for the Lady of Magic to give the curse-ee a chance to atone. Until then, it's pretty much hurry up and wait while we look for other options.

[leftenants]

[She fights the urge to echo him again, her expression darkening as she mulls over the implications of that-- a curse that requires atonement to be reversed.]

Sounds like that kind of thing could get a little subjective. Who's to say when someone's atoned for-- whatever the hell they're being punished for. Not sure I trust anyone with that kind of magic to play by a firm set of rules.

[generaldavideus]

Yeah, well. It was Poseidon. In my experience, gods don't really care about rules - just their egos.

[He takes a breath and closes the book. To be honest, right now he's more concerned about the restrictions the cursed is placing on herself, not the ones the gods are placing on them. Right now, Emma is the powder keg, and she won't take steps to make sure she doesn't blow.]

[leftenants]

Meet up with a lot of gods, do you?

[She's not sure why that should surprise her. She's had proof enough that there are very real higher powers, in this world and her own, but most of her personal experiences have been with demons.]

What happened is really bothering you, isn't it.

[generaldavideus]

[He looks up at her almost as though to say "is there a reason why it shouldn't?" but he doesn't actually say that out loud.]

We went down there to break a curse in the first place, or at least learn more about it, but instead of actually solving anything, we came back with a second, separate curse. It's hard not to be frustrated.

[leftenants]

[Of course it should. Abbie knows it would bother the hell out of her in his place-- hell, she wasn't even there, doesn't even know the friend in question and it still worries her. She looks grim for a moment. As far as failed missions went, this one had to rank pretty high.]

Can I help?

[The offer might sound hollow, but she means it.]

We're all supposed to be in this together, right?

[generaldavideus]

[He considers for a moment, and while he won't get into the Emma of it all, but she might be able to help on the bigger picture.]

Have you heard of the Homo Magi?

[leftenants]

Homo Magi?

[She stares at him for half a moment, just to make sure she heard that right.]

Can't say that I have. Take it you're gonna fill me in?

[generaldavideus]

[CONTRARY TO THE TITLE they are not really gay magic users.]

They're a race of incredibly powerful magic users. They were apparently taught the craft by Circe herself and basically turned Atlantis into a paradise of magic and innovation.

[leftenants]

[The clarification is so appreciated.]

Sound like the kind of people you don't want to mess with. I'm guessing someone did.

[generaldavideus]

[He shakes his head.]

They did it to themselves, in a way. One of them fell in love with a human. They shared the secrets of magic with them, and when Poseidon and Circe found out, they were furious. As a result, they cursed all of the Homo Magi that they would fall madly in love with the first human they laid eyes on and sunk Atlantis to the bottom of the ocean.

To protect themselves, the Homo Magi sequestered themselves away from the rest of the world. Until ... we showed up.

[leftenants]

So the group of you that went-- you were the first humans they'd seen since the curse had been put into play.

[She exhales slowly. That's a long, long time to be cut off from the rest of the world.]

Never heard of that twist on the Atlantis legends. A curse to fall in love doesn't sound so bad on the surface, but even I know there's always a catch. What happened when you got there, then?

[generaldavideus]

[There's something in his posture that stiffens at that statement, just in his shoulders for a moment, before shaking his head.]

Actually, it's probably the worst kind of curse you can be under. Because you don't get to choose. You don't get to consent. You just lock eyes with someone and you think that there's this connection. Your emotions aren't yours, and you're convinced that they love you back, but they don't. And when it's over?

[When it's over, you feel like you've been used and that there's a part of you that's gone and you're never getting it back.

But that's not the question she asked. And he's just going to move on, because he doesn't really want to talk about it.]

Anyway, one of the knights is half-Homo Magi, and her mother was reaching out to her, or so we thought. So we went to the Bermuda Triangle to see if we can find them and get her out, but that didn't go as well as we would have hoped. They conned her into coming there because her mother whose magic they were using to power their defenses, was dying and they needed a replacement. They wanted Zatanna. Unfortunately for them, they weren't expecting her to bring back-up.

[leftenants]

[Abbie guesses that she touched a nerve, but she doesn't say as much-- seems insensitive, especially when she doesn't disagree with him on any level. She nods instead, her expression grim, serious.]

Free will is important. We all deserve the right to choose our own path. A curse that does that for you-- not exactly the fairytale some people might think a love spell might be the start of.

[She leaves it at that, content to hear more about the magi themselves and what the mission itself had been about.]

So what happened when you got there? Zatanna make it back okay, or is she the one who wound up cursed?

[generaldavideus]

[He shakes his head.]

One of the Homo Magi attacked us to try and get to Zatanna. One of the knights on the mission got a hold of her staff. As she went to take it back, she locked eyes with him and ...

[Abbie can probably guess the rest.]

She turned on her people to help protect him as a result, and we couldn't leave her there to suffer the wrath of her people, so we took her with us. That was two years ago, and we've been trying to break the curse ever since.

[leftenants]

[She lets out a long, low whistle. Two years. That's a hell of a long time to suffer a curse, especially one as nasty as that-- one that strips you of the freedom of choice.]

So that's the backstory, right? What happened on the most recent mission? Unless you don't want to say.

[She'll understand if he doesn't, but they've already come this far.]

[generaldavideus]

We went down to Atlantis to try and find out what we could about the curse. While Poseidon was giving us the information we needed, he refused to give us a way to break it and one of the knights on the team didn't take that well, for obvious reasons. Poseidon took it even worse. He chained her to the altar there and was going to drown her, but another team member couldn't let that happen. She volunteered to take the punishment in their place.

So Poseidon turned her into a kelpie.

[leftenants]

A kelpie.

[She recognizes the name, at least, though she's not sure what that might entail here ( knowldege: arcane lore 17 ). All she knows are stories from back home, tucked away in dusty books that she'd never had much use for until recently.]

The water spirit? They're shapeshifters, aren't they?

[generaldavideus]

[He nods in agreement, knowing a bit from personal experience (knowledge mythology 18).]

They're Celtic. Back in Everworld, they looked like horses, and would try and tempt people to ride on their backs or follow them into the water where they would drown them. With the knight here it's a bit different. During the day, she's completely normal. At night she transforms, but if she's not in a body of water during that time, she'll ... lose control. Hurt whoever she can get her hands on. If she's in water, she still changes but she stays herself.